Al-Qaeda Is Getting Larger & Spreading; Bin Laden Is Becoming The Muslims' Hero.

*** US Forces Said By Nov. 13 They Had Killed 1,200 Falluja Insurgents 

*** Wahhabi Scholars In Saudi Arabia Issue A Fatwa In Support Of Holy War Against The US-Led Alliance In Iraq; They Call The American Occupation A Big Crime & Accuse Jews Of Having Infiltrated The Country; Their Fatwa Prohibits Iraqis From Giving Any Help To US-Led Forces In Falluja Or Other Parts Of The Sunni Triangle 

*** Iraq's Sunnis Criticise Shiite Religious Leaders For Being Silent While The US Hit The Insurgents

*** The Saudi Govt. May Cancel Plans To Host Anti-Terror Talks In Riyadh Feb. 5-8

*** Musharraf Says His Role In The US-Led War On Terrorism Is Indispensable

NICOSIA - Osama Bin Laden's global network, Al-Qaeda, is getting larger and more widespread than it used to be before its 9/11 attacks, according to highly-placed APS sources. Judging by the ease with which Bin Laden appeared and the wealth of his analytical review of recent developments as shown in the latest video tape broadcast partly on Oct. 29 by Al-Jazeera, the sources suggest that he is receiving feedbacks regularly from various parts of the world.

Perhaps more serious, Al-Qaeda seems to be at the centre of a Sunni/Salafi insurgency, guided by Wahhabi religious militants, already spread throughout the Muslim world. This tends to give credence to the theory of Michael Scheuer, a senior CIA counter-terrorism official, who argues that Al-Qaeda is a global Islamic insurgency rather than a traditional terrorist organisation.

The US offensive in Falluja, started on Nov. 8, was to test the Bush administration's belief that the Iraqi insurgency can be subdued in time for the country's elections in late January. But it has become apparent that there would be no Hiroshima and no World War II-style capitulation in Iraq or anywhere else in a Muslim world penetrated by a coalition of Wahhabis and other Salafi movements.

Two central movements in this coalition not as clandestine as most Salafi groups are Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Both project themselves as being peaceful and mainstream Sunni movements, but their real agendas are subversive.

As had been the case in Afghanistan since the early 1980s, in Iraq these movements have mastered the arts of hit-and-run-and-then-hit-back warfare. In Iraq, however, they are mastering more sophisticated, more murderous ways: of melting away in a densely populated area only to re-emerge suddenly in another city and hit back, of stage-managing kidnap-and-decapitate scenes on the internet, of using Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabiya to convey a message or inspire other groups to do the same, and so forth.

This stateless coalition is leading numerous insurgent groups bent on de-stabilising all US-backed states including Saudi Arabia but now focusing on Iraq. It is capitalising on the use of what the US and other Western powers have established: the internet and cable news TV channels.

What concerns the current Arab regimes most is that this global insurgency really believes it can force the US to leave Iraq and the rest of the Muslim world. It believes that, once the US has been ousted from the land of Islam, the insurgency will spread across Europe, the US and the rest of the world. Its ultimate objective is to establish a global Sunni Caliphate.

That Iraq and other Arab or Muslim countries like Pakistan are destroyed in the process is a gain to this insurgency which, according to the APS sources, will only end when the Caliphate has been established.

Pakistani President Musharraf's security strategy is to break the branch of this insurgency which remains based between Pakistan and Afghanistan and might even have penetrated India (see SBME5 of this week's Diplomat Package).

Guerrillas of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) still have a presence in the Fergana Valley and neighbouring Kyrghyzstan, having infiltraded from Afghanistan and Tadjikistan. They and Al-Qaeda are part of HT. For the time being, HT and Al-Qaeda are satisfied with their limited means, which consist mainly of terrorism and secret financiers who include wealthy Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and sympathisers in various parts of the world. Some of the wealthier Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia and Qatar are being blackmailed to keep financing them as well as maintain complete secrecy about their links to Al-Qaeda and HT, or their various affiliates in other parts of the world.

The IMU guerrillas, like Al-Qaeda following a radical version of Wahhabism, include fighters from other countries and have modern arms and communication equipment and good financing. On Feb. 16, 1999, they staged a series of car bombings that targetted Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov and caused chaos in the capital, Tashkent, killing 16 people. Shortly thereafter government forces rounded up 22 suspects and in June 1999 the Supreme Court sentenced six of them to death. Since then, the IMU has staged several suicide attacks.

Co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks struck the perimetres of the US and Israeli Embassies in Tashkent on July 30, 2004, killing three people and wounding several. A third explosion in Tashkent detonated about the same time in the lobby of Uzbekistan's general prosecutor's office, killing three people including the bomber who blew himself up inside the lobby, badly damaging the building. The blasts carried potent symbolism. They struck at three governments which have co-operated closely in campaigns against Islamic militancy, and occurred at the end of the first week of the trial of 15 Uzbeks accused of participating in rifle and suicide bomb attacks against the government in March and April 2004, with 47 people killed.