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A recent explosion in Tunisia was likely the work of a local al-Qaida-affiliated group. Such smaller groups, although not nearly as effective as al-Qaida, are harder to track down and able to carry out more operations. Nevertheless, further attacks will strengthen Washington’s anti-terrorism coalition.
German police yesterday released a man suspected of acting as a contact in the possible truck bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia that killed 15 people, including 10 German tourists, the Associated Press reported. Despite the suspect’s release, the German Federal Prosecutors’ Office said it is increasingly convinced that the April 11 explosion was a terrorist attack.
The bombing is one of several recent low-level attacks potentially connected to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network. Although al-Qaida likely served as inspiration for the operations and perhaps trained some of the perpetrators over the past decade, it is less clear whether or not the group had much involvement in financial, logistical or operational support.
In general, al-Qaida’s decentralized structure means that small, local groups are receiving little outside assistance, though they will have an easier time evading U.S. attention and carrying out smaller operations. However, even such small attacks against non-U.S. targets — if carried out with greater frequency — will make it easier for Washington to elicit anti-terrorism cooperation from other nations.
Tunisian authorities say that the incident April 11, when a truck carrying natural gas exploded outside a synagogue on the resort island of Djerba, was an accident. But German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Monday there are indications that it was an attack. Eyewitnesses reported that a man parked the truck outside the entrance to the synagogue and then hurried away before the blast.
The German news magazine Stern reported yesterday that police in Germany eavesdropped on a phone conversation shortly before the explosion. Either the driver or a passenger traveling in the truck spoke with a contact in Germany whom police believe has links to radical Islamist circles, the magazine reported.
The London-based Arab dailies Al-Quds Al-Arabi and Al Hayat also said they had received a claim of responsibility from a group calling itself the “Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites.” The same name was used by a group that claimed responsibility for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and which described bin Laden as a “source of inspiration.” However, it is unclear whether the original group or a local Tunisian group that simply expropriated the name carried out the recent attack.
The best guess is that it was done by local militants who received training or instruction from al-Qaida at some point in the past. In this sense it may be characterized as an opportunistic attack, smaller in scale and impact than the long-planned operations that resulted in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, U.S.S. Cole in Yemen and embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
A similar opportunistic attack occurred in Yemen yesterday, when a bomb exploded in front of the Yemen General Civil Aviation Authority and a branch office of the Yemeni intelligence service. No one was hurt in the blast, one of several in Yemen in the past few weeks, including an explosion near a municipal employee’s house, credit for which was claimed by a local group that said it supports al-Qaida. Earlier in the year, several Arab men also were arrested in Italy in connection with an alleged attempt to attack the U.S. Embassy in Rome.
It appears that many large-scale al-Qaida operations have been disrupted, and that local militants are trying to pick up the slack. The release Monday of what was apparently an old videotape of bin Laden adds to the argument that the foot soldiers of the organization are trying to continue the struggle using whatever resources they have on hand while the leadership regroups.
Attacks on targets of opportunity generally cause less damage than the strategic, long-term operations put together by the al-Qaida core. However, smaller attacks are more difficult to prevent. Much of al-Qaida’s network is made up of autonomous cells, with few links to a central core. A minimum of financial, logistic or communications support also means there are fewer trails for U.S. intelligence services to trace. Thus, as the United States focuses on the al-Qaida leadership, we should expect more low-grade attacks in the months to come.
However, an unintended consequence of this strategy may be the strengthening of the U.S. anti-terrorism coalition. This is especially critical at a time when European governments are increasingly confrontational toward U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The killing of 10 German tourists in the Tunisia attack prompted Schroeder to appear on television Sunday and pledge full efforts to apprehend those responsible. Doing so will likely prompt even greater cooperation between German intelligence services and the United States.
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