Outside View: Britain's Islamist dilemma

Outside View: Britain's Islamist dilemma
UPI - July 26, 2005 Tuesday 12:44 PM EST

By: MUAZZAM GILL

ANAHEIM HILLS, Calif., July 26 - It is impossible to develop even an ounce of sympathy for Muslims who use suicide bombings against civilians to advance their religious cause. We can analyze endlessly the attraction of impressionable youth to radical causes in a first world nation, their transformation into martyrs for Islam -- but analysis is not justification.

Analysis should also include reconsideration of actions taken by Western officials that have inadvertently strengthened jihadist causes and created what CIA veterans call "blowback." Here is a telling example.

That three of the suspected perpetrators of the bomb attacks on London on July 7 are British youths of Pakistani origin should come as no surprise to British intelligence. The radicalization of younger members of Britain's 1.5 million-strong Muslim community started in the mid-1990s with the full knowledge -- and some suggest the complicity -- of British and U.S. intelligence agencies.

In the mid-1990s, the Pakistan-based jihadist group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM -- previously known as Harkat-ul-Ansar, HUA ) sent a contingent to help Bosnian Muslims in their fight against the Serbs. They were sent by the government of Benazir Bhutto at the request of the Clinton administration. The contingent, which was raised and trained by General (retired) Hamid Gul, former director general of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), included a large number of British Muslims of Pakistani extraction.

According to estimates, about 200 Muslims of Pakistani origin living in the United Kingdom went to Pakistan, received training in the camps of the HUA, and joined the HUA in Bosnia with the blessings of London and Washington. Among them was Omar Sheikh, who went on to mastermind the murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.

A decade before Bosnia, the CIA had raised and funded a large corps of Arab jihadists including Osama bin Laden -- to help the Afghan mujahideen in their jihad against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

By the time of the Serbian crisis, these Arabs of Afghanistan vintage had already started creating mayhem beyond Afghanistan, notably in the Indian-held part of Kashmir, so Western intelligence avoided the use of Arabs in Bosnia. Instead they turned to Pakistanis, especially Pakistanis living in Britain and other countries in Western Europe, thus sowing the seeds for a trained force of young killers convinced of the righteousness of their attacks through their understanding Islam.

This is not the place for a discourse on why Islam has failed to adapt to modernism and remains at odds with Western civilization. But it is a phenomenon with which Western intelligence experts should be expected to be familiar.

The case of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and then killed by members of the HUM and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) in January-February, 2002 illustrates grimly how the Bosnia conflict birthed a lethal terror machine.

Pearl's murder was orchestrated by Omar Sheikh, a British citizen of Pakistani origin who had studied at the London School of Economics before joining the HUA to go to Bosnia.

After a stint in Bosnia, Omar then infiltrated into India and conducted acts of terrorism for which he was arrested and jailed by Indian authorities. In December 1999 he was released in a deal following the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Afghainstan by the HUM. From Kandahar, Omar crossed to Pakistan, joined al-Qaida and opened its office in Lahore.

In early 2002, Pearl determined that instructions to Richard Reid the so-called shoe bomber to carry out his terrorist strike had come from an unidentified source in Karachi belonging to an organization called the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra (JUF), based in Lahore. Not much is known about this highly secretive organization except that its leader is Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani, who has four wives, two of them African-American. JUF does not issue statements or pamphlets or run any known websites.

JUF's focuses on activities of Muslim communities in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean and its membership consists largely of blacks recruited from these areas. Its reported goal is to penetrate the armed forces of the U.S. and the Caribbean by recruiting blacks serving in them.

In 1995, HUA also started focusing on the black community in the U.S. It recruited nearly a dozen blacks, brought them to Pakistan for jihadist training in its camps, and sent them back to the U.S. While the HUA and the JUF keep away from each other in Pakistan, they cooperate in the United States and are believed to have built up a network of sleeper cells. The HUA did not show much interest in the Caribbean and that area is largely left to the JUF.

Reports from Pakistan indicate that Omar Sheikh continues to be active from jail, reportedly keeping in touch with friends and followers in the U.K. Statements purported to have been issued by him from jail calling on the Muslims of the world to retaliate against the U.S. for desecration of the Koran are disseminated every Friday in many Pakistani mosques controlled by jihadist organizations.

Unhindered by Pakistani authorities, the JUF continues to recruit volunteers from the U.S. and the Caribbean, sends them to Pakistan to be trained and returns them to their places of domicile.

The chain of events here is not directly linear. But by reaching out to Pakistan to deal with a problem in Bosnia, Western leaders helped to train and "blood" jihadists who have gone on to attack Western individuals and institutions.

All this does not mean Western leaders should never use people in other countries to serve their purposes of the moment. However they should be aware that such actions can turn around to bite them. Western nations especially the United States must conduct a more judicious use of such tactics in the future.

(Muazzam Gill is a news analyst and vice-president of the American Leadership Institute.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)