Al-Qaeda suffered setbacks last year: US

The US government said Thursday that the Al-Qaeda network suffered "several significant setbacks" last year, while the number of Islamist militant attacks worldwide declined to just under 11,000. It said in an annual report that Al-Qaeda reeled under a Pakistani military onslaught, has lost many of its leaders, and has found it "tougher to raise money, train recruits and plan attacks" outside Pakistan and Afghanistan. "In addition to these operational setbacks, Al-Qaeda continued to fail in its efforts to carry out the attacks that would shake governments in the Muslim world," according to the State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism 2009. It also said Al-Qaeda has suffered from a Muslim public backlash as its militants and allies have staged indiscriminate attacks hitting Muslims in Algeria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, and elsewhere. "The number of conservative clerics and former militants speaking out against the organization increased," said the annual report which is required by the US Congress. "Yet despite these setbacks, the Al-Qaeda threat was more dispersed than in recent years, which partially offset the losses suffered by Al-Qaeda?s core," the report said. Its attempted Christmas Day bombing of a US airliner en route to Detroit showed "that at least one "Al-Qaeda affiliate has developed not just the desire but also the capability to launch a strike against the United States." That plot was determined to have been hatched in Yemen with the help of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a Yemeni affiliate. AQAP "has already shown itself to be a formidable threat to Yemen?s internal security, with attacks on the Yemeni security services, as well as a threat to Saudi Arabia," the report said. "Al-Qaeda's other most active affiliates were in Africa," it said. In the Sahel, in northwestern African countries like Mauritania, militants from Al-Qaeda the Islamic Maghreb abducted foreign nationals, sometimes with the help of area tribesmen and nomads. In Somalia, Al-Qaeda?s allies in the Shebab "controlled significant tracts of territory" while several leaders of the group "have publicly proclaimed loyalty" to Al-Qaeda. The State Department also expressed concern that Al-Qaeda and other Sunni militants have made converts of people in the United States. It recalled that five Americans from Virginia were arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of ties to militant groups, while Americans have joined the Shebab in Somalia. In a statistical annex to the report, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) said 10,999 terrorist attacks occurred in 83 countries, resulting in 14,971 deaths. In the previous year, there were 11,727 attacks worldwide, with 15,727 attacks, according to the NCTC. "This marks the second consecutive year attacks and fatalities decreased," the State Department said, summing up the NCTC report. "The largest number of reported terrorist attacks in 2009 occurred in South Asia, which also had, for the second consecutive year, the greatest number of fatalities," it said in a statement. "Together, South Asia and the Near East were the locations for almost two-thirds of the 234 high-casualty attacks (those that killed 10 or more people) in 2009," it added.