Meanwhile, Britain’s International Institute for Strategic Studies also warned yesterday that “neo-Taliban” groups operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas may soon become a global menace.
“They have the potential to turn a local threat into a transnational threat,” said analyst Nigel Inkster. “There is some evidence they were involved with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and that they have dispatched terrorists to the United Kingdom and Spain,” he said.
06 February 2008: AP
WASHINGTON - Al-Qaeda, increasingly tamped down in Iraq, is establishing cells in other countries as Osama bin Laden’s organization uses Pakistan’s tribal region to train for attacks in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Africa and the United States, the U.S. intelligence chief said yesterday.
“Al-Qaeda remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States,” Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told senators more than six years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
McConnell, speaking before the Senate Intelligence Committee, said fewer than 100 al-Qaeda terrorists have moved from Iraq to establish cells elsewhere as the U.S. military clamps down in Iraq, and the organization “may deploy resources to mount attacks outside the country.”
He said that although the level of violence in Iraq has dropped sharply since last year, it is going to be years before Iraq is stable.
“It is not going to be over in a year. It’s going to be a long time to bring it to closure,” he said.
Although the al-Qaeda network in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan has suffered setbacks, the group poses a persistent danger, McConnell said.
Tribal areas in Pakistan provide al-Qaeda a safe haven similar to what it enjoyed in Afghanistan before the war, but on a smaller, less secure scale, he said.
The next attack on the United States most likely would be launched by al-Qaeda operating in those “under-governed regions” of Pakistan, said Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Meanwhile, Britain’s International Institute for Strategic Studies also warned yesterday that “neo-Taliban” groups operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas may soon become a global menace.
“They have the potential to turn a local threat into a transnational threat,” said analyst Nigel Inkster. “There is some evidence they were involved with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and that they have dispatched terrorists to the United Kingdom and Spain,” he said.
