If you got a weird sense of deja vu reading about the London terrorist attacks and the carnage in Egypt it probably was not your imagination: experts also think the seemingly coordinated nature of these attacks indicate Al Qauda is very much in control:
The back-to-back nature of the deadly attacks in Egypt and London, as well as similarities in the methods used, suggests that the al Qaeda leadership may have given the orders for both operations and is a clear sign that Osama bin Laden and his deputies remain in control of the network, according to interviews with counterterrorism analysts and government officials in Europe and the Middle East.
Investigators on Saturday said that they believed the details of the bombing plots in Egypt and Britain — the deadliest terrorist strikes in each country’s history — were organized locally by groups working independently of each other. In Sharm el-Sheikh, where the death toll rose to 88 people, attention centered on an al Qaeda affiliate blamed for a similar attack last October at Taba, another Red Sea resort. In London, where 52 bystanders were killed in the subway and on a bus, police have identified three of the four presumed suicide bombers as British natives with suspected connections to Pakistani radicals.
But intelligence officials and terrorist experts said they suspect that bin Laden or his lieutenants may have sponsored both operations from afar, as well as other explosions that have killed hundreds of people in Spain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Morocco since 2002. The hallmarks in each case: multiple bombings aimed at unguarded, civilian targets that are designed to scare Westerners and rattle the economy.
The officials and analysts also said the recent attacks indicate that the nerve center of the original al Qaeda network remains alive and well, despite the fact that many leaders have been killed or captured since the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings in the United States. Bin Laden may be in hiding, the officials and analysts said, and much is still unknown about the network. But they added that his organization remains fully capable of orchestrating attacks worldwide by recruiting local groups to do its bidding.
As we’ve written here before, many books on terrorism note that you should think of Al Qaeda as a kind of franchise — with individual groups akin to “store” using the home office for advice, materials, networking and an identify.
The the big “corporate” office is run by Osama-bin-Hiding. And the bottom line is: yes, he and his cohorts are out there, are very much in business and still need to be found and dealt with and/or eliminated.
The Washington Post piece also quotes Prince Turki al Faisal, the former director of foreign intelligence for Saudi Arabia who was named this past week as the kingdom’s new ambassador to the United States,as saying in an interview: “All of these groups maintain a link of sort with bin Laden, either through Internet Web sites, or through messengers, or by going to the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan and maybe not necessarily meeting with bin Laden himself, but with his people.”
And the Guardian, in a story noting links between people involved in the to days of bombings in Great Britain, notes that these terorrists network in ways not unlike the ways corporate types network:
Police now believe some of the men they are pursuing for last week’s abortive attacks – on Shepherd’s Bush, Oval and Warren Street tube stations and on a No 26 bus in Hackney – attended a whitewater rafting trip at the same centre as two of the 7 July bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer.
This raises the distinct possibility that the two operations were connected as part of a larger plan to bring carnage to the capital.
Evidence discovered in the rucksacks left behind by the failed bombers led police to three addresses in London. When investigators cross-referenced them with the electoral register they discovered names that tallied with those of individuals who attended the outdoor adventure course in Snowdonia last summer.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.