Al Qaeda broken, but dangerous

Al Qaeda trainees are no longer in Afghanistan learning by the thousands to build bombs or hijack planes. Osama bin Laden, if alive, is incommunicado, hampered from plotting new attacks. His operations czar, Abu Zubaydah, is in US custody, and talking. His military chief, Mohammed Atef, is presumed dead.

In short, Al Qaeda Central is no more. Its home turf is gone. Its command structure is broken. Its brazen freedom to recruit, communicate, and plan – and to raise funds – has been sharply curtailed.

There's just one problem: Al Qaeda is reinventing itself. Just as a frail mother spider sends hundreds of young creeping to the far reaches of her web, Al Qaeda's core mission – to wage jihad on Americans and their allies – lives on through its cells and links to radical Islamic groups already dispersed around the globe.

From Morocco to Pakistan, a string of recent terrorist actions – whether actual attacks or thwarted plots – demonstrate the resilience of the broader Al Qaeda network and groups sympathetic to its cause. Indeed, in an audiotape aired yesterday by the Al-Jazeera satellite TV network, bin Laden's spokesman, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, claimed that bin Laden and his No. 2 man, Ayman Al-Zawahri, are both alive and well and their network is ready to attack new US targets.

"Some affiliated or like-minded group still has the capacity to carry out attacks and inflict pain on the US under Al Qaeda's banner," says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and director of the Rand Corporation's Washington office.

New revelations about the network – the depth of its ranks and its ties to "franchise" terrorists in up to 70 countries – shows that "the intent [of international jihad] has not gone away," one US official says. To a terrorist, such an intent may be further fueled by the spectacular nature of the Sept. 11 attacks and a desire for revenge for the Afghanistan campaign.

As a result, Americans must gird themselves for a war against an ever-changing enemy. "This is a campaign that in some ways will never be over," says Michelle Flournoy, a terrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here. "This is about risk management, about reducing the likelihood and severity of attacks to a level we can live with."

In a positive sign, recent attacks have been mainly small-scale, poorly planned bombings, suggesting the perpetrators lack the skill and backing of the Sept. 11 hijackers. For example, a car bombing that killed 11 Pakistanis outside the US Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan last week represented a "quick, non-rehearsed, unsophisticated attack," says a US official. "With a little planning, it could have been a lot more effective."

Other plots appear to be the work of "freelance" terrorists linked to Al Qaeda, such as alleged shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who was arrested when he tried to blow up a Paris to Miami flight in December.

Nevertheless, experts warn that several highly experienced operatives capable of orchestrating mass casualty attacks remain at large – and may be stepping into Al Qaeda's leadership void. These include men wanted for playing key roles in the bombings of US embassies in East Africa in 1998, such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, a Kuwaiti indicted as a financier of the bombings, as well as Egyptians Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah and Muhsin Musa Matwall Atwah.

Moreover, the lack so far of a large-scale strike is no cause for complacency, experts say, because under bin Laden such attacks were often years in the making, with the preparation for Sept. 11 lasting three years. Typically, a series of plots were pursued on different tracks at the same time.

"If you're throwing darts at the board, eventually something is going to get through," says a US intelligence official. "They're very patient."

Yet if Al Qaeda is proving flexible and adaptive, the US-led anti-terrorism coalition is adjusting, too.

The multifaceted international crackdown on terrorism since Sept. 11 has given US and coalition officials their best understanding yet of Al Qaeda's diffuse, parasitic nature. The unprecedented combination of military, intelligence, law-enforcement, and financial actions has put intense pressure on Al Qaeda and its cells and affiliates.

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