In another major development, Umar Patek, the man responsible for the famous 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202 people has been apprehended in Pakistan and is currently being interrogated by representatives of four countries in Islamabad.  His capture is hoped to reveal information about Southeast Asian terrorist networks.

According to a report released a few hours ago,

Handled right, Patek’s capture could finally put a stranglehold on the growing South-East Asian terror network and stop a series of planned attacks including, if the claims are correct, bombings in Australia. Despite his diminutive stature Patek is thin and only 166cm tall he is one of the world’s most feared terrorists.

He is believed to have been among a group of Indonesians, Malaysians and Filipinos who travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s to train and fight.

On their return to South-East Asia, they allegedly formed Jemaah Islamiyah, with strong links to al-Qaida. They have been blamed for a string of suicide bombings and Patek is suspected of being the group’s deputy field commander during the 2002 Bali attacks, in which 88 Australians were killed.

Patek could give detailed information on Indonesians and Malaysian terrorists operating in the Philippines. He could also map out the links between Pakistan and South-East Asian terrorist groups, the missing piece of the counter-intelligence puzzle.

Nevertheless, AFP reports that Australia warned yesterday that the arrest Patek could spark revenge attacks against Westerners in Indonesia, and cautioned nationals against going there.

This mechanism is not new.  The logic of deterrence is predicated on threatening to impose costs on the adversary to dissuade him from taking certain actions.  The logic of coercion is predicated on threatening to impose or imposing costs on the adversary to persuade him to stop or reverse certain actions.

Targeting civilians as a strategy is not new either.  With the dawn of airpower, strategists believed that bombing civilian populations would create public discontent against their government and lead to popular revolt, resulting in factions favoring surrender coming to power.  The logic behind bombing German and Japanese cities in WWII takes root here.  In reality, the strategies did not work.  Bombed populations become despondent and depressed if they cannot predict the bombing, and develop coping mechanisms and go on with their lives if they can.  Hence, revolt against their government’s continuation of the war does not occur.  For this reason, in coercive campaigns, militaries have since favored strikes against campaign-relevant targets and sometimes against politicians themselves.

Suicide terrorists, too, target a good share of officials and security forces, however, most of the targets remain civilians.  Why is this so?

For one, it is a lot easier than targeting high officials.  Although attempts are often made on governors and mayors, attempts by suicide terrorists on cabinet officials that actually make the decisions that the terrorists resent are extremely rare.  At the end of the day, suicide terrorists are still very low-tech, so suicide bombing high officials would typically be extremely difficult.  However, as the case with Benazir Bhutto shows, unfortunately, it can be done.  The anarchists of the 19th century have also succeeded and nearly succeed in blowing up a number of top political leaders.  Furthermore, it would not be very difficult for terrorist organizations to acquire sniper rifles to target officials from a distance.  So can something else be behind the focus on civilians?

In suicide videos, suicide terrorists consistently claim that they are most outraged by the death and persecution of Muslim civilians.  Therefore, they claim that it is hypocritical to denounce them for targeting Western civilians in return.  As dismal as it is, this is a “fair” statement.  However, it becomes an issue of revenge rather than strategic logic.

Justifying attacks against civilians as merely reciprocating attacks on Muslim civilians does not have strategic logic per se.  Furthermore, it does not correlate directly with the actions it is supposed to reciprocate.   Western Militaries kill civilians by accident, by off atrocities which are discouraged and almost always punished by the commanding officers, and unfortunately, as acceptable collateral damage in targeting military personnel and facilities.  For sure, Western militaries have killed civilians in nearly all of their recent operations.  However, at least in the past several decades this has been accidental or incidental–they have not actually targeted civilians.

Suicide terrorists usually target civilians specifically.  Hence, the logic–you kill our civilians so why don’t we have a right to kill yours is flawed.  When Western militaries discount the civilian casualties, as dismal as it is, it is perceived as necessary for the operation.  When terrorists kill civilians on purpose, it does little to highlight their cause or to bring about pressure on the governments they are trying to coerce.  The flaw in the logic betrays the emotional sign of revenge–the preference for symmetry: eye for an eye rather than brain for an eye, even though the brain coordinated the attack that made you lose your eye.

Furthermore, the strategic mechanism, forcing political elites to withdraw from Muslim nations due to avoid further civilian deaths, does not work when the stakes for the adversary are high.  It works in issues like Rwanda or Somalia, where the Western countries’ stake is so small and the value so low that even the prospects of casualties in the single digits can dissuade their commitment.  However, for an issue like control of Chechnya, that has been an integral part of Russia for centuries, attacks killing 50-100 personnel or civilians per year is far from being enough to force elites to give up a piece of territory they feel entitled to.  In more violence environments like Iraq and Afghanistan, even the typical deaths of 1000 or so civilians per year do not result in government concessions to Islamists.  To the elites, the deaths unfortunately become merely the cost of doing business.

So the question remains, do suicide terrorists understand that in the majority of cases, they simply cannot hurt the adversary enough to force him to change his policy, and that these attacks merely aggravate stated grievances like foreign personnel apprehending Muslims and searching their homes?  Or is the issue really revenge for the deaths of Muslim civilians, and strategic logic is tacked on to avoid admitting to themselves the actual emotional motivation?

In decision-making, this is called avoiding value trade-offs.  Interestingly, although Harry Truman well understood the destructiveness of the atomic bomb, in the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki he naively asked the military to try to target soldiers and sailors rather than women in children.  Although the bombs were considered the lesser of two evils compared to invading Japan’s home islands at the enormous costs to both US personnel and Japanese personnel and civilians, Truman nevertheless had difficulty admitting to himself that he really sanctioned the killing of several hundred thousand of civilians, even if it was for a strategic goal and was expected to kill fewer people than an invasion.

In earlier cases, terrorists targeted foreign personnel to successfully force them to withdraw from territory that they had just occupied and that was of relatively low value to them.  The means were directly related to the goal and were sufficient to achieve those goals.  However, when Osama bin Laden claimed both that the attacks on the World Trade Center was revenge against US attacks on towers in Lebanon some twenty years earlier, and that they are also designed to coerce the US to withdraw forces from Saudi Arabia, he seems to have been avoiding value trade-offs much like Truman.  Clearly, the statement about the towers of Lebanon and the fact that he tried to maximize casualties suggests that revenge must have been a major, if not the more important, motivation.

In the end, this does not mean that terrorists do not really believe that their actions have a strategic logic.  They do, and they act on it, which is what should really matter to Western decision-makers.  However, it does mean that these beliefs may not necessarily be motivated by cold calculation of ends and means, and that they are not adjusted based on suicide bombing campaigns’ performance.  Proving to the terrorist that terrorism does not pay as a political strategy and therefore only ends up killing people will not work, and cracking down on them will breed as many resentful new recruits as the old cadres it eliminates.

Terrorism becomes a self-imposing spiral.  Terrorists do not abandon their campaigns even when they are clearly not working and are in fact counterproductive to the treatment of Muslims.  Western governments refuse to withdraw despite the costs and instead crack down on some populations harder, inciting the ire of terrorists.  In the end, one side should quit adding fuel to the fire.  In the case of the US, it does not have control of terrorists’ policy and thus cannot insure that the side stepping off will be the terrorists.  However, does have control over its own policy.  In the end, after making the best effort to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, it should avoid stationing personnel in countries with a history of suicide terrorists and avoid conducting operations with likely civilian collateral damage, in those countries, and others.  Whether the real motivation is revenge against Muslim deaths or strategic logic of keeping foreigners out, these policies would not give potential terrorists cause for acting on either.

The Technology of Terror

Milrad Fatullayev

The training of suicide bombers is proceeding without a hitch in the North Caucasus.

Three militants and a female would-be suicide bomber were taken into custody yesterday in a special operation at the Kiev Railway Station in downtown Moscow. Judging by their names, Khasan Nazhayev, Ruslan Yusupov (Khasu Batalov), Ramzan Khaliyev, and Anzhela Batalova, the 39-year-old widow of a field commander, belong to the so-called Nogay Jama’at. This Islamist community was in the news again after the death of Dagestani suicide bomber Zavzhat Daudova as a result of an explosion in the guesthouse of a rifle club in Moscow’s Kuzminki Park on New Year’s Eve. Her “colleague” from the Nogay radical religious community, Zeynab Suyunova, in whose name the place had been rented, was caught in Volgograd a few days later.

The militants arrested yesterday were transported to Chechnya, where Ruslan Alkhanov, the head of Chechnya’s MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs], is waiting for them. He said the group had tried to move to Chisinau, intending to stay there for a while after the high-profile terrorist act at Domodedovo Airport and the recent terrorist act committed by a female suicide bomber in the Dagestani village of Gubden in Karabudakhkentskiy Rayon. In the latter case the young woman blew herself up in front of the local police station, which also had a communal living facility for servicemen of the Internal Troops on its grounds. Three soldiers died in the blast and 27 were injured.

All of the latest terrorist acts, and all of the ones that have happened since the end of last year in fact, attest to coordinated action by various extremist so-called jama’ats, and to their direction by a single centre, which is, judging by all indications, Doku Umarov’s so-called “Caucasus Emirate.” Marina Khorosheva, the woman who blew herself up in Gubden, was the common-law wife of Russian Wahhabite Vitaliy Razdobudko, who was declared a fugitive long before the terrorist act at Domodedovo Airport. According to preliminary data, he duplicated his wife’s act a few hours later in the same village of Gubden.

Suicide bombers played the main role in all of these crimes, which were high-profile and major crimes in terms of the number of civilians and law enforcement personnel who were killed. Furthermore, they were female suicide bombers. The overwhelming majority of the female suicide bombers have been “black widows” or the wives of members of illegal armed groups. This is true of Anzhela Batalova, who was taken into custody at the Kiev Railway Station, and the “unfortunate” Zavzhat Daudova. Furthermore, the latter was the wife of Ibragimkhalil Daudov, the so-called emir of the Gubden subversive terrorist group who lost two of his three sons in special operations. Daudov’s predecessor, Magomedali Vagabov, is known for having masterminded the bombings in the Moscow subway in March last year. One of the two female suicide bombers committing those terrorist acts was Vagabov’s wife, Maryam Sharipova.

The existence of Russian Wahhabites ceased to evoke amazement in the republics of the North Caucasus long ago. Almost every so-called jama’at has some of these among its members. The number of former Russian Orthodox members is increasing day by day, and the term “Russian jama’at” has already been coined. Furthermore, the new Russian Muslims are more radical as a rule. The accessibility and simplicity of the rituals of Wahhabite Islam are the main factors attracting young people. The main thing, however, is the strict monotheism, or tauhid, which presupposes the renunciation of excess and luxury.

In recent years, radical Islam has become nothing more than a form of social protest. People are dying under mysterious circumstances and disappearing without a trace. Citizens’ complaints are ignored and protest demonstrations, whether they are spontaneous or sanctioned, produce no results leading to the observance of constitutional guarantees and human rights. Young people are disgruntled wit h the world around them, they have spun out of control, and no one can offer them a fundamentally different form of self-assertion that would be equivalent to radical Islam in terms of its impact on minds.

According to Ruslan Gereyev, an expert on political Islam, the intensive development of Wahhabite thinking is being observed now in the North Caucasus. Studies conducted in schools, higher educational institutions, and other places where large numbers of adolescents are concentrated have shown that they are absolutely jam-packed with notions of Islamic dominion. The Internet media (of the Jannah-Paradise type) are major contributors to this, and so are the videos on the YouTube and RuTube sites, many of which portray the “delights” of the special operations, and there are tape recordings of the telephone conversations of militants, which obviously are not flattering to the state. After a Wahhabite is killed, what does his family get besides harassment, eviction, constant searches, arrests, and public condemnation? In spite of this, their numbers are growing daily.

A message from the radicals to young people can be read on the sites of the Jamaat Shariat group, and it actually tells them this: “If you are young and you live in Dagestan, you are certain to die, so choose an admirable death, one befitting a real man and a true Muslim.” The following ayat of the Qu’ran is quoted, out of context, to young people: “And do not think that the people who were killed on the path of Allah are dead. No, they are alive, enjoying their rewards in the presence of the Almighty.”

For aggressive Islam -in other words, for the supporters of the Wahhabite militant wing -the future is in that method of waging terrorist activity. The percentage of women terrorists is rising, although men are still relied upon for major acts, because there is a chance that a woman might not be able to carry out the “emir’s” assignments for various reasons, usually connected with motherhood.

The techniques for the recruitment of suicide bombers have been perfected to the point at which the suicide bomber feels greatly honoured to be part of the movement for the purity of Islam and is convinced that only he, and no other member of the large group of people willing to die for Islam, has been chosen to be closest to the Creator.

The wife of a killed Wahhabite sees her main purpose as holding out and raising her children -future mojahedin -and after that she also is willing to give up her life without hesitation. After the death of her militant husband, she places herself at the “emir’s” disposal, according to the established procedure. He only has to choose the time, place, and method of her revenge.

The methods of persuading male and female suicide bombers are constantly being improved. There may be some truth to the stories about mind-altering drugs, but these would be used only in rare cases. Zarema Muzhakhoyeva had refused three times to commit a terrorist act, but she nevertheless was sentenced to 20 years 5 years ago, even after she told a police officer on Tverskaya Ulitsa, of her own volition, that she had a bomb. After that harsh sentence, who would think of surrendering, even after being pressured brutally by the militants?

In most cases, the physical and mental preparations take a long time. After ending up in the militant milieu for various reasons (the main one is social protest against existing rules and the absence of legal opportunities for the expression of personal views because of the strong clan bonds and corruption in the society, the resistance of the official clergy and security and law enforcement personnel), the suicide bombers accumulate protest potential. For many months they are urged to give up protein and they eat only bread and nuts. The organism grows weak. The day before the terrorist act, the suicide bombers undergo a cleansing ritual -they are secluded, they pray nonstop, they perform ritual ablutions, and they fast. They have hallucina tions, “visions,” and “conversations” with relatives calling them from paradise, urging them to commit the “act of faith” the “emir” orders and to join them in paradise.

Women, especially widows and unmarried women, are easily terrorized because they are weak. In an atmosphere in which even the security and law enforcement ministers cannot defend themselves, the widows and sisters of militants are easy prey for the “emirs.” No one today even mentions the old methods of terror and blackmail that were used against the hesitant, the gang rapes that were filmed with video cameras, and the threats against relatives and friends. The methods are more refined now, and the sacrificial suicide bomber is made to feel lucky to have been chosen to stand before the Almighty in paradise.

There is something else about the causes of self-sacrifice. It is completely mundane and devoid of ideology. It is virtually impossible for someone in this milieu to surrender to law enforcement personnel. It is impossible for ideological reasons and even for physical reasons. The radicals have such a strong sense of brotherhood and they all know about each move each one of them makes. That is the reason for the high mortality rate among young radicals resisting the police. For the sake of comparison, I can cite at least one incident that occurred in Makhachkala in the beginning of February this year. Several militants who had been surrounded in an apartment building in a special operation “unexpectedly” surrendered. The police ceased to be amazed when they learned that all of them were citizens of Kazakhstan, who had not undergone the “Caucasus cleansing rituals.” After they surrendered to the police, the catchphrase coined for the fans of staying alive from Central Asia was “We are in no rush to go to paradise.” The rest, on the other hand, are waiting and hoping that they, and not any other of their brethren, will be the next to be ordered to “go to paradise” by the “emir.”

At least 11 Iraqi soldiers were killed and some 29 people wounded in a suicide car bomb attack targeted local government compound in a town in Iraq’s eastern province of Diyala on Monday, reports Xinhua.

According to the report,

The suicide bomber blew up his vehicle outside a two storey- building in the compound and totally destroyed it, the source said.

An anonymous local police source told Xinhua that they found a booby-trapped car about 400 meters away from the government compound, but the police expert managed to blew it up without casualties.

Diyala province has had a strong al-Qaeda presence in the past several years, and has been racked by attacks consistently.  Three suicide bombings shook the province in January alone.  No group has immediately claimed responsibility, but in all likelihood, it was conducted by al-Qaeda.

More on both the Kunduz and Kanan bombings as information becomes available.

Two remote bomb attacks against Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) were carried out in Moscow this week.  The first occurred on March 9, when a bomb exploded at a bus stop near an FSB training center.

The second attack occurred on March 11.  The two bombs — one left on top of an outdoor garage and the other left in a metal garbage container — went off outside a building housing FSB employees and their families, police sources told Russian news agencies.

The Wednesday attack was claimed by Riyadus Salikhiyn, a Chechen terrorist brigade established by Shameel Basayev.  The statement released by the terrorists, quoted in a BBC story, claims the attack was ordered by Doku Umarov:

On instructions from the amir of the Caucasus mojahedin, noble mojahedin Dokka Abu Usman [Umarov] and in response to criminal activities in [self-proclaimed] Caucasus emirate, when the FSB blows up houses of relatives of mojahedin on the pretext of mine clearing or by means of some puppet ‘Black Chickens’ [referring to the antiterrorism Black Hawks group], Kadirovites, and so forth, and when on a made-up pretext they detain relatives of mojahedin, including teenagers, we carried out an operation against the main training base of killers, butchers, sadists and terrorists – ‘the FSB Academy’ in Moscow,” the group said in the letter.

Friday attack has not been claimed yet, however, it appears to have been conducted by the same brigade.

Fortunately, no one was hurt in either attack.

A Plan for Libya

With Muammar Gaddafi digging in, many have called for international intervention in Libya. Thus far, the focus has been on regime change, but most proposals would surely be viewed as an effort at Western domination of an oil-rich Muslim country. That focus takes our eyes off the crucial problem — an exploding humanitarian crisis.

Half of Libya’s population of 6.5 million lives in Tripoli and just five other cities, all of which have experienced significant fighting and large refugee flows. Over 200,000 have fled to Tunisia, Egypt and Niger, and nearly 100,000 are in makeshift camps in Libya and Tunisia. With Gaddafi fighting to the last bullet, the number of internally displaced people could escalate rapidly.

But refugees are only part of the potential humanitarian disaster. Libya imports 90% of its food, much of it through a handful of ports on the Mediterranean that have been damaged by fighting. Early signs of shortages are emerging even in areas reportedly under rebel control. At the moment, the humanitarian problems are not dire. The real issue is the potential for truly massive shortages in the coming weeks, which is why the international community should begin to prepare a framework for action now.

Libya is already a failed state. Gaddafi is simply the largest warlord in a country where it will be difficult to restore unity. As a result, the nature of the humanitarian challenges is different in eastern and western Libya. The east is now relatively stable; the major port in the region, Benghazi, remains open and functional, and the roads are largely uncontested. Still, there is serious concern about the importation and distribution of resources to the over 1.5 million people who live along the coast from Ajdabiya to Tobruk. The worry arises because suppliers are reluctant to continue trade into the region given the current lack of oil revenue for payment along with other uncertainties.

So in the east, there is a manageable and potentially highly beneficial opportunity for humanitarian intervention. The west is far more unstable and unpredictable, and intervention, even for humanitarian reasons, has the potential to become an open-ended, costly commitment. At this point, the U.S., working with the international community, should continue to watch the situation in the west and take four steps to mitigate the emerging humanitarian problems in the east.

First, it should build a true coalition, especially including Middle Eastern and Asian countries. This is the best way not only to prevent creating the impression of U.S. imperialism but also to keep a humanitarian intervention from escalating into a geopolitical contest. Already, China has deployed a frigate off Libya, while Turkey, Syria and other regional actors are monitoring the situation.

Next, create an international Libyan relief fund of approximately $1 billion to cover the cost of resuming food imports to coastal cities in the east. Unlike the usual humanitarian intervention, this plan would utilize existing commercial networks, seeking to re-establish preconflict trade flows by decreasing the risk to suppliers. Over time, as oil exports resume, this cost can be transferred back to the Libyans.

Third, coordinate coalition air and naval power to provide basic security for ports and sea lanes in the east. This would not require a no-fly zone over any large portion of Libya but instead establish a sea denial zone from Benghazi and other coastal cities through important commerce lanes in the Mediterranean. One aircraft-carrier battle group in international waters combined with an international flotilla should do the trick. Military action need occur only if Gaddafi bombs the ports or commercial ships.

Finally, the U.S. and others should engage a broad range of international relief agencies to monitor and help distribute resources to the coastal cities in the east. Small contingents from Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, Islamic Relief and the World Food Programme are already on the ground. Their size should be increased, and they should be augmented by other official agencies and NGOs. This plan will not impose a new government in Libya; nor will it solve every future problem. It will, however, head off a potentially large humanitarian crisis, with great benefit in the short term, and improve prospects for nearly all Libyans in the long term.

In the new video, calling for Muslim unity, Umarov uses a parable about four bulls as an analogy for the discord that he sees happening.

Four bulls, three black and one white, lived in a dangerous area hunted by wolves.  However, as long as they stuck together, the wolves could not attack them.  One day, the three bulls separated themselves from the white one, claiming that he is different from them and undermines their cause.  The wolves then ate the sole white bull while the black bulls watched.  However, seeing the lack of unity between the bulls, the wolves began targeting them one by one.  Before the last black bull was eaten, he regretted leaving the white bull for dead, admitting that he is not dying now–he really died then.

Umarov concludes that if the Muslims dissociate themselves from the mujahedeen, they will only undermine the Muslim cause, and the foreign forces will vilify them and come after them after they finish with the mujahedeen.

Umarov also comments on a previously released video, available at jihadology.net.  In it, Umarov appears with Khamzat, the commander of the Riyad-us-Saliheen Martyr Brigade, and Saifullah (presumably Magomed Yevloyev) who was the Domodedovo bomber, discussing the forthcoming attack.

In the new video, Umarov says that he originally did not wish for Saifullah to make the video to protect his family.  However, as the Russian security forces have already identified his identity and are interrogating his family, Umarov decided to release the message.  Umarov further points to the abuses against Muslims, using Russians’ apprehension of Saifullah’s family as an example.

Finally, he wows for additional attacks on Russia until it withdraws from the Caucasus and renounces its claim to it.

According to the Long War Journal,

Khamzat’s appearance with Umarov marks the first time the leader of the Riyad-us-Saliheen Martyr Brigade has been mentioned or seen in public. In a statement released on Kavkaz Center in October 2010, Umarov identified Khamzat as “a deputy and an emir” who was a member of the Caucasus Emirate’s top council.

Umarov reconstituted the Riyad-us-Saliheen Martyr Brigade in April 2009 and immediately directed it to carry out suicide attacks and suicide assaults in the North Caucasus as well is in Russia.

Some of the most recent high-profile suicide operations carried out by the Riyad-us-Saliheen Martyr Brigade include: the double suicide attack in Moscow’s metro on March 29, 2010 (39 people killed); a double suicide attack that targeted police in the city of Kizlyar in Dagestan on March 31, 2010 (13 people killed); a suicide attack at a concert in Stavropol on May 26, 2010 (seven killed); the assault on Kadyrov’s home village of Tsentoroi in Chechnya on Aug. 29, 2010 (16 killed); and the Sept. 9, 2010, suicide attack in Vladikavkaz (16 killed).

After the Domodedovo attack, Umarov has become Russia’s Osama bin Laden.  However, as many militants say he is more of a symbolic figure than a commanding authority, his capture or killing may have only a limited effect.

Furthermore, defectors complain that loss of old commanding officers to combat and decapitation strikes by the US have left the Taliban poorly run, with deteriorating discipline.

Finally, the Afghan civilians, put off by the abuses, no longer cooperate with the Taliban as willingly as before.

Overall, though, Yahya believes that although the organization has lost its way, its organizing principle, resentment of the American occupation, will continue to supply it with new recruits, even as old members walk away in disgust.

Full text:
How the Taliban Lost Its Swagger;
Disgusted by the insurgency’s relentless brutality, more than 1,000 fighters have walked away in recent months.

By Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau

At a dark, unheated village Madrassa near Peshawar, Pakistan, Mullah Yahya spends his days studying the Quran and begging God’s forgiveness for the horrors in which he once took part. Until a few months ago, he belonged to a Taliban unit operating in and around the Afghan town of Marja, led by a commander whose ruthlessness had earned him the nickname “Saddam.” But late last summer, Yahya finally quit the Taliban, together with a dozen other fighters and even Saddam himself. The commander and some of his men joined a U.S.-backed militia in the Marja area–where Saddam was killed by a Taliban IED just a few weeks ago. Yahya and others abandoned the war altogether. “I’d like to delete my past from my memory,” says the black-bearded 28-year-old, huddled in two coats against the madrassa’s indoor chill, to a visiting NEWSWEEK reporter. “I’m worried about how Allah will treat me for what I have done.”

Yahya and others like him are giving worries to Taliban leaders as well. More than 1,000 fighters have walked away from the insurgency over the past several months. The desertions alone may not drastically reduce the guerrillas’ armed strength of roughly 30,000, but they’ve compounded the group’s other recent losses. In the past year and a half, hundreds of seasoned commanders have been killed or captured, along with more than 1,000 fighters, and formerly secure bases across the strategic provinces of Kandahar and Helmand have fallen to the American-led offensive. “The numbers [of defectors] are small, but we can’t ignore them,” says a former Taliban cabinet minister who–like other insurgent sources interviewed for this story–declines to be identified for security reasons. “They are serious and are having an impact.”

The Taliban has lost its swagger. Eighteen months ago they were stronger than ever in eastern Afghanistan and their home provinces in the south, and they were growing fast in the formerly secure north and west. That was before mid-2009, when President Obama began deploying 50,000 additional U.S. troops. Even now, senior Taliban leaders in the safety of back bases inside Pakistan shrug off the defections. “We didn’t notice when they came; we didn’t notice when they left,” a member of the ruling Quetta Shura says of the deserters. “You watch–we’ll cause more American casualties this year than last.”

But fighters on the front lines are far less cocky. They freely admit that defections, desertions, and battlefield losses are undermining their military effectiveness. Worse, the defectors have given valuable intelligence to the Americans. “They gave names of anyone who was supporting the Taliban,” the former minister says. “They are one reason for our heavy casualties.” Morale has been hit hard, too, he adds: “One of our biggest sources of pride and confidence was that there had been no real defections before.” When Obama first announced plans to begin drawing down U.S. forces in Afghanistan this coming summer, the Taliban hailed it as a signal of surrender. They sound a lot more tentative now, even when speaking of the U.S. plan to turn over all security duties to Afghan government forces within four years. “As we get closer to 2014, we feel nervous and under pressure,” says a Taliban intelligence officer from Helmand.

One of their biggest concerns is the lack of real leadership at the top. “In the 16 years of the Taliban’s military and political life, this is our most difficult phase,” says Zabihullah, a senior Taliban adviser. The movement’s founder, Mullah Mohammed Omar, has been unseen and silent since he fled Afghanistan in late 2001, and his right-hand man, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, has been held for the past year by Pakistani security forces. The two senior commanders who nominally run the war in the south now–Abdul Qayum Zakir and Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor–inspire little confidence in the ranks. “There has never been such an emptiness of leadership,” says the former minister, and Zabihullah agrees. “Those top two are not leading the movement well. They do not seem mentally prepared for such a heavy task.” Field commanders seem to be on their own, each pursuing his own agenda, and the ex-minister sees little or no coordination among the ruling Quetta and Peshawar Shuras and the Haqqani network that controls eastern Afghanistan. “Everyone seems to be marching to his own drum and under his own flag,” the former minister says.

The result has been a breakdown of authority on the ground. As mid and lower-level commanders are taken down, many of their replacements seem incapable of keeping their fighters in line, longtime Taliban sources complain. Kidnappings, indiscriminate IED and suicide-bomb attacks, abuses of power, and outright banditry are alienating formerly sympathetic villagers. “Day by day we are losing discipline,” the former minister says, “and with that, crucial popular support.” The soaring number of collateral deaths is a particular grievance: in the first 10 months of 2010 alone, U.N. statistics say the insurgents were responsible for 1,800 civilian deaths–three times the number caused by U.S. and NATO forces.

Yahya detested what the insurgency was becoming. He first joined the Taliban in the name of driving the infidel Americans out of his homeland, he says, but the movement has degenerated into something cruel and un-Islamic. He’s haunted by thoughts of the villagers who were beaten and tortured by his group for visiting government offices, and of villagers who fed and housed the militants and whose homes were then bombed by the Americans after the Taliban had left. “We were playing with the lives of people,” Yahya says. “We killed and harmed innocents, just as the infidel Americans do.” He thinks also of comrades in arms whose lives were squandered in hopeless attacks. “The commanders didn’t care,” he recalls. “We didn’t even collect the dead bodies.”

Some Taliban leaders privately admit they hate losing idealistic fighters like Yahya–men they call the “book Taliban” for their commitment to Islamic studies. Newer recruits tend to be driven by money, power, or the lack of any better employment, insurgents say. “I’m worried that Taliban who are fighting for Islam are decreasing, and those who have dirty intentions to kidnap and make money are increasing,” the former minister says. “Too many fighters are fighting for their own interests,” says a Taliban subcommander in Helmand.

But that doesn’t stop the insurgents, who are planning a major offensive against the Americans when serious fighting resumes in the spring. “We will attack in larger numbers, with new recruits from Waziristan and with more madrassa students,” the former minister promises. Yahya has no doubt that recruits will be found. “The Taliban are bad,” he says, “but the people are angry with the Americans for killing and arresting innocents, and the Afghan Army and police steal the people’s opium and money.” He pulls his two coats around him against the winter air. “Not even 2 percent of the Taliban think like me.” His pessimism is echoed by a former Taliban commander who quit the insurgency after two years in U.S. and Afghan prisons. He too has retreated to a madrassa in Pakistan. “I’m sick of fighting,” he says. “But I still believe the Americans will be defeated.” As long as that idea persists, the war is not over.

Farahi was kidnapped on Sept 23, 2008 in Peshawar and released six months ago.  This week, Farahi finally provided an account of his experience.   He says he learned a lot about the world and terrorism and plans to write a book about it.

Kidnapping officials is a common strategy used by Al-Qaeda and Taliban.  In fact, as Farahi confirms, they often even collaborate.  Terrorist organizations are able to use prisoners for information and to trade them for their own members captured by the other side, for money, or for military materiel.  Farahi says he does not know what he was trade for.

Another interesting point is what the captors’ harangues suggest about their motivations.  According to Farahi, the members interviewing him claimed that he is a sell-out, that he is collaborating with the Americans, and that he is not a Muslim.  Are terrorists motivated by nationalism or religion?  Is the issue foreign control, and collaboration with Western governments is seen as a part of that, or is the issue non-Islamist governance, and collaboration with despised secular governments is seen as undermining true Islam?

The story as follows:

“Afghan Tells of His Ordeal at the ‘Center of Al Qaeda”

By Carlotta Gall

KABUL, Afghanistan — Abdul Khaliq Farahi’s kidnappers attacked fast, smashing into his car to stall it, seizing him and executing his driver as he tried to make a phone call. Within seconds, they were driving away to a hide-out just 20 minutes away.

It was Sept. 23, 2008, and Mr. Farahi, the Afghan consul general in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar, was driving home from work. His kidnapping was one of a series singling out foreign officials that included the taking of an Iranian diplomat and an attempt to kidnap the American consul, Lynne Tracey, who escaped thanks to the quick reactions of her driver.

Mr. Farahi, 52, spent two years and two months as a captive of Arab members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. Questioned under torture for the first six months, he was moved 17 times. Apart from the first days when local Pakistani and Afghan militants handled him, he was always held by Arabs, he said.

He spoke for the first time at length about his two-year ordeal in an interview in a hotel in downtown Kabul, just yards from the presidential palace where he has been living as a guest of President Hamid Karzai since his release last November. Within days of being snatched, Mr. Farahi was driven deep into the mountains of South Waziristan, one of the most inaccessible of Pakistan’s tribal territories, where Islamist militants run a virtual ministate beyond the control of the Pakistani government.

He found himself in a remote valley. Inside one of a few small huts, an Arab man was waiting for him.

” ‘Whatever you need, we are ready to bring you,’ ” Mr. Farahi recalled the Arab’s saying. ” ‘We will start the questions tomorrow.’ ”

”I understood this is the center of Al Qaeda,” he said. His interrogator was in his 20s, gave his name as Hassan and spoke English with a British accent, he said. ”When I saw them, I realized they were Al Qaeda. I thought they would kill me, that first they would ask me questions and then they would kill me.”

By 2008, Pakistani and Qaeda militants were spreading their reach beyond their base in Pakistan’s mountainous tribal areas into the heart of the country’s main cities, and exposing the perilous weakness of the Pakistani state as they conducted assassinations, suicide bombings and kidnappings. Mr. Farahi said that seeing Al Qaeda up close brought home to him how powerful they were in Pakistan. ”They could do whatever they wanted,” he said.

Pakistani militants had long been carrying out kidnappings to extort money and sometimes to exchange for prisoners being held by the government. They had gained the release of a number of high-level prisoners in exchange for the Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, just months earlier. Al Qaeda, Mr. Farahi said he came to realize, was engaging in kidnapping for the same reasons.

”At the beginning, I could not understand why they took me,” he said, recalling his ordeal in sometimes imperfect English. ”They would say: ‘You are a representative of America. Your government is not a Muslim government. We have the right to kill you. You are not Muslim.’ ” They also accused him of working with the Central Intelligence Agency.

”Then later I realized they had aims to release their friends and get some money,” he said. ”I concluded they organized the kidnapping.”

The group, which he sensed was large and had multiple sections, was led by an Arab in his 40s who had fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation. The man gave different names; one was Abdul Haq, but it was not his real name, Mr. Farahi said. Mr. Farahi met him 12 to 15 times, until he was killed in a drone strike last spring.

There was another man in charge of security, an Arab from Saudi Arabia, about 30, who gave numerous names — Ali, Muhammad, Mustafa.

”For the first six months, they gave me a lot of torture and a lot of questions,” he said. ”After that, they treated me better.”

He said he was blindfolded and handcuffed, his feet manacled and chained to his hands, or was made to stand for 12 or 13 hours in a locked room. Then he would be questioned for an hour or more.

He was allowed to go to the bathroom only after 24 or 30 hours. Sometimes he was suspended painfully for three or four minutes at a time by his arms. During one period, he was kept down a well, in a space dug out from the side of the wall, for four or five days at a time. The room down the well, he later came to understand, was designed for people to hide from American drones and other air activity.

The Arabs had very specific questions about intelligence subjects, American diplomats and civilian contractors, and Afghan government and tribal relations.

”They asked me hundreds of questions,” he recalled. ” ‘Where is the Blackwater center? Where is the center of the drones?’ They asked me for details of the American Embassy in Islamabad. They asked too many questions, the location of the Afghan government intelligence. I did not know the locations.”

Although the Arabs seemed to live and operate on their own, Mr. Farahi learned that there was a close cooperation between them and the Pakistani militant groups. At one point, he was moved to a Pakistani village in another valley, indicating a level of interaction or cooperation with local Pakistanis, he said.

At one time two Pakistani Taliban, Pashto speakers, were among his guards, he said. ”The Pakistanis know very well the Arabs are there, because this group of Al Qaeda was mixed with the Pakistani Taliban,” he said.

After six months he was moved to a big room where another prisoner was behind a curtain. ”At the beginning, I thought he was an Afghan businessman from Herat,” he said. ”But then I realized he was an Iranian diplomat.”

His fellow prisoner was Heshmatollah Attarzadeh, the Iranian consul in Peshawar who was kidnapped two months after Mr. Farahi in November 2008. They were held on and off together for the next year until Mr. Attarzadeh was released, after some delays, in March of last year.

Most of the time they were not allowed to talk to each other, but they found one place where they could, softly, so as not to attract attention. Mr. Attarzadeh had come to the same conclusion — that Al Qaeda had kidnapped him in order to win the release of prisoners and extort money from his government, Mr. Farahi said.

Pakistan officials have said Iran’s government made direct contact with Al Qaeda and negotiated Mr. Attarzadeh’s release. One Pakistani official said the Iranian government exchanged him for antiaircraft missiles.

A security official said the diplomat was exchanged for high-level Qaeda operatives, including Saiful Adil, an important figure who was the organization’s commander for external operations and had been in Iranian custody since 2001, as well as some families of Qaeda members. A daughter and a son of Osama bin Laden were allowed to leave Iran at that time, and Pakistani officials said their release from house arrest was part of the deal to gain Mr. Attarzadeh’s freedom.

The release of the Iranian gave Mr. Farahi hope. Six months later, he was released and deposited at the border near Khost in eastern Afghanistan. He says he does not know if any deal was made on his behalf, but officials in Afghanistan suggest that he was exchanged for money.

Mr. Farahi remains reticent about some things. ”I was two years and two months with Al Qaeda in different places, and I realized so many things,” he said. ”I learned too many things about that issue and about the terrorists. I will write a book about it.”

In his video, found on jihadology.net, Razdobudko discusses jihad and the Westerners’ wronging of Muslims.  He stresses the importance of following Allah’s will, which he interprets to be an active war against infidels, and blames Muslims who remain in their warm houses instead.

Most chillingly, the video takes place inside the very car in which Razdobudko blew himself up. At 26:00 into the video, Razdobudko opens the trunk of the car to showcase the bomb.

“And for our enemies, the enemies of Allah, we prepared a new present.  If it pleases Allah, it will serve the cause of some infidels’ getting the taste of death.  Today, Allah, justice will triumph.

The caption in Russian reads,

“10 rabbi-u-l-avval 1432 (12.02.2011)

our brother Vitaly Razdobudko

in the autocar Lada-Priora

blew up the block-post of kafirs and murtods [infidels]

in the village of Gubden of Vilyat Dagestan

having destroyed several tenths

enemies of Allah

Let Allah accept his shaheed!

Allahu Akbar!”

In a much shorter video, found here, Khorosheva appears in a room, wearing a shirt on her head.  She also remonstrates against infidel abuses against Muslims, specifically pointing out searches of their homes.  Khorosheva claims that fighting for the will of Allah is every Muslim’s duty and similarly castigates Muslims who remain safely at home instead.

The caption in Russian at the end of the video reads,

“10 rabbi-u-l-avval 1432 (12.02.2011)

our sister Maria Khorosheva

let Allah accept her shaheed

conducted a suicide attack in the place

of dislocation of murtads and kafirs [infidels]

OVD in the village of Gubden of Vilyat Dagestan”

The couple appears to have no affiliation with Doku Umarov, who remains at large.