Al-Qa'eda 'recruiting in Holland'
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels
11/12/2002
Al-Qa'eda's terrorist network is deeply embedded in Holland's Muslim communities and is recruiting second-generation immigrants for future attacks against Britain, the United States and Israel, according to a report by the Dutch internal intelligence service AIVD.
It said dozens of footloose Moroccan youths were being drawn into Osama bin Laden's web through mosques, prisons and cafes.
"The recruitment of these youths shows that a violent strain of radical Islam is stealthily taking root in Dutch society," said the document. Most of the recruits were either born in Holland or arrived as children.
Sybrand van Hulst, the AIVD's director, said al-Qa'eda preyed on lost souls adrift in Holland's big cities. "They're brainwashed and indoctrinated," he said.
The agency gave warning that the terrorist network was eyeing targets that "at the moment include the US, Israel and Great Britain, but also France and in the future perhaps the Netherlands".
The cells were already active and could strike "at any moment", although the AIVD has no specific knowledge of an impending attack.
A recent report by the Belgian parliament's intelligence committee painted a similar picture of al-Qa'eda penetration of North African youths in Brussels and Antwerp. It concluded that at least 30 mosques were part of the radical network and posed "a grave and immediate threat" to the constitutional order and survival of Belgian democracy.
The Dutch authorities said young Moroccans are drawn into a sub-culture of "jihad videos and internet chatrooms that discuss holy war and Islamic martyrdom".
They take part in youth congresses and Islamic summer camps. Once recruited they are isolated and prepare a farewell testimony to their families. In the past they were sent to Afghanistan for paramilitary training but now learn the terrorist trade at secret camps in Europe.
Holland has 850,000 Muslims in a population of 16 million, but recruitment has mostly been confined to North African immigrants.
The country's large community of Turks, descended from "guestworkers" who came in the 1950s and 1960s, seem largely deaf to radical appeals, as are immigrants from the old Dutch East Indies, now known as Indonesia.
"We're talking about a very small group within a large Muslim community in the Netherlands," said Mr van Hulst.
The presence of a growing "fifth column" on Dutch soil is doubly alarming because the country has been a model of multicultural tolerance.
It has also had the lowest unemployment rate in Europe over recent years, with plentiful jobs that provide a ladder into Dutch society for immigrants willing to assimilate.
Islamophobia and anti-Semitism fuelled by the September 11 attacks and the Middle East conflict are in danger of becoming acceptable in Europe, the European Union's racism watchdog said yesterday.
Presenting its report on racism in the EU, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia called on leaders of the 15-nation bloc to deal with the underlying social and economic factors it said were fuelling prejudice.
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