Militants trickling into Pakistan: officials

Determined band of Western militants trickling into Pakistan's northwest tribal region for training.

ISLAMABAD: A small but determined band of Western militants are reportedly trickling into Pakistan's northwest for training in Taliban and al Qaeda enclaves, officials say.

Western diplomats in Islamabad, intelligence officials and Pakistani security officials say dozens of Westerners are among the thousands of foreign militants hiding out in the remote border region.

Despite their relatively small number, a host of bombings and aborted attacks in Western cities in recent years linked to the tribal areas shows that the threat posed by these migrating militants is nevertheless real.

Just another local

Officials say the would-be attackers are hard to detect as they arrive with legitimate visas from Europe, and even the United States, and blend in with the local population as they make their way to the Waziristan region.

"The British-born Pakistanis are mostly young boys who are adventurous by nature and don't find it hard to come to Pakistan and move around," a security official said, requesting anonymity.

"There are some basic flaws in our immigration system. It's very easy for these suspects, especially those coming from Europe, to pass through our immigration," another senior security official said.

Most of the militants arrive with a working knowledge of the local language, Pashto, and wear local dress, making them difficult to identify, an intelligence official said.

At a meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday, a US official told EU interior ministers that attacks being planned on countries including Britain, France and Germany had been traced back to European militants in the western tribal belt.

"They are difficult to track down, they have European passports," Gilles de Kerchove, the EU's anti-terrorism coordinator, said at the same meeting.

The border area is considered al Qaeda's global base and is home to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, both involved in training suicide bombers responsible for most of the 3,700 people killed in attacks over the past three years.

Handlers on call

"Some Western fighters also disguise themselves as Tablighis," said a senior intelligence official, referring to followers of the moderate Tabligh movement, whose missionaries travel the globe to preach Islam.

Raiwind, a suburb of the eastern city of Lahore, hosts hundreds of thousands of Tablighs every November for one of the largest Muslim gatherings worldwide.

"Some of them have been arrested, but others made it to Waziristan," the intelligence official said.

Retired General Mehmood Shah, a former security chief in the tribal areas, said local facilitators and handlers meet the European fighters on arrival in Pakistan and later send them on to the tribal region.

"Al Qaeda converts these people to their cause before they arrive... once foreigners arrive in North Waziristan they are already fully motivated," he.

"Everyone should keep a closer eye on their citizens"

A US drone strike in North Waziristan on October 4 killed five suspected German militants in the tribal belt, according to Pakistan security sources, in a raid that followed warnings of a possible attack by al Qaeda in Europe.

Germans of Central Asian origin who have links to Uzbek Islamists have been coming to Pakistan for some time, said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a journalist based in northwest Pakistan and an expert on militancy in the area.

They come "very easily via Afghanistan after crossing the Amu Darya river border from Uzbekistan," said Yusufzai.

Others trickle in "via Turkey and Iran" said a Pakistani intelligence officer.

"Anyone can easily find traffickers in the border areas and they can smuggle you wherever you want," he said.

One intelligence official put the overall number of Western militants in Pakistan at "70 to 80". Most said "dozens" were coming.

Former security chief Shah said it was a problem that the United States and its Western allies persistently blamed on Pakistan, but that foreign powers should also shoulder some responsibility.

"The US and the West will have to give up blaming Pakistan for acts of terror committed by foreigners after they've visited our tribal region," he said.

"These countries should take an equal share of the blame and keep a closer eye on their own citizens."