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AT Monitoring Desk-KABUL: The US President Barack Obama said that Afghanistan, Pakistan, Middle East and some other regions might become havens for terrorist networks.
President Obama in his last State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress in Washington said that the United States’ foreign policy must focus on ISIS and al-Qaeda that pose direct threat to the country. “Instability will continue for decades,” he said, adding that parts of Middle East, Pakistan and some other regions would need US attention even more now.
“For even without ISIS, instability will continue for decades in many parts of the world—in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, in parts of Central America, Africa and Asia. Some of these places may become safe havens for new terrorist networks; others will fall victim to ethnic conflict, or famine, feeding the next wave of refugee,” he said, the National Politic Radio reported.
“The world will look to us to help solve these problem [s], and our answer needs to be more than tough talk or calls to carpet bomb civilians. That may work as a TV sound bite, but it doesn’t’ pass muster on the world stage,” he added.
In such a case the US “will mobilize the world to work with us, and make sure other countries pull their own weight,” Obama said, whose presidency is set to end in January 2017. “That’s our approach to conflicts like Syria, where we’re partnering with local forces and leading international efforts to help that broken society purse a lasting peace,” he added.
He added that both, Islamic State group and al-Qaeda terror organizations pose direct threat to the country.
“Both al Qaeda and now ISIS pose a direct threat to our people, because in today’s world, even a handful of terrorists who place no value on human life, including their own, can do a lot of damage. But they do not threaten our national existence,” Obama said.
“We do not want to echo the “lie that ISIL is representative of one of the world’s largest religions. We just need to call them what they are—killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed,” he furthered.
“With nearly 10,000 air strikes, we are taking out their leadership, their oil, their training camps, and their weapons. We are training, arming, and supporting forces who are steadily reclaiming territory in Iraq and Syria,” he said.
Obama asked the Congress to authorize the use of military force against ISIS, if it is serious about winning the war against the extremist group. He added that US would win the war anyway, with or without Congressional action.
“If you doubt America’s commitment – or mine – to see that justice is done, ask Osama bin Laden. Ask the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, who was taken out last year, or the perpetrator of the Benghazi attacks, who sits in a prison cell,” he said.
