The U.S. government designated the group a terrorist organization in 2012, saying at the time that Nusra was an alias for al Qaida in Iraq, which was founded by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian, to battle the U.S. presence there. That designation was recently updated to recognize that the organization is officially seen as an al Qaida branch operating in Syria.
They are not necessarily poor at the time of their death, but, they usually are poor prior to it. So, there is incentive to be a suicide bomber if a young man wants to create a degree of comfort to their family upon his death.
The lack of information provided Americans about how citizenship is denied to jihadists is interesting. The New York Times of all news media should be supplying information that is an understanding of how all that works rather than leaving the door open to fear there will an influx of Americans trained in suicide bombing. The fear mongering for election purposes is more than interesting.
Such fear mongering sincerely causes concern President Obama is a do nothing sort of guy. Sure, whatever the press says has to be real, right?
It is easy to understand why Nusra Front exists. What do we know about the death of a martyr? We know they are given greater brevity after death than before. So with the death of Abu Musab Zarqawi there would be a loyalty to his memory to carry on without him, hence Nusra Front.
It was Americans that killed Zarqawi and it was an American that was recruited. There is some sort of twisted victory in that I suppose.
...I asked Azzam (click here) if he knew who was funding al-Zarqawi’s activities in Iraq.
He thought for a moment, and then replied without answering, “At the time of jihad, you can get vast amounts of money with a simple telephone call. I myself once collected three million dollars, which my father had arranged with a single call.”
“A bank transfer?” I asked.
“No. I collected it on my motorbike.
“I was in Syria when the war in Iraq began,” he went on. “People were arriving in droves; everyone wanted to go to Iraq to fight the Americans. I remember one guy who came and said he was too old to fight, but he gave the recruiters $200,000 in cash. ‘Give it to the mujahideen,’ was all he said.”
He then told me about a young boy he had met in the early days of the war.
“He was from Saudi Arabia and had just turned thirteen. I noticed him in the crowd at a recruiting center near the Syrian-Iraqi frontier. People would come and register in the morning, then cross the border in the afternoon by bus. I first saw him at the registration desk. The recruiters refused to take him because he was so young, and he started to cry. I went back later in the day, and this same small guy had sneaked aboard the bus. When they discovered him, he started to shout Allahu Akhbar!—‘God is most great!’ They carried him off. He had $12,000 in his pocket—expense money his family had given him before he set off. ‘Take it all,’ he pleaded. ‘Please, just let me do jihad.’”...
