The Dubai Affair

BY AMOS

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

Dubai's police chief, Lt.-Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, has been indefatigably reporting his new discoveries in the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh case to international media, turning him into the darling of Arab and European media. He now claims to have evidence of the involvement of nearly 30 agents in the killing of the Hamas operative. What's more, Tamim has announced new plans to train UAE security officials in recognizing Israelis trying to enter the country with foreign passports by their appearance and manner of speaking. This should be a lot of fun. Meanwhile, Britain and Australia have dispatched investigators to Israel to question those dual nationals whose identities were allegedly used by the suspects. Of course, everything is based on the release of their photos by Tamim, who probably could have saved these people a great deal of grief by being more circumspect. But both he and the Dubai police seem to be enjoying the attention, judging by the agency's web site.

Photo Source: Dubai Police

It's hard to take seriously the outrage of the British about the use of their passports. Do MI-6 agents on sensitive missions routinely travel with the Queen's documents? Prime Minister Brown is certainly aware of the hypocrisy of his position. But once Tamim publicized the origins of the passports used by the alleged assassins, those governments could not but react.

For all of Tamim's crowing about a "99% certainty" that the Mossad assassinated al-Mabhou, no evidence has yet come to light that conclusively links Israel to the killing. Interestingly enough, the U.S. has refused to comment at all on the matter. It is hard to believe that if this was indeed a Mossad operation that American intelligence officials were not apprised of it beforehand or actually involved in it.

There are many commentators who have judged the operation a failure, due to the negative publicity. But condemnations of Israel in the international media come and go - one cannot base policy on them. The more relevant yardstick for an intelligence agency and a country's leaders is whether the investment in resources can be justified by the return. If Israel was behind the operation, one would hope that the disruption to Hamas's weapons smuggling networks will actually prove significant enough to affects the organization's usual functioning. Perhaps the killing will sow more fear among Hamas cadres about internal leaks. But Tamim may ultimately be replaced by someone equally or even more capable than him.

Mumbai

The attacks on Mumbai last week are depressingly familiar in many respects. Once again, Islamist terrorists managed to sow chaos in a major urban center and to exploit, with determined evil, the liberties held dear by open, democratic societies. Once again, the failure by intelligence agencies to prevent these attacks was primarily one of the imagination. But there is another sense in which these attacks are familiar. They represent a problem, going back at least as far as June 28, 1914, that the international community has been unable to solve until now. 

On that date  a Serbian terrorist assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand. The Habsburg empire at the time ruled over Bosnia-Herzegovina, which the assassin and his colleagues hoped to see united with Serbia proper, the relatively new nation-state of the Serbs. But Gavrilo Princip did not act on behalf of the kingdom of Serbia. He and his fellow conspirators were non-state actors. As Austria-Hungary and many others at the time suspected, however, it was difficult not to assume some kind of link between Princip and the state organs of Serbia. Furthermore, it seemed highly likely that Serbian citizens residing in Serbia had aided in the attack. In order for the killers of the archduke to be brought to justice, Austria-Hungary needed the help of Serbia. Unfortunately, however, relations between Serbia and Austria-Hungary were extremely hostile. 

My point here is not that India and Pakistan are on the brink of unleashing another world war, although such an outcome takes hard work to avert. I am pointing rather to the problem posed by the non-state actor with deep state connections. The investigations carried out by Indian authorities so far (see The Hindu for the best round-up) have revealed the involvement in the Mumbai attacks of Pakistani citizens, trained in Pakistan. Locked in a long state of war, the two nuclear powers now again appear to be on a collision course. 

India has long complained about the alliances between Islamist terrorists and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI). Setting aside the links between the ISI and Osama bin Laden, the U.S. is growing increasingly antsy about the threats that ISI-supported Islamists are posing to NATO troops in Afghanistan. But so far, Pakistan's rulers have rebuffed American pressure to get at the roots of the problem inside their country. 

It may very well be true that Pakistan is too weak to purge itself of the al-Qaeda-inspired enablers of terrorism that pervade its state.  Furthermore, the U.S. clearly cannot afford to see Pakistan disintegrate into mayhem. But neither can it turn a blind eye to the Pakistani shipping labels on the attacks in Mumbai and in Afghanistan. In both cases, we are seeing a state incapable of reining in its attack dogs. 

Obama raised eyebrows during the presidential campaign when he  spoke about his willingness to attack targets inside Pakistan "with or without approval from the Pakistani government." A month later, NATO and US ground troops entered Pakistan to attack a Taliban stronghold. Pakistan's ongoing protests about these violations of its sovereignty by outside actors ring hollow when it is unwilling to enforce a monopoly of violence inside its own borders.

We will see how the policy of the president-elect and his impressive national security team evolves in the coming weeks.

INS Hanit

The Israeli Navy Ship Hanit ("Spear")

There is an excellent article by the ever-dependable Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff detailing, for the first time, the "intelligence failure" (it was more complicated than that), which led to the near-sinking of the INS Hanit by Hizbullah on the night of July 14, 2006. Readers will recall the discussion with Hazbani about this a few months ago.

The article also makes interesting points about the intense qassam firing of the past week.

The Bundesnachrichtendienst

BND spy "Fat Willy" (Photo: Spiegel)

Ha'aretz has a long profile of former German intelligence officer Willy Dietl, a famous journalist and writer, with extensive experience in the Middle East and Central Asia. Dietl's cover was blown in November 2005 when the chief of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, under pressure from the country's media. revealed to a parliamentary commission that the BND had paid five journalists to inform on their colleagues, in a bid to track the source of leaks. The revelation caused a scandal in Germany, and the once-respected reporter and author of several books about the intelligence community and terrorism (Spy Ladies: Frauen im Geheimdienst, Holy War, Bridgehead Afghanistan, Im Visier: ein Ex-Agent enthüllt die Machenschaften des BND) now lives in disgrace.

Among his successes as a collection agent, Dietl counts his recruitment of two agents, from an unnamed country (Jordan or Syria?), who monitored the Abu Nidal crew:

Willy Dietl credits the crowning glory of his achievements to his running of two intelligence officers from a country that borders on Israel. He declines to name the country, because the two are still in active service. Dietl met a relative of the two, who was arrested in the country in question after he was falsely informed on. After the man's release, he moved to Germany, where Dietl helped him start life anew and became friends with him. His two relatives, the intelligence officers, were very impressed by Dietl's efforts and grateful to him.

"Over time I became friends with the two of them," he relates. "Only afterward did I discover that they were professional intelligence officers, who were in charge of collecting information and monitoring the activity of the Abu Nidal terrorist organization. After a while I recruited them for the BND. They gave me a complete list of Abu Nidal's operatives, their passport numbers, their code names, their travel plans to Europe and many other details. It was a gold mine. You have to remember that in the 1980s, Abu Nidal's organization was considered the most dangerous and most daring terrorist group in the world. They carried out many attacks against targets in Austria and Italy, against Israeli and Jewish targets and against the PLO. Now, suddenly, we had advance information about every trip of the organization's people to Europe."

On the BND's relations with the Mossad:

Do you know whether the BND shared this information with other espionage organizations, including the Mossad?

"I don't know, but I have no doubt that they did. The Mossad is one of the closest organizations to the BND, and Israel was one of the targets for attacks by the Abu Nidal group."

On Germany, I thought this was particularly interesting and accurate:

In Germany, in contrast to Israel, the public does not want to understand that intelligence work is necessary to protect the country's citizens and its democratic character. In Germany, the moment your name is mixed up in anything related to intelligence, you are considered odious, so you can imagine how badly the affair has hurt me.