NationStates Jolt Archive

If this story is true, it vindicates Indian position and exposes the hollowness of the US led war on terror.

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1312&id=1073542005
Attacker 'was recruited' at terror group's religious school

GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN
CHIEF NEWS CORRESPONDENT


ONE of the suicide bombers who struck in London was probably recruited when he attended a religious school in Pakistan with strong links to al-Qaeda and its south-east Asian offshoot, Jemaah Islamiyyah, The Scotsman can reveal.

Security sources in Pakistan are investigating a tip-off that Shehzad Tanweer attended a religious school run by the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) during a recent visit to the country. The group's founder has publicly stated that he believes suicide bombing to be the "best form of jihad [holy war]".


Background info on LeT.

Lashkar-e-toiba means army of the righteous/pure. LeT is not a neophyte to international terror. The Brigitte case of Australia, the viriginia Jihad cell, the recently arrested father son duo at Lodi, California - all have LeT connections. Not too much coverage is given in US/UK media since it will raise uncomfortable questions about facts like LeT, although "banned" by Musharraf, is still running its camps and its leader Professor Hafiz Mohammed Saeed is still preaching jihad to the faithful, unhindered. LeT has a sprawling Headquarters at Muridke, near Lahore.

Chicken always come home to roost.

It seems, yet again, that we have picked the wrong allies. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia seem to be doing little to prevent the teaching of fundamentalist islam in their countries.

Not just wrong allies. It is WRONG strategy too.

I would even go out on a limb and say UK had it coming.

There is simply NO WAY you can wipe out terrorism when you allow one type of terrorist (anti-Indian) to operate while fighting (actually pretending to) against the other.

Hard it maybe to believe, that is PRECISELY what is going on. Musharraf, bought off and bribed often, fights against only the "Arab" types (Al-Quaeda) alone.

His commitment to that is also debatable. His claims that AQ is "hiding" in the mountains is ludicrous since almost all the higher ups in Al-Quaeda were caught in cities or metros like Karachi, Faisalabad etc. The idea that Paki army is fighting this formidable organization Al-Quaeda in law less frontier areas is hilarious. This COMPLETELY takes away the focus on the FUNCTIONING terrorist camps in the plains, near cities ( like the LeT HQ which is in Muridke, near Lahore - a big city).

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani, and believed to be number three in Al-Qaeda was arrested on March 1, 2003 in Rawalpindi, the headquarters city of Pakistani army.

Ramzi bin-al Shibh, a Yemeni and an assistant to KSM, and organizer of the Hamburg Cell, was arrested from the posh Defence Area in Karachi.

Abu Zubaidah, a top Al-Qaeda operative, was arrested in Faisalabad.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British of Pakistani descent, was arrested for killing Daniel Pearl from the house of a Pakistani politician.

Rusman Gunawan, the brother of the Indonesian terror chief, Hambali, was arrested from a madrassah in Karachi.

Yassir Al-Jazeeri, a Moroccan and Al-Qaeda’s communications expert was arrested from Lahore.

Tawfiq bin Attash, alias Khalid Al-Attash, a Yemeni, suspected in the attack on USS Cole at Aden in 2000, was arrested in Karachi.

9/11 suspect, Said Bhaiji, has been traced to Pakistan sending e-mails to his wife from Lahore and Islamabad

Ahmed Khalfan Ghaliani, a Tanzanian, wanted in connection with the 1998 US Embassy bombings of Kenya & Tanzania, was arrested in Gujrat, Pakistan on 27th July, 2004 . Two South African men, Feroz Ibrahim and Zubair Ismail, arrested along with Ghaliani were plotting attacks against South Africa.

Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, alias Abu Talha, a Pakistani computer engineer and an Al-Qaeda key communications operative was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan in July 2004 While helping Al Qaeda with secret communications, he had also plotted terror attacks including one on Heathrow Airport, London.

A Turkish Al-Qaeda terrorist, Yilmaz Mehmat alias Khalid, was arrested in Lahore on Aug. 8, 2004

Saleh Nauman, a top Al-Qaeda operative was arrested from Lahore on Oct. 10, 2004

Abdul Rahman, an Al-Qaeda Communications expert was arrested from Peshawar on Oct. 18, 2004

Anywayz, even while "fighting" against the mythical Al-Queda in the frontier, anti-Indian orgs like the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Toiba etc and their sectarian sister orgs like Lashkar-e-Janghvi and Sipah-s-Sahaba etc were operating normally without any real hindrence.

The thing that not many realise is, most of the jihadi orgs like the anti-Indian types, anti-shia sectarian types and anti-west types are all now seamlessly integrated and share ideology, infrastructure, materials and also foot soldiers.

For ex, take the story in the operning post. A Brit-Paki comes to Pakistan for "religious" studies. He undergoes training in Lashkar-e-toiba camps. You would think that it is a serious issue, but no, apparently it is not. Whenever a terrorist attack by LeT happens in India, we would shout ourselves hoarse about the still running camps in Pakistan and we would get the usual "there are no such camps in Pakistan" by some Paki minister and some "we severely condemn this acts by militants but India has to restrain and try to negotiate and settle peacefully with Pakistan" nonsense or some such inane platitudes from US / UK.

For example here is a list of Incidents involving Lashkar-e-Toiba (http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/jandk/terrorist_outfits/lashkar_e_toiba_lt.htm) , the infamous one being the attack on the Indian parliament itself.

But when asked, the responses will be the usual (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/december01/india_12-14.html) ,
Denying accusations that it harbors terrorists, Pakistani officials warned India of dire consequences if it retaliated against Pakistan.

and the report ending with the statutory tailpiece India has long accused Pakistan of sponsoring and funding the Islamic militants fighting for control of Kashmir. Pakistan says it supports their cause, but denies providing any aid.

Heck, forget the Paki responses, even the way the western media carried the news was disgusting, especially when compared to the way they behave now that their own a$$es have been bombed !

Sample...

BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4659093.stm
London rocked by terror attacks

Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,2763,1029393,00.html
45 killed in Bombay bomb blasts

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,15935,1523933,00.html
Four bombs in 50 minutes - Britain suffers its worst-ever terror attack

Compare the following statements from the Guardian reports.

On the Bombay blasts -

There was no immediate claim of responsibility last night - but suspicion is likely to fall on Islamist extremists, possibly taking revenge for last year's communal riots in the neighbouring state of Gujarat, where 2,000 Muslims died.

On the London blasts -

At least 38 people were killed yesterday and more than 700 injured as terrorists struck at the heart of London, causing the biggest loss of life in a terrorists attack on mainland Britain.

Reuters:
http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-07-07T170056Z_01_N07318127_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-SECURITY-BRITAIN1-DC.XML
Four blasts tore through packed trains and a bus during London rush hour on Thursday, killing over 33 people and disrupting a summit of world leaders in Scotland in the deadliest peacetime attack on the capital.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=13330948_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-42-DEAD-IN-BOMBAY-BOMB-ATTACKS-name_page.html

The 1993 bombings followed Hindu-Muslim riots triggered by the destruction by Hindu zealots of a 16th century mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya. Hindu hardliners say the mosque was built on the site of a Hindu temple. Since then, Ayodhya has been a lightning rod for tensions.

CNN:
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/south/09/22/india.muslims/

Alienation of Mumbai Muslims

Since last December a series of explosions has rocked the city, with bombs placed in public transport vehicles: on buses, trains, taxis.

The most deadly were in August, when near simultaneous taxi bombs exploded in two places, killing 53 people.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/golf/07/07/british.open.terror.ap/
British Open will not be affected by terror attacks

NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/08/business/worldbusiness/08exchange.html?oref=login&oref=login

The London Stock Exchange proved resilient Thursday, remaining open after four terrorists attacks hit London, though the market closed lower after setting a trading volume record.

From Amy Waldman's report on the Bombay blasts -

The Bombay police commissioner, R.S. Sharma, said Monday night that law enforcement authorities suspected that so-called jihadi groups were also responsible for Monday's blasts, although he offered no specific evidence for that assertion.

But many of the jewelers in the area are originally from the state of Gujarat, prompting immediate speculation... that the blast was in retaliation for communal riots there last year that left 1,000 Muslims dead.

Oh the irony of British media expressing horror about the London bombings.

Priceless !

What makes me particularly irritated is (apart from the fact Bombay suffered 5 times more casualties than London) that the mastermind of the Bombay blasts was a Dawood Ibrahim, a mafia chief. Shortly before the blasts he ran away to Dubai / UAE and then to Pakistan (where else !). And the usual denials follow..

http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=100526
Pakistan denies US claim on Dawood
Islamabad |By Shahid Hussain, Correspondent | 18-10-2003

Pakistan yesterday denied a US claim that Dawood Ibrahim, the man wanted by India for alleged involvement in a chain of bombings, was living in Karachi.

"This person is neither in Pakistan nor do we have any information about his whereabouts," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told Gulf News.

The US Treasury Department has branded Dawood Ibrahim a "specially designated global terrorist". According to a notice posted on its website Thursday he lives in Pakistani southern port city.

The notice gave his telephone and passport numbers.

"The man is not even a Pakistani national and if there is any evidence pointing to his whereabouts it should be shared with us," he said.

Dawood is accused of being behind a spate of bombings in India, including a bombing in Mumbai 10 years ago in which over 300 people were killed.


Read that again. OVER 300 KILLED. The report failed to mention over 1000 injured. Ah, but life of a "brown" man in far off India is cheap, I guess.

Well this Dawood chap is doing great in Pakistan, running business and all.
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/2003/10/18/stories/2003101804761100.htm

The Karachi Police also confirmed that a building bombed in that city earlier this year, the Khwaish Plaza, was owned by Dawood

But the bestest ally Musharraf who is valiantly fighting the war on terror , being the president/CEO/General/COAS of the frontline state in war on terror and all, denies his presence in Pakistan

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/2003/09/22/stories/2003092204190100.htm
It is not for the first time that news about the presence and operations of Ibrahim in Karachi has appeared in the Pakistani press. In the later half of 2000, another Pakistani English monthly, Newsline, published purported photographs of the house where Ibrahim was supposed to be living with State security.

Just before the Agra summit, the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, had asked the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, to hand over Ibrahim when the latter talked about possible co-operation between India and Pakistan on the issue of extradition of criminals wanted by each other.

However, Gen. Musharraf denied his presence in Pakistan. Islamabad took the same line when New Delhi submitted the list of 20 wanted criminals after the December 13 Parliament attack.


And to top it all , his daughter is marrying the son of celebrated cricketed Javed Miandad , an iconic figure in Pakistan !
http://www.rediff.com/cricket/2005/jun/19mian.htm
Miandad confirms Dawood relation

June 19, 2005 18:52 IST


Former Pakistan captain Javed Miandad has confirmed the marriage plans between his eldest son and daughter of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

"Yes, there are plans for the marriage of my son to the daughter of Ibrahim but no date has been set for the marriage. When it happens everyone would know about it and they would be invited to attend the ceremony," Miandad said.

Miandad's son Junaid, studying at the Oxford University, met his future wife, also said to be based in London, and the two reportedly got engaged last year.


And then Britishers wonder how they got their asses bombed !

Let's explore more.

Slowly slowly the tubelights are flickering....

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1693405,00.html
New wave of British terrorists are taught at schools, not in the mountains

Tanweer’s uncle, Bashir Ahmed, has no doubts that it was faceless figures in Pakistan who radicalised his sports-mad nephew.

DUH, that's what you get in Paki madrassas !

British intelligence has asked its Pakistani counterparts urgently to trace where the young Britons went, and more crucially who they met, during their study tours.

Officers need to know if the four bombers were ever there at the same time, or attended the same radical training schools.

FAT CHANCE ! because Pakis have already denied it , that too "angrily" !

The Pakistani authorities this week angrily denied accusations from India that terror training camps were once more thriving inside their borders.

More flickering of tubelights !

Western intelligence agencies have also long been concerned about the network of madrassas, the hardline religious schools, which have been blamed for turning out a generation of young jihadis. One institution which has been under recent scrutiny is in the industrial city of Gujranwala, which is just north of Lahore — where Tanweer was heading.

This new generation of training centres are nothing like their predecessors which were run by al-Qaeda in the years before the September 11 attacks on the US and were sited in the inhospitable mountain ranges straddling the Afghan border.

Western volunteers lived rough in the desert with hundreds of other foreign recruits and were taught to handle weapons and explosives, as well as spending hours listening to tape recordings of Osama bin Laden and other zealots.

“Today the camps are more like youth hostels,” one young activist who attended a madrassa in southern Pakistan told The Times.

“Recruits don’t spend hours scrabbling about on outward bound courses. It is more like being in a school room.”

“Organisers don’t want to turn out warriors who can strip down a Kalashnikov rifle blindfolded. They want to shape the mind, not the body.

“They want their recruits to embrace the idea of giving their lives for their cause, and doing nothing more technical than triggering the bomb they carry.”

There are long periods of Koranic study but also what organisers call “the evolution of the jihad”, which teaches how wars are no longer a battle between rival armies.


Ah, Gujranwala. The land which gave so manu jihadis to Kashmir. Nice to know that Gujranwala is now getting noted for IT (no not Information Technology.. it is International Terrorism, the best known export of Pakistan).

"Shaping the mind" and making drones who will just press the button at the time. Hence the current detection techniques of looking for tell tale signs of rope-climbing scars etc practiced at US airports won't work. Evolution indeed, responding to change of circumstances.

Experts say there is little point trying to identify the groups who recruit the young Britons because nowadays they change their names and websites with bewildering frequency.

DUH ! These are not the did-not-know-mouth-from-ass taliban foot soldiers. These are well educated brains dedicated to the cause.

Well known militant groups, such as Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat ul Mujahideen have operated openly in the past and in some cases with the military’s support, and boasted of their British recruits.

Mohammed Bilal, a Briton who was associated with Jaish-e-Mohammed, was the UK’s first suicide bomber when in Christmas Day 2000 he rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into an Indian military post in Kashmir.

Officially, the Pakistan government — a key ally of Britain and the US in the war on terror — insists they have eradicated the culture of terror camps inside their borders.


It is now clear that terrorist camps of LeT, JeM types were still operating even though Musharraf pledged that he would not allow Paki soil to be used for terrorism against India following India amassing troops for war after the parliament attack.

The only rationale I can think of for the reasons US / UK were turning a blind eye to these jihadis attacking India is the thinking that these jihadis will only target India and as long as our asses are saved, why bother, besides our bestest ally Musharraf needs "space" for negotiations with India.

Recall the articles after the arrest of the Hayat guys at Lodi California. Some interesting nuggets from them. Originals archived at LATimes site, so quoting from blogs..

http://www.archivum.info/soc.culture.indian/2005-06/msg00237.html
Until recently, the United States did not press the issue with its ally, believing that those trained in the Pakistani camps would be sent only to fight in Kashmir and other regional conflicts.

Oh, goody. It is OK if Paki jihadis attack India !

http://islaminamerica.blogspot.com/

scroll down to the Affidavit Changed in Terrorism Accusation story
According to the senior counterterrorism official, U.S. authorities are growing increasingly anxious about overseas training camps because, even if followers claim to be interested in overseas conflicts, there is no guarantee that they will not engage U.S. troops or targets.

"In Al-Timimi's case, the followers flew under the banner of the conflict in Kashmir," said the official. "But how can we be sure that is where they will end up?"

Damn right, you cannot be sure !

That's the point. The infrastructure for the jihad factory is still there. Once you allow a training camp to train jihadis to be used against India, once the jihadi is indoctrinated to hate the kafir, it is of no difference to the jihadis who he is bombing - London or Bombay - no difference...hindu or christian - no difference, you are still the same filthy kafir (Ahl-e-kitab or not) to him.

For a Lashkar-e-Toiba graduate, it does not matter who he bombing , the hindu in Bombay or the christian in UL. Once a person crosses the threshold of "Its OK to kill the kafir, because he is kafir" - everybody is fair game.

Read this bit again
Well known militant groups, such as Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat ul Mujahideen have operated openly in the past and in some cases with the military’s support, and boasted of their British recruits.

Mohammed Bilal, a Briton who was associated with Jaish-e-Mohammed, was the UK’s first suicide bomber when in Christmas Day 2000 he rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into an Indian military post in Kashmir.

What was the British reaction on a British citizen going to Pakistan, training in a Pakistani terrorist camp and becoming a suicide bomber in Kasmir ?

Nothing ! Practically nothing. I could not even trace any usual "we condemn the attack by the gunmen but India has to show restraint". This happened in end 2000.

Well, here's another Brit-Paki travelling to Pakistan for training at a terrorist camp.

Quoting from the story in opening post,
Security sources in Pakistan are investigating a tip-off that Shehzad Tanweer attended a religious school run by the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) during a recent visit to the country.

Shahzad Tanweer came back to Britain to bomb London.

Hence the strategy of having Musharraf selling off "arab" jihadis targetting US while turning a blind eye to terrorist camps and terrorist organizations against India will not work !

But the strategy has been sold to the unsuspecting public successfully. I deliberately avoided any "Al-Quaeda", "London bombing" words and look at the responses.

http://gim.gupshup.org/gal/E/inset_cartoon_queue19170_7767251.JPG :D

something's never change.

The comedy circus is on full swing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4683733.stm
Pakistan confirms UK bomber trips
Officials in Pakistan have confirmed that one of the men who carried out last week's bomb attacks in London had previously visited Pakistan.
So far though they have not been able to pinpoint the movements of the bomber, Shehzad Tanweer, in the country or say who he met.

They say he visited Pakistan twice, spending a total of four months there.

OK but what about the "angry denials" of terror camps running in the country when India was accusing?

Oh, I get it, If it is India , then there is no terror camp. But this mysterious non-existent terror camp trains the Tanweer dude and he goes back to UK and bombs London and suddenly Pakistan is able to confirm that the jihadi was trained in the non-existent camp.


According to knowledgeable sources, Pakistani intelligence and investigation agencies are working flat out to accommodate British demands for leads on any of the three London bombers of Pakistani descent.

Flat out. Really. I bet they are working flat out to cover up any evidences and hush-hush the whole thing and create diversions about the mastermind from some other country and the mastermind recruited the suicide bombers in England and the plot was not hatched in Pakistan and poor Pakistan is valiantly fighting the terrorists and needs F-16s and money for catching Osama !

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4682931.stm
UK concern over Pakistan schools

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says he is worried about some of Pakistan's Islamic schools, reportedly visited by one of the London bombers

Jack Straw was not worried when Mohammed Bilal, another Brit-Paki, was indoctrinated by the Paki madrassas and joined Jaish-e-Mohammed and rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into an Indian military post in Kashmir in 2000.

But when poor Tanweer, another Brit-Paki does it to UK, he is worried.

He said Pakistan was increasingly cooperating on counter-terrorism.

:rolleyes:

The International Crisis Group recently said the Pakistan government had "allowed religious organisations, jihadi groups and the madrassas that provide them with an endless stream of recruits to flourish".

It suggests 10-15% of the madrassas are radical.
..
..

"Secondly, it is very important that science education and education for other things should be an essential part of those madrassas."


But but but but it was not radical when the madrassa graduates where attacking others !

Anyway, the message has reached !

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4683441.stm
Pakistan province backs moral law

Pakistan's North-West Frontier province has passed a controversial bill to introduce Taleban-style moral policing in public places.
The legislature called "Hisba" (accountability), was passed with 68 votes in favour and 34 against.

Under the new law, an Islamic watchdog will monitor the observance of Islamic values in public places.

The plan is reminiscent of the infamous Department of Vice and Virtue, set up by the Taleban regime in Afghanistan.

Don't go into the "Oh poor Musharraf, what dangers he is facing, we have to prop him up" mode yet. Remember how convenient the timing of this bill is !

Little known fact is the MMA is in power only because of Musharraf. Hence it is called as Military-Mullah Alliance :D instead of its original name Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal.

http://www.newsline.com.pk/NewsJuly2003/cover2july2003.htm
"The MMA is the Military-Mullah Alliance," says the Peshawar-based former Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Afrasiyab Khattak, who has now joined ANP. "The military establishment created this political alliance of mullahs to use as a bargaining chip with the west. As with the mujahideen and then the Taliban, they will spin out of control," adds Khattak.

Khattak argues that while the major political parties led by the two former premiers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, were fractured and divided into groups, the religious parties were encouraged to unite. Moreover, they were not allowed to campaign before elections, while the MMA brought together a million people under the banner of a conference. (my comments : other parties like the PML and PPP were fractured and their leaders Nawaz Shariff and Benazir Bhutto, both are in exile !)


But the faithfuls are reacting with the usual denial.

http://www.dawn.com/2005/07/14/letted.htm#1
EVERY time an act of terrorism is committed anywhere, a mysterious clandestine website claims responsibility, :p apparently aiming at diverting the world’s wrath towards the poor Muslims, :rolleyes: who are faced with severe repercussions and punishments in various forms.

The planning of such acts is primarily aimed at harming the Muslims, because these are prohibited in the holy Quran. Therefore, in all fairness, investigators should also try to find the real culprits who harbour such highly devilish motives against the Muslims.

S.M.I.I RIZVI
Karachi

Associated Press correspondent Amy Teibel has reported that former prime minister and present finance minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu was about to use the London subway at the same time on July 7 to attend an economic conference at a hotel near the scene of one of the blasts. Scotland Yard informed the Israeli embassy on July 7 morning that some attack was imminent, which prompted Mr Netanyahu to stay back at his hotel. This may sound coincidental, but after the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers, it was rumoured that Jews working there had been forewarned. All this smacks of a hidden hand.

ALI ASHRAF KHAN
Karachi

Aaaawww. Karachi, that wonderful place of faithfuls. Cannot really blame these guys because apparently such theories are very much in vogue even amongst retired brigadiers, no less !

http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/july-2005/14/columns4.php
A letter to Tony Blair

BRIG. (RETD) M. SHAFI KHAN
It is not the occasion to portray the real culprit but the world knows the source of the culture of terrorism. Please recollect 9/11: there were teams on spot to take precision guaranteed photos of final crash of aircraft into the towers. Jews were absent from work on that day. How the aviation facilities on American soil were employed to create the tragedy and there was no scramble of strategic air-command and last minute coordination of attackers and facilities – “the world will never be the same”, the ghosts of Osama bin Ladin is still haunting. Who did it?

Coming back to LeT, it pays to understand where these organizations stand and what is their demands and aspirations.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnist&file_name=parthasarathy%2Fparthasarathy78%2Etxt&writer=parthasarathy
on July 5, Pakistan's Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz proclaimed that his country was committed to the peace process with India, which was now "irreversible".

These comments came almost simultaneously with the attack on the Ayodhya complex by well armed terrorists quite obviously linked to the Lashkar-e-Toiba. Interestingly, on the very same day, the Amir of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed told a gathering in Lahore that Indian Muslims have come to realise that "there is no future without jihad". For good measure, Saeed advised his audience "never make friends with Jews and Christians". :)

It was Saeed who proudly proclaimed that it was at his behest that the Red Fort was attacked and the green flag of Islam unfurled there on December 22, 2000. Earlier, on October 9, 1997, Saeed had warned: "We feel that Kashmir should be liberated at the earliest. Thereafter, Indian Muslims should be aroused to revolt against the Indian Union so that India gets disintegrated."


Good luck to Professor Hafiz Mohammed Saeed and good luck to UK in trying to get justice for those dead.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/07/11/news/edrashid.php

Little incentive to nab bin Laden
Little incentive to nab bin Laden
By Ahmed Rashid International Herald Tribune

TUESDAY, JULY 12, 2005


LAHORE, Pakistan The terrifying spectacle of a great city once again plunged into chaos and grief underlines one of the more glaring failures of the U.S.-led war on terrorism: the failure to capture Osama bin Laden.

Washington has mainly itself to blame. By transferring resources, satellite surveillance and manpower to Iraq, the United States not only took the pressure off bin Laden, but also gave the Taliban, Al Qaeda, drug barons and warlords time and space to reconstitute themselves in Afghanistan, where insurgent attacks are causing the bloodiest summer since 2001.

But there are good reasons why some of America's frustration over this situation has recently been directed at Pakistan, which is feeling increasing U.S. pressure to get serious in catching bin Laden.

Gone are the days when U.S. officials said vaguely that bin Laden was somewhere on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA director, Porter Goss, have said that they know where bin Laden is and that he is not in Afghanistan - implying he is in Pakistan. Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador to Kabul who is now the U.S envoy in Baghdad, has been more blunt and said that bin Laden is in Pakistan.

President Pervez Musharraf's army has captured 500 Al Qaeda militants and handed them over to the United States, and has lost more than 500 soldiers fighting Al Qaeda in the rugged tribal areas. But the reality is that Musharraf has little incentive to catch bin Laden - and it may even be in the military's interest to keep him alive, without necessarily knowing where he is.

Pakistan's military fears that its alliance with the United States is a short-term one, based on cooperating in the war on terrorism, while Washington's long-term ally in the region is India, Pakistan's rival, with which the United States signed a 10-year strategic defense pact on June 29. According to this logic, America cannot dump Pakistan as long as the war on terrorism continues and bin Laden remains to be captured.

The Pakistani Army is also angry at President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan for giving India a strategic foothold in his country and at the Americans for doing nothing to stop it. Pakistan's government claims that India is using Afghan soil to support an insurgency by nationalists in Baluchistan Province.

Pakistan's military is keen to maintain its political influence on the Afghan Pashtun population in eastern Afghanistan, something it has done since 1989 and is loath to give up.

So turning a blind eye to bin Laden's whereabouts and to Taliban recruitment inside Pakistan gives the army leverage over both Washington and Kabul. That leverage was evident during last year's presidential elections in Afghanistan: Only after a private meeting between Musharraf and President George W. Bush did Taliban attacks mysteriously cease for the duration of the elections.

At the same time, Musharraf's own political survival partially depends on not catching bin Laden. Pakistan is witnessing far greater anti-Americanism and sympathy for bin Laden than ever existed in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The army's top brass has no interest in provoking the terrorist mayhem and increased extremism that would certainly follow if bin Laden is caught or killed on Pakistani soil.

Meanwhile Musharraf has kept the fundamentalists at home on his side by allying himself with Pakistan's largest Islamic fundamentalist parties, who idealize bin Laden and rule the two provinces bordering Afghanistan. If bin Laden were caught, the fundamentalists might break that alliance and leave Musharraf politically isolated.

So where is bin Laden? Mostly likely he is hiding wherever the Pakistan Army is not deployed in its thousands. In the northern areas, bordering China and Afghanistan, the Karakorum mountains merge into the Pamir range, providing a scarcely populated, high-altitude hiding ground. In Baluchistan, the army's presence is minimal and the Taliban are active. A third possibility is Pakistan's large cities, where all senior Al Qaeda operatives caught so far have been found.

The carnage in London on Thursday may be a long way from the machinations of South Asian politics, but the fact is that until the world's leaders take into account the fears that drive Pakistan's leaders and military - including the perceived threat from India - terrorism and extremism will continue to find fertile ground there.

(Ahmed Rashid is the author of ''Taliban'' and, most recently, ''Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia.'')


In other words, it is the fault of US that Pakistan is unable to catch Osama and it is the fault of India that "terrorism and extremism will continue to find fertile ground " in Pakistan.

Breakthrough in the Ayodhya terrorist attack case.

The inevitable Paki link !

http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/web1/05july15/news.htm#2
Major breakthrough in Ayodhya attack
5 militants arrested, 2 Sumos used in
smuggling arms seized

By Sanjeev Pargal

JAMMU, July 14: In a major breakthrough in Ayodhya temple attack, police have arrested five militants from Mendhar who had helped five fidayeens in carrying out attack on Ram temple in Ayodhya on July 5. Two TATA Sumo vehicles in which the weapons had been supplied to the militants from Mendhar have been seized by police.

"A total of six militants, all hailing from Mendhar tehsil in Poonch district had helped five fidayeens in the attack. Five of them have been arrested while another was absconding. One of the arrested militant was working in a revered shrine at Thanna Mandi, Rajouri", highly placed sources told the Excelsior tonight.

They said Jammu Police was in constant touch with their counterparts in Uttar Pradesh and Central investigating agencies, operating from New Delhi, after arrests of the militants. A UP Police team was expected to reach here anytime to take custody of the militants.

A couple of women were also said to be involved in the conspiracy but they have not been arrested so far.

Sources said involvement of Jammu and Kashmir militants had been suspected in the attack right from the day the attack was carried out at Ram temple in Ayodhya. Two CRPF jawans and two civilians were injured in the attack while all five fidayeens were killed in three hour operation by the CRPF.

Arrested militants have been identified as Farooq Ahmed R/o Patta Kar, Mendhar, presently putting up in Shahdara Sharief shrine, Mohd Naseem son of Fazal Din R/o Dera Jattan, Mendhar, Abdul Aziz son of Mohd Bashir R/o Patti Dara, Mendhar, Shakeel Ahmed son of Nazir Ahmed R/o Derrian, Mendhar and Mushtaq Ahmed son of Rafiq Ahmed R/o Derrian, Mendhar.

The militant, who was absconding, was Mohd Akbar of Sakhi Maidaan, Mendhar. A massive hunt has been launched by Poonch police and security forces to apprehend him.

Two TATA Sumo vehicles, bearing registration number JK12 0951 and JK12 0267, have been seized by police. The weapons including five AK rifles, grenades and ammunition had been transported to the militants in the two TATA Sumos, which were driven by Farooq Ahmed and Shakeel Ahmed, both of whom were drivers.

A sophisticated wireless set has been recovered from the possession of Farooq Ahmed. After Ayodhya attack on July 5 morning, Farooq Ahmed had passed on a message to Pakistan on the same wireless set, which was partially intercepted by a Central security agency.

Driver of a jeep in which the fidayeens had travelled to Ayodhya and blasted the vehicle before entering the complex has also given vital clues to Uttar Pradesh Police during his sustained interrogation, which were later shared with Jammu Police.

Farooq Ahmed and Shakeel Ahmed were involved in transporting militants and hawala money in different parts of the State and outside in their TATA Sumo vehicles for last three to four years. Duo had so far carried out hawala transactions worth lakhs of rupees. They used to bring hawala money from New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Noida and distribute them among the militants operating in twin border districts of Rajouri and Poonch besides keeping a part of consignment with them. The TATA Sumos had been purchased by them using part of hawala money.

"During sustained interrogation of the militants at a safe house, somewhere in Jammu, they have admitted arranging weapons for Ayodhya fidayeen attack on the directions of top brass of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) outfit", the sources said, adding the militants were shifted from Poonch to Jammu for questioning keeping in view sensitivity of the case.

Shakeel Ahmed was paid Rs 80,000 for providing weapons to the fidayeens.

Security agencies were still engaged in ascertaining the routes used by the militants in shifting weapons from Mendhar to Uttar Pradesh since they would have crossed five States including Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, New Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.

The militants have revealed during their questioning that they had concealed the weapons very tactfully in the TATA Sumos. Albeit their vehicles were stopped at many nakas, the security agencies couldn’t detect the weapons including five AK rifles, which were used by the fidayeen in raining bullets during the attack.

According to sources, involvement of a couple of women has also surfaced in the conspiracy. However, their identity couldn’t be ascertained. They have not been arrested so far but their arrests were expected shortly.

Sources said a police team from Uttar Pradesh and sleuths of Central security agencies are arriving here shortly to take custody of the militants. Jammu Police, according to sources, wouldn’t object in handing over the militants to Uttar Pradesh police since they were wanted there in the attack.

Involvement of Jammu and Kashmir militants had surfaced in the attack after it was detected that the militants had made a call from their mobile telephone to Poonch before destroying it prior to the attack. The mobile phones were destroyed by them to ensure that there was no suspicion on a neighbouring country.

The militants had taken a separate route in reaching Ayodhya, the sources pointed out.


So it is now clear the Lashkar-e-toyba was involved in both the attacks - the Ayodhya temple attack and the London bombings. Timed for a double whammy and would have been a colossal success, except that Indian CRPF foiled the terrorists in Ayodhya before they could cause any damage.

SO how much of this is Osama's plan ?

I suspect, not much, since Osama has never been involved in any attack against India apart from the cursory inclusion of India in some speeches (especially after he went into hiding in Pak - leading to a speculation that he was forced to include the name by his "hosts")

If it was not Osama and only the Lashkar, what is going to be the UK response ? ( apart from giving Musharraf planes and money, of course)

LeT involvement is being confirmed. Tanweer and possibly the other three were also trained at LeT HQ at Muridke.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=15738498&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=7-7--war-on-britin--trained-at-bin-laden-s-house--name_page.html

BOMBER Shehzad Tanweer was taught terror tactics in Osama bin Laden's house, it was revealed yesterday.

Note :Osama had a house in Pakistan. Not in the borders or lawless frontiers or desert regions of Balochistan, but in Muridke, less than 30 miles from Lahore - a big city of Punjab province.

Tanweer, from Leeds, spent time at Markaz-e-Dawa, a notorious religious school in north Pakistan.

Fellow bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, and Hasib Hussain, 18, are also thought to have visited religious schools in Pakistan.

Markaz-e-dawa , the parent / political arm / pseudonym of LeT. Another name used is Jamaat-ud-Dawa. All these names are to maintain an illusion that they are different, but fact is all are headed by Saeed and used for deliberate obfuscation.

Tanweer also visited Jamia Manzoorul Islamia, a madrassa in Lahore. It was also heavily-guarded yesterday. Bearded men carrying AK-47s checked every person entering the school's mosque. One said 1,200 students studied religion at the school. A nearby shopkeeper said dozens were "foreigners".

hmmmm and where might those "foreigners" be going to blow up next..

"It appears Tanweer spent some time at Markaz-e-Dawa and at another militant seminary in the city."


It is speculated in Pakistan that he may have fallen into the clutches of Jaish-i-Muhammad, or Army of Muslims, radical Islamists behind dozens of suicide attacks.

Stupid reporters, it is not army of muslims , it is army of Muhammed.

So our boy has been visiting JeM too. Must have been a religious pilgrimmage so to speak.

The group also run military training camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bosnia and kidnapped British UN worker Annetta Flanigan at gunpoint in Kabul last October.


Let me summarize again, LeT has an international recruiting network, has carried out attacks outside India, has trained terrorists who have carried out attacks all over the world, LeT terrorists have been caught in US, UK, Aus etc. But it is still allowed to operate.

Now that the name LeT is published again and again, we can expect Musharraf to strongly deny and say that LeT leader Saeed is under "house arrest" or something and probably throw in a couple of foot soldiers in an "encounter" and make a song and dance of him combating LeT.


More here,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5142871,00.html
In a telephone call late Thursday, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf assured British Prime Minister Tony Blair of ``Pakistan's fullest support and assistance'' :rolleyes: in the investigation into the London attacks, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan news agency reported.

Blair thanked Pakistan for its ``unequivocal support,'' :rolleyes: APP said. It was not clear who initiated the call.

That is like pissing on the graves on all those who died in the London Bombings.

As soon as the Paki links were on the media, immediately as story was doing the rounds that Pakistan helped thwart an earlier attack, floated by no less than a Paki minister. Turned out to be false.

Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said Wednesday that information provided by Pakistan helped thwart an attack timed for before Britain's May 2005 general elections. But London's police commissioner said Thursday he was unaware of any such plot.

I've been reading your posts, very interesting.

In plain English, our deal with Pakistan reminds me of our deal with Central American countries. We give them millions to help us fight the war on drugs, they go spray a few acres and tell us how helpful they are. Then they get some more acreage planted so we'll give them even more money. Brings a new meaning to agricultural subsidy - or in this case, terrorist subsidy.

Haven't had a chance to respond to your previous India post, you got me doing some serious reading...

Sabbatis,

Thanks. :)

It is important the people take interest and watch the news carefully and understand what is going on beneath the simplistic pronouncements in media.

In plain English, our deal with Pakistan reminds me of our deal with Central American countries. We give them millions to help us fight the war on drugs, they go spray a few acres and tell us how helpful they are. Then they get some more acreage planted so we'll give them even more money. Brings a new meaning to agricultural subsidy - or in this case, terrorist subsidy.

Yes and it is more than that.

It is not like the Bush admin of Wolfowitz, Rocca, Rummy etc don't know about the Paki establishment. Some of the newcons in power today cut their teeth in the Afghan jihad and have developed a close personal relationship with Paki intelligence establishment.

Peter Goss, current CIA chief, was hosting the then Paki ISI chief Gen. Mahmud Ahmed in NY city on the day of 9/11. Ahmed was in Afghanistan hosted by the Taliban, the week before 9/11. Recall the assassination of NA leader Masood just a day before 9/11. The money transfer to Mohd Atta by Omar Shariff (Daniel Pearl killer ) was allegedly under the order of the same Ahmad. Shortly after the India publicising of this info, Musharraf removed Ahmad from post.

I am a person who do not believe in coincidences.

The administration simply does not allow any investigation into these matters by repeating " front line ally" , "after Musharraf the deluge" , " Valiant Pakistan hands over yet another AQ # 3" stuff.

The only person who ever investigated these links was Daniel Pearl and we all know what happened to the poor guy.

I would recommed reading Bernard Henri Levy's book "Who killed Danierl Pearl". Chilling stuff. He, a jew, managed to get into the hallowed halls of Binori madrassa, Karachi, the haunting grounds of Osama himself and the place where the Taliban was born.

Coming back to topic,

I hate to say, I told you so, but read what I wrote earlier

I bet they are working flat out to cover up any evidences and hush-hush the whole thing and create diversions about the mastermind from some other country and the mastermind recruited the suicide bombers in England and the plot was not hatched in Pakistan and poor Pakistan is valiantly fighting the terrorists and needs F-16s and money for catching Osama !

The stories are floating

http://www.eitb24.com/noticia_en.php?id=75961
Chemist, alleged mastermind of London bombings, arrested in Cairo

The report said authorities were eager to learn whether "more than one mastermind" had been involved and whether more bombs had been made, possibly at a bomb factory in Leeds in northern England.

A chemistry teacher believed to have been a possible mastermind in last week's London bombings has been detained near Cairo, ABC's "Good Morning America" reported on Friday.

That's the ways its gonna play out. The Egyptian will become the "mastermind" who hired the poor innocent and "misguided" Pakis who underwent training "secretly" in a "secret" place called Muridke totally unnoticed by the law enforcement just 20 odd miles away in Lahore. Of course LeT is "banned" by Musharraf, so how could it function, eh? :rolleyes:

I wonder why would this smart "mastermind" chemist go back to Egypt, which is a US ally to the point of becoming US's outsourcing hub for detention and interrogation of jihadi suspects and hang around near the heavily fortified airport ?

Reactions after the discovery of the chemist and the acetone explosives story

Eye-ran has a huge plant making acetone and their moo-lahs are blah-blah..See-ria is smuggling ether and they are blah-blah

Heck, all nail polish removers will not be allowed in airport carry-on luggage because it has acetone.

This is the comedy of War on Terror !

A brave soul has visited Muridke in what appears to be a guided tour. My comments in Italicised red.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article299440.ece

Inside the Pakistani school accused of teaching terrorism
By Justin Huggler in Muridke, Pakistan
Published: 16 July 2005

Trying to retrace the footsteps of a London suicide bomber through Pakistan can be a nerve-racking experience. When you turn up at the madrassa that Shahzad Tanweer is alleged to have visited just outside Lahore around six months ago, the first thing you see is a pair of bearded security guards armed with Kalashnikovs, who glare menacingly through the car windows.

The reputation of the Markaz Taiba madrassa goes before it. Journalists who have tried to enter before have been turned away, even threatened. Local people refer to the students as mujahedin. The school is openly run by an organisation that everybody in Pakistan knows is linked to militants fighting in Kashmir. { But but but but Musharraf is the ally of the front line state in war on terror and he has denied there are any terror camps in Pakistan and has promised that he will not allow Pakistani soil to be used for terrorism against India. Oh, I get it, if its terrorism against India, it does not count. }

But when The Independent visited yesterday, the madrassa couldn't have been more welcoming. We were invited to join a game of cricket with the students. The school administrators wanted to show off their horses, on which the students learn to ride, and the pride of their stable, a thoroughbred stallion who reared on his hind legs when a trainer cracked his whip.

We were given a tour of badminton courts and the computer suite. Could this really be the "terror school" of yesterday's news reports? But for the mosque, it looked pretty much like a wealthy private school in Britain: red-brick buildings housing the classrooms, wide playing fields, a large swimming pool.

The madrassa includes a school for children aged between six and 17 and a university. It doesn't offer only religious education but computer science, engineering and medicine.

This is the place that Pakistani intelligence sources say Tanweer attended for four or five days during a two-month trip to Pakistan that began last December. "It's not possible because it is our policy not to accept any foreign students," says Professor Zafar Iqbal, the director of education, a nervous man with red highlights in his beard and thinning hair. He comes out with the answer before you finish the question - it's clearly prepared. { Ah, I see, it is a guided tour to assuage all the fears about a terrorist training camp right near a big city. Nothing to worry folks, it is just a innocent little place where they play cricket !}

However, Pakistani intelligence sources say Tanweer was not a student but just visited. The professor denies that too.

When you ask him about the London bombings, he says: "I've been very busy writing a book. Today was the first I heard about the bombing. I think it's possible some Jews did it. I don't think Christians and Muslims were involved in this." That is a familiar conspiracy theory in Pakistan. {Note: There has been no jews in Pakistan since its independance and 99.9999 % Pakistanis would have never seen a jew in their life. But the jew hatred and jews did 9/11 theories abound in Pakistan. Refer to Benard Levy's book "who killed Daniel Pearl?" }

"Have you seen any militant activity here?" asked Yahyaa Mujahid, the information secretary of Jamat-ud-Dawa, the political party that runs the madrassa. "You can go anywhere you want. You can go alone and look . "

But for all the harmless image the madrassa was giving off yesterday, it is no secret in Pakistan the full story is not quite so innocent. Abu Talha Rashid Minhas, from the education department, parries every question with a polite smile, until you ask about the madrassa's involvement in Indian-held Kashmir. He holds your eyes an instant, a hard look, before waving away the question. :D

The Jamat-ud-Dawa, which owns and runs the madrassa, used to be, and is widely believed still to be, the political wing of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, a group of armed militants fighting in Kashmir. What we saw yesterday appears to have been a carefully orchestrated charm offensive.

Mr Mujahid openly admits the past connection but claims the Jamat-ud-Dawa severed all links with the militant group after it was banned by President Pervez Musharraf last year. :rolleyes: Pakistani journalists say they believe the two groups are still linked.

"How can there be any militant activity here?" asks Mr Mujahid. " We are just outside Lahore. We are closely watched by the security forces." And that begs a question, with Pakistani intelligence naming the madrassa as a link in the Pakistani connection to the London bombings. { Yes, how can it be? Unless, IT IS DELIBERATELY ALLOWED TO TRAIN JIHADIS. Until now, Lashkar trained jihadis were attacking only India and now that they have bombed London, suddenly the training camp attract attention of being a terror camp and this reported feels the need to visit it and report.}

There are an estimated 10,0000 madrasas in Pakistan, providing education to students from poor rural families. Many are financed by donations from Saudi Arabia, and teach an austere form of Wahabi Islam, but critics accuse them of extremism. { Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - the bestest allies of Bush administration. }

This is not Jamaat-ud-Dawa's only madrassa in Pakistan. The organisation has 137 all over the country. Altogether, it teaches 22,000 students. As one Pakistani journalist put it: "If all the other groups with militant links are banned, why does the government still allow Jammat-ud-Dawa to operate freely?"

Wrong. Not just LeT , none of the Anti - Indian Jihadi orgs have been actually banned. Musharraf announcing that Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Toiba are banned in TV and newspaper do not make it so.

The infiltration of jihadis across LoC has also not been completely stopped.

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=74385
The Army today claimed to have killed 15 of the 35-odd militants who had tried to cross the LoC near the Gurez sector in Jammu and Kashmir yesterday.

http://www.hindu.com/2005/07/16/stories/2005071612070100.htm
9 militants die in 100-hour battle

http://sify.com/news/othernews/fullstory.php?id=13897258
Thirteen militants were on Saturday killed as army troops foiled two attempts by ultras to sneak into the valley in Keran and Uri sectors

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshowbnews/1172977.cms
LoC hots up: 40 killed in 7 days


After the strategy of infiltrating non-citizens , Arabs for 9/11 and Pakistanis for the Indian Parliament attack etc) the Jihadi orgs have adopted a new strategy. The deniability did not work and this strategy invited attacks , US attacked Afghanistan and India almost went to war with Pakistan.

The new strategy is to recruit, indoctrinate and train the citizens of the target country and use them for terrorist attacks.

Ayodhya temple attack is apparently done by Indian muslims who were members of LeT ( Govt is not releasing identity of actual attackers fearing backlash ). UK bombings were done by British citizens who could easily evade detection mechanisms put in place to detect 9/11 type attackers. US arrested a LeT trained guy in Lodi, who was a US citizen of Paki descent.

Interestingly, it is also speculated that the UK bombers were not intentional suicide bombers.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=15742951%26method=full%26siteid=94762%26headline=exclusive%2d%2d58%2d%2dwas%2dit%2dsuici de%2d-name_page.html

Why did they buy return train tickets to Luton? Why did they buy pay & display tickets for cars? Why were there no usual shouts of 'Allah Akhbar'? Why were bombs in bags and not on their bodies?

By Jeff Edwards

THE London bombers may have been duped into killing themselves so their secrets stayed hidden.

Police and MI5 are probing if the four men were told by their al-Qaeda controller they had time to escape after setting off timers. Instead, the devices exploded immediately.

A security source said: "If the bombers lived and were caught they'd probably have cracked. Would their masters have allowed that to happen? We think not."

Gives credence to my theory that it was not a AQ planned and coordinated attack. Whoever planned this did not want to the public to know who did this, but wanted the governments to know.

Their devices were in large rucksacks which could be easily dumped instead of being strapped to their bodies. They carried wallets containing their driving licences, bank cards and other personal items. Suicide bombers normally strip themselves of identifying material.

Similar terror attacks against public transport in Madrid last year were carried out by recruits who had time to escape and planned to strike again.

Bomber Hasib Hussain detonated his device at the rear of the top deck of a No 30 bus, not in the middle of the bottom deck where most damage would be caused.

Additionally, two of the bombers had strong personal reasons for staying alive.

Jermaine Lindsay's partner Samantha Lewthwaite, 22, mother of his one-year-old son, is expecting her second baby within days. Mohammed Sidique Khan's wife Hasina, mum of a 14-month-old daughter, is also pregnant.

Our source disclosed: "The theory that they were not a suicide squad is gathering pace. They were the weakest link.

"We think it's possible they were told that when they pressed buttons to set off timers they'd have a short time to abandon the bombs and get away before the blast. Instead, the bombs exploded immediately." :eek: :D

Another intelligence source added: "Whoever is behind this didn't want to waste their best operatives on a suicide mission. Instead they used easily recruited low-grade men who may have believed they'd walk away."

Tubelights are finally alight !

Meanwhile,

http://ickent.icnetwork.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=15745097&method=full&siteid=50102&headline=egypt--will-not-hand--over-suspect-name_page.html
Egypt 'will not hand' over suspect

How can they? That would make the whole spin unravel. The alleged mastermind needs to be out of the country. Just like how Daniel Pearl's killer Omar Sheikh has been allowed to remain in Pakistani custody while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and many such Al-Quaeda types were promptly handed over.

Out of sight, out of mind. While the last bit of " he was the mastermind" is retained in public memory.

A series of articles focussing on Professor Hafiz Mohammed Saeed and LeT.

http://www.the-week.com/25jul17/currentevents_article10.htm

The Ayodhya attack could be part of Lashkar supremo
Hafiz Muhammed Saeed’s plan to open more battlefronts in India
By Lukose Mathew

The jihad in Kashmir would soon spread to entire India.
Our mujahideen would create three Pakistans in India.
Prof. Hafiz Muhammed Saeed, supreme leader of Lashkar-e-Toiba

He is Allah’s avenging angel. And like all avenging angels, he has a long memory. Memory that served him well in his earlier avatar as a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Engineering and Technology at Lahore, and, later, in his role as chief of Markaz-ul-Dawa-al-Irshad (MDI), the parent organisation of the Lashkar-e-Toiba or the ‘Army of the Pure’.

The portly Prof. Hafiz Muhammed Saeed’s devotion to his mission of creating three Pakistans out of India is as single-minded as that of a laser-guided missile. Kashmir, for him, is the gateway to India. Its liberation from the ‘Hindus’, he told the media in February 1996 in Lahore, would be followed by the liberation of Muslims in north and south India. Muslims, he said in an interview a year later, should be "aroused to rise in revolt... so that India gets disintegrated".

Lashkar has emerged as the deadliest terror outfit operating out of Pakistan in the last decade. Indian intelligence agencies attribute most of the recent terrorist strikes in India to Lashkar, including the one in Ayodhya on July 5. It has virtually unlimited access to funds, thanks to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and sponsors in Europe and the middle east, and a never-ending supply of troops, thanks to the schools managed by the MDI.

The pattern of Lashkar attacks in India following Saeed’s statement proves that he was indeed serious about his intent. Though the outfit entered Kashmir to wage jihad rather late—in 1993—it soon pushed the other big organisations, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and Jaish-e-Muhammad, to the fringes. After the Kargil war of 1999, during which Saeed’s boys rubbed shoulders with the Pakistan army fighting the Indians, Lashkar made its name organising fidayeen (suicide) attacks in Kashmir. Even as the civilians and the security forces in the Valley reeled under the new mode of terror, Saeed set his sights outside the state. Delhi was the first target.

Lashkar militants attacked the Red Fort in December 2000 and a year later they mounted a daring assault on Parliament with help from JeM. In fact, JeM and Hizb-ul, after being pushed to the background, have been helping Lashkar militants carry out their strike. The early-bird advantage meant that JeM and Hizb-ul had considerable knowledge of the potential targets, which the Lashkar has been putting to good use.

In 2002, the Akshardham Temple in Gandhinagar, belonging to the Swaminarayan sect, was the target. Last year, there were reports that Lashkar was training its guns on important personalities, including cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly. In March 2005, the Delhi Police killed three Lashkar militants and captured two others who were apparently planning to target software companies in Bangalore. Then came the Ayodhya attack, the fourth on temples since 1996.

Catch them young: Pakistani children with Lashkar flags

"The way the attack has been carried out suggests the involvement of Lashkar," said K. Sreenivasan, deputy inspector-general of the Border Security Force and an expert on pan-Islamic outfits operating in Pakistan. "They have agents in some parts of the country, though in Kashmir they are presently very much down. Only Lashkar has the expertise and motivation to carry out such an attack." So what makes Saeed order these daring strikes? One, the publicity they garner; two, the fear they generate in the minds of the people and; three, the way they "arouse the Muslims". Saeed, it seems, has taken a leaf out of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s book. He has a habit of making bold statements that cause superpowers to shiver. In fact, bin Laden was said to be the main inspiration for the three professors who founded MDI—Saeed, his colleague Zafar Iqbal and Abdullah Azzam of the International Islamic University, which is allegedly funded by bin Laden.

When the MDI, which belongs to the conservative Ahle-Hadith (aka Salafi or Wahabi) school of Islam, was formed in 1987, bin Laden provided the seed money. Its headquarters was set up on a sprawling 190 acres in Muridke, 45km from Lahore. Besides a huge mosque, the building of which was financed by bin Laden, the heavily guarded campus houses a guest house—which was used by the al Qaeda chief before America started snapping at his heels—a madrasa, a hospital, a market, a fish farm, agricultural tracts and residential area for scholars and the faculty. MDI has five Islamic institutions, more than a hundred schools and five madrasas besides ambulance services, blood banks and clinics across Pakistan. It also has a media wing headed by Saeed’s son-in-law, Khalid Waleed.

A year after the MDI was launched, Azzam got killed in an explosion. In July 2004, Iqbal broke away and launched Khairun Naas after Saeed anointed his brother-in-law, Maulana Abdul Rehman Makki, a former teacher, as his second-in-command and head of foreign affairs. Charges of nepotism are nothing new to Saeed. His son, Talha, looks after the affairs of the Lashkar in Muzaffarabad, while Waleed, despite being accused of having links with car smugglers, continues to be powerful.

Lashkar, MDI’s armed wing, was launched in 1990 in the Afghan province of Kunar with the specific aim of fighting the Najibullah regime in Afghanistan. After the Taliban captured Kabul in 1992, the attention turned to Kashmir. Meanwhile, Lashkar had become a big hit with the ISI and the government, particularly because Saeed and his men had no interest in local politics unlike other outfits. Patronage meant that the MDI as well as Lashkar prospered. The many institutions it ran ensured that it never faced a shortage of cadres.

Lashkar trains recruits in two phases. The basic, Daura Aam, lasts 21 days and recruits are motivated to pursue jihad as a mission. The special phase, Daura Khaas, is of three months and involves training in weapons, ambush and survival. Saeed has combined Islamic education and modern knowledge in his institutions, in a bid to make his wards motivated and innovative.

Saeed was arrested in end-2001, under pressure from the US which listed Lashkar as a terrorist organisation. Lashkar was banned and to survive the crisis it was ‘distanced’ from the MDI, renamed Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the headquarters shifted to Muzaffarabad with Maulana Abdul Wahid Kashmiri as head of operations. Saeed was let off in November 2002, because the government ‘failed’ to find anything against him. :rolleyes:

His dream run continues to this day, despite the split in 2004 and resentment over his second marriage to the widow of a slain associate. :eek: Saeed, 57, has two children—a son and a daughter—from his first marriage to the daughter of his maternal uncle Hafiz Mohammad Abdullah Bahawalpuri, an Ahle-Hadith scholar.

Saeed had a strictly religious upbringing in Janubi village in Mianwali district, where his landlord father, Kamaluddin, had set up base after Partition, having migrated from Hyderabad. His mother taught her seven children the Quran and Saeed took to the holy book in a big way. After his graduation, he did his masters in Islamic Studies from King Saud University, Riyadh. His first job was as research officer at the Islamic Ideological Council in Pakistan. Even after he launched the MDI, he continued to teach till his retirement a couple of years ago.

Saeed, who has never been to the west despite the fact that his two brothers live in the US, dislikes being photographed and has banned TV in his headquarters. He hates ‘Hindu rulers’, from whose clutches he wants to liberate Junagadh and Hyderabad, apart from Kashmir. And he has a good reason to hate India: 36 members of his extended family were killed during Partition.

That also explains why he has been so vehemently opposed to the peace process and proves that he would go any length to achieve his mission: disintegrate India.
With Tariq Bhat/Srinagar

Another at the same link. Author is former Chief of Indian Intelligence agency (RAW).

http://www.the-week.com/25jul17/Imgbox/cover5.jpg

Nice heart warming picture. Harkat-ul-Mujahideen's meeting at Karachi.

Time to be on our toes

By B. Raman

The jihadi terrorist strike at Ayodhya should, hopefully, mark the end of the illusions the Manmohan Singh government held that its peace overtures could provide India a respite from terrorism spawned in Pakistani territory.


Those of us who pointed out that there were no reasons to believe that it was the beginning of the end of jihadi terrorism were dismissed as hawks stuck in the years of the cold war. With the rude reality now staring him in the face, the Prime Minister himself, while on his way to Scotland to attend the G-8 summit, reportedly admitted that the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan is by and large intact and that such terrorist strikes could come in the way of the peace process.

The morale of the Pan-Islamic jihadi terrorism has been strengthened by the brave fight put up by their co-religionists in Iraq, who have kept the world’s only superpower at bay for over two years now. They are aligned with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda in his International Islamic Front (IIF).

Following the disruption of the command and control of the al Qaeda by the US troops in Afghanistan, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) has been coordinating the IIF’s activities since 2003. Other Pakistani members of the IIF include the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). Of these, the LeJ is an anti-Shia organisation whose activities are confined to Pakistan.

The LeT, the HuM, the HuJI and the JEM have been at the forefront of jihadi terrorism worldwide and India has been its worst victim. Secret cells set up by the LeT have been discovered all over India.

Since January 2002, President Pervez Musharraf has made a pretense of banning terrorist activities and ordering the freezing of their bank accounts. Some of the leaders of these organisations were detained for some months and then released on the ground that there was no evidence against them.

Now they function under different names and have at their disposal large funds. In the past, one source of their income was contributions from ISI. There is no reason to believe that this source has dried up. According to an affidavit filed in a US court by the Federal Bureau of Investigation following an inquiry, terrorist training camps continue to function in Pakistani territory, some near Rawalpindi, where the headquarters of the Pakistani army are located.

Last year, Pakistanis or people of Pakistani origin constituted the second largest number of terrorist suspects—after Moroccans—detained and questioned by the security agencies of west Europe.

Since the twin blasts in Mumbai in September 2003, there has been a steady flow of volunteers for jihadi missions from the Indian Muslim community. This has become apparent in the recent investigations into the activities of the LeT modules, which were allegedly planning terrorist strikes in the Indian Military Academy at Dehradun, Bangalore's IT firms and the Hindustan Aeronautics complex in Kanpur.

The strategic objectives of Pakistan’s military-intelligence establishment under Musharraf’s leadership remain the same: the ultimate annexation of J&K, the acquisition of Siachen, the polarisation of Hindu-Muslim relations, and preventing the emergence of India as a world power by keeping it continuously bleeding with the help of jihadi terrorists.

A cause for disquiet in Pakistan’s jihadi circles has been the developing relationship between India and the US. There would be no better way of disrupting this relationship than by targeting American lives and interests in India. A terrorist strike—al Qaeda inspired, if not mounted—against American targets in Indian territory such as the US diplomatic missions and the US naval ships visiting Indian ports is an increasingly worrisome possibility.

Does this mean we should reverse the peace process? Not at all. One tends to forget that Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao encouraged more people-to-people contacts between India and Pakistan than any other Prime Minister. They never fought shy of meeting Pakistani leaders. But they had no illusions about a change of mindset in Pakistan’s leadership in the near or medium term. They were ready to make Pakistan pay a price, if need be, for its use of terrorism against India.

The BJP-led government’s sometimes tough, sometimes soft policy created more confusion than clarity. Manmohan Singh’s handling of the peace process has unwittingly created an image of him not as a seeker of peace, but as a supplicant for peace.

It is time to correct this image.
The writer is additional secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat.

http://www.strategypage.com//fyeo/howtomakewar/default.asp?target=htterr.htm

COUNTER-TERRORISM: Pakistan Losing Battle with Terrorists

July 15, 2005: No one wants to talk about it openly, but Pakistan has backed off on dealing with on its own Islamic radicals. In 2002, and into 2003, the Pakistani government tried to crack down on Islamic radicals. Leaders were put under house arrest, a few were actually sent to prison. Training camps for terrorists were shut down, and religious schools were told to clean up their acts, and stop preaching hate and, in effect, training terrorists. The Islamic radicals struck back, with the help of opposition politicians, and Islamic conservative (but not radical) religious leaders. Politics in Pakistan, while not as democratic as it is in neighboring India, is heavily influenced by various alliances and power blocks, plus whatever is hot in the local media. Since Pakistan is currently run by yet another military dictatorship (as it has for most of the time since the nation was created in 1947), public opinion must be catered to, lest another strongman gather enough political clout to depose the current government. So, in order to garner popular support, the government has backed off on its attempts to suppress the Islamic radicals. This is mainly because the main operation of the Islamic radicals is terror attacks against India, mainly in the disputed province of Kashmir (largely occupied by India, but with a population that is mostly Moslem). As much as Pakistan would like all the Islamic terrorists to go away (especially the ones trying to kill the current Pakistani leadership), the “liberate Kashmir for Pakistan” thing is just too popular with too many Pakistanis. This was a campaign that an earlier (the 1980s) military dictator started, not realizing that India would successfully resist the terror campaign, and that the Islamic terrorists would grow to become a serious problem inside Pakistan. But that’s exactly what happened. And now, with Pakistan’s American ally demanding help in fighting Islamic terrorism, Pakistan finds itself unable to do so.

While the Islamic terrorists have assumed a lower profile, and cut back on the number of people they are sending into Kashmir, they are still in business. They are still openly advertising for new recruits, and have reopened training camps that were closed two years ago. Islamic terrorist leaders are largely out from under house arrest, or confinement of any sort. While the Islamic conservatives are divided into many different groups, some of whom are fighting each other, they all unite to oppose any government efforts to crack down on Islamic radical or terrorist activities. But the government will have to deal with the religious fanatics eventually. These groups are too violent and unpredictable to just leave alone. For the moment, however, the Pakistani government is backing off, and hoping that, maybe, just maybe, the Islamic terrorists will sort of, like, go away. It’s uncertain how long the United States, and other countries being hit by Islamic terrorists, will put up with that.

Another article, which echoes my views very much.

http://hindustantimes.com/news/181_1433066,0008.htm
The Pakistan Connection
Vir Sanghvi

It is almost a truism to say that when a terrorist attack takes place in a Third World country, Western powers — and the Western media — dismiss it as an example of the internal tensions that beset that country. But when a similar — or even, a lesser — attack takes place in a Western country, it becomes an event of global significance. The international news channels are full of nothing else. There is talk of international conspiracies. And the world community is asked to sit up and take note of the rogue states that are now threatening the peaceful existence of white people.

I hesitate to make this point again and again because it can be misinterpreted to suggest a certain insensitivity towards the victims of terrorism in Western countries. The truth is that I was as agitated as any American over the 9/11 attacks and wrote what must be one of my most emotional columns after that tragedy, echoing the global feeling that, as the world united against the terrorists, we were all New Yorkers that day.

The London bombings have been even more emotionally wrenching for me. I was born in London, I went to school there and it remains one of my most favourite cities in the world. Even though I was many miles away when the bombers struck, I reacted as though my home had been violated and the attack had reached me personally.

But as bad as I felt about those incidents, there is still no getting around the fact that when it comes to terrorism, the West follows a double standard. There is one rule for the Third World. And one rule for the developed world.

We still don’t have a final figure for fatalities in the London bombings but even the most pessimistic estimates suggest that the eventual death count will not reach even one-third of the number of innocent people who died in the 1993 Bombay serial blasts. While I share in the general mourning for the Londoners who were killed by cowardly terrorists on 7 July, my question is: how many Westerners mourned the Bombayites who were blown up by terrorists?

At that stage, the Western world reacted as though the violence was a consequence of India’s own domestic problems. When we protested that this was not so, nobody was willing to listen. We produced evidence that the bombers had been part of Dawood Ibrahim’s gang of international criminals. We proved that the plastic explosive had been shipped in from West Asia. And we provided testimony from those bombers whom we were able to apprehend. They all said the same thing — that they had been trained in camps in Pakistan.

Nobody took us seriously. Nobody believed that there was an international terrorist conspiracy. Nobody paid any attention to Dawood Ibrahim. And as for the Pakistani connection, well, they said, that was just India being paranoid and blaming everything on Pakistan as usual.

Fast forward to a decade later. In the aftermath of 9/11, almost all of the things that we said about the Bombay blasts were repeated by the FBI. It was an international conspiracy, we were told. The bombers came from West Asia. They were sponsored by Osama bin Laden, who hid out in Afghanistan under the protection of Pakistan’s ISI. And when a list of global terrorists was circulated to police forces all over the world, the Americans were now quite willing to put Dawood Ibrahim on it.

Consider also the response to the London bombings. It now seems clear that though there may have been a shadowy West Asian mastermind, the vast majority of the men who planted the bombs were of Pakistani origin. Some of them may have been born in the UK, but they had been back to Pakistan and perhaps had been trained in the deadly craft of destruction by Pakistani experts. Now, British teams are combing Pakistan to find evidence of the terror networks. They have finally worked out that the modus operandi of the Bombay blasts was remarkably similar to the London incidents: a series of bombs timed to go off within minutes of each other. They now concede that there is a connection in the style of the bombings.

All this should make the West stop and rethink its policies towards terrorism — and towards Pakistan. It has long been an article of faith among Western politicians that while there may be the odd extremist organisation in Pakistan, the government is clean as a whistle and that General Musharraf himself is a kindly, philanthropic figure, fighting the good fight on behalf of his Western mentors.

In fact, as India has been warning for nearly two decades, this view of the Pakistani establishment is not only dangerously naïve, it can also have fatal consequences for helpless civilians in the West and in India.

India has repeatedly made the following points:

* In the 1980s, the CIA spent billions of dollars helping the ISI set up camps to arm and train
Islamic jehadis who were sent into Afghanistan to fight the Russians. At that stage, Osama bin Laden was an US ally, whom Washington regarded as a freedom fighter. (Though why a Saudi should want to fight for Afghan freedom was never made clear.) Once the Afghan jehad was over and America withdrew, Washington was extremely naïve if it believed that it could just walk away from these terror camps. The jehadis needed new targets. And the ISI knew how to train them — and where to send them.

* We argued that the Kashmir insurgency began in 1989 just as the Afghan operation ended. The international jehadis (Saudis, Yemenis, Sudanese etc) who had come to fight in Afghanistan were now being diverted to Kashmir. The next step would be for them to target civilians in the rest of India. And eventually, the terror would reach the West. Nobody listened to us. Instead they bought the Pakistani propaganda about a Kashmiri freedom struggle.

* After the Bombay blasts, we appealed again to the international community and warned that the terror was spreading. We said that ISI had now become a state within a state and posed a danger to world peace. Nobody listened to us again.

* When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan on behalf of their ISI mentors, destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas and forced Hindus to wear a yellow band, we tried to draw the West’s attention to this appalling situation. Nobody cared; not even when IC-814 was hijacked to Kandahar as part of an ISI operation and three dangerous terrorists were released from Indian prisons and promptly found shelter in Pakistan.

* One of those terrorists, Maulana Masood Azhar, openly addressed meetings stirring up anti-Indian and anti-American feeling. The second, Omar Sheikh, killed the American journalist Daniel Pearl when, as a new book reveals, he came too close to unraveling ISI’s links with the terror networks. The third, Latram, came back to Kashmir to murder more civilians. The Pakistani authorities did what they could to help all three — just as they continue to provide shelter to Dawood Ibrahim (and Osama bin Laden?).

* Two years ago, Benazir Bhutto told the HT Leadership Initiative in Delhi that retired Generals and ISI bosses had made millions out of the Afghan operation. They now ran private armies and terrorist camps. They were out of the reach of the Pakistan government. The West paid no attention to this shocking revelation by a former Pakistani Prime Minister.

Now, after the London bombings, Pakistan is suddenly the focus of global attention. General Musharraf has promised to crack down on terrorists, his nose growing longer by the minute. :D Washington has asked Pakistan to close down the terrorist camps. And there is a growing recognition that the real threat to world peace does not come from Iraq or Iran. It comes from Pakistan.

I am glad that the message has finally got through. My only regret is that if the West had listened to us in the immediate aftermath of the Bombay serial blasts, then thousands of lives could have been saved, both in India and in the West.

It is a shame that it took the cold-blooded murder of innocent Londoners to force the Western world to finally wake up and look reality in the eye.


Not sure if they have woken up even now.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-523-1697130-523,00.html
The Pakistan connection
Extremism is thriving in the provinces and schools, reports Christina Lamb

This was Darul Uloom Haqqania or House of Knowledge, one of Pakistan’s leading madrasahs based in Akora Khattak in the North West Frontier Province. The Eton of budding Islamic warriors, its 2,500 places are heavily oversubscribed. Upstairs in the hall leading to the Library of Fatwas, a roll of honour lists most of the Taliban leadership as alumni as well as an honorary degree for Mullah Omar.

Yep, Taliban leadership was from Pakistan and is currently now in Pakistan - a fact that is not even discussed in any western media who don't have time enough discussing if eye-ranian president Ahmedinejad was one of the hostage taker 3 decades ago....

The only posters on the walls were of a Kalashnikov-wielding Osama Bin Laden on a charging white horse.
:)

The teenagers I spoke to were unable to do simple calculations and had never heard of dinosaurs. They laughed uproariously at the idea that man could walk on the moon.

When I asked what they wanted to be when they graduated, they talked of becoming mullahs. One or two spoke of embracing shahadat, martyrdom, and of going to paradise with its 72 virgins, almost as though this world was just a grade to get through.

My visit was short — as a woman, although clad in an all-encompassing burqa, I had been warned I might be stoned and my questions were clearly provoking some hostility.

But I have known the director Maulana Sami-ul Haq since I lived in Pakistan in the late 1980s and he waved me to a plastic chair in his car port and offered Pepsi, brought by his son Osama. The maulana explained that his father had founded the school before independence in 1947, stating that “we don’t have money or guns to drive out the British but through education we have the power to influence and raise an entire generation against them”. :confused:

The only foreign students I had seen were central Asian, Indonesian and north African, but the maulana boasted that among the thousands of applicants every year were British students.

It was in one such madrasah near the old Mughal city of Lahore that Shahzad Tanweer, the Aldgate bomber, spent time at the beginning of this year after growing up in Leeds. It was a trip from which friends say the cricket-mad 22-year old returned a changed man.

According to Pakistani intelligence sources, this was his second trip to the country. Mohammed Sidique Khan, the primary school teaching assistant and Edgware Road bomber, is said to have made regular trips to the country, and the youngest suicide bomber, 18-year-old Hasib Hussain who blew up the No 30 bus, also visited, ironically sent by his father to learn some discipline.

“Yet again with 7/7 we see all roads lead to Pakistan,” said M J Gohel, director of the London-based Asia- Pacific Foundation that monitors terrorism.

He pointed out that all six of the most senior Al-Qaeda leaders captured so far were living in Pakistan. Richard Reid, the failed shoe-bomber, had spent time there as had Saajid Badat, the second would-be shoe-bomber who was arrested in Gloucestershire. Pakistan was the base for Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-born LSE student sentenced to death for beheading Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter.

Now it seems that the Leeds suicide bombers were probably trained and perhaps masterminded from Pakistan.

“This cannot be just coincidence,” said Gohel. “What it shows is that in spite of General Musharraf’s stated policy of supporting the war on terror, Pakistan still seems to be the epicentre for global jihad.”



Some tubelights are fast catching on...


When the Taliban movement emerged in the 1990s, these so-called “universities of jihad” provided thousands of foot soldiers. Maulana Sami-ul Haq boasts of how he would declare holidays and send his students off to fight whenever he got the call from Mullah Omar.

Yep. Taliban was foisted on the hapless Afghans by the Pakis as part of their "Strategic depth" policy. Until 9/11 Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were the ONLY countries to have recognised the Taliban govt (if you can call that a goverment !).

Before the attacks on London, members of Islamic extremist groups in Pakistan would often boast that the next wave of mujaheddin would come from Britain.

“Brother, you will soon see real mujaheddin in action,” said Abu Qasim, a member of Al-Muhajiroun, a London-based extremist group, recently. “They will not come from Afghanistan or Pakistan. They will come from the heart of infidels. They will come from London.”

Sure, they started coming from London atleast a decade ago. Omar Sheikh , a student at LSE , joined JEM and was caught in Kashmir and was released in exchange for a hijacked place IC-814. BBC said alleged terrorist and Pakistan promptly denied involvement and nobody bothered. Mohammed Bilal, another Brit - Paki , took training at a camp in Pakistan and became a suicide bomber in Kashmir in 2000. BBC said alleged terrorist and Pakistan promptly denied involvement and nobody bothered. Shehzad Tanweer another Brit-Paki took training at a camp and did his bit and now all hell breaks loose. NOW, it is called terrorism and NOW western reporters are visiting the camps in Pakistan for scoops! :confused:

It appears now that three of the four bombers were trained in Pakistani terrorist camps for months..

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1699024,00.html
Bombers travelled around Pakistan for three months
By Simon Freeman, Times Online

Three of the four suicide bombers who carried out the July 7 attacks on London had visited Pakistan in the previous 12 months it was confirmed today, lending weight to theories that the terrorists were trained by extremists from the country's lawless border province. :confused:

Detailed arrival and departure records from Karachi Airport have been issued which give the exact times and dates that the trainee terrorists arrived and left Pakistan. Pictures taken at the time show the men looking confident and relaxed as they entered the country.

There are many camps which openly function near cities, the primary one being the LeT headquarters itself based at Muridke, near Lahore.

To go along with such spin as "terorists are only in border provinces and we are fighting them" ... the army launches attacks in the tribal areas, kills some poor tribal minding his goats and claims it has bagged a feared AQ terrorist ;)

like here,

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_18-7-2005_pg1_1
Soldiers kill 17 near Miranshah
PESHAWAR: Seventeen suspected foreign militants and a Pakistan Army soldier were killed in a clash near the Pak-Afghan border in North Waziristan Agency late on Saturday night, officials told Daily Times on Sunday.

Nice, you might think. But no. But go into the details,

A military source speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons said the dead included 15 women and children and two men

Now seriously, 15 women and child terrorists belonging to Al-Queda :rolleyes:

Army and paramilitary troops have carried out several operations to hunt down fighters in the two areas. Pakistan, a key ally of the US in the war on terror, has deployed thousands of troops to the border regions to hunt down terror suspects.

But Tanweer might have visited an extremist madrassah not in "lawless frontier" but in Central Lahore.

http://icsolihull.icnetwork.co.uk/tm_objectid=15748449&method=full&siteid=91411&headline=man-quizzed-on-phone-link-to-bomber-name_page.html
Agents were sent to the Jamia Manzoorul Islam seminary in central Lahore, one of two religious schools - or madrassas - allegedly visited by Shahzad Tanweer


So what about madrassahs and camps in and near cities which churn out jihadis trained to kill ?


http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_18-7-2005_pg3_1
While no seminary in Pakistan is willing to admit that the three London bombers ever contacted them, intelligence personnel in Pakistan accept that all three came to Pakistan between November last year and February this year. Muhammad Siddiq Khan (30) and Shehzad Tanweer (22) are said to have stayed in Lahore or other cities of the Punjab. Haseeb Hussain (18), the youngest of the bombers, is believed to have visited Karachi. Six months after their return from Pakistan they committed the acts of terrorism that may change Europe more than the tragedy of 9/11. In these six months they are presumed to have learnt from an expert how to make explosives in accordance with the instructions in captured Al Qaeda manuals.

The police in Pakistan have gone looking in the cities where the spoor of the terrorists has led them: Lahore, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Toba Tek Singh and Kamalia

All cities and IIRC, most of them are in the Punjab province , not the "lawless" frontier province.

The police have gone to the cities in Punjab known for their links with Al Qaeda and its ancillary militias, now banned but functioning under new names. That all was not well with our security measures was made clear by President Pervez Musharraf when, addressing senior police officers last week, he asked them to go after the banned but still functioning “renamed” militias. He came across as admitting that this was something he did not know and had had just been briefed about. :rolleyes: (One can’t imagine how an IG will approach the supreme leader of the Lashkar with handcuffs even if President Musharraf specifically orders him to do so, which is unlikely.) The truth is that at least three terrorist-jihadi organisation (whose members tried to kill him earlier) have functioned quite openly, and a usually sympathetic Urdu press has been referring to them freely after realising that the government did not mind such reporting too much. At least one leader in Lahore steadily appears on the pages of the Urdu press with statements condemning President Musharraf’s “pro-US and pro-India” policies. So powerful is his “renamed” organisation that he invites opposition politicians to his impressive gatherings at a new venue in the city, which the Punjab government has allowed him. Another “leader”, personally close to Osama bin Laden, has never left the comfort of his luxurious house in Islamabad. Although he has been “picked up” periodically, he has never been de-commissioned.

another small nugget,

The Hamburg Cell “19”, which attacked the United States in 2001, fell under the spell of a Moroccan cleric at the city’s Al Quds mosque. From there they were directed to Pakistan. All of them were ‘facilitated’ by Al Qaeda’s ancillary Islamists while on their way to Afghanistan under the tutelage of Al Qaeda’s Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the main planner of 9/11, who lived for many years in Karachi directing funding from Kuwait.

More incriminations..

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1698573,00.html
Yesterday Maariv, an Israeli paper, claimed that another of the British bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, helped to organise the terror attack on a Tel Aviv that was carried out by two Britons. The Times has learnt from Pakistani security sources that while in Pakistan some of the Tube bombers met leading figures from an outlawed terror group called Jaish-e-Mohammed, which has been actively recruiting Britons from universities and colleges since the early 1990s.

They and another banned group — Lashkar-e-Taiba — collect more than £5 million each a year from British mosques, even though both are proscribed organisations.

Most donors believe that their funds are going to charities and educational projects associated with the conflict in Kashmir.

A report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, says that Britain remains one of the main donors but cautions that the diversion of funds from the humanitarian projects to terror cells has become a normal practice. “It is difficult to separate finances for terror from those for charity,” the report says.

In the past Jaish has boasted of many British Muslim volunteers in its ranks. Among them is Ahmed Omar Sheikh, a former LSE student and public schoolboy from Woodford, northeast London, who abandoned his studies in 1993.

He is now facing a death sentence in Pakistan for the abduction and murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter.

More info on how the mess started..

http://outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20050715&fname=raman&sid=1
The Blowback Continues
It was with the full knowledge and complicity of the British and American intelligence agencies at the height of Bosnia crisis that the radicalisation of the Muslim youth of Pakistani origin living in West Europe began. Omar Sheikh is but one instance...

B. RAMAN

As I watched on the TV an announcement by the BBC that the British Police have identified Jamaican-born Lindsey Germaine, who lived in Buckinghamshire, as one of the bombers responsible for the terrorist strikes in London on July 7, 2005, I could not help thinking of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist working for the Wall Street Journal, who was kidnapped and brutally killed by a group of jihadi terrorists belonging to the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM--previously known as the Harkat-ul-Ansar HUA) and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) in January-February, 2002.

Pearl 's kidnapping and murder was orchestrated by Omar Sheikh, a British citizen of Pakistani origin, who had studied for some time in the London School of Economics. He discontinued his studies and joined the HUA during the war in Bosnia , where the HUA had sent a contingent to help the Bosnian Muslims in their fight against the Serbs. This contingent was sent by the government of Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, who was then the Prime Minister, at the request of the Clinton Administration.. The contingent, which was raised and trained by Lt.Gen.(retd) Hamid Gul, former Director-General of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who himself used to visit Bosnia, had a large number of British Muslims of Pakistani origin.

According to reliable estimates, about 200 Muslims of Pakistani origin living in the UK went to Pakistan, got trained in the camps of the HUA and joined the HUA's contingent in Bosnia with the full knowledge and complicity of the British and American intelligence agencies. These intelligence agencies raised a large corps of jihadi terrorists of Arab origin to help the Afghan Mujahideen in their jihad against the Soviet troops. They similarly raised a large corps of jihadi terrorists to help the Bosnian Mujahideen in their fight against the Serbs.

By then, the Arabs of Afghan vintage had already started creating mayhem across the world after the end of the Afghan jihad., So, these agencies wanted to avoid the use of the Arabs in Bosnia . They turned to Pakistanis, particularly Pakistanis living in the UK and other countries of West Europe . Thus began the radicalisation of the Muslim youth of Pakistani origin living in West Europe .

After having fought against the Serbs in Bosnia, Omar Sheikh infiltrated into India and participated in some acts of terrorism. He was arrested and jailed by the Indian authorities. In December,1999, he had to be released following the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar by the HUM. From Kandahar, Omar crossed over to Pakistan , joined the Al Qaeda and opened its office in Lahore .

In the beginning of 2002, Pearl , then posted in Mumbai, had heard that the instructions to Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, whose father was a British resident of Caribbean origin, to carry out his terrorist strike had come from an unidentified source in Karachi belonging to an organisation called the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra (JUF), based in Lahore . Its leader Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani had four wives, two of them Afro-Americans.

The JUF differed from the other Pakistani jihadi organisations in some respects. It focussed its activities on the Muslim communities in the US, Canada and the Caribbean . Its membership consisted largely of blacks recruited in the US, Canada and the Caribbean . It laid emphasis on the need to penetrate the armed forces of the US and the Caribbean by recruiting blacks serving in them. It was a highly secretive organisation. Not much was known about its leaders other than Gilani. It never issued any statements. It never circulated any pamphlets or ran any web sites.

It became a jihadi organisation of major concern to the intelligence agencies of the US and Canada after its members in the US were involved in a series of attacks on Hindu and Jewish targets and its supporters in the armed forces of the Caribbean almost successfully staged a coup and captured power in the late 1980s.

In 1995, the HUA also started focusing on the black community in the US . It recruited nearly a dozen blacks in the US and brought them to Pakistan for jihadi training in its camps and sent them back to the US . While the HUA and the JUF kept away from each other in Pakistan , they co-operated with each other in the US and built up a network of sleeper cells. The HUA did not show much interest in the Caribbean and left that area to the JUF.

Daniel wanted to visit Pakistan to enquire about any links between Reid and the JUF and interview Gilani. From Mumbai, he established e-mail contacts with some friends in Karachi in order to explore the possibility of an interview with Gilani. One day he received an e-mail from an individual, who later turned out to be Omar Sheikh. This individual claimed he knew Gilani well and offered to organise an interview with him.

Without establishing the identity of this individual and without enquiring about his background, Daniel went to Karachi , agreed to a clandestine meeting and fell into a trap organised by Omar Sheikh. He was kidnapped and ultimately killed. While it was established that the HUM and the HUJI had a leading role in the kidnapping and murder, it was not clear whether the JUF had any role in it.

Omar Sheikh surrendered to a former officer of the ISI and a close personal friend of Gen.Pervez Musharraf, who was posted as Home Secretary in Lahore, was tried along with other accomplices and sentenced to death by a lower court. The sentence has not so far been carried out. An appeal against the sentence filed by Omar is pending before a higher court, which has been adjourning the hearing again and again. On July 14, the hearing was adjourned for the 32nd time.

In the meanwhile, Omar continues to be as active from jail as when he was a free man. He reportedly keeps in touch with his friends and followers in the UK, advising them on their future course of action. Statements purported to have been issued by him from jail calling upon the Muslims of the world to retaliate against the US for its desecration of the Holy Koran are being disseminated every Friday in many Pakistani mosques controlled by jihadi terrorist organisations.

In the meanwhile unhindered by the Pakistani authorities. the JUF continues to recruit volunteers from the USA and the Caribbean, bring them to Pakistan and train them in its camps before they are returned to their place of origin.

On June 20, 2003 before the arrival of Musharraf in the US for his Camp David meeting with President George Bush, FBI officials had disclosed that they had in April arrested Lyman Faris, also known as Mohammad Rauf, originally a resident of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), who had migrated to the US in 1994 and was working as a truck driver in Ohio and charged him with having links with Al Qaeda and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, said to be Osama bin Laden's operations chief, who is believed to have co-coordinated the terrorist strikes of September 11, 2001, in the US. Khalid was arrested in the house of a women's wing leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) of Pakistan at Rawalpindi in March,2003, by the Pakistani authorities and handed over to the FBI.

According to FBI officials, as quoted in the US media, Faris had visited Afghanistan and Pakistan a number of times between 2000 and 2002, met Osama bin Laden and worked with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, in organising and financing jihad causes. After returning to the US from Pakistan in late 2002, officials said, he began examining the Brooklyn Bridge and discussing via coded messages with Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan ways of using blow torches to sever the suspension cables.

Sources in Pakistan described Faris, aged 34, as a Punjabi ex-serviceman settled in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, before he migrated to the US. They also said that he was associated in the past with the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra (JUF).

Reports on the investigation into the London blasts available so far point the needle of suspicion at the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the JUF. Pakistani sources say that while Shehzad Tanweer, one of the bombers, was trained in two LET camps at Muridke, near Lahore, and in Karachi, Lindsey Germaine has had a history of association with the JUF. There are also grounds to suspect that the blasts were orchestrated by Omar Sheikh from his jail in Pakistan .

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter.

It seems, yet again, that we have picked the wrong allies. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia seem to be doing little to prevent the teaching of fundamentalist islam in their countries.
The leadership of both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia walk a tightrope. I would imagine both countries would like nothing better than to stamp out radical Islam, but neither of them desires to start an internecine conflict within their own borders. I certainly don't evy them.

Sorry to revive an old topic, but this news fits right in this thread.

Another datapoint that proves that LeT has gone global.

The Australian - Kashmiri threat 'increased' to Australia (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,16645329-421,00.html)


By Simon Kearney

September 19, 2005


THE threat posed to Australia by Kashmiri terrorists has grown, according to secret briefings submitted to a parliamentary committee overseeing the nation's spying agencies.

The committee has been told of new allegations about links between Kashmiri terrorists and Australian residents and citizens. The links emerged in a report on Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) delivered to the parliamentary joint committee on ASIO, ASIS and DSD.

The report said there were additional allegations beyond those already in the public domain, but did not elaborate.

The threat posed by LeT emerged when it was revealed the group trained Australian David Hicks and French terror suspect Willie Brigitte. The Australian reported in November 2003 that at least two Sydney residents had been questioned by ASIO about LeT, after Brigitte's deportation.

The report said Australian authorities believed Brigitte was planning to attack Sydney's Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, and had been assigned the task because of his bomb-making expertise.

LeT, which is fighting for the creation of an Islamic state, has mainly been concerned with terrorism in Indian-controlled Kashmir and India. In 2001, it attacked the Indian parliament. But its tactics appear to have changed. "Recent intelligence suggests a trend towards LeT operational activity outside its main theatre of operations," the report said.


Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock's statement of reasons for renewing the ban on LeT earlier this year pointed to suggestions about the group;s expanding terrorist operation.

"Senior members of LeT have advocated the group develop an operational interest beyond its principal theatre of operation in Kashmir and India," Mr Ruddock said. "In April 2004, an LeT operational commander was captured by British forces in Iraq."

The committee said LeT had links with other terrorist groups, including in The Philippines. According to Mr Ruddock, LeT "co-operates with al-Qa'ida and other Islamic terrorist groups, both in training and in undertaking operations".

LeT receives most of its funding from expatriate Pakistani communities around the world, particularly in the Persian Gulf and Britain.

LeT's amir (supremo/chief) Prof. Hafiz Mohammed Saeed is still going around the country preaching jihad and collecting funds and LeT is still running camps around the country, including the one in which Shehzad Tanveer and the other London bombers were allegedly trained.