[lit-ideas] What makes an al-Qaida suicide bomber?

From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 19:57:05 -0700 (PDT)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,,1862718,00.html

One of the most bewildering sights since last month's
dramatic Heathrow alert has been the succession of
government ministers insisting that the terrorist
threat has nothing to do with Iraq and British support
for American foreign policy. Such political
certainties fly in the face of all the empirical
evidence I have found in a year of investigating how
young Muslims are radicalised and recruited to fight
in Iraq, not just in Britain but across Europe and the
Middle East. Whenever and wherever I asked the
families and friends of suicide bombers why their
loved ones had been prepared to blow themselves up,
top of their list was Iraq. Some were radicalised by
the alleged illegality of the US invasion, others by
torture at Abu Ghraib and abuses by the American
military, and all by the continuing occupation of a
Muslim land by foreign forces - including the British
army.
Mike Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit,
put it bluntly: "Iraq is an almost unimaginable force
multiplier for Bin Laden, al-Qaida and their allies,"
he told me.

In the Middle East, I met a young Arab who was hoping
to go to Iraq and become a shaheed, a martyr. He told
me he had already tried to get into Iraq via Syria to
join the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group, al-Qaida
in Iraq, but had returned home to try again later
after some of those he travelled with were arrested
near the border. Some, he said, managed to get
through. At some stage he hoped to follow.

He was clearly nervous. He was young, barely 20, with
a red keffiyeh covering his face to conceal his
identity. He said he planned to go to Iraq "to support
our oppressed brothers and send the enemy out of
Muslim lands, to fight in the name of God and ask for
entry into paradise". I had no doubt he meant it. He
said he was prepared to become a suicide bomber. "The
important thing is to be killed as a martyr," he said.

Shezhad Tanweer, one of the 7/7 bombers from Leeds,
expressed much the same sentiments in the video he
recorded before he killed himself and seven passengers
on the Circle line near Aldgate. He made it clear "to
the non-Muslims of Britain" why he had done it. "Your
government has openly supported the genocide of
150,000 innocent Muslims in Falluja," he said. "You
are directly responsible for the problems in
Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq to this day."

It is not known precisely how many Muslims have left
the UK for Iraq. I asked Peter Clarke, head of
Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, if it was
possible to put a figure on the number. "We don't know
exactly how many. We simply don't have a very clear
picture of the total scale of the problem," he
admitted. Muslims about to go to Iraq do not tell even
those closest to them what they are intending to do.
There is at least one case in Britain where an
individual appears to have been stopped, but it is
currently sub judice and cannot be discussed.

Wail al-Dhaleai, 22, from Sheffield was the last
person his friends ever dreamed would go to Iraq and
die. He is thought to have been shot dead by US troops
in 2003 while trying to blow them up. He had never
figured on the radar of South Yorkshire special branch
or MI5. The first they appear to have heard was when a
newspaper in his native Yemen reported that a family
friend had called with the news that Dhaleai had
become a shaheed.

Dhaleai came to the UK in 2000 as an asylum seeker,
settled down and married a young Yorkshire woman at
Sheffield registry office in January 2002. His wife
converted to Islam. Dhaleai soon became a father. He
appears to have been universally popular, not least
because of the martial arts skills he developed and
passed on to others at the young people's class he set
up. His tae kwon do mentor and friend was Andy Hill.
He knew that Dhaleai was a Muslim who took his faith
seriously - he would sometimes stop in class to pray -
but never realised how deep that faith ran until
Dhaleai took the examination for his black belt. After
displaying his skills before the visiting grand
master, Dhaleai had to bow before him. To Hill's
horror, he refused. "I bow to no man but Allah," he
said. "Bollocks!" was Hill's reaction. Dhaleai stood
his ground - and was still awarded his black belt.

In September 2003, Dhaleai made a pilgrimage to Mecca
and brought back an Arab tea set for Hill. He was very
touched. Dhaleai said he had met someone who had
offered him a job as a security guard in Dubai. The
next month, he left. On the eve of his departure, a
friend asked him why he was leaving when he had such a
great family and prospects. Dhaleai replied that where
he was going he would meet an even more beautiful
woman. Presumably he meant paradise.

A fortnight later, special branch came to Hill's door,
questioned him and then told him what was said to have
happened to his friend. Hill was shattered. "I still
can't believe that somebody so nice could do that," he
says.

Last year, French intelligence neutralised five
networks that were channelling young Muslims to Iraq.
Unlike Clarke, France's anti-terrorist coordinator
Christophe Chabout will put a figure on the numbers
who have gone to Iraq. He estimates around 20 and says
that most of them went to join "al-Qaida in Iraq",
which is subordinate to al-Qaida's central command.
Chabout is also concerned about new networks emerging
to replace those that have been broken. "It's quite
amazing to see how fast these young men can be
convinced and brainwashed to go to a country they have
no idea of," he says. "But that's the reality."

The most startling example of rapid radicalisation
involved a number of North Africans from the Parisian
suburb of Butte Chaumont who are said to have fallen
under the influence of a 22-year-old self-proclaimed
imam called Farid Benyettou. Three died of them died
on suicide missions in 2004. They were aged 18, 19 and
20. Benyettou is now in prison awaiting trial. So too
are others he allegedly recruited. One has just been
sentenced to 15 years in an Iraq prison after being
arrested by the Americans in Falluja. Another, Thamer
Bouchnak, was intercepted at Orly airport before he
could fly to Iraq. His lawyer knows what things made
his client angry. Abu Ghraib was one. "When he saw his
Muslim brothers being tortured and humiliated by the
American forces and being killed by American soldiers
for oil and petrol and not to set people free, he was
revolted and wanted to fight."

There is now another growing worry: that jihadis
trained in Iraq are returning to carry out operations
back home, as happened with the Afghan jihadi
diaspora. It is known as "blowback". It is a concern
that Britain shares. Although Clarke says there is not
much evidence of people returning to Britain from
Iraq, he adds the rider "as yet". "It's something that
we're looking at very closely," he says.

In France, there is already evidence of blowback.
Hamid Bach, a French Moroccan living in Montpellier,
is now awaiting trial on charges of making a bomb and
planning an attack in France. As part of his
radicalisation, he was taken to listen to Abu Hamza at
Finsbury Park mosque. Iraq appears to have triggered
his decision to take drastic action. His wife told me
about the conversations they used to have at home. "We
discussed Iraq, like all families. We can't ignore it.
It's dreadful to see people being bombarded day and
night. These people suffer and we suffer with them."
Hamid decided to do something about it and was
recruited by a network to go to Iraq. His wife says
that when he crept out of the house one morning, she
had no idea where he was going. When he got to Syria
and found out that he had been selected to become a
suicide bomber, he had second thoughts. He had wanted
to fight like a soldier and not blow himself up. In
order to return to Montpellier, he told his lawyer, he
had agreed to assist with logistics for an operation
in France. Back home, he bought 19 bottles of hydrogen
peroxide from the local supermarket and accessed
details of explosives and detonators on the internet.
According to his lawyer, he was only going through the
motions to make it appear to those who might be
watching that he was keeping to his part of the
bargain.

In Jordan, I saw the sorrow of parents who had lost a
son. Raed Elbana was a young lawyer who went to
California and enjoyed a rock'n'roll lifestyle. He
returned to Jordan during the Iraq war where,
according to one of his college friends, Abdullah Abu
Rahman, he was radicalised by Salafi jihadis. "They
told him about holy war and fighting the Americans,"
he said. When his father noticed that he was growing a
beard, Elbana explained it away by saying he had been
travelling for three days and had not had a chance to
shave. He then told his parents he was leaving for
Dubai, where he had got a legal job. Later, his father
got a phone call from Iraq saying, "Father of Raed, I
congratulate you. Raed was martyred." Then the line
went dead.

According to al-Qaida in Iraq's website, Elbana was a
shaheed who attacked a Shia clinic in the Iraqi town
of Hi'lla; 118 died. It was said he was handcuffed to
the steering wheel of the car bomb.

In the wake of last year's bombings in London, Tony
Blair said, "Let us expose the obscenity of these
people saying it is concern for Iraq that drives them
to terrorism." Such attacks in London and elsewhere
are undoubtedly obscene, but the reason for them is
scarcely beyond doubt. As Scheuer says, "Iraq is a
self-recruiting machinery for al-Qaida. Al-Qaida
doesn't have to do anything except let Iraq speak for
itself".

¡¤ Al Qaeda: Time to Talk?, the first programme in
Peter Taylor's new series, will be shown this Sunday
at 9pm on BBC2.




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[lit-ideas] What makes an al-Qaida suicide bomber?

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