American fighting with the Taliban?

[buttercup429]

I heard on the news this morning that an American was found among the survivors of the prison uprising and had been fighting for the Taliban! I can't remember the guys name but it was a very typical American name like Brian or something. The report said he's only 20 years old and his parents thought he was working for a relief orginazation. What a surprise! He started out studying Arabic and the Koran and somehow got tangeled up with the Taliban and started fighting for them. The guy even claimes to have seen Bin Laden many times while inspecting his troops. Isn't that weird?!?!

 

[krazy kat2]

I hope they don't let him back in this country, assuming he manages not to get his dumb ass shot!

 

[hell603]

DIDDO!!!

 

[catarina77777]

I wonder what type of background he has. Obviously this guy is unstable. I don't think he should be let back in this Country without a good Brain Scrub!

Love & Peace,
Catarina

 

[bluekat]

I think our US military will debrief him, for every bit of infomation in his mind. It would be in their best interests, to treat him real well, feed him truth serum, and find out everything he knows. The little traitor was real willing to talk to the camera's this week end, I bet he is real willing to talk to US intelligence also.
bluekats

 

[buttercup429]

he must be really mixed up in the head.

 

[airprincess]

I can't even begin to imagine what things must be going through this guys head. To fight to take away the rights of women, to regulate the length of a mans beard....it goes against every principle this country was founded on.

 

[debby]

I agree, Colby, this goes against every principle this person was taught. This is so sad.

 

[catarina77777]

This guy went from Catholicism and switched over to Islamic when he was fifteen. From what I understand, he told his Dad that he wanted to go over to the middle east and study. At fifteen years of age, I think anyone would be easily swayed (brainwashed) given the right circumstances. He obviously didn't have any contact with Americans and was always surrounded by those sickos. I have no idea what our Country's going to do with him, but I still wouldn't trust his presence here. Not now anyway.

 

[miss whitney]

I heard today that the Northern Alliance have 2 more Americans in custody that were fighting with the Taliban. This makes 3 with the young man earlier this week. I wonder if they are just jaded and don't have any alliance to the U.S., brainwashed or criminal types that like the idea of fighting and killing. It is enough to make me sick. I hope they get whatever punishment that can be given. :confused2

 

[buttercup429]

I have a feeling they are all probably young impresionable kids really; who don't know what they have gotten themselves into. At least that's what I think about John Walker. He was looking for an idealistic life, I'm sure the Taliban could be very presuasive under such conditions. Maybe he thought he would bw like Laurence of Arabia!

 

[krazy kat2]

I don't care if they are "young, impressionable men." I think an American soldier should put an impression of a military-issue boot in their traitorous backsides and leave them to the fate of the rest of the taliban soldiers.

 

[buttercup429]

The guys only 20! He also was there before this whole thing started. It's not like the Taliban blew up the towers and then he said "Oh, I think I'll go and hang out with these wackos and be a traitor." Most of the people who live over there don't even know for sure what really happened They don't have CNN to keep them updated. Alot of info. comes from the Taliban and is biased in their favor. Now, I'm not saying he isn't a traitor, because he is, and he shouldn't be allowed back into this country, but I do think people are being much to hard on him. I think he should be left where he is to fend for himself; that's the road he chose so he can walk it! Of course this is only my opinion and I know many of you don't agree but that's how I see it. Maybe I'm just to soft hearted!

 

[buttercup429]

WALKER, WHO USES the last name of his mother, Marilyn Walker, began attending a mosque near the familyâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s home in the San Francisco Bay Area. He adopted Islamic dress that included a long, white robe and a turban, and began observing Islamic dietary restrictions. He took the Arabic name “Sulaymanâ€â€”but when his parents, brother and sister balked, agreed that they could still call him “John.†He talked to his father about becoming a Muslim cleric. He told his mother about his devotion to helping the poor.

Walkerâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s parents last heard from their son seven months ago, when he sent an e-mail from Bannu, Pakistan, where he had been studying the Koran at a madrassah, or religious school. He said that he planned to go “somewhere cooler†for the summer and would not be in touch for a while. He asked for money, and his father wired $1,200. He never said anything about Afghanistan or holy war. Now his parents are struggling to reconcile the image of their “shy, sweet†20-year-old son with that of “Abdul Hamidâ€, the bedraggled Taliban soldier who emerged last weekend from the basement of the Kala Jangi fortress near Mazar-e Sharif in Northern Afghanistan.

Walker, who suffered a gunshot wound, starvation and near-drowning when the basement of the fortress was flooded, was one of about 80 Taliban supporters to survive a vicious, weeklong battle that left a CIA agent and hundreds of foreign fighters dead. Shortly after his capture last weekend, Walker identified himself as an American citizen and told a NEWSWEEK reporter that he had come to Afghanistan to help the Taliban build a “pure Islamic state.†In a subsequent interview with CNN from his hospital bed, Walker described himself as a “jihadiâ€, a fighter of holy wars, and said that he had received combat training at a camp in Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden appeared several times. Before joining the war in Afghanistan, Walker said he had fought alongside Pakistani forces in Kashmir, the disputed region between India and Pakistan. According to Northern Alliance sources, he has now been taken into custody by soldiers from the U.S. Special Forces.

Through interviews with Walker and members of his family, NEWSWEEK has pieced together John Walkerâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s transformation from California high school student to Taliban P.O.W. Born in Washington D.C. in 1981, the second of three children, Walker was named John in honor of former Beatle John Lennon, who had been murdered a few months before his birth. His father was an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice. His mother worked as a home healthcare aide. The family moved to northern California in 1991, when John was 10. Shortly after he converted to Islam four years ago, Walker dropped out of high school and began studying the Quran at a Bay Area mosque. He talked to his mother about wanting to work with poor people, perhaps becoming a doctor. His father had the impression that his scholarly son would someday become a cleric. He spoke of attending Medina University in Saudi Arabia. Johnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s lifestyle reminded him of a “Catholic seminarian,†Frank Lindh, a San Francisco attorney, told NEWSWEEK. “His whole life revolved around religion and study.â€

In the summer of 1998, Lindh took John on a trip to Ireland to learn more about the country from which his grandparents had emigrated. John insisted on wearing his white robe and turban everywhere. Once, in a restaurant, a group of schoolchildren asked John if he was “in a play.†John laughed. His father took a snapshot of his son posing in front of an Irish butcherâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s shop, beneath a sign advertising the pork and bacon that is forbidden to Muslims. John laughed at his fatherâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s gentle teasing about his conversion. “He had a wonderful sense of humor about it,†says Lindh. At the same time, Lindh says it was clear that John had a deep affinity for his new faith. “I told him once that maybe he was always a Muslim, because he had clearly found something important for himself there,†he says.

Later that year, Walker, then 17, told his parents that he wanted to go to Yemen to study Arabic, and asked for their financial support. Yemen, he told them, was the best country to learn the pure dialect of Arabic used in the Quran. He would be attending the Yemeni Language Institute. He spent nearly a year in Sinna, the capital, sending home enthusiastic and sometimes humorous e.mails about his language studies and his travels around the country. He returned to his parentâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s home in 1999 but seemed restless and discontented to be back in California. He resumed his studies at a San Francisco mosque.

In February 2000, a few days before his 19th birthday, Walker returned to Yemen. It was the last time either of his parents saw him. Waiting with John at the boarding gate at San Francisco International airport, Frank Lindh noticed that his son seemed to be well known and liked among some of the other travelers, who John apparently knew from the mosque. Several approached Lindh and congratulated him for having such a scholarly and devoted son. It was during Johnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s second trip to Yemen, says his father, that he became aware that John had friends who had been to Chechnya to fight with Muslim rebels against the Russian army. One friend had been killed in the fighting.

When the U.S.S. Cole was bombed as it refueled in the Yemeni port of Aden in October of 2000, killing 17 U.S. sailors, father and son had an uncomfortable e-mail exchange. Frank says he was upset that the dead sailors were the same age as his son. John seemed to have a more casual view of the attack, which U.S. authorities blamed on operatives of Osama bin Laden. He suggested that the U.S. ship should never have been there in the first place, and that by docking in an Islamic country, had committed an “act of war.†The bombing, John implied, was a justified response. Lindh says he was “concerned†by his sonâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s views, but felt that since John was an adult, there was little he could do to change them. “It was clear he had developed a different point of view,†says Lindh. “My days of molding him were over.â€

Near the end of last year, Walker told his parents that he would be enrolling at a madrassah in the village of Bannu, in Pakistanâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s Northwest Frontier province. In addition to memorizing the Quran, he taught himself local Urdu and Pashto languages. Although the region was known as a hotbed of support for bin Laden, Walkerâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s father says it never entered his mind that John would become involved. “He knows we wouldnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t have approved,†says Lindh. His mother also cannot fathom the idea of her son as a militant. “If he got involved with the Taliban he must have been brainwashed,†she told NEWSWEEK. “He was isolated. He didnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t know a soul in Pakistan. When youâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]re young and impressionable, itâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s easy to be led by charismatic people.â€

John corresponded periodically by e.mail he sent from an Internet cafÃ[emoji]169[/emoji]. Frank says he asked John to remember how worried his mother got and not to “lose contact altogether.†By July, when they had heard nothing for three months, Frank contacted the madrassah to ask if John was OK. In August, he received a letter from the Imam of the school, praising Johnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s abilities as a scholar of the Quran and assuring his parents that John was being well looked after by members of the humanitarian group. Lindh says he found the letter comforting, but was still nervous about not hearing from his son.

Lindh says that the family was “completely horrified, like everyone else†by the Sept. 11 attacks. As news of violent anti-American protests in Pakistan reached the U.S., Walkerâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s parents became concerned that their son might be in physical danger. His father began visiting mosques in San Francisco, showing worshippers the snapshot he had taken of John in Ireland. Lindh says many of the people recognized John and knew him by his Arabic name, Sulayman al Faris. “Their eyes would just light up when they saw the picture,†says Lindh. “Everyone had something nice to say about him.†No one, says Lindh, knew how the young scholar had taken up with the Taliban and adopted the nom dâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]guerre Abdul Hamid. And Marilyn Walker still canâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t picture her “shy kid†in the midst of a bloody prison uprising. “This is a kid who would freeze [from fear]†she says. “Heâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s totally not streetwise.â€

Walkerâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s parents are relieved to know that their son is alive and receiving medical care. But they have received no information from the U.S. government about his fate. The family is scrambling to find him a lawyer and, no matter what, says Lindh, they will stand by their son. “Heâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s a really good boy,†says Lindh, who plans to travel to the region as soon as possible to talk with his son. “I canâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t connect the dots between where John was and where John is,†he says. Neither, it seems, can the rest of the world.

 

[catarina77777]

Buttercup :angel2:

You very well may be right, and he could've been held captive and then brainwashed. The kid went over there when he was very young to study. I don't really see this guy accepting the Taliban beliefs initially, but then again, after seeing their practices with women, I don't understand why he didn't get so frightened that he didn't come home. We don't have enough information at this point, but in my own opinion, I think he's just as dangerous as any other Taliban soldier now and should be held for Treason.

Sorry to say.

Hugs,
Catarina

 

[sunlion]

Thank you for some sanity, Buttercup.

Catarina,

It isn't a case of being brainwashed. Islam is not a cult, like the Moonies. It is one of the 3 great Abrahmic religions, Judaism and Christianity being the other 2. As a Catholic, I am embarassed that nobody within our faith reached out to the young man and caught his imagination. Or perhaps someone tried but he didn't appreciate it, familiarity does breed contempt, after all, that old adage comes from a truth. But 5 years ago, when this person first got interested, Islam was not the evil we think it is today.

The Taliban is not representative of all of Islam any more than, say, the Amish or the fundamentalists are representative of all of Christianity. However, the Taliban has control of the government in an area where church and state are not separated, so they are able to force their practices on their people. I remember when the Shah of Iran was deposed, several people immigrated to my area who were Jewish. They didn't want to live under the new regime and knew their faith would only cause them trouble. Fanatics happen in all faiths, just most religions have a strong peace ethic, whereas Islam give greater glory to those who died promoting their faith. How is this different from the Crusades? Not what I would call a proud moment in Christian history, but probably rooted in many of the same attitudes, whatever the stated reasons were. Remember that it's the victors who write history.

I don't know what will happen to this guy. He was probably just following his religion and suddenly everything went cockeyed on him. The question is whether his loyalty is greater to his country of origin or to his chosen faith. And that is a horrible question for anyone to answer.

 

[melissa]

I don't have any personal opinion to add really, I just wanted to say that I think Sunlion has a few very good, and well thought out points.

 

[catarina77777]

Sunlion,

I do believe your accusation is inaccurate.

I never said that the Isalms brainwashed him and I don't believe that Islam is an evil religion. Islam is a very peaceful group of people; however most religions have their splinter fanatics and one of them are the Taliban. I do believe we agree there.

Being a student of a peaceful religion for so many years, it's hard to conceive that he didn't get the jist of what was happening to him.

The only excuse that I could possibly find for this kid would be that he was a prisoner and brainwashed. As I do agree with you that there is no separation between the Taliban regime and religion. They were looking for as many young, driven, faithful servants to a sick and sadistic way of life.

It hardly seems likely that anyone of our culture and his religious background would conform to that type of treatment to mankind. In my own opinion, people don't change overnite and since he was young, a very well studied and devoted individual, it made him a more impressionable follower. This is what they look for in the Taliban. He's lucky he didn't get a suicide mission. He was perfect for the job and fit all the criteria.

There's more to it then what we know, we can sit and assume and ponder, but I don't care what anyone says, I wouldn't trust him as far as would trust bin laden himself.

Peace,
Catarina

 

[buttercup429]

bump up