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(AP)  Jamal Ahmidan had been in and out of
trouble for years in Spain and his native Morocco. He served time
as a hashish and Ecstasy dealer and gained a reputation for
settling scores with a gun.
     

 The 33-year-old rode a motorcycle and reportedly drank alcohol.
He was a Muslim who didn't attend a militant mosque or sport the
long beard favored by the strictly observant.

      So when narcotics police bugged Ahmidan's phone in January and
February 2004, they were sure the coded conversations were about a
hashish deal. They weren't.

      On March 11, 2004, authorities say Ahmidan and three dozen
accomplices planted bombs on four packed commuter trains in Madrid.
They killed 191 people in one of the deadliest terror strikes since
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

      They also destroyed the stereotype created by the Sept. 11
terror attacks of how Islamic radicals operate.

      None of the Madrid bombers had ever been to Afghanistan or met
anybody in Osama bin Laden's inner circle. A two-year investigation
into the bombings has uncovered no evidence that al-Qaida helped
plan, finance or carry out the bombings, or even knew about them
beforehand.

      Indeed, the Madrid bombings were a wake-up call. It is homegrown
terrorists, not foreign al-Qaida operatives in sleeper cells like
those who carried out the 9/11 attacks, who pose the greatest
threat.

      "We had their phones tapped and we weren't able to see it," a
senior Spanish intelligence chief involved in the March 11
investigation told The Associated Press. "It was so preposterous
to us that some drug dealers could be planning a terror attack that
if we had been told the day before we would have ignored it."

      The lesson has been learned, he said. "Today we are much more
conscious (of the threat we face)."

      To an unknowable degree, the Madrid attack and others reflect
success in the hunt for the al-Qaida leadership responsible for
killing nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and
Pennsylvania five years ago.

      A global dragnet against bin Laden's group has been far more
effective than most people realize in neutralizing al-Qaida's top
command. Osama bin Laden and his top deputy are still at large, but
many of their most trusted men are not.

      Abu Zubaydah. Ramzi Binalshibh. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Ahmed
Khalfan Ghailani. Abu Farraj al-Libbi. All were once among
al-Qaida's top commanders, and all were arrested in Pakistan and
handed over to American custody, along with hundreds of lesser
figures.

      The one-time al-Qaida No. 3, Mohammed Atef, was killed in U.S.
airstrikes in Afghanistan in 2001. Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi,
al-Qaida's chief operative in Yemen, was blown up by a Hellfire
missile in Yemen in 2002. More recently, al-Qaida in Iraq leader
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was taken out by two 500-pound bombs.

      While others have stepped in to fill their 
shoes, many experts
doubt the organization can replace the experience of its top
leaders as quickly as they are lost.

      Heinz Fromm, Germany's domestic intelligence chief, said earlier
this year that bin Laden's group had been degraded into a
"diffuse, amorphous organization." He added: "One today cannot
talk any longer of a central leadership role of al-Qaida."

      Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at Sweden's Center for
Asymmetric Threat Studies, said the West has consistently
misunderstood the nature of the enemy it faces, attributing to
al-Qaida a level of control and leadership over local radical
groups that it simply does not have.

      "We in the West tend to look for structure where there is none.
We talk about the terror CEO, or the al-Qaida franchise, and that
is completely misleading in terms of the amorphousness of the
adversary we're facing," he said. "In fact, there hasn't been any
correlation or firm evidence that al-Qaida knew about or
participated in any of the attacks since Sept. 11."

      But Ranstorp and other counterterrorism experts caution that
there is no cause for celebration. Progress against the core of
al-Qaida has been overshadowed by a steady stream of deadly
bombings by local groups, many of them Muslim extremists inspired
to take up bin Laden's apocalyptic call.

      In attack after attack, homegrown militants have shown they are
capable of massive destruction, with or without al-Qaida's help.

      - In Indonesia, some of the militants who carried out the 2002
Bali nightclub bombings had fought in Afghanistan and trained at
camps there, but no evidence has been presented that al-Qaida had a
direct role in the blasts, which killed 202 people, mostly foreign
tourists.

      Three attacks on Western targets in Indonesia since Bali have
been masterminded by the Malaysian terrorist Noordin Top with no
link to al-Qaida.

      - In London, both the July 7, 2005, train bombings and the
recently thwarted plot to bring down jetliners over the Atlantic
Ocean involved mainly British-born Muslims, most of Pakistani
ancestry. They came from middle- or working-class families, studied
in British schools, played cricket and soccer and lived otherwise
normal lives.

      None are known to have passed through al-Qaida training camps,
though two of the July 7 suicide bombers traveled to Pakistan
months before the attack.

      Pakistani officials say a British man arrested in Punjab last
month in connection with the jetliner plot met with an al-Qaida
operative, but the British government has not yet confirmed that,
or released key details of the alleged plot.

      - In Turkey, bombings in Istanbul in 2003 that killed nearly 60
people may be the exception to the rule. The militants were all
Turks, but some met at al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan before the
U.S.-led war against the Taliban, Turkish prosecutors have said. A
Syrian courier believed to have al-Qaida links provided money for
the attacks, and prosecutors say top al-Qaida leaders were aware of
the general plan but not its details.

      In response to the homegrown threats, governments around the
world have been beefing up their intelligence networks, relying
increasingly on informants and undercover agents rather than
military action.

      In Spain, security services have some 250 suspected militants
under constant surveillance, and watch a handful of extremist
mosques, according to the intelligence chief, who spoke on
condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his job. He
said the number of counterterrorism agents had tripled since the
March. 11, 2004, attacks.

      In Britain, news reports say an informant working with the
government for months was key to breaking the jetliner plot.

      The British domestic spy agency MI5 is adding 1,000 new staff,
bring it to 4,000 employees - the most since World War II. The
Government Communications Headquarters, once home to wartime code
breakers, has doubled its corps of analysts to 5,000 - becoming
Britain's largest intelligence agency - while MI6, Britain's
overseas intelligence service, is urgently strengthening its
presence in Pakistan and the Middle East.

      "Work to monitor activity at mosques and within Islamic
communities has dramatically increased," said Shane Brighton, a
researcher on domestic terrorism at Britain's Economic and Social
Research Council.

      In the United States, the FBI and CIA have made a
well-publicized push to increase the agents who speak Arabic or
Urdu, the language of Pakistan. While some have warned that the
intelligence reorganization has not moved quickly enough, there
have been concrete results.

      An undercover FBI agent was used to help thwart a barely
developed plot to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower, and another agent
helped stymie a scheme to attack New York's subways. An alleged
plan to blow up train tunnels and flood lower Manhattan was also
unraveled by FBI agents monitoring Islamic Web sites.

      Again, there was no evidence that bin Laden or his top men were
involved in the plots.

      Ranstorp, the Sweden-based terrorism analyst, said the fight
against Islamic terrorism can boast a number of major successes,
most notably against top al-Qaida leaders.

      But he warned that the concept of worldwide jihad that bin Laden
unleashed will not die easily, with local groups attaching local
gripes to his global message.

      "The spark has been lit," Ranstorp said. "In terms of the
phenomenon of terrorism, we are fighting a losing battle, because
it is beyond al-Qaida now."
      
      (Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)


Gallery

It is homegrown
terrorists, not foreign al-Qaida operatives in sleeper cells like
those who carried out the 9/11 attacks, who pose the greatest
threat.


The terror threat within

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