printAGENT OF ALLAH. He was supposed to be a double agent. Jordan’s intelligence agency, the General Intelligence Directorate, was confident that they had “flipped” “suicide bomber Humam Muhammed al-Balawi, the Jordanian double agent who killed seven CIA operatives and his Jordanian handler” in the remote mountains of Afghanistan, on December 30, as reported by ABC.
But al-Balawi was just flipping the bird to Jordan and, more poignantly, to the US.
Al Balawi was born in Kuwait in 1977, raised in Jordan and attended medical school in Turkey. He had been arrested by Jordan’s intelligence agency, the General Intelligence Directorate, more than a year ago. Believing they had flipped al Balawi and made him a double agent, the Jordanians released him from prison and sent him to Afghanistan to penetrate al Qaeda by pretending to be an aspiring foreign jihadi.
The naive, American, CIA operatives salivated, setting up a meeting with “the supposed informant” at the “C.I.A.’s Forward Operating Base Chapman in the southeastern province of Khost” (NYT). Having strapped explosives to his body, Al Balawi blew himself up, taking with him one of the spy agency’s elite teams.
Al Balawi had “strong jihadi credentials” for a reason. He was a strong Jihadi.
This is what I’m getting at: The liberal aims to make humanity over in his image. As the creed of left-liberalism sees it, each and every individual has the potential to be a liberal. When operating from the foolish and infinitely arrogant premise that every Muslim is no more than a lesser Westerner struggling to unleash his inner liberal—you’re bound to play footsie with fanatics.
Muslims such as Al Balawi simply possess stronger core beliefs than the average CIA operative can fathom—even the “elites” among them.
Your point about, “every Muslim is no more than a lesser Westerner struggling to unleash his inner liberal”, is well taken. However, the CIA agents in question were not very “elite” and perhaps poorly trained. Obviously they didn’t take any necessary, and very basic, security measures. Even the fuzziest of liberals should have had him searched for electronic devices before he entered the compound, which would have discovered the explosives. If we’ve gone this far down the road to stupid then it’s already over.
The CIA ,US government ,or even US military—all can’t understand that most religious people have more faith in their God than their government be they Muslim, Christian, or Jew.
Eric, it’s not just the religious who don’t place their faith in the Nation State. Many, if not most people, give primary loyalties to something other than the Nation State. He who trusts the State most likely “works” for (and is well compensated by) some level of government. Other affiliations, family, community, religion, tribe, gang, etc., are much more important to most of us. Martin van Creveld (The Rise and Decline of the State) has pointed out that the institution of the Nation State is losing legitimacy with the very people it is supposed to serve, but mostly live off of.
Amanda Ripley wrote and article for Time Magazine on the fate of the passengers who were on the same plane as the “Panty Bomber”. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1950576,00.html
“they were held in the baggage area for more than five hours until FBI agents interviewed them. They were not allowed to call their loved ones. They were given no food. When one of the pilots tried to use the bathroom before a bomb-sniffing dog had finished checking all the carry-on bags, an officer ordered him to sit down”
In the words of John Robb, “this telling para depicts the government reasserting its authority to prop up its legitimacy”
The Emperor isn’t just naked, he’s also quite mad.
Ripley’s Time essay is great. Before 9/11, CIA officials and all Americans traveling (like me) through Dulles Airport went through screening staffed by chador dressed women and men in turbans – BUT, according to Time: ” But al-Balawi, who was allowed onto Forward Operating Base Chapman WITHOUT a body search” http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1952177,00.html#ixzz0bvuhsiAW.
I used to argue (pre-Iraq liberation) WHY is it that no AMERICANS penetrated into Iraq or Afghanistan when idiot Jihadists like John Walker Lindh could? A colleague said that CIA lives would have been at risk – well, how many lives have been lost in AfPak, Iraq, etc. because of bad intelligence?? How many lost by neglecting basic security procedures?
How many lives have been lost by relying on SLAMDUNK sources like CURVEBALL, the cab driver, who was an “expert” on nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons??? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
And how many lives were essentially ruined (and dollars wasted) from our friend Chalabi???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Chalabi
Afghanistan is considered TOO DANGEROUS to even meet al-Balawi at a “safe house” and yet we pour more troops in to “stabilize” it. Instead, we have a bomb-sniffing dog sniffing the PILOT of Flight 253!! We
refer to Saudi Arabia as an “ally”. It is completely MAD.
“The innocent, American, CIA operatives…”
Innocent? How so? I don’t get you on this one Ilana.
[Naive I should have written, and will change.]
“WHY is it that no AMERICANS penetrated into Iraq or Afghanistan when idiot Jihadists like John Walker Lindh could?”
In the words of one (now former) CIA case officer, “Operations that include diarrhea as a way of life don’t happen.” This old but still applicable article goes a long way to explaining why success in counter intelligence can only come about by cutting the CIA budget and manpower by 2/3s.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107/gerecht