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| Capitol Hill: Michael Chertoff (l.), attends a Senate Homeland Security and Governemtnal Affairs hearing, "Confronting the
Terrorist Threat to the Homeland: Six Years after 9/11," with Michael McConne Jim Young/Reuters |
Al Qaeda: often foiled, still global
Bin Laden's network has not successfully attacked the US since 2001 but fosters worldwide support for its war of ideas.
from the September 11, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
But the debate on cable TV news might better have focused on bin Laden urging Americans to embrace Islam, says Mr. Scheuer.
In the US, that rhetoric might be rejected as silly; in the Islamic world, it could be seen as an offer that goes the extra mile. It might allow bin Laden to later say that he did all he could before he launched further attacks.
"From their perspective the world is going their way. It was a very confident speech," says Scheuer, a former chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden tracking unit.
According to the recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the terrorist threat to the US homeland, Americans will face a "persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years," driven mainly by Al Qaeda and associated cells.
Al Qaeda's leadership continues to plan high-impact plots, according to US intelligence, and will likely push harder to place operatives in the US.
"We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership," reads the NIE.
But the fact that as yet there have been no further attacks on US soil does say something about US defensive efforts, according to top officials.
"It is not the case that the enemy has not tried to attack us over the last several years," said Secretary of Homeland Michael Chertoff at a Sept. 10 Senate hearing. "We have disrupted plots in our own country."
Secretary Chertoff pointed to recent arrests that derailed alleged plots against Fort Dix, in New Jersey, and John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.
While it is true that Al Qaeda has rebuilt a central infrastructure in the isolated Pakistani tribal areas, that infrastructure does not match that which existed prior to Sept. 11, 2001, say terrorism experts.
Training areas are more limited. Communications with the outside world are more difficult. The operational environment is much more hostile.
But Al Qaeda central still has operational committees, and a central ruling council.
Osama bin Laden himself has not attended this council in two years, says Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University. Instead, it is run by his long-time deputy, Mr. Zawahiri.
Zawahiri now has placed key allies in charge of such crucial missions as communications with the outside world. He has engineered affiliations with radical Islamic groups in Algeria and elsewhere.
"He has become the driving force behind Al Qaeda, and is probably content that we are still obsessed with Osama bin Laden," says Mr. Hoffman.
Al Qaeda's rebuilt organizational capacity may be revealed by the recent arrests in Germany that alledgedly derailed a plot to bomb US-related targets.
Some of those arrested, including at least one native-born German, had traveled to Pakistan for basic terrorists training, according to German officials.
"A bunch of Germans don't just find their way to Pakistani training camps [without help]," says Hoffman.
But in the end, Al Qaeda's leadership may be most focused on the long term. Its biggest concern may not be with attacks per se, and their failure or success, but in spreading its ideas and maintaining ideological zeal among believers, says Brian Jenkins of RAND.
Measurements of progress don't matter, in this view. War is life.
For Al Qaeda, "this is a struggle against evil that it will continue until that evil is eliminated or judgment day, whichever comes first," says Jenkins, who has studied extensively the group's internal ideology.
Yet Islam's historical weakness has been lack of unity, and this is something the group's leaders constantly talk about among themselves. They may be worried about the depth of their support.
"They can inspire handfuls of young men to take a destructive ... course of action. But there is no mass response to their exhortations," says Jenkins.
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