Intelligence

Elusive bin Laden believed to still pull terror strings

Elusive bin Laden believed to still pull terror strings

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Believed to be holed up on the mountainous frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda's top leaders including possibly Osama bin Laden pull the strings of global terror through an intricate and watertight network, Pakistani intelligence officials say.

Pakistan is on the front line of the war on terror, heading a crackdown that has led to the arrests of key figures in bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, but has yet to snare the one fugitive most wanted by its ally the United States.

"Al-Qaeda cells lurk in countries in the East and West despite crackdowns and arrests of many key and low-level operatives in Pakistan and elsewhere in the world," said a senior security official here, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"After enormous effort the intelligence has been able to penetrate but not to the level that we want to overcome the terrorist threat effectively and catch the leadership," said the official, who has been closely associated with interrogation of suspects recently rounded up in Pakistan.

"They work within a tightly sealed system in which instructions from the top are passed on to masterminds on CDs or through verbal messages by human carriers while planners transmit plans to executors without making physical contact," he said.

The broadcast of a video Thursday featuring Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri vowing that US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan would be defeated further highlighted the failure to clamp down on the network's upper echelons.

Pakistani security officials said they had no solid leads to zero in on the Al-Qaeda leader and his Egyptian deputy on the eve of the third anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks.

Another senior intelligence official compared bin Laden's network to a "monster able to sprout new tentacles in place of lost ones".

"After many of its operatives, including several top planners and hit-men, were captured over the past three years, Al-Qaeda has managed to find new recruits amid widespread belief in the Islamic world that Jews and Americans are bent upon annihilating Muslims," he said.

According to the intelligence estimates, hundreds of Al-Qaeda operatives, both foreigners and locals, are still in hiding in Pakistan, itself a victim of a spate of terrorist attacks, including two failed attempts on the life of President Pervez Musharraf.

"As for Al-Qaeda's presence in countries around the world the information gleaned by us from arrested suspects indicates their number may be up to 4,000 men," an intelligence official said.

"Eliminating the Al-Qaeda threat is going to be a long haul."

Bin Laden allows access to only a select few. "If any one from outside what we believe is a limited circle wishes to meet the leader he is considered a security risk and is sidelined," said the official.

The network's chain of command runs from a handful of "masterminds" at the top down to extremist volunteers ready to carry out suicide missions at the bottom.

"From the masterminds down to the executors contacts are made in such a secretive manner that the operatives remain virtual strangers to one another and that is what makes intelligence penetration difficult," the official said.

Pakistan's security apparatus has identified around four dozen Al-Qaeda operatives working in the country under the command of a Libyan Abu Faraj Farj, the man said to be behind the bids to kill Musharraf.

Farj is number three on the CIA's list of most wanted Al-Qaeda men. The Libyan, who is said to be new chief of the terror network's external operations, carries a US price tag of five million dollars on his head.

He is said to have replaced Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged co-chief planner of the September 11 attacks, after the latter's arrest from Rawalpindi near Islamabad in March. Pakistan has also offered a reward of 10 million rupees for his capture.

Also on the list is Egyptian Abdul Rehman Al-Muhajir, an explosives expert believed to be living somewhere in Pakistan. The man, who carries five million dollars US bounty on his head, ha been indicted in the US over the 1998 twin bombings of American embassies in East Africa.

Pakistani computer expert Naeem Noor Khan, who ranks number eight on the Pakistani list, was arrested from the eastern city of Lahore on July 12, leading to the arrest two weeks later of Tanzanian Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani.

Computer records and information extracted from Khan and Ghailani -- who has also been indicted over the east Africa bombings -- helped preempt planned terror strikes in Pakistan, US, Britain and other countries, according to Pakistani security.

"The present-day Al-Qaeda is a blend of old hands, all close associates of OBL (Osama bin Laden), and bands of new recruits scattered in many countries," said an official of the Inter-Services Intelligence, the country's prime security agency.

September 10, 2004 at 02:13 AM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (7) | Top of page | Blog Home