When No One Is Truly Safe

By Johanna McGeary

Cafer Yilmaz was at work in his bakery on a broad boulevard in Istanbul's modern new financial district at about 11 a.m. last Thursday when a tremendous bang shook down the building's windows and walls. Across the street, yellow smoke poured from the 18-story headquarters of the British-owned HSBC bank, where a pickup truck packed with homemade bombs had just set off a mighty explosion. "That first moment was not at all like you would imagine from the movies," Yilmaz says. "No one was screaming or running. If you had slapped me, I would probably have just stared blankly at you."

Twelve minutes later, in the city's historic Beyoglu district, Victoria Short, wife of the British consul general, stepped across the narrow street from her husband's office to pick up milk for his coffee. She paused to chat with the shop owner as a green catering van sped up the narrow street, smashed into tall wrought-iron gates at the corner of the walled consulate compound and blew up.

The nearly simultaneous blasts sent waves of horror through the crowded streets of Turkey's largest city. Glass exploded from windows, cars burst into flames, debris and choking smoke filled the streets. Stopping an insistent woman from moving closer to the carnage, a police officer told her, "Sorry, beyond this you will be walking on bits of people." Inside the consulate, the body of Short's husband Roger, 58, a career diplomat, was buried under a six-foot pile of wreckage. A rescue worker, cloaked in dust as he frantically dug, reported, "We're not pulling anyone out intact."

The twin bombings took the lives of at least 32 people, almost all Turkish citizens, and wounded more than 450. That was shock enough for the country, but the attacks came on the heels of similarly synchronized blasts just five days earlier at Istanbul's two main synagogues, assaults that had killed 25 and injured more than 300, also mostly Turks. Said Semih Idiz, a veteran columnist for the Aksam newspaper: "It's our 9/11."

Coinciding dramatically with President George W. Bush's state visit to Britain, the violence served up a taunting reminder that his war on terrorism is far from won. Indeed, Turkey appeared to be the newest front in a wave of terrorism strikes that have spread across the Muslim world in the past six months from Iraq to Morocco to Saudi Arabia to Indonesia, making this Ramadan holiday a bloody season. Fearing the campaign was not over, London and Washington issued broad warnings of possible imminent attacks against British and American interests abroad. In Muslim countries, the chosen targets have symbolized mainly Western and Jewish interests--Jakarta's J.W. Marriott Hotel, Casablanca's tourist sites and Jewish centers, residential compounds for foreign workers in Riyadh, Istanbul's synagogues and British offices. But a second assault in Riyadh Nov. 8 was on a compound housing mainly Muslims and Arabs. And the locale of all these strikes may contain a grim message for Muslims: Beware, anyone who cooperates with the West--the danger extends to you.

Rather than being defeated by the U.S.-led war on terrorism, Islamic militants seem to be methodically widening their holy war against the U.S. and its allies. Turkey made an obvious target. Even under the current Islamic-party government, democratic Turkey has remained staunchly secular and pro-Western. It was the first Muslim nation to recognize Israel, and cultivates extensive ties with the Jewish state. Long a faithful U.S. ally and member of NATO, Turkey aspires to join the European Union. Although its populace bitterly opposed the war in Iraq and its Parliament refused to let the U.S. deploy soldiers from Turkish soil, the government has been mending ties with the U.S., even offering to send peacekeepers to Baghdad (which the Iraqi Governing Council refused to accept).

The terrorists' strategy, says an adviser to Morocco's King Mohammed VI, is to create chaos aimed at undermining moderate Muslim governments. In February, Osama bin Laden, in a tape, labeled Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Yemen and Pakistan countries "enslaved by America" and thus "the most eligible for liberation." Having already tried to hit in Jordan in 1999 and successfully attacked in Yemen in 2000, terrorists, since the message went out, have struck the three others. But a former U.S. counterterrorism official says that much as terrorists like to hit targets with such high symbolic value, they plan first with an eye to operational success. "Going after Turkey because of its relationship with Israel or the U.S. is secondary or tertiary," he says. "They went after Turkey because there were available targets. They act where they can--and then go for a message."

From Washington to London to Istanbul, politicians and experts were quick to lay the blame on bin Laden's al-Qaeda. Officials noted that last week's bombing spree bore all the hallmarks of the group's operational style: using suicide bombers to launch multiple attacks almost simultaneously at soft targets. An obscure militant group even invoked bin Laden's name in claiming responsibility.

As yet, there is no solid evidence that al-Qaeda has regrouped as a force to be reckoned with. Much of the known old leadership has been killed or captured, bin Laden has been forced into hiding, and at least some of the group's financial resources have dried up. But that may not add up to a decisive blow as al-Qaeda reverts to its roots as a diffuse brand name for the ideology of international Islamic terrorism. Even without direct ties, bin Laden provides the militants' inspiration. Al-Qaeda, says French terrorism expert Roland Jacquard, has become the mentor for "local actors plotting and launching attacks along the guidelines and long-term instructions of al-Qaeda leaders." According to the CIA, 70,000 to 120,000 recruits went through bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan, graduating with lethal know-how just waiting to show itself. Al-Qaeda can easily find "lots of idiots ready to blow themselves and others up in the name of some higher cause," says a senior French antiterrorism official. French intelligence authorities believe those second-generation radicals are forming scores of separate underground groups only loosely allied in a broad jihad movement. Because they're not large or well organized, they have proved tough to spot.

Al-Qaeda's decimated Old Guard may no longer be able to mount elaborately detailed plots executed by trained terrorists under its direct command. But U.S. counterterrorism officials believe the remaining inner core has put out a general go-ahead to Islamist cells worldwide: Attack whenever and wherever you can. Sometimes the mother ship may provide financial and logistical support, but the dirty work seems to be handled by local, autonomous units that are intimately familiar with their areas and can plan and attack below the radar of local security forces. The pattern, says Rand Corporation terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, "is to send a handful of professional terrorists to make contact with existing local terrorist groups, who provide the cannon fodder--that is, the suicide bombers."

What happened in Istanbul seems to reflect this new face of terrorism. Turkish officials think the double car bombings were the work of homegrown extremists, perhaps inspired and possibly trained by al-Qaeda experts. The Turkish group that first claimed responsibility for both sets of attacks, the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders Front (IBDA-C), is widely believed to be incapable of mounting such a complicated operation entirely on its own. But it seems to have provided the willing bodies--and the cars. The vehicles used in the Saturday and Thursday bombings were apparently bought by the same men. Together with the four suicide bombers and most of the dozen or more alleged accomplices under arrest, they come from the country's volatile southeast, near the border with Iraq, known for its Kurdish separatists and Islamic extremists. Although a few Islamic militant groups have been around for years, Turkish authorities considered them a spent force. But the turmoil in Iraq has revived their ardor. Local extremists, says Mehmet Farac, who has written several books on Turkish militants, want to resurrect themselves, and al-Qaeda's expertise can help them do it.

At the same time, al-Qaeda has every interest in showing it's still in business. Measures taken since Sept. 11, 2001, in the U.S. and Europe have made it tougher for bin Laden's men to strike inside the enemy's borders. But the enemy has plenty of attractive soft targets scattered throughout the Muslim world where affiliated franchises are available and able to take on the job. Al-Qaeda has evidently found a powerful rallying point for jihad in the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Since the invasion, the number and frequency of attacks have risen dramatically. It serves al-Qaeda's propaganda purposes to make people believe it is behind every outrage--even if like-minded groups are acting on their own. Investigators suspect bin Laden's outfit had a direct hand in the May bombings in Saudi Arabia and the August suicide assault in Indonesia. But Moroccan and French security officials say the synchronized bombings in Morocco in May were primarily a free-lance affair: the hastily prepared work of 14 raw young extremists from a Casablanca slum were plucked out of nowhere by local militants who had embraced the al-Qaeda ideology and got direction from Afghan-trained jihadists abroad.

U.S. officials and foreign terrorism experts puzzle over a significant feature of the new terrorism wave: nearly all the victims are Muslims. For years, despite its vow to overthrow corrupt Muslim regimes, al-Qaeda showed little interest in staging attacks in the heart of the Islamic world. But starting on May 12, when at least nine Arabs were among the 26 victims in the first Riyadh attack, al-Qaeda and its surrogates seem to have abandoned any concerns about causing Muslim deaths or alienating Muslim public opinion. "You have Islamist terrorists attacking innocent victims as an indirect manner of striking Arab or Islamic governments that militants condemn as corrupt," says the adviser to Morocco's King. France's Jacquard calls the tactic a new "strategy of rupture." The purpose, he says, is to force Muslims "to finally, fatally decide whether they are for or against righteous jihad." Jacquard says Saudi intelligence officials told him the Riyadh bombers who struck on Nov. 8 picked their target, knowing the apartment complex housed many Arabs, to send the message that all who resist jihad are fair game. To kill fellow Muslims during Ramadan, as terrorists did in Istanbul and Riyadh, "is an act of unspeakable extremism, and that's how it's supposed to be viewed," Jacquard says. "That's the point."

Yet the tactic may backfire. The Saudi bombings pushed the complacent royal regime to crack down hard. In the past six months, Saudi police say they have foiled at least four plots, including a threat against the Holy Mosque in Mecca and a plan to assassinate leading Saudi writers and intellectuals who oppose Islamic extremism. More than 400 arrests have produced a wealth of information showing how al-Qaeda is honeycombed throughout the kingdom. Police raids have uncovered explosives, caches of rifles and operational necessities like computers, cell phones, counterfeit passports and disguises. Officers even found a stash of dresses and wigs used by terrorists to impersonate women, who generally pass through checkpoints without being searched. Now Turkish security forces, known for their no-nonsense methods, will make it difficult for militants who are thought to have used Turkey as a transfer point for personnel and money flowing between Europe and the Middle East. The Islamist-leaning party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is under intense pressure from Turkey's political opposition and secular establishment to prove it can get tough on terrorists. "Turkey," he said, "will be like a fist."

For all their efforts elsewhere, jihadists haven't forgotten their ultimate battleground--the U.S. Late last week the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued another of their vague public warnings about possible threats. Privately, they say incoming intelligence reports are loaded with talk that al-Qaeda remnants are intent on pulling off another spectacular event. Officials believe such an attack is more likely to occur on U.S. interests abroad, simply because it's easier to assemble the weapons, explosives, vehicles and foot soldiers outside the U.S. But no one dares rule out attacks within the country. FBI agents were quietly contacting local police forces around the nation last week, warning them to step up vigilance around "critical infrastructure" targets, iconic structures and events that draw large crowds.

The FBI believes that up till now, the U.S. has escaped a second wave of attacks because bin Laden and his inner circle reserved the country for themselves. Officials say Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, once al-Qaeda's main planner, has told interrogators the leaders micromanaged the 9/11 plot, tweaking and critiquing the evolving plan until they were sure it would come off as awesome and unforgettable. But current intelligence indicates that the remaining al-Qaeda ringleaders aren't calling the shots anymore. Even in the U.S., the international jihad movement seems free to pull off whatever it has the means and opportunity to do.

And as Turkey learned last week, it's hard to beat the devastating power of the simple suicide bomb. That's all it took to send Gozde Ciftlik, a dark-haired woman in her early 20s, rushing to Istanbul's Taksim Hospital to look for her father Ismail, a security guard at the British consulate. When she saw his name on the list of fatalities, she spoke for terrorism victims everywhere. "Damn you," she shouted, "whoever did this." --Reported by Timothy J. Burger and Elaine Shannon/Washington, Bruce Crumley/Paris, Scott MacLeod/Cairo and Andrew Purvis and Pelin Turgut/Istanbul

With reporting by Timothy J. Burger and Elaine Shannon/Washington, Bruce Crumley/Paris, Scott MacLeod/Cairo and Andrew Purvis and Pelin Turgut/Istanbul