Heart of Darkness

[baghda]

AT WAR

 

Heart of Darkness

From Zarqawi to the man on the street, Sunni Arabs

fear Shiite emancipation.

 

BY FOUAD AJAMI

Wednesday, September 28, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

 

The remarkable thing about the terror in Iraq is the

silence with which it is greeted in other Arab lands.

Grant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi his due: He has been

skilled at exposing the pitilessness on the loose in

that fabled Arab street and the moral emptiness of so

much of official Arab life. The extremist is never

just a man of the fringe: He always works at the outer

edges of mainstream life, playing out the hidden

yearnings and defects of the dominant culture. Zarqawi

is a bigot and a killer, but he did not descend from

the sky. He emerged out of the Arab world's sins of

omission and commission; in the way he rails against

the Shiites (and the Kurds) he expresses that fatal

Arab inability to take in "the other." A terrible

condition afflicts the Arabs, and Zarqawi puts it on

lethal display: an addiction to failure, and a desire

to see this American project in Iraq come to a bloody

end.

 

Zarqawi's war, it has to be conceded, is not his

alone; he kills and maims, he labels the Shiites

rafida (rejecters of Islam), he charges them with

treason as "collaborators of the occupiers and the

crusaders," but he can be forgiven the sense that he

is a holy warrior on behalf of a wider Arab world that

has averted its gaze from his crimes, that has given

him its silent approval. He and the band of killers

arrayed around him must know the meaning of this great

Arab silence.

 

 

 

 

 

There is a cliché that distinguishes between cultures

of shame and cultures of guilt, and by that crude

distinction, it has always been said that the Arab

world is a "shame culture." But in truth there is

precious little shame in Arab life about the role of

the Arabs in the great struggle for and within Iraq.

What is one to make of the Damascus-based Union of

Arab Writers that has refused to grant membership in

its ranks to Iraqi authors? The pretext that Iraqi

writers can't be "accredited" because their country is

under American occupation is as good an illustration

as it gets of the sordid condition of Arab culture.

For more than three decades, Iraq's life was sheer and

limitless terror, and the Union of Arab Writers never

uttered a word. Through these terrible decades, Iraqis

suffered alone, and still their poetry and literature

adorn Arabic letters. They need no acknowledgment of

their pain, or of their genius, from a literary union

based in a city in the grip of a deadening autocracy.

A culture of shame would surely see into the shame of

an Arab official class with no tradition of

accountability granting itself the right to hack away

at Iraq's constitution, dismissing it as the handiwork

of the American regency. Unreason, an indifference to

the most basic of facts, and a spirit of belligerence

have settled upon the Arab world. Those who, in Arab

lands beyond Iraq, have taken to describing the Iraqi

constitution as an "American-Iranian constitution,"

give voice to a debilitating incoherence. At the heart

of this incoherence lies an adamant determination to

deny the Shiites of Iraq a claim to their rightful

place in their country's political order.

 

The drumbeats against Iraq that originate from the

League of Arab States and its Egyptian apparatchiks

betray the panic of an old Arab political class afraid

that there is something new unfolding in Iraq--a

different understanding of political power and

citizenship, a possible break with the culture of

tyranny and the cult of Big Men disposing of the

affairs--and the treasure--of nations. It is pitiable

that an Egyptian political class that has abdicated

its own dream of modernity and bent to the will of a

pharaonic regime is obsessed with the doings in Iraq.

But this is the political space left open by the

master of the realm. To be sure, there is terror in

the streets of Iraq; there is plenty there for the

custodians of a stagnant regime in Cairo to point to

as a cautionary tale of what awaits societies that

break with "secure" ways. But the Egyptian autocracy

knows the stakes. An Iraqi polity with a modern social

contract would be a rebuke to all that Egypt stands

for, a cruel reminder of the heartbreak of Egyptians

in recent years. We must not fall for Cairo's claims

of primacy in Arab politics; these are hollow, and

Iraq will further expose the rot that has settled upon

the political life of Egypt.

 

Nor ought we be taken in by warnings from Jordan, made

by King Abdullah II, of a "Shia crescent" spanning

Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. This is a piece of

bigotry and simplification unworthy of a Hashemite

ruler, for in the scheme of Arab history the

Hashemites have been possessed of moderation and

tolerance. Of all Sunni Arab rulers, the Hashemites

have been particularly close to the Shiites, but

popular opinion in Jordan has been thoroughly

infatuated with Saddam Hussein, and Saddamism, and an

inexperienced ruler must have reasoned that the Shiite

bogey would play well at home.

 

The truth of Jordan today is official moderation

coupled with a civic culture given to

anti-Americanism, and hijacked by the Islamists. In

that standoff, the country's political life is

off-limits, but the street has its way on Iraq. Verse

is still read in Saddam's praise at poetry readings in

Amman, and the lawyers' syndicate is packed with those

eager to join the legal defense teams of Saddam

Hussein and his principal lieutenants. Saddam's two

daughters reside in Jordan with no apologies to offer,

and no second thoughts about the great crimes

committed under the Baath tyranny. Those who know the

ways of Jordan speak of cities where religious

radicalism and bigotry blow with abandon. Zarqa, the

hometown of Abu Musab, is one such place; Salt, the

birthplace of a notorious suicide bomber, Raad

al-Banna, who last winter brought great tragedy to the

Iraqi town of Hilla, killing no fewer than 125 of its

people, is another. For a funeral, Banna's family gave

him a "martyr's wedding," and the affair became an

embarrassment to the regime and the political class.

Jordan is yet to make its peace with the new Iraq.

(King Abdullah's "crescent" breaks at any rate: Syria

has no Shiites to speak of, and its Alawite rulers are

undermining the Shiites of Iraq, feeding a jihadist

breed of Sunni warriors for whom the Alawites are

children of darkness.)

 

 

 

 

 

It was the luck of the imperial draw that the American

project in Iraq came to the rescue of the Shiites--and

of the Kurds. We may not fully appreciate the

historical change we unleashed on the Arab world, but

we have given liberty to the stepchildren of the Arab

world. We have overturned an edifice of material and

moral power that dates back centuries. The Arabs

railing against U.S. imperialism and arrogance in Iraq

will never let us in on the real sources of their

resentments. In the way of "modern" men and women with

some familiarity with the doctrines of political

correctness, they can't tell us that they are

aggrieved that we have given a measure of self-worth

to the seminarians of Najaf and the highlanders of

Kurdistan. But that is precisely what gnaws at them.

An edifice of Arab nationalism built by strange

bedfellows--the Sunni political and bureaucratic

elites, and the Christian Arab pundits who abetted

them in the idle hope that they would be spared the

wrath of the street and of the mob--was overturned in

Iraq. And America, at times ambivalent about its

mission, brought along with its military gear a

suspicion of the Shiites, a belief that the Iraqi

Shiites were an extension of Iran, a community

destined to build a sister-republic of the Iranian

theocracy. Washington has its cadre of Arabists reared

on Arab nationalist historiography. This camp had a

seat at the table, but the very scale of what was at

play in Iraq, and the redemptionism at the heart of

George Bush's ideology, dwarfed them.

 

For the Arab enemies of this project of rescue, this

new war in Iraq was a replay of an old drama: the fall

of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258. In the received

history, the great city of learning, the capital of

the Abbasid Caliphate, had fallen to savages, and an

age of greatness had drawn to a close. In the legend

of that tale, the Mongols sacked the metropolis, put

its people to the sword, dumped the books of its

libraries in the Tigris. That river, chroniclers

insist, flowed, alternately, with the blood of the

victims and the ink of the books. It is a tale of

betrayal, the selective history maintains. A minister

of the caliph, a Shiite by the name of Ibn Alqami,

opened the gates of Baghdad to the Mongols. History

never rests here, and telescopes easily: In his call

for a new holy war against the Shiites, Zarqawi

dredges up that history, dismisses the Shiite-led

government as "the government of Ibn Alqami's

descendants." Zarqawi knows the power of this

symbolism, and its dark appeal to Sunni Arabs within

Iraq.

 

Zarqawi's jihadists have sown ruin in Iraq, but they

are strangers to that country, and they have needed

the harbor given them in the Sunni triangle and the

indulgence of the old Baathists. For the diehards,

Iraq is now a "stolen country" delivered into the

hands of subject communities unfit to rule. Though a

decided minority, the Sunni Arabs have a majoritarian

mindset and a conviction that political dominion is

their birthright. Instead of encouraging a break with

the old Manichaean ideologies, the Arab world beyond

Iraq feeds this deep-seated sense of historical

entitlement. No one is under any illusions as to what

the Sunni Arabs would have done had oil been located

in their provinces. They would have disowned both

north and south and opted for a smaller world of their

own and defended it with the sword. But this was not

to be, and their war is the panic of a community that

fears that it could be left with a realm of "gravel

and sand."

 

 

 

 

 

In the aftermath of Katrina, the project of reforming

a faraway region and ridding it of its malignancies is

harder to sustain and defend. We are face-to-face with

the trade-off between duties beyond borders and duties

within. At home, for the critics of the war, Katrina

is a rod to wave in the face of the Bush

administration. To be sure, we did not acquit

ourselves well in the aftermath of the storm; we left

ourselves open to the gloatings of those eager to see

America get its comeuppance. Even Zarqawi weighed in

on Katrina, depicting a raid on the northern town of

Tal Afar by a joint Iraqi-American force as an attempt

on the part of "Bush, the enemy of God" to cover up

the great "scandal in facing up to the storm which

exposed to the entire world what had happened to the

American military due to the wars of attrition it had

suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Those duties within have to be redeemed in the manner

that this country has always assumed redemptive

projects. But that other project, in the burning

grounds of the Arab-Muslim world, remains, and we must

remember its genesis. It arose out of a calamity on

9/11, which rid us rudely of the illusions of the

'90s. That era had been a fools' paradise; Nasdaq had

not brought about history's end. In Kabul and Baghdad,

we cut down two terrible regimes; in the neighborhood

beyond, there are chameleons in the shadows whose ways

are harder to extirpate.

 

We have not always been brilliant in the war we have

waged, for these are lands we did not fully know. But

our work has been noble and necessary, and we can't

call a halt to it in midstream. We bought time for

reform to take root in several Arab and Muslim realms.

Leave aside the rescue of Afghanistan, Kuwait and

Qatar have done well by our protection, and Lebanon

has retrieved much of its freedom. The three larger

realms of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria are more

difficult settings, but there, too, the established

orders of power will have to accommodate the yearnings

for change. A Kuwaiti businessman with an unerring

feel for the ways of the Arab world put it thus to me:

"Iraq, the Internet, and American power are

undermining the old order in the Arab world. There are

gains by the day." The rage against our work in Iraq,

all the way from the "chat rooms" of Arabia to the

bigots of Finsbury Park in London, is located within

this broader struggle.

 

In that Iraqi battleground, we can't yet say that the

insurgency is in its death throes. But that call to

war by Zarqawi, we must know, came after the stunning

military operation in Tal Afar dealt the jihadists a

terrible blow. An Iraqi-led force, supported by

American tanks, armored vehicles and air cover, had

stormed that stronghold. This had been a transit point

for jihadists coming in from Syria. This time, at Tal

Afar, Iraq security forces were there to stay, and a

Sunni Arab defense minister with the most impeccable

tribal credentials, Saadoun Dulaimi, issued a

challenge to Iraq's enemy, a message that his soldiers

would fight for their country.

 

The claim that our war in Iraq, after the sacrifices,

will have hatched a Shiite theocracy is a smear on the

war, a misreading of the Shiite world of Iraq. In the

holy city of Najaf, at its apex, there is a dread of

political furies and an attachment to sobriety. I went

to Najaf in July; no one of consequence there spoke of

a theocratic state. Najaf's jurists lived through a

time of terror, when informers and assassins had the

run of the place. They have been delivered from that

time. The new order shall give them what they want: a

place in Iraq's cultural and moral order, and a decent

separation between religion and the compromises of

political life.

 

Over the horizon looms a referendum to ratify the

country's constitution. Sunni Arabs are registering in

droves, keen not to repeat the error they committed

when they boycotted the national elections earlier

this year. In their pride, and out of fear of the

insurgents and their terror, the Sunni Arabs say that

they are registering to vote in order to thwart this

"illegitimate constitution." This kind of saving

ambiguity ought to be welcomed, for there are

indications that the Sunni Arabs may have begun to

understand terror's blindness and terror's ruin.

Zarqawi holds out but one fate for them; other doors

beckon, and there have stepped forth from their ranks

leaders eager to partake of the new order. It is up to

them, and to the Arab street and the Arab

chancelleries that wink at them, to bring an end to

the terror. It has not been easy, this expedition to

Iraq, and for America in Iraq there has been

heartbreak aplenty. But we ought to remember the

furies that took us there, and we ought to be consoled

by the thought that the fight for Iraq is a fight to

ward off Arab dangers and troubles that came our way

on a clear September morning, four years ago.

 

Mr. Ajami teaches International Relations at Johns

Hopkins University.

[Guest Mustefser]

Endgame in Iraq

 

 

 

Even a brief visit to the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr leaves me convinced that we are entering the endgame here. The coming Iraqi votes, in October over the new constitution and in December over a new parliament, are going to tell America whether it is worth staying here or not for much longer. Despite all the shameful blunders of Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq, at the end of the day, was always going to be what the Iraqis decided to make of it. And the Iraqi majority _ the Shi'ites and Kurds who make up roughly 80% of this country _ have spoken. They want an Iraq that will be decentralised and will allow each of their communities to run its own affairs and culture _ without fear of ever again being dominated and brutalised by an oil-backed Sunni minority regime in Baghdad. Equally important, both the Kurds and the Shi'ites have made it clear that they have no interest in telling the Sunnis how to live, and will cut them a slice of Iraq's oil revenue and maintain Iraq's basic Arab identity.

 

So now we know what kind of majority the Kurds and Shi'ites want to be, the question is what kind of minority the Iraqi Sunnis want to be. Do they want to be the Palestinians and spend the next 100 years trying to mobilise the Arab-Muslim world to reverse history and restore their ``right'' to rule Iraq as a minority _ a move that would destroy them and Iraq. Or do they want to embrace the future? I know the Sunnis are terrified by Iran's influence in this southern region, but, as the Brits who run the Basra area will tell you, the Iraqi Arab Shi'ites here are obsessed with not being dominated by Iran. That attitude would only be enhanced if Iraqi Sunnis, rather than allowing or abetting the murders of Shi'ites, would instead embrace the new constitution and let the US cut the Sunnis an even fairer slice of the pie.

 

``We have a lot of overlapping interests with the Sunnis of Iraq,'' a senior US official in Baghdad said. Indeed, in the latter stages of the constitutional negotiations in Iraq, the US ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, was basically acting as the Sunnis' lawyer in dealings with the Kurds and Shi'ites. The problem was that the Sunnis never knew when to say yes, ``that's enough,'' and the US got fed up with their demanding much more than their due. Do the Iraqi Sunnis understand their own interests, and does the Sunni world have any moral centre? Up to now the Sunni Arab world has stood mute while the Sunni Ba'athists and jihadists in Iraq have engaged in what can only be called ``ethnic cleansing'': murdering Shi'ite civilians in large numbers because they are Shi'ites in hopes of restoring a Sunni-dominated order in Iraq that is un-restorable. A fatwa has just been issued against a female Indian tennis player who is Muslim, condemning her for her short skirts, but no fatwa has been issued by Sunni clerics condemning al-Zarqawi's butchering of children and teachers. Some courageous Sunnis have begun to speak out. ``One of the most bizarre phenomena of recent times has been the refusal of Arab governments to condemn terrorist acts in Iraq or to commiserate with the victims,'' Abdul Rahman al-Rashed wrote in the Saudi daily Asharq Al Awsat. ``Take the most recent atrocities in which more than 200 Iraqis lost their lives in two days of carnage: No Arab government raised its voice in condemnation, although most of them shrilly objected when the new Iraqi Constitution failed to mention that the country was part of the Arab nation. The official Arab position vis-a-vis Iraq has always been spineless.''

 

So, folks, we are faltering in Iraq today in part because of the Bush team's incompetence, but also because of the moral vacuum in the Sunni Arab world, where the worst are engaged in murderous ethnic cleansing and the rest are too afraid, too weak, too lost or too anti-Shi'ite to do anything about it. Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighbourhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won't, then we are wasting our time. We should arm the Shi'ites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind. We must not throw more good American lives after good American lives for people who hate others more than they love their own children.

 

Thomas L Friedman is a New York Times columnist.

[Guest Mustefser]

rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/ter/ter100605_bush.rm?

 

Presdent Bush last speech about Iraq.

خطاب الرئيس بوش الاخير حول محاربه الارهاب و التزامه بتحرير العراق

مذكرا بحقيقه الاسلام كدين سلام " يجب التفريق بين الارهاب و الاسلام"

[salim]

October 5, 2005

Sinbad vs. the Mermaids

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

 

Aboard U.S.S. Chosin

 

I never sleep well on warships.

 

So it was no surprise to me that I woke up at 5 a.m. the other day in my

tiny guest bunk on the U.S.S. Chosin, which commands the U.S. Navy task

force off the coast of Iraq. As I walked laps around the deck in the predawn

light, my mind kept coming back to the incredible clash I had witnessed

between the political culture of the U.S. Navy and the political culture of

both the Iraqis on land and the Arab fishermen in the Persian Gulf.

 

Iraq is a multiethnic society that had to be held together by a dictator's

iron fist. What Iraqis are struggling with today is whether they can forge

their own social contract in which Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis can live

together - without an iron fist. That is critical because virtually every

Arab state today is a mix of religions and ethnicities held together by a

hard or soft fist. If Iraqis can find a way to live together, any people out

here can, and democracy has a future. If the Iraqis can't, probably no one

can, and we can look forward to dictatorships and monarchies in the Arab

world - with all the pathologies they bring - forever. But change is hard.

 

When the Iraqi Navy drops you off on the Chosin, a guided-missile cruiser,

two things just hit you in the face: one is the diversity of the U.S. Navy -

blacks, whites, Hispanics, Christians, Jews, atheists, Muslims, all working

together, bound by a shared idea, not an iron fist. To be sure, it took

America a good 150 years after independence to embrace pluralism and women's

rights, and we're still working at it. Nevertheless, America today is so

different from anything in this part of the world. The Iraqi Navy is all

men, and almost all Shiites. We are like Martians to them.

 

Mustapha Ahansal is a Moroccan-American sailor who acts as the Chosin's

Arabic translator when it boards ships in the gulf to look for pirates or

terrorists. "The first time I boarded a boat," he told me, "we had six or

seven people - one Hispanic, one black person, a white person, maybe a woman

in our unit. Their sailors said to me, 'I thought all Americans were white.'

Then one of them asked me, 'Are you in the military?' ... It shocks them

actually. They never knew that such a world actually exists, because they

have their own problems. I was talking to one of their higher-ups in their

Coast Guard and he said: 'It is amazing how you guys can be so many

religions, ethnic groups... and still make this thing work and be the best

in the world. And here we are fighting north and south, and we are all

cousins and brothers.' "

 

The other thing that hits you on the Chosin is that many officers are women

- so you hear women's voices all day long giving orders over the ship's

loudspeaker and radio. And because the local Arab fishermen also hear this

chatter, many of them probably think the Chosin is an all-female ship! The

110-foot U.S. Coast Guard cutter Monomoy, alongside the Chosin, has a female

deputy captain, who often leads the landing parties that inspect boats in

the gulf; one of the Navy's fast patrol boats, also alongside the Chosin,

had a female captain. "Being a female boarding officer is a huge asset

because they are so curious they want to talk to us more, so we can learn

more things," said Renya Hernandez, the 24-year-old female exec officer of

the Monomoy.

 

Nagga Haizlip is an Iranian-American sailor who translates into Farsi for

the Chosin when it confronts Iran's Revolutionary Guard Navy. Dressed in

navy fatigues, she told me: "If I call [the Iranians] on bridge-to-bridge

radio they will not want to talk to me. ... They will say, 'I want to speak

to a man.' " As for the Iranian fishermen: "They don't understand I am

actually in the U.S. Navy. That surprises them. ... It is different from

their culture. They ask how do people get along [on the Chosin] and how do

they live together? They are curious."

 

In trying to bring some democracy to Iraq, we are not just challenging the

dictatorial-tribal political order here, but the male-dominated culture as

well. In effect, we are promoting two revolutions at once: Jefferson versus

Saddam and Sinbad versus the Little Mermaids - who turn out to be captains

of ships. Succeeding in this venture, to stem the drift of the Arab world

toward Islamo-fascism and autocracy, is so much more important than the war

critics have ever allowed. But it is also so much more difficult than the

Bush team ever understood or prepared for - even though it was warned. The

Bush team's greatest sin was not thinking that this war was important. It

was thinking that it would be easy.

 

Because, as any ship captain on the gulf will tell you, we are sailing right

into the prevailing winds.

[Guest Mustefser]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-1692606,00.html

 

 

Are you ready? Tomorrow you will be in Paradise . . .

Nasra Hassan

What motivates a suicide bomber? Our correspondent talks to a young Muslim who survived his intended 'martyrdom' and describes the terrorists' rigorous training

 

 

 

AT DAWN, when the three men heard the morning call to prayer from a mosque in the village below their hideout in the hills, they knelt and uttered the traditional invocation to Allah that Muslim warriors make before setting off for combat. They put on clean clothes, tucked the Koran into their pockets, and began the long hike over the hills and along dry riverbeds to the outskirts of Jerusalem.

In the Palestinian neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem, they walked in silence so that their accents, the guttural vernacular of Gaza, would not arouse suspicion. It was June 1993, and they were members of the Palestinian fundamentalist group Hamas. Along the way, they stopped to pray at every mosque. At dusk, they boarded a bus that was heading toward West Jerusalem, filled with Israeli passengers. When the driver thwarted their attempt to hijack the vehicle, they tried to detonate the homemade bombs they were carrying.

 

 

 

The bombs failed to go off, so they pulled out guns and began firing wildly. The shots injured five passengers, including a woman who later died. The young men fled the bus, hijacked a car at a red light, and forced the driver to take them toward Bethlehem. Israeli security forces stopped them at a military checkpoint, and in a gun battle two of the young men and their hostage were killed. The third hijacker, whom I will call S, was struck by a bullet in the head; he lay comatose for two months in Israeli hospitals. Finally, he was pronounced brain-dead, and the Israelis sent him back to his family in the Gaza Strip to die.

 

But S recovered, and when we met, five years later, he told me his version of the events. By then, he was married and the father of three sons. Each of them had been named for shaheed batal — “martyr heroes”.

 

In Gaza, S is celebrated as a young man who “gave his life to Allah” and whom Allah “brought back to life”.

 

He was polite as he welcomed me into his home. The house was surrounded by a high cement wall that had been fortified with steel. We sat down in a large, simply furnished room whose walls were inscribed with verses from the Koran. On one wall was a poster showing green birds flying in a purple sky, a symbol of the Palestinian suicide bombers.

 

S had just turned 27. He is slight, and he walked with a limp, the only trace of his near-death. He invited his wife to join us, and he answered my questions without hesitation.

 

I asked him when, and why, he had decided to volunteer for martyrdom. “In the spring of 1993, I began to pester our military leaders to let me do an operation,” he said. “It was around the time of the Oslo accords, and it was quiet, too quiet. I wanted to do an operation that would incite others to do the same. Finally, I was given the green light to leave Gaza for an operation inside Israel.”

 

“How did you feel when you heard that you’d been selected for martyrdom?” I asked.

 

“It’s as if a very high, impenetrable wall separated you from Paradise or badWord,” he said. “Allah has promised one or the other to his creatures. So, by pressing the detonator, you can immediately open the door to Paradise — it is the shortest path to Heaven.”

 

S was one of 11 children in a middle-class family that, in 1948, had been forced to flee from Majdal to a refugee camp in Gaza, during the Arab-Israeli war that started with the creation of the State of Israel. He joined Hamas in his early teens and became a street activist.

 

In 1989, he served two terms in Israeli prisons for intifada activity, including attacks on Israeli soldiers. One of his brothers is serving a life sentence in Israel.

 

I asked S to describe his preparations for the suicide mission. “We were in a constant state of worship,” he said. “We told each other that if the Israelis only knew how joyful we were they would whip us to death! Those were the happiest days of my life.”

 

“What is the attraction of martyrdom?” I asked.

 

“The power of the spirit pulls us upward, while the power of material things pulls us downward,” he said. “Someone bent on martyrdom becomes immune to the material pull. Our planner asked, ‘What if the operation fails?’ We told him, ‘In any case, we get to meet the Prophet and his companions, inshallah.’

 

“We were floating, swimming, in the feeling that we were about to enter eternity. We had no doubts. We made an oath on the Koran, in the presence of Allah — a pledge not to waver. This jihad pledge is called bayt al-ridwan, after the garden in Paradise that is reserved for the prophets and the martyrs. I know that there are other ways to do jihad. But this one is sweet — the sweetest. All martyrdom operations, if done for Allah ’s sake, hurt less than a gnat’s bite!”

 

S showed me a video that documented the final planning for the operation. In the grainy footage, I saw him and two other young men engaging in a ritualistic dialogue of questions and answers about the glory of martyrdom. S, who was holding a gun, identified himself as a member of al-Qassam, the military wing of Hamas, which is one of two Palestinian Islamist organisations that sponsor suicide bombings. (Islamic Jihad is the other group.) “Tomorrow, we will be martyrs,” he declared, looking straight at the camera. “Only the believers know what this means. I love martyrdom.”

 

The young men and the planner then knelt and placed their right hands on the Koran. The planner said: “Are you ready? Tomorrow, you will be in Paradise.”

 

 

 

SINCE 1982, I have been an international relief worker. In 1996 I was posted to the Gaza Strip during one of the most vicious cycles of suicide bombings. To understand why certain young men voluntarily blow themselves up in the name of Islam, I began, without official sponsorship, to research their backgrounds and the beliefs that had led them to such extreme tactics.

 

I was warned that my interest in trying to understand the suicide missions was dangerous. But eventually, when the people who were observing me had assured themslves of my credentials — an important one was that I am Muslim and from Pakistan — I was allowed to meet members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who would help me. “We are agreeing to talk to you so that you can explain the Islamic context of these operations,” one man told me. “Even many in the Islamic world do not understand.”

 

From 1996 to 1999, I interviewed nearly 250 people involved in the most militant camps of the Palestinian cause: volunteers who, like S, had been unable to complete their suicide missions, the families of dead bombers, and the men who trained them.

 

None of the suicide bombers — they ranged in age from 18 to 38 — conformed to the typical profile of the suicidal personality. None of them was uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded, or depressed. Many were middle-class and held paying jobs. Two were the sons of millionaires. They all seemed entirely normal members of their families. They were polite and serious, and in their communities were considered to be model youths. Most were bearded. All were deeply religious.

 

I was told that to be accepted for a suicide mission the volunteers had to be convinced of the religious legitimacy of the acts they were contemplating, as sanctioned by the divinely revealed religion of Islam. Many of these young men had memorised large sections of the Koran and were well versed in the finer points of Islamic law and practice. But their knowledge of Christianity was rooted in the medieval crusades, and they regarded Judaism and Zionism as synonymous.

 

Most of the men I interviewed requested strict anonymity. The majority spoke in Arabic and they all talked matter-of-factly about the bombings, showing an unshakeable conviction in the rightness of their cause and their methods. When I asked them if they had any qualms about killing innocent civilians, they would immediately respond, “The Israelis kill our children and our women. This is war, and innocent people get hurt.”

 

They were not inclined to argue but they were happy to discuss, far into the night, the issues and the purpose of their activities. One condition of the interviews was that, in our discussions, I not refer to their deeds as “suicide”, which is forbidden in Islam. Their preferred term is “sacred explosions”. One member of al-Qassam said: “We do not have tanks or rockets, but we have something superior — our exploding Islamic bombs.”

 

My contacts told me that, as a military objective, spreading fear among the Israelis was as important as killing them. Anwar Aziz, an Islamic Jihad member who blew himself up in an ambulance in Gaza, in December 1993, had often told friends: “Battles for Islam are won not through the gun but by striking fear into the enemy’s heart.”

 

Military commanders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad remarked that the human bomb was one of the surest ways of hitting a target. A senior Hamas leader said: “The main thing is to guarantee that a large number of the enemy will be affected. With an explosive belt or bag, the bomber has control over vision, location, and timing.”

 

As today’s weapons of mass destruction go, the human bomb is cheap. A Palestinian security official pointed out that, apart from a willing young man, all that is needed are such items as nails, gunpowder, a battery, a light switch and a short cable, mercury (readily obtainable from thermometers), acetone, and the cost of tailoring a belt wide enough to hold six or eight pockets of explosives. The most expensive item is transportation to a distant Israeli town. The total cost of a typical operation is about US $150 (£85). The sponsoring organisation usually gives between $3,000-$5,000 (£1,700- £2,830) to the bomber’s family.

 

I met an imam affiliated with Hamas, a youthful, bearded graduate of the prestigious al Azhar University in Cairo. He explained that the first drop of blood shed by a martyr during jihad washes away his sins instantaneously. On the Day of Judgment, he will face no reckoning. On the Day of Resurrection, he can intercede for 70 of his nearest and dearest to enter Heaven; and he will have at his disposal 72 houris, the beautiful virgins of Paradise. The imam took pains to explain that the promised bliss is not sensual.

 

There is no shortage of willing recruits for martyrdom. Hamas and Islamic Jihad generally reject those who are under 18, who are the sole wage-earners in their families, or who are married and have family responsibilities. If two brothers ask to join, one is turned away.

 

The planners keep a close eye on the volunteer’s self-discipline, noting whether he can be discreet among friends and observing his piety in the mosque. During the week before the operation, two “assistants” are delegated to stay with the potential martyr at all times. They report any signs of doubt, and if the young man seems to waver, a senior trainer will arrive to bolster his resolve.

 

A planner for Islamic Jihad said that his organisation carefully scrutinises the motives of a potential bomber: “We ask this young man, and we ask ourselves, why he wishes so badly to become a human bomb. What are his real motives? Our questions are aimed at clarifying first and foremost for the boy himself his real reasons and the strength of his commitment. Even if he is a long-time member of our group and has always wanted to become a martyr, he needs to be very clear that in such an operation there is no drawing back. Preparation bolsters his conviction, which supports his certitude. It removes fear.”

 

A member of Hamas explained the preparation: “We focus his attention on Paradise, on being in the presence of Allah, on meeting the Prophet Muhammad, on interceding for his loved ones so that they, too, can be saved from the agonies of badWord, on the houris, and on fighting the Israeli occupation and removing it from the Islamic trust that is Palestine.”

 

I asked one planner about the problem of fear. “The boy has left that stage far behind,” he said. “The fear is not for his own safety or his impending death. It does not come from lack of confidence in his ability to press the trigger. It is awe, produced by the situation. He has never done this before and, inshallah, he will never do it again. It comes from his fervent desire for success, which will propel him into the presence of Allah. It is anxiety over the possibility of something going wrong and denying him his heart’s wish. The outcome, remember, lies in Allah’s hands.”

 

Al-khaliyya al-istishhadiyya, which is often mistranslated as “suicide cell” — its proper translation is “martyrdom cell” — is the basic building block of operations. Generally, each cell consists of a leader and two or three young men. When a candidate is placed in a cell, usually after months, if not years, of religious studies, he is assigned the lofty title of al-shaheed al -hayy, “the living martyr”. He is also referred to as “he who is waiting for martyrdom”.

 

Each cell is tightly compartmentalised and secret. Cell members do not discuss their affiliation with their friends or family, and even if two of them know each other in normal life, they are not aware of the other’s membership in the same cell. (Only the leader is known to both.) Each cell, which is dissolved after the operation has been completed, is given a name from the Koran or from Islamic history.

 

The young men undergo intensified spiritual exercises, including prayers and recitations of the Koran. Usually, the trainer encourages the candidate to read six particular chapters of the Koran: Baqara, Al Imran, Anfal, Tawba, Rahman, and Asr, which feature such themes as jihad, the birth of the nation of Islam, war, Allah’s favours and the importance of faith.

 

Religious lectures last from two to four hours each day. The living martyr goes on lengthy fasts. He spends much of the night praying. He pays off all his debts, and asks for forgiveness for actual or perceived offences.

 

In the days before the operation, the candidate prepares a will on paper, audiocassette or video, sometimes all three. The video testaments, which are shot against a background of the sponsoring organisation’s banner and slogans, show the living martyr reciting the Koran, posing with guns and bombs, exhorting his comrades to follow his example, and extolling the virtues of jihad.

 

The wills emphasise the voluntary basis of the mission. “This is my free decision, and I urge all of you to follow me,” one young bomber, Muhammad Abu Hashem, said in a recorded testament before blowing himself up, in 1995, in retaliation for the assassination of Fathi Shiqaqi.

 

The young man repeatedly watches the video of himself, as well as the videos of his predecessors. “These videos encourage him to confront death, not fear it,” one trainer told me. “He becomes intimately familiar with what he is about to do. Then he can greet death like an old friend.”

 

Just before the bomber sets out on his final journey, he performs a ritual ablution, puts on clean clothes, and tries to attend at least one communal prayer at a mosque. He says the traditional Islamic prayer that is customary before battle, and he asks Allah to forgive his sins and to bless his mission. He puts a Koran in his left breast pocket, above the heart, and he straps the explosives around his waist or picks up a briefcase or a bag containing the bomb. The planner bids him farewell with the words “May Allah be with you, may Allah give you success so that you achieve Paradise.”

 

The would-be martyr responds, “Inshallah, we will meet in Paradise.”

 

Hours later, as he presses the detonator, he says, “Allahu akbar” — “Allah is great. All praise to Him.”

 

The operation doesn’t end with the explosion and the many deaths. Hamas and Islamic Jihad distribute copies of the martyr’s audiocassette or video to the media and to local organisations as a record of their success and encouragement to other young men. His act becomes the subject of sermons in mosques, and provides material for leaflets, posters, videos, demonstrations, and extensive coverage in the media. Graffiti on walls in the martyr’s neighbourhood praise his heroism. Aspiring martyrs perform mock re-enactments of the operation, using models of exploding cars and buses. The sponsoring organisation distributes cassettes of chants and songs honouring the good soldier.

 

The bomber’s family and the sponsoring organisation celebrate his martyrdom with festivities, as if it were a wedding. Hundreds of guests congregate at the house to offer congratulations. The hosts serve the juices and sweets that the young man specified in his will. Often, the mother will ululate in joy over the honour that Allah has bestowed upon her family.

 

But there is grief, too. I asked the mother of Ribhi Kahlout, a young man in the Gaza Strip, who had blown himself up in November 1995, what she would have done if she had known what her son was planning to do. “I would have taken a cleaver, cut open my heart, and stuffed him deep inside,” she said. “Then I would have sewn it up tight to keep him safe.”

 

 

Nasra Hassan works in Vienna. She has compiled a database of more than 200 profiles of Muslim suicide bombers and has just completed a book on the subject. A version of this article originally appeared in The New Yorker

 

[Guest Guest]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051115/ap_on_...m4yBHNlYwNmYw--

 

 

Four Americans wer killed in the Amman attacks.. why the American media didn't pay attention to .. Very simple..

 

They were Arab Americans including the famous Syrian-American film director of "The Message" Islamic movie..

[salim]

In support to our freinds at Iraq the model.. Please show your support

 

http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/

 

 

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

 

Kill us, but you won't enslave us.

Last week we stopped writing for a while and we apologized to our readers saying that we lost a close friend but we didn't want to give more details as we were overwhelmed by an exceptional situation and a huge shock. We also were afraid from writing more about this subject for security concerns but now I think I must share this with you as it's part of the pain and suffering my nation is going through.

 

Last week our little and peaceful family was struck by the tragic loss of one of its members in a savage criminal act of assassination. The member we lost was my sister's husband who lived with their two little children in our house.

He was a brilliant young doctor with a whole future awaiting him, the couple were the top graduates in their branch of specialty. They had to travel abroad to get their degrees and the war started while they were there but months after Saddam fallen they decided to come back to help rebuild the country and serve their people.

We welcomed them with all love and care, we would sit and talk everyday about our hopes and dreams for a better future for the new generation and for their two little children. We realized that time is needed before they could have a secure and prosperous life and we were satisfied with the little we could make because we believed in the future.

 

He was not affiliated with any political party or movement and spent all his time working at the hospital or studying at home and he was dreaming of building a medical center for his specialty to serve the poor who cannot afford going to expensive private clinics.

We didn't know or anticipate that cruel times were waiting for a chance to assassinate the dream and kill the future.

 

It was the day he was celebrating the opening of a foundation that was going to offer essential services to the poor but the criminals were waiting for him to end his life with their evil bullets and to stab our family deep in the heart.

 

Grief and pain is killing me everyday as I hold my dear nephews, my sister is shocked beyond words while my parents are dead worried about the rest of us.

We are trying hard to close the wound, summon our patience and protect those still alive while we look forward to the future that we hope can bring peace for us.

 

The terrorists and criminals are targeting all elements of life and they target anyone who wants to do something good for this country…They think by assassinating one of us they could deter us from going forward but will never succeed, they can delay us for years but we will never go back and abandon our dream.

We have vowed to follow the steps of our true martyrs and we will raise the new generation to continue the march, these children of today are the hope and the future.

 

What a difference between those who work to preserve life and those who work to end it…it's terrorism and crime and there are no other words to describe these acts.

They will keep trying to steal life from us and we will keep fighting back and we will keep exposing them but not with bullets and swords, we never carried arms and we will never do because we are not afraid and because we are not weak unlike those cowards who know no language but that of treason.

April will always be there to remind us of the sacrifice and remind us of the dream we fight for.

 

My God keep safe the Iraqis and their friends who stand with them in their noble cause, peace and prosperity may seem far away but we will get there and I hope our sacrifices be a bridge to a better world.

 

Posted by Mohammed @ 16:56

[Guest lachuk]

My condolences to you and yours. Nothing I can say will dull your pain. God be with you.

 

What seems to be what is missing in everthing I read in the news is the absolute condemnation of the Terrorists who are killing more civillians that soldiers. These terrorists and homicide bombers don't really care who they kill and they are too cowardly to stand up and fight like men, or to participate in the legitimate processes of forming a government. If they want to get the US out of there they should participate in forming the government not try to kill it's chances.

[tajer]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Soccer.html?hp

 

 

 

Bombings Mar Soccer Celebrations in Baghdad

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: July 25, 2007

Thousands of soccer fans in Baghdad celebrated the Iraqi team’s victory over South Korea in the Asian Cup semifinals. More Photos >

BAGHDAD (AP) -- The dream run of Iraq's national soccer team captivated an otherwise despairing nation. But even in its moment of joy -- the Iraqis are in the Asian Cup finals for the first time ever -- violence struck Wednesday.

 

Two suicide bombings killed at least 50 cheering, dancing, flag-waving Iraqis celebrating their national triumph. More than 130 other revelers were wounded.

 

The attacks bore the hallmarks of Sunni militants who have fueled the violence tearing at the fragile fabric of Iraq for nearly four years. But these bombings, in parked cars less than an hour apart in separate corners of Baghdad, appeared designed to gain attention rather than target a particular sect.

 

An ice cream parlor was the backdrop for the first attack, at about 6:30 p.m. A suicide attacker exploded his car in a crowd of people cheering near the al-Riwad shop in the predominantly Sunni Mansour neighborhood in west Baghdad, according to the Interior Ministry. At least 30 people were killed and 75 wounded, the ministry said.

 

The second suicide car bombing took place in the midst of dozens of vehicles filled with revelers near an Iraqi army checkpoint in the eastern district of Ghadeer, where an uneasy mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Christians live. At least 20 people died and nearly 60 were wounded, the ministry said.

 

The barbarity of Wednesday's bombings will be remembered for what they abruptly ended.

 

Qusai Bilal, a 35-year-old Sunni grocer in Ghadeer, was watching the unusual sight of a street party outside his store. Young people danced and waved flags when tragedy struck.

 

''A huge blast occurred and, in a second, converted the glorious scene to a black one,'' he said.

 

Ahmed Sattar, who makes a living selling kebabs on a sidewalk grill in the district, asked what could motivate the attacker.

 

''I can't imagine what I had seen,'' said the 28-year-old Shiite. ''The terrorist changed the happiness to sorrow, sadness. The place of joy was converted to a massacre in a matter of seconds. I'm wondering why.''

 

University student Ahmad Mudhar, a Shiite, and his 7-year-old brother were celebrating in Mansour, waving the Iraq flag and singing along with hundreds of other revelers. After the bomber struck, the brothers walked home shaken and heartbroken.

 

''Even during the moments of happiness, the powers of evil and terrorism cause tragedy,'' Mudhar said. Iraqis, he predicted, would return to the streets in celebration ''to shame the terrorists'' if Iraq wins the cup.

 

The revelers were celebrating Iraq's semifinal win over South Korea in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday. Iraq won a tense penalty shootout 4-3 after the two sides played to a scoreless draw in 90 minutes regulation and 30 minutes extra time.

 

Iraq will now play Saudi Arabia on Sunday in Jakarta, Indonesia for the championship.

 

The casualties from the two suicide attacks were not the day's only soccer tragedies.

 

Celebratory gunfire that filled the Baghdad sky with bullets within seconds of the victory killed at least three people and wounded 19, according to initial police reports.

 

State Iraqiya television, perhaps eager not to diminish Iraqi joy, withheld the news of any deaths for at least four hours.

 

Five people had also been killed in the gunfire celebration after Sunday's quarterfinal win over Vietnam and the surprise 3-1 triumph over Australia in the group stages.

 

After Wednesday's victory, thousands danced, beat drums and sang. Traffic was snarled in much of the capital as cars, Iraqi flags flying from their windows, moved slowly through choking crowds of fans on foot. Motorists honked their horns and young people sprayed water on each other.

 

Police and soldiers joined in the celebrations, firing their assault rifles in the air, ignoring an appeal against gunfire from the military chiefs.

The successful run in the Asian Cup led many here to see the mixed sectarian team as proof the country could unite despite years of sectarian violence.

Politicians wasted no time in trying for propaganda gain, heaping praise on ''The Lions of the Two Rivers'' as a symbol of the Iraqi unity, ignoring their own failure to bridge the sectarian divide in Iraq that many see as a result of narrow political agendas.

 

Nouri al-Maliki, the embattled Shiite prime minister, led all others.

 

After the quarterfinal win over Vietnam, he appeared on television and spoke to the team: ''Today you flew high the Iraqi flag. You created happiness with the participation of all Iraqis.'' He dispatched a close adviser to represent him in Wednesday's semifinal clash in Kuala Lumpur.

 

Spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told state television the prime minister was trying to speak to the players individually to congratulate them.

 

''Our eyes were filled with tears by the victory,'' said al-Dabbagh.

 

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, proudly announced that he was the first to congratulate the team on its victory. A statement issued by his office said the team's victory ''was a source of pride for Iraqis of all sects.''