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India and Pakistan have been fighting over the region to a greater or lesser extent since 1947. The dispute was settled in favor of India, but an insurgency has festered since 1989, fueled by mujahideen fighters and terrorists from Pakistan and abroad, with significant covert support from Pakistan’s intelligence service. In addition to the two nation-states tussling over the region, a move for Kashmiri independence was also roiling internally.46

As the twentieth century wound to a close, Randall Royer, the white kid from Virginia who had joined the Bosnian mujahideen, was growing restless. He moved in heady circles during his day job with the Council for American-Islamic Relations, rubbing shoulders with top State Department officials (including its counterterrorism coordinator) and even attending White House functions. At one, he had his picture taken with President Clinton.47

It was a job that seemed to fit his disposition, but in time he found his attention drawn once more to the fields of jihad. With a group of friends—up to a dozen American-born citizens and immigrants from the Washington, D.C., area—Royer began to train with firearms for jihad in Chechnya, where an Islamist insurgency had been carrying out a campaign of guerrilla war and terrorism against the Russian government.

They practiced for jihad using paintball guns, as well as live weapons, including the weapon of choice for mujahideen around the world, the Russian-made Kalashnikov assault rifle, better known as an AK-47. Three members of the group were U.S. military veterans, and the team practiced at times on military firing ranges.48 In April 2000 Royer applied for a visa to go to Pakistan, where he met with members of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), Urdu for “Army of Righteousness.”

LeT was a Pakistani Islamist group formed in 1989 that had attracted a significant number of Afghan war veterans. Royer had arranged an introduction through mujahideen fighters he had met in Bosnia who were now in Pakistan.49

According to Royer, he researched the group before going to Kashmir and determined that it had not been designated a terrorist organization.50 This was technically true (LeT was not formally designated as such until December 2001), but it would have been difficult to research the group without discovering its terrorist activities.51 By 2000 the organization had been implicated in attacks on Indian civilians and troops in Kashmir. Its members had killed scores of victims in just a few short years.52

Royer connected with LeT in Lahore, where he saw what he called an “idyllic” Islamic community. According to Royer, he sought and received assurances that the group was opposed to extremism generally and al Qaeda specifically.

The conflict was different here than in Bosnia, more complex and multifaceted (although, in fairness, the narrative in Bosnia had also been greatly oversimplified by both the press and jihadist ideologues). For Royer it boiled down to a series of indignities against “the oppressed”—meaning the Muslim oppressed, as opposed to the Hindus being terrorized by LeT. Royer went to the Kashmir area and wielded a gun during the visit. He sought to minimize the incident as firing “a few rounds over the front line in the general direction of an Indian military bunker.”53

Royer returned to the United States and made arrangements for other members of his group to travel to Pakistan to train and eventually fight with LeT. Back in the states, the men continued to acquire weapons, military equipment, and ammunition.

Then September 11 happened. Some members of the paintball group were already in Pakistan. Those who remained were told by their spiritual guide, Ali Al Timimi, that an all-out war would soon break out between the United States and Islam and that fighting Americans was a legitimate act of jihad. Everyone in the room should talk to Royer about joining their comrades at the LeT training camps, Timimi said. After the meeting, Royer