After arrests in Time Square bombing, Canada has made arrests this week of a Ottawa terrorist cell.
All these incidents make people resistant to donate to flood victims.
Pakistan has repeatedly been described as “the epicentre of terrorism,” “a hub of global militancy” and “a breeding ground for jihadis” simply because terrorists-in-training flock there from Europe, North America, Africa and Asia to be groomed for attacks on the West.
Conspirators in disrupted terror plots in Canada, the United States, Britain, Germany, Denmark and Spain were all trained as terrorists at secret camps in Pakistan. Two years ago, Gordon Brown, then British prime minister, told Pakistan’s leaders, “Three-quarters of the most serious plots investigated by the British authorities have links to al-Qaeda in Pakistan.”
In the latest arrests in Canada, police claim the three men detained have links with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Dubai. There have been no formal allegations they received overseas training, but authorities believe at least one of the suspects travelled to the Pakistan-Afghanistan region for instruction. British officials estimate as many as 4,000 British Muslims may have passed through terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Royal Air Force intelligence-gathering aircraft tracking Taliban radio signals in Afghanistan regularly reported hearing fighters speaking to each other with Yorkshire and Midlands accents. Pakistani links to emerging terror threats have surfaced again and again. The bombers who hit the London transport system in 2005, Momin Khawaja, the Ottawa computer expert and would-be car bomber — the first person convicted under the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act — and Faisal Shahzad, the failed Times Square bomber, were all trained for their missions there.
The harsh mountain territory in the lawless northwestern tribal lands — which the government in Islamabad does not control and which is off-limits to NATO troops based in Afghanistan— has become a breeding ground for jihad and al-Qaeda’s chief training centre. U.S. officials say North and South Waziristan and surrounding territories are the new headquarters for the group’s global operations. The area is also the centre for terror plots and assassination attempts that reach deep into Europe and North America.
But unlike the large military-style camps — with firing ranges and parade squares — that al-Qaeda ran in Afghanistan before 9/11, its new training programs are spread out in small groups, affiliated with local insurgents and radical madrassas. It is believed 100 to 200 hard-core al-Qaeda leaders and operatives flit in and out of the region, staging training programs at between 25 and 50 temporary bases along the border with Afghanistan.
A course can last 10 days, then shift to another place. “All you need is a shack or a house to learn how to fabricate explosives, using homemade or commercially available ingredients,” said Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at Georgetown University.
It is in the terrorists’ interest to keep as low a profile as possible. For the past three years, the Central Intelligence Agency has been waging a relentless air war over Pakistan’s borderlands, with pilotless assassination drones constantly hunting for terror training camps. As a result, al-Qaeda is moving its trainers and resources around, operating within camps run by other insurgent groups in Pakistan, said Vahid Brown, a researcher at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Military Academy.
While support facilities, such as safe houses and weapons dumps, tend to be fixed, the smaller training camps can be easily moved and hidden, trying to blend in with surrounding mountain compounds. Former Taliban and al-Qaeda students say a typical training day might start before dawn. After prayers, the students — who seldom number more than 20 — undergo hours of physical training, before listening to lectures on military tactics. They also train with a variety of weapons — Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars — and receive instruction in bomb-making.
Some camps specialize in training suicide bombers or Kashmiri or Afghan insurgents; others may focus on al-Qaeda operatives. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and terror expert with the Brookings Institution, says al-Qaeda has placed a priority on recruiting from South Asian communities in North America and Europe because someone with a U.S., British or Canadian passport is “a gold mine.” They can travel back and forth with ease, without attracting undue attention.
“It is obvious that their value to these groups is not fighting on the battlefield in South Asia, but in being deployed back to their home or adopted countries as sleepers,” he said.
National Post, with files from news services
