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Victory elusive in 'war on terror'
By Jitendra Joshi
AFP
WASHINGTON
Petroleumworld.com 07 13 07Six years into the US "war on terror," Al-Qaeda is gaining strength in its Pakistani sanctuary and Iraq is a fertile breeding ground for global extremism, according to bleak new assessments.
The sobering appraisals have sparked questions over whether the United States is losing an ambitious campaign declared by President George W. Bush after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Even if Al-Qaeda figurehead Osama bin Laden himself is confined to the anarchic borderland between Afghanistan and Pakistan, experts say, his group has spawned any number of offshoots that are only loosely affiliated.
"It's a paradox: we have succeeded in degrading the operational capabilities of the jihadist enterprise and yet almost every assessment indicates that we are not succeeding," RAND Corp. terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins said.
"In nearly six years, we have blunted Al-Qaeda's ability to launch large-scale attacks from the center but we now confront many little Al-Qaedas, continuing radicalization, and escalating insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan that exhaust our military forces and drain domestic support," he told AFP.
Bush on Thursday took issue with media coverage of a classified new intelligence assessment that suggested Al-Qaeda is as strong today as prior to 9/11.
"That's just simply not the case," he told a White House news conference, arguing that because of US offensive action, "Al-Qaeda is weaker today than they would have been."
But Bush added: "They are still a threat. They are still dangerous. And that is why it is important that we succeed in Afghanistan and Iraq and anywhere else we find them."
Democrats, however, seized on the intelligence report reported by The Washington Post, which coincided with a bleak view of progress in Iraq contained in a new administration assessment.
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said the intelligence shows that "Al-Qaeda is growing stronger."
"But while Osama bin Laden is operating freely, we understand, on the Afghan-Pakistan border, the president wants to keep our troops in an open-ended war, a civil war in Iraq," he told reporters."It's really a travesty that Osama bin Laden is still at large almost six years after 9/11, but it's not surprising that Al-Qaeda has been able to reorganize and rebuild because the administration has taken its eye off the ball when it comes to fighting terrorism."
By invading Iraq in 2003, Bush is accused of diverting US energy and resources from the true sources of Islamist terror and radicalizing a generation of disaffected Muslims in the Middle East and Europe.If the United States has escaped a repeat of the shocking strikes that felled New York's World Trade Center, other nations such as Britain, Indonesia and Spain have not been so fortunate.
Insurgents in places like Algeria, Somalia and the Philippines have recast themselves as "Al-Qaeda" branches, as extremists cash in on what John Kringen, the CIA's director of intelligence, calls the "trademark" of global militancy.
Al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists appear "fairly well settled into the safe haven" of northwest Pakistan, benefiting from more training, money and communications, he told Congress on Wednesday.
" In terms of the growth of terrorist groups, there is little doubt I think that our engagement in Iraq has served as a focal point for Sunni extremists to flow into that conflict, and has served as a rallying point more broadly internationally," the Central Intelligence Agency official added.
According to the US intelligence report, entitled "Al-Qaeda Better Positioned to Strike the West," bin Laden's network is reportedly sheltering in lawless tribal areas of northwest Pakistan to train and to plot attacks.
When asked about the assessment, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he could not discuss any classified report but reiterated concerns that Al-Qaeda activity was expanding worldwide.
" We're concerned about the increased scope. We saw a bombing in Algeria yesterday (Wednesday). We see bombings in North Africa and activities in Somalia and Pakistan," Chertoff told CNN.
" All of these things are creating heightened concern on our part as we move forward," he said.
Chertoff drew criticism for saying Tuesday that he had a "gut feeling" that the United States was at heightened risk of terrorist attack this summer, without spelling out any detailed threat."I don't think anyone is making any official security measures on the basis of the secretary's gut feeling," said Jenkins at RAND.
AFP 12 1944 GMT 07 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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