Author: Kim Sengupta
Publication: The Independent (U.K)
Date: February 25, 2009
URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/exclusive-army-is-fighting-british-jihadists-in-afghanistan-1631347.html
Top Army officers reveal surge in attacks
by radicalised Britons
British soldiers are engaged in "a surreal
mini civil war" with growing numbers of home-grown jihadists who have
travelled to Afghanistan to support the Taliban, senior Army officers have
told The Independent.
Interceptions of Taliban communications have
shown that British jihadists - some "speaking with West Midlands accents"
- are active in Helmand and other parts of southern Afghanistan, according
to briefing papers prepared by an official security agency.
The document states that the numbers of young
British Muslims, "seemingly committed jihadists", travelling abroad
to commit extremist violence has been rising, with Pakistan and Somalia the
most frequent destinations.
MI5 has estimated that up to 4,000 British
Muslims had travelled to Pakistan and, before the fall of the Taliban, to
Afghanistan for military training. The main concern until now has been about
the parts some of them had played in terrorist plots in the UK. Now there
are signs that they are mounting missions against British and Western targets
abroad. "We are now involved in a kind of surreal mini-British civil
war a few thousand miles away," said one Army officer.
Somalia is also becoming a destination for
British Muslims of Somali extraction who have started fighting alongside al-Qa'ida-backed
Islamist forces. A 21-year-old Briton of Somali extraction, who had been brought
up in Ealing, west London, recently blew himself up in the town of Baidoa,
killing 20 people. The head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, has raised the worrying
issue of British citizens being indoctrinated in Somalia, and Michael Hayden,
the outgoing head of the CIA, warned that the conflict in the Horn of Africa
had "catalysed" expatriate Somalis in the West.
But it is in Afghanistan that British forces
are now directly facing fellow Britons on the other side. RAF Nimrod aircraft
flying over Afghanistan at up to 40,000ft have been picking up Taliban electronic
"chatter" in which voices can be heard in West Midlands and Yorkshire
accents. Worryingly for the military, this has increased in the past few months,
with communications picked up by both ground and air surveillance, showing
the presence of more British voices in the Taliban front line.
The men involved are said to try to hide their
British connections but sometimes "fall back" into speaking English.
One senior military source said: "We have been hearing a lot more Punjabi,
Urdu and Kashmiri Urdu rather than just Pashtu, so there appears to be more
men from other parts of Pakistan fighting with the Taliban than just the Pashtuns
who have tribal allegiances with the Afghan Pashtuns. It is this second group,
the Urdu, Punjabi speakers etc, who fall back into English in, for example,
Brummie accents. You get the impression that they have been told not to talk
in English but sometimes simply can't help it."
Some of the British Muslims had originally
trained in Pakistan to commit attacks in Kashmir. But security sources say
the rising threat of Indian retribution, especially after the Mumbai attacks,
had led to the Pakistani government curbing the activities of the Kashmiri
separatist groups, so the fighters are being switched to Afghanistan. The
numbers involved in Afghanistan, the intelligence document shows, are relatively
few, dozens rather than hundreds, but the pattern of involvement is described
as a cause for concern.
Last week, during a visit to Helmand, the
Foreign Secretary, David Milliband, was shown Taliban explosive devices containing
British-made electronic components. An explosives officer said the devices
had either been sent from Britain, or brought over to the country. They ranged
from remote-control units used to fly model airplanes to advanced components
which could detonates bombs at a range of more than a mile.
Evidence of British Muslims fighting inside
Afghanistan and training in insurgent camps in Pakistan's Federally Administered
Tribal Areas has been provided to the UK authorities by the Americans. The
US has significantly stepped up its surveillance inside Pakistan as part of
a more aggressive policy including cross-border raids by unmanned Predator
aircraft.
The Americans are said to have raised the
issue of the Pakistan connection, complaining that the UK is not doing enough
to curb radical Muslims. The US pointed out that this threatens their own
security because UK passport holders can get into the US under the visa waiver
programme. The Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, the chairman of the Commons'
sub-committee on anti-terrorism, which has been examining the activities of
British Muslim extremists, said: "We know the problem we have with UK-based
jihadists. We also know that a number of them have been arrested trying to
leave the country. With the UK intelligence services at full stretch, it is
not surprising some of these jihadists had ended up in Afghanistan."
Brigadier Ed Butler, the former commander
of British forces in Afghanistan, said British Muslims were fighting his forces.
"There are British passport holders who live in the UK who are being
found in places such as Kandahar," he said. "There is a link between
Kandahar and urban conurbations in the UK. This is something the military
understands but the British public does not."
Robert Emerson, a security analyst who has
worked in South Asia, said: "There is ample evidence that British Muslims
had trained in camps in Pakistan. What is emerging now is a picture of them
being more active in Afghanistan, either providing support and logistics or
in active service. The numbers are not particularly large, but it is worrying."
Jonathan Evans, of MI5, said the number of
extremists wanting to travel to Iraq had "tailed off significantly"
as Britain begins the drawdown of its troops in the country. But there was
"traffic" into Pakistan and Afghanistan. "What happens in Afghanistan
is extremely important because what happens there has a direct impact on domestic
security in the UK," he said. "Pre-2001, they were able to establish
terrorist facilities and to draw hardened extremists and vulnerable recruits
to indoctrinate and teach techniques. If the Taliban is able to establish
control over significant areas, there is a real danger that such facilities
will be re-established."
Last week, as Barack Obama ordered 17,000
extra US troops into Afghanistan, a confidential Nato report revealed that
more than 30 per cent of the population believed the government of President
Hamid Karzai had lost control of the areas in which they live and much of
that has slipped back into Taliban control.
