A slightly muddled, but useful, view of terror

Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam by J.M. Berger (2011) is an interesting tale that explores the phenomenon of terrorist recruitment in the US. A few of the cases, most notably that of Anwar Awlaki, are known to even casual followers of the news, but the presence of an American citizen at the founding of Al Qaeda is one of the lesser known cases covered in Berger's book. Peshawar is a long way from Kansas City, but Mohammed Loay Bayazid, known to his colleagues in the Afghan War against the Soviets as Abu Rida Al Suri, made the journey and distinguished himself sufficiently in the fighting in Afghanistan to be an insider when Al Qaeda was funded in Pakistan in 1988.

Berger attempts a nuanced view of the phenomenon he is describing by drawing a line separating those who joined to fight a war in defense of fellow Muslims, whether in Afghanistan, Chechnya or Bosnia, from those who joined to participate in terrorist activities. However, Berger himself notes that, over the years, this distinction has tended to blur or even disappear. Where Berger is less nuanced, it seems to me, is in his casting a broad net that includes as American jihadists some with rather ambiguous ties to America. For example, the son of a Pakistani diplomat born in DC, but raised in Pakistan who only returns to the US to go to college is a very different case from that of someone born and raised in the US of American parents. More common are Somalis who may have come here as children who volunteered to go and fight in a homeland they barely remembered. Along the way, though, Berger cites some truly intriguing cases like Adam Gadahn, AKA Azzam the American, who was raised on a farm in California by a father of Jewish descent who had converted to Christianity and ran a halal goat meat business.

Berger has a blind spot when it comes to his last chapter on conclusions and recommendations. He falls too easily into the narrative that US foreign policy is responsible for terrorism directed at the US. As I have written elsewhere, this view takes a highly selective view of American foreign policy. It overlooks, for example, America's early support for Egypt before our skepticism about the wisdom of the Aswan Dam project created an opening for the Soviets; or our participation in NATO's war against Christian Serbia which benefitted Muslims in Bosnia and Albania. Moreover, Berger conveniently forgets some of the evidence he himself cites that many of these American jihadists have described their disgust with American popular culture and religious tolerance. Despite these shortcomings, this is still a very useful book.