US: Where have all the terrorists
gone? By Ashraf Fahim
NEW
YORK - Two years and eight months after September 11,
2001, no one knows for certain why al-Qaeda hasn't
succeeded in carrying out another attack on the US
homeland. While strikes on Western-associated targets
overseas have multiplied, and some have argued that the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have swelled al-Qaeda's
ranks, not a single attack has been carried out inside
the United States, nor has any major plan to do so been
upset.
Now, with a presidential election
approaching in November, fears that the next wave is
imminent have peaked. "We soon enter a season that is
rich with symbolic opportunities for the terrorists to
try and shake our will," Homeland Security Secretary Tom
Ridge said on April 19. Ridge cited Memorial Day on May
30, Independence Day on July 4, the coming Group of
Eight (G8) Summit on Sea Island in Georgia in June, the
Republican and Democratic conventions this summer, and
the November presidential election as potential zero
hours. The public seems to agree. A recent Associated
Press (AP) poll indicated that 67 percent of Americans
thought an attack was likely before the November 2
election.
Given the proliferation of
al-Qaeda-affiliated groups and the consensus among
security analysts that the US homeland remains
vulnerable, explaining the 32-month hiatus since
September 2001 is difficult.
Terrorism analyst
Mark Burgess of the Center for Defense Information in
Washington, DC, believes several factors could be in
play. Al-Qaeda, he says, "have shown themselves to be
capable of and prone to large-scale attacks", and may
not have struck US soil simply "because it takes a long
time to plan such operations. [September] 11, we know,
was in planning for some time." Burgess believes that
whatever assets al-Qaeda may have inside the US won't
wish to expose their network by carrying out small-scale
operations.
John Pike, director of
Globalsecurity.org, points to other possible factors.
"They currently do not have a clearly identifiable
liberated zone from which to operate," he says,
referring to the loss of al-Qaeda's so-called "safe
haven" in Afghanistan. "Also, we've taken out some
significant fraction of their leadership," he notes,
referring to the arrest of figures such as Abu Zubaydah,
al-Qaeda's onetime operations chief, in March 2002. And
whatever deficiencies that remain in the various US
security services' efforts to combat terrorist groups
since September 11, there has undoubtedly been a
quantitative and qualitative increase in those efforts,
an improvement Pike says may have "given [al-Qaeda]
pause" about planning attacks on the US mainland.
A key improvement in that regard has been the
breaking down of the so-called "artificial wall" that
divided competing US intelligence agencies. As a result,
the frequency, scope and breadth of joint intelligence
gathering by federal, state and local agencies has been
boosted through a number of multi-agency forums such as
the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC). In
addition, the USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening
America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to
Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act, despite its
chilling effect on civil liberties, has empowered law
enforcers. Likewise, the creation of the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS), though belated (it was "stood
up" on March 1, 2003) centralized 22 government agencies
responsible for securing America's borders and
undoubtedly made it more difficult for would-be
attackers to enter or operate in the US.
Both
Pike and Burgess cite another possible reason for the
absence of al-Qaeda attacks on US soil: Iraq. Iraq is an
attractive destination for al-Qaeda operatives, says
Pike, because it "is a lot easier to get to" than the
United States "and you don't have to learn to talk
American - you don't have to assimilate". For Burgess,
transporting the battlefield to Iraq could be a
double-edged sword. "The death and destruction we see on
TV is not death and destruction in New York or the
Pentagon, it's death and destruction in Iraq," he says,
"but to some degree there are probably grievances which
are being fueled, and these old chickens come home to
roost eventually."
Death by a thousand
pinpricks As comprehensive as the post-September
11 security reorganization appears, many analysts say it
has been too slow and that the changes have not
addressed crucial vulnerabilities. Some of the more
comprehensive programs have not yet or have only
recently been put into place. The TTIC only began
operating last May. Indeed, it took the administration
of President George W Bush 18 months, from September 11,
2001, until March 2003, to create DHS.
John Pike
suggests that this process has been somewhat misdirected
in that it has overly prioritized the prevention and
mitigation of mass casualty attacks, such as those
caused by weapons of mass destruction (WMD), as well as
attacks on high profile targets. Meanwhile so-called
"soft targets" have been left largely unprotected. "We
have super-hardened commercial airports," he says,
"they're not going to pull that stunt again. We are
going like gangbusters on container ports because
everybody saw that Tom Clancy movie [The Sum of All
Fears]. But they're not doing squat about Amtrak."
After the March 11 train bombings in Madrid that
killed 192 people and swung the Spanish election, an
unprecedented overhaul of US train security might well
have been expected. It hasn't happened. The US rail
network is vast, of course, and protecting it entirely
would be daunting - 500 Amtrak stations are not staffed,
for example. But the response has nevertheless been
underwhelming. Last week a pilot project to screen
passengers for explosives did begin in a single train
station in suburban Maryland. For one month, commuters
will have to pass through the type of "puffer" machine
already in use in power plants and military
installations, which detects traces of explosives. As
long as al-Qaeda operatives avoid New Carrollton,
Maryland, however, they should be able to board any
Amtrak train in the United States unmolested for the
foreseeable future.
It isn't that the Bush
administration doesn't recognize the threat to soft
targets. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director
Robert Mueller recently warned that in the buildup to
the election, al-Qaeda may not only try to "revisit
missed targets" such as the White House and Capitol
Hill, but "the subways and bridges in major cities, as
well as the airlines, have been a continual focus for
al-Qaeda targeting". Mark Burgess agrees that the coming
political season will be fraught, but says in this
high-stakes atmosphere virtually anything qualifies as a
"high profile" target. "I think every sort of target,
even a shopping mall, is going to be a high-profile
target," he says, adding that "a train in Madrid was a
high-profile target in the run-up to Spain's election".
Pike agrees, saying that "a spectacular attack
does not have to be a single mass-mortality event to be
significant". So numerous are the remaining
vulnerabilities that he is puzzled al-Qaeda hasn't
exploited them. If al-Qaeda were, for example, to "send
multiple teams over to Mexico and have them just walk
across the border ... most of them would make it" into
the United States, he believes. "If they sent a bunch of
them in with MANPADs [Man Portable Air Defense Systems -
shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles], could they
shoot down one airliner the first day, and two the
second day, and three the third day? Yes." The economic
impact of such an attack would be crippling, he says,
shattering the airline industry. Alternatively, "If they
blew up some shopping-mall food courts it would take a
big hit out of the economy because people just wouldn't
go shopping anymore."
The existing gaps in US
homeland security result from an inertia toward funding
programs that could prevent more mundane attacks. The
focus to date has been on expanding intelligence
networks, interdicting potential operatives, and funding
First Responders rather than hardening protection of
soft targets. There has also been lavish spending on
Bush administration priorities such as WMD, or more
obvious programs such as the training of air marshals or
protecting ports and nuclear and chemical plants.
But not nearly as much has been spent to counter
less apparent but no less genuine threats. To address
the very real MANPAD contingency (al-Qaeda operatives in
Kenya used such a weapon to try, unsuccessfully, to
shoot down an Israeli charter airliner in November
2002), DHS announced on January 6 "an aggressive
18-24-month analysis, prototype demonstration and
testing phase" to "adapt military technologies to
civilian aviation". Not only does this give al-Qaeda a
two-year window to attempt such an operation unimpeded,
but the predicted US$10 billion to $15 billion price tag
was labeled as "prohibitive" by DHS in advance. In
contrast, $13 billion has already been earmarked for
First Responders, while the President Bush's Project
BioShield has been slated to receive $5.6 billion over
10 years. Only $5 million, on the other hand, has been
allocated in 2005 to research the interdiction of truck
and suicide bombs.
Burgess, however, cautions
that there is only so much that can be done. Intrusive
inspections in such places as shopping malls, for
example, are impractical, he says, and would have
profound economic consequences. "It's a cost-benefit
analysis," he says. "And it's not easy to say that
because it's such an emotive subject - it's lives you're
talking about. But ... you can't make all targets
secure. If the terrorists wants to get through [they'll]
find a way through."
An exaggerated
threat? So while analysts maintain that
significant gaps remain in US homeland security and few
people challenge the Bush administration's contention
that al-Qaeda has the motivation, and perhaps the
ability, to strike the United States, the question
lingers as to why they haven't attacked the large and
tempting US homeland for almost three years.
Across Europe numerous cells have been wrapped
up and plots have been exposed by the security services,
while devastating operations have succeeded: elaborate
schemes involving chemical weapons in London, train
bombs in Madrid, and the bombing of HSBC bank in
Istanbul, for example. Nothing similar has been exposed
in the US, which Ridge contends is the terrorists' "No 1
target".
On April 14, FBI assistant director
John Pistole told the 9-11 Commission that "since
September 11, the FBI has investigated more than 4,000
threats to the US". But by his own admission these
threats were "primarily terrorist financing operations".
No attacks or operational plans for attacks on the
United States have been made public. The numerous
sleeper cells of which Attorney General John Ashcroft
has repeatedly warned have, if they exist, remained
asleep. "We are disrupting some cells here in America,"
Bush said on April 21. "We're chasing people down."
So far, however, the only "cells" to have been
chased down are the so-called Lackawanna Six, a group of
Americans of Yemeni origin who trained in al-Qaeda
camps, and the Portland Six, arrested for providing
"material support" to al-Qaeda. Both groups were charged
in the autumn of 2002, but neither "cell" was actively
planning attacks. According to Mueller's testimony to
Congress in February, of the arrests in 2003, two were
of separate persons charged with providing "material
support", another was charged with "direct associations"
to the al-Qaeda leadership, and three others were
charged with attempting to smuggle an SA-18
shoulder-fired missile into the US.
Part of the
explanation for the paucity of tangible threats on US
soil may be that the scope of the threat the US was
facing was exaggerated in the months after September 11.
Originally, says Pike, "the president spoke in terms of
100,000 trained terrorists. I always thought that number
was just way too high." Even if the number was as high
as 20,000, he says, "you figure that the average career
span of a terrorist is 20 years, and that none of them
want to die by natural causes. Well, that would mean
that 1,000 of them ought to be embracing martyrdom every
year. So where are they?"
It is a question no
one has been able to answer. "My working hypothesis,"
says Pike, "would be that the longer we go without a
domestic spectacular attack, the greater the presumption
that they aren't here." Burgess says that, in any event,
the sheer numbers aren't important. "It doesn't really
matter if there are only two or three sleeper cells if
they manage to carry out two or three 9-11s," he says.
Both the Bush administration and al-Qaeda have
arguably had an interest in overstating the capacity of
terrorists to strike the US homeland. The reasons for
the administration's exaggeration may not have been
entirely selfish or political - the challenge of
motivating preparedness on the vast US soil is
staggering. If, however, al-Qaeda hasn't attempted an
operation by the time the presidential election rolls
around on November 2 - an opportunity "too good to pass
up" in the words of Condoleezza Rice - real questions
may be asked about the actual size and nature of the
terrorist threat the US is facing.
Ashraf
Fahim is a freelance writer on Middle Eastern
affairs based in New York and London.
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