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| Terror Networks |
| State Department concludes al-Qaeda degraded but resilient |
| 2006-04-30 |
| Al Qaeda is no longer the organization it was four years ago, as international efforts have disrupted its operations and many of its leaders have been killed or captured. According to the annual report on worldwide terrorism in the year 2005, issued by the State Department on Friday, Al Qaeda is nevertheless “adaptive and resilient” and important core members of the group remain alive. There is an increasing Al Qaeda emphasis on ideological and propaganda activity, which has led to terrorist operations in Iraq and Al Qaeda affiliates around the world. Last year, there was an increase in suicide bombings, including in Afghanistan. Also witnessed was a growth of strategically significant networks that support the flow of foreign terrorists in Iraq. The US, the report added, was still in the “first phase” of a potentially long war and would face a “resilient” enemy for “years to come.” Discussing general trends, the report noted that increasingly small autonomous cells and individuals drawing on advanced technologies and the tools of globalisation combined with the motivation to commit a terrorist act represented “micro actors” who were “extremely difficult” to detect or counter. Many terrorists worldwide moved to improve their sophistication in exploiting the global interchange of information, finance and ideas. They also improved their technological ability across many areas of operational planning, communications, targeting and propaganda. The report stated that in some cases, terrorists used the same networks used by transnational criminal groups, exploiting the overlap with organizational networks to improve mobility, build support for their terrorist agenda and avoid detection. The report pointed out that the most “intractable” terrorist safe havens worldwide tend to exist astride international borders or in regions where ineffective governance allows their presence, such as Afghanistan’s borders or Somalia or some parts of Southeast Asia. The report said that denying safe havens to terrorists requires a regional approach based on coordinated action by the US working with partner governments, who, in turn, world with regional partners and institutions. “Corruption, poverty, a lack of civic institutions and social services, and the perception that law enforcement and legal systems are biased or brutal are conditions that terrorists exploit to create allies of to generate a permissive operating environment. Efforts to build partner capacity and encourage more effectively with each other at the regional level are key to denying terrorists safe haven,” the report stated. In its section on India, the report noted that as in previous years, “terrorists” staged hundreds of attacks on people and property in India, the most prominent terrorist groups being “violent extremist separatists operating in Jammu and Kashmir,” Maoists in the Naxalite belt in eastern India, and “ethno-linguistic nationalists” in Kashmiri terrorist groups who made numerous attacks on elected Indian and Kashmiri politicians, targeted civilians in public areas, and attacked security forces. Hundreds of non-combatants were killed, most of whom were Kashmiri Muslims. The report said according to Indian experts, the April 2005 attack on the bus depot for Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus was designed to inhibit growing Kashmiri enthusiasm for normalization of ties between Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. Lashkar-i-Tayyaba and and Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility for many of these attacks. Some of these groups, the annual review said, are believed to maintain ties to Al Qaeda. The report noted that civilian fatalities from terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir continued a five-year decline in the first nine months of 2005. The Indian Government and military, it added, credit improved tactics and a fence that runs along the Line of Control for having significantly reduced the number of “terrorists” who cross into Indian Kashmir, thus resulting in a lower number of attacks and fatalities in Jammu and Kashmir. The report said, “After the October 8 earthquake in Pakistan that reportedly killed many Kashmir-based terrorists, however, the terrorists launched a series of high-profile attacks across the degraded frontier defences in an effort to prove their continued relevance. Indian experts believe that the car bombs, grenade attacks, daytime assassinations, and assassination attempts on Kashmiri political leaders, including current and former state ministers, were designed to signal that the terrorist groups retained the ability to conduct ‘spectacular’ operations despite their reported losses.” |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |