So what are Donald Rumsfeld's targets once Afghanistan is over? Ask anyone at the Pentagon and they'll simply remind you that Afghanistan is far from over, and may not be for some time yet. Still, with President Bush dangling hints that Saddam Hussein will face the consequences if he doesn't allow arms inspectors back in and U.S. officials starting to mention the likes of Sudan, Yemen and Somalia, it's clear the administration is considering its next step.

The outlines of a follow-up to Afghanistan may already be embedded in the logic of the campaign against Al Qaeda there. The next step isn't likely to be going after Iraq — at least not any time soon. Without strong evidence linking Saddam to the September 11 attacks and in light of opposition to attacking the country by many key coalition partners, it may be some time before Washington is ready to go after Iraq. President Bush's warnings over weapons inspectors is certainly a signal that Washington plans to move the issue back to the front burner, but even there it may take months to build up the head of steam necessary to power a showdown. And administration officials moved quickly this week to nix expectations of any imminent move on Iraq.

404 Not Found

---

nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) A more immediate priority in the wake of the Afghanistan campaign, however, will be to destroy any sanctuaries to which Al Qaeda's core might flee. While the terror network is said to operate in 50 or 60 countries, its presence in most of these is small and covert. The organization's long-term future requires that it replace Afghanistan as a sanctuary in which it can function independently and unmolested to cultivate a new generation of professional terrorists. Those requirements considerably narrow the list — even if Iraq were to offer, accepting Saddam's hospitality would totally destroy Al Qaeda's independence and reduce it to the proxy of a man its leaders loathe. (Saddam, of course, would likely be extremely wary of opening his doors to thousands of suicidal zealots with whom he shares nothing beyond a common enemy and a yearning for nuclear weapons.)

No, the immediate "problem areas" being identified in Washington are Yemen, the Sudan and Somalia, and of those Somalia may be the prime target. Sudan, after all, previously kicked out bin Laden under pressure from the U.S. and Egypt, and its government remains eager to stay on good terms with Washington. Yemen may be bin Laden's ancestral homeland, but it's become a center of intense U.S. intelligence activity since the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. Yemen's president met with President Bush on Tuesday to reaffirm his country's commitment to fighting terrorism.

Somalia's 2,000-mile coastline, inhospitable, warlord-dominated terrain and the near total absence of government authority make it perfect bin Laden country. And the U.S. believes there's already an association: "Somalia has been a place that has harbored al Qaeda and, to my knowledge, still is," Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said Tuesday. And in this era of zero-tolerance, that's fighting talk.

It's not that the U.S. necessarily suspects the Somali government of harboring terrorists — but in a land where the government, like the warlords, collects its taxes at roadblocks, state authority is almost non-existent outside Mogadishu. And Washington believes Al Qaeda has been exploiting that situation by renewing its ties with local Islamic radicals to set up a safe haven.

Last month, the U.S. put the financial squeeze on the desperately poor country by freezing the assets of Al Barakaat, a Western Union-style money wiring service, and closing down the Internet connection of the Somalia Internet Company (and with it the whole country's Internet access), accusing both of having links with Al Qaeda. The move choked the largest revenue source of Somalia's near-stagnant economy — remittances sent home via Al Barakaat by thousands of Somalis living abroad. Somali authorities strenuously deny any Al Qaeda presence in their country, and President Abdiqasim Salad Hassan has pledged full cooperation with the U.S. against terrorism.

Washington believes, however, that the bin Laden link to Somalia sidesteps the government, instead running through a local Islamist group called Al Itihad al Islamiya that may have established links with Al Qaeda in the early 1990s. U.S. officials also cite allegations that some of the Somali fighters that killed 18 U.S. Army Rangers in Mogadishu in 1993 may have been trained by bin Laden lieutenant Mohammed Atef. Atef had been an Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader before becoming Al Qaeda's operational chief and allegedly helping mastermind the September 11 attacks. He was reportedly killed two weeks ago during a U.S. bombing raid in Afghanistan.

But the Somali government and local observers rush to dismiss the concern, saying Al Itihad was mostly destroyed as a military force in a cross-border showdown with the Ethiopian military in 1996. They claim its fighters have dispersed and the movement exists today primarily as a politically-motivated welfare group. "They were an armed force but now we don't know of any camps in Somalia," says President Hassan. "We invite the Americans to come here and investigate."

The U.S. military certainly has ugly memories of Somalia. But if it did choose to strike at targets there, the Pentagon would be unlikely to repeat the mistakes of the 1993 Mogadishu fiasco. A more likely scenario would be the Afghanistan model of air power used in combination with local proxy forces — the Ethiopians come to mind, although there would be plenty of local warlords open to turning against any Al Qaeda elements for a small fee.

Needless to say, the prospect of being at ground zero of a new phase of the anti-terror war prompts dread on the part of Somalia's fledgling government. And European coalition partners such as Germany have also expressed reluctance to extend the military campaign beyond Afghanistan. But the challenge in Somalia and elsewhere right now may be quite different from Afghanistan — to prevent the emergence of a new hub of terrorist sanctuaries, rather than destroying an existing one. A mission, in other words, with heavy emphasis on intelligence and building the capacity and incentive for locals to stop Al Qaeda gaining a foothold.