German Quits 'Unhygienic, Drug-using' Taliban
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A German who volunteered to fight for the Taliban quit after becoming disheartened by the violence and annoyed with the group's macho and drug-taking world.

The former fighter also complained of the unhygienic conditions in the war-torn lands of Pakistan's Waziristan province and Afghanistan that left him infected with hepatitis, and which were, in his opinion, "incompatible with the teachings of the Koran".

The unflattering portrayal of life in the Taliban came in a statement made by Thomas U. during his trial in Berlin for involvement in a foreign terrorist group.

The 27-year-old had travelled to Waziristan with his wife in the autumn of 2009 with the intention of freeing the area from the "infidel occupiers" after the couple had converted to Islam. » | Matthew Day | Friday, November 02, 2012

Toulouse Shooting: 80 French Nationals 'Training with Pakistan Taliban'
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: More than 80 French nationals are training with the Pakistan Taliban in the lawless north-west of the country, according to a senior militant commander, raising fears of a renewed campaign against Western targets.

Mohammed Merah, the man believed to have killed seven people in south-western France, was trained by al-Qaeda in Waziristan on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, according to the French prosecutor.

His visits, thought to be in 2010 and 2011, highlight once again Pakistan’s reputation for Jihadi tourism and raise the chilling prospect of more attacks.

A senior commander with the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an al-Qaeda affiliated group, in its stronghold of North Waziristan said militants were following the unfolding events in France.

“There are more than 80 persons belonging to France, mostly in North Waziristan but some in South Waziristan. Five of them left from here in January,” he told The Daily Telegraph on condition of anonymity.

He said he could not disclose their destinations or plans, but that the TTP would claim responsibility when the time came. » | Rob Crilly, and Nazar Ul Islam in Islamabad, and Ben Farmer in Kabul | Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Related »

Bonner Islamist droht Deutschen mit Racheakt

WELT ONLINE: Mounir Chouka ist deutscher Staatsbürger, zog vor Jahren nach Pakistan in den "Heiligen Krieg". Jetzt droht er Deutschland mit Rache.

Demonstrativ wird sein Personalausweis eingeblendet: Mounir Chouka, geboren 1981 in Bonn Bad Godesberg, Staatsangehörigkeit: Deutsch. Doch mit seinem Heimatland hat der 30-jährige Bonner längst gebrochen. Mounir Chouka ist schon vor Jahren zum Mudschahid "Abu Adam" geworden, einem islamistischen Gotteskrieger, der im pakistanischen Stammesgebiet Waziristan für die Einführung der Scharia kämpft.

In einem neuen Propagandavideo der Terrorgruppe "Islamischen Bewegung Usbekistans" (IBU) vollzieht Mounir Chouka nun demonstrativ den endgültigen Bruch mit Deutschland - und droht den Bürgern der Bundesrepublik mit Terroranschlägen.

Deutschland sei ein Verbündeter der USA, ein Handlanger in den Kriegen Amerikas, so der aus Bonn stammende Dschihadist. Die deutschen Geheimdienste seien in den Kampf gegen Muslime involviert und hätten sich dabei mit Tyrannen und Diktatoren alliiert. Der Friedenseinsatz der Bundeswehr in Afghanistan sei in Wahrheit ein Verbrechen der USA mit umfangreicher deutscher Beteiligung, hetzt Chouka. » | Von Florian Flade | Freitag, 10. Februar 2012

Our Friends and Allies, the Saudis! Terror Link Alleged as Saudi Millions Flow into Afghanistan War Zone
TIMES ONLINE: Millions of dollars of Saudi Arabian money have flowed into Afghanistan over the past four years, the country’s intelligence officials say, with the sponsorship of terrorism its most likely use.

According to members of the Afghan financial intelligence unit, FinTraca, the funds, totalling more than £920 million, enter from Pakistan, where they are converted into rupees or dollars, the favoured currency for terrorist operations.

“We can trace it back as far as an entry point in Waziristan,” said Mohammed Mustafa Massoudi, the director-general of FinTraca in Kabul. “Why would anyone want to put such money into Waziristan? Only one reason — terrorism.”

The revelations illuminate the difficulties in dividing the Taleban from al-Qaeda influence and the continuing involvement of Saudi donors in sponsoring the insurgency. >>> Anthony Loyd, Kabul | Monday, May 31, 2010

Star comment:

Oil revenues have allowed the Saudis to spread Wahabbism, the fanatical, destructive form of Islam all over the Muslim world and among the Muslims in the West. One of the Five Pillars of Islam established in the Koran requires that all Muslims give 2.5% of their income to charity. These donations are known as zakat.The amount of zakat donated in Saudi Arabia has been estimated to be around $10 billion annually. Predictably, the Wahhabis have now co-opted this mainstream institution within Islam to promote jihadism.The Saudi government funds mosques, university chairs, Islamic study centres, and religious schools known as madrassas all over the world. The Saudi education system has played a central role in indoctrinating an entire generation of young men into a rabidly xenophobic ideology. – © Alec Paterson | [Source: Times Online Comments] | Monday, May 31, 2010

Family Jihad Tour: European Parents Are ‘Taking Children to Terror Training Camps’
MAIL ONLINE: German intelligence is warning of a new breed of terrorist - whole family groups travelling to training camps on the Afghan-Pakistan border where they learn how to use explosives and raise funds.

Parents travelling with children have in the past raised less suspicion than single men or women travelling to and from Germany.

Now officials have the names of 100 suspects they believe may be radicalised and ready to strike.

Germany is braced for a terror attack after repeated threats because of its involvement in Afghanistan. >>> Allan Hall | Easter Monday, April 05, 2010

The Third Generation: German Jihad Colonies Sprout Up in Waziristan
Islamist Cüneyt Ciftci, a former employee for Bosch, who hailed from the quiet southern German town of Ansbach, carried out a suicide bombing in Afghanistan in March 2008. Photograph: Spiegel Online International
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: A wave of Germans traveling to training camps for militant jihadists has alarmed security officials back in Europe. The recruits are quickly becoming radicalized and, in some cases, entire families are departing to hotbeds for terrorism. It is even believed that colonies catering to German Islamists have taken shape in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It was a Sunday in September when they lost their son Jan*. He gave his parents a particularly tight hug, his father recalls, a long and intense embrace. The father says that he could sense that this was no normal goodbye, and that it was about more than the supposed vacation trip to celebrate the couple's first wedding anniversary -- which was the story that Jan, 24, and his wife Alexandra* had cooked up for him.

It was the day of the German parliamentary elections in 2009, and the autumn sun was shining in Berlin, but Jan and Alexandra weren't interested in who would govern the country. They were going to leave Germany. They had rejected this society and this state. Jan and Alexandra packed their things into a rental car, picked up another couple, and the four friends headed off into exile. One of their traveling companions was 17 years old and six months pregnant -- her husband had just turned 20. Their child would not be born in Germany.

The two married couples headed to Budapest, where they boarded a plane for Istanbul. Jan placed one last call to his parents from a hotel.

Since then there have been only sporadic e-mails. These have been loving messages to his father and mother. But he also writes things that frighten his parents. He is living among brothers and doesn't need much money, Jan writes. No, they can't visit him -- it would be too dangerous, he says. And no, he can no longer imagine returning to Berlin, to a life among the kuffar, the infidels.

Then, in December, he wrote that he didn't know if he would live to see the next summer. Since then his parents have been looking in their mailbox every morning -- and every morning it's the same: nothing. They can hardly bear the uncertainty. Extremist Expats >>> Yassin Musharbash, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark | Easter Monday, April 05, 2010

* Editor's note: Name has been changed by the editors.

Translated from the German by Paul Cohen

Leading Article: Pakistan Finally Takes on the Monster It Created
THE INDEPENDENT: This is a battle that Islamabad should have embarked upon long ago

This week it became brutally clear that Pakistan is effectively at war. A series of brazen assaults by jihadis on police stations, army garrisons and civilian targets across the country in recent days have claimed 160 lives. The military, meanwhile, is preparing for an assault on the militant stronghold of Waziristan.

The death toll is destined to rise further. There will be more casualties, more bombings and more turmoil in this nuclear-armed nation. This battle against a diffused guerrilla force is likely to take years, rather than months. But we need to be absolutely clear about one thing: this is not a struggle that the Pakistani state can avoid. Indeed, it is one that it should have embarked upon a long time ago.

For the best part of two decades, successive Pakistani governments tolerated the growth of Islamist militias (both in the western tribal regions and in the Punjab) in the belief that these groups were useful proxies in the regional strategic struggle with India. The country's intelligence services even funded and armed them. Just as dangerously, the authorities allowed the religious fundamentalists to establish hundreds of schools which churned out indoctrinated recruits to swell the ranks of the militias. The leaders of the Afghan Taliban were trained in such establishments.

The Pakistani authorities believed they could control these fanatics. They were wrong. Earlier this year when the Pakistani Taliban moved into an area only 100km from the capital Islamabad and began to impose their own brutal penal code on its inhabitants, the penny finally dropped among Pakistan's leaders that they had created a monster. >>> | Saturday, October 17, 2009

A German Jihad Colony: Islamists in Pakistan Recruit Entire Families from Europe
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: The German government is trying to secure the release of a group of suspected German Islamists who were arrested by Pakistani authorities while making their way to a jihadist colony in the Waziristan region along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Entire families from Germany are moving to the region to join the jihad.

The young speaker, who calls himself "Abu Adam," praises the stay in the mountains -- almost as if he were shooting an ad for a family holiday camp. "Doesn't it appeal to you? We warmly invite you to join us!" Abu Adam says, raising his index finger. He lists all the things this earthly paradise has to offer: hospitals, doctors, pharmacies as well as a daycare center and school -- all, of course, "a long way from the front." After all, they don't want the children to be woken up by the roar of guns.


The latest recruitment video from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) is a half-hour in length and is addressed to our "beloved" brothers and sisters back in Germany. The video is presented by, among others, Mounir Chouka, alias "Abu Adam," who grew up in the western German city of Bonn.

The video shows shacks erected against a backdrop of lush greenery and craggy rock formations. Women wearing blue burqas are seen surrounded by their children. One small girl is holding an artillery gun.

Welcome to the wild world of Waziristan, the region along the Afghan-Pakistani border controlled by Pashtun tribes, al-Qaida and other splinter groups which has become a regular target of US drones and their remote-controlled missiles.

Islamists Recruiting Entire Families

The ad for Waziristan appears to be finding fertile ground in Germany. Security officials here believe the IMU is currently the largest and most active Islamic group recruiting in the country. But there's an unusual development here, too -- militants don't normally recruit women and children as the IMU appears to be doing. The families move to mujahedeen villages in the rough terrain which are used as bases for supporting the battle against the US troops and the Afghan army.

The German government in Berlin is also examining the propaganda offensive. For several weeks, diplomats in the German Foreign Ministry have been negotiating with Islamabad over the fate of a group of suspected Islamists from Germany's Rhineland region who have been held in custody in Pakistan for several months now. The group includes a young Tunisian and six Germans, including Andreas M. of Bonn, a Muslim convert, and his Eritrean wife Kerya. A Child in Custody >>> By Yassin Musharbash and Holger Stark | Monday, September 21, 2009

Comment Ben Laden échappe à la CIA
Oussama Ben Laden en avril 1998, en Afghanistan. Crédits photo : Le Figaro
LE FIGARO: Pour échapper aux postes avancés de la CIA, le chef d'al-Qaida sait jouer de l'hospitalité pachtoune.

Pourquoi n'a-t-on toujours pas retrouvé Oussama Ben Laden, l'homme le plus recherché de la planète ? Au dire des services de renseignement occidentaux présents à Kaboul, il se cache dans les montagnes reculées du Waziristan, zone tribale pakistanaise frontalière de l'Afghanistan.

Le «cheikh» ne reste jamais très longtemps au même endroit. Il se déplace avec un tout petit nombre de gardes du corps, habillé comme n'importe quel paysan pachtoun local du Waziristan. Lorsqu'il aborde un nouveau village, il s'assoit avec le chef de la tribu, et s'arrange pour lui offrir, sans l'offenser, un généreux cadeau en numéraire pour l'entretien de sa mosquée. Il devient alors l'hôte de la tribu, intouchable selon le pashtounwali, le code d'honneur ancestral des Pachtouns.

S'il venait à l'idée d'un habitant de chercher à le dénoncer pour toucher la prime de 25 millions de dollars, ce dernier n'aurait de toute façon personne à qui rapporter l'information. Dans ces zones tribales autonomes, il n'y a jamais eu le moindre poste de police, du temps des Britanniques comme du temps des Pakistanais.

Dans les principales villes du Waziristan (Banna, Miramshah, etc.), la CIA a installé des minibases avancées, truffées de technologie, dans des maisons anodines, gardées en permanence par des hommes de l'ISI, le tout-puissant service secret militaire pakistanais. Les agents américains ne sortent jamais de ces bases secrètes, passant leurs journées à décrypter les interceptions téléphoniques, à scruter les images aériennes envoyées par les drones, à débriefer les espions pachtouns dépêchés sur le terrain par l'ISI. >>> Renaud Girard, envoyé spécial du Figaro à Kaboul | Lundi 14 Septembre 2009