Blood Brotherhoods

A DEVELOPMENTAL LOOK AT TERRORISM

The Australian Taliban fighter David Hicks was interested in war. The conflict of the moment was the Serbian aggression in Kosovo, so he joined the Kosovo Liberation Army. After a brief taste of battle, at the end of that conflict, he returned to Australia and applied to join the Australian Army. He was turned away because he had left school before he had attained the minimum level of qualification. Feeling deeply rejected, he turned toward the faith of those who had welcomed him in Kosovo, Islam. Through contacts at a small Mosque in Adelaide he was sponsored to go to Pakistan to undergo religious training in Kandahar. Within a short time he was fighting alongside the Taliban. He had found the conflict he was looking for. In the aftermath of September the 11^th it was reported that members of the al Qaeda network had met with members of the Russian mafia in an attempt to obtain the makings of a nuclear bomb. As it turns out al Qaeda had been tricked and the barrels of nuclear material were in fact fake. But why would a puritanical religious group consort with gangsters who trade in prostitution? Surely their moral beliefs would prohibit them from contact with pimps? There is a nasty underworld trade in drugs, illegal arms and mercenaries. Despite making a pretense to clean up the lucrative heroin poppy fields of Afghanistan the Taliban and al Qaeda actually used drug money to fund their activities.