Islamabad, Rashid caught a connecting flight to Peshawar, where Al Kifah had an office. The chief of the Al Kifah guesthouse enthusiastically welcomed Rashid and recommended an extensive program of religious study. Rashid explained that he didnât have much time and that he had already been trained by the U.S. military. He asked to be shown to the front lines. After haggling with various people, he was taken to the front lines and arrived at a camp equipped with Stinger missiles, courtesy of the CIA. Rashid was immediately smitten with the life of the mujahideen.
âIt was every denomination that you could think of over there, young, old, rich and poor,â he recalled. âWe had some kids that ran away from Kuwait, from Saudi, from Abu Dhabi, who had money to throw out the window, but their desire was to go to jihad.â 39
There were also other Americans. One of them had traveled from New York with Rashid, a striking red-haired man with a long beard and a broad smile named Mohammed Zaki, who went by the nom de guerre of Abu Umar Al Amriki (âthe Americanâ). Zaki, whose family tree had roots in Egypt, had been born in Washington, D.C., and later lived in San Diego. 40
Despite his dreams of glory, Rashidâs trip to the front lines was fraught with problems. First he was stricken with malaria and spent long days lying in bed. When he recovered, he joined the battle. Carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and a Kalashnikov rifle (the Soviet-made gun of choice for mujahideen around the world), he ventured onto the battlefield in search of glory ⦠and promptly stepped on a land mine. He recounted the ordeal on a videotape made just weeks after the incident.
It was pitch black, and we could see almost like it was daylight. So we got to the opening, and it was an opening, say, about 15 feet by 8. And wefigured weâd go in here, hit them with the rockets, the bazooka grenade launchers, machine gun fire, and as they tried to escape, we had grouped the brothers over here to get them over there. [â¦]
[T]he brothers stepped in before me, about six, seven of them. And as I stepped in, âcause I had taken the combat boots off now, we all had on sneakers so we could move, I felt that I had stepped on a rock. And as I raised my foot up, BOOM. I went flying up in the air, because it was a mine.
There was a bright, white light, and blue. And I saw, as I went up in the air, my leg say POP. And I went flying behind a rock wall, WHOP, on the ground. And machine gun fire went POP, POP, POP, POP, POP, POP, POP, POP. And more mines, BOOM, BOOM. And then my reality, the impact hit me, and I grabbed my leg. I said, âOh.â I said, âMy leg is off.â And it was just dangling, hanging. 41
It took eighteen hours for Rashidâs fellow combatants to get him to a medical facility. The battlefield medics, such as they were, wanted to amputate the leg, but Zaki, the American, fought to keep the limb. 42
âThey carried us by stretcher for a while, first on their backs, then on stretchers, then on mules,â Rashid said. âNobody ever immobilized my leg. All the way there, for 14 hours, just flop, flop, flop, flop. Blood cominâ in and out, in and out. I was yelling and screaming.â 43
Rashid spent the next three weeks in a Saudi-run hospital in Peshawar before flying home to complete his recovery in the United States. Zaki flew back with him. Rashid experienced serious pain for months afterward; his leg would never be the same. Yet he had no regrets. Far from it. Just a few weeks after he returned to the United States, he recorded an impassioned speech exhorting other Americans to join the fight.
My stay in Afghanistan was tremendous. And my reason for telling you this is, is because I want you to feel, and perhaps to seek, to be warriors, [ ⦠] blessings from Allah, just for your efforts and endeavor to fight for the cause of Allah, with your wealth, with