THEY look like ordinary discs, familiar to any computer user, music lover or film buff. Yet the unmarked CDs circulating among Islamic militants across the Arab world make grim viewing. They show suicide bombers preparing for their missions and carrying them out.

“Give away the martyr to his second home in heaven, give away the martyr with his wounds, blood and clothes,” sings a group of masked men in one CD obtained by The Sunday Times.

Moments later a smiling young suicide bomber waves goodbye to his friends and drives off to explode a car bomb next to a US convoy in Mosul, northern Iraq.

Compiled as both memorials and recruitment tools, the CDs capture the numbing conviction of the suicide bombers that they are working for God and will be rewarded in heaven. They form part of an expanding high-tech terrorist network that is trying to turn the bombers into heroes.

US officials have identified a growing list of Arabic internet websites that chart the lives, families and final murderous attacks of at least 200 suicide bombers. Officials believe that Al-Qaeda and other groups — notably Abu Musab alZarqawi’s jihadist insurgents in Iraq —— are using the CDs and websites to honour and recruit “martyrs”.

“You’d think that seeing a suicide bombing might have a deterrent effect on future volunteers,” said one military officer who has viewed the CDs. “But these guys see only the heavenly glory, with their pictures on everyone’s television.”

In another disc circulated recently two unnamed suicide bombers are seen smiling and chatting to their masked friends amid animated discussion of “martyrdom”. Their “heavenly rewards” include the attention of Houri el-Ein, a celestial virgin.

“Give away the martyr to the Houri in heaven,” the men sing as they hug and pat the bombers on the back. The bombers then climb into an explosives-laden vehicle and wave as they drive away. The last shots show the lorry blowing itself into a huge orange fireball close to another US convoy.

A senior US officer said last week that there had been 21 car bombs in Baghdad this month, compared with 25 in the whole of last year. In the past two weeks more than 400 people have died in almost 80 insurgent attacks.

So determined are the car bombers to reach their targets that some have their hands taped to the steering wheel and a foot taped to the accelerator in case US forces shoot them dead as they approach.

The upsurge in Iraqi violence has shocked Pentagon officials, who had hoped that it was on the wane after the comparative success of the elections earlier this year. General John Abizaid, US commander in the Middle East, admitted that Iraqi security forces were “behind” in their efforts to take over from the coalition. A senior officer in Baghdad was quoted as saying that the coalition effort in Iraq “could still fail”.

Leading the threat to the coalition effort is the seemingly inexhaustible supply of suicide bombers from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other Arab nations. Desperate to know how and why the militants are recruiting so successfully, US military and intelligence agents have been scrutinising radical Islamic websites.

The roster of dead on one website includes 415 names, among them a kung fu champion from Jordan who supposedly told his parents that he was going to a martial arts tournament. The names include Saudi university students, newlyweds and an employee of the Kuwaiti defence department who resigned and headed across the border to Iraq. The aim of all these volunteers was to “purge the Islamic land of American infidels, to achieve martyrdom and a place in heaven”.

One website tells of parents who were unaware that their sons were in Iraq until they received a telephone call announcing their deaths. Some websites list families’ phone numbers for other militants to call with congratulations.

In one case the mother of Mohammed al-Shumari dreamt that her “martyred” son came to her naked and kissed her. She asked clerics for an explanation and was told that he had been accepted in heaven and appeared naked because he had been purified of all his sins.

Some entries are blatant propaganda, notably an account of the Jordanian mother of Khaled bin Abdul Aziz, who is said to have visited her son’s grave in Iraq and demanded to see the body. When the bomber’s remains were dug up, the website said, “they were all surprised to find his body intact two months after burial and still smelling of incense and roses”.

Despite the improbability of a sweet-smelling afterlife, US officials fear that the propaganda offensive is having an effect. Nobody in Washington expects an early end to the wave of suicide bombings.

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