Word: jihadism
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Over the next year, Marwan says, he participated in dozens of assaults on U.S. troops who were struggling to subdue the city. Marwan says he became expert with machine guns, a skill that brought him to the attention of al-Zarqawi's group, then called Attawhid wal Jihad. Marwan's piety apparently impressed the foreign-led jihadis as well: in April 2004 he was approached by Attawhid's spiritual guide, Palestinian-born Abu Anas al-Shami. Marwan says al-Shami, reputed to be a powerful orator and motivator, had a deep impact on him. (Al-Shami was killed...
...transformation into a suicide bomber. Volunteers have to undergo a program to discipline the mind and cleanse the soul. The training, supervised by field commanders and Sunni clerics sympathetic to the insurgency, is mainly psychological and spiritual. Besides the Koran, he says, "I read about the history of jihad, about great martyrs who have gone before me. These things strengthen my will." One popular source of inspiration for suicide bombers is The Lover of Angels, by Abdullah Azzam, one of Osama bin Laden's spiritual mentors, which tells stories of jihadis who died fighting Soviet occupying troops in Afghanistan...
...campaign hoopla, though, was partly upstaged by more dramatic doings 2,000 miles away in Lebanon. There, Michel Seurat, 39, a French Middle East researcher who was kidnaped in Beirut last May by the shadowy pro-Iranian Shi'ite-dominated terrorist organization Islamic Jihad, purportedly had been executed as a French spy. The terrorists released three black-and-white photographs that showed a bare-chested Seurat with unfocused, half-closed eyes, a shrouded figure in a closed coffin. Although his body has not yet been found, there appeared to be little hope that he was still alive...
Nothing has yet been heard of the five remaining American hostages in Lebanon. Washington sources speculate that the Americans are being held not by pro-Libyan extremists, but by members of Islamic Jihad, a pro-Iranian organization that is trying to secure the release of 17 imprisoned Arab terrorists in Kuwait. Islamic Jihad apparently considers the American hostages, while alive, a useful bargaining chip. Anxious to take no chances, however, both Washington and London evacuated dozens of their citizens from West Beirut last week, leaving only about 65 Westerners in the bloodstained Muslim-held area of the city...
Kauffmann's abductors, the extremist Shi'ite Islamic Jihad, had different ideas. Apparently hoping to capitalize on the U.S.-Soviet deal that resulted in the release of American Journalist Nicholas Daniloff, the Iranian-backed group on Oct. 3 released a videotape of two of the six remaining American hostages, Terry Anderson and David Jacobsen. Both men charged that the Reagan Administration was not pursuing their release as vigorously as it had sought Daniloff s. Three days later the kidnapers released a videotape of three French hostages...