Rising ability of al-Qaeda affiliates

The plot to blow up a Northwest Flight 253 over American soil on Christmas Day represents an ominously new and lethal ability by a branch of al-Qaeda to attack the United States directly, according to government and independent counterterrorism specialists.Until now, American officials had expressed concern over the capability of Qaeda affiliates in North Africa, Yemen and Iraq, and a militant Islamist group in Somalia closely tied to Al-Qaeda, to attack American and other Western targets in their regions.But they remained confident that these groups — unlike Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda in Pakistan — could not threaten the United States itself.That assessment has changed, as American intelligence officials say Qaeda operatives in Yemen trained and equipped a 23-year-old Nigerian man to evade airport security measures and ignite a powerful explosive on a commercial airliner.Four months ago, a suicide bomber from the same group, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, using a similar explosive, nearly killed a top Saudi counterterrorism minister.“Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has grown in confidence and seems to be developing a capability beyond the other Al-Qaeda nodes,” said Richard Barrett, a British former intelligence officer now monitoring al-Qaeda and the Taliban for the United Nations, who visited Yemen two weeks ago.Even as the US pours 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan and increases pressure on Pakistan to eliminate Al-Qaeda’s top leaders and sanctuary in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the thwarted attack on an Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight underscores how the Obama administration must now defend the US from attacks conceived in multiple havens abroad.“This is the canary in the coal mine,” said Juan Carlos Zarate, a top counterterrorism official under President George W. Bush. “Al-Qaeda’s regional satellites are seen as platforms for Al-Qaeda’s global agenda.”