When we finished our tea and coffee, the Tunisian urged me to travel to the Tunisian-Libyan border region. “You will find some of my brothers there, helping refugees, masha’Allah. They have all been in prison for years.” He gave me his wife’s number in case I needed to be in touch.
As I walked back to my hotel, I passed groups of people who spoke the dialects of the Gulf region. Some carried Hermès purses and giant shopping bags from Harrods; others sped past in Rolls-Royces, Ferraris, and Maseratis. It struck me that they didn’t seem concerned about—or even very aware of—the turmoil on the streets in some Arab countries. In that way and many others, they couldn’t have been more different from the men I’d just met. I recalled something the Tunisian had said: “Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Syria won’t be the only places. This is the beginning of an unstoppable wave. This will make things easier for the soldiers of Allah.”
It sounded as if the Arab uprisings were about to become a new magnet for militants from all over the world, as Afghanistan and Pakistan had been in the fight against the Soviets. But I knew I’d have to visit some of those countries to find out for sure.
In August I flew to Tunisia, where the Ben Ali regime had given way to a Muslim Brotherhood–supported government. The head of the party, Rachid Ghannouchi, was viewed as a moderate Islamist and had spent more than twenty years in exile in the United Kingdom before returning to Tunisia in 2011. In Tunis, people seemed proud and euphoric. The Tunisians I spoke with were overwhelmingly optimistic, including Ahmad, the stringer I worked with there. Under Ben Ali, the country had been a police state. Intellectuals weren’t allowed to write or say what they wanted. Now, Ahmad told me proudly, Tunisia would turn into a real democracy, with freedom of speech. Though that hadn’t entirely happened yet, he felt that the new leadership was a step in the right direction in terms of fighting corruption and liberalizing the government.
At the Tunisian-Libyan border post at Ra’s Ajdir, I found representatives from the Red Crescent, the United Nations, and other international aid organizations helping people who’d fled the fighting in Libya, including many Africans who had worked in that country. The United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and other nations had sent support as well. Some countries had set up camps for families and provided food, while Morocco had established a field hospital.
One tent in particular drew my attention. There, young men gave refugees bags with food and clothes, then sought to engage them in conversation about the true Islamic path.
Most of the men who worked in the tent wore the gandoura, a long dress common among North African men. Some had beards.
Were these the “brothers” that the Tunisian from London had mentioned? After greeting them politely, I asked if they belonged to any specific group or organization. “We are just here to help the refugees,” one answered. He was cooking bean and vegetable soup on a large propane camp stove.
I asked what he did when he wasn’t here.
“I just got out of prison. Since then I am helping here.” He told me he’d been jailed for teaching the “true words of Islam.”
Two other men were standing nearby, peeling carrots and potatoes for the soup. “Were you all also in prison?” I asked. They nodded. In the wake of the so-called Jasmine Revolution, hundreds of prisoners had been released in a general amnesty, including many jihadists. I asked about the name of their organization. Who was paying for all the vegetables in their soup and everything else they were giving to the refugees? They looked at each other. They had an emir, they told me, but weren’t allowed to say anything more unless he ordered them to do so.
This surprised Ahmad. Like thousands of other young Tunisians, he’d taken to the streets and called for Ben Ali to leave. “Why do you need permission?” he asked. “We had a revolution. This is a free country now. You can speak freely. That’s what we all risked our lives for.”
But men like these evidently wanted something far different from what Ahmad and his friends had fought for. “I cannot speak without the approval of the emir,” insisted one of the men, who said his name was Salah.
I thanked him and said I would be back. A group of refugees was waiting patiently for the soup to be ready. I left with Ahmad, who was still disturbed by what we’d just witnessed. Ahmad was Muslim, but very liberal and a committed feminist; he didn’t like to see people mixing religion and politics, or trying to radicalize vulnerable refugees. He had different ambitions for his country.
As we walked to the car, I dug out my phone from my bag and dialed a UK cell number. The wife of the Tunisian I’d met in London picked up and handed him the phone.
“I am in Ra’s Ajdir, and I think I found your brothers,” I said. “One of them is named Salah, but he says he can’t speak without the permission of his emir. Can you help?”
I heard laughter on the other end of the line. “Insha’Allah, God willing, all will be good,” he answered. “I will try to reach his emir.”
I thanked him and hung up.
“Who did you speak to?” Ahmad asked.
“That was the key to the emir,” I replied.
Next, Ahmad and I went to a nearby Moroccan field hospital where we’d become friendly with some doctors. They would serve us fresh mint tea and share stories. Most of their patients suffered from diarrhea or skin rashes from sleeping in tents without much access to water and soap. From time to time, they also treated men with bullet wounds and women who had been raped in the camp. They said those cases were the hardest.
While we were talking to them, my phone rang. “You can go back to the tent,” a woman on the other end of the line told me in Arabic. “Salah got instructions.” Then the phone went dead.
Salah was inside with the two men we’d seen earlier and another man we hadn’t met. I asked if he had any news from his emir.
“Yes, Sister Souad, he can speak to you,” the new man answered. “The emir gave him permission.”
I asked who he was, but he wouldn’t give me his real name, instead calling himself Abu Khaled.
“Can I talk to the emir?” I asked.
“No, you can’t, but he sends his regards.”
“Can I talk to you?”
“No, you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I haven’t received the permission to speak, only Salah has.”
“You seem to have tough rules in your group,” I said. “Is the emir in Tunisia?”
He smiled. “My sister, you can try whatever way you like to get information out of me, but you won’t succeed in what over fifteen years of prison and torture weren’t able to do.”
“Why were you in prison?”
“For preaching the right way of our religion.”
He answered like so many others I had spoken to before and after him. What they often meant was that they had not only preached Islam, but also called for the toppling of regimes in the region, and in some cases for establishing a structure and rules based on Sharia as they interpreted it.
A few weeks earlier, Cuspert had told me about men like this. I wondered if there was a connection.