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Journalism of Courage
One brother joined the global jihad against the West under the nom de guerre Abu Yahya al-Libi. He rose to become al-Qaedas brightest star and second-in-command,until an American drone strike killed him in Pakistan four months ago.
The other brother,Abdel Wahab Mohamed Qaid,was the first to become an Islamist militant but is now a moderate member of Libyas new Parliament.
As the United States weighs responses to the Islamist-led assault on its diplomatic mission in Benghazi that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens,Qaid says the two brothers diverging paths trace a timely lesson: a parable of the dangers of treating the many different strands of political Islam as a single radical threat.
Abu Yahyas support for al-Qaeda,Qaid said,began after his years as a prisoner at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan an account supported by Western analysts who have studied Abu Yahyas life.
Both brothers had previously shunned Osama Bin Laden and the cause of global jihad as irrelevant to their single-minded focus on ousting the Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi. But then,after the 9/11 attacks,and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan,the Americans began rounding up any Islamist militants they could find,regardless of their specific ideology or agenda; Abu Yahya was captured in Pakistan and imprisoned without trial at Bagram.
When he finally escaped in 2005,picking a prison lock and evading his guards,Abu Yahya originally known as Mohamed Hassan Qaid was reborn as the leading theologian,propagandist and battlefield commander of an Islamic holy war against the West that left little room for local concerns like the struggle for Libyan democracy.
The older Qaid,who is 45 and is speaking publicly for the first time,argued that Abu Yahya had been drawn into battle with the US mainly because its military had treated him as an enemy. The vast majority of young Libyans,including many armed Islamists,now feel warmly toward America for its support against Gaddafi,Qaid said. When they see they are lumped together with al-Qaeda,even those unsympathetic to it will become more sympathetic,and this would be the best gift you could ever give to al-Qaeda, Qaid said,charging that many Americans often treated all Islamists as shades of al-Qaeda.
Qaid insisted that although he and his brother had both been militants,part of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group determined to oust Gaddafi,they were never terrorists or enemies of the West.
Both brothers each the spit and image of the other,both known for their poetic gifts and theological knowledge were drawn into politics by the Libyan student movement of the mid-1980s. We used to think that removing oppression and imposing justice are the same thing,but justice requires dialogue, Qaid said.
He said he considered secular Turkey the best model for an Islamist government in Libya.
New inmates brought reports of Abu Yahya,who had settled among a circle of Islamist exiles in Pakistan and then Afghanistan. But when Abu Yahya escaped,he found his Libyan comrades were almost all gone,detained by the US or sent back to Gaddafis jails. Instead of finding the Libyans who could have absorbed his anger,Abu Yahya found Bin Laden, Qaid said.
