Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, a director at the New America Foundation and the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad."
(CNN) -- Seconds before he detonated the massive truck bomb that killed him and a number of Syrian soldiers two months ago, Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha radioed other fighters in al Qaeda to say, "I see paradise and I can smell paradise."
That in itself may not be unusual. But what should focus our attention is the identity of the bomber -- he was an American.
The son of a Palestinian
father and an Italian-American mother, Abu-Salha grew up in Vero Beach,
Florida, where he played high school football.
Abu-Salha, who was 22, is the first American suicide bomber known to have died in Syria.
On Monday, an al Qaeda-affiliated group in Syria released a half-hour videotape in which Abu-Salha explained his rationale for the impending suicide mission.
The video is an important
window into the worldview of a Western recruit to al Qaeda drawn to the
Syrian civil war, which is now in it fourth year. And the video also
helps illuminate the recruitment techniques that the group has used to
draw Westerners to the conflict, estimated to now number around 2,000
In the video, Abu-Salha is shown tearing up his American passport and
then the passport is set on fire. Next he is shown wearing a green
camouflage vest and holding an AK-47 rifle delivering a diatribe to the
camera directly.
Speaking in a strong
American accent, Abu-Salha explicitly appeals to fellow militants in the
States and the United Kingdom, saying that coming to fight with al
Qaeda was so simple that he arrived in Syria "with only $20 in my
pocket." Abu-Salha explained that "Allah made it easy for me" as he
traveled from the States to Turkey and from there crossed over into
neighboring Syria.
Abu-Salha paints a grim
picture of life in the United States compared with the supposed joys of
his life as a holy warrior: "Just sitting down five minutes drinking a
cup of tea with mujahedeen (holy warriors) is better than anything I've
ever experienced in my whole life. I lived in America! I know how it is.
You have all the fancy amusement parks, and the restaurants, and the
food, and all this crap and the cars and you think you're happy. You're
not happy, you're never happy. I was never happy. I was always sad and
depressed. Life sucked. ... All you do is work 40, 50, 60 hours a week."
Over footage of a woman
in an all-enveloping black burqa who is shooting an automatic rifle,
Abu-Salha tells the story of a Russian woman working for al Qaeda who
conducted a suicide operation in Pakistan. Abu-Salha says, "She's a
thousand men. Not like you men who sit at home." In other words, you are
not a real Muslim man if you don't travel to come join the jihad.
Abu-Salha also paints a
vision of what life in paradise will be for those who are killed
fighting in Syria. In paradise, he says, "A tree will pick the fruit off
of itself and hand it to you," while you will find a woman so beautiful that "you would die from her beauty."
Abu-Salha's videotape
establishes some key recruiting themes for Westerners whom al Qaeda
wants to draw into the Syrian war: That it is purportedly easy to come
and fight in Syria; that life in the West is nothing compared with life
you will lead as a holy warrior; that real men do jihad; and if you do
end up getting "martyred" in the war, "paradise" will welcome you with
beautiful women.
Toward the end of the
tape, Abu-Salha contemplates his own impending suicidal attack and
death. Fighting back tears, Abu-Salha addresses his family back in the
Florida, saying, "I love you Mom." He also addresses his oldest brother:
"I love you bro. ... Look after our sister and our little brother."
At the end of the tape, a truck that
is decorated with the distinctive al Qaeda black flag with white
writing is driven off, and then in the distance there is a massive
explosion.
Abu-Salha is one of
about 100 Americans who have traveled to Syria or have tried to do so as
the civil war there grinds on. Not all of these U.S. citizens have
joined al Qaeda or its splinter groups, but a number have done so. The
New York Times reported Thursday that Abu-Salha had returned
to the States for several months after he had received militant
training in Syria and before he returned there to conduct his final
mission.
So far nine Americans
have been charged with traveling, attempting to travel or facilitating
the travel of others to fight in Syria with militant jihadist groups,
according to a count by the New America Foundation.
The most recent case was that of Michael Todd Wolfe,
23, who pleaded guilty to attempting to join an al Qaeda splinter group
in Syria. Wolfe was arrested June 17 as he tried to fly out of George
Bush International Airport in Houston.
Syria is attracting a
lot more Westerners than the Iraq War ever did because it's the perfect
Sunni jihad. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad belongs to the small
Alawite sect and is therefore considered a heretic by many Sunnis;
al-Assad runs a secular regime, and therefore he is considered by Sunni
militants to be an apostate, and he is inflicting a total war on his
Sunni population.
As a result, there are many hundreds
of "foreign fighters" who have traveled to Syria from European "visa
waiver" countries who do not need visas to travel to the United States,
including 700 from France, 450 from the United Kingdom, 270 from Germany
and dozens from each of the Scandinavian countries.
U.S. officials assert
that jihadist groups in Syria are already shifting their focus to
conducting attacks on the United States and Europe. Speaking at a
security conference last week in Aspen, Colorado, U.S. Homeland Security
Secretary Jeh Johnson said some Syrian jihadists "are actively trying
to recruit Westerners, indoctrinate them and see them return to their
home countries with an extremist mission."
The problem in Syria is
compounded by the fact that, according to both British counterterrorism
officials and U.S. intelligence officials, senior al Qaeda members based
in Pakistan have traveled to Syria to direct operations there. They are
known as the Khorasan group. Khorasan is an ancient term for an Islamic
empire that once incorporated what is now Afghanistan.
What can be done?
Western governments are keenly aware of the problem of Syrian veterans
coming home both radicalized and trained. The problem is that in some
European countries with hundreds of returnees it is just not possible to
monitor all of them. That was vividly illustrated by the case of Mehdi
Nemmouche, who traveled to Syria last year and is accused in the May 24
shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Belgium, that left four
people dead.
Information sharing
between Western governments about the identities of those who have
traveled to Syria and have received militant training is the key to
preventing more incidents such as the one at the Jewish Museum in
Brussels.
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