“Why I joined the Iraqi jihad”: because of a really cool song

posted at 6:45 pm on August 28, 2007 by see-dubya
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Asharq Al-Awsat interviews three would-be “foreign fighters” under arrest in Riyadh who made big plans to join the insurgency. One of them was actually a recruiter, “distributing”* propaganda out of his car to other Saudis. Why would he start doing this?

However, his admiration of the voice and words of an Islamic Jihadi singer and his call to participate in the insurgency pushed him to do what he did.

Al-Quayri told Asharq al-Awsat that he distributed documentaries about Jihad in Iraq after finding inspiration in the words of the unknown Islamic singer who Al-Quayri now feels deceived him by saying that Jihad is the least he could do for Muslims in such a chaotic country.

That must be one wang-dang-dangler of a song. Shame he can’t remember the name. (Or they won’t let him say it.)

One of the other fellows (that’s his picture on the home page) got a little farther along with his travel plans:

However Ahmad al-Shayi was not as lucky. Al-Shayi was misled into driving a butane-gas delivery truck which was detonated by remote control in the neighborhood of Al-Mansur in Baghdad.

Al-Shayi told Asharq Al-Awsat: “At the beginning, I was not convinced of going there, but someone insisted that I should do so. I was shown misleading information, which in many ways was like a visa that facilitated my travel to Iraq.”

Ahmad’s story, and his “blinding flash of insight” (heh) was covered more fully at Mudville Gazette last month. Greyhawk’s account includes an uncomfortable detail about Al-Shayi’s venture: it killed nine people.

What’s interesting about all three cases in this article is that they are being–what’s the word: persuaded? reprogrammed? de-milled? –by a Saudi “Advice Committee” that apparently evaluates captured terrorists and their sympathizers and bends them back into shape. Not long ago, the Advice Committee was boasting of an eighty percent success rate, and being criticized for it. I shudder to imagine their methods, but cases like Al-Shayi’s are certainly propaganda victories, and probably a far better use of his wasted life than summary execution.

* Don’t know whether this means he was selling the CDs and documentaries or giving them away–nor whether he was paid to do so or volunteered. Maybe there’s some giant jihadi multilevel-marketing scheme going down in Saudi.

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