Country Reports on Terrorism 2012

Though the AQ core is on a path to defeat, and its two most dangerous affiliates have suffered
serious setbacks, tumultuous events in the Middle East and North Africa have complicated the
counterterrorism picture. The dispersal of weapons stocks in the wake of the revolution in Libya,
the Tuareg rebellion, and the coup d’état in Mali presented terrorists with new opportunities. The
actions of France and African countries, however, in conjunction with both short-term U.S.
support to the African-led International Support Mission to Mali and the long-term efforts of the
United States via the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, have done much to roll back
and contain the threat.
In Libya, the security vacuum in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution provided greater
opportunity for terrorists to operate. This vacuum, combined with the weakness of Libya’s
nascent security institutions, allowed violent extremists to act, as we saw too clearly on
September 11 in Benghazi, when J. Christopher Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, and
three staff members, died during attacks on U.S. facilities.
In Syria, AQI seeks to establish a long-term presence under the pseudonym of al-Nusrah Front.
The Nusrah Front has denounced the Syrian Opposition Coalition’s founding, rejected the vision
statement that the opposition issued in Cairo, and says it is fighting to establish an Islamic
caliphate encompassing the entire Levant.
In Gaza, a sharp increase in the number of rocket attacks launched by Hamas and other Gazabased
violent extremist groups led Israel to launch Operation Pillar of Defense in November
2012. During the course of the eight day operation, Israeli forces targeted more than 1,500
terrorist sites. Since the Egypt-brokered November 21 ceasefire, the United States has engaged
with our Egyptian and Israeli counterparts to strengthen and sustain the peace.
In West Africa we are seeing a loosely-organized collection of factions known as Boko Haram
(BH) – some of them with ties to AQIM – exploiting the grievances of northern Nigerians to
gain recruits and public sympathy. The number and sophistication of BH’s attacks are increasing,
and while the group focuses principally on local Nigerian issues and actors, there are reports that
it is developing financial and training links with transnational violent extremists.
The year 2012 was also notable in demonstrating a marked resurgence of Iran’s state sponsorship
of terrorism, through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), its
Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), and Tehran’s ally Hizballah. Iran and Hizballah’s
terrorist activity has reached a tempo unseen since the 1990s, with attacks plotted in Southeast
Asia, Europe, and Africa. On February 5, 2013, the Bulgarian government publically implicated
Hizballah in the July 2012 Burgas bombing that killed five Israelis and one Bulgarian citizen,
and injured 32 others. On March 21, 2013, a Cyprus court found a Hizballah operative guilty of
charges stemming from his surveillance activities, carried out in 2012, of Israeli tourist targets,
while Thailand was prosecuting a Hizballah member for his role in helping plan a possible
terrorist attack in that country. The IRGC-QF is suspected of directing planned terrorist attacks
in Georgia, India, Thailand, and Kenya in 2012, and is also implicated in a 2011 plot to
assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States in Washington, DC. And both Iran and
Hizballah are providing a broad range of critical support to the Asad regime, as it continues its
brutal crackdown against the Syrian people.
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