And this morning their help had borne fruit. A Yazidi girl named Manal had made a report to Kurdish officials a month earlier, before she was put into a UN-run IDP camp and promptly lost by UN officials; but overnight she’d been identified and located in a camp far to the east of the battle lines.
Mary Pat Foley would be the first American to speak with her. There were tens of thousands of displaced Yazidis, and hundreds of thousands of refugees and IDPs here in Iraq. But seventeen-year-old Manal warranted this level of personal attention, as far as Mary Pat Foley was concerned, for one very important reason.
She had been forced to marry an ISIS operative in Raqqa named Abu Musa al-Matari.
And the most wanted man on planet Earth to U.S. intelligence was an ISIS operative known to be living in Raqqa with that very name.
The young lady extended her hand to Mary Pat, offering a handshake and a smile with a shy bow. In memorized English taught to her by a UN aid worker minutes before Foley’s arrival she said, “Very pleasure to meet. My name Manal.”
Foley smiled and bowed, genuinely appreciative of the effort. The interpreter stood close. “My name is Mary Pat and I come from the USA. I have heard some of your story, and I am so honored to meet such a brave woman.” The DNI knew Manal had recently managed to escape her captors, and that in itself was enough to earn her respect.
The interpreter translated softly between the two women, and the young girl blushed.
In moments all three were sitting on rugs on the floor. The colonel waited outside — he and Mary Pat agreed the Yazidi girl might be more comfortable that way — but one of Foley’s young female assistants remained in the room to record and take notes. She stood against the wall, just close enough to listen in.
Manal told Mary Pat about her capture, the brutal murder of the rest of her family, and then of being taken away with a group of girls as young as ten. Manal herself had been just fifteen at the time.
“They called us sabya,” Manal said through the interpreter.
The interpreter added, “It means ‘slaves captured in wartime.’”
Mary Pat could see in the nervous eyes of Manal that she had lived through unspeakable horrors.
The young girl said, “I was told I would be given as a gift to a special man. I waited days in a small apartment. I was not raped at this time, like all the other girls were. I was very lucky. Finally, a man arrived, dressed like a Westerner, a very short beard, short hair. Not like most men in DAESH.”
DAESH was an acronym for al-Dawla al-Islamiya fil Iraq wa al-Sham, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Al-Sham was also known as Greater Syria or the Levant.
“Did he tell you his name?”
“Of course. He was proud of who he was. He was Musa. Abu Musa al-Matari.”
“Did that mean something to you?”
“No. But he was important. People were always coming to see him. He had many phones and computers. He was given much respect.”
“I need to know if this is the Musa al-Matari I am looking for, but I do not have any pictures of him. Do you know where he was born?”
“He said he was from Yemen, close to the border with Oman. In a place on the ocean.”
Foley knew the Abu Musa al-Matari she was looking for was from Jadib, located exactly where Manal had just described.
“And his age?”
“I… I do not know. Much older.”
Mary Pat frowned. “Much older… like me?”
“No. Not so old,” Manal said quickly. Mary Pat was in her sixties. She wasn’t offended, but she smiled at the interpreter’s discomfort relaying the young girl’s words.
The CIA had pinned al-Matari’s age at between thirty-five and forty. Mary Pat asked Manal how old her father had been when he died.
“He was forty-one.” Manal nodded. “Yes, maybe he was close to my father’s age.”
“You were with al-Matari for how long?”
“One year. I was a slave, but he married me. I think maybe he had other wives, because he was not at the apartment all the time.”
“And when did he force you to marry him?”
The young woman listened to the interpreter, then she looked at the older American lady for a long time. There was confusion on her face. Finally, she spoke, and the interpreter said, “The first time I ever saw him… we were married in five minutes.”
“I see. Did he spend a lot of time on the computer?”
“Yes,” Manal said. “Every day he was on his computer or on one of his phones.”
Mary Pat knew Abu Musa al-Matari was a top lieutenant in the Emni, a branch of the Islamic State’s Foreign Intelligence Bureau in charge of finding fighters willing and able to operate abroad. Al-Matari ran the North American section, and it was his job to recruit and train Americans and Europeans to conduct terrorist acts for ISIS in the United States. Nine months earlier he had managed to get sixteen U.S. passport holders into Syria for training, but all sixteen were either killed there in a U.S. drone strike or detained upon their return to the West. The destruction of the cell had been hidden from the press, mostly, to preserve the tactics, techniques, and procedures that led to the intelligence coup, but Mary Pat knew her nation had dodged a huge bullet with the operation. She also knew al-Matari had the skill, the motivation, and the backing in the Islamic State’s Foreign Intelligence Bureau that made it a certainty he would try again.
And she most worried that he had already begun.
She asked, “What else did you learn from him?”
“He told me he fought in many countries before I was captured. After I was made his wife, he was gone more than he was here. I don’t think he was off fighting. He wasn’t a soldier… He was something else. I don’t know.
“One day he came back to the apartment in Raqqa, and he told me he had to take a trip abroad.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“To me? No, he did not confide in me. I was only there to clean his home, to cook for his brothers and other family and friends, and to give him pleasure. But I heard him talking on the phone. He was going to Kosovo to meet with someone.”
Mary Pat nodded. “When was this?”
The interpreter relayed the young girl’s answer. “Three months before I escaped. I escaped last month. So… four months ago.”
“And did he return from Kosovo?”
“Yes, and he worked harder after this. Met with more men, foreigners. I mean… not Iraqis. Different accents. Then… maybe four weeks ago, he told me to pack his clothes. He told me he was going on a long journey, and inshallah, he would return.”
“Did he say anything about where he was going?”
“Not to me, but I heard him on the phone again. He talked about going to school.”
“To school?”
“Yes. A language school.”
Mary Pat cocked her head. “Where is this language school?”
“I do not know, but I am sure it was far away. He had books. Books in English. I don’t know what kind of books, I do not understand English, but he took them, along with Western clothing. He left his robes. This just four days before I escaped.”
“How were you able to escape?”
“When he left, he said his uncle would be watching over me. But his uncle did not come. The American bombs became heavy in the city. Maybe he was killed, or just too scared to leave the house. I did not have any food. Of course I could not go out into the streets myself in Raqqa. As a woman alone, I would be stopped by the ISIS religious police. If they caught me a second time, I would be arrested. A third time and I would have been stoned to death.”
“I understand,” Mary Pat said.
“But I got so hungry, finally I decided I had to try to leave if I wanted to live. I had heard that some people who go toward the sounds of the fighting make it through the lines and survive. I did not know if that was true, but I had no choice. I waited for late at night. I watched the sky to see where the flashes were coming from, and I walked toward the fighting.