Too good to check: Jihadis dying of the Black Plague
posted at 10:48 am on January 19, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Since this comes from The Sun, whose journalistic credentials run more towards the busty babes of Page 3 than serious counter-terrorist information, take this with a huge, Lot’s Wife-sized grain of salt. However, in terms of karma, nothing seems more fitting for a group of terrorists for whom “medieval” would be an improvement than to start dying from the Black Death. According to their sources, al-Qaeda units in North Africa have begun dying from bubonic plague, and they may have spread their 14th-century disease to Pakistani camps:
At least 40 al-Qaeda fanatics died horribly after being struck down with the disease that devastated Europe in the Middle Ages.
The killer bug, also known as the plague, swept through insurgents training at a forest camp in Algeria, North Africa. It came to light when security forces found a body by a roadside.
The victim was a terrorist in AQLIM (al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb), the largest and most powerful al-Qaeda group outside the Middle East.
It trains Muslim fighters to kill British and US troops.
Now al-Qaeda chiefs fear the plague has been passed to other terror cells — or Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
The cells the Sun references hide out 100 miles outside of Algiers. AQLIM was known previously as GSPC, the largest Islamist terrorist group outside of AQ until they merged with it and recognized Osama bin Laden’s leadership. The two networks exchange couriers and cross-train, which would make an outbreak of the plague a very big problem for both groups. Because plague is asymptomatic for a few days, up to a week, transmission between people (especially of the airborne variety) gets facilitated, and it can spread like … well, like the plague.
Is this for real? Perhaps, although it could also be a form of psy-op. Plague can be treated if addressed quickly with the right medicines, but AQ doesn’t have the capability in either Algeria or Pakistan. Terrorists would have to surrender to get treatment, and that might be the point of the story — to frighten terrorists into surrendering and then getting intel on their leadership.
It’s easy to wish the plague on AQ, but it might cause more problems in the long run, especially in Pakistan. The Taliban integrates tightly into rural communities in the isolated areas of Waziristan and the NWFP. If the plague did follow the Taliban back to these areas, it could touch off an epidemic that could cross the border into Afghanistan and ravage both nations, as well as the NATO forces fighting terrorism on the Afghanistan frontier.
Related Posts:









Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Comment pages: « Previous 1 2
As Al Queda takes the areas they control backward, they will be become repositories of more than just plague. They have fought the imunization of children for polio with the result that its eradication may be prevented. Their indifference to sanitation systems and water control projects break down societies’ protections against water borne diseases like cholera and dysentary. Their destruction of the water systems in Afghanistan led to crop failures and would have resulted in widespread starvation had the US invasion not come when it did and reversed the problem. Their insistance on ignorance rather than education will have other long term ill effects. (They blow up schools for girls and teach only the Koran to boys.)
Civilization has brought many more blessings than it has ills. Those who condemn it, are doomed to see why humans have craved to rise above the natural state.
KW64 on January 19, 2009 at 4:30 PM
(Sung to the tune of the Candy Man Can)
What kind of cruel people
Fill the world with gloom
Then go hide in caves cause they know that they are doomed
The Taliban
The Taliban, Oh the Taliban Can
The Taliban can cause they fill the world with fear and think that’s something good.
Who can make a missile
Launch it with a scream
And create a Lake where Waziristan had been
The USA
The USA, Oh the USA can
The USA can cause its schools teach math and physics not just the Koran
KW64 on January 19, 2009 at 4:42 PM
May I suggest the economy sized, 20,000 lb disinfectant.
moxie_neanderthal on January 19, 2009 at 4:55 PM
If the the black plague did return, would WHO have the tools to stop it?
hawksruleva on January 19, 2009 at 5:11 PM
Why ?
Not till it spreads past the border
KARMA is finally kicking in
LOL
Plus all the Jihadi’s that die without taking a Jew or Infidel don’t get thier 72 virgins
LOL
HardRight on January 19, 2009 at 5:32 PM
Australia has a traveler advisory for Algeria.
http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/zw-cgi/view/Advice/Algeria
Map Algeria borders Tunisia
The al-Qaeda epidemic is said to have begun in the cave hideouts of AQLIM in Tizi Ouzou province, 150km east of the capital Algiers.
The group, led by wanted terror boss Abdelmalek Droudkal, was forced to turn its shelters in the Yakouren forest into mass graves and flee.
http://i-cias.com/e.o/tiziouzou.htm
Dr Evil on January 19, 2009 at 5:48 PM
I hope you’re counting Israel among the “west” and not the “middle east,” since one of theirs died with ours on the Columbia.
Tanya on January 19, 2009 at 5:54 PM
Too hilarious if this is the case. The black plauge part duex….
Hog Wild on January 19, 2009 at 6:50 PM
Kinda reminds me of the War of the Worlds.
Pythagoras on January 19, 2009 at 7:43 PM
If that HAD been the point of the story, consider the Taliban to be tipped off.
smagar on January 19, 2009 at 9:02 PM
I wonder if this story from back in October is related?
Somalian pirates dying of mysterious illness
BreezeCJ on January 19, 2009 at 11:51 PM
Jihadis health care!
grapeknutz on January 20, 2009 at 7:33 AM
Comment pages: « Previous 1 2