"We were deeply saddened by what we saw in that video," said Maj Jagran Akhtar of the Afghan National Army, through an interpreter to a seated crowd of young Marines. "Here were the United States Marines, who claimed to be the most professional fighting force in the world, and yet they did not even know how to properly desecrate an enemy corpse."
Akhtar then looked down and slowly shook his head. "I mean, they could have cut the nuts off and put them in the corpses' mouths, or even just thrown them on a pile of burning tires. But then, that is why we are here today...to share what we know with our friends the Marines," continued Akhtar, smiling broadly.
Major Akhtar is the officer in charge of the Afghan National Army's first Desecration Trainer Team, or DTT, tasked with teaching American military personnel proper Afghan body-defiling techniques. Every day, Marines eager to learn more about Afghanistan's rich culture of desecrating enemy corpses gather around Akhtar, a veteran of Afghanistan's 1980s war with the Soviet Union, to listen to his tricks of the trade from over 30 years of experience.
"Hanging a body from something and dousing it in petroleum, then setting it on fire -- this is your safe zone. When in doubt, you can always get back to basics with that. And really, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. Much of what you do will simply be devising subtle variations on this one basic theme."
