Pakistan instability draws foreign militants

By William Maclean, Security Correspondent - Analysis

LONDON (Reuters) - Turbulent Pakistan has replaced Iraq as the place to go for militants bent on striking the West, but the threat of U.S. attacks means al Qaeda recruits may spend more time out of sight in a classroom than on an assault course.

Long a favored destination of British militants of Pakistani descent, Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas are now attracting Arabs and Europeans of Arab ancestry who three years ago would probably have gone to Iraq to fight U.S. forces.

With the Iraq war apparently winding down, security sources say, the lure for these young men is to fight U.S. forces in neighboring Afghanistan or to gain the skills to carry out attacks back home in the Middle East, Africa or the West.

One consequence: Western armies in Afghanistan increasingly face the possibility of having to fight their own compatriots.

These foreign militants are likely to feature in Wednesday's meetings between U.S. President Barack Obama, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Obama wants to end the use of Pakistan's tribal zones as a staging area for al Qaeda activities in support of the hardline Islamist Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as their role as a training ground for new attacks around the world.

Dennis Blair, Obama's national intelligence director, said in February the primary threat from Europe-based extremists stemmed from members of al Qaeda and its affiliates "who returned from training in Pakistan to conduct attacks in the West."

"We remain concerned about an influx of Western recruits into the (Pakistani) tribal areas since mid-2006," he said.

Western officials estimate there are several hundred non-Afghan foreign militants training in the tribal areas at any one time. That is probably more than three years ago, although the foreigners are outnumbered by Pakistanis and Afghans undergoing similar training at the same, or similar, facilities.

Little detailed information is known in the West about the training operation, and analysts differ on whether the inflow of militants has risen or just held steady in recent months.

But the assumption among many Western officials is that U.S. success in Iraq since 2006 has diverted some recruits for the anti-Western cause to the Pakistan-Afghan theater.

MILITARY TRAINING OR ADVENTURE HOLIDAY?

U.S. General David McKiernan told Reuters in October 2008 that intelligence had picked up the presence in Afghanistan of Chechens, Arabs, Uzbeks, Punjabis and even Europeans.

Some were old-time residents of neighboring Pakistan's rebellious border regions, but others were new arrivals.

Andrei Novikov, anti-terrorism chief of the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States, told Reuters in February "uncountable" militants from Central Asia had long been part of the Afghan Taliban, which has bases in Pakistan's tribal zone.