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Sunday, April 08, 2007
“Taliban Behead Afghan Journalist”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070408/ts_afp/afghanistanmediaunrest

“Afghan taken hostage with Italian journalist beheaded: Taliban”
by Nasrat Shoaib 45 minutes ago

ARTICLE SNIPPET: “KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Taliban militants on Sunday beheaded an Afghan reporter kidnapped last month with an Italian journalist, after the government refused to negotiate his release, a Taliban spokesman said.

“We killed Ajmal (Naqshbandi) today at 1505 (1135 GMT) because the government did not respond to our demands,” said Shohaabuddin Atal, spokesman for top Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah. “He was beheaded.”

“They (the government) did not contact us,” he told AFP.

Atal said the journalist was beheaded in Helmand’s Hazar Joft district and the Taliban leaders would decide whether to return his body to his relatives.

Afghan private news agency Pajhwok reported that a spokesman for the Afghan intelligence services, Saeed Ansari, had confirmed the execution. But there has been no independent verification.”

stepping back in time...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6081594.stm

Last Updated: Tuesday, 24 October 2006, 23:11 GMT 00:11 UK

“Travelling with the Taleban”

ARTICLE SNIPPET: “The BBC’s David Loyn has had exclusive access to Taleban forces mobilised against the British army in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan.

There is no army on earth as mobile as the Taleban.

Taleban interview

I remember it as their secret weapon when I travelled with them in the mid-1990s, as they swept aside rival mujahideen to take most of the country.”

ARTICLE SNIPPET: “There is one other factor that increases Taleban morale.

Few have any education beyond years spent in the madrassas, the fundamentalist religious schools in Pakistan that have produced an endless supply of Taleban for more than a decade.

But all know the story of Afghanistan’s past victories over the British.

Engraved in their collective folk memory of Afghanistan’s warrior history are tales of the defeat of the British in 1842 and 1880 along with the defeat of the Russians in the 1980s.

The Taleban disappeared to the mountains after their defeat in 2001, and found it hard to recruit.

Five years on they are back, and regrouping against an old enemy.”

Thanks to Ikez78 for the ping to this thread.

Note: The following post is a quote:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1814075/posts

Secular Baathist/Islamic extremist divide overcome repeatedly in Iraq
Regime of Terror ^ | 4-8-07 | Mark Eichenlaub

Posted on 04/08/2007 12:59:05 PM PDT by ikez78

For a regime long said to be sharply opposed to radical Islamic groups the secular Baath Party that formerly ruled Iraq has seen a conspicuously large number of its members caught in close collaboration with al Qaeda and other Islamic groups in post-invasion Iraq.

A recent arrest in Mosul identified a former Saddam Fedayeen leader as an insurgent leader responsible for al Qaeda/foreign fighter camps in Syria.

On March 23, the Tactical Report, an online Middle East intelligence service, reported that a former Saddam Hussein officer was appointed as an al Qaeda leader to set up attacks on Iraqi oil sites.

In addition to these “new converts” a number of older stories on the same topic were passed along to www.regimeofterror.com.

One story, from the Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat translated by a reader at Powerlineblog notes that one of the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s top men, Omar Hadid, was a former personal body guard of Saddam Hussein and had trained with al Qaeda in Afghanistan before fighting against coalition forces in Fallujah and elsewhere. Hadid, according to an al Qaeda biography after his death, also had a relative who was an official for Iraq’s Intelligence Services and worked with Hadid on postwar operations. It should also be noted that, according to Knight-Ridder news services, Hadid’s background included outright conflicts with Saddam Hussein’s regime though he testified to the country’s move away from secular restraints after the first Gulf War.

(Excerpt) Read more at regimeofterror.com ...