Sunday's edition of The Washington Post has a lengthy report that the core remnant of Al Qaeda has now focused on Iraq as the new nexus of conflict with the West, and that Iran has been deeply involved all along the way.
Two years after the attacks on the United States, Osama bin Laden's leadership cadre has been isolated and weakened and is increasingly reliant on the violent actions of local radicals around the world to maintain its profile. But the al Qaeda network is determined to open a new front in Iraq to sustain itself as the vanguard of radical Islamic groups fighting holy war, according to European, American and Arab intelligence sources.The turn toward Iraq was made in February, as U.S. forces were preparing to attack, the sources said. Two seasoned operatives met at a safe house in eastern Iran. One of them was Mohammed Ibrahim Makawi, the military chief of al Qaeda, who is better known as Saif Adel. He welcomed a guest, Abu Musab Zarqawi, who had recently fled Iraq's Kurdish northern region in anticipation of U.S. targeting of a radical group with which he was affiliated, Arab intelligence sources said.
The encounter resulted in the dispatch of Zarqawi to become al Qaeda's man in Iraq, opening a new chapter in the history of the group and a serious threat to American forces there.
"The monster is already near you," said one Arab official who is familiar with the intelligence and who spoke on condition that he not be identified by name or nationality. "I don't know if you can kill it."
The official added: "Iraq is the new battleground. It is the perfect place. It will be the perfect place."
Part of the story is encouraging about overall progress in breaking Al Qaeda elsewhere in the world.
With the capture of other top-tier al Qaeda leaders around the world, the group in Iran -- accompanied by numerous low- and mid-ranking Saudis, including some who would later participate in the May 2003 Riyadh bombings -- became the core of al Qaeda's functioning leadership.Posted by Alan at September 7, 2003 12:02 AMBin Laden and Zawahiri went into hiding in the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and their ability to communicate with their followers has been severely constrained, often limited to oral messages or handwritten notes.
Elsewhere, al Qaeda's leadership structure began unraveling in earnest a year ago, with the capture in Pakistan of self-proclaimed Sept. 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh. Since then, many of the senior leaders have been caught, with information gleaned from one arrest leading to others.