Al Qaeda broken, but dangerous

Militarily, since October the US-led campaign to destroy Al Qaeda's stronghold in Afghanistan has involved 17 nations deploying a total of 16,500 troops to Central Command's area of responsibility, including South Asia and the Middle East. Coalition nations offered the US basing and overflight rights, help in hunting down Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and neighboring regions, and assistance in manning an Arabian Sea naval blockade.

The Afghanistan campaign killed hundreds of Al Qaeda members, while hundreds more were detained. Unknown numbers fled, some to Iran, and the majority presumably to the lawless border areas of Pakistan, according to Pentagon officials. "The activity in Afghanistan clearly instigated a dispersion of these people, which I think is much better than having them training and managing terrorist acts," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week.

While demolishing Al Qaeda's infrastructure and training camps in Afghanistan, the military campaign unearthed a trove of intelligence in the form of videotapes, documents, computer drives, phone directories, and terrorist manuals. Moreover, the 536 detainees now in US military custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba come from more than 40 nations – a demonstration of Al Qaeda's reach but also a boon for US interrogators seeking leads to foil plots around the world.

Indeed, the intelligence on Al Qaeda gleaned from Afghanistan has fed into a robust new flow of information-sharing and law-enforcement cooperation between countries around the world – both traditional US allies and nations such as Yemen and Syria with serious terrorism problems. Watching borders and conducting manhunts, the coalition has arrested more than 1,300extremists believed to be associated with Al Qaeda operatives in more than 70 countries.

The arrests have foiled some of the most serious known post- 9/11 terrorist plots.

For example, Moroccan police in Casablanca this month announced the arrest of three Saudis, members of an Al Qaeda cell plotting to attack NATO ships in the Strait of Gibraltar. The tip for the arrests came from US interrogators who were questioning Moroccan detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Pentagon officials say.

In another case, in May US agents arrested Jose Padilla – a former Chicago gang member with links to detained Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah – who was allegedly helping prepare a radioactive "dirty bomb" strike in the United States.

Moreover, a string of plots to attack US embassies and military installations from Singapore to Sarajevo have been prevented since late last year.

In February, for instance, Italian police arrested four Moroccans with nine pounds of cyanide and maps locating the water pipes running to the US Embassy in Rome.

The thwarted attacks suggest that remote Al Qaeda cells are hampered in their communications, logistics, and financing. The United States and 161 other nations have ordered the freezing of assets of terrorist organizations, with more than $100 million blocked so far.

Nevertheless, Al Qaeda has held onto significant assets by converting them to hard-to-track commodities such as gold and diamonds, as well as nonregulated banking systems, US experts and officials say.

"They can't talk as easily ... they have to reinvent a new logistics system – you are talking about building a business from scratch," says a US official. Stalked all over the world, the disparate Al Qaeda groups and their allies must also spend far more time on operational security.

A goal of the international counterterrorism effort is to learn enough about the capabilities and methods of terrorists to shift from a reactive "case-file" approach – essentially hunting down terrorists after they strike – to a proactive approach that uses key indicators to predict attacks before they happen. It's not an easy job.

"Terrorism is the archetypal shark in the water – it has to move forward to succeed," says Mr. Hoffman. "So it's a constant struggle. One can never relax one's vigilance."

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