The latest bombings in Turkey have made one thing clear: Everyday life in the Muslim world is no longer safe from al-Qaeda and its allies.
With militants brazenly attacking targets and civilians inside their own countries, intelligence specialists warn that the spreading war on terrorism is becoming harder to fight.
While US-led military action in Afghanistan helped disrupt al-Qaeda, it also sent hundreds of its well-trained and indoctrinated fighters fleeing back home to places from the Middle East and Asia. Now those bent on holy war have found their own followers, fresh targets and new victims in a part of the world where no one was expecting them.
As a result, intelligence agencies don't know whether recent attacks in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Indonesia, Morocco, the Philippines and now Turkey are the work of Osama bin Laden's organization or the responsibility of any number of offshoots that share a similar philosophy.
"The phenomenon we're seeing in the Muslim world today is in large part because the boys have gone home from Afghanistan," said Matthew Levitt, a former FBI counterterrorism analyst.
He said the vast majority of recent attacks appear to be al-Qaeda, "but it could be the work of affiliated networks, people who went through the camps or like-minded travelers."
That makes it more difficult for intelligence services, said Paul Pillar, a US intelligence analyst.
"It's harder to follow a bunch of different groups coming at you from different directions," he said, speaking Wednesday at Columbia University.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, nearly all terrorists actions attributed to al-Qaeda have taken place in Muslim countries including Pakistan, Indonesia, Tunisia, Yemen, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. The exception was an attack on an Israeli charter flight and hotel in Kenya earlier this year.
And while a centralized al-Qaeda largely struck at American symbols, terrorists now choose high-impact targets in their home countries, such as shopping centers, apartment complexes, restaurants, synagogues or government facilities. The result has been high casualties among Muslim women and children. In the Nov. 13 attacks in Turkey and one a week earlier in Saudi Arabia, the overwhelming number of victims were Muslim.
Levitt said those casualties mean little for al-Qaeda but could help convince the Muslim world how dangerous the organization is.
In Washington, US officials said it was too early to know whether the deadly attacks this week in Turkey were the work of al-Qaeda. More than two dozen people were killed in Istanbul Thursday, including the British Consul-General Roger Short, and nearly 450 people wounded when suicide bombers exploded trucks at a bank and the British consulate. Last week, twin car bombing outside two Istanbul synagogues killed 23 people plus the two bombers. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said the two bombers had visited Afghanistan in the past.
Intelligence agencies differ about al-Qaeda's capabilities two years after the US went after the organization in Afghanistan. Pillar said the terrorist group "may be close to collapsing."
But August Hanning, head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, said in a speech Thursday that al-Qaeda has "regenerated" although bin Laden's day-to-day role is hard to pin down.
"But we believe he still plays an important role in the background," he said.
"He communicates with his supporters through his messages. He tries to mobilize them, and of course he uses the situation in Iraq," he said.
Intelligence agencies also fear parts of Southeast Asia and East Africa are becoming terrorist bases, he added.
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