Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East Read Free

tell, but because I walked away from these experiences with a perspective I couldn’t have gained in any other way. I wanted to hear those voices that weren’t heard and wanted to be a megaphone for them.
    While in college, I filled my room with eight-by-ten photographs of children I had met, families that had taken me in, and individuals I had encountered. I didn’t want to forget any of it. There was a slide show of images and experiences that constantly played in my head. The memories were equal parts jubilant, tragic, and terrifying. The mental slide show was not always easy to endure, but I appreciated the continuous reminder of what I had seen and experienced.
    After 9/11, my interests began to shift. In my final excursion to Africa, I was shocked by the wave of extremist Islamism that seemed to be sweeping the continent. I had expected this in the coastal cities, where there was a historical Arab and Islamic influence, but it seemed to be gaining traction in central Africa as well. Poverty-stricken communities in desperate need of basic goods and social services have become ripe for infiltration by extremists who can garner support for a radical ideology simply by building a hospital or school. My fascination with this phenomenon led me to the Middle East.
    Once I decided to go to the Middle East, I wanted my first trip to be big. I wanted to go to Iran.

CHAPTER 1

DESTINATION IRAN
     
     
    IRAN, 2004
     
    I t still baffles me that I was ever let into Iran. I was a graduate student at Oxford University, and while I was an innocent student of international relations, I hardly had a background that was conducive to the type of visitors the government of Iran hoped to attract. The flexibility of the Oxford academic schedule, along with the stipend I had from my Rhodes scholarship, made me more interested in using Oxford as a base for travel than a place to study. Iran became my first destination in two years of sporadic travel throughout the Islamic world. Getting there, however, was not without its headaches.
    The traditional position of the government of Iran, a rigorous police state, is based largely on the regime’s desire to undermine an American government viewed as too friendly to the State of Israel, which Iran hopes to see, in the words of its current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “wiped off the face of the map.” So it didn’t seem likely that the Iranian government would grant a young American Jew a visa. Historically, relations between the United States and Iran have not always been so poor. For much of the Cold War, Iran was one of America’s principal allies.
    For the regime in Iran, those years—the period during which the monarchical shah ruled Iran—represent something entirely different. Having ascended to the throne in 1941 at the young age of twenty-two, the shah had neither the experience nor the discipline to manage a country of such vast wealth. Most Iranians believed that the shah was essentially handing Iran’s wealth to foreign companies, which benefited the royal family and the upper class but had detrimental effects on the majority of the population. Discontent brewed and manifested itself in leftist movements that ultimately resulted in the popular election of the socialist Muhammad Mossadeq as prime minister. Mossadeq’s socialist platform called for nationalization of Iranian oil and expulsion of foreign influence from Iran.
    Fearful of the potential loss of political influence in the Middle East, the American government looked for ways to reverse the socialist tide in Iran. In August 1953, the CIA, in a joint effort with British intelligence, staged a coup to oust Mossadeq. While the coup led to the return of the shah to power and a negotiated settlement on Iranian oil that was favorable to Britain and the United States, in the long-term the coup had planted the seeds for the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Twenty-six years of corruption and poor leadership by the shah led Iranians