An Analysis of 3000 Islamic State Entry Documents

April 7th, 2016 - I have recently had a chance to take a good look at just over 3000 foreign fighter entry documents of the "Islamic State" (IS), a collection that I believe to be partly or even largely identical to the ones that Zaman al-Wasl, SkyNews and several German media have reported about a few weeks ago. I have published an analysis of these documents in today's new issue of DIE ZEIT, the paper I work for. The article can be found online here, but is entirely in German.

For the sake of non-German speakers, I have decided to share my main findings in English here.

I have used two approaches in analyzing the documents. One is a systematic, number-based approach, one is an anecdotal approach. I believe both to be revealing in their own way.


1.- The forms itself 

The forms are standardized and they ask for answers to 23 questions. The IS wants to know about the real name and the kunya of the recruit, they ask for the name of the mother, nationality, date of birth, the blood typ, the point of border crossing, an address, prior Jihad experience and specializations, among other things. Two questions are multiple choice: Does the recruit want to become a) a fighter, b) a suicide bomber or c) an Inghimasi. And the recruit is asked to classify his level of Sharia literacy: a) weak or b) medium or c) student/scholar level. Recruits are also asked for an address or phone number to contact in the case of their deaths. And lastly, there is a column called "comments", which IS cadres have in some cases used to add interesting additional information.



2.- "Statistical" findings

The IS cadres who filled in the forms where not all equally diligent. In many cases, the forms are not fully complete. Also the ways in which answers have been taken down are not 100 per cent coherent. So it can happen that someone who has the kunya "Abu XYZ al-Almani" may not have listed an address in Germany or a German nationality, but a phone number in Tunisia. Is he to be considered a German? And if not: What then?

It is therefor only possible to reach conclusions that cannot be considered hard statistical science. I have nonetheless tried to work the numbers as much as I could.

Here are the most important results:

• Just under ten per cent offer to die as suicide bombers ("Istishhadi"). Even less want to be an Ighimasi. The vast majority opts to become a "fighter" ("muqatil"). 
• Roughly three quarters think of their own knowledge of Sharia as "weak". 
• The large majority of recruits is aged between 20 and 30 and appears to have had no real jobs or jobs that require little training or have had no advanced schooling. 
• The biggest contingents reflected in the documents are from Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, followed by Libya, Morocca and Egypt. 

3.- Anecdotal observations 

The "comments" that IS cadres added are very revealing even if they are very diverse. Each entry consists of a few words only but sometimes feel like a short story, giving us an idea of the personalities attracted to the IS.

Following is a small list of such comments I found particularly interesting:

• "Used to be with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan for 5 years"
• "Can see very well, even in the night, ma shah Allah!" 
• This brother came spontaneously after he met other brother at the airport who were on their way here
• Used to be with Jabhat al-Nusra 
• Radar operator! 
• "Important ** has chemical experience"
• This brother has buried 400 moroccan dirhams in Europa before he travelled here
• The effects of this brother are meant as a present for the Mujahidin when he dies (these effects are listed as 2 phones and 4000 euros worth of currency)
• "Has switched to 'suicide bomber'"
• His parents are to be notified of his death, but without mentioning it was a suicide bombing 
• "Please tell my father and my mother to forgive me"
• trained on a 23 cannon 

If one looks at the backgrounds and prior occupations of the recruits, other interesting find can be made. Here are a few examples: 

• a former Kuwaiti soldier
• a former Saudi soldier
• a former Cairo Imam 
• an ex soccer player
• an unemployed truck driver with six kids
• a student of Sharia from an Islamic university 

4.- A careful Assessment 

3.000 out of what are possibly 30.000 IS fighters is a pretty good sample but there may be serious distortions we don't know of and we can't say if our sample is fully representative.

Certainly the sample contains little in the way of sensations, even though known terrorists are among those whose entry forms are available like Mohamed Belkaid, recently killed in a Brussels raid. Much rather, the sample solidifies some of our assumptions.

Further research into these docs is needed, for example in order to find out who travelled to the IS with who, something that is especially interesting in regard to European foreign fighters and the terrorist network they have established between France and Belgium.

The anecdotal observations give un an idea of the spectrum we can find within the IS: veterans of Jihad next to beginners, professionals next to scared people, educated and skilled people next to untrained and probably not very intelligent recruits. Not all of these will turn out to be master warriors, master terrorists or even master administration officials.

I want to conclude this brief post with two quotes. I asked Leah Farrall of Sydney University, a true expert on the history of Jihadism and an author of a great book (The Arabs at War in Afghanistan) for her opinion on the administrative behavior of the IS. Here is what she said:

Al Qaeda bureaucratised the jihad long before Isis, which benefited from inheriting many of its forms and processes when the two split. Poorly organised terrorist groups have short life spans. Al Qaeda turns 30 next year. The mixing of bureaucratised jihadis with former regime elements makes for an even more paperwork driven organisation.

And I asked Thomas Hegghammer of the FFI and Oslo University, who has focused on Foreign Fighters and Jihadist Culture in his work, about what he thinks these anecdotes tell us. He said this:

The files show that the foreigners come from a wide range of backgrounds and bring different skill sets, but they expect the same outcome: death. They also show that IS is combing the recruit population for special skills or connections for use in operations. 

I fully agree with both of them.


Let the debate begin!

 

Let's not follow the IS playbook

Yes, the recently published "Islamic Stat" video of the burning to death of Jordanian fighter pilot Muaz al-Kawasbeh was horrific. It was very hard to watch. Just terrible.

In their reporting, many media suggested that this was the most gruesome of its kind so far. CNN called it the "most brutal yet"; German journalists found similar words. Sascha Lehnartz, for example, at welt.de, spoke of an IS strategy of "continuos escalation." I am sure, the video was similarly described in other countries.

However, I think we ought to take a step back here. Of course the IS intended the video to be an escalation. But is it really? Are we really agreeing that the burning to death of al-Kawasbeh is more gruesome than the mass executions that the IS has perpetrated and filmed? More terrible than the stonings to death of several women? More brutal than the murder of allegedly gay men by throwing them off of high buildings? Are these images really more gruesome than the decapitation videos that the IS has produced? Decapitations that sometimes take minutes?? 

I am asking these rhetorical questions because in my opinion it is impossible for the IS to become more brutal than it has already proven itself to be. The escalation we are talking about here really only pertains to the technical savvyness of the videos and to the ever more skillful addressing of the target audience. This can and should be described and analyzed. 

But do we really want to be taking part in the ranking of the brutality of methods of murder? I, for one, don't think that we should. 

Of course it is conceivable that the IS will try rattle us again and again. Quite possibly they will succeed. They might kill people with methods we wouldn't have thought of. Methods which may seem like taken out of a horror movie. 

But let us at least not follow their playbook in this one respect: Let us not rank murder methods for brutality. As far as I am concerned, my disgust of the IS killing machine couldn't possibly be any bigger than it already is. 

NB: This is a slightly edited version from my German blog post about this topic here at ZEIT ONLINE. 

"Europe only talks about radical Islam"

January 27th 2015 - In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, I interviewed Mustafa Ceric for ZEIT ONLINE. Ceric is the former Grand Mufti of Bosnia & Herzegovina and one of the most important Muslim scholars in Europe. A German version of this interview was published on January, 14th. 




DIE ZEIT: Mr Ceric, you have condemned the Paris attack in strong terms. You have also called it an attack on innocent journalists. There are a lot of people in the Muslim world who believe these journalists were not innocent, but guilty, because they ridiculed the Prophet Mohammed. What do you say to that?


Mustafa Ceric: I would like to postpone the question of innocence for now. We know from the Sira, the recorded history of his life, that whenever the Prophet was attacked and offended, these offences were not only more hurtful than the ones by Charlie Hebdo – but the Prophet did not issue any death sentences. As Muslims, if we want to express our love for him, we do this in our hearts. Of course, the caricatures are not OK. All Muslims feel embarrassed and uncomfortable about them. If Charlie Hebdo wanted to hurt Muslims, the magazine succeeded. If the magazine wanted to offer some kind of social criticism, if it wanted to make clear, that some Muslims have shortcomings – yes, of course, that is true, too. But my point is: You don't love the prophet and show it with a gun.


DIE ZEIT: Al-Qaida, to give just one example, has always argued that cartoonists have to die, when they ridicule the Prophet, because the Prophet himself set an example when he had Ka'ab bin al-Ashraf killed, who had ridiculed him. Is that wrong?


Mustafa Ceric: I don't accept this argument. These terrorists first decide to do something and then seek for arguments. You know what bothers Muslims more? Charlie Hebdo also ridiculed the Jewish faith, and at least one journalist was ousted for Antisemtitism. We want to know: How are we going to solve this puzzle? Or take Anders Breivik, for example. He killed over 70 people. He said he did it as a Christian. Did the media call him a Christian terrorist?


DIE ZEIT: Nobody denied that Breivik believed he was on a Christian mission.


Mustafa Ceric: Perhaps. But it did not lead to hysteria about Christian terrorism in Europe. Why, for God's sake, are the media always talking about „Islamic terrorism“? This is a double standard. What happened in Paris, is not „Islamic terrorism“. I would like to ask the media in Europa to apologize for using the term „Islamic terrorism“.


DIE ZEIT: So the perpetrators have nothing to do with Islam?


Mustafa Ceric: No, this has nothing to with Islam.


DIE ZEIT: If that is so, why did you sign a letter to the head of the „Islamic state“ terror group together with over 120 Muslim scholars, in which you tried to convince Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that his religious arguments were wrong? Clearly you addressed him as a Muslim!


Mustafa Ceric: There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world! When you talk about Islamic terrorism, you are including all of them. That is a verbal crime. Why do you not do the same with Christian terrorists? Or with Jewish terrorists, like the murderer of Yitzhak Rabin? Did anyone blame Moses for what that man did?


DIE ZEIT: But who is blaming the Prophet Mohammed for what the Paris killers did?


Mustafa Ceric: Everybody is blaming Islam!


DIE ZEIT: I find it confusing that you say the Paris attack has nothing to do with Islam, but argue about Muslim theology with the leader of the IS. So let me ask you: Does Paris have anything to do with Islam or not?


Mustafa Ceric: Does al-Baghdadi have to do with Paris?


DIE ZEIT: We don't know yet, but his school of thought is similar.


Mustafa Ceric: We don't know anything about the school of thought of the Paris attackers. I will put it this way: What happened in Paris is against Islam. And against Muslims! It is not acceptable. It is against the values of freedom, against the European values we all hold.


DIE ZEIT: Across Europe, there is a growing problem with young Muslims who are influenced by Jihadists. If you were to speak to a 17-year-old who is in the process of radicalizing and tells you he wants to kill cartoonists because they have ridiculed the Prophet and because the Prophet himself ordered the killing of Kaa'b bin al-Ashraf – what is your argument against that?


Mustafa Ceric: I would tell him that the Prophet has never killed for revenge or for any offence that he suffered. When the Prophet came to Mecca, he forgave the killers of his uncle Hamza. I would tell him: If you love the Prophet, the Prophet will love you for not killing anyone in his defence. The Prophet doesn't need revenge.


DIE ZEIT: According to the Quran, blasphemy will be punished by Allah after you die. There is no prescribed worldly punishment for blasphemy, correct?


Mustafa Ceric: Correct. And if Islam was the way these terrorists represent it, I don't think I would be a Muslim.


DIE ZEIT: As a scholar and a former grand Mufti, are you in competition with radical preachers in Europe?


Mustafa Ceric: Yes. And we need a broader approach to re-socializing and re-educating those who decide to go and fight in Syria and then come back. They need to understand that they are wrong. But the Muslim institutions are weak, they have little resources and many Imams have little knowledge. We need help by Europe's states to establish strong structures.


DIE ZEIT: Why is the radical theology of the IS and al-Qaeda so attractive?


Mustafa Ceric: Young people tend to be rebellious against established systems, that's one reason. But they are also giving them arguments without telling them about their responsibilities. They turn it into an adventure.


DIE ZEIT: What can be done?


Mustafa Ceric: For one, I believe Europe needs a Grand Mufti. We need a voice to calm down things. Not everybody will accept this office, but it will have an effect. But the European states are hesitant to support this.


DIE ZEIT: Muslims could do something themselves to establish that office...


Mustafa Ceric: But we are weak.


DIE ZEIT: In Germany, Muslim groups often find it very difficult to even agree with one another on a local level and on local issues.


Mustafa Ceric: This process is not easy. We need to structure Islam as an official institution. We need better teachers, better Imams, who are from here and not imported.


DIE ZEIT: But who is doing something about that?


Mustafa Ceric: I am fighting radical Imams every day. But even those who are trying to help are sometimes accused of being radicals. Who is an acceptable Muslim for Europeans? It seems like there is almost no acceptable Muslims for the governments or the media. We can't solve this problem alone. Europe complains about political Islam all the time. But Europe also only talks about political Islam.


DIE ZEIT: Should we distinguish between Islam and Islamism?


Mustafa Ceric: I think these distinctions cause a lot of confusion. The Paris attackers should be called neither. They are rebellious murderers. They don't know anything about Islam.


DIE ZEIT: But radical Muslims are often louder than moderate Muslims. They shape the image of Islam.


Mustafa Ceric: But they are not doing this on behalf of Islam! For me, they are destroyers of civilization.

„This threat will stay with us for at least a decade“

What kinds of terror attacks do we have to expect in Europe, and how dangerous are returning Foreign Fighters? Norwegian terror expert Thomas Hegghammer* shares his insights in this interview with DIE ZEIT**.

DIE ZEIT: In the Paris attack, there was a link to Yemen. In Belgium, where the police foiled a terror attack last week, we saw Syria returnees among the suspects. In Germany, the police arrested several Jihadists, some of whom had been to Syria, some of whom hadn't. What do these instances tell us about the current threat?

Hegghammer: Firstly, that it is varied indeed. The security services have to look at different kinds of threats all the time. I would also add to the list the sympathizers of the „Islamic State“ (IS). We have seen plots hatched by IS sympathizers in North America, Australia and Europe. In fact, there have been more plots by IS sympathizers than by actual Syria returnees.

DIE ZEIT: What do all these people have in common?

Hegghammer: Apart from the fact that they are radical Islamists who want to perpetrate violence? Not much, really. They don't organize formally. They take good precautionary measures. That's about it. If you look at their profiles, they are a very mixed bunch.

DIE ZEIT: But it is clear, that the pool of potential terrorists is bigger today than it was a few years ago. Does that mean this threat is going to stay for quite a while?

Hegghammer: O yes, at least for another decade! Syria and the IS phenomonen have given Jihadism in Europe a new lease on life. We will be facing threat levels like this for many years.

DIE ZEIT: Should we expect more attacks, but on a smaller magnitude than we were fearing before?

Hegghammer: It's impossible to make good predication of frequency and scale. The quantity need not go up, but it could. And attacks need not become smaller, there can still be big ones like Madrid or London every now and then. But I believe there are two new trends. We are currently observing more attacks with hand-held weapons than with explosives. And the attackers tend to seek out targets that leave little doubt about the message - like Charlie Hebdo, Jewish schools, Policemen or soldiers -, rather than, say, general transportation systems.

DIE ZEIT: A lot of these plots seems to be results of calls to „individual Jihad“ via „Inspire“ and other Jihadist propaganda. Has this phenomenon now taken centre stage?

Hegghammer: I am not sure. Look at Paris: the Kouachi brothers were part of an old network, exactly like what we used to have in the 2000s. In Belgium, we saw a rather large network of 10 to 15 people. That's not exactly „invidiual Jihad“. The attacks in Ottawa and Sydney, on the other hand, were. We have to understand that new tactics are being added, but old ones are being kept.

DIE ZEIT: You have worked extensively on „Foreign Fighters“. What's more important as a driving factor: adventure and life stlye or religion and ideology?

Hegghammer: People leave for different reasons, but if I were to hightlight one, it’s the desire to be part of a historical project. It's partly escapism. These people want to get away from the West, from corruption and discrimination, and they want to move into this assumedly pure zone where they think they can find true Islam.

DIE ZEIT: We like to think of the Western world as free and able to accomodate all kinds of religious lifestyles. Why does this concept not work for these people?

Hegghammer: Disillusionment is not limited to radical Islamists. Many young people across Europe are frustrated, see no future, are in opposition to the current order. But they have no alternative. The secular, drug-using delinquent in a Paris suburb – where is he going to go? Islamists, in contrast, are being offered an escape route. So availability is a factor here: Syria is easy to get to. It's an utopia that is at hand.

DIE ZEIT: Some Israeli soldiers escape to Goa after military service; some leftists start communes when they are sick of consumerism; but they usually don't turn into terrorists. Where does this element come from?

Hegghammer: Jihadism is a destructive project, concealed in a constructive one. They don't join in order to become terrorists. But they can become terrorists in the process. And our problem is that radicalizing and preparing to go abroad to fight is a kind of activity that is just below the threshold of police intervention. In a way, the reason we have a radicalization problem in Europe is that the Islamists are not that radical. Because a lot of these networks stay clear of terrorist plotting, there is little the state can do against them. If these people were all organized terrorists, we wouldn't have any problem defeating them. But as long as they are operating below that threshold, our hand are tied. All these gateway groups, like Sharia4Belgium, Sharia4Denmark, etc., they have become masters at toeing the line.

DIE ZEIT: So the window to act is too tiny?

Hegghammer: Exactly. And we can't just lower the threshold, or we will end up punishing people for opinions.

DIE ZEIT: Is there any indication of how long it takes foreign fighters to cool down once they return? Or do they stay radical?

Hegghammer: We know very little about Syria returnees so far. But what we do know is the proportion of people who returned from previous battlefields and then plotted attacks. Before Syria, that rate was 1 out of 15 to 20. If you look at open source data about returnees from Syria who were involved in terror plots across Europe, we have so far seen about 10 plots with roughly 20 returnees involved. That is 20 out of 3000 who left to fight abroad, or 20 out of just over 1000 who have already returned, repectively. So far, it is only a small minority who have become terrorists. The question before us is: How do you stop that minority without over-reacting towards the relatively harmless majority?

DIE ZEIT: But many returnees have only returned recently. Some of them still may become active as terrorists...

Hegghammer: Yes, that number will increase. But I think we can already say that the rate is not going to be extremely high. Given the sheer numbers, however, the absolute number of terror plots may well be higher than previously.

DIE ZEIT: How should our societies deal with this long-term threat?

Hegghammer: Some intelligence services in Europe will have to substantially grow, they need more analysts. Not necessarily new methods or new survaillance powers. Adding data usually just means having to process more data. Smarter analytical software can help, but we need more brains, too. Our publics also need to be prepared for more news like what we have heard in the past two weeks, and they need to be persuaded not to panic. Mind you, we are still no-where near the level of terrorist activitiy we had in the 70s and 80s from the far left and far right. We should be able to psychologically tolerate even an increase in terrorist activity.

DIE ZEIT: What other measures are sensible?

Hegghammer: We need a sophisticated system to deal with returnees. We need soft measures to re-integrate those who can be re-integrated, and tough measures to incarcerate those who need to be incarcerated. And there is the internet. I am very aware of free speech concerns, but we have reached a point where something needs to be done about the access of Jhadis to broadcasting tools. JM Berger makes a really good point about this when he argues that the question at stake is not in fact free speech, given that Twitter and Facebook are really like TV stations. Should these people have the right to voice their opinion? Of course! Should they also have the right to broadcast them? Well, I don't think so.

DIE ZEIT: Prisons are also a problem in regard to radicalization.

Hegghammer: And that is a true dillemma. You have three options, none of which is great: Put Jihadists in a prison together, and they will wind each other up. Spread them out, and you will have the risk of the radicals radicalizing other people. Third option: Solitary confinement. But that's inhumane. This dillemma is accentuated by the European tradition of short sentences. In the US, Jhadists get very long sentences. They die in prison or grow old there. In Europe, they will be back on the streets after a few years. For me, all this is a good argument for putting as few people in prison as possible.

DIE ZEIT: How do you prepare for day X? Can resiliance be learnt?

Hegghammer: That's almost impossible, because whether an attack has a unifying or polarizing effect, has to do with the target. And you have no control over that. Take Paris, for example: There is a lot of tension now, the country hasn't simply united after the attack. And that has to with the nature of the target. It was very controversial. When the Twitter-Hashtag „JeSuisCharlie“ came up, that kind of forced people to identify with that controversial target. And lo and behold, within hours you had alternative Hashtags like „JeSuisAhmed“ or „IamnotCharlie“. It was very different in Norway, when Breivik killed 77 people, because it is hard to disagree that killing children is bad. That made it much easier to stand together. 

* Thomas Hegghammer is the director of terrorism research at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment and an internationally renowned expert on Jihadist ideology, Foreign Fighters and Saudi Arabia. (Foto Credit: Christian Vinculado Tandberg / FFI)

** This interview was conducted by Yassin Musharbash for DIE ZEIT. A slightly edited and shortened German version of this interview was published in the current issue of DIE ZEIT which can be purchased online here. We have a cover story this week called "Living with Terror", apart from the interview you will find an in-depth-story on German reactions to the Paris attack and the Belgian arrests as well as a report from Belgium (and other good stuff). 

Truth, Ambiguity and Covering Terrorism

By Yassin Musharbash (c) 

I trust the ambiguous over that which appears certain; I believe it comes closer to the truth. As a journalist this sometimes causes difficulty, because the ambiguous dwells in cumbrous words: allegedly; supposedly; reportedly... I have spent more than one deadline day shielding words like these from editors. These words don't make for beautiful articles. My hope is they make for more truthful articles. It is rare enough we stumble across something truly true.

The last time I felt this happen was in November 2013. I was standing on a tiny balcony in the city centre of Alexandria in Egypt, smoking a cigarette. Two persons sat in the living room that led to the balcony; over the past two days I had spent a total of 14 hours with them. What went through my head on that balcony was that I wanted to write about how Leah Farrall, a former counter terrorism officer of the Australian Federal Police, and Mustafa Hamid, a former Taliban adviser, had gotten to know each other and built enough trust between them to be able to write a book together over the course of two years, here in Alexandria.

I assume that most professions have their own déformation profesionelle; journalists tend to look for the truth in details: When exactly did you hear about it? What went trough your head in that moment? Was is while you were having coffee? Did you learn about it from the radio, or from television? Or did someone call you? What station was it again? And what were you wearing that day, what did you do after you learned about it? What was the weather like?

I, for one, was walking past a café in Southern Greece on that day, noticing the oddness of patrons sitting at their tables, all eyes glued to the TV set, but no one saying a word. I approached the TV set, only to witness the second tower collapsing.

It is of course not interesting at all how I experienced 9/11. But from that day on I, as a journalist, worked mainly on al-Qaida and Islamist Extremism. On 9/11, I was still a student of Arabic Studies, but I had already begun to work as a freelancer for several papers. I had written about Islamism before. On that day, Terrorism as a topic came to me, and I very much accepted it as my topic.

I could not help but think about that moment in Greece as I was standing on the balcony in Alexandria more than 12 years later. Why? Perhaps because it is always special to meet someone who knew Osama Bin Laden. More, I suspect, because in Mustafa Hamid’s case it is indeed interesting how he experienced that day.

On 9/11, he was in the Afghan city of Kandahar, where sweets were handed out when news about the terror attacks in New York and Washington broke. Others may have been celebrating that day, but Mustafa Hamid wasn't. He was angry. Only three weeks prior, he had met with Osama Bin Laden. On that occasion, the Saudi al-Qaida chief had let on plans were in place for a „big strike“ that would kill thousands. Mustafa Hamid asked Osama Bin Laden to stop his plan: „I knew what this would mean for Afghanistan“, he told me. It was a frosty meeting. It turned out to be their last encounter.

After I got back to Berlin from Alexandria I asked Mustafa Hamid to describe to me in yet more detail how that last encounter took place. What was the weather like that day? Where exactly had they met? What had Bin Laden been wearing? Had he smiled when he talked about his „plan“?

Mustafa Hamid kindly sent me two pages in Arabic. But by the time his email arrived, an unexpected process had already been set in motion: I had begun to sense that the real story was not what I thought it was when I was standing on that balcony in Alexandria.

Detail is usually hard currency in journalism. I remember that I once wrote an article about a German convert to Islam who had joined a militant Jihadi group in Pakistan. On the day before his departure from Germany he had taken his cat to the veterinarian. What a great piece of detail! But unfortunately it didn't reveal anything. And it explained nothing.

So I asked myself: What difference does it make to know what clothes Osama Bin Laden had been wearing that day?

Wasn't it more important that Mustafa Hamid was angry at the Saudi? Wasn't it more important that Mustafa Hamid and Leah Farrall managed to write a book together? Wasn't it more important to ask if there was something to learn from this, for all of us? I don't want to be romantic, but: If a former counter terrorism official and a former Taliban adviser can laugh together, as Farrall and Hamid do – why can't all of us?

I asked them both about the common ground in their endeavour and they agreed it was to set the historical record straight. Hamid, the eye witness; Farrall, the academic who had read literally everything on the role of Arab fighters in Afghanistan from 1979 onwards. This common ground is the reason their book is as powerful as it is (The Arabs at War in Afghanistan will be published later this summer).

But at the same time I sensed another element beyond their shared academic interest. It is significant that Mustafa Hamid recalls he chose to be intentionally discourteous towards Leah Farrall when they first met: „I thought she was like those in Abu Ghuraib“. Soldiers, torturing Iraqis, heaped in naked piles: That, apparently, was what came to his mind when he learned that Leah Farrall had been with the Australian Federal Police – even though neither Australians nor Police were involved in the Abu Ghuraib scandal. „But I quickly realised she was different, she was honest and serious, and she gave me honest answers when I asked her something.“

And how about Leah Farrall? “I remember sitting with colleagues years ago, discussing whom we would most like to talk to from the mujahidin world (a surprisingly common topic of conversation). Mr Hamid topped my list and had done so since I chanced upon two stories he had recounted in his books. In one, he told of forgetting to buy his children sweets while on a trip away and returning to face their wrath; the other, recalling encountering the body of a dead Soviet soldier, and the sadness he felt, even for his enemy.”

When Leah Farrall met Mustafa Hamid in person years later, she addressed him as „Mustafa“, and not by his nom de guerre „Abu Walid“. „That reminded me of my humanity“, says he. What was the bridge that made them trust one another? I daresay: A degree of respect for another person's life. But foremost: Honesty about themselves and openness towards the other.

The US TV series “Homeland” is a global success and critics often praise it, saying that it sheds light on the shades of grey in “Great War on Terror” that unfolded after 9/11. A CIA-Agent, a former US-Marine, who was (or was not) turned by al-Qaida during captivity in Iraq: That's the set-up. It is true that “Homeland” plays skillfully with viewers' expectations. But shades of grey? The truth is that in “Homeland” there is black and there is white. The suspense of the show really only comes from the question of who, behind his last mask, turns out to be evil. And who, at the bottom of it all, is good.

But that is not what shades of grey are about. Shades of grey don't mean that you don't know enough. Shades of grey mean that sometimes there are no simple answers.

Mustafa Hamid makes a point of the fact that he always felt in alignment with the Taliban movement but was never a member of the terrorist network Al-Qaida. Leah Farrall says: “I was happy I worked in law enforcement and not secret services because I never had to lie, and I wasn’t part of an apparatus that was involved in activities now widely viewed as repugnant and very much dictated by this black and white distinction of evil and good and with us or against us that dictated how some of the covert agencies operated in their less accountable space.” That is what shades of grey are about.

In January 2011, when millions took to the streets in Egypt to protest the Mubarak regime, I spent two weeks in Cairo. One morning I spoke to a young revolutionary who had not been attending work for days in order to live in the protesters' camp on Tahrir Square. He was very tired and had all but lost his voice. But he was euphoric. One thing he said touched me in particular: „One day it will be cool to be an Arab!“ There was so much pain mirrored in that sentence. Pain because anywhere outside of the Muslim world for all of his adult life that young man had been considered, as a Muslim and an Arab, a security risk.

Sometimes I ask myself if we can actually remember what life was like before 9/11. And how we used to look at one another and at the world. This “we” I am referring to is an almost global “we”: It encompasses almost all people considering themselves part of “the West” as well as almost all people considering themselves part of the “Muslim world”. Plus those who believe they are part of both worlds - a huge number of people.

I believe that prior to 9/11 we all used to accept shades of grey to a higher degree than after. I believe that 9/11 is the day that killed all shades of grey. The day on which many of us, as individuals, as citizens, as members of nations, consciously or unconsciously organised ourselves in patterns like shards of metal under the influence of a magnetic field.

But if one day, if that day, has such a power, I want to understand it. And by that I mean: Not as symbol; not as warning but in its concrete historical genesis. Not as a deed with its own specific operational history and perpetrators, that's what the US 9/11 commission report is for. But as that which unfolded as opposed to those which did not.

In Alexandria, I asked Leah Farrall about the single most interesting thing she learned from her studies and her conversations with Mustafa Hamid. She replied: “The role of chance.” Chance? Chance is not usually a category that plays a role in the discussions of historians or terror experts when they talk about al-Qaida and 9/11.

In hindsight, it is always tempting to interpret history as an inevitable chain of events. In the case of 9/11, one such “inevitable chain” goes like this: In 1996, Osama Bin Laden declared war upon the United Stated; pronouncing every US soldier anywhere in the world a legitimate target. On August 7^th, 1998, two huge bombs exploded in front of the US embassies in Nairobi and Daressalam, killing more than 200 people. On October 12^th, 2000, 17 US sailors died when al-Qaida operatives attacked the USS Cole off the Yemeni port of Aden in a suicide mission. Given this prehistory, what could 9/11 possibly be other than the next logical step?

That is true. But is also not true. It is only true in as much as all three events have already been the result of a dynamic within the al-Qaida nexus that was all but inevitable. What happened was that Osama Bin Laden gained the upper hand and the means to pursue this particular course of action – even though many in the al-Qaida leadership and close to it were not in favour of attacking the US at all. It is important to understand this: While many inside al-Qaida were against 9/11, some of those who planned the attacks had only reluctantly become members of al-Qaida in the first place. Like Khalid Sheikh Muhammed.

In the summer of 2009, I received an unusual email. “I have a message for you”, it read. Then there was a link to an uploader website. I followed the link and found a letter in which a group of Jihadists from Germany, who had migrated to Waziristan and joined a terrorist group there, invited me to interview them. Naturally, I immediately informed my editors. A short while later my phone rang, a number from Pakistan: It was the spokesman of said group, a Turkish-German militant. He said I should fly to Quetta in Pakistan, and I would be brought to their camps from there. I would be allowed to take pictures, interview who I wanted to interview, etc. My editors and I agreed quickly that I would not take that trip. It was way too risky and we could not trust these people. But we agreed to send them a number of questions. If their answers were more than just propaganda, we would decide how to deal with their proposal later. A few weeks passed. Then I learned the Americans had contacted the German Office of the Chancellery and had supplied them with the complete correspondence I had had with the militants.

The Americans? I suppose, more precisely, the NSA. Honestly, it felt horrible. I remember gesturing my wife into the bathroom and then, like in a bad movie, turning on the tap of the bathtub. I whispered to her that we would have to assume that our communications were being monitored.

"Even if there's just a 1 percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty”: This is how US journalist Ron Suskind in 2006 cites what he calls the “One per cent Doctrine”, also known as the “Cheney Doctrine”, for then Vice President Dick Cheney was the creator of this doctrine, formulated in the White house in November 2001, only weeks after 9/11.

The Iraq War, Guantanamo, Waterboarding, CIA Black Sites and renditions: Through the prism of the Cheney Doctrine all of these events seem less arbitrary, don't they? The same is true for global surveillance: Until this day, nothing explains NSA's greed for data better than this doctrine.

There is no need to compare Dick Cheney to Khalid Sheikh Muhammad to see that not only inside al-Qaida, but also within the US administrations the more extremist positions had the upper hand. Sure, Al-Qaida never distanced itself from 9/11 whereas in the US there was a process of democratic revision of all of these practices. But again: This isn't a comparison. It's just meant to re-iterate the fact that we are – in neither sphere – talking about inevitable chains of events.

Nobody knows what the world would look like if 9/11 had not happened. But what if we forced ourselves to try and look at the world as if that was the case? Bearing in mind that those responsible for 9/11 and the doctrine by which reaction was shaped are a handful of people – not millions.

I don't want to gloss over things: I am half-Jordanian, and I long for the times I experienced there as a kid. My Jordanian family is part of the country’s Christian minority. And until very recently what my aunt told me at my last visit there would have been unthinkable: That the guy in the bakery who used to bake all the cakes for our family events let it be known that he wouldn't put crosses on cakes anymore.

But by the same token I don't want to withhold that I am nervous whenever I have to travel to the US. Sure, so far I have always been allowed in. But the last time it really helped that the officer who screened me knew me from Twitter and thus was able to understand that my visa entries from Pakistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia didn't mean I was a risk but were proof of my profession.

I believe in a way we are all prisoners – prisoners in a kind of Guantanamo of the Mind. But I don't want to live there. I want to continue to meet with and talk to people like Mustafa Hamid, even if the US decides to designate them as terrorists, and without accepting that judgment as something I have to agree with. Just as I want to keep meeting with and talking to CIA analysts and operatives without immediately categorising them as torturers or murderers. I want to draw my own conclusions. Sometimes I want to pass on drawing my own conclusions. And sometimes I even want to be able to admit that I can't draw my own conclusions.

Because I know and understand that the world is complicated and that almost nothing is either black or white; because I believe that people can change; because I know that our world, really, is a world of shades of grey.

One day we will look back on the “Great War on Terror” and its warpage, and we will realize that it didn't end on the day that Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize; nor on the day that Osama Bin Laden was killed; nor on the day that the last NATO soldier left Afghanistan. The “Great War on Terror” will have ended, because enough people around the world will have understood and remembered that the ambiguous is closer to the truth and to reality than the seemingly certain. 

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NB: This Essay was first published in German by ZEITmagazin on May 28th, 2014. It is copyright-protected. It has been marginally edited for this Blog.