As the NYT puts process over substance it seems to miss the real story

The New York Times ran a pretty abbreviated report on the British terror trial that resulted in sentences totaling 136 years for the seven men convicted of planning, as the Times put it, "spectacular attacks in the United States and Britain."

In the Times presentation of this story, the really interesting aspect of this case seems to be that it raised "a fiery debate in Britain over whether the period of permissible detention without charge for terrorism suspects should be extended from 28 to 90 days" as most of the evidence presented at the trial came from the investigation after the men were arrested. As the Times summarized the police side of this debate: "Modern terrorism investigations need much more time to permit the police to carry out complicated investigations that require advanced code-breaking and language skills across international frontiers."

Consistent with the Times interest in process over substance then, missing from its account were any substantive details of the various plots, the motives of the men, or how these seven individuals came together in the first place.

So to get at that information, I went to the Telegraph.

As to the specifics of the plots, here is what this London newspaper reported:

[Dhiren] Barot, 34, [the mastermind,] spent a year researching and drawing up a 39-page document that he presented to senior al-Qa'eda planners in April 2004. It contained a number of potentially devastating ideas.

The "Gas Limos Project" proposed packing limousines with propane gas cylinders and driving them into underground car parks beneath targets. Police were unable to identify definite targets but found a list of railway stations and hotels in central London.

Barot also proposed a radioactive "dirty bomb", hijacking a train and blowing up a petrol tanker in a series of co-ordinated attacks. The plans had also suggested attacking Tube trains under the Thames, to flood the tunnel, and the Heathrow Express

As part of a previous plan to attack financial institutions in Washington and New York, Barot - a Hindu convert to Islam - had made a video in which one of the terrorists could be heard making the sound of a mock explosion at the World Trade Centre, five months before the September 11 attacks.

The gang had planned to blow up Tube trains under the Thames

Police also found a list a potential hotel targets in central London, including the Savoy, the Churchill InterContinental, the Berkeley, the Hyatt Carlton Tower and the Marriott at Marble Arch. The gang had researched details of entry points and underground car parks.

There was also discussion about using a radioactive dirty bomb to "close off an area the size of Manhattan'', though there was little evidence that they could acquire the radioactive material needed.

In a sidebar, the Telegraph provides some background on the ringleader, Barot:

Born a Hindu in the city of Baroda in the North West Indian state of Gujarat, the son of a banker from Nairobi, Kenya and an Indian mother, his parents fled the worsening political situation in East Africa in 1972, when Dhiren was a year old.

Manu Barot and his wife Bhartia arrived in Britain with Dhiren and his older sister, and moved into a 1930s semi-detached home in a cul-de-sac in the suburb of Kingsbury, Northwest London where Manu worked as a storeman at a local engineering factory and his wife worked at the local Sainsbury supermarket.

Barot was reportedly an "average student" whose highest level of educational attainment was a certificate in pre-vocational education from a local technical college. As the Telegraph continues:

Soon afterwards he converted to Islam, causing a rift with his father, and began attending prayer meetings at Willesden Library, run by the radical cleric Abdullah el-Faisal and at Finsbury Park Mosque run by Abu Hamza.

He worked in a series of hotels before taking a job as a booking clerk for Air Malta in Piccadilly, central London, leaving in September 1995 to go travelling.

Barot flew to Karachi in Pakistan and traveled from there to Kashmir where Muslims and Hindus had been involved in decades of fighting over the disputed territory.

There, he said, he "witnessed a side of Islam which cannot be found in classrooms."

He took extensive notes about the weapons and explosives and moved to Afghanistan where he spent a year working as a trainer in one of the camps for Islamic fighters.

It was probably during that time that he met Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and became involved with al-Qaeda, where according to US sources, he gained the nick name Esa al-Britani and Esa al-Hindi.

In September 1999 he traveled to the Philippines where he was trained in firearms, munitions and explosives handling.

He traveled to Karachi in January 2000 and from there to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard Walid bin Attash, known as "Khallad".

American intelligence sources believe he met the al-Qa’eda planner Hambali in Kuala Lumpur just as the September 11 attacks were being finalised.

It is also possible that he met two of the men who were to become hijackers on September 11, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who were meeting with Hambali in Kuala Lumpur around the same time.

In March 2001 Barot visited New York to look at potential targets.

The information was so detailed that it amounted to a virtual structural survey concentrating on how explosions could bring the buildings down but they were put on hold after September 11.

American supergrass Mohammed Junaid Babar said Barot called a summit in the Pakistani tribal area of South Waziristan in March 2003, shortly after the arrest of several senior al-Qa’eda figures.

His British plans were probably presented to senior al-Qa’eda commanders when Barot flew to Lahore in Pakistan in February 2004.

He returned to Britain on April 21 using a false passport after apparently receiving the go-ahead.

In other words, this group wasn't just a bunch of al Qaeda wannabes operating alone over there in England. Barot was working directly with KSM, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, as well as other al Qaeda leaders, for example the men he called to a meeting in South Waziristan in March 2003, after KSM was arrested.

Now as to why the New York Times didn't think these details were interesting, well, I guess for the same reason they thought recent news of the JFK plotters' arrests wasn't Page One material either.

Anyway, the Telegraph also provides some interesting biographical details on the men. They ranged in age from 23 to 34.

One, Mohammed Naveed Bhatti, 27, had an engineering degree from Brunel University, the same school attended by two members of the fertilizer gang, another sleeper cell apprehended in Britain. This engineer's primary role in the plot, incidentally, seems to have been to chauffeur the C-student- Barot - around. Oh how his parents must cringe at reading that detail.

Zia ul-Haq, 28, also had a professional degree, his in architecture. But perhaps his parents can take some pride in the fact that at least their son seems to have gotten some respect from the ringleader, for whom, the Telegraph goes on to say, he "acted as a kind of consultant...and helped him gain access to specialist libraries."

The youngest member of the group, Omar Abdur Rehman, 23, also had promising career prospects. A graphic information design candidate, his contribution to the plot was to perform reconnaissance at the Ramada Hotel in Watford where he had a summer job to see how it would size up as a target.

In a sidebar analysis to the Telegraph story Philip Johnston provides these details on how these men met each other and how the police came to find them:

[Barot] recruited his terrorist cell - basically a support network - from among people he met at mosques and political meetings in Britain. Most were of Pakistani background and some had already been to training camps there, another constant in these plots.

Police and MI5 believe Barot was within six weeks of launching attacks in London. But he was detained only after police in Pakistan arrested a leading al-Qa'eda operative whose computer contained details of Barot's activities.

How many more ''sleeper'' cells are there?

Nek Mohammed: the life and death of a Waziri tribal leader

To illustrate the type of ties that exist between the pro-Taliban leaders in Waziristan and Pakistan, in the photos below, you can track the life of Nek Mohammed.

At the time of his death, he was a 27-year-old Waziristan tribal leader. Waziristan is the tribe-controlled region of Pakistan where many people think bin Laden may be hiding. As the BBC reported at the time of his death in 2004:

[Nek Mohammed] came to prominence as the commander of a pro-Taleban group of Pakistani tribesmen, who resisted six military operations by Pakistan troops hunting al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects in the South Waziristan region, bordering Afghanistan.

Accused of sheltering foreign militants from Uzbekistan, Chechnya, Afghanistan and some Arab countries, Nek Mohammad and several of his men were punished when the Pakistani government demolished their homes and issued warrants for their arrest.

However, the army was forced to strike a deal with him in April after suffering significant human and material losses in several rounds of fighting.
Mohammad had his moment of glory when Lt Gen Safdar Hussain, commander of the forces battling the militants in South Waziristan, publicly embraced him in the presence of several thousand tribesmen to announce a reconciliation.

Though Mohammad renounced militancy in return for an amnesty from the military, the deal raised his stature in the eyes of tribal people.

...But it was not long before disagreement over the terms of the unwritten agreement once more pitted Mohammad against the armed forces. He said he was unable to produce fugitive foreign militants before the authorities for registration.

The military retaliated by revoking his amnesty. Orders to kill or capture him were issued as the military launched its biggest operation against al-Qaeda-linked foreign militants and their Pakistani supporters on 11 June.

A week later, Nek Mohammad was dead.

Pakistan's double-edged sword

Ken Silverstein at Harper's has must-read piece on Pakistan. It is a few weeks old. But nevertheless...You should read it to get a sense of the difficult position Musharaff is in.
As Silverstein observes:

We should be concerned about reports of increased Al Qaeda activity in Pakistani tribal areas. But is Pakistan really to blame for our failures to stomp out Al Qaeda? Other countries, as former senior CIA official Michael Scheuer reminded me, do not look at the world from the same point of view as the United States. “The first duty of any intelligence agency,” he said, “is to protect the national interest. Pakistan is not going to destroy the Taliban because at some point they would like to see the Taliban back in power. They cannot tolerate a pro-Indian, pro-American, pro-Russian, pro-Iranian government in Afghanistan. They already have an unstable Western border and have to worry about a country of one billion Hindus that has nuclear bombs.”

At the same time, as Silverstein goes on to report:

Hundreds of suspected terrorists have been killed or captured by Pakistani authorities since September 2001. “Individuals detained in 2004 haveprovided leads that aided investigations by security agencies around the world,” said a 2004 U.S. government report. Most notably, the ISI has helped capture three of Al Qaeda's most important figures: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Ramzi Binalshibh. All three were turned over to the CIA. “Every time we have brought someone important to justice, the first one through the door is Pakistani,”said Milt Bearden, a former CIA official.

Meanwhile back in Waziristan....

Saturday's geography lesson about Waziristan came just in time for today's news. The New York Times is reporting that Al Qaeda is once again running terrorist training camps in this autonomous region of Pakistan.

The Times sources, described as "American analysts," say that the camps are being operated by Arab, Pakistani, and Afghan "militants" who report to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who serves as Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man. Bin Laden himself is not believed to be playing an active management role.

While these new camps are reportedly smaller and less capable than Al Qaeda's camps were back in Afghanistan under the Taliban rule, the Times sources say that "the Qaeda infrastructure in the region is gradually becoming more mature."

The Bush administration is reportedly debating about what to do about these camps. A Pentagon faction, not surprisingly, is recommending a military strike but these "hawks" are being opposed by those who are worried about collateral damage - i.e., civilian casualties.

The State Department is supposedly cautioning that any American military action would likely undermind, as the Times underscores, "President Musharraf’s military-led government."

The "militants" reportedly found a safe refuge in North Waziristan last year, after "military leader" President Musharraf agreed to withdraw his, yes, military from the region in exchange for tribal leaders ceasing their support of cross-border attacks into Afghanistan. The tribal leaders have it would appear failed to live up to their end of the bargain.

Pakistani-trained terrorists were fingered by the director general of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, who said in November that terrorist plots in Britain “often have links back to Al Qaeda in Pakistan [and that] through those links, Al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale.”

Two of the four bombers who carried out the July 2005 subway and bus bombings in London, the reader may remember, were noted to have traveled to Pakistan prior to the attack, as have other British terrorism suspects, according to various trial transcripts.

While most of the Pakistani-trained "militants" are believed to be headed for Afghanistan, some, maybe an increasing number, may be training to attack American forces in Iraq.

The Times points ot the evidence of Al Qaeda's "increased international capability" (to use its phrase) that has surfaced recently in the attacks that its new franchisee, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, the Algerian-based group, has been able to carry out in Algeria. These included last week's bombing in Algiers and the December attack on a bus carrying Halliburton contractors.

Is it because I'm an Other

as Edward Said would have labeled me that I can't see the logic behind the recent string of suicide bombings in Pakistan?

Yesterday yet another man blew himself up. This time, the suicide bomber detonated inside a small district court in Quetta, killing himself and 15 others, including a judge who was hearing a property dispute, the litigants, their relatives who were in attendance, and the six lawyers who were debating the case. Thirty-five people were wounded.

This was the sixth attack in a series of suicide bombings in the area that have left some 40 people dead.

As the New York Times reports:

A militant leader, Baitullah Mehsud, vowed to use suicide bombers to take revenge [for an airstrike against suspected militants in the tribal area of South Waziristan on Jan. 16]. Pakistani officials have not directly implicated Mr. Mehsud in the bombings while the investigations are under way, and he has denied any involvement, saying that his threat was an emotional outburst.

Mr. Mehsud is believed to have trained suicide bombers and sent them into Afghanistan, where there were 127 suicide attacks last year."

South Waziristan, for those of you whose Pakistani geography might be a little vague, is part of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. This is an area that is only nominally under Pakistan's control, and as Wikipedia notes, about 30% of the FATA is inaccessible both politically and administratively. In other words, the Pakistani central government has no authority in about a third of this Tribal Area.

This is the area in Pakistan, incidentally, in which many experts believe bin Laden may be hiding. The Waziris are a subset of the Pashtuns, the primary ethnic group of the Taliban, the Afghan government that so kindly gave bin Laden refuge up until they were forced out of power by the U.S.-led coaltion in 2001.

Map courtesy of Wikipedia

Now while I suppose I can see why "militants" in the neighboring province of Baluchistan might want to avenge any act that aimed to harm their friends in Al Qaeda, I really can't see the logic in why they would have targeted a courtroom in Quetta.

I wonder if anyone who isn't an Other could kindly inform me of the strategy here. My email address is at the top of this page.