Bin Laden's elite soldiers fleeing Afghanistan: Newsweek
DHARAM SHOURIE
New York, October 29, 14:04
Arab 'holy warriors', who form the nucleus of Osama bin Laden's elite soldiers, are paying huge amounts, ranging from $20,000 to $30,000, to smugglers to get them out of Afghanistan.
Between 150 and 200 of these Al-Qaida operatives have slipped out of Afghanistan through illegal channels and are now moving through Tajikistan or Uzbekistan to Ukraine, hoping ultimately to find their way to Britain or Germany, a media report quoting underworld "travel agents" says.
"Each Arab fighter has paid between $20,000 and $30,000 to be smuggled out of Afghanistan," Newsweek said quoting an agent in Peshawar who uses the pseudonym Fekrat.
People-smuggling worldwide is a $4-billion a year industry and no country has a deeper history of smuggling of all sorts than Afghanistan, the report said.
Places like Peshawar, on the Pakistani frontier with Afghanistan, are home to some 30 people-smugglers and innumerable forgers who operate out of innocuous-looking portrait studios and photocopy shops.
Shady middlemen find corrupt diplomats willing to sell visas, which are available for China, Malaysia, Dubai and even Britain for $4,000 -- up from $2,500 prior to September 11, it said.
Rates for smuggling people have jumped since the September 11 attacks on the US with agents now charging $24,000 for the United States up from $21,000, the magazine said.
Last week, Newsweek said, its correspondent easily obtained a complete set of fraudulent Afghan documents, including a passport for $275, a driver's license for $9, a Kabul ID card for $56 and a birth certificate for $8, all in the name of a fictitious 'Mariana Ali.'
Two additional documents were purchased to support a plea for political asylum in the west: a membership card for the now-defunct Afghan Communist Party and a letter from Taliban intelligence summoning 'Mariana Ali' for interrogation and demanding that she stop teaching English to girls secretly. "These will get you asylum," promised the agent's go-between.
The smuggling network even includes an Escrow-type system designed to protect illegal immigrants from losing their money if a journey ends in failure. Some of the possible transit routes include Malaysia, Iran, Turkey and Bosnia.
Bin Laden's followers can even cross the frontlines in the Afghan war to get into Tajikistan or Uzbekistan, then onward to Ukraine and Europe. They simply have to pay a premium to a people-smuggling agent from the enemy northern alliance. "It's a way for the Northern Alliance to build its war chest without even fighting," an agent in Peshawar was quoted as saying.(PTI)
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