Al-Qaida has changed, but is still center of terrorism

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Its top lieutenants have been hunted down, arrested or killed, its rank-and-file scattered. But those charged with wiping out Osama bin Laden's terror network warn al-Qaida remains a pre-eminent threat.

The nature and structure of al-Qaida have changed radically since it carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed 3,000 people, terrorism experts say. Intense pressure, the ripping away of al-Qaida's safe haven in Afghanistan and the disruption of communications have turned what was a hierarchical machine into a looser conglomeration of like-minded militants.

"Al-Qaida as we know it today is not the al-Qaida that we knew prior to Sept. 11. It has metastasized," said Dan Mulvenna, a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies outside Washington. "The organization, post-Sept. 11, has been forced to rely more and more on the broader network of fundamentalist groups. In a sense, it has become a holding company for worldwide Islamic Jihad."

In Pakistan, al-Qaida fugitives are believed to rely on a network of support from deeply conservative sympathizers in the tribal belt near the border with Afghanistan, and officials say they've mixed freely with local Muslim militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

When CIA and Pakistani intelligence officials nabbed alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a dead-of-night raid on Saturday, they found him hiding at the Rawalpindi home of Ahmed Abdul Qadus, a member of the hard-line religious party Jamaat-e-Islami. The party is part of a religious coalition that swept to prominence in October elections, largely on the strength of an anti-American, pro-Taliban platform.

A Jan. 9 raid in Karachi that netted two other al-Qaida suspects was also carried out at the home of a Jamaat-e-Islami leader, Sabiha Shahid, raising concern about al-Qaida's links to hard-line Pakistani groups.

Inspiring movement

It is al-Qaida's continued ability to inspire the Islamic militant movement -- both in Pakistan and around the world -- that has many officials and analysts worried.

Pakistan has suffered a series of violent attacks on Westerners since President Pervez Musharraf threw his support behind the U.S. war on terror. And suspected Islamic militants fighting Indian rule in divided Kashmir have launched several attacks in India that have heightened tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals.

Ahmed said bin Laden's terror network suffered a severe blow with the arrest of Mohammed, but has the ability to find others to fill the void.

"A very big fish has been caught, but the problem is that there will be others to take his place," Ahmed said. "Al-Qaida is not so dead as some people are thinking. It is still a big threat to Pakistan."

There are still thousands of al-Qaida-trained militants around the world, and even the arrest of a leader like Mohammed will not disrupt every plot by every sleeper cell, analysts say.

Michael Swetnam, a counterterrorism specialist at the Washington-based Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, said al-Qaida now relies on a network of like-minded militant groups, some of which have direct links and some of which simply ascribe to the same anti-Western philosophy.

"There are, we think, about four dozen terrorist groups around the world linked with al-Qaida that share their organization and training," he said. "But there are many more that clearly associate themselves with al-Qaida even though they have no direct connection to them."

Analysts speak of a many-faceted threat. Several core al-Qaida leaders -- most notably bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri -- are still out there and likely can win over recruits.

But the explosion of anti-Western radicalism is of equal concern.

"Winning the war on terrorism has a whole lot more to do with winning the cultural war than it does with rounding up four or five individuals and getting rid of them," Swetnam said. "The idea and the spirit and the movement that has been created will not go away, even if you do get rid of the leadership."