Meet the new Osama bin Laden
source: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/09/pakistans_bin_laden
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- sloan
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Although I still can't wrap my head around stuff like this:
"Mehsud's force structure is diverse: It includes approximately 12,000 local fighters, many belonging to his own Mehsud tribe, and close to 4,000 foreign fighters, predominantly Arabs and Central Asians seasoned in the Afghan jihad of the 1980s."
How does he command & control 12,000 local fighters? How does that even work?
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dainjdc
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"He also has a stable of teenage boys who have been indoctrinated to serve as suicide bombers.,"
This guy seems dangerous and I've heard nothing about him until this article. Suicide bombing is so crazy and nearly impossible to deal with. Especially when you're training impressionable kids.
- 2 years ago
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dainjdc
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frank_leahy
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I'm reading a great book -- Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu -- and in it Marco Polo describes armed forces with 10s of thousands and even 100s of thousands of men, plus similarly large numbers of horses, elephants, camels, etc. The numbers are staggering. Maybe we're sheltered here in the West where we tend to think of ourselves as individuals, while a lot of the rest of the world thinks and lives in community/ies (tribal, religious, etc.).
I once took a taxi from Leh to Srinigar, and we had to wait for two hours at the pass while a tribe of goat herders moved their families and animals up to the summer pastures passed by. There were hundreds of people and thousands of animals in the group. I can easily imagine the men from a couple of dozen of those tribes getting together to form a militia in the 1000s...
- 2 years ago
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frank_leahy
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afitzgerald
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Wow - great story. I've often wondered about who it is in Pakistan that we're supposed to be worrying about - because it certainly doesn't seem like it's bin Laden anymore.
- 2 years ago
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afitzgerald
