Agence France Presse September 4, 2003
Battered al-Qaeda relying on allies to keep up terror campaign
By PATRICK ANIDJAR
The al-Qaeda terror network has been forced to let smaller allies take up the war against the United States since its bases in Afghanistan were decimated in the military campaign unleashed after the September 11 attacks, US terrorism experts say.
The theory that Osama bin Laden's network needs increasing support from satellite groups has been confirmed by other groups claiming responsibility for recent attacks around the world, they added.
"Their infrastructure and capability are not at all what it was on September 10, 2001," the eve of the attacks against the World Trade Center in New York, and the Pentagon outside Washington, said Patrick Garrett of GlobalSecurity.org, a security consultancy.
"That's the reason they are more reliant on other groups," Garrett told AFP.
Al-Qaeda's infrastructure used to be based around camps in Afghanistan -- harboured by the former Taliban regime in the country -- which trained not only bin Laden's fighters but affiliates from dozens of other radical Islamist groups.
Garrett estimated that about 3,000 al-Qaeda members and their allies have been killed or captured in the US war on terrorism launched in around 100 countries after the September 11 attacks two years ago.
Marc Burgess, of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information (CDI) highlighted that US and Western intelligence services said the new scenario first came to the fore with the Bali bombing on October 12, 2002 that killed more than 200 people.
Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) claimed responsibility for that attack and its leaders are now on trial or being hunted.
According to Burgess, al-Qaeda has been forced to rely on such associates to cause damage even far away from the United States.
JI also claimed responsibility for the car bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta on August 5 which left 12 people dead.
Other extremists who follow the Wahhabi sect of the Sunni Muslim faith are beginning to infiltrate Iraq, analysts said.
The Takfir group operates in Europe and North Africa and is linked to hardcore factions of Algeria's Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
The head of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, attributed responsibility for an attack on Israeli tourists and an attempted attack on an Israeli airliner in Mombasa, Kenya in November to the Somali-Kenyan group Al-Ittihad al-Islamiya (AIAI).
The group, whose name means the unity of Islam, is on the US wanted list.
Other fundamentalist Islamic groups linked to al-Qaeda are also known to be operating in the Caucasus and in south Asia.
"Al-Qaeda is not centralized as they were. They are more scattered so they may not be capable of carrying big attacks in the short term. How long is it going to be the case? We don't know," Burgess admitted.
But for Charles Pena of the CATO Institute, although that approach is well founded, it does present a number of risks.
"Even if they are weaker and less capable, we shouldn't operate under that assumption, but under the assumption that they are at least as capable as they were September 11, 2001," said Pena, noting that the organization is an "adaptive" one.
"Maybe they are using this time to rebuild and regenerate their organization. The fact it's not al-Qaeda doesn't mean they are not capable." Pena said.
And he suggested al-Qaeda might be saving its strength to "focus on something else more directly against the US."
The sole certainty is that al-Qaeda is still an inspiration and a source of finance for these groups, and that "their objectives are exactly the same" as they were.
In the ominous words of al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a taped message dating from August 3, what the United States has seen so far is merely a foretaste of what is to come.
© Copyright 2003, Agence France Presse
