The New Spymasters by Stephen Grey

Author:Stephen Grey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466867130
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Chapter 8

Allah Has Plans

‘They plan, and Allah plans. And Allah is the best of planners’

– Koran, 8:301

On 20 January 2009, the newly elected Barack Obama stood before the Capitol to be sworn in as the forty-fourth president of the United States. Nearly two million people had gathered that freezing morning in Washington, DC, for one of the most widely viewed events in history. His campaign slogan had been ‘Yes we can’. After years of painful and divisive wars, and a recent domestic economic slump, Obama embodied an infectious, hopeful spirit that, just for a moment, transcended the familiar grudge-match wrestle of American political factions.

His speech was uplifting. Borrowing the phrase from President Abraham Lincoln’s promise in his 1863 Gettysburg Address during the Civil War, Obama looked to a ‘new birth of freedom’. Earlier generations, said Obama, had faced down fascism and communism ‘not just with missiles and tanks’. They had persevered with their values: ‘They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.’

Obama said the country was at war, but the war was coming to an end. ‘We’ll begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan.’ He had promised to reverse many policies of his predecessor, President Bush. He had promised to close the camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He had promised an end to the CIA’s programme of rendition, torture and secret detention. Here, at the Capitol, he promised to bring the troops back home.2

But the war was far from over.

* * *

Six thousand miles away, a 31-year-old man was a prisoner of the war. As Obama spoke, he was being questioned for a second day. Humam al-Balawi, a doctor employed in a Palestinian refugee camp, was in a secret police cell. He was in Jordan, a close ally and oil-less dependant of the United States. His prison was a hilltop fort that overlooked Wadi Assur, the Valley of Orchards, in Amman, the capital city. It served as headquarters of the General Intelligence Department (GID). The doctor was getting a dose of reality.

Since America had invaded Jordan’s neighbour, Iraq, five years earlier, Humam had been waging battle against what he regarded as the devil’s own forces, the US and Israel. True, his war had been conducted mostly from his comfortable bedroom in a leafy part of Amman. But his words, which lionized the jihadi fighters of Iraq and Afghanistan and urged every young Muslim to join the cause, provided inspiration to others and so had impact. Thanks to the speed with which information spreads on the Internet, his online nom-de-guerre had become known from Washington to Riyadh. He called himself Abu Dujanah al-Khorasani. ‘Abu Dujanah’ was a heroic battlefield companion of the Prophet Muhammad and ‘Al-Khorasani’ means someone from Khorasan, an ancient name for eastern Persia, including the area of modern Afghanistan.

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