I don't know if this is a new trend but certainly something to be worried about. In a related note in the past year and a half about 20 Somalia immigrants living in Minnesota have gone back to fight in Somalia for the radical Islamist groups there with one becoming a suicide bomber. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33375399/ns/world_news-washington_post Dozens of Westerners attending terror camps Officials: Americans, Europeans travel to Pakistan, Afghanistan for training BERLIN - Midway through a propaganda video released last month by a group calling itself the German Taliban, a surprise guest made an appearance: a cleanshaven, muscular gunman sporting the alias Abu Ibrahim the American. The gunman did not speak but wore military fatigues and waved his rifle as subtitles identified him as an American. The video contained a stream of threats against Germany if it did not withdraw its troops from the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. Although the American's part in the film lasted only a few seconds, it has alarmed German and U.S. intelligence officials, who are still puzzling over his background, his real identity and how he became involved with the terrorist group. U.S. and European counterterrorism officials say a rising number of Western recruits — including Americans — are traveling to Afghanistan and Pakistan to attend paramilitary training camps. The flow of recruits has continued unabated, officials said, in spite of an intensified campaign over the past year by the CIA to eliminate al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders in drone missile attacks. Since January, at least 30 recruits from Germany have traveled to Pakistan for training, according to German security sources. About 10 people — not necessarily the same individuals — have returned to Germany this year, fueling concerns that fresh plots are in the works against European targets. "We think this is sufficient to show how serious the threat is," said a senior German counterterrorism official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. High alert German security services have been on high alert since last month, when groups affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaeda issued several videos warning that an attack on German targets was imminent if the government did not bring home its forces from Afghanistan. There are about 3,800 German troops in the country, the third-largest NATO contingent after those of the United States and Britain. German officials say Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders are trying to exploit domestic opposition in Germany to the war; surveys show that a majority of German voters favor a withdrawal of their soldiers. The videos all featured German speakers who urged Muslims to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan to join their cause. "They're doing such good business that they are dropping a new video every week or so," said Ronald Sandee, a former Dutch military intelligence officer who serves as research director of the NEFA Foundation, a U.S. group that monitors terrorist networks. "If I were a young Muslim, I'd find them very convincing." Last week, German officials disclosed that a 10-member cell from Hamburg had left for Pakistan earlier this year. The cell is allegedly led by a German of Syrian descent but also includes ethnic Turks, German converts to Islam and one member with Afghan roots. Other European countries are also struggling to keep their citizens from going to Pakistan for paramilitary training. In August, Pakistani officials arrested a group of 12 foreigners headed to North Waziristan, a tribal region near the Afghan border where many of the camps are located. Among those arrested were four Swedes, including Mehdi Ghezali, a former inmate of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Meanwhile, three Belgians and a French citizen are facing trial in their respective home countries after they were arrested upon their return from Pakistani camps last year. The suspects deny they were part of a terrorist conspiracy or plotting attacks in Europe. But one defendant has admitted to French investigators that the group received explosives training while in Waziristan. Three other Belgian and French members of the alleged cell are still believed to be at large in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Recruiting networks European security officials have warned for many years of the threat posed by homegrown radicals who have gone to Afghanistan and Pakistan to wage jihad. Officials in some countries, such as Britain, said they have successfully cracked down on the number of would-be fighters going to South Asia. But others, such as Germany, are seeing a significant increase and struggling to contain it. In the past, such volunteers were largely self-motivated and had to find their own way to South Asia. Today, however, al-Qaeda and its affiliates have developed extensive recruiting networks with agents on the ground in Europe, counterterrorism officials said. The agents provide guidance, money, travel routes and even letters of recommendation so the recruits can join up more easily. In a recent report, the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service said there were a "growing number of indications" that more Europeans were attending camps in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Obama administration has said that al-Qaeda's command structure and operations wing have become weaker in the past year because many of its leaders have been killed in drone missile attacks. But in its report, the Dutch intelligence agency offered a different assessment, saying that al-Qaeda's ability to carry out attacks has generally improved in recent years largely because it has successfully bolstered its alliances with other terrorist groups. "With the jihadist agenda of those allies becoming more international, at least at the propaganda level, the threat to the West and its interests has intensified," the Dutch report found. German officials said they have discovered multiple recruitment networks that work for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other groups, such as the Islamic Jihad Union, which has been issuing many of the online threats against the German government. But they said the recruiting networks often operate independently, making it difficult for the security services to detect or disrupt them. "In Germany, we don't have a uniform structure that recruits people," another senior German counterterrorism official said in an interview. "We have a wide variety of structures." U.S. residents detained Another sign of the internationalization of the recruitment networks is the small but growing participation of U.S. residents. Abu Ibrahim the American, the gunman in last month's German Taliban video, is also being touted as a poster boy for jihadi recruitment on a Turkish-language Web site. The site, Sehadet Zamani, issues propaganda on behalf of the Islamic Jihad Union, an offshoot of an Uzbek terrorist group that now counts Turks, Germans, Arabs and Chechens among its members. In July, U.S. officials announced that they had apprehended Bryant Neal Vinas, 25, a resident of Long Island, N.Y., who has confessed to traveling to al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan and firing rockets at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan. Vinas, the son of immigrants from Peru and Argentina, is cooperating with U.S. and European authorities. He has testified about his interaction with the six-member cell of recruits from Belgium and France. Vinas has also told the FBI that he spent time in Pakistan with another New York resident, whose identity and whereabouts are unknown. Last month, the FBI arrested yet another U.S. resident, Najibullah Zazi, and accused him of plotting a bombing in New York. Zazi, 24, an Afghan national who has lived in New York since he was a child, traveled to Pakistan last year. U.S. intelligence officials have said that he made contact with a senior deputy to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and learned how to make homemade bombs. Zazi said he went to Pakistan to visit his wife but has denied going to a training camp. Terrorism analysts said the CIA campaign to kill al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders had been generally effective, but warned that the strategy had its limitations and that missile attacks alone would not put an end to the training camps. "The drone attacks seriously weaken these organizations, but you can't rely on that alone," said Guido Steinberg, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. "They obviously have no problem recruiting new members. In the long run, they won't have any problem replacing the leaders who have been killed." On Saturday, the Pakistani military deployed 30,000 troops into South Waziristan as part of a broad offensive against the Taliban and other militant groups. U.S. and European officials have said they hope the mission will force many of the training camps to shut down. But analysts said the camps, which offer basic lessons in homemade explosives and countersurveillance as well as weapons training, could easily relocate elsewhere in Pakistan or even back across the border in Afghanistan, where they operated before the U.S. invasion in 2001. "We're talking about much smaller, much more mobile camps that don't train by the hundreds, but by the handful," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. "They can be repacked and set up again fairly easily and quickly."
Too lazy to read the article but cynical enough to not be shocked. I don't think anyone predicted cults, serial killers or nationally organized youth gangs 40 years ago. Or political assassinations every other week ten years before that.
I think we need to start taking the war on terror a bit more seriously. This is why focusing on Iraq was so dangerous...instead of defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban, they have survived and learnt how to last. This blunder may be Bush's worst of all.
I think its more of the continuous fighting for the past centuries that have taught these people how to last, not a "bush blunder". Much like how the Soviets rode off in victory after their conquest in Afghanistan.
I don't think the "war on terror" is winnable. We're not talking about a conventional war here. The only way to win is to make them stop hating you. And that's not going to happen as long as the US is dependent on oil from the Middle East.
I disagree. It can't be as simple as not being dependent on Middle East oil. Coercive actions planted the seeds of hatred and pushed people to extremes. The groups are a result of of this hatred. However, I do not believe that the propagation of these groups is through the same actions. As it stands, these fanatic groups are powerful enough to convince Westerners to become extremists. Think about that fact. These are not people who have lived their whole lives surrounded by war. They have actually been exposed to real freedom and a positive perspective on Western life. The main tactic that these groups use is absolute perversion of the Islamic religion for their own purposes. Give a confused youth a set of instructions that appear religious and you have a recipe for disaster. I really get sick of the apologists who say that the main problem is from actions from the U.S. The extremism is because of ridiculously weak opposing voices in much of the Islamic world. You look at a place like Waziristan, in Pakistan, and its reputation for being a terrorist hotbed. I strongly believe this stems from its complete autonomy from a more moderate-minded Pakistani govt. Contrast this with Turkey. Multiple viewpoints and relative freedom allow its people to be exposed to a much broader prism of ideas. The end result is a much more moderate nation with a better equipped populace. Simply put, the problem is purely organizational. When people say that Islam is stuck in the Middle Ages, it is primarily because it lacks a sufficient modern governing body. Basically, the group waving the banner of religion with the loudest voice wins. Unfortunately, that group just happens to be preaching extreme ideologies.
Many terrorist groups are trained inside of United States, Georgia John Pilger - Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror 2003 Part 3/6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOA91lkFCDg http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4527835028345509000#docid=-210088912352527308
Sigh and exhibit A of our problem. There is no "these people." Iraq and Afghanistan are two entirely seperate countries with different histories, languages, cultures, etc.. Outside of both being predominately Islamic, the two are very different places. It's like comparing two random countries in Europe. Similarly their ability to "last" is another overstatement. Iraq blew up for numerous reasons and you could easily write a novel on the various reasons ranging from exposing massive sectarian divides to mismanagement of the reconstruction process. Afghanistan similarly had its own failures. While your point sort of resonates since in Afghanistan's case, a lot of the Taliban/al qaeda/etc.. in fact did learn a lot from past conflicts there, that doesnt answer why we are where we are. In case we've all forgotten, unlike in Iraq the Afghan invasion was hugely popular among the general population. When the government talks about winning the hearts and minds as a strategy to overall success, we had that the moment we walked in and we blew it by a failure to provide the necessary attention and resources to stamp out the insurgency. Until last year, Manhattan had more cops than Afghanistan had NATO troops. Hence the point about Iraq screwing us over in Afghanistan by diverting massive amounts of resources that couldve been used more effectively. But please stop using false historical analogies to essentialize an entire region simply because they share a religion (and that too not even the same variety of that religion). We're all very aware of the differences between protestant, orthodox and catholic churches and all of the many sub denominations. Those distinctions are important and serve practical purposes in analyzing any country or place. The same should be applied to the Muslim world and that goes beyond simply saying "sunni or shi'ite." Even that is a rather broad spectrum. Bottom line if we're going to stop terrorism I think we all should take some time to fully understand the Muslim world and the complexities and differences within it. It will pay dividends and help us stop repeating many of the same mistakes.
Warfare is a natural expression for human beings and has been ever since we figured out how to organize into US and Them. Managing it the best we can is what diplomacy and the CIA are for. If I were a CIA strategist, I would organize my own underground militant Islamist organization and recruit and pay aggressively. You set up enough successes to keep up morale and then set up your own guys on enough occasions to keep the worst of them in jail. I'd also be a big buyer of opium at the wholesale level. Let the Afghan farmers profit but cut out the Taliban. * I was all for overthrowing Saddam. The blunder turned out to be the dismantling of the army and Baathist civil system instead of co-opting it. It looked like that what was needed to appease the Shia and Kurds, but the end result was almost a decade of chaos. Live and learn.
I have a couple of Pakistani friends at my school going for their doctorate. And they have a boatload of stories talking about US interference with the nation and the problems that results since decades back. Most recently, the incredible amount of food shortage and inflation ever since the war on Afghanistan. As well as American guns and weaponry found on Taliban invaders. The news on Pakistan INSIDE Pakistan is like a total reversal from news I read on CNN and such. It's not ideologies. It's about causing suffering in the lives of the people. Now, are all these problems really attributed to the US? I doubt it. I'm sure there's some propaganda within their news. But I'm also certain the US meddles in these countries a lot more than they let on to the American public. Regardless, these problems would not occur if US doesn't stick their noses into other people's business. Sure, Pakistan would still suffer a great deal even without US interference. But at least then the Pakistani govt would blame India or other factors. It's easy to shoulder the blame and be called the bad guy when you're the #1 superpower with troops, money, and influence everywhere in the world.
There was a big push by several international organizations a few years back to try and purchase the opium output of Afghanistan to increase the availability of legitimate opioids like morphine and oxycontin, but the Bush administration objected vociferously, so now we have warlords and the Taliban controlling opium for processing into heroin. Gotta love prohibition.
If Bush had sent 100k troops to Afghanistan instead of Iraq, there would be no such thing as the Taliban or Al Qaeda today.
Yes there would. they would just hide in the shadows bidding their time before striking again. The key is to make the people of Afghanistan stand up and actively refuse to be scared. Ideas are a lot more powerful than the swords.
Possibly not. The Soviets used overwhelming force in Afghanistan and still lost so just throwing troops in might not cut. I think though with a strategy focussing on improving overall security and economic development having more troops would help and in that case I think Iraq was a distraction that siphoned off resources from Afghanistan.
We do need to take the war on terrorism seriously. Going around killing the relatives of Somalis, Afghans and Iraqis etc. who live in the country should not be done lightly because of abstract neo-con beliefs picked up by the mainstream media.
In case you missed it I wasn't advocating the Soviet's strategy. That doesn't mean I advocate withdrawl from Afghanistan either.
