Whose an Expert?

Okay. The U.S. Gov't's official word and this 'expert' opinion seem to be at odds.

First, the story:

Al-Qaida-linked groups planning attacks, expert says

Associated Press
Jan. 7, 2004 07:50 AM

SINGAPORE - Al-Qaida-linked groups are training and recruiting militants to carry out suicide attacks that have become Osama bin Laden's "greatest achievement" as his brand of extremist Islam spreads around the world, a terrorism expert said Wednesday.

The greatest threats include Al Ansar Al Islami in Iraq, Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia, Al Ansar Mujahidin in Chechnya, the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Salafi Group for Call and Combat in Algeria, Rohan Gunaratna told a Southeast Asian outlook forum.

Gunaratna said a fresh batch of Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists will graduate Jan. 15 from a camp in the southern Philippines. Based in Indonesia, Jemaah Islamiyah is an al-Qaida funded regional group believed responsible for the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, among other terrorist attacks in the region.

The camp is run by the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front, or MILF, which is fighting for an independent Muslim homeland in Mindanao, Gunaratna said. He did not elaborate on the number of graduates or where he got his information, but Indonesia intelligence has also said there's a recruiting drive for the group, thought to have about 3,000 members.

Sidney Jones, the Indonesian project director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, supported Gunaratna's assessment on the Philippines being a Jemaah Islamiyah training ground.

"There are several MILFs, all using the same name," Jones said, adding that these factions were not the same as the group now conducting peace negotiations with Manila.

Despite the arrest of Jemaah Islamiyah's alleged operations chief Hambali in Thailand last year, Jones said there were a number of key group operatives still at large, including Azahari Husin and Nordin Mohamed Top. The two men are accused of planning the Bali bombings.

Gunaratna, author of "Inside al-Qaida: Global Network of Terror," said the bulk of the terrorist attacks expected in 2004 will come from these groups - trained and financed by bin Laden and not the network itself.

"Small, disparate organizations mounting operations are in many ways Osama bin Laden's greatest achievement," said Gunaratna.

Before the Sept. 11, 2001 strikes in the United States, the al-Qaida network launched an attack every two years; since then, there has been one al-Qaida-linked attack every three months, Gunaratna noted.

He predicted that pace will continue through this year, with the growing threats coming from the smaller, regional terrorist organizations.

"As the memory of 9/11 recedes, the West is likely to witness another mass casualty attack on Western soil," Gunaratna said.

In a paper presented at the forum, he said: "The threat of terrorism and its associated groups will persist throughout 2004."

Maritime targets are vulnerable to attack, he said, adding "almost all the attacks will be suicide vehicle bombings, an al-Qaida hallmark."

If left unchecked, Iran could emerge as a training ground for al-Qaida terrorists, Gunaratna predicted. Link

Okay, here we have what appears to be a true expert on these matters entirely contradicting what the U.S. Gov't. has told us. Furthermore, Ahmed Rashid, perhaps the foremost English speaking journalist covering the Middle-East, and author of Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, and Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia was on NPR's Fresh Air, has estimated Al Ansar al Islam's numbers at no more than a few hundred, and that their activity was confined to the area in Iraq that we'll detail in a moment.

Al Ansar al Islam articles chronicling U.S. successes during the Gulf War redux:

US claims victory against Ansar al-Islam

A US special forces team has asserted that a joint operation with local Kurds against an alleged Al Qaeda-linked group in northern Iraq had been a resounding success, with initial investigations turning up evidence of chemical weapons production.

Speaking during a rare appearance before the press, seven special forces officers said Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam) was now "neutralised", even though many of the group's fighters may have escaped over the border to neighbouring Iran.

"It was pretty damn successful. In a period of one-and-a-half days, a terrorist organisation that has had a grip on this region was rooted out and neutralised," said one of the officers during the briefing in Halabja, a town in the south-east of the Iraqi Kurd autonomous zone.

"There was a lot of fighting. The Ansar al-Islam and Al Qaeda were not a pushover," the officer said. None of the team, decked out in battle fatigues, gave their names.

Citing "anecdotal evidence", the team said there were "several hundred" Ansar casualties. The group had an estimated 700 members, of which 75-100 were believed to be Al Qaeda veterans from Afghanistan. Much more at link

And this:

The rise and fall of Ansar al-Islam

Former members of Ansar al-Islam talk to the Monitor about the militant group's ties to Al Qaeda, the foreign fighters that joined its ranks, and its eventual destruction.

By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

SARGAT AND SULAYMANIYAH, NORTHERN IRAQ -- As the American air attack pulverized the mountain base of Ansar al-Islam last March, Mohamed Gharib let his video camera roll - just as he had done during countless operations of the northern Iraq-based militant group.

"I filmed the missiles falling," says Mr. Gharib, a Kurdish militant and the Ansar media chief. Gharib's footage had for years recorded the violent history of the Al Qaeda-linked fighters, and served as a fundraising tool. "You wouldn't believe if I told you we were happy [to be attacked]. They gave us the sense that we were so true, so right, that even America had to come fight us."

Washington fingered Ansar as a terrorist group experimenting with poisons, and used its tenuous links to Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda to help justify the war against Iraq.

US officials were triumphant last spring, even as the broader Iraq invasion was still underway, after a three-day assault. Gen. Tommy Franks declared that a "massive terrorist facility in northern Iraq" had been "attacked and destroyed" by a joint US-Kurdish operation. Much more at link

What to believe? I honestly do not know. My gut tells that the CS Monitor and Ahmed Rashid's account in the Fresh Air segment's are more likely to be true. I think Rashid is more of an expert on the Taliban, and the Taliban certainly do appear to be regrouping along the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Rashid has said this himself. The Taliban was never a direct threat to the U.S. It was their harboring of al-Qaeda that made them a menace.

As for the other groups that Mr. Gunaratna has named, they all appear at this time to involved in local terrorism. I am always leery of murky ties to al-Qaeda. Our own government has attempted to connect the Ba'athist regime to al-Qaeda, and this has thus far been debunked by our own intelligence agencies.

I remain skeptical. If Mr. Gunaratna's assertions are true, and "Al-Qaida-linked groups are training and recruiting militants to carry out suicide attacks" are indeed taking place, what is the international community doing about it? Cannot we find these camps and eradicate them? Or have our forces been so thinly stretched as to not have sufficient strength to carry out such operations? If the latter is the case, it is yet more evidence that the Gulf War redux was truly a sideroad in the war against terrorism.

Worse yet is the possibility that if all of this new activity is indeed occurring, our involvement in Iraq may directly have been responsible.