TORTURE CASE RATTLES TRANSATLANTIC ALLIANCE

Senior British judges thumbed their noses at London and Washington by refusing to keep secret evidence that the CIA tortured a detainee and the British government knew about it. The detainee was Binyan Mohammed, an Egyptian, who was given refugee status in the U.K. in 1994.

In releasing eight paragraphs, which had been scratched from a previous High Court hearing at the request of the British government, the public learned that the British government and its intelligence community knew about the torture of Mohamed. By delivering their ruling, three Court of Appeal judges showed they were not going to capitulate to political pressure to conceal their own government’s complicity in what they regarded as a breach of international law. Pressure on the judges to hide what London and Washington knew about Mohamed’s treatment in CIA custody had come from none other than the White House and Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, who publicly warned that release of the paragraphs could jeopardize the future sharing of intelligence with Britain. The British government, which is in the midst of a controversial inquiry into its unqualified support for the invasion of Iraq, tried to persuade its courts to withhold the material, which confirmed that CIA reports about Mohammed’s condition had been read in London and that his treatment breached international undertakings made by the U.K. in 1972 with respect to Geneva Conventions. Nevertheless, under intense pressure from the Obama White House, lawyers instructed by Home Secretary, David Miliband, tried to convince the Court of Appeal that national security trumped the release of the paragraphs.
The British judiciary, which has often been conservative when handling matters pertaining to national security, took a different view. The appeal judges decided it was in the public interest to expose their own government to scrutiny of what it knew and denied it knew about the torture of Binyan Mohammed. It has been reported, however, that the same judges made a concession to 10 Downing Street by not releasing damning evidence showing British foreign intelligence agents were not only complicit in Mohammed’s torture but had shown a total disregard for his suffering.
What makes this case so explosive for Washington and London is that it opens up a possible legal debate about the CIA’s rendition program, thereby exposing both governments to charges of war crimes before the International Criminal Court. At the highest levels of government in London and Washington there is a genuine fear the London ruling will lead to further scrutiny of the CIA’s use of “black sites” and the roles played by other foreign intelligence agencies in facilitating renditions, or providing alternative interrogation sites. It is likely attention will focus on the fact that U.S. Joint Special Operations Command has been running its own secret sites across Afghanistan and elsewhere. Barack Obama promised to close all CIA black sites there is no evidence he has done so, or has ever addressed the issue of the Joint Special operations sites, some of which have been referred to by detainees as “the salt pit” and “the prison of darkness.”
The revelation Binyan Mohamed was tortured in a black site highlights increasing evidence that suspects are still continually rounded up and “disappeared” in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the past year, families in Afghanistan have claimed that loved ones were snatched in the middle of the night by U.S. Special forces and were not seen again. The families believe their kin are being held incognito in “dark prisons.” One such “prison” exists outside Kabul and some detainees who were held there later talked about been chained in darkness for weeks. Binyan Mohamed was held in the Kabul black site for four months. His story highlights how, post 9/11, the Bush administration had a no-holds barred attitude to interrogation. There are now suspicions that, for all its rhetoric the Obama administration has not ended the Bush policy.
Mohammed was arrested in late 2001 in Pakistan where he was held for several months and interrogated by CIA and British MI6 agents. In the summer of 2002, the CIA renditioned him to Morocco, which has a long history of using torture. Over the next 18 months, Moroccan interrogators broke some of his bones and cut his genitals and chest with a scalpel and razor blades. They told him the U.S. wanted him to give evidence in court against senior Al Qaeda figures they had in custody. All he had to do was say in court what he would be briefed to say. It is now believed he was kept for a long time in Morocco to allow the wounds to his genitals and bones to heal.
At 2:05 a.m. on January 22, 2004, he was flown in a CIA registered Boeing-737 jet, # N313P, to Kabul. According to the Council of Europe, the same jet was used later that day to rendition another detainee from Macedonia to Kabul. When Mohamed arrived at Kabul airport, he was whisked off to the CIA’s “dark prison” outside Kabul instead of the U.S. run prison at Bagram air base. He was held there until May before being transferred to Bagram and subsequently to Guantanamo. While he was in the “dark prison” he was allowed outside once for fifteen minutes. He later said it was the first time he had seen daylight in two years. His CIA interrogators shackled him, continuously deprived him of sleep and threatened him to such an extent he had to be kept under observation to stop him harming himself. The British judges concluded his detention had to be extreme if his captors had been worried about his state of mind.
In September 2004, he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay where he was held until February 2009 when he was cleared of all charges and released into the custody of the British. On his arrival back in Britain, he was freed. One of the startling aspects of his confinement is that he says he was forced to sign a statement admitting he plotted with Jose Padilla to explode a dirty bomb in the U.S. The so-called “Padilla dirty bomb plot” has since been exposed as an intelligence agency fiction.
Since the decision by the three Court of Appeal judges to release the classified paragraphs, the British government has sought to distance itself from charges it colluded in torture. Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, tried to set the record straight with the following declaration:
It appears that after 9/11 the U.S. changed the rules of engagement for their staff in the fight against international terrorism. When this became clear to us, Agency guidance to our own staff was changed to make clear their responsibilities, not just to avoid any involvement or complicity in unacceptable practice, but also to report on them.”
Some observers deemed Miliband’s statement a specious attempt to protect Britain’s security services, which are due to face additional scrutiny when more cases like Binyan Mohamed’s reach the British courts. One of the ironies of the Binyan Mohamed saga is that the British judges’ refusal to play ball with London and Washington, and the British public’s interest in the truth about the darker side of the war on terror, are not matched by opinion in the U.S. On the contrary, Congress and the mainstream media have shown little appetite for shedding light on those alleged to have abused international law, including hired mercenaries, now called contractors. As for the American public, too many people prefer the fictional world of “Jack Bauer” in which torture is a necessary evil, as long as we are using it.

CIA UNDERESTIMATED ITS ENEMY

As we learn more about the killing of seven CIA agents at a forward operating base in Afghanistan on December 30, 2009, it is clear the Agency, and its Jordanian counterpart, the General Intelligence Department, sometimes known as the Mukhabarat, underestimated Al Qaeda and its allies within the Pakistani and Afghani Taliban.
Ever since the wipe-out of the CIA team, which had been targeting Al Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban leaders for assassination, the Mukhabarat has tried to downplay its part in what turned out to be a disastrous intelligence operation. The Mukhabarat, which likes to think it is as good as the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, had convinced the CIA it had a double agent who could deliver up Osama Bin Laden or, at the very least, his deputy, Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri, for assassination. The fact that the agent eventually turned on his handlers before blowing up 7 CIA personnel and two Jordanian agents, demonstrated a serious lack of judgment on the part of the Jordanians and the CIA. While the episode exposed a dangerous naiveté on the part of some CIA operatives it also highlighted that the enemy was capable of planning a deadly intelligence sting.
The agent assassin was Human Kalil Abu Malal al-Balawi, aged 31. Like Bin Laden’s deputy, Al Zawahiri, he was a doctor, born in Kuwait, of Palestinian origin. He was married to a Turkish journalist and turned to radical Islam because of his anger at the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Israeli treatment of Palestinians, particularly in Gaza where the Israeli military was accused of war crimes. Just like other radicalized Muslims over the past three decades, Balawi was particularly upset about foreigners occupying Muslim lands. His views on that issue mirrored the ethos that motivated the Mujahideen, whom the U.S. supported in their war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It is that same ethos that now fuels the ideological engine driving the Taliban and many Muslim militias across the Middle East.
In 2001, Balawi and his wife moved from Turkey to Jordan where they had two children. He worked in a Palestinian refugee camp outside Amman, the Jordanian capital and soon became very angry about the plight of Palestinians throughout the region, especially those under Israeli control. At some point in the past couple of years, he used online postings to express radical views about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as the developing war in Afghanistan. He also condemned Israeli military strategy in Gaza and the West Bank. His internet activity brought him to the attention of the Mukhabarat in its headquarters in the Jordanian capital, Amman. Within that H.Q. is an area set aside for joint CIA-Mukhabarat operations and for the interrogation of suspects seized by Jordan or renditioned to Amman by the CIA. The Mukhabarat is known for using enhanced interrogation techniques and has often been accused of torturing suspects. It operates in a society where there little accountability, a fact made clear in past State Department country reports and in the literature of international human rights organizations.
In or around 2007, Balawi found himself in the hands of Mukhabarat interrogators and was held in the section of its H.Q. reserved for high value suspects. That is where the real story begins but it is unlikely to be revealed by the CIA or the Jordanians. What we can reasonably surmise is that the Jordanians saw in Balawi the ideal terrorist agent for infiltrating the core leadership of Al Qaeda, provided of course he could be “de-radicalized.” The concept of “de-radicalizing” detainees lay at the heart of the naiveté of the CIA and Mukhabarat. It was an intelligence technique the CIA tinkered with in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and in secret prisons across the globe. It evolved around the principle that enhanced interrogation could be used to turn detainees into ideal terrorist agents. The Jordanians were familiar with the strategy and believed they could divest Balawi of his radical views. In pursuing that goal they ignored the fact he did not arrive at his radical views by accident. He was, after all, a highly intelligent individual who had espoused the concept of jihad and martyrdom for years. If history has proven anything, it is how difficult it can be to convince people who are wrapped up in religious zealotry to see the error of their ways, or to see a conflict from a westernized perspective. Balawi may have quickly realized just how desperate the CIA and Mukhabarat were to recruit him, especially when they finally promised him massive sums of money for his services. From his perspective, they were providing him with the opportunity to fulfill his dream of being a martyr. It is staggering to think that that his interrogators did not pay enough attention to the online postings he had made to radical websites in which he had warned other jihadists not be weak like him. He had even lamented the fact he would probably die some day in his bed rather than be a martyr because he lacked courage.
But, all of a sudden, he was being afforded the opportunity to be a martyr and to deal a major blow to the two nations his father has since claimed he saw as the enemy – the United States of America and Jordan. He had the opportunity to impress the man he most admired, Osama Bin Laden.
Once he became a Mukhabarat agent, run mostly by the CIA, he was sent to Pakistan and Afghanistan to infiltrate the Taliban and Al Qaeda. By then, he had clearly chosen to offer himself up to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. While we may never know the exact nature of his relationships with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, it is fair to assume he was well briefed by them in his new role as their triple agent. The fact that he was able to become a valuable and trusted asset of the CIA and Jordanians indicates that his Taliban and Al Qaeda handlers were sophisticated operators and that the CIA and Jordanians were naïve and careless. The Taliban in particular had plenty of experience running double and triple agents in the war with the Soviets. They, more than Al Qaeda, were probably instrumental in ensuring he maintained a perfect cover any time he met with his CIA and Mukhabarat handlers. It is likely he gained the confidence of the CIA in particular because the Taliban fed him actionable intelligence on parts of their own network – intelligence the CIA would have used to kill Taliban fighters. In this kind of war, it is not unusual so one side to sacrifice some of its own to perpetuate deception.
For its part, the CIA is never going to admit the damage Balawi caused but it is reasonable to believe he learned a great deal about the intelligence targeting strategies of the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan. At some point, his new terrorist handlers learned about the CIA’s forward operating base, “Chapman”, situated in Khost Province close to the Afghan-Pakistan border. The Taliban and Al Qaeda must have decided they could not pass up the opportunity to wipe out the CIA agents at that base. Such a blow, they would have reckoned, would seriously impair CIA targeting of Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders.
The CIA has not revealed whether Balawi visited “Chapman” before the fatal trip on December 30, but it is likely he did. When he arrived at the base on that fateful day, with explosives strapped to his body, he was not searched. Why? The answer is that he was considered such a critical piece in the CIA’s undercover war they regarded him as one of their own. Making that judgment cost lives and we may never know how much damage it did to the intelligence war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In reality, the CIA and the Jordanians underestimated their enemy and operated on false assumptions about radical Islam. They were guilty of bringing the devil into their lair - a devil with a sting in his tail. By any standards, one would have to admit that the sting was planned by a sophisticated enemy.
The Balawi saga highlights a war fought in the shadows. It is like a complex chess game in which a player making an ill-considered move can quickly find himself looking at checkmate.

U.S. CHINA FUTURE LOOKS MESSY

This year will see a worsening in relations with China as the Obama White House improves ties with India and scrambles to create a strategy to address China’s growing economic and military power.
Since he became president, Barack Obama has not shown he understands that China will use economic blackmail against the U.S. if and when it chooses. A sign that Beijing feels it can intimidate Washington came in a warning from the Chinese on January 29 that a U.S. plan to sell Taiwan a $6.4 billion arms package could hurt ties between the two nations. Implied, rather than stated, was the real possibility the hurt to the U.S. would be economic. Beijing followed up by a threat to impose sanctions on the U.S. companies supplying the arms and a promise to cancel joint military conferences.
No one doubts China’s ability to resort to economic retaliation, given it holds a massive amount of U.S. debt. Hank Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary, claims that during the height of the financial crisis in 2008, Russia tried to persuade China to dump U.S. bonds in order to generate a collapse of the U.S. economy but China refused. The Chinese may have realized such a move would have led to a global meltdown, which would not have favored China. Perhaps, China wanted to choose where and when it used its economic leverage over the U.S.
The recent gulf between the Obama administration and the Chinese further highlights again the fact that China has drawn a line in the sand over Taiwan. The Chinese response to news of the arms sale, which includes, two submarines and the latest Patriot anti-missile batteries, was a statement from China’s Vice-Foreign Minister, He Yafei that the sale represented “crude interference” in Chinese domestic affairs and harmed its national security. He added that it would damage cooperation between China and the U.S. on a range of international issues. One of those issues could well be Iran, a nation with which China does a lot of business, especially in the oil and gas sectors. China could use its position on the U.N. Security Council to oppose any U.S. proposed sanctions against Iran. It could also persuade Russia to do likewise, thereby dealing a blow to Obama’s Middle East policy. That would likely heighten tensions with an Obama White House, which is beginning to echo a neocon mantra that Iran must be chastised militarily. As Obama places more military hardware in the Persian Gulf, within range of Iran, he may find China and Russia taking a hard line in the Security Council. Former British P.M., Tony Blair, who appears to have joined the neo-conservative ranks, has speculated that the West might have to invade Iran, in the same way it invaded Iraq. Some observers in Britain think that Blair, in equating his decision to support the invasion of Iraq with any danger posed by Iran, is merely trying to give himself cover for his failed Iraq policy.
This latest controversy over the arms deal with Taiwan comes on the heels of a threat by Google to pull out of China and growing evidence that China’s cyber warriors have hacked U.S. defense networks in the past couple of years. Until now, the Obama White House has had little to say about that issue or China in general, aside from pleasant comments the president made when talking to Chinese students on a visit to Beijing last year. Before long, however, Barack Obama may find his administration facing a more serious deterioration in China relations as a bigger issue looms large on his foreign policy horizon. That issue relates to his predecessor’s strategy of cementing diplomatic, military and economic ties with India as a bulwark against Chinese military and economic expansionism – a policy Obama seems to support, if only because he has not offered an alternative.
On a purely economic level, George Bush’s wooing of India related to a recognition India offered a massive market for American exports, including arms sales. It may now prove to be the ideal place for Google to expand its Asia operations at a time when the Chinese government is curtailing internet freedoms. It may also be behind those who hacked Google networks in search of the secret algorithms that drive the massive search engine. One of the peculiarities of the Google-Beijing relationship is that Google, while is deplores Chinese censorship, allows its search engine to be used by Indian security authorities. It has even agreed to limit the kinds of searches that India believes might contravene its religious traditions. In contrast to India, however, China reckons it has good reason to be wary of Google because of its business dealings with the CIA non-for-profit venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, previously known as Peleus. The firm’s brief is to seek out and invest in hi-tech companies with applications that could benefit U.S. intelligence gathering across a range of agencies.
But, Google aside, the Obama administration will soon find its China relations in a tailspin over Washington’s growing acceptance of India’s determination to press ahead with major upgrades of its nuclear arsenal, its navy, its armed forces and more controversially its pursuit of ant-satellite warfare. India has publicly admitted it is determined not to allow China to have an edge in space weapons.
Ever since China angered the world by shooting down one of its own satellites in January 2007, the U.S. has quietly outstripped China in developing a new range of space warfare capabilities, especially in the field of anti-satellite missiles. It is one of the most controversial and significant areas of modern weapons development because satellites are now used for targeting as well as intelligence gathering and battlefield scanning. The loss of satellites in a modern war could prove catastrophic for one of the combatants. India has recognized this and has moved ahead to develop its own anti-satellite technology. This has happened without any criticism from Washington, which feels the door to space wars was opened by the Chinese in 2007 and it cannot be closed. China is as much angered by India’s determination to develop such a capability as Washington’s silence on the matter. The Chinese claim they abandoned plans to develop such weapons but Washington refuses to believe them.
As regards the Taiwan issue, India believes it is vital for the U.S. to assert its ties to Taiwan and its policy, mostly unstated, that it will defend Taiwan if it is attacked by China. India realizes that China wants control of Taiwan so it will have a direct line of sight to the Pacific. As things stand, China feels vulnerable on the high seas because it lacks ports on the Indian Ocean and feels hemmed in by Taiwan and the Straits of Malacca. India would like to keep it that way but much will depend on whether the Obama administration creates a robust China policy as relations with China worsen in 2010.

PAKISTAN'S MILITARY A LAW UNTO ITSELF

If Senator Joe Lieberman thinks the Pakistani military has been bought and paid for and will do Washington’s bidding he is in for a rude awakening.
When he visited Pakistan with John Mc Cain on January 9, 2010, he announced that the Pakistani army was “on the move.” He didn’t say exactly where it was going but someone should have told him it was not where the U.S. wanted it to go. U.S. military chiefs had wanted it to go hell for leather into North Waziristan but Pakistan’s generals said they would only commit to a limited strike at Bin Laden and his associates in that region. On no condition would they send their army in with all guns blazing to take on the Taliban, which was the major force there.
Pakistan’s military knows all about the Taliban. It fought a short, bloody campaign against them in South Waziristan but failed to clear them out. Prolonged battles proved that only a massive military commitment to the area had any chance of dislodging them and it would have alienated large sections of the civilian population there and throughout the country. According to Pakistani military strategists, it would have required too many troops, thereby leaving other parts of the country vulnerable to a mobile enemy. In the final analysis, Pakistan’s generals reckoned their limited campaign sent a message to the Taliban leadership that they would return for a bigger showdown if the Taliban used the area for a safe haven for which it and Al Qaeda could attack NATO forces in Afghanistan.
It is not clear if the Taliban got the message but the generals still assert that the campaign served its purpose. They have always argued that South Waziristan is the real hotbed for Al Qaeda and similarly minded insurgents. The CIA says that is nonsense because the killing of seven of its agents in December 2009 was planned in North Waziristan. Be that as it may, the generals insist they will not be led by the nose by Washington. They have even demanded an end to drones over their territory, claiming American intelligence often selects the wrong targets and kills innocent civilians further radicalizing Islamic elements in Pakistan. They told Sec. of Defense, Robert Gates that allowing the U.S. military to operate independently over the skies of Pakistan has increased anti-Americanism. They would prefer the U.S. supplied them with drones and missiles and allowed them to do their own targeting.
The dispute between U.S. and Pakistan highlights much more than a debate about strategy. The Pakistan military, which ran the country for decades, is reluctant to cede any military decisions to its elected government. It is also unwilling to permit the judiciary to hold it accountable for its excesses, in particular for the thousand or more “disappeared” dating back to the rule of General Pervez Musharraf, Washington’s favorite dictator after 9/11. On another level, the military and the main intelligence service, the very powerful ISI – Inter Services Intelligence – believe they would be foolish to engage in massive military campaigns that would alienate Muslims across Pakistan.
Pakistan’s generals have always been equally cautious about making too many enemies among the Taliban in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. They reckon that when NATO pulls out of Afghanistan, they will need allies among the Taliban in both countries if they are to prevent Pakistan from becoming a rogue state with nuclear weapons.
The military’s wish not to do U.S. bidding is tied to political deals between the country president Asif Ali Zardari and Washington. Last year, he secured $7.5 billion in non-military funding in return for promising to ensure Pakistan’s military stepped up to the plate in the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The military was opposed to the deal because it required Zardari to place it under government control.
Human Rights Watch claims the military has been trying to undermine Zardari to prevent him from making it accountable for “disappearances,” as well as extra judicial killings and unapproved interventions in parts of the country. In a recent report, HRW said the military was trying to destabilize the president and the elected government:
“The Pakistani military continues to subvert the political and judicial systems in Pakistan. After eight years of disastrous military rule and in spite of the election of a civilian government, the army appears determined to continue calling the shots in order to ensure that it can continue to perpetrate abuses with impunity.”
In Britain meanwhile parliamentarians are outraged by evidence that Pakistan’s military and its intelligence arm tortured British citizens in their custody. There is a move by some M.P.s to launch an inquiry that would focus on whether Britain’s intelligence agencies were complicit in aiding or turning a blind eye to the torture.
The sheer power of Pakistan’s generals is evident in the fact that they forced Zardari to return to them control of the country’s nuclear arsenal. Behind the scenes in Washington that transfer was greeted with relief because it was felt the generals, for all their failings, were more reliable guardians of the nuclear trigger.
In 2010, it will be interesting to see how much the military continues to resist governmental interference. All signs suggest the president and the democratic process have been weakened and the military will continue to act as it chooses. Therefore, the billions of dollars in U.S. aid may alter little in terms of the balance of power. The aid has not even led to changes in blasphemy laws, which have allowed Islamic elements to claim Christian teachings insult the Prophet. Those laws have been used to foment hatred of a Christian community that numbers almost 3 million. Since 2001, there have been several massacres of Christians, culminating in one last August when seven were killed and scores injured after 60 homes were fire bombed. Following that incident local police, who could have prevented the tragedy, were merely suspended.
Since Washington is prepared to give Pakistan billions in aid it should insist that it addresses issues like the blasphemy laws. Perhaps, Joe Lieberman and his fellow senators would be better putting pressure on Pakistan to make legal changes rather than wishfully thinking the country’s generals are going to do the Pentagon’s bidding any time soon.