Kill the Monsters
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.
—Samuel Johnson
An imposing iron fence, twenty feet high and painted black with a gold-plated crown in its center, protected the entrance to the Royal Wing from the passenger areas of Jordan’s Queen Alia International Airport, located fifteen miles south of the capital. Stern-faced military policemen, wearing rose-red berets and carrying Heckler & Koch submachine guns, ringed the main perimeter and the roadway leading to the section of the airport used by the king and other members of the royal family. Security around the area was no-nonsense. Royal arrivals were usually secretive events known only when a high-speed motorcade consisting of armored vehicles and follow cars equipped with M134 Dillon Aero 7.62 x 51mm Gatling guns that could project three thousand rounds of armor-piercing fire per minute appeared at the site. But on the morning of February 4, 2015, several thousand Jordanians waited in the teasing warmth of the winter sun to greet King Abdullah upon his return from Washington, DC, and the fast departure turned into a slow crawl.
People gathered by the side of the main highway to Amman with English and Arabic banners proclaiming, “We are all Moaz!” Royal Guard and gendarmerie reinforcements sent in for crowd control found it hard to contain the throngs. In an unprecedented display of unity, temperamental Bedouin elders dressed in their traditional robes lined the side of the road in a silent vigil. Jordanians were horrified by what had happened to one of their own. The crime, rather than splinter the country, had helped unify it as never before.
The king returned to the royal palace to a ream full of notes and missed phone calls from world leaders expressing their condolences. His first act upon returning was to address the nation, wearing the same suit and tie that he had on twenty-four hours earlier when he addressed the Senate and spoke with point-blank resolve to President Obama. He donned a red-and-white checkered kaffiyeh and stated, “We have received with all the sorrow, sadness, and anger the news about the pilot, the hero, Moaz al-Kasasbeh. God rest his soul. He was murdered by the terrorist group Da’esh. This cowardly Islamic State group does not resemble our religion in any way.”152
Later in the day the king met with his general staff and air force commanders to discuss military moves that Jordan would take in response to Moaz’s murder. It would be one of the largest Jordanian military operations since the country was founded in 1921.
None of the pilots of No. 1 and No. 2 Squadrons slept much the night after the Islamic State tweet of Moaz’s immolation. Some headed out to call on Moaz’s widow and his parents; the younger pilots called their own wives and parents to reassure them that they would be all right. “We were angry, and we wanted revenge,” said Lieutenant Ra’ed,1 an F-16 pilot in No. 1 Squadron. “We wanted a mission. A mission to bomb the bastards who killed our friend. A mission to send them all to hell.”153 The king made sure that the RJAF would be assigned a long list of priority Islamic State targets for the next morning. Over twenty targets in Iraq and in Syria were penciled in at Inherent Resolve headquarters. A dozen of the Islamic State barracks and arms depots assigned to the Jordanian Viper drivers were in Mosul; the rest were in Raqqa. US Air Force F-16s and F-22 Raptors would fly escort; KC-135 in-flight tankers would hover safely above the battle space to extend the range and deployment time of the aircraft over the Caliphate. US Air Force and Marine Corps, as well as British and other coalition special operations officers, addressed the issue of close air support and combat search and rescue; the officers were careful about even hinting that there might have been any failures the morning that Moaz was captured. Throughout the night, Jordanian aircrews—including female soldiers—wrote anti–Islamic State slogans on the ordnance to be dropped. One airman wrote the Koranic verse “Let fall on them fragments from the heaven” (34:9) on a GBU MK-82 500-pound bomb destined for Raqqa.154
Thirty Jordanian F-16s took off for targets in Iraq and Syria early in the morning of February 5.155 The aircraft flew together in a tight formation on a northeast trajectory until it split into two: one flight headed north toward Mosul and the other pushed on in the direction of Raqqa. The Jordanian strikes hit over a dozen Islamic State targets—some that were defended by antiaircraft cannons and shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles. None of the attacking aircraft were hit during the bombing runs; they destroyed all their targets and reportedly killed thirty-five terrorists.2
Instead of returning to Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, the F-16s flew over Amman and then headed south, where they performed a victory lap above the village of Aiy and the home of the Kasasbeh family. The Kasasbeh clan set up a huge white mourning tent for the men and a smaller tent just for the women. Women who weren’t in the tent, old and young alike, worked in a communal kitchen and over grills to prepare food and sweets for the many villagers, soldiers and even average citizens from all over the country who lined up the twisting dirt path leading to the Kasasbeh home to offer their condolences; the smell of lamb grilling on the fire and fried pastries wafted through the ancient village.
The roar of the F-16s flying their low-altitude afterburner salute to the parents of their fallen comrade energized the long lines wishing to offer their respect. The aircraft would be back over the skies of Mosul and Raqqa the next day—and the days after that—bombing Islamic State targets with greater frequency and ferocity.
King Abdullah arrived in Aiy shortly after the flyover. The Jordanian monarch embraced the Kasasbeh patriarch, and he expressed his sincere condolences on behalf of the entire nation. One of the responsibilities of a commander in chief, especially in a small country, was to personally extend a hug and a salute to those left behind when a warrior was killed in the line of duty. The king and Moaz’s father spoke as the two men sat on cushioned chairs at the head of the tent where the male members of the immediate family were gathered. Safi Kasasbeh, Moaz’s father, wore a brownish Bedouin robe. His face was coarse and chiseled, carved by the desert winds and by the anguish of watching a group of thugs incinerate his son. The Kasasbeh patriarch turned to the king in a confiding whisper, and said, “I demand that this criminal organization [the Islamic State] be annihilated.”156 Yassin al-Rawashdeh, one of Moaz’s distant uncles and a former army officer, went even further. He demanded that the king “kill the monsters!”157
King Abdullah’s motorcade flowed into GID headquarters shortly before the onset of evening. The convoy of speeding armored vehicles swept past the gates and concrete obstacle blocks of the intelligence service’s campus and passed the armored booths and heavy machine gun positions meant to mitigate hostile threats long before they could get anywhere near the spymasters. The king’s schedule was packed with planned visits to a long list of army and air force units throughout the country to help bolster morale, but his visit with the spies was purely operational. “The mood at GID headquarters was,” an officer in the Counterterrorism Division remembered, “what it must have been in the United States after Pearl Harbor. We were all ready to roll up our sleeves and get busy. We wanted revenge.”158
Word of the king’s visit to the United States raised morale at GID headquarters—especially some rumors concerning his stoic comments to American lawmakers and his requests of military assistance so that the conflict could continue. General Faisal Shobaki met the king at the entrance to the main headquarters. The GID chief brushed off his dark gray suit and straightened his silk tie as the motorcade came to a stop. Both men walked together up the flight of stairs to the second floor, then down a pristine hallway of red carpeting, white walls and framed portraits of the country’s kings. GID protection specialists and uniformed members of the Royal Guard escorted the two men into the director’s office. The division heads of the service were already waiting. The king sat at the head of the table to convene his war council.
King Abdullah looked around the table at the men who secretly protected Jordan. He made the point to stare at each one of the division chiefs in the eye; he selected his words carefully, and his tone was direct. The king explained that Moaz’s murder was a turning point in the war against the khawarij, and it was up to Jordan—and the GID—to deal a crippling blow to the Islamic State. This was also an important opportunity, the king explained, to show the Western intelligence services that Jordan had the lead in the West’s war against fundamentalist Islamic terror. The GID maintained excellent relations with the espionage arms of NATO and the intelligence services of the United States and the CIA. The war against the Islamic State required the very best talents of all involved, the king implored. No one nation would or could do it alone. The United States and its intelligence-gathering services with budgets in the hundreds of billions and satellites had been unable to pinpoint Moaz’s location or where the men who held him were hiding. And the men in the room and the spies they commanded, perhaps the Middle East’s finest HUMINT case officers and analysts, had also brought pieces of the puzzle to the equation, but not the complete picture.
The division chiefs were all highly experienced veterans of the back-alley treachery of the Middle East spy wars. The men responsible for the Syria Desk, the Iraq Desk, special operations, internal security and foreign liaisons listened as the call for vengeance was made, wondering what resources they had that could assist in the endeavor. The CTD, the department’s largest division, would bear the brunt of the workload.
Brigadier General Habis al-Hanayneh owned the GID counterterrorism portfolio. His friends, as well as his enemies, called him Abu Haytham, or the Son of a Lion. Brigadier al-Hanayneh carried that nom de guerre with passion and pride, and any overseas section head of a foreign intelligence service wanting to court his favor addressed him accordingly. Abu Haytham was shaped like a steel bank vault, and the burly spymaster had jet-fuel-black hair that covered a medicine-ball-size head; his mustache was thick and shaped like the kind the Ottoman pashas were fond of. A foreign intelligence officer who worked with Abu Haytham said that he resembled Omar Sharif if Omar Sharif were a nightclub bouncer.159
Abu Haytham’s imposing appearance was just an introduction to what lay beneath. He could be ruthless, a sledgehammer, showing no mercy to his foes. He was known to have a howitzer for a temper, but he was also analytical and calculating. He carefully pondered every move he made, knowing that counterterrorism was a chess match, where manipulation and patience were key. He carried a lifetime’s worth of scar tissue under his bespoke suit—it was the collateral damage of sleepless nights spent on a stakeout, and dozens of late-night shootouts that put terror cells out of business. Abu Haytham was one of the most capable officers in the service’s history, and he understood the terrorist mind-set better than most of his contemporaries—in Jordan and beyond.
The orders were as much for revenge as they were to preserve national pride. The terrorists calculated that by executing Moaz in a daylight ceremony, at a time of their choosing, even though Raqqa was under constant bombardment, the mockery would openly challenge Jordan and the Inherent Resolve coalition.160 The terrorists, the king explained, would have to pay for their arrogance and cruelty.
The king ordered the GID to target and kill every member of the Islamic State’s army that laid their hands on Moaz, with a preferred priority to go after the Islamic State’s military leadership—the men who planned the execution and the senior committee members who so gleefully approved the decision. The king told the spy chiefs that he didn’t care if the pursuit of these men took fifty years.161
King Abdullah wasn’t seeking fanfare or glory, just results. He wanted the khawarij to disappear into the rubble of history, and he wanted their deaths to be a warning to anyone with thoughts of filling their shoes. Inside GID HQ, the ad-hoc name given to the operation was Guillotine. The nickname name stuck. The spy chiefs liked it. None of the division chiefs asked any questions about their assignments. Their orders were clear. Each man knew what was expected of him and the agents in their command. The men stood up straight and at attention when the king rose from behind the table. Abu Haytham headed back to his office to convene a meeting with his management team.
Abu Haytham might have been the man in charge of the CTD, but his section chiefs were the men who really ran the show. They were all handpicked and were the bravest and most cunning officers in the entire organization. These midlevel managers—Bedouins, Circassians and Chechens—earned their stripes and a chest full of medals battling al-Qaeda and Zarqawi. They had survived long days that stretched into endless nights in the field and in the office. Most smoked at least a pack a day; they drank an unhealthy amount of coffee. Some carried the physical scars of work inside refugee camps inside Jordan and beyond the nation’s borders—from being stabbed or shot. Others had served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they were now very experienced on the Syrian battlefield.
One element of the king’s marching orders to what became known as the Moaz Task Force was that the GID work closely with the CIA. The section chiefs were the ones who met with the CIA liaison officers to talk shop, exchange intelligence and barter with one of the region’s most valuable commodities: information. One of the section chiefs, the one who usually maintained the links with the Americans, lit a cigarette, took a sip of stale and tepid coffee, and called his contact at the US Embassy.
1 A pseudonym to protect his identity.
2 Following the air strikes, the Islamic State claimed that US aid worker Kayla Mueller, held for seventeen months by the terrorists, was killed in one of the Jordanian air strikes. Coalition intelligence services believed that Mueller had been killed long before, and that the Islamic State was using the Jordanian bombing run as an attempt to shift the narrative away from the terrible crime that had been posted on Twitter and social media of Moaz’s immolation.