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Al-Qaeda and the skimming
scam
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - The 10-month-old United States-led war
on terror was principally aimed at capturing Osama bin
Laden and eliminating his al-Qaeda network, yet to date
the results have been poor, despite the arrest and
interrogation of many suspects.
Most of the detainees at the US naval
base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who were arrested
in Pakistan, are non-al-Qaeda Arabs, the majority of
whom arrived in Afghanistan after September 11 to fight
against the US, which was attacking a Muslim country. In
only a few instances have the coalition forces caught
actual al-Qaeda members in Pakistan, such as Abu Zubaida, a senior
aide to bin Laden, and some of his accomplices.
There have been two clashes in Pakistan
between suspected al-Qaeda members and
Pakistan/coalition forces. The first was in Waziristan Agency, during
which two Chechens were arrested, but they turned out not
to be al-Qaeda; the second was near Kohat in which five
Uzkebs (not Chechens as was widely reported) were
killed. Intelligence agents say that the manner in which
the five fought suggested that they were al-Qaeda.
In all, Pakistani and US joint
intelligence teams have arrested more than 150 Arabs in
Pakistan since the Taliban were driven out of Afghanistan
early in the year. Apart from those who arrived
after September 11, many Arab families were already
in Afghanistan, from Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and
Iraq, which they had fled for political reasons. Most of
them had businesses in either Jalalabad or Kabul, and
they had nothing to do with al-Qaeda's
network. (Incidentally, the the former president of
Afghanistan and Northern Alliance leader, Burhanuddin Rabbani,
was the one who invited bin Laden to Afghanistan when he
ran into trouble in Sudan. Haji Abdul Qadeer, the
recently slain Afghan minister, provided him accommodation in
Jalalabad).
Clearly, and as confirmed by sources
in European intelligence networks, the al-Qaeda network
survived virtually intact, and it is presently being
restructured after losing its base in Afghanistan.
According to the latest information, 24 al-Qaeda
planners have arrived in Pakistan via Dubai in the
United Arab Emirates, along with a number of
international gangsters.
Intelligence sources
say that the only currently active al-Qaeda cell in
Pakistan is in Karachi, headed by Kuwaiti-born Khalid
Shiekh Mohammed, one of the US's most wanted terrorists
for his suspected role as one of the chief architects of
the September 11 attacks. Most of the members of this
cell are thought to be Egyptians. Its first target is
the assassination of Pakistan's President General Pervez
Musharraf, followed by reestablishing links in the
underworld to carry out attacks in Kabul and elsewhere.
In light of this information,
Musharraf's activities have been restricted to the army area
of Rawalpindi, the twin city of the capital Islamabad.
Last week, the general was scheduled to travel to Karachi
to attend a function hosted for international
delegates, but his intelligence team refused to give him
security clearance and he did not show up.
Intelligence sources within Pakistan are convinced
that the world-wide operations of al-Qaeda are still
a threat, and that with the help of the underworld it
is capable of carrying out operations (although not on
as large a scale as the World Trade Center attacks). US
authorities claim that they have blocked all of
al-Qaeda's financial arteries, but this is unlikely. The
world-wide hawala business (illegal transfer of
money through money changers) is still intact. And there
are other methods of moving money around, as a recent
case in Karachi illustrates.
A combined team of
top military officials, police officers and
international bank investigators recently cracked a gang
in Karachi. Some of its members stole credit card
information in London which was then used to make
counterfeit cards, which were sent to Pakistan and other
countries at a cost of US$1,000 to $1,500 each.
The story starts with London's Halifax Credit
Card Services. One of its card holders, Dympna
McDermott, complained of 180,000 rupees (US$3,000) being
run up on her card in Karachi although she had never set
foot on Pakistani soil. The matter was reported to the
multinational bank where the credit card had been
presented to withdraw the cash.
The theft and
fraud detection cell of the bank then contacted Army
Corps V headquarters and requested them to cooperate, and
suggested that Inspector Salman Waheed be roped in as a
consultant as he had a good reputation after cracking the
first cyber -gang in Pakistan's police history.
The police and
bank investigators finally concluded that McDermott's data had been
"skimmed" from the magnetic strip of her card. Such
devices are available on the black market in such places as
London, Singapore, Malaysia and Bangkok at a cost of
about $4,000.
The machines are used at retail
shops, hotels and restaurants, for example, where
crooked staff use the small electronic "skimmers" to
capture a credit or debit card's details in a matter of
seconds. The card is swiped through a regular credit
card machine, and then quickly and secretly run through
the smaller "skimmer". Once the skim artist has the
details, he makes a fake card, which is then sold.
Skim artists usually target gold or platinum
cards because of their higher credit limits. And while
the whole process of getting a fake card onto the
streets can take less than a day, the legitimate card
holders take much longer to realize that there is a
problem as the original cards are still with them.
In the case of Mcdermott, investigators
traced the scam to one Malik Amjad Hussain, who under
interrogation admitted that a gang was involved in the
business, and that the source of the cards was London.
He explained that travel agents were also involved as
they passed on lost passports to the crooks, who used
them to create new identities for the recipients of the
bogus cards.
The skimming scam, although it has
been around for some time, is just one example of how
international criminals operate. But it has taken on
renewed significance now as al-Qaeda seeks new ways in
which to channel funds around the world, given the close
watch on regular banking methods, and given al-Qaeda's
increasing contact with the underworld in many
countries, including Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates,
India and even South Africa.
(©2002 Asia Times
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