IRAQ has replaced Afghanistan as the nerve centre of global terrorism by militant groups whose ability to regenerate, despite setbacks, means that suicide bombings and other mass-casualty attacks remain a serious danger in 2006, analysts said. Three major developments are likely to define the security landscape this year,
Singapore-based terrorism analyst Rohan Gunaratna told a forum organised by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) last week. "The first is that al-Qaeda has morphed or transformed from a small group into a terrorist movement," he told diplomats, academics, officials and business executives.
"So today the threat is not so much from one single organisation called al-Qaeda but from the global jihad movement." Mr Gunaratna, head of terrorism research at the Singapore-based Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, said governments must "prepare for a challenge posed by a number of disparate groups" waging campaigns on the global, regional and local levels.
"The second most significant development we have seen is that the centre of gravity of international terrorism has shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq," he said. "Iraq is the new land of jihad."Like we saw the last generation of jihadists coming from Afghanistan, we will see the next generation of jihadists will come from Iraq." The US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 that ousted the fundamentalist Taliban regime resulted in the dismantling of al-Qaeda training bases there. Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was moving to establish a global terrorist network from Iraq similar to the way Osama bin Laden had done from Afghanistan, Mr Gunaratna said.
The third significant development was the deepening co-operation among various militant groups worldwide, Mr Gunaratna said. In Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) remained a long-term threat, said Jakarta-based terrorism analyst Sidney Jones, Southeast Asia project director of the think-tank the International Crisis Group. JI had split into two -- the mainstream JI with an estimated membership of about 1000, and a radical faction called the JI Thoifah Muqotilah with 30 to 50 members bent on carrying out suicide attacks -- Mr Jones told the ISEAS forum.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17761512%255E1702,00.html
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