WASHINGTON - A group of midlevel operatives has assumed a more prominent role in al-Qaida and is working in tandem with Middle Eastern extremists across the Islamic world, senior government officials say. They say the alliance, which extends from North Africa to Southeast Asia, now poses the most serious terrorist threat facing the United States.
This newly constituted alliance of terrorists, though loosely knit, is as fully capable of planning and carrying out potent attacks on U.S. targets as the more centralized network once led by Osama bin Laden, the officials said.
Classified investigations of the Qaida threat now under way at the FBI and CIA have concluded that the war in Afghanistan failed to diminish the threat to the United States, the officials said. Instead, the war might have complicated counterterrorism efforts by dispersing potential attackers across a wider geographic area.
The ability of the loose network to achieve deadly results was again displayed in Friday's attack in Karachi, Pakistan, when a car bomb exploded outside the U.S. Consulate.
As al-Qaida followers have fled Afghanistan, the old bin Laden hierarchy has been succeeded by a group of tactical operatives who have set up makeshift alliances with Muslim militant groups in countries such as Pakistan, Egypt and Algeria.
In the months since the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan, intelligence analysts say, they have not regarded al-Qaida as a spent force. But they have redefined their estimates of its potency and reach, concluding that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan had badly disrupted the group's leadership and forced bin Laden and his top lieutenants to turn to new operational leaders.
"Al-Qaida at its core was really a small group, even though thousands of people went through their camps," said one senior official, referring to the bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan. "What we're seeing now is a radical international jihad that will be a potent force for many years to come."
At least seven al-Qaida operational lieutenants, whose increasingly important roles have not been previously disclosed, possess the managerial skill and authority to carry out attacks, government officials said. The officials said the seven al-Qaida operatives have assumed a larger leadership role in place of the network's central command group, which was badly disrupted by the war in Afghanistan.
One terrorism suspect who is said to personify the changing threat is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti-born lieutenant of bin Laden, who authorities have said was a central organizer of the Sept. 11 attacks. He has been sought by federal agents since the mid-1990s for his suspected role in organizing a failed plot to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean. The presence in the group of someone of Mohammed's standing in carrying out large-scale attacks makes intelligence officials worried. But they say they cannot tell where, how, and when such attacks might come.
The six others include several Egyptian men who played a role in the bombing attack on two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998. They also include Saif al-Abdel, a Saudi who is believed to have a seat on al-Qaida's consultative council, helping to approve attacks, including the embassy bombings.
The International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, the umbrella organization that bin Laden founded in February 1998 in a training camp in eastern Afghanistan, included not only al-Qaida, which had militants from many countries, but also two leading militant groups from Egypt, as well as Islamist groups from Algeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh, among others.
Some experts regard the formation of this alliance as bin Laden's most significant political achievement.
To some extent, al-Qaida itself was always something of a hybrid that staged not only highly structured, top-down attacks but also relied on affiliated - or like-minded - militant groups that concocted and financed their own schemes, with al-Qaida's blessing, to strike at U.S. targets.
Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian militant arrested in December 1999 trying to enter the United States from Canada to detonate a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport, was seen by investigators as a free-lancer who was part of this broader network from which al-Qaida recruited.
Law enforcement officials said that it remains unclear whether al-Qaida directed more recent plots such as the one ascribed to Jose Padilla, the American who is said to have met with Qaida leaders for discussions about detonating a radioactive bomb in the United States.