Sunday, January 18, 2015

How to Motivate your Enemies to Fight You

How did Charlie Hebdo killer Chérif Kouachi first get involved in serious jihadism?
In the year after the United States’ invasion of Iraq, a 22-year-old pizza delivery man here couldn’t take it anymore. Sickened by images of American soldiers humiliating Muslims at the Abu Ghraib prison, he made plans to go fight United States forces. He studied a virtual AK-47 on a website. Then he took lessons from a man, using a hand-drawn picture of a gun.
That time he was arrested before he managed to leave France for Iraq. In prison he met other, more experienced jihadists, and preachers who radicalized his Islam, setting him more firmly on the path to suicidal violence. But it started with Abu Ghraib.

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

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