[iwar] [fc:Alumni.Of.Camps.Run.By.Bin.Laden.Raise.Fears.About.Further.Attacks]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-12-13 06:45:13
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Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 06:45:13 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Alumni.Of.Camps.Run.By.Bin.Laden.Raise.Fears.About.Further.Attacks]
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Wall Street Journal
December 13, 2001
Alumni Of Camps Run By Bin Laden Raise Fears About Further Attacks
Trained in Afghanistan, Many Have Since Fanned Out to Wield Their Skills,
Influence
By Jay Solomon, Steve Levine, David Cloud and Almar Latour, Staff Reporters
of The Wall Street Journal
As the noose tightens around Osama bin Laden, intelligence and
law-enforcement officials are shifting their focus to an equally elusive and
dangerous target: the thousands of Muslims around the world who have been
trained over the years in Mr. bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan.
Just this week, Attorney General John Ashcroft asserted that the U.S. now
believes that all 19 of the hijackers in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
attended camps in Afghanistan, as did Zacarias Moussaoui, a French Moroccan
who was indicted this week for alleged conspiracy in the terrorist plot.
Officials in America, Europe and Asia fear that, just as the Sept. 11
hijackers were, other camp alumni are concealed in "sleeper cells,"
undetected but capable of becoming active at any time. Aware that they are
being hunted, these cells may move deeper underground in the short term,
making them even harder to find. Whatever they do, it is becoming clear that
the alumni have helped spread the camps' influence, recruiting and training
others in cells around the world -- some aligned with al Qaeda, some with
their own agendas and grievances.
"There may no longer be a command headquarters like there was in
Afghanistan," says Roland Jacquard, a French terrorism expert who advises
the United Nations Security Council on terrorism matters. "But now smaller,
more numerous, more cloistered sleeper cells are likely to multiply across
the world." In the U.S., the Central Intelligence Agency has established a
special unit specifically to deal with cells of Mr. bin Laden's al Qaeda
network. In Europe, a few of the cells have already been cracked.
The bin Laden alumni network grew out of Afghanistan's war against Soviet
occupation in the 1980s, when thousands of Muslim men from around the world
flocked to the country to help the Afghans. Among these foreigners was
Saudi-born Mr. bin Laden, who with his own money set up his first camp for
such foreigners near the eastern city of Khost.
Mr. bin Laden settled permanently in Afghanistan in 1996. He and his al
Qaeda network established a dozen or so camps, most of them located outside
Kabul, Jalalabad, Kandahar and Khost. Authorities on terrorism estimate that
50,000 militants from more than 50 countries have received training and
sanctuary in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan over the years. Some went to
these camps to focus on fomenting Islamic revolutions in their homelands --
Egypt, Yemen, Uzbekistan and Chechnya, for example. Others, such as detained
American John Walker, went to al Qaeda camps to become conventional soldiers
to fight alongside the Taliban army inside Afghanistan.
And still others who trooped through Afghanistan -- perhaps 5,000 by U.S.
estimates -- were trained at camps set up specifically to produce operatives
for al Qaeda's own terrorist network. The two most notorious of these camps
were Darunta and Tarnak Farms, outside Jalalabad. In its indictment of Mr.
Moussaoui, the U.S. asserted that he went to a third al Qaeda camp called
Khalden in the spring of 1998.
Today, the bin Laden camps lie deserted or in ruins. Before Sept. 11, al
Qaeda's main sources of recruits for these camps were Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
the Persian Gulf states and Algeria, places where young Muslim men, many of
them well-educated but with few job prospects, respond to the organization's
call to overthrow Western-oriented and often repressive regimes. Experts
caution that a trip to a training camp doesn't mean that someone has become
a committed terrorist willing to risk his life for a cause or has picked up
the skills needed to become a terrorism expert.
Still, the network's reach is wide. That's evident at the headquarters of
the Islamic Youth Movement in central Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. Set
up in a crumbling Dutch-colonial villa, the group indicates its presence
with a sign out front that reads: "Israel and the U.S.: The Real Terrorist
Nations and Killers."
Three hundred of the Islamic Youth Movement's members have been fighting in
Afghanistan, some alongside the Taliban in Kandahar and Kunduz, says
Chairman Suaib Didu. The group's "trainers," mostly 80 veterans from past
battles and the camps in Afghanistan, are constantly in contact with
colleagues in the Middle East, he says.
Ishar and Luti, two Youth Movement recruits -- like many Indonesians, they
use one name -- say they've been benefiting from the Afghan veterans'
expertise. Both men say they have taken part in extensive military and
religious training at a secret camp outside Jakarta in recent weeks. Here,
they say, they've learned about the landscape of Afghanistan, how to fire
guns, and how to live in a place that's being bombed.
"They're teaching me how to survive in war times," says the 23-year-old Mr.
Luti, who wears green military fatigues. On the wall nearby hangs a photo of
Mr. bin Laden.
Mr. Suaib, the Youth Movement's chairman, says his recruits could be called
for action outside of Indonesia and Afghanistan in the years ahead. He says
he hopes to send some members to Europe and the U.S. to monitor how Muslim
interests are being served in the Western world. Some of his fighters could
resort to bombings or suicide attacks, he says, if they feel that Muslims
are being discredited in those countries.
A troubling mystery of the current Afghanistan conflict is the fate of the
foreigners -- from Pakistan, Arab countries and beyond -- who arrived to
fight in an al Qaeda brigade that battled alongside the Taliban army. Many
died or were captured, but some are believed to have slipped across the
region's porous borders.
Hada Farm is among three major bases and camps that Mr. bin Laden and an
estimated several hundred Arab fighters occupied in and near Jalalabad at
any one time. It sits within a sprawling agricultural complex where Afghans
maintain herds, fruit orchards and vegetable gardens. Some of the Arabs
inhabited an area behind high walls along a dirt road. Inside, a maze of
open-air passageways leads through courtyards that connect clusters of
traditional mud-brick cottages.
The compound was abandoned when the city fell to anti-Taliban forces last
month. Before fleeing for nearby mountains in a convoy of about 80 vehicles,
the Arabs and other foreign fighters who occupied the compound methodically
emptied most of the rooms. But in three rooms, the fighters left behind
dozens of textbooks and catalogs, including titles like "Fundamentals of
Physics," "Chemistry: An Introduction" and "Engineering Materials." Wiring,
alligator clips and other communications hardware is still wrapped carefully
in plastic bags and stowed in the small wooden drawers of an electronics
case.
Near the camps and around Jalalabad, merchants say they rarely exchanged
words with the foreign fighters who sometimes patronized their shops. "They
didn't trust anyone. They just drove through town very fast in their 4-by-4s
and Pajeros," says Gul Rahman, 70 years old, who sells firewood next to Hada
Farm. "They only came by when they needed food and bread. Then, they came in
one or two vehicles, and mostly at night."
At least three of the camps that U.S. and European officials believe were
used specifically to train al Qaeda terrorist operatives appear to have been
organized by nationality -- Algerians in one camp, Egyptians in another, and
so on. An al Qaeda camp near Kabul handled training for Egyptian Islamic
Jihad, a group that merged with al Qaeda in 1998.
From the camps, the alumni have fanned out across the globe, frequently
using aliases and fictitious passports. Intelligence officials in the U.S.
and elsewhere say they don't have enough information to track them down.
European governments and intelligence experts are divided over how many may
have settled in Europe. Some put the number as high as 3,000.
Already, about 20 bin Laden lieutenants are behind bars in Europe, while
dozens of Islamic extremists with no direct links to Mr. bin Laden's network
have been arrested in the past year. Among the biggest catches is Mohammed
Bensakhria, who is believed to be Mr. bin Laden's top man in Europe. He has
been in French custody since July, after having been extradited from Spain,
where he was arrested in June. In September, French, Belgian and Dutch
law-enforcement agencies arrested key players in a terrorist cell that is
believed to have been planning an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Paris. In
British custody is Lotfi Raissi, who is alleged to have given pilot training
to several of the Sept. 11 pilots. And last month, Spain arrested eight
suspected terrorists with alleged links to al Qaeda and the Sept. 11
attacks.
In Britain, preoccupied with the Irish Republican Army for decades,
intelligence services are today suffering from an "intelligence gap" on
Islamic terrorist groups in their country, says Prof. Paul Wilkinson,
director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism at the University of St.
Andrews. Also, once-lax antiterrorism laws made it hard for British security
forces to arrest suspected terrorists, while the British legal system made
it possible for suspected terrorists to fight lengthy legal battles to avoid
extradition.
France has been more aggressive. Today there are about 50 people in France
who have been identified as having passed through al Qaeda camps in
Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many of them have been arrested and questioned at
one time or another, and 15 are behind bars. Arrests of other Islamic
militants in France in the past few years number in the hundreds. "We keep
close tabs on them," says Jean-Louis Bruguiere, France's top
counterterrorism investigating magistrate. Still, he cautions: "It's
impossible to know how many sleeper cells there are in France at the
moment."
In Southeast Asia, hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of local Muslims have
trained and fought in Afghanistan in the past 15 years and now have returned
to Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. These Islamists are using their
military and religious training to try to lead revolts against their secular
governments and "holy wars" against non-Muslim populations.
Many of these Afghan veterans deny allegations by U.S. and European
officials that they are members of Mr. bin Laden's network. Many say that
they are either acting independently of Mr. bin Laden or are hostile toward
him. That could pose a challenge of its own kind in a region that's home to
a quarter of the world's Muslims, as most of these militants say they will
continue their struggles regardless of Mr. bin Laden's fate.
Ja'far Umar Thalib, the commander of the Laskar Jihad militia in Indonesia,
probably has been scrutinized by U.S. intelligence operatives more than any
other Islamist in Southeast Asia in recent months. The 40-year-old
Indonesian of Yemeni heritage met and fought alongside Mr. bin Laden in
Afghanistan in the late 1980s. He oversees a militia that since 1999 has led
thousands of Muslims into battles against Christians for control of islands
in central and eastern Indonesia. And he is deeply committed to establishing
Islamic law in his country.
In recent weeks, Spanish officials have alleged that Mr. Ja'far's
organization helped train thousands of al Qaeda operatives at secret
Indonesian camps. The Spanish investigators are looking into an alleged
Madrid-based cell of Mr. bin Laden's organization. Mr. Ja'far denies the
allegations.
At his headquarters, an Islamic boarding school in the central Javanese city
of Yogyakarta, women in Afghan burkhas peer out warily from wooden homes on
stilts, their bodies covered from head to toe in long-black cloth. On
Fridays, students at Mr. Ja'far's school -- mostly refugees from the
sectarian conflict in eastern Indonesia -- are trained in the arts of war.
Mr. Ja'far also controls a media center in Jakarta that puts out five
publications that focus largely on conflicts pitting Muslims against
non-Muslims in Indonesia. The Laskar Jihad's Web site is also run out of the
media center. Some U.S. officials say similarities between the site and
others run by Islamist groups indicate that Laskar Jihad is part of a wider
global terrorist network.
Mr. Ja'far says 10 Indonesians with Afghanistan experience are working as
"trainers" for the Laskar Jihad. But in an interview at a Jakarta hotel, he
denies that his group has any links to al Qaeda. He says that Mr. bin Laden
practices a form of Islam that he rejects and that the U.S. has been trying
to tie Laskar Jihad to the Saudi terrorist suspect as a way to discredit the
organization. Mr. Ja'far says that some al Qaeda operatives visited his
organization last year in an attempt to establish financial links but that
he turned them down.
"Laskar Jihad is purely an Indonesian organization," Mr. Ja'far says.
Dozens of other, smaller Islamist organizations have sprung up in Indonesia,
focused nearly exclusively on the domestic conflict between Muslims and
non-Muslims. Many of them have members who fought or trained in Afghanistan.
This week, Hendropriyono, head of Indonesia's top intelligence body, told
reporters that foreign terrorists, including some from al Qaeda, are
cooperating with Indonesian radicals.
In the U.S., totting up the number of bin Laden alumni at large is hard
because of the ease of moving around and because, as the Sept. 11 hijackers
showed, it's possible to work well below the surface. Airline passenger
records showing who has been flying to and from Pakistan, the main conduit
in and out of Afghanistan, are of limited use because of the similarity of
Arab names and the use of false identities. In early 2000, the CIA began
making covert contacts with Taliban commanders in Afghanistan, but the
effort was focused mainly on tracking Mr. bin Laden's movements.
The CIA's counterterrorism center has operated a separate al Qaeda unit
since 1997. Since Sept. 11, the center has been reorganized into two parts,
the larger of which focuses on finding remaining al Qaeda cells around the
world, according to a center official. The smaller one tries to identify al
Qaeda members inside Afghanistan. Names and locations of possible cell
members are gathered and sent out to CIA stations in the field so suspects
can be arrested or monitored, or so cell members can be approached for
possible recruitment, an intelligence official says.
Since Sept. 11, the CIA has attached many more field agents to the
counterterrorism center. Still, the best information on suspected terrorists
with ties to al Qaeda comes from other countries' intelligence services. If
the CIA hopes to eradicate the bin Laden alumni association, current and
former intelligence officials say, it will have to rebuild its ability to
penetrate and monitor sleeper cells on its own.
-- John Carreyrou in Paris contributed to this article.

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