The Terrorists That Got Away

„The thwarted bomb plot out of Yemen last week offers the latest evidence that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is an increasingly dangerous force. So far, we have gotten lucky in countering their attacks, but this branch of al Qaeda is innovating in ways that have caught Western intelligence services flat-footed at times. It's vital that we understand the new threat, starting with key figures in the region who Washington and London have already overlooked more than once.

Top on the list is Anwar al-Awlaki, the 39-year-old Yemeni-American cleric who preaches anti-Western sermons over the internet, but was once one of the FBI's prime suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks. One of the reasons that Western intelligence officials have flagged AQAP as an emerging terror threat is its ability to proselytize in fluent English. That ability is largely thanks to Awlaki. Today his sermons include advice on how to make home-made explosives, as well as descriptions of how to inflict the maximum number of civilian casualties during terror attacks. One recent article in Inspire, the English-language magazine published by AQAP, bore the title How To Make A Bomb In The Kitchen Of Your Mom.

Awlaki's growing influence on impressionable young Muslims in the West may have contributed to the terror alert issued last month by the U.S. about the possibility of Mumbai-style terror attacks in major European cities. Awlaki has been urging Muslims to carry out these attacks because they are relatively simple to organize and cause widespread panic, a senior British security official tells me. All you need is a few guns and suicide bombs. Both Sir John Sawers, the new head of Britain's MI6 foreign-intelligence service, and Jonathan Evans, who leads the MI5 domestic equivalent, singled out Awlaki as a major security threat even before last week's plot came to light.”