The life and times of the other American killed with Anwar al-Awlaki

Sunday, 02 October 2011

Samir Khan, a U.S. citizen who was killed alongside the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, was editor of Inspire, al-Qaeda’s English-language magazine. (File Photo)

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By Muna Khan
Al Arabiya And Agencies

How did a 25-year-old American college graduate of Pakistani parentage – he was born in Saudi Arabia and migrated to the U.S. when he was seven – grow up to edit al-Qaeda’s online publication, in which he advocated violent means that even Osama Bin Laden found too gruesome?

This, in a nutshell, is the story of Samir Khan, the other U.S. citizen killed alongside the suspected al-Qaeda cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, in a CIA drone strike in Yemen on Friday. American authorities have not confirmed the killing of a third man, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, a master bomb-maker whose death, according to a Sept. 30 report in The Observer, could “overshadow” Awlaki’s and Khan’s, as it hits at al-Qaeda’s operational abilities.

Khan’s death, like Awlaki’s, could prove to be a turning point in the weakening of al-Qaeda, which has now lost two sympathizers with the ability to recruit westerners. That is, after all, how 40-year-old Awlaki has been described: a cleric with a great deal of charisma who is believed to have inspired men into committing terror attacks against western targets.

At first glance, Khan might be easily replaceable, as he was merely a Yemen-based editor of the al-Qaeda magazine, Inspire, whose vitriolic blogging and writing isn’t necessarily unique; after all, there are dozens of angry young men who want to stick it to the (western) man. However, Khan laid the groundwork by reaching out to disenchanted Muslims angry at Western policies toward the Islamic world. His weren’t rants against discriminate policies as much as they were pro-active “suggestions” aimed at getting more foot soldiers for al-Qaeda’s war against the West. He wrote about making a bomb in one’s kitchen and explained what one could expect in jihad.

He was unabashed about this support for al-Qaeda, as a story published in the Los Angeles Times on Oct. 1 that quotes from a 2009 Inspire issue illustrates. In an article in the issue titled “I am proud to be a traitor to America,” he explained: “I am a traitor because my religion requires me to be. We pledge to wage jihad for the rest of our lives until either we implant Islam all over the world or meet our lord as bearers of Islam.”

It’s not clear what caused Khan’s radicalization, but according to his friend Adam Azad, who met Khan when he moved to North Carolina in 2004, Khan was “already radicalized.” A New York Times story on Sept. 30 reports that Khan’s father had been worried about his son’s radicalization for some time and reached out to Muslim leaders and clerics to help dissuade his son from extremist views.

Khan’s blogs from the time he was a college student, while anti-American, were always careful to never directly advocate violence. In 2007, however, he did “champion the killing of U.S. soldiers overseas,” according to the report in the Los Angeles Times. This was about the time that Western media began paying attention to him.

In perhaps the only interview with Khan, an American TV channel, WBTV, in 2007 confronted him in a parking lot and asked him if his website was a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda, to which Khan replied, “not at all.” Others interviewed for the segment disagreed and described Khan as a threat to U.S. national security, with one terrorism expert saying, “it’s a war zone here, they want to kill us.”

Leaders in the Muslim community in North Carolina met with Khan and his father in a bid to get the young man to renounce violence; he was also banned from speaking at the mosque he and his father frequented, according to the spokesman for the Islamic center, Jibril Hough. Describing the long meeting the leaders had, he told NPR: “I think at one time … [Khan] tried to give some kind of justification for killing innocent people, but it was a very short rebuttal.”

And it seemed to have no effect on Khan, who blogged about his intentions to move to Yemen to teach English; the young man did move to that country in Oct. 2009. In an issue of Inspire, however, he wrote he moved to join al-Qaeda fighters and “wage jihad for the rest of our lives.”

Khan’s final issue of Inspire was different from previous ones, which focused more on tactical strategies. The final issue, which was published on Sept. 27, celebrated al-Qaeda’s achievements since 9/11. It also promised an article by Awlaki called “Targeting the Populations of Countries that are at War with the Muslims”, which, if indeed written, could perhaps be printed posthumously and garner far more attention.

Perhaps Inspire will continue on its path of being an online propaganda tool supplying readers with information on various “how to” topics related to terrorism. Or perhaps the publication will cease to exist because it was largely an extension of Khan’s personality and belief system.