Justice and the Enemy
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ac Amongst many disturbing precedents, in 2004 Islamic suspects in the Madrid train bombing that killed 191 people booby-trapped their hideout.When the police converged upon them, they blew it up, killing themselves and a Spanish special forces agent. Moreover, U.S. personnel had been particularly aware of the threat of suicide bombings aimed at themselves since the catastrophic attack by a Jordanian double agent on C.I.A. officers in Khost, Afghanistan. Jordanian intelligence , the General Intelligence Department (GID), has been a crucial ally to the C.I.A. for many decades, has a record of successful penetration of jihadist groups, and has provided the U.S. with invaluable information on many occasions.The GID had recruited Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi as a source on the Al Qaeda leadership. He claimed to know the whereabouts of bin Laden’s deputy (and successor) Ayman al-Zawahiri and was brought to the C.I.A. base in Khost on December 30, 2009. He was, in fact, working for Al Qaeda. Although C.I.A. officers had been warned that his loyalty was in question, inexplicable lapses of security allowed him onto the base without being searched, and he then detonated his suicide vest, killing five C.I.A. officers, two C.I.A. security contractors, a Jordanian officer, and the Afghan driver who had brought him to the base. Six other C.I.A. officers were wounded. It was the deadliest attack on the C.I.A. in decades. [Kristen Chick, “C.I.A. ignored Jordanian intelligence before suicide bombing in Khost, Afghanistan,” Christian Science Monitor, October 20, 2010.]
ad The extent to which Human Rights Watch now excited controversy was demonstrated powerfully when, in October 2009, its founder and former chairman, Robert Bernstein, criticized the organization in an article in the New York Times. Bernstein’s principal concern, in which he was not alone, was that the organization had abandoned fairness in the Middle East and was seeking to turn Israel into a pariah state.
Human Rights Watch was formed in 1988 by the grouping of several regional human rights committees, dealing with the Soviet Union, the Americas, and other areas under the global Human Rights Watch umbrella. In the next twenty years it grew enormously in prestige and effectiveness. By 2010 it had a budget of $44 million and conducted research in some ninety countries, publishing scores of reports every year.
Amongst its most valuable reports were those documenting the abuses of Saddam Hussein’s regime. But between 2000 and 2010 it published more reports on abuses of human rights in Israel than in Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Algeria. There were roughly as many reports on Israel as on the dictatorships of Iran, Libya, and Syria combined. Bernstein’s concern about its bias against Israel was given weight by the revelation that Human Rights Watch had tried to raise money in Saudi Arabia (a dictatorship) by emphasizing its criticisms of Israel (the only democracy in the region). [ Ben Birnbaum, “Minority Report: Human Rights Watch Fights a Civil War Over Israel,” New Republic, April 27, 2010.]
ae But the organization would have difficulties in reaching any sensible conclusions on such matters. It had not even been able to agree on a definition of terrorism. This was because of opposition by the twenty-two members of the Arab League and the fifty-seven members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, neither of whom was prepared to recognize the reality of Islamist extremism.Thus the Arab Terrorism Convention exempts from its definition of terrorism any suicide bombing or slitting of children’s throats (for example) under the umbrella of “all cases of struggle by whatever means . . . against foreign occupation and aggression for liberation and self-determination.” The U.N. Human Rights Council preferred to concentrate on “the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism,” by which they meant “youth unemployment... marginalization and the subsequent sense of victimization,” rather than on “anti-Semitic hate speech or nihilist acts of vicious cruelty conducted by Al Qaeda and other terrorists.” [Anne Bayevsky, UN Watch, May 2011.]
af The trial of Aafia Siddiqui, dubbed by the press “Lady Al Qaeda,” is instructive in this regard. Highly educated as a neuroscientist in America, married to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s nephew, Siddiqui was caught in Afghanistan in 2008 with poisonous chemicals, bomb-making instructions, notes about dirty bombs, and a list of New York landmarks. While being questioned by Afghan police she seized a rifle and shot at U.S. soldiers, translators, F.B.I. agents, and others. She was put on trial in the courtroom that Eric Holder had wanted to use for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and she turned the proceedings into a circus by screaming abuse at America and Jews. (She even demanded that the jury take DNA tests to make sure they were not Jews.) In 2010 she was convicted of trying to kill U.S. soldiers and sentenced to eighty-six years. But by now she had become a heroine and a martyr in Pakistan where millions believed anti-American lies about her being tortured for years in Bagram before her capture in 2008. Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s successor, demanded that Pakistanis take “the only available path, that of jihad” to liberate her, and the prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, demanded her repatriation. The U.S. government made no real effort to combat the myth.
ag Al Qaeda combatants were instructed always to allege they had been tortured after capture. Ibrahim Shafir Sen, aTurkish detainee, claimed that while detained in Kandahar, female interrogators sexually abused him and desecrated the Koran, that guards beat him with iron bars and had him mauled by dogs. In Guantanamo, he said, “Ninety percent of the soldiers . . . wore skullcaps. They all had Jewish names. There were also fifteen rabbis at Guantanamo that we counted. At least one rabbi was present during interrogations.” He was released by the United States in November 2003 and in 2008 was arrested inTurkey and charged with being the leader of an Al Qaeda cell.
ah From his base in Yemen, al-Awlaki had become the most influential internet jihadist in the English-speaking world. However, he remained “an honored guest” of student Islamic societies and community centers in Britain. In 2003, he had spoken in person at several events organized by the Muslim Association of Britain and the Federation of Islamic Societies. At the East London mosque in December 2003, he participated in a “Stop Police Terror” event where he instructed his listeners not to cooperate with the authorities’ counterterrorism investigations. In January 2009, he appeared via video link at another East London mosque event called “The End of Time,” which featured, inter alia, pictures of New York in flames. After protests from the Henry Jackson Society the mosque issued a statement: “Mr. Awlaki has not been proven guilty in a court of law. Everyone is entitled to their point of view.” In April 2009, he was invited to address City University’s Islamic Society’s annual dinner by video link. This was canceled after protests but he did give a video lecture to a Muslim group at a community center funded by the London borough of Tower Hamlets. In August 2009, he was due to give another video lecture organized by Cageprisoners. Protests from the Henry Jackson Society and others led to the cancellation of this lecture but City University’s Islamic Society posted his prerecorded text to its website. The year 2009 was also when al-Awlaki is known to have become active in the secret incitement of specific would-be murderers in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere. [Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, “As American as Apple Pie: How Anwar al-Awlaki Became the Face of Western Jihad,”The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, 2011; http://icsr.info/publications/papers/1315827595ICSRPaperAsAmericanAsApplePieHowAnwaralAwlakiBecametheFaceofWesternJihad.pdf.]
ai President Obama was apparently concerned lest American support should “taint” democratic uprisings. This was not the case. When the U.S. ambassador to Syria visited pro-democracy protestors in the Syrian town of Hama in July of 2011, he was greeted with roses, olive branches, and enthusiasm. It was noteworthy also that there were far fewer disturbances in Iraq which, thanks to the U.S.–led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, already had an elected government. It was not a good government, but the people had been allowed to choose it. [Robert Mackey, “U.S. Ambassador Greeted with Roses by Syrian Protestors in Hama,” New York Times, July 8, 2011, http:thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/u-s-ambassador-greet
ed-with-roses-by-syrian-protesters.]
aj In September 2011, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former director general of MI5, Britain’s internal security service, strongly criticized the waterboarding of Al Qaeda detainees. She went on to say, “The argument that lifesaving intelligence was thereby obtained, and I accept it was, still does not justify it.” [Reith Lectures, 2011, www.bbc.co.uk.]
Copyright © 2011 by William Shawcross.
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