Report: Iraq War Made Terror 'Worse'

Sep 24, 2006 9:01 am US/Pacific

Report: Iraq War Made Terror 'Worse'

Terrorism Has Spread Since U.S. Invasion, National Intelligence Estimate Finds

CBS News Interactive: Postwar Iraq

(CBS News) The U.S. invasion of Iraq has heightened the threat of terrorism and increased the number of terrorist groups, according to a new report compiled by U.S. intelligence agencies since the Iraq war started.

The report, the classified National Intelligence Estimate, "says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse," one American intelligence official told The New York Times.

Completed in April, the intelligence estimate reflects the views of 16 different spy agencies within the U.S. government. Instead of weakening Islamic radicalism, the report titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States," says the jihad ideology has spread worldwide since the Iraq war.

The report ends by saying the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of al Qaeda operatives and related groups and now includes a class of "self-generating" cells inspired by al Qaeda's leadership, yet has no direct connection with Osama bin Laden or his top officers, The New York Times reported.

In other developments:

At least 20 people were killed and 37 injured Sunday in scattered violence around Iraq, including a mortar attack on the Health Ministry followed by a car bombing targeting a police patrol. Police also discovered another 13 bodies, the apparent victims of sectarian death squads.


Baghdad police on Sunday raised the confirmed casualty toll in the deadly bombing of a kerosene truck on a crowded street Saturday to 38 killed and 42 injured. A Sunni group claiming responsibility for the attack in Baghdad's Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite slum, said it was in revenge for a Friday attack by a suspected Shiite death squad on Sunni Arab homes and mosques that killed four people in the capital.


Iraq's fractious ethinic and religious parliamentary groups agreed Sunday to open debate on a contentious Shiite-proposed draft legislation that will allow the creation of federal regions in Iraq, politicians from all groups said. The agreement came after a compromise was reached with Sunni Arabs on setting up a parliamentary committee to amend Iraq's constitution, a key demand by the minority.


U.S. military authorities are reporting the deaths of three American soldiers in Iraq Saturday. They say one died in a roadside bombing in Baghdad. Two other troops were killed after a bomb exploded near their patrol in a town 150 miles north of Baghdad. The U.S. command says three other soldiers were injured. No further details have been released.


An al Qaeda-linked group posted a Web video Saturday purporting to show the bodies of two American soldiers being dragged behind a truck, then set on fire in apparent retaliation for the rape-slaying of a young Iraqi woman by U.S. troops from the same unit.

While threats came in a blizzard around the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks - a series of sophisticated videos from al Qaeda's No. 2 warning that the group is still vital and plans to strike - U.S. intelligence agencies and many private security analysts doubt that al Qaeda or its elusive leader, Osama bin Laden, still maintain much if any operational control over far-flung terror cells.

They see no sign of a direct al Qaeda hand in a flurry of recent attacks, such as the assault on the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria or the fatal shooting of a British tourist in Jordan. And a recent French intelligence report that bin Laden may have died last month of typhoid fever merely highlights the uncertainty the West now has about any role he plays in the terror network.

All that means those frightening videos may have been just that -designed to frighten the West and inspire followers - with little real punch behind them.

Bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are now "less like generals and more like talking heads, disseminating their violent ideology via satellite television in hopes of inspiring others to do their bidding," says Eben Kaplan of the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York.

Not everyone agrees with that controversial idea. There also are ominous signs in Afghanistan that al Qaeda is trying to make an operational comback as attacks, especially suicide missions, against U.S. and coalition forces increase.

Some experts also fear the absence of a major, Sept. 11-style attack simply means that al Qaeda is taking its time to plan a next spectacular strike.

Yet, five years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, many analysts believe the day-to-day threat from al Qaeda itself has dropped.

Paradoxically, however, the threat from Islamic extremist terrorists overall may have grown - and become broader, more diverse and more complex, and thus harder to combat.

"The absence of a formal, single organizational structure has contributed to making the fight against this brand of terrorism more elusive and difficult," the British think-tank Chatham House said in a report this month as the videos were airing.

After the U.S. and its allies ousted the Taliban in 2001, al Qaeda apparently transformed itself into an ideological movement of self-sustaining cells that operate with little or no central direction, many analysts and intelligence officials believe. That makes them difficult to track - until they strike or make a mistake that leads the authorities to them.

But the goals, methods and targets of those far-flung radicals now vary widely. And not all extremist groups share al Qaeda's vision of global struggle against the West, preferring in some cases to fight instead for some specific national political agenda.

Across the world, that means the threat is fractured into many parts - with the need to tailor defenses accordingly.

In Iraq, the fight has mostly morphed into a sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites for control of Iraq's future, although some foreign fighters inspired by al Qaeda seem to still be involved.

In Britain, mostly homegrown militants of Pakistani descent seem intent on waging the kind of big, spectacular attack that bin Laden used on Sept. 11.

Elsewhere, however, militants have diverged sharply from bin Laden. The Sept. 12 assault on the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria which came just a day after al-Zawahiri's warning tapes were aired serves as a prime example.

In Syria, militants have focused on getting rid of President Bashar Assad and there is no sign they receive any operational direction from al Qaeda.

In places like Sudan and Somalia, Muslim militants are fighting for local power and control. They may have links to bin Laden from the past - but their only real connection seems to be when they invoke his name to resist the West.

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