Al-Qaeda Leadership.

Hidden in the harsh terrain of Pakistan's tribal lands near the Afghan border, al-Qaeda's senior leaders are said to be quietly rebuilding their terrorist network - including lines of command to cells in other countries. But the Christian Science Monitor on March 5 quoted "US intelligence officials and outside experts" as saying al-Qaeda's resurgence did not mean the group had regained its old strength. The Monitor said: "Al-Qaeda's top levels are now filled with inexperienced commanders, and its new camps can train only a fraction of the recruits the pre-2001 infrastructure in Afghanistan could handle. Al-Qaeda's goals also remain murky. It is not clear whether the organization has a specific plan to strike within the United States or whether it considers Europe, or Iraq, more important in its war to impose its vision of Islam on the Middle East".

The Monitor quoted Martin Libicki, lead author of a recently published RAND Corp. study on the subject, as saying of al-Qaeda: "We have no evidence that they have a coherent strategy" to attack US targets.

The capabilities of a resurgent al-Qaeda became a hot topic in Washington recently after Vice President Dick Cheney's surprise trip to Pakistan. During his visit, Cheney told Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf of US concerns that al-Qaeda was regrouping in Pakistan's tribal regions, and that its Taliban allies may mount a spring offensive into Afghanistan.

In a recent US Senate hearing, US intelligence officials reiterated that terrorist groups remained their greatest challenge. Al-Qaeda still tops the list of single threats. The director of national intelligence, retired Vice Adm. Michael McConnell, said of al-Qaeda: "Its core elements are resilient" and that al-Qaeda would still like to inflict mass casualties on the US, and it continued to seek WMD.

The Monitor quoted US intelligence as saying al-Qaeda was "forging stronger operational connections that radiate outward" from Pakistan to affiliated groups in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. Still, the Monitor added, al-Qaeda "remains a loose network of like-minded individuals, instead of a tightly controlled terrorist hierarchy. Three-quarters of al-Qaeda's pre-9/11 leaders were killed or captured, according to US estimates. Aside from Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, many of its leaders are relative rookies. Nor has al-Qaeda's new Pakistani infrastructure replaced the multiple camps it operated in Afghanistan, capable of training thousands of recruits at once". McConnell said: "The numbers are not the same, but there are volunteers who are attempting to reestablish [training grounds]".

The Monitor quoted Jessica Stern, a terrorism expert at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, as saying al-Qaeda's resurgence in its remaining small corner of the world should not come as surprising news, adding: "It's been true for a long time".

US intelligence has long thought bin Laden disappeared into Pakistan's wild tribal frontier after the fall of the Taliban in late 2001. The area is so remote that for centuries it has largely remained beyond the control of central authorities. Border security is non-existent. As to evidence of al-Qaeda regaining ability to reach out and mount attacks, in a videotape released in 2006 Zawahiri claimed responsibility for the July 2005 London bombings. Investigators have long believed the failed 2006 plot to blow up airliners from London was al-Qaeda-related, in part because it resembled a mid-1990s plan to explode airliners over the Pacific.

The Monitor said: "...critics of the White House are surprised that many of the recent warnings about al-Qaeda come from administration officials. In essence, critics say, the White House confirms something they've long held to be true: the central front in the war on terror is along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, not in Iraq". Ms. Stern said: "We went to Iraq and left the serious terrorist problem to fester".

On the subject of Iraq and al-Qaeda, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) estimates less than 10% of the Iraqi insurgency consists of foreign fighters. Of those, most are suicide bombers. Violence by terrorists accounts for "only a fraction" of insurgent violence in Iraq, according to a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee by DIA Director Lt. Gen. Michael Maples. The DIA says the attacks have a disproportionate impact on Iraq's stability because of the high-profile nature of the terrorist operations and tactics.

According to Gen. Maples' statement, documents captured in a raid on a safehouse belonging to al-Qaeda in Iraq revealed that the group was planning operations in the US. Maples wrote: "Despite being forced to decentralize its network, al-Qaeda retains the ability to organize complex, mass-casualty attacks and inspire others".

The Monitor said the DIA and other US intelligence sources maintained that al-Qaeda was still focused on striking the US. But the RAND study says that is not the same as having a specific plan or a discernable strategy for the goals it hopes to achieve by doing so. The study examined a number of hypothesis which might explain al-Qaeda's thinking with regard to hitting within the US: that the group's leaders might be interested in rallying supporters around the world or in coercing the US into leaving the Middle East.

The most likely scenario, RAND concluded, was that al-Qaeda would pick targets which would simultaneously create fear and damage the US economy. It might attack US agriculture or food industries, for instance; or employ radiological "dirty" bombs. But, the study says, the terrorist organisation itself has given few real clues about where or when it might strike, or if its leadership is thinking in such terms.

Neo-Salafis In N. Africa: A Moroccan court on March 2 sentenced eight Islamists to prison terms of up to 15 years for plotting terrorist attacks in France, Italy and Morocco. The eight included a Tunisian man, Muhammad Benhedi Msahel, who Moroccan prosecutors said was the leader of a Neo-Salafi cell in Milan with ties to North Africa's largest terrorist unit, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. Counter-terrorism officials point to Msahel as evidence that the Salafist Group is organising militants across North Africa to bring the remnants of al-Qaeda into a new international force for jihad.

In January, the group changed its name to al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb. European counter-terrorism officials are worried about the group because it is within easy striking distance of the continent. Its leader, Abdelmalek Droukdel, in 2006 singled out France as a target for attacks. US officials are concerned because US interests have also been designated as targets.

Msahel and his cohorts were arrested in March 2006 after the arrest in Morocco in late 2005 of Anour Majrar, who told interrogators he had visited Salafist Group leaders in Algeria with Msahel and an Algerian man, Amir Laaraj, who is still at large. Moroccan prosecutors charged Msahel and Majrar with being part of a terrorist network planning attacks on the Paris Metro, Orly Airport and the headquarters of France's domestic intelligence agency, as well as Milan's police headquarters and the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, in which a 15th-century fresco depicts the Prophet Muhammad in hell. More than a dozen people have also been arrested in Algeria, France and Italy in connection with the case. Majrar was sentenced in February to seven years in prison. The people arrested in Algeria, France and Italy have yet to be tried.

Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb in an internet message on March 5 claimed an attack on a bus carrying Russian gas workers in Algeria, saying it was to avenge Russia's actions in Chechnya. It said: "Mujahedeen using a high intensity bomb targeted the convoy of Russian infidels working for the Russian company Stroytransgaz". A Russian engineer and three Algerians were killed and five other people wounded in the bomb attack on their bus on March 3 at Hayoun, near Ain Defla in southern Algeria. The statement said: "We dedicate this modest conquest to our Muslim brothers in Chechnya...victims of the criminal (Russian President Vladimir) Putin".

The Algerian newspaper el-Khabar said the bus was carrying employees of the Russian firm, who were laying gas mains between Ain Defla, in the region of Medea, and Tiaret, 340 km south-west of Algiers. The attack was the second claimed by the group in recent months against foreigners based in Algeria, long troubled by Islamic extremist violence. Last December one person was killed and nine injured in an attack on a bus carrying staff of the Brown and Root Condor (BRC) company, a unit of the Algerian Sonatrach oil company and of US firm Halliburton. The Algerian driver died, and a US citizen, four Britons, a Canadian, two Lebanese and an Algerian were among the injured.