Al Qaeda Rising

[RedEarth]

After leaving university, Atta-ur Rehman traded his jeans and T-shirts for a beard and cap, his civil service aspirations for a martyr's spot in heaven.

He used to spend his time playing cricket, but he is now in a Pakistani jail facing a death sentence on terrorism charges. Mr. Rehman, along with nine other "comrades," is charged with carrying out a deadly June attack against a senior Pakistani Army general in Karachi. The general escaped narrowly but 10 people, including seven soldiers, were killed.

Rehman's circle call themselves Jundullah (God's Army) and have close ties to al Qaeda. Most are young, educated men, whom Rehman allegedly sent to training camps in Pakistan's remote tribal areas.

Rehman doesn't fit the mold of the typical al Qaeda leader. Traditionally, most were Arabs who gained status by resisting the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Younger, educated recruits tapped for suicide missions like 9/11 typically came from Middle Eastern countries with long histories of pan-Islamic resistance. What sets this new breed apart is that they are joining from places like Pakistan, where the focus has been on regional grievances, like independence for the disputed area of Kashmir. But as the al Qaeda leadership ranks begin to thin, men like Rehman are starting to climb the ladder.

"It is a new generation of al Qaeda," says Riffat Hussain, a leading defense and security analyst based in Islamabad, Pakistan. "These are new converts to al Qaeda. They may have no links with al Qaeda in the past, but now they are willing to sacrifice their lives for the cause as they feel al Qaeda is the name of defiance to the West. They are young and angry, and their number has swelled in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq."

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/20107/