As we live in an era of the ‘fear market’, where only ignorance drives our thoughts and responses every day, we observe many incidents of auctions in ‘terror markets’ across the globe. These are spreading successfully because we do not do our homework. We have no specific counterterrorism strategies. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, the terror market is run in different ways. If we deeply study the news stories of just one month of suicide terror-related incidents, we will find that terrorists use different techniques for killing in the region. The method of destruction and killing is the same but the techniques are different.
I recently found some shocking stories of Pakistani, Afghani and Somali teenage suicide bombers who were captured during the military operation in Swat, Bajaur and Somalia. While their training is underway, at the tail end, suicide bombers are taken to mosques to be congratulated for being ‘chosen by God’. On the day of the planned attack, they are heavily drugged, which make them forgetful and they stop crying for parents, siblings and relatives. In Somalia, Sudan and Nigeria, young children are threatened with dire consequences if they refuse to carry out a suicide attack.
Recently, a new video of marketing a suicide bomber for the sectarian war in Syria appeared on YouTube. Apparently, it was made in a conference room of a hotel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The video shows that a Saudi father, Abu Saleh is offering his son, Khalid, for sale to be used as a suicide bomber. Abu Saleh sold his son only for an amount of $ 400,000. Some Pakistani and Afghan men are also involved in the same business. The former ISPR chief, Major General Ather Abbas once said that the Taliban in Waziristan buy and sell children. In Tank, Wana, and other parts of South and North Waziristan and in several southern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan, suicide bombers’ ‘training academies’ recruit young children. When they complete their training, they are sent for a ‘great religious job’.
Terrorist organisations like al Qaeda, Al Shabab, Boko Haram, the Taliban, Arab extremists and Takfiri jihadists in Europe, Pakistan and Afghanistan, through facebook, YouTube and twitter invite young people to join their networks, using various marketing techniques. These terror groups are marketers as well as consumers to a degree; their recruiters ‘market’ boys. They supply suicide bombers across Asia and the Middle East for just $ 20,000 for each bomber. Religious and political vendettas are being settled by using suicide bombers against rival groups or families in Pakistan. This generation of fear and panic is controlled by extremist elements and non-state actors in Waziristan, Kabul and Quetta. Fear and terror marketing systems are updated every year and new techniques of destruction are being introduced every so often.
Prominent American scholar Philip Bobbitt in his famous book, Terror and Consent elucidates the way terrorism is marketed; he says non-state actors can be best described as terror marketers. The way the Afghan Taliban design their strategies for training and brainwashing suicide bombers is not different from the suicide techniques of the Pakistani Taliban in FATA. They market fear and terror according to the demand. If we deeply consider the terrorism marketing techniques of both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, we will clearly observe similarities in their way of killing. Earlier this month, Pakistani suicide bombers killed 90 innocent Hazara Shias in Quetta while the Afghan suicide bombers attacked the Afghan intelligence headquarters in Kabul; thus, terrorism was marketed in the same way in the two countries.
In the markets in the UK, videos and CDs of suicide terrorism are available at cheap prices; young Britons are the main customers. In these CDs, the methods of suicide attacks, techniques of killings, religious zeal, accounts of events, explosions and the importance of time and distance are described in detail. These CDs are imported from Pakistan, Somalia, Algeria, Nigeria and Afghanistan and sold secretly. Incidents in the past 10 years indicate that Britain has long been an island under siege from terrorists who believe they can advance their aims through acts of violence. For over a century Special Branch, MI5 and MI6 have prevented terrorist atrocities but despite developing one of the world’s most sophisticated security architecture, successful terrorist attacks have occurred with alarming regularity.
Analyses of terror-related incidents in Britain indicate a growing prevalence of attacks by lone individuals. Such attacks are difficult to predict and prevent, particularly if the attacker is not known by profile. The involvement of British citizens in ethnic and sectarian conflicts across Asia, Africa and the Arab world raised many questions when these young Britons were arrested by local counterterrorism police abroad. Recently, in such a case, on January 10, 2013, Scotland Yard arrested four Syrian British men trying to join the opposition forces in Syria, the BBC reported. This is not the only case; official figures show that arrests for suspected terrorism offences rose by 60 percent in 2012.
All intelligence and counter-insurgency measures of the international community have failed to defeat the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. In a recent report, the Pentagon has accepted intelligence failures and warned that without sweeping changes to intelligence gathering practices in Afghanistan, military success is impossible. Unfortunately, the US and European intelligence agencies collect information about insurgents and their movements through weak sources. The CIA and the Pentagon are not satisfied with the cooperation of the ISI’s intelligence sharing, as the latter is not willing to help NATO, ISAF and the Pentagon in countering the Taliban insurgency across the Durand Line. There are pro-Taliban and anti-Taliban elements within the ISI networks that run the agency in varied directions. Finally, I must suggest that better and well-coordinated intelligence is the only solution to all these problems.
The writer is the author of Policing in Multicultural Brittan and can be reached at [email protected]