After a year and a half in Syria, surely they could make themselves understood? Sadiq had no idea whether the girls were in contact with local Syrians or just hung out with their European clique. The usual pattern of social intercourse was that the French fraternized with other French speakers, Germans with Germans, and Scandinavians with Scandinavians. Ayan spoke Norwegian with Hisham while Leila and Imran communicated in English.
Sadiq’s nerves were on edge.
After a few days, Osman called. “Listen. There are two kinds of people that can crisscross the front—from government-controlled areas into IS territory, over to the militias and rebel forces, and back again. Because everyone needs them. The mobile boys—the ones who repair telecommunications, the internet—and then there are those transporting fuel. The tank truck drivers. Without them the war stops.” When he got to the last part, he practically shouted: “We send them out with the oil!”
Sadiq’s role in the operation was to pay for it. But funds were nonexistent. His friends had no more money to lend him. And he could not ask NAV for more. Sadiq toyed with an idea he thought might be lucrative: Very few foreign fighters from Norway had come forward in the media, the honor code of the milieu forbade it, you did not inform on one another or talk to the kuffar media. Sadiq thought he could sell information that Osman unearthed. They could start up a kind of joint information service, with Osman responsible for seeking it out and Sadiq for selling it.
Sadiq called a couple of journalists he had been in contact with previously and got a bite. He wrote to Osman. “I have good news. I’ve made a deal with a Norwegian journalist. They’ll give us money for every snippet we can get them on Norwegian foreign fighters, as long as there are photos or videos. Either ISIS or Nusra.”
“Perfect,” Osman replied on Viber, before sharing more details of his evolving plan for smuggling the girls out. “I know a guy who has a wife in Raqqa. He delivers petrol to IS every third day. He can kidnap the girls and transport them back in the tank truck.”
“Excellent.”
“The vehicle first needs to be looked at by a welder and adapted so that the girls aren’t injured. We’ll partition the tank to make a six-foot-by-six-foot area and drill an air hole. The tank is very large. It holds 120 tons. He can take your son-in-law too. Did you understand all that? What do you say, Abu Ismael?”
“Get started.”
“Heads will roll…” Osman continued. “That’s what worries me. I swear to God, if they discover what we’re up to they’ll throw us in the tank, pour petrol over us and burn us worse than that Jordanian pilot ☺.”
On Christmas Eve 2014, a Jordanian F-16 fighter plane had crashed outside of Raqqa. Twenty-six-year-old Muaz al-Kasasbeh ejected but came down in IS territory. The scenes of jubilant soldiers manhandling the captured pilot had been shown around the world. IS began negotiations with Jordan to trade the aviator for the female terrorist Sajida al-Rishawi, whose suicide belt had failed to explode in an attack in Amman in 2005.
The leading jihadist ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi was released from a Jordanian prison in order to act as an intermediary. Al-Maqdisi, who in the 1980s had been too extreme for Osama bin Laden, soon established contact. The Jordanian authorities required photographic evidence that the pilot was still alive before they would release Sajida. IS sent an electronic file to al-Maqdisi, but it was password protected. After several days of intense dialogue, he was sent the code to open the file. Once he received it the old Islamist understood he had been fooled. The password was “Maqdisi is a pimp, the sole of the tyrant’s shoe, son of the English whore.”
When he typed in the sentence, a video appeared on the screen. He watched as an IS soldier forced the pilot into a cage, doused him in gasoline, and set him alight. Osama bin Laden’s old teacher was enraged. Fire could not be used as a punishment. That right was reserved by God exclusively for those who were condemned to eternal torment in hell.
IS posted the video online three hours later. The criticism of Islamist scholars was lost on them. The pilot had bombed a brick factory and his victims had been burned alive, they said, so he received the punishment he deserved, according to the sharia principle of qisas—retribution.
“I’m not afraid of my own group, they cannot betray me,” Osman wrote. “But I am afraid of IS, they terrify me. Heads will roll … if we mess up.”
“I know, my dear friend.”
“And you need to find money,” the Syrian went on. “A sponsor, someone to cover the costs. And soon. Remember—don’t tell anyone the details, absolutely no one.”
“I would sooner risk my daughters’ lives than risk the safety of you or other Syrians. If you want me to bring your entire family to Norway I will. I’m more than prepared to do it. I can guarantee you. You and Syria have become a part of my life and part of the very meaning of it.”
A couple of days later Sadiq sent him a reminder, not about the rescue operation but about the means of financing it—information on Norwegian jihadists.
“Find information for me, whatever you can on migrants from Norway. No matter how trivial. Please concentrate on that. It will yield a profit.”
“What kind of information do they need?” Osman asked.
“Their names or whereabouts for example, if they’re leaders or ordinary foot soldiers. Any kind of information that can accompany a photo. We can sell the photos and buy what we need with the money.”
“Will I take pictures? Without talking to them?”
“It’s not necessary to talk to them. Just the information, no matter how trivial. Confirmed or unconfirmed, with photos!”
“Will I take a picture on my mobile phone? The quality might not be the best.”
It would be good enough, Sadiq assured him.
The next
