Made in the U.S.A.
Hundreds of Americans have followed the path to jihad. Here's how and why
U.S. News traced reports of more than three dozen American jihadists, many of them previously unknown. Unlike the 9/11 hijackers, who spent only months here, many are U.S. citizens, native born or naturalized. Most put down roots here, attended schools, ran businesses, and raised families. A majority appear to be Arab-Americans--Egyptian, Saudi, and Palestinian immigrants--or fellow Muslims from lands as far afield as Sudan and Pakistan. But a fair number are African-Americans, who make up nearly one third of the nation's Muslims. Still others are as varied as Lindh, a wealthy white kid from California's Marin County, or Hiram Torres, a Puerto Rican convert from New Jersey.
No records. Surprisingly--despite the key role some have played in terrorism --investigators have never tracked them as a group. Immigration agents keep no records on foreign travel by U.S. citizens and resident aliens. FBI and CIA officials say that fear of political spying charges has kept them from monitoring suspicious trips by U.S. citizens abroad. Nor does the State Department have files. "Why would we keep records?" asks one official. "These are people who are dropping out of U.S. society." With few such records, government files on al Qaeda backers here were woefully incomplete. Thus, after September 11, most of the 1,200 suspects arrested were found by combing immigration rolls for persons out of compliance--not by tracking those with jihadist ties or training in the jihadist military camps of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Those camps--once run freely by bin Laden and his allies--are the connective tissue binding together the international jihadist movement. To date, the United States and its allies have captured al Qaeda fighters from no fewer than 33 countries, including Australia, Belgium, and Sweden. Only two "American Taliban" are in custody: Lindh and Yasser Esam Hamdi, a Baton Rouge-born 22-year-old who spent most of his life in Saudi Arabia. But some counterterrorism officials are convinced dozens more remain active, including several who may play key roles within bin Laden's network. Their trails are difficult to track; dual citizenship and false passports are common, and they typically have Arabic names, either given or adopted, with multiple spellings. "God knows where the hell they are, because we never found them," says Blitzer. "It's always been a potential time bomb."
They are, to be sure, a tiny minority of the nation's 4 million Muslims. Law enforcement officials stress they see no evidence of a tightly organized "fifth column" among America's diverse Muslim communities. And many jihadists have fought in struggles that the United States either supported or was neutral in--against the Russians in Afghanistan and Chechnya, for example, or against ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. In fact, Americans have long fought in other nations' wars. Such actions may violate the Neutrality Act--which bans fighting against nations with which America is at peace--but the law is rarely enforced. During the late 1930s, for example, nearly 3,000 Americans fought the fascists in Spain's civil war.
But the international jihad movement is different, analysts say. It has become virulently anti-American, anti-Western, and steeped in the kind of absolutist religious fervor that is the hallmark of bin Laden's al Qaeda network. In that, American holy warriors resemble their brethren overseas: They tend to be young, smart, and motivated, often introverted and detached, and ready to risk life and limb. "These are the true believers," says Howard University's Sulayman Nyang, author of Islam in the United States of America. "You feel you are an instrument of God, or part of a historical force."
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