6.45pm GMT
Pakistan-based Taliban pose global risk, thinktank
warns
Richard Norton-Taylor
Tuesday February 5, 2008
Guardian Unlimited
Taliban groups based in Pakistan could pose a
significant international threat and become a leading
terrorist group, analysts at a leading thinktank
warned today.
"They have the potential to turn a local threat into a
transnational threat," Nigel Inkster, senior risk
analyst at the International Institute for Strategic
Studies told a London press conference.
Referring to Baitullah Mehsood, described as leader of
Taliban in Pakistan, he added: "There is some evidence
they were involved with the assassination of Benazir
Bhutto and that they have dispatched terrorists to a
number of locations including Spain and the United
Kingdom."
International terrorism remained a "growth industry"
and resurgent groups in Pakistan had earned the
"dubious honour" of making the biggest strides during
the past year, Inkster said.
Britain's security and intelligence agencies say they
are deeply concerned about potential links between
individuals in Britain attracted to violence and
extreme Islamism and groups based in the tribal areas
of South Waziristan.
Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan president, has blamed
Mehsood for the assassination of Bhutto as well as
recruiting suicide bombers. A spokesman for the
Pakistani Taliban leader denied at the time any
involvement in Bhutto's killing.
Inkster was speaking at the launch of the IISS annual
Military Survey, which gave a bleak picture of
political developments in Iraq and future cooperation
between the US and its allies on military operations.
"The Maliki government [in Iraq], remains fractured
and insubstantial," said John Chipman, IISS director
general. He added: "Individual ministries resemble
party or personal fiefdoms with cross-governmental
coordination remaining sporadic at best".
The IISS said in its report that the security
situation in Iraq had improved because of the "surge"
in US troops ordered by President Bush.
However, Chipman warned these advances would be
quickly undone if the US reduced the number of its
troops in Iraq too quickly. He said US troop levels
had to stay high to prevent an increase in Shia
military activity, provide security for any provincial
elections and keep violence in Kurdistan from
increasing.
It was still unclear, Chipman said, whether America's
experience in Iraq and Afghanistan had diminished its
enthusiasm for "revolutionary" military technologies
and the "associated belief that these technologies
will change fundamentally the nature of armed
conflict".
He added: "If in the past it was the technological and
doctrinal gap between the US and its Nato allies that
was the centre of anxious transatlantic debate, now it
is the willpower and capacity gap that is striking."
April's Nato summit in Bucharest, the Romanian
capital, was therefore likely to be preoccupied "not
only with the question of what the alliance is for,
but with the question of whether the alliance can
muster the military forces and political commitments
to match its expansive strategic vision", Chipman
said.
Asked about what could be expected from a new US
president - whether Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or
John McCain - Dana Allin, senior fellow at the IISS,
replied that among other things there would be a "much
more unequivocal renunciation of torture". There would
also be a stronger commitment to face up to the issue
of climate change, he added.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited
2008
---------------
Jusfiq Hadjar gelar Sutan Maradjo Lelo
Allah yang disembah orang Islam tipikal dan yang digambarkan oleh al-Mushaf itu
dungu, buas, kejam, keji, ganas, zalim lagi biadab hanyalah Allah fiktif.
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