EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is excerpted from the book Race Against Terror by Jake Tapper, published by Atria, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission. Copyright © 2025 by Jake Tapper.

Spin Ghul’s desire for jihad started when he was a child in Saudi Arabia, where his parents had remained after traveling from Niger on holy pilgrimage. From his elementary school days, he was determined to become a religious soldier, especially after learning about the Soviet-Afghan War, and how the Islamist holy warriors — the mujahideen — were helping defeat the USSR in the bloody battle.

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, many mujahideen joined Chechen rebels to fight for independence, Chechnya being a majority-Muslim autonomous republic. The First Chechen War lasted from 1994 until the Chechens recaptured their capital city of Grozny in August 1996, prompting Russia to agree to a ceasefire. Tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, Chechen fighters, and Chechen civilians were killed. In September 1999, the Second Chechen War broke out after four apartment blocks in Russia were bombed, which Russia blamed on separatist militants. Fueled with money and fighters from Arab countries, backed to a much greater extent than the first time around, this war lasted for a full decade and included Vladimir Putin’s bloody siege of Grozny.

This was the battle Spin Ghul had wanted to join, and it would eventually set him on a path toward being part of an al Qaeda ambush against American servicemembers in Afghanistan in 2003, leading an effort to blow up the US embassy in Nigeria, and bec