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NEWSWEEK: Taliban Source: Al Qaeda Training Western Operatives in Pakistan; 'English Brothers' to Return to Home Countries to Organize Al Qaeda Cells There
Sunday December 17, 12:52 pm ET
Britain's Foreign Office Spokesperson Says: It Is 'Common Knowledge' That Jihadist Recruits Have Been Traveling From Britain to Pakistan for Instruction and Training

NEW YORK, Dec. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- For the past year, a secret has been slowly spreading among Taliban commanders in Afghanistan: a 12-man team of Westerners was being trained by Al Qaeda in Pakistan for a special mission. Most of the Afghan fighters could only rely on hearsay, but some told of seeing the "English brothers" (as the foreign recruits were nicknamed for their shared language) in person, report a team of Newsweek correspondents in the December 25, 2006-January 1, 2007 issue (on newsstands Monday, December 18). Omar Farooqi, who serves as the Taliban's chief Qaeda liaison for Ghazni province, in eastern Afghanistan, says he spent roughly five weeks this past year helping to indoctrinate and train a class of foreign recruits near the Afghan border in tribal Waziristan, and among his students were the English brothers. The 12 included two Norwegian Muslims and an Australian, along with nine British subjects, Farooqi tells Newsweek. Their mission, Farooqi says, will be to act as underground organizers and operatives for Al Qaeda in their home countries -- and their yearlong training course is just about finished.
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(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20061217/NYSU007)

In the current issue, Special Correspondent Sami Yousafzai, South Asia Bureau Chief Ron Moreau and Investigative Correspondent Mark Hosenball report that U.S. and British security agencies have known this threat would come sooner or later. While saying he could not confirm the English brothers' case specifically, a spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office (unnamed as a matter of standard policy) calls it "common knowledge" that jihadist recruits have been traveling from Britain to Pakistan for indoctrination and training. American intelligence officials tell Newsweek that their people are definitely concerned about terror suspects and operatives shuttling back and forth between Britain and Pakistan. "For the most effective background checks on passengers, the United States needs information and assistance from the country where the traveler resides," says Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke, adding that such help should be "routine."

While the Americans talk, Farooqi says Al Qaeda is pressing on with its training plans. He confidently described those plans to a Newsweek correspondent at a mud-brick house in Afghanistan's Paktia province, not far from the Pakistan border, mentioning the English brothers almost in passing as an example of the jihad's recent successes. The specifics of his story could not be independently corroborated. But among the dozen or so Taliban gunmen guarding the house one, with most of his face hidden by a black and white kaffiyeh, appeared to be a European with light-colored eyes; Farooqi later confirmed that the guard was one of the brothers. An open notebook lay on the carpet where Farooqi was seated, and the correspondent caught a fleeting glimpse of scrawled names and telephone numbers, including several that were preceded by the United Kingdom's country code: 44.

Farooqi tells Newsweek he first met the brothers, all of them in their 20s, soon after they reached Waziristan in October 2005. He recalls one of them, known as Musa, telling him that the 7/7 bombings in London "were just a rehearsal of bigger acts to come." A few, he couldn't say how many, had arrived in Pakistan by air, but most had taken a clandestine overland route, across Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, escorted by a network of professional smugglers. According to Farooqi, the brothers' travel arrangements were made by Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, one of Al Qaeda's top operations men and a liaison with insurgents in Iraq. The transcontinental journey took a month to complete, but Farooqi claims the brothers left no official traces of their passage, slipping past every border-control post without showing any travel documents.

Still, Al Qaeda wasn't taking any chances with the English brothers' safety. They received much of their training behind the mud-brick walls of the sprawling compounds that are typical of Pakistan's tribal areas. The idea was to keep the men hidden from U.S. and Pakistani reconnaissance planes. Farooqi says the recruits were taught a wide variety of subjects, from religious and ideological doctrine to the art of molding, assembling and detonating state- of-the-art Iraqi-style shaped-charge IEDs. They learned how to make and use suicide-bomb vests; how to rig car bombs; how to motivate other men to sacrifice their lives for the jihad, and how to maintain communications with Al Qaeda on the Afghan-Pakistan frontier. They're not meant to be suicide bombers themselves, Farooqi says; they are far too valuable to waste.

The English brothers -- and the Pakistan pipeline -- are signs that Al Qaeda, as an organization, is still in action. Farooqi says he believes, based on overheard conversations, that Al Qaeda is planning for the very long term, a decade into the future. He says the terrorist group is talking about gradually fielding more than 1,000 jihadists in Europe over the next 10 years. From what he has heard, only 10 percent of those operatives are in place so far. Based on information from the British security service M.I.5, the British Home secretary, John Reid, recently warned that a terrorist attack in the United Kingdom could be highly likely during the holidays.

(Read entire article at www.Newsweek.com)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16240565/site/newsweek/