Iraq war's impact on intelligence

The capture of Ramzi Binalshibh – a top Al Qaeda logistics and financial operator – is a textbook example of how Washington wants intelligence agencies worldwide to cooperate with the US.

Speaking from Camp David over the weekend, President George Bush hailed the joint Pakistan-US operation in Karachi last week as proof of a "relentless" US effort to "one by one ... hunt the killers down." (New Al Qaeda arrests in the US, page 2)

But a debate is emerging about the risks of losing such clarity of purpose – and key intelligence cooperation – as the US shifts its focus from the "war on terror" to a "regime change" in Iraq.

America's Arab and Muslim allies – including Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia – now provide important intelligence about Al Qaeda activities. But they publicly reject any US military strike against Iraq.

Experts largely agree that any attack on Iraq is likely to increase public sympathy for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups, especially if such an operation drags on and civilian casualties mount. But they are divided about whether it will help or hurt US intelligence gathering.

"This is like playing multidimensional chess blindfolded, and [the US] has to check mate on all levels of the game," says Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University in Scotland.

"Of course, the war on Iraq will have huge consequences on the war on terrorism," Mr. Ranstorp says, ticking off concerns about unrest on the Arab street, and a likely surge of anti-US feeling in the Mideast. "Some countries may not be as willing as they have been in the past to engage in this horse trading of intelligence."

That view is shared by Khaled al-Maeena, editor of the English-language Arab News in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Al Qaeda intelligence data could be withheld "as a sign of being upset, because the horrors and disaster could be immense if [the US] attacks Iraq," says Mr. Maeena. "The Iraq issue is very paramount, and Arab states might use any leverage they have to try to tell the US to go easy.... They may stop handing over Al Qaeda information to the US."

Maeena notes the Mideast maxim, "My enemy's enemy is my friend," to explain why support for Al Qaeda and other anti-US groups are likely to increase in the face of an Iraq attack.

On the other hand, it is that same dynamic that may keep intelligence cooperation alive, other analysts say.

"Those governments are as much the targets of Al Qaeda as the United States, We're all in the bull's-eye for Al Qaeda," says Frank Anderson, a former CIA Near East and South Asia division chief, who is now with Foreign Reports, Inc., a consulting firm in Washington. "For that reason," Mr. Anderson says, "nothing in my experience, either in government or since, would lend credence [to intelligence curtailment] as an issue."

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