The US may be having trouble recruiting international troops for its declared "war on terrorism," but countries around the world are being generous with a potentially more valuable resource - intelligence.
So far, countries as diverse as Bosnia, Russia and Libya have stepped up with information that could help shatter the Al Qaeda terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden, the rich Saudi dissident suspected of a role in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
In a series of lighting raids, crackdowns and interrogations, these countries have gathered information that could tighten the noose around bin Laden and his armed supporters, who by the latest intelligence estimates could number in the thousands.
Among the quickest to respond to US calls for help has been Germany. Immediately following the September 11 attacks, German intelligence agents intercepted a phone conversation between alleged bin Laden associates that led the FBI to search frantically for two more teams of suicide hijackers, according to AP.
The eavesdropping German spies overheard references to "the 30 people traveling for the operation," said the agency, sending the FBI scrambling to locate suspects beyond the 19 suspected hijackers believed to have turned four planes into kamikazes.
The US apparently hopes to rely more heavily on NATO allies such as Germany in the days ahead, according to AFP reports this week. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz asked colleagues in the European organization to supply Washington with more intelligence about terrorist networks - but not necessarily to provide troops or warplanes for any US retaliation.
The NATO allies seem to be rising to the occasion. According to AP, British authorities are currently investigating whether anyone in their country played a part in the attacks, with Scotland Yard acknowledging that 11 of the 19 accused hijackers passed through Britain earlier this year.
France, meanwhile, has detained seven suspected Islamists in the Paris area as part of a Europe-wide crackdown in the wake of the attacks in the US, police sources told AFP. The suspects, including women, were detained in dawn raids by counter-intelligence officers, said the agency.
The suspicion at this point is that European intelligence may provide the key strands of the web tightening around bin Laden. According to a senior American official cited by AP, the inquiry into the attacks is focusing more than ever on Germany, and more FBI agents are being sent there.
But it is not just America's NATO allies who are contributing intelligence - even smaller players, such as Bosnia, are chipping in.
The interior minister of Bosnia's Croat-Muslim entity told a press conference this week that while bin Laden's supporters might be looking for "paradise" in Bosnia, it would turn out to be their "hell."
According to AFP, the minister quoted "trustworthy intelligence sources" as saying that up to 70 Afghan supporters of bin Laden might be seeking to leave Afghanistan and to hide out in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The minister promised to nab the suspects.
Further afield, even America's Cold War arch foe Russia seems to be leaking intelligence harmful to bin Laden. The Russians, furious over their own death toll in the war with Muslim separatists in Chechnya, have been open to recent US pleas to take the battle to the "terrorists."
Russian intelligence could help pin down bin Laden himself, with ITAR-TASS quoting unnamed security sources as saying the Saudi dissident was on the run near the Afghan city of Jalalabad earlier this week.
THE ASIAN CONNECTION
As the US scours the world for clues, it has also received assistance from intelligence agencies in the Philippines, and offers of similar support from Japan and Indonesia.
The Philippines and Indonesia in particular have a vested interest in intelligence-gathering on Muslim extremists, since both face actual or potential uprisings based on Islamist ideologies.
According to AFP, Philippines President Gloria Arroyo has announced that the interior department and corporate watchdog agencies will investigate and neutralize "legal organizations caught acting as fronts for terrorist or criminal groups."
In addition, military sources told AFP that authorities were monitoring several NGOs' alleged money transfers for bin Laden, and had received a foreign intelligence report that about 50 Filipino Muslims were trained in camps set up by bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Indonesia, meanwhile, has seen a spate of anti-US demonstrations and even attempts by militants to "list" American hotel guests.
A Muslim activist and author told AFP this week that the Darul Islam Indonesia network of largely radical Muslim groups "had 'a special relationship' with Bin Laden, through the thousands of Indonesians who joined the war to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s."
He said that Darul Islam - a radical Muslim group - staged several coup attempts to turn Indonesia into an Islamic state in the years surrounding independence from the Dutch in 1945.
In this context, it remains to be seen whether Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who this week condemned the September 11 attacks, can follow through on her pledge of "full support" for the US "war on terror."
One US ally, meanwhile, may be making an unprecedented break with the past in order to support an American military operation abroad.
According to the Kyodo news agency, Japan is preparing to mount a first-ever operation to send three destroyers and a naval tanker to the Indian Ocean to assist the US with intelligence and surveillance tasks.
INTELLIGENCE AROUND GROUND ZERO
Closer to Afghanistan, the eye of the mounting US military storm, other intelligence sources have begun kicking in - some familiar, some unexpected.
Israel, which has benefited from billions in American military aid, has provided some intelligence to the US in the wake of the attacks - at least by helping to rule out Iraq's involvement, despite US suspicions.
"I have not found any direct links between Iraq and the plane hijackings and terrorist attacks in the United States," a top military intelligence figure, Gen. Amos Malka, told the Yediot Aharonot daily, cited by AFP.
Nearby, bin Laden's former host, Sudan, has handed over the names and locations of individuals in the Al Qaeda network to US intelligence services, according to United Press International.
Egypt, which has fought a long-running war with its own Islamist militants, is also sharing information with the US on Muslim extremists' movements, prompting expressions of appreciation from US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"Egypt ... is really ahead of us on this issue," Powell told AFP this week, referring to the handling of extremists. "We have much to learn from them, and there is much we can do together."
The US is also reportedly soliciting intelligence from what it formerly identified as "rogue states" such as Libya and Syria, with less clear results.
According to an online report published by the Arizona Daily Star, an anti-government Libyan Islamist group is on the list of alleged terrorist groups the US plans to go after. A day after the attacks, Libyan leader Muammar Kadhafi said that the US had the right to retaliate, and offered aid to his former enemy, which bombed Libya in 1986.
As for Syria, the report said, a US State Department official had called the contacts "very sensitive," but added that they had already "generated interest."
REPORTS HEARD ROUND THE WORLD
The wide-ranging US effort to gather intelligence, through both traditional allies and former enemies, appears to be bearing fruit. Although bin Laden has so far eluded the global manhunt, the strands of an unprecedentedly vast intelligence net appear to be tightening around him and his organization.
Moreover, with the US recruiting help from both Cold War-era enemies and Muslim states themselves, a globe-spanning intelligence network could be coalescing to do exactly what US intelligence failed to do in the first place: anticipate attacks like those which took place on September 11 - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
