Attacks signal stepped-up Qaeda effort

WASHINGTON -- A pair of terror attacks in Egypt this week are the latest sign that Al Qaeda is successfully exploiting the war in Iraq to win new adherents and is outsourcing its wider struggle against the West to home-grown militant groups in other Arab countries, according to US intelligence officials and terrorism specialists.

Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, have effectively used the carnage in Iraq through the Internet and other means, the analysts said, to inspire grass-roots militant groups with grievances of their own to destabilize Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other key US allies.

Although no direct connection has been uncovered, the tactics used in the attack Monday in the Sinai Peninsula, in which three coordinated bombings killed 21 people in the Red Sea resort of Dahab, suggested that Al Qaeda inspired or may have helped organize the attacks. Two days later, suicide attackers targeted peacekeepers in the northern Sinai, but killed only the two bombers.

The style of the attacks ''conforms perfectly to Al Qaeda targeting instructions and directives," said Bruce Hoffman, director of the Washington office of the Rand Corporation and a specialist on Islamic fundamentalist groups. ''It not only kills infidels, but undermines the economies of precisely the regimes that Al Qaeda and its followers see as an apostate and anti-Islamic."

He added: ''I think this is a new phenomenon, the co-option of local Muslims who may not have had much interest in such activity before. This will continue in the Arabian peninsula at large."

There are additional signs -- including recent activity on Islamic websites and the timing of the attacks -- that the Sinai bombers probably have broader links to Al Qaeda, specialists said.

The home-grown group, believed to include local Bedouin tribesmen and responsible for bombings at Egyptian resorts in the Sinai over the past 18 months, calls itself the Egyptian Tawhid wal-Jihad Movement, meaning Unity and Holy War. It's the same name -- translated as Unity and Holy War -- previously used by Zarqawi's organization in Iraq before he pledged allegiance to bin Laden in December 2004 and renamed his group Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The Egyptian group has also taken responsibility for previous attacks on the same website on which Zarqawi has broadcast messages to his followers. An Egyptian court charged 13 of its members in a series of bombings in the resort town of Sharm-el-Sheik last year. The group is also suspected of blowing up hotels in the Red Sea resort town of Taba in 2004. Meanwhile, militants arrested in Egypt last week were using another alias used by Zarqawi affiliates in Iraq, ''The Victorious Sect."

Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq for organizing dozens of suicide attacks and beheadings, exhorted followers in a rare videotaped message this week to take up arms against the West.

''It is unclear if there is a direct connection here, but once again, given their access and use of the Internet, you have to imagine that these cells are -- at a minimum-- being heavily influenced by the philosophies and multimedia of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden," said Evan Kholmann, a terrorism expert who frequently advises US authorities.

''After the attack in Dahab, there were many Al Qaeda members who were congratulating themselves on the Internet," added Farhana Ali, a former US intelligence analyst who is now with the Rand Corporation, which is funded by the US government. ''One could speculate there is this broader jihadi undercurrent."

Egyptian authorities have broadened their investigation into the Dahab bombing to look into any possible Al Qaeda role. Hussein Mubarak, an Egyptian diplomat in Washington specializing in security issues, said in an interview yesterday that a preliminary investigation of the Monday attacks indicates the group is based in the Sinai but was probably inspired by outside Al Qaeda leaders. Egypt's intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, flew to Yemen on Wednesday seeking to determine whether Qaeda terrorists who escaped from a prison in Yemen might be connected to the terror cells in the Sinai Peninsula, according to news reports in the region.

The timing of the attacks, carried out a few days after a new communique from bin Laden was aired on Arab television and just a day after Zarqawi put out his message, also suggested it was part of a larger, coordinated campaign.

''It is not just a coincidence that attackers struck a day after Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden issued a tape warning that ordinary Western citizens were legitimate targets," said Darko Trifunovic, an Al Qaeda expert based in Vienna, Austria. ''Terror attacks in Egypt will likely cause Arab nations sympathetic to US efforts in Iraq to raise their alert status, fearing they could be attacked next."

The director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, retired Vice Admiral John Scott Redd, informed Congress earlier this month that the rise in terrorist groups that are affiliated with Al Qaeda but operate independently pose one of the most difficult challenges to counterterrorism officials. ''These grassroots or homegrown elements may draw inspiration from Al Qaeda but operate independently, with little or no centralized guidance and control," Redd reported. ''They may exist under the radar for years."

He said these Sunni Muslim terrorist groups ''have been inspired by Al Qaeda and have largely adopted Al Qaeda's premise that the United States is the root of most of the problems affecting Muslims. These groups constitute a significant threat to our allies and interests abroad, and may attempt to extend their geographical reach."

One recent US government report prepared by the office of John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, concluded that Al Qaeda's ''geographic dispersion, aided by global telecommunications, has allowed other voices and actors to play prominent roles. . . . The result is that we are facing a range of groups espousing Al Qaeda's ideology and attempting to carry out its anti-Western agenda."

Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.