Shree Paradkar: She was a Muslim spy at the forefront of CSIS’s fight against terrorism. Then, she turned whistleblower

Months after two passenger planes flew into the World Trade Center and another crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, Huda Mukbil joined Canada's spy agency as an intelligence officer.

Months after a white supremacist gunned down six Quebecers praying in a Quebec City mosque in 2017, Mukbil turned whistleblower.

Those 15 intervening years are captured in a recently released book that tells the story of how Canada's first Black Arab-Canadian Muslim spy was treated at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

It depicts an agency dragging its heels on recognizing the relevance of diverse staff and describes how biases including misogyny, racism and homophobia obstruct the agency from doing the job with which it's tasked: national security.

In the memoir, Mukbil chalks out her service in terms of fulfilment and purpose but also glass ceilings and dashed dreams, with a pit stop at Britain's MI5 along the way.

Her story of being a rarity - an Arab (Yemeni) and African (Ethiopian) who grew up in Egypt and Canada and who could speak English, French, Harari and Arabic - along with possessing intelligence and drive meant she quickly became an expert at the forefront of the fight against terrorism.

The way I was made to feel was that I have a certain skill set that they need and so they will tolerate having me there," she writes.

The book states - and this is no spoiler - that the spy agency, which until 1984 was a branch of the RCMP and continues to recruit people from there, operated with the same prejudices as the police force and with the same impunity.

It details the red flags that signalled institutional discrimination, from culturally incompetent hiring practices to women being passed over for advancement for men with fewer qualifications, as well as shocking levels of Islamophobia Mukbil says she experienced.

Mukbil's decision to start wearing a hijab in 2004 challenged CSIS's fragile tolerance. She expected to have to handle some stereotyping, she writes, but Most managers were former RCMP officers. The culture was deeply conformist and intolerant, and I was an unprepared fool."

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, intelligence officers went into Muslim communities in what the head of a Muslim organization in 2004 described to the CBC as fishing expeditions," a witchhunt type of interrogating ... that left people very, very confused and very traumatized."

Around the time she decided to wear a hijab, the agency's focus was shifting from middle-aged Muslim men to young first- and second-generation Muslims, she writes. Mukbil says she quickly began to be perceived as an inside threat. Her manager asked her to disclose all her conflicts of interest" and her community involvement" and told her she needed approval before attending events in the Muslim community.

Soon, she writes, all her managers wanted to know what I was doing on my weekends and in my private life."

Eventually, her performance scores dropped; her manager said she lacked judgment as evidenced by her continued engagement in the Muslim community. He engaged Internal Security, the branch that investigates security breaches and conflicts of interest to determine employee loyalty.

Mukbil underwent 10 hours of interrogation: how often did she pray, why did she decide to wear a hijab, what did she think of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, the Muslim Brotherhood and suicide bombers. When Internal Security found nothing on her, they asked her to return to work, she says.

In the book, Mukbil contrasts this alienation with the warmth and cordiality in Britain's MI5. Soon after a series of bomb attacks in London in 2005 that killed 52 people, the MI5 sent out a special communique to the Five Eyes intelligence community (U.S., Canada, Britain, New Zealand and Australia), she writes. They were seeking officers and analysts with top-secret clearance and East African linguistic and cultural background to assist with the investigations. She was almost immediately seconded there.

When she returned to CSIS, the MI5 commendations she received for her help with tracking down the perpetrators shielded her, albeit briefly.

Because its operations are shrouded in secrecy, there appeared to be little incentive for CSIS to take internal complaints seriously, until, it seems, someone was willing to sacrifice their career and blow the whistle.

When Mukbil and four colleagues told CSIS they were preparing to launch a legal challenge in 2017, the agency conducted a Workplace Climate Assessment" in the Toronto Region. No surprise, the assessment validated the complaints of an old boys' culture, where swearing and demeaning comments about racialized people were rampant.

The Friday night drinking (with select employees) is where decisions were being made on not just operations, but who gets promoted," said Mukbil.

CSIS director David Vigneault called the behaviours categorically unacceptable in a high-functioning, professional organization" in a public statement then.

CSIS had just been recognized as one of the country's top 100 employers in 2017.

After the five claimants' $35-million civil lawsuit against the agency caused a media and political outcry, CSIS reached a confidential settlement with the five, who had used pseudonyms in their allegations, as directed by CSIS; Mukbil was Bahira."

Media reported on the lawsuit claims such as managers calling one Muslim analyst a sand monkey," and telling another to complain to Allah." One email referencing a complainant who was often called a gay slur said, OT for the homo is approved."

CSIS's post-9/11 culture was also one of conflating Muslims with terrorists and it was affecting assessments, leading to innocent Canadians being tortured abroad with CSIS knowledge. In addition to the damage they were doing inside the agency and to Muslim communities, CSIS's prejudicial attitudes were also risking democracy, with rising far-right and white supremacist threats obstinately remaining in the agency's blind spot.

When the Quebec mosque attack took place in 2017, Mukbil says, CSIS were completely surprised."

They didn't see it coming," she says, despite the fact that the FBI was looking at far more seriously prior to 2017" and the phenomenon was growing in Europe.

CSIS's database was full of information about Muslims, but had contained almost nothing on the far-right threat." She says it took years for CSIS to determine that the white supremacist threat needed its attention.

It might be tempting to think Mukbil's book details past culture and practices that have little bearing on the present.

According to CSIS's data, representation of employees from racialized groups nudged up from 16.9 per cent in 2018-19 to 19.8 per cent in 2022-23. After various recruitment and retention initiatives, executives are about 80 per cent white.

While the work of making CSIS more diverse and inclusive is ongoing, we are proud of the significant strides that have been made in recent years and credit employees in helping drive that change," CSIS spokesperson Eric Balsam told the Star via email. Director Vigneault has been very clear in stating to both employees and Canadians that, unfortunately systemic racism exists everywhere across Canada, including at CSIS.

CSIS leadership is actively engaging employees through open and honest conversations to deepen the organization's understanding of racism, diversity and inclusion," Balsam told the Star. It collaborates with employee-led networks such as a women's network, pride network, a BIPOC network, he said.

Mukbil still sees signs of those blind spots, citing the truckers' convoy, which laid siege on Ottawa last year and caught the nation unawares.

Where was the intelligence to see that they were going to stay?" Mukbil asks. If there was a group of Muslims with trucks full of gasoline sitting in front of Parliament ... there would have been like this whole what is going on in this country?' "

The CSIS spokesperson told the Star: Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremism (IMVE) poses a significant national security threat and is on par with the religiously motivated violent extremism (RMVE) threat to Canada. IMVE threat actors often target equity-deserving groups including racialized individuals and religious minorities ... CSIS now dedicates 50 per cent of its counterterrorism resources to investigating this threat."

When Mukbil began her career, the desk that oversaw al-Qaida-linked investigations was called the Sunni Islamic Extremism Middle East desk." It's interesting to note that when it came to white extremism, the agency shies away from using the identifier white."

Unpacking why it did not have the same qualms with Sunni Islamic Extremism" might just get to the heart of one of the knottiest challenges within.

Shree Paradkar is a Toronto-based columnist covering issues around social and racial justice for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @ShreeParadkar