The shifting threat from Al Qaeda

The Economist has a good rundown of the latest intelligence about Al Qaeda and its altered post-9/11 state, reaffirming some points that Daniel Byman made a few weeks ago. The good parts version:

With most of its leaders probably now lurking in the wilder parts of South Asia, deprived of their radios and telephones by fear of detection, the group’s organisational function has shrivelled. Although Mr Khan’s activities suggest that al-Qaeda is still more cohesive and active than has often been said, its card-carrying members represent nothing like the threat they did when Mr al-Hindi allegedly cased the New York Stock Exchange in late 2000…. But in its second coming, as the battle-standard and the ideology for a generation of militant Muslim youth, al-Qaeda is scoring a nightmarish success. Witness the case of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian believed to be leading hundreds of Islamist militants in Iraq. While running terrorist training camps in Afghanistan ten years ago, Mr Zarqawi was Mr bin Laden’s rival of sorts. Now, wanted for the same $25m bounty as Mr bin Laden, he is routinely described as the head of al-Qaeda operations in Iraq. Noting this shifting role, Jason Burke, a writer on al-Qaeda, says: “Since 9/11, there’s been a rampant dissemination of al-Qaeda’s ideology, which, even if its capability has diminished, has made it far easier for the group to recruit individuals.” The result, Mr Burke predicts, will be fewer spectacular strikes, such as those of September 11th, and many more small-scale, more randomly directed attacks, such as this year’s bombings in Madrid. As in Madrid, these attacks will often be carried out by individuals who have only a passing contact with the al-Qaeda organisation, even if they claim to be members of it. For any American president hoping to claim victory in the war on terror, such an analysis brings both good news and bad. Massive, potentially election-wrecking attacks look less likely, though not impossible. On the other hand, it would no longer be possible to claim—as Mr Bush would doubtless like to be able to claim—that by knocking out Mr bin Laden, the war had been taken to its final round. Ironically, perhaps, a happier prospect for America is that if al-Qaeda should increasingly become the label of choice for all Islamic militants, its ire would be redirected towards an increasing number of local enemies, giving America some much-wanted allies. This process can already be tracked in Pakistan…. A very tentative conclusion is that while America is practising for another September 11th, the threat of Islamic militancy is becoming less spectacular, more general and more unpredictable. In short, it may be becoming more like the sort of insurgencies that Britain has fought during many decades. Accordingly, says Rand’s Mr Jenkins, Americans must learn not only to minimise the threat of al-Qaeda, but also to live with it. “Americans can’t be phlegmatic,” he laments, “there’s no question we’ve cranked up the threat. Whereas the Brits are capable of taking the long view, of seeing that this is a long-term problem, Americans look to do everything for short-term gain.” He argues that the American public needs to get risk-savvy, and the authorities need to find ways to handle the intelligence better, so that they can alert the nation to the threat of terrorism in a way that does not alarm people unduly. Such lessons will probably take another terrorist threat or two to master, but mastered they may eventually have to be. Because, as most al-Qaeda watchers agree, a quick end to the war on terror is very hard to envisage.