‘Al Qaeda expanding beyond nerve centre in Pakistan, Afghanistan’

WASHINGTON - US officials remain concerned that Al Qaeda militants maintain bases and training camps in Pakistan as the terrorist group appears to have increased its influence among the myriad Islamist militant groups operating along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The US also believes that two top Al Qaeda leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are in hiding in northwestern Pakistan nine years after they disappeared following the toppling of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, according to a new report.

The two leaders are in hiding in tribal areas on the Pakistan-Afghan border, says the report by the powerful Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Al Qaeda and its expansion in new areas - Yemen and Somalia - beyond its nerve-centre in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Bin Laden and Zawahiri are believed to be hiding in northwestern Pakistan along with most other senior operatives,” said the 21-page report released by the Committee Chairman Senator John Kerry.

“Al Qaeda leaders have issued statements encouraging Pakistani Muslims to ‘resist’ American ‘occupiers’ in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to fight against Pakistan’s US-allied politicians and officers,” the report said.

A 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on terrorist threats to the US concluded that Al Qaeda “has protected or regenerated key elements of its homeland attack capability, including a safe haven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, operational lieutenants and its top leadership.”

The report prepared by the Majority Staff of the Senate Committee said Islamabad reportedly has remanded to US custody roughly 500 Al Qaeda fighters since 2001, including several senior operatives.

US officials say that drone-launched US missile attacks and Pakistan’s pressing of military offensives against extremist groups in the border areas have meaningfully disrupted Al Qaeda activities there while inflicting heavy human losses.

The August death of Al Qaeda-allied Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, reportedly caused by a US-launched missile, may have thrown Islamist militants in western Pakistan into disarray, the report said.

“Some analysts worry, however, that successful military operations are driving Al Qaeda fighters into Pakistani cities where they will be harder to target and, fuelling already significant anti-American sentiments among the Pakistani people,” it said.

“The Pakistani military has conducted successful counter- insurgency campaigns to wrest two parts of the country from Pakistani Taliban control, the Swat Valley and South Waziristan. Still militants continue to use some of the rugged tribal areas as bases of operations,” the report said.

“It is clear that there is a significant Al Qaeda threat in Pakistan. But there are significant Al Qaeda populations in Yemen and Somalia, too,” the report said.

“As Al Qaeda members continue to resist US and Pakistani forces along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, some of their comrades appear to be moving to Yemen and Somalia, where the political climate allows them to seek safe haven, recruit new members, and train for future operations, it added.