20060829

Britain 'is now biggest security threat to US'

Kashmir on the Thames. London Broil. Bergen & Cruickshank in The New Republic:

The danger to the United States of the nexus between British Pakistanis, Al Qaeda, and Kashmir is becoming clear...

According to The Daily Telegraph, In March 2006, British citizen Mohammed Ajmal Khan was a frequent
visitor to the United States and talked about attacking U.S. synagogues.
American prosecutors say Khan was in touch with a group of Virginia militants also tied to LeT...

Of more concern, then, is the likelihood that British Pakistanis will continue to target Americans--both
in the United States and abroad....Great Britain must step up efforts to identify its own citizens who attend Kashmiri or Al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan...

Unfortunately, there are limits to what the British government can do alone. It will need help from moderate Muslims, some of whom are waking up to the threat posed by the radicals in their midst.

"These people are ill," says Ghulam Rabbani, the imam of the mosque adjoining the Fitness Centre, where the Saviour Sect held meetings. "I say very categorically and very clearly that they are misguided and they don't know the basics of Islam."

Rabbani faces a steep challenge: According to a recent poll, a full quarter of British Muslims
consider the 2005 London bombings justified. And anyone who doubts how dangerous the intersection of such sentiments, Al Qaeda, and Kashmiri militants can be should consider what became of Omar Sheikh, the former London School of Economics student who won his freedom on New Year's Eve in 1999: Two years later, he was under arrest for orchestrating the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

(Related story: The Telegraph's perspective on this report, 'Britain 'is now biggest security threat to US': http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/29/wsecurity29.xml&pPage=/core/Matt/pcMatt.jhtml

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