Extremists relocating to big cities to avoid drone attacks

WASHINGTON: Al Qaeda, Taliban and other militants have been relocating from the Tribal Areas to Pakistan’s overcrowded and impoverished cities, which is likely to make it harder to find and stop them from staging terrorist attacks, officials say.
Concerns are growing among US intelligence and military officials that CIA’s drone strikes are bolstering the insurgency by prompting radicals to disperse from the Tribal Areas into Pakistan’s heartland.“Putting these guys on the run forces a lot of good things to happen,” said a senior US defence official. “It gives you more targeting opportunities. The downside is that you get a much more dispersed target set and they go to places where we are not operating.”Moreover, the officials point out, the strikes by the missile-firing drones are a recruiting boon for extremists because of the civilian casualties.Windfall: The attacks “may have hurt more than they have helped”, said another US military official involved in counter-terrorism operations. The official called the drone operations a “recruiting windfall for the Pakistani Taliban”.As a result of the drone attacks, insurgent activities are “more dispersed in Pakistan and focusing on Pakistani targets”, said Christine Fair of the RAND Corp, a think tank that advises the Pentagon.US officials have long identified Karachi as the headquarters of the Afghan Taliban’s fundraising committee, and many top Taliban were educated at the Binori Mosque. An upheaval in Karachi would be catastrophic, they say.