Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [45]
It’s unlikely that either Siddig or his disciples had a deep-enough grasp on jihadist theology to understand the distinction between near and far. Siddig was parroting themes he had heard from Rahman and Nosair. For instance, in January 1993 Rahman gave an incendiary speech at a conference on “Solidarity with Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in which he directly tackled the “far enemy” and specifically erased any distinction between jihadist and terrorist:
The Western mass media is accusing those who perform jihad for the sake of God of being terrorists. And when we defend ourselves saying “No, we are not terrorists, we are far away from terrorism.” As if we are standing in the cage of the accused persons and our enemy is accusing us because we are trying to defend our religion. And we defend ourselves against what we are accused of. And this is a bad way that we are putting ourselves in the cage of the accused persons.
We are defending ourselves and refuting the accusations. No, if those who have the right to have something are terrorists, then we are terrorists. And we welcome being terrorists. And we do not deny this charge to ourselves….
There are two main enemies. The enemy who is at the foremost of the work against Islam are America and the allies. Who is assisting the Serbs? And who is providing them with weapons and food? Europe and behind it is America, who are providing them with weapons, money and food, in order to completely exterminate the Muslims, and because they declared that they do not want the establishment of an Islamic republic in Europe.70
Chris Voss, an FBI agent who worked on the case, feels strongly that Siddig was a terrorist first and a jihadist second, who knowingly used manipulative tactics to win over people whose intentions might have been good in the beginning. His observations are important to understanding the process by which American Muslim terrorists are born.
Siddig and the others that were recruiting knew that if you could recruit someone to go and fight in Bosnia or any other place in the world, you got an individual to agree to engage in battle. So at that point, it’s a much smaller step to simply change the battlefield. And that was Siddig’s intention. It might not have been the person that was being recruited, it may have not been their intention when they were starting out, and sort of by definition these people in many ways walked into this very unwilling.
If you’re a Muslim and you see Muslims being exterminated in another country, you can’t help wanting to do something about it, in some fashion or another. Anybody, if you identify strongly with a religious group or your ethnicity, if they are being exterminated someplace else, if there is massively unjust bloodshed going on, it might be easy to manipulate you into, maybe you donate, maybe you feel strongly enough that you want to go and fight. And if you’re willing to train, that might have been your intention all along, but the recruiter is thinking something else, they’ve got their own agenda.71
Beyond the ideological currents and the manipulation lies a simpler, more human dynamic that merits consideration.
At the start, Siddig’s jihadist volunteers were pumped up with anger, their heads filled with heroic fantasies of traveling to strange lands to rescue fellow Muslims.
Then the training began, which made the prospect seem more tangible and grounded in the real world. Training could take place only on weekends because they had to work. Wives and families complained about their frequent absences. The training was difficult—even within Project Bosnia’s relatively short span, about 75 percent of the recruits washed out.
They found themselves penned in by more and more obstacles: the cost of travel, the language barrier, fear, inertia, sickness, family obligations, and other factors