Al Qaeda's veil begins to lift

Before Sept. 11, much was suspected, but little known about Al Qaeda. Investigations and recent arrests in Europe and the US, however, are now revealing a clearer portrait of Osama bin Laden's hydra-headed network of operatives and sympathizers.

"We are learning that many assumptions that we operated with are out of the window," says Richard Shultz, a terrorism expert at Tufts University in Boston.

Al Qaeda's level of organization is one of the biggest surprises for those tracking terrorist groups, who now recognize it as potentially a sophisticated, disciplined, and thorough outfit.

Thousands of men who passed through Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan have returned to their homes around the world. Many are believed to stand ready for action if called upon. Most of them are not full-fledged members of Al Qaeda, but belong instead to local groups with ties to Mr. bin Laden's organization.

"They are not micromanaged, but that does not mean they are not connected," says Prof. Shultz, whose work with US government agencies has given him access to classified material.

As more is learned about the international terrorist underground, he says, "we will see a much greater set of connections" between different groups, up-ending conventional wisdom of recent years in counter-terrorism circles that terrorist organizations were operating in less and less coordinated fashion.

Already evidence has emerged of Al Qaeda ties - financial and personal - to dozens of organizations in dozens of countries, from Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, through Kashmir, Chechnya, and Bosnia to Egypt, Algeria, and Somalia in Africa and to France, Spain, and Italy in Europe.

Sometimes such groups have made their alliance with Al Qaeda public, as when a number of them co-signed bin Laden's 1999 fatwa declaring war on "Crusaders and Jews." Sometimes they have tried to keep their relationship secret.

"They have not been subsumed into Al Qaeda" says Neil Partrick, a Middle East specialist with the London-based Royal United Services Institute. "They work with Al Qaeda," giving it "a degree of rootedness in their countries," which became clear in last year's attack on the USS Cole in Aden, and the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. "We are looking at a loose confederation with various assignments given to various groups," he says.

The failed 1993 bomb attack on the World Trade Center had long been seen as evidence that terrorist groups were increasingly amateur, says Prof. Shultz. Sept. 11 destroyed that perception.

It is now clear that the Sept. 11 attack was planned over as many as two years, coordinated, financed and put into motion from Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Germany and finally the United States.

"Al Qaeda engages in detailed planning and reconnaissance to the point of meticulousness" says Bruce Hoffman, a Washington-based terrorism expert with the Rand Corporation. One telling detail: In the final days of their lives, just before they flew airliners into targets in Washington and New York, the hijackers wired unused funds back to the man in the United Arab Emirates who had financed them, according to the indictment issued last week against Zacarias Moussaoui, an alleged plotter.

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