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Well, this is disturbing. The Chechen Islamist terrorists have taken up recruitment in the manner of Scientology.
And, just to make it worse, they are threatening to attack the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Russia's New Black Widows
MOSCOW — On Monday afternoon, a young woman with a green headscarf walked onto a public bus in the Russian city of Volgograd, went to the back, and sat down on the seat beside the ticket-taker. Irina Kushnir, 31, who was riding to a doctor's appointment, could not help staring at the woman. "I noticed her immediately, right when I was paying my fare," she later told reporters in the hospital. "She had a lovely green scarf around her head. She was looking out the window, acting calm, not drawing any attention to herself."
A moment later, the woman in the pretty green headscarf would fly into the air, leaving behind the bodies of six people and sending more than 30 to the hospital with ghastly wounds. The ticket-taker would end up in the emergency ward, while the suicide bomber, Naida Asiyalova, who was a few days from her 31st birthday, would die in the explosion.
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What's unusual about this story is that it seems to lack the biographical component that people on suicide missions usually share: the motive of revenge. Its absence seems to indicate an emerging tendency in this type of terrorism, which can no longer be defined as an act of payback for the loss of one's home, property, or dignity; it is not a radical form of patriotism. From Asiyalova's case and others, it seems that suicide bombings have simply become the most convenient way to conduct a war by terror: one explosion, many victims, and lots of attention from the media. The bombers themselves are little more than instruments, chosen for their weakness, for the ease with which they can be manipulated.
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Yusup told me how his Arab commander was able to prepare an entire brigade of troops who were not merely prepared for death but desired it. "Lots of different people came to this forest. Some were hyper, wanting to fight, to train, but there were always people who lacked a certain amount of attention at home, lacked love," Yusup said. "These were weak people, who just wanted to be respected and loved, and Khattab was a very good psychologist. He was able to spot such people and assign to them a particular instructor. The first thing that these people received upon entering the collective was love. They were called brothers and sisters, they were coddled, food was prepared for them, prayers were read with them, much time was spent in conversation with them. Then -- all of a sudden -- the instructor would begin asking, almost as a passing thought, whether there were strong brothers among them who would be willing to sacrifice themselves for Allah and for the sake of the common goal. And many among the weak wanted to become strong."
MOSCOW — On Monday afternoon, a young woman with a green headscarf walked onto a public bus in the Russian city of Volgograd, went to the back, and sat down on the seat beside the ticket-taker. Irina Kushnir, 31, who was riding to a doctor's appointment, could not help staring at the woman. "I noticed her immediately, right when I was paying my fare," she later told reporters in the hospital. "She had a lovely green scarf around her head. She was looking out the window, acting calm, not drawing any attention to herself."
A moment later, the woman in the pretty green headscarf would fly into the air, leaving behind the bodies of six people and sending more than 30 to the hospital with ghastly wounds. The ticket-taker would end up in the emergency ward, while the suicide bomber, Naida Asiyalova, who was a few days from her 31st birthday, would die in the explosion.
...
What's unusual about this story is that it seems to lack the biographical component that people on suicide missions usually share: the motive of revenge. Its absence seems to indicate an emerging tendency in this type of terrorism, which can no longer be defined as an act of payback for the loss of one's home, property, or dignity; it is not a radical form of patriotism. From Asiyalova's case and others, it seems that suicide bombings have simply become the most convenient way to conduct a war by terror: one explosion, many victims, and lots of attention from the media. The bombers themselves are little more than instruments, chosen for their weakness, for the ease with which they can be manipulated.
...
Yusup told me how his Arab commander was able to prepare an entire brigade of troops who were not merely prepared for death but desired it. "Lots of different people came to this forest. Some were hyper, wanting to fight, to train, but there were always people who lacked a certain amount of attention at home, lacked love," Yusup said. "These were weak people, who just wanted to be respected and loved, and Khattab was a very good psychologist. He was able to spot such people and assign to them a particular instructor. The first thing that these people received upon entering the collective was love. They were called brothers and sisters, they were coddled, food was prepared for them, prayers were read with them, much time was spent in conversation with them. Then -- all of a sudden -- the instructor would begin asking, almost as a passing thought, whether there were strong brothers among them who would be willing to sacrifice themselves for Allah and for the sake of the common goal. And many among the weak wanted to become strong."
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