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Qaeda in Pakistan gravest threat to US: report
The US said on Thursday that despite major setbacks, Al Qaeda's core in Pakistan is the "most formidable" terrorist group threatening the US, along with affiliates in Yemen and Africa.In an annual report, the State Department said it also learned that Americans were not immune to the spell of militancy, with some of them hooking up last year with radicals in Pakistan and Somalia. "Al Qaeda's core in Pakistan remained during 2009 the most formidable terrorist organisation targeting the United States," the State Department's counter-terrorism coordinator Daniel Benjamin told reporters. "It has proven to be an adaptable and resilient terrorist group whose desire to attack the US and its interests abroad remains strong," Benjamin said, reading from the Country Reports on Terrorism 2009. "We assess that Al Qaeda was actively engaged in operational planning against the US and continued recruiting, training and deploying operatives, including individuals from Western Europe and North America." Al Qaeda, from its safe haven in Pakistan, is helping train and fund the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, where it "remained resilient in the south and east and expanded its presence into the north and west," the report said. In Afghanistan, despite some heavy losses among militants and their leaders, the Taliban's "ability to recruit foot soldiers from its core base of rural Pashtuns remained undiminished," the report said. In Pakistan, there was still "rising militancy and extremism," it said. Al Qaeda militants, Afghan insurgents and others, it said, are using "safe havens" in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Baluchistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, southern Punjab, and other parts of Pakistan. But Benjamin repeated the US contention that Pakistan is now tackling seriously the threat from militants. The report said that Al Qaeda reeled under a Pakistani military onslaught, has lost many of its leaders, and has found it "tougher to raise money, train recruits and plan attacks" outside Pakistan and Afghanistan. It also said Al Qaeda has suffered from a Muslim public backlash as its militants and allies have staged indiscriminate attacks hitting Muslims in Algeria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, and elsewhere. Posted by: Fred 2010-08-07 |
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