New Concern Over Pakistan

Via CT Blog -

The Spanish daily El Pais on Sunday reported that European intelligence services now believe that Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban, whom the CIA believe ordered the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, also orchestrated a plot last month to attack Barcelona and other European cities.

According to intelligence sources quoted by El Pais, this operation was to be Mehsud's "international baptism of fire."

On Monday, the Washington Post, citing a European intelligence source, reported that Abu Laith Al Libi, the senior Al Qaeda commander killed in a Predator strike last week, was on the way to see Baitullah Mehsud, when he was killed, a report that if confirmed, underscores Mehsud's close ties with Al Qaeda.

In recent years Mehsud, who dominates much of South Waziristan, has allowed Al Qaeda to establish small training camps for jihadists in area under his control. In an article just published in the Guardian, I explain just how important such camps are to Al Qaeda's efforts to launch operations in the West. Although the organization has thousands of supporters in European countries, the hands-on training and indoctrination that it can provide in its small camps in western Pakistan, is crucial to its attempts to turn the merely radicalized into capable terrorist operatives.

Soberingly, Director of National Intelligence Admiral Mike McConnell in congressional testimony today stated that an "influx of new Western recruits into the [Pakistani] tribal areas since mid-2006" has allowed Al Qaeda to continue to improve its ability to attack the U.S.