Bombshell (28 page)

Malika el Aroud was five years old when she moved with her parents from Morocco to Belgium. They were part of a wave of Muslim immigrants that helped rebuild Europe after the devastation of World War II. Initially men came to work temporarily and sent remittances home, but with time, their families joined them. Many European countries saw Muslim ghettos grow on the outskirts of their cities and towns. As a young immigrant, Malika grew up like other children, playing, going out, and having “an average life” according to her sister, Saida.

As she grew older, she indulged in the various vices Belgium had to offer: sex, drugs, alcohol, parties, discos, and lots of boys. Her sisters recalled that she was a wild child who became pregnant by her first cousin and had a baby out of wedlock. By her own account, Malika claims that, after a while, she became so disgusted with herself that she wanted to die. She even attempted suicide.
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In high school, she attacked a teacher for making racist remarks, and was promptly expelled. She recalls being treated like a “dirty foreigner” wherever she went. She claims her radicalization was a reaction to the right-wing racist xenophobia she encountered as an
outsider in Belgium. Like many children of Muslim immigrants, Malika faced the identity crisis associated with being neither European nor fully Moroccan. She did not fit in either society.

Malika wanted to give her daughter a better future than she had. But she could not find work, had serious financial problems, and fell into a deep depression. As, one by one, the doors around her closed, she gravitated toward the Centre Islamique Belge (CIB) in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, a mosque and community center founded in 1997 by a radical Syrian cleric named Ayachi Bassam. There, Malika found a new identity in political Islam. It opened a door that offered money, work, psychological support, and, best of all, a husband.
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At the center she quickly married and quickly divorced twice before meeting the love of her life, Abdessater Dahmane.

Abdessater had heard about Malika. One day, he approached her outside the center while she waited for the tram. He apologized for being so forward, gave her his phone number, and asked if he could talk to her again. Malika, impressed by the dark prayer callus on his forehead, which indicated he was truly a man of faith, readily agreed. The two of them enjoyed a chaste courtship consisting of long walks in the park and discussions about politics and the evils of America. When Malika contracted tuberculosis she feared Abdessater's reaction to the news would be to abandon their courtship. But instead of spurning her, he asked her to marry him so that he could take care of her.
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That April they wed. Sheikh Bassam himself performed the ceremony.
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Bassam indoctrinated his followers with a puritanical interpretation of Islam, making the center a breeding ground for extremism.
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There was enormous pressure on students in the study groups to conform. Many girls walked in bareheaded, but within a week or two they were almost certain to be sporting a headscarf. Surrounded by Muslims who embraced a “pure” form of Islam, Malika donned
the hijab and began her metamorphosis, first reading the
Qur'an
in French, then abstaining from drugs and alcohol. The rigid environment and strict code of conduct provided her with a welcome sense of purpose.
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Abdessater shared Malika's worldview and politics. They both regarded Shi'a and secular Muslims with contempt. They considered Moroccan Islam overly traditional, superstitious, and sexist. In their view, colonial influence had poisoned the country, whereas the Salafi interpretation of Islam represented a true form, much closer to the ideals of the Umma, the Islamic Community of Believers. The most dynamic interpretation of Islam, in their view, was Osama bin Laden's. The couple greatly admired bin Laden and followed his charitable deeds in Afghanistan while he fought the Russians. Bin Laden spent his own money, which in itself was worthy of their respect and love. Malika recalled the day bin Laden appeared on the news and Abdessater was deeply impressed. He said, “Look at his face, don't you think it is beautiful?” Malika enthusiastically agreed. Bin Laden was combating injustice in Afghanistan and Abdessater was scared of dying without having done anything important for God or in the name of jihad. He felt that Osama was talking directly to him.
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Bin Laden's example inspired the couple to travel to Afghanistan in 2000, to Al Qaeda's ad-Darunta training camp in Jalalabad. Abdessater hoped to fight the Russians in Chechnya, but instead was recruited into bin Laden's terror network. Within a few months, the couple was housed in the enclave reserved for bin Laden's most trusted lieutenants.
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It was in Afghanistan that Malika was launched into jihadi stardom. Housed separately in the camp for foreign women, she had hoped to open an orphanage but was unprepared for the poverty and devastation she saw around her. The ravages of war shocked her and she blamed American sanctions against the Taliban for the destitution of the Afghan
people. As a good jihadi wife, she supported her husband's decision to accept bin Laden's leadership and to do his bidding.

On bin Laden's instructions, Abdessater assassinated the Taliban's chief rival, Ahmad Shah Massoud, on September 9, 2001. Together with a partner, Abdessater posed as a Moroccan journalist sent to interview Massoud. It was the partner, Rachid Bouraoui El Ouaer, who detonated an improvised device disguised as a camera in Massoud's presence. Abdessater was shot and killed by Massoud's bodyguards as he tried to flee the scene.
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Massoud's death was bin Laden's gift to the Taliban since Massoud, the so-called Lion of Panjshir, had been the only obstacle preventing their complete dominance of Afghanistan. More important, Massoud's death paved the way for the 9/11 attacks, which took place just two days later, by giving the Taliban free rein in Afghanistan and guaranteeing that the Taliban would protect bin Laden from any retaliation that might follow.
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Malika was tried for complicity in Massoud's death. There is evidence showing that a courier brought her five hundred dollars and a letter of congratulation from Osama bin Laden soon after the assassination, but, by playing the part of the grieving widow, she persuaded the court that she knew nothing of her husband's plan. Belgian human rights organizations secured her release from the NATO prison in which she was held, and the government entertained the hope that they might turn Malika into a double agent.

But Malika really had aided in the attack on Massoud. She had returned to Belgium from Afghanistan, picked up Abdessater's laptop computer, and delivered medicine and two envelopes full of cash to cover the costs of the operation. Once she was acquitted, her husband's death propelled her to fame as the widow of a martyr—the pinnacle of achievement for a devout Muslim woman.

Malika soon found new love in a jihadi chat room and married Moaz Garsallaoui, a Moroccan man several years her junior. Moaz
shared Malika's fervent devotion to radical Islam. They moved to a small Swiss village where they ran four French-language pro-Al Qaeda websites that carried the unabridged speeches of Osama bin Laden and snuff videos of hostage beheadings in Iraq. Moaz, a radical since 1985, was under almost constant police surveillance. He was linked to Muriel Degauque—a Belgian woman who became the first Western female suicide bomber in 2005—through his friendships with Tunisian soccer star Nizar Trabelsi and Belgian jihadi Bilal Soughir. Malika greatly admired Muriel (whom she called Maryam), saying that she had a lot of courage to go to Iraq and kill Americans.

In 2005 Malika el Aroud was convicted for supporting a terrorist organization, distributing propaganda over the Internet, publishing images of executions and mutilations, and operating jihadi websites,
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but received only a six-month suspended sentence. She was detained again in December 2008 for plotting domestic terror attacks against the EU summit meeting in Brussels and, specifically, against British prime minister Gordon Brown.
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Belgian law required that she be released within twenty-four hours if no charges were filed against her. When police searches failed to turn up weapons, explosives, or any incriminating evidence, she was freed once again. However, that arrest and the follow-up operations, which included the May 2009 arrest of two members of her so-called kamikaze network for smuggling suicide bombers to Italy, struck a major blow to Malika's fund-raising and recruitment efforts.
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She was arrested several more times for her alleged involvement in terrorism, but until 2010 had always been able to evade jail.

At her 2010 trial, the government took no chances and instituted extreme security measures, including masked agents, metal detectors, and roadblocks on the streets to and from the courthouse. Malika faced an eight-year sentence for advocating terror
and for indirect responsibility for the deaths of several European Muslims killed in Afghanistan. Her husband, Moaz, was sentenced in absentia, having rejoined the jihad in Afghanistan and claimed to have personally killed at least five Americans.
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To Malika's website he posted a chilling message in May 2009: “If you thought you could pressure me to slow down by arresting my wife, you were wrong. It will not stop me from fulfilling my objectives. My wife's place is in my heart and the heart of all mujahideen and it is stronger than ever. There are surprises in store in the days ahead. Those who laugh last, laugh more.”
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A MARTYR'S WIFE

Malika, often known by her nom de guerre, Oum Obeyda, is one of the new women of Al Qaeda. Unlike the women of JI, these women comprise a group that includes supporters, propagandists, recruiters, and suicide bombers, and that reflects the diversity of the organization itself. Unlike the women of JI, their agenda is not specifically local, but encompasses a view in which the House of Islam (
Dar al Islam
) opposes the House of War (
Dar al Harb
).

Malika has claimed in interviews that she did not know about Abdessater's mission. He had told her that he was being sent to film the jihadis on the northern front. In fact, bin Laden had selected Abdessater for a top-secret suicide mission. Malika learned of her husband's death when she stepped out of her house and someone congratulated her on being the wife of a martyr. She told CNN's Paul Cruickshank that her heart jumped. Over the next few days several visitors came to see her and congratulate her, although she claims that she was grief-stricken. Eventually, a courier from bin Laden arrived with a check and a video that Abdessater had made for her, breaking the news about his mission. Abdessater had hoped that the video would arrive before she found out from anybody else.
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After Abdessater's death, the “Voice of the Oppressed” website described Malika as a female holy warrior for the twenty-first century. Malika was transformed into a role model for jihadi women all over the world. For Malika, it is not a woman's place to set off bombs. It would also be out of the question for her to personally participate in an attack. Yet she has a potent weapon at her disposal: her pen, or rather her laptop, was mightier than any sword. Her mission is “to write, to speak out. That's my jihad. You can do many things with words. Writing is also a bomb.”
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Malika acknowledges that if the act of disseminating information about the massacres of her Muslim brothers and sisters in Iraq and Afghanistan means that people label her a terrorist, then yes, she is a terrorist.
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However, she does more than report on the events of the war; she also urges men to go there on jihad and encourages women to support them. Her website is a place where she can express her own convictions and a personal platform calling for Islamic resistance. “There is a war going on, and it is necessary for each one of us to chase the occupier out of our land. Those countries that have invaded Muslim lands are pigs and dogs and their presence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, or in Palestine is only a matter of time.”
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For Malika, resistance against the occupation is an obligation. Remaining silent is cowardice, if not complicity. She knows people call her radical, and she embraces the term. God willing, she waits for Afghanistan to be purified of those “pigs' stains” (the soldiers of the Coalition and the current government of Hamid Karzai) so that she may someday return again and join Moaz in jihad.

In Malika's 2003 autobiography,
Les Soldats de la Lumière
, she likened the mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan to “soldiers of light” fighting the Western soldiers of darkness. She writes that she was on the battlefield with her brothers and can vouch that they were proud and brave. She pays tribute to the warriors who died
defending the honor of their sisters, and to those who are imprisoned in Guantánamo. She writes: “My ancestors' blood flows in my veins … which boils in me, I want to say today: Today I am proud to be the granddaughter of the mujahideen … the wife of a mujahid … the sister of the mujahideen!” She triumphantly concludes: “The criminal President George Bush spent billions of dollars to extinguish the light, but could never extinguish the light of Allah.”
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As a self-proclaimed mujahid, Malika boasts that she is a woman of Al Qaeda.
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Her propaganda efforts have promoted suicide terrorism in Iraq and supported domestic terror cells in Europe. According to a counter-terror official in Europe, “Malika is a role model, an icon who is bold. She plays a very important strategic role as a source of inspiration. She's very clever—and extremely dangerous.”
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For jihadi women, Malika is a source of inspiration because she is telling women to stop sleeping and open their eyes. Wherever she goes she inspires other jihadis with her charismatic personality.