Report: Al-Qaida in Pakistan gravest threat

[unhappycamper]

Report: Al-Qaida in Pakistan gravest threat
By Matthew Lee - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Aug 5, 2010 17:31:16 EDT

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Thursday that al-Qaida’s core membership in Pakistan, along with affiliates in Africa and Yemen, poses the most dangerous terrorist threat to the United States and its interests abroad.

In its annual report on global terrorism, the State Department said that although al-Qaida suffered some setbacks in Pakistan last year, it is “adaptable and resilient” and has expanded its reach through proxy groups.

The report for 2009 also said the terrorist network remains “actively engaged in operational plotting” of attacks against U.S. and Western targets around the world.

As in previous years, the report identified Iran as the most active “state sponsor of terrorism” and said its backing of militant groups in the Middle East and Central Asia played a highly destabilizing role in those regions. The report also left unchanged “state sponsor” designations for Cuba, Sudan and Syria.

It also found that an increase in terrorist attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan triggered a spike in the number of civilians killed or wounded there last year, pushing South Asia past the Middle East as the top terror region in the world. Those statistics are contained in an annex to the report first published in late April.