In a sobering story, Newsweek claims that al Qaeda is using its new playpen of North Waziristan in the tribal area of Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan to train a small group of Westerners to lead attacks in their homelands.
For the past year, a secret has been slowly spreading among Taliban commanders in Afghanistan: a 12-man team of Westerners was being trained by Al Qaeda in Pakistan for a special mission. Most of the Afghan fighters could rely only on hearsay, but some told of seeing the "English brothers" (as the foreign recruits were nicknamed for their shared language) in person. One eyewitness, a former Guantánamo detainee with close Taliban and Qaeda ties, spoke to NEWSWEEK recently in southern Afghanistan, demanding anonymity because he doesn't want the Americans looking for him. He says he met the 12 recruits in November 2005, at a mud-brick compound near the North Waziristan town of Mir Ali. That was as much as the tight-lipped former detainee would divulge, except to mention that Adam Yahiye Gadahn, the notorious fugitive "American Al Qaeda," was with the brothers, presumably as an interpreter.
Another Afghan had more to say on the subject. Omar Farooqi is the nom de guerre of a former provincial intelligence chief for the Taliban; he now serves as the Taliban's chief Qaeda liaison for Ghazni province, in eastern Afghanistan. He says he spent roughly five weeks this past year helping to indoctrinate and train a class of foreign recruits near the Afghan border in tribal Waziristan, and among his students were the English brothers. The 12 included two Norwegian Muslims and an Australian, along with nine British subjects, says Farooqi. Their mission, Farooqi told NEWSWEEK, will be to act as underground organizers and operatives for Al Qaeda in their home countries—and their yearlong training course is just about finished.
U.S. and British security agencies have known this threat would come sooner or later. While saying he could not confirm the English brothers' case specifically, a spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office (unnamed as a matter of standard policy) calls it "common knowledge" that jihadist recruits have been traveling from Britain to Pakistan for indoctrination and training. The existence of a Qaeda pipeline between those two countries has grown harder to deny with every new terrorism story that has broken since the suicide bombings in London that killed 52 subway and bus passengers on July 7, 2005. Each new case that emerges features at least one or two suspects with ties to Pakistan—such as an alleged plot that began before 9/11 to bomb financial buildings in New York, Newark, N.J., and Washington, and this past summer's alleged plot to blow up airline flights from Britain to the United States.
A few weeks ago Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of the British security service M.I.5, publicly disclosed that British authorities are monitoring 200 networks and 1,600 individuals "actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts here and overseas." A "substantial" fraction of those 1,600 people have connections to Pakistan, says a British official, declining to be named because the subject is sensitive. The M.I.5 chief added that her investigators had identified nearly 30 separate plots "that often have links back to Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and through those links Al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here."
The story talks of an al Qaeda "underground railroad" that can get people into Pakistan with no official trace of them ever being there:
That's something a British Qaeda operative would certainly want to keep secret. A newly issued International Crisis Group report on the tribal areas says the militants have been able to "establish a virtual mini-Taliban-style state there" where they can "provide safe haven to the Taliban and its foreign allies." In the words of a senior Western diplomat in Islamabad, who asks to remain nameless to avoid offending his hosts: "The Pakistanis simply don't control the territory in any meaningful way, and that means a common enemy has a place [to operate]. You have to assume Al Qaeda will make the most of it." Before September 11, Al Qaeda had no network inside Pakistan and only limited contact with Pakistani militants. Now the group has close support on both sides of the border.
Inside Afghanistan, Taliban field commanders depend on regular visits from their Qaeda paymasters. Guerrillas in eastern Ghazni province say the Arab money teams ride in from the direction of the Pakistan border astride motorcycles driven by Taliban fighters. The Qaeda men ask each local commander what weapons, money and technical assistance he needs—and then deliver the aid that is required. According to Zabibullah, a senior Taliban official who has been a reliable source in the past, Al Qaeda has more than 100 specialists, mostly Arabs, helping support Taliban forces in Afghanistan. ...
Some counterterrorism experts argue that Al Qaeda has become only a figurehead, with no real control over the local terrorist cells it has spawned around the world. The English brothers—and the Pakistan pipeline—are signs that the organization is still in action. Farooqi says he believes, based on overhead conversations, that Al Qaeda is planning for the very long term, a decade into the future. He says the terrorist group is talking about gradually fielding more than 1,000 operatives in Europe over the next 10 years. From what he has heard, only 10 percent of those jihadists are in place so far.
The Washington Post editorialized Thursday on the threat emanating from Pakistan (Note: the Post and Newsweek are owned by the same parent company):
... The situation in Pakistan's border areas is starting to look a lot like eastern Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2001. President Bush and Mr. Negroponte ought to be asking themselves if they are repeating history by tolerating the situation. They need not do so: The United States has provided Gen. Musharraf strategic cover and billions of dollars in military and economic aid since 2001. In return it should have the right to demand that he abandon his separate peace. Action must be taken against Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Pakistan before spring, when another major offensive against U.S. and NATO forces can be expected unless the enemy bases and supply lines are disrupted.
As for Gen. Musharraf's political problems, these could be addressed if he stopped allying himself with Pakistan's own Muslim fundamentalists and rehabilitated the secular democratic political parties that he has repressed since his 1999 coup. He could also abolish the colonial governing system in the tribal areas, under which secular political parties are banned and mullahs empowered, and allow representative government. By tolerating the general's empty promises and excuses, the Bush administration is putting its mission in Afghanistan and homeland security into unacceptable jeopardy.