Scattered Al Qaeda harder to target

The portrait of Al Qaeda emerging one week after some of the worst terrorist bombings since 9/11 is of a group that is decentralizing and setting up bases of operation in new regions - to the considerable detriment of antiterror efforts.

Although President Bush has said at least half of Al Qaeda's leadership has been removed, many experts think it's the less important half and that the organization is becoming more active in exploiting local conflicts as well as plotting new attacks.

In the end, the US military's disruption of Al Qaeda's base of operations in Afghanistan has had the result of forcing remnants of the organization to fan out around the world, making it harder for US intelligence officials to track cells and foil hits.

"The US intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan increased the speed of Al Qaeda's decentralization," says Rohan Gunaratna, an expert on terror and author of "Inside Al Qaeda." "We saw experts in intelligence and organization, financiers, military trainers from the corps in Pakistan and Afghanistan moving to ... Mindanao [in the Philippines], Kashmir, Bangladesh, Somalia, Algeria, Yemen, Chechnya, and the Pankisi Valley in Georgia."

From these centers, officials and experts say, Al Qaeda is not only able to inject itself into regional conflicts, hijacking the goals and foot soldiers of radical Islamist groups. Its adherents are also able to carry out planning, training, and recruiting efforts for additional attacks.

The diffused nature of the network and its ability to remold itself is one reason behind the growing number of warnings that are now surfacing about possible new Al Qaeda strikes.

Tuesday, the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia announced that some of its Saudi missions will be closed for the next few days because of imminent threats.

At the same time, Tom Ridge, secretary of Homeland Security, says he is considering raising the US terror threat level from elevated to high because of intelligence that the US might be the target of a new hit.

"There is a chatter, and a high level of chatter both regionally and in other international spots," Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the US, told reporters in Riyadh Monday night. He went on to say that his "gut feeling is that something big will happen either in Saudi Arabia or America."

To be sure, some analysts caution against seeing Al Qaeda under every bed. In some respects, the organization has become the new El Niño - blamed for everything short of the Red Sox loss to the Yankees Monday night.

But terrorism experts note that by reconstituting itself and setting up smaller bases in new countries, the group has become more dangerous and difficult to stop.

"Al Qaeda is constantly moving forward, changing direction," says Bruce Hoffman, an expert on terror at the RAND Corp. in Washington. "You don't just want to keep up with it, you want to get one step ahead. But that's very difficult."

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