Officials play down al Qaeda's potency

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Al Qaeda has rebuilt cells in the vast tribal areas of Pakistan the past year, but the terrorist group is not at the same strength exhibited in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. officials said Thursday.

"Al Qaeda is not a state-sponsored organization in Pakistan," a U.S. counter-terrorism official told The Examiner. "Al Qaeda in 2001 had a state sponsor called the Taliban. That is not the case in Pakistan. To draw a comparison I think would be inaccurate."

Some news reports cited a new intelligence community assessment of al Qaeda as saying the terrorist group has regrouped to pre-Sept. 11 levels.

But the counter-terrorism official said the report, "Al Qaeda Better Positioned to Strike the West," makes no such statement.

"The report does not draw bold, sweeping conclusions in comparison to al Qaeda's capability in 2001," said the counter-terrorism official, who asked not to be identified because of the topic's sensitivity. "But it does suggest in the last couple of years that the operating environment in Pakistan has become more favorable."
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told ABC News, "I wouldn't put" al Qaeda's potency at 2001 levels "because I do think we've accomplished an awful lot in dismantling their activities overseas."

The Bush administration has said it has killed or captured two-thirds of al Qaeda's leaders. Not among them are al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The administration has publicly warned since January that al Qaeda was picking up strength in Pakistan's tribal regions, so in that respect, the report's threat assessment is not new.

U.S. officials have blamed the resurgence on a peace deal last fall between Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and tribal leaders loyal to bin Laden.

Musharraf pulled back troops who had been attacking and disrupting militants, leaving a safe haven for al Qaeda. At the same time, he has placed limits on U.S. operations in the tribal areas. He allows CIA officers and FBI agents, but not American terrorist-hunting special operations forces.

"The Pakistanis have been extremely helpful and have captured or enabled us to capture a very large number of al Qaeda figures," Thomas Fingar, deputy director for analysis of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said Wednesday. "They haven't enabled us to capture everybody."

Al Qaeda terrorists in the tribal regions, Fingar told the House Armed Services Committee, are "in an environment that is more hostile to us than it is to al Qaeda."

rscarborough@dcexaminer.com

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