What's Become Of Al-Qaeda?

The U.S. has killed or seized hundreds of bin Laden's fighters, but many are still on the loose. A progress report on the war on terror

By Romesh Ratnesar Monday, Jan. 21, 2002

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    As long as the military command continues to produce evidence that the campaign in Afghanistan has "disrupted" al-Qaeda's plans for future carnage--as it did last week in Singapore--the public will probably support the coalition's halting progress toward rounding up al-Qaeda. But disruption of bin Laden's terror enterprise has never been the definition of success; liquidation of it is. Bin Laden may be running, but the longer he stays on the loose, the greater the risk that his network will sufficiently reconstitute itself to strike back. "The more pieces we get, the more it begins to reveal a story of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, its capabilities, its reach and the other networks with which it collaborates," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday. "But needless to say, there are still many missing pieces to the puzzle." America can't claim victory until they are found.

    --Reported by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad; Simon Elegant/Singapore; Paul Quinn-Judge/Khost; Elaine Shannon, Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington; and Michael Ware/Kandahar

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