Terrorism: Can Al-Qaeda Find A New Nest?

To do their worst, terrorists need a sanctuary. The next order of battle is to deny them one

By Johanna Mcgeary Monday, Dec. 24, 2001

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    SUDAN: If Khartoum still needed telling, the fierce American campaign in Afghanistan served up a sobering reminder. The country's previous involvement with bin Laden brought on cruise-missile strikes in 1998, and there's no eagerness to repeat that experience. Six years on the State Department's terrorist list taught Sudan the economic cost of getting cozy with terrorists. The Islamic regime does remain suspect for nurturing extremism. Its diplomats were allegedly involved this year in a plot--dreamed up by an al-Qaeda agent connected to the Cole and East African embassy attacks--to bomb the U.S. embassy in India. But the Sudanese government claims its tolerance for that stuff is over, since Islamic militant Hassan al-Turabi, formerly the guiding light of the National Islamic Front government, fell from favor and was arrested last year.

    Enticed by U.S. promises of aid and a rethinking of Sudan's appearance on the terrorist list, and pushed hard by Egypt, Sudan began rescinding its support for terrorism a year ago. Its cooperation against the Islamists jumped noticeably after the Twin Towers fell, as terrorist suspects were detained or expelled. A few weeks ago, Sudan began handing Washington rich files from the years it spent monitoring al-Qaeda and extremist affiliates passing through.

    SOUTHEAST ASIA: Could violent Islamist groups in nations like Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines take up the relay of training jihad fighters? Al-Qaeda is said to have cells and camps set up in the Philippines and has made common cause with the Abu Sayyaf rebels fighting for a Muslim state on the island of Mindanao. The damp jungles may not be familiar turf for al-Qaeda fighters, but they made a safe guerrilla beachhead for the Abu Sayyaf. The Bush Administration has promised President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo $19 million to combat the rebels and will soon send a stockpile of modern weaponry.

    Counterterrorism officials know destroying the Afghan command center will not necessarily disrupt al-Qaeda's operations, even if every one of the 50 countries where its spores have spread prevents "the base" from securing a new haven. Bin Laden trained 11,000 terrorists at his Afghan camps, and most of those alumni fanned out to other countries. Key lieutenants, like Abu Zubaydah, bin Laden's training-camp chief, and Mustafa Ahmed, the al-Qaeda paymaster, vanished in early September. Three alleged 9/11 accomplices based in Germany are still at large. And undetectable "sleepers" were implanted across the globe some time ago. Without a sanctuary like Afghanistan, the terrorists' capacity to conceive and carry out grand attacks in a centralized manner has clearly been undermined. Trouble is, not all the terrorism inspired by al-Qaeda needs to be handed down from the top. "They can be self-initiating at the grassroots level," says Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at St. Andrews University in Scotland. "Each individual member considers himself to have the authority to issue a fatwa. If we look only for the leadership and traditional nature of authority, it's a mistake."

    --Reported by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad, Massimo Calabresi and Douglas Waller/Washington, Helen Gibson/London, Scott MacLeod/Cairo, Tim McGirk/Kandahar and Simon Robinson/Mogadishu

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