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Exclusive: Abu Zubaydah’s struggle for martyrdom and Pepsi

Terror suspect’s diaries reveal psychology of a man seeking to inflict violence on West and enjoy soft drinks, pop music

Some of Afghanistan’s anti-American mujahedeen seem to have had unexpected tastes.
Sebastian Widmann/DAPD/AP

Zain Abidin Mohammed Husain Abu Zubaydah’s diaries portray a man driven by a hope for “martyrdom” in a campaign of spectacular violence to “bring America to its knees.” But it also shows his improbable dreams of a post-jihad life as a husband, father and computer engineer, his thirst for Pepsi cola and his sentimental attachment to the love songs of British-Irish crooner Chris de Burgh.

A government translation of the diaries has been obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera America from a former U.S. government intelligence official who worked with the CIA and FBI on Al-Qaeda’s rise to power. Abu Zubaydah’s notes on his life in the Afghan camps during the 1990s and his involvement with Al-Qaeda became a key element in the Bush administration’s case that Abu Zubaydah was a conspirator in the 9/11 attacks, with a hand in “every major Al-Qaeda operation” — an assessment the U.S. government has since walked back, although he is still likely to see out his days in U.S. custody.

But what the diaries do reveal is something of the complexity of Abu Zubaydah and of the networks and personalities that produced Al-Qaeda. The diaries reveal a mindscape that mingles a fondness for the casual trappings of Western culture — such as cheesy pop music and Pepsi — with hard-core anti-Western sentiments and a willingness to embrace violence and death for the cause.

Though to many readers, Abu Zubaydah’s sentiments might seem shocking, experts say that is precisely why such documents are valuable. They offer a full glimpse of the personal reasoning that brings men like Abu Zubaydah to a point that they’re willing to undertake acts of mass violence that they believe are sanctioned by their faith.

“If we don’t understand what’s motivating people, then how are we going to effectively deal with them? If we can understand, we can respond. You’re not excusing anything someone like Abu Zubaydah may have done. You’re just trying to understand the complexity of this person and why he did what he did,” said Ken Ballen, a former federal prosecutor who runs Terror Free Tomorrow, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

‘Soft and beautiful songs’

In one entry from 1993, Abu Zubaydah captures the ambiguities created by U.S. support for the original Afghan jihad against the Soviets and their Afghan proxies, which had called thousands of young Arabs like him to the Hindu Kush. He writes bitterly about the quality of some Tajik recruits who appeared unaware that their ideology demanded hostility toward the U.S. “Most of them, such as Afghans, know their enemy to be the communists, but they do not know then enmity of the brother, which is America or the idea of democracy. Some of them love ‘America’ as a symbol of freedom … and this is the most awful thing,” he wrote.

In another entry, after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, he writes, “I wished to see America’s fall and destruction, and the destruction of the State of Israel, and I wished to torture and kill them myself with a knife.” He justifies conflict and his commitment to jihad with references to international conflicts. “The enemies of Islam who occupied our lands and humiliated us, and they are intransigent to our religion. Look at Israel, whatever they do, no one talks, and if we attempt to defend our land and ourselves, they would say that we are terrorists. Therefore, we are terrorists,” he writes in an August 1998 entry in Volume 4.

Click for in-depth coverage of the Guantanamo prisoner’s writings.

But elsewhere in the diaries, entries are more mundane and personal. Abu Zubaydah reveals a deep and abiding love for Pepsi cola, even recounting a moment when his fellow mujahedeen surprise him with some as a gift because they know he likes it so much. “Five chilled bottles of Pepsi Cola … is a very amazing thing — especially when you drink the bottle as one shot,” he writes.

He also recounts his deep fondness for the music of de Burgh — best known for his hit song “The Lady in Red” — and laments how emotional the tunes make him feel. “The hell with ‘Chris Deburg’ (sic) in spite of his soft and beautiful songs, yet they bring sadness and anxiety to the soul (beautiful anxiety but it is anxiety),” he writes in 1990, in the first volume of his diaries.

Abu Zubaydah also recounts enjoying Bollywood film scores and finding Rambo III — in which Sylvester Stallone joins forces with Afghans to fight the Soviets — ridiculous. “Today and after all these years … I watched this movie and I laughed loudly … I laughed … I laughed … My eyes became teary because of the deep laugh.”

He also writes repeatedly of his family and an occasional but deep longing for a wife and family of his own — something clearly at odds with his quest for martyrdom. At one point, he creates a fantasy of a domestic life that includes “my own son; play with him, be kind to him and even spank him. Yes! Spank him, why not?”

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Places
Afghanistan
Topics
Al Qaeda
People
Abu Zubaydah

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