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| More on Ansar al-Islam... |
| 2002-12-27 |
| This is excerpted from a much longer article on Taliban On-Line, which has moved to a subdomain of MuslimThai.com. It's part of a much longer article originally published in Sydney Morning Herald. I've stashed the complete article on WOT Week. "Life was hopeless - even this prison is better. There was no TV, no radio, no newspapers. All I was allowed to do was to stand in the rain, holding my Kalashnikov; and to listen to religious instruction," Didar Khalid Khedr says. "They wouldn't let me see girls, not even a picture on the wrapping of a bar of soap. But they promised me virgins in paradise when I exploded the bomb." Khedr is a mechanic, but he lost his job in the city of Irbil because of a bad back. He was heading for the valley and the Ansar-controlled village of Biyara because of a chance meeting at a mosque in Irbil. He explains: "I met a man named Annis. He told me about Ansar and we decided to join as fighters. I was in Biyara for six or seven months - they put me on guard duty in Gulup village." He says the villagers see little of the Afghan Arabs who have made their homes in a network of inaccessible caves in the mountains, as a result of which the area has been dubbed Tora Bora - the same as the frontier cave network in which bin Laden and hundreds of his al-Qaeda fighters made their last stand in the east of Afghanistan last year. Life for the valley communities is in retreat. Women are fined for going without their veil and some have been subjected to acid attacks. The villagers are made to watch video-recordings of torture sessions as a warning not to stray from Ansar's narrow social and religious dictates. Girls are not allowed to go to school after age 12; teachers may not teach children of the opposite sex. Music, pictures and advertising are forbidden. Villagers are ordered to the mosque and must live by the ancient tenets of Sharia law. Khedr tells the story of how he was selected as a suicide bomber. "In Biyara village I made another friend - Hisham," he says. "He encouraged me to volunteer to be a suicide bomber. The bomb had 5 kilograms of TNT in it and it was made by Ali Wali, who told me he became an expert in explosives in Afghanistan, fighting first against the Russians, and then with the Taliban." Khedr has just started describing the bomb in detail when the jailer returns and drops the bomb vest on the floor between us, in such a way that the blocks of explosive spill onto the carpet. It is the work of a true professional and Khedr proceeds to model it. It has eyelets for a corset-like lace to ensure a snug fit on his body, and all the wiring is carefully wound in black insulation tape. And Wali the bomb maker takes no risks. A separate belt, worn around the waist, is fitted with its own explosives - four lumps of TNT, each about the size of a cigarette packet - and its own detonator, so that if the main bomb fails, the bomber will still be able to detonate an explosion. "The men who coached me on how to use it were Abu Shafa, Ansar's deputy leader, and Abu Bahkir," says Khedr. "They told me they were representatives of Osama bin Laden. My instructions were to blow the body bomb, and if that didn't work to press the second switch for the belt bomb. They tried to make me scared of the PUK so that I would kill myself rather than be captured, by saying that if they took me alive they would cut away bits of my skin every day. The Arab Afghans drove me about 25km to the town of Sayid Sadiq - I was to blow myself up in front of the peshmerga headquarters. The plan was that Ansar would attack the town and I would blow up during the battle." |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 I love the admiration with which the writer describes the design of the boom suit. The string, the tape, how exquisite! Clearly, it represents the epitome of Arab engineering and craftmanship. Still, a backup detonation system just in case it doesn't work the one freaking time it needs to. At least we don't have to worry about these guys building a stealth bomber, aircraft carrier or Kia-class subcompact anytime soon. |
| Posted by: John 2002-12-27 15:10:40 |