SALON

Monday, Sep 3, 2012 4:15 AM UTC

Jihadist shift seen in Pakistan _ fewer Arabs

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Jihadist shift seen in Pakistan _ fewer ArabsFILE - This undated file image taken from video provided by IntelCenter shows al-Qaida's former second-in-command Abu Yahya al-Libi. In the Pakistani tribal regions that harbor al-Qaida and a cauldron of other jihadist groups, militants from Central Asia, China, Turkey and even Germany are growing in number, eclipsing Arabs and possibly raising new challenges not just for the U.S. but for Europe, Russia and China, say intelligence officials, analysts and residents of the area. Two senior U.S. officials said the drone war was affecting al-Qaida numbers and morale. The deaths of high-profile al-Qaida figures such as Abu Yahya al-Libi, killed in a drone strike in June, have made others skittish, prompting some to leave Pakistan for other battlefields in Syria, Yemen, Iraq or their home countries, the officials said. (AP Photo/IntelCenter, File) MANDATORY CREDIT: INTELCENTER(Credit: AP)

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — In the Pakistani tribal regions that harbor al-Qaida and a cauldron of other jihadist groups, militants from Central Asia, China, Turkey and even Germany are growing in number, eclipsing Arabs and possibly raising new challenges not just for the U.S. but for Europe, Russia and China, say intelligence officials, analysts and residents of the area.

Al-Qaida, the organization that plotted the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks from Afghanistan, consisted largely of Arabs, who were led by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi. But stepped-up U.S. drone strikes, Pakistani military offensives and dwindling cash reserves have driven out many of the Arabic-speakers in recent years, says Mahmood Shah, a retired brigadier and former security official in the tribal regions.

While there are no exact numbers, Shah said intelligence sources in the tribal regions put the number of Arab and African jihadists at about 1,500, compared with 3,500 to 4,000 ranging from Chinese Uighurs and Uzbeks to recruits from Turkey, the Russian republics of Chechnya and Dagestan as well as native and immigrant Germans.

Two senior U.S. officials said the drone war was affecting al-Qaida numbers and morale. The deaths of high-profile al-Qaida figures such as Abu Yahya al-Libi, killed in a drone strike in June, have made others skittish, prompting some to leave Pakistan for other battlefields in Syria, Yemen, Iraq or their home countries, the officials said.

In separate interviews, both Americans cited the case of a Saudi named Najam, who lost his legs to a drone at about the same time as al-Libi died. They said Najam, who came from an affluent family, was able to reach an agreement with the Saudi government to return to his wife and children.

Intelligence suggests that Najam’s treatment has encouraged other militants to seek similar deals, switch to other battlefields or seek leniency from their governments, both U.S. officials said.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss information gleaned from on-the-ground intelligence.

None of the Central Asian groups figuring in the apparent demographic change are new to the tribal regions. Some were welcomed to Afghanistan decades ago during the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Others arrived during the Taliban’s rule of Afghanistan that lasted from 1996 to the American-led invasion of 2001. The breakaway Chechen government even had an embassy in Kabul.

The Sept. 11 attacks focused global attention on the Arab militants, but the changing demographics could have implications for Europe as well as Russia and China, analysts say.

The arrest in Madrid a month ago of three men who allegedly had explosives and reportedly trained in Pakistan’s tribal areas seems to highlight the changing reality.

Two of them, Eldar Magomedov and Mohamed Ankari Adamov, were said to be Russians of Chechen descent while the third, Cengiz Yalcin, is Turkish.

Spanish officials allege they were planning an attack in Spain or elsewhere in Europe. There was no identification of the target.

Analysts and officials who track militant movements say they believe al-Qaida’s leadership, including Egyptian Ayman Al Zawahri, remains in Pakistan, where its redoubts have shrunk further under Pakistani military assaults, according to Shah, the ex-brigadier, who was interviewed in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar near the tribal regions.

But jihadists from outside the Arab world have been getting more attention.

A report on extremist trends released last month by Germany’s domestic intelligence said the Islamic Jihad Union, headquartered in Pakistan’s tribal area, is “widening its sphere in the sense of global jihad to include Europe.” Once dominated by ethnic Uzbeks, the IJU has sought to recruit German converts who have embraced a radical form of Islam as well as Germans of Turkish origin, say analysts familiar with the organization.

In 2007, German intelligence foiled a terrorist plot planned by ethnic German converts to Islam who belonged to the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU).

“They (IJU) want to recruit Turkish-origin people but maybe born in Germany, established here and with a German passport … they train them and build them up and send them to Germany as well as to other European countries to commit acts of terrorism,” said Rolf Tophoven, director of the German Based Institute for Terrorism Research and Security Policy.

According to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks Islamist extremist messages, the IJU is known as the European affiliate to al Qaida. SITE described the IJU’s rise in prominence as a significant development within the global jihadist movement.

The IJU, like other jihadi groups, seeks the installation, if necessary by force, of Islamic governments and revenge for Western attacks. In 2005 the U.S. State Department designated the IJU a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

For the past 30 years, Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Washington’s Georgetown University, has been tracking terrorist groups and studying insurgencies. He said that European governments as well as China and Russia have good reason to keep a close eye on the tribal regions of Pakistan.

“The IJU was also strengthened by their access to German converts,” he said, as well as to disaffected members of China’s Muslim Uighur minority, concentrated in Xinjiang, western China, whose radicalization “the Chinese are very concerned about.”

Russia too has strong interests in the Muslim-dominated republics that were part of the Soviet Union, and in Chechnya and Dagestan, Hoffman said.

The threat from the changing jihadist demographics is “more in the future than immediately. The main threat is that the existing nucleus will attract more and as time goes on the threat will increase. It exists now, but at a lower level,” he said in an interview.

Ivan Safranchuk, an associate professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, told The AP that the governments of the Central Asian republics also fear instability from neighboring Afghanistan once NATO and U.S. troops leave in 2014

Safranchuk, who edits the Great Game, a magazine focused on Central Asia, said training camps in Pakistan have attracted mostly Uighurs and recruits from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

“If a new battle front opens in Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan, say, these militants will naturally be dispatched there,” he said.

Stephen Sestanovich, an expert on Russian and Eurasian affairs at the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations, agreed that Russia and the Central Asian republics have a stake in what happens after the 2014 withdrawal.

“It’s a reminder to the Russians that the U.S, departure from Afghanistan is going to be a very mixed blessing. That’s why (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has actually been talking up Russia’s stake in American success there. … Putin and Russian intelligence doubtless worry that Central Asia will be destabilized.”

While the demographics may be changing, the militant presence in the tribal regions remains strong, despite the drone attacks and the local public’s growing expectation of a Pakistani military sweep, according to Safdar Hayat Khan, head of the Tribal Journalists Union, in an interview in Peshawar.

“There are still so many foreigners there,” he said. “They keep coming and going.”

___

Associated Press writers David Rising in Berlin and Peter Leonard in Kazakhstan contributed to this report.

___

Kathy Gannon is AP special regional correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan and can be followed on www.twitter.com/kathygannon.

More Kathy Gannon.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
289 points290 points | 253 comments
vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
252 points253 points | 21 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
223 points224 points | 31 comments
vote
Austerity Kills: Brian McArdle, a 57-year-old man who had had two strokes and could barely walk, was found "fit for work" by a government subcontractor, and had his benefits stopped. He died the next day.
93 points94 points | 8 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
78 points79 points | 16 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations