[](/sites/default/files/uploads/2015/01/reporter_huddy_012815.jpg)Jordan announced its willingness to release an imprisoned jihadist female terrorist, Sada al-Rishawi, to ISIS in exchange for the release of a Jordanian pilot, 1st Lt. Muath al-Kasaesbeh, whom ISIS captured in Syria.
“Jordan confirms that it is completely prepared to release the prisoner Sajida al Rishawi if Moaz al Kasasbeh is released and his life is intact,” said the Foreign Ministry statement. “The priority of Jordan from the start of the crisis was to insure the life of our son, the pilot Kasaesbeh,” said the spokesman, Mohammed al Momani.
Rishawi was involved in deadly hotel bombings in Jordan in 2005, killing 60 people, for which she had been sentenced to death. Amongst the dead were guests at a wedding party. Kasaesbeh had been participating in U.S.-led coalition airstrikes against ISIS when his plane was shot down over Syrian territory controlled by ISIS.
ISIS originally linked the release of Rishawi to the release of another of its hostages, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto Jogo, not the Jordanian pilot. Whether ISIS will accept the swap terms offered by Jordan remains unclear. The fate of the captured Japanese journalist is also unclear at this time. The jihadist group reportedly extended the deadline for Jordan to turn over Rishawi until Thursday at sunset, which has passed, while Jordan is insisting on proof that their captured soldier is still alive.
Jordan is one of the few Arab countries participating in the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS. The Jordanian government’s offer to swap Rishawi for Kasaesbeh followed public demands led by Lieutenant Kasaesbeh’s father, who complained that Jordan should never have been a part of the coalition whose fighting led to his son’s capture. As for Rishawi, she is not considered to pose any real threat to Jordan if she were released. She had tried three times to blow herself up in the wedding hall and failed, while it was her late husband who successfully detonated his explosives, killing himself and wedding guests. Even the wedding groom, who lost his father in the bombing, said that he and his surviving family members did not object to the swap. “She’s a nobody,” he said.
The Obama administration has avoided any direct public criticism of Jordan for trying to negotiate a prisoner swap with terrorists. However, White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said with a straight face on January 28th that U.S. policy is “we don’t give concessions to terrorist organizations.” A reporter confronted Schultz with the fact that just last year the Obama administration exchanged five high-level Taliban detainees from Guantanamo for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, whom the Taliban captured after Bergdahl had walked away from his Army post in Afghanistan. Schultz responded that “I don’t think that the Taliban is a terrorist organization.” They are an “armed insurgency,” while ISIS is a “terrorist group,” he claimed as he tried to justify the Obama administration’s decision to negotiate with the Taliban for Bergdahl’s release.
Schultz made this preposterous distinction, ignoring the fact that the Pakistan branch of the Taliban, Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, is on the U.S. government National Counterterrorism Center’s list of terrorist groups. Last October the chief spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban and five regional commanders declared allegiance to ISIS. And just last month, the Pakistani Taliban group demonstrated their emulation of ISIS’s brutality by slaughtering 132 children and nine teachers in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan.
The Obama administration and its cheerleaders may well try to make a further distinction between the Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban, since the five detainees released in exchange for Bergdahl were members of the Afghan Taliban. The U.S. State Department’s official list of terrorist groups does not include the Afghan Taliban. But this too is a distinction without a difference.
First of all, a 2002 executive order designated the Afghanistan Taliban as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, which the Obama administration has not rescinded. And for good reason. After all, it was the Afghan Taliban who sheltered al Qaeda and provided them with a base in Afghanistan from which they launched the 9⁄11 attacks.
Moreover, the Afghan Taliban leaders released in exchange for Berghdal were themselves jihadist terrorists, not some local armed insurgents rebelling against the central Afghan government. Intelligence officers, including Rob Williams, the U.S. national intelligence officer for South Asia, have indicated their belief that at least four of the five released detainees are expected to resume their activities with the Taliban. Those activities were aimed in part directly at Americans in concert with al Qaeda and the terrorist-sponsoring regime in Iran.
Mullah Mohammad Fazl, one of the high level Afghan Taliban detainees whom Obama decided to release from Guantanamo, was the Taliban’s former deputy defense minister and is wanted by the United Nations for his role in massacres targeting Afghan’s Shiite Muslim population. Another of the released detainees, Khairullah Khairkhwa, was reported to have met with Iranian officials after 9⁄11 to help plot attacks on U.S. forces entering Afghanistan to remove the Taliban from power and end the sanctuary they were giving to al Qaeda. Mohammed Nabi Omari was a member of a joint al-Qaida/Taliban cell and was involved in attacks against U.S. and coalition forces. Abdul Haq Wasiq was reported by the Defense Department to have been “central to the Taliban’s efforts to form alliances with other Islamic fundamentalist groups to fight alongside the Taliban against US and Coalition forces after the 11 September 2001 attacks.”
In short, Jordan is following in the Obama administration’s footsteps by negotiating with terrorists, but with a big difference. Jordan is willing only to trade a low-level failed suicide bomber for its hero pilot who was fighting with the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS. The Obama administration, on the other hand, traded five high-level Taliban leaders, some with American blood on their hands, for someone who is being actively investigated for possible desertion.
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