Al-Qaeda's Job Application Form Revealed

HughPickens.com writes: ABC News reports that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released a list of English-language material recovered during the raid the killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011 including one document dubbed "Instructions to Applicants," that would not be entirely out of place for an entry-level position at any American company – except for questions like the one about the applicant's willingness to blow themselves up. The questionnaire includes basic personal details, family history, marital status, and education level. It asks that applicants "answer the required information accurately and truthfully" and, "Please write clearly and legibly." Questions include: Is the applicant expert in chemistry, communications or any other field? Do they have a family member in the government who would cooperate with al Qaeda? Have they received any military training? Finally, it asks what the would-be jihadist would like to accomplish and, "Do you wish to execute a suicide operation?" For the final question, the application asks would-be killers that if they were to become martyrs, who should al Qaeda contact?

The corporate tone of the application is jarringly amusing, writes Amanda Taub, but it also hints at a larger truth: a terrorist organization like al-Qaeda is a large bureaucratic organization, albeit one in the "business" of mass-murdering innocent people. Jon Sopel, the North American editor from BBC News, joked that the application "looks like it has been written by someone who has spent too long working for Deloitte or Accenture, but bureaucracy exists in every walk of life – so why not on the path to violent jihad?"

Comments

Truth be told...

[garyisabusyguy]

These 'applicants' would probably never consider the path to jihad if they had a decent job and the ability to earn a living to raise a family

The unemployment rates are 27% with even higher rates for people in their twenties
The application takes advantage of their desires to have a 'real' job and twists it into continuing strife that does nothing to improve their economic conditions

Re:Truth be told...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Anonymous coward( 'Bull Fucking Shit', below) is far too strident; but it is the case that there's a curious sort of 'bifurcation' in the 'terrorist' labor market(a confusion we probably contribute to by conflating the various local tribal militias, warlords, strongmen, etc. who cause us trouble during our ground campaigns with the 'terrorists' who are much more international in scope).

On the one hand, as you say, the terrorist grunt supply is heavily drawn from frustrated young men(inconveniently, lots of prime recruiting grounds have demographics that skew fairly young, so there are lots of them), with limited economic prospects, often compounded by a culture where you probably aren't getting laid unless you've achieved enough economic stability to get married. The miscellaneous 'insurgents' who raise hell when you attempt to occupy their home sand trap; but lack international ambitions and/or capabilities are mostly these guys. Some of the lower-skill terrorists proper are as well(particularly for the Israelis, since Gaza's festering-prison-slum atmosphere provides an endless supply of the angry and hopeless; and you don't even need to buy them plane tickets to have them go do a 'martyrdom operation'.

On the other hand, a lot of terrorist leadership, and high-skill recruits(if you want to blow stuff up, it sure helps to have some real engineers and chemists around), are not driven by economic desperation. Bin Laden himself was basically a trust-fund fundamentalist, and a lot of the more influential and logistically important figures are people with decent university degrees, often in marketable subjects, who are financially stable; but alienated by some aspect of the injustice of the world, or disaffected by secularism or the wrong sort of religious practice, exactly which one varying by person.

They come in both flavors.

Re:Truth be told...

[hey!]

Dear moderators: "Troll" is not a synonym for "I disagree with this".

That said, I disagree with this.

We've known since the investigation of 9/11 that suicide bombers are not necessarily dead-enders except in the literal sense. Economic powerlessness might play a role in the political phenomenon of extremist violence, but it is not a necessary element of the profile of a professional extremist. These people often come from privileged backgrounds and display average to above average job aptitude.

Mohammed Atta's life story makes interesting reading. He was born to privileged parents; at the insistence of his emotionally distant father he wasn't allowed to socialize with other kids his age, and had a lifelong difficulty with relating to his peers. At university he did OK but below the high expectations of his parents. He went to graduate school in urban planning where his thesis was on how impersonal modern high rise buildings ruined the historic old neighborhoods of the Muslim world.

That much is factual; as to why he became an extremist while countless others like him did not, we can only speculate. I imagine that once he decided modernity was the source of his personal dissatisfactions Al Qaeda would be attractive to him. Al Qaeda training provided structure which made interacting with his new "peers" easier than ever before. And martyrdom promised relief from the dissatisfactions of a life spent conscious of his own mediocrity. Altogether he was a miserable and twisted man -- but not economically miserable.

I forgot to ask

[fustakrakich]

Why is "business" in quotation marks? This is a business. Al-Qaeda and ISIS are brand names, just like DuPont and AT&T. Financed by big money from around the world. That would most likely include your favorite financial institution.

Re:When watching GI Joe

[mujadaddy]

And knowing is half the battle!

Sample questions

[Snotnose]

Al-Faruq has 12 sticks of dynamite in his vest. El-waqui has 4 packs of C4. They trade 3 sticks of dynamite for 1 pack of C4.
a) Did Al-Faruq's vest weight go up or down?
b) How many infidels can each send to hell when they're a martyr?

Awan-Afuqya and Al-Suq Aweenr can destroy 1,000 feet of priceless ancient artifacts in 3.5 hours. Awan-Afuqya alone takes 6 hours. How long would it take Al-Suq to do the job alone?

M'Ballz Es-Hari made 2 IEDs yesterday, and 3 IEDs today. How many IEDs does M'Ballz Es-Hari have?

Divide 80 infidels into 3 groups such that the second group will have twice as many as the first, and the third will have 5 less than the second.

Re:business of mass-murdering innocent people

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If anything, Al-Qaeda isn't actually in the mass-murder business.

They are a nasty bunch, treat civilian casualties as a feature not a bug, etc.; but they don't have nearly the resources or the direct combat assets; much less specialized infrastructure that must either be carefully hidden or sited in an area where you are the de-facto government, to do 'mass murder'.

They do terrorism: that tends to include a good deal of violence; but calibrated with an eye to maximum psychological impact, attacks on culturally salient targets, that sort of thing. In terms of straight body count, they rank well below more-or-less-strictly-business drug cartels, and even a fair percentage of the 21st century bush wars in countries that aren't interesting enough to even attract a few foreign correspondents; much less the sort of stuff that made the 20th century so notorious.

The numbers get a bit fuzzy because of the various more-and-less-actually-connected 'franchise' operators, some of which were actually collaborators to some reasonably close degree, some of which were little more than unrelated thugs with a taste for trademark infringement; but Al-Qaeda's body count just isn't that big. It's well weighted for psychological punch, lots of Americans in important buildings, fewer peasant conscripts in ethniclashistan; but in absolute numbers? Chickenshit. ISIS and Boko Haram are almost certainly well ahead; and let's not even talk about how quickly the professionals working for established nation states can stack up bodies...

Brought to you by dice.com

[linebackn]

This story has been brought to you by your dice.com overloads.

Which makes it even more disturbing...

Wonder that the health benefits are like. :P

Re:Benefits

[Tablizer]

Actually, the fine print would probably resemble: "You will receive stated number of virgins in the afterlife, but Al-Qaeda and its affiliates cannot guarantee the quality, skill, sexual preference, or the species of the virgins. Nor do we offer substitutions."

Re:business of mass-murdering innocent people

[KGIII]

Beer and circuses my friend. It appears you know this, which is good. Today it is televised sports and beer. Circuses are not so common any more but the result is the same. A lethargic and mostly satisfied or entertained populace does not seem to inspect or criticize their government (or those who have power over them) nearly as much as a disenfranchised group with neither satisfaction or entertainment.

Re: EVEN ***MORE*** BULLSHIT

[garyisabusyguy]

Doctors? Hardly

Mohammad Sidique Khan: aged 30, worked as 'learning mentor' in a primary school for immigrant children

Shehzad Tanweer: aged 22, worked part time at his father's fish and chips shop

Germaine Lindsay: aged 19, worked part-time as a carpet fitter and supplemented his income by selling covers for mobile phones at a local market

Hasib Hussain: aged 18, a recently graduated student who was living with in-laws and had a recent arrest for shoplifting

I Applied

[BlackHawk-666]

I applied, but the recruiter insisted I already have five years experience in suicide bombing before he could get me a decent placement.