The Guardian - Sep 10, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5282550-103677,00.html
Britain now faces its own blowback:
Intelligence interests may thwart the
Brits.
by Michael Meacher
The videotape of the suicide bomber Mohammad
Sidique Khan has switched the focus of the
London bombings away from the establishment
view of brainwashed, murderous individuals and
highlighted a starker political reality.
While there can be no justification for horrific killings
of this kind, they need to be understood against the
ferment of the last decade radicalising Muslim youth
of Pakistani origin living in Europe.
During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the
1980s, the US funded large numbers of jihadists
through Pakistan's secret intelligence service, the
ISI. Later the US wanted to raise another jihadi
corps, again using proxies, to help Bosnian Muslims
fight to weaken the Serb government's hold on
Yugoslavia. Those they turned to included Pakistanis
in Britain.
According to a recent report by the Delhi-based
Observer Research Foundation, a contingent was
also sent by the Pakistani government, then led by
Benazir Bhutto, at the request of the Clinton
administration. This contingent was formed from
the Harkat-ul- Ansar (HUA) terrorist group and
trained by the ISI. The report estimates that about
200 Pakistani Muslims living in the UK went to
Pakistan, trained in HUA camps and joined the
HUA's contingent in Bosnia. Most significantly, this
was "with the full knowledge and complicity of the
British and American intelligence agencies".
As the 2002 Dutch government report on Bosnia
makes clear, the US provided a green light to
groups on the state department list of terrorist
organisations, including the Lebanese-based
Hizbullah, to operate in Bosnia - an episode that
calls into question the credibility of the
subsequent "war on terror".
For nearly a decade the US helped Islamist
insurgents linked to Chechnya, Iran and Saudi
Arabia destabilise the former Yugoslavia. The
insurgents were also allowed to move further
east to Kosovo. By the end of the fighting in
Bosnia there were tens of thousands of
Islamist insurgents in Bosnia, Croatia and
Kosovo; many then moved west to Austria,
Germany and Switzerland.
Less well known is evidence of the British
government's relationship with a wider Islamist
terrorist network. During an interview on Fox
TV this summer, the former US federal
prosecutor John Loftus reported that British
intelligence had used the al-Muhajiroun group
in London to recruit Islamist militants with
British passports for the war against the Serbs
in Kosovo. Since July Scotland Yard has been
interested in an alleged member of al-Muhajiroun,
Haroon Rashid Aswat, who some sources have
suggested could have been behind the London
bombings.
According to Loftus, Aswat was detained in
Pakistan after leaving Britain, but was released
after 24 hours. He was subsequently returned
to Britain from Zambia, but has been detained
solely for extradition to the US, not for
questioning about the London bombings. Loftus
claimed that Aswat is a British-backed double
agent, pursued by the police but protected by
MI6.
One British Muslim of Pakistani origin radicalised
by the civil war in Yugoslavia was LSE-educated
Omar Saeed Sheikh. He is now in jail in Pakistan
under sentence of death for the killing of the US
journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 - although many
(including Pearl's widow and the US authorities)
doubt that he committed the murder. However,
reports from Pakistan suggest that Sheikh
continues to be active from jail, keeping in touch
with friends and followers in Britain.
Sheikh was recruited as a student by
Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of Muhammad),
which operates a network in Britain. It has
actively recruited Britons from universities
and colleges since the early 1990s, and
has boasted of its numerous British Muslim
volunteers. Investigations in Pakistan have
suggested that on his visits there Shehzad
Tanweer, one of the London suicide
bombers, contacted members of two
outlawed local groups and trained at two
camps in Karachi and near Lahore. Indeed
the network of groups now being uncovered
in Pakistan may point to senior al-Qaida
operatives having played a part in selecting
members of the bombers' cell. The Observer
Research Foundation has argued that there
are even "grounds to suspect that the
[London] blasts were orchestrated by Omar
Sheikh from his jail in Pakistan".
Why then is Omar Sheikh not being dealt with
when he is already under sentence of death?
Astonishingly his appeal to a higher court against
the sentence was adjourned in July for the 32nd
time and has since been adjourned indefinitely.
This is all the more remarkable when this is the
same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General
Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000
to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker,
before the New York attacks, as confirmed by
Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes
unit.
Yet neither Ahmed nor Omar appears to have
been sought for questioning by the US about
9/11. Indeed, the official 9/11 Commission
Report of July 2004 sought to downplay the
role of Pakistan with the comment: "To date,
the US government has not been able to
determine the origin of the money used for the
9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little
practical significance" - a statement of
breathtaking disingenuousness.
All this highlights the resistance to getting at
the truth about the 9/11 attacks and to an
effective crackdown on the forces fomenting
terrorist bombings in the west, including
Britain. The extraordinary US forbearance
towards Omar Sheikh, its restraint towards
the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Dr AQ
Khan, selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya
and North Korea, the huge US military
assistance to Pakistan and the US decision
last year to designate Pakistan as a major
non-Nato ally in south Asia all betoken a
deeper strategic set of goals as the real
priority in its relationship with Pakistan.
These might be surmised as Pakistan
providing sizeable military contingents
for Iraq to replace US troops, or Pakistani
troops replacing NATO forces in
Afghanistan. Or it could involve the use of
Pakistani military bases for US intervention
in Iran, or strengthening Pakistan as a base
in relation to India and China.
Whether the hunt for those behind the London
bombers can prevail against these powerful
political forces remains to be seen. Indeed it
may depend on whether Scotland Yard, in its
attempts to uncover the truth, can prevail over
MI6, which is trying to cover its tracks and in
practice has every opportunity to operate
beyond the law under the cover of national
security.
[Michael Meacher is the Labour MP for Oldham
West and Royton; he was environment minister
from 1997 to 2003.]
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