Fox News:
Western strikes on Al Qaeda have shown progress in taking out the terror group’s core in Pakistan, but affiliates still are increasing “operational capabilities,” the State Department said in releasing its annual Country Reports on Terrorism.
Highlights of the 2011 report include the death of Usama bin Laden and Al Qaeda’s relative lack of influence on the so-called Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East, the State Department’s top counterterrorism official, Daniel Benjamin, said Tuesday.
He warned, however, that the United States has “no illusions” that further progress against terrorism will be easy or quick, and certain Al Qaeda affiliates remain a troubling threat.
“The report’s narrative notes, among other things, the continued weakening of the Al Qaeda core in Pakistan, but it also demonstrates that the Al Qaeda affiliates, while also suffering losses, increased their overall operational ability,” Benjamin said. “And this is particularly true of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.”
“So for all the counterterrorism successes that we’ve seen against Al Qaeda and its affiliates, the group and violent extremist ideology and rhetoric continue to spread in some parts of the world.”
The report also notes the threat from other terror groups, including the Lebanese-based Hezbollah, which is “engaging in their most active and aggressive campaigns since the 1990s,” Benjamin said. He also noting that Iran “remains the pre-eminent state sponsor of terrorism in the world.”
