Amidst the attention it has lavished on Iraq, it’s essential that the Bush administration keep a sharp eye on al-Qaeda. Intelligence officials have noted renewed activity in remote border areas of Pakistan where Osama bin Laden and his legions have vanished from scrutiny.
Just before last year’s mid-term election, President Bush declared that “al-Qaeda is on the run.” Last April, national intelligence director John Negroponte described the sponsors of the Sept. 11 terror attacks as “a somewhat weakened organization.” In 2005, U.S. intelligence indicated that al-Qaeda leaders were detached from their followers and any new operations.
After the United States and its allies drove bin Laden out of Afghanistan in late 2001, he went into hiding. But any sense that the organization has disintegrated is only wishful thinking. Members hid from pursuers, regrouped and are now thought to be training for new attacks. Recent reports indicate the organization, along with the Taliban, the Islamist militants who once ruled Afghanistan, is regaining strength in remote areas of the Pakistan-Afghan border.
It’s time for the United States to intensify its efforts to capture bin Laden and No. 2 figure Ayman al-Zawahiri, and to disrupt their network activities.
Recently, President Bush planned to re- deploy some of the 24,000 U.S. troops now stationed in Afghanistan, but reversed course at the urging of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Bush has now extended the tours of some 1,200 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
Small, inconspicuous al-Qaeda compounds have been discovered along the Pakistani side of the border. The training camps are of modest size, big enough for 20 people at a time who are “taught calisthenics and bomb-making,” author Peter Bergen reported in the New Republic last month, quoting a former American intelligence official. An insidious element is that the camps are also preparing Western citizens – mainly British, it is said – “who could carry out major terrorist attacks in Britain or the United States,” Newsweek reported in December. The magazine quotes a source who says 12 Westerners, tagged the “English brothers,” traveled to and from the al-Qaeda camps over a land route via Turkey so their passports would never show that they had been to Pakistan.
During Tuesday’s swearing in of Mike McConnell, President Bush instructed his new intelligence chief to develop more recruits with the language skills and background to collect information on al-Qaeda and other terrorist. It’s a capability that U.S. intelligence has been sadly lacking.
Al-Qaeda’s mission is ongoing destruction. While there is no doubt that Pakistan needs to do more, the United States must take responsibility for stopping the terror network from striking America or its allies. Top officials underestimated al-Qaeda before the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It would be folly to make the same mistake again.
