Leaders of al-Qaida lost some control of the terror network last year due to
the arrests and deaths of top operational planners, but the group remains the
most prominent terror threat facing the United States and its allies, the State
Department said Friday.
In its annual report on worldwide terrorism, the department singled out Iran
as the most active state sponsor of terrorism, saying that its Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Intelligence and Security directly
have been involved in the planning and support of terrorist acts.
Overall, the report tallied about 11,000 terror attacks around the world last
year, resulting in more than 14,600 deaths. That is almost a fourfold increase
from 2004, though the agency blames the change largely on new ways of tallying
the incidents.
About 3,500 of last year's attacks occurred in Iraq and about 8,300 of the
deaths occurred there, accounting for a large part of the increase over 2004.
The report said that Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders are scattered
and on the run and
Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for the network. In addition,
al-Qaida's relations with the Taliban that once ruled Afghanistan are growing
weaker and the group's finances and logistics have been disrupted, the report
said.
"Al-Qaida is not the organization it was four years ago," the report said.
However, "overall, we are in the first phase of a potentially long war," it
said. "The enemy's proven ability to adapt means we will go through several more
cycles of action/reaction before the war's outcome is no longer in doubt. It is
likely we will have a resilient enemy for years to come."
A new generation of extremists, some of them getting training through the
Internet, is emerging in cells that are likely to be more local and less
meticulously planned, the report said. These small groups, empowered by
technology, are very difficult to detect or counter, it said.
Safe havens for terrorists where they plan and inspire acts of terrorism tend
to be located along international borders between and among ineffective
governments, the report said. It cited the Afghanistan border, the intersection
of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, the Celebes Sea in Southeast Asia, and
Somalia.
In Iraq, which the report called a key front in the global war on terror, a
system of clandestine support networks funneled in foreign terrorists from the
Middle East, Europe, North Africa, South and Central Asia and the Caucasus.
In 2004, the U.S. government's National Counterterrorism Center, which
monitors terrorism, counted 3,192 terror attacks worldwide, including more than
28,000 people wounded, killed or kidnapped.
Officials have said the government last year changed its system of counting
global attacks and devoted more energy to finding reports of violence against
civilians. Even so, the higher figures underscore how terrorism around the world
has grown since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Six countries — Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria — remain
classified as state sponsors of terror. Libya and Sudan, though, were credited
with continuing to take significant steps to cooperate in the global war on
terror.
But the report cited allegations that Libyan officials played a role in an
attempt to assassinate then-Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in 2003 and said the
United States continues to evaluate Libya's assurance to halt the use of
violence for political purposes.
Libya began working last year with Britain to curtail terrorism by the Libyan
Islamic Fighting Group and extradited a suspect in a Cairo bombing to Egypt, the
report said.
In Israel and Palestinian-held territories, a range of groups, including
Hamas, used a variety of tactics, including suicide bombs.
The number of victims killed in Israel was less than 50, down from the nearly
100 people killed in 2004, the report said.
The report said that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, with whom the Bush
administration has clashed repeatedly, has an "ideological affinity" with two
terrorist groups operating in Colombia, the FARC and the National Liberation
Army. It said these connections limit Venezuela's anti-terrorism cooperation
with its neighbor.