Next generation of terrorists to come from Pakistan: US report

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

WASHINGTON: If rapid Talibanisation of Pakistan continues, the next generation of the world’s most sophisticated terrorists will be born, indoctrinated and trained in that nuclear-armed nation, an American think tank said in a report on Tuesday.
“Today, al-Qaeda’s top leadership is most likely based in Pakistan, along with the top Taliban leaders, both Afghan and Pakistani,” said the report ‘From AfPak to PakAf: A Response to the New US Strategy for South Asia’, prepared by the Council on Foreign Relations. The ‘Talibanisation’ of Pakistan’s Pashtun belt is gradually moving eastward into settled districts, creating new terrorist safe havens in once-tranquil locales such as the Swat Valley, said the report authored by Daniel Markey. “If present trends persist, the next generation of the world’s most sophisticated terrorists will be born, indoctrinated, and trained in a nuclear-armed Pakistan,” the 17-page report said.
“Pakistan’s non-Pashtun extremist and sectarian groups, some of which were historically nurtured by the state as a means to project influence into India and Afghanistan, also have the potential to prove deeply destabilising,” it added. Further, groups like the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad or Jamaatud Daawa are well resourced and globally interconnected.
Some appear to retain significant influence within state institutions and enjoy public sympathy, in certain cases because of the social services they provide, the report said. It said over the past two years, the security environment in Afghanistan and Pakistan has taken a significant turn for the worse.
The spread of militancy, whether by terrorists connected with al-Qaeda, the Taliban of Mullah Omar or Baitullah Mahsud, criminal gangs, narco-traffickers, or sectarian extremists, among others, has destabilised the Pashtun belt in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “At the same time, a range of other violent actors - from Punjabi anti-Indian extremists to Central Asian warlords - operate in the non-Pashtun areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan,” the report said, adding, Pakistan and Afghanistan offer these groups an unusually hospitable environment, one that complicates and magnifies the danger.

 

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