Intelligence Men Are Traitors

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

sattarkassem@hotmail.com

Intelligence men are the least popular people in the Arab homeland. People hate intelligence men and describe them with the vilest of attributes, viewing them as tyrannical, destructive oppressors who know nothing but their own interests. In the eyes of ordinary people, the Arab intelligence man is a devil who finds no rest except in troubling others, informing on them, and taking revenge on them. He is a person who cannot be trusted at all, never found except in places he ought not to be. He pries into people’s affairs, spies on them, entraps them, and interferes in their private and public matters. He is repugnant; he knows no honor, is restrained by no conscience, and gives no weight to virtue or upright character. He is in rebellion against God, against man, and against everything that is virtuous — he is Satan himself. This, with an apology to anyone who joined this profession out of a genuine desire to serve the nation and homeland. I have only tried to let the intelligence man hear what goes on among people behind his back, if there remains any secret at all left in the Arab homeland — and recent events across the Arab world have exposed exactly what intelligence men hated to hear.

Historically, this is what the Arab intelligence men made of themselves. People throughout the Arab homeland watched our enemies defeat us in every sphere of life: they occupied our lands, seized control of our wealth, appointed our rulers, prevented us from developing technology, stood between us and unity, and much else besides. And people watched how the enemies’ intelligence services infiltrated our ranks to the point that it became difficult to keep any secret from them, managing to worm their way into the smallest details of our lives — at the very same time that our own intelligence services were busy pursuing the citizen, keeping him a tool, or a mere animal consumed in a manner only slightly more refined than that of the buffalo or the docile ox.

The enemies employ their intelligence services to support their states, while our intelligence services are preoccupied with tracking citizens; instead of being an aid to the citizen against the enemy, they are a heavy burden upon him. The regimes conscripted people to be watchers over one another, until a culture developed in which “the walls have ears.” A great many people were recruited into apparatuses of surveillance and pursuit, until a man came to suspect his own brother, his wife, his neighbor, his cousin, his fiancée, his fellow countryman — and perhaps came to suspect even himself. It reached the point where people believed the intelligence services planted listening devices in telephones, in the floor of the room, on the dining table, in the walls. There was no safety in talking with a friend, nor in private or public gatherings, nor even in the bedroom.

People also came to know the practical results of this terrifying web of espionage: they were summoned for interrogation — some were imprisoned, some were tortured, some disappeared, either through death or into a cell that those who had arrested them simply forgot about. The intelligence services flogged the sons of the nation, instilled terror and helplessness in their hearts, and planted within their souls humiliation, disgrace, despair, and surrender. The Arab intelligence services and their men have committed crimes on a scale that memory cannot erase and that history cannot leave unrecorded. These apparatuses built prisons until they became towering monuments of oppression distinguishing this homeland; they erected slaughterhouses for human skin, and people came to know electricity searing their flesh before it ever entered their homes. Skins were burned with fire, fingernails were torn out, people were made to sit on bottles with broken necks, and they were led away to be tortured naked in bitter cold with chains, shackles, and barbed wire. Instruments of the “ghost” stress position, of spinning, of breaking limbs, noses, and skulls were used. A long list of instruments of crime and torment that history will record in volumes — bearing witness, on the one hand, to the scale of the injustice the ruler practices, and on the other, to the scale of the humiliation the Arab agreed to swallow before he finally rose in revolt.

Some intelligence men argue that they stand guard over the security of the state and the homeland against troublemakers and bats who emerge only in darkness to suck blood and conspire against people’s interests in order to satisfy their own private appetites. This argument is refuted, because:

First: rulers are the ones who suck the blood and wealth of the people more than anyone else; they plunder without account and without oversight. They have amassed vast fortunes, and everyone knows that God did not bequeath them the earth, nor did He permit them to seize people’s money — indeed, some of them are known to have inherited nothing but poverty from their fathers and grandfathers, not even enough to comfortably meet their daily needs. It is not only the ruler who delights in sucking people’s blood, but also his relatives, his friends, his retinue, his flatterers and sycophants, their sons and daughters, their spouses, their children, their children’s children, and their spouses’ spouses. Vast sums of money are plundered and squandered on every variety of consumer goods, whether manufactured locally or imported, and on every kind of pleasure and appetite, inside the Arab homeland and outside it, in clean places and unclean ones — the red ones, the black ones, the yellow ones — places that no light or guidance ever enters.

We are not merely defeated in secret — every defeat inflicted upon us happens in plain sight, before all eyes, until we have become a farce before the nations and a joke in comedy clubs and entertainment circles.

These intelligence men are not content merely to open the doors of our private chambers to our enemies; they are perpetually occupied with those very deeds and acts that render the Arab incapable of rejecting humiliation, pushing him instead toward acquiescing to it and swallowing still more of it. They refuse not only to defend their own kin, but insist that the whole nation’s kin be made available to all. They have killed manhood in men, until women became certain that they are given in marriage to nothing more than a male, and they instilled terror in women’s hearts until a woman became nothing more than a means of reproduction that could just as easily be replaced by test tubes. They took care to implant defeat deep within the soul, until sleep itself became impossible without a dose of it. And after all this, they claim they are defending a homeland and its citizens.

Third: they defend regimes, not citizens, homelands, or states. If only they would explain to us how the security of the homeland is served by tracking people’s footsteps to learn who their friends are, what adventures they have had, what food they like, and which gatherings they avoid. What service does the homeland gain from pursuing a husband quarreling with his wife, or a man of religion at peace with those who pray behind him, or from learning what made so-and-so laugh while walking with so-and-so, or what made so-and-so refuse to ride his donkey while crossing open country?

I recognize that such trivial matters can be important when pursuing the spies of other states who try to gnaw away at our bodies, but these activities are devoted against us — aimed at nothing but reassuring the ruler that the people are submissive and surrendered to him, chanting his name and singing his praises, and at making sure the ranks are “cleansed” of those who aspire to change and work toward it. Intelligence men do not fear the spies of other states, because they are the ones preserving the very system that suppresses the people who form a shield for a nation that no one wishes well. The enemies care about the humiliation of Arabs, their submission and surrender, so that they may remain in control of us and of our resources and wealth. This is exactly what the regimes do, and it is precisely what preserves the enemies’ interests. This is why the enemies’ intelligence services roam freely in our countries, operating openly and secretly without ever being questioned. Israel’s spies are respected, and so are the agents of America, Britain, Uganda, Nigeria, Turkey, Zimbabwe, and so on. Spies and agents operate in plain sight of the Arab security services and in cooperation with them, and together they hunt down the free men of the Arab homeland.

The Arab wishes that the security services would be employed in defense of the nation, not in defense of those who expose the nation’s security to danger. If only these services would devote 10% of their energies to confronting the enemy, and would let the citizen express himself so that a correct public opinion could form and be conveyed to the ruler, allowing him to correct course in response to his people’s aspirations. But the tragedy remains: the very Arab upon whom the enemies’ intelligence services vent their anger has the Arab intelligence services vent their anger upon him too. If a person has a file with the Zionist enemy, he faces that very same file in Arab countries. Palestinians are the best witness to this. If the sons of Zion are angry with you, you will find most Arabs angry with you as well (including some people of the cause itself). At least, this has been my personal experience.

So as not to be unjust, I acknowledge that there are external and internal activities carried out by Arab intelligence services to pursue certain enemies of the nation. The scope, extent, and goals of these activities vary from one state to another, but it is notable that part of it is directed toward other Arab states, as part of the mutual hostilities between regimes rather than between peoples. As for the remaining part devoted to tracking the enemies’ news, following their armament, studying their intentions, methods of influencing them, and the possibility of defeating them — this remains quite modest compared with the energies mobilized to pursue the Arab citizen.

And lest any intelligence man imagine that he holds the regime’s trust, let him remember that there is intelligence watching him too, to make sure he is not playing games. There is intelligence upon intelligence, and intelligence upon the intelligence of intelligence. Let the intelligence man know that he himself is the object of the very suspicions he tries to dig up in the homes, souls, and minds of his brothers, cousins, and friends. He is an employee of a ruler whose deeds qualify him for nothing but suspecting others and branding them traitors.

Fourth: many intelligence men receive no education about the social and psychological dangers arising from their activities. They listen to lectures with many facets devoted to disregarding human values — chivalry and brotherhood in particular — and they learn how to avoid engaging in real dialogue lest others’ views tempt them, and how to play various roles in order to entrap their prey by exploiting psychological factors. From my long experience with Arab or Zionist intelligence men, I learn each time new facets of their diseased personalities, steeped in decay and disintegration. And I am confident that once Arabs are liberated, they will need to build many psychiatric hospitals to treat these wretched souls.

They do not fully grasp the danger of planting suspicion and distrust among the ranks of citizens, nor do they properly appreciate the meaning of the absence of effective social and political organizations committed to change. They tear down what some of them imagine they are building. Their work has turned our institutions into nests of espionage and rivalries far removed from professionalism, channeled instead into serving the ruler for personal gain. The vast majority of institutions in the Arab homeland — universities, hospitals, recreation and research centers — have become headquarters for security services or supporters of the ruler, rather than places of professional achievement or progress.

The Revolution

This is a horrifying degradation that nothing but revolutions can put an end to, and revolutions need formidable men and noble women. And it is now clear that the men of the nation have not vanished, and that those honorable women have not sheathed their swords.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “رجال المخابرات خون” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.