Tantalising tit-bits of information relating to the links between jihadi terrorists in Pakistan and Egypt and in Egypt and the UK have been given in an editorial on the blasts carried by the Daily Times, the prestigious daily of Lahore, on July25, 2005. The editorial titled "Terrorist Link Between Egypt and Pakistan " makes the following salient points:
"In many ways Egypt and Pakistan form the two poles of the same movement. The former produces the guides, the latter provides the training grounds and shelter. The blind orator Omar Abdul Rehman of Gama’a Islamiyya caused the greatest stir when he planned the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre through Ramzi Yusuf who was of Pakistani origin. Indeed, if Pakistan had been Arabic-speaking the power of the blind men of Saudi Arabia (Bin Baz) and Egypt (Kishk, Omar Abdur Rehman) would have doomed its population forever. However, money worked almost equal wonders, when Khalid Sheikh Muhammad sat in Karachi and guided all sorts of killer operations in Pakistan through Pakistani operatives — while Omar Abdur Rehman’s son was ensconced comfortably in Quetta organising the murder of Hazara Shias there on behalf of Osama Bin Laden, who in turn was supporting his son’s father-in-law, Mullah Umar."
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(My comment: In this connection, please refer to my past articles in which I had repeatedly mentioned that the frequent massacres of the Hazara Shias in Balochistan since July,2003, were due to the Al Qaeda's suspicion that the Hazara Shias were co-operating with the US' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in its hunt for Osama bin Laden and that they had betrayed Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) leading to his arrest in Rawalpindi in March,2003, and his being handed over to the US' Federal Bureau of Investigation )
"In all, over 500 Egyptians died fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the highest tally among the Arabs. In fact, as we witnessed the soul-searing attack on London ’s subways on July 7, we recalled that London ’s Finsbury Mosque cell of Al Qaeda was run by Abu Hamza Al-Masri, an Egyptian who had lost an arm and an eye fighting in Afghanistan . Al Masri published al-Ansar, the lethal weekly of the murderous GIA in Algeria , and got his son to abduct British tourists in Yemen for the sake of jihad. Al Masri has been in a British jail since 2004. Another Egyptian, Yasser al Sirri, headed the London-based Islamic Media Observatory, the news agency that provided letters of accreditation to the two fake journalists who killed the Afghan leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, in the north of Afghanistan three days before 9/11."
" Egypt ’s salafist Islam of the Ikhwan has mixed well with Saudi Wahhabism to create the explosive chemistry unleashed by Al Qaeda on the world. Many scholars now think that the poison of violence is not sown in the Muslim mind by the madrassa but by the mosque. Not only the Finsbury mosque in the UK and the Al Quds mosque of Hamburg in Germany, but mosques all over the United States too are using hate literature penned by the late blind chief mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Bin Baz, and have attracted all sorts of middle class Muslims to suicide bombing."
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(My comment: For the last one year, many analysts are coming round to the view that it is not just the madrasas, but the mosques which are fanning jihadi terrorism. There has been a mushrooming of mosques in West Europe and the US to cater to the requirements of the Muslim migrants from different countries. On the ground that qualified preachers are not locally available, these mosques have been permitted by the local authorities to get religious clerics from different Muslim countries for working in the mosques. Before 9/11, the Western Governments were liberal in the issue of visas to religious clerics, Arabs as well as non-Arabs, for working in the mosques. After 9/11, they have tightened up the issue of visas to Arab clerics and started preferring Pakistani clerics. Many of the Pakistani clerics now working in the mosques of West Europe and the USA are of Wahabi-Deobandi thinking and preach that it is the religious duty and obligation of Muslims to wage a jihad against the US and those co-operating with it and to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) material, if necessary)
(Ayman) "Al Zawahiri had not only attacked Gama’a for going quiescent after the 1997 massacre at Luxor; earlier in his book, The Bitter Harvest, he had also attacked the Ikhwan for giving up violence. He held the view that Egypt had to be attacked because that was where the West had to be fought first. Sitting in Peshawar he repeatedly tried to assassinate Egyptian ministers and civil servants suspected of persecuting the Islamists. His recruits narrowly missed two government figures in Cairo but killed one informer. He tried to destroy the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad in 1995, succeeding only partially. He was however more successful in fulfilling Osama Bin Laden’s agenda against the Americans after the setting up of Al Qaeda in 1998. He blew up the US embassy in Nairobi (partially) and tried but failed to blow up the one in Daresalam. These attacks were followed by more successful hits in Yemen and Saudi Arabia ."
The editorial also makes an insinuation that it was Hosni Mubarak, who after coming to power, released the jihadi extremists from jail and persuaded them to go to Afghanistan and fight against the Soviet troops. A large number did and many of them got killed by the Soviet troops. Those who survived and their followers are now haunting the world, including Egypt .
B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, New Delhi , and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter.
