Influence of al-Qaida strengthens in Pakistan

Increasingly brazen suicide bombings testify to the growth of the terror network.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Almost three years ago, Sajjad Khan used to buy supplies for the Pakistani Taliban with U.S. dollars that he says came from al-Qaida.

Now he realizes what al-Qaida is getting in exchange. Khan’s 13-year-old nephew has been pulled from a madrassa to train as a suicide bomber, and Khan fears he himself might be killed for begging the boy not to go.

“The Taliban come in secret and take them for training from the madrassa,” said Khan, a burly, black-bearded Pashtun, holding a picture of his young nephew. “They go to the Taliban but they get their training from the Arabs. It all comes from al-Qaida.”

Al-Qaida’s influence runs like a thread through the myriad of militant groups on the Pakistani border — it ties the groups together, yet is often hard to discern. The hidden nature of al-Qaida’s presence makes it harder for the U.S. and Pakistan to fight, especially when the two countries disagree on which groups pose the greatest threat.

“Al-Qaida is strictly behind the scenes — as a force multiplier, providing training, expertise both in combat arms and propaganda,” says Bruce Hoffman, terrorism expert at Georgetown University.

The groups are wildly disparate and their relationships increasingly complex. They range from the tribal homegrown Taliban to an Afghan father-and-son team where the father, Jalaluddin Haqqani, once visited the White House and met U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Experts say some groups are virtually fronts for al-Qaida, but others have a tenuous relationship that might be limited to ideology.

“The problem is that these groups are overlapping more and more, the layers of allegiances are hard to peel away, and the greater interconnectivity makes it quite hard to know what is really happening in any given conflict,” says Daniel Markey, a regional expert at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

For example, in closed-door sessions over the past two weeks, Pakistani lawmakers have discussed whether they should make a distinction between the local Taliban and al-Qaida and enter talks with the Taliban. However, the two groups appear to be increasingly connected.

Deep within the warren of rickety book stalls in the old city of Peshawar, book sellers are hawking a version of al-Qaida’s military training manual translated into Pashto, a local language. A copy obtained by the AP featured instructions on suicide bombings and on what chemical compounds cause the greatest damage in explosives.

“The distribution of the manual attests to the Taliban’s growing strength and organizational capabilities,” states the U.S. Military’s Counter Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, N.Y. “Already into its fourth edition, there is clearly a demand among Taliban cadres for the lessons outlined in the manual.”

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, as it is known, is led by the ailing Baitullah Mehsud, who is accused of masterminding last year’s assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. It brings together some of Pakistan’s most violent militants, including Faqir Mohammed, a close ally of al-Qaida’s No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahari, and Maulvi Fazlullah, whose long-haired, gun-toting followers have terrorized Pakistan’s Swat Valley.

Al-Qaida’s training is showing up in increasingly audacious suicide bombings and more sophisticated attacks within Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the Taliban-led insurgency is claiming more U.S. lives almost by the day.

In the past, militants usually targeted troops and convoys in the volatile northwest, where some 100,000 Pakistani forces are deployed. But in the last year they have taken their battle nationwide, striking hundreds of miles from the lawless border regions.

Former Taliban members told the AP that al-Qaida is now financing local movements even in regions beyond the tribal belt and training recruits from the thousands of madrassas or religious schools that flourish in northwest Pakistan.