Qaeda’s training area in Pakistan is ‘the most dangerous spot on the map’

The lawless area between Pakistan and Afghanistan – where an Afghan terror suspect arrested in Denver admitted he was trained by Al Qaeda – has been called “the most dangerous spot on the map.”

If the United States suffers another 9/11-style attack, experts expect it will be born there, in the region known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

“If the United States is going to get hit, it’s going to come out of the planning that the [Al Qaeda] leadership in the FATA is generating,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in June 2008.

A Center for Strategic and International Studies report this year described the area as a “witches’ brew of terror and militancy” that is now ground zero of the U.S. war against extremism.

About 3 million Pashtun tribesmen – along with 1 million Afghan refugees – live in the FATA region, which is roughly the size of Massachusetts. Chief terror suspect Najibullah Zazi and his father, Mohammed Zazi, also under arrest, are Pashtuns from there.

There are no cities and few towns. It is primarily a wild, rural and lawless existence. The region is nominally controlled by Pakistan – which complicates U.S. military operations there – but experts say it’s actually under the sway of Taliban militants and Pashtun warlords.

They have readily given Al Qaeda terrorists who were pushed out of Afghanistan a new base to train and plot. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was once believed to be hiding in North Waziristan, one of the seven tribal areas that make up FATA.

Najibullah Zazi allegedly admitted to the FBI that during a trip to visit his wife in Pakistan in August 2008, he went to the tribal regions for Al Qaeda training. He “admitted that he received instruction from Al Qaeda operatives on subjects such as weapons and explosives,” the complaint says.

At that same time, President George W. Bush dramatically stepped up CIA drone strikes in the FATA.

President Obama kept up the pressure. There have been about 70 Hellfire missile strikes this year against Al Qaeda operatives in the FATA, including one that targeted a son of Bin Laden in July.

Supporter of hard-line Islamic parties brandishes assault rifle in rally in Pakistan near Peshawar.

Popularity: 1% [?]