Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Taleban suicide bombers.  A recent United Nations report said violence against Afghan civilians was up 15% in the first half of this year, with more than 1,400 civilian deaths.  Roadside bombs were the biggest killer of civilians in the first half of this year.   But there is also evidence that since the beginning of the year, the Taleban has been stepping up its recruitment of young suicide bombers.

On 7 May, the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) said that “hundreds of children” were being prepared in Pakistan for suicide attacks inside Afghanistan.  This allegation was repeated by the NDS on 23 May when it said that both the Taleban and al-Qaeda were “increasingly using children as suicide bombers”.  Other evidence supports these assertions, and it is clear that a campaign of recruitment using the inducement of heavenly joys has been stepped up.  Prospective young recruits are told that they will be rewarded with rivers of milk and honey and compliant virgins.  As one example, a recent broadcast by Taleban radio, based in Miram Shah, urged listeners to “join the company of suicide bombers in order to gain a place in heaven in the hereafter”.  Taleban radio in the Bajaur area of Pakistan starts transmissions with jihadi chants including songs proclaiming: “I will not waste my time, virgins are waiting for me in paradise.”

On 26 July, former Afghan president Borhanoddin Rabbani told a nationwide council of clerics:?“Very poor and destitute children are being recruited to carry out blasts in mosques and public gatherings where helpless and innocent people are getting killed.  Ignorant religious scholars have issued fatwa and some of them preach that they would go to paradise for such acts...”

*** Israel and the Kurds.  Last week we provided a detailed briefing on how the Kurdish question was moving up the Mideast agenda.  In total there are approximately 35m Kurds, which is a large number for a people who do not have a state.  Israel, in particular, seems willing to exploit the Kurdish question to pay back Turkey for its abandonment of their previously close relationship.  Last week we quoted an editorial in The Jerusalem Post which argued on 24 July: “There’s no reason not to express unstinted Israeli support for Kurdish self-determination – as we did for South Sudan’s.”

In the past week, on 28 July, a piece in the Yedioth Ahronoth expressed almost identical views, saying: “The Kurds are close to Israel, which they view as a twin sister who shares a common historical fate and a non-Arab identity in a hostile Middle East.  We are now faced with the prospect of the dismemberment of four countries [Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Iran], each with varying degrees of hostility towards Israel, a prospect that would yield a new ally for the Jewish state.”  The commentary tied the fate of the Kurds to the Palestinians and warned that if these states “decide to ‘fix’ Israel” by supporting Palestinian statehood at the UN, “they themselves will be fixed”.