Word: jihadis
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...Hasan Askari Rizvi believes that radicalization could not occur during a one-month visit with family. "These people aren't coming to Pakistan and getting radicalized, they were radicalized before they came. You don't just show up at a madrassah, spend a few weeks there and become a jihadi. It doesn't work that way," he says. "Here in Pakistan their commitment to radicalism will be reinforced, but the germs are already in place." It is back in the U.K. that such visitors are provided with contacts and introductions to terrorist cells or extremist groups in Pakistan...
...Muhammad Amir Rana, author of A to Z of Jihadi Organizations in Pakistan, takes a different view, claiming that explosives training is exactly what visiting foreigners are getting from Pakistan-based cells. "We have seen that the foreigners aren't interested in battlefield training, they are only interested in making explosives," he says, referring to the research he does with the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies in Lahore. "You can download bomb-making instructions from the Internet, but when you don't have practice, it's still very difficult to do. So you come to Pakistan for the experience side...
...these measures have brought only temporary relief. Militias and insurgents know to disappear when the U.S. military arrives. Past experience shows that once the soldiers move on, the violence returns. After three days of extended curfews and intensive patrolling in Amariyah, a mainly Sunni neighborhood that was controlled by jihadi groups, the U.S. last week declared the area safe and ended the cordon-and-search operations. But residents say the jihadis had simply melted away before the operations began, and fully expect them to return...
...like Abu Ghraib, long a battleground between Sunni insurgents and U.S. forces, residents say they want to see more U.S. soldiers and fewer Iraqi troops. "Compared to the Shi'ite militias, the Americans are a more merciful presence," says Abu Abdallah, a field commander in Abu Ghraib for the jihadi group known as the Army of Islam. "If the Americans leave, the life of a Sunni in Baghdad will be worth nothing...
...Things have gotten worse on both fronts. Eighteen months ago the insurgency was not quite so well organized, jihadi groups were operating mainly outside Baghdad and Shi'ite militias were smarting from Moqtada al-Sadr's failed insurrection. It was possible to go out in the evening to a restaurant or a private home. My favorite hangout was a caf? attached to the city's best art gallery, where artists and intellectuals gathered every evening for stale coffee and sparkling conversation. Going out after dark now is out of the question: kidnapping gangs lurk in public places looking for lucrative...