Surprise, mom! I'm fighting for the Taliban

Catholic family in San Francisco suburbs shocked to see son captured in Afghanistan

By DOUG SAUNDERS
Tuesday, December 4, 2001 – Page A1

LOS ANGELES -- Teenage rebellion is something of an industry in the San Francisco Bay area, but John Walker's case is extreme even by local standards: It's not every kid who becomes a PoW in a holy war against his own country.

Somehow this 20-year-old, a shy, skinny Irish Catholic kid who went to high school in the plush northern suburbs of San Francisco, transformed himself into an Islamic holy warrior, a member of an elite branch of the Taliban known as Answar (the helpers), personally trained by Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Walker had disappeared from family and friends for months until Saturday, when TV cameras picked up images of a bearded, grimy Taliban warrior being pulled from a besieged prison fortress near Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan.

He had fought at the siege of Kunduz and surrendered along with hundreds of other fighters. Among the 86 Taliban who had somehow survived a violent prisoner revolt and subsequent bombing, shelling, burning and flooding of the fortress a week ago was a smiling, pale man who called himself Abdul Hamid.

He was born John Phillip Walker, and the fact he had become a Taliban fighter came as quite the surprise to his parents in the prosperous suburb of San Anselmo.

His transformation began three years ago with a typical moment of youthful radicalism, when, at 17, he read the autobiography of Malcolm X and announced to his parents that he wanted to become a Muslim scholar. They figured it was a phase.

"It was clear he had developed a different point of view," Mr. Walker's father, a lawyer named Frank Lindh, said in an interview yesterday.

Mr. Lindh supported his son's new beliefs, even after he dropped out of high school to study at a local mosque, even when he made repeated trips to Yemen and Pakistan, ostensibly to study religion.

But Mr. Walker had not just been studying Arabic language and interpretations of the Koran.

Impressed with Afghanistan's fundamentalist movements during a visit, he joined the Taliban's elite foreign corps

The last his parents had heard, Mr. Walker was studying the Koran in Bannu, Pakistan.

Then he appeared on the television news.

"I was a student in Pakistan, studying Islam and came into contact with many people connected with Taliban," Mr. Walker said in a TV interview yesterday.

He was being held by U.S. forces in northern Afghanistan, with gunshot wounds to both legs.

Mr. Walker said he had become a "jihadi" and he was fighting for a pure Islamic state. He told reporters he had fought in Kashmir before joining the Taliban.

This is all more than a little surprising for his mother, who watched it all on TV in California. She believes that her son must have been out of his senses. "If he got involved with the Taliban he must have been brainwashed," she said. It is unclear where Mr. Walker's fate lies. As a U.S. citizen fighting with an enemy in war, he could be charged with treason, which carries a maximum penalty of death.

His parents just want to see their errant son. While they say they have no sympathy for the cause he has apparently embraced, they still say they are impressed with his dedication to Islam and his scholarly prowess. "I'm proud of John," Mr. Lindh said yesterday. "He's a really good boy. A really sweet boy."

[ December 04, 2001: Message edited by: Tahna Los ]

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A case against Walker "would be a tricky thing to prosecute because the Constitution requires two eyewitnesses to the act of treason," University of North Carolina law professor Eric Muller said. "I would think somebody in the Justice Department will have to take a very careful look at this." Also, President Bush's military tribunals are limited to foreign nationals, not U.S. citizens.

Another possible avenue would be to charge American Taliban fighters with seditious conspiracy, which has a lower standard of proof. That's one of the charges that radical Islamic cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman, who plotted to blow up New York City landmarks, was convicted on in 1995. One of Abdel-Rahman's sons was captured while fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

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The differences here are that 1) The Taliban is not a country or government, but maintains its tax-exempt status as a religious group with guns. Theres some issue with exactly how to treat the POW's legal status. The 'foreign Taliban' are in the middle of this mess.
2) We have no idea what he thought he was doing. If he was incommunicado and thought he was fighting homeland infidels like the Northern Alliance, he could find himself a ticket home. Not likely though.
And besides .. how stupid was that. He'd quickly find himself a casualty, a paler-skinned than usual footnote in some really pointless middle eastern war that wasnt really on its way to solving anything about the muslim world. He'd have been better off taking an Islam studies course at the learning annex, i think.

"'I'm proud of John,' Mr. Lindh said yesterday. 'He's a really good boy. A really sweet boy.'"

The key word here is action. To truly commit treason, you have to take action against something. If I disagree with, or refuse to support a country's policies, it's not treason. If I disagree with their policies and help the people that are trying to overrun them, it is.

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I'm forced to wonder why fucked-up people's parents never seem to be able to admit that their children are fucked up...?

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There is of course absolutely no way this kid isn't fucked up.

"Everyone should want to be in the Federation!" - Eddington.

[ December 05, 2001: Message edited by: Mojo Jojo ]