Australia's spy chief says al-Qaida is rebuilding
Al-Qaida appears to be strengthening its forces in the remote border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, despite recent offensives by US and Pakistani forces in the region, Australia’s spy chief said today.
Paul O’Sullivan, the head of the Australia Security Intelligence Organisation, said the rise in terrorist attacks and disrupted plots since September 11, 2001, demonstrated the extremist network was extending its ideological reach.
“Despite successful disruption activities, al-Qaida appears to be rebuilding both its organisational structures and operational capabilities from bases in the tribal regions bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan, and networks in the Middle East, North Africa and Western Europe,” O’Sullivan said during a rare public speech to a security forum in Sydney.
“However ill-founded and overwrought its world view, it is a learning and a teaching organisation, pushing the horizon for violent extremism,” he added.
Australia, which maintains some 900 troops in Afghanistan, is one of several countries blaming a recent rise in violence in the central Asian nation on increasing attacks by al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents hiding in remote camps along Pakistan’s rugged north-western border.
