Western recruits flock to join Taliban, al-Qaeda

Washington: A rising number of Western recruits--including American--are travelling to Afghanistan and Pakistan to attend paramilitary training camps, the Washington Post reported on Monday citing US and European counter-terrorism officials.

The flow of recruits has continued unabated in spite of an intensified campaign over the past year by the CIA to eliminate al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders in drone missile attacks, the influential US daily said citing unnamed officials.

Since January, at least 30 recruits from Germany have travelled to Pakistan for training, according to German security sources, the Post said in a report from Berlin.

German security services have been on high alert since last month, when groups affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaeda issued several videos warning that an attack on German targets was imminent if the government did not bring home its forces from Afghanistan.

The videos all featured German speakers who urged Muslims to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan to join their cause.

Last week, German officials disclosed that a 10-member cell from Hamburg had left for Pakistan earlier this year. The cell is allegedly led by a German of Syrian descent but also includes ethnic Turks, German converts to Islam and one member with Afghan roots.

Other European countries are also struggling to keep their citizens from going to Pakistan for paramilitary training, the Post said.

The Post cited German officials as saying they have discovered multiple recruitment networks that work for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other groups, such as the Islamic Jihad Union, which has been issuing many of the online threats against the German government.

But they said the recruiting networks often operate independently, making it difficult for the security services to detect or disrupt them.

Another sign of the internationalisation of the recruitment networks is the small but growing participation of US residents, the Post said.

Terrorism analysts cited by the Post said the CIA campaign to kill al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders had been generally effective, but warned that the strategy had its limitations and that missile attacks alone would not put an end to the training camps.

The camps, which offer basic lessons in homemade explosives and counter-surveillance as well as weapons training, they said, could easily relocate elsewhere in Pakistan or even back across the border in Afghanistan, where they operated before the US invasion in 2001.