LAT : Setbacks weaken Al Qaeda's ability to mount attacks, terrorism officials say

Setbacks weaken Al Qaeda's ability to mount attacks, terrorism officials say

By Sebastian Rotella | Reporting from Washington | October 17, 2009

As Al Qaeda is weakened by the loss of leaders, fighters, funds and ideological appeal, the extremist network's ability to attack targets in the United States and Western Europe has diminished, anti-terrorism officials say.

Nonetheless, Al Qaeda and allied groups based primarily in Pakistan remain a threat, particularly because of an increasing ability to attract recruits from Central Asia and Turkey to offset the decline in the number of militants from the Arab world and the West.

Al Qaeda's relative strength these days is of crucial importance in the complex debate in Washington over future U.S. troop levels and tactics in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Although factions within the Obama administration differ on how best to deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, all agree that the paramount priority is defeating Al Qaeda. Unlike the Afghan Taliban, the terrorist network Al Qaeda remains committed to a holy war against the West with a goal of matching or surpassing its devastating attacks in 2001.

Western intelligence officials say that the group, already under pressure from U.S. drone strikes and facing a likely Pakistani army assault on its sanctuary, has been further racked by internal division and rifts with tribal groups.

"Some pretty experienced individuals have been taken out of the equation," a senior British anti-terrorism official said in a recent interview.

"There is fear, insecurity and paranoia about individuals arriving from outside, worries about spies and infiltration," said the official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive topic. "There is a sense that it has become a less romantic experience. Which is important because of the impact on Al Qaeda the brand, the myth, the idea of the glorious jihadist."

Al Qaeda last spilled blood in the West in July 2005 when bombing attacks on the London transportation system killed 52 people. Global cooperation and aggressive infiltration by Western spy services have thwarted subsequent plots, and a stepped-up campaign of drone strikes has killed many Al Qaeda leaders and intensified divisions among extremist groups.

"There are tensions about AQ as an entity," the British official said. "It has embedded itself in [northwestern Pakistan] over the course of years with marriages, links to tribes. The drone strikes appear to be straining those bonds with the locals."

Some Arabs and Westerners still trek to the training compounds of Waziristan, though the numbers have shrunk as intelligence services get better at tracking and capturing trainees. British militants thought to have trained in Pakistan during the last year and a half number in the tens, not the hundreds, the official said.

French authorities say only small numbers of militants from France are going to Pakistan. Italian anti-terrorism officials have not detected any recruits from their country traveling to Pakistan since 2005 or '06, said Armando Spataro, a top terrorism prosecutor in Milan.

The dwindling supply of foreign recruits results partly from an ideological backlash in the Muslim world, experts say.

President Obama cited the debilitated condition of the terrorist network last week during a visit with U.S. counter-terrorism officials.

"Because of our efforts, Al Qaeda and its allies have not only lost operational capacity, they've lost legitimacy and credibility," he said.

The number of failed plots in the West, whether directed or inspired by Al Qaeda, also shows that the quality of operatives has declined, scholar Marc Sageman testified at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.

"Counter-terrorism is working," said Sageman, a former CIA officer and New York Police Department expert. "Terrorist organizations can no longer cherry-pick the best candidates as they did in the 1990s. There is no Al Qaeda recruitment program: Al Qaeda and its allies are totally dependent on self-selected volunteers."

In several recent cases, Western trainees in Pakistan allegedly had contact with Mustafa Abu Yazid, also known as Said Sheik, a longtime Egyptian financial boss. Abu Yazid acts as the day-to-day chief of the network while Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, spend their time eluding capture, said the British official.

The training and direction of Westerners had largely been coordinated by one individual: Rashid Rauf, a Pakistani Briton who died in a missile strike in November. Investigators believe Rauf was the handler of British operatives in plots dating back to a failed 2004 bombing in London.

A French trainee who confessed this year detailed to French police the relatively small size of the network. Walid Othmani, who is of Tunisian descent, said he trained in the Waziristan region with a mostly Arab contingent of 300 to 500 fighters, according to a French police report provided by a defense lawyer.

"The chief of the Arabs is . . . of Egyptian origin," Othmani told interrogators. "The Arab group is mostly people of Saudi origin. You find people from the Middle East, North Africans, blacks, Turks and a majority of Arabs."

Anti-terrorism officials said Othmani's estimate largely matches previous intelligence.

The French militant also described a trend that may signal a new threat: the rise of Turks and Central Asians.

"There's a big Turkish group, the Arab group [the smallest of the groups], two rather large Uzbek groups, a group of Uighurs from Turkestan [the region in China officially known as Xinjiang] . . . the largest of the groups," he said under questioning. "There are also two Kurdish groups and finally a mixed group led by an Uzbek."

Western investigators worry about the Uzbek-led Islamic Jihad Union. The IJU broke off in 2002 from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a longtime Al Qaeda ally.

The IJU has made a name for itself as a Turkic-speaking alternative to Al Qaeda for Turks and Central Asians. The Turkic groups produce Internet propaganda in amounts that rival those of Al Qaeda, and have threatened Germany because of its military presence in Afghanistan.

"For the Turkic groups, Germany is America," said Evan Kohlmann, a terrorism expert who works with law enforcement around the world.

The IJU also directed a group of converts and Turks from Germany who were convicted of plotting to bomb U.S. military targets in Germany in 2007.

An IJU video recently obtained by Kohlmann shows Germans training in Pakistani badlands along with a muscular man with a shaved head who brandishes an automatic rifle. The video identifies him as an American.

"Law enforcement is deathly afraid of these groups," Kohlmann said.

Recent attacks in Pakistan highlight other threats to the West. The bold strikes on military and government targets were blamed on joint teams of Pakistani Taliban and Punjabi militant groups, both allies of Al Qaeda that could protect or rejuvenate the network.

"The ties between Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban are closer and closer," Jean-Louis Bruguiere, a veteran French anti-terrorism magistrate, said in an interview. "Then you have the danger of other Pakistani networks like Lashkar-e-Taiba that have had complicity in the past with elements of the state. Al Qaeda might be diluted, but it could become part of a larger threat."

Two Americans with links to Lashkar were convicted this summer in Atlanta of conspiring with militants in Canada and Europe and filming prospective targets in Washington.

In contrast, the Pakistani Taliban, like its Afghani counterpart, rarely surfaces in plots against the West.

One murky case hints at the potential: the arrests last year of a group of Pakistanis in Barcelona, Spain. Then-Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mahsud allegedly sent would-be suicide bombers to Barcelona, shadowed by a Pakistani informant working for French intelligence.

The informant called in a police raid when the suspects allegedly said they were about to commit a suicide attack on the Barcelona subway. No explosives were found, however. Some French and Spanish officials said the imminence of the attack was exaggerated and the links to Mahsud, who died in an airstrike this year, were unclear.

Nonetheless, the alliance between Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban raises concern, Bruguiere said.

"Such ambitions by the Pakistani Taliban cannot be excluded, because they want to join in the global jihad," Bruguiere said.

rotella@latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Trak : Britain to help Pak establish MI5-like network

Britain to help Pak establish MI5-like network

ANI | October 2, 2009

Washington, Oct. 2 (ANI): Britain will assist Pakistan to set up a counter-intelligence agency on the line of British secret service, MI5.

BBC’s Richard Watson quoted senior British and Pakistani counter-terrorism officials as saying that British training and funding will be made available to the new security authority.

In the first phase, 200 experts will be employed in Pakistan, covering extremism and religious affairs, he said.

One of these will examine the alleged role in religious schools and radicalisation.

He added that there will be a new counter-terrorism strategy within six months, and research projects will be launched.

British intelligence has estimated that almost three quarters of terrorist attacks in Britain have their origins in Pakistan.

British experts fear that Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI could block progress, as it would want to remain in charge of terrorist investigations.

However, Pakistani sources insisted that the ISI is fully on board.

The Home Office declined to comment on funding, but said it strongly supported the move. (ANI)