Archive for the 'Terrorism' Category

The goddess of Taliban country

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on March 18, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Terrorism and Travel
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H.M. Naqvi at GlobalPost:

The southern swath of Baluchistan is anything but godforsaken. It is, I learn, hallowed land: When Kali, the Dark Mother of the Hindu religion, the Goddess of Death, shattered millennia ago, her torso landed in the mountains.

Baluchistan, then, is not simply hallowed; it is one of the holiest tracts in Hindu mythology. Several years ago, L.K. Adavni, then-leader of the Hindu fundamentalist party in India, was stirred when he visited Nani Mandir. (On his return, he was temporarily dismissed from the party because of “pro-Pakistan” statements he made to the press.) Asphalt roads were paved in anticipation of his advent.

The approach to the temple is unremarkable: An iron gate opens into a narrow esplanade nestled in a valley, presumably a riverbed in the rainy season. Simple single-story cement rooms stand on either side. A makeshift cupboard-sized shrine houses a statuette of Kali, arms perpendicularly extended, tongue rolled out like Gene Simmons. Burnt incense sticks are pitched in the surrounding earth and empty coconut husks litter the periphery. In April, thousands of Hindu pilgrims, both local and from across the border, make the journey on foot. They shave their hair and shed their clothes. We follow in their tracks, passing mossy pools littered with Frooto boxes and floating locks. There is graffiti in Sanskrit on the boulders, and a pair of vertiginous eyes.

Unlike the temples in and around Karachi — Sri Swami Narayan on Bandar Road, Ratneshwar Mahadev in Clifton — Nani Mandir is not grand; there are no spires, arches, no detailed stonework. More:

Not your father’s Taliban

Published
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on March 10, 2010
in Terrorism
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Andy Borowitz at the New Yorker:

TALIBAN OVERHAUL IMAGE TO WIN ALLIES

The Taliban have embarked on a sophisticated information war, using modern media tools as well as some old-fashioned ones, to soften their image. . . . The dictates include bans on suicide bombings against civilians, burning down schools, or cutting off ears, lips and tongues. —The Times.

Isn’t it time you took another look at . . . the Taliban™?

Not your father’s Taliban™. The New Taliban™. TalibanLite™.

We know what you’re thinking: “The Taliban™? Aren’t they the dudes who blow up shit and cut off body parts?”

LOL! You’re thinking of the Old Taliban™.

How do we know what you’re thinking?

Focus groups.

You’re, like, “Focus groups? Since when do the Taliban™ do focus groups?”

We’re, like, “Since Domino’s Pizza started doing them.”

You told Domino’s their crust tasted like cardboard and their sauce tasted like ketchup. Harsh, right? But your criticism only made their pizza much tastier. At the New Taliban™, we want to be the Domino’s of extremists. More:

Now India and Pakistan can get down to business

Published
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on March 8, 2010
in Af-Pak, India, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Najam Sethi, editor in chief of The Friday Times, Pakistan, in The Wall Street Journal:

On initial appearances, the first high-level bilateral talks between India and Pakistan since November 2008 weren’t a success. When the two foreign secretaries convened in New Delhi on Feb. 25, at times it was as if they were at different meetings. The Indians tried to focus on terrorism sponsored from within Pakistan, while the Pakistanis wanted a broader dialogue. In the end, there was no noteworthy result. But appearances in this case are deceiving. This meeting is likely to prove more successful than many expect.

That’s because interests on both sides are at last correctly aligned to give talks a shot at success. For India, it has been a matter of reaching several conclusions at the same time. First, New Delhi has failed to browbeat Islamabad into steps like cracking down on Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terrorist group responsible for the Nov. 2008 Mumbai attacks. Indian saber rattling alone hasn’t done the trick, just as in 2002 when India’s armed forces tried but failed to intimidate Pakistan into halting the flow of jihadis into the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. More:

Former Pakistani officer embodies a policy puzzle

Published
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on March 5, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Carlotta Gall from Rawalpindi in The New York Times:

With his white turban, untrimmed beard and worn army jacket, the man known uniformly here by his nom de guerre, Col. Imam, is a particular Pakistani enigma.

A United States-trained former colonel in Pakistan’s spy agency, he spent 20 years running insurgents in and out of Afghanistan, first to fight the Soviet Army, and later to support the Taliban, as Pakistani allies, in their push to conquer Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Today those Taliban forces are battling his onetime mentor, the United States, and Western officials say Colonel Imam has continued to train, recruit and finance the insurgents. Along with a number of other retired Pakistani intelligence officials, they say, he has helped the Taliban stage a remarkable comeback since 2006.

In two recent interviews with The New York Times, Colonel Imam denied that. But he remains a vocal advocate of the Taliban, and his views reveal the sympathies that have long run deep in the ranks of Pakistan’s military and intelligence services. More:

Taking on the Taliban

Published
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on March 3, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Books, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Steve Coll in The New Yorker:

The Taliban’s jihad, like rock and roll, has passed from youthful vigor into a maturity marked by the appearance of nostalgic memoirs. Back in the day, Abdul Salam Zaeef belonged to the search committee that recruited Mullah Omar as the movement’s commander; after the rebels took power in Kabul, he served as ambassador to Pakistan. “My Life with the Taliban,” published this winter, announces Zaeef’s début in militant letters. The volume contains many sources of fascination, but none are more timely than the author’s account of his high-level relations with Pakistani intelligence.

While in office, Zaeef found that he “couldn’t entirely avoid” the influence of Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. Its officers volunteered money and political support. Late in 2001, as the United States prepared to attack Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, the I.S.I.’s then commanding general, Mahmud Ahmad, visited Zaeef’s home in Islamabad, wept in solidarity, and promised, “We want to assure you that you will not be alone in this jihad against America. We will be with you.” And yet Zaeef never trusted his I.S.I. patrons. He sought to protect the Taliban’s independence: “I tried to be not so sweet that I would be eaten whole, and not so bitter that I would be spat out.” More:

Planet Pakistan

Published
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on March 2, 2010
in Pakistan and Terrorism
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Robert M. Hathaway in The Wilson Quarterly. Robert M. Hathaway is the director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Asia Program. His most recent book is Powering Pakistan: Meeting Pakistan’s Energy Needs in the 21st Century (2009). [via 3quarksdaily]

An American visitor in Pakistan can’t help thinking at times that he has arrived in a parallel universe. Asked about the presence of Al Qaeda on their country’s soil, Pakistanis deny that there is any evidence of it. They lionize A. Q. Khan, who created the country’s nuclear weapons program and sold essential nuclear technology and knowledge to Iran, North Korea, and Libya, and they are incensed by American worries about the security of their country’s nuclear assets. Suicide bombings and political assassinations are near-daily occurrences, yet many Pakistanis are astonishingly complacent about the murderous groups behind them. They rail instead against the government that is powerless to prevent these attacks and an America that would like nothing better than to see an end to ­them.

Last October, when I visited, Pakistanis were fuming over the U.S. aid package recently approved by Congress. The $7.5 billion Kerry-­Lugar bill tripled American support for Pakistan over a ­five-­year period and reversed the overwhelmingly ­pro­military slant of previous U.S. aid. Instead of going almost entirely to the armed forces, American dollars will flow to schools and clinics, economic development, and efforts to promote the rule of law and democratic governance. Pakistan’s friends in Washington were jubilant. Yet most Pakistanis I spoke with insisted that because the aid came with ­conditions—­the U.S. secretary of state must certify that Pakistan is working to end government support for extremist and terrorist groups, for ­example—­it was an affront and a threat to their country’s sovereignty. One legislator complained that what Pakistan was being asked to accept was less an aid package than a treaty of ­surrender.

Denial is a national habit in Pakistan. With a long history of failed governance and political leaders who put their personal interests first, Pakistanis point their fingers at the United States, their arch-enemy India, or the ­all-­purpose malefactor often described in the local news media as the “hidden hand”—anyone but themselves to explain their nation’s past failings and precarious ­present. More:

Frustrated strivers in Pakistan turn to Jihad

Published
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on March 1, 2010
in Pakistan and Terrorism
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A new generation has made militant networks more sophisticated. From The New York Times:

Lahore: Umar Kundi was his parents’ pride, an ambitious young man from a small town who made it to medical school in the big city. It seemed like a story of working-class success, living proof in this unequal society that a telephone operator’s son could become a doctor.

But things went wrong along the way. On campus Mr. Kundi fell in with a hard-line Islamic group. His degree did not get him a job, and he drifted in the urban crush of young people looking for work. His early radicalization helped channel his ambitions in a grander, more sinister way.

Instead of healing the sick, Mr. Kundi went on to become one of Pakistan’s most accomplished militants. Working under a handler from Al Qaeda, he was part of a network that carried out some of the boldest attacks against the Pakistani state and its people last year, the police here say. Months of hunting him ended on Feb. 19, when he was killed in a shootout with the police at the age of 29. More:

Love and death in Pakistan

Published
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on March 1, 2010
in Terrorism
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From The Guardian:

The story began with a chance meeting on a train between a British care worker and a young Pakistani chef. It ended in tragedy this week when Belinda Khan was among eight people killed by a suicide bomber in a marketplace in troubled northern Pakistan.

Yesterday relatives and friends told the tragic story of how Khan, a 44-year-old woman from Cardiff, came to be in one of the world’s most dangerous places. They described how her relationship with pizza chef Yahya Khan ended when he was shot dead in Pakistan by the Taliban two years ago, and how she married Yahya’s younger brother, Saeed, just a fortnight before she was caught up in the suicide bomber’s attack.

Saeed, 25, also spoke of the horror of the moment when he and his new wife were caught in the terrorist bombing as they paused for a snack at a market in the Swat valley in the country’s North-West Frontier province.

He said he wished he could have died with his bride. “Me and my family are missing her very much,” he said. “She was a brave woman and gave a lot of love to me and my family members.”

Belinda’s journey to the Swat Valley began some five years ago when she stepped on to a train in the UK and met Yahya Khan. Their backgrounds were very different. More:

Mystical form of Islam suits Sufis in Pakistan

Published
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on February 26, 2010
in Culture, Faith, Politics, Religion and Terrorism
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Sabrina Tavernise from Lahore in The New York Times:

It is Sufism, a mystical form of Islam brought into South Asia by wandering thinkers who spread the religion east from the Arabian Peninsula. They carried a message of equality that was deeply appealing to indigenous societies riven by caste and poverty. To this day, Sufi shrines stand out in Islam for allowing women free access.

In modern times, Pakistan’s Sufis have been challenged by a stricter form of Islam that dominates in Saudi Arabia. That orthodox, often political Islam was encouraged in Pakistan in the 1980s by the American-supported dictator, Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. Since then, the fundamentalists’ aggressive stance has tended to eclipse that of their moderate kin, whose shrines and processions have become targets in the war here.

But if last week’s stomping, twirling, singing, drumming kaleidoscope of a crowd is any indication, Sufism still has a powerful appeal. More:

India and Pakistan: The potholes

Published
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on February 26, 2010
in India, Pakistan and Terrorism
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In The Hindu, Siddharth Varadarajan analyses the first official talks between India and Pakistan since the 2008 Mumbai attacks:

So accident-prone and politically fraught is the relationship between India and Pakistan that conventional diplomatic metrics for measuring the success or failure of a meeting between them must invariably be discarded for more esoteric markers.

The absence of a joint statement or joint press conference at the end of Thursday’s meeting of the two foreign secretaries clearly meant the bilateral gulf was still enormous. But the fact that Nirupama Rao and Salman Bashir spoke of taking small first steps, stopping the “regression” in the relationship and rebuilding confidence and trust suggested their encounter had served its original purpose: of opening a path for a new process of engagement. More:

Indian Mujahideen

Published
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on February 22, 2010
in India and Terrorism
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From The Indian Express:

They announced their arrival in 2008 with a bang, literally, claiming credit for a series of blasts that shook cities like Delhi, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and the unexploded bombs in Surat. And they were thought to have been largely neutralised within months, with a large number of foot soldiers and some leaders arrested or killed and the rest going underground or fleeing the country. The Indian Mujahideen seemed to have disappeared from the terror map as mysteriously as it had emerged on it. But last week’s bomb blast in Pune, once an IM hub and hideout, has focused the spotlight again on the homegrown Islamist terror outfit even though there is little evidence so far to prove its role in the attack.

The reasons are not hard to comprehend. The Pune attack is the first in 14 months since the November 26, 2008, Lashkar-e-Toiba outrage in Mumbai. While the larger geopolitical events in the AfPak region and their implications for India have been obvious for some time now, shades of grey have dominated the database of security agencies as far as intelligence about what remained of the networks and sleeper cells of Lashkar and its extension, IM. Top police and intelligence officials are, in fact, candid in private when asked if IM is history or if it still retains the ability to spring a surprise like it may have in Pune. Their answer: “We are not sure”. More:

In Pakistan raid, Taliban chief was an extra prize

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on February 19, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Terrorism
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From The New York Times:

Only after a careful process of identification did Pakistani and American officials realize they had captured Mullah Baradar himself, the man who had long overseen the Taliban insurgency against American, NATO and Afghan troops in Afghanistan.

New details of the raid indicate that the arrest of the No. 2 Taliban leader was not necessarily the result of a new determination by Pakistan to go after the Taliban, or a bid to improve its strategic position in the region. Rather, it may be something more prosaic: “a lucky accident,” as one American official called it. “No one knew what they were getting,” he said.

Now the full impact of Mullah Baradar’s arrest will play out only in the weeks to come. More:

Rings of terror: A guide to Al Qaeda’s leadership

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on February 17, 2010
in Af-Pak and Terrorism
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Lydia Khalil in Foreign Policy:

1. Al Qaeda’s original leadership. The first group is made up of al Qaeda’s original leadership — and it is shriveling up like the roster of the local VFW. This crew still has a few big names: still-at-large figures like Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Abu Yahya al-Libi. But the original core of al Qaeda is shrinking fast. No one knows the exact composition of this highest-level group, nor its exact whereabouts. But the best intelligence suggests the members live somewhere in the vicinity of Pakistan.

2. Al Qaeda’s regional subsidiaries. Next, there are members of al Qaeda’s regional subsidiaries, local terrorist or insurgent groups that have declared allegiance to the group. This includes outfits such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Ansar al-Sunnah in Iraq, al-Shabab in Somalia, and segments of the Taliban. These organizations do not take operational direction from al Qaeda’s core, but accept broad strategic guidance. They are often critical to al Qaeda’s efforts to expand its jihad throughout the globe. Al Qaeda, in turn, exploits these proxy groups, often mired in regional conflicts, to co-opt nationalist struggles into its broader narrative. Often, the senior leaders of these regional insurgent-cum-terrorist groups are in contact with original senior al Qaeda leadership. More:

An American admiral, a Pakistani general, and the ultimate anti-terror adventure

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on February 17, 2010
in Af-Pak, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Michael Crowley in The New Republic (via 3quarksdaily):

On August 26, 2008, Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, touched down for a secret meeting on an aircraft carrier stationed in the Indian Ocean. The topic: Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The summit had been arranged the previous month. Mullen had grown anxious about the rising danger from Pakistan’s tribal areas, which Islamic militants were using as a base from which to strike American troops in Afghanistan and to plot terrorist attacks against the United States. He flew to Islamabad to see the country’s army chief of staff, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Kayani is Pakistan’s most important general, commanding its 550,000-man army. By some accounts, he is also the ultimate source of power in a militarized society that reveres its generals more than its politicians. Mullen had been blunt with Kayani: The United States needed Pakistan’s army to take on the militants flourishing along the border, he said. The days of Pakistan looking the other way–cutting deals and playing double games with the radicals–had to end.

It was hardly a painless request; the Pakistani military is organized for warfare against its arch-nemesis India, and many of its mid-level officers are sympathetic to the Taliban and, at best, wary of the United States. More:

Pune’s German Bakery is like Mumbai’s Leopold Cafe

Published
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on February 14, 2010
in India and Terrorism
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Nine people were killed and nearly 50 injured in a bomb explosion that ripped apart the popular German Bakery near a Jewish prayer house in Pune on Saturday evening. The bakery is near the Osho Ashram and features in every travel guide.

According to Reuters, the government said on Sunday it had little idea who was behind the blast, an attack that some experts said could be the work of home-grown militants. (See Reuters story here)

Below, from the Indian Express: German Bakery is to Pune what Leopold Café, where terrorists struck in 2008, is to Mumbai.

Wooden benches, cane mats, sloping roof and the premises spilling out onto the pavement nearby re-create an ambiance that is cool, classy and very Goa-like. What really endears you to it though is the eclectic menu that offers about 15 varieties of teas, a large choice of sandwiches, salads, breads, cookies and a host of puddings ranging from lemon tart to apple strudel, served with a panache that would make any foreign visitor feel right at home. More:

Kabul makeover

Published
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on February 11, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Fashion, Society, Terrorism and Women
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Reality-TV shows like Afghan Model are rewiring Afghan culture—for better and for worse. Kim Barker in The Atlantic:

Anita Khalwat wears heavy makeup, fake eyelashes, and a green spangly head scarf, loose dress, and pants fit for an Afghan wedding. But she’s no bride. She’s a warrior in heels and metallic nail polish, preparing to appear on Afghan Model, a new TV show that aims to find the top fashion star in a war-torn nation where neither of the two main languages has a word for “model,” and where threats by the TV-hating, women-loathing Taliban have turned an appearance before the cameras on a rickety, rainbow-lit white stage into a political statement.

“Hide your hair today,” one judge, Hozair Amiri, tells Khalwat before a recent taping. “Please.”

Khalwat, her green head scarf showing off a good part of her highlighted brown hair, looks at Amiri almost fiercely. With less than perfectly white teeth, a generous nose, an average body, and a hip thrust more fitting for a hockey rink than for a runway, the 23-year-old Khalwat would never make the tryouts for America’s Next Top Model, the Tyra Banks vehicle that Afghan Model tries to emulate. More:

On Afghan road, scenes of beauty and death

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on February 8, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Terrorism
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A road that runs through a mountain gorge between Kabul and Jalalabad holds its own terrors. From the New York Times:

Sarobi, Afghanistan — Even in a nation beset by war and suicide bombings, you would be hard-pressed to find anything as reliably terrifying as the national highway through the Kabul Gorge.

The 40-mile stretch, a breathtaking chasm of mountains and cliffs between Kabul and Jalalabad, claims so many lives so regularly that most people stopped counting long ago. Cars flip and flatten. Trucks soar to the valley floor. Buses play chicken; buses collide.

The mayhem unfolds on one of the most bewitching stretches of scenery on all the earth. The gorge, in some places no more than a few hundred yards wide, is framed by vertical rock cliffs that soar more than 2,000 feet above the Kabul River below. Most people die, and most cars crash, while zooming around one of the impossible turns that offer impossible views of the crevasses and buttes. More:

I wanna be like Osama

Published
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on February 4, 2010
in Entertainment and Terrorism
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From Jihad! The Musical, a satirical romp about the war on terror

The bad Sufi

Published
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on February 2, 2010
in Af-Pak, Conflict, Faith, Music, Religion and Terrorism
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Modern Sufi leaders have become part of Pakistan’s corrupt ruling elite, favoured by the West not for their ‘moderation’ but for their compliance. Qalandar Bux Memon at Naked Punch:

I was sitting at the shrine of Shah Kamal in Lahore, with the dhol beats and whirling dervishes dancing to connect to the ‘centre of the universe in themselves’, when a friend turned and pointed to an old German fellow sitting a few meters from us. “He just delivered a lecture on Sufism. He is an expert on the subject, and talked about how it’s a religion of peace and love.”

I replied curtly: “Have you ever been in love? Have you had your heart broken? What peace is there in that state? What peace was there when Mansur had his head chopped off on the orders of the Baghdadi Emperor? What peace was there when Shah Inayat was fighting against the Mughal emperor for his life and that of his commune? What peace is there in Sassui’s peeling feet as she searches for her beloved through the desert of Sindh?”

My friend agreed and said: “But they pay me – I have to go along with them.” More:

Part two of Qalandar Bux Memon’s series on Sufism, focusing on the history of Sufism and the positive role it could play, will be published at The Samosa.

Understanding Afghan tribes

Published
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on February 1, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Culture, Society and Terrorism
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From The New York Times:

Botox could become terrorist tool

Published
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on January 26, 2010
in Terrorism
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From the Washington Post:

Al-Qaeda is known to have sought botulinum toxin. The Lebanese Hezbollah movement, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization, and other groups have bought and sold counterfeit drugs to raise cash. Now, with the emergence of a global black market for fake Botox, terrorism experts see an opportunity for a deadly convergence.

“It is the only profit-making venture for terrorists that can also potentially yield a weapon of mass destruction,” said Kenneth Coleman, a physician and biodefense expert.

Last year, Coleman and fellow researcher Raymond Zilinskas set out to test whether militant groups could easily exploit the counterfeit Botox network to obtain materials for a bioterrorism attack. In a project sponsored by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, two scientists found that a biologist with a master’s degree and $2,000 worth of equipment could easily make a gram of pure toxin, an amount equal to the weight of a small paper clip but enough, in theory, to kill thousands of people. More:

The next generation of jihadi pundits

Published
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on January 23, 2010
in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Terrorism
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Jarret Brachman, a senior consultant to the U.S. government on al Qaeda issues, at Foreign Policy:

When Humam Khalil al-Balawi exploded himself at a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, last month, killing seven CIA officers, his suicide attack did not just have repercussions for the NATO effort in Afghanistan — it also represented a giant leap forward for al Qaeda’s global Internet movement. In the minds of Web jihadists, Balawi was more than just another suicide operative. He was one of them, someone whose thinking they trusted, knew intimately, and had been reading for years.

Before he became a Jordanian “triple agent,” Balawi was the jihadi online pundit Abu Dujana al-Khorasani. Under that moniker, Balawi had been anonymously feeding his online readers a steady stream of jihadi missives since early 2007. His climb from eager chat-room participant to elite jihadi Web forum administrator to revered Internet pundit to triumphant suicide bomber helped forge a path that Web jihadists could finally hope to emulate.

The number of Web jihadists who make the transition to real-world terrorists is growing. Terrorists who have been radicalized online include Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Badr al-Harbi — the Kuwaiti who posted more than 1,000 times on an al Qaeda Internet forum before blowing himself up in Iraq — and now Balawi. In doing so, they have taught other Web jihadists how to upgrade their keyboards into suicide vests. With his many screeds posted to forums lionizing those who carry al Qaeda’s torch, Balawi helped narrow the distance separating the global jihadi movement’s fighters and its online sympathizers. More:

Also read The worst of the worst: Some of the jihadi pundits who are making waves on al Qaeda’s Web forums.

Bin Laden: Digital mug shot

Published
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on January 15, 2010
in Terrorism
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[Digitally enhanced photo of Osama bin-Laden released by the US Department ofDefense and Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] which shows an age-progression imageof Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden. Click here]

From The Times:

Osama bin Laden has aged a little since he was last seen in September 2007 but has put on little or no weight in the arid surroundings of the Afghan-Pakistani border — that, at least, is the assumption made by FBI forensic artists as the agency continues its relentless search for the al-Qaeda leader.

Digitally enhanced photographs have been released showing how he might look today; one in his traditional outfit, the other showing him with trimmed beard and Western clothing.

The ”age-progression images” were produced in the latest effiort to find the elusive al-Qaeda leader. FBI forensic artists modified bin Laden’s facial features to show what they might look like today. More:

Growing up bin Laden

Published
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on January 12, 2010
in Books and Terrorism
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In The National, a review of a new memoir of Osama bin Laden by his wife and son, “Growing Up bin Laden: Osama’s Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World” by Jean Sasson, Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden:

“I remember staring into his kindly eyes, tartly thinking to myself that my cousin was shyer than a virgin under the veil.” Thus Najwa Ghanem recalls a meeting with 16-year old Osama bin Laden shortly before she became his first wife: “My life progressed from childhood into adulthood by the end of that evening. I was a married woman in every way.”

It’s anyone’s guess how much money has gone into the quest for information about Osama bin Laden since he rose to prominence in the mid-1990s. Now, for less than Dh100, we can get details on his personal life that are more reliable than all previous works combined. The publication of Growing up bin Laden is astonishing, not because of its tame bedroom confessions, but because nobody in the bin Laden family has ever spoken publicly about Osama before. The development is so unlikely that one inevitably wonders: is this for real?

The sheer number of bin Laden biographies published in the past decade leaves room for doubt. A few of these books have been serious, such as Jonathan Randal’s Osama and Peter Bergen’s The Osama bin Laden I Know. However, the majority are filled with inaccuracies and in some cases sensationalist fabrications. In one dubious book, Adam Robinson wrote that bin Laden was an avid Arsenal FC supporter who regularly attended matches at Highbury stadium in the 1990s. In another, a woman named Kola Boof claimed – falsely, by most accounts – to have been raped by bin Laden in Morocco in 1996. And the fake rumour that bin Laden was a playboy in 1970s Beirut has proved remarkably persistent. More:

The terrorist mind

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on January 11, 2010
in Af-Pak and Terrorism
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Sarah Kershaw in The New York Times:

What moves people to kill themselves and innocent bystanders?

This mystery of the mind became an issue again in recent weeks as a suicide bomber in Afghanistan — a double agent — killed seven C.I.A. officers; a man plowed a truck full of explosives into a crowded playground in Pakistan, and a Nigerian man tried to blow himself up on a plane bound for Detroit on Christmas Day.

Until recently, the psychology of terrorism had been largely theoretical. Finding actual subjects to study was daunting. But access to terrorists has increased and a nascent science is taking shape.

More former terrorists are speaking publicly about their experiences. Tens of thousands of terrorists are in “de-radicalization” programs around the globe, and they are being interviewed, counseled and subjected to psychological testing, offering the chance to collect real data on the subject. More:

Taliban — a risky ally in the war on polio

Published
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on January 10, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Conflict, Health and Terrorism
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From the Wall Street Journal:

Mehtar Lam, Afghanistan — Knocking on door after door, thousands of volunteers fan out every month across southern and eastern Afghanistan, vaccinating children against polio, a disease eradicated almost everywhere else in the world.

Usually, the volunteers — sent by the government and sponsored by United Nations agencies — bring a single-page letter requesting people to cooperate, “for the benefit of our next generations.” The letter’s signatory: Mullah Mohammad Omar, the one-eyed supreme leader of the Taliban.

“We always carry a copy,” says Dr. Attar Wafa, the chief of polio vaccinations in the insurgent-infested province of Laghman, much of which is a no-go area for government workers and foreigners.

The antipolio campaign brings together the Taliban, President Hamid Karzai’s central government, Unicef and the World Health Organization in an uneasy but functioning partnership — one that recognizes the reality of the insurgents’ stranglehold over large chunks of the country. More:

Waziristan: The last frontier

Published
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on January 8, 2010
in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Conflict, Culture, Pakistan, Politics and Terrorism
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From The Economist:

“YOU should enjoy this,” said a Pushtun from Waziristan, the most remote and radicalised of the tribal areas in North-West Pakistan that border Afghanistan, as he proffered a bottle of Scottish whisky. It was an excellent Sutherland single-malt; but the man was referring to the bottle’s more recent provenance, not its pedigree.

He had been given it by a fellow Waziristani working for Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. This spy had received the illegal grog from an American CIA officer. Your correspondent’s friend returned homewards, Scotch in hand, driven by another Waziristani, who is also employed as a fixer by al-Qaeda.

Waziristan, home to 800,000 tribal Pushtuns, is a complicated place. It is the hinge that joins Pakistan and Afghanistan, geographically and strategically. Split into two administrative units, North and South Waziristan, it is largely run by the Taliban, with foreign jihadists among them. If Islamist terror has a headquarters, it is probably Waziristan.

For terrorists, its attraction is its fierce independence. More:

A merger of interests

Published
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asianwindow
on January 2, 2010
in Af-Pak, Conflict and Terrorism
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Rajmohan Gandhi in the Hindustan Times:

‘Of course, they will kill me,’ one of the subcontinent’s most-influential Muslim leaders told me the other day. “But first they will flog me.” He was speaking of what would await persons like him if violent extremists took over. But the need to survive is compelling many in Pakistan to fight the jihadists.

The stupid talk of an Indian hand behind suicide attacks is not the real story from Pakistan. That Pakistanis as a society are quietly redrawing their list of friends and enemies.

Violent extremists disgracing Pakistan and Islam are now seen as the nation’s enemy number one as well as danger number one. Certainly the United States is not liked, and there is resentment at the pressure on Pakistanis to do more. Pakistanis think that the US and India should understand what Dawn recently called “the limitations of a sub-optimal state fighting a hydra-headed enemy”.

But the violent extremists who blast women, children and the elderly into body pieces that land in mosques and bazaars have firmly displaced the US from its position as the entity Pakistanis most detest. More:

‘Democracy is the greatest revenge’

Published
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asianwindow
on December 28, 2009
in Pakistan and Terrorism
. 0 Comments

Asif Ali Zardari, President of Pakistan, in the Wall Street Journal:

Two years ago the world stopped for me and for my children. Pakistan was shaken to its core and all but came apart. Women everywhere lost one of their greatest symbols of equality. And Islam, our great religion, lost its modern face.

On Dec. 27, 2007, my wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated. She was the bravest person I have ever known, and the second anniversary of her death is an appropriate occasion to reflect upon what she achieved for our country, and how her legacy must be preserved against those who would return Pakistan to darkness.

Twice elected prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir had an immense impact. She stood up and defeated the forces of military dictatorship. She freed all political prisoners. She ended press censorship. She legalized trade and student unions, built 46,000 primary and secondary schools and appointed the first female judges in our history. And she showed the women of Pakistan and the world that they must accept no limits on their ability and opportunity to learn, to grow and to lead in modern society. More:

Al Qaeda’s American mole

Published
by
asianwindow
on December 16, 2009
in Af-Pak, India, Pakistan and Terrorism
. 1 Comment

New court documents on the Chicagoan David Headley suspected of helping plan the Mumbai attacks show who he was working with — and suggest an alliance of some of the world’s deadliest terror groups. Bruce Riedel at The Daily Beast:

taj_hotelThe arrest in Chicago of a Pakistani American, David Headley (originally Daoud Gilani), has rightly gotten much attention because of his alleged role in helping the terror group Lashkar-e-taiba to reconnoiter their targets for the terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, a year ago. That attack killed dozens of innocent Indian, American, and Israeli citizens in the most spectacular act of international terror since the 9/11 attacks. The court documents served in Chicago, however, also show something else. Headley’s most important connection was to an individual, Ilyas Kashmiri, who is a prominent member of al Qaeda. In short, al Qaeda apparently had an American mole operating inside the United States for at least the last year and maybe longer.

The Chicago records are very clear that Headley was closer to Kashmiri than anyone else including his other contacts in Lashkar-e-taiba. When he heard that Kashmiri might have been killed in a drone attack in northern Pakistan this September, according to the court documents, he was distraught and immediately began searching the Web for any news about his handler. Headley was greatly relieved when his contacts told him Kashmiri was still alive and looking forward to seeing him on his next trip to Pakistan. He was arrested when he tried to board the flight. He was actively involved in plots for new attacks in India focusing on Israeli targets, which he had already reconnoitered, and a plot to attack the Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that had attracted the anger of al Qaeda. More: