Dirty Wars (46 page)

As president-elect Obama began to build his foreign policy and counter-terrorism teams, Yemen would emerge as a major priority. Although most of the United States and the world had never heard of Anwar Awlaki, the new administration was monitoring his movements in Yemen. US authorities presented no concrete evidence that Awlaki was actively involved in any terror plots, but they asserted that he was an inspirational figure whose sermons kept popping up in investigations into various terror plots: in 2006, a group of Canadian Muslims charged with plotting to storm parliament and behead the prime minister were found to have listened to Awlaki speeches. In addition, some of the men convicted in the 2007
plot to attack Fort Dix
in New Jersey were heard praising Awlaki, according to a recording made by a government informant. Other references to Awlaki were registering on the radar in investigations in the United Kingdom, as well as in Chicago and Atlanta. Awlaki was openly praising al Shabab in Somalia, where the United States was becoming increasingly concerned about Western Muslims joining the jihad. A group of young Somali Americans from Minneapolis who had
traveled to Somalia
to join al Shabab were allegedly inspired by Awlaki's “Constants on the Path of Jihad.”

In a December 21, 2008, blog post titled “Salutations to al-Shabab of
Somalia,” Awlaki wrote that the group's seizing of territory in Mogadishu and elsewhere in Somalia “
fills our hearts
with immense joy. We would like to congratulate you for your victories and achievements.... Al-Shabab not only have succeeded in expanding the areas that fall under their rule but they have succeeded in implementing the sharia and giving us a living example of how we as Muslims should proceed to change our situation. The ballot has failed us but the bullet has not.” He contrasted al Shabab's armed insurrection against US proxies with the teachings of “Islamic universities run by Green Zone Scholars under governments headed by pimps,” whose teachings advocated “weakness and humiliation.” Awlaki asserted that the “university of Somalia” would “graduate an alumni” of “fighters who are hardened by the field and ready to carry on with no fear and hesitation. It will provide its graduates with the hands-on experience that the ummah [the global Muslim community] greatly needs for its next stage. But their success depends on your support. It is the responsibility of the ummah to help them with men and money.”

Al Shabab replied to Awlaki's message and Awlaki posted the answer on his site. Addressing him as “
beloved Sheikh Anwar
,” al Shabab's statement said, “We look to you as one of the very few scholars who stand firm upon the truth and defend the honor of the Mujahideen and the Muslims by continuously uncovering the feeble plots of the enemies of Allah. Allah knows how many of the brothers and sisters have been affected by your work so we ask you to continue the important effort you are doing wherever you are and never to fear the blame of the blamers.” It concluded, “O Sheikh, we would not only look at you as only a soldier, but as the likes of Ibn Taymiya [an Islamic scholar known for resisting the Mongols in the thirteenth century].”

During the Israeli siege of Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead, which began in late 2008, Awlaki's tone grew markedly more radical and warlike. “
The illegal state of Israel
needs to be eradicated. Just like Rasulullah drove them out of the Arabian peninsula the Jews of Palestine need to be driven out to the sea,” Awlaki wrote. “There are no Israeli civilians unless they are Muslim. When the enemy targets our women and children we should target theirs.”

Awlaki was influential among jihadist circles and with young, conservative Western Muslims, including those contemplating participating in the armed struggles against the United States and Israel and their proxies. His sermons had gone viral on jihadist web forums, which were heavily monitored by US intelligence. But there was no hard evidence presented that Awlaki had done anything that was not protected speech under the First Amendment to the US Constitution, or that would not require a major
court battle to prove it was unconstitutional. There was, however, enough smoke around Awlaki for US intelligence to want him silenced, as he was during his eighteen months in a Yemeni prison. Now that Awlaki was out of jail and becoming more popular with every blog post, the digital surveillance on him intensified.

Unbeknownst to Awlaki, his e-mails were being intercepted and read, and his blog was being combed over for clues about his contacts. On December 17, 2008, the FBI intercepted an e-mail Awlaki received from Nidal Hasan, the army major whose parents had been members of Awlaki's mosque in Virginia in 2001. The last contact Awlaki had with Hasan was before he left the United States for Yemen—and then it was only to speak with him at the request of his parents. In retrospect, the e-mail is ominous. “
There are many soldiers
in the us armed forces that have converted to Islam while in the service. There are also many Muslims who join the armed forces for a myriad of different reasons,” Hasan wrote Awlaki. “Some appear to have internal conflicts and have even killed or tried to kill other [US] soldiers in the name of Islam i.e. Hasan Akbar [a US soldier who was convicted of murdering two fellow soldiers in Kuwait], etc. Others feel that there is no conflict. Previous Fatwas seem vague and not very definitive.” He then asked Awlaki, “Can you make some general comments about Muslims in the [US] military. Would you consider someone like Hasan Akbar or other soldiers that have committed such acts with the goal of helping Muslims/Islam (Lets just assume this for now) fighting Jihad and if they did die would you consider them shaheeds [martyrs]. I realize that these are difficult questions but you seem to be one of the only ones that has lived in the [US who] has a good understanding of the Qur'an and Sunna and is not afraid of being direct.” Awlaki did not reply to that e-mail, but for months Hasan kept writing him.

Although federal investigators took no action against Hasan after that e-mail, a year later, after Hasan gunned down thirteen of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas, Hasan's e-mails would help form part of the narrative that Awlaki was a terrorist. “Al-Awlaki
condenses the Al Qaeda philosophy
into digestible, well-written treatises,” Evan Kohlmann, a self-proclaimed al Qaeda scholar and popular “expert witness” at terror trials, told the
New York Times.
“They may not tell people how to build a bomb or shoot a gun. But he tells them who to kill, and why, and stresses the urgency of the mission.” Kohlmann was frequently brought in to brief the US government on al Qaeda—even though he
did not speak Arabic
and had done little traveling in any countries with a strong al Qaeda presence. Kohlmann briefed the US Justice Department and said he warned them of what he described as Awlaki's increasing ability to incite young Westerners
to join foreign jihads or to conduct terror attacks in their own countries. Kohlmann alleged that there should be “
little surprise
that Anwar al-Awlaki's name and his sermon on ‘Constants on the Path of Jihad' seem to surface in every single homegrown terrorism investigation, whether in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, or beyond.” He labeled “Constants” a “lecture that over time has become the ‘virtual bible' for lone wolf Muslim extremists.”

Although Awlaki was undoubtedly grabbing the attention of an increasing number of counterterrorism officers and analysts in the United States, some within the intelligence community believed his importance was being inflated. Awlaki's sermons were indeed popping up in a variety of terror investigations, but he was a virtual nobody in the world of actual al Qaeda cells. Outside of English-speaking Western Muslims, he was not influential in most parts of the Muslim world. “I think the reason we tend to focus on him so much, is because
he preaches in English
. And because of that, we have more exposure to what he says and because we have more exposure to what he says, we assume that he has more influence than he really does,” said Joshua Foust, who at the time was a Yemen analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Foust said he was concerned about Awlaki's sermons influencing young Western Muslims, but he believed that some within the intelligence community were elevating the role his sermons played in terror plots. “I don't see any evidence whatsoever that [Awlaki] poses some kind of ideological threat against the United States. I would say that 99.99 percent of the all the people who either listen to, or believe in Awlaki's ideology, never act on it,” Foust told me. “So if you're going to argue that ideology is what caused someone to do something, you need to actually—to me at least—to be intellectually honest and analytically rigorous. You need to explain why that ideology compelled that person to act, but it didn't compel everyone who didn't act to not act. And to me, I don't think its possible to really explain that. I haven't ever seen an argument that actually does that. So from the start, I think a lot of the focus on Awlaki doesn't make any sense, because we assign him a kind of importance and influence that he doesn't really have.”

From Awlaki's perspective, he had been preaching a similar message for years before 9/11 and doing so in the United States. US Muslim “organizations used to support the Jihad in Afghanistan, in Bosnia, in Chechnya, and in Palestine. I was there, in America, at that time,” Awlaki recalled. “We used to
call from the pulpits
...for Jihad for the sake of Allah, the establishment of the Caliphate. Allegiance and Disavowal. We could speak freely. The freedom in America allowed us to say these things, and we had much more freedom than in many of the countries of the Islamic world.” Awlaki believed his message had not fundamentally changed, but the target
of the jihad he advocated had. Lectures Awlaki had given advocating jihad in Chechnya or Afghanistan or Bosnia in the 1990s were on-message with US policy goals. A decade later, the same teachings—applied against the United States—took on a new meaning and cast Awlaki as a traitor to the country of his birth.

As 2008 drew to a close, Awlaki posted, “A New Year: Reality and Aspirations,” a blog in which he provided an analysis of various wars around the Islamic world and cited countries where Muslim mujahedeen were progressing against Western powers. In Iraq, Awlaki wrote, “
The US has come to the conclusion
that they cannot do the job alone and they must seek the assistance of the munafiqeen [hypocrites]. With all of the outside and inside forces combining efforts to fight the carriers of the truth in Iraq our brothers do not need to win in order to be victorious. All they need to do is hang on. If they succeed in that they are [winning]. The invader cannot stay there forever.” In Afghanistan, Awlaki asserted, “The mujahideen are winning, NATO are losing.... Obama is all hyped up about bringing an end to terrorism by focusing on Afghanistan. I pray the brothers teach him and his forces some good lessons this year.” Awlaki also celebrated al Shabab's ascent in Somalia as “the best news of the year,” writing, “Al-Shabab are winning on all fronts. Insha Allah we should witness the announcement of the establishment of an Islamic emirate. Ethiopia is tired of fighting a proxy war on behalf of America.” Awlaki predicted that the United States would, once again, target Somalia, observing (presciently it would turn out), “The sea around Somalia is already occupied under the pretext of protection from piracy. This year could witness aerial bombardment with a renewed ground force invasion as a possibility.”

Globally, Awlaki asserted, “The separation of believers from hypocrites which precedes any Muslim victory is underway.” The “
Jihad will carry on
. And all of these are building stones for the ummah in its next stage. If Allah wants an end he prepares the means to it. Allah wants victory for this ummah and Allah is preparing the means for that. Let us not sit on the sidelines. Lets be part of that victory.” In some ways, Awlaki's fixation on the Islamic players in an escalating global war of civilizations paralleled a different set of lists being secretly compiled by the Obama administration's counterterrorist teams. On these lists were scores of al Qaeda leaders, as well as militants much further down the food chain: “facilitators,” “suspected militants,” “propagandists.” The administration was gearing up for a series of smaller wars in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, as well as a shift in strategy in Afghanistan that would seek to decapitate the Taliban leadership. At the center of Obama's new strategy would be a targeted assassination program that fulfilled Rumsfeld's vision of the world as a battlefield.

Awlaki predicted that the new US president would be a hawk against Islamic resistance movements. He was right. Obama would soon give carte blanche to JSOC and the CIA to wage a global manhunt. Capture was option two. Killing those whom the president deemed a threat to the United States was the primary mission, despite public assertions otherwise by military and government spokespeople. JSOC would not just be tasked with killing al Qaeda's top leadership, but with decimating its support infrastructure, killing its way down the chain. It was through this program that Awlaki would find himself in the new president's cross-hairs. He would soon become an American citizen sentenced to death with no trial.

UNITED STATES,
2002–2008—Barack Obama is an Ivy League-educated constitutional law professor whose political career was carefully plotted. In October 2002, when he was a state senator in Illinois, Obama had staked out a position on the Iraq War that foreshadowed the foreign policy vision he would later articulate as a presidential candidate. “I don't oppose all wars,” Obama declared. “What
I am opposed to
is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by...armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.” Obama would often refer to that speech, but very few Americans heard it at the time. Obama burst onto the scene in 2004 when he delivered a widely praised, fiery keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, won a seat in the US Senate that year and then, three years later, announced his candidacy for president. “
Let's be the generation
that never forgets what happened on that September day and confront the terrorists with everything we've got,” Obama said in his speech announcing his presidential run. “We can work together to track terrorists down with a stronger military, we can tighten the net around their finances, and we can improve our intelligence capabilities.”