The release last month of eight new documents, captured during the raid that killed Usama bin Laden, is allowing us to re-examine conclusions reached earlier about al-Qaeda (AQ). Two previous posts used the new evidence to look at the relationship between AQ’s leadership and affiliates, and at Bin Laden’s involvement in running his own organization. This post examines what the documents have to say about the complex relationship between AQ and Pakistan.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) offshoot Jamat-ul-Ahrar claimed credit for suicide bombings on two churches in Lahore, Pakistan. Ehsanullah Ehsan, the group’s spokesman, tweeted the claim on March 15 and stated that it had been carried out by the group’s “Aafia Siddique Brigade.”

The Islamic State (IS) has received dozens of official pledges from in Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Indonesia, and several other countries. Perhaps the most interesting—not to mention alarming—of its pledges has been from former Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and tribal leaders in the “Khorasan,” an old name for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

I argued in my last post that the Khorasan Group, as well as a series of developments throughout the al-Qaeda (AQ) network, suggest the return of AQ as a potentially serious threat to the United States. A number of events in South Asia, which might have been overlooked if not for the threat from the Khorasan Group, are especially illustrative of the depth of the problem that the U.S. and the world are facing in the AQ network’s resurgence.