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Suicide Watch

The Observer has an interesting feature: Inside the mind of a female suicide bomber

An increasing number of female jihadis are being recruited and trained to blow themselves up in the name of Islam. Alissa J Rubin visits an Iraqi jail to find out what makes young women turn themselves into killing machines

Alissa J Rubin, the Baghdad bureau chief for the New York Times, meets a captured female suicide bomber who tells her: “If I had not seen you before and talked to you, I would kill you with my own hands. Do not be deceived by my peaceful face. I have a heart of stone.”

Read the rest of this disturbing report.

Hat tip: Chris Lawes

Comments

Spell Check    
  23 November 2009, 2:31 pm

a captured female suicide bomber who tells here:

her?

Fojee Punjabi    
  23 November 2009, 2:34 pm

Frightening stuff.

Brett    
  23 November 2009, 2:39 pm

her?

Fixed. Ta.

MindTheCrap    
  23 November 2009, 3:05 pm

“Was there a difference, I wondered, between killing American soldiers and killing American civilians, like reconstruction workers? No, she said: “I am willing to explode them, even civilians, because they are invaders and blasphemers and Jewish. I will explode them first because they are Jewish and because they feel free to take our lands.”

How politically-incorrect. I’m sure she meant Zionists ….

Spell Check    
  23 November 2009, 3:06 pm

What I find surprising is that I think of Iraq as a barely functioning state run by various militias and thugs. And yet they have a functioning justice system where people people get jail for plotting mass murder and shuffled around to hospitals for psychological evaluations.

I cannot believe that given the ruthless killers on both sides that someone doesn’t have somebody on the inside to take people like this and have them executed and dumped in a ditch, and then visit their house and kill the rest of their family.

John P.    
  23 November 2009, 3:37 pm

I’ve a co-worker who is an Iraqi Christian ( Chaldean). He left decades ago and in repsone to the invasion told me that it would be pointless because in Iraqi culture the basic moral and ethical framework for the establishment of a civil society simply aren’t present. The Ishallah fatalism ( note the women with two kids who dismisses them with; “allah will protect them”) just precludes any possibility that this country can be governed democratically. This place is just hopeless and should just be allowed to tank. At least if they,re fighting amongst themselves they won’t have much time to attack targets in Europe or America. How can we win Hearts and Monds when both are irretrievably barbaric?

I’m sure some Iraqis are just fine and dandy and really want peace; it’s just that there aren’t nearly enough of them.

Mr Danger    
  23 November 2009, 4:06 pm

How can we win Hearts and Monds when both are irretrievably barbaric?

They are not.

Edgar Davidson    
  23 November 2009, 4:29 pm

MindTheCrap picked up on the comment “I am willing to explode them, even civilians, because they are invaders and blasphemers and Jewish. I will explode them first because they are Jewish and because they feel free to take our lands.”

In fact, almost every interview I have seen with would-be suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan have said exactly the same thing. They believe that every American and European in their countries is a Jew. A year ago I watched a CNN report on the top school in Kabul and every one of the ‘cream of Afghan’ youth – as well as the teachers – said essentially the same thing. They also said that they were looking forward to Obama being President as he was not a Jew like Bush.

What I do not understand is why nobody in the main stream media ever attempts to expose this anti-semitic brainwashing that takes place in every Muslim country. Nor do I understand why the main stream media fails to take this into account when listening to any Arab statement (either personal witness statement or Governement spokesmen) in relation to Israel.

Abu Faris    
  23 November 2009, 4:46 pm

Edgar Davidson,

You make a telling point. Anti-Semitism is rife in the Arab (and more broadly Muslim) world.

Even the recent Algeria-Egypt World Cup qualifier in Khartoum, marred as it was by violence towards Egyptian fans on the part of Algeria’s supporters, elicited the following remark on Egyptian national television from Mohammed Fouad, a popular Egyptian singing star who attended the Khartoum match:

“If the Jews were beating us, even they wouldn’t have done it so savagely,” he said.

http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=1&id=18862

Neil D    
  23 November 2009, 4:52 pm

How the world works according to John P.

John talks to bloke.

Bloke tells John something.

John is convinced that he was right all along.

Blinkered.

Alcuin    
  23 November 2009, 5:11 pm

Another reason here for female suicide killers:

I was dismayed but not surprised when a Sunni, Al-Qaeda plot emerged, one in which male terrorists raped eighty Muslim girls and women, then turned them over to Samira Jassim who patiently, persistently, “maternally,” persuaded the rape victims, (many of whom had been targeted because they were depressed or mentally ill), to “cleanse” their shame by blowing themselves and other Muslims up. Twenty eight women did so.

The ruthlessness of those who manipulate such people is breathtaking, but very effective – as a tactic, though not as a strategy. Wars will never be won by such methods, they only cause chaos.

David All    
  23 November 2009, 5:41 pm

Edgar Davidson: The main stream media does not expose the rampant anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world because to do so would be Politically Incorrect* and/or because of groveling to the Saudis and the other Arab oil states.

*Remember Politically Correctness states that only white people can be evil or bigoted. Non-whites or people of color are free of any such nastyness except where it is the fault of Western Imperialism. This is the latest version of the Myth of the Noble Savage.

Mr M    
  23 November 2009, 7:18 pm

David All,

Alissa Rubin should have told those Iraqi females about her family’s background and it might have got a bit more interesting.

It was just going to be bias anyways, and that is what we have here; mindless “Mooslems”.

So I hope you can see where the hate comes from, and it is not started by Muslims but who travel from the comforts of London to a far place in Iraq to bring us misinformation and pogroms on a Sunday morning paper.

PeterParker    
  23 November 2009, 8:07 pm

Suicide bomberess: “If I had not seen you before and talked to you, I would kill you with my own hands. Do not be deceived by my peaceful face. I have a heart of stone.”

Peaceful face?

Any self-respecting female Islamist would be wrapped up head to toe in a black blanket. The fact that she claims you could see her peaceful face means she must be lying.

Live long and keep mocking ‘em.

M*o*r*g*o*t*h    
  23 November 2009, 9:53 pm

Any self-respecting female Islamist would be wrapped up head to toe in a black blanket. The fact that she claims you could see her peaceful face means she must be lying.

She wouldn’t be allowed to cover her face in jail for security reasons.

Abu Faris    
  23 November 2009, 10:26 pm

It might be a simpler (if as depressing) a reason:

She would not have to cover her face, according to her twisted Islamist fundamentalism, as she was in the company only of another women.

Abu Faris    
  23 November 2009, 10:27 pm

*woman*. Typo. Grrrr.

PeterParker    
  24 November 2009, 12:17 am

M*o*r*g*o*t*h, I was joking, of course.

Keep mockin’ ‘em folks, and live long.

mettaculture    
  24 November 2009, 12:29 am

The article is hopelessley self indulgent however.

Alissa Rubin is rehearsing a pseudo femminist scrpt of disempowered women traumatised by the ‘occupation’ above all.

Her weasel words such as women rarely do this ‘alone’ and the choice of suicide is not entirely theirs to make’.

Of course bloody not and not for psychological reasons.

Women and children are weaponised increasingly to get around the success of apprehending male auto-bombers.

She did not listen to the detective ‘do not generalise each story is different’.

The story that is the same is the process of their weaponisation.

To weaponise humans you need;

1. A general collectivist anti individual culture. A culture of self sacrifice and acceptance that some will sacrifice themselves for others.

2. Militant terrorist organisations prepared to use humans. This from the Tamil Tigers to Palestinian to Iraq ‘anti-insurgents’ happens where there are competive militant organisations and one decides to use increasingly miilitant tactics.

3. Recruitment, vulnerable individuals are targeted. Generally this starts with ideological zealots fanatics and the fully volunteering.

4. Grooming this always is a process between seduction and initiation into a cult. The individual whatever their original motivation must be bonded wedded to the cult the group and ego stripped and then redirected.

5. The dedication ceremony. always present usually totally misunderstood even when we get to see their matyrdom video afterwards.

This is the public commitment always in a group often by video it is a dedication almost a marriage where sacrifice is offered ritually sealed and spiritual reward offered.

This ceremony marks the no-going back (so that failed bombers will try again or kill themselves in shame).

6. Publicity To secure the dedication and the no-going back the perrsons name and perhaps video will be widely disseminated among the peer population so that the hero, the martyr can neveer hold their head up high if a failure.

During this period the dedicated suicide bomber may be traded or sold between groups, just like other weapons.

7. Bomb target selection and delivery. Like any missile or bomb it has to be delivered pay load dropped. This is never under the control of the individual who becoming a mere weapon ceased to have any real autonomy.

To underscore the fact that the weaponised human suicide bomber is now not human in the minds of her handlers increasingly they are detonated by another.

The descent into the use of women children and the mentally and physically disabled was as inevitable as night follows day as was the arming of an additional detonator for remote explosion of the walking bomb.

I wish journalist would stop with the psychological motivations. It actually in seeking a quasi legitimacy for their acts through individual trauma further dehumanises them and makes the monstrously evil weaponisers off the hook.

Those who make bombs out of humans in a human bomb factory have all of the greatest evil knowable; Hannah Arrendt’s ‘banality of evil.

Name the human bomb makers don’t rationalise and excuse the human bombs through a tendentious psychodrama of the individual tortured beyond all imagination becoming the Gothic monster of a glib Penny Dreadful.

David All    
  24 November 2009, 12:42 am

Have finished reading the article. It is quite frightening and depressing. Can only hope the jihadists run out of suicide bombers before they run out of targets.

Mr M. Your post does not make sense. Please explain in more detail what you mean.

Josh Scholar    
  24 November 2009, 3:57 am

David All, Mr. M’s comment was perfectly clear. He said:

1) The reporter has a Jewish name. If only she had told the Islamists she was Jewish we would have been spared this embarrassing report, or at very least she would have gotten the hostile reaction all Jews deserve.

2) Any criticism of suicide terrorists is a lie, probably invented by the Jewish conspiracy and brought to us by a Mz. Rubin.

I’m not sure which part of the story Mr. M wanted suppressed. Probably that not all suicide terrorists succeed, that the woman was abused by her husband, that the glorious martyrs kill civilians, that they are ordinary bigots who call Americans “Jews” as they kill them – or perhaps that the word “bomber” was used instead of Mujahideen.

Josh Scholar    
  24 November 2009, 3:59 am

Or, lol, that they blow them up remotely!

:)

That MUST hurt, Mr. M!

Do terrorists blown up by remote control go to heaven, Mr. M?

If so, maybe the glorious resistance should just buy an airplane, strap the bombs to babies and throw them out the bomb bay!

Mr M    
  24 November 2009, 12:41 pm

Josh,

Are you saying you would have sent a BNP member to discuss and report about Jewish issues?

It is just bad taste, and unfair. Even if the cause was good, the main people who needed to pay attention such as the Muslims in the west would ignore it. But that is unless you want more suicides to equate Islam,Arabs etc with suicide bombing and other madness.

Josh Scholar    
  24 November 2009, 3:29 pm

I see, Mr. M.

All people with a Jewish name are equal to BNP members.

Also if we send Jewish reporters we mush want more suicide bombers and we’re sullying the good names of Arabs and Islam…

Keep digging you god damn fascist bigot, keep digging!

Josh Scholar    
  24 November 2009, 4:05 pm

By the way, Mr. M, please enlighten us. Which part of that story do you think is a lie by the god damn Jewess? Tell us, about what is she lying?

Mr Danger    
  24 November 2009, 4:52 pm

Are you saying you would have sent a BNP member to discuss and report about Jewish issues?

That really is an exceptionally offensive and stupid statement.

David All    
  25 November 2009, 6:43 pm

Thanks, Josh Scholar and Mr. Danger for exposing Mr. M for the idiot he is.