South Africa cautions citizens

By M.S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, OCT. 11. The South African Government has cautioned against any attempts by its nationals to enlist themselves or recruit other nationals to fight in the conflict in Afghanistan.

The Government's cautionary refers to the Foreign Military Assistance Act, 1998, which prohibits the recruitment of persons for engagement in mercenary activity or the rendering of foreign military assistance, within South Africa or elsewhere, to any State or organ of State, group of persons or other entities. Under South African law, any such assistance can only be offered within the framework of and guidelines set by the National Conventional Arms Control Committee, constituted in August 1995.

The warning has been issued in the light of recent reports that some radical Muslim groups had begun recruiting Muslim youth to fight in Afghanistan. One such organisation, Muslims against Illegitimate Leaders (Mail), claimed last week that it had already recruited hundreds of young South African Muslims to fight in Afghanistan. Imam Achmat Cassiem, the founder and leader of another such radical Muslim organisation, the Qiblah Mass Movement, has publicly questioned whether the attack on the Pentagon, was not an attack on a legitimate military target.

According to a historian of radical Islam in South Africa (``Islamic Resurgence in South Africa'' by Abdulkader Tayob, University of Cape Town Press, 1995), Qiblah, founded in 1980 and a militant participant in the anti-apartheid struggles within the country, married the revolutionary message of the Iranian revolution with local, anti-apartheid slogans. Qiblah has consistently maintained that the solution to all the problems of South Africa, indeed, of the world, is an alternative economic and political order provided by Islam.

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Section  : International
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