Souad Mekhennet

Souad Mekhennet, a German born to parents of Moroccan and Turkish descent, becomes a journalist and goes into the Middle East where Americans often cannot easily go. I found this book so interesting. Ms. Mekhennet shows us the other side of the story as she works independently for the New York Times, Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and others. She asks the questions that need asking and does not shy away from pressing her point when she does not receive an answer. I liked her strength and the show more sense of humor that comes through. She is in a tough profession. She astonishes the people she goes to write of with her knowledge of the area and language. She is not to be taken lightly. She keeps going after the story until she gets it even if she has to do it from afar when her life is threatened. This book makes me think of what we don't hear in the U.S. about what is really going on and how we respond to the events. It also makes me think that we overstep too often. An enlightening and fascinating read. show less

As a German Muslim journalist born to Moroccan & Turkish immigrants, Mekhennet is in a unique position to research and report on how jihadists are radicalized, particularly young ones from Western nations (European/American). She is granted interviews with members of the often cellular but increasingly centralized movement, including ISIS, because of her pieces, critical and inclusive of many sides. Understanding and acknowledging as many aspects as possible of a problem leads to a more show more comprehensive and lasting solution. Crazy interesting and terrifying - humans are the scariest monsters.

Also, daaaaamn girl - nerves of steel. show less

While covering the trial of an accused 9/11 plotter, Souad Mekhennet met the widow of an FDNY fireman who died at the World Trade Center. This woman blamed the American government and the media for failing to adequately inform her of the level of hatred for the West that exists in the Muslim world. As a Muslim and reporter, Mekhennet took on the challenge of examining the nature and scope of this rage. She has created a remarkable document that combines investigative reporting with memoir to show more bring the reader close to the world of jihadi terrorism. In doing so, her intent was not only to examine the sources of that hatred but also to provide the reader with an experience of that world. Along the way, she shares the dangers involved in covering these stories and scores some journalistic scoops. In the end her work highlights the complexity of managing terrorism.

Mekhennet was ideally positioned to tell the inside story of jihad. Raised in Germany, the daughter of a Moroccan father and Turkish mother, she was fluent in the languages and cultures of both Muslim and Western worlds. Moreover, as a journalist, she was proficient with objective reporting. Despite these obvious advantages, little of this book would have been forthcoming if Mekhennet had also not been fearless in her approaches to some really scary people and places.

In her travels, Mekhennet penetrated Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and their affiliates, all during a time when journalists were being kidnapped and even beheaded. Not unlike herself, she discovered that many of the jihadists were intelligent young people, often educated in the West, but with roots in the Muslim world. They felt isolated and alienated in the Western cultures that treated them as outsiders and second-class citizens, thus becoming easy prey for radicalization. At one point, Mekhennet muses: “This guy could have been somebody different. He could have had a different life.” She even has the realization that her own background put her at risk for similar radicalization, except that her parents saw jihad as a personal struggle rather than one of revenge through terror. This, along with a desire to follow the trail blazed by Woodward and Bernstein, set her on a very different path.

Mekhennet travels to most of terrorism’s hotspots in pursuit of her story. She takes you to the Hamburg neighborhood where the 9/11 plotters were radicalized; to Iraq where Sunnis and Shia struggle for control of a broken country; to the border between Turkey and Syria where ISIS is active; to France and Belgium where jihadists are created; to North Africa where Mekhennet spent her youth; and to London where she discovers the identity of the infamous ISIS executioner nicknamed “Jihadi John.”

Her narrative is often chilling but filled with important insights, not the least of which is the complex nature of terrorist motivations. Some were torture victims others were refugees. Sunnis in Iraq told of U.S.-backed torture and murder by Shiite militias. North Africans described poverty and government distrust that made Al Qaeda seem attractive. Iraqis and Afghanis focused on the US occupation, while Pakistanis complained about the killing of innocents in drone strikes. A Moroccan-German woman even cited the aid of an imam precipitating her radicalization.

The danger and hardships associated with Makhennet’s interviews was never far from the surface. She was repeatedly reminded that these people were unpredictable and threatening. Surveillance by various intelligence services was also part of the picture. Meetings invariably involved multiple connections, as well as abandoning American colleagues and communications devices. Her title comes from instructions she received prior to one interview: "I was told to come alone. I was not to carry any identification, and would have to leave my cell phone, audio recorder, watch, and purse at my hotel. . . ." Makhennet overcame many of these setbacks with cleverness and occasionally a bit of humor. After being refused an interview, she suggested they just meet to have “tea,” a custom that is almost never refused in Muslim culture.

Unfortunately one is left with the understanding that there are no easy answers to terrorism. One can only feel despair at the end of the book when a tragedy strikes painfully close to Makhennet’s personal life. There are no winners and much that the West is doing to curb terrorism seems counterproductive. By adopting hardline tactics, the West fails to understand that it is forcing more young people into the hands of the radicals who preach the propaganda that the West is at war with Islam. Few actors on both sides seem to realize that honest and healthy dialogue is sorely needed. Ironically, Makhennet maintains that the promise of the Arab Spring was never realized mainly because people did not understand that a magical transformation of Muslim cultures into functioning Westernized democracies almost overnight was overly optimistic. Indeed the jihadists took advantage of the unrest brought on by the Arab Spring to increase inroads into those countries. show less

This book is incredible: fascinating, terrifying, distressing, and totally absorbing. The places Mekhennet has been and the people she has met seem like something out of fiction, which makes this book hard to put down and perhaps blunts the edge of the deeply uncomfortable truths the book reckons with. This book is an excellent reminder of where America and the West in general have been over the last seventy years, geopolitically speaking, from the colonialism and its sometimes violent end show more through the cold war and into the modern era of conflict along religious lines: not very pretty places, mostly. Mekhennet is looking at the question of why people - people like her, even people she knows - choose one path, one way of thinking, over another, and the answers are deep and complex and heartbreaking and confusing in a way that even long-form journalism has difficulty addressing. Much of what has happened has deep roots in the past and is in no small part the result of decisions made by people - outsiders, foreign governments with specific goals - with too little information and too little forethought. It seems there is little reason to believe that that better-informed decisions on how, when, and why to become involved are being made now.

The feelings of exclusion and profound alienation that Mekhennet encounters in talking to people who have chosen to join groups like ISIS or Al Qaeda affiliates, and to those who knew them, should not be surprising. These stories hold a lesson that we would all do well to remember, which is that both deliberate and careless exclusion lead, perhaps not inevitably but quite regularly, to profound alienation, and whether that alienation is cannily exploited by others or simply runs its own course, it is a monster that feeds on itself, leading to actions that only serve to deepen divisions between individuals and between groups, between societies. This lesson has, I think, broader implications than the conflict Mekhennet studies here. Her writing is excellent, her story is vitally important. You should read this book. show less