Family of terrorism

DANIEL PIPES

"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. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Khadr went to work for Human Concern International, an Ottawa-based charity 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.

The federal Canadian government, living up to its na‹ve reputation, contributed $325,000 (Canadian) to HCI. The bureaucratic ing‚nues 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, killing 18. Canada's Prime Minister Jean Chr‚tien took advantage of a state visit to Pakistan to intercede on Khadr's behalf.

This highly unusual step succeeded; Khadr was soon released and returned to Canada.

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 shoot-out matched Khadr's.

The terrorism-related activities of other Khadr family members com-plement 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, an al-Qaeda member in 1999.
Son, Abdullah, 22, is an al-Qaeda fugitive constantly on the move to elude capture.
Son, Omar, 17, stands accused of hurling a grenade in July 2002, killing a U.S. medic in Afghanistan.
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, was captured by coalition forces in November 2001 and agreed to work for the Central Intelligence Agency. He has now denounced both extremism and his family's terrorist ways.

The Khadr'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 they seek to turn their children into militant Islamic weapons.

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.

Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum.

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