Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Friday, September 11, 2015
Saturday, August 9, 2014
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
7 indicators Muslims reached the Americas before Columbus
June 6, 2014
By: http://moorishharem.com/
Source: Muslim Village.com
Source: http://moorishharem.com/
It is an established, but not much publicized knowledge among historians that Muslims had very early contacts with the people of the lands now called Americas. There are plenty of records and evidences for the arrival of Muslims in America, not less than 600 years before Columbus.
Despite the plainly obvious argument that an empire/empires which ruled (directly or indirectly) more than half of the then known world for more than 800 years would have been the most probable to reach a land only 1500 nautical miles from its shores. (The distance between Freetown, Sierra Leoneand Natal, Brazil is 1822 miles/2933 km/1583 nautical miles, which is less than that between the ports of Aden and Colombo, a distance Muslim traders covered with much ease), history has been forced down the throats of the mankind that Columbus “discovered Americas” in 1492.
Historians have confirmed that during the golden days of the Muslim nation, Muslim ships were plying the Atlantic Ocean, which was then known as the Sea of Injustice, and they were heading west.
Years in which the parts of Americas were “discovered”. Piri Muhyid Din Re’is’s map (Below)showed them all in 1513.
Muslims reached the shores of the lands now known as the Americas in the following instances:
1. In the year 889 AD, Muslim sailor Khishkhash ibn Said ibn Aswad Al-Qurtuby (of Cordoba) set sail from the port of Palos in Muslim Spain and reached a certain land in the west. He returned home with huge treasures. He drew a world map calling these areas in the Atlantic Ocean “the unknown land”. The Muslim geo-historian Al-Masoudy records this in his book “Muruj-al-Dhahab wa Maadin Aljawhar”(956 AD);”Some people feel that this ocean is the source of all oceans and in it there have been many strange happenings. We have reported some of them in our book Akhbar az-Zaman. Adventurers have penetrated it on the risk of their lives, some returning safely, others perishing in the attempt. One such man was art inhabitant of Andalusia named Khashkhash. He was a young man of Cordoba who gathered a group of young men and went on a voyage on this ocean. After a long time he returned with a fabulous booty. Every Spaniard (Andalusian) knows his story.”
2. In Feb. 999 AD, Ibn Farukh from Granada in Muslim Spain landed in Gando (Great Canary), visited King Guanariga and continued his journey westwards till he found two islands, which he called Capraria and Pluitana. He arrived back in Spain in the month of May that year. Abu Bakr b. ‘Umar al Qutiyya relates the story of his voyage.
3. In twelfth century AD, a group of North African sailors: According to the famous Arab geographer Al Sharif al Idrisi (1097-1155);”A group of seafarers sailed into the sea of Darkness and Fog (the Atlantic Ocean) from Lisbon in order to discover what was in it and to what extent were its limit. They were a party of eight and they took a boat, which was loaded with supplies to last them for months. They sailed for eleven days till they reached turbulent waters with great waves and little light. They thought that they would perish so they turned their boat southward and travelled for twenty days. They finally reached an island that had people and cultivation but they were captured and chained for three days. On the fourth day a translator came speaking the Arabic language! He translated for the King and asked them about their mission. They informed him about themselves, then they were returned to their confinement. When the westerly wind began to blow, they were put in a canoe, blindfolded and brought to land after three days’ sailing. They were left on the shore with their hands tied behind their backs, when the next day came, another tribe appeared freeing them and informing them that between them and their lands war a journey of two months.” From “The Geography of Al Idrisi”.
4. In 1310 AD, Abu Bakari (Abu Bakar), King of the Malian Empire: The predecessor of the world-renowned ruler of the African Islamic Empire of Mali, Mansa Musa set off on a voyage to discover the limits of the neighbouring sea (Atlantic ocean). The emperor narrated this on his famous Hajj pilgrimage in 1324.(See his narration below). There are ample proof that African Muslims from Mali and other parts of West Africa (Mandinga) arrived in the Gulf of Mexico around 1312. They used the Mississippi River as their access route for exploring the interior.
5. In 1421, Cheng He – The legendary Chinese admiral: Cheng He (A Muslim)travelled around the world in the fifteenth century. British marine historian Gavin Manzies proves in his book ” 1421 – The year China discovered America” that Cheng He beat Columbus by 71 years. A Chinese historical document known as the Sung document records the voyage of Muslim sailors to a land called as Mu-Lan-Pi (America) in 1178. This document mentioned in another publication – the Khotan Amiers – published in 1933 after the Cheng He voyages.
6. The first map of Americas by Piri Muhyid Din Re’is in 1513. The famous Turkish admiral in charge of the Ottoman Red Sea and Indian Ocean fleets made this map and presented it to Sultan Selim I. Even though Columbus has been to the Caribbean by then, the areas accurately depicted in the map had not been “discovered”. Therefore it is logical that the Ottoman admiral was well aware of the areas. ( Refer figure).He was a famous navigator and mapmaker and wrote a handbook on the Aegean and the Mediterranean Seas, known as Piri Re’is Bahriye. The map was discovered by chance in the library of Serallo, Istanbul in 1929 by Khalid Edhem Bey.
7. The “First” to see the Americas became Muslim. May be as a divine justice on a false historical claim, the first Christian to see the American land, Rodrigo de Triana or Rodrigo de Lepe, became a Muslim on his return to Spain, “because Columbus did not give him credit nor the King any recompense, for his having seen before any other man, light in the Indies.”
Link: http://muslimvillage.com/2014/06/06/54173/7-indicators-muslims-reached-the-americas-before-columbus/.
By: http://moorishharem.com/
Source: Muslim Village.com
Source: http://moorishharem.com/
It is an established, but not much publicized knowledge among historians that Muslims had very early contacts with the people of the lands now called Americas. There are plenty of records and evidences for the arrival of Muslims in America, not less than 600 years before Columbus.
Despite the plainly obvious argument that an empire/empires which ruled (directly or indirectly) more than half of the then known world for more than 800 years would have been the most probable to reach a land only 1500 nautical miles from its shores. (The distance between Freetown, Sierra Leoneand Natal, Brazil is 1822 miles/2933 km/1583 nautical miles, which is less than that between the ports of Aden and Colombo, a distance Muslim traders covered with much ease), history has been forced down the throats of the mankind that Columbus “discovered Americas” in 1492.
Historians have confirmed that during the golden days of the Muslim nation, Muslim ships were plying the Atlantic Ocean, which was then known as the Sea of Injustice, and they were heading west.
Years in which the parts of Americas were “discovered”. Piri Muhyid Din Re’is’s map (Below)showed them all in 1513.
Muslims reached the shores of the lands now known as the Americas in the following instances:
1. In the year 889 AD, Muslim sailor Khishkhash ibn Said ibn Aswad Al-Qurtuby (of Cordoba) set sail from the port of Palos in Muslim Spain and reached a certain land in the west. He returned home with huge treasures. He drew a world map calling these areas in the Atlantic Ocean “the unknown land”. The Muslim geo-historian Al-Masoudy records this in his book “Muruj-al-Dhahab wa Maadin Aljawhar”(956 AD);”Some people feel that this ocean is the source of all oceans and in it there have been many strange happenings. We have reported some of them in our book Akhbar az-Zaman. Adventurers have penetrated it on the risk of their lives, some returning safely, others perishing in the attempt. One such man was art inhabitant of Andalusia named Khashkhash. He was a young man of Cordoba who gathered a group of young men and went on a voyage on this ocean. After a long time he returned with a fabulous booty. Every Spaniard (Andalusian) knows his story.”
2. In Feb. 999 AD, Ibn Farukh from Granada in Muslim Spain landed in Gando (Great Canary), visited King Guanariga and continued his journey westwards till he found two islands, which he called Capraria and Pluitana. He arrived back in Spain in the month of May that year. Abu Bakr b. ‘Umar al Qutiyya relates the story of his voyage.
3. In twelfth century AD, a group of North African sailors: According to the famous Arab geographer Al Sharif al Idrisi (1097-1155);”A group of seafarers sailed into the sea of Darkness and Fog (the Atlantic Ocean) from Lisbon in order to discover what was in it and to what extent were its limit. They were a party of eight and they took a boat, which was loaded with supplies to last them for months. They sailed for eleven days till they reached turbulent waters with great waves and little light. They thought that they would perish so they turned their boat southward and travelled for twenty days. They finally reached an island that had people and cultivation but they were captured and chained for three days. On the fourth day a translator came speaking the Arabic language! He translated for the King and asked them about their mission. They informed him about themselves, then they were returned to their confinement. When the westerly wind began to blow, they were put in a canoe, blindfolded and brought to land after three days’ sailing. They were left on the shore with their hands tied behind their backs, when the next day came, another tribe appeared freeing them and informing them that between them and their lands war a journey of two months.” From “The Geography of Al Idrisi”.
4. In 1310 AD, Abu Bakari (Abu Bakar), King of the Malian Empire: The predecessor of the world-renowned ruler of the African Islamic Empire of Mali, Mansa Musa set off on a voyage to discover the limits of the neighbouring sea (Atlantic ocean). The emperor narrated this on his famous Hajj pilgrimage in 1324.(See his narration below). There are ample proof that African Muslims from Mali and other parts of West Africa (Mandinga) arrived in the Gulf of Mexico around 1312. They used the Mississippi River as their access route for exploring the interior.
5. In 1421, Cheng He – The legendary Chinese admiral: Cheng He (A Muslim)travelled around the world in the fifteenth century. British marine historian Gavin Manzies proves in his book ” 1421 – The year China discovered America” that Cheng He beat Columbus by 71 years. A Chinese historical document known as the Sung document records the voyage of Muslim sailors to a land called as Mu-Lan-Pi (America) in 1178. This document mentioned in another publication – the Khotan Amiers – published in 1933 after the Cheng He voyages.
6. The first map of Americas by Piri Muhyid Din Re’is in 1513. The famous Turkish admiral in charge of the Ottoman Red Sea and Indian Ocean fleets made this map and presented it to Sultan Selim I. Even though Columbus has been to the Caribbean by then, the areas accurately depicted in the map had not been “discovered”. Therefore it is logical that the Ottoman admiral was well aware of the areas. ( Refer figure).He was a famous navigator and mapmaker and wrote a handbook on the Aegean and the Mediterranean Seas, known as Piri Re’is Bahriye. The map was discovered by chance in the library of Serallo, Istanbul in 1929 by Khalid Edhem Bey.
7. The “First” to see the Americas became Muslim. May be as a divine justice on a false historical claim, the first Christian to see the American land, Rodrigo de Triana or Rodrigo de Lepe, became a Muslim on his return to Spain, “because Columbus did not give him credit nor the King any recompense, for his having seen before any other man, light in the Indies.”
Link: http://muslimvillage.com/2014/06/06/54173/7-indicators-muslims-reached-the-americas-before-columbus/.
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Sunday, February 16, 2014
WW II - The REAL Reason !
Source: the fuhrerbunker.com
Massacre of Volksdeuterhers (ethnic Germans) by Polish military and civilians.
Most real scholars of World War Two are aware of the reasons that Adolf Hitler sent the Wehrmacht into Poland. When we look back on what we now know, it was easy to understand why England and France threatened Hitler not to invade Poland. They all knew it was inevitable and they all knew why. Most governments knew of it; but the well-spun propaganda and controlled press made it appear that a power-crazed Adolf Hitler only wanted to kill Jews and rule the world. Even today, this same false propaganda is taught in schools.
Simply put - not only was Germany herself under attack from the World Jewish community (the call to boycott all German made goods in the early 1930's) but worse yet, the Polish authorities were engaged is mass murder, rape and robbery of Volksdeutscher (ethnic Germans) living in Poland. It reached such massive proportions that Hitler, as leader of the German people, could not ignore it. He had to send in the Wehrmacht.
DEPORTATION ORDERS
Deportation orders did not begin, as we are told to believe, with Germans deporting Jews. In fact, the Deportation Orders began in Poland, deporting and/or arresting ethnic Germans. There were three types of orders - the yellow form was merely deportation to central or eastern Poland; the pink form meant internment and the red form meant outright arrest. In reality, each form meant deportation to one degree or another and ultimate death for most.
You will now read FIRST-PERSON accounts of that time, and they all justify the incursion into Poland. In fact, they demanded intervention.
EUGEN HOFMANN - On 2 September 1939 this Bromberg merchant was arrested on orders of the commander of the air raid district, Isador Berger, a Polish Jew and was taken to the women's prison in Bromberg. On 4 September, he and all Germans held in this prison were given a certificate of release and were indeed released. However, this 'release certificate' also ordered any police officer to kill the bearer! All but Hofmann were murdered the same day. He escaped to tell his story by hiding with relatives.
ROBERT KUNDE - Monday, 4 September 1939, four Polish soldiers entered the home of Kunde at Wierbathstraße 23 in Bromberg and searched for weapons. Finding none, they wrote comments in the passports of Kunde and his son Wilhelm, that stated the bearer was "suspect" and on other pages, made the note that the bearer should be shot. These soldiers arrested the male members of the Kunde family and handed them over, along with other Germans, to Polish soldiers who took them into the nearby woods. Kunde and another German, a man named Grüning, managed to escape - all the others were shot dead. Kunde later learned that his father had also been murdered.
VERA GANNOTT - The home where she and her parents lived was invaded by Polish authorities on Sunday, 3 September. Here is the translation of her sworn statement, taken on 14 September, 1939:
"I am 19, Protestant, without occupation.
When it became known in town that the German troops were coming in, the civilian population and Polish soldiers began to commit acts of violence. At about 2 o'clock on Sunday, Polish soldiers and civilians came toward our house at Thorner Straße 125, two and a half miles from town. The Polish civilians said; "Germans live here!" The soldiers immediately began to fire. We fled into a shed. I believe the Polish soldiers also threw hand grenades. My father was the first taken from the shed. The Poles asked him where he had the machine gun. My father did not understand the question as he did not know Polish. Thereupon I came out of the shed, for I knew Polish and wanted to help my father. I asked the Poles what we had done to them and interceded for my father. But the Poles shouted; "Down with you German swine!" My father was repeatedly struck on the face and body with rifle butts, then stabbed with a bayonet. Thereupon my father fell to the ground and as he lay, he was shot six times before dying. The mob then left, after telling civilians they could loot the house else they (the soldiers) would burn it down. Now my mother also came out of her hiding place. She and I wanted to wash my father, who was completely covered with blood. Just as we started, there appeared another Polish mob armed with pickets and clubs. My mother and my aunt were beaten with the clubs. I was slapped again and again. Then they left. After a while there came another mob of Polish soldiers and civilians. As they approached, I ran into the River Brahe, which flows past the rear of our house. I was dragged out by the hair. Between ten and fifteen civilians dragged me into the house. They said they were going to show me that the Poles weren't so bad after all; they would allow me to change my wet clothes. No one left the room so I refused to change. The Poles thereupon tore my clothes off and laid me on the ground naked. About ten men held me down by the head, hands and feet while one of them raped me. He completed the act and I suffered injuries. I had considerable pain during the first days, but not any more. The other Poles did not attack me. During this time my mother was taken to a room on the upper floor and held at the point of a rifle.
Polish soldiers robbed money, a bag, watches and rings from my father and myself. Our home was completely destroyed - the furniture hacked to pieces with axes. Our china and the linens were stolen.
We did not have any arms in our house. We had previously surrendered them to the police because of a general order."
LORENZ BREITINGER was part of a group that was force-marched across Poland. His sworn testimony reads:
"From Konin, our march could not be continued towards Kutno so we suddenly turned north. About seven kilometers beyond Konin, our guards left us, only one remaining being a weak minded policeman. We were now ill-treated with long clubs and stones by soldiers of the Polish reserves. Military policemen rescued us. We were allowed to stop for three days on a farm near Maliniec because our policeman first had to go and get orders as to what was to be done with us.
Beyond Slesin we passed through many Polish positions and were placed on a farm which was completely overrun with Polish soldiers. Here a young Polish lieutenant threatened us with death, cursing us all the time. On the next morning we were called as early as 2 o'clock to continue our march. The carts with the cripples and children remained behind. I heard later that they were shot. They were the entire Schmolke family and another war invalid who had only one leg. A forced march under the thunder of cannon, took us to Babiak. We continued in the afternoon after having been subdivided into three groups and a number of soldiers having been added to our guard. On a forest path, we were forced to hand over our watches and other jewelry, our money and, many of us even our wedding rings, to the soldiers. When we were forced to continue on Monday morning, some of us were unable to stand on our feet. Five who were ill and quite incapable of going on - a women school teacher from Posen among them - remained behind. Three able bodied men stayed behind to protect them. We learned later that the guards had shot them and beaten them to death with stones in a bestial manner.
After days of aimless marching - the war front drawing nearer to us all the time - we were freed by German troops on 17 September 1939. The German Army brought us home via Breslau."
SISTER SCHMIDT and the CHILDREN'S HOME - "Bloody Sunday"
"The Deutsches Kinderheim (German Children's Home) on Thorner Straße in Bromberg, was searched five times in all on 'Bloody Sunday'. About seven AM, two Polish soldiers demanded admittance. They searched the house for arms and left after having convinced themselves that their mission was futile. The soldiers were polite.
The second search, by six Polish soldiers, occurred at about 9:30 AM. They beat against the door with their rifle butts and demanded admittance. One of them put his pistol to the temple of Sister Olga, head of the Kinderheim. Insisting that a machine gun was hidden in the house and that shots from it had just been fired, they demanded surrender of the arms. Sister Olga replied that there were no weapons, and bade them search. The soldiers searched the house thoroughly, breaking into drawers and cupboards that could not be easily opened. Finding no weapons, the searchers left.
In the late forenoon, as the children were about to lunch, a third search was undertaken by four or five Polish soldiers accompanied by as many civilians. Some of these soldiers had taken part on the previous search. The soldiers again insisted that shots had been fired from the house and demanded to see the 'machine gun'. One of them threatened the Sister with his bayonet. The Sister repeated that she had no weapons. One of the soldiers - the Sister believed that he was an officer - thereupon said; "But we have been told that shots were just fired from here." The soldiers who had taken part in the previous search confirmed that there was really nothing upstairs. However, a Pole named Maximilian Gackowski, the only civilian who had followed the soldiers to the staircase, kept shouting; "Shots have been fired from here. I saw it myself!" Turning to Sister Schmidt he yelled; "You old hag! You old shrew - you and your brats should have been driven away long ago! If I could have done what I wanted, you would have been dead long ago. I would have killed you all myself!" He brandished a weapon, believed to have been steel rod, in the Sister's face. However, Gackowski could not convince the soldiers and the search ended.
The next search by about five soldiers and five civilians, took place at about 3 PM. Gackowski was again present. The leader of the group ordered all inmates including three Sisters and eighteen children ranging from two to eighteen years, to gather and raise their hands. Gackowski ranted as before, insisting time and again, that shots had been fired from the house and asked for the 'machine gun'. He brought a 'witness' who, he claimed, was ready to swear that shots had been fired. While the soldiers searched the house, one of them remained standing before Sister Olga with his Bayonet. Gackowski took part in this search of the house. After this group had found nothing, Gackowski declared, "They work in the daytime, but evenings they have men upstairs, they smoke cigarettes. I have seen it myself, and nights they shoot."
The raiders left the Kinderheim just as a man accused of having fired shots was being brought from the direction of the Schützenhaus. Gackowski was the first to turn against this man. After the fourth search, the Sisters discovered that smaller valuables, among them Sister Olga's watch, were missing. The last search was made about 5:30PM. It was again made by soldiers and civilians. The head of the group approached Sister Olga with his rifle and threatened to shoot her. At this moment, one of the Sisters who had been ordered to help in the cleaning up of the railroad station returned amid a mob of soldiers and civilians. The Sister, having compelled to clean the railroad tracks, was very dirty. At the instigation of Gackowski, who was again present, a railway man charged that the lubrication oil on the hands and the dress of the Sister was from a machine gun. As before, Gackowski sought to entice the soldiers by declaring that shots had been fired. However, it was proved that there were no arms in the Kinderheim and that no shots were fired from the house."
WILHELM STARKE testifies about the horticulturist Herr BERNDT
"An SS cap was reputedly found at the establishment of horticulturalist Bernd of Lissa. Berndt was thereupon arrested. Neither he not his brothers had ever had the SS cap in their house. It was later discovered that the cap had been found by the Polish attackers of the village of Geiersdorf. There were ten SS men in the village who had to leave without their outfits. It was ascertained that the cap belonged to an SS man, Ernst Wiedermann, of Vienna."
Attack on the MATTHES FAMILY
"Late in the morning of 3 September 1939, the accused Kazimir Dybowski, Paul Kinczewski and Peter Pijarowski, accompanied by a considerable number of unidentified Polish civilians and by several Polish soldiers with fixed bayonets, marched along Albertstraße in Bromberg. Dybowski had a knife in his hand; Kinczewski and Pijarowski had an axe and a hatchet. When the mob arrived in front of Albertstraße 24, where witness Herbert Matthes, a member of the German minority (Volksdeutscher), carried on a large cabinet making trade. They were incited by Kinczewski to raid the house. Speaking to witness Biermann, who was responsible for the air raid protection of the house, Kinczewski insisted that Matthes had fired on Polish soldiers. Biermann's repeated denials of the charge were to no avail and the mob broke through the courtyard to the drying room in which Matthes, his wife and two sons, and his 72 year old mother had hidden. The door of the room was locked and when it was not opened at the ringleader's demand, Kinczewski simple smashed it in with his axe. Thereupon, Mrs. Ella Matthes, her two sons and her mother-in-law appeared in the doorway; Herbert Matthes remaining in hiding at first. Mrs. Matthes told the members of the mob and the soldiers that her husband was not at home and that she did not know where he had gone. Kinczewski replied that in that case the two sons had would be taken as hostages. However, Matthes stepped forward to save his children. Kinczewski swung his axe at Matthes but Biermann caught the handle and deflected the blow. Simultaneously Pijarowski with his axe, and Dybowski with his knife, headed toward 72 year old Selma Matthes, but failed to harm her. Finally Matthes and his two sons were led away by Polish soldiers. Matthes later succeeded in himself and his children by escaping while their Polish captors were quarreling over the division of the valuables taken from Matthes, thus relaxing their vigil."
'The SZWABY Must Be Shot!' (Szwaby or Swabians was a derogatory Polish term for Germans) Blood and Brains Spattered....
"My name is Johanna Giese, nee Keusch. I am 51, Protestant, Volksdeutscher and live in Bromberg at Konopnickiej 9.
On Sunday, 3 September 1939 between 11 and 12 o'clock, we were in the cellar of our residence. Polish soldiers and civilians entered our yard and demanded that we come out of the cellar. When we obeyed, a soldier asserted that shots had been fired from our home. There were however, no weapons at all in our house.
My son-in-law was the first to leave the cellar, and was greeted by a civilian's shout of 'The Szwaby must be shot!' Without hesitation, the Poles fired at my son-in-law. The first bullet pierces his jugular vein, while three others lodged in his chest and neck. Nevertheless he was still alive when we were forced to flee that night. We could not take him along, so we put him on a couch in our dwelling.
When German troops entered Bromberg on Tuesday, a corporal accompanied me to our farmstead to see how things looked. A horrible sight met out eyes. The mob had taken my son-in-law from the couch and had dragged him into the kitchen. His remains lay under the kitchen table. His head was split, his skull cap was missing. Brains and blood were spattered on the kitchen wall.
My son, Reinhard Giese, 19 years old, had been in the cellar with us. When he saw that my son-in-law was being shot, he dashed out and jumped over the fence to our neighbor's plot. The Poles followed, caught my son and shot him. In the evening, I managed to get the body into our laundry. Reinhard was shot through the chest.
Another son of mine, Friederich Geise, 25 years old, was reported shot in the mass murder of the family with which he had hidden in Hopfengarten."
'SLAY THE GERMANS!' Eyes Gouged out with Bayonets
"My name is Paul Sikorski. I am 35, Catholic, a merchant. I call myself Volksdeutscher and reside in Bromberg, Mühlenstraße 4.
At about 6:00 am on Sunday, 3 September 1939, I went to the mill to put out the light and to stop the turbine. On my way, I suddenly heard loud shouting from the direction of the railroad. About a hundred meters away, a mob of railway men, civilians and soldiers with bayonets, rifle butts and clubs were attacking seven people of ages varying from about 20 to 60. The victims were surrounded. As I approached the scene, I heard members of the mob call in Polish, 'Slay the Germans!' I could see blood spurting. It was then that I turned and fled for the mob was about to assail me. I returned to the scene at nine o'clock and looked at the bodies. The eyes of two corpses had been gouged out by bayonets. The sockets were a mass of blood. The skulls of three had been cracked open, and their spattered brains lay a meter away. The other bodies were similarly slashed to pieces. One belly was split wide open. I recognized two of the murdered men; the butcher Leichnitz or Jägershof, and Mr. Schlicht.
About three in the or four o'clock in the afternoon, a band of soldiers and railway men brought eighteen Germans to my mill. (the Peterson mill). I could see from the garden that the Germans were tied in pairs. All eighteen were shot, two at a time, then beaten as they lay on the ground. Among them was a fourteen-year-old boy and a woman. The murderers were obviously in a great hurry, for they all disappeared immediately after the slaughter. I later had a thorough look at the bodies, which lay there for three days.
At noon on Monday, when it was already rumored that the Polish troops had left, I saw two Polish soldiers march an elderly couple to the wall at the mill. I ran up to the soldiers, knelt before them and begged them in Polish to spare the people, who were both about 65. I was struck with a rifle butt and told, 'Let the damned Niemcys (Germans) die like dogs!' Even before I could rise to my feet, the soldiers had shot down the two old people. The bodies rolled into a ditch as the soldiers trotted away."
WILDEMANN MURDER "They Should be Beaten to Death!"
Testimony of Frau Wildemann:
"On the morning of September 3rd, several raiding parties searched Frau Wildemann's house in Bromberg at Schwedenbergerstraße (Ugory) 56, but found no weapons.
At about 3 p.m., a new mob, consisting of approximately thirty men all armed with clubs and similar weapons appeared. Claiming that shots had been fired from the house and that it must therefore be searched for arms, the mob entered. Several objects belonging to Wildemann family were stolen. There were not arms in the house, and no shots had been fired from it. When he saw the approaching mob, Herr Wildemann hid in the cellar. Questioned as to her husband's whereabouts, Frau Wildemann said that he had gone to visit acquaintances in Kufawierstraße. She was taken to the address. When her husband could not be found there, Frau Wildemann was threatened. Finally, after having been assured that nothing would happen to Herr Wildemann, she revealed his hiding place. The mob returned to the couple's home, seized both the husband and wife, beating them on the way, dragged them into the garden. They were stood up as if they were going t be shot. When they embraced each other and began to pray, they were ridiculed. Shouts were heard again & again, 'They should be beaten to death!'. One of those who shouted was a barber names Alfons Lewandowski. When Frau Wildemann asked him, 'Why should you kill me? What have I done to you?' he slapped her in the face saying, 'German pig! Damned Hitlerite!' Herr Wildemann was then taken away by the soldiers who, on the whole, were less hostile than the rabble. Several days later Wildemann's body was found nearby under a thin layer of sand. So horribly mutilated was he that only by his clothing and the contents of his pocket could he be identified."
GOLLNICK & KÖPERNICK MURDERS "All Germans Must be Butchered!"
Testimony of witnesses Olga and Franz Tafelski of Bromberg
"The throng milling about Breite Straße arrounsed the soldiers against a German named Gollnick. The soldiers beat Gollnick down with their rifle butts and left him lying in the street badly injured.
Toward evening, Franz Tafelski noticed that the victim's left leg and left hand were still twitching. Gollnick had fallen on his face but the mob had turned him over and tore open the front of his trousers, exposing the whole lower part of his torso. A civilian and two soldiers appeared and ran a bayonet into Gollnick's belly. Following this, a final shot was fired into the body.
Throughout the afternoon, a mob had milled up and down Breite Straße right by the dying man. They shouted that the Germans had shot from their homes. Sofie Bednarczyk, an unemployed woman, was in the mob. She flirted with the soldiers and, according to Olga Tafelski, behaved 'like a mad woman'. Franz Tafelski saw her, arms forled, leading the mob. Her manner revealed a morbid lust for power. Olga Tafelski heard her shout 'Give me the rifle; all Germans must be butchered! The damned Hitlerites!'
Franz Tafelski heard her shout, 'All Germans must be slain!'. All the time she was laughing and flirting with the soldiers. She stopped at the corner of No. 5 Breite Straße, where Gollnick lay with his trousers torn open. Witness Bartkowski heard her shout, 'This Hitlerite ought to have his testicles cut off!' About half an hour later, Köpernick, a Volksdeutscher, was dragged past the same house and murdered."
GOLLNICK MURDER "The Swine is Still Alive!"
Testimony of Christa Gollnick of Kujawierstraße 101 in Bromberg
"We operated a flour and feed store. As the first Polish troops were leaving, I noticed a Polish neighbor talking to a Polish major and pointing at our house. Thereupon Polish soldiers broke open the door and rushed into our store. Thinking that a skirmish was in progress and that the soldiers wanted to entrench themselves in our house, we ran toward the shelter which we had been ordered to build. We did not reach the shelter because the Polish soldiers fired at us. My husband was shot in the shoulder and hit in the face with a rifle butt. He reeled but still tried to escape. He started to climb the fence, but was held back by a civilian. A Polish soldier gave him another rifle butt blow which knocked him out.
A Polish lieutenant led me and the children back into the house. From an attic window, I could see my prostrate husband. He lingered on for a long time. I saw him draw his legs up and stretch them. Oncein a while he would life his hand. However, it was impossible for us to go to him, for he was surrounded by Polish soldiers and civilians. A Polish policeman stood guard at the fence. Polish women shouted, 'The swine is still alive!' Towards evening, my husband was shot three more times by Polish soldiers. He had also been stabbed through the stomach with a bayonet. Time and again he tried to open his trousers, finally succeeding. The woman next door told me that he was still breathing the next day. My husband was tall and strong and only 38 years. Probably that is why he had such a hard time dying. He lay about eighteen hours before he was released from his agony."
BETTIN MURDER "We'll Butcher You! Here's Some Young Hitler Blood for You!"
Testimony from Frau Bettin of Bromberg:
"About noon on 3 September 1939, the so-called 'Bromberg Bloody Sunday' a horde of Polish bandits overran the Bettin property at Frankenstraße 76. The Bettins, hearing their windows being smashed in, decided to investigate. They were seized and forced to raise their arms and kneel. A Swastika, which Fraulein Bettin was wearing on her dress, fell to the ground. Seeing the emblem led the mob to insult the girl outrageously. Some of the Poles bore revolvers and pitchforks; one had an axe. They shouted such things as:
'Hitler Blood!'
'Hitler Pigs!'
'We'll Butcher You!'
Fraulein Bettin was taken away by two Poles, one of whom was a railroad employee named Bruski. The captive was treated roughly and practically hurled from the farmstead. She was dragged on by the arm and threatened with a club. At the corner of Bölitzer Straße, she was turned over to two other Poles, a postal employee disguised as a policeman and a railway man. Bruski told them, 'Here's some young Hitler blood for you!' Between 4 and 5 p.m., she was freed by a young Polish officer. When she got home she found that only her mother and sister-in-law were still there. Her father and brother had been dragged away by the Polish mob. Her brother's body was found some time later. Her father is still missing and probably also murdered."
THIEDE and MITTELSTÄDT MURDERS "Hold Him so that I can Kill Him!"
Testimony of Gerda Thiede and Otto Papke, both of Schulitz:
"Waclaw Pasterski, a chauffer, owned property opposite the Thieses in Schulitz. The Thiedes, a mother and two children Gerda and Werner, were Germans and had lived here for many years. Waclaw Pasterski was a Pole and came to Schulitz about seven years ago.
On Sunday, 3 September 1939, Polish soldiers drove stray cattle belonging to Poles who had fled, into the Thiede's best fields. Accompanied by Emil Mittlestädt, who owned property nearby, the Thiedes went out to see how much damage had been done. While they were there, a troop of Polish soldiers came from the direction of the woods and called, 'Germans or Poles?' Werner Thiede answered, 'German.' Mittlestädt replied 'Pole.' Werner Thiede was searched and found unarmed. The Thiedes were then compelled to walk with raised hands towards the woods. The soldiers followed them, allowing Mittlestädt to remain in the meadow.
Meanwhile, Waclaw Pasterski, armed with an axe and a knife, came out of the woods. Seeing Werner Thiede, he shouted to the soldiers, 'Hold the little fellow so that I can kill him!' At this threat, Werner turned and ran in another direction. The soldiers pursued him, firing as they went. Gerda Thiede now looked back, although the soldiers had forbidden it, and saw Mittlestädt, his side slashed open, lying in the meadow. Since the soldiers had left the meadow in order to follow Werner, and Mittlestädt and Pasterski were left alone, Gerda attributed the wound to an axe blow by Pasterski. No one else could have struck the blow. Gerda furthermore had heard Pasterski insist that Mittlestädt was German. Otto Papke who saw Mittlestädt lying in the meadow was certain that the would was caused by the blow of an axe. Mittlestädt was in agony until he died some time during the night. Werner Thiede's body was later found and buried by Kriewald, another neighbor. Gerda Thiede had stated that according to information from Kriewald, her brother had been shot in the back and had his head slashed.
Werner Thiede was 20, Mittlestädt in his early thirties. The latter was a widower and is survived by a young child."
FINGER MURDER "For God's Sake.....Now We'll Die"
Testimony of Käthe Finger
"My name is Käthe Finger, nee Böhkle. I am 48, the widow of a bank attorney. I reside in Bromberg. I am in no way related to the accused.
On 'Bloody Sunday', several Volksdeutscher and a Polish woman whom we had summoned for our protection, were gathered in my home. About 11 a.m. a mob came down our street. The brothers Weyna, who live in the Raddatz house opposite us, and the accused Owczaczak were in the crowd. One of the Weyna brothers was armed.
I heard my husband in the next room telling our girl, Göde, that Owczaczak was pointing at our residence. My husband then came to me and said, 'For God's sake, the mob is coming in. Now we'll die!' He added that we should perish together. At that moment the mob broke into our apartment. There was a soldier among them who demanded that my husband and I lie down on the carpet. We obeyed. The soldier fired and my husband was killed instantly. I expected a second shot and since it failed to come, I raised myself a little. My hands were red with my husband's blood. I cried, 'My God!' and I was yanked to my feet by the soldier. Then I was pushed through the door and led away with the others who had sought refuge in our house. On the way we were insulted, beaten and kicked by the members of the mob. As we passed the canal gates, a Polish civilian shouted, 'Psia krew Hitlerowa!' (Damned Hitlerite women!) and pulled me toward the canal. I managed to tear myself loose. I was then brought to the police station where I was kicked so viciously that the force hurled me against a wooden fence. We were then all forced to lie down in the courtyard of the police station, amid shouts of, 'Lie here like cattle, you German bloodhounds!'. Now victims, beaten, bleeding and groaning in pain - more were arriving continuously. My 12-year-old son was lying beside me. We were under constant fire from the neighboring houses and from the direction of the canal gates. Many Germans were struck. These were taken away. How many were dead, I do not know. My son and I lay there about seven hours before a Polish policeman effected our release.
A machine gun had been trained on us in the police courtyard, while we received orders to shout, 'Hoch Rydz-Smigly!'. We were then asked whether we enjoyed living in Poland and when one woman replied negatively, the machine gun was aimed at her.
There was great confusion in the courtyard. I cannot enumerate the hardships inflicted on us.
I swear that this testimony is true, and reaffirm the oath I have already taken in connection with this matter before the Bromberg Special Tribunal on 11 September 1939."
Link: http://www.thefuhrerbunker.com/WWII.htm.
Massacre of Volksdeuterhers (ethnic Germans) by Polish military and civilians.
Most real scholars of World War Two are aware of the reasons that Adolf Hitler sent the Wehrmacht into Poland. When we look back on what we now know, it was easy to understand why England and France threatened Hitler not to invade Poland. They all knew it was inevitable and they all knew why. Most governments knew of it; but the well-spun propaganda and controlled press made it appear that a power-crazed Adolf Hitler only wanted to kill Jews and rule the world. Even today, this same false propaganda is taught in schools.
Simply put - not only was Germany herself under attack from the World Jewish community (the call to boycott all German made goods in the early 1930's) but worse yet, the Polish authorities were engaged is mass murder, rape and robbery of Volksdeutscher (ethnic Germans) living in Poland. It reached such massive proportions that Hitler, as leader of the German people, could not ignore it. He had to send in the Wehrmacht.
DEPORTATION ORDERS
Deportation orders did not begin, as we are told to believe, with Germans deporting Jews. In fact, the Deportation Orders began in Poland, deporting and/or arresting ethnic Germans. There were three types of orders - the yellow form was merely deportation to central or eastern Poland; the pink form meant internment and the red form meant outright arrest. In reality, each form meant deportation to one degree or another and ultimate death for most.
You will now read FIRST-PERSON accounts of that time, and they all justify the incursion into Poland. In fact, they demanded intervention.
EUGEN HOFMANN - On 2 September 1939 this Bromberg merchant was arrested on orders of the commander of the air raid district, Isador Berger, a Polish Jew and was taken to the women's prison in Bromberg. On 4 September, he and all Germans held in this prison were given a certificate of release and were indeed released. However, this 'release certificate' also ordered any police officer to kill the bearer! All but Hofmann were murdered the same day. He escaped to tell his story by hiding with relatives.
ROBERT KUNDE - Monday, 4 September 1939, four Polish soldiers entered the home of Kunde at Wierbathstraße 23 in Bromberg and searched for weapons. Finding none, they wrote comments in the passports of Kunde and his son Wilhelm, that stated the bearer was "suspect" and on other pages, made the note that the bearer should be shot. These soldiers arrested the male members of the Kunde family and handed them over, along with other Germans, to Polish soldiers who took them into the nearby woods. Kunde and another German, a man named Grüning, managed to escape - all the others were shot dead. Kunde later learned that his father had also been murdered.
VERA GANNOTT - The home where she and her parents lived was invaded by Polish authorities on Sunday, 3 September. Here is the translation of her sworn statement, taken on 14 September, 1939:
"I am 19, Protestant, without occupation.
When it became known in town that the German troops were coming in, the civilian population and Polish soldiers began to commit acts of violence. At about 2 o'clock on Sunday, Polish soldiers and civilians came toward our house at Thorner Straße 125, two and a half miles from town. The Polish civilians said; "Germans live here!" The soldiers immediately began to fire. We fled into a shed. I believe the Polish soldiers also threw hand grenades. My father was the first taken from the shed. The Poles asked him where he had the machine gun. My father did not understand the question as he did not know Polish. Thereupon I came out of the shed, for I knew Polish and wanted to help my father. I asked the Poles what we had done to them and interceded for my father. But the Poles shouted; "Down with you German swine!" My father was repeatedly struck on the face and body with rifle butts, then stabbed with a bayonet. Thereupon my father fell to the ground and as he lay, he was shot six times before dying. The mob then left, after telling civilians they could loot the house else they (the soldiers) would burn it down. Now my mother also came out of her hiding place. She and I wanted to wash my father, who was completely covered with blood. Just as we started, there appeared another Polish mob armed with pickets and clubs. My mother and my aunt were beaten with the clubs. I was slapped again and again. Then they left. After a while there came another mob of Polish soldiers and civilians. As they approached, I ran into the River Brahe, which flows past the rear of our house. I was dragged out by the hair. Between ten and fifteen civilians dragged me into the house. They said they were going to show me that the Poles weren't so bad after all; they would allow me to change my wet clothes. No one left the room so I refused to change. The Poles thereupon tore my clothes off and laid me on the ground naked. About ten men held me down by the head, hands and feet while one of them raped me. He completed the act and I suffered injuries. I had considerable pain during the first days, but not any more. The other Poles did not attack me. During this time my mother was taken to a room on the upper floor and held at the point of a rifle.
Polish soldiers robbed money, a bag, watches and rings from my father and myself. Our home was completely destroyed - the furniture hacked to pieces with axes. Our china and the linens were stolen.
We did not have any arms in our house. We had previously surrendered them to the police because of a general order."
LORENZ BREITINGER was part of a group that was force-marched across Poland. His sworn testimony reads:
"From Konin, our march could not be continued towards Kutno so we suddenly turned north. About seven kilometers beyond Konin, our guards left us, only one remaining being a weak minded policeman. We were now ill-treated with long clubs and stones by soldiers of the Polish reserves. Military policemen rescued us. We were allowed to stop for three days on a farm near Maliniec because our policeman first had to go and get orders as to what was to be done with us.
Beyond Slesin we passed through many Polish positions and were placed on a farm which was completely overrun with Polish soldiers. Here a young Polish lieutenant threatened us with death, cursing us all the time. On the next morning we were called as early as 2 o'clock to continue our march. The carts with the cripples and children remained behind. I heard later that they were shot. They were the entire Schmolke family and another war invalid who had only one leg. A forced march under the thunder of cannon, took us to Babiak. We continued in the afternoon after having been subdivided into three groups and a number of soldiers having been added to our guard. On a forest path, we were forced to hand over our watches and other jewelry, our money and, many of us even our wedding rings, to the soldiers. When we were forced to continue on Monday morning, some of us were unable to stand on our feet. Five who were ill and quite incapable of going on - a women school teacher from Posen among them - remained behind. Three able bodied men stayed behind to protect them. We learned later that the guards had shot them and beaten them to death with stones in a bestial manner.
After days of aimless marching - the war front drawing nearer to us all the time - we were freed by German troops on 17 September 1939. The German Army brought us home via Breslau."
SISTER SCHMIDT and the CHILDREN'S HOME - "Bloody Sunday"
"The Deutsches Kinderheim (German Children's Home) on Thorner Straße in Bromberg, was searched five times in all on 'Bloody Sunday'. About seven AM, two Polish soldiers demanded admittance. They searched the house for arms and left after having convinced themselves that their mission was futile. The soldiers were polite.
The second search, by six Polish soldiers, occurred at about 9:30 AM. They beat against the door with their rifle butts and demanded admittance. One of them put his pistol to the temple of Sister Olga, head of the Kinderheim. Insisting that a machine gun was hidden in the house and that shots from it had just been fired, they demanded surrender of the arms. Sister Olga replied that there were no weapons, and bade them search. The soldiers searched the house thoroughly, breaking into drawers and cupboards that could not be easily opened. Finding no weapons, the searchers left.
In the late forenoon, as the children were about to lunch, a third search was undertaken by four or five Polish soldiers accompanied by as many civilians. Some of these soldiers had taken part on the previous search. The soldiers again insisted that shots had been fired from the house and demanded to see the 'machine gun'. One of them threatened the Sister with his bayonet. The Sister repeated that she had no weapons. One of the soldiers - the Sister believed that he was an officer - thereupon said; "But we have been told that shots were just fired from here." The soldiers who had taken part in the previous search confirmed that there was really nothing upstairs. However, a Pole named Maximilian Gackowski, the only civilian who had followed the soldiers to the staircase, kept shouting; "Shots have been fired from here. I saw it myself!" Turning to Sister Schmidt he yelled; "You old hag! You old shrew - you and your brats should have been driven away long ago! If I could have done what I wanted, you would have been dead long ago. I would have killed you all myself!" He brandished a weapon, believed to have been steel rod, in the Sister's face. However, Gackowski could not convince the soldiers and the search ended.
The next search by about five soldiers and five civilians, took place at about 3 PM. Gackowski was again present. The leader of the group ordered all inmates including three Sisters and eighteen children ranging from two to eighteen years, to gather and raise their hands. Gackowski ranted as before, insisting time and again, that shots had been fired from the house and asked for the 'machine gun'. He brought a 'witness' who, he claimed, was ready to swear that shots had been fired. While the soldiers searched the house, one of them remained standing before Sister Olga with his Bayonet. Gackowski took part in this search of the house. After this group had found nothing, Gackowski declared, "They work in the daytime, but evenings they have men upstairs, they smoke cigarettes. I have seen it myself, and nights they shoot."
The raiders left the Kinderheim just as a man accused of having fired shots was being brought from the direction of the Schützenhaus. Gackowski was the first to turn against this man. After the fourth search, the Sisters discovered that smaller valuables, among them Sister Olga's watch, were missing. The last search was made about 5:30PM. It was again made by soldiers and civilians. The head of the group approached Sister Olga with his rifle and threatened to shoot her. At this moment, one of the Sisters who had been ordered to help in the cleaning up of the railroad station returned amid a mob of soldiers and civilians. The Sister, having compelled to clean the railroad tracks, was very dirty. At the instigation of Gackowski, who was again present, a railway man charged that the lubrication oil on the hands and the dress of the Sister was from a machine gun. As before, Gackowski sought to entice the soldiers by declaring that shots had been fired. However, it was proved that there were no arms in the Kinderheim and that no shots were fired from the house."
WILHELM STARKE testifies about the horticulturist Herr BERNDT
"An SS cap was reputedly found at the establishment of horticulturalist Bernd of Lissa. Berndt was thereupon arrested. Neither he not his brothers had ever had the SS cap in their house. It was later discovered that the cap had been found by the Polish attackers of the village of Geiersdorf. There were ten SS men in the village who had to leave without their outfits. It was ascertained that the cap belonged to an SS man, Ernst Wiedermann, of Vienna."
Attack on the MATTHES FAMILY
"Late in the morning of 3 September 1939, the accused Kazimir Dybowski, Paul Kinczewski and Peter Pijarowski, accompanied by a considerable number of unidentified Polish civilians and by several Polish soldiers with fixed bayonets, marched along Albertstraße in Bromberg. Dybowski had a knife in his hand; Kinczewski and Pijarowski had an axe and a hatchet. When the mob arrived in front of Albertstraße 24, where witness Herbert Matthes, a member of the German minority (Volksdeutscher), carried on a large cabinet making trade. They were incited by Kinczewski to raid the house. Speaking to witness Biermann, who was responsible for the air raid protection of the house, Kinczewski insisted that Matthes had fired on Polish soldiers. Biermann's repeated denials of the charge were to no avail and the mob broke through the courtyard to the drying room in which Matthes, his wife and two sons, and his 72 year old mother had hidden. The door of the room was locked and when it was not opened at the ringleader's demand, Kinczewski simple smashed it in with his axe. Thereupon, Mrs. Ella Matthes, her two sons and her mother-in-law appeared in the doorway; Herbert Matthes remaining in hiding at first. Mrs. Matthes told the members of the mob and the soldiers that her husband was not at home and that she did not know where he had gone. Kinczewski replied that in that case the two sons had would be taken as hostages. However, Matthes stepped forward to save his children. Kinczewski swung his axe at Matthes but Biermann caught the handle and deflected the blow. Simultaneously Pijarowski with his axe, and Dybowski with his knife, headed toward 72 year old Selma Matthes, but failed to harm her. Finally Matthes and his two sons were led away by Polish soldiers. Matthes later succeeded in himself and his children by escaping while their Polish captors were quarreling over the division of the valuables taken from Matthes, thus relaxing their vigil."
'The SZWABY Must Be Shot!' (Szwaby or Swabians was a derogatory Polish term for Germans) Blood and Brains Spattered....
"My name is Johanna Giese, nee Keusch. I am 51, Protestant, Volksdeutscher and live in Bromberg at Konopnickiej 9.
On Sunday, 3 September 1939 between 11 and 12 o'clock, we were in the cellar of our residence. Polish soldiers and civilians entered our yard and demanded that we come out of the cellar. When we obeyed, a soldier asserted that shots had been fired from our home. There were however, no weapons at all in our house.
My son-in-law was the first to leave the cellar, and was greeted by a civilian's shout of 'The Szwaby must be shot!' Without hesitation, the Poles fired at my son-in-law. The first bullet pierces his jugular vein, while three others lodged in his chest and neck. Nevertheless he was still alive when we were forced to flee that night. We could not take him along, so we put him on a couch in our dwelling.
When German troops entered Bromberg on Tuesday, a corporal accompanied me to our farmstead to see how things looked. A horrible sight met out eyes. The mob had taken my son-in-law from the couch and had dragged him into the kitchen. His remains lay under the kitchen table. His head was split, his skull cap was missing. Brains and blood were spattered on the kitchen wall.
My son, Reinhard Giese, 19 years old, had been in the cellar with us. When he saw that my son-in-law was being shot, he dashed out and jumped over the fence to our neighbor's plot. The Poles followed, caught my son and shot him. In the evening, I managed to get the body into our laundry. Reinhard was shot through the chest.
Another son of mine, Friederich Geise, 25 years old, was reported shot in the mass murder of the family with which he had hidden in Hopfengarten."
'SLAY THE GERMANS!' Eyes Gouged out with Bayonets
"My name is Paul Sikorski. I am 35, Catholic, a merchant. I call myself Volksdeutscher and reside in Bromberg, Mühlenstraße 4.
At about 6:00 am on Sunday, 3 September 1939, I went to the mill to put out the light and to stop the turbine. On my way, I suddenly heard loud shouting from the direction of the railroad. About a hundred meters away, a mob of railway men, civilians and soldiers with bayonets, rifle butts and clubs were attacking seven people of ages varying from about 20 to 60. The victims were surrounded. As I approached the scene, I heard members of the mob call in Polish, 'Slay the Germans!' I could see blood spurting. It was then that I turned and fled for the mob was about to assail me. I returned to the scene at nine o'clock and looked at the bodies. The eyes of two corpses had been gouged out by bayonets. The sockets were a mass of blood. The skulls of three had been cracked open, and their spattered brains lay a meter away. The other bodies were similarly slashed to pieces. One belly was split wide open. I recognized two of the murdered men; the butcher Leichnitz or Jägershof, and Mr. Schlicht.
About three in the or four o'clock in the afternoon, a band of soldiers and railway men brought eighteen Germans to my mill. (the Peterson mill). I could see from the garden that the Germans were tied in pairs. All eighteen were shot, two at a time, then beaten as they lay on the ground. Among them was a fourteen-year-old boy and a woman. The murderers were obviously in a great hurry, for they all disappeared immediately after the slaughter. I later had a thorough look at the bodies, which lay there for three days.
At noon on Monday, when it was already rumored that the Polish troops had left, I saw two Polish soldiers march an elderly couple to the wall at the mill. I ran up to the soldiers, knelt before them and begged them in Polish to spare the people, who were both about 65. I was struck with a rifle butt and told, 'Let the damned Niemcys (Germans) die like dogs!' Even before I could rise to my feet, the soldiers had shot down the two old people. The bodies rolled into a ditch as the soldiers trotted away."
WILDEMANN MURDER "They Should be Beaten to Death!"
Testimony of Frau Wildemann:
"On the morning of September 3rd, several raiding parties searched Frau Wildemann's house in Bromberg at Schwedenbergerstraße (Ugory) 56, but found no weapons.
At about 3 p.m., a new mob, consisting of approximately thirty men all armed with clubs and similar weapons appeared. Claiming that shots had been fired from the house and that it must therefore be searched for arms, the mob entered. Several objects belonging to Wildemann family were stolen. There were not arms in the house, and no shots had been fired from it. When he saw the approaching mob, Herr Wildemann hid in the cellar. Questioned as to her husband's whereabouts, Frau Wildemann said that he had gone to visit acquaintances in Kufawierstraße. She was taken to the address. When her husband could not be found there, Frau Wildemann was threatened. Finally, after having been assured that nothing would happen to Herr Wildemann, she revealed his hiding place. The mob returned to the couple's home, seized both the husband and wife, beating them on the way, dragged them into the garden. They were stood up as if they were going t be shot. When they embraced each other and began to pray, they were ridiculed. Shouts were heard again & again, 'They should be beaten to death!'. One of those who shouted was a barber names Alfons Lewandowski. When Frau Wildemann asked him, 'Why should you kill me? What have I done to you?' he slapped her in the face saying, 'German pig! Damned Hitlerite!' Herr Wildemann was then taken away by the soldiers who, on the whole, were less hostile than the rabble. Several days later Wildemann's body was found nearby under a thin layer of sand. So horribly mutilated was he that only by his clothing and the contents of his pocket could he be identified."
GOLLNICK & KÖPERNICK MURDERS "All Germans Must be Butchered!"
Testimony of witnesses Olga and Franz Tafelski of Bromberg
"The throng milling about Breite Straße arrounsed the soldiers against a German named Gollnick. The soldiers beat Gollnick down with their rifle butts and left him lying in the street badly injured.
Toward evening, Franz Tafelski noticed that the victim's left leg and left hand were still twitching. Gollnick had fallen on his face but the mob had turned him over and tore open the front of his trousers, exposing the whole lower part of his torso. A civilian and two soldiers appeared and ran a bayonet into Gollnick's belly. Following this, a final shot was fired into the body.
Throughout the afternoon, a mob had milled up and down Breite Straße right by the dying man. They shouted that the Germans had shot from their homes. Sofie Bednarczyk, an unemployed woman, was in the mob. She flirted with the soldiers and, according to Olga Tafelski, behaved 'like a mad woman'. Franz Tafelski saw her, arms forled, leading the mob. Her manner revealed a morbid lust for power. Olga Tafelski heard her shout 'Give me the rifle; all Germans must be butchered! The damned Hitlerites!'
Franz Tafelski heard her shout, 'All Germans must be slain!'. All the time she was laughing and flirting with the soldiers. She stopped at the corner of No. 5 Breite Straße, where Gollnick lay with his trousers torn open. Witness Bartkowski heard her shout, 'This Hitlerite ought to have his testicles cut off!' About half an hour later, Köpernick, a Volksdeutscher, was dragged past the same house and murdered."
GOLLNICK MURDER "The Swine is Still Alive!"
Testimony of Christa Gollnick of Kujawierstraße 101 in Bromberg
"We operated a flour and feed store. As the first Polish troops were leaving, I noticed a Polish neighbor talking to a Polish major and pointing at our house. Thereupon Polish soldiers broke open the door and rushed into our store. Thinking that a skirmish was in progress and that the soldiers wanted to entrench themselves in our house, we ran toward the shelter which we had been ordered to build. We did not reach the shelter because the Polish soldiers fired at us. My husband was shot in the shoulder and hit in the face with a rifle butt. He reeled but still tried to escape. He started to climb the fence, but was held back by a civilian. A Polish soldier gave him another rifle butt blow which knocked him out.
A Polish lieutenant led me and the children back into the house. From an attic window, I could see my prostrate husband. He lingered on for a long time. I saw him draw his legs up and stretch them. Oncein a while he would life his hand. However, it was impossible for us to go to him, for he was surrounded by Polish soldiers and civilians. A Polish policeman stood guard at the fence. Polish women shouted, 'The swine is still alive!' Towards evening, my husband was shot three more times by Polish soldiers. He had also been stabbed through the stomach with a bayonet. Time and again he tried to open his trousers, finally succeeding. The woman next door told me that he was still breathing the next day. My husband was tall and strong and only 38 years. Probably that is why he had such a hard time dying. He lay about eighteen hours before he was released from his agony."
BETTIN MURDER "We'll Butcher You! Here's Some Young Hitler Blood for You!"
Testimony from Frau Bettin of Bromberg:
"About noon on 3 September 1939, the so-called 'Bromberg Bloody Sunday' a horde of Polish bandits overran the Bettin property at Frankenstraße 76. The Bettins, hearing their windows being smashed in, decided to investigate. They were seized and forced to raise their arms and kneel. A Swastika, which Fraulein Bettin was wearing on her dress, fell to the ground. Seeing the emblem led the mob to insult the girl outrageously. Some of the Poles bore revolvers and pitchforks; one had an axe. They shouted such things as:
'Hitler Blood!'
'Hitler Pigs!'
'We'll Butcher You!'
Fraulein Bettin was taken away by two Poles, one of whom was a railroad employee named Bruski. The captive was treated roughly and practically hurled from the farmstead. She was dragged on by the arm and threatened with a club. At the corner of Bölitzer Straße, she was turned over to two other Poles, a postal employee disguised as a policeman and a railway man. Bruski told them, 'Here's some young Hitler blood for you!' Between 4 and 5 p.m., she was freed by a young Polish officer. When she got home she found that only her mother and sister-in-law were still there. Her father and brother had been dragged away by the Polish mob. Her brother's body was found some time later. Her father is still missing and probably also murdered."
THIEDE and MITTELSTÄDT MURDERS "Hold Him so that I can Kill Him!"
Testimony of Gerda Thiede and Otto Papke, both of Schulitz:
"Waclaw Pasterski, a chauffer, owned property opposite the Thieses in Schulitz. The Thiedes, a mother and two children Gerda and Werner, were Germans and had lived here for many years. Waclaw Pasterski was a Pole and came to Schulitz about seven years ago.
On Sunday, 3 September 1939, Polish soldiers drove stray cattle belonging to Poles who had fled, into the Thiede's best fields. Accompanied by Emil Mittlestädt, who owned property nearby, the Thiedes went out to see how much damage had been done. While they were there, a troop of Polish soldiers came from the direction of the woods and called, 'Germans or Poles?' Werner Thiede answered, 'German.' Mittlestädt replied 'Pole.' Werner Thiede was searched and found unarmed. The Thiedes were then compelled to walk with raised hands towards the woods. The soldiers followed them, allowing Mittlestädt to remain in the meadow.
Meanwhile, Waclaw Pasterski, armed with an axe and a knife, came out of the woods. Seeing Werner Thiede, he shouted to the soldiers, 'Hold the little fellow so that I can kill him!' At this threat, Werner turned and ran in another direction. The soldiers pursued him, firing as they went. Gerda Thiede now looked back, although the soldiers had forbidden it, and saw Mittlestädt, his side slashed open, lying in the meadow. Since the soldiers had left the meadow in order to follow Werner, and Mittlestädt and Pasterski were left alone, Gerda attributed the wound to an axe blow by Pasterski. No one else could have struck the blow. Gerda furthermore had heard Pasterski insist that Mittlestädt was German. Otto Papke who saw Mittlestädt lying in the meadow was certain that the would was caused by the blow of an axe. Mittlestädt was in agony until he died some time during the night. Werner Thiede's body was later found and buried by Kriewald, another neighbor. Gerda Thiede had stated that according to information from Kriewald, her brother had been shot in the back and had his head slashed.
Werner Thiede was 20, Mittlestädt in his early thirties. The latter was a widower and is survived by a young child."
FINGER MURDER "For God's Sake.....Now We'll Die"
Testimony of Käthe Finger
"My name is Käthe Finger, nee Böhkle. I am 48, the widow of a bank attorney. I reside in Bromberg. I am in no way related to the accused.
On 'Bloody Sunday', several Volksdeutscher and a Polish woman whom we had summoned for our protection, were gathered in my home. About 11 a.m. a mob came down our street. The brothers Weyna, who live in the Raddatz house opposite us, and the accused Owczaczak were in the crowd. One of the Weyna brothers was armed.
I heard my husband in the next room telling our girl, Göde, that Owczaczak was pointing at our residence. My husband then came to me and said, 'For God's sake, the mob is coming in. Now we'll die!' He added that we should perish together. At that moment the mob broke into our apartment. There was a soldier among them who demanded that my husband and I lie down on the carpet. We obeyed. The soldier fired and my husband was killed instantly. I expected a second shot and since it failed to come, I raised myself a little. My hands were red with my husband's blood. I cried, 'My God!' and I was yanked to my feet by the soldier. Then I was pushed through the door and led away with the others who had sought refuge in our house. On the way we were insulted, beaten and kicked by the members of the mob. As we passed the canal gates, a Polish civilian shouted, 'Psia krew Hitlerowa!' (Damned Hitlerite women!) and pulled me toward the canal. I managed to tear myself loose. I was then brought to the police station where I was kicked so viciously that the force hurled me against a wooden fence. We were then all forced to lie down in the courtyard of the police station, amid shouts of, 'Lie here like cattle, you German bloodhounds!'. Now victims, beaten, bleeding and groaning in pain - more were arriving continuously. My 12-year-old son was lying beside me. We were under constant fire from the neighboring houses and from the direction of the canal gates. Many Germans were struck. These were taken away. How many were dead, I do not know. My son and I lay there about seven hours before a Polish policeman effected our release.
A machine gun had been trained on us in the police courtyard, while we received orders to shout, 'Hoch Rydz-Smigly!'. We were then asked whether we enjoyed living in Poland and when one woman replied negatively, the machine gun was aimed at her.
There was great confusion in the courtyard. I cannot enumerate the hardships inflicted on us.
I swear that this testimony is true, and reaffirm the oath I have already taken in connection with this matter before the Bromberg Special Tribunal on 11 September 1939."
Link: http://www.thefuhrerbunker.com/WWII.htm.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Unconditional Muslim Support
by Latheef Farook
source: latheeffarook.com
“Let
me assure my Sinhalese countrymen that I am one among them in demanding
complete freedom for our country. They can count on me as one of the
most ardent admirers of their legitimate national and cultural
aspirations. In me and in my community, let them know that they find the
most trusted friends and kind neighbors in this island. They would
never find wanting in me or in my community that unflinching loyalty and
patriotism that this little island would demand one day from its sons
and daughters to carve out a niche of fame for itself as a self-
respecting unit in a world federation. Let me also assure my Sinhalese
friends that the brave community to which I belong shall never considerany
sacrifice too great to make Lanka a happy, prosperous and glorious
country in the world where not one section of its population but every son and daughter of her soil shall legitimately take pride in her glorious destiny”.
source: latheeffarook.com
Crucial
Muslim support facilitated the process of Sri Lanka gaining
independence from British in 1948 and help end almost four and half
centuries of European colonial rule in the island. Many
still remember the leading role played by Muslims leaders such as Dr
T.B.Jayah, Sir Razik Fareed, Dr M.C.M.Kaleel and Dr Badiduddin Mahmud in
the constitutional reforms of this country and their enthusiastic
support for the demand of the Dominion Status and independence. They
never obstructed the political progress of the country.
For
example when the demand for independence began gathering momentum World
War 11 broke out in Europe. The British government urged all its
colonies to support them assuring that they would be given independence
after the war.
In
the aftermath of the World War 11, agitation for political reforms and
independence began to gather momentum. However the British government
insisted that three quarters of the population should support the demand
for independence to ensure the rights of minorities were protected.
With the Sinhalese community as a whole constituting less than three
quarters of the population this was an impossible demand to fulfill
unless the minorities supported.
Tamil
Congress leader G.G.Ponnambalam demanded equal representation, better
known as fifty –fifty. However the Muslims stood fully behind the
majority community and help to meet the British demand for the support
of two third of the population despite past sufferings and
disadvantages.
Addressing
a gathering at Zahra College grounds under the chairmanship of Sir
Mohamed Macan Markar to protest against the inadequate representation of
Muslims in the Legislative Council Dr. Badiduddin Mahmoud, the
Secretary of the All Ceylon Muslim Political Conference said on 5 March
1939;
In
keeping with this policy the three Muslim representatives in the State
Council extended their whole- hearted support for the “Dominion Status
Bill” – a Sri Lankan bill sponsored by the late Mr.S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike
when it came for the vote on 9 November 1945. T.B.Jayah and Dr M.C.M
Kaleel spoke in favour of the bill while Sir Razik Fareed and Dr Kaleel
voted in favour as Jayah was not present during the time of voting.
During
his speech Razik Fareed said” “the All Ceylon Moors Association
pledge their support to the resolution of the Hon Leader under
discussion today. Nothing else would at the moment give me great
pleasure to do so, and to express my whole hearted support to the Hon
leader’s proposal. As my community and I have always stood by them, I
must say that in the hour of his triumph we join hands with him in the
forward march to the goal of the proposal to which he aspires”…
Supporting
the Sri Lankan Bill despite its disadvantages to Muslims and defining
the attitude of Muslims towards the bill Mr.T.B. Jayah said:” I am glad,
Sir, that it has been stated that this is not the moment for jubilation
or exultation or even for mutual recrimination. I certainly think that
this is not the occasion to speak of the discomfiture of the minority
communities’ or of the victory of the majority community”.
“As
far as I am concerned, I speak with the full support of members of the
Muslim community. I saw to it that the Ceylon Muslim League,
representing the Muslim community of Ceylon, consulted Muslim
representatives in different parts of the country on the important
issues before the house and I am in a position to say that the Muslim
members of this Council have the fullest backing of the Muslim community
in this island”.
“When
the Muslims of the Council decided to take a definite stand at the time
the Sri Lanka –Bill was introduced, they did so for one and one reason
only. The reason was that where the political freedom of this country
was involved, they were prepared to go to any length, even to the point
of sacrificing advantages and benefit as a result of such action”. As
far as I am concerned, Sir, I do not consider any right greater than the
right of political freedom and therefore, although I am fully conscious
of those disadvantages of the Bill, looking at it from a narrow point
of view, yet I am prepared to support this Bill”.
Expressing
his gratitude to the Muslim members on behalf of the Sinhalese
community, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike assured that he would consider any
reasonable request by the Muslim community. Bandaranaike said:” I say
that if any member has brought closer the achievement of agreement among
the various sections of the people of the country by an attitude of
generosity where even those with whom he is concerned to differ, I say
the fullest credit must go more than anyone else among us to the
Honorable nominated Member, Mr. T.B. Jayah. He has made a speech today
that will have a great effect in bringing unity among the people of this
country in bringing some sense of reality to this struggle, however it
may shape, that we are going to undertake to obtain a satisfactory
measure of freedom”..
“
What have the three members,T.B.Jayah,Dr M.C.M.Kaleel and Razik Fareed,
have done? There is provided in the Bill a Scheme of Representation
under which the Muslim community in this country might suffer in the
form in which it appears, but yet, he himself so sincerely determined to
work for the main idea of freedom that he was prepared to vote for the
principle embodied in the Bill”.
“But
I can give the Hon Nominated member, Mr T.B.Jayah, this assurance on
behalf of, I think, the vast majority, at least the Community that I
represent, that in the struggle for freedom whatever may or may not be
the recommendation of the Soulbury Commission on our representation, he
may be rest assured that we will be quite prepared to consider any
reasonable point of view that, might be put forward.
Thus
the Muslim support provided the required support of two third majority
of the population paving the way for the island’s independence on 4
February 1948 when Mr. D.S.Senanayake lowered the British flag and
hoisted the Sri Lankan National Flag and declared the island’s
independence.
Muslims
have lived in harmony and peace with the Sinhalese and Tamils for
centuries and they wanted to continue to do so. As stated by former
Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva rightly that “Muslims have been a
peaceful ethnic group interacting with other religious and ethnic
groups, cordially interlinking those cultures with their own culture.
They never organized themselves for armed insurrection or destruction”.
They were not party to the ethnic conflict. However their sufferings were immense.
What
many conveniently forget is the crucial role played by the Muslims in
preserving the territorial integrity of the island. For example, during
the early days, Tamil militants' call for a separate state had the full
backing of India and the island's armed forces were not equipped or
trained, as they are today, to deal with them.
From
the very inception, Muslims throughout the country vehemently opposed
calls for the division of the country and firmly stood for territorial
integrity and unity. Nevertheless, they were entangled into this
unfortunate and unwanted ethnic conflict only to face death,
devastation, loss of properties and livelihood and displacement with no
appreciation. Around 130,000 Muslims driven out from Jaffna have been
still languishing in refugee camps in appalling conditions and their
plight is nobody’s business for more than 20 years.
Had
the Muslims joined the Tamil militancy during its early stage the
island's fate would have been sealed and the history would have
projected a new political landscape. It is unfortunate that these
sufferings and sacrifices have never been highlighted in its proper
perspective. I am sure the Muslim community is prepared to take ten
steps if the authorities take one-step to take them into confidence to
pave the way for cordiality and communal harmony.
Link: //latheeffarook.com/index.php/srilanka-muslims/657-unconditional-muslim-support.
Link: //latheeffarook.com/index.php/srilanka-muslims/657-unconditional-muslim-support.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Stories from Hama: Memories of Painter Khaled Al-Khani. Part 2
Feb 2,2012
Source:http://7ee6an.wordpress.com
Introduction to Part 2.
We continue with the memories of renowned Syrian painter from Hama, Khaled Al-Khani. In this segment, Khaled mixes his memories of events he witnessed, as a six-year-old child, with those he heard during the great escape from the massacre of 1982 and in subsequent years.
Khaled tells horrific tales of images, feelings, sounds, smells that have remained with him and with most survivors of the Hama massacre until today. But above all, these are also stories of both those who perished in the bombardments and mass executions as well of those who survived to share the pain and the long-lasting scars that can only be left by excessive brutality and deliberate savagery. The material is not for the weak heart or sensitive reader.
Today, Thursday, 2 February, 2012, and at 9:00 PM Damascus time, Orient TV is airing a 30 minute film by Journalist Emma Sulieman “Why do I paint Um-Ibrahim” “لماذا ارسم أم ابراهيم”. The promo for the film can be viewed here. Orient TV has a direct online broadcast as well.(http://orient-tv.net/orient_live.php)
Part 1 of Stories from Hama, Memories of Painter Khaled Al-Khani.
Stories from Hama: Memories of Painter Khaled Al-Khani. Part 2.
After our great escape from the massacre of Hama; a human history event resembling no other massacre but itself, and after fleeing from the images, the sounds, the smell of blood, the taste of stale bread, and the voices of women being raped and men and children grappling with death having been shot, and after the destruction of our city as if an earthquake had befallen it, we reached the point of no return, and we headed to the countryside, barefoot and half naked. They displaced us from our homes, killed whomever they wanted killed, and launched us on a journey even more painful than what has preceded it.
In the village, we were received with the utmost hospitality and honor, which goes to show the fact that all of the Syrian people knew of the corrupt regime’s lies. We remained as refugees in that village, where we finished the second school semester. My father was martyred. His properties were either stolen or destroyed. We stayed there until the start of the following school year when we returned to Hama and lived with one of my maternal aunts through an act of nurturing and pain sharing. Later, one of our relatives managed to find my lost paternal aunt, about whom we had no information whatsoever, in the countryside. I remember that I did not expect to ever see her like that. She was a queen, but all had changed. I hugged her for hours, while my siblings and our mother (all of us) sobbed hysterically. My aunt later told of the arrest of my father in the shelter we passed by and that she never saw him alive after that but had learned of his death from some people. We sobbed and sobbed. Sobbing first, before even greeting each others, became the norm in Hama when people met face to face as they exchanged visits. For years, the house we stayed at was a home for many displaced because of the complete destruction of several neighborhoods such as Al-Baroudyyeh, Al-Kilanyyia, Al-Zanbaqa and Shimali, (الباروديه، الكيلانية، الزنبقة، شمالي ) and many more. There was barely a house in Hama which did not have martyrs and detainees, and this at the least.
We went back to our schools after tremendous suffering, humiliation, oppression, and hunger. I swear to you that in my grade (second grade), there were only two kids who were not orphaned. So, just imagine how much we suffered in order to overcome our internal crisis, and we still have not done that to date.
Then the regime (and it does not even deserve being called a regime), inflicted new torments. It never stopped arresting people. Many of the generation slightly older than mine were arrested and many remain disappeared until now. Their names are well-known to the people of Hama. To further torment the people of Hama, and to prove that we were humiliated, broken, and stepped all over, the ruling gang started releasing some of the prisoners who were not liquidated in Tadmor only on their self-proclaimed national holidays that had no connection whatsoever to their actual deeds; days like the “corrective movement” and the “birth of the party” and so on.
Over the years, the people of Hama became used to that. On each of these occasions, they flocked to the southern entrance of the city (i.e., Homs highway، طريق حمص) and the scene would go as follows:
Women, children and men, or for that matter, all of the people of the city , stop buses and cars coming from Homs’s direction and search while shouting, each, the name of their own disappeared with nonstop crying. The scene lasts throughout the day in a chaotic and crushed state with the search for the disappeared continuing in mind-boggling and logic defying ways. Sometimes the people may find their disappeared; may be three or four only, and the entire city would return demoralized with their voices too subdued to even express their inner pain. Those who find their prisoners are not more fortunate than those who do not, for most of the surviving prisoners are very weak and powerless, and I swear that they brake the heart more than those who perished.
We know a man who was released from prison and we went to greet him. Praise to God, he was in a good mental state because they had taken him out of Tadmor prison into Sydnaya prison for recuperation six months before his release. I swear that his skeleton was clearly visible and his color was inhumanly white because he had not seen the sun for years. He told me everything about their imprisonment in Tadmor, and one of strangest stories was about a prisoner in his cell who started displaying symptoms of ruptured appendix and suffered great pain for days. They knew that they could not ask for help from the warden who used to monitor them from a hole in the ceiling because if they asked for help and informed the warden of their friend’s pain, the jailers’ solution would have been to liquidate him with the utmost expediency. The prisoners therefore decided to operate on their friend in the dormitory in complete silence. Imagine that! the prisoner’s abdomen was cut open using a piece of tin while some prisoners held him to prevent him from moving and others closed his mouth with a piece of cloth. The surgery was carried out by a doctor who made the surgical needle from the same tin, and I am not sure what kind of threads he used to sew the wound. The operation was performed without making a single sound. This was a reality of fear and repression and a clarity of fate inside the prisons of the corrupt regime.
*****
I will tell some harrowing images that can only reflect the logic of the barbarians who violated my city in 1982.
While inside the washing room in Omar Ibn-Alkhattab mosque, the door opened and five adolescent girls were let in, and what a scene….. The lower halves of their clothes were full of blood, and while we the children did not pay attention to this sign, which was beyond our comprehension, some of the women, seeing this, fell down in seizures. We did not understand the rising crescendo of Surat-Yassin (سورة يسين), the Takbeer (تكبير), and the increasingly louder crying, but we joined everyone crying in a way I have never encountered again in my life because nothing like this could have happened any where else, and god willing, never will such happen anywhere else again.
The adolescent girls were taken to a small back part of the washing room after the scene of their blood filled our hearts. The older women tried to help the bleeding that was staining the place (how indecent are you as you demonstrated and confirmed your savagery, O’ barbarians). Then, and in a scene that causes the soul a great disturbance and horribly breaches serenity with pain shared until today, some women began to take off their underwear and hand them to the girls. Us children were shell-shocked, as we could not understand what was happening in front of our eyes, why were women taking off their underwear to cover our violated virtues? The women, who joined forces even managed to stop the horrible bleeding. At first, some women asked for assistance from the soldiers, but the soldiers refused, laughed, and mocked us with excessive vulgarity as if they were not born to mothers but sprang out of cold stones and as if they have never known God, but only bullying coercion. The women tried to embrace the wounded girls to ease their panic, and only after long hours, our minds achieved the contentment of the restless and tired soul, mainly as one form of survival instinct. We, the children, began to playfully approach the wounded girls to alleviate their pain. I still remember their faces, they looked horrified as if they came out of a barn full of rabid wolves.
The girls told the women what happened to them. They refused to respond to the wolves’ demand, and the wolves hit them with brutality far beneath human imagination. Beating them, verbally assaulting and stripping them by tearing their clothes, they violated the young girls’ hymens with most inhuman barbaric means. Sex was not their only motive, they were sick with infinite sadism that violated the girls’ souls before their bodies, these were the monstrous beasts who yoked our necks.
****
In the same place, one woman told about her elderly handicapped grandmother, who had sent them off in hope that they will survive this dark blood bath and stayed behind with her wheel-less walker.
They were in the Al’aseeda (العصيدة) neighborhood right after the army had bombed it with artillery and had entered it as killers immediately executing many men and horribly mutilating their bodies in the worst possible means. Never hesitant to murder even children, the soldiers arrested those left alive. I swear, I know a man who was a child then, and I saw and spoke with him s few weeks ago, and he told me of the state of the bodies of his maternal uncles, and that when they fled, they had to step over the bodies of their loved ones to get out. What a way to say good-by, and what a horrible death. He has been carrying his pain with him to the day, and he told me “I’m afraid of their might, and I can’t resist my fear. Forever they raped my peace of mind”. He naively asked me, “we will be victorious over them, won’t we?” I laughed, me who hasn’t laughed in months and confirmed our victory while hesitantly smiling. But I know that we will be celebrating our victory.
Grandmother (um Ibrahim) decided to get everyone from the neighborhood out, and herein, everyone means only children and women. She walked with them supported by her walker under snipers’ bullets and artillery shells, climbing uphill until they reached the beginning of the “Hadher, حاضر” neighborhood. Um Ibrahim became tired and she could not walk anymore so she stayed in the house of one of my paternal aunts and her husband after she sent them to their unknown destiny like a flock of swallows among beasts. Grandmother Um Ibrahim had no other choice, and she was well aware that these killers are not human and that everyone must escape the blood bath that threatened them every moment. In the wash room, when the women talked about Um Ibrahim and how she shouted at them sending them off to their escape, every one read Al-Fatiha, “الفاتحة” for her soul thinking that she was wiped by the barbarism she decided to confront. But Um Ibrahim was stronger than the canon, and as my aunt and her husband decided to escape from the ever rising death, she released them and stayed in their home decidedly defiant.
For a week, Um-Ibrahim remained in my aunt’s house with all doors wide open. The soldiers entered the house, went out, stole and demolished its contents, all the while Um-Ibrahim screamed in their faces scaring them and shaking their fake sense of bravery. She did not bow to the killers. Instead, she defended the house with her courage as a symbol of righteous defense of the entire violated city. Her steadfastness humiliated them and their leaders, and they started obeying her dictates and discovered that she was the victor with her walker. They decided to blow up the houses of the entire neighborhood intending for her to witness the level of their inhumanity. So they took her out of the house to the middle of the street, and she sat on a chair in the middle of the bloodied street for three days throughout which, Um Ibrahim, in this wilderness, never negotiated or even maneuvered. She announced her presence like a palm tree, a flagpole and a flag, never asking for help from anyone. Some soldiers, taken by her glory, started to help her in her physical needs. Um Ibrahim swore that she never feared them because they were too small for her vision to a point where they became invisible to her. She insisted that God sent her all what she needed while she stayed to tell the killers that we will return, exact justice, honor our martyrs with individual headstones refusing to leave them to a mass grave, and that “contrary to your belief, you will never be victorious”. In the end, it was by God’s mercy that some people, also on their own escape journey, found her and carried her; she who refused to be carried, to the villages with the other dispossessed.
…. to be continued
Source:http://7ee6an.wordpress.com
Introduction to Part 2.
We continue with the memories of renowned Syrian painter from Hama, Khaled Al-Khani. In this segment, Khaled mixes his memories of events he witnessed, as a six-year-old child, with those he heard during the great escape from the massacre of 1982 and in subsequent years.
Khaled tells horrific tales of images, feelings, sounds, smells that have remained with him and with most survivors of the Hama massacre until today. But above all, these are also stories of both those who perished in the bombardments and mass executions as well of those who survived to share the pain and the long-lasting scars that can only be left by excessive brutality and deliberate savagery. The material is not for the weak heart or sensitive reader.
Today, Thursday, 2 February, 2012, and at 9:00 PM Damascus time, Orient TV is airing a 30 minute film by Journalist Emma Sulieman “Why do I paint Um-Ibrahim” “لماذا ارسم أم ابراهيم”. The promo for the film can be viewed here. Orient TV has a direct online broadcast as well.(http://orient-tv.net/orient_live.php)
Part 1 of Stories from Hama, Memories of Painter Khaled Al-Khani.
Stories from Hama: Memories of Painter Khaled Al-Khani. Part 2.
After our great escape from the massacre of Hama; a human history event resembling no other massacre but itself, and after fleeing from the images, the sounds, the smell of blood, the taste of stale bread, and the voices of women being raped and men and children grappling with death having been shot, and after the destruction of our city as if an earthquake had befallen it, we reached the point of no return, and we headed to the countryside, barefoot and half naked. They displaced us from our homes, killed whomever they wanted killed, and launched us on a journey even more painful than what has preceded it.
In the village, we were received with the utmost hospitality and honor, which goes to show the fact that all of the Syrian people knew of the corrupt regime’s lies. We remained as refugees in that village, where we finished the second school semester. My father was martyred. His properties were either stolen or destroyed. We stayed there until the start of the following school year when we returned to Hama and lived with one of my maternal aunts through an act of nurturing and pain sharing. Later, one of our relatives managed to find my lost paternal aunt, about whom we had no information whatsoever, in the countryside. I remember that I did not expect to ever see her like that. She was a queen, but all had changed. I hugged her for hours, while my siblings and our mother (all of us) sobbed hysterically. My aunt later told of the arrest of my father in the shelter we passed by and that she never saw him alive after that but had learned of his death from some people. We sobbed and sobbed. Sobbing first, before even greeting each others, became the norm in Hama when people met face to face as they exchanged visits. For years, the house we stayed at was a home for many displaced because of the complete destruction of several neighborhoods such as Al-Baroudyyeh, Al-Kilanyyia, Al-Zanbaqa and Shimali, (الباروديه، الكيلانية، الزنبقة، شمالي ) and many more. There was barely a house in Hama which did not have martyrs and detainees, and this at the least.
We went back to our schools after tremendous suffering, humiliation, oppression, and hunger. I swear to you that in my grade (second grade), there were only two kids who were not orphaned. So, just imagine how much we suffered in order to overcome our internal crisis, and we still have not done that to date.
Then the regime (and it does not even deserve being called a regime), inflicted new torments. It never stopped arresting people. Many of the generation slightly older than mine were arrested and many remain disappeared until now. Their names are well-known to the people of Hama. To further torment the people of Hama, and to prove that we were humiliated, broken, and stepped all over, the ruling gang started releasing some of the prisoners who were not liquidated in Tadmor only on their self-proclaimed national holidays that had no connection whatsoever to their actual deeds; days like the “corrective movement” and the “birth of the party” and so on.
Over the years, the people of Hama became used to that. On each of these occasions, they flocked to the southern entrance of the city (i.e., Homs highway، طريق حمص) and the scene would go as follows:
Women, children and men, or for that matter, all of the people of the city , stop buses and cars coming from Homs’s direction and search while shouting, each, the name of their own disappeared with nonstop crying. The scene lasts throughout the day in a chaotic and crushed state with the search for the disappeared continuing in mind-boggling and logic defying ways. Sometimes the people may find their disappeared; may be three or four only, and the entire city would return demoralized with their voices too subdued to even express their inner pain. Those who find their prisoners are not more fortunate than those who do not, for most of the surviving prisoners are very weak and powerless, and I swear that they brake the heart more than those who perished.
We know a man who was released from prison and we went to greet him. Praise to God, he was in a good mental state because they had taken him out of Tadmor prison into Sydnaya prison for recuperation six months before his release. I swear that his skeleton was clearly visible and his color was inhumanly white because he had not seen the sun for years. He told me everything about their imprisonment in Tadmor, and one of strangest stories was about a prisoner in his cell who started displaying symptoms of ruptured appendix and suffered great pain for days. They knew that they could not ask for help from the warden who used to monitor them from a hole in the ceiling because if they asked for help and informed the warden of their friend’s pain, the jailers’ solution would have been to liquidate him with the utmost expediency. The prisoners therefore decided to operate on their friend in the dormitory in complete silence. Imagine that! the prisoner’s abdomen was cut open using a piece of tin while some prisoners held him to prevent him from moving and others closed his mouth with a piece of cloth. The surgery was carried out by a doctor who made the surgical needle from the same tin, and I am not sure what kind of threads he used to sew the wound. The operation was performed without making a single sound. This was a reality of fear and repression and a clarity of fate inside the prisons of the corrupt regime.
*****
I will tell some harrowing images that can only reflect the logic of the barbarians who violated my city in 1982.
While inside the washing room in Omar Ibn-Alkhattab mosque, the door opened and five adolescent girls were let in, and what a scene….. The lower halves of their clothes were full of blood, and while we the children did not pay attention to this sign, which was beyond our comprehension, some of the women, seeing this, fell down in seizures. We did not understand the rising crescendo of Surat-Yassin (سورة يسين), the Takbeer (تكبير), and the increasingly louder crying, but we joined everyone crying in a way I have never encountered again in my life because nothing like this could have happened any where else, and god willing, never will such happen anywhere else again.
The adolescent girls were taken to a small back part of the washing room after the scene of their blood filled our hearts. The older women tried to help the bleeding that was staining the place (how indecent are you as you demonstrated and confirmed your savagery, O’ barbarians). Then, and in a scene that causes the soul a great disturbance and horribly breaches serenity with pain shared until today, some women began to take off their underwear and hand them to the girls. Us children were shell-shocked, as we could not understand what was happening in front of our eyes, why were women taking off their underwear to cover our violated virtues? The women, who joined forces even managed to stop the horrible bleeding. At first, some women asked for assistance from the soldiers, but the soldiers refused, laughed, and mocked us with excessive vulgarity as if they were not born to mothers but sprang out of cold stones and as if they have never known God, but only bullying coercion. The women tried to embrace the wounded girls to ease their panic, and only after long hours, our minds achieved the contentment of the restless and tired soul, mainly as one form of survival instinct. We, the children, began to playfully approach the wounded girls to alleviate their pain. I still remember their faces, they looked horrified as if they came out of a barn full of rabid wolves.
The girls told the women what happened to them. They refused to respond to the wolves’ demand, and the wolves hit them with brutality far beneath human imagination. Beating them, verbally assaulting and stripping them by tearing their clothes, they violated the young girls’ hymens with most inhuman barbaric means. Sex was not their only motive, they were sick with infinite sadism that violated the girls’ souls before their bodies, these were the monstrous beasts who yoked our necks.
****
In the same place, one woman told about her elderly handicapped grandmother, who had sent them off in hope that they will survive this dark blood bath and stayed behind with her wheel-less walker.
They were in the Al’aseeda (العصيدة) neighborhood right after the army had bombed it with artillery and had entered it as killers immediately executing many men and horribly mutilating their bodies in the worst possible means. Never hesitant to murder even children, the soldiers arrested those left alive. I swear, I know a man who was a child then, and I saw and spoke with him s few weeks ago, and he told me of the state of the bodies of his maternal uncles, and that when they fled, they had to step over the bodies of their loved ones to get out. What a way to say good-by, and what a horrible death. He has been carrying his pain with him to the day, and he told me “I’m afraid of their might, and I can’t resist my fear. Forever they raped my peace of mind”. He naively asked me, “we will be victorious over them, won’t we?” I laughed, me who hasn’t laughed in months and confirmed our victory while hesitantly smiling. But I know that we will be celebrating our victory.
Grandmother (um Ibrahim) decided to get everyone from the neighborhood out, and herein, everyone means only children and women. She walked with them supported by her walker under snipers’ bullets and artillery shells, climbing uphill until they reached the beginning of the “Hadher, حاضر” neighborhood. Um Ibrahim became tired and she could not walk anymore so she stayed in the house of one of my paternal aunts and her husband after she sent them to their unknown destiny like a flock of swallows among beasts. Grandmother Um Ibrahim had no other choice, and she was well aware that these killers are not human and that everyone must escape the blood bath that threatened them every moment. In the wash room, when the women talked about Um Ibrahim and how she shouted at them sending them off to their escape, every one read Al-Fatiha, “الفاتحة” for her soul thinking that she was wiped by the barbarism she decided to confront. But Um Ibrahim was stronger than the canon, and as my aunt and her husband decided to escape from the ever rising death, she released them and stayed in their home decidedly defiant.
For a week, Um-Ibrahim remained in my aunt’s house with all doors wide open. The soldiers entered the house, went out, stole and demolished its contents, all the while Um-Ibrahim screamed in their faces scaring them and shaking their fake sense of bravery. She did not bow to the killers. Instead, she defended the house with her courage as a symbol of righteous defense of the entire violated city. Her steadfastness humiliated them and their leaders, and they started obeying her dictates and discovered that she was the victor with her walker. They decided to blow up the houses of the entire neighborhood intending for her to witness the level of their inhumanity. So they took her out of the house to the middle of the street, and she sat on a chair in the middle of the bloodied street for three days throughout which, Um Ibrahim, in this wilderness, never negotiated or even maneuvered. She announced her presence like a palm tree, a flagpole and a flag, never asking for help from anyone. Some soldiers, taken by her glory, started to help her in her physical needs. Um Ibrahim swore that she never feared them because they were too small for her vision to a point where they became invisible to her. She insisted that God sent her all what she needed while she stayed to tell the killers that we will return, exact justice, honor our martyrs with individual headstones refusing to leave them to a mass grave, and that “contrary to your belief, you will never be victorious”. In the end, it was by God’s mercy that some people, also on their own escape journey, found her and carried her; she who refused to be carried, to the villages with the other dispossessed.
…. to be continued
Saturday, April 23, 2011
In Turkey, surveyors map a WWI battlefield
Sat Apr 23
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press
ISTANBUL – The World War I battlefield of the Gallipoli campaign, where throngs gather each April to remember the fallen, is a place of lore, an echo of ancient warfare that took place on the same soil. Now researchers are mapping dugouts, trenches and tunnels in the most extensive archaeological survey of a site whose slaughter helped forge the identity of young nations.
Armed with old maps and GPS technology, the experts from Turkey, Australia and New Zealand have so far discovered rusted food cans, unused bullets and their shell casings, and fragments of shrapnel, Ottoman-era bricks with Greek lettering, ceramic rum flagons of Allied soldiers and glass shards of beer bottles on the Turkish side. They announced early findings ahead of annual commemorations on the rugged peninsula on Sunday and Monday.
The chief aim is to gain a detailed layout of a battlefield whose desperate trench warfare, with enemy lines just a few dozen meters (yards) apart in some places, has been recounted in films, books and ballads, acquiring a legendary aura in the culture of its combatants.
"It will hasten a broader understanding of what went on at Gallipoli," Richard Reid, a researcher and author of the book "Gallipoli 1915" said of the government-funded investigation. "It will help us as nations that are always interested in trying to preserve what heritage we have."
There is heightened interest in the battle, especially among Turks who are showing more pride in their past, buoyed by economic and diplomatic advances after decades of internal strife. Australia and New Zealand mark the occasion with a national holiday on Monday, holding dawn services and closing off downtown areas for marches of veterans of all conflicts.
Before dawn on April 25, 1915, an Allied expedition under British command landed at Gallipoli on the Aegean Sea in a bid to reach Istanbul and open a sea route to Russia, an ally whose troops were wilting on the eastern front. But Ottoman armies, allied with Germany, dug in and forced their adversaries to withdraw after a nine-month campaign.
About 44,000 Allied soldiers died, and at least twice as many perished on the Turkish side. Hundreds of thousands more were wounded or suffered debilitating fever, diarrhea and dysentery.
For Turkey, the terrible losses are central to the staunch nationalism that underpins its regional ambitions today, and the battle made a hero out of an Ottoman army officer who led Turkey to independence in 1923. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk imposed a secular vision that gave the state authority over Islam, a legacy that dominates the divisive politics of modern Turkey.
"I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die," the steely commander is said to have told a regiment that was eventually wiped out. "In the time which passes until we die, other troops and commanders can take our place."
During the battle one night, local lore says, the light of a star and the crescent moon shone on the blood-soaked ground, forming the design of what became Turkey's red and white national flag.
In recent years, some of Turkey's founding "myths" have been undercut, among them the idea of a tight-knit Turkish identity that ignored the existence of ethnic Kurds and other minorities, said Kerem Oktem, author of "Angry Nation: Turkey since 1989," a book about the country's erratic transition from military to democratic rule.
"Gallipoli remains "one of the important, overarching, big, symbolic moments," he said.
For that reason, Oktem said, neither the current Islam-based government nor secular nationalists who oppose it want to "devalue or challenge" the idea that Gallipoli was a glorious victory, despite debate about its military significance.
Australia and New Zealand regard Gallipoli with equal reverence, noting the bravery and loyalty of soldiers whose British commanders considered troops from the former colonies to be untested and of poorer quality. It forged a self-image of determination, irreverence and "mateship" that is referred to as the Anzac spirit, after the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps.
The fighting happened near the mouth of the Dardanelles strait, part of a conduit between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. The Turkish military occupied the strategic site until 1973, when it became a national park. Memorials and cemeteries at the site discouraged thoughts of potentially disruptive fieldwork.
The new study does not involve excavation, instead using satellite-based technology to map battle positions over gullies, dense vegetation and limestone cliffs.
"Forestation had changed the natural geography of the battlefield, even of trenches and pits," said Mithat Atabay, a history professor at Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University and one of five Turks on the 14-member team. In 1994, he said, "a huge part of the forest burnt down, and the zone suffered further damage."
In October, the researchers mapped four kilometers (2.5 miles) of trenches, many of them barely visible, at locations including Johnston's Jolly and Quinn's Post, names bestowed by Allied troops. They inspected Turkish positions known as Kirmizi Sirt, or Red Ridge.
"The war on the surface was only one element of the struggle," the team said in a report. "A constant underground battle developed; tunneling became a major preoccupation on both sides of the line, for both offensive and defensive reasons."
Mapping data is entered in a digital database that can be compared with information from other sources, including maps used in the 1915 landings and Ottoman-era documents. Fieldwork resumes in September, and is expected to continue, with the help of ground-penetrating radar and aerial photographs, until the campaign centenary in 2015.
Charles Bean, an Australian journalist who covered the conflict and surveyed the battlefield just after the war, wrote about the grudging respect that was said to have developed between the underdog enemies. In an early 1916 dispatch, he recalled a memorial built by an Australian.
It was, he wrote, "a little wooden cross found in the scrub, just two splinters of biscuit box tacked together, with the inscription 'Here lies a Turk.' The poor soul would probably turn in his grave if his ghost could see that rough cross above him. But he need not worry. It was put there in all sincerity."
The remains of the ancient city of Troy lie near the Gallipoli peninsula. Alexander the Great led an army through the region. So did Persian emperor Xerxes I. The Greek historian Herodotus referred to the place in his chronicles.
"The Allies were really the last, I suppose, military expedition to try to take this particular strip of land," said Chris Mackie, a classics professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, and one of the Gallipoli surveyors. "But there were plenty before them."
Source: Associated Press
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press
ISTANBUL – The World War I battlefield of the Gallipoli campaign, where throngs gather each April to remember the fallen, is a place of lore, an echo of ancient warfare that took place on the same soil. Now researchers are mapping dugouts, trenches and tunnels in the most extensive archaeological survey of a site whose slaughter helped forge the identity of young nations.
Armed with old maps and GPS technology, the experts from Turkey, Australia and New Zealand have so far discovered rusted food cans, unused bullets and their shell casings, and fragments of shrapnel, Ottoman-era bricks with Greek lettering, ceramic rum flagons of Allied soldiers and glass shards of beer bottles on the Turkish side. They announced early findings ahead of annual commemorations on the rugged peninsula on Sunday and Monday.
The chief aim is to gain a detailed layout of a battlefield whose desperate trench warfare, with enemy lines just a few dozen meters (yards) apart in some places, has been recounted in films, books and ballads, acquiring a legendary aura in the culture of its combatants.
"It will hasten a broader understanding of what went on at Gallipoli," Richard Reid, a researcher and author of the book "Gallipoli 1915" said of the government-funded investigation. "It will help us as nations that are always interested in trying to preserve what heritage we have."
There is heightened interest in the battle, especially among Turks who are showing more pride in their past, buoyed by economic and diplomatic advances after decades of internal strife. Australia and New Zealand mark the occasion with a national holiday on Monday, holding dawn services and closing off downtown areas for marches of veterans of all conflicts.
Before dawn on April 25, 1915, an Allied expedition under British command landed at Gallipoli on the Aegean Sea in a bid to reach Istanbul and open a sea route to Russia, an ally whose troops were wilting on the eastern front. But Ottoman armies, allied with Germany, dug in and forced their adversaries to withdraw after a nine-month campaign.
About 44,000 Allied soldiers died, and at least twice as many perished on the Turkish side. Hundreds of thousands more were wounded or suffered debilitating fever, diarrhea and dysentery.
For Turkey, the terrible losses are central to the staunch nationalism that underpins its regional ambitions today, and the battle made a hero out of an Ottoman army officer who led Turkey to independence in 1923. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk imposed a secular vision that gave the state authority over Islam, a legacy that dominates the divisive politics of modern Turkey.
"I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die," the steely commander is said to have told a regiment that was eventually wiped out. "In the time which passes until we die, other troops and commanders can take our place."
During the battle one night, local lore says, the light of a star and the crescent moon shone on the blood-soaked ground, forming the design of what became Turkey's red and white national flag.
In recent years, some of Turkey's founding "myths" have been undercut, among them the idea of a tight-knit Turkish identity that ignored the existence of ethnic Kurds and other minorities, said Kerem Oktem, author of "Angry Nation: Turkey since 1989," a book about the country's erratic transition from military to democratic rule.
"Gallipoli remains "one of the important, overarching, big, symbolic moments," he said.
For that reason, Oktem said, neither the current Islam-based government nor secular nationalists who oppose it want to "devalue or challenge" the idea that Gallipoli was a glorious victory, despite debate about its military significance.
Australia and New Zealand regard Gallipoli with equal reverence, noting the bravery and loyalty of soldiers whose British commanders considered troops from the former colonies to be untested and of poorer quality. It forged a self-image of determination, irreverence and "mateship" that is referred to as the Anzac spirit, after the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps.
The fighting happened near the mouth of the Dardanelles strait, part of a conduit between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. The Turkish military occupied the strategic site until 1973, when it became a national park. Memorials and cemeteries at the site discouraged thoughts of potentially disruptive fieldwork.
The new study does not involve excavation, instead using satellite-based technology to map battle positions over gullies, dense vegetation and limestone cliffs.
"Forestation had changed the natural geography of the battlefield, even of trenches and pits," said Mithat Atabay, a history professor at Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University and one of five Turks on the 14-member team. In 1994, he said, "a huge part of the forest burnt down, and the zone suffered further damage."
In October, the researchers mapped four kilometers (2.5 miles) of trenches, many of them barely visible, at locations including Johnston's Jolly and Quinn's Post, names bestowed by Allied troops. They inspected Turkish positions known as Kirmizi Sirt, or Red Ridge.
"The war on the surface was only one element of the struggle," the team said in a report. "A constant underground battle developed; tunneling became a major preoccupation on both sides of the line, for both offensive and defensive reasons."
Mapping data is entered in a digital database that can be compared with information from other sources, including maps used in the 1915 landings and Ottoman-era documents. Fieldwork resumes in September, and is expected to continue, with the help of ground-penetrating radar and aerial photographs, until the campaign centenary in 2015.
Charles Bean, an Australian journalist who covered the conflict and surveyed the battlefield just after the war, wrote about the grudging respect that was said to have developed between the underdog enemies. In an early 1916 dispatch, he recalled a memorial built by an Australian.
It was, he wrote, "a little wooden cross found in the scrub, just two splinters of biscuit box tacked together, with the inscription 'Here lies a Turk.' The poor soul would probably turn in his grave if his ghost could see that rough cross above him. But he need not worry. It was put there in all sincerity."
The remains of the ancient city of Troy lie near the Gallipoli peninsula. Alexander the Great led an army through the region. So did Persian emperor Xerxes I. The Greek historian Herodotus referred to the place in his chronicles.
"The Allies were really the last, I suppose, military expedition to try to take this particular strip of land," said Chris Mackie, a classics professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, and one of the Gallipoli surveyors. "But there were plenty before them."
Source: Associated Press
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian Regime
Thursday, June 4,2009 05:09
by Shadi Hamid
BACKGROUND
The Brotherhood, founded in 1928, is the oldest and most influential Islamist movement in the Middle East, with branches in most Arab countries. The group went underground during the rule of President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1954-70), who imprisoned or executed most its leaders. Hoping to counter the influence of the left, President Anwar el-Sadat released Brotherhood members from prison and allowed the group to operate with a degree of freedom.
As a religious movement, the group functions as a parallel social structure, providing jobs, healthcare, and other services to Egyptians. Since 1984, the Brotherhood, which is technically banned, has run candidates as independents or as part of electoral coalitions with both secularist and Islamist parties. It has also won elections for student unions and trade syndicates. The Egyptian government, and some Western observers, accuse the group of supporting terrorism and harboring a radical, theocratic agenda.
However, there is little evidence to suggest this is the case. The Brotherhood formally renounced violence in the 1970s and has publicly committed itself to many of the foundational components of democracy, including alternation of power, popular sovereignty, and protection of minority rights. There is an ongoing debate over whether these examples of "moderation," as articulated in their electoral programs and other documents, reflect a strategic transformation or merely a tactical - and therefore - temporary shift.
Recently, the Brotherhood found itself at the center of controversy. In August 2007,it released a draft political party platform which was roundly condemned for including provisions for barring non-Muslims and women from becoming president and establishing a Islamic "commission" to approve laws. The document was criticized by leading members within the organization including influential moderates Abdel Menem abul Futouh and Esam el-Erian who were apparently excluded from the drafting process. Young Muslim Brotherhood bloggers also expressed their frustration publicly, in what became an unprecedented show of internal dissent.
The release of the platform reflected a internal tilt within the Brotherhood toward old-guard conservatives, who have grown more powerful in the absence of the some of the group"s leading reformists (such as Khairat al-Shater), who have been disproportionately targeted in the government arrests of the past year. In response to internal and external pressure, the Brotherhood withdrew the draft and promised to make revisions.
The Bush administration has stayed silent in response to the Egyptian regime"s increasing resort to repression. With Islamist groups making strong electoral gains in 2005 and 2006, the Bush administration backed off of its "freedom agenda." In light of its priorities in countering Iran and stabilizing Iraq, the U.S. appears increasingly unwilling to criticize Arab countries for their treatment of opposition groups.
ANALYSIS
The Egyptian regime has long benefited from the perception that there are only two choices in the Arab world - radical Islamist parties on one hand and pro-Western autocrats on the other. Egypt"s leaders have a vested interest in preventing any moderate alternatives from emerging. This explains the regime"s destruction of Ayman Nour"s secular-liberal al-Ghad party as well as its repeated denial of legal status to the al-Wasat party, which broke away from the Brotherhood in 1996. And, more recently, it explains the regime"s efforts to undercut moderates within the Muslim Brotherhood itself.
Over the last few years, a growing number of American analysts have argued that the U.S. should engage moderate Islamists. Last year, congressional delegations met with Saad al-Katatni, head of the Brotherhood"s parliamentary bloc (and Katatni himself was issued a visa to participate in a March conference on Islamist politics at Georgetown University). In June 2007, the State Department convened a meeting of officials and experts to discuss the possibility of formally engaging Islamist groups. For its part, the Brotherhood, through its English-language website and occasional op-eds in Western media, has increasingly made an effort reach out to Western opinion makers.
These two developments - the Brotherhood"s emergence as a viable alternative to the status quo and American interest in engaging with Islamists - has made the Egyptian regime, as well as others in the region, nervous. Khaled Hamza, editor-in-chief of Ikhwanweb, arrested on February 20, represents the convergence of these trends. Exerting a quiet influence and a seen as a kind of mentor to the young Brotherhood bloggers, Hamza represents the possibility of a Brotherhood that is more outward-looking and amenable to a dialogue with the U.S. His arrest, and that of other Brotherhood reformers, suggests an explicit strategy on the part of the regime to shift the balance of power within the organization toward its more conservative members.
For more than a quarter-century, Egypt has been one of America"s closest allies in the region and the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. Yet it continues to regress on political reform, and refuses to tolerate any strong opposition. The recent campaign of repression against the Muslim Brotherhood - probably the worst the group has seen since the days of Abdel Nasser - threatens to plunge
Egypt toward full-blown autocracy.
by Shadi Hamid
BACKGROUND
The Brotherhood, founded in 1928, is the oldest and most influential Islamist movement in the Middle East, with branches in most Arab countries. The group went underground during the rule of President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1954-70), who imprisoned or executed most its leaders. Hoping to counter the influence of the left, President Anwar el-Sadat released Brotherhood members from prison and allowed the group to operate with a degree of freedom.
As a religious movement, the group functions as a parallel social structure, providing jobs, healthcare, and other services to Egyptians. Since 1984, the Brotherhood, which is technically banned, has run candidates as independents or as part of electoral coalitions with both secularist and Islamist parties. It has also won elections for student unions and trade syndicates. The Egyptian government, and some Western observers, accuse the group of supporting terrorism and harboring a radical, theocratic agenda.
However, there is little evidence to suggest this is the case. The Brotherhood formally renounced violence in the 1970s and has publicly committed itself to many of the foundational components of democracy, including alternation of power, popular sovereignty, and protection of minority rights. There is an ongoing debate over whether these examples of "moderation," as articulated in their electoral programs and other documents, reflect a strategic transformation or merely a tactical - and therefore - temporary shift.
Recently, the Brotherhood found itself at the center of controversy. In August 2007,it released a draft political party platform which was roundly condemned for including provisions for barring non-Muslims and women from becoming president and establishing a Islamic "commission" to approve laws. The document was criticized by leading members within the organization including influential moderates Abdel Menem abul Futouh and Esam el-Erian who were apparently excluded from the drafting process. Young Muslim Brotherhood bloggers also expressed their frustration publicly, in what became an unprecedented show of internal dissent.
The release of the platform reflected a internal tilt within the Brotherhood toward old-guard conservatives, who have grown more powerful in the absence of the some of the group"s leading reformists (such as Khairat al-Shater), who have been disproportionately targeted in the government arrests of the past year. In response to internal and external pressure, the Brotherhood withdrew the draft and promised to make revisions.
The Bush administration has stayed silent in response to the Egyptian regime"s increasing resort to repression. With Islamist groups making strong electoral gains in 2005 and 2006, the Bush administration backed off of its "freedom agenda." In light of its priorities in countering Iran and stabilizing Iraq, the U.S. appears increasingly unwilling to criticize Arab countries for their treatment of opposition groups.
ANALYSIS
The Egyptian regime has long benefited from the perception that there are only two choices in the Arab world - radical Islamist parties on one hand and pro-Western autocrats on the other. Egypt"s leaders have a vested interest in preventing any moderate alternatives from emerging. This explains the regime"s destruction of Ayman Nour"s secular-liberal al-Ghad party as well as its repeated denial of legal status to the al-Wasat party, which broke away from the Brotherhood in 1996. And, more recently, it explains the regime"s efforts to undercut moderates within the Muslim Brotherhood itself.
Over the last few years, a growing number of American analysts have argued that the U.S. should engage moderate Islamists. Last year, congressional delegations met with Saad al-Katatni, head of the Brotherhood"s parliamentary bloc (and Katatni himself was issued a visa to participate in a March conference on Islamist politics at Georgetown University). In June 2007, the State Department convened a meeting of officials and experts to discuss the possibility of formally engaging Islamist groups. For its part, the Brotherhood, through its English-language website and occasional op-eds in Western media, has increasingly made an effort reach out to Western opinion makers.
These two developments - the Brotherhood"s emergence as a viable alternative to the status quo and American interest in engaging with Islamists - has made the Egyptian regime, as well as others in the region, nervous. Khaled Hamza, editor-in-chief of Ikhwanweb, arrested on February 20, represents the convergence of these trends. Exerting a quiet influence and a seen as a kind of mentor to the young Brotherhood bloggers, Hamza represents the possibility of a Brotherhood that is more outward-looking and amenable to a dialogue with the U.S. His arrest, and that of other Brotherhood reformers, suggests an explicit strategy on the part of the regime to shift the balance of power within the organization toward its more conservative members.
For more than a quarter-century, Egypt has been one of America"s closest allies in the region and the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. Yet it continues to regress on political reform, and refuses to tolerate any strong opposition. The recent campaign of repression against the Muslim Brotherhood - probably the worst the group has seen since the days of Abdel Nasser - threatens to plunge
Egypt toward full-blown autocracy.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Military Resistance: 7I13:
Interviews With 6 Afghan Resistance Fighters:
“A Rare Chance To Understand How The Insurgents See This War, From The Collapse Of The Taliban, Through Their Revival And, Now, Their Budding Ascendancy”
“Oral History, Told Through The Words Of The Taliban Themselves”
Sep 26, 2009 By Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau, NEWSWEEK [Excerpts]
During wars and after them, the real voice of the enemy is rarely heard.
Propaganda is plentiful, as are prideful boasts — and the Taliban have certainly been quick studies at the modern art of information warfare.
But the fears and ambitions of ordinary fighters are too often buried under statistics and theories propounded from thousands of miles away.
To put together this remarkable oral history, told through the words of the Taliban themselves, NEWSWEEK turned to contributing correspondent Sami Yousafzai, who has been covering the conflict for the magazine since 2001.
Over that time he has developed and maintained contact with dozens of Afghan insurgents, including the six whose stories are told here.
Working with NEWSWEEK’s Ron Moreau, Yousafzai spent more than a month crisscrossing Afghanistan and Pakistan to meet these sources.
He has known them all for some time, and in the past their information has generally proved reliable.
While it’s impossible to confirm the credibility of everything they say, their stories offer a rare chance to understand how the insurgents see this war, from the collapse of the Taliban, through their revival and, now, their budding ascendancy.
*****************************************
Chapter One: The Fall
‘The bombs cut down our men like a reaper harvesting wheat. It felt like judgment day.’
Maulvi Abdul Rehman Akhundzada
HAQQANI: Two days before the September 11 attacks on America, we were all celebrating the death of (Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah) Masood. His forces were already on the verge of defeat, so his death all but assured us of total victory in Afghanistan.
But the September 11 attacks turned our cheer into deep concern. We gave those camels (a derogatory Afghan term for Arabs) free run of our country, and they brought us face to face with disaster.
We knew the Americans would attack us in revenge.
Realizing the danger, I immediately sent my wife and children to Pakistan. The entire government started to fall apart. I never thought the Taliban would collapse so quickly and cruelly under U.S. bombs.
Everyone began trying to save themselves and their families. When the bombing began, I changed out of my usual white mullah’s garb, put on an old brown shalwar kameez, and headed for Pakistan. I crossed the mountains on foot, and at the top I turned around and said: "God bless you, Afghanistan. I’ll never come back to you under our Islamic regime."
AKHUNDZADA: When the bombing started, I was commanding some 400 fighters on the front lines near Mazar-e Sharif. The bombs cut down our men like a reaper harvesting wheat. Bodies were dismembered. Dazed fighters were bleeding from the ears and nose from the bombs’ concussions. We couldn’t bury the dead. Our reinforcements died in their trenches.
I couldn’t bring myself to surrender, so I retreated with a few of my men in the confusion. Everything was against us. The highway south to Kabul through the Salang Tunnel was blocked. We walked four days in the deep snow without food or water. Kids started shooting at us from the hilltops, hunting us like wild animals.
By the fifth day I could barely walk.
I hid my weapon and walked to a village, saying I was a lost traveler and asking for food. The villagers fed me, but I had lost touch with my comrades. I walked on until a minibus came along; I aimed my gun at the driver and forced him to stop. The van was full of Taliban. They said they had no room for me, but I threatened to shoot out their tires unless they took me. I had to lie on the floor with their feet on my body. It was uncomfortable, but I was warm for the first time in days.
A group of local militiamen captured us the next morning at a checkpoint on the Kabul-Kandahar highway. We were nearly dead. Our mouths were dry and cracked, our lips bleeding. It felt like Judgment Day.
I lay in their filthy jail for a month before they let me go free, just after the Eid holidays. With the strength I had left, I made it to Peshawar. Our Islamic Emirate had collapsed with less than 40 days of resistance — I couldn’t accept that. Allah would let us rise again, I thought, because of all the blood we had spilled for Islam.
KHAN: After the mujahedin began retreating, Arabs, Chechens, and Taliban raced by our house and mosque in Ghazni in convoys of cars, pickups, and trucks, headed to Pakistan.
Almost immediately they started getting bombed. So they abandoned their vehicles and started walking, even the wounded. Some injured Taliban, and Arabs with their families, came to seek shelter at my father’s mosque. Other villagers wouldn’t help them. Only my father and I brought them food.
YOUNAS: When I was a child, my father was a mujahedin commander in the jihad against the Russians, and he sent our family for safety to an Afghan refugee camp in Wana, South Waziristan. After the Taliban’s victory (in 1996), he became an official in a ministry in Kabul. I used to visit him on holidays from Wana. The Islamic Emirate’s collapse was like a nightmare.
I watched as wounded, disabled, and defeated Taliban fighters straggled into Wana and the surrounding villages, along with Arabs, Chechens, and Uzbeks. Every morning as I went to school I could see them wandering around town, almost like homeless beggars. Little by little, the tribal people started helping them, giving them food. Some people even took them into their houses; at first these once proud jihadis survived, thanks to the people’s charity.
The Arabs were disappointed the Taliban hadn’t stood and fought. They told me they had wanted to fight to the death. They were clearly not as distressed as the Afghans. That was understandable.
The Arabs felt they had lost a battle.
But the Afghans were much more devastated — they had lost their country.
MASIHUDDIN: When the Taliban fell, I was a madrassa student in Nuristan. Since all the Taliban officials and militiamen had fled, I decided to continue my studies in Pakistan.
(Then-Pakistani president Pervez) Musharraf imposed new rules on the Pakistani madrassas (in 2002), including a ban on foreign students. So I went to a mosque in an outlying village (near Peshawar) to study and wait for the situation to improve. We were 10 students studying and sleeping in one small room. The people couldn’t afford to bring us food, so we often went without dinner. We rarely had electricity. Without a fan it was hard to study, even to sleep.
To make matters worse, the Peshawar police were harassing and arresting us. They didn’t hold us for long, though — I think they just wanted to frighten us. We began praying for the survival of the Taliban who had fled. There was no reason to pray for victory, since such a return seemed inconceivable.
HAQQANI: My father, brother, and family were at Mansehra (a town in northwestern Pakistan that is home to several Afghan refugee camps). But I realized it wouldn’t be wise to move in with them. Too many people knew who I was, and some had no love for the Taliban.
Instead I found a place to stay at a mosque nearby. I had to sneak over at midnight just to see my kids, like a thief. When I was visiting my daughter one night, she asked me about our Kabul home, why we didn’t have a car anymore. She complained that it was too hot in the refugee camp, and that she wanted to move back to the cool climate of Kabul. I couldn’t answer her.
But she could tell from my eyes how sad I was. I was a wreck — nervous, worried, and almost panic-stricken.
AKHUNDZADA: Once proud Taliban mullahs and fighters changed the way they dressed so they wouldn’t be recognized. No one wanted to be identified as a Talib.
Friends and relatives who had respected me while I was a commander now turned away. I had no money or job. I moved my family to a village in Punjab, far from Afghanistan, to become a day laborer, but I was a failure at it. I couldn’t speak the local language, and no one would hire me.
So I returned to Peshawar and started selling vegetables from a basket in the market. I began making money.
But I couldn’t get over the Taliban’s collapse, the death of my men.
My wife said I was crying in my sleep. I went to a doctor, who gave me some medicine. I was so distracted that when a customer would ask me for potatoes, I’d give him tomatoes.
Chapter Two: The Rebirth
‘The end of the Taliban was the start of my Jihadi career.’
Mullah Aga Mohammad
KHAN: Mullahs like my father became depressed. Under the Taliban they had been very influential, but after the collapse people paid less attention to them.
My father was so upset, he had a stroke that left him partially paralyzed.
At the end of 2002 the Afghan police raided our mosque. They grabbed my father and hauled him in front of the villagers, accusing him of being with the Taliban. They demanded to know where the Taliban’s weapons were stored. They personally insulted him and then threw him in jail. He was 70.
The faithful at our mosque went to the police and complained.
People who a few months before seemed to have turned against my father now supported him.
They said it was a disgrace for the police to have entered the mosque wearing their shoes, and to have arrested an old, crippled imam.
In early 2003 he died.
I was a just a kid, but the police arrested me too, twice — once from my house, once from the mosque.
They interrogated me, asking stupid questions like: "Where are the Taliban?" "Where are the weapons hidden?"
My family sold our motorbike to raise the money to free me. The police also arrested my brother, who was a schoolteacher. The police even arrested, insulted, and manhandled a 90-year-old mullah in our district.
People’s attitudes were changing; they were becoming angry at the police and the local officials for the disrespect they were showing toward mosques and mullahs.
YOUNAS: At first I didn’t hear the Afghans talking about going back to fight. But the Arabs did, and they encouraged the Afghans and the local tribal people not to give up. Nothing much happened for the first year or so, but then the Arabs started organizing some training camps. The first one I heard about was at Shin Warsak village, near Wana. When I had some time off from school, I decided to visit. I was really impressed. There was more than one camp. One was run by Arabs, and another by Chechens and Uzbeks.
Thanks to my madrassa studies I could speak Arabic; I made friends with Egyptians, Saudis, Libyans, and Yemenis. Nek Mohammad Wazir (a pro-Taliban Pakistani tribal leader who was killed by a June 2004 Predator strike) gave the Arabs places to train and access to weapons and other supplies. They moved openly on the main roads and in the towns and villages, showing no concern about security. I decided to leave my studies and join their resistance.
MOHAMMAD: The end of the Taliban was the start of my jihadi career. My father died in 1994, leaving me to take care of my mother, brothers, and sisters. So I’d had no time to join Mullah Omar’s movement. For years I had a very heavy conscience for having missed the jihad. After the collapse of the Taliban in late 2001, many injured and traumatized mujahedin began coming to the mosque in Peshawar where I was the imam. Some of the worshipers asked me outright why I hadn’t fought in the jihad like these men.
I needed to make up for not joining the fight. I started asking around if the mujahedin were still active, but no one could give me a real answer. Then one day I heard about a young Afghan named Azizullah who had been in the resistance — he’s in jail now in Afghanistan.
I went to his house, and told him I wanted to help the resistance against the Americans if it was forming. He lied, saying he was only a poor man and had nothing to do with jihad. Then one day I saw him walking to the mosque. I joined him. He was still hesitant, but finally he said he could help. He gave me directions to a militant camp in Waziristan and a letter of introduction.
HAQQANI: In early 2003 my family and I moved to a rented house near Peshawar. It was the first time I was living in my own house since 2001. I put my white clerical outfit back on. And suddenly the Taliban’s defense minister, Mullah Obaidullah, came to see me — the first senior Taliban leader I had seen since our collapse. He was traveling around Pakistan to rally our dispersed forces.
Half the Taliban leadership was back in touch with each other, he said, and they were determined to start a resistance movement to expel the Americans.
I didn’t think it was possible, but he assured me I could help.
He said to meet him again in two weeks, and gave me an address. I was surprised at the number and rank of the people I found at the meeting. There were former senior ministers and military commanders, all sitting together, all eager to resist the Americans.
Obaidullah told me: "We don’t need you as a deputy minister or bureaucrat. We want you to bring as many fighters as you can into the field."
AKHUNDZADA: One day a man came to buy vegetables — a mullah who had worked with our jihad in northern Afghanistan for years. We recognized each other.
He asked me what I wanted to do: keep selling potatoes or go back to the jihad.
I was making about 2,000 rupees ($33) a day, which was good, but I wanted to rejoin the struggle.
We went to a meeting at night near Peshawar, and I couldn’t believe what I saw: my top commander (from the northern front), Mullah Dadullah! He was my ideal; his name meant victory for us.
My interest in the vegetable business disappeared. After six or seven months I was called to Miran Shah (in North Waziristan). Dadullah (who would be killed in May 2007) was there; so were Akhtar Mohammad Osmani (who would be killed in December 2006) and our defense minister, Mullah Obaidullah (who would be captured by Pakistani forces in March 2007).
It was decided that each commander should go find his former soldiers and prepare to return to Afghanistan to fight.
I was sent to Quetta, where survivors from my unit had settled. There had been 400 fighters under my command. In Quetta I found 15 of them.
They embraced me and the idea of returning to free our land of the American invaders.
In North Waziristan we trained, re-equipped, recruited more men, and got ready to return to Afghanistan.
Chapter Three: The Taliban Surge
‘After these first few attacks, God seems to have opened channels of money for us.’
Qari Younas
YOUNAS: One night in April (2003), we crossed the border in five pickups and one larger truck.
Once we were safely across, we sent the vehicles back to wait for us on the Pakistan side.
Our target was a U.S. base just across the border at Machda in Paktika province. We attacked at dawn. I think we really surprised them. We shelled them with 122mm rockets and mortars for about 30 minutes. But we didn’t get close enough to fire our Kalashnikovs; before we could move in, American helicopters came, raining rockets and bullets on us. Terrified, I crawled and ran to escape death. Amid the noise and explosions, dust and smoke, I remember seeing six of us cut down and killed: two Arabs, three tribals, and an Afghan.
Still, I was strangely exhilarated.
We showed our resolve by fighting, by taking a stand.
We knew we’d be back.
We carried the stiff and bloodied bodies of our martyrs back to Wana. Thousands of locals attended their funerals, saying it was an honor to witness the burial of these martyrs. People brought flowers, ribbons, colored cloth, and flags to decorate their graves.
As the news traveled, a lot of former Taliban began returning to Wana to join us.
KHAN: By the middle of 2004, we were hearing rumors that the Taliban were operating once again in Ghazni. Friends and relatives in other rural districts were saying that armed men were beginning to show up in villages at night on motorbikes.
Within a few months, signs of them began appearing everywhere.
At first we saw shabnama ("night letters") that the Taliban were leaving in shops, mosques, and other public places warning people not to cooperate with Karzai and the Americans. By the beginning of 2005 the Taliban began targeted killings of police officers, government officials, spies, and elders who were working with the Americans.
One night around midnight someone knocked on the door of our house. We were terrified, fearing that the police had come back to arrest me or my brother once again.
But when we opened the door, it was one of my father’s former students. He had a Kalashnikov on his shoulder and was a Taliban subcommander already.
The two other Taliban he was with also carried AKs and had several hand grenades attached to their belts.
This was my first encounter with the Taliban since the defeat. We invited them to spend the night. Early the next morning I accompanied them to the mosque. My father’s former student read out the names of those he accused of having betrayed Islam by following Karzai and the infidels. He warned them to cease all contact and to quit any job they may have had with the government or the Americans. He ended by saying he would return in one week.
MOHAMMAD: Those first groups crossing the border were almost totally sponsored, organized, and led by Arab mujahedin. The Afghan Taliban were weak and disorganized.
But slowly the situation began to change.
American operations that harassed villagers, bombings that killed civilians, and Karzai’s corrupt police and officials were alienating villagers and turning them in our favor.
Soon we didn’t have to hide so much on our raids. We came openly.
When they saw us, villagers started preparing green tea and food for us.
The tables were turning. Karzai’s police and officials mostly hid in their district compounds like prisoners.
YOUNAS: Our real jihad was beginning by the start of 2005.
Jalaluddin Haqqani’s tribal fighters came actively back to our side because the Americans and the Pakistanis had arrested his brother and other relatives. He appointed his son Sirajuddin to lead the resistance.
That was a real turning point.
Until then villagers in Paktia, Paktika, and Khost thought the Taliban was defeated and finished. They had started joining the militias formed by the Americans and local warlords, and were informing on us and working against us. But with the support of Haqqani’s men we began capturing, judging, and beheading some of those Afghans who worked with the Americans and Karzai. Terrorized, their families and relatives left the villages and moved to the towns, even to Kabul. Our control was slowly being restored.
KHAN: My father’s former student returned as promised a week later. I decided to join him. I helped assassinate those people who had continued their contacts with the government and the Americans. I didn’t want to kill, but I was determined to bring back our Islamic regime and get rid of the Americans and the traitors allied with them.
By the end of 2005 the Taliban’s ranks in Ghazni were increasing.
There were new recruits like me and more former Taliban returning home from Pakistan.
At the same time, we started receiving shipments of RPGs, rockets, mines, and bombs, most of which were old and rusty. My group only had three RPG launchers and only one mortar tube, and a few rounds for each. We had a few rusty Russian mines that only worked about 30 percent of the time. So we could only carry out very quick and limited attacks on convoys, construction crews, and district compounds.
At first we didn’t have much success. But we were learning.
Just firing a mortar, even if it didn’t hit the target, was a big deal: it proved to everyone we were there and were a force to be respected.
The Americans and their Afghan allies made mistakes after mistake, killing and arresting innocent people.
There was one village in Dayak district near Ghazni City where the people had communist backgrounds, from the days of the Russians, and had never supported us.
But the police raided the village, beat the elders at a mosque and arrested them, accusing them of being Taliban.
They were freed after heavy bribes were paid.
After that incident the whole village sent us a message asking forgiveness for the abuses of the communist era.
AKHUNDZADA: There are famous Taliban poems about how mujahedin come to free villages from occupiers at the point of a bayonet.
I began living that poem.
My body and mind got stronger and my mental problems disappeared.
As word of our success traveled, I was able to organize another group of new, young recruits.
They were smarter, more spirited, and better motivated than my former Taliban fighters.
Still, we lacked weapons and money. So I visited Mullah Dadullah. He had gone into Helmand province in early 2006 with 30 people. When he returned months later, he had organized 300 sub-commanders who each had dozens of troops. His return was like the arrival of rain after five years of drought.
I gave him a list of our needs. Even before he read the list, he smiled and said: "Whether I am alive or dead, remember this: the resistance will become greater than your greatest expectations. We will return to control Afghanistan." The next day he called me, took a page out of a notebook, wrote something on it, and gave it to me. The note said to go and see this guy and he will help you. Back in Pakistan, I found the man. He kissed Dadullah’s letter.
After two weeks this man had provided me with all the guns, weapons, and supplies I had requested. Dadullah gave such letters to many people.
MOHAMMAD: Once we sent a shipment for the making of IEDs to our forces in Zabul province. For some reason we forgot to include the remote-control devices. I got an urgent call from the commander asking me to quickly send the missing items. So I hid the remotes among some books and clothes in several travel bags. At Torkham (the Khyber Pass crossing), the police asked me to open the bags. At first I thought I should flee. But where could I run? I started searching for the key to open the bags. There was a long customs queue. The impatient policeman finally said: "You’re taking too long. Get out of here."
Another night I was in a hotel in Kabul on a mission to smuggle remote devices and explosives. Afghan police and intelligence were checking all the travelers staying in the hotel. My fellow mujahedin and I hid the bags containing the remotes in the bathroom. The police checked our luggage and pockets. But God blinded their eyes to the bathroom. If they had found the devices I would have ended up in jail for life. All these close calls strengthened my faith and my commitment to the jihad.
HAQQANI: In 2007 I returned to Afghanistan for the first time. I visited the south and spoke to Taliban units, to elders and villagers, and raised new recruits. Mullah Omar has entrusted me with the job of touring towns and villages on both sides of the border to encourage people to support, contribute to, and join the jihad.
Between 2006 and 2009 I have personally raised hundreds of new recruits to join the resistance. (In August) I traveled to eight Afghan provinces in 20 days.
The unpopularity of the Karzai regime helps us immensely. In 2005 some Afghans thought Karzai would bring positive change. But now most Afghans believe the Taliban are the future.
The resistance is getting stronger day by day.
Chapter Four: We Get Stronger Every Day
‘We were born here. We will die here. We aren’t going anywhere.’
Mullah Aga Mohammad
MASIHUDDIN: That base on top of the mountain (in Barge Matal) had to go. The Americans there were monitoring our phone calls and walkie-talkies, and they ran intelligence operations with Afghan spies from there.
So (last June) we began carefully planning an attack. One of our men said that the mission would be hard even if the Americans only threw stones at us, as we’d be attacking up a steep mountain. Everyone laughed at him, but we knew there was some truth in what he said.
I asked for volunteers, and everyone signed up.
As usual we prepared a medical team, including donkeys and stretchers to evacuate our wounded.
But as I divided up weapons, ammunition, explosives, and communications gear, it started to rain heavily. The Americans have heavy boots and other mountain equipment that allows them to move up and down the steep rocks. But our men mostly wear leather sandals that don’t give us any grip. So we postponed the attack for two weeks.
KHAN: Fighting the Americans is not easy. One night in the summer of 2007, my commander, Mullah Nurla, was killed in an American raid on his house. Other Americans killed 12 of our commanders. All the raids came between midnight and dawn.
We found out that the Americans were finding us by tracing our cell-phone calls, and by calls from spies giving away our locations. So we forced the cell companies to stop all transmissions from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m.
We still worry about helicopters and bombers, but we are suffering fewer American night raids. I think they just don’t have the intelligence they used to have.
Fewer people are willing to cooperate with them and betray us.
Our men, on the other hand, are watching American bases 24 hours a day.
They inform us of American movements.
We used to hit the Americans with roadside bombs and then disappear. Now when we explode an IED, we follow that with AK and RPG fire.
We now have more destructive IEDs, mostly ammonium-nitrate bombs that we mix with aluminum shards.
We get regular deliveries of these fertilizers, explosives, fuses, detonators, and remote controls. One heavy shipment is on its way right now. I think we are better at making IEDs now than the Arabs who first taught us.
HAQQANI: I admit Taliban commanders are being captured and killed, but that hasn’t stopped us, and it won’t.
Our jihad is more solid and deep than individual commanders and fighters — and we are not dependent on foreigners, on the ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence agency), or Al Qaeda.
Personally I think all this talk about Al Qaeda being strong is U.S. propaganda.
As far as I know, Al Qaeda is weak, and they are few in numbers.
Now that we control large amounts of territory, we should have a strict code of conduct for any foreigners working with us. We can no longer allow these camels to roam freely without bridles and control.
MASIHUDDIN: Late Friday afternoon, after prayers, we began to move.
We slowly sent our people up the mountain as the shadows lengthened. The mujahedin climbed slowly, steadily. We waited quietly on the ridgeline overnight without fires for warmth or to cook food. We’ve learned that the Americans are always listening for the smallest sound.
I gave the signal to attack just before sunrise. We started with our mortar and rocket teams shelling the base from the surrounding hilltops.
By dawn our mujahedin were almost hugging the base’s outer walls. We killed a number of Afghan Army soldiers, and one U.S. soldier who may have been hit in a guard tower.
As we fought, our video team filmed our advance. Our mortars, rockets, and RPGs destroyed most of one outer defensive wall.
We yelled to those inside to come out and surrender. No one came out. So we set fire to one side of the post and moved around to wait on the opposite side. The smoke forced some, if not all, of the soldiers to abandon the post. During the attack we didn’t lose any fighters.
Then American helicopters arrived, firing rockets and machine guns. We fought until sunset. We lost 12 Taliban to martyrdom, largely to the helicopter fire that comes down like heavy rain.
We cannot compare our military strength to that of the Americans.
But we have learned how to stay protected behind rocks and mountains.
Even with all their advanced technology, we forced them to withdraw and captured that base. (Coalition forces retook the post three days later and later abandoned it; a U.S. chronology of the battle differs in some details.)
YOUNAS: Not long ago, when one of my younger brothers got married, my mother asked me: "Boy, when will you marry?" I told her that the day I help to bring the Taliban back to Kabul and restore the Islamic Emirate is the day I will marry. That day may be far away, but I know it will come.
KHAN: The Americans talk about getting Taliban to leave the jihad for their dollars. That’s ridiculous. I was engaged to be married a year ago, but I don’t have the $1,500 bride price to give to the girl’s father or the $500 for the wedding. If I had money, I would not delay my marriage. Who would marry me? You’d be surprised.
The people here are not worried about giving their daughter or sister to Taliban, who can get killed within one week of the wedding. They are happy to be part of the jihad.
It’s not easy being in the Taliban.
It’s like wearing a jacket of fire.
You have to leave your family and live with the knowledge that you can be killed at any time.
The Americans can capture you and put you in dog cages in Bagram and Guantánamo. You can’t expect any quick medical treatment if you’re wounded. You don’t have any money.
Yet when I tell new recruits what they are facing they still freely put on this jacket of fire.
All this builds my confidence that we will never lose this war.
MOHAMMAD: We never worry about time. We will fight until victory no matter how long it takes. The U.S. has the weapons, but we are prepared for a long and tireless jihad.
We were born here. We will die here. We aren’t going anywhere.
MASIHUDDIN: In the south the mujahedin have adjusted to Obama’s new crusade by making some small strategic withdrawals and fighting back mostly with IEDs.
But we mujahedin in Kunar and Nuristan are lucky. These mountains and forests are our protectors. Trees and rocks shelter us everywhere.
The Americans can’t match us here.
Two or three years ago, U.S. soldiers in the region acted as if they were on holiday.
They were taking videos and photos of themselves and walking in the mountains for fun. They were playing games in the open.
Those days are over.
Now they are forced to keep their fingers on their triggers 24 hours a day.
AKHUNDZADA: Sometimes I think what’s happened is like a dream.
I thought my beard would be white by the time I saw what I am seeing now, but my beard is still black, and we get stronger every day.
“A Rare Chance To Understand How The Insurgents See This War, From The Collapse Of The Taliban, Through Their Revival And, Now, Their Budding Ascendancy”
“Oral History, Told Through The Words Of The Taliban Themselves”
Sep 26, 2009 By Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau, NEWSWEEK [Excerpts]
During wars and after them, the real voice of the enemy is rarely heard.
Propaganda is plentiful, as are prideful boasts — and the Taliban have certainly been quick studies at the modern art of information warfare.
But the fears and ambitions of ordinary fighters are too often buried under statistics and theories propounded from thousands of miles away.
To put together this remarkable oral history, told through the words of the Taliban themselves, NEWSWEEK turned to contributing correspondent Sami Yousafzai, who has been covering the conflict for the magazine since 2001.
Over that time he has developed and maintained contact with dozens of Afghan insurgents, including the six whose stories are told here.
Working with NEWSWEEK’s Ron Moreau, Yousafzai spent more than a month crisscrossing Afghanistan and Pakistan to meet these sources.
He has known them all for some time, and in the past their information has generally proved reliable.
While it’s impossible to confirm the credibility of everything they say, their stories offer a rare chance to understand how the insurgents see this war, from the collapse of the Taliban, through their revival and, now, their budding ascendancy.
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Chapter One: The Fall
‘The bombs cut down our men like a reaper harvesting wheat. It felt like judgment day.’
Maulvi Abdul Rehman Akhundzada
HAQQANI: Two days before the September 11 attacks on America, we were all celebrating the death of (Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah) Masood. His forces were already on the verge of defeat, so his death all but assured us of total victory in Afghanistan.
But the September 11 attacks turned our cheer into deep concern. We gave those camels (a derogatory Afghan term for Arabs) free run of our country, and they brought us face to face with disaster.
We knew the Americans would attack us in revenge.
Realizing the danger, I immediately sent my wife and children to Pakistan. The entire government started to fall apart. I never thought the Taliban would collapse so quickly and cruelly under U.S. bombs.
Everyone began trying to save themselves and their families. When the bombing began, I changed out of my usual white mullah’s garb, put on an old brown shalwar kameez, and headed for Pakistan. I crossed the mountains on foot, and at the top I turned around and said: "God bless you, Afghanistan. I’ll never come back to you under our Islamic regime."
AKHUNDZADA: When the bombing started, I was commanding some 400 fighters on the front lines near Mazar-e Sharif. The bombs cut down our men like a reaper harvesting wheat. Bodies were dismembered. Dazed fighters were bleeding from the ears and nose from the bombs’ concussions. We couldn’t bury the dead. Our reinforcements died in their trenches.
I couldn’t bring myself to surrender, so I retreated with a few of my men in the confusion. Everything was against us. The highway south to Kabul through the Salang Tunnel was blocked. We walked four days in the deep snow without food or water. Kids started shooting at us from the hilltops, hunting us like wild animals.
By the fifth day I could barely walk.
I hid my weapon and walked to a village, saying I was a lost traveler and asking for food. The villagers fed me, but I had lost touch with my comrades. I walked on until a minibus came along; I aimed my gun at the driver and forced him to stop. The van was full of Taliban. They said they had no room for me, but I threatened to shoot out their tires unless they took me. I had to lie on the floor with their feet on my body. It was uncomfortable, but I was warm for the first time in days.
A group of local militiamen captured us the next morning at a checkpoint on the Kabul-Kandahar highway. We were nearly dead. Our mouths were dry and cracked, our lips bleeding. It felt like Judgment Day.
I lay in their filthy jail for a month before they let me go free, just after the Eid holidays. With the strength I had left, I made it to Peshawar. Our Islamic Emirate had collapsed with less than 40 days of resistance — I couldn’t accept that. Allah would let us rise again, I thought, because of all the blood we had spilled for Islam.
KHAN: After the mujahedin began retreating, Arabs, Chechens, and Taliban raced by our house and mosque in Ghazni in convoys of cars, pickups, and trucks, headed to Pakistan.
Almost immediately they started getting bombed. So they abandoned their vehicles and started walking, even the wounded. Some injured Taliban, and Arabs with their families, came to seek shelter at my father’s mosque. Other villagers wouldn’t help them. Only my father and I brought them food.
YOUNAS: When I was a child, my father was a mujahedin commander in the jihad against the Russians, and he sent our family for safety to an Afghan refugee camp in Wana, South Waziristan. After the Taliban’s victory (in 1996), he became an official in a ministry in Kabul. I used to visit him on holidays from Wana. The Islamic Emirate’s collapse was like a nightmare.
I watched as wounded, disabled, and defeated Taliban fighters straggled into Wana and the surrounding villages, along with Arabs, Chechens, and Uzbeks. Every morning as I went to school I could see them wandering around town, almost like homeless beggars. Little by little, the tribal people started helping them, giving them food. Some people even took them into their houses; at first these once proud jihadis survived, thanks to the people’s charity.
The Arabs were disappointed the Taliban hadn’t stood and fought. They told me they had wanted to fight to the death. They were clearly not as distressed as the Afghans. That was understandable.
The Arabs felt they had lost a battle.
But the Afghans were much more devastated — they had lost their country.
MASIHUDDIN: When the Taliban fell, I was a madrassa student in Nuristan. Since all the Taliban officials and militiamen had fled, I decided to continue my studies in Pakistan.
(Then-Pakistani president Pervez) Musharraf imposed new rules on the Pakistani madrassas (in 2002), including a ban on foreign students. So I went to a mosque in an outlying village (near Peshawar) to study and wait for the situation to improve. We were 10 students studying and sleeping in one small room. The people couldn’t afford to bring us food, so we often went without dinner. We rarely had electricity. Without a fan it was hard to study, even to sleep.
To make matters worse, the Peshawar police were harassing and arresting us. They didn’t hold us for long, though — I think they just wanted to frighten us. We began praying for the survival of the Taliban who had fled. There was no reason to pray for victory, since such a return seemed inconceivable.
HAQQANI: My father, brother, and family were at Mansehra (a town in northwestern Pakistan that is home to several Afghan refugee camps). But I realized it wouldn’t be wise to move in with them. Too many people knew who I was, and some had no love for the Taliban.
Instead I found a place to stay at a mosque nearby. I had to sneak over at midnight just to see my kids, like a thief. When I was visiting my daughter one night, she asked me about our Kabul home, why we didn’t have a car anymore. She complained that it was too hot in the refugee camp, and that she wanted to move back to the cool climate of Kabul. I couldn’t answer her.
But she could tell from my eyes how sad I was. I was a wreck — nervous, worried, and almost panic-stricken.
AKHUNDZADA: Once proud Taliban mullahs and fighters changed the way they dressed so they wouldn’t be recognized. No one wanted to be identified as a Talib.
Friends and relatives who had respected me while I was a commander now turned away. I had no money or job. I moved my family to a village in Punjab, far from Afghanistan, to become a day laborer, but I was a failure at it. I couldn’t speak the local language, and no one would hire me.
So I returned to Peshawar and started selling vegetables from a basket in the market. I began making money.
But I couldn’t get over the Taliban’s collapse, the death of my men.
My wife said I was crying in my sleep. I went to a doctor, who gave me some medicine. I was so distracted that when a customer would ask me for potatoes, I’d give him tomatoes.
Chapter Two: The Rebirth
‘The end of the Taliban was the start of my Jihadi career.’
Mullah Aga Mohammad
KHAN: Mullahs like my father became depressed. Under the Taliban they had been very influential, but after the collapse people paid less attention to them.
My father was so upset, he had a stroke that left him partially paralyzed.
At the end of 2002 the Afghan police raided our mosque. They grabbed my father and hauled him in front of the villagers, accusing him of being with the Taliban. They demanded to know where the Taliban’s weapons were stored. They personally insulted him and then threw him in jail. He was 70.
The faithful at our mosque went to the police and complained.
People who a few months before seemed to have turned against my father now supported him.
They said it was a disgrace for the police to have entered the mosque wearing their shoes, and to have arrested an old, crippled imam.
In early 2003 he died.
I was a just a kid, but the police arrested me too, twice — once from my house, once from the mosque.
They interrogated me, asking stupid questions like: "Where are the Taliban?" "Where are the weapons hidden?"
My family sold our motorbike to raise the money to free me. The police also arrested my brother, who was a schoolteacher. The police even arrested, insulted, and manhandled a 90-year-old mullah in our district.
People’s attitudes were changing; they were becoming angry at the police and the local officials for the disrespect they were showing toward mosques and mullahs.
YOUNAS: At first I didn’t hear the Afghans talking about going back to fight. But the Arabs did, and they encouraged the Afghans and the local tribal people not to give up. Nothing much happened for the first year or so, but then the Arabs started organizing some training camps. The first one I heard about was at Shin Warsak village, near Wana. When I had some time off from school, I decided to visit. I was really impressed. There was more than one camp. One was run by Arabs, and another by Chechens and Uzbeks.
Thanks to my madrassa studies I could speak Arabic; I made friends with Egyptians, Saudis, Libyans, and Yemenis. Nek Mohammad Wazir (a pro-Taliban Pakistani tribal leader who was killed by a June 2004 Predator strike) gave the Arabs places to train and access to weapons and other supplies. They moved openly on the main roads and in the towns and villages, showing no concern about security. I decided to leave my studies and join their resistance.
MOHAMMAD: The end of the Taliban was the start of my jihadi career. My father died in 1994, leaving me to take care of my mother, brothers, and sisters. So I’d had no time to join Mullah Omar’s movement. For years I had a very heavy conscience for having missed the jihad. After the collapse of the Taliban in late 2001, many injured and traumatized mujahedin began coming to the mosque in Peshawar where I was the imam. Some of the worshipers asked me outright why I hadn’t fought in the jihad like these men.
I needed to make up for not joining the fight. I started asking around if the mujahedin were still active, but no one could give me a real answer. Then one day I heard about a young Afghan named Azizullah who had been in the resistance — he’s in jail now in Afghanistan.
I went to his house, and told him I wanted to help the resistance against the Americans if it was forming. He lied, saying he was only a poor man and had nothing to do with jihad. Then one day I saw him walking to the mosque. I joined him. He was still hesitant, but finally he said he could help. He gave me directions to a militant camp in Waziristan and a letter of introduction.
HAQQANI: In early 2003 my family and I moved to a rented house near Peshawar. It was the first time I was living in my own house since 2001. I put my white clerical outfit back on. And suddenly the Taliban’s defense minister, Mullah Obaidullah, came to see me — the first senior Taliban leader I had seen since our collapse. He was traveling around Pakistan to rally our dispersed forces.
Half the Taliban leadership was back in touch with each other, he said, and they were determined to start a resistance movement to expel the Americans.
I didn’t think it was possible, but he assured me I could help.
He said to meet him again in two weeks, and gave me an address. I was surprised at the number and rank of the people I found at the meeting. There were former senior ministers and military commanders, all sitting together, all eager to resist the Americans.
Obaidullah told me: "We don’t need you as a deputy minister or bureaucrat. We want you to bring as many fighters as you can into the field."
AKHUNDZADA: One day a man came to buy vegetables — a mullah who had worked with our jihad in northern Afghanistan for years. We recognized each other.
He asked me what I wanted to do: keep selling potatoes or go back to the jihad.
I was making about 2,000 rupees ($33) a day, which was good, but I wanted to rejoin the struggle.
We went to a meeting at night near Peshawar, and I couldn’t believe what I saw: my top commander (from the northern front), Mullah Dadullah! He was my ideal; his name meant victory for us.
My interest in the vegetable business disappeared. After six or seven months I was called to Miran Shah (in North Waziristan). Dadullah (who would be killed in May 2007) was there; so were Akhtar Mohammad Osmani (who would be killed in December 2006) and our defense minister, Mullah Obaidullah (who would be captured by Pakistani forces in March 2007).
It was decided that each commander should go find his former soldiers and prepare to return to Afghanistan to fight.
I was sent to Quetta, where survivors from my unit had settled. There had been 400 fighters under my command. In Quetta I found 15 of them.
They embraced me and the idea of returning to free our land of the American invaders.
In North Waziristan we trained, re-equipped, recruited more men, and got ready to return to Afghanistan.
Chapter Three: The Taliban Surge
‘After these first few attacks, God seems to have opened channels of money for us.’
Qari Younas
YOUNAS: One night in April (2003), we crossed the border in five pickups and one larger truck.
Once we were safely across, we sent the vehicles back to wait for us on the Pakistan side.
Our target was a U.S. base just across the border at Machda in Paktika province. We attacked at dawn. I think we really surprised them. We shelled them with 122mm rockets and mortars for about 30 minutes. But we didn’t get close enough to fire our Kalashnikovs; before we could move in, American helicopters came, raining rockets and bullets on us. Terrified, I crawled and ran to escape death. Amid the noise and explosions, dust and smoke, I remember seeing six of us cut down and killed: two Arabs, three tribals, and an Afghan.
Still, I was strangely exhilarated.
We showed our resolve by fighting, by taking a stand.
We knew we’d be back.
We carried the stiff and bloodied bodies of our martyrs back to Wana. Thousands of locals attended their funerals, saying it was an honor to witness the burial of these martyrs. People brought flowers, ribbons, colored cloth, and flags to decorate their graves.
As the news traveled, a lot of former Taliban began returning to Wana to join us.
KHAN: By the middle of 2004, we were hearing rumors that the Taliban were operating once again in Ghazni. Friends and relatives in other rural districts were saying that armed men were beginning to show up in villages at night on motorbikes.
Within a few months, signs of them began appearing everywhere.
At first we saw shabnama ("night letters") that the Taliban were leaving in shops, mosques, and other public places warning people not to cooperate with Karzai and the Americans. By the beginning of 2005 the Taliban began targeted killings of police officers, government officials, spies, and elders who were working with the Americans.
One night around midnight someone knocked on the door of our house. We were terrified, fearing that the police had come back to arrest me or my brother once again.
But when we opened the door, it was one of my father’s former students. He had a Kalashnikov on his shoulder and was a Taliban subcommander already.
The two other Taliban he was with also carried AKs and had several hand grenades attached to their belts.
This was my first encounter with the Taliban since the defeat. We invited them to spend the night. Early the next morning I accompanied them to the mosque. My father’s former student read out the names of those he accused of having betrayed Islam by following Karzai and the infidels. He warned them to cease all contact and to quit any job they may have had with the government or the Americans. He ended by saying he would return in one week.
MOHAMMAD: Those first groups crossing the border were almost totally sponsored, organized, and led by Arab mujahedin. The Afghan Taliban were weak and disorganized.
But slowly the situation began to change.
American operations that harassed villagers, bombings that killed civilians, and Karzai’s corrupt police and officials were alienating villagers and turning them in our favor.
Soon we didn’t have to hide so much on our raids. We came openly.
When they saw us, villagers started preparing green tea and food for us.
The tables were turning. Karzai’s police and officials mostly hid in their district compounds like prisoners.
YOUNAS: Our real jihad was beginning by the start of 2005.
Jalaluddin Haqqani’s tribal fighters came actively back to our side because the Americans and the Pakistanis had arrested his brother and other relatives. He appointed his son Sirajuddin to lead the resistance.
That was a real turning point.
Until then villagers in Paktia, Paktika, and Khost thought the Taliban was defeated and finished. They had started joining the militias formed by the Americans and local warlords, and were informing on us and working against us. But with the support of Haqqani’s men we began capturing, judging, and beheading some of those Afghans who worked with the Americans and Karzai. Terrorized, their families and relatives left the villages and moved to the towns, even to Kabul. Our control was slowly being restored.
KHAN: My father’s former student returned as promised a week later. I decided to join him. I helped assassinate those people who had continued their contacts with the government and the Americans. I didn’t want to kill, but I was determined to bring back our Islamic regime and get rid of the Americans and the traitors allied with them.
By the end of 2005 the Taliban’s ranks in Ghazni were increasing.
There were new recruits like me and more former Taliban returning home from Pakistan.
At the same time, we started receiving shipments of RPGs, rockets, mines, and bombs, most of which were old and rusty. My group only had three RPG launchers and only one mortar tube, and a few rounds for each. We had a few rusty Russian mines that only worked about 30 percent of the time. So we could only carry out very quick and limited attacks on convoys, construction crews, and district compounds.
At first we didn’t have much success. But we were learning.
Just firing a mortar, even if it didn’t hit the target, was a big deal: it proved to everyone we were there and were a force to be respected.
The Americans and their Afghan allies made mistakes after mistake, killing and arresting innocent people.
There was one village in Dayak district near Ghazni City where the people had communist backgrounds, from the days of the Russians, and had never supported us.
But the police raided the village, beat the elders at a mosque and arrested them, accusing them of being Taliban.
They were freed after heavy bribes were paid.
After that incident the whole village sent us a message asking forgiveness for the abuses of the communist era.
AKHUNDZADA: There are famous Taliban poems about how mujahedin come to free villages from occupiers at the point of a bayonet.
I began living that poem.
My body and mind got stronger and my mental problems disappeared.
As word of our success traveled, I was able to organize another group of new, young recruits.
They were smarter, more spirited, and better motivated than my former Taliban fighters.
Still, we lacked weapons and money. So I visited Mullah Dadullah. He had gone into Helmand province in early 2006 with 30 people. When he returned months later, he had organized 300 sub-commanders who each had dozens of troops. His return was like the arrival of rain after five years of drought.
I gave him a list of our needs. Even before he read the list, he smiled and said: "Whether I am alive or dead, remember this: the resistance will become greater than your greatest expectations. We will return to control Afghanistan." The next day he called me, took a page out of a notebook, wrote something on it, and gave it to me. The note said to go and see this guy and he will help you. Back in Pakistan, I found the man. He kissed Dadullah’s letter.
After two weeks this man had provided me with all the guns, weapons, and supplies I had requested. Dadullah gave such letters to many people.
MOHAMMAD: Once we sent a shipment for the making of IEDs to our forces in Zabul province. For some reason we forgot to include the remote-control devices. I got an urgent call from the commander asking me to quickly send the missing items. So I hid the remotes among some books and clothes in several travel bags. At Torkham (the Khyber Pass crossing), the police asked me to open the bags. At first I thought I should flee. But where could I run? I started searching for the key to open the bags. There was a long customs queue. The impatient policeman finally said: "You’re taking too long. Get out of here."
Another night I was in a hotel in Kabul on a mission to smuggle remote devices and explosives. Afghan police and intelligence were checking all the travelers staying in the hotel. My fellow mujahedin and I hid the bags containing the remotes in the bathroom. The police checked our luggage and pockets. But God blinded their eyes to the bathroom. If they had found the devices I would have ended up in jail for life. All these close calls strengthened my faith and my commitment to the jihad.
HAQQANI: In 2007 I returned to Afghanistan for the first time. I visited the south and spoke to Taliban units, to elders and villagers, and raised new recruits. Mullah Omar has entrusted me with the job of touring towns and villages on both sides of the border to encourage people to support, contribute to, and join the jihad.
Between 2006 and 2009 I have personally raised hundreds of new recruits to join the resistance. (In August) I traveled to eight Afghan provinces in 20 days.
The unpopularity of the Karzai regime helps us immensely. In 2005 some Afghans thought Karzai would bring positive change. But now most Afghans believe the Taliban are the future.
The resistance is getting stronger day by day.
Chapter Four: We Get Stronger Every Day
‘We were born here. We will die here. We aren’t going anywhere.’
Mullah Aga Mohammad
MASIHUDDIN: That base on top of the mountain (in Barge Matal) had to go. The Americans there were monitoring our phone calls and walkie-talkies, and they ran intelligence operations with Afghan spies from there.
So (last June) we began carefully planning an attack. One of our men said that the mission would be hard even if the Americans only threw stones at us, as we’d be attacking up a steep mountain. Everyone laughed at him, but we knew there was some truth in what he said.
I asked for volunteers, and everyone signed up.
As usual we prepared a medical team, including donkeys and stretchers to evacuate our wounded.
But as I divided up weapons, ammunition, explosives, and communications gear, it started to rain heavily. The Americans have heavy boots and other mountain equipment that allows them to move up and down the steep rocks. But our men mostly wear leather sandals that don’t give us any grip. So we postponed the attack for two weeks.
KHAN: Fighting the Americans is not easy. One night in the summer of 2007, my commander, Mullah Nurla, was killed in an American raid on his house. Other Americans killed 12 of our commanders. All the raids came between midnight and dawn.
We found out that the Americans were finding us by tracing our cell-phone calls, and by calls from spies giving away our locations. So we forced the cell companies to stop all transmissions from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m.
We still worry about helicopters and bombers, but we are suffering fewer American night raids. I think they just don’t have the intelligence they used to have.
Fewer people are willing to cooperate with them and betray us.
Our men, on the other hand, are watching American bases 24 hours a day.
They inform us of American movements.
We used to hit the Americans with roadside bombs and then disappear. Now when we explode an IED, we follow that with AK and RPG fire.
We now have more destructive IEDs, mostly ammonium-nitrate bombs that we mix with aluminum shards.
We get regular deliveries of these fertilizers, explosives, fuses, detonators, and remote controls. One heavy shipment is on its way right now. I think we are better at making IEDs now than the Arabs who first taught us.
HAQQANI: I admit Taliban commanders are being captured and killed, but that hasn’t stopped us, and it won’t.
Our jihad is more solid and deep than individual commanders and fighters — and we are not dependent on foreigners, on the ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence agency), or Al Qaeda.
Personally I think all this talk about Al Qaeda being strong is U.S. propaganda.
As far as I know, Al Qaeda is weak, and they are few in numbers.
Now that we control large amounts of territory, we should have a strict code of conduct for any foreigners working with us. We can no longer allow these camels to roam freely without bridles and control.
MASIHUDDIN: Late Friday afternoon, after prayers, we began to move.
We slowly sent our people up the mountain as the shadows lengthened. The mujahedin climbed slowly, steadily. We waited quietly on the ridgeline overnight without fires for warmth or to cook food. We’ve learned that the Americans are always listening for the smallest sound.
I gave the signal to attack just before sunrise. We started with our mortar and rocket teams shelling the base from the surrounding hilltops.
By dawn our mujahedin were almost hugging the base’s outer walls. We killed a number of Afghan Army soldiers, and one U.S. soldier who may have been hit in a guard tower.
As we fought, our video team filmed our advance. Our mortars, rockets, and RPGs destroyed most of one outer defensive wall.
We yelled to those inside to come out and surrender. No one came out. So we set fire to one side of the post and moved around to wait on the opposite side. The smoke forced some, if not all, of the soldiers to abandon the post. During the attack we didn’t lose any fighters.
Then American helicopters arrived, firing rockets and machine guns. We fought until sunset. We lost 12 Taliban to martyrdom, largely to the helicopter fire that comes down like heavy rain.
We cannot compare our military strength to that of the Americans.
But we have learned how to stay protected behind rocks and mountains.
Even with all their advanced technology, we forced them to withdraw and captured that base. (Coalition forces retook the post three days later and later abandoned it; a U.S. chronology of the battle differs in some details.)
YOUNAS: Not long ago, when one of my younger brothers got married, my mother asked me: "Boy, when will you marry?" I told her that the day I help to bring the Taliban back to Kabul and restore the Islamic Emirate is the day I will marry. That day may be far away, but I know it will come.
KHAN: The Americans talk about getting Taliban to leave the jihad for their dollars. That’s ridiculous. I was engaged to be married a year ago, but I don’t have the $1,500 bride price to give to the girl’s father or the $500 for the wedding. If I had money, I would not delay my marriage. Who would marry me? You’d be surprised.
The people here are not worried about giving their daughter or sister to Taliban, who can get killed within one week of the wedding. They are happy to be part of the jihad.
It’s not easy being in the Taliban.
It’s like wearing a jacket of fire.
You have to leave your family and live with the knowledge that you can be killed at any time.
The Americans can capture you and put you in dog cages in Bagram and Guantánamo. You can’t expect any quick medical treatment if you’re wounded. You don’t have any money.
Yet when I tell new recruits what they are facing they still freely put on this jacket of fire.
All this builds my confidence that we will never lose this war.
MOHAMMAD: We never worry about time. We will fight until victory no matter how long it takes. The U.S. has the weapons, but we are prepared for a long and tireless jihad.
We were born here. We will die here. We aren’t going anywhere.
MASIHUDDIN: In the south the mujahedin have adjusted to Obama’s new crusade by making some small strategic withdrawals and fighting back mostly with IEDs.
But we mujahedin in Kunar and Nuristan are lucky. These mountains and forests are our protectors. Trees and rocks shelter us everywhere.
The Americans can’t match us here.
Two or three years ago, U.S. soldiers in the region acted as if they were on holiday.
They were taking videos and photos of themselves and walking in the mountains for fun. They were playing games in the open.
Those days are over.
Now they are forced to keep their fingers on their triggers 24 hours a day.
AKHUNDZADA: Sometimes I think what’s happened is like a dream.
I thought my beard would be white by the time I saw what I am seeing now, but my beard is still black, and we get stronger every day.
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