Author: Douglas Frantz With Raymond
Bonner
Publication: The New York Times
Date: September 23, 2001
Officials in Europe, the United
States and Pakistan say they have identified new elements of the bin Laden
terrorist network, including a top lieutenant in Europe and a previously
undisclosed cell in the Gaza Strip.
At least 11,000 terrorists have
been trained in the past five years at camps operated by Osama bin laden
across the border in Afghanistan, these officials say. Many have since
been dispatched abroad to destinations unknown.
Mr. bin Laden and his Afghan camps
are only part of the problem, the officials say, and his network of loosely
linked cells may already be so vast that eliminating those camps or even
Mr. bin Laden himself would go only part way toward confronting the terrorist
threat.
Western governments have concluded
that many of the terrorist operations linked to Mr. bin Laden are being
run by a very senior lieutenant in Europe whom officials would not name.
Europe was a far easier place from which to operate because of access to
telephones, travel and banks, one European ambassador said.
There is also substantial evidence
that once terrorists are dispatched around the globe as "sleepers," they
are given considerable latitude in selecting their targets and executing
their plans in order to minimize communication and detection.
Even before the Sept. 11 attacks
on America, security agencies in Europe rounded up several groups of followers
of Mr. bin Laden. Suspects were arrested this summer in Spain, Italy, France,
Germany and Britain.
The scope of the network was illustrated
by an operation that started with the arrest of four militants in Frankfurt
last Dec. 26. The suspects were two Iraqis, a French Muslim and an Algerian.
An intelligence official familiar
with the arrests said authorities suspected the group intended to bomb
the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
The leader of the terrorist cell,
an Algerian identified as Muhammad Bensakhria, escaped. He was arrested
later in southeastern Spain, and prosecutors say he and his colleagues
had been trained by Mr. bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization in Afghanistan.
Other cell members were arrested
over the summer in Italy and Germany, and an Italian antiterrorist official
said evidence seized indicated that the group planned to supply weapons
to militants in Britain, Germany and Belgium.
Earlier this year, Israeli authorities
"stumbled on" an Al Qaeda cell in Gaza, a senior American official there
said.
The official, who offered few details
of the operation, said the Israelis were not even looking for the bin Laden
organization and did not know they had a cell in their midst.
President Bush said this week that
the network operates in 60 countries. But the harder truth, the intelligence
officials said, is that no one knows how far Mr. bin Laden's reach really
extends.
It is certain, however, that the
organization's influence goes beyond secretive terrorist cells. It has
exported instability on a global basis by training and financing Islamic-oriented
insurgency movements from the Philippines and Malaysia to Nigeria and Chechnya.
A good example of its influence
is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is trying to create an Islamic
state in the Ferghana Valley that includes parts of three Central Asian
countries: Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
American intelligence officials
said the group's members were trained at a former Soviet military base
now operated by the bin Laden organization near the city of Mazar- i-Sherif
in northern Afghanistan.
Estimates of the Uzbek group's strength
range from 2,000 to 3,000 fighters, most of them well-equipped with the
latest weapons and surveillance equipment. From bases in northern Afghanistan
and Tajikistan, they have carried out numerous hit-and-run attacks through
the region over the last three years.
"Without a doubt, the strength of
the I.M.U. is external support," Michael R. Hickok, an expert on Central
Asia at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, said
in an interview. "Among its supporters are the Taliban and Osama bin Laden."
Training terrorists and those who
assist them is carried out by the military wing of the bin Laden organization.
Another wing deals with public relations, trying to spread the anti-American
message as far as possible through interviews and videotapes.
Muhammad Ismail Khan, a Pakistani
journalist based in Peshawar, described a morning in August of 1998 when
he was awakened by a telephone call informing him that Mr. bin Laden wanted
to be interviewed. He and several other journalists went to the airport,
where a bin Laden associate gave them tickets to Banno, south of Peshawar.
There they were met by a van and escorted across the Afghan border at an
unmarked crossing point and on to Mr. bin Laden's camp.
Such camps in Afghanistan have provided
the training grounds for at least 3,000 hard-core terrorists recruited
from Arab countries as well as Pakistan and Muslim regions like western
China, Chechnya and Central Asia, officials said.
A NATO ambassador said the most
frightening aspect of the bin Laden organization was that so many of his
adherents joined Al Qaeda as young boys and were indoctrinated thoroughly
in terrorist techniques and a deep hatred of the United States.
Another 8,000 men have received
instructions on logistics, like moving money, planning sophisticated attacks,
blending into Western cities and communicating secretly, officials said.
Intelligence authorities have tracked
a network of business dealings that includes agriculture companies, banking,
and export-import firms around the world. Along with providing money for
the training, the authorities said, the empire can be used for moving people
and money around the world.
There has been little success in
shutting down his finances, the step regarded by many intelligence officials
as one of the keys to stopping his operations.
"The massive amount of money is
the fuel of this," said a NATO ambassador in an interview in Brussels.
"The international system is so globalized, so instant, with so many opportunities
for anonymity that these guys can take advantage of it."
Another expert, Peter Bergen, a
journalist who is completing a book on Mr. bin Laden, said the Saudi exile
is only the best-known leader of the organization and the public starting
point for a particular brand of transnational terrorism.
"We use the name bin Laden with
multiple connotations," he said. "There are groups that have sworn allegiance,
others who might work with him, and others who think he is a good guy."
