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| Afghanistan |
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| 2002-11-17 |
| Al Qaeda is once again training terrorists inside Afghanistan. The camps are much smaller and more transient now, but there are said to be at least a dozen, and their new graduates, mostly from inside the country, are believed to number in the hundreds. Their goal, as unlikely as it may seem, is to turn Afghanistan back into a global base for Osama bin Ladenâs followers. In the past few weeks NEWSWEEK has found and interviewed three Afghans who independently told of attending programs at three different clandestine camps this past summer. Military experts in Washington believe the stories are exaggerated, but they do not deny that such camps exist. The trainees insist their strength is growing. âSoon there will be Afghans and Al Qaeda behind every rock in Afghanistan,â Rasul brags. âYou will seeâwe will kill Americans the way we Afghans chop onions.â His confidence is in sharp contrast to the harsh conditions at some camps. Jalal Shah, 30 (also a disguised name), is a Taliban bureaucrat who fled to Peshawar when the Americans took Kabul. In August he traveled with four other Afghan exiles to a largely deserted mountain village in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan. There they were joined by five Arab recruits: three Saudis and two Yemenis. One carried an American passport, Shah recalls. The place was run by a leathery Qaeda veteran, a Saudi named Abu Yasser. He and the campâs four other foreign instructors bunked with the 10 trainees in a crumbling two-story mud-walled house with no bathroom, little furniture, a few blankets and only rudimentary facilities for cooking and eating. The trainers seemed to expect trouble at any moment. They never took off the hand grenades that hung from their belts, and everyone was required to take turns on sentry duty at night. The class spent two weeks learning to assemble car bombs, make time bombs and lay land mines. The subject of explosives had particular significance to Shah, who says heâs an old friend of convicted World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef. Shahâs class also studied suicide bombing, especially how to pack explosives and strap them to their bodies. The campâs director told the recruits he had trained a total of 26 Afghans and Arabs in three similar courses elsewhere during the preceding weeks. In his parting speech he told Shahâs group it was up to each individual to decide whether to become a suicide bomber. âWe donât want to push you,â he said. âIt depends on the strength of your Islamic spirit.â Now the campsâ graduates seem to be getting out into the real world. Rocket and bomb attacks against U.S. forces and Afghan government targets around the country have increased markedly in the past three months, and there have been several unsolved explosions in Kabul, although none of them was fatal. Reached by satellite phone last week, one senior Taliban official, a friend of Mullah Mohammed Omarâs, warned that Americaâs troubles have only begun. âThe Americans have started a huge campaign, and they should be really sorry for themselves, because theyâre caught in the middle of this big web,â he said, adding: âAfghanistanâs geography has made it a natural bunker for jihad.â Most recent attacks have been far less imaginativeâand less disruptive. âA lot of the violence is not very professional,â says a knowledgeable official in the Bush administration. âIn August in Kabul there were 12 bombings, but only one was a decent piece of work. My judgment is that they have lost a lot of expertise. But I donât doubt they are out there retraining in some areas.â Some parts of the country are âstill pretty hairy,â he concedes. But even in those places, the antigovernment forces seem to have only limited resources. It shows in the way the violence shifts from place to place in response to U.S. military pressure. Al Qaedaâs leaders are frustrated by their traineesâ lack of progress so far. According to Taliban sources in Karachi who work closely with Al Qaeda operatives, bin Ladenâs lieutenants are complaining that their Afghan allies donât seem really serious about taking the war to the Americans. âAl Qaeda men are unhappy,â says one Taliban source. âThey say they have spent a lot of money, put in a lot of time training and reorganizing the Afghans with little result.â The impatience has been particularly intense since September, when 9-11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh was arrested in Karachi. Since then the groupâs fugitive leaders have tried to stay on the move, never spending two consecutive nights at the same safe house and keeping their use of satellite phones to a minimum. The new recruits agree that the past year has held some major setbacks and hardships for the war against America. Many tons of Qaeda and Taliban munitions have been confiscated and destroyed as a result of U.S.-led military sweeps in the countryside. Rasul admits as muchâbut he hastens to add that those arsenals are being rebuilt. Jalal Shah also insists that the troubles are only temporary. âAllah is simply testing our faith through these hardships,â he says. Both men seem convinced that the Americans are losing the war. âOsama bin Laden and Mullah Omar are still free and leading us,â says Rasul. âThis is proof of the U.S. failure.â He may well be overstating his case, but he certainly has a point There is more at the site above |
| Posted by:Paul |