Who's the Enemy Now?
With al-Qaeda's leaders on the run, the terrorist threat is evolving—and getting scarier—as a new generation takes over

Along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, there is no shortage of spies and informers. In mid-March, Pakistani troops, already engaged in an offensive to flush out foreign fighters, pounced on a tip that a "high-value al-Qaeda target" was hiding with sympathizers in the village of Kalosha. Soon a variety of sources were giving the target a name: Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 leader of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's closest aide.

No one hoped he was caught more than George W. Bush. A picture of al-Qaeda's second in command dead or in chains would give a boost to the President's insistence that, even as chaos mounted in Iraq and the world reverberated from the shock of the commuter-train bombings in Madrid, the U.S. is winning the war on terrorism. With Bush's election campaign picking up speed, the stakes for finding al-Zawahiri and bin Laden have never been higher, especially now that terrorist forces seem to have developed a keen eye for political calendars. The Islamists charged with slaughtering more than 200 Madrid commuters struck on March 11. Three days later Spanish voters tossed out the ruling party allied with the U.S. in the war in Iraq. Incoming Socialist Party Prime Minister JosŽ Luis Rodr’guez Zapatero, who called the Iraq occupation a "fiasco," moved ahead with his campaign promise to pull Spain's 1,300 peacekeepers out of Iraq by June. Meanwhile, Iraqi insurgents attacked several hotels on the eve of the war's first anniversary, just when the U.S. hoped to talk up Iraq's successes.

The sweep of death and destruction gave fresh evidence of how the Islamist terrorist threat has managed to survive the global war waged against it. New networks of jihadists emerge faster than the U.S. and its allies can arrest or kill them. Counterterrorism experts believe that the old al-Qaeda organization commanded by bin Laden may be expiring and that a new, more elusive generation of extremists apparently inspired by al-Qaeda's ruthless vision—men like Jamal Zougam, 30, a cell-phone salesman arrested for the Madrid bombings, and Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, 37, the Jordanian suspected of orchestrating violence in Iraq—has taken up the banner. Barely recognizable even to officials who make a living tracking terrorists, the new jihadists proved in Madrid that they can evade detection while they hatch their plots. And no one knows where they will strike next.

The Spanish Connection
Nobody thought Islamic terrorism would happen in Spain. Much of Europe is known to be a logistical base for the militants but rarely a theater of operations. That may account for the lackadaisical response Spanish security services gave to warnings from France and Morocco to keep an eye on Zougam. A Spanish judge has charged Zougam and two fellow Moroccans with carrying out the train bombings. All three proclaimed their innocence. But Zougam had been under watch by European counterterrorism officials since at least August 2001, after French officials found a number of their suspects crossing paths with him.

In the end, Spanish police connected with him through dumb luck. A bomb that didn't explode on March 11 was connected to a cell phone whose SIM card was tracked back to Zougam's shop. Spanish press reports say he purchased a whole box of them recently, along with 14 cell phones. In a thorough search of his shop, police reportedly found a piece of plastic broken from the casing of the cell phone found with the unexploded bomb.

Still, Zougam's possible role in the Madrid plot is unclear, and experts are still divided over who might have ordered it. Although the key arrests in the railway bombings were Muslims, there is no iron-clad evidence—though there is plenty of speculation—that they worked for al-Qaeda or any other group. Analysts say the timing of the attacks may signal a dangerous turn: a new generation of terrorists, impressed by their seeming ability to sway an election, could time future attacks to achieve political objectives.

Iraq's New Insurgents
The mighty car bomb that lit the sky orange as flames shot from the wreckage of the five-story Mount Lebanon Hotel in downtown Baghdad was evidence of the changing nature of terrorism there too. Though the March 17 bombing killed only seven, not 27 as originally reported, its impact was outsized, underscoring the trend toward striking ever softer targets. That included murders of four U.S. missionaries and two European engineers working to rebuild Iraq.

General Mark Kimmitt, the military's chief spokesman in Iraq, and other U.S. officials in Iraq increasingly believe Islamic radicals have taken charge of orchestrating the violence as Saddam Hussein loyalists fade from the scene. Their intent is to push the country into anarchy, where extremism can flourish.

The man most often cited by occupation authorities as the ringleader is al-Zarqawi. They frequently tie the Jordanian militant to al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam. But now al-Zarqawi seems to be running his own network in Iraq. He allegedly set out, in a long letter U.S. officials attributed to him in January, his plan for inciting civil war through attacks on Iraqis. Catching al-Zarqawi is a "daily mission," says Kimmitt, but he adds that it probably wouldn't stop the extremists. He has seen signs that the old regime's loyalists are joining forces with Islamists who have the money and leaders to take on the U.S. In exchange, militants who belonged to the ousted Baath ruling party can provide safe houses, weaponry and trigger pullers.

More than two years, two wars and billions of dollars have made the U.S. more effective than ever at hunting and pre-empting terrorists. Much of the old al-Qaeda leadership has been destroyed, along with many of its trained operatives. Yet the U.S.'s success in dismantling bin Laden's organization has not lessened the threat of Islamic terrorism. Al-Qaeda has spawned a movement greater than itself. "Al-Qaeda has infected others with its ideology," former cia director George Tenet said in March. "Other extremist groups within the movement it influenced have become the next wave of the terrorist threat."

That's why, in the darkened warrens of the U.S.'s counterterrorism agencies, the pace is unrelenting, as analysts try to disrupt the terrorists before they can strike here. Those officials are intensely worried that Islamists, emboldened by the Spanish vote, are focusing on how to target the U.S. in the run-up to Election Day to blow up public confidence in the Bush Administration. Officials warn that this summer's Democratic and Republican conventions in Boston and New York City present exactly the kinds of targets al-Qaeda teaches its operatives to choose: the crush of VIPs, chaos, noise and long hours will be a security nightmare. And, as a senior U.S. official points out with a shudder, both conventions will be held above train stations.

—from TIME, March 29, 2004

Questions

1. What "dangerous turn" may be signaled by the Madrid bombings?

2. According to the article, to what extent has the U.S.'s success in dismantling al-Qaeda lessened the threat of Islamic terrorism? Explain.