Why Pakistan is Qaeda's Best Base
Printable Version
By NOAH SHACHTMAN
Adam Rawnsley is a
research associate at the Center for National
Policy. This is his first post for Danger
Room.
On Capitol Hill, General David Petraeus
testified yesterday that al-Qaeda is more
likely to launch attacks against America from
Pakistan’s tribal areas than from Iraq.
Iraq is geographically closer to the United
States and Europe, looms larger in al-Qaeda’s
rhetoric and has already provided hundreds of
foreign recruits with on-the-job training in
state of the art urban terrorism. How
so? How could Pakistan be Osama's new
launching pad?
West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center may
have already provided the answer. In a May
2007 report, “Al-Qaeda’s (mis)Adventures in the
Horn of Africa,” CTC analysts looked into the
terrorist group’s early experiences in East
Africa and found that, somewhat counter to
conventional wisdom, poorly governed regions of
sovereign countries can be better terrorist
safe havens than the usual suspects of failed
states.
Somalia, far from being a playground for
al-Qaeda, was largely a headache for the terror
group, CTC explains.
They were prone to extortion and betrayal,
found themselves trapped in the middle of
incomprehensible (to them) clan conflicts,
faced suspicion from the indigenous population,
had to overcome significant logistical
constraints and were subject to the constant
risk of Western military interdiction.
In contrast, territory in western-oriented
Kenya was quite useful for orchestrating
attacks.
…the state’s poor governance, combined with
relative stability and basic infrastructure,
created a potential base area from which to
support operations in more unstable regions
like Somalia and a favorable operational
environment to attack lucrative targets within
Kenya. More importantly, outside military
forces could not conduct operations because of
Kenyan sovereignty, yet the state had little
ability to interdict the terror group’s actions
or effectively police its activities.
This tracks closely with al-Qaeda’s experiences
in Iraq and Pakistan. In Iraq, a state which
many have considered failing (at least, until
the prime minister started asserting his
authority), the United States enjoys a free
hand to use force. Local allies have been
unreliable. And the whack-a-mole nature of
al-Qaeda’s movement in Iraq from Fallujah to
Ramadi to Mosul are less than stable
environments to stash the prized Western
passport holders useful for an attack inside
the US.
Pakistan’s better infrastructure, weak
counterterrorism capacity, ambivalent
counterterrorism policy, and increasingly
prickly sovereignty issues gives al-Qaeda a
more stable platform to train, shield and
export personnel—everything a terrorist group
needs to organize an attack against targets in
the West, as a string of plots now seem to
show.
-- Adam Rawnsley
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/05/why-pakistan-is.html
