Juan Cole of Informed Consent wrote this brief history of Dr. Al-Balawi, the suicide bomber who took out several CIA agents in Afganistan, and how he came to be. He was in Afganistan allegedly helping the CIA track down primary Al Qaeda suspects. After the incident, it was reported that Dr. Al-Balawi was a double-agent, even though it is unclear just who he was supposed to be working for. Juan Cole cleared that up. It was himself, a Palestinian doctor radicalized by American led and funded atrocities in the Middle East.

<Al-Balawi's sad biography in fact ties together the whole history of Western, including Israeli, attacks on the Middle East. Al-Balawi's family is Palestinians displaced from Beersheba by Zionist immigrants into British Mandate Palestine, who in 1948 ethnically cleansed about 700,000 Palestinians from what became Israel. Most Palestinians in Jordan are bitter about the loss of their homes, for which they never received compensation, and some still live in refugee camps. The British Empire and the United States supported this displacement of the Palestinians and to this day the US government often attempts to criminalize even charitable aid to the suffering Palestinian people.

AP has a video interview with al-Balawi's Turkish wife, in which she traces his radicalization to the brutal US occupation of neighboring Iraq, including reports of the rape of Iraqi women by US troops at Abu Ghraib (where much of the torture had sexual overtones) and the US destruction of the city of Fallujah in November-December 2004.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idla9Gvql3U

The Arabic press is confirming that al-Balawi was further enraged by the Israeli war on poor little Gaza last winter. A physician, he volunteered to be part of a group that intended to go to Gaza to do relief work for the victims of Israel's brutal targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure. (The Israelis were trying to destroy the fundamentalist Hamas party, which rules Gaza, and gave as their pretext the occasional rockets Hamas fired into Israel, though in fact there had been a truce for much of 2008, a truce of which the Israelis coldly took advantage to plan their war.)

The Jordanian secret police arrested al-Balawi to prevent him from going to Gaza. It may be that he had to agree to work for it as a quid pro quo to regain his freedom.

After the vicious war on Gaza was over, and the schools and hospitals lay in ruin, Israel ratcheted up a siege of the small territory of 1.6 million persons, half of them children, denying them enough services, fuel and even food for a decent life. In some parts of Gaza, 10 percent of the children are stunted because of malnutrition. Israel destroyed Gaza's airport and harbor and strictly controls what goes into the territory. Israel never says what its end game is here, and how long exactly they are going to keep the children of Gaza in what one Vatican official has called a 'concentration camp.'

In the past couple of weeks (though you would not know it from American television), two separate civilian Western aid convoys were mounted to relieve the Gazans via Gaza's small southwestern border with Egypt (the Israelis would never have allowed them to do this, and the Egyptian state wasn't happy either). One was supported with a hunger strike by an elderly Holocaust survivor. Some of those in the second were assaulted by the Egyptian police. British MP George Galloway was deported and forbidden to return to Egypt. Egypt is dragooned into supporting the illegal blockade of Gaza by the US on behalf of Israel, and is also afraid of the fundamentalist Hamas, which has resorted to terrorism.

Collective punishment of a whole population, especially one still technically occupied, is illegal in international law.

What is fascinating is the way al-Balawi's grievances tie together the Iraq War, the ongoing Gaza atrocity, and the Western military presence in the Pushtun regions-- the geography of the Bush 'war on terror' was inscribed on his tortured mind.

Morally speaking, al-Qaeda is twisted and evil, and has committed mass murder. Neither the US nor Israel is morally responsible for violent crackpots being violent crackpots. Al-Qaeda or a Taliban affiliate turned al-Balawi to the dark side. Gandhi and Martin Luther King taught us the proper response to social injustice (and it should not be forgotten that Gandhi had a significant following among the Pashtuns). But from a social science, explanatory point of view, what we have to remember is that there can be a handful of al-Balawis, or there can be thousands or hundreds of thousands. It depends on how many Abu Ghraibs, Fallujahs, Lebanons and Gazas the United States initiates or supports to the hilt. Unjust wars and occupations radicalize people. The American Right wing secretly knows this, but likes the vicious circle it produces. Wars make profits for the military-industrial complex, and the resulting terrorism terrifies the clueless US public and helps hawks win elections, allowing them to pursue further wars. And so it goes, until the Republic is bankrupted and in ruins and its unemployed have to live in tent cities.

So, yes, this al-Balawi person was going to help Jordan and the US find al-Qaeda leaders Usama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Sure he was. Walmart does better background checks on its store clerks than the CIA and Jordanian intelligence did on this guy.>

http://www.juancole.com/

With permission.

 

I don't know if he was there; I'll probably never know.  The little guy who stood outside the ISAF American compound gate where the blast took place today (pictured below.)  Seven killed 91 wounded.  I was standing there with him, in June.  Right on the spot.  I hate this war, I hate all war.  I hate it I hate it.  And it is so  unnecessary.

He stood selling bracelets and trinkets each day, just outside the gate which we entered for our meeting with US command staff who agreed with us, wholeheartedly, that what this country needs is a program of measly $5-a-day-jobs to keep the young men out of the arms of the Taliban, which pays $8 a day to men whose families are semi-starving.  There is FORTY PERCENT unemployment.  The UN says 35% of Afghans are malnourished.  

The commanders said, Go home and tell the Congress.  Lobby.  This is what we need.  It's cheap.  It would cost about what we already spend here in a month on jet fuel, bombs, and bullets.  We were on a fact-finding mission for our peace program of Jobs for Afghans.

I doubt the bomber was an Afghan, most likely an Al Qaeda foreigner from Yemen or Pakistan.  Afghans won't blow themselves up.  They'd rather stand and fight.  Most recently General Stanley McChrystal said: Send jobs.  These are dirt poor people.  They don't want to fight us.  But they need the money.  Is Congress listening?

USA Today: "McChrystal: Jobs could curb Taliban fighting":

The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan says many Taliban insurgents, particularly in the violence-plagued south, could be persuaded to stop fighting if they could find jobs in a stabilized country.

Even the generals say it.  The generals.

My little guy had the look of a boy who had already had a hard life.  His brother, working down the same street you can see here, where the bomb was, pushed packages of gum at us through our car window as we left and said in a very soft voice "I'm so hungry.  I'm so hungry." No human new to this country can hear that and not fish out his wallet.

This war is a creature of the military-industrial complex which doesn't want to end it the easy way, with a modicum of economic help and development.  The executives of Bechtel, Dyncorp, Halliburton, and KBR.  It's just too damned profitable.  If my little guy is hurt, or dead, that is what he died for.  That is what they are all dying for.  Are you listening, Congress?  Do this for him.  Yes I'm mad.  All I know is, I'm going back.  I'm in this too deep now.

PLEASE SEND THIS POST AND THIS DRAFT LEGISLATION THROUGH YOUR CONGRESSPERSON'S EMAIL FORM HERE.  The diarist is co-founder of Jobs for Afghans.

SEE HOW MUCH YOUR CONGRESSMAN TAKES FROM THE MILTARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX HERE.

Diarist with buddy outside the ISAF gate in June, where the blast took place.

Blast damage today.

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Here in Kentucky's First District, during the failed do-nothing 109th Congress and well before, Exxon Ed Whitfield served as a loving rubber-stamp to every failed policy of Mitch McConnell and George W. Bush. In Iraq, these three managed to send our troops into the wrong country on the wrong mission. Worse than that, they showed the ultimate in disrespect to our troops by sending them there without proper training, planning, and most important for the welfare of our troops, equipment.

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As of late, someone from Camp Obama - a surrogate of Sen. Obama - has dredged up Monica's blue dress drivel. I believe it's safe to say that topic has been covered at length. However, if we're going to talk about stains - let's talk about Sen. Obama's foreign policy adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski and his stains upon credibility. And decency.

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The Biden for President Campaign today congratulated Sen. Barack Obama for arriving at a number of Sen. Biden's long-held views on combating Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Much of what Senator Obama has proposed Senator Biden has already initiated or accomplished.

As part of the 9/11 bill that passed Congress last week, Senator Biden and Representative Lantos wrote the law that conditions aid to Pakistan on its cooperation with the United States in combating Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Before writing the law, Biden wrote to President Musharraf and Secretary Rice making clear his intent to do so.

Starting in January, Senator Biden has repeatedly called for surging more forces out of Iraq and into Afghanistan.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on January 30th, 2007, Sen. Biden discussed the need for a surge in Afghanistan at Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing.

At this same hearing, Sen. Obama asked two questions - he did not address Afghanistan or Al Qaeda or Taliban. The first was on the topic of Iran; the second was on an issue that he admitted "seems somewhat parochial, but I think, as you'll see, is of concern across the world." Obama discussed the "stunning level of mercury in fish" and asked about a proposal for the U.S. adopt a ban on mercury sales abroad?

http://www.joebiden.com/home

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0807/Biden_Obama_stole_my_ideas.html

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