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Plot to blow up US flight shows Qaeda affiliates growing ability to strike | The plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight over American soil on Christmas Day demonstrates a new and lethal ability by a branch of Al Qaeda to attack the United States directly, the New York Times quotes both government and independent counter-terrorism specialists, as saying. According to the daily,
American officials till now had concerns about the capability of Qaeda affiliates
to strike in North Africa, Yemen and Iraq, and remained confident that these groups
- unlike Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda in Pakistan - could not threaten the United
States itself. That assessment has now changed, as American intelligence officials
say Qaeda operatives in Yemen trained and equipped a 23-year-old Nigerian man
to evade airport security measures and ignite a powerful explosive on a commercial
airliner. "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has grown in confidence and seems
to be developing a capability beyond the other Al Qaeda nodes," claimed Richard
Barrett, a British former intelligence officer now monitoring Al Qaeda and the
Taliban for the United Nations, who visited Yemen two weeks ago. The thwarted
attack on an Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight underscores how the Obama administration
must now defend the United States from attacks conceived in multiple havens abroad.
"This is the canary in the coal mine. Al Qaeda's regional satellites are seen
as platforms for Al Qaeda's global agenda," said Juan Carlos Zarate, a top counter-terrorism
official under President George W. Bush. Last month, federal officials unsealed
terrorism-related charges against men they say were important actors in a recruitment
effort that led roughly 20 young Americans to join the Shabab, a violent insurgent
group in Somalia with ties to Al Qaeda. Law enforcement officials fear that the
recruits, who hold American passports, could be tapped to return to the United
States to carry out attacks here, though so far there is no evidence of such plots.
"We think of core Al Qaeda in Pakistan as a very potent group, but not huge. But
if you add the affiliates that are actively targeting us, it becomes a much bigger
number," said Daniel L. Byman, a former intelligence analyst. American officials
are of the view that terrorist groups in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen are now communicating
more frequently and trying to coordinate their actions. American and European
counter-terrorism experts, however, say the ability and expertise of the Qaeda
satellites are still limited. A report by Dutch counterterrorism specialists issued
Wednesday, for example, concluded that the planning and preparation for the failed
attack against the Northwest Airlines flight was "fairly professional, but its
execution was amateurish." And the groups' effectiveness often hinges greatly
on the personalities of their leaders. By design as well as necessity, the plots
hatched by Al Qaeda's regional affiliates are typically smaller and less spectacular
than, say, Al Qaeda's failed plans to blow up several airliners over the Atlantic
in 2006. But in setting their sights lower and relying on lone suicide bombers,
rather than complicated plots with several confederates, these Qaeda affiliates
may also pose a threat that is harder to thwart, as the Christmas Day incident
demonstrated. |
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