Link between attacks on CIA base in Khost and Fort Hood base in Texas

In the past few months, the US security stronghold suffered two blows in a row, right in the very hearts of two maximum security facilities - by two entrusted doctors of Palestinian immigrant origins.

When Humam al-Balawi last week called his fellow Jordanian intelligence official to facilitate a meeting with 6 top CIA officers at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, he said he would release important information about Al Qaeda no.2, Ayman al Zawahiri. According to reports, he blew himself as they gathered around him when he said he'd show them some sort of a document or a map.

The alleged double-agent was allowed inside the base without a body search, apparently, as he wore an explosive belt somewhere under his clothes. The bomb exploded killing himself, the Jordanian intelligence official (claimed to have barely passed high school education) and 6 CIA experts.

Several months before, Nidal Malik Hasan, a Psychologist working at Fort Hood US military base in Texas, opened fire inside the base, killing 13 military personnel.

The similarities are quite obvious. Both Nidal and Humam were granted access to the heart of these military bases. Both are doctors. And both are of the same origin, Palestinian.

Humam was born in Kuwait, and had to flee during the first Gulf War to Jordan where he worked serving Palestinian refugee camps - impoverished areas that prove to be an easy recruiting point for terrorists and where the majority of votes tend to support the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in its extension.

Nidal was the son of Palestinian immigrants who fled the West Bank city to chase the American dream. Both had similar upbringing - Middle class Palestinian refugee families with access to relatively good educational institutes. Both believed in the Arab fight against Israel, and both decided to execute their terrorist actions when deployed in (or were on the way to) Afghanistan. They bit the hand that fed them, the minute it pointed towards "fellow muslims."

Both had also access to strategic information.

While Humam was allegedly a double agent, he was able to convince both the Jordanian intelligence and the CIA of his good deeds, meanwhile, he was likely giving sensetive information to Taliban and in extension, Al Qaeda. Whereas Nidal was in charge of receiving soliders coming back from Afghanistan in psychiatric sessions where they reveiled their experiences and fears.

Both were also active on internet forums. Humam allegedly was a blogger, and maintained a blog under a fake name that was "anti-western" in its content. Whereas Nidal was contacting Yemeni religious personalities on internet forums. The CIA knew of these contacts.

Lessons learned: terrorism is not organizational, it is a mentality. To defeat Islamic terrorism, one has to eliminate anti-westernism in Islamic discourse, and not least, eliminate anti-islamic sentiments that leaves muslims with radical tendencies as "outsiders" in secular societies.

It is no doubt that this is a long term process, which initiation has never really got off the ground. Meanwhile, western powers find themselves more and more in need of people of muslim background to help them in the fight against terrorism.

The trust circle is scratched, but not totally broken.