But as you might expect, the real story is more complicated than the media representation:

Rumors circulate among local residents of government hit squads and disgruntled Buddhists and Muslims that rove as heavily armed vigilante groups – sometimes with tacit backing from local security forces. To complicate matters further, criminal gangs often stage violent acts to appear as militant attacks in order to mislead investigating authorities. The family members of victims of violence also often pressure authorities to attribute their deaths as insurgency-related so that they can receive government compensation.

Lieutenant General Pichet Wisaijorn, the commander of security forces in the South, told Asia Times Online in November that 74% of the violence in the region is related to criminal activity. This assessment is disputed by many independent observers, who estimate loosely that the percentage is likely closer to 50%. Whatever the percentage, it is clear that the insurgency is being used as a cover for criminal violence.

Reminds me of the sage observations of former war correspondent Chris Hedges:

The moral scum of any society rises to the surface in war. Those who have a penchant for violence and an access to weapons dominate the landscape.

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The author, Michael Jerryson, visited Southern Thailand, where an Islamist rebellion is underway, between 2006 and 2008 to do research. Jerryson found armed monks in temples:

One day after teaching an English class for Buddhist novices at a monastery a young monk came over and pulled back the folds of his robe to reveal a Smith & Wesson. I later learned that he was a military monk—one of many covert, fully ordained soldiers placed in monasteries throughout Thailand. To these monks, peacemaking requires militancy.

Since my initial realization in 2004, I began to look critically at my earlier perspective on Buddhism—one that shielded an extensive and historical dimension to Buddhist traditions: violence. Armed Buddhist monks in Thailand are not an exception to the rule; they are contemporary examples of a long historical precedence. For centuries monks have been at the helm, or armed in the ranks, of wars. How could this be the case? But more importantly, why did I (and many others) hold the belief that Buddhism=Peace (and that other religions, such as Islam, are more prone to violence)?

Jerryson concludes that he and other Westerners have been victims of a long-running and successful propaganda campaign.

Since the early 1900s, Buddhist monastic intellectuals such as Walpola Rahula, D. T. Suzuki, and Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, have labored to raise Western awareness of their cultures and traditions. In doing so, they presented specific aspects of their Buddhist traditions while leaving out others.

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Khairullah is a broken man. “He came to Peshawar to escape the war,” says the 57-year-old’s eldest son, Rahimullah. “But it’s Peshawar that has driven him mad.”

The single-named father of six from the Mohmand tribal agency in Pakistan’s restive northwest lies on a cot in the waiting room of the Shafique Psychiatric Clinic in Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). His body sporadically erupts into paroxysm, and his tortured eyes dart over the blank ceiling as if caught in a violent waking nightmare. He rarely speaks as his wife, hugging his knees, rocks back and forth to calm him.

Thousands of men, women and children like Khairullah wander Peshawar’s anarchic streets. They are the forgotten victims of the war between Pakistan’s army and Islamic militants. The city is where the mad come for solace, pouring in from war-torn regions of the Pakistani frontier and even farther afield in search of a disturbingly scarce resource: psychiatric aid.

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Hammami – who grew up in Daphne, AL and is now known as Abu Mansour “Al-Amriki” – became the leader of a 180 member foreign fighter unit of Al Shabab in September after the former leader was killed in a US helicopter raid. And the latest info:

Abdi says he heard in October that Hammami had been fighting near the Ethiopian border, and is recovering in hospital from bullet wounds and mental problems.

War will do that to a guy, Islam or no…

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The warlords we champion in Afghanistan are as venal, as opposed to the rights of women and basic democratic freedoms, and as heavily involved in opium trafficking as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw between us and our adversaries are fictional.

The uplifting narratives used to justify the war in Afghanistan are pathetic attempts to redeem acts of senseless brutality.

War cannot be waged to instill any virtue, including democracy or the liberation of women.

War always empowers those who have a penchant for violence and access to weapons.

War turns the moral order upside down and abolishes all discussions of human rights.

War banishes the just and the decent to the margins of society.

And the weapons of war do not separate the innocent and the damned. An aerial drone is our version of an improvised explosive device. An iron fragmentation bomb is our answer to a suicide bomb. A burst from a belt-fed machine gun causes the same terror and bloodshed among civilians no matter who pulls the trigger.

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Sequential destruction of Muslim nations.

A conspiratorial view of the world is frequently inaccurate, exposing more the paranoia of the view rather than the reality of the world. The sequential destruction of Muslim nations — Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, (and Iran is on the list) — may or may not be a conspiracy hatched in Washington D.C., but it is becoming an international reality. It is no secret that the United States and Europe, with varying degree of mutual cooperation and some make-believe internal discord, superintend the sequential destruction of Muslim nations. This War of Sequential Destruction (WSD), despite Nobel-Laureate Barack Obama’s denials, refuses to go away.

I also found this interesting:

After razing Iraq and Afghanistan, the WSD has now turned to ravage an ally, Muslim Pakistan. Pakistan is a nation that the British, in 1947, carved out of India and that India, in 1971, broke into two, liberating Bangladesh from the murderous clutch of the Pakistani military.

He attributes the separation of East and West Pakistan to India, as though the Bangladeshis had nothing to do with it. He is stating that an outside non-Muslim agent came in and split a Muslim country, but then he calls it a “liberation.” This seems like a contradiction within his perspective, but not a surprising one, since he seems to be compulsively grasping for ‘outsiders’ to blame for conflict in Muslim states.

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They don’t like it, but they see it happening and know there is nothing they can do about it. The poll, conducted by Clarus Research Group, showed that 68 percent of us agree with idea that we won’t either win or lose the war in Afghanistan, now eight years long, but will instead just remain there.

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At least 87 refugees have been killed in an army air raid on a makeshift camp in north Yemen.

The camp at Adi in Harf Sufyan has been at the centre of fighting between government forces and Zaidi Shia fighters, which erupted in early August.

News Yemen, an independent website, aid on Thursday the raid hit the refugees while “they were sleeping under trees and plastic awnings.”

There’s talk of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, although one informed commentator says viewing this conflict in this way “does not help”.

(Side note: I was interested to discover Saudi had been at loggerheads with Oman and pre-UAE Abu Dhabi in the 1950s. Over oil, of course.)

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Violent clashes have broken out between Shia rebels and government forces in northern Yemen, with both sides accusing the other of breaking a truce.

A Yemeni military source claims there were many casualties, although there is no independent confirmation.

The UNHCR, Al-Jazeera, and Juan Cole’s blog have a bit of a background on the people fighting against the Yemeni government.

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