DENIS DOYLE/AP MORROCO: Jewish and tourist sites were targeted in a series of strikes in Casablanca in May, but here too most of the dead were Muslim locals

Posted Sunday, November 23, 2003; 15.23GMT
The terrorists' strategy, says an adviser to Morocco's King Mohammed VI, whose country suffered similar suicide bombings in May, is to create chaos aimed at undermining moderate Muslim governments. In February, Osama bin Laden, in a tape, labeled Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Yemen and Pakistan countries "enslaved by America" and thus "the most eligible for liberation." Since that message went out, terrorists — having already tried to hit in Jordan in 1999 and successfully attacked in Yemen in 2000 — have struck the other three. But a former U.S. counterterrorism official says that as much as terrorists like to hit targets with such high symbolic value, they plan first with an eye to operational success. "Going after Turkey because of its relationship with Israel or the U.S. is secondary or tertiary," he believes. "They went after Turkey because there were available targets. They act where they can — and then go for a message."

As yet, there is no solid evidence that al-Qaeda has regrouped as a force to be reckoned with. Much of the known old leadership has been killed or captured, has been forced into hiding, and at least some of the group's financial resources have dried up. But that may not add up to a decisive blow, as al-Qaeda reverts to its roots as a diffusive brand name for the ideology of international Islamic terrorism. Even without direct ties, bin Laden provides the militants' inspiration. Al-Qaeda, says French terrorism expert Roland Jacquard, has become the mentor for "local actors plotting and launching attacks along the guidelines and long-term instructions of al-Qaeda leaders." According to the CIA, 70,000 to 120,000 recruits went through bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan, graduating with lethal know-how just waiting to show itself. They can easily find "lots of idiots ready to blow themselves and others up in the name of some higher cause," says a senior French antiterrorism official. French intelligence authorities believe those second-generation radicals are forming into scores of separate underground groups only loosely allied in a broad jihad movement. Because they're not large or well-organized, they're tough to spot.

Al-Qaeda's old guard may no longer be able to mount elaborate plots executed by trained terrorists under its direct command. But U.S. counterterrorism officials believe the remaining inner core has put out a general go-ahead to extremist cells world wide: attack whenever and wherever you can. The mothership may provide financial and logistical support but the dirty work seems to be handled by local, autonomous units intimately familiar with their areas, who can plan and attack beneath the radar of local security forces. The pattern, says Rand Corporation terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, "is to send a handful of professional terrorists to make contact with existing local terrorist groups, who provide the cannon fodder — that is, the suicide bombers."

What happened in Istanbul seems to reflect this new face of terror. Turkish officials think the double car bombings were the work of homegrown Islamic extremists, perhaps inspired and possibly trained by al-Qaeda experts. The Turkish group that claimed responsibility for both sets of attacks, the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders Front (IBDA-C), is widely believed to be incapable of mounting such a complicated operation entirely on its own. But it seems to have provided the willing bodies. And the cars: vehicles used in the synagogue and British bombings were apparently bought by the same men. Together with the four suicide bombers and most of the dozen or more alleged accomplices now under arrest, they come from the country's volatile southeast, near the border with Iraq, known for its Kurdish separatists and Islamic extremists. Although a few Islamic militant groups have been around for years, Turkish authorities considered them a spent force. But the turmoil in Iraq apparently revived their ardor. Local extremists, says Mehmet Farac, who has written several books on Turkish militants, now want to resurrect themselves and al-Qaeda's expertise can help them do it.

Al-Qaeda has every interest in showing it's still in business. Measures taken since Sept. 11 in the U.S. and Europe have made it tougher for bin Laden's boys to strike inside the enemy's borders. But the enemy has plenty of attractive soft targets scattered throughout the Muslim world where affiliated franchises are eager to take on the job. Al-Qaeda has evidently found a powerful rallying point for jihad in the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Since the invasion, the number and frequency of attacks has risen dramatically. It serves al-Qaeda's propaganda purposes to make people believe it is behind every outrage — even if like-minded groups are acting on their own. Investigators suspect bin Laden's outfit had a direct hand in the May bombings in Saudi Arabia and the August suicide assault in Indonesia. But Moroccan and French security officials say the synchronized bombings in Morocco in May were primarily a freelance affair: the hastily prepared work of 14 raw young extremists from a Casablanca slum were plucked out of nowhere by local militants who had embraced the al-Qaeda ideology and got direction from Afghan-trained jihadis abroad.

U.S. officials and foreign terrorism experts puzzle over a significant feature of the new terrorism wave: nearly all the victims are Muslims. For years, despite its vow to overthrow corrupt Muslim regimes, al-Qaeda showed little interest in staging attacks in the heart of the Islamic world. But starting on May 12, when at least nine Arabs were among the 26 victims in the first Riyadh attack, al-Qaeda and its surrogates seem to have abandoned any concerns about causing Muslim deaths or alienating Muslim public opinion. "You have Islamist terrorists attacking innocent victims as an indirect manner of striking Arab or Islamic governments militants condemn as corrupt," says the adviser to Morocco's king. France's Jacquard calls it a new "strategy of rupture." The purpose, he says, is to force Muslims "to finally, fatally decide whether they are for or against righteous jihad." Jacquard says Saudi intelligence officials told him the Riyadh bombers who struck on Nov. 8 picked their target knowing the apartment complex housed many Arabs, to send the message that all who resist jihad are fair game. To kill fellow Muslims during Ramadan, as terrorists did in Istanbul and Riyadh, Jacquard says, "is an act of unspeakable extremism, and that's how it's supposed to be viewed. That's the point."

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