Monday May 16, 2005

Fear is still the factor Al-Qaeda

ISLAMABAD: Being big in al-Qaeda is clearly not what it used to be, but the fear factor is.

While al-Qaeda's ability to inspire like-minded Islamist groups has grown, its own core members haven't succeeded in carrying off a major overseas attack since Sept 11, 2001.

So, when Pakistani intelligence caught Abu Farj Faraj al Liby two weeks ago, many people responded: “Who?”

There wasn't even a reward advertised for Liby, yet US counter-terrorist agents say he was successor to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the brains behind al-Qaeda's stunning strikes on US cities more than three years ago.

Al-Qaeda is still the biggest brand name among Islamist groups. Videotapes regularly released by leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri see to that.

“The inner core of al-Qaeda is intact, but as a group it's been degraded. Its survival depends on associated groups,” said Rohan Gunaratna, a Singapore based security analyst and author of Inside al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror.

“Linked to al-Qaeda” has become a catch-all phrase to describe any group that carries out an attack, and either declares admiration for Osama, announces a hitherto unheard of or distant affiliation to al-Qaeda, or has bona fide ties.

Last year's Egyptian Red Sea resort bombings and Madrid train bombings, the Casablanca suicide bombings and Istanbul synagogue bombings in 2003, a Kenyan hotel blast and the attack on nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia, in 2002 were all executed by local groups who identified with al-Qaeda's cause.

“What we are seeing is a lot more locally organised attacks,” Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism expert at the Congressional Reseach Service in Washington, said.

“Al-Qaeda has become more of an ideological organisation than an operational one,” said Gunaratna.

Most of al-Qaeda's energy is spent fighting on virtual home territory, with the insurgents in Iraq, through loyalists in Saudi Arabia and hard core remnants still hiding in Pakistan's tribal badlands after fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001.

On Saturday, ABC News reported intelligence sources saying a missile fired by an unmanned Predator aircraft had killed another senior al-Qaeda operative, Haithan al-Yemeni, on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border.

Pakistan says nothing happened on its territory, while the United States has maintained official silence.

Liby, as military commander and Number Three in command, was doing his best to make attacks happen in the West's backyard.

Plans for attacks on London's Heathrow airport and US financial targets fell apart last July when Pakistani police nabbed a computer expert who was relaying e-mails from Liby to al-Qaeda sleepers in Britain.

And Liby's main claim to fame was being named as the al-Qaeda mastermind behind two assassination attempts by Pakistani militants on President Pervez Musharraf in December 2003.

Counter-terrorist officials stress against underestimating al-Qaeda's threat, or its potential to draw a new generation of militants, battle-hardened by the Iraq insurgency, to its ranks.

But ousted from its base in Afghanistan, with hundreds of members killed or imprisoned and its bank accounts frozen, al-Qaeda is not the force it was – but it's still punching.

Some analysts say an Egyptian, Hamza Rabia, had more control over al-Qaeda's operations outside Pakistan, though US intelligence sources insist Liby's capture is the real deal. – Reuters

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