This is Part 8 of Running to Disaster, CommandEleven’s eight-part study of how Pakistan’s radicalization and terrorism problem was built, from the Soviet-Afghan war to today.
Understanding the Recruitment and Training Process
Very few people understand the process that recruits transition through to become terrorists. Since the training camps were developed and managed by the CIA and ISI, it is not surprising that the enlistment process is very similar to joining the national military.
Selig Harrison, from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said at the Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia conference, in London (March 2000):
“The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan. The US provided US$ 3 billion for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan’s demand that they should decide how this money should be spent.”
Recruitment and Enlistment Centers
During the Soviet invasion, there were two methods for enlisting individuals into the mujahideen.
The first, and most effective, method was through the madrassas, in which individuals were used to quickly identify and select potential recruits. These recruits were given additional attention by recruiters and other new recruits to develop relationships prior to moving on to training camps along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The second method was through regular enlistment, much like a volunteer who wished to fulfill their duty would go to a US Army recruiter and sign up. Those who wished to directly volunteer for jihad went to recruiters in villages and cities, who would provide a full briefing and explanation before enlisting them as recruits and adding them to the group that would come through the madrassas.
Groups were sent to the training camps every fortnight, so a steady stream of new recruits were being pumped into the war machine.
These methods, implemented during the Soviet invasion with great deftness to deliver the best recruits to the battlefield, were advanced and spread across Pakistan after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989.
There are two types of training camps:
- the camp for the soldiers and commanders
- the camp for suicide bombers
Skilled resources, such as doctors, mechanics, and other labor, were selected from society, based on their motivation to help the mujahideen. Some of these resources were also gleaned from those who enlisted to fight, but were found ineligible due to fitness or other grounds.
Boot Camp (Training Camp)
Fighters who enlist and pass the initial psychological, religious and attitude tests are moved to the boot camps. At the boot camp, recruits are put through an indoctrination process that achieves two things:
- it weeds out those who are not truly motivated to join the jihad as a fighter, and another ancillary role is found for them
- it helps to determine who will fill what role in the fighting force
Outside the psychological testing and the emotional evaluations, recruits follow a training process like the one described below:
Step 1: The training process begins with a 21-day religious course given to all recruits. The religious course teaches three additional books along with the Holy Quran and a tafsir (explanation). The three additional books were ‘Taaleem-ul-Islam,’ ‘Taaleem-ul-Jehad,’ and ‘Tarikh-e-Islam.’
Step 2: After the completion of the religious course, the recruits are put through a 21-day combat weapons training course. The daily course regimen includes prayer and religious teaching breaks, as well as time for leisure activities and sports. More than half of the training day is spent on weapons and fieldcraft, so that the recruits understand how to operate in a live battlefield.
Step 3: Those who successfully complete the combat weapons training course are moved to a three-month training camp, where recruits are trained to dismantle and assemble assault weapons, use maps, compasses, GPS, and guerrilla tactics.
Step 4: They are trained in how to operate on the live battlefield, learning how to perform raids and ambushes, how to hide weapons in the field and surviving without food and water for 55 hours.
Step 5: Those who successfully complete the previous rounds are moved to an explosives training course, where they are trained in bomb-making, IED manufacturing, and suicide vest building.
Step 6: Training on ways to collect intelligence, agent handling, sabotage, recruitment, surveillance, interrogation tactics (soft and hard), overt propaganda, and the use of alcohol, women, and money to elicit information.
Step 7: Pass arms firing test and training is completed.
This is the training process started after the individual has been radicalized.
It should be noted that this process is a repetitive one, which provides more advanced training on each repetition.
Recruits able to reach levels ten to fifteen are given specialized training in GPS tools, map reading, making and planting Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), and they are given internet access. To reach levels ten to fifteen, the recruit would need to complete 4 months each at levels I, II and III.
Suicide (Fidayeen) Bomber Camp
Suicide bombers fall into three categories:
- Motivated (mostly used on civilian targets) – those who have gone through the fidayeen training. These are the suicide vests, car bombs, suicide bombers with ball bearings mixed in the explosives.
- Political (used to achieve a political statement) – political suicide attacks are typically targeted at government institutions and officials. They will try not to harm a civilian.
- Controlled (the most dehumanizing) – controlled suicide attacks are exactly that, controlled by someone else. The attacker is typically a drug addict who has had a suicide vest attached to him. They think they have the detonation button, but the actual button is with someone else outside the blast radius, watching live.
There is one additional training, which lasts between eight months and a year, given only to suicide (fidayeen) bombers.
Only one person from a batch of 200 fighters is selected to become a suicide bomber. Many recruits feel great honor in being selected as a suicide bomber.
Step 1: The suicide bomber recruit goes through a special indoctrination course called sufa, which mentally hardens the recruit for what is asked of him. They are taught with three books – Taaleem-ul-Islam (Islamic Studies), Taaleem-ul-Jihad (Jihad Studies), and Tarikh-e-Islam (History of Islam).
Promotion to the next stage in training was heavily based on the recruit’s success in the first step.
Step 2: This stage of training lasts from 40-60 days, where recruits are given training in weapons handling, mountain survival, covert communication techniques, GPS, and map reading. They also undergo mandatory physical fitness training to ensure they will be able to reach their objectives.
Step 2B: The final stage of this training, which can last over forty days, includes various advanced weaponry, including assault rifles, LMG, sniper rifles, grenades, rocket, and grenade launchers, and Under Barrel Grenade Launcher (UBGL), something heavily used by the Indian Army.
Step 3: The last stage of training divides the recruits into sub-groups, providing each sub-group with wireless communication sets, and dispatched in different directions to practice communications.
What we have defined above began after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and was a tactic imported from the Palestinian conflict, when al-Qaeda began operations in Afghanistan. In our research, we were unable to find instances of suicide bombers during the Soviet invasion.
As we said previously, the Soviet invasion was the plantation of a seed, suicide bombers/car bombs were a mutation that developed to combat the firepower the opponent possessed.
Then, there was another mutation, brought by the Islamic State – the controlled suicide bomber.
The controlled suicide bomber was the most dehumanized of all the fighters, developed for two reasons.
First, there were some suicide bombers who were able to reach their target, but were shot before they were able to achieve their objective. Second, some suicide bombers would reach their target and lose their nerve, not detonating their vests.
The controlled suicide bomber opened new opportunities for the terrorists. Since the detonator was in another person’s hands, the terrorists were able to target more innocent civilians or soldiers.
Some groups began using heroin addicts to carry out controlled attacks. The groups that adopted these methods were not respected for this decision, but their objective was not jihad but massive loss of life.
While terrorism itself is a human rights violation, specifically the use of heroin addicts is an unbelievable extreme that was not expected.
We have learned that groups like the Islamic State have begun to create their own heroin addict bombs to be used in the field of battle.
What does that mean?
The Islamic State, and their affiliated groups, would look for people in society that could be easily manipulated, and below the age of 15. We will call them targets, rather than recruits.
These targets were first indoctrinated into the world of radicalization through a madrassa, but purposely paired with people who were already using hashish or cannabis, who could slowly convince them to start using with them. When they were high on drugs, their circle of friends would “inspire” them with the tales of the glory of jihad and becoming a martyr for Islam. They would go straight to heaven, they were told.
Planting a new seed.
Once the target started using drugs, promoting them to harder, more dangerous drugs was very easy.
Once they started using heroin, the job was complete. A heroin addict is only interested in one thing – where will their next “fix” come from.
The heroin addict in Pakistan is a common sight. They can be found in every city and village, begging people for money. That’s the advantage the terrorists leveraged. The addict can reach places without raising suspicion.
We have been told by those who escaped the suicide camps that targets were injected throughout the day with heroin to keep them from thinking about anything else. When the time came to use them as a weapon, they were:
- injected with enough heroin to knock them out
- loaded into a van
- by the time they reached their target location, the heroin had started to wear off so they injected them with heroin again
- pushed from the van into a crowded square, roundabout or police barricade
- remotely detonated by another person watching outside the blast radius.
For those who did not become drug addicts, their suicide vests looked just like all the others, with its own detonation button, but, for operational efficiency, all vests were also fitted with a remote system that would allow another person to detonate, if the target lost their nerve and couldn’t detonate.
The Jihad Is Over
In 1989, the jihad was over, the Soviet Red Army had withdrawn, but the jihadis and their camps still existed, were functional, and were still receiving funding from Gulf States and high-net-worth individuals.
All those who had come from the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, and other Muslim countries were still in Afghanistan, heavily armed, and well-trained, but with no one to fight anymore.
Osama bin Laden, a graduate of King Abdul Aziz University in civil engineering, saw an opportunity to organize and unite all the ex-mujahideen and other supporters. Al-Qaeda were the first Islamic terrorist group in the world and emerged from the war with the Soviets.
Bin Laden’s role in the mujahideen was initially on the Pakistan side of the border raising funds and providing logistic and humanitarian aid from 1980-86. From 1986-89, according to sources within the mujahideen, bin Laden participated in numerous battles against the Soviets as a guerrilla commander, including the Battle of Jalalabad.
Many rumors claimed that the CIA funded Osama bin Laden and other Arab volunteers who came to support the mujahideen. In fact, bin Laden and the Arabs were funded by charities and mosques in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, and were frequently viewed with suspicion by the Afghan mujahideen.
When the Afghanistan War ended in 1989, Hezbollah (Lebanon 1982) and Hamas (Gaza Strip 1987), political movements against the oppressive policies of the State of Israel, had already emerged in guerrilla warfare.
Al-Qaeda (AQ), whose goals were mostly political, would carry out well-planned attacks on Western targets in the Middle East. Al-Qaeda was a very structured organization with all plans and decisions made originally by Osama bin Laden and then by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second emir of al-Qaeda, from June 16, 2011.
Al-Qaeda was a slow, methodical war machine. They were not like today’s terror groups, with indiscriminate violence and brutalities. Al-Qaeda targets were typically US military installations in the Middle East until 9/11.
AQ battle operations were kept secure because of specialized measures in counter-intelligence and secure communications learned from the CIA, ISI, and many other “friendly” intelligence agencies. Messages, very rarely written, were carried by couriers, responses were delivered face-to-face in that operation’s chain of command. Messages were coded with historical references, that only members would know, making code breaking exponentially more difficult.
Additionally, AQ attacks were planned, practiced and preparation implemented years before the attack took place. Since all the training had come directly from intelligence agencies, they were especially well-versed in Cold War espionage tactics, which are still used today.
The global terrorism picture changed again when the US invaded Iraq. Prior to the Iraq invasion, Islamic terrorism was quite well understood, with various combatants being well known.
The invasion of Iraq brought forward a new terrorist group that was more interested in brutality and the massive loss of life.
In April 2013, the world watched as the US created another monster in Iraq called The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, best known by two names – Daesh and The Islamic State. The Islamic State is a transnational militant terrorist group and quasi-state that follows the Salafi jihadi brand of Sunni Islam.
The Islamic State took jihad to a level that al-Qaeda had never envisioned with their use of technology and social media. Their promotional and recruitment videos were as clean as commercial TV. Their publications were also tailored to the audience they were aimed at. Their brutality was beyond what the world had seen in the past.
These materials were available to anyone interested via their Internet connection, a computer, and/or a mobile phone, which could not be stopped by any technology or government.
Their materials forced the other jihadi groups, domestic and global, to up their game to compete with The Islamic State for volunteers.
What the West was able to do through television, movies, and mainstream media, The Islamic State was able to supersede with its social media presence.
Unlike al-Qaeda, The Islamic State didn’t promote only organized warfare, but they coined the concept of “Lone Wolf” attacks.
A Lone Wolf attack occurs when an individual, overly motivated by Islamic State videos, takes a knife or gets behind the wheel of their car and looks for any target. It brought radicalization and terrorism to everyone’s doorstep outside the Middle East, where it was away from view or discussion.
Terrorism and its brutality have exponentially increased worldwide since the birth of The Islamic State.
Terrorism is no longer a problem that can be controlled, identified, and recognized before the where, how, or who will carry it out.
Four decades on, what began as a mismanaged, geopolitical proxy war has pushed radicalization, whether religiously or politically motivated, to reach every household in the world. Radicalization then morphed into political, social and/or cultural movements. All based on different levels of acceptance of violence, and has achieved the ability to wage war against organized law enforcement, militaries, and innocent civilians.
After four decades, while terrorism has increased, new methods employed, new territories set ablaze, and new lives have been destroyed; the other side has yet to figure out any feasible methods to stop further radicalization or enlistment with terrorist and insurgent groups. They have been unable to stop the financing and armaments that continue to flow into terrorist and insurgent groups.
If we continue to fight terrorism in this manner, what will the next decade bring?
Conclusion
While it’s very simple to put the blame at the feet of the military alone, the objective of this volume was to demonstrate how destructive things, other than terrorism, were being initiated against Pakistan to punish it for supporting both the mujahideen and the United States.
The Soviets used numerous active measures to attempt to recruit politicians, seed discord among the people and the refugees, fabricate plots to damage relations between Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, China, and the United States, and sponsor, train, and arm insurgent groups, including giving them training camps on Afghan soil.
While many saw Pakistan at war against the Soviet Union, they did not realize Pakistan was also fighting a disinformation war designed to create unrest in Pakistan and force foreign capitals and allies to question their own relationships with the Zia regime.
These measures and disinformation did not affect the relationship between the United States and Pakistan, but assuredly, it left considerable questions between governments.
In order to present a proper chessboard, it was a requirement to share the history of Soviet active measures before and during the Soviet invasion against the governments of both countries. Even though the Soviet invasion was their military’s role, the Kremlin and the KGB had their own objectives to achieve that would provide results well after the war was over.
Today, Afghanistan’s soil is still used by terrorist and insurgent groups for training, medical care, and safe haven.
The next volume of the Running to Disaster series will focus specifically on the spillover and fallout in Pakistan, post-Soviet withdrawal, and the rise of terrorism in 2001 from the region.
As said in previous volumes, this series is not about placing blame.
There is enough blame for all institutions and governments, whether Pakistan’s own or foreign countries. Running to Disaster is an in-depth look into terrorism in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region and how it can be first limited and then eliminated.
Part of the rationale behind providing an understanding is to assist in understanding that none of these problems were created domestically, but once the problem was created the international community was no longer interested in what was left behind or how it was left behind, which is why this seems like an impossibility.
They have thought about what will be required of the nation, its citizens, its institutions, and its government, but are not ready to sacrifice to achieve a domestic objective that will change Pakistan’s global position.
Download the original report: Running to Disaster, Volume II: Operation Dinner Out (PDF). The 2024 report this part is drawn from, which covers Parts 3 to 8 of this series.
