totalitarianism today

Turning scarlet for Scarlett.

I appreciate David Rovics' response to Scarlett Johansson's Super Bowl Sodastream reminder as to precisely why she is a Hollywood sexpot rather than a person whose opinion should matter on anything apart from lipgloss brands.

The story of William Wold.

 [Fallujah, photo source]

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”

Joan Didion, The White Album

I found his name in piece excerpting the opening chapter of The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War. In this book, journalist Kevin Sites speaks to recent soldiers and veterans about the unspeakable portions of their time in the fields of conflict. Specifically, the excerpted chapter chronicles the tragic demise of a Marine named William Wold. 

VICE MAGAZINE: Kevin first interviewed William while covering the Iraq war in 2004, only minutes after the 21-year-old corporal and his fire team gunned down six insurgents inside a mosque in Fallujah. Back then, William was wired for combat, calloused from killing and watching friends die. This excerpt picks up with William’s story seven years after meeting Kevin in Iraq and explains how the decorated Marine’s life was irreparably broken by the things he saw and did in the name of his country. 

ARMCHAIR GENERAL MAGAZINE: Nine Navy Crosses and twenty-two Silver Stars were awarded to participants of Operation Phantom Fury.

The fight for Fallujah was hailed as a "new dawn" by some. Willam Wold was there. He was sick of watching his friends die.

Wold enlisted in the Marines at 17. He was selected to guard President Bush for three years at Camp David before going to Iraq in 2004. While fighting in Fallujah that year, he suffered a blast injury. 

Things began to change. Wold decided that he "wanted to get the fuck out" of the military- maybe stick around just long enough to become a sergeant. If he had it to do over, he says would have gone to college. In a video shot during Iraq Operation Phantom Fury, we see Wold answering the questions of Kevin Sites.

Wold refers to wanting to see his fiance, though feeling he could never tell her the things he "had done here". A gap between his life and the speakability of it emerged.

WILLIAM: "I just want to be normal....I just want to live a normal life."

[Fallujah. Image source: Special Ops Magazine.]

William's mother grew worried after he took a trip back East to see the woman whom he called his "fiancee", the woman he planned to marry, the one he thought about while closing his eyes for a few hours of sleep. 

But something went awry. The relationship between William and his fiancee ended after his visit. After flying there to see her, it took less than 24 hours for him to lose his bearings. 

SANDI WOLD: "He lost it. He calls me and tells me to find him a flight home. ‘I can’t close my eyes, I can’t sleep,’ he tells me, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ I think he knew he was so unstable he was going to end up hurting her.” 

Wold couldn't forget some things. Like the day in which a vehicle ran the road block- an ordinary occurrence- in which he was directed to fire as the vehicle came through the roadblock. After shooting, the troops discovered that the van had been filled with young Iraqi children. The incident left Wold unable to sleep, eat or be among crowds. 

Somewhere along the way, Willam Wold started taking Oxycontin. 

[Fallujah. Image source: Fox News]

The summer after his discharge, William's mother realized the extent of his PTSD. 

SANDI WOLD: “Fourth of July was just horrible for him. Some neighbors had firecrackers they were setting off in the distance.”

But for William, the sound of fireworks were not a symbol of partying and celebration. Not anymore. For William, as for many vets from both Vietnam, Korea, and the recent Middle Eastern wars, the sound of fireworks brought back those paralyzing memories of combat. 

SANDI WOLD: “He just starts twitching. ‘It’s going to be OK,’ I told him, but he pushed me back and screamed, ‘You don’t know what’s going on in my brain; there’s no switch that can shut off what’s going on in here.’ He’s sweating and pacing, just the look in his eyes. It went on for 30 to 45 minutes. I visibly see his pulse, 250 to 260, he’s going to stroke out. How do I stop it? I need to get three octaves above him. That’s what Marines respond to. He’s looking for someone in authority to take control. Now we’re talking insanely loud, I’m screaming at him, ‘You need to bring it down!’—trying to use military phrases. I start screaming at him, ‘Marine, stand down! Marine, stand down! Marine, stand down!’ About the fifth time I did it, it had an effect.”

This was not supposed to happen.

SANDI WOLD: “Afterward, I think he was mortified that he was in a position to hurt me,” she says. “Before he left for Iraq he had a sparkle in his eye, he cared about people. He made a commitment to his country, and he took it seriously. But when he came home, he was torn and tattered. I hired psychologists, we tried to do everything for him.”

KEVIN SITES: Like so many other service members coming back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan physically or psychologically damaged, or both, Wold’s life began to revolve around a potent cocktail of painkillers, muscle relaxants, and antidepressants he used to cope with his injuries. 

SANDI WOLD: “On the backside of my house, we have a gazebo, and there’s a pond. It’s where I’m talking to you right now,” Sandi tells me. “It’s the place where you get right with the world. It’s surrounded by trees. No one can see you. He loved being here. He lived with us for a while, then bought a house, but after a while said he couldn’t live alone anymore. He just couldn’t do it.”

[Fallujah. Image source: Chicago Reader]

MILTARY AND MEDICAL RECORDS: At some point after his return from Iraq, William Wold began abusing the powerful painkiller OxyContin and became addicted to it.

SANDI WOLD: He grew more restless and agitated until the day he told her me was going to reenlist.

KEVIN SITES: He had been home for a year and a couple of months, much of it spent shuttling between doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists. But few were able to bring him comfort or relief. His frustration fed on what seemed like perfect logic to his damaged brain—while his time with the Marines was the source of injuries, it was also when he felt most protected. 

WILLIAM: “My brothers will take care of me..."

SANDI WOLD: “We tried to talk him out of it for hours. ‘Look what the Marines have done to you already...Get an education, be what you want to be. Look at where you’re at...."

But it didn't register. 

SANDI WOLD: “He wasn’t there anymore. The sparkle in his eyes was completely gone. He was hollow.”

So William returned to Iraq. This time, however, he preferred to assist with maintaining armored vehicles and similar tasks. He stayed away from the front lines. Fellow Marines knew he was abusing Oxycontin. Eventually, it got so obvious that the Marines placed William in the Substance Abuse and Rehabilitation Program for intensive inpatient therapy.

KEVIN SITES: When he failed to successfully complete the program, he was put in the medical hold unit of the Naval Medical Center pending a medical discharge. In only a few short years, he had gone from a fearless warrior baptized in some of the fiercest combat in recent military history to a brain-damaged drug addict about to be tossed from the ranks of those to whom he had once brought so much honor.

Back in his bunk, William and few friends went out to get new tattoos. Everything seemed fine when they got back to his room at about 6:30 p.m. The guys planned to hang around and watch a movie.  

KEVIN SITES: According to legal and medical reports, one of the friends watched Wold try to take his medications again, but reminded him he had already done so. By some accounts, Wold would do this quite often, repeating doses of medications he had forgotten he’d taken. Wold reclined on his bed and put a pinch of dip between his lower lip and gum as had become his habit before going to bed when he was deployed in Iraq. At a certain point in the evening, he told his friends he was not feeling well and was starting to get cold. The friends left around 11:30 with promises to return in the morning for a camping trip they had planned for the weekend. When Frey and Leoncio came back nine hours later and knocked on his door, there was no response. They contacted the front desk at the medical facility and got security to let them in. They said they found Wold in the same position they had left him the night before, lying on his back in his bed, his dip cup on his chest. But now he wasn’t breathing. Frey and Leoncio began CPR until paramedics arrived and transported Wold to the emergency room of the Balboa Naval Medical Center. He was already cold to the touch. They noticed a pink, frothy sputum in his mouth. 

AUTOPSY REPORT: The concentration of methadone in his blood is within a range that has been associated with death; and while the other medicines are in low or therapeutic ranges, they can have similar, additive sedating effects, especially in combination with the methadone.

SANDI WOLD: He re-enlisted hoping to find comfort in the company of others in the military. 

Sergeant William Wold died at the ripe age of 23. His body was found in his San Diego bunk three days after his discharge from a military hospital, where he was being treated for the PTSD and related drug addiction.

SAN DIEGO COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER: Wold's death was "best listed as methadone, clonazepam, diazepam, and fluoxetine toxicity." An accidental overdose. 

SANDI WOLD: "How can they justify this as an accident? And whose accident is it?"

Official records state that Wold was unable to complete a substance abuse program. As he was being moved from the naval hospital to the barracks, Wold was being readied for military discharge. 

Obviously, death by overdose of psychiatric drugs is not uncommon. Since he received his treatment through the VA medical centers, the prescribing physicians presumably had access to all the drugs he was currently taking. Two benzos- Klonopin and Valium- combined with an antidepressant (Prozac) and an powerful, highly addictive opiate (methadone). It seems Wold's physicians had already written his death sentence in those prescriptions- Klonopin is an extremely addictive drug, the kind of drugs for which persons choose rehab. And the methadone he managed to procure and keep is worrisome, especially since methadone usually requires one to visit a clinic for each pill (rather than save up a baggie for later use).

William Wold just wanted to be "normal". What happened to make that impossible?

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.” 

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

Sources:
Business Insider

Religious extremism and the death of a poet.

The date was August 28, 2012. The stars weren't quite twinkling.

A pious Muslim lady posing as a pilgrim paid a visit to the home of Sufi cleric Said Atsayev. Upon arrival, she had little to say. Wearing an explosive belt loaded with nails and ball bearings, the lady spoke the language of suicide bombs, killing herself, Atsayev, and six others, including an 11-year-old boy visiting with his parents. There are no famous last words.

The making of a Dagistani "black widow": How Alla Saprykina became Aminat Kurbanova

Over the past ten years, suicide missions by widows of Salafi extremists, dubbed "Black Widows", has become a habit of extremist groups from Chechnya and nearby regions. This story of this particular black widow merits a closer look, if only to acknowledge certain patterns and trends in radicalization.

Alla Saprykina (later Aminat Kurbanova), an ethnic Russian female who was both wife and widow of Islamist militants, earned herself a harem in heaven by killing the 74-year-old Atsayev, a prominent Sufi sheikh in the troubled province of Russian Dagestan. How does a feisty, attractive young Russian girl brought up as an Eastern Orthodox Christian become a suicide bomber? The recipe, unfortunately, is not an unfamiliar one- fall in love, embrace ideology, and pepper your own version of Romeo and Juliet with some religious extremism. 

Aminat was known as a talented actress and promising dancer during this period of her life.

While studying at a theatre school in Dagestan, Aminat fell inlove with fellow actor Marat Kurbanov. The couple married in 2003 and she gave birth to a daughter, Malika, two years later. When their daughter was one year old, Aminat and Marat were introduced to Islam by Marat’s brother Rustam.

One year later, Marat converted to Islam with Aminat by his side. But they didn't become members of the Sufi school indigenous to Dagestan. Instead, the Kurbanovs embraced an import model of Islam- one based in the Salafi school which forced them to reconfigure their lives and be born again. The couple left the theatre because dancing and acting are considered un-Islamic in this school of Islam.

A source close to Aminat described the change in her attitude and demeanor:

“When we met up, she would tell me that women should be closed off [from society]. I think this was all due to [her husband] – she was wildly in love with him. It wasn’t her initiative, at first. She slowly turned herself over to [radical Islam].”

In 2008, Rustam Kurbanov was killed in a police house raid on suspected militants. The young couple were allegedly shocked. Angry and desiring revenge, Marat left his family, allegedly joined militants to avenge his brother's death, and never returned. In 2009, Marat died in a counterterrorism operation conducted by Russian forces. The source said that, after Marat's death, it was as if something was "ticking inside" of Aminat, as if she was "biding her time". 

Marat's older brother, Ali, lived in Moscow. On a supposed "holiday" in Dagestan, Ali disappeared. It was alleged that Ali had been killed by Russian police. Aminat was left with Malika- and a twisted story of marriage in which her husband and two brothers had been killed by police on three separate occasions over the course of a few years.

Aminat started to earn money as an Islamic dress seamstress and became involved with local Salafist extremists. She began to be watched by security services, who allegedly searched her flat and questioned her after the death of her husband. Given that Aminat allegedly went through four husbands, it is unclear at which point the Russian authorities began to suspect Aminat. All four of her husbands are loosely described as "NVF fighters".  

Hungry for love, revolution, or the firmness of ideology, Aminat married the best man at her wedding, Timur Kurbamagomedov, whom she also met while studying theatre. Timur went to prison for arson when he burned down a store that sold alcohol.  Law enforcement described Timur as an NVF "accomplice", who refused to return to the NVF fold after becoming involved in a rehabilitation program resulting in a suspended sentence. (Note: Timur probably changed his name or became an intelligence asset following his release from prison because I can find neither hide nor hare of him online.) Annoyed by Timur's reluctance to wage jihad, Aminat left Timur and dove deeper into Salafi fanaticism.  

Where Salafi law stands on divorce did not concern Aminat. She quickly married Magomed Ilyasov, a fighter with the Gubdenskiy "band group". Magomed helped train the Russian Salafists Mariya Khorosheva and Vitaliy Razdobudko, a married couple who blew themselves up in two separate terror attacks in the village of Gubden in 2011. Aminat put on her mourning clothes again when Magomed died on 19 December 2011 while transporting a homemade bomb in his own vehicle.

Reports suggest that Aminat had made a previous attempt at a suicide bombing in Moscow only to discover that she was being followed by police. As a result, Aminat went under the radar for a year only to re-emerge under suspicion of recruiting locals for the NVF. She married a member of the NVF group led by Gusein Mamayev. 

In May of 2012, Aminat's fourth husband was killed by Russian police in a counter-terrorism operation. Law enforcment officials openly sought information about Aminat. The police believed she was responsible for the recruitment of Rizvan Aliyev and Mulimata Aliyeva, a brother-sister team who blew themselves up at a police post on 3 May 2012, killing 16 people. The NVF group associated with Aminat's husband trained the Aliyevas for their suicide mission. At this point, Aminat reportedly began to prepare herself for the role of suicide bomber. 

On the morning of the bombing, Aminat kissed her daughter, Malika, goodbye and took a bus to the cleric's house. How Aminat gained entrance into Atsayev's home remains murky. On the day of the bombing, some reports suggest Aminat convinced the gate keepers to let her in to see Sheikh Atsayev because she was Russian and wanted to convert to Islam.  According to various Russian press reports, Atsayev invited her into his home along with a translator, since he only spoke Avar. Other reporting says that she told guards that she was pregnant and that she should be let in right away.

Her relatives tried to keep the news from Malika, but the Sunday Times reported that she overheard at school that ‘your mum’s a suicide bomber’ and saw her mother's severed head on TV. During their investigation of the bombing, Russian police established that the Aliyevas "were not fully responsible for the May attack on on the police station. Police also found a tumbler switch among the remnants of the bombing device. This suggests that Aminat probably detonated the bomb herself.

At the time of her death, Aminat was wanted by local police for her involvement in the NVF-sponsored terrorist attacks the police patrol in Makhachkala. Her daughter, Malika, is 7 years old. What she knows of the world is subject to question.

Said Atsayev: The threat he poses to militant Islamists

Atsayev- also known as Sheikh Said Afandi- spoke out against violent Islam. As a representative of traditional Sufi Islam, Atsayev advocated reconciliation between the new breed of extremist Salafism brought to Dagestan by the Afghani conflict. His murder occurred just as President Putin was touring the region, making pleas for national unity.

Sheikh Atsayev/Afandi was not born into his faith. At the tender age of seven, Atsayev's father passed away. He dropped out of high school to become a shepherd and help support his widowed mother and family. Afandi served in the Soviet Army and worked as a firefighter before his conversion to Sufism at the age of 32. He survived a previous assasination attempt by Salafists in November 2007.

By the time of his death, Afandi had published many books, and was known for his love and composition of poetry. (Unfortunately, even his poems would be held against him by dogmatic Salafists, who scorned his use of the local language rather than Arabic.) Garnering a large number of murids ("committed ones") meant that Afandi's influence was palpable. He provided ethical leadership and inspiration to the 80% of Dagestanis who describe themselves as Sufis.  Since most Dagestani police and political officials followed Afandi, his efforts to establish peace among local Salafis and Sufis carried more than just metaphysical weight.

His murder follows "similar religiously-motivated killings" in Dagestan and other parts of the former USSR, targeting Muslim leaders who are hostile to the radical forms of Islam trickling in from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Salafis advocate an independent state, or emirate, that would include Caucasus and parts of southern Russia that contain a significant Muslim population.

Sufi v. Salafi

Sufi brotherhoods differ from Salafi Muslims in their closer affiliation with Shiite Islam, rooted in a more mystical, awe-inspired approach to faith. For example, Sufis (and some Shiites) pray over the tombs of revered saints and encourage aristic representations of spiritual matters while Salafis condemn such acts as a form of idolatry. Like the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholics, Sufis and most Shiite Muslims do not see a conflict between images of saints or prophets. Like American Protestants and Christian extremists, Sunni Muslims, including Salafis, find it impossible to image an image of something sacred that does not provoke worship and idolatry.

The tension is not a political one which can be erased- it is a spiritual and emotional tension woven deep in the fabric of their worldviews. It is rooted in a very modern obsession with the literalism of the sacred texts (whether Bible or Koran)- an obsession that makes language the only appropriate vehicle for spiritual enlightment.

Peace, as promulgated by the Astayev and other traditional Sufis, would put a dint in the violence preferred by a variety of groups, from Salafis to the Christian neoconservative advocates of permanent war against "terrorism". Local scholars consider these bombings as attempts to sidetrack peacekeeping efforts and to escalate the cycle of violence in the region.

After tens of thousands thronged the streets to pay their respects to Atsayev, Dagestan's secular authorities declared an official day of mourning.  If the killing goes unpunished, the authority of Atsayev's influential followers will be questioned, said Alexei Malashenko of the Carnegie Moscow Center. "If the main figure is killed and his followers are silent, this will lead to a major reappraisal of values" in Dagestan, he said.

The traditional Astrakhan fur hat is made from Persian lambs wool. Nikolai Gogol who is believed to had worn it in the style of Astayev, lacking the extra brim or side flaps. Dubbed "the pie hat" in Soviet times, Leonid Brezhnev was known to wear it frequently. Winston Churchill probably built some negative associations into this traditional hat when he elected to wear one at the Yalta Conference in 1945.

The Chechnyan context

Salafi insurgents in Dagestan are part of a broader Islamist insurgency across the North Caucasus following two post-Soviet wars pitting the Kremlin against separatists in neighboring Chechnya. After the First Chechnya War from 1994-1996, Shamil Basayev and Saudi-born Ibn Al-Khattab launched a terrorist campaign against the Russian-backed Chechnyan regime by declaring their intention to unite Chechnya and Dagestan under Islamic rule and expel Russia from the Caucasus. In 1999, Putin gained popularity with Russians by launching a second war against Chechen separatists, some of which were not religiously-motivated. This enabled him to suceed Yeltsin as President of Russia. 

Ibn Al-Khattab (and his successor, Abu Walid al-Ghamdi) enlisted the techniques and ideology learned from bin Laden. Issuing a worldwide call for jihad, they built a local network of Al Qaeda members who fled Afghanistan after the 2001 invasion by US forces. Hundreds of young, unemployed jihadis flocked to Chechnya to help liberate Dagestan. Terrorist training camps were set up in the unmarked border areas between Chechnya and Dagestan. Reprisals and counter-reprisals swept Dagestan and its neighbors into a perfect storm of terrorism that wreaked havoc on civilian life and made normalcy appear like a poppy-generated pipe dream.

Abdul-Vakhed Niyazov, an advisor to the Chairman of the Russian Council of Muftis, said that the ultimate number of mourners streaming into Chirkei after Astayev's death may have been as large as 300,000 people. He believes that "one of the main reasons why Dagestan did not descend into outright war alongside Chechnya in the mid- and late- 1990s had to do with the teachings and influence of [Astayev] and those like him". When a Muslim doesn't advocate for violence and murder, a Salafist extremist quickly calls him a heretic and begins to plan for a way to remove his influence. Death usually does the trick. 

On the other hand, human rights workers claim that Salafis in Dagestan are subject to police abductions, torture in secret prisons and extrajudicial executions. Every story about another human rights abuse generates more sympathy for disaffected teens. Like many other young men around the world, Dagestan’s youth romanticized the war as a revolution; many supported their “brothers” fighting in the woods and mountains.

Shariat Jamaat, a Dagestani Islamic jihadist group, emerged over the past decade. Pledging allegiance to the worldwide Al Qaeda/salafist movements, Shariat Jamaat aims to establish a United Northern Caucasus "Emirate" front.

Salafism, women, and other gray areas

Recently, a young lady with a sahid belt and a name eliciting fears of terrorism was detained by Dagestani police. Perhaps this other Alla's life is bursting with coincidence- or maybe she was preparing to launch a copycat suicide bombing. Clearly, there is a rise in the cool factor of female suicide bombings that seems concentrated in the former Soviet states.

Observing the worrisome increase in black widow suicide bombings, journalist Anna Nemtsova observes:

Unlike the so-called black widows from Russia’s decade-long war with Chechnya, who were trained in camps before being sent to Moscow with their bombs, Dagestan’s female suicide bombers are not being trained in any special way, experts from leading human-rights groups, both international and Russian, say. Before blowing up the Moscow metro, the two Dagestani widows, with their faces covered, spoke in a video that circled the Internet in the days after their attack: “Sisters, if you really desire to help Allah, follow other girls who have sacrificed themselves,” one of them said.

The appeal to feminine sisterhood in the context of a market-driven modernity which brings strip clubs, pornography, and prostitution to public spaces can be powerful for women who feel that moral values have been sacrificed to moneyed interests. The Russian government's recent attempts to crack down on female converts to Islam raises questions of paternalism and disregard for civil liberties. 

US-based terrorist Tamerlane Tsarnaev visited Dagestan for a period of six months during 2012 prior to his 2013 bombing of the Boston marathon with the help of his younger brother, Dzhohkar. For a few months, American journalists and media turned their eyes towards Dagestan, drawing new attention to the actions of the black widows.

Unfortunately, the media failed to elucidate the broader context in which Salafism's first attack was against local Muslims of the Sufi brotherhoods. The Salafist strategy vacillates in emphasis between targeted enemies. The jihad against Western culture generates endless media reports and analyses. Unfortunately, the jihad against fellow Muslims rarely enters the mainstream press. This is unfortunate because, ultimately, the greatest "enemies" of extremist Islam are the faithful Muslims now branded as "heretics" by jihadist groups. 

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

Alina Lobzina, "Russian authorities consider monitoring new Muslim converts", The Moscow News, 2 August 2012 
Anna Nemtsova, "Russia's female menaces", The Daily Beast, 6 Sept. 2012
Anna Nemtsova, "Tighter crackdown in Dagestan fuels local miseries", Russia Beyond the Headlines, 31 July 2013 
Charles J. Sullivan, "Dmitry's Dilemma: The Resurgence of Insurgent Activities in the North Caucusus",  The Washington Review of Turkish and Eurasian Affairs, January 2011
F. William Engdhal, "Salafism + CIA: A winning formula to destabilize Russia, the Middle East", Voltairenet, 13 September 2012
Gordon M. Hahn, "IIPER No. 60", CSIS, 31 August 2012
International Crisis Group, "Russia's Dagestan: Conflict Causes", Europe Report No. 192, 3 June 2008
Luke Harding, "Dagestan: My daughter, the terrorist", The Guardian, 18 June 2010
Marc Ginsberg, "A field guide to jihadi Dagestan and Chechnya", Huffington Post, 22 April 2013
Marina Dzhashi, "Radical Islam poses an enduring menace", RT, 27 April 2011
Mark Franchetti, "Dagestan: Bridal gown off, black widow's bomb belt on", The Sunday Times, 18 November 2012 
Mark Galeotti, "Said Atsayev- Dagestan's Falcone?", In Moscow's Shadows, 29 August 2012
Natalia Antonova, "Fear rising in Muslim community", The Moscow News, 9 Sept. 2012
Ruslan Kurbanov, "Dagestani Muslims: From confrontation to peace", On Islam, 6 May 2012
Simon Saradzhyan, "Turncoats and converts make a deadly terrorist mix", Power & Policy, 11 September 2012 
Steve Gutterman, "Caucuses suicide bomber named as Russian widow", Reuters, 29 August 2012
Tom Parfitt, "Russia's war in the Caucusus", Telegraph UK, 25 July 2012
"Ethnic Russian woman suspected as suicide bomber," The Moscow Times, 30 August 2012
"Islamists in Russia," The Economist, 27 April 2013
"Profile of suicide bomber Aminat Kurbanova", Russia-Eurasia Terror Watch, 30 August 2012
"Rizvan Kurbanov: Bandit underground does not submit to Doku Umarov", Georgia Times, 31 January 2012
"Suicide bomber kills Russian Sufi scholar", Al-Jazeera, 29 August 2012
"The evolution of Dagestani Salafism", Terrorism Watch, July 2013
 "Widows of Chechnya purged by Russians", The Telegraph, 8 April 2004 

What's going on in Kashmir?

Kashmir is even more complicated than the chord progressions for the Led Zepellin song by the same name. And there is no place in the world I have wanted to visit more than Kashmir. The closest I've come is Mysore (which is nowhere close). I blame it on the fact that the BJP was ruling India when I visited, which made it difficult to procure travel documents.

The Hindu shrine of Amarnath cave is dedicated to Shiva. Situated at an altitude 12,756 ft less than 80 miles from Srinigrar. As one of the holiest shrines in the Hindu religion, the cave admits pilgrims during a short period of time in the summer, when the surrounding mountains and paths are not covered in snow. Thousands of Hindu devotees make an annual pilgrimage to the Amarnath cave on challenging mountainous terrain to witness the famous ice stalagmite, considered a Shiva Linga, formed within the cave. 

The sacred stalagmite is formed due to freezing of water drops that fall from the roof of the cave on to the floor and grows up vertically from the cave floor. There is a rhythm to the legends and sacred mysteries surrounding this cave-turned-temple.

The Cave waxes during May to August, as snow melts in the Himalayas above the cave and the resultant water seeps into the rocks that form the cave and gradually wanes thereafter. As per the religious beliefs, it has been claimed that the lingam grows and shrinks with the phases of the moon reaching its height during the summer festival, although there is no scientific evidence for this belief. 

According to a Hindu legend, this is the cave where Shiva explained the secret of life and eternity to his divine consort, Parvati. Two other ice formations represent Parvati and Shiva's son, Ganesha. The main purpose of the annual pilgrimage to the cave is worship of the ice stalagmite Lingam. 

The Amarnath cave has been a place of worship since times immemorial. There are references to the legendary king Aryaraja (ascribed dates 300 BCE) who used to worship a lingam formed of ice in Kashmir. The book Rajatarangini (Book VII v.183) refers to Amareshwara or Amarnath. It is believed that Queen Suryamathi in the 11th century AD gifted trishuls, banalingas and other sacred emblems to this temple. Rajavalipataka, begun by Prjayabhatta has detailed references to the pilgrimage to Amarnath Cave. Other than this, there are further references to this pilgrimage in many other ancient texts.
                        ["Amarnath Temple", Wikipedia]

The people of Kashmir observe October 27 as “black day” every year to protest the arrival of Indian troops and their invasion of the Himalayan region in 1947. The Pakistani press warns that observances this year were rather boisterous, with thousands of Pakistanis turning out to rally against India. 

On the other side of the fence, The Times of India downplayed the numbers and effect of the protest. It was a "strike" (less political) and something that happens every year (nothing significant). 

And yet some Indians express concern. Indian authorities claim one guard was killed and six injured by a shell fired at the Arnia post in Jammu region, where the protests are taking place.

Amir Bashir promises his guests that they are "going to heaven". What he intended was to tell them they were going to Kashmir, a heaven to many, and a hell to others. 
[Mehboob Jelani, "Blood and Tourism in Kashmir", Dissent] 

Back in August, reporters suggested the fight for Kashmir continues, though at a lower level of violence. New recruits to militancy are different from volunteers over the past 20 years. They are younger and better educated. Burhan Wani is one of the youngest. His father said his son had left home overnight two years ago at the age of 15 to join the militants. Burhan didn't tell a soul of his plans. He just told his father he was going out and then he never returned. Though pious and brought up in a family that is supportive of the extremists, Burhan had shown no sign of wanting to take up arms until he was detained and beaten by security forces, his father, the head of a local college, said. Jason Burke has the story on the new wave of militants. 

Rising unemployment provides a wonderful source of recruitment for young militants, who are given a clear source against which to direct their despair and anger. Over 330,049 unemployed educated and uneducated youth have been registered with district employment and counseling centers in Jammu and Kashmir till June this year, reports Sana Altaf. 

In the recent years it is said that a Buta Malik, a muslim shepherded re-discovered the caves in 1850. The by of given a sack of coal by a sadhu (ascetic) and upon reaching home he opened the sack and found that it contained gold not coal. When he rushed back to find and thank the sadhu he found a cave at the place where they both had actually met. From that day they cave became the sited of pilgrimage. Maharaja Gulab Singh who was the King of the Dogra kingdom was so please with the find that he declared that during the time of pilgrimage each year a representative of the Malik family would be present in the shrine. The king also granted that the Malik family would be given one third of the offerings made to the shrine. Lastly his family was given a large estate near Pahalgam and the family was exempted from paying any revenue for the earnings.

The Amarnath yatra starts from Palalgam with pilgrims walking the 42 km distance. It normally takes four to five days to reach the shrine. Devotees of old age take a ride on horse-back to make the journey.
[Popular Temples of India blog]

Photo credit: Nissar Amad

In 2010, efforts were made to protect pilgrims and cave-trippers. “Fidayeen or no fidayeen, we will ensure that the Yatra takes place peacefully. If militants try to disturb peace, we will hunt them down,” Inspector General Reddy told a visiting group of journalists. Paramilitary protection for religious pilgrims. 

In 2012, fourteen pilgrims died en route to the Amaranth shrine in Kashmir. The deaths were from natural causes, including cardiac arrest. 

The Holy Shiva Lingam Shrine +
Mrs. Percy Brown's published poems about Kashmir circa 1921 +
Traditional yatra routes +
Phugtal, which occasions its own adjective +
10 most incredible Indian cave temples + 

Eight perspectives on Syria.

Abu Malik, a Saudi national, in Syria. [Photo credit: Charles Lister]

1. Omar Kayed (which appears to be a cover name) shares an interesting perspective on Syria's "mujahedeen". The piece is a must-read for Syria watchers. Kayed's conversations with Abu Malik al-Shahri, a Jabhat al-Nusra leader in the Levant, took place during May 2013. Malik made several distinctions between Jabhat and the seemingly less disciplined Isalmic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). 

According to Abu Malik, Salafist jihadist ideology is based not on the idea of governance advocated by Sayyid Qutb and Abu Ala Mawdudi. [According to this ideology], a Muslim's goal is to strive to liberate Muslim lands from colonizers and establish God's law. God Almighty said: "Judgement is only through God," so any legislation [other than Sharia] is invalid. In Abu Malik's opinion, the way to establish God's law on earth is through jihad and fighting. This group was called Salafist jihadist because it adopts jihad as a means of achieving change, "so everyone who believes this idea becomes our brother in religion."

The second pillar [of Salafist jihadist ideology] is loyalty and disavowal. Al-Qaeda members believe that anyone who embraces this ideology is a Muslim brother who they must support. However, anyone who violates these beliefs is an infidel and an apostate, and they must disown him.

I asked him, "Pardon me, Abu Malik, but how did you enter into the world of al-Qaeda?" He told me that he had accompanied a friend to visit a man called Sheikh Abu Muhammed in Jordan. Later, he became convinced of Abu Muhammed's statements claiming that humans' purpose on earth is to apply this heavenly message and join their brothers to establish God's law.

2. Abu Malik al-Shahri was killed by Syrian forces in Latakia countryside in August 2013. He was originally from Saudi Arabia and a student of Osama Bin Ladan. He reportedly slaughtered scores of civilians and government forces across Syria. 

3. Abu Omar al-Chechani made his way from Chechnya to Syria to join the latest jihad. His bright orange hair makes quite a fashion statement on the jihadi front. News reports involve him in Aleppo. 

4. Turkey and Iran are probably expressing concern over the militarization of the Kurdish ethnic minorities in Syria, especially those in Rojava, where concerted actions continue to take place. The ongoing struggle for a united Kurdistan has only gained numbers and strength since the Bush administration's war in Iraq. 

5. Saleh Muslim, the leader of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), deemed to be the most powerful politician among the Syrian Kurdish parties, was in Geneva to hold meetings with international organizations and explain his perspective. The PYD, which has close ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), controls areas inhabited by Kurds in northern Syria, and has a highly disciplined fighting force made up of a few thousand soldiers. Vicken Cheterian reports that Muslim is not seeking secession for the Kurdish groups in Syria.

6. Sami Nader believes the Saudi criticism of the UN revolves around its agreement to step back from Syria and allow the instability and war to continue. He makes reference to Saudi's position as reflecting that of the "Arab street".

7. The war between the regime of President Assad and the Syrian opposition has reached the Druze villages in the Golan Heights, with three youths from the community joining the ranks of Assad's army. So long as bombs continue to fall on Palestinian refugee camps, refugees from war are likely to morph into supporters of nearby revolution. Joshua Mitnik reports that "the Syrian Druze living under Israeli control in the Golan Heights are loyal to President Assad because they consider him an economic lifeline and a protector of minority rights".

8.  Turkey and Iraq seek reasons to cozy up. Both concerned by the rise of al Qaeda in Syria, leaders announced today that their strained relations were improving and they would cooperate more closely to limit the spillover from Syria's civil war. The reporting is from Reuters.