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Al-Qaeda now in control of Pakistani Islamist, jihadi groups
Al-Qaida is now reliant on Pakistani militants and groups, a U.S. terror expert said Wednesday.ABC terrorism analyst Alexis Debat discussed the recent "Pakistanization" of al-Qaida at the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank. He said recent developments required intelligence analysts to reassess the way the terrorist group functioned. "The (al-Qaida) organization has filtered through those Pakistani groups and is now reliant on them," Debat said. "The militant community has evolved in a very interesting way. It's become a little al-Qaida in itself. If you look at a lot of developments of the past several years you'll see that those militant groups have a very important place in al-Qaida." This is not the first time al-Qaida has been linked to or even dependent upon Pakistani militants to support their mission, Debat said. "In the '90s most of the volunteers trained in al-Qaida's camps were Pakistani," he said. "Beginning in '97 '98 '99, the trainers were Pakistani. The Pakistanization of al-Qaida was very strong back then." Debat said al-Qaida also had "roots not only in the militant community but in the mainstream community in Pakistan." He said al-Qaida operatives had been apprehended in safe houses owned or run by local government officials affiliated with Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan's largest religious political party. "This holds a very fundamental challenge. We're not talking about just deep roots, we're talking about the main Pakistani society and political community," he said. Debat said that evidence suggested al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden spends part of the year hiding in Pakistan. He also said that the Pakistani militant community had acted as a subcontractor of al-Qaida in several of its operations including an assassination attempt on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and the July 2005 bombings in London. Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-02-16 |
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