ISLAMABAD - The July 5 killing of
yet another white jihadi commander in an American
drone strike in the North Waziristan tribal agency
of Pakistan - an Australian national this time -
has given credence to earlier reports by Western
intelligence agencies that the Pakistan-based
al-Qaeda network is recruiting Western Muslim
converts to widen the pool of potential terrorists
beyond traditional Asian and Middle Eastern
radicals who could foil racial profiling and carry
out terrorist attacks in the West.
According to Pakistani media reports, the
white jihadi killed by two missiles fired by a
drone at around 11 pm on July 5 in Mir Ali area of
North Waziristan has been identified as Saifullah,
who used to serve as a key aide to Osama bin Laden
and had been working in tandem with al-Qaeda's
chief military strategist, commander Ilyas
Kashmiri, who has been reported as killed in a
drone attack on June 3.
Saifullah, 50 years old, has been
described as a middle-ranking al-Qaeda leader,
though little more is known about him. The deadly
strike actually targeted a guesthouse and also
killed five other militants. The Mir Ali area,
where Saifullah was killed, is in the sphere of
influence of Abu Kasha al-Iraqi, an al-Qaeda
leader who serves as a key link to the Taliban and
supports the external operations network of
al-Qaeda, now led by Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Pakistani Taliban leader Hafiz Gul Bahadar,
who is still considered by the Pakistani
establishment as a "good Taliban", and the Haqqani
network led by Jalaluddin Haqqani's elder son
Sirajuddin Haqqani, also operate in Mir Ali, a
known hub for al-Qaeda's military and external
operational councils.
An increasing number
of Westerners have traveled to the Pakistani
tribal areas in recent years to join the so-called
jihad that al-Qaeda is waging against US-led
allied forces in Afghanistan. Among the Westerners
are Americans, Britons, Germans, French and
Australians.
The al-Qaeda-trained white
jihadis have formed their own contingents in North
Waziristan and are fighting alongside al-Qaeda
militants on the Pak-Afghan border. The white
jihadis living in North Waziristan wear local
clothes and travel in small groups in vehicles or
on motorcycles, flaunting weapons including
assault rifles, rocket launchers and
rocket-propelled grenades.
Recruits
bearing Western citizenship are prized by the
al-Qaeda leadership, mainly because of their
nationalities and English-speaking abilities. More
and more Muslim converts from the West are
therefore being chosen by international jihadis as
recruits to strike in the heart of the West.
The current spike in drone attacks in Mir
Ali area is ostensibly meant to target the
leadership of the North Waziristan-based white
jihadis, which Western intelligence agencies
believe have been training and dispatching white
men to Europe for carrying out commando-style
terrorist raids in the West - similar to the 26/11
attacks in the Indian commercial capital of Mumbai
that killed 166 people, including many foreigners.
Therefore, the US Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), which runs the drone program, has
been repeatedly targeting al-Qaeda hideouts in the
Mir Ali area, ostensibly to wipe out the white
jihadis' networks. So far this year, the CIA has
carried out 43 drone attacks in the tribal areas
of Pakistan, killing more than 360 people. There
were 124 drone strikes in 2010.
Commander
Saifullah is not the first Muslim convert from the
West to have been killed in Mir Ali. Sixteen
Germans and two Britons have been reportedly
killed in drone strikes in Mir Ali since September
8, 2010.
They were all members of the
Islamic Jihad Group (IJG), an al-Qaeda affiliate
based in Mir Ali, which had suffered the last set
back on December 10, 2010, with the killing of two
white commanders, both British nationals, in a
drone attack. The Britons were killed in Khadar
Khel town of Miranshah in North Waziristan and
identified as Stephen and Smith.
They were
known in militant circles by their pseudonyms of
Abu Bakar (Stephen) and Abu Mansoor (Smith), and
were traveling in a vehicle with two local
militants when the drone targeted them. Even
though the car was completely destroyed and little
remained of the bodies, local militants were quick
to take the mutilated corpses out from the burnt
vehicle for burial.
Stephen, 47, was
subsequently identified as a senior al-Qaeda
operative who was imparting terror training to a
group of white jihadis from Great Britain in North
Waziristan to carry out terrorist operations in
Europe and America. Smith, 28, was identified as
the righthand man of Stephens in the Islamic Army
of Great Britain.
Hardly two months before
the killing of Stephen and Smith, another American
drone had killed the operational chief of the
Britons in the same area. Abdul Jabbar, a British
national, was killed in North Waziristan on
October 4, 2010. Identified as the chief
operational commander of the Islamic Army of Great
Britain, he was a British citizen, came from the
Jhelum district of Punjab in Pakistan and had a
British wife. Abdul Jabbar had earlier survived a
drone strike on September 8, 2010, targeting a
training camp being run by Hafiz Gul Bahadar.
Jabbar was tasked by the Waziristan-based al-Qaeda
leadership to plan Mumbai-style suicide attacks
against targets in Great Britain, Germany and
France.
Besides Abdul Jabbar, the October
4, 2010 drone attack also killed German nationals
who were known in militant circles of North
Waziristan by their Islamic names of Imran and
Shahab. According to intelligence British
authorities subsequently shared with their
Pakistani counterparts, Jabbar, Imran and Shahab
had been making frequent phone calls to England
and Germany to their jihadi contacts in a bid to
set off the terror plot by finding appropriate
accomplices in Europe. In their conversations, the
white jihadis reportedly talked about facilitators
and logistics they needed in Europe to
successfully execute terrorist operations.
However, Jabbar's younger brother, who is
a key leader in the lslamic Army of Great Britain,
and two other most wanted German jihadis were
lucky to have survived the October 4 drone hit.
The white Germans - 27-year-old Mouneer Chouka
alias Abu Adam and 25-year-old Yaseen Chouka alias
Abu Ibrahim - are real brothers.
Coming
from Bonn, both lead a group of 100-plus German
militants who had traveled to the border areas of
Pakistan in recent years, raising a security alert
in Europe. Information about the presence and
activities of the Chouka brothers in North
Waziristan as well as the hatching of a
Mumbai-like terror plot for Europe came from an
arrested German jihadi of Afghan origin, Rami
Mackenzie alias Ahmed Siddiqi.
The
36-year-old was part of an 11-member jihadi cell
that was to take part in the European terror plot,
but was arrested in the Afghan capital, Kabul, in
the beginning of July 2010. He is reported to have
told his American interrogators that the European
terror plot was approved by none other than Bin
Laden, who had also provided some funding to
execute the scheme.
Currently being held
at the US military airbase at Bagram in
Afghanistan, Siddiqi further told his
interrogators that small teams of militants were
to model their missions in European countries on
the pattern of Mumbai attacks by first seizing and
then killing hostages.
While unveiling the
terror plans of the Chouka brother, Siddiqi
reportedly told his interrogators that they had
already trained and sent back to Europe over a
dozen well-trained, battle-hardened German
militants who had been tasked to carry out
Mumbai-like terror attacks in Europe. The
unearthing of the European terror plot soon led to
an unprecedented surge in drone strikes in North
Waziristan, primarily to target the hideouts of
the Islamic Army of Great Britain, thus killing
many of its top leadership.
In fact, many
of the terrorist plots directed against Britain in
recent years had been linked, either directly or
indirectly, to Pakistan, starting with the suicide
bombings of London's transport network in 2005.
The attacks, which killed 52 people, were
conducted by four British nationals of Pakistani
origin.
Furthermore, the September 1,
2005, video message of one of the four 7/7 suicide
bombers, Mohammad Siddique Khan, was recorded in
the Waziristan region during the latter's November
2004 visit to Pakistan. Through the video
broadcast, showing pictures of Dr Ayman
al-Zawahiri and the bomber, al-Qaeda claimed
responsibility for the July 2005 London attacks.
''Until we feel secure, you will be our targets
and until you stop the bombing, gassing,
imprisonment and torture of my people we will not
stop this fight,'' Siddique Khan said in the video
tape.
According to the findings of a
recent study conducted by the Home Office in
Britain, almost three quarters of the most serious
terrorism cases investigated since the 7/7 London
terrorist attacks had links to al-Qaeda in
Pakistan.
Similarly, of the 90 individuals
convicted or punished in Britain for their
involvement in jihadi terror plots between
September 2001 and September 2009, 64 were
affiliated with al-Qaeda and 27 were trained
either in Pakistan or in Afghanistan - more than
in any other country across the world.
These figures clearly show that al-Qaeda
now seeks to employ white men with Western
nationalities to successfully strike in the heart
of the West. Hence, the CIA is ruthlessly using
drones to dismantle the network of the white
jehadis in the Waziristan region in a bid to
protect the West from any further act of jihadi
terrorism.
Amir Mir is a senior
Pakistani journalist and the author of several
books on the subject of militant Islam and
terrorism, the latest being The Bhutto murder
trail: From Waziristan to GHQ.
(Copyright
2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact us about sales,
syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
