Al Qaeda is under pressure to strike another "high-value" Western target and may be looking at attacking chemical plants or shooting down planes with surface-to-air missiles, a top German intelligence official said on Tuesday. "A substantial decline in activities in the next couple of years is highly improbable," Rudolf Adam, deputy head of German’s BND foreign intelligence agency, told a security conference in Berlin. "On the contrary, we would feel that pressure is mounting on al Qaida to reassert its effectiveness and its ability to strike another really big high-value target" in order to keep its "trade name" visible, he said. Adam said air transport remained a potential target, adding: "The next threat that we observe with great concern is the possibilities of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, so called MANPADs."
Adam said shipping, tourist sites and supply infrastructure such as oil pipelines, power stations, electricity grids and water supplies remained potentially at risk. "We have unspecified hints that plans have been made or are still under way to target the chemical industry and chemical infrastructure," he said, without giving details. Adam also said there was concern that al Qaeda might consider staging kidnappings - a tactic it has not previously used - as a bargaining chip to seek the release of prominent members captured during the U.S.-led war on terror. "We have some disturbing evidence that kidnappings have been planned," he said.
| Hezbollah seems to be having some success with the tactic... with German help. |
Adam said the "first generation" of al Qaida had been badly weakened in the war on terror, but even the capture or killing of its leader Osama bin Laden would leave behind a second generation of fighters, trained in Afghan camps, and a third generation currently being recruited. "The cancer has already proliferated into innumerable metastases," he said. |