Affraz joined the Marines because he wanted to belong. By serving, he thought his citizenship would no longer be questioned. On the contrary, he became a POW in his own country, the unwanted, orphan son of his adoptive fatherland.

He's now on a permanent watchlist, always searched at airports, visited by DHS every once in a while, probably as a result of his faith and his military training, the only two things he could cling to while being tortured by federal agents. Nevertheless, because of his great love of the American idea, he conquered fear and hatred on the pock-marked path of recovery. 

The Warrior on The Watchlist is a story of U.S. policy gone awry from a microcosmic point of view of one persecuted person who while being stalked by national security cops, just can't seem to clear his name. And so, the harassment from the national security state has persisted until the present.

The experience of Affraz is part of a pattern of counter-terrorism investigations that all relied on entrapping targeted individuals in schemes confabulated by the national security agencies themselves and coercing Muslims into informing on their community, which is why the New York Times published his story as a narrative of injustice. However, it is also a story of recovery from non-combat PTSD, of fighting for accountability, and the potency of community in combating extremism. 

Although he never committed any crime, he has been denied recourse to the nation’s courts. In the end, they never got what they wanted: conviction or cooperation. And he lost years hunkered down, paranoid, and bitter, neglecting his wife and kids, cutting ties with friends, and estranged from family, his fellow Marines, and finally, his faith.

In the end, the most important chapter of his story left out by the media illustrates how that "stop terror by sowing terror" approach backfires, radicalizing even would-be patriots and driving them into the arms of terrorist recruiters. 

Coming soon on Amazon.