In the latest of his regular online dispatches, The Observer's Chief Reporter looks at why terrorist "links" are so easy to claim and difficult to prove and congratulates the Pakistani journalists who decided to dig deeper after seven men were shot in Macedonia.
This is a cautionary tale.
On March 2nd this year seven men "who appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin" were shot dead by Macedonian security services near the capital Skopje. The authorities then proudly announced that they had folied an al-Qaeda plot and described the dead men as Islamic extremists who were plotting attacks on the British, American and German embassies in southeasten Europe.
Quite how they had reached this conclusion was not immediately apparent because the Macedonian security services - or anyone else from the government for that matter - had been unable to interview them particularly thoroughly before they died in, as the thriller writers would have it, "a hail of lead".
Indeed exactly how the men had died was unclear too, Ljube Boskoski, the Macedonian interior minister, first said they had been shot by a police patrol. Then he said they had died in a gun battle with soldiers on a country road outside the capital.
The Macedonians did however produced "Arabic language" pamphlets containing the names of other terrorists and the dates of a series of secret meetings at which the men had plotted their forthcoming attacks. The government also released photographs of weapons and hand grenades which the authorities claimed were found on the dead men's bodies. Though newspapers around the world were happy to take Bosloski at his word observers noted that the arms looked brand new and the combat fatigues which the men were said to be carrying had actually been recently pressed.
A Pakistani magazine, the Herald, obtained copies of the pamphlets. The Herald, one of the best publications in south Asia has conducted an exhaustive and illuminating investigation to find out exactly who were the "key al-Qaeda figures" whose death in Skopje five months ago was trumpeted around the world.
The Herald immediately saw that the pamphlets found on the men were in fact invitations to a Shia muslim religious gathering in eastern Pakistan. The names listed were the organizers and speakers. There was also a verse from the Quran and a copy of the Nad-e-Ali, a key religious text found in almost every Shia home. The Herald then set about tracing the dead men. All were from eastern Pakistan except for one who was a Sikh of Indian origin. Only one had any connection to any Pakistani extremist organisation, Shia or otherwise, let alone al-Qaeda. They were, it seemed illegal immigrants who had been working in Greece.
The one man with extremist connections was 26 year old Bilal Kazmi who had spent two years in prison for the murder of two activitst of the violent Sunni muslim group Sipa-e-Sahaba. Legal costs for the case had bankrupted the family and Bilal had travelled to the West, through Iran and Turkey, to earn some money.
However, even if he was guilty of the crime for which he was convicted, Kazmi was nothing to do with al-Qaeda. He was a Shia acitivist and thus, to bin Laden and his people, a heretic. The strong antipathy between al-Qaeda (which has ideological roots in hardline Sunni muslim thought and financial and political roots in hardlien Sunni muslim countries and circles) and the Shias persists notwithstanding clumsy attempts by the Israelis or the Americans to manufacture links to Hizbolllah or the Iranians.
Two other victims of the shooting came from the profoundly poor village of Bhao Ghaseetput. Khlaid Mahmood was married with three young daughters and earned his living by selling the milk of his cows and driving the tractor of a local landlord. He had left for Greece in the summer of 2000. Riaz Ahmed worked alongside Mahmood in Bhao Ghaseetput and earned 1,500 rupees (25 pounds) a month for tending cattle.
Ahmed Khan, a village elder, told The Herald that a number of residents had successfully made it to the West and been able to remit what for the locals were huge sums of money. Neither man had anything to do with al-Qaeda and, to be honest, it is absolutely ludicrous to think they might have done. The Herald found that six out of the seven men killed were poor labourers from rural Pakistan. The idea that they were skilled al-Qaeda operatives or even footsoldiers for militant Islam is frankly daft.
That didn't stop the Macedonians claiming it or credulous journalists believing them or readers accepting what they had been told as the truth. There have been many such claims made and many more will be, particularly as the politicians try to prepare us for a war in Iraq. You have been warned.
· Jason Burke is The Observer's Chief Reporter. You can read a selection of his reporting on the terrorism crisis, including his fortnightly online terrorism dispatch in Observer Worldview's best of Jason Burke page.
On March 2nd this year seven men "who appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin" were shot dead by Macedonian security services near the capital Skopje. The authorities then proudly announced that they had folied an al-Qaeda plot and described the dead men as Islamic extremists who were plotting attacks on the British, American and German embassies in southeasten Europe.
Quite how they had reached this conclusion was not immediately apparent because the Macedonian security services - or anyone else from the government for that matter - had been unable to interview them particularly thoroughly before they died in, as the thriller writers would have it, "a hail of lead".
Indeed exactly how the men had died was unclear too, Ljube Boskoski, the Macedonian interior minister, first said they had been shot by a police patrol. Then he said they had died in a gun battle with soldiers on a country road outside the capital.
The Macedonians did however produced "Arabic language" pamphlets containing the names of other terrorists and the dates of a series of secret meetings at which the men had plotted their forthcoming attacks. The government also released photographs of weapons and hand grenades which the authorities claimed were found on the dead men's bodies. Though newspapers around the world were happy to take Bosloski at his word observers noted that the arms looked brand new and the combat fatigues which the men were said to be carrying had actually been recently pressed.
A Pakistani magazine, the Herald, obtained copies of the pamphlets. The Herald, one of the best publications in south Asia has conducted an exhaustive and illuminating investigation to find out exactly who were the "key al-Qaeda figures" whose death in Skopje five months ago was trumpeted around the world.
The Herald immediately saw that the pamphlets found on the men were in fact invitations to a Shia muslim religious gathering in eastern Pakistan. The names listed were the organizers and speakers. There was also a verse from the Quran and a copy of the Nad-e-Ali, a key religious text found in almost every Shia home. The Herald then set about tracing the dead men. All were from eastern Pakistan except for one who was a Sikh of Indian origin. Only one had any connection to any Pakistani extremist organisation, Shia or otherwise, let alone al-Qaeda. They were, it seemed illegal immigrants who had been working in Greece.
The one man with extremist connections was 26 year old Bilal Kazmi who had spent two years in prison for the murder of two activitst of the violent Sunni muslim group Sipa-e-Sahaba. Legal costs for the case had bankrupted the family and Bilal had travelled to the West, through Iran and Turkey, to earn some money.
However, even if he was guilty of the crime for which he was convicted, Kazmi was nothing to do with al-Qaeda. He was a Shia acitivist and thus, to bin Laden and his people, a heretic. The strong antipathy between al-Qaeda (which has ideological roots in hardline Sunni muslim thought and financial and political roots in hardlien Sunni muslim countries and circles) and the Shias persists notwithstanding clumsy attempts by the Israelis or the Americans to manufacture links to Hizbolllah or the Iranians.
Two other victims of the shooting came from the profoundly poor village of Bhao Ghaseetput. Khlaid Mahmood was married with three young daughters and earned his living by selling the milk of his cows and driving the tractor of a local landlord. He had left for Greece in the summer of 2000. Riaz Ahmed worked alongside Mahmood in Bhao Ghaseetput and earned 1,500 rupees (25 pounds) a month for tending cattle.
Ahmed Khan, a village elder, told The Herald that a number of residents had successfully made it to the West and been able to remit what for the locals were huge sums of money. Neither man had anything to do with al-Qaeda and, to be honest, it is absolutely ludicrous to think they might have done. The Herald found that six out of the seven men killed were poor labourers from rural Pakistan. The idea that they were skilled al-Qaeda operatives or even footsoldiers for militant Islam is frankly daft.
That didn't stop the Macedonians claiming it or credulous journalists believing them or readers accepting what they had been told as the truth. There have been many such claims made and many more will be, particularly as the politicians try to prepare us for a war in Iraq. You have been warned.
· Jason Burke is The Observer's Chief Reporter. You can read a selection of his reporting on the terrorism crisis, including his fortnightly online terrorism dispatch in Observer Worldview's best of Jason Burke page.
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