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l-Qaeda has its headquarters in training camps in Afghanistan. In addition to directing its own attacks, it acts as an umbrella group, financing and subcontracting operations to local networks like Algeria's Armed Islamic Group (GIA), a terrorist organization active throughout Europe. The camps in Afghanistan play a vital role. Whatever network they may originally have been aligned with, visitors to the camps meet men from other groups, forge relationships and acquire the stature of soldiers in a holy war. The high command of the group includes bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi-born Palestinian who was identified in an American court case in July as the organizer of the camps and who investigators believe may be al-Qaeda's director of international operations.

Some of the best leads on al-Qaeda's directorate now seem to be coming from Djamel Beghal, a French-Algerian who is suspected of being an al-Qaeda ringleader and who was arrested in Dubai in July on his way from Pakistan to Europe. After being convinced by Islamic scholars in Dubai of the evils of terrorism, Beghal started talking. (He is now back in France and has attempted to retract his confession.) Beghal has said that while in Afghanistan in March, he received instructions from Abu Zubaydah on a bombing campaign against American interests in Europe, including the Paris embassy. "He's talking about very important figures in the al-Qaeda structure, right up to bin Laden's inner circle," a European official told TIME. "He's mentioned names, responsibilities and functions—people we weren't even aware of before. This is important stuff."

Though al-Qaeda has its roots in Afghanistan, investigators now think that the "Afghan" nature of the group is subtly changing. The war against the Soviets ended in 1991. Increasingly, al-Qaeda's captains in the field are too young ever to have fought in Afghanistan, though some may have joined Islamic brigades in Chechnya—or in Bosnia, as Abu Zubaydah did. Many of the new fighters were born and raised not in the Arab lands but in the Muslim communities of Europe, around which they travel with ease. And there is a growing sense that a number of them are "Takfiris," followers of an extremist Islamic ideology called Takfir wal Hijra (Anathema and Exile). That's bad news: by blending into host communities, Takfiris attempt to avoid suspicion. A French official says they come across as "regular, fun-loving guys—but they'd slit your throat or bomb your building in a second."

In addition to the ruthless nature of al-Qaeda's soldiers, investigators now also appreciate just how extensive are its tentacles. In mid-October, for example, NATO forces in Bosnia foiled a plot to attack U.S. and British targets there. Bensayah Belkacem, an Algerian thought to be at the center of a Bosnia-based terror group, had the number of Abu Zubaydah on a chit of paper in his apartment. On Oct. 28, Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group in the Philippines that authorities believe has been supported in the past by al-Qaeda, bombed a food market, killing six people. And the Ugandan government announced that it had detained eight men on suspicion of belonging to al-Qaeda. How did one organization with an extremist ideology manage to acquire a reach that trembles governments from Bosnia to the Philippines to Uganda?

THE BORDERLESS WORLD

"Globalization means interdependence," says Edmund Hull, U.S. ambassador to Yemen and former State Department counterterrorism chief. "We have previously seen the benefits of this interdependence. Now we are seeing its risks." That goes to the heart of any attempt to understand al-Qaeda. For the past decade, globalization has been understood as an economic process, rooted in the trade of goods and services. But the defining characteristic of our new world is not the movement of products or money but of people. Cheap air transport, the effects of decolonization and a population explosion in the poorer parts of the world have combined to create an unprecedented movement of humanity from one nation to another. Travel and emigration have broadened the mind and brought unparalleled opportunities to countless families. But they have also helped create havens for those seduced by the romance of terrorism.

French investigators believe Kamel Daoudi is one such recruit; his tale illuminates both the nature of modern terrorist cells and their global reach. Daoudi was the kind of child that immigrant parents dream of having. The son of Algerians who had immigrated to France, he took the tough post-high school exams a year early and started to study computer sciences at a university in Paris. But he found the courses difficult, and according to reports, a family row exploded in 1999 when Daoudi's father found evidence of his son's appointments with psychiatrists. Daoudi left for Britain, his pockets bulging with the $11,000 his family had saved for his education.