LAHORE – Pakistan has been declared the greatest threat to the West, with majority of experts thinking that the country is most likely to have its nukes end up in the hands of terrorists, according to a survey carried out by Foreign Policy (FP) magazine.
FP asked top terrorism experts to take stock of the threat posed by Al Qaeda and its allies. And while the majority of respondents believe that Al Qaeda is no stronger today than it was a decade ago, they also worry that “we are only slightly safer from terrorist attack than we were the day the Twin Towers fell”.
Interestingly, only two experts named Iran as the West’s greatest threat or as a nuke proliferator to terror groups. Does this signify the end of the neoconservative notion that state sponsors of terrorism like Iran are more dangerous than groups without state sponsorship such as Al Qaeda? There was widespread agreement that “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding are not effective, although there was something of an even split on whether closing the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay would improve US security.
Some of the most interesting insights came in the experts’ on-the-record responses. Roger Cressey, a National Security Council official under presidents George W Bush and Bill Clinton, characterised the CIA’s drone programme in Pakistan as “the most successful counterterrorism programme since 9/11”, while retired French counterterrorism prosecutor Jean Louis Brugi
