The Exile by Adrian Levy

Author:Adrian Levy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

August 2009, Wana, South Waziristan, Pakistan

When Humam al-Balawi, a baby-faced Jordanian doctor, had first turned up in Wana seeking to contact Al Qaeda Central in March 2009, everyone suspected him of being another spy.111 Although he demonstrably had a secret double life as a fearsome online jihadist called Abu Dujana al-Khorasani, a self-styled “scourge of the West,” in the flesh he was effeminate and bookish.

Balawi came from a stable middle-class family in Amman, the Jordanian capital, where he worked in a clinic treating refugees, and he was married with two young daughters. However, while they slept, his avatar took over as he embarked on an online crusade to inform Muslims worldwide about the brave actions of his hero, the martyred Jordanian hardman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.112 Night after night, Balawi aka Abu Dujana posted grisly videos of insurgent attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq as he tried to rehabilitate Zarqawi’s reputation among those who had been previously alienated by his excesses.

Balawi’s arrival in Wana, where he attracted a curious but cautious crowd of Taliban and Al Qaeda supporters, was not completely unexpected. Atiyah had already heard of him, since he and Balawi had begun corresponding by e-mail in 2008, with Atiyah promising to help if he ever came to Pakistan. The Jordanian had flown to Peshawar in March 2009 with two small suitcases containing medical equipment, initially intending to volunteer his services to Al Qaeda as a field doctor.

Balawi had a list of contacts, including several Pakistani jihadists who had written to him through his website, but with the drone war having intensified, it took nearly five months for him to gain anyone’s trust. One of the first to take a chance on him was TTP emir Baitullah Mehsud, who in mid-May 2009 invited the Jordanian doctor to join him and his band of Mehsud fighters.113 Baitullah, who suffered from diabetes and several other ailments, welcomed the opportunity to have a personal medic, someone who could also treat his fighters, who shifted daily from house to house. To thank him, Balawi presented Baitullah with a large roll of dollars he had brought from Amman.114

On August 5, when Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a drone strike, Waziristan rose up in fury and pledged to avenge the TTP leader’s assassination.115 Balawi, who was accused of having called in the strike with devices hidden in his medical equipment, fled north. When he reached Mir Ali on August 8, he wrote a note to Atiyah. He desperately needed to call in that favor. “By Allah, I have yearned to meet you, Sheikh,” he wrote. “When I meet you I will squeeze you to my chest.”116 Atiyah decided to take a risk and meet him.

Balawi told Atiyah a staggering story that he immediately understood as the foundations of a plan. The CIA had sent the baby-faced doctor to Waziristan to spy on Al Qaeda, but he had no intention of becoming an American asset.

Balawi explained how when, in January 2009, the CIA had unmasked him as Abu Dujana, the Americans had asked their colleagues in the Jordanian GID to arrest him.

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