Evidence Suggests Al Qaeda Is Regrouping

W A S H I N G T O N,  June 18, 2002 -- What does a car bombing in Karachi, Pakistan, last week have to do with the arrest of some Saudi nationals in Morocco?

And what does the bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia in April have to do with a church bombing in Islamabad, Pakistan, in March?

Intelligence analysts say the events all point to one thing: the re-emergence of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network in a new and dangerous form.

Although it has been cut off from its former base in Afghanistan by Western military operations, analysts believe al Qaeda is now operating in smaller, more independent units around the world — and is just as dedicated to destruction as ever.

Loose Confederation of Terror Groups

In some ways, al Qaeda is actually more dangerous than ever, says Rohan Gunaratna of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence.

"This is the phase where al Qaeda wants to do a maximum number of operations and to show to their actual and potential supporters that al Qaeda is not dead," he said. "Al Qaeda is still active. Al Qaeda still retains a capability to conduct operations. So al Qaeda will do its best to strike a target to make its presence felt."

It will do that, experts say, by linking up with local extremist groups — like the one that claimed responsibility for last Friday's attack on the U.S. Consulate in Karachi.

Police in Karachi have questioned more than 60 people in connection with the bombing, but have made no arrests. They initially blamed a suicide bomber, but since they haven't found a suicide bomber's body, they now believe the bomb was set off by remote control.

Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABCNEWS they believe an Islamic extremist group and al Qaeda carried out the attack.

A loose confederation of groups is inherently more difficult for intelligence agencies to track, says former CIA Agent Robert Baer.

"Intelligence agencies do much better against hierarchies, against government structures, anything that's organized, an organization that keeps accounting, keeps lists of members, because you can go after the central information system," he said. "Now apparently there isn't one."

‘Like Hitting a Beehive With a Baseball Bat’

Baer said disrupting the hierarchy in Afghanistan has allowed al Qaeda to become even more dangerous today than it was in October of last year. But that doesn't mean the military operation was a failure.

"You had to cut off the organization at the head," Baer said. "But it's like hitting a beehive with a baseball bat. You know you destroy the beehive, but you still have the bees out there and they're going to sting."

Now, he said, the goal is to work with governments to get rid of the cells. "This is going to take a long time to do and this is by no means over."

Others say organizations like al Qaeda rarely have defined hierarchies the way a conventional army would, so the devolution of authority to the second tier has probably had little impact on the group's capacity for violence.

"If you don't have a real formalized structure it doesn't make as much difference," said Skip Brandon, a former FBI counterintelligence official. "The thing that's frightening is that major acts of terrorism that have been planned or approved are well under way. Their patterns for major acts have been surveillance, two or three years ahead of time. They do plan well and are very patient."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has repeatedly stressed the global reach of al Qaeda, emphasized the same point to reporters on Monday.

"They tend to plan well in advance of the actual event," he said. "And we keep doing things that disrupt their ability to engage in terrorist acts, but unquestionably, we're not going to disrupt them all."

Coalition Needed to Fight Terror

All sides seem to agree the United States cannot stop al Qaeda on its own and the cooperation of other governments is essential.

A case in point is the arrest in Morocco last month of five men believed to have been planning attacks on U.S. and British warships in the Strait of Gibraltar.

U.S. officials say the plot is coming to light now because Morocco wanted some well-deserved credit for cooperating. It began in February, when Morocco sent some agents to the detention center at the U.S. naval base in Cuba to help interrogate some of the 17 Moroccans who were being held there as battlefield detainees.

A number of them said a man named Zuhair had recruited them into al Queda. They could not remember his real name, but one of them remembered that his wife had been killed in Afghanistan and he remembered her family name.

From that, Moroccan police took over and eventually tracked down one of the Saudis and put him under surveillance in April. By May, they had detained and had arrested five of them.

"The good thing is, it demonstrates a friendly country like Morocco, using its police and its intelligence services, can close down one of these operations if it's vigilant," said Baer. "One bad thing is that not all countries are as capable as the Moroccans."

Baer said it would be just as easy to attack a U.S. ship from Algeria — and that government does not have control of its country. He said he's also bothered by Somalia and Yemen, where the governments have little control.

This all brings to mind the myth of the Hydra, the many-headed serpent of ancient Greek legend. If an attacker cut off one head, the serpent would grow back two.

And like the Hydra, it is possible that the vitality of al Qaeda is itself a myth: The recent spate of terrorist attacks, while terrifying and deadly, could be the last gasp of a desperate and dying organization. The alternative is more frightening — that the latest attacks are the stirrings of a new and more dangerous animal.