I thanked him for his honesty, but I reminded him that he had a beautiful wife and several children, adding, “May God always give them good health.” I told him that I was going into a meeting and would have to call him back.
I hung up and called Michael in New York. When I told him about the texts, he started laughing. “You must let us know before it gets serious,” he said, “so we can make plans for the wedding in Zarqa.”
7
The Value of a Life
Algeria, 2008
In December 2007, militants staged twin suicide truck bombings in Algiers, outside a government building and the United Nations headquarters, killing 41 and injuring 170. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the attacks, the latest in a series of ambitious assaults against the government and Western interests in Algeria.
Islamist militants had been active in Algeria for decades, but their affiliation with global jihadist groups like Al Qaeda was relatively recent. A powerful local insurgent movement had existed in Algeria since 1830, when France invaded and colonized the North African country. The Algerians finally won their independence in 1962 after a brutal eight-year war that cost as many as three hundred thousand Algerian lives.
After more than twenty-five years of authoritarian socialism and increasing social unrest, an Islamist party known as the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) swept the 1991 elections. To hold on to power, the secular Algerian military staged a coup, imposed martial law, and banned and repressed the FIS. In time, the most radical members of the FIS split off and formed the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which pursued urban guerrilla actions. At the heart of the GIA were some fifteen hundred Algerian Islamists who had returned home from the battlefields of Afghanistan.
The GIA went to war against the military government, aiming to end the secular state and establish Sharia law, a war that left more than a hundred thousand dead. But by the end of the decade the GIA had splintered; one of the branches, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC), turned to kidnapping, smuggling, and human trafficking to bring in cash, but the GSPC soon found itself running low on money and weapons.
In 2004, a GSPC commander named Abdelmalek Droukdal became the group’s emir. That fall, he got in touch with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. The Algerians needed support, Droukdal told him. In return, their organization would become an Al Qaeda franchise, operating under the distant leadership of Osama bin Laden. In 2006, the alliance between the GSPC and Al Qaeda became official. A year later, Droukdal announced the group was changing its name to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM.
This evolution had happened in plain sight, but no journalist had managed to talk to Droukdal or gain deep insight into what quickly became one of Al Qaeda’s most powerful regional affiliates. I had been talking to one of Droukdal’s deputies, who thought it might be possible for me to interview Droukdal if I came to Algeria. In the spring of 2008, a few months after the Algiers bombings, Michael Moss and I decided to make the trip together.
Michael learned about an American business delegation going to Algeria and asked the organizers if we could tag along. We were curious: Which politicians would the delegation meet? How would they handle security, given the recent attacks and kidnappings? The delegation also offered us some cover, a reason to be in the country so that we could learn more about the militants without arousing undue suspicion from intelligence agencies.
We arrived in Algiers near the end of May and checked into the hotel where the delegation was staying. The Americans were telecom and oil industry executives, most of whom had never been to Algeria before and knew little about its history or recent political upheaval. From their five-star hotel, the country looked peaceful and prosperous.
Two men in the group stood out. They said they ran an Internet company that specialized in telecommunications. It sounded a little vague, but we didn’t inquire too deeply. They were tall, handsome, and fit; they spent a lot of time in the hotel gym, and one told me he had previously worked as a hand model. They sought out Michael and me, and sometimes joined us for dinner. The former hand model was especially charming and gentlemanly, opening doors for me and pulling out my chair when we ate together.
Things seemed normal, but I felt certain that we were being watched. I’d been to Algeria before, and I knew that there, as elsewhere in the region, intelligence services took a keen interest in foreign visitors, especially journalists. While reporting on Laid Saidi, the Algerian who had been held alongside Khaled el-Masri in Afghanistan, I’d spoken to Algerian human rights activists and lawyers who advised me never to leave anything in my hotel room. Even while you sleep, they told me, intelligence operatives come in and take things.
I always took precautions after that, and most of the time I carried everything with me. While I was sleeping, I slid my computer, phone, passport, a notebook full of contact numbers, and a flash drive under my pillows before turning in.
Michael and I tried to get rooms next door to each other, but this time, his was at the other end of the corridor. On our second night in the country, we said good night at about 11:00 p.m., and I fell into a sound sleep. Sometime later, I heard the door click open. A very small, soft light floated into the room. After a few seconds, the door closed again, very softly. Exhausted, I quickly fell back asleep. When I woke early the next morning, I thought I must have dreamed it. Then I noticed that the spare notebook I’d left on a table in my room was gone. Fortunately, I hadn’t yet written anything in it. That night, before getting into bed, I stacked two chairs against the door.
We spent a few days in Algiers, talking to people about the security situation and joining the American delegation for meetings with Algerian businesspeople and government officials. At one of those gatherings, a government minister insisted that the country was ready for foreign tourism. “Take a car and go to Jijel, go to Boumerdès,” he said. “It’s very nice, and it’s all very safe.”
“The minister says we should go and take a look,” I told Michael later. “So let’s go.”
We would travel with our driver and a coordinator from a major international nongovernmental organization, who asked us not to identify his employer. The coordinator, an Algerian, had agreed to take us to the area around Naciria, where AQIM had a presence. Algeria’s wealth rarely trickled down, and the locals in Naciria felt forgotten by the central government, which they viewed as corrupt and punitive.