Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
The author of "My Jihad" talks about John Walker Lindh, his days with Daniel Pearl's killer and a 9/11 hijacker, and why the FBI had its head in the sand.
Jul 17, 2002 | He was a devout Muslim, devoted to holy war in defense of his faith, and there were times in the 1990s when he was so admired in the jihad camps and battlefields of places like Afghanistan and Chechnya that fellow soldiers called him Abu Mujahid, the father of warriors. He accepted that he might die in combat. He wished, in fact, for just that end.
And yet, Aukai Collins is not the Islamic extremist of modern stereotype. He was born in Honolulu, grew up in Southern California. His father was a Marine who did a tour in Vietnam; after his discharge, the family drifted from Hawaii to Florida to Indiana and finally to California, by which time they were wearing love beads and tie-dyed clothes, and their little blue-eyed boy had long blond hair and a string of puka shells around his neck.
But in "My Jihad," Collins' memoir of his Muslim warrior days, the red-bearded American casts himself in a Zelig-like role, as violent militant Islam becomes an international force through the 1990s and into the early years of the new century. In 1993, in an Afghan training camp, Collins befriended Ahmed Omar Sheikh, who was sentenced to death this week for his role in Daniel Pearl's murder. In the late 1990s, while he was a paid FBI informant based in Phoenix, he met Hani Hanjoor, who would later fly a jetliner into the Pentagon. He says that while he was working with the CIA, he was invited to meet Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, but that the agency denied him permission. He even claims that he's mentioned -- though not by name -- in the infamous memo by Phoenix FBI agent Ken Williams that warned of a possible plot by Middle Eastern men in U.S. flight schools. His story has parallels with two other American converts to Islam: John Walker Lindh, who traveled from Marin County, Calif., to fight with the Taliban, and José Padilla, a Chicago street tough who was arrested in May and charged with conspiring with al-Qaida to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the United States.
But Collins' odyssey is also singularly his own. He describes his nomadic childhood as anything but idyllic: When he was 4, his father split and his mother spiraled deeper into a world of bikers, criminals and drugs. When he was 8 and they were living back in Hawaii, she was murdered and her body dumped in a swamp not far from their home. "From that point forward," Collins writes, "emotions like fear only strengthened me."
By the time he was 17, he was a hard-assed punk doing eight years in the California Youth Authority for his part in an armed house robbery. But after a couple of years of bucking the system -- both the CYA and its hardcore race-based gang system -- Collins had a seeming chance encounter that would permanently change his life. One day, in a GED class, one of the other inmates left a Quran open on his desk. Collins took a look, and, he writes, he was transfixed. Within a couple of weeks, he had converted.
Out of prison, he gravitated to a ghetto mosque in San Diego run by the pacifist Tabliqis. But soon he became restless with their approach, and set off on a journey that would take him to Croatia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Chechnya in search of the "true jihad."
The irony is that, especially in those early years, Collins had a hard time finding it. Even once he hooked up with other Muslims who shared his desire for jihad, he was constantly frustrated in his effort to penetrate war zones, by the dull routine of sitting around camps and waiting for battle. Though devout in his aims, he clearly loved weapons, all sorts of weapons, from handguns to rocket-propelled grenade launchers to tanks. In one Chechen camp, his delight in munitions and his impatience with authority earned him another nickname: Abu Mushakil, or father of trouble. Later, though, he would see people being killed up-close, and he himself would kill -- and live to describe it all with an almost clinical lack of passion.
Even after his right leg was mangled in Chechnya -- it was later amputated -- Collins might've been just another soldier of fortune, albeit with a higher cause. But then he turned himself over to the FBI and CIA, because he believed the growing movement of Arab jihadis wasn't policing itself, was growing ever more lawless and turning to terror. His informant role was ultimately as frustrating as being a jihadi. In an interview, Collins said he believes Sept. 11 could have been prevented. Based on a deep cynicism developed during years working undercover with the FBI and the CIA, he thinks it impossible both agencies could be caught unaware by the attack. It's entirely possible, he says, that they knew very well what was coming -- and that they let it happen anyway.
For its part, the FBI has confirmed that Collins was an informant who provided valuable information on Muslim extremists -- but denies that he provided information that could have prevented Sept. 11. Salon spoke to Collins about his experiences the same week that John Walker Lindh and Ahmed Omar Sheikh were sentenced for their crimes.
On Monday Lindh pleaded guilty to two felony charges arising from his involvement as a soldier with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Last month, federal agents arrested Josi Padilla, and charged he conspired with al-Qaida to build and detonate a "dirty bomb." Most Americans are surprised to find Americans fighting alongside al-Qaida. In your years of active fighting in Bosnia or Chechnya or the Middle East, how many Americans did you encounter?
First of all, with Padilla, I don't think he actually ever fought anywhere. So if al-Qaida recruited in that picture, he's just an errand boy or something. What surprises me [about Padilla] is, from everything that we're reading about the guy, it seems that he's just a very low-level maybe errand boy at best that probably was just talking about some big ideas he had. And Ashcroft turned that into stopping a bomber on his way to Washington. John Walker Lindh, now he volunteered with the Taliban. And if his contact was with al-Qaida, it was for the simple fact that the Taliban usually instructs foreign mujahedin to go with the other foreigners, which would be the Arabs, which loosely you could call al-Qaida. Now in Bosnia, the war lasted what, maybe five years? There was a handful of black American Muslims who had gone there to fight, probably no white American Muslims, maybe one or two. So probably just a handful.
But is it your impression, having moved in this world, that there are a number of other Americans who might be fighting with the Taliban, fighting with al-Qaida?
Well, what's your definition of American? You know, American-American, or a naturalized American? Naturalized Americans, of course, you're going to find you have Pakistani Americans, Afghan Americans, that are going to travel back to Afghanistan and fight with Taliban or someone else. American-Americans, that's another story. Probably very few.
After Padilla's arrest, there was talk about there being an active Islamic movement with thousands of conversions in American prisons and detention centers. Could there be a class of people like Padilla who convert, and then go overseas to ally themselves with people who are fighting the United States?
No, no. I think Padilla, whatever he is, is the exception, not the norm. There's a lot of people who become Muslims in prison, but if you sat down and tried to figure out how many of those people ever went for anything close to jihad or anything like that once they got out of prison, you're talking about a tiny, tiny -- maybe low two-figures -- number of people. I was watching a report on MSNBC that al-Qaida is recruiting people in the prisons. That's the biggest load of crap I've ever heard. The Muslims who do become Muslims in prison, the imams who teach them are generally Pakistani- and Arab-Americans, and they're completely against any idea of jihad or radical talks, so the Muslims coming out of prison naturally take those lines. I myself, I've had conflict with many American Muslims at the mosques throughout the country -- we would have arguments, and they wouldn't even support the idea of supporting Chechnya even with money. They've been taught that this is radical, this could be related to terrorism or whatever. The idea they're being recruited in prison, that's just absurd.
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