Taliban commander Qari Hussain released a 40-minute propaganda tape showing statements of suicide bombers and the aftermath of their attacks inside Pakistan. The videotape was distributed by Taliban commander Qari Hussain during a press conference held in the provincial capital of Peshawar.
The press conference demonstrates that the Taliban feel they are not under a serious threat in the capital of the Northwest Frontier Province. The military has launched three operations to relieve the Taliban pressure on Peshawar, but the Taliban continue to encroach on the city.
The tape “shows men and youths, some apparently in their teens, addressing the camera about their intention to carry out suicide attacks to background music of Urdu-language militant anthems,” AFP reported.
The suicide bombers took credit for attacks against Pakistani security and intelligence forces, including the March 2008 double suicide attack on the headquarters of the Federal Investigation Agency in Lahore (26 killed and more than 160 wounded) and the September 2007 attack on an Inter-Service Intelligence agency bus and a military bazaar in Rawalpindi (25 killed, 68 wounded).
The suicide bombers all spoke Pashto, indicating they were from Pakistan’s Pashtun-dominated northwest, and said carrying out the attacks is their religious duty.
“I’m going to do this suicide bombing with Islamic sentiments,” a teenage suicide bomber named Masood who was involved with the Lahore attack said. “Suicide bombers are the atomic weapons of Muslims because Muslims do not have the latest weapons to fight enemies who are committing atrocities against Muslims in Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Hussain encouraged Muslims to join the Taliban to wage jihad against the United States, Israel, and Pakistan. “Israel, America and Pakistan’s military are committing atrocities against Muslims so jihad has become compulsory for all Muslims,” Hussain said on the tape.
Hussain, who is based out of South Waziristan, is a senior deputy to Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud and an ally of al Qaeda in Pakistan. He runs camps in South Waziristan that train children to become suicide bombers. Children as young as seven years old are indoctrinated to wage jihad in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a video taken at one of his camps in Spinkai showed.
The Pakistani military demolished Hussain’s suicide nursery during a short offensive against the Taliban in Spinkai in January 2008. The military launched a short operation after Taliban forces commanded by Baitullah overran two military outposts and conducted attacks against other forts and military convoys in the tribal agency.
The military seized numerous documents and training materials in the demolished camp. In May, a senior Pakistani general described the previous camp as a suicide “factory” for children.
The Pakistani military reported that Hussain was killed in January, based on intercepted Taliban communications. The military later reiterated that claim during the tour of the Spinkai camp on May 18, 2008.
Five days later, Hussain mocked the military during a press conference held at a government school building in South Waziristan. “I am alive, don’t you see me?” Hussain taunted.
Hussain rebuilt his child training camps in South Waziristan sometime in the spring or summer of 2008.
The Spinkai camp is one of 157 training camps and more than 400 support locations in the Taliban-controlled tribal areas and in the insurgency-infested Northwest Frontier Province. The Taliban control all seven tribal agencies and several settled districts in the province. The Taliban and al Qaeda conducted 61 suicide attacks in Pakistan in 2008, resulting in 889 civilians and security officers killed and 2,072 more wounded.
15 Comments
That’s interesting. What are the Atomic Bombs of the Pakistani Military then? Chopped Liver?
So what kind of bang does America get for its bucks invested in the military of Pakistan?
Does anyone have a figure of how much America has already remitted to Pakistan in the last 7 long years in this long war?
And with what results? For the Wild West never appeared wilder. . . Pakistan’s military is touted as the 7th largest in the world! (For context, its economy is no 46 in the World Banks league table, as compared with its neighbor, India at no. 11) So why has it not been able to deliver security within its own territory? Does the US have a real strategy to support its massive military investments? These are difficult times so we must ask the most seriously difficult questions, must we not?
StrategyPage had an interesting article yesterday on the effectivity of suicide bombings.
StrategyPage: Dismal Track Record of Suicide Bombers
The child suicide training camps of Qari Hussain remind me a lot of the Hitler Youth camps toward the end of World War II when the Germans needed cannon fodder to fight the oncoming Allied forces. It just stuns me that the training starts as early as 7 years of age. The only way the Allies stopped killers like this (along with their Japanese counterparts, the Kamikaze), was by totally crushing both Germany and Japan militarily. My fear is that the West will never get rid of this very dangerous threat unless a major war is fought in Pakistan and these Muslim extemists are either killed or forced to surrender. I also don’t expect any help from the current Pakistani government, which either supports these actions or just isn’t able to suppress them. Either way, they’re not doing much to stop them, which means that Muslim terrorists have a base of operations for training even more killers for years to come. Since I doubt Western nations have the will or the stomach to address this problem, we had better get used to even more Mumbai-style attacks emanating from Pakistan. It just remains to be seen how much longer it will be before another 9/11-type attack is launched not from training camps in Afghanistan, but from training camps inside Pakistan and it ends up killing thousands of people in a major Western nation. If that day comes (and it ends up harming the United States), I don’t think that Western nation is going to be as understanding as India was after the Mumbai attack.
T Ruth confuses weapons with tactics.
“So suicide bombers don’t work, altho strategy page made no mention of 9/11, which were suicide bombings.”
Of course a bombing may kill people, but does it lead to the desired outcome? Where is the Caliphate? Did the “paper tiger” USA fold upon being attacked on 9/11, as predicted by Osama? Do the Taliban still rule Afghanistan? The Taliban and AQ are both in hiding, though the Taliban is having more success currently than AQ. Suicide bombs led to defeat in Iraq for AQ as the Sunnis turned against the tactic. Even Zawahiri told Zarqawi to cool it with the civilian casualties. The attacks of 9/11 led to the death of Saddam and his sons, the end of his payments to Palestinian suicide bombers, the removal of the Taliban from the government of Afghanistan, and drove a sharp wedge into the Middle East which stabs Iran, the Taliban and AQ. Iraq and it’s oil no longer support violent Islam. Iraq’s oil now assists the USA and the people of Iraq. Within 7 years Iraq will be a rich country instead of a poorhouse run by a maniac.
Suicide bombing is a loser. It’s adherents hold no territory. The lonely terrorist haven in Pakistan only exists due to the USA allowing it to exist to avoid civilian casualties, which would inflame Muslims. Killing civilians is a loser for any side in a conflict.
Suicide bombings have mixed results, depending on where and how they are used. In Pakistan’s northwest, if not throughout the country, they have been very effective in cowering the people opposing the Taliban – including the nascent tribal groups that have been destroyed in Swat, Dir, Bannu, Kohat, Arakzai… I could go on – as well as elements in the civilian population, the government, and the military.
In Iraq, the suicide attacks came close to driving the country to a real civil war as well as a hasty US exit.
I think suicide attacks have been ineffective in Algeria, the government hasn’t wavered there. There have been mixed results in the West: 9-11 cause the US to take the fight to al Qaeda while Madrid scared Spain out of Iraq. India has absorbed blow after blow, only reacting after a terror assault on Mumbai, not mass-casualty suicide attacks.
Al Qaeda is not holed up in Pakistan’s tribal areas. I’d suggest reading this, noting that Yemen, Iran, Somalia, and parts of Afghanistan are al Qaeda’s major havens.
https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/01/the_state_of_jihad_2_1.php
DNI McConnell’s statements that al Qaeda is cornered in Pakistan has more to do with his legacy building than the actual reality on the ground.
This people do not deserve to live!
I think we need to remind them what an Atomic bomb would do because they are clueless
“Al Qaeda is not holed up in Pakistan’s tribal areas. I’d suggest reading this, noting that Yemen, Iran, Somalia, and parts of Afghanistan are al Qaeda’s major havens.”
Point taken, Bill. I knew better when I wrote that. I will also bow to your points about the efficacy of some attacks, while holding to my opinion that such attacks will not be successful against the West in the long run.
Terrorism has always been an exercise in extreme rhetoric. Winning asymmetric warfare is an important part of the struggle, but the message sent is equally if not more important. The old style terrorists of the 60’s and 70’s didn’t do it as an act of religious dedication; they did it to create a large scale media spectacle. By holding an airliner or embassy hostage, a small group could use the entire world media to get their message out. Nation states could also employ loosely connected terrorist groups to carry out a proxy war against an enemy without direct risk to the sponsor nation.
Terrorist bombings have evolved into acts of ritual sacrifice. It is an act of ultimate sacrifice to blow one’s self up to further the cause. It says that the lives of both the bomber and the victims are of less importance in the scheme of things than submission and devotion to the cause. They reserve the right to wipe out anyone they deem un-Islamic with any means at their disposal. The profanity of the mass casualty bombings only underscores their complete rejection of the modern world.
Neo, I agree with your analysis of the rhetoric of terrorism. I would add, however, that these suicide-bombing terrorists are not really rejecting the modern world — they, and terrorism, are certainly a part of it — but rather, rejecting humanity itself.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 01/19/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
Neo:
“Nation states could also employ loosely connected terrorist groups to carry out a proxy war against an enemy without direct risk to the sponsor nation.”
Very accurately put. This is what’s happening in Mumbai attacks. If terrorists are successful, we will see this pattern spread around the world causing untold harm.
MUSLIM SUICIDE BOMBERS HAVE PROVED TO BE A VERY EFFECTIVE WEAPON IN KILLING MUSLIMS.
“MUSLIM SUICIDE BOMBERS HAVE PROVED TO BE A VERY EFFECTIVE WEAPON IN KILLING MUSLIMS.”