Now a global threat

by Shibani Dasgupta 

Use of violence and terror as a means of expressing dissent and a tool for achieving goals is on the rise all over the world. As Pakistan emerges as the epicenter of training camps for terrorists, a new generation of leaders has emerged to succeed Osama Bin Laden. They have developed their own system of human couriers and electronic gadgets to avoid detection. This threat can be met only by a combined global effort.

Be it United States of America, India, South East Asia, Middle East or Sri Lanka, the regular use of violence, killings and mayhem as a means of conveying dissent and disenchantment has not stopped or even reduced.

American intelligence and counter intelligence officials have stated as recently as late March   2007 that as Al Qaida rebuilds in Pakistan's tribal areas, a new generation of leaders have emerged under Osama Bin Laden to take control over the network's operations.

According to a report that appeared in New York Times, the new leaders rose from within the organisation after the death or capture of the operatives that built Al Qaida before the September 11, 2001 attacks leading to surprise and dismay within American intelligence agencies about the group's ability to rebound from an American-led offensive.

The NYT dispatch has said it has been known that American officials were focusing on a band of Al Qaida training camps in Pakistan's remote mountains, but a clearer picture is emerging about those who are running the camps and though to be involved in plotting attacks.

American, European and Pakistani authorities have for months been piecing together a picture of the new leadership, based partially on evidence gathering during terrorism investigations in the last two years.   Of special importance have been the interrogations of suspects and material evidence connected to a plot British and US investigators said they averted last summer to destroy multiple commercial aero-planes, after takeoff from London airport.

Intelligence officials have also found out more about Al Qaida's structure through intercepted communications between operatives in Pakistan's tribal areas, although officials have said that the group has a complex network of human couriers to evade electronic eavesdropping.

And the investigations about the airline plot had led officials to conclude that an Egyptian paramilitary commander by the name Abu Ubaidah al-Masrih was the Al Qaida operative in Pakistan orchestrating the attack, the officials have said.

Although the core leadership had been weakened in the counter-terrorism campaign begun after the September 11 attacks, intelligence officials now believe it was not as crippled as they once thought.

The reassessment has brought new urgency to joint Pakistani-American intelligence operations in Pakistan and strengthened officials' belief that dismantling Al Qaida's infrastructure there could disrupt nascent large-scale terrorist plots that may already have been planned.

According to a PTI report from London Al Qaida sympathizers in the United Kingdom are sending in hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash to terrorist groups in Pakistan to fund their operations against Western democracies including Britain, according to an intelligence document.

The report, produced from intelligence provided by MI5 and the police, said security service and police investigations continue to detect high levels of operational activity by UK based Islamist extremist networks.   Government buildings, Ministry of Defence establishments and sites such as the London Eye are at severe risk of terrorist attacks, it said.

Many US sources in intelligence agencies have said in recent years that the role of Bin Ladan and his close followers in Pakistan's remote mountains had diminished with the growing prominence of the branch in Iraq, Al Qaida in Mesopotamia, along with the emergence of regional terrorism networks and so called home-grown cells.

It is believed that in contrast with earlier hierarchical structure of Al Qaida in Afghanistan before September 11 2001, the group's leadership is now more diffused, with several planning hubs working autonomously and not reliant on constant touch with Bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al Zawahri.

Not very much is known about the backgrounds of the new Al Qaida leaders they could be in their mid-thirties and have many years of battle experience in Afghanistan and Chechnya and possibly include several Pakistani and North African operatives.