‘There’s Kind of a Weird Camaraderie’

Al-Shebab is Hammami’s Twitter target. But the social butterfly tendencies he once copped to in high school are on display. His most devoted Twitter interlocutors are some of the least likely: members of the U.S. counterterrorism community, who’ve been won over by Hammami’s charm.

Hammami engages with American security professionals who ask him about his current views on jihad, and he jumps into their discussions of counterterrorism. There’s a notable absence of rancor, and even some constructive criticism, however inadvertent. When Hammami criticized State Department initiatives at confronting extremists like him online, he said those efforts came across as tin-eared. Berger and Hammami have an extended, public colloquy about the justification and the efficacy of using violence to pursue jihad. All this comes leavened with Star Wars references. Berger wonders if this sort of collegial jihadi-counterterrorist dialogue is “the wave of future, when everyone’s on Twitter.”

Jihadis and their American opposites have engaged each other over the Internet for years, notes Will McCants, a former State Department terrorism adviser. But usually those efforts are tentative and rarely substantial — let alone fun. What’s happening with Hammami is something new. “He comes across as quite likeable. He’s willing to listen, hear your argument and respond to it,” McCants says. “He’s not just a robot, he’s got this great sense of humor.”

He’s even winning over who prefer to point and laugh at jihadis, like Rusty Shackleford of the My Pet Jawa blog. Hammami recently tweeted, “rusty, I ain’t comin’ home alive jus like you ain’t gonna stop puttin’ soft porn up on mypetjawa. and to shabab, I’m here till u fix up.” Shackleford blogged, “I’ve actually become kinda fond of the guy — if that’s possible.”





These days, Twitter conversations between Hammami and several prominent counterterrorism scholars, commentators and practitioners with a social media presence — Berger, McCants, ex-FBI agent Clint Watts — have settled into loose, barstool-style banter. (That is, if Hammami drank.) Watts once remembered that Hammami used to crave crappy Chinese food and tweeted about his “Halal BBQ-style” dinner, prompting Hammami to reply, “drool. Mmm. Gonna eat a chicken my wife slaughtered and cooked right now.” Berger joined in to discuss hot sauce. When several American national-security nerds waged a goofy “Twitter Fight Club” using the hashtag #TFC13, Hammami interjected himself, declaring: “I abu mansuur al amriki have declared war against #tfc13 until i am made victor… A vote for abu m is for khilafah and shari’ah. I’m gonna win!“

All this has led to one of the strangest buddy movies on the internet. In interviews, Hammami’s counterterrorist interlocutors concede that, yes, yes, they recognize that “Omar” — as they universally call him — is a jihadist. “This is unique because the American public is seeing the human side of some of these terrorists and getting confused, like they’re not really sure what to think about it,” says Watts. “The terrorist might be nice one day, and detonate a suicide vest the next.”

But some wonder if Hammami’s friendliness isn’t a subtle opening, a climbdown for him to get out of the jihadi life before Shebab comes for him with a Kalashnikov or the Joint Special Operations Command comes for him with a Predator. Berger, who has talked with Hammami for longer and in greater depth than any counterterrorism professional, feels strongly that reaching out to him is worth a shot — even if it doesn’t work out. “There’s kind of a weird camaraderie that’s come out of these exchanges,” Berger says. “Odds are, it ends badly for us.” That is: either Hammami kills an innocent person in pursuit of his jihad, or he gets killed himself.

Because Hammami is so engaging, and so fluent in the idioms of American culture, it’s easy to overlook his commitment to the jihad. But factor out his tone from his words, and his message is clear. His criticisms of Shebab boil down to a charge that they’re insufficiently down for the cause. Tempting as it may be to believe that the nice guy from Alabama could really be ready to kill and die, he shrugs over DM: “fighting is part of the religion.” His back-and-forth on Twitter with Americans, he says, is transactional: “Definitely to get the word out. The only people who [otherwise] listen and give me a platform are my default audience. Hope it echoes 2 rest.”

Does he have any warm feelings for Berger, Watts, McCants and everyone else he tweets at?

“ha ha. warm thoughts? i don’t dream of slaughtering them, but i still see them as part of my greater enemy,” he DMs. “i pray 4 their guidance.”

‘I Can’t Do Much But Wait 4 My Time’

Is Omar Hammami a terrorist? Serious question.

He has never killed any civilian — although, by his own admission to me, he killed a man who was powerless to fight back — and no American. By the terms of leaked Justice Department memoranda justifying drone attacks on Americans, Hammami is no “senior operational leader” of al-Qaida or its affiliates; in fact, he’s a thorn in the side of al-Qaida’s East Africa affiliate. But his consistent advocacy of jihad against the U.S., in context, is incitement to violence, and he has reconciled himself to the idea of violent struggle against the west.

I get a sense of that during one of our DMs. “Any non-muslim grown sane male w/o a covenant is a target,” he tells me. I become suddenly aware of the Passover holiday I’ve been observing.

“So if we met,” my thumbs tap back, “you’d try to kill me?”

Hammami dials it down. He wouldn’t harm me, he DMs, “if we met as an agreed meeting w/terms of safety.”

Killing Americans is a means to an end, one the Alabama-born Hammami accepts after convincing himself that the U.S. stands irreconcilably in his way. “Its not like i fantasize about it,” he says, “but it is a means to the end when done as prescribed.” He might spend a lot of time on his Twitter dialogues, but dialogue alone “won’t stop u.s. From blocking shari’ah and khilafa.”





By “Khilafa,” Hammami means his ultimate goal of a world governed by Islamic law, similar to the caliphate of old. When I ask what happens to nonbelievers like myself in such a world, he explains, “nonmuslims are suboordinate to shari’ah but free, in exchange 4 small tax.”

Yet Hammami’s focus on his dream of an Islamic world contains an intriguing subtlety: al-Qaida isn’t particularly important within it. “aq did their job. It’s time to move on to khilafah,” he DMs. “Aq is a methodology to move towards khilafah. We became closer now and need a new paradigm. No idea 4 candidates tho.”

Nor is Hammami interested in going outside of Somalia to pursue it. Asked if he might join the uprising in Syria — his father is Syrian and the Assad regime tortured his uncle — he says there’s “No road, and i have to fix this place b4 leaving.” But “victory and state building isn’t my perrogative,” he DMs. His jihad is finished “once we are irreversibly on the right track. the ideology becomes spread broad base.” In the meantime, he says, he’s planting corn and melons, riding his donkey to get water, and keeping an eye out for Shebab. Washington believes stopping that is worth $5 million; it might be overpaying.

“He was a big-time Shebab recruiter and now he’s blowing holes in Shebab’s rep,” McCants observes. “He’s more valuable kept in place doing that kind of damage. There’s great intelligence value in capturing him, sure, but I think this is going to end up with his death, and I don’t think that’s useful.”

“My primary motive at this point is that this is a guy who doesn’t have to die stupidly,” Berger adds. “I don’t think that there’s a very good chance anything we say on Twitter is gonna change his mind about things that are problematic and determine whether he dies stupidly. But I think it’s worth an effort. There’s no reason for him to just sort of let him ride off into the sunset without putting up a fight first.”

And yet Hammami seems reconciled to the idea that he will not leave Somalia alive, let alone struggle long enough to see Islamic law dominate the earth. “I figure i can’t do much but wait 4 my time,” he DMs. “I’m surrounded by enemies. Drones don’t have borders. Just kickin’ it w/family till then.” After dozens of DMs, I can’t tell if it’s just bravado.