Jihad is not only a mujahid with machine-gun; jihad is an ideology that develops, adapts, and seeks new opportunities and allies to strike at the enemies of Islam.
Before a jihadist or a jihadi group will strike at a target, they learn it well. It is already well known that they bide their time, and human life has no value to them.
But by far the most terrible weapon the jihadists employ is the lie, the blurring of the mind.
Not far from Grozny, only around a half hour’s drive, hundreds of mujahideen have been trained for a future of shooting the enemies of Islam. They had come there from many countries, as well as from the Caucasus. I visited two jihad training camps in the North Caucasus, in Chechnya. At one of them I was a frequent guest for 3 months. It was founded by the Jordanian Arab jihadist Amir ibn al-Khattab (real name: Samer Saleh al-Suveylem). Chechens called this camp “the Islamic Institute of the Caucasus.”
There were many Arabs there, but they ignored me because I was not Muslim. Only one Arab spoke to me. He knew that I knew the jihad leaders Khattab and Basayev personally. My Chechen guide explained to me what was what.
Before this camp opened, there was a children’s recreation area on that site. Ironically, in 1997 in that same area there began the “training of death.” Since 1997, this Institute has trained thousands of Mujahideen. Arabs taught Institute attendees the Qur’an and Islam. The instructors for military training were the Chechens. Their responsibility was to train young students in the possession of weapons. Training in the creation of a bomb using any available materials was the responsibility of the Arabs.
“They have a lot of practice,” remarked one of the mujahideen. He learned about the camp from a friend. Advertising had also been on TV. “They promised to us salaries, weapons, uniforms and free education in the madrasah. I’m lucky if I die for the faith of Islam,” he said, and looked at me proudly.
At first I was not clear on what was the point of creating this camp. The Chechens have always been good warriors. I was surprised that they had to be taught by Arabs.
Abdul-Walid from Saudi Arabia, a teacher of explosives, explained to me that jihad is not only physical war. It is a religion, and the essence of Islam as written in the Qur’an. “The Chechens are good soldiers, but they do not understand Islam,” he said. “They fight with the Russians, but do not know that the real enemy of Muslims and Islam is the Jew. This the Qur’an teaches us. Nobody can win the war without the will of Allah.”
In this camp I also heard about the organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood. Khattab created a branch of Muslim Brotherhood in the northern Caucasus. I learned that many students come from the Middle East, too, and will learn military affairs from Chechen trainers, as the Chechens learned Islam from the visiting teachers.
This symbiosis has been very beneficial to all concerned. Jihadism became stronger in the Caucasian region, and the visitors learned martial arts. One Caucasian jihadist gave me an example of how the Chechens did not know Islam: once he was in the mosque reading the sacred pages of the Qur’an, but later, after he was educated in Saudi Arabia and returned to the northern Caucasus, he realized that the text he had been reading was not from the Qur’an.
Maybe it was a joke, maybe not. But they all serious about one thing: they believe that if you are not Muslim, jihadists can kill you, and this is not a sin.
In the camp the trainees are fed so well that many students came from poor regions of Russia and Azerbaijan. They were given uniforms and guns. Also, at that time I already knew that the families of the deceased received compensation from the sponsors of jihad.
The jihadists have succeeded in just one or two years: jihad is not only continuing, but is also spreading to new territory.
Every day for months, I looked at the people who wanted to kill the “enemies of Islam.” At the beginning of the training they would in conversation talk about various things, but after a few months in the camp the only topic of conversation was the jihad and the Zionists. All other people were Zionist agents.
But worst of all were those who were not included in these conversations. They were spending their time praying, were never late for classes, and were dressed in Arab costumes of bright material. Just hearing the azan made them raise their heads and start praying (making namaz).
Looking at this, I realized that all these brainwashed people were serious about killing. They had different techniques, but one idea. They were ready to explode bombs and kill innocents just because these innocents were not Muslim. And during the killings and executions they say: in the name of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate.