QandO

August 16, 2004

Meanwhile, in the war on Terror
Posted by McQ

Elaine Shannon and Tim McGirk from TIME report on a big terror meeting in March which took place in Pakistan:

It was a gathering of terrorism's elite, and they slipped silently into Pakistan from all over the world in order to attend. From England came Abu Issa al-Hindi, an Indian convert to radical Islam who specializes in surveillance. From an unknown hideout came Adnan el-Shukrijumah, an accomplished Arab Guyanese bombmaker and commercial pilot. And from Queens in New York City came Mohammed Junaid Babar, a Pakistani American who arrived with cash, sleeping bags, ponchos, waterproof socks and other supplies for the mountain-bound jihadis.

Why are these people so important? Well according to Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, "The personalities involved, the operations, the fact that a major explosives expert came here and went back, all this was extremely significant."

How wonderful. Now some of the summit attendees have been captured, but some remain at large. And this summit now makes it clear that perhaps the recent terror alerts weren't at all about "politics":

"This was a meeting of a bunch of cold-blooded killers who are very skilled at what they do and have an intense desire to inflict an awful lot of pain and suffering on America," says an official familiar with the summit. A senior counterterrorism official said analysts are scrutinizing the recent pattern of enemy activity against timelines of previous attacks. This, he said, has contributed to the worry that at least some members of a strike team are already in the U.S.

Musharraf is of the opinion this meeting points to a "second string" of al-Queda leadership. Or you could look at it as the new and emerging leadership of al-Queda. In either case they remain viable and dangerous. Probably the most dangerous of those who are being sought is this man:

The terrorist who worries Washington most is el-Shukrijumah, 29, chiefly because he is still at large but also because he is practically homegrown. Born in Guyana and reared in Miramar, Fla., where his father, a Saudi-Yemeni cleric now deceased, preached hard-line Wahhabism at a small mosque, el-Shukrijumah took computer classes at Broward Community College in Florida. He holds Guyanese and Trinidadian passports, may also have Canadian and Saudi passports and can easily pass for Hispanic. "He speaks English and has the ability to fit in and look innocuous," says an FBI agent. "He could certainly come back here, and nobody would know it." U.S. authorities have put his name on domestic and international watch lists but fear he will travel to Mexico or Canada on phony documents and then sneak across the border into the U.S.

Should he come through Mexico, I'm sure he'll be greeted by our newly "sensitized" Border Patrol, processed and allowed to wander into the US. But then, maybe I'm just cynical and have the feeling that there a whole bunch of folks out there still living in a September 10th world and still don't take these sorts of threats seriously.

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