The Taleban deserter from East London BY DANIEL MCGRORY Our correspondent hears of frontline 'chaos' DISILLUSIONED with life on the front line, a British deserter from the Taleban is warning other young Muslims that if they go to Afghanistan seeking glory or martyrdom they will only find themselves at the mercy of “lunatics and liars”. Abu Mindar, 26, from London’s East End, considers himself lucky to have survived his baptism of fire this week with a crew of raw recruits of many nationalities, none of whom had ever fired a shot in anger. “Maybe I was naive but I was told there would be proper training and I would be joining an organised military unit and it was just chaos,” he said. The impression being given by militant Muslim groups is that there is a slick and successful recruiting drive in British cities after which volunteers are shepherded by its emissaries to Pakistan and on to training camps run by the Taleban. The reality, says Abu Mindar, is different. After days of delay, discomfort and lies he was driven into the desert with about 25 others, somewhere near Kabul, and handed a Kalishnikov by the “commander” of his group who gestured for him to fire at an enemy he could not see through the swirling dust. “There were other Taleban around and suddenly everyone started firing,” Abu Mindar said on the telephone from Pakistan. He laughed nervously as he described how, as he was not used to handling a gun, the ricochet nearly tore the AK47 from his grasp. “It arced up in the air, took off the top of a tree and nearly decapitated some of the others in our group. Before I knew it the other side — whoever they were — started firing back and there was nowhere much to take cover. Everyone was shouting, some got shot, I didn’t know what to do.” Abu Mindar is not sure how many casualties his group suffered in the 20-minute gunfight but he was taken back to their makeshift barracks sharing a four-wheel-drive truck with three wounded. “Some of the others were shouting victory slogans but we hadn’t done anything except get ourselves shot,” he said. “It wasn’t the danger I minded because I expected shooting. It was the recklessness of the Taleban and their complete disregard for the lives of those fighting for them.” He is reluctant to say much about himself or to state his present whereabouts, except to admit that he is in Pakistan, as he is afraid of being punished by the Taleban if he is found there or jailed if he returns to East London after ministers threatened that British Muslim volunteers could face charges of treason. Abu Mindar is the name by which he is known in Pakistan. He said that he ignored the pleas of his wife and his father and gave up his job as a motor mechanic to fly to Pakistan at the end of September because of the anger he felt about the allies talk of war against Afghanistan. “I was a Muslim, I did pray regularly at mosque but I wasn’t some kind of zealot,” he said. Among friends he would talk about the war and he was persuaded to go to a meeting called by al-Muhajiroun, the British Islamist group headed by Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad. Several speakers urged the young men to “do their duty” but it was outside the meeting that a man approached him with a contact number of someone in Lahore who would arrange their military training. Abu Mindar flew to Karachi, where he has family. From there he travelled to Lahore, where in an office next to a bicycle repair shop he met his contact, who was vague about the group to which he was affiliated. For the next 12 days Abu Mindar was moved around the border areas, mostly at night, sharing cramped rooms with people he had never met and none of whom spoke much English. Late one night he was put in a truck, covered with rugs and piles of clothes and driven on a potholed, bone-shaking journey into what he was told was Afghanistan. His final destination was a bare room on the edge of a mosque complex. “I could see on the horizon far off some tall buildings and was told that was Kabul but as I had never seen it before how was I to know where I was?” There was little food, no clean clothes, and at nights the men could hear bombing raids. He was not offered weapons training, although many men around him carried guns. “Then at the start of this week someone came rushing into our room while we were still asleep, screaming at us to cram ourselves into the back of a pick-up truck. We were driven for miles to what looked like the middle of nowhere but they said was their front line.” Only now does Abu Mindar realise that there are rival factions — in Britain and in Pakistan — plotting against each other and claiming credit for recruiting UK volunteers, when all they do, he says, is “shoot their mouths off”. Abu Mindar said that he would like to return home to warn other young men against the recruiters, but he had decided to remain in hiding, fearful of retribution from the Taleban or Britain. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001380013-2001381446,00.html
I seriously doubt Q8 has got the balls to head to Afghanistan. Too busy driving his Daddy's Mercedes around the desert.
will you be happy when 400,000 kids die this winter in afghanistan? i wonder how that would breakdown compared to hitler/stalin/mao killings per month...
I'm not paying attention to the real world right now... but have boy and Q8 mentioned that it's desirable to be a martyr??? Is that a gross generalization, or is that something that all Muslims really believe? Thanks in advance, I'll take my response off the air.
Thanks for the clarification. I was reading through the thread and not paying attention to the thread title.
Along with the casualties in the WTC attack, this is probably going to be the most horrific part of the war. The gross incompetance and lack of foresight that the Taliban and Al Quaeda have displayed is as much a crime against the Afghans as it is the US. To back the US into a corner and force us to fight or be killed was a huge error on their part... Let's make the assumption that the Taliban and Al Quaeda are completely right and just in their beliefs and actions, including the killing of Americans. Is it then OK for them to start a war with the US and the UN? NO! They decided that Afghans were expendable. They decided that innocent people (that were already suffering) were acceptable losses in their meglo-maniacal war. They knew that a conflict with the US would cause even more suffering on their people than what they had experienced so far. The US and the UN can only do so much for the Afghan people. Our first priority is self preservation. You always have to watch out for yourself first. This is not an immoral belief.
Also, it makes me sick at my stomach to hear a comparison between the US and Nazi Germany. The war that Hitler waged WAS NOT a matter of self preservation. There are absolutely NO similarities.
Achebe said: boy said: Is that good enough for you Achebe? Normally I don't think your posts on this subject are worth replying to (as they're usually just opportunities to take cheap shots at me), but this one I wanted to answer. And look! 'boy' did it for me... That said, it probably would have been more tactful to leave boy and Q8 out of the title... We all make mistakes.
We wouldn't be happy, but the Taliban would if it saves his @ss. You know he would be the one putting this kids in position to die during the winter, not America. The "innocent" country you're defending beats and rapes and kills their women when they don't cover their faces, lets disease run unchecked through the land, force young kids to die for their country with reprecussions of death, hide murderers and thieves, and countless other things. Think about that next time you do something ridiculous and compare the United States to "Hitler and Nazi Germany". You don't have a clue about those monsters, and the monsters you're defending.
for the last time taliban is plural not singular. and again tree yes dying for god is great...wouldn't you say dying for your country is great? in my belief god comes before country so if that makes me a terrorists well hot damn. it makes me sick to my stomach to hear half a million afghani kids will DIE this winter.
boy: Half a million kids were going to die in Afghanistan this winter. You conveniently forget the drought that has ravaged the nation for the past three years, and blame thew famine on us. You conveniently forget the fact that everyone except for the US has been fighting there for the past 20+ years and blame the famine on us. You conveniently forget the fact that had the Taliban never grown opium, and had grown wheat instead, that there would not be any famine in the region. You also conveniently ignore the fact that all of the food sent into Afghanistan is currently being intercepted and stolen by the Taliban. As of this point half a million kids might die if we do not get control of the cities and ground routes soon. That is one of the major reasons I want to see the war progress there more quickly. Time is running out... My, what a wonderful world you must live in. Fall out of a tree? It's the US's fault. Get a cut while carving an apple? It's the US's fault. Bad hair day? The US. Woman cheating on you? Well, that must be a Jew... We are the Afghans' only hope at this point, because the Taliban sure as hell is not helping them. Nor the Pakistanis, nor the Iranians, nor the Iraqis, Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians... All they're sending is holy warriors - something Afghanistan needs no more of.
