Word: jihadi
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...Marwan is already a battle-hardened insurgent, a jihadi foot soldier in Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi's terrorist group, al-Qaeda in Iraq. Like the bulk of insurgents, he is a Sunni Muslim from the former ruling minority community. In his hometown, Fallujah, he is known for his ferociousness in battle and deep religiosity. Marwan asked his commander to consider him for a suicide mission last fall but had to wait until the beginning of April for his name to be put on the list of volunteers. "When he finally agreed," Marwan recalls, "it was the happiest...
BIRTH OF A JIHADI Marwan's journey toward suicide murderer began just a few weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Before the war, he had been one of Fallujah's privileged young men: his father's successful business earned enough--even during the difficult years when the West imposed economic sanctions on Iraq--to provide a good life for Marwan and his six brothers and four sisters. In high school, he was an average student but excelled in Koranic studies at the local mosque...
...There had always been a "global jihadi" perspective in at least a section of the Chechen insurgency, not least because of the arrival of foreign fighters in the 1990s fresh from their war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. A more radical element in the Chechen resistance, personified by the notorious commander Shamil Basayev, had made common cause with this element in recruiting a new generation of fighters more extreme in their commitments and Islamist ideology - and it may well be elements of this group behind the current wave of attacks. (Basayev had, for example, boasted some time ago about training...
...Observers believe the rampant corruption in the poorly-paid Russian armed forces has contributed to the mobility of the Chechen fighters - wads of cash (raised through criminal extortion or donations from jihadi-sympathizers abroad) has often proven a more effective weapon than a rocket launcher in the hands of separatist fighters looking to break through Russian lines. The heavy-handed tactics of Moscow's forces has alienated even many of those Chechens who had initially welcomed their arrival as deliverance from the violent chaos of criminality and warlordism that had prevailed under the de facto independence won from Moscow...
...some seeking money, some pushing a terrorist agenda--have kidnapped dozens of foreigners since the end of the war last year. The hostages then become commodities in a deadly human trade that links street gangs to local mafias to insurgents like Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda--linked jihadi thought to be behind many of the recent terrorist attacks in Iraq. Victims are sold up the chain, and each handler scores thousands of dollars, money used to finance gun running, drug smuggling and the insurgency. There are indications that Rifat may have been caught up in such a chain...