[Reader-list] The Case of Faisal Shahzad

[S. Jabbar]

>From The New Yorker

The Case of Faisal Shahzad
 
Posted by Steve Coll
<http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/steve_coll/search?contributorName=St
eve%20Coll> 
 
 

Providing an accurate e-mail address to the seller of a vehicle you intend
to use as a murder weapon is the sort of mistake that might get a person¹s
membership card pulled down at the terrorist union hall. No doubt Faisal
Shahzad, the man arrested in the Times Square car bomb case, is having a bad
day. It will probably get worse if he spends time in his holding cell
reflecting on the trail of breadcrumbs he apparently left behind while
planning what the evidence available so far suggests was the only act of
violence committed during his young life as a U.S. citizen. If not for that
e-mail address, Shahzad might already have stepped off an airplane in
Karachi, ready to melt away into Pakistan.
 

Terrorists are adaptive, self-correcting, and cunning‹except when they
aren¹t. For all of his alleged error-making as an individual, however,
Shahzad¹s case may actually reflect on how Pakistan-based jihadi groups have
learned to protect themselves. According to news reports, Shahzad spent
several months in Pakistan before returning to the United States. This would
make him one of at least half a dozen U.S. citizens or residents to travel
to Pakistan as alleged volunteers during the last several years.

Last week, before the Times Square incident, I was talking with a former
U.S. intelligence officer who worked extensively on jihadi cases during
several overseas tours. He said that when a singleton of Shahzad¹s
profile‹especially a U.S. citizen‹turns up in a place like Peshawar, local
jihadi groups are much more likely to assess him as a probable U.S. spy than
as a genuine volunteer. At best, the jihadi groups might conclude that a
particular U.S.-originated individual¹s case is uncertain. They might then
encourage the person to go home and carry out an attack‹without giving him
any training or access to higher-up specialists that might compromise their
local operations. They would see such a U.S.-based volunteer as a ³freebie,²
the former officer said‹if he returns home to attack, great, but if he
merely goes off to report back to his C.I.A. case officer, no harm done.
 

Whatever the narrative behind Shahzad¹s case turns out to be, we can take
solace that we will hear it in a court of law. Amidst the country¹s often
self-defeating search for a justice system to address terrorism, his is not
a particularly hard case‹a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil for a crime
against Americans carried out in New York. We can nonetheless look forward
to ³The Daily Show² clips showing cable television anchors railing about the
Obama Administration¹s failure to recognize him as a warrior. Fortunately,
like one of those Eleven O¹clock News bank robbers who tries to rob an
A.T.M., only to topple it over on himself, Shahzad¹s case may help to
illuminate a truth larger than himself: Terrorists are criminals, and the
great majority of criminals are prosaic.
  

Read more: 
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2010/05/the-case-of-faisal-s
hahzad.html#ixzz0n3VLrPLz