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Unconscious Chechen Attacks on the "Mother"

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Unconscious Chechen Attacks on the The Maternal Drama of the Chechen Jihadi NANCY HARTEVELT KOBRIN, Ph.D. Copyright © 2014 Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin e-Book Copyright © 2014 International Psychotherapy Institute All Rights Reserved This e-book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. This e-book is intended for personal use only. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be used in any commercial manner without express permission of the author. Scholarly use of quotations must have proper attribution to the published work. This work may not be deconstructed, reverse engineered or reproduced in any other format. Created in the United States of America For information regarding this book, contact the publisher: International Psychotherapy Institute E-Books 301-215-7377 6612 Kennedy Drive Chevy Chase, MD 20815-6504 www.freepsychotherapybooks.org [email protected] THE CHECHEN NATIONAL ANTHEM Death or Freedom We were born at night when the she-wolf whelped, In the morning, to lion's deafening roar, they named us There is no god but Allah In eagles' nests our mothers nursed us, To tame wild bulls our fathers taught us. There is no god but Allah Our mothers raised us to dedicate ourselves to our Nation and our Homeland, And if our nation needs us we're ready to fight the oppressive hand. There is no god but Allah We grew up free as eagles, princes of the mountains. There is no threshold from which we will shy away. There is no god but Allah Sooner will cliffs of granite begin to melt like molten lead, Than any one of us shall lose our honor in life's struggles. There is no god but Allah Sooner shall the Earth be swallowed up by the broiling sun, Than we emerge from a trial in life without our honor! There is no god but Allah Never to bow our heads to anyone, we give our sacred pledge, To die or to live in freedom is our fate. There is no god but Allah Our sisters heal our brothers' bloody wounds with their songs, Lovers' eyes will supply the strength of arms. There is no god but Allah If hunger weaken us, we'll gnaw on the roots of trees, And if thirst debilitates us, we'll drink the dew from the grass. There is no god but Allah For we were born at night when the she-wolf whelped. We pledge our lives to God, Nation and Vainakh homeland. There is no god but Allah IN MEMORY OF Brendan Mess, Erik Weissman, Raphael Teken Murdered on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in Waltham, Massachusetts Krystle Marie Campell, Lu Lingzi, Martin William Richard Murdered on April 15, 2013 in Boston Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Officer Sean Collier Murdered on April 18, 2013 and For the 95% of Chechen, Dagestan, Ingushetian and Russian people who wish to live in peace TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ......................................................................................... 8 About the Author ........................................................................................... 10 Introduction .................................................................................................... 13 1 The Shame–Honor Culture As Cauldron of The Volcanic Iceberg Mentality .................................................................................. 41 2 The Unconscious Terror of the Female and Her Body ............ 116 3 The Maternal Cameo: An Icon of Fusion and Violent Attachment ............................................................................................ 142 4 Unconscious Chechen Attacks on the "Mother" ........................ 169 5 The Family Tsarnaev and the Twinship of Terror .................... 211 6 The Chechenization of Jihad: The Crossover Effect ................. 294 Conclusion The Female as Lynchpin in Stopping the Violence 324 Appendix A .....................................................................................................30 Appendix B .....................................................................................................34 Bibliography ..................................................................................................36 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my friend and colleague Dr. Joan Jutta Lachkar for her motivation and insights. She was the inspiration behind my making the initial contact with International Psychotherapy Institute e-books' publisher, Jay Aronson, M.D. I wish to thank him for encouraging me to pursue the concept of the maternal platform for terrorism studies. Special tribute and thanks to Anonymous, whose help and concern for the Chechen people and whose contribution made this book more informative. His correspondence was a gift. Again I owe a debt of gratitude to the fine mind, eye, and editing of Joanne Freeman, who helped this book see the light of day. I also am immensely grateful to my former doctoral student Dr. David Van Dyke for his help and friendship. He coined the phrase “maternal drama” to characterize the jihadi dependency on the mother. My life partner, Professor Yitzhak Reiter—chair of Land of Israel Studies at Ashkelon Academic College and senior researcher at the Truman Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies—has been of immeasurable help. He is one of Israel's leading authorities on the Arab minority, and I could not have written this book without his wisdom, support, kindness, and love— although I take full responsibility for any errors it contains. Finally, special thanks to my children and grandchildren for their love, support, and the joy they bring to my life. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst and counterterrorist expert. She is a fellow of the American Center for Democracy and has a doctorate in comparative literature, specializing in translation theory, semiotics and aljamía, Old Spanish in Arabic script, focusing on Islam and Hadith. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Spanish and Portuguese, which she studied in Mexico, Brazil, and Portugal. She also studied Hebrew, receiving a Bachelors of Judaic Studies prior to her doctoral work. Her post-doctoral work included training at the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis, where she became the first woman from the Upper Midwest with a doctorate in a non- medical field to graduate from the Institute. At the same time, Dr. Kobrin was appointed director of graduate studies for the department of comparative literature and also taught Jewish Studies. In the 1980s she independently began to focus on the psychological mindset of the terrorist, drawing from her own "internal terrorist.” After the train attacks in Madrid, she presented (in Spanish) to the Madrid police. She has also presented to NATO, as well as to law enforcement and military in Sri Lanka, throughout the United States, England, and Israel. Because of her expertise in this field, she was invited to conduct interviews with Somali prisoners, which led to her becoming a specialist on Somali culture. After 9/11 the U.S. Army at Fort Leonard Wood asked Dr. Kobrin to help them understand the relationship between the devalued female in Arab Muslim shame-honor culture and the spawning of Islamic suicide terrorism. Her analytic training allowed her to develop a theory for the suicide attack that explained its unconscious derivatives within the scope of the family. This was published in her 2010 book, The Banality of Suicide Terrorism, available from Potomac. The Hebrew translation appeared in 2013 with a forward written by professor emeritus Gideon Kressel, one of Israel's leading experts on the Bedouins. Her second book, Penetrating the Terrorist Psyche, published in 2013 and available at multieducator.com, explains the importance of early childhood development and expounds on the onset of terrorism as it occurs during maternal attachment and bonding. It focuses on the interlocking links of domestic violence, domestic terrorism, and political violence. Dr. Kobrin is a graduate of the Human Terrain System program in Leavenworth, Kansas. Dr. Kobrin immigrated to Israel in 2010, where she lives with her partner, Professor Yitzhak Reiter, one of Israel's leading authorities on the Arab minority. Together they have eight grandchildren. INTRODUCTION The aim of this book is to demystify terrorist behavior from a psychoanalytic perspective for the lay public, the military, law enforcement, as well as therapists who may have difficulty understanding how terrorism works. It sheds light on the combustible combination of factors inherent in being raised in a shame-honor culture and religion. Its intent is to help readers understand terrorist behavior using the tools and insights drawn from psychoanalysis. This knowledge will facilitate better and earlier interventions for terrorism rather than feed the existing cycle of violence. In this book I use the phrase volcanic iceberg mentality to describe the behavior of the Chechen jihadi in general and the Tsarnaev brothers in particular. In Iceland the icebergs have active volcanoes beneath them, with the potential to make a global impact on the environment.1 I appropriate this image as a metaphor for Chechen jihadis, who appear cold as ice, while simultaneously lurking below the surface is a violent, murderous personality that is undetectable to the untrained eye. The volcanic iceberg mentality is a narrative descriptor of the Chechen jihadis' lack of empathy; their obsession with warrior weaponry, fire, and rage; and their murder and maiming of 1 J. O’Brien. New Icelandic volcano eruption could have global
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