Remember “Saifullah” and friends the next time someone calls criticism of Islam “racist.” “US drones target white jihadis,” by Amir Mir for Asia Times, July 19 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):
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….