What we learn from Al-Qaeda drop-outs
Michael Jacobson

ON Dec. 10, 2001, after completing his Al-Qaeda training in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sajid Badat returned home to Britain. Badat, 22, a Muslim born in Gloucester, had an associate, a gangly man named Richard Reid, and the duo were now ready to carry out their mission: Blowing up two separate aircraft traveling from Europe to the United States. Badat and Reid had been given identical explosive devices, specially designed to evade airport security and destroy an aircraft in mid-flight. On Dec. 22, Reid — now infamous as the “shoe bomber” — was jumped by his fellow passengers when he tried to light his device on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami. He got further than Badat, who simply bailed on the plot, leaving his dismantled bomb in his parents’ house. Badat is now serving a 13-year sentence in a British prison. He told prosecutors that he decided to “get away from danger and introduce some calm in his life.”
Badat’s case sheds some light on a rarely considered question: Why do some terrorists drop out? We rightly think of Al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups as formidable foes, but the stories of would-be killers who bail give us some intriguing clues about fault lines that counterterrorism officials should exploit. The reasons for a change of heart can be strikingly prosaic: Family, money, petty grievances. But they can also revolve around shaken ideology or lost faith in a group’s leadership.
It’s become a truism of counterterrorism that we must understand how and why individuals become jihadists in the first place. But almost nobody is studying the flip side of radicalization — understanding those who leave terrorist organizations. We’d do well to start. Figuring out why individuals walk away from terrorist groups can help governments predict whether an individual — or even a cell — is likely to go through with a plot. Understanding the dropouts should also make it easier for governments to determine which terrorists might be induced to switch sides, help stop radicalization and craft messages that could peel away people already in terrorist organizations. The more we know about why terrorists bail, the better we can fight them. So where to start? Despite Al-Qaeda’s reputation for ferocity and secrecy, plenty of wannabes wind up dropping out from it and its affiliates — not just the hapless Badat.
Consider the Sept. 11, 2001, plot. Even in Osama Bin Laden’s greatest triumph, not all of his recruiting efforts paid off. Two Saudis who were selected, Mushabib Al-Hamlan and Saud Al-Rashid, decided not to participate in the attacks after leaving the training camps in Afghanistan. And in the summer of 2001, Ziad Samir Jarrah, who became the hijacker pilot on United 93, agonized about whether to withdraw from the operation. In an emotional conversation, Ramzi Binalshibh — the Hamburg-based liaison between the plotting cell and Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership in Afghanistan — persuaded Jarrah to stay.
Al-Qaeda prides itself on its esprit de corps, but key members have turned against the group from its earliest days. These include Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl, a Sudanese radical who was one of Al-Qaeda’s first members and helped work (unsuccessfully) in the early 1990s to procure uranium for the organization; Essam Al-Ridi, an Egyptian veteran of the 1980s jihad against the Soviets who later purchased an airplane in the United States to help ship Stinger missiles from Pakistan to Sudan; and L’Houssaine Kherchtou, a Moroccan who trained to serve as bin Laden’s personal pilot. (All three became prosecution witnesses in the trial of the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998.)
Looking at Al-Qaeda dropouts, some clear patterns emerge. Some left after becoming disillusioned with the group’s tactics and strategy. Probably the unkindest cut from any former member was delivered by Bin Laden’s fourth son, Omar Bin Laden, who had spent nearly five years living in Afghan training camps. After 9/11, Omar quit Al-Qaeda, calling the attacks “craziness,” according to the journalist Peter Bergen. “Those guys are dummies,” Bin Laden’s son said. “They have destroyed everything, and for nothing. What did we get from Sept. 11?”
Another factor driving jihadists to drop out is a general lack of respect for the group’s leadership. Ridi testified during the embassy bombings trial that he resented having to take battlefield orders during the Afghan jihad from Bin Laden and others who lacked military experience. For Ridi, the final straw was a battle in which many jihadists died — in his view needlessly — thanks to inept leadership, but that Al-Qaeda nonetheless declared a victory. Jarrah, the 9/11 pilot, felt cut out by ringleader Mohamed Atta’s leadership style.
Another reason bad guys bail out is money. Like the rest of us, some terrorists see inadequate compensation as a sign of unfair treatment. Fadl, the Sudanese radical, fumed over his salary while Al-Qaeda was based in Sudan and began embezzling funds — stealing approximately $100,000 from Bin Laden, according to his testimony in the embassy bombings case. (When Bin Laden got wind of Fadl’s theft, he ordered Fadl to repay the money; after forking over about $30,000, Fadl fled, fearing retribution.)
Don’t forget the role of petty slights, either. Kherchtou grew bitter after a Bin Laden aide turned down his request for $500 to cover the costs of his wife’s Caesarean section — and grew livid when Al-Qaeda subsequently paid the expenses of a group of Egyptians sent to Yemen to renew their passports. “If I had a gun,” Kherchtou later testified, “I would shoot (Bin Laden) at that time.”
The final factor seems to be good old family ties. Terrorists who maintain contact with friends and family outside their cell or organization seem more likely to drop out. This may be why Atta forbade the 9/11 hijackers to contact their families to say goodbye. The wobbliest of the hijackers, Jarrah, resisted Al-Qaeda calls to cut his ties with his fiancee in Germany and his family in Lebanon, souring his relationship with Atta, according to the 9/11 Commission.
Something similar happened to two would-be 9/11 plotters, Rashid and Hamlan. Both men bailed out when they left the fanatical, insular atmosphere of the Afghan training camps and returned home to Saudi Arabia. After getting a visa to enter the United States, Hamlan contacted his family, despite clear Al-Qaeda instructions to the contrary. He found out that his mother was ill and decided not to return to Afghanistan, despite intense pressure from his handlers. Hamlan later moved back in with his parents and returned to college. Similarly, Badat, the would-be shoe bomber, appears to have decided to abandon the plot once he returned to Britain and resumed contact with his family.
There’s no obvious silver bullet here, of course. But the tales of the terrorists who weren’t are of more than academic interest. Counterterrorism officials have spent a great deal of effort trying to understand the process of radicalization that turns ordinary people into killers. But strikingly little work has been done on the flip side of the coin: On the factors that can turn a fanatical would-be killer into a somewhat chastened citizen. We’d do well to spend some time trying to understand how Mr. Hyde turns back into Dr. Jekyll. It might help us beat back a rising tide of radicalization — and win a war that is clearly not going well.

—Arab News

Bleeding Tibet; A most brutal day in their life
Ren Ke

PENG Zhongyang has no option but to live in the conference room of the Urban Construction Bureau. The 37-year-old lost his home and brother-in-law to the riot that broke out on March 14 in Lhasa —- which means the “place of the Gods”. The father of two kids is still haunted by the violence that broke out on March 14 in Lhasa. Around 3:30 p.m that Friday, after he picked up his little boy and girl from school, he was caught up in the chaos. “We encounter more than ten mobs throwing stones on the street, beating and smashing a traffic post nearby. Among them was a teenaged Tibetan girl in school uniform,” he recalled.
Pen, the owner of two clothing stores, tried to run for his life, with his kids. But the mob had no intention to spare them, chasing them all the way to his store on Duosenge Road. “Roughly 30 of the rioters tired to break in,” he said. At the same time, a Tibetan girl was shouting to him for help. Peng took her into the store, where eight people sought sanctuary, and they were trying to close the rolling door, but rioter’s sticks flew towards them. Eventually, they put a spring bed against the door. The mobs began to chop the rolling door with their Tibetan swords. “After cutting out the door, they threw in gas-filled mineral waters bottles, and set the place on fire,” Peng said.
At 5:30 p.m., when the firemen and police arrived, the rioters ran away to different directions, but the fire spread to Peng’s store next door, in which his brother-in-law Zuo Rencun was hiding. Peng ventured into the store only to find his dead body there. Zuo was among the 13 civilians burned or stabbed to death on the black Friday, with many others injured. The riot had also caused Peng about half a million RMB worth of loss. That is “two to three years of my income,” he said. Anger and fear is still hanging over Lhasa ten days after the riot took place. “They (rioters) hit everyone in their way, and were very inhumane,” said Qoizhoin in a hospital. The 63-year-old Tibetan granny was injured on the way home.
The “3.14 incident” originated from the Ramoche Monastery, where a group of monks stones policemen around 11 a.m. Later, the mobs went to Barkhor bazaar, the most bustling tourist spot of Lhasa, where they smashed and burned down houses and shops in the area. The chaotic situation then extended to other parts of the city. At that very day, the rioter set fires at some 300 locations and smashed and burned 56 vehicles, according to the Tibetan Autonomous Region government. “They were extremely brutal”, Puncog recalled. “In one incident, they poured gasoline onto an innocent person, and burned him to death. In another, they knocked over a police officer, and then knifed a fist-size piece of flesh out of the officer’s buttocks.”
The brutalities are condemned by the living Buddha the 11th Panchen Lama Gyaincain Norbu Panchan. “The violence ran counter to Buddhism tenets,” Panchan . “The rioters’ actions not only harmed the interests of the nation and the people, but also violated the aim of Buddhism.” Indeed, killing is strictly forbidden in Buddhist doctrines. But what Janne C Fredrik, a Swedish tourist, saw is the otherwise. “The rioters were carrying knives, iron bars and backpacks full of rock. They were definitely well-organized,” recalled Janne, who was cycling around Tibet in the last two months.
“People were chased and badly hurt by mobs. It was senseless,” he said, adding “Most people engaged in arson were young men and women.” The violence has severely damaged the personal and property safety of Tibetan people. “But, it will not undermine the harmony between Tibetans and Hans cultivated in thousands of years’ history,” said Tibetologist Kelsang Yeshe, president of Tibetan Ancient Book Publishing House. Archaeological finds suggest that Han and Tibetan people share the same origins. Excavated stone knives of late Paleolithic age and grains in Neolithic age show that ancient Tibet had interactions with the Yellow River basin. Ever since the Tang Dynasty’s Princess Wencheng came to Tibet some 1,300 years ago as queen of Songtsen Gampo, King of Tubo, Lhasa has seen comprehensive exchanges between Han and Tibetan ethnic groups in culture and trade.
In order to preserve Tibetan culture, the central government has earmarked a huge amount of money for the repair and the maintenance of monasteries since 1959 when the peaceful liberalization of Tibet put an end on its theocracy and serfdom system, noticed Tubdian Targyai, a living Buddha at the Gandan Monastery. “The monasteries preservations are a best protection of Tibetan culture.” At the same time, the central government pours billions of RMB into Tibet to help its economic and social development. In 2006, Tibet’s GDP hit 29 billion yuan (4 billion U.S. dollars), a more than 45 times that of 1959.
“Religion advocates care and mercy, but the reckless rioters attacked hospitals and child-entertainment centers,” said Cering Doje, deputy director of the religion research institute of the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences. “They seemed to have lost basic humanity, and there was no mercy at all.” Now that the situation in Lhasa calmed down since March 16. Civil servants and local residents took to the streets on Sunday afternoon to clean up the aftermath from the riot in the worst hit areas. “They stirred up a decent city and turned it into chaos. They were truly horrible,” said Yangjain, a local Tibetan. The main streets in the downtown area, which were scattered with rubbish and rocks, were crowed with traffic again. As for the clothing store owner Peng Zhongyang, he said the local elementary school has given his kids new schoolbags and schoolbooks for free after knowing their sufferings in the riot. “I really appreciate the deep concern of local people,” he said.







Kazakhstan: A resource-rich and prospering nation
Rubina Barket

AS GLOBAL demand of fossil fuels sours rapidly, the countries with proven reserves of energy are gaining a lot of attention. World powers as well as emerging economic powerhouses such as China are working hard to secure a mutually beneficial relationship with energy rich countries. Brother Islamic country Kazakhstan is one of such nations that have assumed a lot of significance, thanks to its vast reserves of oil and gas and resultantly ¨C a booming economy. Kazakhstan¡¯s economic model and development of oil and non-oil sector in parallel, distinguish it among the independent countries that emerged out of former Soviet Union 16 years ago. Primarily, it is the abundance of hydrocarbon materials. Total forecasted resources are estimated to be 12-17 billion tons of oil and proved extracted volume is 4.8 billion tons of oil and 3.4 trillion cubic meters of gas. It is expected that by 2015, the country will be among top 10 world oil exporters.
Along with a wide-scale work on oilfields, inland development of Caspian shelf that falls in Kazakh jurisdiction is being carried out actively. In 2007 oil and gas extraction was 67 million tons, and it is expected to grow to 130 million tons by 2015. Agriculture is also a very important sector of Kazakh economy. By the volume of grain production, Kazakhstan is on the third place in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) after Russia and Ukraine. It is not only self-sufficient but grows exportable surplus in grains like wheat. Today the main source of economic growth of the country is exploitation of raw materials¡¯ potential. In comparison with 1985, the volume of hydrocarbon extraction has grown by 225%, while this production in the world increased only 1.3 times in the same period. The country is magnet for foreign investors, attracting more than 60 billion USD in foreign direct investments. Attractiveness of oil and gas is coupled with political stability ¨C unlike many other CIS countries ¨C and a sound financial system, considered very progressive. Kazakhstan was the first among the countries of CIS to establish National Fund for ensuring stable socio-economic development, diminishing the dependence on unfavorable external factors.
Today there is 21.4 billion USD accumulated in National Fund. Total gold and foreign exchange reserves of the country including those of National Fund exceed 40 billion USD. Ten years ago GDP per capita was a bit more than 700 USD. It is expected to exceed $ 8000 by 2010 and $1 3000 by 2015. The economy has weathered it well in the recent, rather ongoing financial and equity crisis at the global level that negatively influenced economies of many countries. Mortgage crediting is developing in Kazakhstan. According to the Head of National Bank of Kazakhstan A. Saidenov, mortgage crisis in the USA was not able to influence Kazakhstan¡¯s credit system: ¡°It is clear that in general there is a slowdown of the growth of banks¡¯ assets, credit activity and the real-estate market. But this corresponds to the long-term objectives of National Bank and the Agency of Financial Control.