Experts downplay role of al-Qaida

CAIRO, Egypt – The threats came in a blizzard around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks – a series of videos from al-Qaida’s No. 2 warning of more strikes to come.

But U.S. intelligence agencies and many private security analysts doubt al-Qaida or its elusive leader, Osama bin Laden, still maintain much, if any, operational control over far-flung terror cells.

They see no sign of a direct al-Qaida hand in a flurry of recent attacks, such as the assault on the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria, or the fatal shooting of a British tourist in Jordan. The French intelligence report that bin Laden may have died last month of typhoid merely highlights the uncertainty the West now has about any role he plays in the terror network.

All that means those videos may have been designed to frighten the West and inspire followers, but they likely lack any real punch behind them.

Bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are now “less like generals and more like talking heads, disseminating their violent ideology via satellite television in hopes of inspiring others to do their bidding,” said Eben Kaplan of the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York.

Not everyone agrees. There are ominous signs in Afghanistan that al-Qaida is trying to make an operational comeback as attacks, especially suicide missions, against U.S. and coalition forces increase.

Some experts also fear the absence of a major, Sept. 11-style attack simply means al-Qaida is taking its time to plan its next spectacular strike.

Still, five years after the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, many analysts believe the day-to-day threat from al-Qaida itself has diminished.

Paradoxically, however, the threat from Islamic extremists may have grown, becoming broader, more diverse and more complex, and thus harder to combat.

“The absence of a formal, single organizational structure has contributed to making the fight against this brand of terrorism more elusive and difficult,” the British think tank Chatham House said in a report this month, even as the videos were airing.

That view is also expressed in a classified U.S. intelligence report that says the Iraq war has increased the threat of terrorism by stirring up Islamic extremism around the globe.

After the U.S. and its allies ousted the Taliban in 2001, al-Qaida apparently transformed itself into an ideological movement of self-sustaining cells that operate with little or no central direction, many analysts and officials believe. That makes them difficult to track. It also increases the difficulty of determining whether any specific attack was actually directed by al-Qaida.

For example, British authorities insist there is no evidence al-Qaida directed the July 2005 suicide attacks on the London transit system that killed 52 people.

Nonetheless, one of the four British Muslim bombers appeared later on a videotape made before his death, declaring his allegiance to bin Laden. That tape bore the logo of al-Qaida’s production company.

“Al-Qaida is crippled and is certainly not the organization it was. Al-Qaida, however, has placed extra emphasis on inspiring other groups and trying to mobilize other groups,” the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, Henry Crumpton, told the Council on Foreign Relations recently.

Al-Qaida’s efforts to inspire appear to be focused on a worldwide wellspring of young, radicalized Muslims who share broad anger at the West, especially the United States.

But the goals, methods and targets of those far-flung radicals now vary widely. And not all extremist groups share al-Qaida’s vision of global struggle against the West, preferring in some cases to fight instead for specific national political aims.