The killing of CIA employees in Afghanistan by a suicide bomber, lauded online as a militant James Bond, suggests Al-Qaeda’s South Asian allies have developed an unprecedented capacity to disrupt the West’s spy efforts.
The attack by a Jordanian double agent also shows militants are keener on killing Western spies than infiltrating them, underlining the daunting challenge for Western services seeking to plant an informant among Al-Qaeda’s senior ranks. The agent, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal Al-Balawi, blew himself up on Dec. 30 inside Forward Operating Base Chapman, a well-fortified US compound in Khost province in southeast Afghanistan, killing seven CIA officers and a Jordanian officer.
The attack, the second-most deadly in CIA history, pleased a global community of Al-Qaeda propagandists thrilled to discover Al-Balawi was the author under a pen name of some of the most celebrated anti-Western commentaries on the Internet.
“Our James Bond — who is he? He is Abu Dujana! His motto: Let me die or live free!” Al-Qaeda supporter Asadullah Alshishani wrote in one posting, referring to Al-Balawi’s online pen name. The attack followed the failed Dec. 25 downing of a US airliner over Detroit, the Nov. 5 killing of 13 at a US Army base by a gunman linked to a Yemen-based preacher and a string of arrests of suspected militants in the United States in 2009. Counterterrorism experts say the incidents show the resilience of the globally-scattered hubs of sympathizers, financiers and supporters that Osama Bin Laden has fostered as he has come under increasing pressure from US drone attacks in South Asia, where he is believed to be hiding.
Investigators are studying possible links between the Dec. 30 attack and at least two local Al-Qaeda allies — Pakistan’s own Taleban insurgents and the Haqqani network associated with the Afghan Taleban group fighting US troops in Afghanistan. A spate of militant propaganda about the attack has only intensified this focus.
Al Jazeera television reported that shortly before his suicide attack Al-Balawi had made a video urging revenge for the death of the Pakistani Taleban leader Baitullah Mehsud, killed by a pilotless US aircraft last year.
Pakistan television station AAJ showed what it said was a video of Al-Balawi sitting with Baitullah’s successor, Pakistani Taleban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, and reported he shared US and Jordanian state secrets with militants. “The attack and the statements being made about it show that links to local partners are at the very core of Al-Qaeda’s mission,” said Brynjar Lia, a research professor at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment. “If Al-Qaeda had not ingratiated itself with local groups it would have exposed itself to grave dangers,” he said, in a reference to the dependence of Al-Qaeda’s mostly Arab leaders on their more militarily powerful South Asian hosts for security. Former intelligence officials have said Al-Balawi was recruited by Jordanian intelligence to infiltrate Al-Qaeda and the Taleban and give Washington an intelligence advantage it has sought with special urgency since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Al-Balawi had associated with Islamists in the past.
Analysts said it appeared the CIA understandably hoped he might be someone with the credibility, savvy and boldness to infiltrate senior Al-Qaeda ranks and operate undetected. But this may have led it to cut corners on security, some commentators have said. A Western counterterrorism official said the attack had shown that Al-Qaeda “is not playing an intelligence game, which would have meant keeping its man alive in our system. It’s at war, and it wants to deal a death blow. “We are the ones playing the intel game. Were we so desperate for a major breakthrough with that effort that we got carried away?”
The West’s need for sources is likely to ensure that Western intelligence maintains its ties to Jordan, analysts said. “If the Jordanians are as good as we think they are, the US would be mad to sever the relationship,” former US intelligence officer Robert Ayers told Reuters.
