By Paul Cruickshank
With
a surge in the number of American residents joining al Qaeda, its
menace to homeland security is now more acute than at any time since
September 11.
In
the eight years since September 11, and especially during the
Bush administration's first term, Americans became all too accustomed to
a diet of orange alerts, sensational terror arrests, and breathless
press conferences announcing the thwarting of yet another serious plot.
But months and years down the line, it often emerged that such plots
may not have represented such grave threats after all: terrorism
suspects were charged with less serious offenses or released
altogether; plotters turned out to have little or no capacity to launch
attacks; and, often, when juries did convict, it emerged that entire
conspiracies were reliant on the helping hands of undercover
law-enforcement agents.
But 11 days ago federal
agents in Denver foiled an alleged plot on U.S. soil that, for the
first time, appears to have posed a true and severe threat to the U.S.
homeland. Najibullah Zazi,
a permanent resident of Afghan nationality pled not guilty
yesterday in his arraignment in Brooklyn to charges including for
conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. He is believed to have
trained to make bombs with al Qaeda in the Federally Administered
Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan and to have initiated plans -- apparently
without assistance from undercover agents -- with others in the United
States to perpetrate a terrorist attack in New York City. The FBI, in
other words, has just thwarted the most serious plot, by far, on U.S.
soil in the last eight years.
And
this is just the beginning. The threat from al Qaeda to the U.S.
homeland is arguably more acute now than at any time since September
11. This is not because al Qaeda has become a stronger foe. (On the
contrary, Osama bin Laden's terrorist network has actually been
weakened in the last two years by intensified U.S. missile strikes
against its leadership in FATA and a sharp backlash among Muslims
worldwide against its violent excesses.) It is because a growing number
of Americans have gone to FATA, the global hub of al Qaeda's terrorist
operations, to join the jihad in Afghanistan -- something which was very
rare until recently -- and al Qaeda, opportunistically, has recruited them
for attacks on their country.
The number of American
residents who had joined or trained with Al Qaeda between its founding
in 1988 and the September 11 terrorist attacks numbered only in the
single figures. They included Wadih El-Hage (bin Laden's private
secretary), Ali Mohammed (an American Special Forces instructor of
Egyptian origin), Christopher Paul (a man from Columbus, Ohio, who
joined Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the early 1990s), Iyman Faris
(another Columbus man of Kashmiri descent who trained in a Qaeda
facility and, rather fancifully, planned to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge
with gas cutters and a blowtorch in 2003), Adam Gadahn (a Californian
Christian convert to Islam who has become one of Al Qaeda's
spokespeople), and John Walker Lindh (the so-called American Taliban).
To read the rest of my piece about al Qaeda's recruitment of Americans, visit Newsweek,
where this was originally published.
Paul Cruickshank is a Fellow at the NYU Center on Law
& Security.
SHIRLEY SHEPARD/AFP/Getty Images
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