The new face of jehadis

ISLAMABAD: 28-year-old Naeem Noor Khan, a well-educated young man from a middle-class background, hardly fits the profile of a hardened terrorist.

A computer whiz kid, who abandoned a promising career for the call to jehad, Naeem is described as the crucial cog in Al-Qaeda’s operation in Pakistan. A graduate from the Karachi Engineering University, Naeem allegedly played a central role in planning new terrorist attacks in the US and other western countries.

Naeem, who was arrested in Lahore on July 13, 2005, a week after the 7/7 London bombings, represents the new breed of Pakistani militants linked with international terrorist networks.

The new cadre boasts highly qualified professionals; children of opportunity rather than deprivation, they are the masterminds behind many of the recent terrorist attacks in the country.

Naeem Khan was lured into jehad by an Arab Al-Qaeda operative whom he met in Dubai in 1997 during a family wedding.

The young engineer was dispatched to Afghanistan in 1998 to train in guerrilla warfare. Upon returning home, Naeem set up Al-Qaeda’s communication base in Lahore, from where he relayed coded messages on the internet from Al-Qaeda leadership hiding in the tribal areas, to operatives abroad.

Subsequently, say Pakistani intelligence sources, he became the bridge between Al-Qaeda leaders and their operatives. His arrest exposed an intricate web of Al-Qaeda contacts in Pakistan, United Kingdom and the United States.

Computers and CDs seized from his base provided a treasure trove of information about the Al-Qaeda’s terrorist plans. Naeem is on train for terrorism charges in Pakistan.

The next in line is 26-year old Attaur Rehman, who, after leaving the university, traded his jeans and T-shirts for a beard and prayer-cap, his civil-service aspirations for a martyr’s spot in heaven.

He used to spend lots of his time playing cricket, but he is now in a Karachi jail and facing a death sentence on terrorism charges. Along with nine other comrades, Attaur was charged with carrying out a deadly bomb attack against a senior Army general in Karachi in June 2004.

The general escaped narrowly but 10 people, including seven soldiers, were killed. Attaur Rehman’s circles call themselves Jundullah (God’s Army) and have close ties to Al-Qaeda.

Most are young, educated men, whom Rehman allegedly sent to training camps in Pakistan’s remote tribal areas.

Rehman doesn’t fit the mould of the typical Al-Qaeda leader — mostly Arabs who gained status by resisting the Russians troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

What sets the new breed of militants apart is that they are joining from places like Pakistan, where the focus has been on regional grievances, like independence for the disputed area of Jammu & Kashmir.


But as the Al-Qaeda leadership ranks begin to thin, men like Rehman are starting to climb the ladder.

With a gush of motivated youth in Pakistan flooding towards the realm of jehad and joining the Al-Qaeda-cadres, the country continues to be a potential site of jehadi recruitments to bolster its manpower that has grown in strength despite the capture of over 500 Al-Qaeda operatives from Pakistan since the 9/11 terror attacks.

While Al-Qaeda has lost several of its leading operational commanders, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Waleed Bin Attash, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and Abu Faraj Al Libbi, who have been captured — the fact remains that the terror group has not only survived the loss, but has also proved its ability to thrive in difficult circumstances.