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Afghan Camps Linked to Recent Terror

Nov 24, 2003 8:50 am By Robert Spencer

After students graduate from those madrassas in Pakistan that teach the glories of violent jihad, where do they go? Many ended up in terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, which have had nothing less than a global reach: “From Bali to Istanbul, New York to Casablanca, the ferocious chain of terror that has choked the world since Sept. 11 has stemmed from a single source – camps like this one just south of Kabul, where thousands of young men were indoctrinated in Osama bin Laden’s brutal vision.” Thus says AP.

“An Afghan link can be traced to nearly every major terrorist attack since the 2001 strikes in New York and at the Pentagon, although not all have been carried out directly by bin Laden’s al-Qaida, U.S., European and Asian officials told The Associated Press.

“Attacks like the ones in Turkey this past week, and others in Indonesia, Morocco, Tunisia and the Philippines, appear to have involved homegrown groups, sometimes working hand-in-hand with al-Qaida. Officials say some of the attacks carry the ‘hallmarks’ of al-Qaida, a way of spreading the group’s franchise throughout the world.

“Extremists were trained and either pledged their allegiance to bin Laden and al-Qaida or carried his message and inspiration back to their home countries to initiate more localized jihad efforts,’ said a U.S. intelligence report obtained by AP.

“Between 15,000 and 20,000 people are believed to have trained at Afghan camps since 1996, when bin Laden returned to Afghanistan from Sudan, said a U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity.”

Other estimates are much higher. Senator Bob Graham, who of course may have had reasons of his own to exaggerate, said last July that, according to the CIA, “70,000 to 120,000 recruits went through the al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan before we attacked those camps in late 2001.”

Since the war, says AP, “Rishkhor and other al-Qaida camps have mostly been reduced to rubble, but the men who trained in them – including, allegedly, the two Turkish suicide bombers who detonated last week’s synagogue explosions – are still pursuing their legacy of death.

“The Afghan war deprived al-Qaida and other Islamic militant groups of their main operating base, making it far more difficult to plan and organize large-scale attacks like Sept. 11. But as followers poured out of Afghanistan under heavy U.S. bombardment, they created a diaspora of destruction the world is today struggling to contain.

“Militants who trained in Afghanistan have returned to Turkey, the Philippines, Pakistan, Malaysia, Morocco, Chechnya and countries throughout Europe and the Middle East, possibly including Iraq, authorities say. The United States and Canada have also arrested men allegedly trained in the Afghan camps.

“If anything, the decentralization has made it harder for intelligence services to track down the extremists, said Pillar, the U.S. analyst: ‘It’s harder to follow a bunch of different groups coming at you from different directions.’

“Some 3,500 men passed through Rishkhor, a sprawling complex of shattered barracks and dusty training fields about 10 miles south of the Afghan capital, Kabul, Mullah Mohammed Khaksar, the Taliban’s former deputy Interior Minister, told AP.

“The camp was run by a Pakistani – Qari Saifullah Akhtar – and taught traditional combat skills in order to feed foreign troops into the Taliban army, but terrorist training also went on here.

“Khaksar said that, as a senior Taliban official, he attended an al-Qaida demonstration at the camp in early 2001 in which terrorist trainees – including Middle Easterners, Pakistanis, Chechens and others – showed off kidnapping and assassination techniques. U.S. warplanes bombed the camp into ruin on the first night of the Afghan war.

“‘It was one of the biggest camps and they were extremely well trained,’ said Khaksar, who secretly contacted the United States in 1999 to seek American help in stopping the Taliban, and renounced the religious movement after their collapse. ‘Now these men have all returned to their homes. It is a grave risk for the security of the world.'”

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