Once back in their home territories, these terrorists could well launch new attacks on American interests — one reason Tenet has warned that U.S. military installations are at risk not just in obvious places like Pakistan and Afghanistan but also in East Africa, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and beyond. Back home, says Roland Jacquard, a French terrorism analyst, the graduates of the camps "won't be plotting attacks in the heart of America, but they now feel they can attack America in their own backyards." Most terrorist acts in 2002 — the bombings of a mosque in Tunisia, of a bus full of French contract workers and of the U.S. consulate in Karachi, together with the plans that al-Faruq has revealed — fit into this pattern of attacks by local groups on international targets.

Beyond ideology, the terrorists continue to be sustained by a steady flow of funds. A recent U.N. report shows that although $112 million of al-Qaeda resources were frozen in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, only $10 million has been seized in the past eight months. Terrorism is still being bankrolled by an estimated $16 million in private contributions from rich backers in the gulf states, by diverted money intended for Islamic charitable purposes and, even to this day, by investments in companies and real estate made with bin Laden's own sizable fortune. In any event, for local operations, terrorist cells are quite skilled at living off the environment. "Many Islamist terror plots in Europe and North America," says Jean-Francois Ricard, one of France's top antiterrorism investigators, "were self-financed through criminal activity — mainly stolen-car trafficking and, above all, credit-card fraud." When Kamel Daoudi, a French alleged al-Qaeda terrorist, was arrested in Britain last year, he had more than 100 forged credit cards in his car.

Above all, al-Qaeda apparently can still accumulate its most important resource, which comes not in plastic rectangles but on two legs. Al-Qaeda, says a new report by the RAND organization, depends for its future operations on its "ability to gather new recruits." In some towns of northern Pakistan, where hundreds of young men followed their religious leaders into Afghanistan like lambs to the slaughter, there is resentment toward the jihadists. But worldwide, according to analysts, al-Qaeda doesn't seem to have had trouble finding fresh blood. Notwithstanding the success of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the RAND report argues that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 were potentially an effective recruiting weapon, dealing "a massive blow to the most prominent symbols of American economic and military might." Abuza concurs, arguing that there is no better spur to recruitment than success — and the destruction of the World Trade Center counted as one. In Europe, terrorist analysts have long understood that those the RAND report calls "frustrated immigrants, drifters living on the margins of society, seekers of absolute truth or greater meaning for their lives" provide a rich field for terrorists to harvest. The cases of John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla, coupled with the arrests in Lackawanna and earlier in Detroit and Oregon, suggest that the U.S. may already be facing the same phenomenon.

For RAND, religious conviction is what gives terrorists strength, but "the armed struggle is what holds them together." If there are terrorism analysts anywhere in the world who think the armed struggle is over, they are keeping mighty quiet. Al-Qaeda "would love to pull off a spectacular," says Ranstorp, using the terrorism watchers' term for a large-scale attack, "but they will be exceptionally patient." At the end of a good week, the question for the U.S and its allies is whether they will be as patient as their enemy.

WITH REPORTING BY BRIAN BENNETT/KARACHI; DOUGLAS WALLER, ELAINE SHANNON, JOHN F. DICKERSON AND MICHAEL WEISSKOPF/WASHINGTON; SIMON ELEGANT/JAKARTA; J.F.O. MCALLISTER/LONDON; BRUCE CRUMLEY/PARIS; AND PHIL ZABRISKIE/KABUL

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