Suicide Bomber Was My Cousin

I can't say if this is true or not. This seems to be a 1st contribution to Znet, so there's no context to put it in. The time frame mentioned puts it around 20/11/09 when there was a reported suicide bombing in Afghanistan involving a motorcycle, but this article claims that only the bomber & accomplice were killed, whereas the reports I found mention various casualty figures.
News Roundup
It may be a different incident.www.zmag.org...
There's a resignation to it that strikes me as truthful tho... & sad.

Whether the incident happened in the way described in the Znet article or not, what I find interesting is that this person claims not to support the Taliban & even that the bomber cousin's "family particularly his mother used to beg him to give up his association with Taliban." However, they did not report him for fear of "the torture techniques employed at notorious detention centres run by Americans in Afghanistan." Yet, despite being a spokesperson for a moderate Afghan group (Rawa), this person is quite clear in his belief that it was US funding which created the ideological conditions which led to his cousin being indoctrinated into extremism.
I just wonder if there can ever be peace there ever again, unless it is constantly enforced by US$s backing a hardline regime, which would be no real peace at all. Because if this moderate's opinion is anything to go by, so long as US troops are on Afghan soil, there will be no end to the resentment which fuels further Taliban recruitment.

Originally posted by Bunken Drum

The biker lost the balance and both fell setting off the explosive filled in the suicide jacket. Both died on the spot.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

There's a term for that:

Autodarwination.

And I agree with his older brother; glad he didn't kill a bunch of innocents in his attempt.

So all in all, the story had a happy ending.

[edit on 11-12-2009 by jerico65]

reply to post by jerico65 Yes, jerico65, as soon as I saw you had replied, I knew I could count on you to have completely glossed over the issues & instead gone for a trite response. Good job there... Not
Why didn't you just save space & type "Wooha!", eh?

On reflection, I'm now wondering if it was the right thing to have done by wading into jerico65. I'd really rather this thread become a discussion about the future of Afghanistan & how that can be achieved, rather than a pro/anti war/muslim/USA/terrorist debate. The place will still exist, no matter what happens, & it will still be populated by the same people.

Originally posted by Bunken Drum
On reflection, I'm now wondering if it was the right thing to have done by wading into jerico65.

*sniff, sniff* And that was mean; you bruised my tender feelings. Just kidding.

The question that I have is what fueled Taliban recruitment prior to the US invasion? This wasn't an organization that just popped up on 17 Oct 01, when US Rangers dropped in that night. It had been around before that.

NATO forces in A-stan (because it's not just US troops there) seems to be the excuse de jure that the extremists are using to recruit troops now. They are hooking the young, dumb gullible kids into blowing themselves up. Notice that the leaders aren't strapping on the bomb vests.

It happens to be the same "issue" with GITMO. Certain people wish to act as though WE are responsible for the recruiting of more terrorists, yet before 9/11 (And for at least the past 50 years), they have been continuously taking part in likewise attacks (Long before we even had forces anywhere on "Their Lands"). It is reminiscent of Hitler when he made the world somehow believe that Sudetenland was the basis for all of his grievances and violence, yet when it was handed over to him on a Silver Platter, he "mysteriously" and "unexpectedly" began a genocidal rampage that lead to 70 Million Dead around the Globe.

Originally posted by Bunken Drum
However, they did not report him for fear of "the torture techniques employed at notorious detention centres run by Americans in Afghanistan."

And that is exactly why torture ends up destroying and otherwise killing intelligence reporting. Most intelligence is given voluntarily... and reports of torture will do a whole lot to end that! People will just say what the interrogator wants to hear regardless of whether its true. And on top of that people will stop reporting others because while they may disapprove of what someone is doing they disapprove of the torture they'd get even more.

Afghanistan is a rugged yet beautiful but also very poor nation. It has been more or less in a state of war since the late 70’s in one fashion or another.

Whether it was the Soviets and their long occupation, or the Coalition Forces led by America and their long occupation or just the different tribal factions and groups like the Taliban vying for control are hard to say.

The Taliban is not so much a product of Afghanistan as it is Afghanistan’s many wars and remoteness.

Many in the Taliban are not actually Afghanis but are both lingering remnants of foreign born fighters who originally came to fight the Soviets and then stayed, and extreme Muslim idealists who were looking for a part of the world that they might live in that fashion that they believe their Quran tells them they should.

While many in the Taliban are Afghanis many in the Taliban are not Afghanis and in many ways the Taliban was a metamorphism of significant parts of the Mujahedeen that America and other Western Nations funded to fight against the Soviets.

Isn’t it funny that the CIA was thrilled when people like Bin Laden and others gravitated to Afghanistan from all over the Muslim war to rid it of the dreaded Soviets only to later find that creation took on a very unique and perhaps unanticipated life of its own?

During the Soviet Occupation those foreign born freedom fighters against the Soviets who flocked from all over Islam to Afghanistan were likened in ways to the brigades that fought in Fascist Spain shortly before World War II or the Flying Tigers in China shortly before World War II. They at that time were considered patriots fighting for a good cause, of course when who they were fighting against was America’s ideological enemy.

Now that some of these men are fighting against Americans they are of course considered terrorists, and no longer patriots or freedom fighters.

All throughout history governments and their leaders have sought to unite their populace under them in common causes. In times of peace it was often massive building projects, of course nothing unites people more than times of war. Especially if its considered a patriotic or war of ideologies and moralities that allow that nation waging it the notion that in winning that war they can prove their ideology and morals superior not just to the conquered but to themselves.

The Islamic Boogie Man has replaced the Communist Boogie Man as that threat our government wishes to unite our society under. That has more to do about our leaders being able to control us though than it does about the threat that they paint for us that we must unite and fight against. It’s really all about our own government being able to control us through giving us a shared identity complete with a purpose and that self validating carrot of should we win we prove ourselves to be superior and at the same time prove our leadership and government is worthy and wise.

So in places like Afghanistan and Iraq and likely soon Iran we wage these slow low intensity conflict wars of attrition.

We exploit the differences between the various tribes and political factions in those nations and do our level best to get them to fight one another, and fight one another they do. Whether it’s the remnants of the Afghani Northern Alliance that make up the puppet government in Kabul fighting the Taliban, or Shiites and Sunnis and their various factions fighting one another in Iraq for the most part our troops try to secure and keep secure vital infrastructure and get the locals to kill one another as often as they can.

There is strong evidence that many suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan are pressed into service through blackmail and other coercive tactics. Family members are kidnapped, they will be killed if you don’t carry out a suicide mission, they will be freed and looked after and fed and cared for if you do. Often these people have little choice as they find themselves trapped between a rock and a hard place.

What exactly would you do, would any of us do if a stranger walked up to us and showed us a picture of our kidnapped wife, or children with a gun pointed at them by another stranger and told us if we did not carry out a murderous attack that would claim our own lives in the process?

Would you choose to not only lay down your own life but to kill other human beings to save the ones you loved knowing that if you refused both you and your loved ones would be killed, or would you sacrifice yourself and your loved ones so innocent lives could be spared?

Anybody who thinks they can answer that question without first being in that situation is simply talking to talk for honestly I do not know what I would do and I sincerely hope I never have to make such a choice.

Yet people in Iraq and Afghanistan are forced to make those choices often.

Of course not all suicide bombers are pressed into service in that fashion, some of them are heartbroken people that have already lost their families and lives to aerial bombing and drone and missile attacks.

For these people life is not worth living anymore without the ones they loved and the chance to strike back at the people they view responsible for that loss is powerful.

For some others it is just hopelessness and despair in a world of war and poverty and not being able to take care of their family as a result. They know if they die as martyrs to the cause that very often their wives and children will be looked after by the cause.

Probably the smallest percentage of suicide bombers are those hardcore Islamic Fundamentalists looking to be martyred just to be martyred. Those types of personalities in fact are often the ones who either press others into such service or help to facilitate the otherwise willing.

The long and the short of is Western Money and Weapons made Afghanistan a magnate during the Soviet Occupation.

We would basically arm, pay with cash, otherwise fund, or help any faction or individual willing to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

The end result was a whole lot of people ending up in Afghanistan permanently that Afghanistan could have really done with out and a whole lot of weapons, many of which have never stopped firing against some faction or another within Afghanistan.

There are some very modern and progressive minded Afghanis but most live a life of poverty and squalor in remote places we couldn’t even imagine, devoid of electricity, plumbing, markets, and all the things we take for granted.

Such people know nothing of our ways and ideals and luxuries as they have never truly witnessed or experienced them. Some of course want nothing to do with such enslaving things, while others see it as a possible brighter and easier future.

Afghanistan was at war with itself long before we got there, and it will be at war with itself probably long after we leave.

We aren’t entirely responsible, but we have over the past few decades put a lot of money and a lot of weapons in the hands of people over there that we shouldn’t, and put them in the hands of people who didn’t belong there in the first place.

We have been more or less exploiting Afghanistan and Afghanis for various reasons for going on thirty years now.

I shutter to think what the final outcome of that might be. Afghanistan is a story that likely has no happy ending.

Very few people really understand it’s history, or what’s really going on there, or why we are even there.
Most Afghanis are no different than everyone else in this world; they would like to live in peace. For some accursed reason the world will not let them do so and that will and does have consequences for us all.

reply to post by jerico65

The question that I have is what fueled Taliban recruitment prior to the US invasion?

From the OP article:

[Abdul Rauf's] strong conviction in entering paradise was inculcated into his mind over a period of 12 years he spent at a madrassa in Pakistan where our respective families migrated during Soviet occupation of Afghanistan...
He grew up in a camp under the Jihadis' control and attended a madrassa where the primers were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines. These textbooks were, ironically, developed in the early 1980s under a USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) grant to the University of Nebraska (USA) and its Centre for Afghanistan Studies. This fact was brought to my notice by a friend during a visit to the USA soon after 9/11. This friend showed me a report run by Washington Post saying the USAID spent $ 51 million on these ''education programs'' in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994. Rauf was one of those who became lettered through such textbooks.

Indeed, a long time before any US service personnel were officially in Afghanistan. Although the CIA, MI6 et al. & various spec-ops types almost certainly were there throughout the conflict with the USSR.
Seriously tho, what of the future? The place is so wrecked, not just physically, but socially, if the USA pull out (& NATO are just there getting some soldiers trained, they'd leave immediately), what would happen? It'd be an open invitation to China to roll over the place with tanks.
The Afghans may well be the toughest individuals on earth, but after so long at war, how could they resist? Then again, how long are Americans prepared for this petro-$ war to go on for? Myself, I just cant see any good solutions... & by good, I mean ending in peace.

reply to post by TheAgentNineteen See reply to jerico65

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler Good analysis, as ever Proto.
Something I've noticed, in debating these current wars with Americans over the years, is that even less than 2yrs ago, the majority were saying "Wooha! 9-11 - kick some a$$!" A year ago, it got to be a lot more, "Support the troops, not the war." Now, I'm seeing another sea change. It seems a lot of ordinary Americans have had enough.
Still, something else I notice is that many US vets are saying, "Give us more materiel & let us go fight these SOBs like we mean it. We can win." That reminds me of the Viet Nam conflict. So I get to thinking, are any of these conflicts actually supposed to be won? Or, as you suggest, is it really all just 1984 style perpetual war?
If that is the case, just how long can the US public be fooled into accepting it? Dont look to the UK for a lead on this, our banker-leaders are so economically dependent on the USA, we'll do as we're told. So long as there's no more British troops getting killed than there were in N Ireland, people just dont care.
I honestly think that the US military would have a hard job recruiting if it weren't for the state of the economy. *Shakes Head* "You cant fool all the people all the time." Maybe not, but apparently you can fool enough of them often enough.

reply to post by Bunken Drum




I honestly don't think there is a solution.
Both the wars that we (UK) and the US have involved themselves in have been absolutely pointless..

There is massive resentment in both countries for our troops and I don't blame the nationals of either country.
I don't condone their actions at all but I know if someone had illegally invaded my country and they were going round behaving the way some of our troops have and using the bully and torture tactics that had been applied in these detention camps and so on... I'd be pretty pissed of too.


As Immortal Technique says in his song Bin laden (tell the truth)

They say the rebels in Iraq still fight for Saddam But that's bulls***, I'll show you why it's totally wrong Cuz if another country invaded the hood tonight It'd be warfare through Harlem, and Washington Heights I wouldn't be fightin' for Bush or White America's dream I'd be fightin' for my people's survival and self-esteem I wouldn't fight for racist churches from the south, my ni***I'd be fightin' to keep the occupation out, my ni***


There is NO military solution to this problem... none whatsoever.
Because when you invade and impose yourself on another country... it breeds resentment, and in these cases, terrorism.

reply to post by Bunken Drum


I don't think the Afghan occupation will succeed especially when they don't want to succeed. They have much more to gain by destabilizing Iran rather than stabilizing Afghanistan.

It is a failed plan since the Afghan people have had long good relations with Iran. And the cost of building up the Afghan army to fight Iran would cause huge burden for the American economy which is already in bad shape.

America doesn't want a stabilized Afghanistan. I don't see any evidence of policy, I only see rhetoric, I only see politicians saying yes that is what we want.

But what I have seen is the opposite, I mean common Karzai's brother works for the CIA and they are telling us Afghanistan has and had free elections for the last 8 years.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

They are telling us corruption and drugs are the biggest problems which are fueling the unrest and yet 8 years of American policy shows that America is behind the destabilization. The resistance has legitimacy because America doesn't want a stabilized Afghanistan.

America is playing mind games with us, they are telling us one thing and doing the exact opposite. But then again they have the right to do so out of fear because if the people knew what they were up to they would get dragged in to the streets and hanged like Saddam.

oz

reply to post by blupblupForgive me for tardiness & for cutting you mid-sentence: the former was due to irl & starting another thread, which I thought would be a slow burn but got a fair bit of interest straight away; the latter is due to wishing to take poetic advantage...

Originally posted by blupblup
There is massive resentment in both countries for our troops and I don't blame the nationals of either country.
I don't condone their actions at all but I know if someone had illegally invaded my country and they were going round behaving the way some of our troops have and using the bully and torture tactics that had been applied in these detention camps and so on... I'd be

As mental as the next person, completely prepared for asymetrical warfare & all the horrors that entails.
Why? Because under intolerable stress, I would be insane; at least, by the standards I live by right now.
I haven't always had the luxury of such a lofty viewpoint however, so, whilst I've never been in a situation like these various muslim "insurgents", I have been in enough dodgy situations to know that, when push comes to shove, if there's anyone I like about to get shoved also, then the shoving had best start by putting me on my arse, because otherwise my shove-back will ramp up in viciousness to meet whatever threat is presented. This is not keyboard warrior talk btw: I am ashamed of the times I've been unable to resolve a situation without violence. Its just an admission of my guilty nature: ordinarily I will take a punch or 2 rather than go into fight mode, but there comes a point where my level of fear &/or concern overrides my sanity & then its pretty much last man standing time.
I'm sure I'm not alone in this. The difference being, the Afghans have centuries of voluntary practice, whereas we Westerners have centuries of volunteer armies whose individual loyalty was to their alcohol ration, squad mates & paycheque.

do bad that didn't happen to the UAV Predator operator on his way to work before he gets a chance to fire an AGM-114 hellfire missile at an afghan wedding reception or into a crowded iraqi vegetable and spice market.

reply to post by Bunken Drum


Your right,the afgans are the toughest people on our planet.They have known so many wars,their natural fighters!

I expect that other suicide bombing with bigger casualities wasnt this one,I dont think we realy know the full picture out there.

going off slightly anyone believe the the poor british buggers recently killed by suicide bombers realy stopped them from blowing up a market!I thought the soldiers were the real targets for the resistance,have seen countless vid clips of Iraqi cars going like a bat out of hell towards amercian check points to explode on impact!I guess if I look again at those videos with a wider angle I may make out a bustling market just behind with lovely soft targets