US multinational companies wary of backlash

As the war with Iraq winds down and with it the momentum for a global consumer boycott of US products, companies like McDonald's and Coca-Cola should be breathing a sigh of relief.

But a bomb blast at a McDonald's in Istanbul, Turkey, on April 15 showed that new threats are emerging. One of them is possible small-scale terror attacks on poorly protected US symbols like the ubiquitous American franchises that are easy and inexpensive to bomb, say security analysts.

Call it fast-food terror. Al Qaeda has been disrupted since Sept. 11, 2001, and traditional targets like embassies and US bases have grown harder to hit. So American franchises have found themselves at risk as convenient "soft" targets for terror groups.

To millions around the world, the "golden arches" and Colonel Sanders are more recognizable symbols of the US than the Stars and Stripes. But now that identification is becoming a double-edged sword.

Since Sept. 11, McDonald's and other franchises have been hit by a rash of small bombings in the far-flung and sometimes chaotic markets they entered during the economic expansion of the 1990s.

There have been bomb attacks in Saudi Arabia, Moscow, Beirut, and Xian, China, and three bombs in Istanbul. KFC outlets have been bomb targets in Indonesia, Lebanon, Greece, and Pakistan. A Pizza Hut was bombed in Lebanon.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the latest Istanbul attack, which did extensive damage but injured no one.

But all of the other attacks have been linked to militant Islamic groups, and analysts say that was likely the motive in Turkey as well.

Though some of these groups have tenuous ties to Al Qaeda, these small-scale operations appear to be locally planned and executed, which analysts say is an emerging trend.

"There are people who are very, very angry at the US and they retain the ability to strike,'' says Dr. Achmad Abdi, the director of criminal investigations for the South Sulawesi provincial police department in Indonesia. "This remains a dangerous period."

A McDonald's here in South Sulawesi's capital, Makassar, was bombed by a militant group with ties to Al Qaeda last December, and Mr. Abdi is leading the investigation.

Suspects like Muchtar Daeng Lau - who acted as a logistics organizer - targeted McDonald's because of what it stands for, he says. "[The suspects] give a lot of reasons for the attack, but one of the top ones is that they simply hate America,'' he says. "They mentioned the war in Afghanistan and America's [attack on] against Iraq."

The 13 McDonald's bombers, says Abdi, have links to a militia group called Laskar Jundullah.

The Laskar Jundullah, in turn, has ties to the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), an affiliate of Al Qaeda that has been blamed by US and Indonesian investigators for a string of terrorist incidents in Southeast Asia.

The leader of Laskar Jundullah, Agus Dwikarna, was sentenced to 10 years in jail in the Philippines last year for explosives possession, and many JI members have been rounded up since last year's attack on a nightclub in Bali.

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