American man who fled to Afghanistan to join Al Qaeda says terrorist life was ‘extremely boring’

Bryant Neal Vinas grew up in Long Island but fled to Pakistan and then Afghanistan in 2007

A homegrown terrorist who fled the US to join Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2007 has told for the first time how ‘boring’ his life as a terrorist was and why it failed to match up to his fantasies about jihad. 

Bryant Neal Vinas grew up in Long Island but fled to Pakistan and then Afghanistan in 2007 after becoming disillusioned with the West. He spent a year trying to become a jihadist but did not complete a single successful mission before he was captured in Pakistan in 2008. 

After being caught, he turned on his terrorist ‘brothers’ to act as an informant for the US authorities. In 2017, he was released from federal prison and is now living as a free man in New York City, without the protection of the government.

In an article for the US Military Acadamemy’s monthly publication The Sentinel that was published on Tuesday, the 17th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, he describes his time as an Al Qaeda soldier. 

The military’s hope is that his bleak description of how unexciting it was will deter other young Americans considering what he did. 

Instead of fighting American or allied forces’ soldiers in bloody combat, he spent most of his time doing ‘nothing’. The most exciting few months he spent in the Middle East was at a training camp where he was only ever allowed to shoot gun ones. 

He only took part in one mission and had to have one of his small toes amputated because of a fungal infection he developed in the putrid conditions. 

 ‘We lived in mudbrick houses, and the food was bad—mainly rice, potato stew, or okra stew….There are days when you do absolutely nothing.

Far from celebrating him as a man who had turned on his country, the bosses he answered to repeatedly turned him down when he offered to take part in suicide missions and told him the only way to progress was to pay for expensive courses in weaponry which he could not afford. 

‘We lived in mudbrick houses, and the food was bad—mainly rice, potato stew, or okra stew. The rich Arabs had money to buy goats, sheep, and chickens, but that was about as exotic as it got. 

‘There are days when you do absolutely nothing. There is common frustration amongst many AQ guys about the amount of inactivity. 

‘There were few operations to participate in, and even those weren’t very good so the body was not in prime fighting condition for “mountain fighting” when a fighting mission appeared,’ he said. 

Vinas went to Pakistan in 2007 with the help of some friends who were unaware of what he was planning. It was from there that he ventured in Afghanistan and started trying to infiltrate the terror groups. 

He described one mission which he took part in not for Al Qaeda but for Shab Shab, a Sunni group, where he said: ‘Going on a mission had been such a relief from the terrible boredom, but in the end, I was disappointed that the operation was unsuccessful.’ 

He was so bored that it was a relief when he was asked to perform a suicide mission for the Sunni group because it meant he would not face the altitude sickness he’d been subjected to in battle missions. 

A video grab shows members of Al-Qaeda in a video published by Osama Bin Laden. Vinas only went on two missions – they had to abort one and the other was unuccessul 

‘I was having a difficult time with the altitude. I was getting very sick, so I felt that it would be easier to do a martyrdom operation. Also, then you would be considered a martyr. That’s the highest, most honorable death in jihad.

But he was let down, he said, when he was given a ‘phony reason’ for not being allowed to carry it out. 

In December 2007, after three months in Afghanistan without taking part in a single mission, he had to have his smallest toe on one of his feet amputated because of a fungal infection.

When he was finally able to join Al Qaeda, in 2008 he was allowed to use weapons but not at anyone.  

In March 2008, he was finally brought into the terror regime’s fold and was sent to training camp. It was a simple process which involved signing forms and handing over his passport. 

‘I never had to go through any type of ritual or test to prove myself to get into AQ.  You did need someone to vouch for you, and the word of Haji Sabr, older Tunisian, was sufficient reference for me,’ he wrote.

‘Maybe if you wanted to rise in the ranks, that vow of loyalty might be necessary, but for me, who was content in being a regular fighter, it was not necessary.’ 

His training involved three mandatory courses; basic training, explosives theory, and projectile weapons theory.

 ‘Between the boredom, cold, and end of the fighting season, it made sense to go and try and find a wife.

The training was like a normal bootcamp but had to be done indoors, in mud brick houses, to avoid the terrorists from being spotted by drones. 

A normal day started with morning prayers, then Qur’an recital, morning exercise, breakfast, morning lessons, early afternoon prayers, lunch, afternoon lessons, break, kitchen duty, sunset prayer, dinner, night prayer then lights-out unless you were on security night watch. 

But during their explosives course, none of the students were ever allowed to actually build a bomb. 

And they were only able to fire the weapons, at no specific target, they had been taught how to handle and clean at the end of their course.  

The basic courses, he said, offered nothing in the way of new information and the more advanced, appealing courses were reserved for those who could afford them.  

Afterward he completed his mandatory training, he did little else but sit around, he said, and talk about their old lives and home.

‘If I was with someone who spoke English, then I would talk with them. Because of the lack of anything productive to do, we would talk a lot about our lives before we got to Waziristan. 

‘Other than talking about our personal lives, the day was made up of praying, eating, cooking, sleeping—that is what we would do. 

More members of Al Qaeda are pictured in a 2001 promotional video. The terror organization was far from what Vinas expected and he never took part in any fighting

‘On occasion, we would get radio signal from BBC radio, and I remember listening to Usain Bolt’s race at the Beijing Olympics, news about the 2008 Obama-McCain election campaigns, and updates on the surprising Philadelphia Phillies World Series victory. 

He did not see his first mission until September 2008, a year after he fled the US. It involved launching four rockets at the U.S. Forward Operating Base Tillman but they were unsuccessful.   

 ‘Other than talking about our personal lives, the day was made up of praying, eating, cooking, sleeping

In 2008, he plotted an attack on the LIRR. It was nothing more than a ‘campfire plot’ he said, which he discussed with a senior Al Qaeda official.

Vinas was arrested not long afterwards in Peshwar where he had returned to find a wife out of boredom.  

‘Between the boredom, cold, and end of the fighting season, it made sense to go and try and find a wife. 

‘And I had a friend living in Peshawar, and I asked him if I could spend the winter there, and also to ask him if he could help me find a wife,’ he said.

He was captured then, when he realized how severe the charges were against him, decided he would cooperate with the US government.

He was turned over to US authorities and acted as an informant but was released from prison last year and is back living on the East Coast. 

Earlier this year, he won a sympathetic ear from The New York Times to whom he complained about not being given witness protection by the government.

He now survives on food stamps and is on Medicaid.  

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk