British 'Taliban fighters' in Afghanistan

[davidbfpo]

A slim BBC News report:

Two Britons suspected of fighting for the Taliban have been arrested by British armed forces in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said. The MoD said the pair, who it said "claim to be British nationals", have been detained.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14230458

The Daily Telegraph has some more detail, although unclear whether detained in Herat or Helmand:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...rror-raid.html

In June 2009 there was a short-lived flurry of articles about a dead Taliban fighter being found with an Aston Villa tattoo:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...la-tattoo.html

After the flurry it all went quiet.

There have been other stories about British accents being overheard and allegations that bodies were blown up in extremis situations (where removal was not possible) to hinder identification, a grenade in the mouth IIRC.

After 2001-2002 although not on my front-line radar Jihadi propaganda has not been overflowing with footage of British-born fighters or other signs. We have of course had the 'Tipton Taliban' and others who ended up in Guantanamo Bay.

I shall watch and wait for any more information.

[Bob's World]

This topic touches a concept we've been tossing around at work of "Identity"

The general gist is that everybody possesses multiple "identities", and that those identities have some personal hierarchy, and that there is also essentially a cut line above which are identities one is willing to die for, and below not.

So, as example one may identify by their gender, region, profession, nationality, family status, race, ethnicity, hobbies, music likes, etc, etc.

The culture one lives in shapes a general "norm" in any given community. Our theory is that in the modern information age those "norms" are evolving far more rapidly than in the past, and there are going to be far more individuals within a community who adopt a family and hierarchy of identifies that are outside that norm.

For example, a third generation French citizen living in Paris may come to prioritize their Algerian heritage above their French citizenship.

Or a British citizen who feels strongly against the UK's policy toward Afghanistan may come to prioritize his support for those who he or she feels his country wrongly oppresses.

Over the past several years the establishment writes such events off as some sort of mental disorder, and say that someone has been "radicalized." This is a natural tendency of governments to write off such individuals as being either somehow crazy or corrupted by some powerful external force. We think it is much more a simple fact that people have free will, and are free thinking and in an age where they are exposed to so much more information have a broader range of choices that they will naturally make.

So, these men may well be British nationals, but it would be an interesting conversation to dig into how they identify, how they prioritize those identities, and how their identifies evolved to the ones that bring them to their current situation.

Just something to consider.

Bob

[davidbfpo]

The NYT article has a potentially important two sentences:

Under NATO guidelines, most individuals detained by allied forces are released or transferred to the Afghan Authorities within 96 hours.

Britain has a national policy of detaining people longer than 96 hours in exceptional circumstances, particularly when authorities think they can get information to protect their forces or the Afghan population.

Link:http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/..._r=1&ref=world

I will reply to Bob's post another time.

[Tukhachevskii]

Damien Lewis, Bloody Heroes, bases on of his Muslim combatant characters on a "British" Jihadi, known as Ali Al-Africani by his comrades. Apparently the book was based on primary sources and narrates the early invasion of Afghanistan.

[Tukhachevskii]

Originally Posted by Bob's World

This topic touches a concept we've been tossing around at work of "Identity"

The general gist is that everybody possesses multiple "identities", and that those identities have some personal hierarchy, and that there is also essentially a cut line above which are identities one is willing to die for, and below not.

So, as example one may identify by their gender, region, profession, nationality, family status, race, ethnicity, hobbies, music likes, etc, etc.

The culture one lives in shapes a general "norm" in any given community. Our theory is that in the modern information age those "norms" are evolving far more rapidly than in the past, and there are going to be far more individuals within a community who adopt a family and hierarchy of identifies that are outside that norm.

For example, a third generation French citizen living in Paris may come to prioritize their Algerian heritage above their French citizenship.

Or a British citizen who feels strongly against the UK's policy toward Afghanistan may come to prioritize his support for those who he or she feels his country wrongly oppresses.

Over the past several years the establishment writes such events off as some sort of mental disorder, and say that someone has been "radicalized." This is a natural tendency of governments to write off such individuals as being either somehow crazy or corrupted by some powerful external force. We think it is much more a simple fact that people have free will, and are free thinking and in an age where they are exposed to so much more information have a broader range of choices that they will naturally make.

So, these men may well be British nationals, but it would be an interesting conversation to dig into how they identify, how they prioritize those identities, and how their identifies evolved to the ones that bring them to their current situation.

Just something to consider.

Bob

Can't believe I actually like something you've written. But I have to add that the concept of "multiple identites" isn't something that one can comfortably confine to the "information age" (whatever that is, sounds like a fuzzy concept to me). What the present age does do, IMO, is increase the number of competing systems of normalisation outsdie to those one normally finds within a given system of normalisation (or culutre, or discipliniary practie or knowledge/power /regime of truth, take your pick). But one also has to counter-ballance that argument with the pervasive role of a particular political ideology (liberalism) in creating a morally relativistic and anti-patriotic (in the sense of relatvising the relationship between citizen and state) climate which permits rival normative ecosystems the ability to flourish and undermine pre-existing societal norms. The division between traitor and patriot has become so blurred as to make treason actually acctractive, if not nonsensicle (for instance). Foucualt and Bordiue have some better (i,.e., more cohenrent) stuff to say on the matter this was just my hash up.

[davidbfpo]

After a small flurry the BBC reports both released from UK custody, on 29th July:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14367282

[Bob's World]

Originally Posted by davidbfpo

After a small flurry the BBC reports both released from UK custody, on 29th July:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14367282

Perhaps the bigger story is that two were detained, presumably because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time; and released, presumably because they were not doing anything wrong.

This happens dozens of times a week in Afghanistan. Often in a person's own home in the middle of the night.

We all know how we would feel if our own local police force kicked our front doors in in the middle of the night and dragged us out of our homes in cuffs in front of our neighbors to take downtown for questioning, only to be released and sent home a few days or weeks later. That is a gross violation of justice under the rule of law and grounds for a successful lawsuit. All the more so if that act is perpetrated by some foreign military force.

Night raids have indeed reduced the number of Taliban team leaders and squad leaders on the battlefield. That is a good thing in terms of disrupting the guerrilla, counter-guerrilla operations, counter-insurgent operations. As to the effect on the larger conditions of insurgency, those underlying perceptions of discontent among the greater populace that fuels the movement and motivates people to tacitly or actively support the insurgency?? Mostly it makes them worse.

Within Afghanistan it is primarily a resistance insurgency (OK, all the "smart" guys like to point out that it is a rural rather than urban insurgency, which while true is largely irrelevant to effective operational design other than directing where one's counterinsurgent operations should be focused) The critical distinction is understanding that in Afghanistan it is a resistance, and that the harder one surges against a resistance, the harder it surges back. Also that one cannot defeat, but can only suppress, a resistance so long as the overarching revolutionary insurgency is alive and well.

The revolutionary insurgency is the torch held by the leadership of the various factions of the Taliban leadership that are primarily taking sanctuary in Pakistan. This is the highly political aspect of the insurgency that must be resolved for stability to occur. Focused counter-guerrilla operations at this level can help as a supporting effort; but the main effort must be political and must be focused at GIRoA.

A bit off task, but the rolling up and release of a couple of Brits highlights a major disconnect in our approach to understanding and addressing the problem of Afghan stability. Frankly the fastest path to stability is for the intervening force to simply leave and let natural selection take place. The problem being (as is always the problem) we fear that we, the outsiders, will not approve of what nature provides. Nothing is more stable than nature.

Ask: Are we empowering nature, or are we enabling an unnatural, and therefore unsustainable, solution designed primarily to suit our wants, needs, and concerns as we have defined them???

[davidbfpo]

The successful conviction in Manchester, Northern England, of Munir Farooqi, Matthew Newton and Israr Malik, highlighted once again (as if more proof was needed) the existence of the dark connection between Britain and the war in Afghanistan. A former Taliban fighter who had returned to Manchester after being picked up on the battlefield not long after the U.S. invasion by Northern Alliance forces, Farooqi ran a recruitment network in Northern England that fed an unknown number of fighters to the fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. What was most striking about the case, however, was the way it exposed the method by which recruitment cells operate in the United Kingdom, following a model that is likely emulated elsewhere in the west.

How effective was / is this method?

It remains unclear exactly how many people Farooqi was able to persuade to go and fight in Afghanistan. One estimate published in the local press said some 20 people had been sent over, A figure that seems quite low for an operation that could have been going on for as long as eight years. However, this small number likely reflects the reality of how large the actual number of British citizens being persuaded to go and fight really is.

Link:http://raffaellopantucci.com/2011/09...-afghan-jihad/