What's Become Of Al-Qaeda?

By Romesh Ratnesar

Is this an offer a terrorist can't refuse? The U.S. military wants to send hundreds of al-Qaeda operatives on an all-expense-paid, one-way trip from Kandahar to sunny Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Before departing on a roomy Air Force cargo plane, prospective passengers spend time at the U.S. Marine base outside Kandahar, at the American-held airfield in Bagram or on board the U.S.S. Bataan in the Arabian Sea, joining one John Walker Lindh. There they are interrogated by FBI agents and military intelligence officials seeking clues to al-Qaeda terror plots and the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants; the chattier "battlefield detainees" can expect their interviews to last for hours.

Last Thursday the first group of 20 al-Qaeda fighters--clean-shaven and manacled--boarded a C-17 cargo plane at the Kandahar airport for their journey to Cuba. Each received a complimentary orange jumpsuit to wear on board, as well as a personal escort of two U.S. soldiers for the duration of the 27-hr. flight. The Americans chained the prisoners to their seats and sedated at least one passenger, who they feared might get jumpy.

As the C-17 taxied on the runway, incandescent flares suddenly illuminated the darkness. With two Cobra attack helicopters providing close cover support, the cargo plane got off the ground. Eight minutes later, according to airport officials, a hail of AK-47 shots rattled the air. Three teams of anti-American bandits had slipped past defensive "strong points" set up outside the airport, advanced to within 300 yds. of the Marine base and peppered the foxholes on its perimeter. American soldiers responded with M-16, 240 Golf and M-249 machine-gun fire and 25-mm cannon shells. The firefight lasted 40 minutes. U.S. commanders at the base say the gunmen--who almost certainly belonged to al-Qaeda--weren't attempting a serious attack and probably didn't know about the secret transfer of prisoners. "I would call it a probe," says Captain Dan Greenwood, an operations officer at the base. "They didn't have a specific target; more testing our defenses." The Marines do not anticipate a full-scale military assault. "We see the most likely threat as an asymmetrical attack," says Lieut. James Jarvis, a Marine spokesman. That's another word for an act of terrorism, which is, after all, al-Qaeda's specialty.

Two months after the U.S. and its Afghan allies crushed the Taliban, the military campaign has not extinguished the lethal ambition of bin Laden's followers. The harrowing threat still posed by al-Qaeda was highlighted last week in Singapore, a beacon of law and order, where authorities announced the arrest of a group of suspected terrorists, linked to bin Laden, for plotting to blow up U.S. Navy vessels, American airplanes, office buildings, houses and the embassies of the U.S., Israel, Britain and Australia. Since Sept. 11, law-enforcement authorities from Hamburg to Kampala to Jakarta have pooled intelligence to root out al-Qaeda sleepers, but the crackdown has slowed as suspects have gone further underground; so far authorities have apprehended only a small fraction of the global network's malefactors. In Afghanistan vestigial al-Qaeda forces appear determined to stage a calamitous attack on U.S. troops. In late December the Marines closed their Kandahar base to conduct background checks on journalists assigned there; American special forces had learned that al-Qaeda operatives were posing as journalists to enter the base and map the Marines' gun pits.

Even with a post-Taliban government in place and international peacekeepers patrolling the streets of Kabul, the 4,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan are still on the prowl, searching for more al-Qaeda militants to dispatch to Guantanamo. But the trail of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan grows colder every day. Local warlords say that for each one of the 445 al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the custody of U.S. troops, dozens more have slipped away--many south and east to the tribal lands of Pakistan; others west to Iran; a few, perhaps, to points beyond, such as Somalia or the Sudan.

The U.S. believes hundreds of al-Qaeda-trained terrorists still lurk in Afghanistan, but they are often impossible to detect. "We don't know how many people have changed their turbans and melted away to fight another day," says a U.S. counter-terrorism official. For the first time American military commanders admitted that Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar may have escaped U.S. bombings--and, perhaps, flat out escaped--but the Administration doesn't want to talk about it. "We've been walking somewhat close to the edge of the ice in describing where somebody was, where we think somebody is or where they're not," said Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem. From now on, he said, "we will stop speculating openly" about where the quarry has gone.

As they confronted the idea that U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan, for all its successes, has so far failed to deliver on its principal aims--capturing or killing bin Laden and shutting down his network--American officials last week tried to direct public attention away from the manhunt. Months of withering U.S. raids have leveled al-Qaeda's training camps and communications facilities and scattered its forces, and U.S. soldiers continue to seize potential intelligence troves like computer hard drives, videos and cell phones. "It's not just about Osama bin Laden," said Pentagon spokesman Torie Clarke. On the other side of the world in Kandahar, the Marines stuck to the same script. "We have had some opportunities to go to different spots where al-Qaeda might be," says Lieut. Jarvis. "Anytime we do an operation like this, we're going to find something."

But hints of frustration are emerging. American soldiers combed through pulverized cave complexes in eastern Afghanistan looking for dead al-Qaeda kingpins but came away empty-handed. With the number of targets dwindling, the U.S. zeroed in on a single facility last week and pounded it incessantly. U.S. warplanes dropped hundreds of bombs around the Zhawar Kili Al-Badr cave complex near the town of Khost--the same al-Qaeda camp hit by American cruise missiles in a failed 1998 attempt to take out bin Laden. But last week Air Force General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces were stunned by the size of the complex, which stretched over dozens of acres of rocky terrain. "The structure was more extensive than we had forecast it to be," Myers said.

Local authorities in Khost said U.S. commandos slipped into town in early January and set up camp in a school building. After each bombing raid last week, the special-ops troops fanned out into the area surrounding Zhawar, collecting intelligence scraps and hunting stray al-Qaeda operatives. Backed by U.S. helicopter gunships, the commandos seized 14 al-Qaeda members, including two senior leaders. Stufflebeem said, "They were attempting to regroup." U.S. bombers may have been hoping bin Laden had taken cover at Zhawar, but locals interviewed by TIME doubted he would hide in such a ripe target. And while American commanders last month suggested he might have been killed by air strikes in Tora Bora, they made no such claims this time. "We're not chasing that shadow," Stufflebeem said.

With the hunt for al-Qaeda's leaders in Afghanistan yielding diminishing returns, the U.S. has begun to look elsewhere. Centcom chief General Tommy Franks last week praised Pakistan's efforts to round up al-Qaeda members inside that country. With Islamabad's approval, U.S. commandos may yet enter Pakistan to assist the Pakistani military in pursuing al-Qaeda leaders on the run. Intelligence officials told TIME the U.S. is set to deploy 160 special-ops troops, many from the Army's 1st Special Forces Group, to train Philippine government soldiers battling the Islamic fundamentalist group Abu Sayyaf, a band of separatist guerrillas with long-standing ties to al-Qaeda. U.S. commandos will advise the Filipinos on counterterror and close-quarter fighting tactics; an intelligence source says as many as 500 U.S. troops may join the operation. President Bush also issued a warning to Iran, which the Administration believes may try to destabilize the new government in Kabul. Intelligence officials say a few hundred al-Qaeda operatives have slipped into Iran and then transited to safer territory.

The coordinates of al-Qaeda's leaders are unknown, and it's likely most have survived the war. Even so, al-Qaeda is in tatters. "They are severely disrupted," says a senior U.S. intelligence official. "About all they can do is hide out and try not to get caught. They are not in any position to conduct operations." Most significant, the defeat of the Taliban has destroyed the sanctuary that bin Laden and his inner circle used to mastermind terror attacks. "It's like a football team," says a top Navy officer. "You may not have caught the quarterback and his key receiver, but if they can't hold a huddle, they can't score a touchdown."

Even the huddle has shrunk. The Pentagon has crossed off the names of at least eight influential al-Qaeda officials on its kill list, and American forces have detained at least four others. American bombings last week reportedly killed Abu Hafs al-Mauritania, a high-ranking bin Laden lieutenant, and Abu Jafar al-Jaziri, an operative who handled logistics and fund raising. Those in U.S. custody include Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi and Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, both believed to be responsible for training recruits in al-Qaeda's military camps. A Kandahari commander named Nin Gyali, who is loyal to the U.S.-backed Kandahar governor Gul Agha Sherzai, told TIME that late last year Sherzai's troops captured Abu Zubair al-Haili, whom U.S. authorities identify as a senior al-Qaeda operational planner, in the southern hamlet of Takteh Pol, on a road leading into Pakistan. "The Americans were very happy," he says. Kandahar police chief Mohammed Zabit Akram told TIME the Afghans have kept news of the arrest secret for two months. If he has been caught--U.S. officials were unable to confirm his capture--al-Haili would be the highest-ranking al-Qaeda operative in allied custody.

U.S. forces scouring caves and bunkers abandoned by al-Qaeda have unearthed computer files and videotapes that the military hopes will help authorities bust al-Qaeda cells around the world. Working from a videotape and notes written in Arabic recovered in an al-Qaeda leader's house, Singapore police arrested 13 suspected members of the Jamaah Islamiyah, or Islamic Group--eight of whom allegedly trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. On the tape, a suspect identified as Hashim bin Abas marks locations where the terrorists could detonate bombs to kill U.S. Navy personnel traveling from Singapore's docks on a shuttle bus. Abas proposed hiding explosives in bicycles. According to the local authorities, the attack was to be directed by an Arab al-Qaeda member and a bombmaker from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a Filipino group. Before their arrest last week, the group had allegedly tried to purchase 17 tons of ammonium nitrate to build several truck bombs.

The international dragnet has snared some 1,500 suspected terrorists in more than 50 countries since Sept. 11. But that's nothing. Intelligence estimates of the number of potential terrorists worldwide trained by al-Qaeda run as high as 10,000. U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement officials investigating the Sept. 11 hijackers have found links from the 19 men to individuals or organizations in at least 63 countries. "It tells you that al-Qaeda is still out there in a lot of places," says an Administration official. U.S. investigators told TIME that an intensive manhunt is under way for Abu Zubaydah, the al-Qaeda aide charged with managing the global web of cells and planning the logistics of attacks. "He knows some things bin Laden wouldn't know," says an official. "When he's captured or killed, this will be a devastating blow to al-Qaeda." Zubaydah is thought to be a one-stop source for names of al-Qaeda suicide attackers, paymasters, bombmakers and phony business interests. Says the official: "There is a very significant effort under way to locate him."

In Afghanistan pockets of al-Qaeda soldiers are thought to be holding out in the areas north of Mazar-i-Sharif, along the Pakistan border in the east and in the mountains of Helmand province. Local officials near Khost say as many as 2,000 al-Qaeda fighters--Chechens, Turks and various Arabs--shuttle across the Pakistan border for rest and resupply from their outposts in the remote mountain provinces of Khost, Paktia and Paktika. The local Afghan authorities say they are powerless to stop the guerrillas' movement. "We can control the main roads but not the mountain tracks," says Pacha Khan Zadran, the regional governor.

The inability of the U.S.'s Afghan proxies to go after residual al-Qaeda forces has become all too familiar to American commanders and highlights the glaring weakness of the American strategy. The proxy army that helped minimize American casualties is also minimizing al-Qaeda arrests. Afghan warlords who once were U.S. allies are striking deals with Taliban officials, allowing some to go free, over Washington's objections. The U.S. can only surmise how many al-Qaeda commanders slipped out under the noses of local officials. Southern Afghanistan abounds with prepackaged escape routes, well worn by opium dealers and human traffickers. Akram told TIME that just before the surrender of Kandahar in December, "almost all the al-Qaeda leaders managed to get to other countries," employing smugglers to whisk them through the dozens of routes that lead into Pakistan. As recently as early January, a man described by Akram as "very senior al-Qaeda" managed to get out of Kandahar and cross into Pakistan. Why wasn't he stopped? "Nothing could be done," Akram said with a shrug.

Now that the manhunt for bin Laden and his henchmen has widened beyond the borders of Afghanistan, the U.S. and its allies will rely heavily on the intelligence they can extract from prisoners like those taking up residence in chain-link cages at Guantanamo Bay. So far the majority of the detainees aren't singing. "We've got 5,000 guys in custody," a Pentagon official says, referring to enemy troops held by the U.S. and the Afghan government, "and most of them don't know anything." Interviews of prized prisoners are conducted by FBI agents accompanied by military analysts. The most exhaustive interrogations take place at Bagram, which has the largest number of interpreters; Abdul Salaam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, was moved to Bagram last week. A U.S. military official in Kandahar says the interrogations, while still "mostly rudimentary," have started to bear fruit. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Myers said, "We think we have thwarted some attacks" as a result of the prisoner interviews.

As long as the military command continues to produce evidence that the campaign in Afghanistan has "disrupted" al-Qaeda's plans for future carnage--as it did last week in Singapore--the public will probably support the coalition's halting progress toward rounding up al-Qaeda. But disruption of bin Laden's terror enterprise has never been the definition of success; liquidation of it is. Bin Laden may be running, but the longer he stays on the loose, the greater the risk that his network will sufficiently reconstitute itself to strike back. "The more pieces we get, the more it begins to reveal a story of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, its capabilities, its reach and the other networks with which it collaborates," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday. "But needless to say, there are still many missing pieces to the puzzle." America can't claim victory until they are found.

--Reported by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad; Simon Elegant/Singapore; Paul Quinn-Judge/Khost; Elaine Shannon, Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington; and Michael Ware/Kandahar

With reporting by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad; Simon Elegant/Singapore; Paul Quinn-Judge/Khost; Elaine Shannon, Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington; and Michael Ware/Kandahar