WorldPeace - "Al-Qaeda rises from its ashes intent on revenge and more terrorism" by John WorldPeace on daily press photos

IT IS possible to imagine the fat smile of satisfaction that spread across Osama bin Laden’s face when he heard about the Bali bomb. Another shattering strike against the West, hundreds more "infidels" laid to waste, shockwaves reverberating around the world. Depending on your conspiracy theory of choice, Bin Laden may have orchestrated the massacre from a Middle Eastern bolthole, hooked up to a life-maintaining dialysis machine; or he may have had nothing to do with it, the bomb the work of a passionate, but separate, Islamic fundamentalist sect. Or, of course, Bin Laden may be dead.

But even if it eventually turns out that the Bali bomb was not the work of al-Qaeda, and that its master no longer walks the earth, there will be little comfort for those who thought the terrorist network had been smashed by the American onslaught on its bases in Afghanistan.

In a chilling report to a US congressional intelligence committee last week the CIA announced that al-Qaeda had been "reconstituted". "They are coming after us. They want to execute attacks. The threat environment we find ourselves in today is as bad as it was last summer, before 9/11," CIA Director George Tenet warned.

The US is not alone in making this grim assessment. A recent report by the United Nations concluded that, despite George W Bush’s war on terrorism, al-Qaeda is "fit and well", still has access to funds and is "poised to strike again".

As though on cue, al-Qaeda’s leaders have begun to re-emerge from the shadows. Separate audio tapes purporting to be of Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Zawakiri were released two weeks ago calling their followers to arms. Since then there has been a glut of attacks.

The Bali bomb was preceded by a terrorist bombing of a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen, which killed one crew member. Two days later a US Marine was shot dead in Kuwait after a series of shootings from jeeps.

Four days before that a bomb killed a US Special Forces soldier in the Philippines. Then on Thursday the terrorists struck again in the Philippines, killing six and injuring 143 with two bombs in crowded shopping centres.

It is not long since the US authorities were celebrating the scattering of al-Qaeda. US General John Keane said that one of the war on terror’s "biggest successes" was "chasing al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan".

"There is no longer a safe haven for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan," he said. "There are no base camps left, there are no training camps left. We have reduced al-Qaeda to small groups hiding in the mountains."

Yet around 1,000 al-Qaeda fighters are believed to have escaped the US blitz on Afghanistan, and many observers now claim that the reduction of al-Qaeda to small amorphous groups has made the organisation more dangerous.

"They have fanned out to a dozen or so countries, and are even more difficult to hunt down," said one Washington security expert. "As well as being decentralised they are more experienced and battle-hardened after surviving the US onslaught in Afghanistan."

Peter Singer, of the Brookings Institution, fears al-Qaeda may be more dangerous because of its lack of centralised leadership. Al-Qaeda members will tend to carry out a greater number of independent attacks all over the world, he says. Such acts will be less sophisticated than the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But they could be enormously devastating, as the discovery of preparations by al-Qaeda’s affiliates against American embassies in Rome and Bosnia prove.

Jean-Louis Bruguiere, France’s chief anti-terrorism official, says that the new groups "change their shape like the Aids virus. The way they communicate or carry out one operation is not the way they carry out the next one. And many of them are so integrated into Western society, even eating pork, drinking and wearing Western clothes as a cover, that they are almost impossible to discover".

So where will they attempt to strike next? Intelligence agencies have identified a number of key "hot spots" where al-Qaeda cells flourish.

In south-east Asia the US is focusing on Jamaah Islamiyah, the Asian version of al-Qaeda, which is an Islamic separatist group seeking to establish an Islamic state in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. The group is suspected of having planted the Bali bomb. Various intelligence agencies say links have been established connecting Jamaah Islamiyah with al-Qaeda.

But its alleged founder, Abu Bakar Ba’aysir, illustrates the difficulties facing investigators presented by the new-look al-Qaeda. Ba’aysir denies any connection with al-Qaeda, and says he is willing to help the authorities with their enquiries.

He runs an Islamist boarding school in Java, Indonesia and though many of his pupils have been detained on terrorism-related accusations in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines Ba’aysir insists he is not even a member of Jamaah Islamiyah. The 64-year-old cleric was this weekend under police guard in hospital after suffering breathing problems following his arrest in connection with a spate of church bombings carried out two years ago.

Before the Bali bomb the Philippines, not Indonesia, was the country deemed to be most at risk of terrorism in south-east Asia. The government of the predominantly Roman Catholic nation is at war on several fronts against armed Islamic militants seeking to establish a Muslim state.

For over a decade Manila has been fighting the Abu Sayyaf fundamentalist Islamic group, which demands a separate Muslim state in the southern Philippines.

Both the US and the UN say Abu Sayyaf has received funding from al-Qaeda, and that several of its members were trained in Bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan. Bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, has been a frequent visitor to Zamboanga City, an Islamic hotbed in Mindanao island. He is suspected of funnelling money to the rebels through Islamic charities and a university in the city.

After September 11 Bush sent 650 troops to help President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo fight Abu Sayyaf. They are accompanying some 5,000 front-line Philippine soldiers on patrols in Basilan, a rugged island that is a stronghold of the terror group.

Last week, the authorities arrested a number of Islamic militants linked to two bomb attacks. In one attack the same C4 explosive used in the Bali attack was found.

In the Middle East and East Africa al-Qaeda’s technique is to home in on "failed states", where political chaos or civil war prevents governments from exercising control.

Al-Qaeda has re-established itself in Yemen, despite pledges by Yemen’s ruler, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, that his country, previously notorious as a haven of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, was now a "friend of the West". But the desperately poor Yemen government cannot control territory close to its border with Saudi Araba, and it is here that al-Qaeda fighters have re-established their presence.

The US government has sent military advisers to assist the Yemeni government. But it is considering more direct action, especially after the recent attack on the French oil tanker off the Yemeni coast. The US has discreetly established a 800-strong special forces group in Djibouti, which could be sent to Yemen to attack al-Qaeda cells.

Yet the US is in a quandary. Al-Qaeda forces could vanish across Yemen’s porous border with Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden’s family come from this region, and the population are sympathetic to al-Qaeda. As home to 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers, Saudi Arabia is no longer regarded as the reliably stable ally of the West. Saudi banks and Islamic charities continue to channel funds to al-Qaeda. These funds are difficult to trace because of the widespread use of the Islamic banking device known as Hawala, whereby debts are passed on to third parties for settlement, making transactions hard for outsiders to trace.

The consequences of a US hot-pursuit incursion into Saudi Arabia could be highly explosive. The presence of "infidel" American troops in eastern Saudi Arabia since the 1991 Gulf War is already a major rallying cry of Bin Laden’s followers against the Saudi rulers.

Two other "failed states", Somalia and Sudan, are also the focus of US suspicion. Sudan has re-emerged as a terrorist haven following reports that al-Qaeda has moved its gold reserves there from Afghanistan.

In Somalia, many analysts believe that the US force in Djibouti has al-Qaeda cells in this war-wracked country in its sights.

Al-Qaeda has also found safe havens in The Caucasus, where it has capitalised on the conflict between Russia and Moslem rebels.

Russia claims that the group is active in Georgia and Chechnya. Russian television recently quoted a counter-terrorism official as saying that Moscow had confirmed that "on the territory of Georgia, in the Pankisi Gorge, there are camps for training terrorists, where Arab nationals with special military training are teaching".

Al-Qaeda is also spreading its tentacles closer to Europe through North Africa, despite the existence of moderate Moslem governments. Attempts to blow up US and British warships near Gibraltar are believed to have originated in Morocco, while in Tunisia, a synagogue was attacked killing 13 German tourists.

The terrorist organisation is strongest in Pakistan, as al-Qaeda has shifted its bases there from Afghanistan. Once again Islamic schools known as madrassas provide willing recruits.

The Pakistani authorities find it almost impossible to control the wild north-west frontier close to Afghanistan where many al-Qaeda elements are still hiding. Meanwhile, in the teeming capital, Karachi, a senior al-Qaeda figure, Khalid Sheim Mohammed, is believed to be masterminding al-Qaeda operations.

The US also says it has evidence that Iran and Iraq, both named by Bush as part of the "axis of evil", and the United Arab Emirates, which is regarded as a friendly state, have al-Qaeda connections.

The administration has repeatedly asserted that Saddam Hussein has links with al-Qaeda, but has so far failed to publish hard evidence. But with al-Qaeda "killer cells" now operating so autonomously the question of defining what is and what is not al-Qaeda is starting to be asked.