Author: Daniel Pipes
Publication: New York Sun
Date: March 16, 2004
"We are an Al Qaeda family." So
spoke one of the Khadrs, a Muslim Canadian household whose near single-minded
devotion to Osama bin Laden contains important lessons for the West.
Their saga began in 1975, when Ahmad
Said al-Khadr left his native Egypt for Canada and soon after married a
local Palestinian woman. He studied computer engineering at the University
of Ottawa and engaged in research for a major telecommunications firm.
After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Khadr went to work for Human
Concern International, an Ottawa-based charity founded in 1980 with the
purported aim to "alleviate human suffering," but with a record of promoting
militant Islam.
In 1985, in the course of working
in Afghanistan, Khadr met bin Laden and became his close associate. Sometimes
Khadr was described as the highest ranking of Al Qaeda's 75 Canadian operatives.
The federal Canadian government,
living up to its naïve reputation, contributed $325,000 in Canadian
dollars to HCI. From 1988 to 1997 in particular, HCI was simultaneously
receiving Canadian taxpayer funding and working with Al Qaeda.
The bureaucratic ingénues
in Ottawa continued to find nothing wrong with Khadr even after his arrest
by Pakistani authorities in 1995 for siphoning off HCI funds to pay for
an Al Qaeda terrorist operation that year - an attack on the Egyptian embassy
in Pakistan, which killed 18. Quite the contrary, Canada's prime minister,
Jean Chrétien took advantage of a state visit to Pakistan to intercede
with his Pakistani counterpart on Khadr's behalf.
This highly unusual step succeeded;
Khadr was soon released, and returned to Canada. In 1996, he and his wife
set up an Islamic charity they named "Health and Education Project International."
When the Taliban took control in Afghanistan a few months later, the parents
and their six children decamped there. As he worked closely with bin Laden,
Khadr became known for his militant Islamic vitriol, leading one Frenchman
in Afghanistan to observe about him," I never met such hostility, someone
so against the West."
Like other Al Qaeda leaders, Khadr
disappeared from view soon after 9/11. He spent two years on the lam, reappearing
only in October 2003,when Pakistani forces unexpectedly found that the
DNA of one unrecognizable corpse from a bloody shootout matched Khadr's.
The terrorism-related activities
of other Khadr family members - wife, one of two daughters, three of four
sons - complement their patriarch's record.
* Wife Maha Elsamnah took
her then 14-year-old son Omar from Canada to Pakistan in 2001 and enrolled
him for Al Qaeda training.
* Daughter Zaynab, 23, was
engaged to one terrorist and married, with Osama bin Laden himself present
at the nuptials, a Qaeda member in 1999. Zaynab endorses the 9/11 atrocities
and hopes her infant daughter will die fighting Americans.
* Son Abdullah, 22, is a Qaeda
fugitive constantly on the move to elude capture. Canadian intelligence
states he ran a Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan during the Taliban period,
something Abdullah denies.
* Son Omar, 17, stands accused
of hurling a grenade in July 2002, killing an American medic in Afghanistan.
Omar lost sight in one eye in the fighting and is now a U.S. detainee in
Guantánamo.
* Son Abdul Karim, 14, half-paralyzed
by wounds sustained in the October 2003 shoot-out that left his father
dead, is presently prisoner in a Pakistani hospital.
Fortunately, there is also one positive
story:
* Son Abdurahman, 21, reluctantly
trained with Al Qaeda, was captured by coalition forces in November 2001
and agreed to work for the Central Intelligence Agency in Kabul, Guantánamo,
and Bosnia. He returned to Canada in October 2003, where he denounced both
extremism ("I want to be a good, strong, civilized, peaceful Muslim" )
and his family's terroristic ways.
While an unusual case, the Khadr
family's horrifying history serves as a warning, pointing to the danger
of Muslim parents in North America and Europe who stray so deeply into
militant Islamic currents that, Palestinian-style, they seek to turn their
children into militant Islamic weapons to be turned against their own countries.
This pattern is yet rare, but it
might well become more widespread as the second generation of Islamist
children in the West comes of age. The key in the Khadr case, as it will
likely be for others, is isolation within a militant Islamic environment
- schools, press, social life. Preventing such self-segregation must be
an urgent policy goal throughout the West.