[Mb-civic] Al Queda Rising

Thu Oct 7 12:59:09 PDT 2004

Al Qaeda Rising 

By Owais Tohid, Christian Science Monitor
 Posted on October 7, 2004, Printed on October 7, 2004
 http://www.alternet.org/story/20107/

After leaving university, Atta-ur Rehman traded his jeans and T-shirts for a
beard and cap, his civil service aspirations for a martyr's spot in heaven.

He used to spend his time playing cricket, but he is now in a Pakistani jail
facing a death sentence on terrorism charges. Mr. Rehman, along with nine
other "comrades," is charged with carrying out a deadly June attack against
a senior Pakistani Army general in Karachi. The general escaped narrowly but
10 people, including seven soldiers, were killed.

Rehman's circle call themselves Jundullah (God's Army) and have close ties
to al Qaeda. Most are young, educated men, whom Rehman allegedly sent to
training camps in Pakistan's remote tribal areas.

Rehman doesn't fit the mold of the typical al Qaeda leader. Traditionally,
most were Arabs who gained status by resisting the Russians in Afghanistan
in the 1980s. Younger, educated recruits tapped for suicide missions like
9/11 typically came from Middle Eastern countries with long histories of
pan-Islamic resistance. What sets this new breed apart is that they are
joining from places like Pakistan, where the focus has been on regional
grievances, like independence for the disputed area of Kashmir. But as the
al Qaeda leadership ranks begin to thin, men like Rehman are starting to
climb the ladder.

"It is a new generation of al Qaeda," says Riffat Hussain, a leading defense
and security analyst based in Islamabad, Pakistan. "These are new converts
to al Qaeda. They may have no links with al Qaeda in the past, but now they
are willing to sacrifice their lives for the cause as they feel al Qaeda is
the name of defiance to the West. They are young and angry, and their number
has swelled in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq."

A voice on an audiotape last weekend, purported to be that of Ayman
al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, called on young Muslims to continue
the global fight even if al Qaeda's leaders are killed or captured. It is
people like Rehman and his colleagues that Mr. Zawahiri could have been
talking about.

Police here suggest that Pakistan's newly organized jihadis and educated
radicals might number in the hundreds. Police say that more than 600
suspected al Qaeda militants have been rounded up by security forces over
the past three years.

Two Types of Recruits

Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, the 28-year-old known as al Qaeda's computer man,
is among them. A middle-class engineering graduate, Khan is believed to have
played an important role in planning terrorist attacks in the U.S. and
Britain before he was arrested in Lahore on July 13.

Khan visited Afghanistan during his student days and later became a bridge
between al Qaeda leaders and their operatives. He helped al Qaeda operatives
send encrypted messages over the Internet.

"His journey to al Qaeda started from outside a mosque in his Karachi
neighborhood where he met extremists," says his old friend named Khurram. He
watched his friend's transformation but "never imagined that he would become
such a man."

Under interrogation, Khan exposed part of al Qaeda's intricate web of
contacts in Pakistan, Britain, and the U.S. The information led to the July
arrest of Tanzanian terror suspect Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and a top al Qaeda
operative, Musa el Hindi, in Britain.

"There are two types of recruits," says a senior Pakistani counterterrorism
investigator. "There are Islamist-educated young men from middle-class and
upper middle-class families whose feelings are ignited in Islamic
congregations at private houses, mosques and madrassahs and are subsequently
picked up by al Qaeda men from there," he says. "Then there are jihadis who
were trained by Arabs and Taliban in Afghanistan and have now been
approached by al Qaeda operatives or their trusted extremists."

Drawn From Local Ranks

Some of the jihadis are drawn from the ranks of local militant
organizations, including Al-Badr (backed by the extremist religious party
Jamaat-e-Islami), the Kashmiri outfits Harakat-ul Mujahideen and Jaish-e
Mohammad, and the Sunni group Lashkar-e Jhangvi. Most of these groups have,
until recently, focused their energies on Kashmir or sectarian conflicts.

The new independent splinter groups are small, receive funding from al
Qaeda, and attack Western targets using tactics like suicide bombings  once
unheard of in Pakistan. Investigators in Karachi say several such groups of
around 10 members each are operating in the city alone.

"They [al Qaeda] are mostly banking on local jihadis," says one police
investigator. "They themselves don't want to be seen on the ground as they
don't feel safe, so they rely on these brainwashed jihadis."

To recruit, al Qaeda leaders or operatives rely on trusted contacts,
preferably people who have fought with Arabs or have been trained by them,
says a senior Karachi police investigator. The go-between appoints a group
of leaders, who in turn hires the services of members and assigns tasks
mostly on the instructions coming from the go-between. For the jihadis, the
work can be lucrative  they are paid $170 to $340 a month.

Amjad Farooqi, a top militant reportedly killed by security forces Sunday,
was a main recruiter. A veteran of the Afghan resistance in the early 1990s,
he linked up with al Qaeda operatives following Sept. 11, 2001. Security
forces arrested some 10 suspected al Qaeda-linked Pakistani militants
following the interrogation of two arrested accomplices of Mr. Farooqi.

The rise of splinter groups has made the task of investigators much more
difficult. The police recently recovered a booklet of instructions from a
jihadi in the wake of ongoing crackdowns.

"Don't roam around with beard and Islamic dress in fashionable
neighborhoods," read the instructions. "Always take out the chip of the
mobile [phone] while sleeping to avoid being caught. Use mobile [phone] from
a crowded place so police don't locate the positioning. Don't write the
original numbers of mujahids in a notebook, try to memorize the last three
digits."

To bolster secrecy, group members do not know the real names of their
comrades, and only group leaders know the whereabouts of other members, says
a police official. Suicide bombers are mostly young and usually live and
operate separately, he adds.

'The Battle is On'

The growing influence of militant groups within the law enforcement agencies
has also set alarm bells ringing. Three policemen acted as suicide bombers
in the Shiite mosques in Karachi and Quetta. Several low-ranking personnel
from the armed forces were arrested for their alleged involvement in the
foiled assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf.

"It is difficult to monitor the profiles of these new recruits and the new
groups," says Karachi police chief Tariq Jameel. "If we want to defeat them
then there is a need of collective effort from the entire society to
eliminate terrorism and extremism. They are chasing us and we are chasing
them. The battle is on."