Jul 18, 2008 6:45 am US/Eastern
Foreign Jihadis Flock To Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan (CBS) ―
Afghanistan has been drawing a fresh influx of jihadi fighters from Turkey, Central Asia, Chechnya and the Middle East, one more sign that al Qaeda is regrouping on what is fast becoming the most active front of the war on terror groups.
More foreigners are infiltrating Afghanistan because of a recruitment drive by al Qaeda as well as a burgeoning insurgency that has made movement easier across the border from Pakistan, U.S. officials, militants and experts say.
For the past two months, Afghanistan has overtaken Iraq in deaths of U.S. and allied troops, and nine American soldiers were killed at a remote base in Kunar province Sunday in the deadliest attack in years.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned during a visit to Kabul this month about an increase in foreign fighters crossing into Afghanistan from Pakistan, where a new government is trying to negotiate with militants.
A former high-ranking member of the pre-2001-invasion Taliban government, who spoke to CBS News' Sami Yousafzai on condition of anonymity on Monday, said the Taliban was benefiting hugely from a massive influx of foreign fighters.
The former minister, who presently lives in Pakistan, told Yousafzai that the attack on the U.S. troops in Kunar province was made possible by the new techniques and skills brought to the country by outsiders, and he admitted that Afghan Taliban were not previously capable of carrying out such daring attacks.
He called it a "well planed attack, and the start of a new resistance in direct combat with the invaders."
The former Taliban official told CBS News the number of foreigners - who he described as primarily Arab or Pakistani - coming to wage jihad in Afghanistan had increased three-fold since 2007. "As much as the so called war on terror in Afghanistan expands, numbers of the foreigner volunteers get more and more."
Two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, told The Associated Press that the U.S. is closely monitoring the flow of foreign fighters into both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Jihadist Web sites from Chechnya to Turkey to the Arab world featured recruitment ads as early as 2007 calling on the "Lions of Islam" to fight in Afghanistan, said Brian Glyn Williams, associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts. Williams has tracked the movement of jihadis for the U.S. military's Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
Local Afghans in the border regions are increasingly concerned about the return of the "Araban" or "Ikhwanis," as Arab fighters are known in the Pashtun language, Williams wrote in a CTC paper. He said there were rumors of hardened Arab fighters from Iraq training Afghan Pashtuns in the previously taboo tactic of suicide bombing.
The ex-Taliban minister told Yousafzai that, while the benefits of foreign fighters' advanced training and techniques were clear to the militant group, he also believes Arab and Pakistani extremists' presence in Afghanistan presents potential trouble for the invaders, and the local militants.
He said that in the past foreigner fighters have not shown "respect for local values." Afghanistan's Taliban commanders have been at odds in the past with the group's Pakistani factions and al Qaeda over tactics that result in high civilian casualties, particularly suicide bombings.
In related developments:
Taliban official Mullah Nasrullah Akhund told CBS News Friday that one of the group's senior figures in Ghazni province had been killed in clashes with Afghan national police and army troops. Yousafzai reports that Anas Sharif was a senior commander who was responsible for supplying bombs and planning attacks on U.S. military supply convoys on the key Kandahar to Kabul highway, according to Akhund. Sharif was reportedly killed Thursday evening after he and a group of his fighters attempted to ambush an Afghan National Army and police convoy about 4 miles south of Ghazni's provincial capital.
NATO reported Thursday that a senior Taliban commander had been killed and Afghan officials said an air strike left at least 10 insurgents dead and four civilians wounded. The military alliance said that Bismullah Akhund, an insurgent leader in the southern province of Helmand, was killed on Saturday in Naw Zad district. It did not say how Akhund died. (Read more.)
The Defense Department will send close to 800 more bomb-resistant vehicles to Afghanistan, where a resurgent Taliban has military leaders developing plans to add thousands of U.S. troop reinforcements. The hulking vehicles, known as MRAPs, protect U.S. personnel from the powerful blasts of roadside bombs, the No. 1 cause of combat deaths and injuries.
Al Qaeda's recruitment drive stems from a slow and steady resurgence that started in 2002, according to Taliban sources.
"They are awake," said Qari Mohammed Yusuf, who Afghan authorities confirm is a senior Taliban. "They have people going by different names to other countries. They are coming and going easily. In the last year, they have been organizing more day by day."
Al Qaeda has financed the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, Yusuf told the AP. In the chaos created by the Taliban groups, al Qaeda has been able to steadily recruit, re-establish its public relations wing, plot new attacks and re-establish areas of operation on both sides of the border.
Some new recruits cross into Afghanistan's northern Balkh province or through Iran into Herat province in western Afghanistan, said Nangyal Khosti, a commander loyal to Jalaluddin Haqqani, a wanted terrorist. Those from Iran have often trained in Iraq and are hardened insurgents. The recruits, Yusuf said, head to Afghanistan's Paktika province, where there are roughly 150 Arab militants.
In Pakistan, al Qaeda recruits are sent to Waziristan and the lawless regions of the northwest along Afghanistan's eastern border, Yusuf said.
Afghan and Western officials say a key route for al Qaeda recruits is from Central Asia into northeastern Kunar and Nuristan provinces, where former U.S. intelligence officials suspect Osama bin Laden is hiding. Both provinces border Pakistan's Bajaur tribal area, where the Taliban hold sway and where the U.S. has targeted al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri.
The hulking mountains of Kunar and Nuristan soar thousands of feet and are heavily forested, giving militants good cover. Kunar was the location of the war's two deadliest attacks on U.S. soldiers - on Sunday, with the killing of the nine Americans, and in June 2005, when militants shot down a helicopter and killed 16 soldiers.
Kunar and Nuristan are also the only areas in South Asia where the Wahhabi or Salafi strain of Islam dominates. Wahhabism is the main sect in Saudi Arabia and is followed by al Qaeda, while Afghanistan's Islamic traditions are more Sufi and mystical in nature.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
