Like any well-run corporate house, Al Qaeda has first secured its base in northwestern Pakistan, and is now expanding its network through affiliations and even corporate-style takeovers of smaller Islamic groups.
The Los Angeles Times draws on United States intelligence and counter-terrorism experts to report the development, and says the moves indicate an attempt by the terrorist group to broaden its reach and enhance its ability to strike at western targets.
'Certainly we do see Al Qaeda trying to influence the broader movement and to control some of these affiliates in a more direct way,' the LA Times quotes a senior counter-terrorism official in the Bush administration as saying. 'The word I would use is 'co-opt' as opposed to simply associating with or encouraging.
'By that I mean target selection, types of attacks, methodology, funding, all of the things that would make an affiliate suddenly a subsidiary.'
The report cites recently retired counter terrorism expert Bruce Riedel as pointing out that thanks to these moves, Al Qaeda stands to gain thousands of foot soldiers who carry European passports and don't require a visa to travel to the United States.
From its base in Pakistan, experts say, Al Qaeda has rebuilt the network of field commanders it had lost in the aftermath of 9/11; these commanders have in turn begun re-establishing contact with former affiliates, and to new groups and leaders.
The first sign of rebuilding became apparent two years ago, and have intensified since, the report says. On September 10, this year, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert S Mueller told the US Congress that Al Qaeda's 'mergers with regional groups have created a more diffuse violent Islamic extremist threat that complicates the task of detecting and deterring plots against the homeland.'
The report cites US officials as saying the new liaisons combine Al Qaeda's money, training, finely honed tactics and muscle with the widespread support and participation that the local groups enjoy within their communities. For the local groups, the cachet of aligning themselves with the Al Qaeda brand is in itself sufficient to say yes to the alliance.
The LA Times cites the example of the Islamic Maghreb, an extremist group previously known as the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, known by the French acronym GSPC. On September 11, 2006, Al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri announced that the group had became Al Qaeda's affiliate in the North African region to become 'a bone in the throat of the American and French crusaders'.
The case is classic because the GSPC had manpower but no arms, training or money; thanks to the tie up with Al Qaeda, the group now has access to all of this, and has thus become infinitely more dangerous.
This is reflected in the fact that the Islamic Maghreb has in recent times launched as many as four attacks a week, mostly suicide bombings against Western targets and political enemies.
In some quarters, however, Al Qaeda's expansion efforts have encountered resistance -- in Southeast Asia and Iraq, for instance. In the latter country, Al Qaeda attempted to exert control over foreign fighters, sending Abu Ayyub Masri from Pakistan after Abu Musab Zarqawi, the leader of a group calling itself Al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in a US airstrike last year.
Despite that, says the LA Times, Al Qaeda hasn't managed to make much headway; in fact, some local tribal leaders have allied themselves with the US military to counter the group's advances.
Elsewhere, Al Qaeda is in negotiations with the Palestinian group Army of Islam in the Gaza Strip, and with Fatah al Islam, until recently was based in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el Bared in north Lebanon, the report says, adding that Al Qaeda is interested in forging alliances with similar groups in Lebanon, Jordan and other neighbors of Israel.
Al Qaeda is also attempting, with mixed results, to gain a stronger foothold in Egypt, which has a large recruiting pool of militants already sympathetic to al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden's chief deputy and the man, intelligence experts are quoted as saying, driving the current rebuilding effort.
These moves are creating strange bedfellows. For instance, Al Qaeda has been negotiating with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and the fact of Al Qaeda fighters showing up in Libya has forced Moammar Qadafi to reinvent himself as a counter- terrorism ally of the United States.
On another front, Al Qaeda is believed to be forging alliances with Somalian militants fighting the US-backed transitional government, and also in Yemen, Bin Laden's ancestral homeland.
The LA Times report is scary for how Al Qaeda is bringing the best practices of business to the job of running a terrorist network, and for the large scale mayhem such alliances could trigger across the world.
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