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TERRORISM

ANA YURDUM

Bin Laden Is Not Lone Mastermind (2)

Nearly eight years ago, bin Laden was not even on the public radar, but he was on the intelligence screen. He was not on the State Department's terrorist watch list or the FBI's most-wanted list until the 1993 World Trade Center bombing because the FBI was tracking his financial movements and was concerned he would be tipped off to its surveillance. Apparently it didn't matter, as the intelligence community lost sight of bin Laden in 1998. Intelligence expert James Bamford, the leading authority on collection of U.S. electronic intelligence and author of Body of Secrets, says bin Laden "changed his method of communications" after loose-lipped congressmen talked openly about intercepted telephone conversations he had with his stepmother.
While Bush presses to get bin Laden, dead or alive, the focus will turn to others. So who will be targeted next? The United States may have answered that recently by releasing a 22-page background report on the known terrorist groups. Here are some highlights of this recent State Department report:
c Al-Jihad is composed of two groups. Bin Laden personally operates the first, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and finances the second, the Vanguards of Conquest, led by Ahmad Husayn Agiza. Both groups are "increasingly willing to target U.S. interests in Egypt," the report notes. The original al-Jihad group was responsible for the assassination in 1981 of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. It is several thousand strong with networks in Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and Sudan.
c The Abu Nidal organization (ANO) has carried out terrorists attacks in 20 countries, killing about 900 persons, including the 1985 airport attacks in Rome and Vienna. It operates out of Iraq and has a few hundred members in the Sudan, Syria and Lebanon. ANO assassinated a Jordanian diplomat in Lebanon in 1994. It is known to have targeted the United States, United Kingdom, France and others.
c Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya is the largest militant group in Egypt. It signed on with bin Laden's call in February 1998 to attack U.S. civilians. For nearly a decade it has attacked tourists in Egypt, including the killing of 58 at Luxor in 1997. This group, composed of several thousand members in southern Egypt, took responsibility for the attempted assassination of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1995.
c Harakat ul-Mujahideen (HUM), an Islamic militant group in Pakistan, also signed on with bin Laden's call in February 1998 to kill U.S. civilians. It operates camps in eastern Afghanistan. The State Department says HUM suffered heavy losses in the 1998 U.S. missile strikes on bin Laden-associated training camps in Khowst, Afghanistan. Its leader, Fazlur Rehman, subsequently declared that HUM would take "revenge on the United States." Several thousand members strong, HUM has conducted

numerous operations against Indian troops and civilian targets in Kashmir.
c Hezbollah (Party of God) is a radical Shia group formed in Lebanon. Its several thousand members are strongly anti-West and anti-Israel. They are linked to the suicide truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 and the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut in September 1984.
c The Palestine Islamic Jihad is committed to the destruction of Israel and the United States. The group threatened to retaliate against the United States for the murder of its leader, Fathi Shaqaqi, in Malta in October 1995. It has employed suicide bombers to attack Israel.
Meanwhile, President Bush has been working hard to cut off the terrorist bank accounts. Since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has frozen $6 million -- a promising start. Roger Robinson, a former senior economic adviser in the Reagan administration who has been privy to White House briefings with the Bush team, strongly supports taking this economic war to the capital markets. He tells Insight that foreign companies conducting business with terrorist states simply would be cut out of the market.
Congress appears to be listening. Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Larry Craig (R-Idaho) are pushing for a similar agenda. "This idea that for a short-term economic advantage they can continue to have strong economic relations with countries that help and abet and harbor terrorists must go out the window," Schumer said on the floor of the Senate a day after the Sept. 11 attack.
"Our global strategy should be re-examined to include adopting a more positive policy toward nearby countries opposed to such regimes and pressuring countries with which the United States has friendly relations but which may be supporting the harboring regimes to cease that support," Craig added, noting Iran and Libya continue to be supported by European countries that want their oil.
Cutting off a substantial amount of the funding still might not be enough when dealing with certain terrorist groups. The attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon did not need millions of dollars to accomplish. The Justice Department estimates the operations may have cost as little as $300,000. Similarly the 1993 World Trade Center attack may have cost as little as $18,000.
Even if the United States gets bin Laden or his assets, Bodansky says, the fear is that his legacy will haunt the West by having spread fanaticism. He already is a cult figure among radicalized Islamist youth, and students eagerly are joining his movement. One such student told Bodansky, "If we can't take revenge from the Americans during our lifetime, our own Osama will teach a lesson to them."
That is, unless, the United States teaches the lesson first.

Timothy W. Maier is a writer at Insight.