September 7, 2007
Arrests in Germany Turn Focus
on Pakistan Terror Camps
Islamabad
The arrest in Germany this week of three suspects in an alleged plot
to blow up US military and civilian targets has again raised the
spectre of terrorist training camps in Pakistan that groom killers
to wreak havoc in the Western world.
The claimed existence in the remote tribal belt near the Afghanistan
border of centres run by Taliban insurgents, Osama bin Laden's Al
Qaeda terrorist network and other Islamic extremist groups is not
new.
US intelligence agencies assert that such facilities exist and
regular visits to Pakistan by top administration officials have
focussed on the need for counter-terrorism ally President Pervez
Musharraf to ensure they are eradicated.
But while acknowledging that terrorist and insurgent "elements" are
present in the tribal areas, Islamabad sharply rejects claims that
bin Laden's network in particular has reconstituted itself there and
is now coordinating global operations from Pakistani soil.
"There are no terrorist training camps (here), whether Al Qaeda or
anyone else's," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said after
officials in Germany Wednesday announced the arrests of two German
converts to Islam and a Turkish Muslim suspected of planning
attacks.
Remarks by Germany's Federal Prosecutor-General Monika Harms that
they were members of the Uzbekistan-linked Islamic Jihad Union and
had received training in Pakistan in 2006 were "just claims", Aslam
said, noting that there had been no formal contact by German
authorities concerning such a connection.
But despite the efforts of the Pakistani military to tame the
mountainous tribal areas, independent experts do not doubt the
existence of terrorist training camps in the North West Frontier
Province (NWFP) where they are located.
"Most of them are in north and south Waziristan and were mainly
established after 2001 when the US invasion of Afghanistan forced Al
Qaeda militants and the members of other Islamic resistance
movements from Chechnya, Tajikistan and other parts of Central Asia
to flee to these areas," said Ismaeel Khan, a respected authority on
terrorism and bureau chief of the Dawn newspaper in the NWFP capital
of Peshawar.
"The militants are well trained in warfare skills and in making and
using highly sophisticated explosive devices," Khan said, noting
that intelligence agencies in Pakistan, the United States and other
Islamic countries trained many of the foreign fighters to engage
Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. "This knowledge has now
been handed down to the next generation of the militants," he added.
While Islamabad is rigid on the issue of camps, Pakistani security
forces on the border say they are struggling to stem the arrival of
suspected terrorist trainees via Afghanistan, especially at the
Tuftan crossing in the southwest Balochistan province.
"We pick up around a dozen such people every week," a senior
official said on condition of anonymity. "It is possible that many
others might have passed the crossing without coming into our notice
as hundreds of people travel through it every day."
After questioning, suspects are handed over to state intelligence
agencies, he said, adding that individuals and groups from Western
Europe use two main routes to reach Pakistan for training purposes
or to join the conflict against NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The first is from Eastern Europe via Russia, Central Asia, Turkey or
Iran and finally to Balochistan. Or they travel directly to Turkey,
Iran and into the same province. The same routes are used to move
people and material to the West.
There are also established mechanisms for the financing of training
operations, according to Khan.
"Many locals as well as Muslims living abroad who sympathize with
the cause and objectives of the jihadi forces give them donations.
The funds are in millions (of dollars), which are sent here through
the old Hawala system of transferring money," he said, referring to
the unofficial but widespread practice whereby funds are deposited
with individuals abroad and paid out by an associate at the other
end, like a regular wire transfer.
Meanwhile, recruits are also believed to receive religious
indoctrination at some of Pakistan's thousands of Islamic madrassa
seminaries, and learn how to assemble suicide bomb vests and build
explosive devices.
According to German prosecutor Harms, the three arrested men had
accumulated some 730 kg of hydrogen peroxide, from which bombs
similar to those used in London in July 2005 were to be made.
Two of the London bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer,
are known to have visited Pakistan shortly before they and two other
British Muslims blew up three underground trains and a bus, killing
52 people.
In December last year, British police were trying to trace a gang of
British Muslims dubbed the "English brothers", which included nine
Britons, two Norwegians and an Australian who were believed to have
been smuggled into Waziristan in October 2005.
The group was thought to be under the command of an Al Qaeda veteran
suspected of training some of the Britons accused of the alleged
plot in 2006 to blow up passengers planes flying to the US from
Heathrow airport.
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