Hurray for Bollywood
Update: Bill Roggio reports that some sources deny Dawood Ibrahim has been arrested., but the story of his life, as reported below, is still interesting.
Two terrorist figures wanted for the 1993 Mumbai bombing were reported arrested near the Pakistani-Afghan border by Pakistani intellgence. The Counterterrorism Blog has the background story of one of those reported arrested who mixed religion, crime, showbusiness, politics and terrorism into a lethal cocktail. It's an interesting portrait that contrasts with the stereotypical image of the ascetic, fanatically religious jihadi that is often portrayed in the press. The Counterterrorism Blog says:
A screenwriter would be challenged to develop a character like Dawood Ibrahim – crime lord, terrorist, spy, and high society figure. For a full profile, see this article by friend of the CT Blog David Kaplan.
Ibrahim was the head of D Company, the top mafia in Mumbai. As everywhere else in the world, mafias frequently have ethnic orientations and Ibrahim became a folk hero to Mumbai’s Muslims. With his immense wealth he bought his way into Bollywood, financing top films.
In December 1992 Hindu extremists destroyed the Babri Mosque in Ayodha which sparked communal rioting in nearby Mombai in which 900 people (mostly Muslim) died. Ibrahim is believed to have collaborated with Pakistani intelligence (particularly through his massive smuggling network) to carry out the March 12, 1993 Mumbai bombings. Shortly before the bombings, Ibrahim and his top deputies fled India. For a time Ibrahim was reportedly based in the UAE, but most analysts claim he has rebuilt his criminal empire and operates out of Karachi. He reportedly lives the high-life and has provided support for al-Qaeda and the Pakistani-based terrorists of Lashkar-e-Toiba (which have been linked to terror attacks in Kashmir and, most notably, the December 2001 attack on India’s parliament that nearly sparked a war between the nuclear powers.
The rumors of Ibrahim’s arrest are unclear. One says that Ibrahim and his deputies were arrested in Quetta (which is also in the vicinity of Mullah Omar’s reported whereabouts.) Other reports are that he was in a brawl at a Karachi hotel (although with a recent Musharraf visit, security was very tight.) Indian security services deny that he is in custody. Pakistani officials claim that they have no idea of his whereabouts – and that if he were in Pakistan they would like to be informed so that he can be apprehended. One report has it that one of Ibrahim’s underworld rivals is spreading these rumors.
Ibrahim’s son-in-law, Javed Miandad (who is a cricket star - Pakistan’s film industry is undeveloped so instead Ibrahim has associated with leading Pakistani cricket players) has said that Ibrahim is not in Pakistan but, “He is well wherever he is.”
Readers of this blog will remember my stories of how the Abu Sayyaf's Commander Robot earned his moniker for proficiency at robotic-style dances. People have been long been puzzling out the problem of why wealthy Saudis and educated Pakistanis should be on the forefront of the Jihad. And one reason -- I do not say it is the only reason -- is that killing infidels is fun and cool for people habituated to their own sense of superiority and cleverness.
My guess is that much of the "religious" part is mumbo-jumbo sprinkled on as stardust on to fool the fatuous and guilty Westerner and so give crime the appearance of virtue. That's not to say that there aren't people who are genuinely willing to blow themselves up for Allah. But some news reports have mentioned the "sale" of suicide bombers -- sometimes poor, devout people offered what to them are staggering sums of money -- from recruiters to terror groups. MITRE has a paper analyzing the Palestinian suicide bomber recruitment industry, for example, and found that the ultimate motivation was hard to pin down, but that personal frustration and economic need figured prominently. Interestingly, one of the things recruiters sought in a candidate was "susceptibility to coercion". What emerges, at least partially, is a picture of suicide bombers sold as a commodity to be fired like factory-made rounds by individuals who would be at comfortable in an expensive suit and laughing all the way to the bank.
Some cynic once said, "There's a sucker born every minute...and two to take 'em.". Maybe it's true. Both in the East and in the West. Who would be dumb enough to be suckered into becoming a suicide bomber? About as many as those willing to be suckered into thinking that terrorists are Minutemen.
posted by wretchardthecat at 8/09/2007 05:43:00 PM
12 Comments:
It's beyond me how any Arab, no matter how wealthy, could be sucker enough to fall for the fable that he's superior. I don't care if Allah *did* say it, all he has to do is look around at the sewage in the streets, the AIDS running amok in his hospitals, the rate of brown children with birth defects from inner breeding, and the fact that he would be a very unhappy oil tick indeed if his Western-produced air conditioning failed.
I don't know why the West hasn't put the same limitations on air conditioning units as OPEC puts on oil.
Works for them, Nahncee.
(Saudi Sheiks, at least.)
Also many professors here, safe in their cloisters, cheering the honor of the Jihadi.
(sure would be nice to know the money total they've spent here in payoffs to our enemies within.)
---
Never Judge An Afghan By His Hat
Bad Mistake if he turns out to be a Baloch
Like 24-year-old Abdulmalik Rigi, who despite headgear of a sort calculated to make Russians and Talibanis shudder , is not a Pashtun.
The Baloch ethnic minority straddles an area across southeast Iran, southwest Pakistan and south Afghanistan. In February, the Iranian city of Zahedan was hit by a bomb—for which Rigi claimed responsibility—that killed 11 Revolutionary Guards, and placed Rigi at the top of Tehran’s hitlist.
An article in the current issue of Prospect links Rigi’s guerilla attacks to a wider US-sponsored covert war against Iran.
"And one reason -- I do not say it is the only reason -- is that killing infidels is fun and cool for people habituated to their own sense of superiority and cleverness."
"fun and cool" skulking about to kill the unaware and defenseless? All the while the "Commanders Robot" working their hardest to avoid the Devil Dogs (moniker earned for proficiencies other than dance) and their brethren.
You get a sixth sense for when you are fighting the truly poor. The signature is imprinted in their demands, their angers, their rhetoric. Each time I've listened to a spokesman of an Islamic extremist group I've come away with the feeling that the message has been crafted, not by poor men. Nor even by "holy" men. But by smarmy, power-hungry intellectuals whose furthest interest is God. Or if you will, Allah.
Those of you with wide exposure to Marxist literature, especially in its most bloodthirsty form, will know what I mean. Precious little of it was written by the "workers and the peasants". Yet these little middle-class priestlings are remarkably adept at selling the fatuous on their schemes; on their suicide bomber packages, complete with a complimentary video, personalized check and framed photograph, like one of those overpriced, packaged birthday parties that are sold to the unwary all around the world.
I remember telling one cynical Party member once that I could prove there was God because I could establish the existence of the Devil; and I could establish the existence of the Devil by the necessity of Hell; and the necessity of Hell by the need to put people like him there.
"That's not to say that there aren't people who are genuinely willing to blow themselves up for Allah."
Stooges. To wrapped up in the "party's" B$#;+ to understand that they are being used. Israeli Security experts have told me that there are no cases of elite families turning their own children into ammunition.
Cannon fodder is - along with oil - the most abundant natural resource in the Arab Middle East.
"Also many professors here"
Yes. There is no shortage of professors who will even justify racism and racist oppression, as long as it's practiced by non-Westerners.
"And one reason -- I do not say it is the only reason -- is that killing infidels is fun and cool for people habituated to their own sense of superiority and cleverness."
I like this observation, it rrings true. The motivations is racist more than religious.
This brings to mind what I read recently. It was a description by a P-47 pilot of his being shot down late in WWII while on a ground attack mission in northern Italy. He could speak German and as he lay in agony from his wounds, his Whermacht captors asked him some curious questions.
Such as “Why are your strafing attacks so vicious? Why do you fly through intense flak just to shoot up one little truck? Why do you shoot the horses we are using to pull our supplies and artillery? Don’t you know that the horses are innocent?”
And the best one was, “How do you expect us to fight if you shoot up our soldiers and innocent horses?”
The pilot thought that under the circumstances it was better not to tell them they were freakin’ nuts.
But you really have to wonder why a soldier in the Germany military, of all things, would ask such questions. Maybe there really is something to this Cannon Fodder idea…..
"Those of you with wide exposure to Marxist literature, especially in its most bloodthirsty form, will know what I mean. Precious little of it was written by the "workers and the peasants". Yet these little middle-class priestlings are remarkably adept at selling the fatuous on their schemes;...."
En fuego, W, again. Marxism, from the beginning, is the ultimate in bourgeois.
"killing infidels is fun"_____I have thought for a long time that the insurgent snipers in Iraq are playing at big game hunting. So many points for killing an American, more points if it's a Marine, more if it's an officer.
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people." - Karl Marx
It is not like the Marxists originated the idea of using an engineered belief system to manipulate their serfs. Merely observed it in others and applied the theory. Islam is structurally similar to the olden Eastern Orthodoxy that Marxists were to supplant (leaders of Church supportive of and supported by the regime).
Within a states influence religion becomes another organ of the state and its functionaries bereaucrats advancing through following the forms of department more than a relation to any God.
"I've listened to a spokesman of an Islamic extremist group I've come away with the feeling that the message has been crafted, not by poor men. Nor even by "holy" men. But by smarmy, power-hungry intellectuals whose furthest interest is God. Or if you will, Allah."
Their energies are directed by the Muslim state in service of the Muslim state. State Islam appeals to heart, hope & spirit five times day, every day and asks only that the people remain faithful against us faithless heathens. Religion is opium soothing the grief caused by poverty and repression of the state. It prevents rebellion, it directs aggression against us heathens, it works.
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