June 12, 2013
C. Christine Fair
Assistant Professor, Georgetown University
http://home.comcast.net/~christine_fair/pubs/LeT_Fair_6_11_2013.pdf
Conclusions
In short, while you consider the specific threat that LeT poses to the United States and its interests, I encourage you to expand the aperture of your query to look not only at this group but other Islamist militant groups based in Pakistan. While they may not be well situated to recruit and train a Pakistani to operate here, the diaspora seems a ready source of potential persons who are so situated.
I also encourage you to look pro-actively at the activities of the ISI and its henchpersons here in the United States to intimidate Americans and others to acquiesce to their insidious demands and to cultivate information that is favorable to the Pakistani state.
While most persons recognize that working with Pakistan is necessary due to its importance in wrapping up military operations in Afghanistan, I sincerely hope that after 2014 the United States will look very closely at Pakistan and evaluate that state’s contribution to the degradation of U.S. security interests in South Asia and beyond.
I hope that there will be a serious inquiry about the numbers of Americans and American allies in Afghanistan whose deaths and injuries can be attributed to the ISI’s ongoing support to the Taliban and their allies, despite continuing to benefit from U.S. financial assistance and military sales. In this regard, I was dismayed to learn that the State Department quietly issued a range of waivers that permitted all forms of security cooperation and military sales to proceed as if Pakistan has been a faithful, cooperative ally deserving of such emoluments.
Oddly no American news outlet covered this quiet relaxation of U.S. laws and requirements for a country that so brazenly undermines U.S. interests.
Finally, while considering the threat that specific religious, ideological and expatriate communities pose to Americans’ safety, I strongly urge you to examine the structural features of our society that makes violence relatively easy to perpetrate on a large scale, including the ready availability of weaponry as
well as continued problems in the inter-agency data puzzle that allow some persons with ill-intent to slip into the country without detection until they do something deadly.
US House of Representatives
Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Counterterrorism
and Intelligencehttp://home.comcast.net/~christine_fair/pubs/LeT_Fair_6_11_2013.pdf
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