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In 2002 Abousamra was the first to make a go of it. With a few hundred dollars given to him by a sympathetic friend, he traveled to Pakistan in 2002 and again in 2003, looking for training to join Afghan insurgents in battle against U.S. forces. He tried unsuccessfully to enlist with Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. Then he tried the Taliban, which also refused his assistance (supposedly due to his “lack of experience”).63 Rebuffed, he returned to the United States to seek more advice.

So desperate was Abousamra to make the trip that he shelled out $5,000 to someone he thought could make an introduction. Abousamra and Maldonado were itching to see combat; Mehanna seemed less enthused, but he went through the motions. In 2004 Mehanna, Abousamra, and a childhood friend of Mehanna’s flew to Yemen for training, this time with the intention of continuing on to fight

U.S. forces in Iraq.64

They had set a high bar for themselves. For reasons that are not clear, almost no Americans had managed to enter Iraq and join the jihadists fighting U.S. forces there.65 Once again, the young hopefuls failed to find a training camp. Everyone was either in jail or in hiding.66 Discouraged, Mehanna returned to the United States after two weeks.67

But Abousamra was committed. He went on to Fallujah and became the only American clearly documented as reaching Iraq to take part in jihad. He remained there for about fifteen days. He told a friend that he had met with insurgents during the trip but said they would not allow him to participate because he was an American.68

Maldonado too felt the call of jihad, packing up his family and moving first to Egypt and then to Somalia in 2006. Like Zach Chesser, Maldonado described a desire to be part of a political movement. Although Maldonado had a tendency to alter his story depending on his audience, the fixation on an Islamic state is consistent in all of his accounts. In a letter posted to jihadist forums, Maldonado wrote,

Once my wife (may Allah accept her) and I found out that an Islamic State was established in Somalia, especially after the taking of Mogadishu, we decided to go and make Hijra (migration) from Egypt.69

Yet in a handwritten letter filled with spelling mistakes submitted in court after his arrest, he tried to recast his migration as the result of persecution in America and Egypt.

[I] moved my family to Somalia because I wished to live as a Muslim without a problem with the way I or my family practice our religion (beard, veil, going to mosque much, wearing Islamic garb and so on). After September 11, the U.S. was a hard place to live as a Muslim, and I felt that I should not have to change my looks or way I practice ’cause some other Muslims did wrong. [ … ] It seemed that if they really made a true Islamic state that was practicing Islam as the law, it would be the perfect place for a family like mine.70

It’s extremely difficult to credit Maldonado’s claim that practicing Islam in America was so difficult that it would be easier in an active war zone. Elsewhere in the court letter, he claimed he had heard “business was booming” in Somalia. One day after his first letter to the court, Maldonado wrote a second letter in which he admitted to “many dishonest statements.”

In the new letter, he claimed he had been eying jihad all along. The decision to go to Somalia had emerged during discussions with a friend named Omar Hammami, who was married to a Somali woman. They “talked about possibly joining the jihad if we went. We decided that he would go first and I would go later with my family.” He also admitted that he had sought out and participated in jihadist training, including instruction on how to build improvised explosive devices.71

There were al Qaeda members among the jihadists. When Maldonado arrived, the primary Islamic faction fighting to take control of Somalia was the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). Maldonado observed that the al Qaeda members he met received more respect than the ICU fighters. Soon after Maldonado’s departure, many