Islamic Jihad and the United States
The Jihadists in Pakistan have spread their influence all over the globe - even the United States is not immune. The startling part is that Pakistan''s secret service, the ISI, is deeply involved with the key Jihadist organisations and have helped set up such organisations in the United States.
The New York Times reported on October 20,2000, that Ali Mohammed, 48, an ex-US Army Sergeant of Egyptian origin pleaded guilty before an US District Judge to a charge of plotting with Osama bin Laden to kill Americans anywhere in the world.
He reportedly admitted that he had conspired with bin Laden and others to murder Americans anywhere they could be found, to attack the U.S. military in Somalia and Saudi Arabia, to kill Americans at unspecified embassies, and to conceal the conspiracy. He said that the object of the conspiracy, which he joined in the late 1980s, was to force the US out of West Asia.
According to the "New York Times", Mohammed left the U.S. Army in 1989 after three years of service. During his military service, he earned a Parachute Badge and an M-16 Expert Badge, teaching soldiers in the Special Forces about Muslim culture.
He also admitted that he had helped secretly move bin Laden from Pakistan to Sudan and trained members of his terrorist organization, al Qaeda.
In his plea, he described bin Laden as central in a massive conspiracy by members of an Islamic holy war (Jihad) movement to target U.S. military installations and embassies worldwide. ``The objective of all of this was to attack any Western target in the Middle East,'' Mohammed said.
Mohammed's plea of guilty has focussed attention on the efforts of Pakistan and Afghanistan-based Jihadi extremists to recruit members from the Muslim communities in North America and the Caribbean Islands to use them initially for operations against US interests in West Asia and then subsequently for promoting Jihad in the US territory itself.
While the role of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, of Pakistani origin, and other US-based Muslim mercenaries of bin Laden in causing the explosion at the New York World Trade Centre in February, 1993, is well known and has been well-documented, adequate attention has not been paid to the activities of certain Pakistan-based organisations in this regard.
The earliest of such organisations was the highly secretive Jamaat-ul-Fuqra, which started its clandestine activities in the Muslim communities of North America and the Caribbean in the 1980s. Founded in Pakistan during the USA's proxy war against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan by one Sheikh Mubarik Ali Gilani, it not only organised religious teachings for the members of the Muslim communities of these countries, but also converted a large number of Afro-Americans to Islam and brought some of them to Pakistan for training in the use of firearms and explosives.
It was strongly against the US, Israel and India and its members in the US and Canada were suspected in a number of instances of arson attacks on properties owned by the Jewish people and the Hindus.
The annual report on the Patterns of Global Terrorism during 1998 issued by the Counter-Terrorism Division of the US State Department stated as follows on the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra: "Seeks to purify Islam through violence. Members have purchased isolated rural compounds in North America to live communally, practise their faith and insulate themselves from Western culture. Fuqra members have attacked a variety of targets that they view as enemies of Islam, including Muslims they regard as heretics and Hindus. Attacks during the 1980s included assassinations and fire bombings across the US. Fuqra members in the US have been convicted of criminal actions, including murder and fraud."
In an investigative report carried by the "News" (February 13,1995) of Pakistan, Mr. Kamran Khan, the well-known Pakistani investigative journalist, brought to light for the first time the nexus between the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) of Pakistan, headed by Lt.Gen. (retd) Javed Nasir, former Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), which was declared by the US as an international terrorist organisation in October, 1997, and their role in supporting Islamic extremist movements in different countries, including amongst the members of the Muslim community in the US.
He quoted unidentified office-bearers of the HUM as saying as follows: "Ours is basically a Sunni organisation close to the Deobandi school of thought. Our people are mostly impressed by the TJ. Most of our workers do come from the TJ. We regularly go to its annual meeting at Raiwind. Ours is a truly international network of genuine Jihadi Muslims. We believe frontiers can never divide Muslims. They are one nation. They will remain a single entity.
"We try to go wherever our Muslim brothers are terrorised, without any monetary consideration. Our colleagues went and fought against oppressors in Bosnia, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Burma, the Philippines and, of course, India.
"Although Pakistani members are not participating directly in anti-Government armed resistance in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Jordan, many of the fighters in those Arab States had remained our colleagues during the Afghan war and we know one another very well. We are doing whatever we can to help them install Islamic governments in those States."
The report also quoted the HUM office-bearers as claiming that among foreign volunteers trained by them in their training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan were 16 African-American Muslims from various cities of the US and that funds for their activities mostly came from Muslim businessmen of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UK.
The February 1998, issue of the "Newsline", a monthly of Pakistan, quoted workers of the TJ as saying that the TJ had many offices in the US, Russia, the Central
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