Posted on 06/27/2004 7:36:28 AM PDT by KriegerGeist
Meet The New Jihad
A TIME investigation reveals how insurgents in Iraq aim to create an Islamic state and turn the country into a terrorist haven
By MICHAEL WARE/FALLUJAH | Time Magazine | June 27, 2004
The safe house lies on the outskirts of Fallujah in a neighborhood where no Americans have ventured. Inside, a group of Arab sheiks has gathered to discuss the jihad they and their followers are waging against the U.S. The men wear white robes and long beards and greet each other solemnly. They are all Iraqi, but their beliefs are those of the strict Wahhabi strain of Islam repressed under Saddam Hussein. Unlike most Iraqi sitting rooms, this one has no pictures adorning its walls or a television or radio nestled in a corner. Such luxuries are forbidden, just as they were under the Taliban in Afghanistan. At the back of the room are a few men from Saudi Arabia, who stand silently as one of the sheiks, the group's leader, addresses me in Arabic and stilted English. The war in Iraq, he says, is one of liberation, not just of a country but of Muslim lands, Muslim people, Islam itself. There is no room for negotiation with the enemy, no common ground. What he and his men offer is endless, righteous resistance. "Maybe this war will take a long time," he says. "Maybe this is a world war."
After the meeting, they adjourn to the garden and drink sweet black tea in the twilight. As they lecture me on Islam, a roar cuts across the conversation. From the other side of the farmhouse, less than 50 yds. away, a missile soars over us with a thunderous screech—bound for a nearby encampment housing U.S. Marines. "Allahu akbar," they all mutter—God is great. Minutes later, the imam makes the evening call to prayer. The 50 militants gathered at the safe house form tight lines behind one of the imams and bow reverently in prayer. Then some leave to get ready to try to kill more Americans.
While the U.S. hopes that the fighting and dying in Iraq will begin to dissipate after the hand-off of power to an interim Iraqi government this week, militants like these sheltered outside Fallujah are just as determined to wreak more carnage. The ruthlessness of the insurgents was evident across Iraq last week, as guerrillas launched a wave of attacks that were stunning in their scale and coordination. In a single day, insurgents attacked in six cities, blowing up police stations, seizing government buildings, ambushing U.S. forces and killing more than 100 people, including three American soldiers. Though U.S. commanders continue to say they can contain the insurgency, Iyad Allawi, the incoming Iraqi Prime Minister, said he may impose martial law once he takes office, a move that would at least temporarily suspend many of the liberties the U.S. ostensibly intended to bring to Iraq. "We were expecting such an escalation, and we will witness more in the next few weeks," Allawi said. "We will deal with it, and we will crush it."
The insurgents have no intention of laying down their arms. Indeed, the nature of the insurgency in Iraq is fundamentally changing. Time reported last fall that the insurgency was being led by members of the former Baathist regime, who were using guerrilla tactics in an effort to drive out foreign occupiers and reclaim power. But a Time investigation of the insurgency today—based on meetings with insurgents, tribal leaders, religious clerics and U.S. intelligence officials—reveals that the militants are turning the resistance into an international jihadist movement. Foreign fighters, once estranged from homegrown guerrilla groups, are now integrated as cells or complete units with Iraqis. Many of Saddam's former secret police and Republican Guard officers, who two years ago were drinking and whoring, no longer dare even smoke cigarettes. They are fighting for Allah, they say, and true jihadis reject such earthly indulgences.
Their goal now, say the militants interviewed, is broader than simply forcing the U.S. to leave. They want to transform Iraq into what Afghanistan was in the 1980s: a training ground for young jihadists who will form the next wave of recruits for al-Qaeda and like-minded groups. Nearly all the new jihadist groups claim to be receiving inspiration, if not commands, from Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the suspected al-Qaeda operative who the U.S. believes has masterminded the insurgency's embrace of terrorism. Al-Zarqawi's group kidnapped three Turkish workers last Saturday and threatened to behead them within 72 hours unless Turkish companies withdrew from Iraq. And now the conditions are ripening for the insurgents to turn their armed struggle into a political movement that aims to exploit the upheaval and turn parts of Iraq into Taliban-style fiefdoms. A potential leader is Sheik Mahdi Ahmed al-Sumaidai, a hard-line Salafi imam recently released from Abu Ghraib prison and now based in Baghdad's radical Ibn Taimiya Mosque. Mujahedin leaders and U.S. military and intelligence officers in Iraq say many jihadists are also rallying behind Harith al-Dhari, who leads the Association of Muslim Scholars, Iraq's most significant Sunni organization. Al-Dhari, who operates out of the Mother of all Battles Mosque, is said to have played a key role in mobilizing fighters during April's uprising in Fallujah; during a gathering of militants there on April 9, one of his lieutenants called on Muslims outside Iraq to join the fight. As a result, al-Dhari has built support among both Iraqi and foreign insurgents, who believe he may emerge as a figure akin to Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
And we keep hearing from liberals Al Qaeda has nothing to do with Iraq... <sarcasm
Ping! Read the whole thing and try not to grit your teeth.
At this point, the Time reporters that wrote this story should be being detained and debriefed by military intelligence to gain the location of that safehouse so it may be bombed, along with every single scrap of information about the occupants thereof. Then they should be kicked out of Iraq.
I swear, if the modern news media was around sixty years ago, they would've had reporters embedded with the SS "Das Reich" at Malmedy and reported on how the captured US soldiers "provoked" their SS captors to gun them down like dogs.
}:-)4
We should, at least, be following reporters like this -- electronically -- to see what rat holes they go down.
Congressman Billybob
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Would they really put themselves in the hands of fanatics who could behead them without the slightest provocation? Or maybe he was never really there and made the thing up out of whole cloth a la Jayson Blair - although it does ring truer than the usual fiction reported in the media about Iraq's terrorist insurgency.
Michael Ware of Time Magazine should be hauled in and made to talk. What's he doing in a safe house, who are his contacts, and how many allied troops have died because of him? Time, who's side are you on?
They're certainly not on America's side in this war.
Same as the old jihad...
Here is some confirmation for you.
And this alone is enough for what we are doing in Iraq.
" From the other side of the farmhouse, less than 50 yds. away, a missile soars over us with a thunderous screech-..."
Memo to terr perps. Safe houses may be unsafe for your health. May the next screech they hear be their last.
And may they catch as many media whores there getting Leahy with a full Monica so they may meet the same fate.
It's a shame that a Time reporter would not reveal the location and attendees to our Coalition forces. However, while the subtle message most American get from reports such as this will not be, "This is a bigger problem than I thought we should leave.", but instead, "These Islamist are dangerous to everyone's lives. I don't want my children to be threatened by them."
IMO, the reporter was likely blindfolded and taken to this location. BUT we should still interrogate him, with panties on his head. And, we then should have a MOAB visit Fallujah.
Or several MOAB's would be even better.
Nuke Fallujah till it glows.
bump
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