Assessing Al-Qaeda (merged thread)

[davidbfpo]

On Feb. 25, 2010, the Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative and Foreign Policy magazine hosted "Al-Qaeda Central: Capabilities, Allies, and Messages," a conference about the two strikingly different but simultaneously accurate pictures of al-Qaeda have dominated recent discussion of the terrorist group: one, a resilient foe still determined to attack the United States and its interests abroad, and the other, a wounded organization whose leaders are being hunted down and killed.

The New America Foundation also released a series of papers designed to address the current state of the threat from al-Qaeda’s Afghanistan- and Pakistan-based central leadership, its allies, and messaging strategies:

Paul Cruickshank, "The Militant Pipeline Between the Afghanistan-Pakistan Border Region and the West." (Executive summary.)

Barbara Sude, "Al-Qaeda Central: An Assessment of the Threat Posed by the Terrorist Group Headquartered on the Afghanistan-Pakistan Border."

Stephen Tankel, "Lashkar-e-Taiba in Perspective: An Evolving Threat."

Link:http://counterterrorism.newamerica.n..._qaeda_central

There is a pod cast for the presentations and I listened earlier to the first, excellent and started the sceond before chores arrived.