Qaeda deputy warns of new terror strikes

Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, condemned United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon as enemies of Islam and warned in a video released Monday, the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, that the terror group would strike the Gulf and Israel, opening new fronts in its war against the West.

Al Qaeda released a string of videos for the anniversary, showing increasingly sophisticated techniques as it tried to demonstrate that it remains a powerful, confident force five years into the United States' war on terror.

One video showed images of the planes striking the World Trade Center, lionizing the 19 suicide hijackers as men "who changed history." Another was a 91-minute documentary-style video titled "Knowledge Is For Acting Upon: The Manhattan Raid," in which Osama bin Laden is seen smiling and chatting with the planners of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in a mountain camp in Afghanistan.

Zawahiri spoke in a third video, excerpts of which were aired on Al Jazeera, warning Americans that more attacks were to come.

Rational justification

"We have repeatedly warned you and offered a truce with you. Now we have all the legal and rational justification to continue to fight you until your power is destroyed or you give in and surrender," he said. "The days are pregnant and giving birth to new events." His comments pointed to new fronts for Qaeda attacks.

The terror network has had few operations in Lebanon, Israel or in the Gulf region. Its branch in Saudi Arabia has carried out a campaign of violence in recent years, but it has been heavily damaged by a government crackdown.

Both Lebanon and Israel have warned of a possible growing Qaeda presence.

"We have seen over the last months increased Al Qaeda activity in our area," in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev.

"We've seen an attempt by Al Qaeda to also infiltrate in Gaza and even in the West Bank, so we take the threat very seriously and we're taking the appropriate countermeasures," he added, without elaborating.

Addressing America, Zawahiri said: "You should not waste your time" reinforcing troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, "because they are doomed to defeat." "Instead, you have to reinforce your troops in two regions. First is the Gulf, where you will be thrown out after you are defeated in Iraq, at which point your economic ruin will be achieved," he said.

"The second is Israel, because the jihad reinforcements are getting closer to it." He also denounced the UN peacekeeping force now moving into Lebanon under terms set out in a UN cease-fire resolution that on Aug. 14 ended fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas. He suggested that Muslims should act to prevent the peacekeepers' deployment.

International troops

"What is so terrible in this resolution is that it approves the existence of the Jewish state and isolates our Mujahedeen in Palestine from Muslims in Lebanon," he said. "This is consecrated by the presence of international troops who are hostile to Islam. Anyone who accepts this resolution means that he accepts all these catastrophes." Zawahiri, who was born in Egypt, called on the Muslim world "to rush with everything at its disposal to the aid of its Muslim brothers in Lebanon and Gaza" and accused Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The comments on Lebanon - which indicated the video was recent - were the first indirect threats against the UN force deploying there to enforce a border zone free of Hezbollah weapons.

But it is not clear whether Al Qaeda has the means to carry out significant attacks in Lebanon. Al Qaeda, which is Sunni-led, and Hezbollah, a Shiite force, are considered enemies.

A claim by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia that on Dec. 27 it fired rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel, provoking Israeli airstrikes on a Palestinian base in central Lebanon, angered the Shiite guerrillas. No centralized control

Bin Laden and Zawahiri are believed to be on the run in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. Many analysts believe that they no longer have centralized control to order or organize attacks by militants around the world. The capture and killing of many mid-level commanders has left the organization more diffuse and amorphous.

But at the same time, the propaganda machine of the central leadership has become more sophisticated, aiming to rally militants and romanticizing the jihad, or holy war, against the United States as a heroic fight.

The three videos were issued by As Sahab, Qaeda's media arm. Advertisements on Islamic militant Web forums advised that the full Zawahiri video, said to be about 75 minutes long, would be posted soon. Al Jazeera and CNN, which also aired excerpts, did not say how they obtained the footage.

The two other videos were posted on Web forums late Sunday.

(The International Herald Tribune)