Free Jack Idema Blogburst

Each time I write about the plight of Jack Idema,
the U.S. Special Forces soldier illegally imprisoned in Afghanistan along
with his right-hand man, Brent Bennet,
and Emmy award-winning journalist, Ed Caraballo,
I'm conscious that I haven't really talked, in detail, about Jack's
relationship with the Afghan troops he trained and fought alongside.
There are two, conflicting, accounts of Jack's involvement with the
Afghan military:

• The official line is that Idema was a freelancer;
  a mercenary hunting Islamopaths for the bounties on their heads who had
  no official standing in either the U.S. or Afghan military. This was
  the U.S. Government's position at the time of Idema's first trial in
  September 2004. It was also the position of the Karzai government in
  Afghanistan.
• Jack Idema, of course, tells a very different story,
  stating that he was working as a military advisor to the Northern
  Alliance, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with these men as they hunted down
  Islamopaths, not for reward money, but out of patriotism.

Clearly,
both these accounts can't be correct. And, clearly, war-zones around
the world are filled with various adventurers, mercenaries and
bounty hunters. This is the reason why MSM's claims to have never heard
of Idema prior to his arrest in 2004 are so damaging -- They add
credence to the U.S. and Afghan governments' assertion that Jack was a
rogue-operator, and, effectively, deflect interest from the case. After all,
there's a big difference between imprisoning a mercenary serving
himself and imprisoning a U.S. soldier serving his country.
It's for this reason those of us involved in the campaign to see
justice done in this case are so keen to stress both Jack's past military record and the duplicitous
nature of big media, which first reported on the work Idema was
doing in Afghanistan, then denied all knowledge of him a year later.
To settle this, however, the Free Jack campaign doesn't have to rely on
self-serving journalists and government mouthpieces -- We can actually
call on the testimony of people Jack Idema fought alongside in the
battle to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. These are the men of
the Northern Alliance (properly, the United Front), and to understand
how they fit into Jack Idema's story, it's necessary to understand a
little of their long and honourable history defending Afghanistan from Her
enemies.
Much of this success can be attributed to one person, Commander Ahmad
Shah Massoud. Though sneeringly described as a 'warlord' by MSM, Massoud
was actually a highly educated and moderate man who believed
passionately that the future of Afghanistan should be both democratic and free of
fanaticism. Fortunately for the Afghan people, Massoud was also a
military genius, responsible for inflicting a staggering 60% of the total
casualties suffered by the Red Army during the Soviet occupation.
After the Russians were expelled, Massoud set up democratic rule in the
regions of Afghanistan his forces controlled, spending the remaining
years of his life struggling to remove first the murderous Hekmatyar,
then the Taliban, from power.
You can read about Massoud's life here, but what
must be understood about this remarkable man is that he, as well as
those who followed him, are exactly the kind of people we need on our side
in the WOT.
Here's Massoud on democracy:

The future government should be
formed through elections by the people. Men and women should take part.
The only form of government, which can balance the different
ethnicities, is democracy.

And, again, here's Massoud's reaction to
the Taliban's demand that he leave Afghanistan after they seized
power:

Is it just that when we were in Kabul leading the country,
when we had the people's consent, we promised to protect them, to defend
our independence and to take care of Afghanistan and its people and now
that these people are in great danger we would leave them? Is this
really justice? I do not think it is justified. I will stay in this country
until my last breath and resist. I am convinced that, God willing,
Afghanistan one day will be free.

Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panjsher, was assassinated by
al-Qaeda suicide bombers on 9th September, 2001.
Two weeks after that Jack Idema arrived in Afghanistan. He, and
hundreds of other Special Forces soldiers, were under orders from coalition
leaders to train and equip Northern Alliance forces in order to remove
the Taliban. This, of course, was exactly the sort of work that Idema
specialised in -- After stints in Haiti, El Salvador, Thailand and
Lithuania, he was one of the most capable men in the world at pulling ragged,
ill-equipped armies together into crack fighting units. You can read
press reports archived at SuperPatriots which detail some of the work
Jack did with the Northern Alliance here, here, and here, but
this is only part of the story.

See, although MSM were chiefly interested in Idema during 2001, the
Northern Alliance troops he trained and served alongside for three years
deserve a hearing too. They're brave soldiers, most of whom have spent
their whole adult lives fighting for a free and democratic Afghanistan.
What's more, several of them were tortured, tried and imprisoned
alongside Jack, Brent and Ed in September 2004.
One of these men, Major Ezmerai Amin, has this to say about Idema and
the state of Afghanistan
under Karzai:

Commander Massoud was right. But Massoud
told us to follow his way, and I have dedicate my life to follow the way
of Massoud because to save my country and the world. And my commander
has too. This is why our people follow Jack, because he follow
Massoud's way. One time when I was still in Pulacharke I was very sad, and I
said to Jack, fuck Massoud, because we follow Massoud's way we are in
prison. Then Jack remind to me that Massoud would never give up, he
would keep to fight to make real freedom not freedom only for the rich
people. We talked about how Massoud would not allow a road to be built to
his village until all the country had roads. But this government, they
buy rich cars and build roads to their villages while people are still
starving and with no doctors.

Major Amin, like the other
Afghans imprisoned with Jack, was released after their case went to
appeal a year ago -- Jack, Brent and Ed should have been freed at that point
too, but the U.S. State Department and FBI put pressure on the Karzai
government to illegally continue their detention. What's worth noting,
though, is that Major Amin pays Jack Idema the highest complement he can
-- He compares him to Massoud, modern Afghanistan's greatest hero.
Then there's Lieutenant
'Zorro' Rasuli:

Actually, Jack took me with him for just one
month from General Atta, but I don't know why he trust his life, his
power, and everything on me, but I can say one thing; after the death of
our leader Commander Massoud he will now be my commander on the rest of
my life, and in any place I'm waiting for his orders.

Zorro means this. After he was released along with the other Afghans
convicted with Idema, he elected to remain in prison until his three American
compatriots are free.

So, question: if Idema were nothing more than a mercenary out to make a
quick buck, why is it that he inspires such loyalty among Northern
Alliance troops? The answer to this one should be obvious -- The Afghan
soldiers Idema trained and fought with see, in him, a similar commitment
to rid the world of terrorism as the one they feel.
Here's New Yorker writer, Jon Lee Anderson, offering us an insight into
how this camaraderie played out during the war to remove the Taliban from
power:

On the way down the mountain, Jack, who was armed and wearing full
combat regalia, clambered onto one of the mujahideen tanks with a tin of
white paint and a brush. He wrote, "N.Y.P.D." on the tank's green steel
carapace. The mujahideen smiled obligingly and asked to borrow his
paint. In lacy Farsi script they added the words "Dear Massoud, we will
follow your way."

Right now, three of men who fought that war
are stuck in prison at the behest of the State Department. Meanwhile,
just this week, President Karzai begged Taliban
scumbag-in-chief Mullah Omar to 'get in touch if he wanted peace'.

It's difficult, not to conclude that something's going badly wrong with
a war in which we offer amnesty to the chief architects of 9/11, while
imprisoning the men who risked their lives to bring these animals to
justice.

So what can we do? Well, anyone reading this with their own blog can
sign up for the weekly Free Jack Idema Blogburst by
emailing Cao or Rottweiler Puppy for details.
I'd urge everyone to do this, as we're still terribly short on takers. If
you want to know more about the story, Cao's Blog has a large section
devoted to Jack Idema. There's also a
timeline here, and, of course, a huge amount of information is
available over at SuperPatriots,
without whose work none of us would have learned about Jack's story.

Finally, PLEASE NOTE: The SuperPatriots and Jack images on this site are used with WRITTEN
COPYRIGHT PERMISSION and any use by any third party is subject to legal action
by SuperPatriots.US

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