- SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S.
President George W. Bush will sleep easier knowing the mastermind of the
September 11 attacks is behind bars.
- But with Osama bin Laden still free and a war on Iraq
likely to help his cause, the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed offers no
opportunity for U.S. counterterrorism operatives to relax.
-
- "That's fantastic!" exclaimed Bush when he
heard Pakistani security agents, reportedly acting with the help of U.S.
agents, had captured Mohammed in a pre-dawn raid at a house in the teeming
city of Rawalpindi near the capital, Islamabad.
-
- Bush needs good news.
-
- The momentum of his military build-up against Iraq suffered
a double blow at the weekend when President Saddam Hussein began destroying
his banned al-Samoud 2 missiles, strengthening the hand of anti-war advocates
who say arms inspections are working, and when the parliament in Ankara
rejected a motion to let U.S. troops use Turkish bases and ports.
-
- Opposition has stiffened across the world to Bush's plan
to attack Iraq, which Washington accuses of possessing weapons of mass
destruction and of links to bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Europe is split
from top to bottom over whether to back Bush.
-
- There is little wonder, then, that U.S. officials were
jubilant at the arrest of Mohammed, a Kuwaiti of Pakistani ancestry believed
to be about 37 years old.
-
- They hailed as an intelligence coup the capture of a
man who terrorism experts say has been behind almost every anti-American
attack carried out by Islamic militants in the past decade.
-
- But analysts were less convinced that capturing the head
of al Qaeda's military committee and its number-three leader would give
Bush the boost he needs as he struggles to win international support to
take on Iraq.
-
- Clive Williams of the Australian National University
noted that Washington had said it had about one-third of al Qaeda's top
leadership in custody.
-
- "That means two-thirds are still out there,"
Williams said. "By their own statements they admit that the organisation
is substantially untouched at senior levels."
- A COUP, BUT NO DEATH BLOW
-
- What's more, experts doubt Mohammed's arrest will unlock
the secrets of al Qaeda. Devotion to the cause means the $25 million bounty
on Bin Laden -- and on Mohammed -- has gone unclaimed.
-
- "Given his key position and role, it would be very
surprising if (Mohammed) does not know the general location of Osama bin
Laden and his number two, Ayman Al Zawahiri," said Husain Haqqani
of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington.
-
- "Whether he will turn them in is something we don't
know. The higher you are, the more devoted you are likely to be."
-
- For Williams, the arrest of Mohammed was a coup but nothing
like a death blow to al Qaeda.
-
- "This doesn't affect al Qaeda's operational activities,"
he said. "Some things will have to be aborted because of the knowledge
he has, but they can make other arrangements."
-
- Terror experts said that if Mohammed did talk, he could
give his interrogators erroneous information and thus spread fear in the
West about attacks that were mere bluff.
- "They win if they create fear and panic," said
Haqqani.
-
- That has been the pattern with the arrests of other top
operatives, including Abu Zubaydah, one of bin Laden's top lieutenants,
who was captured in the central Pakistani city of Faisalabad in March 2002.
-
- "Al Qaeda is a resilient organisation and someone
will step in and take his place," Williams said. "You can't beat
al Qaeda by trying to crush it. You have to remove its popular support."
-
- A war on Iraq could achieve just the opposite by stirring
anger in the Middle East against the United States and creating a breeding
ground for a new generation of al Qaeda recruits.
-
- "This attack will be portrayed as an attack by the
Great Satan on the Muslim people," said Williams.
-
- "An attack plays into al Qaeda hands. If bin Laden
were advising Bush he'd say 'Attack Iraq'."
-
- SPEED BUMPS
-
- Williams said Bin Laden would use any attack to ensure
common cause with al Qaeda, portraying leaders in Pakistan and the Middle
East -- particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- as U.S. puppets keeping
their peoples in varying degrees of oppression.
-
- "These (arrests) are just speed bumps along the
road. They don't lead to the outcome of the defeat of al Qaeda," he
said. "Even if you take out bin Laden it wouldn't kill al Qaeda.
-
- "What they (the Americans) are dealing with is a
cause and an ideal, an idea and a vision, and you can't overcome that by
killing off individuals."
-
- For Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally
of Bush in the war on terror, the arrest is particularly well timed.
-
- It burnishes his credentials as an important partner
when Islamabad has fallen from favour for allegedly backing attacks against
India in disputed Kashmir.
-
- Pakistan is also suspected of supplying nuclear technology
to isolated North Korea -- now locked in a mounting row over its nuclear
ambitions with the United States.
-
- And Pakistan's will be one of the swing votes in the
United Nations Security Council later this month when it debates a U.S.-British
resolution that would lead to war on Iraq.
- "This is a balancing act by Pakistan," said
Haqqani. "They could try to balance domestic opinion by saying they
are not American stooges and thus abstain. Or they could tell the United
States 'We are absolutely faithful'.
-
- "It could go either way," he said. "But
this (arrest) may increase their leverage."
-
- Williams saw Musharraf in a tricky position.
-
- "This will make Musharraf popular with the Americans,
but more unpopular with the people of Pakistan."
-
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