Taliban training in mosques

Rowan Scarborough:

One of the ways al Qaeda and the Taliban has regrouped in Pakistan, while avoiding air strikes, is to plan and train in the hundreds mosques in the country's vast ungoverned tribal areas, military sources say.

A former U.S. officer who worked along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border told HUMAN EVENTS that, after the Taliban was ousted from Kabul in 2001 and fled to Pakistan, they realized that one relatively safe haven was a mosque.

The officer said the Taliban-al Qaeda axis began gravitating to mosques "virtually as soon as they were chased out of Afghanistan. Originally they keep the training sites separate, but as we started using drones to attack them, and showed no willingness to go into mosques they migrated indoors. By the time they saw everything that went on in Iraq with us avoiding mosques they were nearly 100 percent there by, maybe, mid 05."

The officer said the U.S. refrains from striking the religious centers from high-flying Predator drones, the only U.S.-directed weapon used to kill terrorists in the federally administered tribal areas. The Taliban and al Qaeda leaders came to put two and two together. A village meeting of terrorists might be targeted; meet in a mosque and you are relatively safe.

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Their use is so extensive special operations forces have conducted super-secret missions along the border to intercept communications inside the religious centers.

"Their are tons of mosques there," the former officer said. "They are the only educational establishments for the population. You can hear call to prayer from four or five mosques in a medium sized village." The U.S. monitors the mosques to learn of new attacks and track senior terrorists it may strike once they leave the compound.

Besides using ground receivers along the border, the U.S. relies heavily on Predator drones to eavesdrop on tribal area chatter, including radio and phone traffic.

The source said one network of mosques under regular surveillance is run by the Haqqanis, a family of Muslim fighters closely aligned with the Taliban and al Qaeda in the tribal area's North Waziristan. The source called these mosques, "Taliban central."

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"We're shooting ourselves in the foot by making the mosque a no-fire area," a senior military intelligence official told HUMAN EVENTS. "We're afraid of their information operations campaign. If we hit a mosque they'll raise a hue and cry because they know the press will be all over it."

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If there is a high value target hanging out in a mosque, then we should strike. In doing so we should be ahead of the newc7ycle in explaining the need for the strike and who the target it. One of the problems with our information operations has been a reluctance to name targets of these strikes in hopes of gaining information from the enemy.We need to be able to have that information at the time of any strike where the target is in a mosque.