‘White’ Britons reported killed in North Waziristan strike

From The Telegraph, via Channel Four News, comes this report that two “white” Britons were killed in the Dec. 10 Predator strike in the village of Khadar Khel in the Datta Khel area of South Waziristan:

A pair of white British Muslim converts who joined al-Qaeda have been killed in a drone attack in a mountainous region of Pakistan, according to reports.

The men, one of whom was apparently called Steve, died five days ago when a Hellfire missile was fired from a remote controlled American drone in the town of Datta Khel. If confirmed, they would be the first white British converts to have been killed in the area. The militants, who were aged 48 and 25 and using the pseudonyms Abu Bakr and Mansoor Ahmed, were in a vehicle with two other fighters.

They had entered the country last year and travelled to the town in North Waziristan in the lawless tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, to join al-Qaeda, the report on Channel Four News said.

It’s not a stretch to speculate that these two Britons were likely part of the group assigned to carry out Mumbai-type terror assaults in Europe. Western passport holders, particularly white ones, are highly desired by al Qaeda’s external operations network.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

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6 Comments

  • Neonmeat says:

    Score 1 for ISAF!
    Good work these converts are often more fanatical than those born into Islam.
    As I’ve said before I wish all the militant Islamists that live in my country would stop being such cowards and go join the Taliban, then we can kill them.
    If they hate us that much they should really forsake their evil western comforts and head of to the mountains of Afpak.
    Of course most potential Islamist cannonfodder still like the benefits of piped electric, water, heat, internet, cable television and of course the freedom and protected rights we possess that allow them to hold, without persecution, their own set of twisted beliefs. Thats why in the end we will win, because we believe in freedom of religion and expression, just as long as you don’t try and kill us because of your beliefs; then you get messed up.

  • Paul says:

    Surely if these guys can get into North Waziristan why not CIA/MI6?

  • Villiger says:

    Paul, they probably can too. But can you imagine what kind of twisted beings would want to offer themselves for that kind of job. Its one thing to snoop on scum; quite another to live with that filth and pretend that one was imbibing Islam, repeating those lines like a demented cretin and all the rest of it. I would rather try my act in Broadway or the West End.

  • Andrew R. says:

    This is, btw, why ethnic profiling won’t really make things easier. Put a white Brit in a blazer and wingtips, and he’d pass everyone without a moment’s pause.

  • Ranger says:

    Andrew-yea but I’ve been waiting years (literally) to see one of the white Taliban get whacked. Think about how small these percentages are. Random dudes in wingtips are no excuse to not profile Arab Muslims.

  • Jeromy Henning says:

    A couple of white Brits is no excuse to not profile muslims of Middle Eastern decent. We are getting ourselves into a rhetorical hucklebuck when we replace common sense with comm sensitivity. The saddest part of all of this is that the western muslim communities, at-large, have invested more money into spin/public relations than they have preaching a counter-message to their own peoples. Bottom line, 99% of the immediate terrorist threats in the west come from muslims of middle eastern decent…more specifically, Arabs. When there is a bigger push from caucasian Islamic terrorists, then we shift our focus. It works for the Israelis and they have waaaaay more Arabs and other Middle Easterners trying to kill them than all of the rest of the west combined…

Iraq

Islamic state

Syria

Aqap

Al shabaab

Boko Haram

Isis