AIRING TONIGHT on PBS is the latest installment of Frontline, featuring an hour-long interview with Abdurahman Khan, a self-proclaimed “Son of Al Qaeda.”
Abdhurahman, 21, was born in Canada to Ahmed Said Khadr, an Egyptian born engineer who had emigrated to Canada only a few years earlier, and Maha, a Palestinian woman who had been raised in Ottawa. When Abdurahman was 11, he and his family, six siblings in all, moved to Afghanistan. There his father was deeply involved in charity work, feeding and schooling some of the many children who had been orphaned by that country’s decade-long struggle against the Soviet Union. In addition, he and his associates–bin Laden among them–were plotting the murder of Americans under the cover of their charity work. It is in Afghanistan that Abdurahman’s bizarre story of treachery and betrayal begins.
Terence McKenna, a correspondent for the CBC, begins the program with footage, from October 2003, of a Pakistani military operation in that country’s now infamous Waziristan province. With the Pakistani army surrounding a suspected terrorist hideout, a demand for surrender is met with small-arms fire, resulting in the deaths of two Pakistani soldiers. The siege is finally broken with the assistance of a helicopter gunship. Eighteen suspects capitulated, leaving 8 corpses to be pulled from the hideout, which had by then been reduced to little more than rubble. Among the dead is Abdurahman’s father, Khadr, and among the captives, is his 14-year-old brother Karim, left paralyzed by a bullet in the spine.
THE REST OF THE FAMILY is similarly unsavory. Abdurahman’s 17-year-old brother Omar now resides at Guantanamo Bay, having been shot three times by American forces in a firefight. And rounding out the family tree is brother Abdullah, 22, now in hiding in Islamabad, who agreed to be interviewed for the show. Abdurahman’s mother and sister’s loyalty to al Qaeda and hatred of America are also shared with McKenna in separate interviews.
When asked whether they are proud of Omar, who killed an American medic with a grenade, mother and sister are so eager to affirm their support that they continually interrupt each other. Abdurahman’s mother replies “of course,” while sister Zaynab asks “if you were in that situation, what would you have done? I’d like to ask everybody that. . . . [T]hree of his friends who were with him had been killed . . . why does nobody say you killed three of his friends? [W]hy does everybody say he killed an American soldier? Big deal.” The fervor with which both embrace and hope for the martyrdom of their family members is chilling. Zaynab tells McKenna that “when we were very young, he [her father, Khadr] used to say, if you guys love me, pray for me that I get shaheeded [martyred].” Her prayers were answered.
Of course, Abdurahman is different from his family. According to everyone interviewed, he always was. He was the standout delinquent at terror camp-chasing girls, getting drunk, disrespecting his elders, but always avoiding harsh discipline because of his father’s close relationship with bin Laden. His father, apparently aware of his limited potential as a terrorist mastermind, tried on numerous occasions to persuade him to become a suicide bomber, but Abdurahman was the rebel of the family. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the family fled the camps, and Abdurahman used the opportunity to separate from his family. In the chaotic months that followed he found his way from a Northern Alliance prison into CIA custody, where he offered his full cooperation in exchange for a “get out of jail free card.”
This is where the story gets confusing. Abdurahman claims that the CIA employed his services in Afghanistan for several months, using his intimate knowledge of the terrorist organization to help their agents distinguish al Qaeda fighters from the rest of the riff-raff. With his brother in Gitmo, Abdurahman explains that the CIA believed he would make a useful jailhouse informant, and offered him cash in exchange for his services as an undercover rat at Camp X-Ray. Abdurahman recounts the great physical and emotional stress this experience entailed, noting he contemplated suicide on several occasions. He is also careful to mention his conviction that only 10 percent of the people at Guantanamo are “really dangerous.” He says the rest were turned in to U.S. custody by Afghans as al Qaeda in exchange for the $5,000 reward.
Having been broken by Gitmo, Abdurahman pleaded to be released, and claims he was reassigned to an undercover assignment in Sarajevo. There he was supposed to cozy up to an al Qaeda recruiter operating out of the city’s largest mosque. This assignment too became unbearable, so Abdurahman placed a call to his grandmother, still in Canada, and asked her to appeal to the press for his return to Canada. The CIA allowed his return under the condition that he not reveal this story.
ABDURAHMAN BETRAYED THE CIA in order to tell this story. What’s more, he betrayed his family, and al Qaeda, and Canada. When his grandmother discovered his collaboration with the CIA, he was kicked out of the house. The young man was loyal only to himself. Still, his story does offer some encouragement. In an odd way, Abdurahman’s survival instinct is an encouraging sign at a time when much of the Arab world seems to have mindlessly embraced a culture of death.
Michael Goldfarb is a staff assistant at The Weekly Standard.
