Why the War on Terror Will Never End
Bomb attacks in Riyadh and Casablanca suggest that even on the run, the al-Qaeda network remains a deadly serious threat to the West

For Scott Schlageter, 35, an American procurement manager for the Saudi air force, it was just another expat's night in Riyadh. He was watching an Antonio Banderas thriller, curled up on the sofa in his home in al-Jadawel, a gated town-house complex in the Saudi Arabian capital. Suddenly the lights died, and the TV zapped off. Schlageter saw a flash and felt a thundering explosion that blew out all his windows.

At that very moment, similar assaults were under way in two other residential areas. Four miles away, at a complex that housed dozens of Americans, a pair of cars were on a deadly mission. The first, a Ford Crown Victoria sedan filled with terrorists armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, sped up to the compound's security checkpoint. The men mowed down the guards and removed a 3-ft.-high steel barrier that protected the compound. The second vehicle, a Dodge pickup loaded with explosives, barreled into a central area and exploded between two five-story buildings. At the nearby al-Hamra complex, two other explosives-laden vehicles were detonated near a pool where a party was in progress. By the time the smoke cleared from the three assaults last Monday, 34 were dead, including nine Americans, and 200 more were wounded.

Terror struck again just four days later. In the Moroccan city of Casablanca, five suicide bombers hit within 20 minutes of one another, spreading death and destruction across an array of targets: a Spanish social club, a hotel, a Jewish community center and cemetery, a restaurant next to Belgium's consulate. Nearly half of the 41 who lost their lives had been at the club, Casa d'Espana, where two suicide bombers muscled in after slitting the throat of a guard. Within a day, Moroccan authorities had rounded up a number of Islamic militants and had in custody one man who had been detained before his bomb exploded.

Before Riyadh and Casablanca, it was tempting, if just for a moment, to believe that the war on terrorism was going well, that the big picture was of one success after another. Then reality returned with a vengeance. After the latest blasts, no one is talking about turning any tide. Instead, the world is focused again on mourning, on soul searching, on how to deliver an effective response. Make no mistake about it: Islamic extremists are still angry enough, and organized enough, to cause considerable damage to the U.S. and its allies.

Was it al-Qaeda again? Although there is not yet definitive proof, the attacks in Riyadh, American officials say, bore all the hallmarks of the organization. The terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and the safe haven al-Qaeda constructed there have been dismantled. But the network remains formidable, U.S. officials say. "Al-Qaeda still retains the ability to plan and launch terrorist attacks, including in this country," says a U.S. official.

WHERE'S BIN LADEN?

For most Americans, "winning" the war on terrorism means a clear victory over al-Qaeda. The arrests on April 29 in Pakistan of Walid bin Attash, suspected of organizing the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole at the Yemeni port of Aden, and Ali Abd al-Aziz, an alleged paymaster of the Sept. 11 team, were just the latest in an impressive series of arrests of leading al-Qaeda figures.

As for bin Laden himself, analysts generally believe he is still alive and probably capable of getting messages to his followers, if only by the slow means of personal courier. Both CIA and FBI counterterrorism officials think he is hiding somewhere in the mountains along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Capturing bin Laden–whose name Bush has not publicly uttered unprompted since February 2002–would be hugely satisfying to Americans. But it is not clear what effect taking bin Laden "dead or alive" would actually have on terrorism today. Many analysts feel strongly that measuring success against al-Qaeda by the number of leaders captured is mistaken. Lopping off the beast's head may not kill its body.

HOW BIG A THREAT?

Is al-Qaeda as powerful as it once was, more than a year and a half after Sept. 11? Is it still a threat to America? The answers are: no and yes. Improvements in security and surveillance mean it would be much harder for the organization to pull off a long-planned, complex, relatively expensive operation in the West like the one that occurred on Sept. 11. There are also better controls on the international flow of funds to terrorist groups. But al-Qaeda, says Roland Jacquard, a well-known French expert on terrorism, doesn't need as much money as it once did. "What cost al-Qaeda millions," he says, "was the camps. The group doesn't have the same financial needs as it did before." The Bali bombing cost perhaps $35,000 to pull off, a sum easily gathered from the credit-card fraud and petty-crime networks that certain Islamist extremists run.

It also is clear that the destruction of the Afghan camps, however useful, had one perverse and unintended effect. Local terrorist chiefs no longer depend on anything from bin Laden and his top brass except for ideological inspiration.

A team of 66 fbi personnel is working closely with Saudi authorities as they sift through the debris at the wrecked compounds. Sources say the Saudis, who did not cooperate effectively with U.S. law enforcement after earlier attacks inside Saudi Arabia involving Americans, are being helpful this time. Saudi officials have been conducting an exercise in damage control on American tv, telling the world they will crack down on terrorism and its financing as never before. Yet acting forcefully would represent a risk for the House of Saud, which has long drawn legitimacy from deeply religious Muslims.

Perhaps the Saudi government will break with past habits. But even if it does, those terrorists who believe with a religious conviction that the lives of Americans and their friends are fair game will continue their unending war. These days, when Scott Schlageter leaves al-Jadawel for a spin in his car, he wears a white shirt and a red-checked Arab headdress. That way, he hopes, nobody will mistake him for an infidel.

—from TIME, May 26, 2003

Questions

1. Where do western experts believe Osama bin Laden is hiding?

2. Compare the threat that al-Qaeda poses today to the threat it posed in the fall of 2001.