>Gordon Fitch said:
>> You're talking somewhat as if al-Qaeda were a conventional
>> nation-state. Terrorists are too weak to hold territory or
>> even harass the enemy with any regularity, like a guerrilla
>> force.
>
>No, I'm talking about Al-Qaeda as if they were a terrorist group based in a
>friendly state. A state where they had bases, training camps which were very
>useful to them. They had a significant infrastructure and investment in
>Afghanistan, which is now lost. Where are they going to train all these new
>recruits? Pakistan?
You don't need much training facility to practice terrors (though you need a lot of it to create and discipline conventional armed forces). There have been a number of attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9.11.01 (e.g., a car bomb outside the US consulate in Karachi on June 14, killing 12 Pakistanis); you haven't taken note of them since they happened outside the West, on much lesser scales than 9.11 (like the attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998).
Besides, I don't believe Afghan training camps were useful for the 9.11 hijacking. The hijackers learned to fly planes in Florida, not in Afghanistan. As for new recruits and trainers, terrorists can probably get a number of disaffected guys from armed services, secret polices, intelligence agencies, mercenaries, etc. in various parts of the world, or they can have their members serve in them and learn useful skills. Non-citizens can serve in the US military and learn a thing or two, too: "More than 31,000 noncitizens are currently serving on active duty -- accounting for between 3 and 4 percent of America's total military personnel" (@ <http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/news/0702/04military.html>). They will be disqualified from screening baggage at US airports, however:
***** Airport screeners across the country are speaking out against the new law prohibiting noncitizens from working as airport screeners. The new citizenship requirement in the Aviation and Transportation Security Act signed last November is scheduled to take full effect by November 2002.
Nearly 30,000 immigrant airport screeners will lose their jobs if the law is kept in place. SEIU, ACLU, and community organizations such as Filipinos for Affirmative Action have filed a discrimination lawsuit on behalf of immigrant screeners, charging the federal government with violations of due process and the Fifth Amendment.
Noncitizens constitute about a quarter of airport screeners across the country. In California, where the campaign against the citizenship requirement has been the most active, 40 percent of Los Angeles International Airport and 80 percent of San Francisco Bay Area airport screeners are immigrants with permanent legal residence. Over 75 percent of the 1,250 screeners at the San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose airports are Filipino....
<http://www.arc.org/C_Lines/CLArchive/story5_2_05.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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