More than half the suicide bombers used by the Taleban to launch attacks in Afghanistan are not Afghan nationals, the United Nations says in a report.
| Whoa! Never guessed that, did we? |
It says more than 80% are recruited, trained or sheltered in neighbouring Pakistan, noting a steep increase in attacks over the past two years.
| That could be because Pakistain is making war on Afghanistan, officially or un-. |
The UN mission in Afghanistan released the report on the sixth anniversary of the country's first suicide attack. It killed the mujahideen leader Ahmad Shah Massoud.
| That wasn't Taliban, dumbasses. It was al-Qaeda. It was a strictly Arab operation. |
But it was only after 2005 that suicide strikes became common here, used by the Taleban in their insurgency. Last year there were 123 and this year 103 by the end of August.
| Takes a while to get the fatwah machine precisely tuned. |
During the first six months of the year, such attacks killed 193 people - 121 of them Afghan civilians, 62 Afghan security forces, and 10 foreign troops.
| The Talibs make no pretense they're doing it for the Afghan people. They're doing it for Mullah Omar. |
Different bombers
The report says Afghans should accept the fact that their compatriots do mount such attacks.
In the past, Afghan leaders have sometimes said Afghans simply do not commit suicide.
| We won't discuss what they're full of. |
The authors believe many attackers are opium addicts, and many others orphans
| Most are brainwashed madrassah sweepings. |
Nonetheless, the UN believes more than half the attackers here are foreign, coming mainly from Pakistan and also Arab and Central Asian states. Many are Afghans who have spent much of their lives in refugee camps in Pakistan. It says that in several ways, suicide attackers in Afghanistan differ from those in other countries. They tend to be poor and little educated, very often groomed in madrassas in Pakistan's tribal areas. None have been women, and there have never been pre-attack statements from them or acts to venerate their families. Indeed, often the families are unaware their son has died in a suicide mission.
| They're cannon fodder, or maybe we should call them boom fodder. They're cheap and easily replaced. Just because it's a cliche that human life is cheap in the mysterious East doesn't mean it ain't so. |
Addicts
President Hamid Karzai recently pardoned a teenage boy who had failed in an attempt to blow up a provincial governor. His father had sent him to a Pakistani madrassa but had no idea he had come back to Afghanistan having been groomed for a suicide attack.
The authors believe many attackers are opium addicts, and many others orphans. The report says the authorities are now preventing many such attacks and that even the ones that succeed tend not to kill many people. However, 80% of those they do kill are civilians, even though all the attacks appear to be aimed at Afghan or foreign security forces, or Afghan government targets.
The authors of the report interviewed more than 20 failed attackers held in an Afghan prison, ranging from a boy of 15 to a man in his 50s. Some were awaiting trial but none, said the UN, had recourse to any legal counsel.
| Wow. That's the same recourse to legal counsel their potential victims woulda had. Talk about a finely honed legal ethic! |
Of those interviewed, some said they had been duped or even told that that they would not die in the bomb blast and would receive a financial reward. Those coercing them, for instance by threatening to behead them, rarely go on to mount suicide attacks themselves.
| Comes as a surprise, dunnit? I know. It floored me, too. Who'da ever guessed that? |
But others were willing attackers, angered by the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan, by the civilian deaths caused by them, or by what they saw as the corruption of the Afghan government. Many said they were sorry that suicide attacks killed civilians but the attackers believed these ordinary people would go to heaven as martyrs.
| In the civilized world we tend to put off going to heaven, and we always try to ask before sending someone. |
Publicity
The UN says suicide attacks here tend to diminish people's faith in the Afghan state, and cites polls as saying just over a 10th of Afghans believe such attacks are always or sometimes justified. The Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, said that while suicide attacks tended to be militarily ineffective, they could have a big propaganda effect, bringing publicity to the Taleban. An example was a bomb outside the Bagram air base in February which killed more than 20 civilians when US Vice- President Dick Cheney was inside.
| Umm... Right. It went off within a couple miles and a day of his arrival. |
Mr Koenigs said that in order to try to undermine the attackers, it was vital that foreign forces in Afghanistan did their utmost to reduce the civilian casualties they were causing, and that Afghan forces take on more of the burden of providing security. He also said it would be good if more Muslim countries could contribute troops to the Nato-led force, Isaf. Currently, the only Muslim-majority countries in Isaf are Turkey, Azerbaijan and Albania. |