Terror Strikes Again
Attacks on U.S. embassies prompt new fears--and a vow of retribution
Now, the frightening question is whether the embassy bombings augur a new wave of anonymous attacks on soft American targets overseas. "When you have a multiple bombing like this, it suggests a campaign," said Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert who consults for Rand. Since a truck bomb killed 19 Americans at the Khobar Towers military housing complex in Saudi Arabia two years ago, the U.S. government has tightened security at many military bases and embassies. But each time that security is improved at one set of targets, another set becomes comparatively more vulnerable (box, Page 17).
Terrorists also are less likely than ever before to take responsibility for their acts. This is a radical departure from classic Palestinian terror of the 1970s, when numerous groups would often claim responsibility for the same bombing or hijacking in order to attract attention to their cause. Today, a public claim merely invites retaliation, a lesson drummed in by the U.S. bombing of Libya in 1986.
Terrorism by proxy. Another trend that adds to the confusion around the embassy bombings is the "subcontracting of terror," said Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism at St. Andrews University in Scotland. Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi may have pioneered this tactic by paying the Japanese Red Army to carry out terror strikes in the 1980s. Today, a Saudi Arabian millionaire named Osama Bin Ladin is suspected of financing terror around the world, but his hand is hard to trace. "It has become difficult to speak of traditional [terrorist] organizations," said Jenkins. "Rather we deal with universes of like-minded fanatics from which emerge ad hoc conspiracies, or whose members provide the soldiers for a terrorist leader. But we don't necessarily find an organization with initials and an established modus operandi."
One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, ranked the most likely suspects in the embassy bombings as Bin Ladin, the Egyptian terror group Islamic Jihad, and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah. Though he is now in hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan, Bin Ladin still is believed to control a personal fortune estimated at $250 million and a network of perhaps 3,000 people, with fundamentalist recruitment centers and guesthouses in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. He combines financial muscle with religious fanaticism: In February, during the last American standoff with Iraq, Bin Ladin and a coalition of Islamic extremist groups issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, saying that "to kill the Americans and their allies--civilian and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it."
According to a February 23 memorandum prepared by the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, "these fatwas are the first from these groups that explicitly justify attacks on American civilians anywhere in the world." The U.S. government remains concerned that Bin Ladin may still be obtaining funds from Saudi Arabia; the White House plans to discuss those ties when the Saudi crown prince visits Washington this fall. As recently as May, the United States also asked Bin Ladin's hosts and protectors in Afghanistan, the Taliban, to turn him over--but to no avail.
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