Critical Releases in Homeland Security: August 24, 2011

"Resilience was identified in the 2010 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) Report as one of three foundational elements essential to a comprehensive approach to homeland security; the report also defines Ensuring Resilience to Disasters as one of five missions of the Department. Members of the Community Resilience Task Force (CRTF) view those actions as a prescient prelude to the emerging national resilience imperative. The recent Presidential Policy Directive on National Preparedness (PPD-8) tasks the Secretary of Homeland Security to lead the charge in enhancing national resilience while also making clear the complex nature of this responsibility, which is shared with diverse stakeholders across the homeland security enterprise. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) clearly has an important role to play in building national resilience, but at its core, the resilience charge is about enabling and mobilizing American communities. The CRTF acknowledges that many relevant activities are already underway, particularly in fostering development of preparedness capabilities, but observes that those activities are rarely linked explicitly to resilience. Thus, the Task Force identified an urgent need for clear articulation of the relationships and dependencies between resilience and other homeland security efforts--particularly preparedness and risk reduction. Clarification of these relationships is crucial both to build shared understanding across diverse stakeholder communities and to motivate action throughout the Nation. A more integrated approach also offers opportunities to identify and leverage synergies across programs, enabling conservation of scarce resources."

"U.S. law requires the Secretary of State to provide Congress, by April 30 of each year, a full and complete report on terrorism with regard to those countries and groups meeting criteria set forth in the legislation. This annual report is entitled Country Reports on Terrorism. Beginning with the report for 2004, it replaced the previously published Patterns of Global Terrorism. […] Al-Qa'ida (AQ) remained the preeminent terrorist threat to the United States in 2010. Though the AQ core in Pakistan has become weaker, it retained the capability to conduct regional and transnational attacks. Cooperation between AQ and Afghanistan- and Pakistan-based militants was critical to the threat the group posed. In addition, the danger posed by Lashkar-e Tayyiba (LeT) and increased resource-sharing between AQ and its Pakistan-based allies and associates such as Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Haqqani Network meant the aggregate threat in South Asia remained high."