The Core Breeding Ground
Where might one seek the safest harbour, the most secure, most remote breeding ground for terror; the territory, geography, geological features, weather-entrapped, known and familiar to only a core population comprised of hardened tribal leaders and their faithful, traditional followers?Find a contiguous border between two countries forever nursing a grievance against one another, ready to take up arms at the slightest perceived provocation - throw in mountains and passes and valleys for a truly tough terrain, and you have it.
It's in Afghanistan, it's in Pakistan. A swath of beautiful and hostile mountainous terrain, with narrow passages between, replete with caverns and hidden geological features only those born to the geography can decipher, approach and feel comfort within.
One thousand kilometers' worth of tortuous ascent and descent and history-famed places like the Khyber Pass to take caravans of camels, then trucks and cars, through from one country to the other. But in between, on each side, there reside fierce tribal settlements living their fierce medieval lives.
The tribal areas boast fighters of great ferocity. One doesn't like to meddle with them unnecessarily; one hopes for concord, for a state of live-and-let-live, so it is understood by government that they govern themselves.
And woe betide the government that seeks to pacify and to govern those remote areas. For those tribal peoples are a warrior people and they turn easily from pasturage and trade, from illicit smuggling to terror militias.
What a perfectly fortuitous place for the Taliban to melt into, sharing as they do the lethal fundamentalist theology in Islam of the indigent tribes. And move over, there's room aplenty to share, here comes al-Qaeda as well.
Brothers at arms, brothers in jihad, much in common, much to share, much to plan. Including the territory, perfect in a sense, for setting up discrete training camps. What better terrain than this to train and toughen up recruits.
Teach them under these conditions so untender to human flesh and easy living, and they will have experienced through resolve and smouldering theistic totalitarianism in a barbaric setting the toughness needed to aspire to heroic deeds in expunging the lives of countless enemies.
There they are encouraged, given instruction, taught the highest tenets of their shared ideology of fascistic jihad and sent on to their missions around the world.
In Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iraq, in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in Lebanon, oh yes, of course. But also in Great Britain, in Germany, in Spain and elsewhere around the world. Borders, what are they?
They live and they recruit and they ship out and they acquire instruction and are dispatched, from the United States and Canada to the Philippines and back to Pakistan. The world become their oyster.
Labels: Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Friday, February 15, 2008
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