Bin Laden has a 46% approval rating in Pakistan. US 19% and al Qaeda 43 %

Poll: Bin Laden tops Musharraf in Pakistan

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf -- a key U.S. ally -- is less popular in his own country than al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, according to a poll of Pakistanis conducted last month by an anti-terrorism organization.

Additionally, nearly three-fourths of poll respondents said they oppose U.S. military action against al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan, according to results from the poll conducted by the independent polling organization Terror Free Tomorrow.
"We have conducted 23 polls all over the Muslim world, and this is the most disturbing one we have conducted," said Ken Ballen, the group's head. "Pakistan is the one Muslim nation that has nuclear weapons, and the people who want to use them against us -- like the Taliban and al Qaeda -- are more popular there than our allies like Musharraf."
The poll was conducted for Terror Free Tomorrow by D3 Systems of Vienna, Virginia., and the Pakistan Institute for Public Opinion. Interviews were conducted August 18-29, face-to-face with 1,044 Pakistanis across 105 urban and rural sampling points in all four provinces across the nation. Households were randomly selected.
According to poll results, bin Laden has a 46 percent approval rating. Musharraf's support is 38 percent. U.S. President George W. Bush's approval: 9 percent.
Asked their opinion on the real purpose of the U.S.-led war on terror, 66 percent of poll respondents said they believe the United States is acting against Islam or has anti-Muslim motivation. Others refused to answer the question or said they did not know.
"We failed in winning hearts and minds in Pakistan," Ballen told CNN. "In fact, only 4 percent said we had a good motivation in the war on terrorism."
Seventy-four percent said they oppose U.S. military action against al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan.
After American relief efforts following the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan's Kashmir region, 46 percent of Pakistanis had a positive opinion of the United States, according to the poll. But as of last month, only 19 percent reported a favorable opinion.
Meanwhile, al Qaeda has a 43 percent approval rate; the Taliban has a 38 percent approval rate; and local radical extremist groups had an approval rating between 37 percent to 49 percent.
Views of U.S. could improve, responses indicate
There were a few bright spots in the poll results, however. Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto -- a relatively moderate and progressive figure, as well as a woman -- had a 63 percent approval rating.
Seventy-five percent of poll respondents said suicide bombings are rarely or never justified.

And a majority of Pakistanis said their opinion of the United States would improve if, among other things, there were increases in American aid to Pakistan, American business investments and the number of visas issued for Pakistanis to work in the United States.
Terror Free Tomorrow is a non-partisan, nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., and according to its Web site is "the only organization dedicated to a new strategic vision: Leading the fight against terror by winning the popular support that empowers global

Hate calls made to families of RAF members from Pakistan

Taliban terrorises RAF families

By TOM NEWTON DUNN Defence EditorAugust 22, 2007
COMMENT ON THIS STORY
TALIBAN fanatics terrorised the wife of an RAF officer by phoning her and saying: “You’ll never see your husband alive — we have just killed him.”
Rebels in Afghanistan are targeting British forces’ families with hate calls after tapping into Our Boys’ mobile phones.
The tearful wife rang the RAF fearing the worst after receiving the midnight call — and was told her husband was safe and well.
But the Taliban calls are a sick new plot to destroy morale, and British forces in Afghanistan have now been BANNED from using mobiles.
Army chiefs believe extremists are using sophisticated eavesdropping equipment to trace home numbers when forces call their loved ones in Britain.
Intelligence analysts have tracked the hate calls to numbers in Pakistan, a hotbed for Islamic extremism and the Taliban’s prime recruiting ground.


Pakistan’s notorious ISI spy agency — a known supporter of the Taliban — is believed to be intercepting Our Boys’ calls. It is also feared the Taliban may be getting intercept information from Iran.
Now all British troops’ welfare calls have to be made on secure military phone lines. But squaddies are fuming as they are only allowed 30 minutes’ call time each week.
One senior officer said: “We assume these days that every conversation over mobile phones is being heard by our enemies.
“They have some pretty powerful friends and allies, who are giving them some very sophisticated help. They will use that information in any way they can to damage us, whether it is physically or mentally.”
Hate calls are the latest tactic in the ever-more sophisticated war raging in Afghanistan’s lawless south.
A British forces spokesman in Afghanistan confirmed the hate calls, adding: “We are fully aware of the security implications of using personal mobile phones in Afghanistan and have therefore imposed a ban on their use to protect individuals and their families.”
The MoD confirmed that families of troops in Iraq have also suffered from “nuisance calls” in the past year.

National Security Archive Documents: Pakistan and the taliban

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing

Documents Detail Years of Pakistani Support for Taliban, Extremists

Document 17
From [Excised] to DIA Washington D.C., "IIR [Excised] Pakistan Involvement in Afghanistan," November 7, 1996, Confidential, 2 pp. [Excised]
Similar to the October 22, 1996 Intelligence Information Report (IIR), this IIR reiterates how "Pakistan's ISI is heavily involved in Afghanistan," but also details different roles various ISI officers play in Afghanistan. Stating that Pakistan uses sizable numbers of its Pashtun-based Frontier Corps in Taliban-run operations in Afghanistan, the document clarifies that, "these Frontier Corps elements are utilized in command and control; training; and when necessary - combat. Elements of Pakistan's regular army force are not used because the army is predominantly Punjabi, who have different features as compared to the Pashtun and other Afghan tribes."
According to the document, Pakistan's Frontier Corps provide some of the combat training in Kandahar or Herat provided to Pakistani madrassa students that come to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban. The parents of these students apparently know nothing regarding their child's military involvement with the Taliban "until their bodies are brought back to Pakistan."

Pakistan's soldiers 'huddling in their bases' in tribal regions

Pakistan's soldiers 'huddling in their bases' in tribal regions

· Army paralysed by Taliban threat, says ex-CIA agent· Retired officers accused of helping militants Declan Walsh in IslamabadSaturday June 16, 2007The Guardian
The Pakistani army is paralysed by the growing Taliban threat and some retired officers are covertly aiding the militants, according to a former CIA officer.
Soldiers posted to Waziristan, a tribal area that hosts an estimated 2,000 al-Qaida fighters, are "huddling in their bases, doing nothing", said Art Keller, a CIA case officer who was posted to Pakistan last year.
"Their approach was to pretend that nothing was wrong because any other approach would reveal that they were unwilling and unable to do anything about Talibanisation," said Mr Keller, who has visited Waziristan.


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The Pakistani military insists it is doing its best. President Pervez Musharraf has repeatedly referred to the 80,000 soldiers posted to the tribal areas, about 700 of whom have been killed in action.
But Mr Keller said that behind the scenes the fight was riven by divisions among the officers. "There are the moderates who fear Talibanisation, the professional jihadis who want to embrace the Taliban again, and the middle group who aren't too fond of the Taliban but resent doing anything under pressure from the US out of sheer bloody-minded stubbornness," he said. "Because of [that], the Pakistani military remains paralysed."
Mr Keller alleged that retired army officers, including the former spy chief Hamid Gul, were secretly supporting the Taliban. "To the degree that they aren't arrested or forced to cease and desist, they are tacitly tolerated," he said. Gen Gul, who has faced similar accusations before, said last night: "I morally support the movement to end the American occupation of Afghanistan. But there is no physical dimension to it, no hidden agenda."
Mr Keller's comments come at a sensitive time in US-Pakistani relations. Since 2001 Washington has given Pakistan $10bn (£5bn) in exchange for counter-terrorism cooperation. But although hundreds of al-Qaida figures have been arrested, Osama bin Laden remains at liberty and Taliban attacks on Afghanistan have soared.
On Thursday the US assistant secretary of state Richard Boucher visited Quetta, the capital of the western province of Baluchistan where Nato officials say the Taliban has a headquarters. The chief minister of Baluchistan, Jam Muhammad Yousaf, told him that "Mullah Omar or Osama bin Laden are not [here]", according to a government statement.
Uzbek, Arab, Chechen and Somali militants are sheltering in Waziristan, to the north of Baluchistan. The majority Uzbeks are concentrated around Mir Ali in north Waziristan, where they have allied with local fighters - self styled "Pakistani Taliban" - to coordinate attacks inside Afghanistan.
Gen Musharraf's efforts to stem the violence through a controversial peace deal with the militants have failed, and in recent months "Talibanisation" has spread north out of the tribal belt and into North-West Frontier Province, with attacks on music shops, barbers and government officials.
But Mr Keller said American efforts to catch the ringleaders were being thwarted by Pakistani rules restricting CIA agents to heavily guarded military camps. "Limited freedom of movement and limited freedom to directly engage locals were, and remain, the biggest obstacles to success," he said. Critics say the CIA has also inflamed the situation through secretive attacks by Predator aeroplanes on al-Qaida targets that have killed dozens of civilians.
Last year the CIA revived efforts to hunt bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al Zawahiri. Mr Keller doubted they were in Waziristan. "I don't think the two top guys are there but some roads leading to them run through there," he said.
Excessive pressure from Washington was also hampering the chase, he added. Spies needed peace and quiet to "spin webs and wait for the flies to come", he said. "Such a manhunt is chess, not checkers."

Pakistani among those killed by U.S. attack in Somalia

American among those killed by U.S. attack in Somalia
By Mahad Elmi and Shashank Bengali
McClatchy Newspapers
MOGADISHU, Somalia - Somali officials confirmed on Sunday that an American was among the suspected Muslim radicals killed on Friday when a U.S. Navy warship fired missiles at a militant encampment in northern Somalia.
The American was not identified, but Hassan Dahir Mohamoud, the vice president of Puntland, the northern Somali region that declared itself semiautonomous in 1998, said that the American's passport had been recovered.
Five other foreigners were also killed in the strike, Mohamoud said, including citizens of Great Britain, Sweden, Morocco, Pakistan and Yemen. Two Somali nationals reportedly survived the U.S. missile strike.

Pakistani paramilitary soldier killed American soldiers

‘Paramilitary man shot at ISAF delegates’
PESHAWAR: A Pakistani paramilitary soldier belonging to areas close to Waziristan shouted Allah-u-Akbar (God is great) and opened fire as he saw Americans on Monday, sources in Kurram Agency said on Tuesday. A Pakistani and a US soldier were killed moments after they walked out from a school building near the Pak-Afghan border in the Kurram tribal region after a “flag meeting” on Monday. “A paramilitary soldier, who belonged to the Bhittani tribe and was deployed there for the security of American and Afghan military officials, opened fire, and cross-fire followed in which he was killed,” the sources told Daily Times on condition of anonymity. Information regarding the paramilitary soldier’s involvement in the shooting was “obtained from different people”, the sources added. Military spokesman Maj Gen Waheed Arshad said he had “no information” that linked a Pakistani paramilitary soldier to the killing of the American. “I’ve no such information and an investigation has been ordered,” he told Daily Times. “I don’t have preliminary results of the investigation.” He blamed the attack on unidentified “miscreants”.The Associated Press quoted an unnamed US military official as saying in Washington that US soldiers had “gotten into a truck and were preparing to leave when a Pakistani militiaman walked up and opened fire. Return US fire killed the gunman.” Arshad said he did not see the Kabul-datelined AP story. The Bhittani tribe lives in areas from Tank to Lakki Marwat along the border with South Waziristan and is regarded as one of “the most conservative and fiercest” of all Pukhtoon tribes. iqbal khattak

DHS trying to restrict access of British citizens of Pakistani origin to the United States.

May 2, 2007
U.S. Seeks Closing of Visa Loophole for Britons
By JANE PERLEZ
LONDON, May 1 — Omar Khyam, the ringleader of the thwarted London bomb plot who was sentenced to life imprisonment on Monday, showed the potential for disaffected young men to be lured as terrorists, a threat that British officials said they would have to contend with for a generation.
But the 25-year-old Mr. Khyam, a Briton of Pakistani descent, also personifies a larger and more immediate concern: as a British citizen, he could have entered the United States without a visa, like many of an estimated 800,000 other Britons of Pakistani origin.
American officials, citing the number of terror plots in Britain involving Britons with ties to Pakistan, expressed concern over the visa loophole. In recent months, the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, has opened talks with the government here on how to curb the access of British citizens of Pakistani origin to the United States.
At the moment, the British are resistant, fearing that restrictions on the group of Britons would incur a backlash from a population that has always sided with the Labor Party. The Americans say they are hesitant to push too hard and embarrass their staunch ally in the Iraq war, Prime Minister Tony Blair, as he prepares to step down from office.
Among the options that have been put on the table, according to British officials, was the most onerous option to Britain, that of canceling the entire visa waiver program that allows all Britons entry to the United States without a visa. Another option, politically fraught as it is, would be to single out Britons of Pakistani origin, requiring them to make visa applications for the United States.
Rather than impose any visa restrictions, the British government has told Washington it would prefer if the Americans simply deported Britons who failed screening once they arrived at an airport in the United States, British officials said. The British also screen at their end, and share intelligence with the Americans.
But Washington feels strongly, Mr. Chertoff has said, that it has the right to build controls against terrorists from Britain who do not have a prior criminal record — precisely the kind of man Mr. Khyam was until he was arrested in early 2004 and put on trial for plotting to blow up targets like a major London nightclub and a popular suburban shopping mall.
For its part, the British government looks with dismay at the frequency with which Britons travel to their ancestral land of Pakistan — an estimated 400,000 trips a year — where a small minority, like Mr. Khyam, link up with extremist groups and acquire training in weapons and explosives.
Foreign office officials have said they have discussed measures with the Pakistani Embassy in London, which grants Pakistani passports to Britons of Pakistani descent, to consider tightening the rules for Pakistani travel documents.
In Washington, an expert on terrorism and Pakistan, Bruce Riedel, who served on the National Security Council under President Clinton and in the early Bush administration, and who recently retired after 30 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, said that Mr. Khyam was perfect material for Al Qaeda.
“He is the classic U.K.-Pakistani connection that Al Qaeda has focused on since 9/11,” said Mr. Riedel, who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “His U.K. passport gives him international mobility. His training at a camp run for Kashmiris by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency gives him expertise. Al Qaeda gives him direction.”
The trial that ended Monday with the conviction of Mr. Khyam and four other Muslim men on conspiracy charges did not establish whether Mr. Khyam or his colleagues belonged to a Qaeda cell.
But the head of counterterrorism at Scotland Yard, Peter Clarke, said after the verdict the investigations into the bomb plot had given “a new understanding of the Al Qaeda threat to Britain.”
At his sentencing, the judge, Sir Michael Astill, described Mr. Khyam as “the energy behind the conspiracy,” the man who attracted other young Muslims to the plan, and inspired them, and who knew how to shuttle from Britain to Pakistan for terrorism training.
From Mr. Khyam’s own testimony, as well as a cascade of official intelligence surveillance presented during the yearlong trial, a portrait of determination and ruthlessness emerged.
As a teenager, Omar became entranced by jihadist ideology. He moved on to the cause of Kashmir, and was then piqued by 9/11 and the Iraq war, things that inspired and angered other Britons with Pakistani roots. But he in the end turned to attacking Britain, where he was born and raised.
Asked on the witness stand his reaction to 9/11, Mr. Khyam did not disguise his delight.
“I was happy,” he recalled in his south England accent. “America was, and still is, the greatest enemy of Islam. I was happy that America had been hit because of what it represented against the Muslims, but obviously 3,000 people died, so there were mixed feelings.”
Mr. Khyam testified that his parents migrated to Britain from Pakistan in the 1970s, before his birth. He came from a family, he said, with a proud heritage of service, first in the British Army in Pakistan, then in the army of the newly independent Pakistan, and also in the intelligence services.
His parents were not particularly religious, he said, a pattern typical among Pakistani immigrants to Britain where the new generation, often turned off by what they see as the loose morals of binge drinking and broken marriages, has proven to be more devout than their elders.
At the age of 10, his father, a successful businessman with a textile factory in Karachi, left his mother and moved to Belgium, leaving behind Omar, the eldest, and two small children.
His mother’s English was poor. Quickly, Omar became the man of the household, organizing the finances, and bossing his siblings. Instead of enrolling in the local school where most of the students were South Asian, he attended a mostly white, government-run school, and led a middle-class British life.
He did relatively well in his final school exams and enrolled in college but, distracted by his larger cause, never followed through on his studies or sought steady employment.
By 1998, he had taken his first steps into the realm of radical Islam, when he was introduced to Al Muhajiroun, a group led in Britain by Omar Bakri Mohammed, in his neighborhood in West Sussex. The group indoctrinates followers in the virtues of an Islamic state and indoctrinates a strict code of personal behavior. It expects members to shun friends who do not practice strict Islamic mores.
On the political side, Mr. Khyam calmly told the court about how he watched bloody videotapes of Russian soldiers blowing up mosques in Chechnya, and of atrocities by the Serbs against Muslims in Bosnia, which were shown to members of Al Muhajiroun.
But he soon tired of Al Muhajiroun, he said, and yearned for something more than the group’s desire for an Islamic state in Britain, which he deemed to be “not realistic.”
He took his first trip to Pakistan as a vacation with his mother and his brothers in 1999, when he was just a teenager. There, he experienced firsthand what he had heard about at home: the cause of Kashmir, the border area claimed by both Pakistan and India. He met with a group, Al Badr Mujahedeen, that fought, he said, to free Kashmir from Indian control.
In early 2000, Mr. Khyam was back in Pakistan. He found a training camp for fighters being sent to Kashmir that was run, he said, by Inter-Services Intelligence.
According to his testimony, the American-led war in Afghanistan, and later Iraq, dramatically colored his views. Those wars, he said, were wars against Islam, and he hoped to join the fight.
“By this time I had a lot of contact with the I.S.I. because of my family,” he said, referring to the Pakistani intelligence service. He visited the headquarters of the agency in Islamabad, and was told that what the Americans wanted “is to stop anyone who calls for the return of an Islamic state or a caliphate.”
From 2002 on, Mr. Khyam said he shuttled between Britain and Pakistan, culminating in a trip in 2003 to a training camp in Malakand in the North-West Frontier Province with five of his fellow defendants, including his younger brother, Shujah, who was acquitted.
By late 2003, according to prosecution evidence, Mr. Khyam had decided from his trips to Pakistan to concentrate on a plot in Britain that would involve a fertilizer bomb.
Mr. Khyam, using some of the organizational skills he had honed as a young man at home, can be heard on surveillance tapes divvying up responsibilities for the plan.
Along the way, he found time to marry — in what he called a “religious marriage” — Saira, a Pakistani woman.
They finally married in a civil ceremony on March 25, 2004, and a few days later, Mr. Khyam was arrested by the police in a bedroom of a Holiday Inn in England while he was on his honeymoon with his wife.

The Pakistani diaspora and potential for terrorist acts(Norway)

The Pakistani diaspora and potential for terrorist acts
LAHORE: Religious terrorism in Norway is nonexistent but needs to be addressed in advance to possibly ward off any future attacks, according to University of Oslo Humanities researcher David Hansen.Most theoretical literature on terrorism mainly deals with theoretical aspects of religion and religious violence and not possible ways of dealing with religious terrorism, said Hansen in a recent lecture.“In dealing with the task of finding solutions to terrorism, I have chosen to focus on Islamic terrorism and, more specifically, on the present Pakistani Diaspora group in Norway with possible Norwegian solutions to the problem,” Hansen stated in his lecture.Pakistanis are the largest non-Western immigrant group in Norway and are mostly notorious for receiving unwelcome attention from society, Hansen said. The Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11 have resulted in terrorism receiving a much wider context than they used to have and can now be referred to as global terrorism, he said. Religious terrorism in our time has come to represent Islamic terrorism allegedly being performed by Muslims under the ideological mindset that the killing of “non-believers” is justified.Thus far, Norway has been safe from any terrorist activities, said Hansen. “The potential for religious terrorism, specifically Islamic terrorism against Norway and its citizens, however, is being widely discussed in the media as well as in political circles and government institutions,” he said. “It has become common perception that it isn’t a matter of if Norway is attacked, but rather a matter of when.” Recent investigations have focused on finding the second or third generation Pakistani man (as the nationality comprises the majority in Norwegian Muslims) who could be the mastermind of such an attack, he added.“The biggest fear is that such discussions are seen as aggressive, stigmatising, and possibly polarising [Pakistani] Diaspora groups in society,” said Hansen. How far a person can be pushed before he considers reprisal against society should be debated, he said. Islam is also notorious for coming in the public spotlight not through good deeds, but rather through such acts as honour killings, he said. The differing schools of thoughts within Islam (Hanafi, Shafi, Maliki, etc) also create problems in helping define the religion to an outsider, said the lecturer. The best solution is for Muslims to follow the guidelines of Bosnian scholar Fikret Karcik, who says that religion should be adapted so that it does not interfere with [secular] law in host societies without compromising one’s beliefs. Karcik has provided several Hadiths in support of his views, said Hansen.There is no simple way to deal with religious terrorism; either at home or on an international scale, said Hansen when concluding his lecture. It is necessary to incorporate Diaspora groups into any discussion that deals with possible resolutions as evidence suggests that leaving them out can serve to radicalise them, he said. Further, there are concerns related to using police in dealing with religious terrorism, as people who believe they have no rights are more likely to commit acts of terror. Treating immigrants like second-class citizens should stop as such alienation can cause them to turn to radical elements for support, he added. daily times monitor

DHS on the lookout for Pakistanis

Friday, March 2, 2007
HOMELAND INSECURITYFeds on terror lookout for 'high-risk' Pakistanis
Passengers put on special watchlist to check al-Qaida training camp ties
Posted: March 2, 20071:00 a.m. Eastern
By Paul Sperry
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com-->© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Pakistani travelers are the focus of a new temporary watchlist the federal government has created to identify high-risk passengers entering the United States, WND has learned.
The Department of Homeland Security has programmed a computer system that screens inbound passengers for signs of terror activity to flag certain individuals traveling from Pakistan. The system automatically creates a "one-day lookout" for the individuals in the official terror-watchlist database.
U.S. authorities are on high alert for Pakistani travelers who pose a possible terror risk after American spy satellites recently turned up photographic evidence of al-Qaida training camps inside Pakistan, U.S. officials say.
According to internal DHS documents obtained by WND, the department has directed customs officers to escort passengers identified by the "one-day lookouts" to secondary inspection, where they are subjected to a battery of questions to determine if they have visited terror camps in Pakistan.
(Story continues below)
American citizens of Pakistan descent also are under increased scrutiny. Over the past few years, U.S. authorities have arrested or investigated several Pakistani-American men who have trained at the camps during trips to Pakistan. One camp used photos of President Bush for target practice.
"The camps are a big concern," said a DHS official, who requested anonymity. "We are questioning U.S. citizens, as well as Pakistani nationals, as they come back to the states if the computer says they might have terrorist ties."
Vice President Dick Cheney earlier this week confronted Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf with "compelling" evidence of active al-Qaida camps inside Pakistan. The two met face-to-face in Islamabad.
Cheney's secret visit revealed new cracks in an already fragile alliance between Washington and Islamabad in the war on terror. Musharraf has denied the existence of terror camps in his country, even as authorities have traced major British terror plots back to al-Qaida-tied madrassas and camps in Pakistan.
DHS refers to the ramped-up screening process for Pakistani and other high-risk travelers as "augmented primary."
The "one-day lookout" is usually the result of analysis conducted on passenger information submitted by the airline prior to an international flight's arrival in the U.S.
Muslim-rights groups and Democratic leaders in Congress have complained the government's use of such information to "profile" potential terrorists constitutes an invasion of privacy. The government has said the nation's ability to spot security threats would be critically impaired without access to such data.
DHS officials claim the system has resulted in several suspected terrorists being turned away or apprehended.
According to DHS documents, the airline-passenger information is fed into a so-called Automated Targeting System, or ATS-P, which flags inbound passengers who may pose a terrorism risk based on various criteria, including:
suspicious travel itineraries;
travel to Pakistan and other high-risk countries;
use of suspect ticketing agencies;
or possible matches to federal watchlists.
Additional data gleaned from passenger travel records, including seating and meal preferences, are reviewed by DHS officials at the National Targeting Center in Northern Virginia. Passengers added to the temporary watchlist warrant a closer look by an airport customs officer trained in "counter terrorism response," or CTR.
CTR officers have been trained to ask "passengers of interest" a list of required questions from a matrix. Highly suspicious passengers are subjected to additional interviews and searches and may be taken into custody.
The matrix of questions is sensitive and closely held within the department. WND has obtained a copy of the matrix sheets, which contain more than 30 questions cross-referenced with more than a dozen security categories involving passport issues and travel patterns, among other concerns.
Question No. 2 reads: "Did you travel to Pakistan? If so, what cities did you visit." Questions 5 and 6 deal with "military training" and "school/training." Others drill down on specifics regarding such training.
WND has agreed not to reveal details, given that al-Qaida coaches its operatives in how to answer such questions to avoid suspicion at U.S. and other Western airports.
For instance, the al-Qaida training manual advises that "during travel the brother should be taught the answers to the following questions ... when your travel to Pakistan is discovered:"
"A. What were you doing in Pakistan?B. In which camp were you trained?C. Who trained you? On what weapons were you trained? ...
"H. How many are in that camp?I. What are their names?J. Who are the group commanders there (in Pakistan)? Where do they live and what do they do?K. What things did the commanders talk about?"
Also:
"A. What were you doing in Pakistan?B. Are you a jihad fighter?C. Do you belong to religious organizations?D. Why did you come to our country in particular?E. Whom will you be staying with now?F. How long will you spend here?"
DHS has put its temporary lookout system and "augmented primary" interviewing process into operation at major international airports, including ones in Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Newark, N.J., Boston, New York, Miami and Los Angeles.
The system was set up by Erik Shoberg, a field operations official for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Washington.
DHS first responded in 2004 to intelligence that Pakistani-Americans were training at terror camps during trips to Pakistan by requiring customs officers to check young Pakistani male travelers for physical signs of military training. As WND first reported, they were asked to look for "rope burns," "unusual bruises," "scars" and other possible injuries suffered from obstacle courses, firearms or explosives.
"Many of the individuals trained in the Pakistani camps are destined to commit illegal activities in the United States," warned the two-page DHS advisory that launched the special action.

Britain beheading plot suspects visited Islamic extremists at a terrorist training camp in Pakistan(Plot was contrived there)

Kidnap plot suspect 'had threatened to have soldier's head cut off before' Daniel McGrory

Police are investigating claims that one of the terrorist suspects held over the alleged plot to execute a British soldier recently threatened to kill a Muslim serviceman after a public fight. During the skirmish in a Birmingham snooker hall the suspect is reported to have described the young soldier as a traitor, adding that “he should have his head chopped off”. Material recovered from properties searched by police after raids in the West Midlands is understood to include extremist literature that condemns British Muslims joining the Army to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Detectives are also checking computer files that are said to contain images of western hostages being executed by al-Qaeda sympathisers. Extremist Islamic websites have increasingly condemned British Muslims who enlist in the military as “collaborators” who should be “punished for fighting their Muslim brothers.” Last night police began to question the nine men for the first time since they were arrested in predawn raids on Wednesday. They are all being held at a top security police station in Coventry. Senior officers say that they wanted to check the material recovered from homes and businesses before putting specific allegations to the suspects. Police decided to make the arrests after a month of surveillance in Operation Gamble when one of the suspects bought a camcorder that officers believe was to film their hostage. The man’s family claim he bought the camcorder for a family wedding this weekend. Police revealed that they had been given warrants yesterday to check three more properties in the West Midlands linked to some of the suspects. Assistant Chief Constable David Shaw, of West Midlands Police, said yesterday that “a significant quantity” of material had been seized from 18 properties being searched in the Birmingham area. “Far better that we use a measured, calculated, meticulous response than rush into things,” Mr Shaw said. Police are asking the Pakistan intelligence agencies for help in identifying the al-Qeada linked terrorist who reportedly groomed a number of the suspects. British security sources revealed that they contacted the Pakistani authorities asking for their help four days before the raids and arrests. Four of the detainees are reported to have visited Islamic extremists at a terrorist training camp in Pakistan. This is where the plot to kidnap and then film the torture and execution of a Muslim soldier is thought to have been contrived. Two of the men are understood to have young children at their homes in Britain. Another of the accused is said to have been brought up on the same road in Birmingham as Corporal Jabron Hashmi, 24, the first British Muslim soldier to be killed in Afghanistan last year. He was described as a "traitor" on a website run by the UK based al-Ghurabaa sect which is banned in Britain. This is not the first time a British serviceman has been a target for extremists. Last year a London street vendor was sentenced to six years in prison for his role in a plot to kill a decorated British soldier. The Ministry of Defence is trying to agree new arrangements to protect the identities of serving Muslim personnel. Traditionally the MoD encourages local newspapers to report the exploits of troops from their region. Last night MoD officials refused to confirm reports that two of its Muslim soldiers, identified by police as among the prime targets to be kidnapped, are under guard with their families at an army camp. Senior British officials, led by William Nye, the UK Director of Counter Terrorism and Intelligence, have been in Islama-bad discussing new moves to combat terror networks. The US authorities, who have been briefed about the kidnap plot in the West Midlands, have expressed their concerns about the “human pipeline” that arranges for young British militants to travel to Pakistan for training at terrorist camps. Officials in Washington recently claimed to have identified another group of nine young Britons being schooled at one camp on the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan whom they dubbed “the English brothers”. Leaders of Britain’s Asian police officers have asked the Government to assess the risk to Muslim officers (Stewart Tendler writes). Sikh and Hindu officers also fear that they could be seized because extremists might not know their religious background. Keith Jarrett, chairman of the National Black Police Association (NBPA), said yesterday that he had written to Tony Mc-Nulty, the Police Minister at the Home Office, asking for a risk assessment. Mr Jarrett said that concerned officers from Warwickshire police had sent a delegation to the NBPA headquarters asking for action. In London Muslim officers have already asked Scotland Yard to carry out a risk assessment and some Muslim officers have reported threats from Islamic extremists. Scotland Yard said that senior officers met leaders of staff associations yesterday and assured them that, so far, there had been no specific threat as a result of the Birmingham operation. Asians represent the largest ethnic group among full-time police. They make up 38 per cent, or about 2,000, of officers from ethnic minorities in England and Wales. 1,600 Number of people under surveillance by M15 in terror investigations