Dr Aafia Siddiqui: A Conundrum?
Is she the present-day Mata Hari working for Al Qaeda, the most dangerous woman in the world; or, is she the highly educated neuro-scientist who lived for a decade in Boston, like any other woman, with her husband and three kids and with a noticeable dedication to her religious beliefs? That is the conundrum, the riddle called Aafia Siddiqui who was found guilty by a 12-member jury, Feb 3, 2010, on several charges, including attempted murder. She is scheduled to be sentenced on May 6.
A major cause of the mystery is that Dr. Aafia’s case has been handled chiefly by the ace intelligence agencies of Pakistan and the US. An intelligence man is usually taciturn and even when he talks he excels in disclosing the known. Perhaps, the US media were fed by the security agencies with intriguing tales involving Aafia as red herrings. To convey the impression that she was a high-level Al Qaeda operative, who arranged the transfer of large funds, stories were floated about her visit to Liberia to secure illegal diamonds to be disposed of in South America. Official US sources have never confirmed or denied the colorful account of the episode. She has rejected it outright.
The media, thriving on sensation, enjoyed spreading tales of spies and militants, disappearances and deceptions in the cloak and dagger borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Aafia left her parental house in Karachi on March 30, 2003, along with her three children to visit her uncle in Islamabad. The ISI/FIA operatives picked her up before she could reach the airport. Soon afterwards she was handed over to CIA/FBI who placed her in the US detention facility at Bagram, Afghanistan. When the story of her disappearance broke in the press, the intelligence agencies of both countries denied any knowledge of it.
Pakistan ’s then Interior Minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat, claimed that she was an Al Qaeda agent and was arrested because she had been absconding. “You will be astonished to know”, he added “about the activities of Dr. Aafia”. Naturally, he must be referring to her activities in the US as she had spent a decade in that country pursuing her studies from under-graduate to doctorate level before returning to Pakistan.
Her neighbors in Boston, interviewed by American media, recalled her as an ordinary young woman, living with her husband and rearing up their small children. Her passion for her beliefs and for charity projects was noticeable. So, was her distaste for Israel, which she regarded as a Zionist state illegally occupying Palestinian land. Boston Magazine called her “a normal woman living a normal life until the FBI called her a terror”.
The September 11, 2001 catastrophe had generated a panic and frenzy in the US, and President Bush decided to invade Afghanistan identifying Osama bin Laden, founder of Al Qaeda, as the chief culprit. Subsequently, he attacked Iraq despite the worldwide rallies against such a war. He stoked the fears of the possibility of another attack by Al Qaeda, expanded security setups and pressured them to produce results by arresting enemy combatants and their sympathizers.
President Musharraf flaunts in his memoirs his regime’s ability to take into custody and hand over to the US authorities several hundred persons suspected of having ties with Al Qaeda. Security agencies would whisk away the suspects, hand them over to the US agencies and collect huge rewards for this service. Relatives, friends and the people at large had no idea where such a missing person went and what happened to him/her. The scandal became public after the Chief Justice of Pakistan took notice of the case involving hundreds of missing persons.
Aafia was one of the lot.
Some three months before her disappearance, a lengthy write-up in the Newsweek magazine of January 23, 2003, composed by 8 journalists who had access to FBI records, exposed the Al Qaeda network in America. It carried photographs of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, and Ali Al Marri . She was accused of having hired a P.O. Box for Majid Khan, an alleged member of Al Qaeda who had lived in Baltimore. It was to help establish his US identity.
At a news conference in May 2004, US Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director, Robert Mueller, announced the names of seven most wanted persons who had ties to Al Qaeda. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was the only woman on the list.
Her plight in Bagram detention camp became public after a British journalist, Yvonne Ridley, told a press conference in Islamabad on July 7, 2008, that Aafia was being held in solitary confinement in Bagram as prisoner #650 and her loud cries in anguish keep haunting the other inmates. One of them, Moazzam Begg, author of a book about Bagram, mentioned her wailing and cries in a TV interview. Aafia was hallucinating about her missing children and had lost her sanity. She was diagnosed in Sept. 2008 with depressive type chronic psychosis. A month later when a Pakistani parliamentary delegation visited her, she appeared to have overcome the trauma and its impact on her mind.
According to media reports, when she was arrested in Ghazni, a town south of Kabul, she was carrying notes that might have been helpful in making a dirty bomb, and a list of significant sites of New York. This was perhaps a part of the media campaign to build a scaffold for her to hang judicially. But, it affronts logic to believe that a PhD in neurosciences would need notes of the type allegedly found on her. And, for a person who had spent 10 years in Boston, no list of New York’s sensitive sites was needed.
The US media has projected her as a relation of the so-called mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, and her second husband a suspect in custody at Guantanamo Bay. She has vehemently refuted both.
It is relevant and significant to remember that the Manhattan Court did not try her for being an accomplice in any terrorist plot or for espionage, but for an incident at Bagram where she is alleged to have fired two shots at US personnel. She was the only one who emerged out of the tussle with two wounds in her belly.
Yet she has been found guilty on charges related to attempted murder and assault of US and Afghan nationals. She faces 30 years to life in imprisonment.
The case reminds one of the trail of Al Capone in which the top gangster of the time was given a long sentence for tax evasion instead of being tried for murders, which were difficult to prove.
In the case of Dr. Aafia, the following facts need be kept in mind.
- The case was tried in a court hardly a mile from the site of the twin towers.
- Fear-inducing websites had become active asking the visitors never to forget the attacks of 9/11 as “radical Muslims are planning another 9/11 level attack”.
- The jury comprised residents of New York and adjoining areas many of whom had lost a relation or friend in the 9/11 tragedies.
- Mass media, some TV stations in particular, had been projecting Aafia as Mata Hari and an obnoxious member of Al Qaeda. A perception was thus created though she was not tried on that basis.
- Dr. Aafia makes no bones about her hatred of Israel. She went to the extent of saying on the floor of the Court that the judgment was dictated by Israel. New York is dominated by the Jewish community. Israel is like a US territory and some times vice versa. Aafia has often shown her love for America but her hatred of Israel trumps her affection for America.
- American authorities perhaps believe that she has some information about Al Qaeda and its leadership that is valuable for them but she is perhaps adamant in not disclosing it to them.
No doubt, Dr. Aafia has a mind of her own. She is a tough lady who would rather go down fighting than concede the ground to her opponent. Tough but tactless, to the extent of putting up with the anguish of separation from her kids. She is no Mata Hari. To be really tough, one does not have to be in stripe trousers. The courage of conviction of this 90 lbs petite woman may turn her into a legend affecting for years the public perception of America in her homeland. (arifhussaini@hotmail.com 714-345-2654)
