Homeland Security News

Here is an excerpt of Statement of K. Alan Kronstadt Specialist in South Asian Affairs Congressional Research Service before the U. S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information,Federal Services, and International Security titled “Addressing the U.S .-Pakistan Strategic Relationship”.

Concurrent with this sharp increase in domestic insecurity in Pakistan has been the apparent resurgence on that country’s territory of the very threat the United States has sought to neutralize in Afghanistan: Al Qaeda and affiliated groups who continue to plot anti-Western terrorist attacks. Despite years of effort and billions of dollars worth of resources, the estimated number of Al Qaeda suspects reported killed or captured in Pakistan - around 700 - has remained essentially unchanged since 2004. At an April 2008 House hearing on Al Qaeda, a panel of non-governmental experts agreed that the ongoing hunt for Al Qaeda’s top leaders was foundering. At the m e time, however, the head of the U.S. Central Intelligence- Agency, Michael Hayden, later portrayed A1 Qaeda as being on the defensive in South Asia, claiming that its leadership is losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Muslim world. Yet Hayden’s conclusion came only two months after his March 2008 assertion that the situation on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border “presents a clew and present danger to Afghanistan, to Pakistan, and to the West in general, and to the United States in particular.” He agreed with other top U.S. officials who believe that possible future terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland likely would likely originate in that region.

Full copy of Addressing the U.S .-Pakistan Strategic Relationship statement is available here.