Today's Wild Geese: Foreign Fighters in the GWOT

[SWJED]

I just finished Inside the Jihad: My Life With Al Qaeda - A Spy's Story by Omar Nasiri - highly recommend it.

[Cori]

Although this report is obviously a little dated now, it's an interesting analysis of jihadist statements about the national origins of "martyrs" killed in Iraq, at least during a slice of 2005.

[Jedburgh]

Here's one take on the subject in the US, from the Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Monitor, 2 Aug 07:

Behind the Indoctrination and Training of American Jihadis

On July 26, a former Washington, DC cab driver and resident of Gwynn Oak, Maryland was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for providing material support to a terrorist group. Ohio-born Mahmud Faruq Brent, 32, admitted to attending training camps run by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT, Army of the Pure) in 2002, a Pakistani-based jihadi group established during the 1980s campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan. After training at various locations in Pakistan, Brent returned to the United States, residing in Baltimore when he was arrested in August 2005. Brent told Tarik Shah—who pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaeda—that he had been up in the mountains training with the mujahideen. Through Shah, Brent's training is linked to other cases of Americans who attended LeT-run camps in Pakistan. After Shah's arrest, he agreed to record conversations with Brent in cooperation with the FBI. In Shah's cell phone, along with Mahmud al-Mutazzim, another name Brent used, was the contact information for Seifullah Chapman, who also knew Brent. Chapman, a former Marine, was part of the "Virginia Jihad Group," another informal network convicted of terrorism-related charges stemming from their training in Pakistan. He was sentenced in 2005 to a 65-year prison term.

As disturbing as these cases are individually, collectively they demonstrate an even more troubling trend of radicalized American Muslims—bound by Salafi ideology—receiving training overseas and returning to the United States for potential future operations.....

[Jedburgh]

The Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Focus, 24 Sep 08:

Jihadis Publish Online Recruitment Manual

To become a full fledged jihadi, volunteers must go through gradual ideological reform and build a sense of security and vigilance needed for clandestine activities. To further their preparation, one al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadi internet forum uploaded a new manual entitled The Art of Recruitment, offering tutorials in techniques for approaching and recruiting suitable people to join the global Salafi-Jihadi movement.

A jihadi forum participant using the nickname Abu Amr al-Qaedi uploaded the 51-page recruitment manual. The work contains a logical means of recruiting candidates for jihad, using three phases of “solitary preaching” and cultivation. The recruiters are instructed to cover every phase before moving to the next step. The successful completion of all three phases should lead to the formation of an active jihadi cell. In preparing the manual, al-Qaedi says he took into consideration the differences between people living in Muslim countries not occupied by crusaders, such as Jordan, Libya, Egypt, Algeria and others. "The purpose of the booklet is to transform the candidate into a devout and distinguished jihadi who understands the fundamentals of jihad, consequently becoming one of the ‘victorious cult.’” Al-Qaedi defines “solitary preaching” as a personal, direct contact between the candidate and the recruiter. Direct contact presents a good opportunity to comprehensively mold the candidate into a pious member of the Salafi-Jihadi movement and closely observe the recruitment progress. The recruiter can easily clarify any frustrations the candidate might have about joining jihad, refute discrepancies and, above all, preserve the confidentiality of the operation from the notice of security forces.....