Terrorists and Iraq

[Mr T.]

Originally Posted by turbanator

I agree about the propaganda issue, but the recent murders were not done with a sword.

All the recent murders of captives by these mad dogs (going back to that of the FT journo Pearlman in Pakistan, and even the slaughter of 12 Nepalese - 2 beheaded, 10 shot) have been done with a form of knife/small blade. None have been done with a sword.

[Brass Monkey]

[Brass Monkey]

Although I believed in everything that was in the last post I have came under pressure (or maybe good advise) to delete the whole thing. This I have done, my thanks to all that read what was there and agreed. Alas I am as soft as those I spoke of, now being one of the "public". Sorry for the retraction but I have been told it's not wise for me to say such things in public.
To the guys that supported what I'd wrote, sorry guys but I live in these parts and the family thought that I was potentially bringing down trouble on us. This logic could not be argued with. Hope you all understand.


Thus conscience makes cowards of us all. Or as my wife just said "It will only take one of these nutters with an AK to change our lives for the worse".


Dave.

[Mr T.]

Video nasty
(Filed: 26/09/2004)

Con Coughlin on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader whose murderous mission came to him in a dream

It came to him in a dream. One night in 1992, as the 26-year-old Abu Musab al-Zarqawi slept in his shabby, two-storey house in Jordan, he dreamt that a glistening sword had fallen from heaven and come to rest, somewhat conveniently, in his outstretched hand.

On one side of the sword was inscribed the word Jihad, Holy War. On the other side was his name, Abu Musab, and a verse from the Koran: "Thy Lord has not forsaken thee. Do not despair or mourn. You will be victorious if you truly believe."

The next morning Zarqawi arose from his bed a changed man. The former foot-soldier of the bloody campaign in Afghanistan in the 1980s to evict the Russian interlopers had been transformed into a visionary who saw it as his personal mission to eradicate the Arab world of infidels. "Due to what the Jews are doing in Palestine, the sanctions against Iraq, the mass killings in Chechnya, and what happened in Bosnia, military jihad has become the religious duty of every Muslim," he declared to a Jordanian journalist in a rare interview.

Twelve years later this mission has made him the most notorious, and feared, leader of the insurgency to drive coalition forces out of Iraq. Apart from orchestrating suicide car-bomb attacks against coalition targets such as the United Nations headquarters and the Italian embassy, Zarqawi has struck terror into the hearts of all the foreign soldiers and contractors engaged in the painstaking business of reconstruction in Iraq by demonstrating his less than proficient decapitation skills.

Certainly Zarqawi's sword has lost some of its edge since it dropped from the heavens. Last May, having first revealed his identity before a video camera, it took Zarqawi nearly a minute to remove the head of Nicholas Berg, his young American captive.

Last week it required 35 seconds of frenzied slashing for him to murder Eugene Armstrong, the American contractor seized in Baghdad with another American and the Liverpudlian Kenneth Bigley. The following day one of his accomplices murdered the other American hostage, Jack Hensley, in a similarly laboured fashion.

Zarqawi's masterful manipulation of the media over the fate of Mr Bigley has increased his international notoriety, for the moment making him even more famous than Osama bin Laden, his former comrade-in-arms in Afghanistan. Indeed, such is the desperation of the American forces to capture Zarqawi - dead or alive - that they have placed a $25 million (£13.8 million) reward on his head - the same amount that was offered for Saddam's capture.

Despite mounting an intense military and intelligence campaign based on the restive town of Fallujah, the Americans still appear to be chasing shadows. There have been no publicly confirmed sightings of Zarqawi, no confirmation of which town he may be operating from, although the Americans have been bombing Fallujah, claiming to be striking at forces linked to him.

There is no shortage of material available on the streets of Baghdad that attests to his personal involvement in masterminding the campaign of terror against Iraq's "infidels". The stalls of Baghdad's thieves' market are filled with snuff movies released by the "media section" of Zarqawi's Tawhid wal Jihad group (Unity and Holy War).

For less than a dollar it is possible to purchase a DVD that depicts in horrifying detail Zarqawi's latest gruesome atrocity. In some cases, such as the Bulgarian worker and a South Korean translator, the victims plead for their lives in broken English, while others sit passively, their heads bowed, awaiting the fatal blow. The lucky ones, such as Murat Yuce, the Turkish driver whose only offence was to have driven supplies for the US army, are shot in the head with a pistol.

The sophistication of Zarqawi's propaganda techniques, which have made him the most prominent terrorist of the internet age, is surprising given his peasant origins. Born on October 30 1964 in the industrial town of al Zarqa in east Jordan, Zarqawi's real name is Ahmed Fadel Nazal Khalayleh. One of nine children, his sister Amina recalls that young Ahmed was his father's pet, "the apple of his eye".

He had an unremarkable childhood. "Ahmed was a normal boy, just like other boys, and he was not even religious during his adolescence," she told the Jordanian journalist Muhammed Annajar. "He only became religious after the death of his father."

Ahmed was affected deeply by the death of his father, a retired army officer, in 1984, and for a time he acquired a reputation as a drunken lout, hanging out with gangs of local Jordanian and Palestinian thugs. Apart from drinking heavily, he was constantly in trouble with the Jordanian authorities for carrying knives and iron bars, which he was not averse to using at the least provocation. His neighbours say that at one point he was jailed for drug abuse and sexual assault. He acquired a tattoo on his shoulder, which, when he later sought to improve his standing in the local community, he removed with hydrochloric acid.

Eventually his brothers and sisters persuaded him to mend his ways, and in 1987 he set off to fight with the muhajadeen against the Russians in Afghanistan. After the war ended in 1989 he became a journalist working for an Islamic magazine, eventually returning home to Jordan in 1992. He took two wives, a Palestinian and a Jordanian, who provided him with two sons and a daughter, who still live in the family's two-storey home in al Zarqa.

The Afghan experience certainly made a deep impression on him and, inspired by the revelatory experience of his 1992 dream, he soon became involved with Bayaat al-Imam, a Jordanian Islamic group accused of planning the violent overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy and replacing it with an Islamic caliphate.

He was sentenced to 15 years' hard labour and it was during his imprisonment in Swaqa jail that he changed his name to Abu Musab after the legendary Islamic fighter Musab bin Mayer, a contemporary of the Prophet Mohammed. Although Musab lost both his arms in battle, he continued to carry Mohammed's standard with his stumps, despite the certainty that he would be killed, making him a symbol for today's suicide bombers. Zarqawi's new surname was taken from his home town.

When he was released under an amnesty in 1999, he returned to Afghanistan where, with bin Laden's consent, he set up a training camp in the western city of Herat. After the September 11 attacks and the defeat of the Taliban, he escaped to northern Iraq, by way of Iran, where he came in contact with Ansar al-Islam, a radical Islamic group with links to al-Qaeda.

It was during this period that a number of intelligence reports linked him with Saddam's regime, claiming that he had received hospital treatment in Baghdad for injuries sustained during the Afghan war that required the amputation of one of his legs.

But Zarqawi only came into his own after Saddam's overthrow, when the collapse of the country's security infrastructure enabled him to assume a leading role in the insurgency to drive coalition forces out of Iraq. Although his radical agenda of turning Iraq into an Islamic state is anathema to many Iraqis, his organisation has nevertheless flourished, mainly because it has demonstrated its effectiveness in launching a series of devastating attacks against the coalition.

Zarqawi's success in driving the infidels from Iraq will depend to a large extent on his ability to survive the coalition's determined effort to eliminate him. Shortly before Zarqawi's mother, Um Sayel, died last March, she said that she hoped to hear that Ahmed - "the nearest to my heart of all my children" - had been "martyred" rather than fall into the hands of the Americans. It is a wish that the coalition forces are desperately attempting to fulfil.


* Con Coughlin is the author of 'Saddam: The Sectret Life'.

[HelenM]

Is the media helping the hostage takers?


By Peter Preston
Former editor of the Guardian


The taking of hostages, such as Ken Bigley in Iraq, has prompted debate on the media's role and responsibilities in covering such events.

Does publicity help or hinder their plight? Was Margaret Thatcher right to decry the 'oxygen of publicity'?

The dilemma is beginning to haunt editors everywhere. How do you deal with this wave of hostage taking from Russia to Iraq?

How do you cover something where, time and again, your coverage is part of the reason why the hostages were taken in the first place?

Ken Bigley being held in Iraq

Perhaps the media has been a little slow off the mark here, blinded by a certain arrogance.

We couldn't believe that Chechen revolutionaries or Al-Qaeda terrorists with beards and kaftans could be sophisticated spin doctors, too - let alone that it was us they were spinning.

But that is the truth of it. The Chechens who stormed that school in Beslan and shot their own videos inside it expected to see TV cameras poking 24 hours a day from surrounding buildings.

That was one of the points of their brutal exercise. The most vicious of the Iraqi groups who take hostages like Kenneth Bigley aren't after ransom money: they want their deeds on the internet and then on front pages and television screens everywhere.

It boosts their power in the Arab world. It shakes western public opinion. It's the name of their game.

What do we - those editors who have come to realise the ploy and our readers and listeners - do about that?

Another infernal dilemma. Many readers or listeners have a simple answer, the one Mrs Thatcher gave long ago when she decried the 'oxygen of publicity'.

Simply: don't show the hostages or their masked captors, don't publicise the demands or chart the progress, don't mention the beheadings or the agonies of their families.

What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over. Enforce blanket silence and (perhaps) the hostage takers will go away.


But, like all simple answers, this one doesn't quite work. It doesn't work for the two smiling Italian hostages now released from captivity and safe home. It hasn't been the way to get two French journalists back to freedom - or many more hostages before them.

Some groups in Iraq are extortionists, not zealots; some bargains are best made in the open.

How, though, do you know who you're dealing with until some way down the line? News isn't a water tap, to be switched off and on arbitrarily.

'Free society'

Readers and listeners aren't stooges, to be informed and then ignored. In a free society, moreover, I think that citizens who have the profound ill luck to be taken hostage deserve more than being left to die in silence, to join the ranks of the disappeared. That is us using them as pawns; and we ought to be better than that. No: the only way is the hard way. It means thought and reflection from editors, reporters and listeners alike. It means seeing, hour by hour, the nature of the manipulation and explaining the probabilities. The injunction, at the last, is to tell the whole story, the full truth. And if sickening spin is part of that story, to make sure that we all understand that, too. The hostages have to live, terrified, in the dark. We have to live in the light.

[Tony F]

We have all the questions all right but there's no easy answers here.

I'm of the opinion that the media should curtail it's reporting of these events however. I stand to be corrected but I don't believe in the western world we've tried this approach and if for no other reason than what we're doing currently isn't working than I say give it a go.

My view for what it's worth is that denying the publicity is taking away some of the effectiveness of these actions. Cam made the point very well that this could spur the terrorists on to larger events, he could well be right sadly but I think I believe taking away some of the success at the present time has to be worth trying at least.

The post above says this approach "doesn't work for the two smiling Italian hostages now released from captivity and safe home. It hasn't been the way to get two French journalists back to freedom - or many more hostages before them" . Well how do we know it wouldn't? Come on, Turkeys don't vote for Christmas, the media will never believe silence is the answer.

And what did work then? Giving in to the demands, oh great idea - not!

Of course it is a free world (hic) and we do have the free press, I don't think they should be silenced but rather a restriction of reporting applied.

And picking up on the religious point and allying it to the use of the term 'murder' rather than 'execution' is useful I believe. Whatever their religious faith is these people believe that they act with it's blessing. No religion condones murder however so we ought to use the word then, every little bit of politics helps.

Well that's MHO, I wish I really knew it would be the right approach but I don't, better and more powerful people than me are in just the same position and that's our problem.

[chrisch]

Originally Posted by Tony F

The post above says this approach "doesn't work for the two smiling Italian hostages now released from captivity and safe home. It hasn't been the way to get two French journalists back to freedom - or many more hostages before them" . Well how do we know it wouldn't? Come on, Turkeys don't vote for Christmas, the media will never believe silence is the answer.

As an aside - adding nothing to the debate I accept - the media coverage here of the two women was very heavy. Of the 20 odd channels we have all but the 24hr music and the sports-only channel did not cover it live or in a news special.

Chris

[nickjb]

How about changing 'terrorists' to 'freedom fighters' and 'hostages' to 'hostile invading force'. It is all semantics

I wonder what you would do if your homeland was invaded by force with vastly superior weaponry.

What this group is doing may be disgusting but then so is what the Americans are doing

[Mark]

Hi,

the terms Resistance and freedom fighters should be inlcuded in the poll. They may be mad and very bad but so are the yanks (and us).

I think it is exactly the same as the illegal Iraeli occupation of Palestine then calling the PLO etc. the terrorists.

Its all just propaganda to feed the current hysteria surrounding terrorists or to support US interests.

Regards,

Mark.

[Mr T.]

Media aiding kidnappers, says Allawi
By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor
(Filed: 01/10/2004)

Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi prime minister, demanded yesterday that Kenneth Bigley's kidnappers be starved of publicity.

He said the intense exposure given to the plight of the Liverpool engineer was only encouraging the taking of more hostages.

"Terrorists feed on the media," he said. "If you cut off this oxygen, they will die very quickly."

As the British Government declared its readiness to "listen" to the kidnappers but not to negotiate with them, Mr Allawi said his intelligence services were trying to find the captors and "put pressure" on them.

The Iraqi leader threw his weight behind Tony Blair, saying that Britain had been right to go to war in Iraq. He said that demands for the early withdrawal of coalition troops was "music to the ears of the terrorists and the insurgents".

Mr Allawi, addressing a meeting of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, was keen to give assurances that Iraq's extremists were being defeated and that January's elections would take place on time. He expressed confidence that Iraq would eventually become a "model" for democracy in the Middle East.

He said: "We are making serious progress in defeating these extremists and ensuring that democracy wins out in Iraq."

But he faced a welter of questions about what he was doing to secure the release of Mr Bigley, who appeared in a new video released by his kidnappers the previous evening.

The 62-year-old captive was seen pleading for his life as he sat shackled in a cage, wearing an orange jump-suit reminiscent of terrorist suspects held by the Americans at their base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The kidnappers had earlier shown footage of two of his American colleagues being beheaded.

Mr Allawi said: "The videos his captors have released show not only their brutality but also their ruthlessness and their wile.

"It is repugnant to take an innocent man like Kenneth Bigley and to use him as a political pawn in this way. The anguish and pain inflicted on his family and friends are indescribable. My heart goes out to them and my prayers are with them and with Kenneth."

But Mr Allawi said he was saddened by the media coverage: "Let us not forget that this terrorism depends entirely on publicity. We therefore need to think long and hard about how this kidnapping has been covered by the media . . .

"Can we justify showing videos of hostages or groups of armed and hooded men? Is this not exactly the publicity the terrorists seek? Should we play their game?"

Mr Allawi delivered his tough comments as Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, met members of the Bigley family in London. Mr Straw said earlier that the Government was ready to open some form of dialogue with the hostage takers.

"We have made it clear - we have a policy which we adhere to strictly and always - that we do not negotiate with hostage takers," he told GMTV television. "But we want Mr Bigley released. Were the hostage takers to get in touch with us, we would obviously listen to what they have to say."

That was a more careful choice of words than those Mr Blair used on Wednesday when he said at the Labour Party conference in Brighton: "They have made no attempt to have any contact with us at all. If they did make contact, it would be something we would immediately respond to."

The Government has come under pressure from the Bigley family, particularly the hostage's brother, Paul, 54, who lives in Amsterdam, to do more to secure the release of the hostage.

This week two Italian women aid workers were freed after the Italian intelligence agencies established contact with the kidnappers and were reported to have paid a million-dollar ransom.

While most of the Bigley family has limited itself to issuing appeals for mercy, under the supervision of the Foreign Office, Paul Bigley has adopted a more confrontational stance.

He has called on Mr Blair to "get on the phone" to convince President George W Bush to reverse his decision to block the Iraqi government's planned release of two women scientists held by American forces.

Mr Bigley's kidnappers have demanded the release of all women prisoners but have not named specific inmates.