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Afghanistan drawing fresh influx of jihadi fighters

* Experts say Qaeda attracting foreign recruits for escalating Afghan offence, strengthening through Pakistani and Afghan Taliban

PESHAWAR: Afghanistan has been drawing a fresh influx of fighters from Turkey, Central Asia, Chechnya and the Middle East, one more sign that Al Qaeda is regrouping on what is fast becoming the most active front of the war on terror groups.

More foreigners are infiltrating Afghanistan because of a recruitment drive by Al Qaeda as well as a burgeoning insurgency that has made movement easier across the border from Pakistan, United States officials and experts said.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen warned about an increase in foreign fighters crossing into Afghanistan from Pakistan, where the government was trying to negotiate with militants. Two US officials told the AP on condition of anonymity that the US was closely monitoring the flow of foreign fighters into both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Militant web sites from Chechnya to Turkey to the Arab world featured recruitment ads as early as 2007, said University of Massachusetts Islamic History Associate Professor Brian Glyn Williams. He has tracked the movement of militants for the US military’s Combating Terrorism Centre.

He said there were rumours of hardened Arab fighters from Iraq training Afghans in the tactic of suicide bombing.

Recruits’ source: Turkey also appears to have emerged as a source of recruits. Williams estimated as many as 100 Turks had made their way to Pakistan to join the fight in Afghanistan.

“The story of Turkish involvement in trans-national terrorism is one of the best kept stories of the war on terror,” said Williams, who noted that Al Qaeda videos posted on YouTube mention Turks engaging in the insurgency. He said, “The local Afghans whom I talked to claim that the Turks and other foreigners are more prone to suicidal assaults than the local Taliban.”

Dozens of Turkish Islamic militants have trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and taken part in attacks there, said Emin Demirel, an anti-terrorism expert in Turkey. He said images of attacks on mosques or Muslim villages provide propaganda for recruiting young Turkish Muslims.

“Nowadays, they are effectively using the Internet to communicate with fellow militants, and police have difficulty in keeping tabs on several of the militant sites,” said Demirel.

He added, “Turkish courts sometimes locally block access to one particular site, but it is still accessed outside Turkey. These websites eulogise fallen fighters as martyrs in order to recruit radical Muslim youths.”

A senior official in Turkey’s Interior Ministry said it had no information to confirm the claims of an increase in the number of Turks fighting in Afghanistan.

Taliban: Al Qaeda has financed the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and in the resultant chaos, it has been able to steadily recruit, re-establish its public relations wing, plot new attacks and re-establish areas of operation on both sides of the border.

Afghan and Western officials say a key route for Al Qaeda recruits is from Central Asia into north-eastern Kunar and Nuristan provinces, where former US intelligence officials suspect Osama Bin Laden is hiding. Both provinces border Pakistan’s Bajaur Tribal Area, where the Taliban hold sway and where the US has targeted Al Qaeda’s Ayman al Zawahri.

The hulking mountains of Kunar and Nuristan soar thousands of feet and are heavily forested, giving militants good cover. Kunar was the location of the war’s two deadliest attacks on US soldiers on Sunday, with the killing of the nine Americans, and in June 2005, when militants shot down a helicopter and killed 16 soldiers.

Naseer Ahmed al Bahri, Bin Laden’s bodybuard until 2000, told the AP in Yemen last year that Al Qaeda had field commanders in countries from Indonesia to Senegal.

While Al Qaeda may be sending most of its trainees to Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is probably also creating cells with the mission of attacking Western countries, including the US, warned Erich Marquardt, senior editor with the Combating Terrorism Centre.

“I think we have to accept the fact that Al Qaida has not taken its sights off the far enemy, it recognises that it is fighting in multiple theatres and is therefore likely training fighters for different areas of operation,” he said. ap

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