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| maximum20 | Posted
on 29-Mar-03 12:14 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/29/international/worldspecial/29WEB-BOMB.html?ex=1049605200&en=5467c229f3944cfc&ei=5040&partner=MOREOVER Bombing May Signal the Future Use of Guerrilla Tactics By STEVEN LEE MYERS ITH THE THIRD INFANTRY, Central Iraq, Saturday, March 29 A Iraqi suicide bomber killed four U.S. soldiers today by luring them to his taxi cab at a checkpoint north of Najaf and then detonating an explosive, an army spokesman in the region said. The attack occurred north of Najaf on a road west of the Euphrates River. The victims were all members of the division's First Brigade, which has been involved in significant fighting around the city since last weekend. Capt. Andrew J. Valles, the civil affairs officer for the First Brigade, said the attack occurred just after noon when the taxi pulled up to the checkpoint and called to the soldiers, who approached the car cautiously in a security drill that put two of them in front of the car and three on the side. "As they approached the vehicle the driver detonated a bomb killing all four of the soldiers and himself," Capt. Valles said. It was the first suicide bomb attack on United States soldiers fighting in Iraq, and signaled a potentially disturbing turn of events as irregular forces loyal to Saddam Hussein have been seeking to employ guerrilla tactics to slow the advance of an 80,000 member army on Baghdad. An earlier suicide car bombing occurred this week in northern Iraq at a civilian checkpoint at Girdi Go, in the Kurdish controlled region. That blast killed four people, including an Australian television cameraman. It followed American military attacks on Ansar al-Islam, an extremist group allied with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization. The checkpoint near Najaf was part of the cordon that the Third Infantry has been enforcing around the holy city, where Ali, the spiritual leader Shiite Muslims is buried in a major shrine visited by pilgrims from around the world. "I don't know what motivated this guy to kill himself. To me this is not an act of war," said Capt. Valles. "It's terrorism -- a man in a civilian vehicle killing himself at a checkpoint." ---------------------- This war is turing very ugly now. Americans are going to have a VERY hard time. |
| arty | Posted
on 29-Mar-03 03:26 PM
this is indeed sad, the ugliest face of war.... I don' know what's worse, people bombing themselves or ppl being bombed or people killing themselves in order to kill ... Is it pain/desperation / revenge/ a sense of bravado/heroism/martyrdom, a mass hysteria or may be everything and more. I read a piece about the suicide bombers in Palestein. Oftentimes they are young men below 30.... and the psychology and act of suicide bombing is accepted, praised, encouraged and even paid for..... Mahmoud Ahmed Marmash, a twenty-one-year-old bachelor from Tulkarm, blew himself up in Netanya, near Tel Aviv, in May 2001. On a videocassette recorded before he was sent on his mission, he said: I want to avenge the blood of the Palestinians, especially the blood of the women, of the elderly, and of the children, and in particular the blood of the baby girl Iman Hejjo, whose death shook me to the core.... I devote my humble deed to the Islamic believers who admire the martyrs and who work for them. In a letter he left for his family he wrote, "God's justice will prevail only in jihad and in blood and in corpses." Such references to jihad are not as common as references to revenge. Having talked to many Israelis and Palestinians who know something about the bombers, and having read and watched many of the bombers' statements, my distinct impression is that the main motive of many of the suicide bombers is revenge for acts committed by Israelis, a revenge that will be known and celebrated in the Islamic world. Most of the suicide bombers say as much themselves, but it is impossible to generalize about them. At first, when Hamas and its military branch, the Izz al-Din al-Qasam Brigade, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad took responsibility for sending virtually all of the suicide bombers, the bombers were young unmarried males. But since December of last year, when the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade joined in, the bombers have included both men and women, villagers and townspeople, bachelors and married people. The bombers are young and not so young, educated and not educated, from poor families and from relatively well-off ones. Still, most of the bombers are young unmarried men, between seventeen and twenty-eight, and more than half of them come from refugee camps, where the hatred of Israel is strongest. From the accounts of them in the press and the statements by those who know them, the suicide bombers are not what psychologists call suicidal typesthey are not depressed, impulsive, lonely, and helpless, with a continuous history of being in situations of personal difficulty. Nor do they seem driven by economic despair. A study conducted by the Israeli army analyzing the background of eight bombers from the Gaza strip showed that they were relatively well- off.[2] I have never seen a public or private statement by a suicide bomber that mentions his own economic situation or that of the Palestinians generally as a reason for his action. It is often said that the bombers are driven by their own feelings of hopelessness and despair about the situation of the Palestinians; but this seems open to question. It is true that the Palestinian community is in a state of despair, but this does not mean that each and every person, in his or her personal life, is in despairany more than the fact that the US is relatively rich makes each American rich. The despair in communities explains the support for the suicide bombers, but it does not explain each person's choice to commit suicide by means of a bomb. Hussein al-Tawil is a member of the People's Party, formerly the Communist Party, in the West Bank. His son Dia blew himself up in Jerusalem, in March 2001, on a Hamas mission. Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist for Ha'aretz who has intimate knowledge of life in the occupied territories, talked to friends of the father, former Communists, and some of the son's friends, who are members of the Hamas group at Beir-Zeit University. The two groups of friends don't mix. The father's friends claim that Dia was "brainwashed" by Hamas, causing great pain to a father who loved him and did what he could to send his son to the university to study engineering. For Dia's friends from Hamas, who chanted at his funeral, on the other hand, he is a heroic martyr to the Islamic cause. Their reaction resembles that of Raania, the pregnant wife of the Hamas militant Ali Julani and a mother of three. Her husband took part in a no-escape attack in Tel Aviv. "I am very proud of him. I am even prouder for my children, whose father was a hero. I want to tell the Israelis that I support my husband and I support people like him." Was she angry with him for leaving his children fatherless? "He left us in the mercy of God. He was raised as an orphan and the way he was raised so his children will be raised."[3] A man named Hassan, whose son blew himself up in a Tel Aviv discotheque, had a similar reaction: "I am very happy and proud of what my son did and I hope all the men of Palestine and Jordan will do the same."[4] Most families seem to be similarly proud of their kin who become shuhada. According to a verse in the Koran that is quoted often by the shahid's family and friends, the shahid does not die. From a religious point of view, a crucial element in being a shahid is purity of motive (niyya), doing God's will rather than acting out of self-interest. Acting because of one's personal plight or to achieve glory are not pure motives. Most of the families of the shuhada accordingly want to present their suicides in the best possible light. To honor and admire the family of a shahid is a religious obligation and the family's status is thus elevated among religious and traditionalist Palestinians. In addition families of shuhada receive substantial financial rewards, mainly from Gulf countries and especially from Saudi Arabia, but also from a special fund created by Saddam Hussein. So far as I know, no one who has followed the history of the shuhada closely believes that money is what makes their families support them, although it helps. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15979 |