From Beverly Giesbrecht to Khadija Abdul Qahaar: Locals shed light on kidnapped Vancouverite’s past

On March 20, the Globe and Mail posted a video on its Web site that showed West Vancouver resident Khadija Abdul Qahaar in Pakistan begging for her life. How did she get there?

Qahaar, formerly known as Beverly Giesbrecht (and who also goes by the pen names Bev Kennedy and Paul Morris-Read), has long been accused of being an agent of the CIA. One Web site argues her kidnapping is proof that the Taliban is actually MI6 and part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the Illuminati. A local commentator led a piece on her with the description, “pathetic and obviously unwell”. At the same time, journalist organizations have expressed their concern.

Qahaar was a born-again Christian until shortly after the September 11 attacks when she embraced Islam. For several years, she regularly espoused ideas and arguments similar to those of Islamic fundamentalists. In November, she was kidnapped by the Taliban. Today, she remains held for ransom in Pakistan, allegedly near the border with Afghanistan. In a March 20 video, Qahaar, 52, states that she expects to be killed by the end of the month.

Old friends, former neighbours, and one-time associates paint a complicated picture of Qahaar. They describe her as a woman who, above all else, was intense, dedicated, and driven in everything she did.

Al McPhee, a former associate of Qahaar from Lions Bay, recalled the first time he met Qahaar, sometime in the mid 1990s.

McPhee said that Qahaar struck him as an independent woman determined in everything she did. Over the next few years, he did numerous jobs for Qahaar during a relatively stable time in her life.

Qahaar did not have an easy childhood. According to From Ashes to Light, a manifesto of sorts published by Qahaar on-line in September 2003, she spent much of her early years in hospitals, crippled from the waist down until she taught herself how to walk again.

Her teenage years were worse. Qahaar writes that she left home at age 13, was pregnant at 14, married at 15, separated at 17, married again at 18, divorced for a second time at 20, and then was forced to give up her child at age 21.

“My early life of course had its toll and by 32, I was a chronic alcoholic,” Qahaar writes. “Doctors gave me a year to live unless I stopped driving and of course I couldn’t.”

McPhee remembered Qahaar as an open book about those years. “She talked freely about the extent of her alcoholism and felt that by sharing her experiences”¦that she might be an inspiration to others who were struggling with addiction,” he said.

“When I met her, she had been on the wagon for probably 10 years, fairly long-term anyway,” McPhee noted.

Qahaar had found Christianity and credited religion with saving her life. “God intervened directly in my life in response to my less than eloquent prayers and I could no longer deny His existence,” she wrote in From Ashes to Light.

By all accounts, Qahaar went on to put as much energy and devotion into improving her life as she once had in destroying it.

“She was absolutely obsessive-compulsive and would work 20 hours a day sometimes,” McPhee said. “Sometimes she’d have three cigarettes going at once. It was unconscious—she was so hyper.”

“She gave great parties,” was the first thing that Glenn Cooper, a database consultant in West Vancouver, told the Straight. “She’s a natural-born leader, extremely intelligent, and she’s totally without fear.”

By his account, Cooper has been Qahaar’s best friend for the last 23 years. “Khadija’s friends were disturbed at her sudden turn in direction after 9/11, and nobody more than me,” he told the Straight. “But she’s been my friend for many years and I don’t abandon my friends.”

Many others did. In April 21, 2002, Qahaar launched Jihad Unspun, an aggregation Web site for news and opinions related to the Middle East and the United States “war on terror”. The site’s content is vehemently anti-American and is widely accused of espousing rhetoric promoting al-Qaeda. By Qahaar’s own admission, it lost her many friends.

Wayne McIntyre, a former next-door neighbour, lost touch with Qahaar when he moved to North Vancouver in early 2002. He says he last knew her as a devout, born-again Christian who followed the teachings of southern Evangelists and filled her home with Christian memorabilia.

He told the Straight that when Jihad Unspun started up, friends and colleagues expressed concern. “But she had a passion for the issue which prevailed,” he said.

“She’s a fascinating woman and was a terrific neighbour,” McIntyre added. “Whichever god you believe in, I hope there is a god that will help her.”

Cooper said that it was with “horror” that he discovered Qahaar had converted to Islam.

For 18 months around September 11, 2001, Cooper said, he was out of touch with Qahaar. This, coupled with the fact that Qahaar had no family and quickly fell out with many of her friends around this time, means that very little is known about Qahaar’s transformation from a born-again Christian to what many consider to be a radical Muslim.

In From Ashes to Light, Qahaar writes, “The United States of America, the greatest nation on earth, had been attacked and now everything, absolutely everything has changed.”

She wrote that she felt that the “official story” of 9/11 “didn’t add up” and could not rest until she found answers. “I was going to having [sic] to understand where Muslims were coming from if I was going to tell their side of the story without propaganda.”

Qahaar next details how she read everything she could find on Islam and the Middle East. She contacted Muslim groups across Canada and spent months trolling the Internet. She read an English translation of the Quran. By the end of it all, she wrote, “I knew there was no decision to be made.”

“On April 12, 2002 high in the mountains of British Columbia I took Shahadah on the Youth of Islam board and declared my submission to Allah, the one true God. Lí¢ ilí¢ha illallí¢h!,” she wrote in From Ashes to Light.

According to the manifesto, what followed was an all-encompassing mission to get Jihad Unspun off the ground and make it an alternative news source for both Muslims and non-Muslims.

Cooper maintains that he has never understood what happened to Qahaar during that time, despite the fact that she stayed with him often.

In 2003, Qahaar moved to Egypt. She continued to run Jihad Unspun and intensified her study of Islam and Arabic. According to Cooper, she travelled the region and, at least for a while, ended up in a Palestinian refugee camp. There, she “sponsored” a child.

“I am going to send money for him starting September to get tutoring in English and math,” Qahaar wrote in an e-mail to Cooper. “The money stops if I don’t see good report cards. I can’t change the world but maybe I can change this kids life.”

Cooper recalled Qahaar as always being very motherly with children around her.

In 2003, Qahaar settled in Malaysia.

“She was running her Web site and giving interviews and was actually invited to talk at various universities,” said Cooper, who at this point was essentially the only person from Qahaar’s past who was still in regular contact with her. “She felt very comfortable in Malaysia,” he continued. “People treated her with respect.”

It didn’t make any difference. Nearly one year ago, in April 2007, Qahaar was off on what could now be her final journey.

“She just had no fear of anybody and it got her into trouble more than once,” Cooper said fondly. “I always wondered if one day, she was just going to go too far and push that envelope over the edge.”

Qahaar quickly grew fond of Pakistan. On August 26, 2008, she published a lengthy travel memoir from Pakistan’s North-West Frontier province. Qahaar wrote:

As we travelled over open plains with nothing more than tire tracks for roads, it was soon time for Mahgrib prayer. In these parts, the women do not pray behind the men so the Mujahideen prayed on the flat lands after making wudu in the ground water and Emir Ullah placed a prayer mat for me on the high ground. It was an overwhelming sight and I was filled with awe as I saw the Mujahideen praying in the foreground and the mighty mountains of Afghanistan so close that it appeared that could reach out and touch them. That is when the magnitude of it all hit me. After six long years, here I was, with the Mujahideen close to the border of Afghanistan praying to our Mighty creator in the wide open spaces of Mohmand Agency. This scene has been in my heart and mind ever since and it will surely never leave my memory.

Soon enough, it seems Qahaar’s situation changed. On October 22, she posted a message from Pakistan on Jihad Unspun asking for money for an exit visa.

“Pakistan is now erupting into a full scale war zone. We have been in some very sensitive areas and even Islamabad is now locked down. As foreigners we must leave the country,” she wrote.

According to the Globe and Mail, Qahaar’s visa application states she is a freelance journalist working on a documentary for the Al Jazeera television network.

On November 13, news broke that Qahaar had been seized at gunpoint while traveling through North Waziristan, a region of Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt.

“I told her that I would not send her any money unless she were coming home,” Cooper said. “I was afraid she was actually planning to do one more trip before she got out of Pakistan.”

Looking back after talking to Qahaar’s friends and associates, McPhee said that no one was totally shocked by the direction she has taken.

“She had a penchant for independence and doing the unexpected with 100 percent commitment,” he said. “Of course, everyone hopes she gets out of the almost unimaginable situation she finds herself in.”

Cooper still focuses on the friend he knows. “When she is away from that theatre and just back to being an ordinary person, she is the same person I always knew,” he said. “A very energetic and courageous woman.”

You can follow Travis Lupick on Twitter at twitter.com/tlupick.