New Taliban magazine has article calling for taking foreigners hostage as prisoners of war
I finally got around to reading this.
Link to the article is here. It is in Arabic.
The article starts off talking about the missing 82nd airborne soldiers earlier this month.
This piece basically reiterates what Abu Walid al Masri wrote about in his July 2009 book wherein he outlined this strategy and suggested the Taliban adopt it.
Key difference being this new piece is an article in an official Taliban publication. The July 2009 book was Abu Walid’s own work, not part of a Taliban sanctioned media publication that has processes of review and approval before things get published.
It too advocates taking foreign military and civilians hostage, including aid workers and using them as bargaining chips.
It also says that adopting this strategy will help deflect the forthcoming surge of US troops by forcing more of them into defensive functions (such as protecting foreign aid projects etc) instead of offensive activities.
Another point of interest is that the article specifies that any hostages taken should be kept in Afghan hands.
It also appears to make reference to the article I wrote for The Australian in September about this emergence of this strategy arising from Abu Walid’s guidance and the potential for the Taliban to adopt it. One caveat on that old article… I mistakenly wrote it was an al Qaeda document, when it was Abu Walid’s publication. I explained this in a later post, but I can’t seem to find it at the moment. Will hunt around and post a link to that later too in next editing break.
UPDATE: ok my earlier piece is here. I should note however that Vahid Brown did point out an earlier mention in an official publication, but this more recent piece is more emphatic (and detailed) than the earlier one and is not attributed to a particular author.
I should also point out in relation to this earlier post that my why and why now questions were answered by Abu Walid in the first letter he provided to me — which is listed to the right side of this post. It was the first of his six responses which I am woefully behind in providing translations for. Sorry. Chapter is proving impossible to cut down from 20 000+ length which I seem to be being told is no longer acceptable in a PhD. W I must confess this pisses me off immensely because since when does one have to explain something in a set 10 000 word format for a dissertation. But that’s just my grumble. Anyway, until I get that done I won’t get to them. Late next week for the chapter massacre being forced upon me by some stupid rule I can’t seem to find written anywhere.
As for my forthcoming article on our dialogue. It’s been submitted, but it’s a big news week here with our opposition party imploding so it may get pushed back a day or two. We’ll see. Hoping for Wed or Thursday now.
Will post here as soon as it is published. Also have a translation of another response, which I cite and feature in my article, which I have completed and will publish in full here once the article is published.