Home pagePress CenterIn the Media Arnaud de Borchgrave, a CSIS senior adviser, published a commentary with United Press International, "Commentary: Pakistan's Terror Inc."
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Arnaud de Borchgrave, a CSIS senior adviser, published a commentary with United Press International, "Commentary: Pakistan's Terror Inc."
Most terrorist trails lead back to Pakistan, Britain's MI5 (internal intelligence service) concluded a year ago. An average of some 400,000 Pakistani Brits a year fly back to the old country for vacation or to visit their relatives. From the airports in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, where they land, side trips to the madrasas -- Koranic schools -- where they were originally radicalized, or to a terrorist training camp in the tribal areas that straddle the Pakistani-Afghan border, go undetected. There is no way to keep track of thousands of passengers arriving from the United Kingdom every day. Nor can MI5 cope with up to 1,000 a day returning to their U.K. homes from trips to Pakistan.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, German intelligence services were happy to report to their Western colleagues they had no such problem with Germany's 2.8 million-strong Turkish minority. Most of them are second- and third-generation German-speaking Turks long established and integrated in German life. This week a high-ranking German internal security delegation met with the heads of several U.S. intelligence agencies to explain how their comfortable assumptions had to be re-examined. German intelligence services have uncovered a direct al-Qaida link from Germany via Turkey to Pakistan -- for young radicalized German Turks.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions; accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in these publications should be understood to be solely those of the authors.
