By Scott Stewart
In the wake of the assault on Nairobi's Westgate Mall, one of the media narratives that has fascinated me has been the focus on Samantha Lewthwaite, the so-called "white widow" of deceased suicide bomber Germaine Lindsay, who was one of the men responsible for the London Subway bombings on July 7, 2005. Really, the press coverage of Lewthwaite following the Westgate attack has been more like a media storm than a narrative, especially in Lewthwaite's home country, the United Kingdom. A British newspaper even published an article about the style of knickers she prefers.
The nonsensical media coverage of Lewthwaite (and her knickers) typifies an issue that has bothered me for some time. The press, and indeed even some analysts, tend to overstate the importance of some jihadists merely because they speak English, or were born in an English-speaking country.
The Lewthwaite Case
Despite some witness reports from Nairobi claiming that an English-speaking woman was involved and perhaps led the Westgate attack, no evidence has corroborated claims of her involvement. Al Shabaab, the group that conducted the attack, even denied Lewthwaite's participation, saying it would never permit a woman to be involved in a military operation. While al Shabaab should not necessarily be automatically trusted for obvious reasons, the group tends to be truthful about its operations -- and in any case, it has little reason to lie in this particular instance. Moreover, al Shabaab has never been known to use a female operative (Western or Somali) in a meaningful attack.
There are also strong theological reasons for a jihadist group like al Shabaab to exclude women from the battlefield. Unlike Hamas and Chechen groups who have used female suicide bombers, most jihadists do not believe women belong in battle. For example, the the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant has condemned the Kurdish People's Defense Units, which have employed female fighters to defend Kurdish areas against jihadist aggression in northern Syria. Notably, Iraqi jihadists have recruited and even employed female suicide bombers in the past out of tactical necessity. However, these efforts ultimately hindered recruitment and fundraising operations, and the practice did not become widespread.
What we do know is that Lewthwaite and a man believed to be her current husband, British citizen Habib Saleh Ghani, have spent time in Kenya. In fact, the two currently are wanted by Kenyan authorities for allegedly plotting to stage attacks in Mombasa, Kenya, during the Christmas holiday in 2011. Jermaine Grant, a British citizen allegedly associated with Lewthwaite and Ghani, is currently on trial in connection with the Mombasa plot, and according to testimony offered in court during the trial, the plotters were linked to al Shabaab. Still, despite Lewthwaite's links to Kenya and al Shabaab, there is no real proof that she has been involved in any militant or terrorist operations. Furthermore, while Lewthwaite has become something of a media "terrorist legend," there is certainly no indication that she is more dangerous than the lesser known Ghani or even Jermaine Grant, both of whom are fluent English speakers but do not happen to be Caucasian women and thus generate less press coverage.
A Premium on English Speakers
The situation with Lewthwaite is somewhat reminiscent of that involving another al Shabaab-linked Westerner, U.S. citizen Omar Hammami, also known as Abu Mansur al-Amriki. Hammami, who served as an English-speaking spokesman and recruiter for the group prior to being executed by his colleagues, rose to infamy after releasing a few laughably bad jihadi rap videos and because of his frequent activity on Twitter.
While Hammami did help recruit some foreign fighters and raise some funds for al Shabaab, he was never a significant battlefield commander for the group. He was always a marginal figure at best. Yet despite this, he enjoyed a far larger media profile than important al Shabaab figures including group leader Ahmad Abdi Godane, also known as Abu Zubayr, who maintains very strict operational security; Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, an important al Shabaab leader from the Rahanweyn clan; and the now-deceased Ibrahim Haji Mead, also known as Ibrahim al-Afghani, who had vied with Godane for leadership of the group.
But it is not just the media that tend to confer a celebrity status on English speakers. The U.S. government's Rewards for Justice program, for example, offered a reward of $5 million for information leading to the capture or death of Hammami. This is the same amount offered for Robow, Mead and several other significant militant leaders such as Mokhtar Belmokhtar, Sirajuddin Haqqani and Hakeemullah Mehsud.
This bias in the Rewards for Justice program applies to another American-born jihadist in Somalia, Jehad Serwan Mostafa, for whom the U.S. government is currently offering $5 million. Mostafa has an even lower profile than Hammami and yet there are only eight terrorist suspects in the entire world that have higher rewards offered for their death or capture by the U.S. program. Clearly his importance is inflated, given that Washington did not offer such rewards for the operational leadership of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- namely, Nasir al-Wahayshi (aka Abu Basir), Qasim al-Raymi and Ibrahim al-Asiri, all of whom have directly planned and executed attacks against the United States.
While these "native" members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were deemed less important by the Rewards for Justice program, the United States placed a higher premium on the group's English-speaking members, including Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, who drew attention away from operational militants like al-Wahayshi and his staff. As we forecast in 2011, al-Awlaki's death would not be the end of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's ideological efforts, much less its physical struggle, despite the hype al-Awlaki and his death had received in the media. That forecast has proved true.
The premium on English speakers is a natural reaction for English-speaking agents and analysts, who can read written statements or listen to audio or video recordings from English-speaking jihadists without any need for translation. I can personally relate to this, because although I speak Spanish, I have to rely on our Arabic or Somali-speaking analysts and area specialists for translations before I can begin my analysis. It was much quicker and easier for me to subscribe to Hammami's Twitter feed than to read translations of Arabic-language message boards. It is also easier for me to read Inspire than al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Arabic language Sada al-Malahim magazine. Even in the U.S. government, there are very few agents and analysts who speak Arabic, much less Somali or Hausa, and translation takes a lot of time and effort.
This does not apply only to American and British press and authorities. We have also seen the German press and authorities focus heavily on individuals such as Yassin and Monour Chouka, two German-born jihadists associated with the Islamic Jihad Union who posted German-language videos threatening attacks against Germany. The French-speaking world has its own version of the "white widow," a woman named Malika el-Aroud, (aka Oum Obeyda), the Moroccan-born Belgian citizen whose first husband was involved in the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud two days before the 9/11 attacks. She has been investigated several times (and convicted in Switzerland) for raising funds and recruiting fighters for al Qaeda and the wider jihadist movement.
Real Threats
For the most part, these high-profile English-speaking militants do not pose direct physical threats. They are too well known to travel back to their native countries to conduct attacks, and they generally are not operationally active. This means that they are far more significant as propagandists, fundraisers and recruiters. In the case of al Shabaab, they have used figures like Hammami to raise money and recruit fighters to travel to Somalia.
On the other hand, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has used its English-language propaganda to attempt to "inspire" jihadists living in the West to conduct terrorist attacks where they live. To date, these efforts have been largely unsuccessful. As we noted when Inspire Magazine's 10th edition was published, there have been a number of thwarted plots in which the organizers were informed by the magazine, but there has not been the type of massive global grassroots uprising al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has sought to foment. Instead, such incidents -- the Boston Marathon bombing, for example -- have been few and far between.
This is not to suggest that such people should be ignored. Certainly, intelligence and law enforcement efforts to locate and apprehend them should continue, as should the monitoring of their English-language communications despite the very real risk of disinformation. But these efforts must be kept in the proper context, and these English speakers should not divert attention from non-English speakers who pose more acute and deadly threats.
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