Thank you for this article.
I'm posting some interesting info on Afghanistan to the LBO list soon.
Mark
>The key line in this story: "Classified investigations of the Qaeda threat
>now under way at the F.B.I. and C.I.A. have concluded that the war in
>Afghanistan failed to diminish the threat to the United States, the
>officials said. Instead, the war might have complicated counterterrorism
>efforts by dispersing potential attackers across a wider geographic area."
>
>In other words: our bombing of Afghanistan -- which reliable estimates say
>killed at least 1000 civilians, created a massive refugee crisis, and put
>drug-running warlord thugs in power -- not only failed to nail Osama bin
>Laden, but actually failed to even "diminish the terrorist threat," and in
>fact may have made the situation worse.
>
>Some of this new-found "intelligence" is undoubtedly hype designed to
>justify higher defense budgets. But the underlying truth is undisputable.
>What do the arm-chair hawks have to say to this?
>
>CK
>
>* * *
>
>June 16, 2002
>
>Qaeda's New Links Increase Threats From Global Sites
>
>By THE NEW YORK TIMES
>
>his article was reported and written by David Johnston, Don Van Natta Jr.
>and Judith Miller.
>
>WASHINGTON, June 15 - A group of midlevel operatives has assumed a more
>prominent role in Al Qaeda and is working in tandem with Middle Eastern
>extremists across the Islamic world, senior government officials say. They
>say the alliance, which extends from North Africa to Southeast Asia, now
>poses the most serious terrorist threat to the United States.
>
>This new alliance of terrorists, though loosely knit, is as fully capable of
>planning and carrying out potent attacks on American targets as the more
>centralized network once led by Osama bin Laden, the officials said.
>
>Classified investigations of the Qaeda threat now under way at the F.B.I.
>and C.I.A. have concluded that the war in Afghanistan failed to diminish the
>threat to the United States, the officials said. Instead, the war might have
>complicated counterterrorism efforts by dispersing potential attackers
>across a wider geographic area.
>
>The ability of the loose network to achieve deadly results was displayed
>Friday in Karachi, Pakistan, when a car bomb exploded outside the American
>Consulate, killing 11 people and injuring 26. No Americans were believed to
>have been killed. Pakistani officials warned of a new militant coalition
>with Qaeda remnants.
>
>Moreover, as Al Qaeda followers have fled Afghanistan, the old bin Laden
>hierarchy has been succeeded by tactical operatives with makeshift alliances
>with militant groups in countries like Pakistan, Egypt and Algeria.
>
>Since the Taliban defeat in Afghanistan, intelligence analysts say they have
>not regarded Al Qaeda as a spent force. But they have redefined estimates of
>its potency and reach, saying that the American-led war in Afghanistan badly
>disrupted the group's leadership and forced Mr. bin Laden and his top
>lieutenants to turn to new operational leaders.
>
>"Al Qaeda at its core was really a small group, even though thousands of
>people went through their camps," one official said of the bin Laden
>training camps in Afghanistan. "What we're seeing now is a radical
>international jihad that will be a potent force for many years to come."
>
>At least seven Qaeda operatives, whose important roles have not been
>previously disclosed, possess the managerial skill and authority to carry
>out attacks, officials said. They said the operatives have assumed a larger
>leadership role in place of the central command group, which was badly
>disrupted by the war in Afghanistan. Muhammad Atef, the military commander
>of Al Qaeda, was killed in American airstrikes last November; he was the
>most senior member of Al Qaeda to be killed during the fighting in
>Afghanistan.
>
>One terrorism suspect who is said to personify the changing threat is Khalid
>Shaikh Muhammad, a Qaeda member from Kuwait who authorities have said was a
>central organizer of the Sept. 11 attacks. He has been sought by federal
>agents since the mid-1990's in a failed plot to blow up a dozen American
>airliners over the Pacific Ocean. The presence of someone of his standing in
>carrying out large-scale attacks makes intelligence officials worried. But
>they say they cannot tell where, how and when such attacks might come.
>
>The six others include several Egyptian men who played a role in the bombing
>attack on two United States embassies in East Africa in August 1998. They
>also include Saif al-Adel, a Saudi who is believed to have a seat on Al
>Qaeda's consultative council, helping to approve attacks, including the
>embassy bombings.
>
>To track the more dispersed remnants of Al Qaeda and its affiliates, Robert
>S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, has created two analytical units within
>the new counterterrorism analysis division to focus on what analysts call
>the "international jihad."
>
>The current role of Al Qaeda's traditional leadership group and how much
>power its members have been forced to cede to their midlevel commanders is
>the subject of a debate among intelligence analysts about whether Mr. bin
>Laden is alive or dead.
>
>As months go by without evidence of his whereabouts, several senior
>officials said this week that they were skeptical that he survived the
>American-led bombing in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan last December.
>But he has dropped from sight for long periods before and, lacking proof,
>most experts remain unconvinced that he is dead.
>
>Several senior government officials said they had recently picked up a
>possible clue. In Afghanistan, Mr. bin Laden surrounded himself with a
>phalanx of fanatically loyal security guards, a few of whom have surfaced in
>other countries in recent months. Some experts say that if Mr. bin Laden
>were alive, his retinue of guards would have remained by his side.
>
>One official who has monitored Al Qaeda for years said some of the new
>central figures were drawn from the coalition that Mr. bin Laden assembled
>in late 1998 to help carry out his religious order to "kill Americans and
>their allies, both civil and military, in any country where this is
>possible."
>
>The International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, the
>umbrella group Mr. bin Laden founded in February 1998 in a training camp in
>eastern Afghanistan, included not only Al Qaeda, which had militants from
>many countries, but also two leading militant groups from Egypt, as well as
>Islamist groups from Algeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
>
>Some experts regard the formation of this alliance as Mr. bin Laden's most
>significant political achievement.
>
>To some extent, Al Qaeda itself was always something of a hybrid that staged
>not only highly structured, top-down attacks but also relied on affiliated -
>or like-minded - militant groups that concocted and financed their own
>schemes, with Al Qaeda's blessing, to strike at American targets.
>
>For example, Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian militant arrested in December 1999
>trying to enter the United States from Canada to detonate a bomb at Los
>Angeles International Airport during the nation's millennium celebration,
>was seen by investigators as a freelancer who was part of this broader
>network from which Al Qaeda recruited. Though officials say he trained at a
>Qaeda camp in Pakistan and received some help in Canada from the group's
>operatives, they say he did not clear either his specific target or his plot
>with Al Qaeda's leadership.
>
>Law enforcement officials said it remained unclear whether Al Qaeda directed
>more recent plots like the one ascribed to Jose Padilla, the American who is
>said to have met with Al Qaeda leaders for discussions about detonating a
>radioactive bomb in the United States. The officials said it was uncertain
>if Mr. Padilla, a former gang member, had the skills to build a bomb or
>acquire radiological material. Like Richard C. Reid, the Briton accused of
>trying to blow up a Paris-to-Miami flight in December by igniting explosives
>in his shoe, Mr. Padilla has emerged as a minor figure in sharp contrast to
>operatives like Mr. Muhammad, whom authorities regard as far more worrisome.
>
>Although sworn members of Al Qaeda were estimated to number no more than 200
>to 300 men, officials say that at its peak this broader Qaeda network
>operated about a dozen Afghan camps that trained as many as 5,000 militants,
>who in turn created cells in as many as 60 countries.
>
>Foreign intelligence officials said that even if Al Qaeda's entire
>leadership were eliminated, Western targets would remain at risk from the
>broader network posed by radicalized militants from the two major branches
>of Islam - the majority Sunni branch of the faith, and minority Shiites.
>
>"The Sunni Muslim threat will remain for the short-to-medium term," said one
>foreign intelligence official. "A significant proportion of them are from
>Egypt, Algeria and Somalia," the official added.
>
>Regrouping the Network
>Clues on the Web to Remote Sites
>
>Smiling as he lounged on a floor pad in what appeared to be a private home
>in Afghanistan, Mr. bin Laden seemed to be fully in control. Al Qaeda's
>leader, in a videotape released by American authorities in December,
>appeared intimately acquainted with the details of the Sept. 11 hijackings.
>
>On the tape, Mr. bin Laden said he knew that the suicidal nature of the plot
>was withheld from some of "the brothers" until just before the hijackings.
>Six days before the attacks, Mr. bin Laden said he was aware of the precise
>day and time of the attacks. And he said he was aware there would be
>multiple aircraft strikes at targets inside the United States.
>
>For intelligence analysts, the tape provided a critical piece of
>information. The video confirmed that Mr. bin Laden could communicate with
>his operational forces in the field. The depth of his knowledge indicated
>that he not only was an inspirational figure but also operated as a
>commander in chief who was responsible for the attacks.
>
>But since December, when the American-led raid at Tora Bora in northeast
>Afghanistan sought to root out one of Al Qaeda's last strongholds, Mr. bin
>Laden, as intelligence analysts put it, has "gone dark." Intelligence
>agencies have heard nothing from him for six months. None of their sources,
>electronic or human, have provided any clear indication of his fate.
>
>The fate of his terror network has been better understood. In recent months,
>Internet traffic among Al Qaeda followers indicates that elements of the
>network have regrouped - some in remote sanctuaries in Pakistan, government
>officials said.
>
>Some of Mr. bin Laden's midlevel commanders have turned to new Web sites and
>Internet communications as part of what officials have described as a
>concerted effort to reconstitute a terror network after the rout of the
>Taliban in Afghanistan.
>
>The Internet activity indicates that some of Mr. bin Laden's followers may
>have fled to villages in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, along the
>Afghan border, a sometimes lawless region. American officials now believe
>that some of these villages in Baluchistan could be serving as new
>sanctuaries for Al Qaeda members.
>
>Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he had seen
>indications that Al Qaeda followers had regrouped in the Kashmir region, an
>area disputed by Pakistan and India. Indian leaders have long accused
>Pakistan of harboring Islamic militants in Kashmir.
>
>The New Leadership
>Without a Chain, the Links Persist
>
>With Al Qaeda's leadership in disarray, at least seven Qaeda members who
>have specialized in organization and tactics have assumed a more prominent
>role within the loose coalition of remaining terrorist groups, analysts and
>government officials said.
>
>The officials said these Qaeda lieutenants have both the authority to
>initiate attacks and the ability to carry them out by providing cash and
>false documents to operatives.
>
>"The operators who are still out there - they are the ones that will conduct
>the next terrorist attack," a senior government official said.
>
>Intelligence and law enforcement officials say they now believe that Al
>Qaeda operatives like Mr. Muhammad are operating independently, out from
>under the control of the bin Laden chain of command, which may no longer
>exist as a working command structure as it did in Afghanistan.
>
>Besides Mr. Muhammad, who was identified last week as being suspected of
>having a major operational role in the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials
>identified six other people whom they view as the planners of new attacks.
>Officials said they were scattered among several countries to regroup the
>activities of what is left of Al Qaeda and operations involving other terror
>groups.
>
>"I'd sleep a lot better at night if these guys were off the street," a
>senior government official said.
>
>According to government officials, these are the key leaders:
>
>Saif al-Adel is said to sit on Al Qaeda's consultative council, the group
>that approves all terrorist operations, including the embassy bombings and
>the attack on the American warship Cole in October 2000 in Yemen. Mr. Adel,
>a Saudi, came to Al Qaeda as part of its affiliation with Egyptian Islamic
>Jihad. The United States government has been trying to find Mr. Adel since
>1993, when he trained tribal fighters to attack the United Nations
>peacekeeping force in Somalia, an operation that killed 18 American
>soldiers.
>
>Fazul Abdullah Muhammad is a native of the Comoros Islands, an impoverished
>archipelago in the Indian Ocean. Using the alias Haroun Fazul, Mr. Muhammad
>was Al Qaeda's chief operative in Kenya in the mid-1990's.
>
>Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah is a 37-year-old Egyptian who was one of five
>fugitives indicted in the two American Embassy bombings in East Africa in
>1998. Mr. Atwah was believed to have been in Afghanistan last fall, but
>American authorities said this week they do not know his current location.
>
>Mustafa Muhammad Fadhil is an Egyptian who the authorities said was an
>important organizational operative in Al Qaeda. Mr. Fadhil is believed to
>have rented the house in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where a half dozen
>conspirators made the car bomb that exploded outside the United States
>Embassy there, an attack that killed 11 people. Mr. Fadhil was also indicted
>in the embassy bombings case, but he has eluded capture. An American
>official this week said that Mr. Fadhil "was one of the most important
>people we are pursuing."
>
>Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, an Egyptian, has served since the early 1990's as a
>senior adviser to Mr. bin Laden, officials said. He was indicted for his
>alleged involvement in the bombing of the American Embassy in Nairobi.
>Cooperating witnesses have told the authorities that he conducted
>surveillance of the embassy three days before the bombing.
>
>Fahid Muhammad Ally Msalam, 26, is another Qaeda suspect wanted for being
>directly involved in the bombing of the embassy in Nairobi. Mr. Msalam, a
>Kenyan, is said to be the Qaeda member who bought the Toyota truck that was
>used in the bombing. Prosecutors say he packed it with explosives and
>transported it to the embassy. His fingerprints were found on a magazine
>that was inside a Nike gym bag that also contained clothing with traces of
>TNT, according to testimony at the embassy bombing trial last year in
>Manhattan.
>
>Senior government officials said that despite some Qaeda members who have
>been captured or killed, the organization still has the ability to initiate
>terrorist strikes.
>
>One official said this about the remaining goal: "It's body bags. That's all
>that matters to them now."
>
>Tracking the New Network
>Shifting Alliances of Militant Groups
>
>In May, not long after a suicide assault, also in Karachi, that killed 11
>French citizens, Pakistani intelligence officials told President Pervez
>Musharraf that some of the country's most militant Islamic groups had joined
>forces to carry out fresh attacks against American targets. Pakistani
>officials said they believed that the attack on the American Consulate had
>been carried out by a new coalition of organizations drawn from the remnants
>of Pakistani militant groups that were disrupted during General Musharraf's
>crackdown earlier this year.
>
>Officials emphasized that it was no longer possible simply to label all
>post-Sept. 11 plots as Al Qaeda inspired, because the new terror alliance
>has largely replaced the old bin Laden network. Senior government officials
>said this week that the Karachi bombing had been an example of the new
>broad-based coalition of various terrorist groups coming together for
>operations. "What many of these groups have in common, however, is that they
>had members go through the Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan," one
>official said.
>
>Investigators have also looked for clues of the remade terrorist landscape
>in both the attacks and the foiled plots since Sept. 11.
>
>At least six plots have been disrupted since Sept. 11. The first, on Sept.
>13, was a plot to destroy the United States Embassy in Paris. A French
>citizen of Algerian ancestry was arrested in Paris and told prosecutors that
>he was part of a Qaeda plot to blow up the embassy.
>
>In Singapore last December, the police arrested what they described as 13
>Qaeda members who were part of a cell that had prepared to blow up embassies
>of the United States, Israel, Britain and Australia.
>
>Earlier this week, Moroccan authorities said they had broken up a Qaeda cell
>that had identified NATO ships in the Strait of Gibraltar as potential
>targets.
>
>Two men, both tied to Al Qaeda, have been arrested since Sept. 11: Mr. Reid,
>the shoe-bomb suspect who was accused of trying to blow up a Paris-to-Miami
>flight on Dec. 22, and Mr. Padilla, the former Chicago gang member accused
>this week of beginning a plot to build and detonate a "dirty bomb" in the
>United States.
>
>Investigators say they see important similarities between Mr. Reid and Mr.
>Padilla. Neither man is the traditional Al Qaeda attacker - Mr. Reid is
>British, while Mr. Padilla is American.
>
>Although some government officials said Mr. Padilla's dirty bomb plot was
>only in its earliest stages, they said they were most struck that Al Qaeda
>would use someone like Mr. Padilla, whose American passport would allow him
>to enter the country with ease. "It's a very nice package for them to be
>able to move somebody - he has the clean passport," one official said. "We
>have some strong leads and ideas of where his support was coming from."
>
>In Mr. Padilla's case, investigators said the new leadership's resiliency
>illustrates a saying attributed by a senior official to Ayman al-Zawahiri, a
>deputy to Mr. bin Laden whose whereabouts are not known: "Zawahiri described
>Al Qaeda as a bunch of grapes - even if you manage to pull off one grape,
>you still have a lot more grapes left."
--