Conflict 'may cut' role of al-Qaeda By Mark Huband in London, Victoria Burnett in Islamabad and Farhan Bokhari in Lahore
The US-led invasion of Iraq and signs of a resurgence of militancy among national Islamist groups may diminish the global role of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, security officials and political analysts say.
The al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's call on April 9, for Iraqis to resist the US and UK invasion by launching suicide bomb attacks, is not thought to have been behind the attacks of this kind that have killed several US soldiers there in the past week.
"We don't see al-Qaeda active in or around Iraq, even though indications are that it is certainly not dead and buried," said a senior intelligence officer.
Before the invasion of Iraq, security officials and intelligence services had adapted their counter- terrorism strategies to the possibility that al-Qaeda operatives would launch terrorist attacks in response to the actions of US and UK troops there.
So far this has not happened, in part due to waves of arrests in the weeks before the war. But while all law enforcement agencies remain convinced that al-Qaeda has plans for a big attack intended to be as devastating as those on New York and Washington on September 11 2001, the network's ability to carry one out now appears uncertain.
"Osama bin Laden may already have done his worst. What he has shown is what can be done, and whatever he does now he will never top the 11 September attacks," said a senior security official.
Some now regard al-Qaeda as having achieved its aims and as therefore more relevant for its mythical appeal than as a catalyst for action. But others are more dismissive, believing that the situation in Iraq has diluted its influence because of the breadth of Arab objection to the war, ranging beyond the Islamist camp it leads.
"I think there is no place for it in this situation, because I don't think al-Qaeda ever really captured the imagination of the Arab people," said Basheer Nafi, a writer on Islamic affairs. "September 11 exaggerated al-Qaeda's importance. But I think it was a fluke and was not really about the reality of history. Bin Laden now has no place in the situation in Iraq."
In response to the efforts to destroy it, al-Qaeda activists have drawn closer to like-minded Islamist groups - notably in Pakistan. Intelligence officials have said several known al-Qaeda operatives are also living in Iran, while others have returned to their home countries in the Middle East.
But deprived of its Afghan base, al-Qaeda is less useful to individual groups ranging from Indonesia to Algeria, from which it drew its support. These groups are now thought likely to re-emerge as the terrorist threat, a senior intelligence official said.