Al Qaeda is a wounded but dangerous enemy: report

Analysts say group has shifted tactics to focus on small-scale operations that are far harder to detect and disrupt




Daily Times Monitor




LAHORE: New assessments of Al Qaeda by the top US counter-terrorism experts offer grounds for both optimism and concern a year after US President Obama took office, but warn that the Al Qaeda is a wounded but dangerous enemy, according to an article published in the Washington Post.




Officials say Al Qaeda's ability to wage mass-casualty terrorism has been undercut by relentless US attacks on the network's leadership, finances and training camps. But even in its weakened state, the group has shifted tactics to focus on small-scale operations that are far harder to detect and disrupt, analysts say.




The deadly November shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, and the failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb an airliner - both examples of the low-tech approach - have raised the fear level in Washington and across the country. Some terrorism experts say the worst could be still to come as a wounded Al Qaeda movement thrashes about in search of a victory.




"The noose is tightening, and Al Qaeda's leadership is accelerating efforts that were probably in place anyway," said Andy Johnson, national security director for the Washington think-tank Third Way.




In the past year, Johnson said, the "good guys have been scoring the points," killing key Al Qaeda leaders and disrupting multiple plots. But pressure on Al Qaeda in Iraq and Pakistan has forced terrorist operatives to flee to new havens, such as Yemen, and step up the search for weaknesses in Western defences. While battered, "the enemy is unwavering and determined," he said.




The article stated that the US ability to strike Al Qaeda's nerve centre was on display recently with news of the apparent death of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan chief Hakeemullah Mehsud, who suffered severe injuries in a missile strike in mid-January. US drones have struck Al Qaeda and Taliban targets inside Pakistan 12 times this year, putting the Obama administration on course to surpass 2009's record-setting 53 strikes, according to a tally by the Long War Journal website.




In a testimony before two congressional panels last week, top US intelligence officials said the campaign has shaken Al Qaeda's core leadership, the small band of hardened terrorists led by Osama bin Laden. The attacks, combined with a successful squeeze on Al Qaeda's cash supply have impeded the group's ability to launch ambitious, complex terrorist operations on the scale of the September 11, 2001 strikes on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the officials said.




"Intelligence confirms that they are finding it difficult to be able to engage in the planning and the command-and-control operations to put together a large attack," CIA Director Leon Panetta said on February 2 (Tuesday) in a testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.




However, the article stated that intelligence officials also warned lawmakers of worrisome new evidence of Al Qaeda's ability to adapt. In an annual "threat assessment" to Congress, spy agencies described the emerging threat as more geographically dispersed and also low-tech, favouring lone operatives and conventional explosives.




National Intelligence Director Dennis C Blair, who presented the assessment to House and Senate panels, said the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit is emblematic of an evolving threat that relies on "small numbers of terrorists, and short-term plots." The new tactics are less spectacular but also much harder to detect and disrupt, he said.




The foiled plot came on the heels of the Fort Hood shooting rampage. That attack, and the arrest of an Army major apparently inspired by Al Qaeda, crushed the widely held perception that Americans were immune from the kind of violent home-grown extremism seen in Muslim enclaves in Western Europe. Blair acknowledged that intelligence agencies are newly concerned that Americans may be travelling overseas for training and returning to the United States to carry out terrorist strikes, according to the Washington Post.