Australia envoy: Terrorism to affect regions so far immune

Ambassador Gary Francis Quinlan, of Australia, the chairman of the UN Security Council Committee concerning Al-Qaida and associated individuals and entities, on Wednesday said some countries face the risk of terrorism even though they have been immune to so far. Addressing the Council, Quinlan said "some States that have not yet been the victims of terrorism face many of the same risk factors as countries that have." He said the "major lesson" learned during the last eleven months is that AI-Qaida and its affiliates have already evolved in several regions. "No longer is the threat anchored primarily in a global A1-Qaida Organisation, but revolves around a range of increasingly heterogeneous franchises that are themselves continually evolving, with the recruitment of younger fighters and increased mobility across borders," he noted. He explained that A1-Qaida has "effectively adapted to local conflicts and mobilised local affiliates that -- support the broader AI-Qaida ideology." He indicated that terrorist propaganda on the Internet continues to grow in sophistication and reach, and is contributing to the problem of self-radicalization. Asymmetric tactics and complex, simultaneous multi-strike attacks used by small but highly mobile A1-Qaida units draw strength from a "close understanding of regional weaknesses, such as vast and porous borders," he argued. Quinlan quoted the Committee's Monitoring Team which said in its recent report that there are operational contacts between terrorist entities in eastern Libya and AI-Qaida affiliates in the Sahel, the Maghreb, the Middle East and South Asia, as well as training camps in Libya to which many foreign fighters travel before heading elsewhere to fight. In response to those findings, he said, the Committee has listed on its sanctions list both Muhammad Jamal Abd-A1 Rahim Ahmad A1-Kashif and his Muhammad Jamal Network (MJN), responsible for establishing terrorist training camps in Egypt and Libya, and their reported involvement in the attack on the US Mission in Benghazi, Libya, in September, 2012. Meanwhile, he said, the continuing civil war in Syria has seen the emergence of a strong A1-Qaida presence drawing from A1-Qaida in Iraq under the name Jabhat al-Nusra, attracting hundreds of recruits from outside Syria.