The Camp Chapman attack was a suicide attack by Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi against the Central Intelligence Agency facility inside Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan on December 30, 2009. One of the main tasks of the CIA personnel stationed at the base was to provide intelligence supporting drone attacks in Pakistan. Seven American CIA officers and contractors, a Jordanian intelligence officer, and an Afghan working for the CIA were killed when al-Balawi detonated a bomb sewn into a vest he was wearing. Six other American CIA officers were wounded. The bombing was the most lethal attack against the CIA in more than 25 years.
Al-Balawi was a Jordanian doctor and jihadist website writer who was detained and interrogated over three days by the Jordanian intelligence service, the General Intelligence Directorate (GID). The GID and the CIA thought they had turned al-Balawi to penetrate al-Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal areas to provide intelligence for high-level targets. Instead, al-Balawi used this trust to gain access to the CIA base in Afghanistan unsearched and perpetrate the attack. Al-Qaeda and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility, saying they helped al-Balawi with the attack. After the attack, the families of the victims sued Iran, and won a judgement of $268,553,684 on March 22, 2023. However, it is unlikely that the victims will receive any compensation, as the US Department of State noted in the case that "The United States does not maintain diplomatic relations with the government of Iran."
On December 30, 2009, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi was picked up by Arghawan, an Afghan who was the chief of external security at Camp Chapman, at the border between Miranshah, Pakistan, and Khost, Afghanistan. Arghawan drove al-Balawi to Camp Chapman, arriving around 4:30 p.m.
The car was waved through three security checkpoints without stopping before arriving at its destination well within the base. Sixteen people were waiting for the car near a building set up to debrief al-Balawi and had even baked him a birthday cake as gesture of goodwill. Al-Balawi then got out of the vehicle and detonated the explosives hidden in his suicide vest.
Al-Balawi and nine other people were killed by the blast. Seven were CIA personnel: five officers, including the chief of the base, and two contractors. One was a Jordanian intelligence officer and another was the Afghan driver. Six other CIA personnel were seriously wounded in the attack, including the deputy chief of Kabul station. Some of those killed had already approached the bomber to search him, whereas others killed were standing some distance away. At least 13 intelligence officers were within 50 feet (20 m) of al-Balawi when the bomb went off.
After the attack, the base was secured and 150 mostly Afghan workers were detained and held incommunicado for three days. The attack was a major setback for the intelligence agency's operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was the second largest single-day loss in the CIA's history, after the 1983 United States Embassy bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed eight CIA officers. The incident suggested that al-Qaeda might not be as weakened as previously thought.
Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi
Al-Balawi, 32, was a Jordanian doctor who worked at a clinic for Palestinian refugee women and children in the Marka refugee camp near Amman, Jordan. He was an al-Qaeda sympathizer from the town of Zarqa, the home town of Jordanian militant Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He was married and had two daughters. Islamist websites, as well as some newspapers, characterized the attacker as a triple agent, someone who is believed to be a double agent by the intelligence organization he infiltrates.
Al-Balawi had a history of supporting violent Islamist causes online under the pseudonym Abu Dujana al-Khurasani. Al-Balawi became an administrator and a well-known contributor for al-Hesbah, an online jihadist forum. He had tried to rehabilitate the image of al-Zarqawi in Jordan after the 2005 Amman bombings. Jarrett Brachman, the former director of research at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center, said "since at least 2007, [Abu Dujana had] become one of the most prominent al-Qaida jihadist pundits."
Al-Balawi was arrested by Jordanian intelligence in January 2009 and held for three days. During al-Balawi's questioning, Jordanian intelligence officials threatened to have him jailed and end his medical career, and they hinted they could cause problems for his family. Al-Balawi was told that if he cooperated, his slate would be wiped clean and his family left alone. After this episode, the GID and CIA believed they had turned al-Balawi into a double agent. A plan was developed for al-Balawi to infiltrate al-Qaeda in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan, along the Afghan border. In March 2009, al-Balawi left Jordan and arrived in Peshawar, Pakistan, and made his way into the tribal areas. The CIA took over the management of al-Balawi from the Jordanians sometime in the second half of 2009, dictating how and when the informant would meet his handlers, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officers.
Al-Balawi had been invited to Camp Chapman after claiming to have information related to senior al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Al-Balawi was not searched as a sign of respect because of his perceived value as someone who could infiltrate the ranks of senior al-Qaeda leaders. A former U.S. counter-terrorism officer, as well as Jordanian government officials, said that he had already provided useful and actionable intelligence to the CIA over several weeks of undercover work in the region. A former intelligence official stated that al-Balawi was "feeding us low-level operatives and we were whacking them." He was seen by the CIA and the U.S. administration as the best hope of tracking down the al-Qaeda leadership. The CIA had come to trust al-Balawi and the Jordanian spy agency vouched for him, according to officials.
The deputy chief of Kabul station was present for the meeting, more evidence that al-Balawi was highly valued. The CIA was "expecting the meeting to be of such substance that following the meeting their next directive was to call President Obama," a security official in Kabul said.
Al-Balawi's wife, Defne Bayrak, a journalist who lives in Istanbul, Turkey, has translated several Arabic books into Turkish, including Osama bin Laden: Che Guevara of the East. She said the radicalization of al-Balawi started in 2003 because of the Iraq War. She doubted that al-Balawi worked as a double agent for the CIA and Jordan's intelligence agency or that he was an al-Qaeda member. Bayrak said that al-Balawi would have acted of his own volition because he regarded the United States as an adversary. She also said that she was proud of her husband. In her view, al-Balawi had carried out a "very important mission in such a war." Turkish police questioned and released Bayrak on January 7, 2010.
Al-Balawi's family is of Palestinian origin, from a tribe in the Beersheba region. His brother said al-Balawi had been "changed" by the 2008–09 Israeli offensive in Gaza, and that he had been arrested by Jordanian authorities after volunteering with medical organizations to treat wounded Palestinians in Gaza. Other family members said that al-Balawi had been pressured to become an informant after Jordanian authorities arrested him in January 2009.
Al-Balawi's father said he was called by an Afghan after the attack who told him his son died as a hero in an operation to kill CIA agents. He also said his son "sacrificed his body and soul for the oppressed." He blamed the intelligence agencies for turning his son "from a human, a doctor, to a person with a heart full of negative and hostile emotions towards others."
Jordanian authorities cautioned the relatives of al-Balawi against speaking with anyone about the incident. Members of the family said that Jordan security forces had sealed off the area in which they live, blocking journalists from entering and preventing any family gathering after they heard the news of al-Balawi's death.