From here to eternity

Aleppo, Syria. Ten brothers were sitting in the courtyard of their house in one of Aleppo's myriad lanes, with a plastic bag full of small pieces of paper, from which they drew lots. Five of them would stay in Syria and look after all 10 families. The others, the winning five, would enjoy the ultimate prize: a jihadi trip to Baghdad. It was March 2003, the Americans had just started bombing Baghdad and, like the 10 brothers, hundreds of young men were eagerly making their way in cramped buses towards the Iraqi border. Most of them were Syrians, but there were many, too, from other Arab and Muslim nations, all driven by a religious fervour fuelled by the cries of jihad from Muslim scholars.

"Each neighbourhood [of Aleppo] started sending buses loaded with mujahideen into Iraq," says Abu Ibrahim, the second eldest of the 10 brothers, describing those early days of the war. "If someone was unable to go, he would support the jihad by giving his money."

The call to jihad was openly encouraged by the Syrian government, says Abu Ibrahim (a nom de guerre); it also arranged for buses to ferry fighters, speeded up the issuing of documentation and even gave prospective jihadis a discount on passport fees.

This is indeed most interesting. Definitely a cut above the usual. I have always found these in-depth interviews with actual people far more educational than the usual theorizing and conjecture.
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"Abu Ibrahim, the most radical of his family, was not one of the lucky five of his brothers and had to stay in Syria, which did not go down well with his Bedouin wife. "My wife accused me of being a coward. She accused me of being happy that I didn't have to go."

"He is small and slight, but says he can fight five men alone. He keeps repeating that pride and honour are the most important things in life"

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Funny guy, he goes on and on about his fanaticism and ferocity yet at the same time he's henpecked. Do you suppose the real reason he went away, first to trade in Riyadh then fight in Iraq was just to get away from her?

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"But the Syrian authorities didn't want cross-border traffic in fighters to stop. The security services pressured them to keep sending people. "Why were they so keen for us to go and fight in Iraq?" asks Abu Ibrahim. "So we would die there?"

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Ya know? I think the Syrian and Saudi rulers believe in the "flypaper principle" even more than we do. All those energetic young men who might stir up trouble at home can go to Iraq and get themselves killed. After all, for decades the only allowed form of political self-expression has been to rail against the Great Satan and the Zionist Entity.

Then again, if those two countries had democratic governments with the rule of law those same lads might be doing constructive things like, y'know, building stuff rather than blowing stuff up and suchlike.

In my humble opinion its past time to JDAM Bashar and put the screws to the perfidious princes. We won't anger anyone who doesn't hate us already.

I thouhgt the part about the Syrians sending over 'volunteers' was interesting, too. Especially since, by Abu's own account,

Fifty fighters went in total, Abu Ibrahim says now, but after a few months he returned to Syria with three others - the only surviving members of the group.

Syria was able to take 50 'troublemakers,' send them to Iraq, and end up with a mere four troublemakers at the end of the process. For the dictatorship, it's a clever way to kill off thier radicals while claiming a halo from other radicals for 'supporting jihad.'

I just wonder if there is a tipping point beyond which we won't tolerate those tactics.

The real tragedy is that in a free, healthy society most (though not all, of course) of those same "volunteers" would be the backbone of their economy. "Abu" might be busy setting up a rug import boutique on Park Avenue even as we speak were this a better world...

The Iraqi security forces are gradually taking up the reins and I gather they are a lot less gentle than us big, mushy-hearted yanks when it comes to these guys.

It's been a rough few weeks, but I'm with those who say we are seeing the last desperate lunges rather than another "Tet '68" despite the best efforts of the MSM to pump air into every bombing story. So much of the country has been quite peaceful and quietly improving as the Iraqi bloggers like to remind us. You'll notice the MSM and the DemLibs never want to hear from the actual flesh and blood Iraqis whom they profess to bleed for.

More warm bodies are not going to make much difference to the insurgency as it is money not men that they are desperate for. Without the dough and without safe havens there is very little they can accomplish. I have read this elsewhere.

The major misconception the Arabs have been operating under is that it was they that pushed the Russians out of Afghanistan. They all got the impression that all they had to do is stay at it and the America will pull a USSR and bug out of Iraq. I hope this will not be proved true in the later case, but in the first case it was the U.S.A. that made it possible, they were nothing but targets until we gave them the means to push the Russians out.

Their answer would be that Allah just used the Americans as his way to put the means of pushing the Russians out into their hands, and that he will find a way to do the same with their "Jihad" against the Americans.

Never underestimate the ability of a people to rationalize to a conclusion that they want to make, against all evidence.

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