An Assessment of the Threat Posed by the Terrorist Group Headquartered on the Afghanistan-Pakistan Border
by BARBARA SUD
A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in July 2007 assessed that al-Qaeda had “protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership.”1 It was not as comfortable for the group as Taliban-controlled Afghanistan had been before the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the group had lost many key personnel over the years, but the Pakistan safe haven allowed al-Qaeda to act with virtual impunity to plan, train for, and mount attacks. In 2009, however, U.S. officials frequently touted al-Qaeda’s unprecedented losses of mid-level to senior commanders since the NIE—at mid-year, for example, as many as “11 out of 20 of the Pentagon’s most wanted-list”2—to concerted strikes by U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the FATA. The casualties also have included prominent regional leaders who helped facilitate al-Qaeda’s safe haven, such as Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, killed in August. Terrorism specialists increasingly characterized al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as a mere figurehead, and at least before September 2009, it appeared that al-Qaeda had been unable to train operatives for attacks in Western countries since mid-2008 or earlier.
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(Submitted by reader)