Posted on 10/10/2001 7:48:11 AM PDT by milestogo
Gul Ahmed Shami sipped his Pepsi-Cola and said: "I want to be the next Osama bin Laden."
Then the 22-year-old set off to join the jihad with a hold-all containing a change of clothes, a pair of fake Timberland boots and a slim volume of Verses for Victory gleaned from the Koran.
"The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said heaven lies in the shadow of the sword," he said.
His friend Hamid Noor, a wiry 19-year-old, was taking only a sleeping bag and the stained, baggy clothes and sandals he was standing in, but was confident that the Taliban and the Almighty would provide.
As a stiffener before embarking on a mission to defend their homeland, they attended an anti-American rally at a mosque in Peshawar, the Pakistani border city where an estimated one million Afghans, including both men's families, live.
There was no fear, no apprehension, at least not before a Western listener. Sitting in a grubby, backstreet restaurant, after the frenzy of the protest, the pair were engaging and impeccably mannered, but with an added irredeemable zeal.
Hamid said: "Allah is with us. The Americans have technology but they don't have the courage to face death, which we do. I will be there until my death if need be. I know I probably won't come back." His father, a quack doctor, approves of his departure, but not his mother. Two of his brothers are already fighting with the Taliban militia.
Gul was less naive. "We will be there until something big happens - a reconciliation between the Taliban and other sides, or an American ground invasion."
As a veteran of four tours of duty, he is not averse to coming home in six months, which the Koran says is the maximum jihadis should be away from their families. He has three children.
Once in Afghanistan they will head for the eastern city of Jalalabad, one of the main American targets, and report to a man known as Commander Rocketi. Hamid will receive his basic military training - he hopes in one of bin Laden's camps - and Gul will probably join a tank unit.
Both are typical of thousands of young Afghans and Pakistanis who have been indoctrinated at fundamentalist Islamic seminaries in Pakistan and sent across the border to their deaths. Others have done reasonably well out of fighting for the Taliban - Gul said his expenses were always paid.
That may change as the Pakistan government has abandoned its sponsorship of the Taliban and the movement's overseas accounts have been frozen. The radical Pakistani parties, which mostly share the Taliban's Pathan ethnicity, appear to be their last source of succour and manpower.
Hamid and Gul planned to cross the border with 35 students from a radical mosque in Rawalpindi. Their coach was stopped by police, possibly because it had the Taliban flag on the roof and a picture of bin Laden on the windscreen.
"We don't want to hide. We are fighting for Allah," said Gul. They were due to head off Tuesday with the flag and picture removed.
"We will be there tomorrow, God willing."
Uh-huh. Yeah, those NYC firefighters who still insisted on entering the second WTC tower to rescue people even after the first one collapsed - they didn't have the courage to face death, did they?
I hope this pencil-necked little raghead gets just what's coming to him.
Stuff's dangerous!
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