ABDULLAH ANAS with TAM HUSSEIN
To the Mountains
My Life in Jihad, from Algeria to Afghanistan
HURST & COMPANY, LONDON
First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by
C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.,
41 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3PL
Abdullah Anas and Tam Hussein, 2019
All rights reserved.
Distributed in the United States, Canada and Latin America by
Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
The right of Abdullah Anas and Tam Hussein to be identified as the authors of this publication is asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
A Cataloguing-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-7873-8185-8
www.hurstpublishers.com
To God and all His Messengers. To my dear friends Faheem Khan, Ghada, Pana, Registani, Muslim, Aryanpour, Sarmuallim Tariq, Syed Ekramuddin, Bismillah, Abdullah, Amir Mujahid, Syed Najmuddin, Engineer Bashir, Abdel Vader Zabibullah, Abdessabour Farid and Abdullah Azzam and all the martyrs of Afghanistan. Without you the Soviets would never have left. To my wife Summayah and my mother in law, Mrs. Samira. To my parents. Last but not least to my dear friend Jamal Khashoggi who remained true till the very end.
Abdullah Anas
The the special women in my life. You have always been the mountains that I have leaned on drawing strength from your love and prayers.
To Vale, my wife who has the best nose for a story, whose patience with me is unfathomable. To my daughter whose kisses and fearlessness push me on. And to my mother who strove alone on the path urging us always to be human.
And then there is a boyyou have a mighty name may this book be of use.
Tam Hussein
CONTENTS
PART I
THE ROAD TO AFGHANISTAN
PART II
MASSOUD AND ME
PART III
THE ARAB SERVICES BUREAU
PART IV
INTO THE WILDERNESS
AND RETURN TO THE MOUNTAINS
The idea for this book has been a long time coming and has germinated for six years. But life is such that I have put it off. Initially, I started to develop the project with two journalists, Adam Lively, and then Nick Fielding, then of the Sunday Times . Though the project fell through, in Adam I found a teacher who taught me English. I, in turn, hope I taught him Arabic. In Nick I found a dear friend. Both these men are excellent journalists but unfortunately our busy working and private lives prevented completion of this text.
Then I started working with two young men who were inseparable and for whom I have immense love and respect: Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn. I feel a deep connection to them due to our shared passion for Afghanistan. Alex and Felix also knew Arabic and, moreover, they also had that experience of living in Afghanistan and could write about the Taliban with great authority, which was very good for context. But then life in the shape of two women got in the way. They separated! They both became husbands and lifes responsibilities overtook them, not to mention the looming deadlines to finish off their respective PhDs.
As for me, my own life took different turns. The responsibility of raising five children, setting up a television channel, al-Magharibiya, and then later the unleashing of the Arab Spring all made me kick this book into the long grass.
Then circumstances were such that I felt obliged to return to complete this book. The post-9/11 world was already highly polarised, yet with the arrival of the Arab Spring, and the Middle East being convulsed by protest, the political climate in the West became increasingly intolerant, with ideas and terms circulating that often meant different things to different people, thereby adding to the overall confusion.
On one side there were men in suits who wished to sully the word Jihad, considered sacred to Muslims, and make it synonymous with terrorism. They invalidated not only my labours, rendering me a terrorist, but, by implication, also invalidated the Jihad of freedom fighters such as Omar Mukhtar and Emir Abdelkader, figures that we Muslims hold dear. Both these men fought colonialism, showed immense moral courage and were celebrated thus. Yet even these towering figures would be considered terrorists according to some. That was something I could not and will not accept.
On the opposing side were al-Qaeda and her ugly sisters: ISIS, Boko Haram and their ilk. They committed innumerable and horrific crimes including stabbings, truck ramming, burning, raping, looting and God knows what else and called it Jihad. They too have sullied this noble concept by making these criminal acts synonymous with Jihad. Jihad in its essence means a morally just war. I challenge any man to see what good has ever come from al-Qaeda. Absolutely nothing apart from bloodshed and more misunderstanding.
And yet it is this understanding that now colours the minds of the public, whether layman or specialist. For when the non-Muslim hears the word Jihad it conjures up the image of a cruel bearded man, which is far different from what Muslims have in their minds. And so many non-Muslims naturally are gripped by fear, which the media no doubt contributes to, whilst Muslims feel outraged by these masked men who have distorted one of their most sacred concepts. For Muslims, Jihad is a martial tradition with a sublime moral and ethical framework which cannot be transgressed. It upsets them that the wider public are unaware of these ideas and are bombarded with the image of criminals who commit heinous acts in the name of Jihad. These contending ideas surrounding the word Jihad have inevitably led to much misunderstanding and fear, and a return to basic principles is called for.
I therefore felt the need, given my ten years of experience resisting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the Cold War, as a mujahid that is someone who fought in a Jihadto explain the concept of Jihad and its relationship to Afghanistan. Whilst my explanation is by no means comprehensive, I hope that my experiences will go some way towards explaining how the struggle against the Soviet Union contributed to the rise of modern Jihadism. I wish also to draw a distinction between Jihadism, a very modern concept, and the original concept of Jihad. I want to share my experiences of the Afghan Jihad alongside Ahmed Shah Massoud and others in order to shatter some myths, remove some misconceptions and for the reader to have a nuanced and informed understanding of this concept.
It is with this idea in mind that I met Tam Hussein, a Swedish journalist with years of experience studying and covering Jihadism. He also has personal experience of the frontlines, having seen the fruits of this idea first-hand in the ongoing civil war in Syria. He speaks Arabic, and understands Islamic religious discourse and the political currents that I came from. He also knows the West and its culture. I felt Tam would be the ideal interlocutor for this venture and so with his help I returned to it once again. Now, by the Grace of God, the work is complete. We ask that God accepts this from us.
Abdullah Anas
November 2018
It will become immediately clear after meeting Abdullah Anas in person that he is not as articulate as the pages within reveal. That is because he is at his best and most persuasive when he speaks Arabic.
I have been extremely privileged to sit and talk with Abdullah Anas over the last two years. In many ways we, the Muslim youths growing up in London, experienced the fruits of his fascinating life story. And in a way I knew of Abdullah Anas long before we met, when one of my friends, a young Algerian, told me that his family was to attend a function in London. He couldnt contain his excitement when he heard that Abdullah Azzams son-in-law would be there. So, in some respects, Abdullah Anas is responsible for my own fascination with Jihad, war and ideology.
