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From an interview conducted earlier this year:

INDC: Who is the insurgency? Who are the people who plant bombs every day and shoot at Americans, IA and police?

Yusef: "They have some ideology from some of the American prisons, the one in Buca and south, in those two prisons there were extremist religious insurgents. The Americans took those people and put them in the prison too and they (the radicals) worked on the other prisoners, teaching them and feeding them that ideology of fighting and to think that everyone else is a sinner and that they should be killed."

Note: I spoke to a Marine Detention Facility Officer intimately familiar with the mentioned corrections facilities, and he verified this characterization; young Iraqis on the fence are often radicalized there, initially associating with fundamentalists as a survival mechanism.

INDC: So the majority of the insurgency here is religious radicals?

Yusef: "People in Iraq fighting, they are kids. They have no knowledge, they are ignorant from both sides, about their religion and education-wise. They (the radicals) buy them with money, so why not? Some guys who work with insurgents and start killing people, when they begin and kill one, they cannot leave."

INDC: What do you mean, they can't stop killing?

The interpreter explains: "It's like when you join a gang in the states. Once you do something, that's it, you cannot leave."

A Newsweek exclusive reveals that Iraqis and the US Military are addressing the problem with a deprogramming effort:

Wiry and lean, Abdullah looks on with a glassy stare as the instructor explains the subject for the day: revenge. The case study is the first gulf war, and the instructor lists religious and moral reasons why it was wrong for Iraqi soldiers to loot and kill in Kuwait. Abdullah, 17, and the nine other teenagers sitting with him on wooden benches in the class nod impassively. This isn't an ordinary high school. The teens, all decked out in orange uniforms, are detainees at Camp Cropper, the high-security facility in Iraq that once held Saddam Hussein.

Some of the teens may have tried to kill American or Iraqi soldiers, others may have been picked up for smaller offenses like breaking curfew. But the group, all Sunnis, have one thing in common: they've all been brainwashed for jihad. "They get their education from Wahhabis," says Sheik Abdul Jabbar, 37, an Iraqi cleric working with the teens, as he looks on from the side of the class. "They say their enemy is the Shia first and then the Americans." Abdullah has had his dose of radical education. He is convinced that his stepmother, who is Shiite, is a kafir, or nonbeliever. He has told the instructors in the class that, given the chance, he would kill her. "If they let them out, they would all become suicide bombers," says Jabbar. "Soon we will have two generations of terrorists."

And that's what the "religious education" program at Cropper is trying to prevent. It's not exactly "Scared Straight," but the goal - winning back hearts and minds - is the same. Last week, NEWSWEEK was given an exclusive tour of the facility and allowed to sit in on classes. The program was started two months ago and the classes are taught by imams, psychiatrists and counselors, all Iraqis, who are trying to bring the most hardened youth back into the fold.

Read the rest.

Posted by Bill at August 13, 2007 09:54 AM | TrackBack (0)

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Posted by: Brian H at September 8, 2007 05:56 PM