The pandemic could turn terror networks into ‘super-spreaders.’
The shadowy alliance between Iran and the Taliban has killed countless American soldiers over the years. But Iran exported more than just IEDs and training to Afghanistan. The social problems of the Islamic dictatorship traveled along the same highways as the IEDs. But they didn’t kill Americans.
Iran has a huge meth problem. Now, so does Afghanistan.
Under President Trump, the United States has begun bombing Taliban meth labs as the junior Islamic terror regime in Afghanistan began imitating the meth export business of its big brother in Iran. But when Islamic republics get into the drug business, it’s their own people who get addicted to the stuff.
Iran’s coronavirus outbreak, like its meth crisis, has also been exported to its good friends, the Taliban.
The virus crosses Shiite-Sunni barriers as seamlessly as it does international time zones. And the estimated 500,000 infected in Iran are translating into rising infections in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan wasn’t the only country to be infected by Iran. Americans were also infected by Iran.
The first confirmed case in New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, was a traveler who came from Iran. But Iran’s shared border with Afghanistan and the millions of Afghans living in Iran, as workers, religious students, and terrorists, makes the spread impossible to stop.
Iran has a huge Afghan population. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, 200,000 Afghans fled the disease-ridden terror state for their home terror state and brought the disease along with them.
And the Taliban are getting nervous.
The Islamic terrorist group had famously gone after health care workers as part of a joint bid with Islamist allies in Pakistan fighting against the polio vaccine. But now the Taliban are promising not to kill health care workers and begging WHO to come back after previously banning the organization
“Our Mujahideen are helping the health workers to spread out the messages about the dangers of COVID-19,” a Taliban spokesman declared.
The Taliban’s General Commission for Public Health has issued bulletins advising Afghans to resist the virus by wearing masks, gloves, eating Vitamin C, and Halal foods. Taliban fighters have begun detaining and quarantining Afghans coming back from Iran. While the Taliban’s official position is that the coronavirus was sent by “Allah” because of the “sins of mankind” which is to be fought by reading the Koran, its willingness to embrace western medicine, from test kits to PPEs, shows it’s worried.
In an unprecedented move for an Islamic organization that had murdered vaccine aid workers and treated medicine as a conspiracy against its regime, the Taliban is telling supporters that, “safety guidelines issued by health organizations, doctors and other health experts must be observed.”
In a further sign that its leadership fears that the virus might spread to its Jihadists and decimate their ranks, a Taliban spokesman announced that, “If, Allah forbid, the outbreak happens in an area where we control the situation then we will stop fighting in that area.”
What really has the Taliban so worried?
The Islamic terror movement has Iran as a cautionary example. Like Communist China, Iran lied to its people about the scope of the outbreak. Its death tolls and case numbers are equally unreliable.
Iran caught the pandemic from China. Both regimes chose to maintain open access as part of their alliance. Instead of protecting its people, the Iranian leadership prioritized its relations with the PRC. While the Iranian regime continued lying to its people, it was carefully taking precautions to protect its leadership, including its 80-year-old leader, even as the pandemic was quietly spreading across Iran.
Officially there was no coronavirus outbreak in Iran. In reality, it was burning through the country.
China’s dishonesty infected Iran and then Iran’s dishonesty infected Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia (the first confirmed fatality in that country was an Afghan), Syria, and spread outward to the United States.
Religious Islamic ties were behind the spread of the coronavirus to Iran with 700 Chinese students studying in seminaries in the Islamic sacred city of Qom identified as the source of the outbreak. Afghans returning from Qom, many of them fellow Shiites, then helped spread the disease into Afghanistan.
The IRGC, Iran’s terror hub, had been recruiting Afghan Shiites to fight in its wars, including in Syria. The Assad government has become an Iranian puppet and so failed to stop travel from Iran to Syria.
Iran needed China, Syria needed Iran, and the Taliban also need Iran. That’s how the virus spread.
The IRGC had provided the Taliban with IEDs, MANPADS, and political support in any “peace deal”. Despite the Taliban’s hostility to Shiites, the Sunni Islamist terror group was reliant on Iran, but it also had the inside information through its IRGC contacts of just how bad the situation in Iran really was.
That is what likely panicked the Taliban.
The pandemic has been at its worst in New York City’s dense urban grid. And at 27,000 people per square mile, it’s certainly dense. But Kabul, now under coronavirus lockdown, has 12,000 people per square mile. The Taliban would like to take Kabul, but they fear there may not be anything to take.
And the Taliban, like many Islamic terrorist groups, including ISIS, are worried that the virus spreading through the ranks of its fighters could be particularly deadly and cripple its terror campaign. If the virus gets into its training camps, then its entire force infrastructure could be badly compromised.
Even ISIS, which had been frantically urging foreign supporters to come and join the group to supplement its declining numbers, has asked them to stay away during the coronavirus crisis.
But the Taliban, despite being on track to take over the country from a conflicted government, can’t stop the flood of Afghans fleeing Iran and can’t sever its ties to the Islamic terror regime which has been training its Jihadists and providing it with weapons. And that’s why the Taliban are panicking.
While Iran has been happy to supply the Taliban with weapons to kill Americans, it’s not going to bail it out during a pandemic. Not when its own people are dying. If the Taliban needed any evidence of that, it comes from the Afghans in Iran who have come down with the coronavirus and been denied care.
And if the Taliban become infected, the next vector would be through the porous Pakistani border. Infected Afghans have already been detained trying to enter Pakistan, but the Taliban are interlinked with a variety of terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, as well as Pakistani and Chinese Islamists.
If the Taliban become ‘super-spreaders’, they could take down quite a few other terror groups.
The world’s Islamic terrorist pipeline begins in Iran, Qatar, Turkey, and Pakistan, and flows outward across the Middle East and Asia. Its interlinked nature, uniting unlikely allies like Iran and the Taliban, is uniquely vulnerable in a pandemic. A wide variety of Islamic terror groups have been trained in Iran, many then check into Qatari hotels, and make contacts with Islamists in Pakistani and Turkish cities.
These secret networks have proven resilient in the War on Terror, but are vulnerable to the coronavirus where every contact potentially compromises everyone whom he comes into contact with ad infinitum.
The network’s very circuitousness, its dependency on human contact across different countries, makes it the best ally of the pandemic. It’s no wonder that the Taliban, ISIS, and other Islamic terrorists are worried. Even as their political Islamist allies dismiss the threat, the Jihadists understand that the pandemic risks destroying the global infrastructure that makes Islamic terrorism an international threat.
Islamic terrorism is dependent on a handful of ‘backer’ countries, on couriers and training camps, and the coronavirus risks making the entire network of Islamic terrorism into a pandemic vector.
Mural says
May the worst fears of Taliban and ISIS come to pass.
If this happens, it might be the only silver lining in these dark times.
tom parry says
The feel good story of the day thanks
elee says
Muslims unleashed the Black Plague on the west following their deployment of it as a bioweapon at Caffa in 1346. They tried to repeat that a few years back at a jihadist base in Algeria, but it killed them before they could unleash it. And now I’ve read here, not once or twice, that they view the coronavirus as a horde of little soldiers of Allah, and urge the pious to self-infect and then infect kafirs.
Rarely says
Kindly provide your source for your assertion that muslims unleashed the Black Plague on Europe in the 14th Cent.
shortfattexan says
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/8/9/01-0536_article
gravenimage says
Rarely, Muslims did indeed use the corpses of those who had died of the Black Death as a weapon at the siege of Caffa in the Crimea in 1346–hurling the bodies into the besieged city. Many Genoese fled the city, heading for Italy. Plague hit Italy in the following year, and spread from there to the rest of Europe. This is well documented.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/8/9/01-0536_article
What is less certain is whether this was the only cause of the disease’s spread to Europe. There was also a lot of trade, and it may have also spread via commercial shipping.
J says
How would Shia and Sunni terrorist groups work together? Seriously I love you all and I know 99.999% of what you’re saying is true but can you please drop the Shiite and Sunni are working together?
gravenimage says
J, it is true that Sunnis and Shia hate and murder each other, but they hate Infidels even more. There is a long history of these two sects working together against Kufar, especially against the free West–including re 9/11. Now sure why you want Jihad Watch to stop reporting on this.
elee says
Sunni Turkey prefers to align itself with Shia Persia and against the Sunni regimes of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others.
gravenimage says
Also true, elee.
gravenimage says
Why the Coronavirus Poses a Unique Threat to Islamic Terrorists
………….
The Taliban must be worried if they are talking about temporarily suspending Jihad…
But doesn’t “Allah” tell them not to abandon killing in the way of Allah? What a dilemma for the pious murderers…
Ray Jarman says
+1
Anjuli Pandavar says
Daniel, “And if the Taliban become infected, the next vector would be through the porous Pakistani border. Infected Afghans have already been detained trying to enter Pakistan,”
—
In principle, this is correct. The cross-border progress of coronavirus infections is neither as linear, nor as dependent on the terror networks, as you describe. Islam itself short-circuits its own terror networks. The Tablighi Jamaat, as well as Pakistani students in Qom, for example, have already taken the virus into Pakistan, where thousands of Afghans work as menial labourers. Just last week, an estimated 5,000 Afghans rushed the border at Torkham, overwhelming the passport and quarantine controls and made for their homes all over Afghanistan. Afghanistan is being swamped with the coronavirus from west, south and east. Wherever the terror and drug networks should reach, they will find CoVID-19 already there.
Certainly, the Taliban are panicking, just as all Islamic terror outfits are, just as all Muslim governments are, just as the OIC is, just as the more intelligent “scholars” are, and just as lay Muslims are. No terror network carried the virus to Bangladesh; Tablighi Jamaat did. Bangladesh is in meltdown.
I think that the spread of the coronavirus through the Dar al-Islam is a complex interplay of various vectors: the understandable Muslim instinct to seek refuge in mosques and congregational closeness, especially if anyone should tell them not to (let’s not put too fine a point on it, these are *mediaeval people* — I was once one of them); their clergy and so-called scholars, from whose lips they hang, will be thundering every Friday about how crucial it is, now more than every, to stick together in the mosques for protection; the vast cross-border and internal movements of menial workers, the vast majority Muslim, set off by the various lockdowns; the movements of large numbers of clergy, both high and low, especially now that the call for their services is highest; and, of course, the terror networks. Hajj, it seems, will be cancelled, but the biggest bomb of all is yet to go off: Ramadan. And soon after that, the growing piles of bodies that no one will be able to bury. The Dar al-Islam is staring an apocalypse in the face.
Anjuli Pandavar says
Sorry, I forgot to mention. It’s great to read about how the coronavirus is affecting terrorist networks, especially their unshakeable conviction in their own invincibility. It amuses no end to see these bastards running scared. The coronavirus is Allah’s little black dogs.
J_not_a says
Haha, the once arrogant terrorist rats are running scared now! Looks good on ’em.
PaulH says
Guns,GERMS and Steel will crush Islamic terrorism.
gravenimage says
I wouldn’t count on it, sadly.
Gareth says
People are still guessing at the mortality rate among people infected with covid 19, but it’s unlikely to be more than 5% even with no medical treatment at all. It’s surprising that a bunch of fanatics would be getting so worried.
dhans says
The inclusion of the meth angle in the article is key. It has severe effects on immunity to disease.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4290678/
Nataraja says
WHO will send health workers and Doctors to Iran and Afganistan for cure with American funds ,once Iranis & Afganis become healthy ,they put bombs on America.
Kepha says
No, WHO won’t do anything that remotely helpful to human well-being. SOP for a UN bureaucracy is to dicker over the price of luxury hotel accommodations for their supervisory staff while, perhaps, some well-trained militaries get shelter and medications in place within a matter of days. Think the Indonesia Tsunami, in which the US, Australian, and Indonesian navies were up and running in Sumatra while UN agencies were dickering in Jakarta.
While Trump i not a man I’d like my sister (had I one) to marry should he tire of Melania (even if there’s the likelihood of large alimony payments later), he was absolutely right to cut off funding to WHO. WHO’s first order of business was to keep Taiwan diplomatically isolated, parrot Beijing’s lies about having the thing under control, and then to threaten the USA with body bags after Bejing threatened to hold up medical exports to us. Joke was on them when some of our own pharmaceutical industry restarts. Considering that Tedros Adhonom Gebreyesus was Beijing’s handpicked choice for his current sinecure, got his start as a minion of the Derg, covered up three outbreaks of cholera while Ethiopia’s health minister, and pushed close economic cooperation with China (for how much?) all goes to show that he is not the man for the job.
If Iran and Afghanistan’s Taliban-held areas are indeed still being infected, my guess is they’ll have to wait until human immune systems make the necessary adjusments.
drodom says
Exactly, Gareth!
The virus is highly contagious but the mortality is very low. It is higher only among people who avoid sunshine on skin, as in New York due to the need for winter clothing. “Vitamin” D3 prevents the illness. The darker the skin tone, the more sunshine onto the skin is required to raise levels of D3. Everyone will eventually receive the virus, but only the D3 deficient will become ill unto death.
gravenimage says
No, vitamin D3 does not prevent the Coronavirus.
And people in NYC get a lot of sun even during the winter (never mind that it is not winter now, in any case)–few cover up entirely. Generally the only ones with Vitamin D deficiency are Muslims in Burqas.
Now we have fools taking dangerous megadoses of vitamins in the hope of preventing the disease, which paradoxically may make them more vulnerable:
“Wellness influencers are telling followers potentially toxic doses of vitamins will protect them from the coronavirus”
https://www.businessinsider.com/wellness-influencers-say-near-lethal-vitamin-doses-prevent-coronavirus-2020-2
Anjuli Pandavar says
This just came out. Haven’t read it yet. Should be interesting: https://www.investigativeproject.org/8373/coronavirus-presents-a-formidable-challenge-to
OLD GUY says
Let them stew in their own pot. Wasn’t aware of the meth issue in Iran and Afghanistan, I would imagine that meth user may have a weakened immune system, so the C-19 virus will hit them hard. What a shame their Allah may fail them in killing infidels and devastate islamic followers instead.
Francis Weber says
IED in their lungs, you beauty!
don vito says
What a wonderful post Mr, Greenfield, it does give a kufr hope. The koran followers are really going to piss allah off, because allah knows believers are going to imitate kufr. Don’t Imitate kufr if you want to live, saracens trust in allah.