Minimalist imperialists (continued) BY RICHARD BYRNE

SUCH HUBRIS has been noticeably absent among many close observers of Al Qaeda. Only one day before the Washington Post’s May 6 trash talking of Al Qaeda, the Christian Science Monitor came to an entirely different conclusion. Its May 5 edition features a story with the stark headline AL QAEDA MAY BE REBUILDING.

Relying on a broader array of sources than the Post, the Monitor quoted this snippet from an intelligence report prepared by a "European ally" that put the question of Al Qaeda’s potency bluntly: "The toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime could have a cataclysmic effect on the mobilization of recruits for Al Qaeda. Despite the significant successes we’ve had against them, and the pressure we’ve brought to bear, we cannot say that the Al Qaeda network has been weakened, let alone destroyed."

The Monitor also noted that Al Qaeda has adapted to the pressure placed upon it by the law-enforcement and military apparatus of the US and its allies in the war on terror. It's done so by reclaiming territory in Afghanistan right under the noses of US troops, transforming its funding network to resist detection, and "outsourcing" some of its work to regional Islamic terror networks.

This view of Al Qaeda’s continuing potency is shared by one of America’s foremost experts on Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network. Journalist Peter Bergen — author of Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (Free Press, 2001), the most comprehensive look at Al Qaeda’s rise to prominence — has updated his account of the group’s post-9/11 activities in a recent documentary, Al Qaeda 2.0, for the new Discovery Times cable channel.

Al Qaeda 2.0 tracks the many successes achieved by the US and its allies in battling bin Laden’s terror network. But it also provides a chilling account of how the organization has quietly melted away to regroup. Bergen’s documentary examines how Al Qaeda’s infamous October 12, 2002, Bali nightclub attack (a template for attacks such as Friday’s Casablanca bombing) was concocted, and it also takes viewers from Pakistan’s Karachi (a well-known hiding place for the group) to lesser-known breeding grounds. In particular, Al Qaeda 2.0 singles out Bangladesh for its poverty, Islamic fervor, and opacity to Western intelligence and law enforcement as precisely the sort of place where bin Laden’s network can safely regroup and regenerate.

Reached by phone, Bergen observes that "the obituary [for Al Qaeda] was written prematurely. The obituary writers will have to do some rethinking." He does downplay the immediate threat of another attack by Al Qaeda on US soil in the near term, but he notes that the group’s capacity to attack US citizens and interests has not diminished. "I think we might see numerous attacks overseas," says Bergen. "Mainly against economic and soft targets. The group remains a significant threat to Western interests around the world."

The question, he says, is how the Bush administration and future American leaders will regard such an Al Qaeda campaign. "Does [a campaign of overseas attacks] represent a national-security threat?" asks Bergen. "Or is it merely an irritant? The cost of doing business?" He sees the US business community — and particularly US business interests abroad — as a potential soft underbelly that may push smaller attacks abroad into something more damaging to US interests. "There could be significant fallout if American corporations begin to say that it’s too risky to do business abroad," Bergen says. "If [such attacks] keep happening, it could push things into the category of a threat to national security."

Bergen argues that a key to Al Qaeda’s flexibility in the post-9/11 environment is its transformation from a concrete organization with a central command and training camps to a more "virtual" entity connected by ideology and hatred. In short, it has shifted from the "incorporated" body that he described in Holy War, Inc. to the "software" so chillingly detailed in Al Qaeda 2.0 — ready to be inserted and downloaded in many locations. The organization’s new "virtual" model also means that the capture of key leaders and operatives such as Khalid Sheikh Muhammed (Al Qaeda’s operations director, who was detained in March) and the continuing fugitive status of bin Laden impair Al Qaeda’s operations, but do not destroy them.

Bergen believes that an attack on the scale of the May 12 Saudi Arabian residence-compound bombings bears the mark of a "green light" from bin Laden himself, but that lower-level attacks by the "virtual" Al Qaeda require nothing more to proceed than the means and will to carry them out. "The people who carry out such attacks," he says, "don’t have to be part of the organization proper. It’s become an ideology. It may look like Al Qaeda the organization perpetrated an attack, but it doesn’t have to have approval. Someone like Khalid Sheikh Muhammed may have had three or four more attacks up his sleeve. But you can imagine what a more-virtual Al Qaeda could be capable of doing."

IF NOTHING ELSE, the attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco have put Al Qaeda firmly back on the radar screen. Notwithstanding the boasts made by US State Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black that Al Qaeda had failed to respond to the Iraq war, the terrorists’ response now seems quite apparent.

The greatest immediate danger in Al Qaeda’s latest response is that it is quintessentially "terrorist." That is, these attacks are designed to instill fear as much as they are designed to do concrete damage. The strained relations between the US and the Saudi Arabian regime may be "strengthened" by the attack, but such cooperation has the downside of playing into Al Qaeda’s hands by sharpening Saudis’ anti-American feelings. And as surely as the October blast in Bali crushed tourism in that popular destination, Westerners’ desire to travel to Morocco in the aftermath of Friday’s blast will suffer.

Even in the aftermath of the new bombings, however, some continue to argue that Al Qaeda is overrated. In Monday’s Times of London, op-ed columnist Mick Hume accused Americans of "paranoia" about Al Qaeda. "All it takes," Hume wrote, "is a few zealots with homemade bombs in Africa or Asia to have the Western world pressing the panic button."

It is hard to argue with one aspect of Hume’s critique. The news media that rushed back to trash as soon as the White House said the war was over can switch back just as easily to hyping the terrorist threat. "Today the reported sighting of a man with a beard," wrote Hume, "can cause us to cancel flights to East Africa; a few envelopes of white powder can close down the machinery of US government; two snipers with one rifle can bring Washington, DC, to a standstill; and a limited health problem such as SARS can send entire cities and economies into quarantine."

Perhaps what is even more scary than the blasts directed against tourists and Americans far from home is that America’s battle against Al Qaeda represents yet another unfinished bit of White House foreign policy. And a highly politicized one at that. The Bush administration has a long to-do list that stretches from catching bin Laden, crushing the Taliban, and finding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to repairing the frayed US relations with Europe.

Most alarming for the future, however, is the Bush administration’s willingness to declare victory in unfinished wars — and to use them as a means to reap political capital. That sort of hubris could come back to haunt the White House as surely as bin Laden’s violent ideologues have come back to haunt the soft tourist targets of Casablanca and the brittle regime in Riyadh.

Richard Byrne can be reached at richardbyrne1@earthlink.net