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Bin Laden now 'everywhere'
07/07/2006 16:54 - (SA)
Washington - Suddenly, the faces and
voices of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman
al-Zawahri are everywhere, in a stream of video and audio
messages broadcast to the world.
In the past month alone, five new tapes from the two have
reached an international audience. Excerpts of Zawahri's latest
message were broadcast on Al Jazeera television on Thursday, a
day before the first anniversary of the London bombings.
But US officials and terrorism experts are wary of
concluding that the spate of messages means another major
attack is imminent.
Instead, they believe a complicated mix of factors is
behind the outpouring: a desire to show that al-Qaeda is still
potent; a new sophistication in the use of propaganda, and
finally, sheer coincidence as several different messages have
all surfaced within a short time span.
Threats taken seriously
US officials and terrorism experts said they take al- Qaeda's threats seriously. The two men are believed to be
hiding somewhere in the hostile, tribal border area between
Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Bin Laden was not heard from for a year prior to January
2006. But he and Zawahri have now issued 11 audio and video
tapes this year, the highest frequency recorded since the September 11 attacks, analysts say.
"They are trying to prove that the movement's not dead,"
said Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism analyst at the Congressional
Research Service, the in-house think tank of Congress.
The two leaders may have felt they had to respond quickly
to last month's US military success in killing Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
A failed US attempt to kill Zawahri in January and
possible greater ease of movement for al-Qaeda leaders in
Pakistan's northwest frontier region might have also
contributed to the higher volume of tapes, Katzman said.
Ben Venzke, head of intelligence company IntelCentre whose
clients include the US government, said the back-to-back
timing of the messages did not mean they were actually designed
to produce a threatening crescendo.
Venzke saw some of the tapes as a quick al-Qaeda response
to major events, such as the death of Zarqawi. Others were more
general commentaries on current events which were issued when
they were ready.
In part, experts traced the recent wave of messages to al
Qaeda's increasing media savvy and better logistics.
"Bin Laden and Zawahri are trying to piggy-back on events
they consider favourable, such as the Taliban resurgence, the
upsurge of Islamic militants in Pakistan, the takeover by the
Islamic Courts Union in Somalia. By coming out with this many
videos, they are trying to give the impression that 'this is
because of us,'" Katzman said.
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