Pakistan to Europe: a pipeline of terror
Officials probe emerging link from haven to cells
ULM, Germany - As Al Qaeda regains strength in the remote areas of the Pakistani-Afghan border, more militants from mainland Europe are traveling to Pakistan to train and to plot attacks on the West, European and US antiterror officials say.
The emerging route, illuminated by alleged bomb plots dismantled in Germany and Denmark last month, represents a new and dangerous reconfiguration. In recent years, the global flow of Muslim fighters had shifted to the battlefields of Iraq after the loss of Al Qaeda's Afghan sanctuary in 2001.
"There have always been people going to Pakistan, but it is more frequent now," said a senior French intelligence official who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity. "There is a return. It is a cycle. . . . And you have the attractive phenomenon that all the big chiefs of Al Qaeda are there."
Unlike Iraq, where foreign fighters plunge quickly into combat, recruits in Pakistan are more likely to be groomed for missions in the West. Aspiring holy warriors drawn to the Pakistani-Afghan border region include European converts and militants from Arab, Turkish, and North African backgrounds, investigators said.
"Pakistan worries me more than Iraq," a top Belgian antiterrorism official said. "It's true that Iraq scares them a bit because many of them end up getting strapped up with the explosive belt right away. In Pakistan, they have time to be trained as operatives."
The path is not straight or easy. In the German case, at least a dozen suspects meandered among Koranic schools in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, then traveled through Iran into Pakistan. Several suspects were detained by Pakistani authorities en route to training camps, their seemingly improvised, sometimes amateurish odysseys contrasting with their alleged ferocity.
In the past, the main threat from that part of the world has involved young men from Britain's large Pakistani diaspora targeting Britain and the United States. In half a dozen plots since 2003, British operatives trained in Pakistan, made contact with fugitive Al Qaeda leaders, and returned home to strike. They succeeded in July 2005, when suicide bombings in Western Europe killed 52 people aboard the London transport system.
In contrast, extremists from North African and Arab immigrant communities in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy have been more likely to join networks based in North Africa or the Iraq region.
But today, even small countries such as Belgium, Denmark, and Switzerland have detected non-Pakistani extremists going to Pakistani training outposts, officials say. Pakistani immigrant communities in mainland Europe are smaller than Britain's but could serve as conduits to the networks, police say.
In Spain, radical Pakistani imams and recruiters are muscling into predominantly North African mosques, a senior Spanish antiterror official said. In Italy, Moroccan and Tunisian extremists communicate by Internet with extremists in Pakistan in an effort to show they are major players, an Italian antiterrorism official said.
These new links, combined with the unprecedented plots against Germany and Denmark, show a gathering menace, the official said.
"I think that Europe has been at extremely high risk during the past six months," he said. "First, because many fighters have returned from Iraq. Second, because of the real problem of Pakistan."
In the Danish case, the leader of an alleged cell was trained by Al Qaeda in Pakistan in an apparent plot to kill Danish civilians, partly as revenge for the publication of caricatures of the prophet Mohammed, antiterrorism officials say.
In the German case, police in September arrested three suspects accused of assembling 1,500 pounds of explosive materials for vehicle bombings near US military bases. The trio allegedly took orders from Islamic Jihad Union, an Al Qaeda ally based in Pakistan.
The path began in this town near Stuttgart, where a mix of German converts and Arab and Turkish immigrants coalesced in an alleged extremist cell at a notoriously radical mosque. They made contact with their Egyptian imam's son-in-law, who directed the Qortoba Arabic-language school in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, intelligence officials say. Starting in 2005, the three main suspects spent time at the Alexandria school.
Even if many teachers and students are not violent fundamentalists, Arabic and Koranic schools in the Middle East are classic gateways of radicalization for European Muslims. German suspects also attended such schools in Saudi Arabia and Syria and roamed in Turkey, investigators say, drifting abroad for months at a time.
It is believed that Fritz Gelowicz, the accused ringleader, met a key contact at a Koranic school in Damascus, in 2005: a militant from the Baluchistan region of Pakistan who became the liaison to the camps, according to an antiterrorism official.
In March 2006, Gelowicz and two other suspects trained at a camp in the lawless Waziristan region of Pakistan, according to Pakistani and US intelligence provided to German investigators. Intelligence reports indicate that a German-speaking trainer worked with some German suspects, an antiterror source said.
Investigators say the training camp was located near the city of Mir Ali, which has seen heavy fighting recently as Pakistani forces clash with Al Qaeda and Taliban militants. The suspects used a variety of contacts and routes. But they all entered Pakistan via Iran, German investigators say. In a police state such as Iran, it seems unlikely that security forces would not spot foreign militants in transit, particularly German converts, investigators said. Iranian authorities either looked the other way or were complicit, they said.
The attitude of Shi'ite Iran to Sunni Al Qaeda has been ambiguous. Iranian authorities have arrested some Al Qaeda figures and protected others, seeing Al Qaeda as a useful weapon against the West, antiterror officials say.
The role of the Koranic school in Syria raises similar questions. Several European investigations have identified schools in Damascus as busy gateways where foreign fighters, posing as students, contact operatives who help them join the Iraqi insurgency. 