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Devoted followers of the religion of peace are training to kill Americans in Afghanistan again, according to Newsweek.
Jalal Shah, 30 (also a disguised name), is a Taliban bureaucrat who fled to Peshawar when the Americans took Kabul. In August he traveled with four other Afghan exiles to a largely deserted mountain village in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan. There they were joined by five Arab recruits: three Saudis and two Yemenis. One carried an American passport, Shah recalls. The place was run by a leathery Qaeda veteran, a Saudi named Abu Yasser. He and the camp’s four other foreign instructors bunked with the 10 trainees in a crumbling two-story mud-walled house with no bathroom, little furniture, a few blankets and only rudimentary facilities for cooking and eating. The trainers seemed to expect trouble at any moment. They never took off the hand grenades that hung from their belts, and everyone was required to take turns on sentry duty at night.
The class spent two weeks learning to assemble car bombs, make time bombs and lay land mines. The subject of explosives had particular significance to Shah, who says he’s an old friend of convicted World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef. Shah’s class also studied suicide bombing, especially how to pack explosives and strap them to their bodies. The camp’s director told the recruits he had trained a total of 26 Afghans and Arabs in three similar courses elsewhere during the preceding weeks. In his parting speech he told Shah’s group it was up to each individual to decide whether to become a suicide bomber. “We don’t want to push you,” he said. “It depends on the strength of your Islamic spirit.”
Now back in Pakistan, Shah says he’s prepared to go home and die. “I’m ready to sacrifice my life for Islam,” says Shah, a talkative man with a toothy grin and a close-cropped beard. He seems unconcerned about what will become of his wife and their three children—or the fourth child she’s expecting. If it’s a son, Shah plans to name him Osama. He says his four Afghan classmates have all returned to their home country on undisclosed “special missions,” and he expects to attend another camp soon for further training. Meanwhile he’s not wasting any time. Since returning from his summer session he says he has persuaded 15 Afghan volunteers to go for training.
(Hat tip: Carthaginian Peace.)