Mi vida en Al Qaeda/ Inside the Jihad, My Life with Al Qaeda

by Omar Nasiri

A gripping account of life inside Al Qaeda traces the rise of the terrorist organization from an insider's perspective, documenting his role as a double agent working for the UK and French intelligence to infiltrate the group's training camps, detailing his own illegal activities with Al Qaeda, and profiling the top terrorist leaders, including Osama bin Laden.

Genres: Nonfiction, Terrorism, Memoir, Politics, History, Biography, Islam

477 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2007

Reviews

[Darryl Greer · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Inside The Jihad" by Moroccan-Belgian author, Omar Nasiri is written under a pseudonym for obvious reasons. It chronicles the author’s engagement as a spy for foreign intelligence services, principally France’s DGSE as well at Britain’s MI5 and MI6 during the years 1994 to 2000. The author describes his life in Belgium when he was first introduced to members of Islamist terrorist cells, to his infiltration into training camps in Afghanistan, then, later when living in London when he attends various mosques, one at least a hot bed of radical preaching. The global network he describes eventually becomes known as Al Qaeda.

This is an unusual book written by a somewhat unusual person. It is, of course, a fascinating insight into exactly what goes on inside a terrorist training camp and I do believe, because of the detailed descriptions of the camps, that Nasiri’s account of them is factual. Some of his missions are nerve-tingling and his description of them would make good fodder for a page-turning thriller. The most interesting aspect for me, however, was his insight into how the Islamic terrorist mind works, something that we in the West seem to struggle with. I recommend "Inside The Jihad" to anyone who, like me, is fascinated by the Middle East

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inside the Jihad: My Life with Al Qaeda by Omar Nasiri, takes you inside the the loosely-organized radical Islamist groups that make up Al Qaeda. Between 1994 and 2000, the author Omar Nasiri (a devout Muslim) worked as a secret agent for Europe’s top foreign intelligence services - including France’s DGSE ( Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure ), and Britain’s MI5 and MI6. From the netherworld of Islamist cells in Belgium, to the training camps of Afghanistan, to the radical mosques of London, he risked his life to defeat the emerging global network that the West would come to know as Al Qaeda. Now, for the first time, Nasiri shares the story of his life-a life balanced precariously between the world of Islamic jihadists and the spies who pursue them. As an Arab and a Muslim, he was able to infiltrate the rigidly controlled Afghan training camps, where he encountered men who would later be known as the most-wanted terrorists on earth: Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, Abu Zubayda, and Abu Khabab al-Masri. Sent back to Europe with instructions to form a sleeper cell, Nasiri became a conduit for messages going back and forth between Al Qaeda’s top recruiter in Pakistan and London’s radical cleric Abu Qatada. A gripping and provocative insider’s account of both Islamist terror networks and the intelligence services that spy on them, Inside the Jihad offers a completely original perspective on the ongoing battle against Al Qaeda.

[Ed · Rating 1 out of 5]

If goodreads had a rating below one star "Inside the Jihad" would qualify.

There are a lot of laudatory reviews of this book and many if not most reviewers take the author's claims at face value. I think he has less credibility than James Frey or Clifford Irving.

There is no translator or co-author credited but the book is written in clear idiomatic English—which would be Nasiri’s fourth language, after Maghrebi Arabic, French and German—possibly a record, certainly better than Joseph Conrad or Ha Jin could do. He writes of lying to, cheating and stealing from his family, friends and co-conspirators, says he was able to fool a drug dealer in Belgium—and even convince the drug dealer to lead him to an arms dealer and dupe the arms dealers into providing guns and ammunition to him with no money up front and no security for the illegal goods. He was a triple agent, playing the spy services of several European countries against each other and also fooling Al Qaeda operatives into recruiting him while he worked for (or at least was being paid by) two intelligence services that were operating against Al Qaeda.

So this guy claims to be a very accomplished liar who has spent his life taking advantage of the gullible--apparently everyone he encounters—with no compunction about spinning whatever tales will help him and who is almost always successful. If that is the case why would anyone believe this unsourced, unvetted and ultimately unverifiable story of skullduggery and freelance espionage?

If it sounds to good to be true...

[Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to read account of Muslim from Belgium who becomes a spy for France and ultimately infiltrates the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Later he spies in London but becomes somewhat bored and disillusioned and eventually settles in Germany to retire and get married. Best thing about this book is that it is a non-U.S. view and discusses many of the misperceptions the West has about Islam, jihad, and events (attacks) that happened in Europe and beyond, especially in the 90's. Makes the distinction between violent and non-violent sects and shows how extremism is rationalized and fueled. Believable, interesting, different.

[إسلام أنور · Rating 1 out of 5]

كتاب ترويجي للنظرة الأمريكية للجهاد .. يقولب الجهاد في قالب الإرهاب و يتعاطف مع من يخون الأمة و يسلم فرسانها لجلادي الجاهلية ..
لكن للكتاب ميزة عظيمة للمتأمل .. فهو يعرض بوضوح خبايا التعقيد النفسي الذي يؤدي للخيانة ثم يجذب صاحبها في دركات السقوط!!..
و يفتح أعين العاملين للإسلام جليا على علامات واضحة في سلوك العملاء و الخونة ينبغي الانتباه إليها ..
الكتاب نافعٌ جدًّا .. لكن لمن يقرأه بفهم مغاير لما أراده كاتبه و ناشره و مترجمه ..

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

As gripping as a good spy thriller. A fascinating account, offering unique insights that certain intelligence services would have been (and probably continue to be) well advised to take more heed of.

[Anaszaidan · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب يتكلم عن شاب، بلا مستقبل ولا هوية تجعله يبني حياة مستقرة. يدخل لسبب غامض في نشاط الجماعات الإسلامية في أوروبا..ولسبب غامض يدخل في نشاط استخباري قوي ضدهم.

بسبب التجنيد، يسافر إلى أفغانستان ليتلقى تدريبا هنالك، ويبقى معهم لمدة تزيد عن سنة، ليعود بتفاصيل لا غنى عنها لكل جهاز استخباري.

على الرغم من كثرة التفاصيل لعمل ومنجزات صاحب الكتاب. إلا أنه يشوبه الغموض عندما يتحدث عن مكنونات نفسه.فلم يوضح لنا لماذا قبل العمل مع أخيه في شراء الأسلحة في فرنسا، ولماذا قبل أن يساعدهم في طباعة وتوزيع نشرة الأنصار الشهيرة في تسعينات القرن الماضي؛ رغم عدم اتفاقه أو التقائه مع الجماعات الإسلامية فكريا؟

ولماذا عرض خدماته على المخابرات والشرطة، مع أن أخاه متورط مع الجماعات الإسلامية، وربما سيكون أول ضحايا المخابرات؟!وهو ما لا يصح عمله في العقلية العربية...فما بالك لو كان الخصوم من الكفار!؟

ولماذا يدلي بكل التفاصيل عن أعماله في أفغانستان بطريقة، يمكن لمن كان في معسكرات أفغانستان أن يتعرف على هذا الشخص لو أنه قرأ كتابه؟ وقد يستهدفه بالقتل
أسئلة لم يجب عنها الكتاب..

بقي شيء طريف...
الكتاب يقدم صورة نمطية دارجة إعلاميا عند الغرب. فعندما يتحدث الكاتب عن قصة نشأته في كنف والديه، لا بد له أن يخبرنا بان أباه كان يضرب أمه، ثم صار يضرب أخاه، وأن هذا سبب له الكثير من المتاعب النفسية..هذه صورة نمطية مطلوبة إعلاميا لأي كتاب يكتبه عربي كي ينجح كتابه.

وكأني به لو أنه نشأ في بيت هادئ، فسيتساءل القارئ حينها: لماذا انحرف الابن إذاً وتعامل مع جهتين مشبوهتين؟

كل هذه الأسئلة طرحتها لأتأكد من أننا رأينا (أو عزمنا على رؤية) الصورة الكاملة للكاتب...فربما دخل إلى قصته التحريف من أكثر من جهة، كما حرفت نصوص مقدسة من قبل، لغاية في نفس بولس!!

فليحذر الآريسيون إذاً من تضليل بولس..وليقرأوا وليتأملوا ما كان يصح وصفه بالحقيقة

ودمتم سالمين

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book for me. I learned a lot about jihad, which really is about life and how we should live it. The militant fighting jihad is only one aspect of jihad. I appreciated the author's ability to create the daily flow of Islamic worship. I learned much about the workings of espionage. I am not an anti arms person, but it really made me think about why we have invested so much time and intellect and money into developing bigger and better ways to blow people and things up. I struggle with the concept of war against others who do not have the same world view. I'm not sure this really helped that. I still don't understand fanaticism to the point of slaughtering entire towns because their religious practice differs from yours. I cannot reconcile that mind set in any way, shape, or form with God and righteousness. It scared me to realize the type of training militant jihadists receive. And it scared me to realize the depth and breadth of the militant jihadist mind set. This was a book that was amazingly interesting and amazingly scary. I know I will be pondering much of what I read for quite a while.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining read about a spy infiltrating the jihad community of the 1990s.
While all of it may not be completely true it is still completely possible the author ran into these, later big, figures in the 2000s jihad community and stumbled into success infiltrating the camps.

Sometimes being in the right place at the right time happens.

[Elsie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Omar's evaluation in the early pages of his book is very interesting. "This is the problem of modern Islam in a nutshell. We are totally dependent on the West--for our dishwashers, our clothes, our cars, our education, everything. This is humiliating, and every Muslim feels it. ... Once we had accomplished so much--in science, mathematics, medicine, philosophy. For centuries we ran far ahead of the West. We were the most sophisticated civilization in the world. Now we are backwards. We can't even fight our wars without our enemies' weapons." (p.38) He was not a devout Muslim but his time in the Al Qaeda camps certainly created conflict with his desire to perform jihad and fulfill his spy duties. As he worked with the French, British and German intelligence forces he was very frustrated with their lack of understanding of the Islamic issues. His frustration also included the willingness of Muslims to rationalize the killing of civilians under the guise of jihad. "Killing soldiers is war; killing civilians is murder." (p. 318). However, I was disappointed in Omar's conclusion: "I think the United States and all the others should get off our land, and stay off. I think they should stop interfering in the politics of Muslim nations. I think they should leave us alone. And when they don't they should be killed, because that's what happens to invading armies and occupiers." (318-319) I would like to think that progress in society would exclude war, that we could all live together as one happy family. But if all the terrorism would stop by the West moving out of any Arab nation, then wouldn't we also expect all the Muslims to return to their own nation?

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was written by an Arab man who became involved with terrorist groups in the 1990s and then became a spy. He attended terrorist training camps as a spy, but later gave up his life as a spy when his heart was no longer in it.

The book is an exciting story of his life and contacts, and the author writes well. He does a good job of expressing his feelings, emotions, and reasons for his decisions. I wish that he would have included more analysis of why he believes people become terrorists. At the beginning of the book, he says that he understands how these people think, but he never develops this theme fully. Instead, he offers personal reflections, which provide some insight, but are limited in scope.

[Olli Lukkari · Rating 4 out of 5]

A super-interesting memoir and autobiography that reads like a thriller! Omar Nasiri - not his real name - worked as a spy for France and UK exposing many important figures in the Al-Qaida terrorist network. The book has lots of historical and geopolitical accounts of various historical wars. The book also tells about how the treacherously spy/defense organizations work - despite Nasiri putting his life in danger many times in his work the organizations he worked for didn't seem to care about him much at times and would have been ready and happy to land him in jail to rot away for the rest of his life.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a very interesting story, but in the end, I was left with the impression that the author, a Morrocan Arab Muslim, was a self-serving sleazebag and not to be trusted as an honest story teller. I really don't think that I'm a Islamaphobe; I went into this book very openmindedly (is that a word?). But this guy seems to change with the wind. He claims to be a Muslim at the core, but he consistantly breaks all the commandments of Mohammed and is a creature of convenience. Anyway, I was left with very mixed feelings about the author which taints the veracity of his account for me.

[zewx · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب رائع يتحدث عن جاسوس عربي قادته الظروف ليجد نفسه جاسوس للاستخبارات الفرنسية و بعدها توغل في معسكرات المجاهدين في أفغانستان وفي رأسه فكرة كيف ممكناً ان يكون التطرف مدمرا و حاملين هذا المغالاة في الدين لدرجة الابتداع وسفك دماء من يعادي أفكارهم سواء كان مسلم /كافر او طفل /عجوز ، وفي نهاية يدرك ان الارهاب لن ينتهي حتى تكف امريكا و دول اوربا العظمى عن التدخل في سياستتا .

[sarah :) · Rating 1 out of 5]

screams propaganda tbh

[Thomas Ptacek · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good read, but I seriously doubt the veracity.

[Melinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

After getting caught up in the GIA in Belgium, Omar Nasiri decides to work with the French intelligence agency as a spy. He trains with the mujahidin in Afghanistan (fulfilling a long-time dream of his, as well as a promise to the DGSE), then moves to London to surveil the rise of radicals like Abu Qatada, Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri Muhammad. It's a fascinating story, reading at times like a novel, but it's clear that Nasiri — unlike ex-Islamist memoirists Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz — remains committed to the goals of Islamism, including violence, though within limits that the GIA, al-Qaida, and other jihadist groups transgress.

The book comes with a bizarre introduction by a former CIA official. Michael Scheuer offers up Nasiri's memoir as evidence of his theory that jihadists are motivated by neither religion nor hatred of the West but foreign policy grievances alone. Scheuer also claims that recruiting is practically non-existent, in favor of self-recruiting. This narrative doesn't match Nasiri's; his brother's religious turn to Salafism coincided with his involvement in the GIA and recruitment of Nasiri as a weapons runner. Nasiri writes laudatorily of the religious lessons in the training camps and praises Abu Qatada as a "true scholar" of Islam (in contrast to the demagoguery of Abu Hamza). While it's true that Nasiri enjoys life in Europe — along with wine, cigarettes and womanizing — he makes it clear that his fellow fighters eschew everything "taghut," including Nasiri's secret lifestyle, and resent the "cultural imperialism" of the United States.

Throughout the text the author transcribes Qur'an as "Kur'an" — a peculiar stylistic choice that is neither English (Koran) nor Arabic (Qur'an). It's particularly jarring given the ample use of other Arabic words and names that start with "q": qibla, Qatada, Qaeda.

[Amir · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a book I dont know where to start
First it was an amazing book I felt like I was watching an action drama movie, also I learned a lot about Islam and the world and of course the terrorist mindset by reading this book not every jihad is terrorism and sometimes the west are the terrorist and the muslims are just trying to define them self and their land, I couldn't put down the book the moment I started and I rarely can read more then 30 minutes but I found myself reading it for hours and hours, it opened my eyes and I agree with the author that as long as the west and other countries interfered in mulism countries and occupied their land Muslim will attack them and they will respond back and more and more people will die.

[James Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I pursuing my degree in Emergency Management Degree with a concentration in terrorism, this book opened my eyes and if you want to understand the reasons why terrorists do what they do then read how this covert operator infiltrated Al Qaeda and learned their ways. Other organizations have a very similiar mindset. 9/11 could have been avoided and this operator warned the U.S. with no avail.

[Joey Briggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to gauge whether this is *actually* nonfiction since there is nothing to corroborate it.

Brilliant and exciting story about a young man from Morrocco who moves to Europe and encounters the radical fundamentalism that Al-Qaeda etc. cling dearly to. The stories of his infiltration into terrorist training camps are enthralling all while offering us a never-before-seen perspective.

[Caitlin Winston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating look into the build-up of 9/11 and the perspectives of the terrorists that are usually mythologized and difficult to understand. Nasiri's own dual life is extremely interesting to read about. It reads like a fictional spy novel, so enjoyable. Obviously not 100% sure of the truth, as there's no way to verify, but a captivating story nonetheless.

[Ryan W. · Rating 4 out of 5]

enlightening, entertaining

A quick and enlightening read about the culture, life, and history of the jihad. Useful to understand the context of the Muslim world and challenges for western societies to understand it.

[Tanner Barlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

So well told, just shocking. I have no grounds for determining its accuracy, but wow it was fascinating to read. The most valuable part of this for me was a truly sincere look into the logic of jihad. What a story! And what a final paragraph!

[Hank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely worth reading.

Author doesn’t explain himself particularly well in some contexts, but he tells a good story and his opposition to violence against civilians is evenhandedly admirable.

I hope he made some money on the book in order to improve the situ

[Mohamed Yehia · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب هام لكل من يريد أن يري الجماعات المسلحة الاسلامية من الداخل , بعيدا عن دعايات أصحابها ومبالغات الكارهين لها , رأفت الهجان داخل تنظيم القاعدة

[alyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of my favorite books i've ever read. the author's cognitive dissonance is understandable in his position, and the stuff he went through is insane.

[niett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sensacional!

[Sofia Cordovez · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best muslim books I've read...weird timing but good to read right now

[Julius Simonelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun read of a unique experience. No way to verify if it's true.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kept me on the edge of my seat and wanting more when it ended. Amazing book.