Agence France Presse October 15, 2002
Weakened al-Qaeda delegates to small Islamic groups
By PATRICK ANIDJAR
The al-Qaeda terrorist network, forced to reorganize following US-led raids on its Afghan training camps, has delegated responsibility to smaller Islamic groups, experts say.
As investigators hunt for those responsible for a bloody bombing at a Bali nightclub, authorities also are trying to link the small Indonesian-based Muslim group Jama'a Islamiya to al-Qaeda.
John Pike, an expert on terrorism and director of the website globalsecurity.org, believes the recent attack, which left nearly 200 foreign tourists dead, is a product of the al-Qaeda new tactic. "After September 11, we thought the world will be different. We were wrong. I think al-Qaeda had one good plan. They used it last year, that plan will probably be unusable today," he warned.
Al-Qaeda these days would be working in small, discreet cells in locations around the world, on small strikes such as the club bombing in Bali.
The network now, he said, would not be up to something on the scale of flying commercial jets in to skyscrapers as they did on September 11, 2001.
"To strike, these small groups don't need a lot of money, a lot of centralized coordination," Pike said.
Which is why, he continued, "they won't need to spend two years to prepare their attacks. It will be difficult to prevent, difficult to stop."
According to The New York Times, the ramifications of an al-Qaeda with small tentacles worldwide -- in as many as 60 countries according to US authorities -- are just beginning to be felt.
"More often, the extremists are linked by a common ideology without direct ties to Al-Qaeda," the daily said, citing anonymous US and European intelligence sources.
The trend is such that some Federal Bureau of Investigation officials now avoid naming al-Qaeda, referring instead to a "radical international movement pursuing the United States and its allies."
Matt Levitt, a former FBI agent in anti-terrorism, said: "The message has gone out that they (these small groups) can conduct attacks on their own.
"We have the remaining radical elements that are still out there and that will try to unleash new strikes."
"They don't have any longer to go back to Afghanistan to get permission to strike," Levitt added.
Experts believe that before the September 11 attacks, al-Qaeda acted as a kind of "umbrella" organization, gathering many different groups into fixed objectives.
"Today, they don't have any more control by an outside leadership," Levitt said, underlining that he believes all the groups are now acting independently.
The Washington Post recently said predicted al-Qaeda attacks in the near future would be "rudimentary, smaller scale operations.
"While the strategy may be a sign of weakness, the simplicity of these attacks might make them more difficult to predict and prevent," the daily said.
Copyright 2002 Agence France Presse
