“A report released Tuesday said Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network has been largely dismantled, but the threat posed by extremist Muslim terrorists remains high and has grown harder to track.” This just in from AP.
I have been saying ever since 9/11 that the threat of radical Islam doesn’t come only from Al-Qaeda, but that radicals around the world are making recruits by appealing to the Qur’an and Sunna. It’s nice to see AP coming around on this.
“Kevin Rosser, one of the report’s authors, said worldwide counterterrorism efforts, including the arrests of al-Qaida leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, had significantly disabled the network. ‘The al-Qaida organization that existed on Sept. 11 (2001) … really no longer exists, it’s been largely dismantled,’ he said.”
Later, however, comes a sour note: “However, bin Laden remains at large and not everyone agrees with that assessment of al-Qaida’s capabilities. Officials in Saudi Arabia believe a suicide car bombing that killed at least 17 people in Riyadh on Saturday bore similarities to previous attacks blamed on the group.”
Rosser adds: “What we’re beginning to see is a much more disparate movement of people who are sometimes coordinating their acts and sometimes not, but who are inspired by the example of al-Qaida and who are carrying out attacks. So we see the threat becoming much more elusive and the danger is that it becomes much harder to track.” . . .
“Rosser said that terrorists’ intense focus on civilian targets and the presence of strong anti-American and anti-Western feelings in many parts of the world mean the risk of new attacks remains high. The report noted the continued risk of a major attack on the United States or Europe, and included London, but not the rest of Britain, on its medium risk list. Athens was also rated medium risk because the Olympics are being held there.”