Terrorist safe havens continue along Af-Pak border: US

The US today identified tribal regions of Pakistan and parts bordering Afghanistan as one of the top terrorist safe havens in the world "to conduct domestic, regional and global attacks".
"Portions of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, and Balochistan province remained a safe haven for terrorist groups seeking to conduct domestic, regional, and global attacks," the State Department said in its annual report on counterterrorism.
"Al-Qaeda, the Haqqani Network (HQN), Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Lashkar e-Taiba, and other terrorist groups, as well as the Afghan Taliban, took advantage of this safe haven to plan operations in Pakistan and throughout the region," the report said.

"Though they (Pakistan authorities) did act against TTP, Pakistani authorities did not take significant military or law enforcement action against other groups operating from Pakistan-based safe havens, such as HQN and the Afghan Taliban," the State Department said.
According to the report, several terrorist networks active in Afghanistan, such as al-Qaeda (AQ), the Haqqani Network and others, operate largely out of Pakistan.
"AQ has some freedom of movement in Kunar and Nuristan provinces largely due to a lack of Afghan National Security Forces' capacity to control certain border territories in north and east Afghanistan.

"During 2013, the Afghan government continued to counter the Afghan Taliban and Taliban-affiliated insurgent networks with AQ connections. The increased capability of the Afghan Local Police units helped to secure some rural areas that had previously lacked a Government of Afghanistan presence," the report said.

The State Department in its report described terrorist safe havens as "the ungoverned, under-governed, or ill-governed physical areas where terrorists are able to organise, plan, raise funds, communicate, recruit, train, transit, and operate in relative security because of inadequate governance capacity, political will, or both".
In Africa, the State Department identified Somalia, trans-Sahara and Mali as terrorist safe havens.
Other such regions identified by the report are Sulu, Southern Philippines, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Yeman, Columbia, Venezuela.