Author Description

This compilation includes a reproduction of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Since the findings of the 9/11 Commission were released in July of 2004, and even before, U.S. counterterrorism policy proffered a strategy to preemptively "attack terrorists and their organizations." Al Qaida (AQ), a violent extremist organization (VEO), is responsible for the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC). Due to U.S. military operations to oust AQ from the sanctuary provided by the Taliban in Afghanistan in October of 2001, several of its senior leaders fled and remain at large in the sanctuary of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan. Denying sanctuary in the FATA is a national priority critical to regional stability and global security. During this same period of time, however, the U.S. national strategy for combating terrorism and the U.S.'s zeal to capture or kill the high-profile personalities responsible for the devastating attack on the WTC led to well-intended, but misappropriated, resources and separate agency plans. These plans focused on targeting individuals as the way to defeat the "global insurgency" rather than targeting the strategic pillars of terrorist organizations and transnational insurgencies. Counterterrorism (CT) strategists and intelligence professionals have characterized AQ and its loose network of like-minded terrorist groups a "global insurgency."It was determined that both the United States Government (USG) and the Government of Pakistan (GOP) approaches are not sufficiently addressing the operational elements of sanctuary. Moreover, USG/GOP COIN methods may actually be perpetuating the insurgencies as evidenced by their growing disruptive activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan and their intentions for greater instability in the region. Further, it was determined that "whole-of-international-community" effort focused on reducing the operational elements of the FATA's sanctuary