The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is reported to have uncovered an Al Qaeda sleeper cell in Lodi , near Sacramento in California . All of those so-far arrested in this connection-- Hamid Hayat and his father Umer Hayat, Muhammed Adil Khan, Shabbir Ahmed Mohammed and Khan's son Hassan Adil -- are Pakistanis or American nationals of Pakistani origin.Hamid is alleged to have attended an Al Qaeda training camp at a place called Tamal near Rawalpindi in 2003-04.Khan and Mohammed are described as two Imams from the Lodi Mosque.
The Muslim community to which these people belong is predominantly from Pakistan . It is said there are about 2,500 Pakistanis or American nationals of Pakistani origin in Lodi 's 60,000-strong population.
The FBI has already filed an affidavit before a court to justify its request for the continued detention of the arrested persons. The charge as levelledagainst them so far is not participating or planning to participate in a terrorist act or belonging to a terrorist organisation, but telling a lie in order to cover up the fact of Hamid having undergone training in an Al Qaeda training camp. It is alleged that Hamid initially denied it, but only subsequently admitted it when put through a lie detector test.
It is not clear how the FBI zeroed in on Hamid. Some Pakistani sources allege that their community at Lodi is a divided one with a lot of politics and that some sections opposed to those arrested had planted false information on the FBI against the arrested persons.
There are some loose links in the case as so far put up by the FBI.Among questions inadequately or unsatisfactorily answered are:
(a). Would it have been possible for the Al Qaeda to run such a training camp at or near Rawalpindi , considering the fact that the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan Army are located there?
(b). Who was responsible for running the camp---Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the leader of the Deobandi-Wahabi organisation called the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI) Pakistan or Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil, the former Amir of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM)? It is said that the FBI had initially mentioned the name of Maulana Fazlur Rahman, but subsequently withdrew it?
(c). It is also said that some of the arrested/suspected persons had condemned the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US and had been members of inter-religious groups, which were campaigning against terrorism. How can they be so deceptive---seemingly working overtly against terrorism and covertly assisting the Al Qaeda and other jihadi terrorist organisations?
(d). How come Gen.Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, who projects himself as a stalwart ally of the US, allows such anti-US activities to go on in Pakistani territory?
(e). How does the US continue to trust and pamper him despite such instances?
Would it have been possible for the Al Qaeda to run such a training camp at or near Rawalpindi , considering the fact that the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan Army are located there?
It is very unlikely. All the identified Al Qaeda training camps of the past were located in the Afghan territory or in the remote tribal areas of Pakistan adjoining the Afghan border in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). There has been no instance of an Al Qaeda training camp having been found in a non-tribal area away from the Afghan border.
However, there have been instances of individual Al Qaeda leaders sheltering in and operating from non-tribal urban areas. Abu Zubaidah was arrested in a safe house of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in Faislabad in Punjab . Ramzi Binalshib and Khalid bin Attash, the suspect in the case relating to the October,2000, attack on USS Cole, were arrested in Karachi . Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) orchestrated the entire 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US , at the instance of bin Laden, from hide-outs in Karachi and he was finally arrested in the house of an office-bearer of the women's wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) in Rawalpindi .
It is unlikely that Pakistan 's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) would allow the Al Qaeda or any other jihadi terrorist organisation to run a full-fledged terrorist training camp from Rawalpindi or near it. It would be afraid that such camps may be detected by foreign intelligence officers posted in their Embassies in Islamabad .
However, it is quite possible for Hamid to have been trained by any Pakistani jihadi organisation in one of its madrasas in the Rawalpindi area. The jihadi terrorist training infrastructure falls into two categories-- full-fledged training camps, where religious education and motivation are part of the jihadi terrorist training and the madrasa courses for religious education where jihadi military training forms part of the course.
The Al Qaeda does not directly control any madrasa in Pakistan . It runs full- fledged training camps in the remote tribal areas where full-time jihadi training is imparted by Arab, Chechen, Uzbeck or other foreign instructors. It does not run any madrasa courses for religious education. It takes into its full-time jihadi training courses volunteers, who have already gone through the madrasa courses and are found to be well-motivated.
However, the Pakistani jihadi organisations run full-time jihadi training courses as well as courses in religious education in the madrasas controlled by them. For example, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) runs full-time jihadi training courses at its headquarters at Muridke, near Lahore , as well as courses in religious education plus jihadi training in the madrasas controlled by it all over Pakistan . So too, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) runs full-time jihadi training courses in special camps in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) and religious education courses in the madrasas controlled by it all over Pakistan.
The brother of Hambali of the Jemaah Islamiya (JI), and other Indonesians and Malaysians, who were arrested and deported by the Pakistani authorities in 2003, were undergoing religious education courses, with jihadi training as part of the course, in a madrasa controlled by the LET in Karachi. The Pakistani jihadi organizations use retired Pakistani military personnel for jihadi training and not foreign instructors.
It is, therefore, my assessment that if Hamid had really been trained in an Al Qaeda camp, it could not have been at or near Rawalpindi.If he had really been trained at or near Rawalpindi , it must have been by one of the Pakistani jihadi organisations and not by the Al Qaeda.Either he has been misleading the FBI or it has not properly interrogated him. I have noticed even in the past that the interrogation of the jihadi terrorists by the FBI and other US agencies---whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq or elsewhere--- tends to be superficial and the jihadi terrorists find it easy to mislead the Americans, who understand very little of Islam and the Muslims.
Who was responsible for running the camp--Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the leader of the Deobandi-Wahabi organisation called the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI) Pakistan or Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil, the former Amir of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM)?