“¦ attacks plotted by Al Qaeda and its associates against Western targets outside the Af-Pak area were detected in advance and foiled by the intelligence agencies.
After the July, 2005 bombings in London, Al Qaeda has not been able to carry out any major terrorist strikes in the West. Two of its attempts—– the attempt to blow up a US plane bound for Detroit from Amsterdam on December 25 last year by a Nigerian student and the attempt of a US resident of Pakistani origin motivated and trained by the Pakistani Taliban to cause an explosion in the Times Square of New York on May 1— almost succeeded, but were thwarted at the last minute by an alert passenger of the aircraft and an alert member of the public in New York. However, the Pakistani Taliban did carry out a spectacular strike against the Central Intelligence Agency in the Khost area of Afghanistan on December 30 last year.
Barring these incidents which were not detected in advance by the intelligence agencies, all other attacks plotted by Al Qaeda and its associates against Western targets outside the Af-Pak area were detected in advance and foiled by the intelligence agencies. Al Qaeda and its associates have reasons to be worried because of the repeated leakage of information about their conspiracies to the US and other Western intelligence agencies. Such leakages enabled the US intelligence to thwart the plans of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the 313 Brigade of Ilyas Kashmiri to attack the offices of the Danish newspaper which published cartoons of the Prophet in 2005, and the latest attempt of the AQAP to cause explosions either on board two courier planes or in Chicago through parcel-bombs. A precise tip-off from the Saudi intelligence about the parcel-bombs booked by these flights enabled the intelligence agencies of Dubai and the UK to intercept and de-activate the parcel-bombs.
The Saudi tip-off clearly shows a weakening of internal security in Al Qaeda. It was strong internal security which enabled Al Qaeda to carry out a series of successful and spectacular strikes between 1998 and 2005 without its plans being detected. The weakening of internal security should account for its low success rate after July,2005 in the West. This weakening can be attributed to the fact that Al Qaeda is no longer a homogenous organisation consisting largely of Arabs loyal to bin Laden. The difficulties faced by Arabs in traveling to the West have forced Al Qaeda to depend more and more on non-Arabs such as Pakistanis, Nigerians, Uzbeks, Turks, white converts to Islam etc for its operations in the West. This has affected its internal security. The recent receipt of intelligence by the German authorities about Al Qaeda’s plans for a terrorist strike in Germany is also due to this weakening of its internal security, which has resulted in a leakage.
The AQAP has sought to play down this weakening of internal security in Al Qaeda as a whole by projecting its latest operation as a success, which it was not.
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