Al Qaeda Looking for Blond, Blue-Eyed Recruits
Al Qaeda is establishing a network of training camps throughout western Pakistan for the express purpose of training people of white, European origin as terrorist operatives. Such Western-looking operatives would be able to more easily infiltrate the United States or Europe in order to conduct a terrorist strike.
In an interview televised by nbc News on March 30, cia Director Gen. Michael Hayden said:
It’s very clear to us that al Qaeda has been able, over the past 18 months or so, to establish a safe haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area that they have not enjoyed before, that they are bringing operatives into that region for training—operatives that, a phrase I would use, wouldn’t attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles [the Washington airport] with you when you’re coming back from overseas.
A U.S. intelligence report, released in February, noted the influx of Western recruits into al Qaeda safe havens in the federally administered tribal areas of western Pakistan since 2006.
“Al Qaeda is improving the last key aspect of its ability to attack the U.S.—the identification, training and positioning of operatives for an attack in the homeland,” the report stated.
Last September, three men were arrested in Germany under suspicions they were plotting to bomb a U.S. military air base. Two of these men were ethnic German converts to Islam. German authorities said they both had trained in camps that were run by an al Qaeda offshoot.
Former cia Director James Woolsey said after these arrests that al Qaeda was making efforts to attract blond-haired, blue-eyed recruits.
The incorporation of Western-looking operatives into the al Qaeda terrorist network is another innovation enabling radical Islamists to more effectively carry out jihad against Western society. This is one more factor working against America in its “war on terror.”
For more information on the future relationship between Western nations and radical Islam, read “Why We Cannot Win the War Against Terrorism,” “The Sickness in Britain’s Heart,” and “The Coming War Between Catholicism and Islam.”