By Steven EmersonAmerican outreach efforts with the Muslim world have been nothing short of a disaster because we continue seeking partners among those who foster anti-American sentiment and who facilitate, rather than rebuke, radical Islamist ideology.
That's the message I brought to Capitol Hill Wednesday, where I testified before a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on al Qaeda. Disturbing intelligence estimates are true – the threat from a reconstituted al Qaeda is at its highest point since 2001. While U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement actions have combined to thwart al Qaeda, its safe haven in Pakistan's remote tribal areas allowed it to regroup with a new generation of battle-tested leaders.
Al Qaeda's attention increasingly is drawn to Europe, which has been the victim of terrorist attacks planned in the tribal areas that transcend the Afghan-Pakistan border, and is a much closer and accessible target of these extremists than is the United States. In the past year, frightening plots in Spain, Germany and Denmark have been thwarted.
Last fall, officials arrested two German converts to Islam and a Turkish immigrant who allegedly were plotting bombing attacks at Ramstein Air Base and the Frankfurt International Airport. The suspects, who trained at an al Qaeda-affiliated camp in Pakistan, were found with enough explosives to make bombs bigger than those used in the London transit bombings and the 2003 attack in Madrid. IPT News
Source: IPT News
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