Suicide bombers from North Caucasus using drugs

http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2009/09/window-on-eurasia-north-caucasus.html

The above article was written by Paul Goble and posted on his web site, Window on Eurasia, 9-16-09. I’ll quote from it and comment below: It is entitled, “North Caucasus Militants Using Drugs, Not Religion, to Produce Suicide Bombers.” I’ll quote from the article and comment below:

“. . . Like the assassins of centuries ago, anti-Russian militants in the North Caucasus today are using drugs to create “zombified” suicide bombers, according to a Moscow newspaper, a charge that will discredit the militants, undermine calls for negotiations with them, and spark new fears about people from that region among Russians at large.

“In an article entitled ‘Robots of Death’ in today’s ‘Trud,’ Elena Yuryeva says that ‘North Caucasian schools for militants have begun to attract drug specialists [from Middle Eastern countries] for the preparation of shahid suicide bombers,’ . . .”

“Before the militants, who Yuryeva stresses are no longer motivated by ethnic or religious considerations are sent on a suicide mission, they are given drugs by their ‘bandit’ leaders ‘after which it is impossible to stop or persuade them not to go ahead’ and attack their targets even at the cost of their lives. . .”

“’suicide bomber schools’ in various parts of the North Caucasus have trained 30 such people already, of whom 13 have already been killed, either in the course of attacks in which they lost their lives or because they ‘have been liquidated by the forces of the special services.’

“. . .’the remaining suicide bombers now can be anywhere in the North Caucasus.’ Moreover, she says, ‘part of them have received an order to go to Moscow or other major Russian cities’ and carry out their deadly attacks.

“Kaloy Akhilgov, press secretary to Ingushetia President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, told Yuryeva that . . . ‘suicide bombers before setting out on a mission take psychotropic medicines and drugs” and that this process is conducted by ‘qualified foreign specialists.’

“ . . . experts in the field such as Leonid Gedko of the CIS Narcotics Control Center ‘have confirmed that in reality it is easiest to transform a person into a “living bomb” with the help of specially selected medical preparations’ than it is to rely on religious or ethnic “fanaticism” as was the case earlier.

“As Takhir Bazarov, a professor of social psychology at Moscow State University, put it, ‘the goals which the instructors of the diversion schools pursue consists in the stupefaction of the consciousness of their pupils. This can be achieved with instruction in religious intolerance but with the help of narcotics, this process takes place much faster’ . . .”

“. . . articles like the one in “Trud” certainly will [provide] yet another justification for the view of Vladimir Putin and others in Moscow that the only thing Russia can do with the militants is kill them and for the view of many ordinary Russians that “people of Caucasus nationality” represent a threat.

“. . . tensions about migrants from [the North Caucasus] in major Russian cities . . . have prompted populist officials like Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov to demand deep cuts in the number of migrants allowed and led to the organization of often violent anti-migrant groups, that attention could lead to even bigger problems than the one Yuryeva has described.”

COMMENT:

Reading this article, after reading Fahid’s note about how wonderful, good and kind Islam is, fills me with the irony of these matters. I doubt, however, that someone as “faithful” as Fahid can see it.

I notice that the terms “Islam” and “Muslim” do not appear in the above article. Does that mean that Russian journalists have become as “Politically Correct” as their European and American journalistic brethren? Are there “religious fanatics” in the North Caucasus that are not Islamic? This article might inspire readers to think that there might be. But there aren’t. Islamic suicide bombers from the North Caucasus are using drugs to complement their religious fanaticism. Since the concept of using of drugs came from the Middle East (according to Trud), the home of the suicide bomber, they have probably been using drugs there as well.

Here is your Islam, Fahid, killing civilians and children and causing responses that are as violent as you are. How can you talk of goodness and kindness as though these concepts are “absolutes” when you don’t intend them to be. Your “goodness” and “kindness” is only to be applied to your fellow Muslims – and yet in reading this article, what kind of “goodness” and “kindness” is it to turn your fellow Muslims into drug-induced suicide bombers?

The Trud journalist, Elena Yuryeva, seems to believe it wrong for Putin “and others in Moscow” to think “the only thing Russia can do with the militants is kill them.” But if I lived in Russia, that is what I would think. Does she object to self-defense? Has Russia grown a set of pacifists?

Had Fahid responded to my first note admitting that Radical Islam is a serious problem in the Islamic world, I could have sympathized with him and had a peaceful discussion with him. If the mythical “peaceful” traditional Muslim truly exists, then let him speak up and say that he disapproves of Radical Islam. Otherwise, I shall think he approves of the militants. We may be confused in the West and in Russia, but most of us aren’t pacifistic. You had better build up your drug supply, you Militants. Putin “and others in Moscow” are being very practical when they think “the only thing” to do with Islamic “militants is kill them.”