Wednesday, February 25, 2009

AfPak: Some of the UK's enemies

One wonders if there is any parallel for the CF:
Exclusive: Army is fighting British jihadists in Afghanistan
Top Army officers reveal surge in attacks by radicalised Britons

British soldiers are engaged in "a surreal mini civil war" with growing numbers of home-grown jihadists who have travelled to Afghanistan to support the Taliban, senior Army officers have told The Independent.

Interceptions of Taliban communications have shown that British jihadists – some "speaking with West Midlands accents" – are active in Helmand and other parts of southern Afghanistan, according to briefing papers prepared by an official security agency.

The document states that the numbers of young British Muslims, "seemingly committed jihadists", travelling abroad to commit extremist violence has been rising, with Pakistan and Somalia the most frequent destinations.

MI5 has estimated that up to 4,000 British Muslims had travelled to Pakistan and, before the fall of the Taliban, to Afghanistan for military training. The main concern until now has been about the parts some of them had played in terrorist plots in the UK. Now there are signs that they are mounting missions against British and Western targets abroad. "We are now involved in a kind of surreal mini-British civil war a few thousand miles away," said one Army officer.

Somalia is also becoming a destination for British Muslims of Somali extraction who have started fighting alongside al-Qa'ida-backed Islamist forces. A 21-year-old Briton of Somali extraction, who had been brought up in Ealing, west London, recently blew himself up in the town of Baidoa, killing 20 people. The head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, has raised the worrying issue of British citizens being indoctrinated in Somalia, and Michael Hayden, the outgoing head of the CIA, warned that the conflict in the Horn of Africa [latest here] had "catalysed" expatriate Somalis in the West...
Another sort of participation in Somalia, by a Canadian:
Canadian approved as prime minister of Somalia
Predate: This had skipped my mind:
...his defence was that he wanted to aid and someday join Muslim insurgents fighting Canadian and other NATO troops in Afghanistan...

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