Wages Of Sin, We Keep Paying
There once was an Islamic extremist who was radicalized by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Egyptian peace treaty with Israel. After the assassination of Anwar Sadat — in which his role was, at most, peripheral — he was arrested by the Egyptian security forces and tortured extensively. From then on, his course was clear: it was death to the enemies of Islam, and he appointed himself judge, jury and executioner. Torture will do that to you.
Last month, someone detained for three years in Guantanamo Bay before his 2005 release was part of a suicide bomb attack in Mosul. Abdullah Salim Ali al-Ajmi was a Kuwaiti. The New York Times reports:
Mr. Ajmi is one of several former Guantánamo detainees believed to have returned to combatant status, said another American military spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon. “Some have subsequently been killed in combat and participated in suicide bomber attacks,” he said.
Note the verb returned. I don’t have any additional information on Ajmi. But the Times says he was picked up in Afghanistan in 2002 — when we were paying Northern Alliance warlords for anyone they gave us who they said was al-Qaeda, and when our intelligence apparatus in Afghanistan was ad hoc and meager. Ajmi, obviously, was never charged with anything, and his release in 2005 is a de facto admission that he probably never belonged there in the first place.
In other words, a strong prima facie case can be made that Ajmi didn’t “return” to the battlefield. The experience of being hooded and goggled and flown half a world away in the belly of a C-130; of being caged under the hot sun in the chain-link-and-wood sarcophagus of Camp X-Ray and then the panopticon of Camp Delta — and I have seen it with my own eyes; of being always at the mercy of the Quick Reaction Force and the Joint Detentions Operations Group and the interrogators; and never having a clear and open and fair path to argue for your freedom for years — that is the sort of thing that makes a man plot revenge. To deny that is to deny human nature.
I’m not saying Ajmi was an innocent. I’m not saying Guantanamo gave him a license to murder. And I’m certainly not saying that his victims deserved to die because he spent three years in Guantanamo.
What I’m saying is that a completely forseeable consequence of Guantanamo Bay is the creation of terrorists. Or, to be more nuanced, arbitrary and indefinite detention, which in itself is torture, is the sort of thing that makes a person already angry at the western world and willing to maybe help the Taliban out on a thing or two decide: That’s it: ain’t no half stepping. No sleep till suicide bomb. How do we know this? It’s the story of Ayman al-Zawahiri.
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May 8th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
“How do we know this? It’s the story of Ayman al-Zawahiri.”
Er…. no. It really, really isn’t.
If you’ve been involved in forming radical islamist groups supporting the overthrow of your government through assassination and jihad since you were a teen (as detailed in The Looming Tower), then you get arrested and tortured in your 30s, it’s a little hard to claim the latter experience informed the former.
This being the *complete opposite* situation to the one assumed for our Kuwaiti friend.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:34 am
Uh, Kilo. You are an ass, and a clown. An ass-clown, if you will.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:51 am
I’m a lot of things. I ain’t heard you say “wrong” was amongst em yet chump.
May 9th, 2008 at 6:07 am
Zawahiri was imprisoned and tortured following the assassination of Sadat in 1981. Here’s what he was up to before that, from the same source cited here…
“[In 1966] Ayman al-Zawahiri helped form an underground cell devoted to overthrowing the government and establishing an Islamist state. He was fifteen years old.”
“Zawahiri’s underground cell began to grow—it had
forty members by 1974.”
“There were five or six cells in Cairo alone, most of
them with fewer than ten members. Four of these cells, including Zawahiri’s, which was one of the largest, merged to form Jamaat al-Jihad—the Jihad Group, or simply al-Jihad. …
they had no intention of trying to work through politics…”
“1980…Afghanistan… he was preoccupied with finding a base for jihad.”
“1980…Zawahiri began going around to universities,
recruiting for jihad.”
“Zawahiri returned … Peshawar in March of 1981. … Later he would write that he saw the Afghan jihad as “a training course of the utmost importance to prepare the Muslim mujahideen to wage their awaited battle against the superpower that now has sole dominance over the globe, namely, the United States.” ”
“Zawahiri’s organization, al-Jihad, supported the Iranian revolution with leaflets and cassette tapes urging all Islamic groups in Egypt to follow the Iranian example.”
“those, like Zawahiri, who wanted to wreck the state and impose a religious dictatorship. The main object of the
Islamists’ struggle was to impose Islamic law — Sharia”
“Zawahiri envisioned not merely the removal of the head of state but a complete overthrow of the existing order. Stealthily, he had been recruiting officers from the Egyptian military, waiting for the moment when al-Jihad had accumulated sufficient strength in men and weapons to act. His chief strategist was Aboud al-Zumar … Zumar’s plan was to kill
the main leaders of the country, capture the headquarters of the army and State Security, the telephone exchange building, and of course the radio and television building, where news of the Islamic revolution would then be broadcast, unleashing—he expected—a popular uprising against secular authority all over the country.”
“[Group member] began smuggling weapons and ammunition from army strongholds and storing them in Zawahiri’s medical clinic in Maadi, which was in a downstairs apartment in the duplex where his parents lived. In February of 1981…”
“The dragnet missed Zawahiri but captured most of the other leaders of al-Jihad. However, a military cell within the scattered ranks of Jihad had already set in motion a hasty and opportunistic plan. Lieutenant Khaled Islambouli, who was twenty-three years old, proposed to kill Sadat during an appearance at a military parade the following month.”
This all preceded his incarceration, following his umbrella group’s assassination of Sadat.
Wow, imagine if he he’d been radicalised *before* then, eh chump ?
You wanna pony up any explain all this away abraham ?
Nah, you wanna take your whipped arse back to where it came from, don’t you.
And Ackermen, unless you wanna lie and claim you’ve never read the Pulitzer Prize winning Looming Tower, then you know exactly what I do about Zawahiri and what he was before he was *properly* arrested. Namely that his imprisonment and torture post-dated his state of radicalisation which included a dedication to bloody coups and jihad to impose Sharia in Egypt. In fact, even growing hair on his chest post-dated this.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Sorry Kilo, I have read Looming Tower and I agree very strongly with Ackerman’s characterizations here. There’s a big difference between someone who merely chooses to oppose a regime or another powerful entity and someone who sacrifices their entire life in pursuit of that goal. That’s the divide that al-Zawahiri crossed when he was tortured and that’s absolutely the danger of looking the other way when it comes to torture. The neocon mindset, and their fascination with torture as a means for control, is dangerous and it creates far more terrorism than it stops.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Compelling evidence Kilo. Compelling enough to liken this use of direct action to achieve a state that functions according to the will of the people to many of the radical groups that call for peace and an end to all war. Sure, some of my fellows in the anti-war movement would love to set up a few protest bombings that don’t hurt anyone, just the edifice and therefore the institiution–but that does not mean that I want to. Just because I am associated with people that do not want to achieve a goal through the most peaceful and/or political means does not make me any less of a radical or anarchist. Just because I am associated with these people does not make me intentionally violent either, as Al-Zawahiri was involved with colleagues that had violent aims thogh you pointed to no evidence that he was an initial supporter of the use of violence to others. I want to see this state overtaken and overthrown but I do not personally believe that assasination and pointing fingers will achieve a stable base for the future; I use direct action and peaceful demonstration with my colleagues because we know the same things that Al-Zawahiri did, the rationale that politics do not work for the will of the people.
May 10th, 2008 at 12:41 am
I don’t think the issue is about Zawarihi and I’m surprised that you’ve all taken it this far.
This is about Abdullah al-Ajmi. This is about a man who was 23 years old when he was brutally taken to the hell that is Guantanamo Bay. Keep in mind that he was never a fighter.
In fact, to make it easier go to myy website where I did an article today on “Abdullah al-Ajmi - The man”
http://freedetainees.org/745 will take you to the story..
Another point I’d like to make is that it isn’t really about these men and women were guilty prior to their being locked away in Guantanamo. The point is that the treatment, or should I say MIStreatment of human beings will lead to a desperation. And desperate people do desperate things.
I cannot say that I wouldn’t do the same if I were in the same circumstance.
Hi Abdullah’s case he was a member of Tablighi Jamaat and was not a fighter. That is a religious organization that encourages charity and dawah - they are about helping others less fortunate.
If you follow the story of his detention, read the CSRTs and summaries - then read the news stories when he was released - and not even recognizable he was in such bad shape… and you’ll see. His chance at any normal life was stolen from him. So… I would have to agree with the author that this “terrorist” was made in Guantanamo.
LGR
May 10th, 2008 at 5:00 am
…..and you think someone who dedicates their life to that goal between the age of 14-30 hasn’t yet qualified as the latter ?
Here’s a question, WTF could he have done before the age of 30 to get him across that line for you, but didn’t do ?
He was a cell leader in al-Jihad plotting to kill his country’s leaders in a bloody coup plot to install sharia law over the population.
What’s a jihadist gotta do to get some props around here ?
May 10th, 2008 at 5:16 am
You might want to keep in mind he was taken from Tora Bora after the fall of the Taliban.
There’s people who were “in the wrong place at the wrong time”. Then there’s people who chose to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and who couldn’t have been there if they were “the wrong people”.
He claim’s he was never in Afghanistan, which may raise the question of who is lying about that. Unfortunately you link us to this website…
That’s not very helpful, given that it highlights the following exchange at his hearing which secured his release, a mere 9 months before that release occurred…
Q: What direction or path will that dedication take should you be released?
A: For peace.
This would the suicide bomber.
That is of course damaging only to his credibility. Unlike this statement, also unhelpfully highlighted there…
Q: Being detained here, does that affect your ideology of the peace concept that you just mentioned?
A: I don’t blame the Americans for what they did by bringing us over here and detaining us over here. If I were in their place I would go out and look for terrorism all over the world like they did but I have a feeling it is going to be a just decision by the Americans. That is my feeling. I would do the same thing if I were in their shoes. I would capture the bad people, the terrorists and bring them over here and detain them.
Ouch.
May 10th, 2008 at 5:33 am
Well no, your later declaration that you do takes care of that.
Sorry, what ?
Just because you are associated with people who want to carry out bombings, this doesn’t make you *LESS* of a radical ?
Yes, I think I’d have to agree with that.
I get the impression you’ve spent a lot of time conversing with individuals who border on being retarded if you thought this needed an explanation.
“If we set off the bomb does this mean we’re more or less radical?”
“Put a pot of coffee on, we’ll figure this out if it takes us all night”
I pointed out he was the leader of an al Jihad cell, plotting assassinations.
Seriously, WTF is your understanding of the word “violence” ?
How about assassination without compounding that with the pointing of fingers ?
I thought you opened up with a declaration that you don’t use direct action like your colleagues do.
Either way, I think we both know you are a fantasy-based wannabe anarchist and neither you nor your friends are involved in any “direct action” that counts for shit.
I don’t eat at McDonalds. You can trash as many of them as you like kid. You aint overthrowing anything but trash cans stuffed with burger wrappers with that kind of “direct action”.
May 10th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
In reponse to your articulate backlash, Kilo: I do not believe that I made it clear by what I meant when I declared to be a radical. I would have been much more clear in my initial response if I’d clarified that I am a radical pacifict, a radical peace activist. That, i believe, makes a bit more contextual sense I hope. My apologies.
Also, I am not a kid as you have labeled me. I am a graduate student and have been an adult for many years now. Direct action takes place through education, vandalisation, civil disobedience and peaceful protest; direct action may include bombing or other violent acts that potentially harm other human beings, but in my personal action I use means that do not inflict this direct physical harm.
Again, my apologizes for not providing clearer definitions and spellings to a “T” as many articulate persons such as yourself must prefer. I will keep that in mind for further comments that I post.