US officials fear al-Qaeda might attack West from Syria

WASHINGTON — Dozens of seasoned militant fighters, including midlevel planners, have traveled to Syria from Pakistan in recent months in what U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials fear is an effort to lay the foundation for future strikes against Europe and the United States.

“We are concerned about the use of Syrian territory by the al-Qaeda organization to recruit individuals and develop the capability to be able not just to carry out attacks inside of Syria but also to use Syria as a launching pad,” CIA Director John Brennan told a House panel recently.

The extremists who concern Brennan are part of a group of al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan that has been severely depleted by a decade of U.S. drone strikes. But the fighters still bring a wide range of skills to the battlefield, such as bomb-building, small-arms tactics, logistics, religious indoctrination and planning, though they are not believed to have experience in launching attacks in the West.

Syria is an appealing base for these operatives because it offers them the relative sanctuary of extremist-held havens — away from drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan — as well as ready access to about 1,200 American and European Muslims who have gone there to fight and could be potential recruits to carry out attacks when they return home. Senior counterterrorism officials have voiced fears in recent months that these Western fighters could be radicalized by the country’s civil war.

New classified intelligence assessments based on information from electronic intercepts, informers and social media posts conclude that al-Qaeda’s senior leadership in Pakistan, including Ayman al-Zawahri, is developing a much more systematic, long-term plan than was previously known to create specific cells in Syria that would identify, recruit and train these Westerners.

Al-Qaeda has in the past blessed the creation of local branches in places like Yemen, where an affiliate has tried to strike the United States. But the effort in Syria would signify the first time that senior al-Qaeda leaders had set up a wing of their own outside Pakistan dedicated to conducting attacks against the West, counterterrorism officials said. It also has the potential to rejuvenate al-Qaeda’s central command, which President Barack Obama has described as having been greatly diminished.

The assessment by the United States, however, has some detractors among even its staunchest counterterrorism partners, which also see an increase in Pakistan-based veterans of al-Qaeda among Syrian “rebel” groups but disagree over whether they are involved in a coordinated plan to attack the West.

“At this stage, it’s a lot less organized than a directed plan,” one Western security official said. “Some fighters are going to Syria, but they’re going on an ad hoc basis, not at an organized level.”

Most of the operatives identified by intelligence officials are now focused on attacking Syrian government troops and occasionally rival “””rebel””” factions. But the fact that such operatives are showing up in Syria indicates to U.S. officials that al-Zawahri is also playing a long game — counting on easy access to Iraq and al-Qaeda support networks there, as well as on the United States’ reluctance to carry out drone strikes or other military operations against targets in Syria.

“A key question, however, is how using Syria as a launching pad to strike the West fits into Zawahri’s overall strategy, and if he’s soft-pedaling now, hoping to consolidate al-Qaeda’s position for the future,” one U.S. counterterrorism official said. “Clearly, there is going to be push and pull between local operatives and al-Qaeda central on attack planning. How fast the pendulum will swing toward trying something isn’t clear right now.”

The new assessment is not likely to change U.S. policy toward Syria anytime soon, but it puts pressure on the Obama administration and its allies because it raises the possibility that Syria could become the next Afghanistan.

Top officials at the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center and the Department of Homeland Security say they are working closely with European allies to track Westerners returning from Syria.

There are perhaps “a few dozen” al-Qaeda veterans of fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan in Syria, two top counterterrorism officials said.

“What we’ve seen is a coalescence in Syria of al-Qaeda veterans from Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as extremists from other hot spots such as Libya and Iraq,” Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told a Senate panel in March. “From a terrorism perspective, the most concerning development is that al-Qaeda has declared Syria its most critical front.”

In his first speech as secretary of homeland security in February, Jeh Johnson put it bluntly. “Syria has become a matter of homeland security,” he said.

The al-Qaeda veterans have multiple motivations, counterterrorism officials say. Like thousands of other foreign fighters, many have been drawn to Syria to fight the Syrian government.

Others, like Abu Khalid al-Suri, a Syrian-born veteran of al-Qaeda, were sent by the terrorist group’s central command in Pakistan first to fight Syrian government but also to begin laying the groundwork to use enclaves in Syria to launch attacks against the West, U.S. officials said.

Al-Suri, who is believed to have been close to Osama bin Laden and to have fought against U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, was sent to mediate conflicts between al-Qaeda’s main affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front, and another extremist faction, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which al-Qaeda has disavowed. He was killed in a suicide attack in February by the rival group.

James Clapper, director of national intelligence, told a Senate panel in February that a “small nucleus” of al-Qaeda veterans from Afghanistan and Pakistan who are “separate from al-Nusra harbor designs on attacks in Europe and the homeland.”

Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, agreed, saying, “The large majority of al-Qaeda-linked commanders now in Syria are there due to the potential for Syria to be the next jihadist safe haven.”

Source: The New York Times

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