The Pakistanis Training in Al Qaeda Camps |
||
|
|
|
|
|
The recent arrests of two Pakistani-Americans in a small
California town of Lodi in the United States and a confessional statement by
one of them of having been trained at an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan
for six months till last year, has put a big question mark on the most-trued
American ally, President General Pervez Musharraf's real, as opposed to
professed, commitment to the war against terrorism. The confessions by the two alleged al-Qaeda operatives
contained in a June 6, 2005 FBI affidavit, signed by Special Agent Pedro
Tenoch Aguilar and filed in a US court, simply belie the Pakistan government's
oft-repeated claims of having dismantled the al-Qaeda terrorist training
camps from the country. The arrests and subsequent revelations further highlight
the threat posed by second generation Islamic militants and the persistent
presence of terrorist bases in a country which is the alleged hideout of the
al-Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden and his second-in-command, Dr. Ayman
al-Zawahiri. Strangely enough, the strategically important urban city of
Rawalpindi houses the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan Army, right
next to the country's capital, Islamabad. Therefore, one is constrained to
assume that the terrorist training camp was being run with the explicit approval
of the Pakistani military and intelligence establishments. One of the men arrested, 22-year-old Hamid Hayat, is
accused in a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) criminal complaint of
getting training in an al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan to learn "how to kill Americans"
and then lying to FBI agents about it. His father, 47-year-old Umer Hayat, is
charged in the complaint with lying about his son's involvement and his own
financing of the al-Qaeda camp. The FBI affidavit describes the investigation
as beginning on May 29 this year when Hamid Hayat was flying from Pakistan to
San Francisco. Hayat had traveled to Islamabad, from San Francisco on April
19, 2003, arriving there on April 21. He returned to the United States on May
29, 2005 after his wedding, the affidavit from FBI Special Agent Pedro Tenoch
Aguilar states. The plane had stopped in South Korea en route to San
Francisco. Shortly after it took off, the American FBI learnt that Hayat was
on the plane and that he was on a federal "no-fly" list. The plane
was diverted to Tokyo, where an FBI agent questioned Hayat, then decided to
downgrade his status from the no-fly list and allow him to enter the United
States, where Hamid Hayat was arrested subsequently and interrogated. During
interrogations, Hamid Hayat confessed to have received terrorist training at
an al-Qaeda training camp in Rawalpindi for six months in 2003 and 2004.
Having been denied bail, the two alleged terrorists are being held in the
Sacramento County Jail pending further court proceedings. According to the FBI affidavit, Hamid Hayat described the
al-Qaeda training camp as providing structured paramilitary training,
including weapons training, explosives training, interior room tactics, hand-to-hand
combat and strenuous exercise. And part of the weapons training included
sessions where photographs of American President Bush were pasted onto
targets for trainees to shoot at. The classroom sessions also focused on
ideological rhetoric against the United States and other non-Muslim nations,
the document states. Hayat told FBI agents that he had not participated in
all facets of the training, but that he knew of all the types being offered
and that "he and others at the camp were being trained on how to kill
Americans," the affidavit states. "Hamid advised that he specifically requested to come
to the United States to carry out his jehadi mission," the affidavit
said. On the other hand, the father, Umer Hayat, continued to deny that he
knew anything about terrorist camps in Pakistan, until he was shown a videotape
containing his son's confession. Shortly after viewing that videotape, Umer
confirmed that Hamid Hayat attended a jehadi training camp in Pakistan in
2003-04. Umer Hayat further admitted that he paid for Hamid Hayat's flight
and provided him with an allowance of $100 per month, knowing that his
intention was to attend a jehadi training camp. Umer Hayat described Hamid Hayat as first being interested
in attending a jehadi training camp during his early teenage years, and being
influenced by a classmate at the madrassah (religious school) Hamid attended
in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Hamid was also influenced by his uncle, Atiq Ur
Rahman, who fought with the mujahideen in Afghanistan. Umer Hayat claimed
Hamid was at the training camp for six months, but had been able to leave for
home on the weekends. The madrassah was operated by Hamid Hayat's
grandfather, and Umer Hayat's father-in-law, Qazi Saeed Ur Rehman. According
to Umer Hayat, Qazi Saeed Ur Rehman sends the students from this madrassah to
jehadi training camps in Pakistan. After completing his education at the madrassah, Hamid
Hayat went to the Tamal training camp near Rawalpindi, Pakistan, which is
operated by Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Umer Hayat stated that Maulana Fazlur
Rehman is a close personal friend of Saeed Ur Rehman, Umer Hayat's father-in-law.
Umer stated that due to his close familial connections to the leaders of the
above-mentioned madrassah and training camp, he was invited to observe
several operational training camps. According to Umer, he was assigned a
driver who drove him from camp to camp. While visiting these training camps he observed weapons
and urban warfare training, physical training and classroom education. Interestingly, Maulana Fazalur Rehman, who according to
Umer Hayat runs the Rawalpindi religious school, happens to be the opposition
leader in the National Assembly of Pakistan besides being the head of a
religio-political party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). However, well-informed
government sources claimed the Rawalpindi training camp was being run by
Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, leader of a leading Pakistani jehadi outfit,
Harkatul Mujahideen (HuM) and not by Maulana Fazalur Rehman. The HuM leader,
Maulana Khalil has been closely aligned to Pakistan's premier intelligence
agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), since the days of the Afghan
jehad and had been siding with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance
troops even after the US-led Allied Forces attacked Afghanistan in October
2001, following the 9/11 terror attacks. Maulana Khalil was close to Osama bin Laden when it was
okay to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviet troops. That he had been
associated with Osama bin Laden was proved on August 20, 1998, when America bombed
the al-Qaeda training camps near Khost and Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan
in retaliation to the bombings of their embassies in three African countries.
The bombing destroyed two of the Harkatul Mujahideen training camps and
killed 21 of its activists. Two days later, on August 22, 1998, while
speaking at a news conference in Islamabad, the then Harkat chief Maulana
Fazlur Rahman Khalil accused the United States of killing 50 innocent
civilians in Afghanistan, including 15 Arabs. He said the camps bombed by the
US in the Afghan territory were actually set up by the American Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the days of Afghan war, that were now being
usedby the Harkatul Mujahideen for 'imparting religious education' to Afghan
students. The Harkat chief denied that any training in terrorism was going on
at these camps. Fazlur Rehman Khalil was arrested by the Pakistani
security agencies in August 2004 on allegations that he was still involved in
training and sending militants to Afghanistan to fight out the US-led Allied Forces.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil was taken into custody by the Pakistani
authorities after the Afghanistan government claimed having captured a
17-year old Pakistani jehadi, Muhammad Sohail, who was fighting alongside the
Taliban in southern Afghanistan. The arrest reportedly came after months of complaints by the Afghan
and American officials that militant groups in Pakistan are training fighters
and sending them into Afghanistan to attack American and Afghan forces. During
interrogations by Afghan officials, Sohail confessed that Pakistan was still
allowing militant groups to train and organize insurgents to fight in
Afghanistan. Sohail described his recruitment through his local mosque by
Jamiatul Ansar, the new name for the Harkatul Mujahideen being run by Maulana
Fazlur Rehman Khalil at that time. In his confessional statement, a copy of which was
provided to Islamabad by Kabul, Sohail talked about his militant group and
its leaders, and claimed they had high-level support from within the establishment.
The Afghan intelligence officials further found on Sohail a Jamiatul Ansar
membership card and a list of phone numbers of high-level party officials. In
his confessional statement, Sohail claimed traveling with a group of 15
others from his mosque to a training camp near Mansehra in the North Western
Frontier Province of Pakistan which borders Afghanistan. There he claimed receiving
one month of training in explosives and weapons. After their training in Mansehra,
Sohail claimed that he and his group went to Islamabad and met Maulana Fazlur
Rehman Khalil, the leader of Jamiatul Ansar, at his headquarters. Three months later, Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil went to
speak at their mosque and called up the group of youngsters to fight, Sohail said.
He added that they went to Quetta, the provincial capital of the Balochistan
province and then with four other fighters, he crossed over the border and
drove to the Afghan city of Kandahar. They went to a designated hotel and in
a room found a bag with weapons. The next day they headed to a mountain base
near the town of Panjwai, west of Kandahar, where they joined some 50
fighters and became involved in combat operations, before finally being
arrested. Sohail was charged with taking part in a terrorist attack on the
Panjwai District center in April 2004, in which an Afghan police officer and
two aid workers were killed. Sohail was subsequently sentenced to a 20-year
rigorous imprisonment by a judge in Kabul. As the Bush administration took up with the Pakistani
authorities the Karzai government's complaint (based on Sohail's confessional
statement) that Islamabad was still involved in training and sending militants
to Afghanistan to fight out the US-led Allied Forces, the Pakistan government
moved swiftly and rounded up Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil in August 2004.
However, the arrest was actually a protective measure meant to retain his
usefulness for the jehad by keeping him away from the FBI which had demanded his custody for
interrogation with regard to Sohail's confessions. Once the pressure was
eased off, the Musharraf administration released Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil
on December 20, 2005. That made three leading Pakistani jehadi warlords out in
the open, the others being Hafiz Mohammad Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Toiba and
Maulana Masood Azhar of the
Jaish-e-Mohammad. All were, and remain, key players in the Kashmir jehad. For
those who need a ready reckoning on Musharraf's performance in the war on
terror, one look at his record on handling jehadi kingpins will suffice; not
a single major jehadi kingpin has been arrested and prosecuted, even under
Pakistan's notoriously mangled judicial system. However, he was released on December
20, 2004 after a seven-month detention.
|
|
|