|
Al-Qaeda leadership still in control
Interesting article. I really doubt that Binny is actually living in Nangahar or Kunar or even NWFP. I've joked since Tora Bora that he's been staying in Fazl's guest house, though if pushed I'd say it's more likely Sami's. But with a shave and a haircut, a new moustache, maybe some spray-on tan, he's just another Arab. Even his lips aren't that distinctive â Mick Jagger uses the same set. So he's as likely in Lahore or Karachi as in Miranshah, and likely splits his time among them, when he's not traveling abroad.
When we were getting inebriated at the latest Rantapalooza, Seafarious remarked that we were at the end of a terrorism lull, which always seems to come before the storm. That was two days after the London booms, and now we see a Qaeda "offensive" unfolding. London, then London Act II â flubbed because the explosives went stale â and now Sharm el-Sheikh. I'm not sure if the Lebanon booms are part of it, since occasional booms are part of Lebanon's background noise, but it looks seriously like they're trying a sustained series of attacks on a wide front. The attempt itself implies centralized planning, even if they're using decentralized organization.
I'd also add that Pakistan has come to fill the void left by Afghanistan, which has become a sideshow. Karzai seems like he's eventually going to get control of the country, piece by miniscule piece. But it continues as a diversion, and if some equivalent of Hekmatyar in 1992 arises to institute another dog-eat-dog, then so much the better for Binny. Otherwise, tough nails for Mullah Omar. Pakland's maulanas have much more power than Mullah Omar. The training camps remain at Manshera and similar places. Rather than a single Taliban to link with, they have Jaish and Lashkar-e-Taiba and lots of domestic muscle to draw on from Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Harkat ul-Mujaheddin. Karachi's got better communications with the outside world than Kabul ever did, and there are the occasional fleshpots for those off-duty hours. So Karachi's terror central, and Binori Town is Karachi central.
I don't think Perv's crackdown is going to last very long, and I don't think the jihadi establishment expects it to, either. Given attention span drift, the heat will be off in 60 days at the outside, and most of those jugged will be back on the streets, selling the same old product. Then we can have another lull in six months, followed by another storm and probably even another Perv crackdown because the direction will have come from Karachi or Lahore but probably not someplace as isolated as Multan. |
The back-to-back nature of the deadly attacks in Egypt and London, as well as similarities in the methods used, suggests that the al Qaeda leadership may have given the orders for both operations and is a clear sign that Osama bin Laden and his deputies remain in control of the network, according to interviews with counterterrorism analysts and government officials in Europe and the Middle East.
Investigators on Saturday said that they believed the details of the bombing plots in Egypt and Britain -- the deadliest terrorist strikes in each country's history -- were organized locally by groups working independently of each other. In Sharm el-Sheikh, where the death toll rose to 88 people, attention centered on an al Qaeda affiliate blamed for a similar attack last October at Taba, another Red Sea resort. In London, where 52 bystanders were killed in the subway and on a bus, police have identified three of the four presumed suicide bombers as British natives with suspected connections to Pakistani radicals.
But intelligence officials and terrorist experts said they suspect that bin Laden or his lieutenants may have sponsored both operations from afar, as well as other explosions that have killed hundreds of people in Spain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Morocco since 2002. The hallmarks in each case: multiple bombings aimed at unguarded, civilian targets that are designed to scare Westerners and rattle the economy.
Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-07-24 |
