Joel Brinkley
Even among the ranks of al-Qaeda and other Islamic terror groups, leaders frequently debate how useful it is to kill unarmed Muslim civilians, as their fighters so often do.
For them, "it simply does not look good to systematically and deliberately target Muslim civilians," said
A few years ago, the U.S. military seized documents from an Iraqi al-Qaeda base and found a 13-page letter from
Of course, al-Qaeda in
Well, in Pakistan right now, the Taliban are carrying out a raging campaign of carnage, killing thousands of unarmed civilians, seemingly heedless of what anyone thinks. After a brief pause because of the devastating floods that struck Pakistan this fall, bombings and attacks have picked up again. Two recent bombings killed seven civilians and wounded 92 others. A study by a private group, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, estimates that "2,300 civilians were killed in terror attacks alone with many more injured" in the last year.
In
They are blaming the United States, their hated enemy, for their own murderous acts, and these claims are widely believed. For the Taliban, that is a marvelous achievement. Last summer, for example, Taliban killers perpetrated one of their most heinous attacks: They stormed into a hospital in
Oh, they were ready. Taliban spokesmen blamed Blackwater, the former name for the American private security firm that got into so much trouble for heedlessly killing civilians in
For months the Taliban have been putting out stories of a roving band of armed Western mercenaries, secret employees of Blackwater, who are killing people so that the peace-loving Taliban would take the blame.
They first took up this tactic last year, when Taliban militants attacked a Pakistani Army base and a cricket match -- then blamed Blackwater. Since then the story has taken off, now fervently believed by millions of Pakistanis, which leaves Taliban leaders smiling.
The problem has grown so acute that
But a week later, Mufti Kifayatullah, leader of a fundamentalist Islamic political party, was still blaming Blackwater for the state's endemic violence, saying its aim is to defame the Taliban, who, he averred, "are patriotic; they are not fighting against the country."
The trouble is, in Pakistan nefarious rumors tend to spread even faster than wildfires and are too easily believed -- particularly when they reflect poorly on the United States.
America is supplying billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan and its people -- including
So, despite Zawahiri's admonition, the Taliban have found that killing thousands of their own people is proving to be quite useful. But I can't think of a more contemptible, misanthropic strategy in use anywhere else in the world.
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(C) 2010 Joel Brinkley