How many terrorists remain? Estimates vary

White House backs away from earlier estimate of 100,000

CALVIN WOODWARD, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Originally published Wednesday, January 30, 2002

WASHINGTON -- Lest anyone think the job is done, President Bush and his aides presented Americans on Tuesday with a vision of "tens of thousands" of terrorists very much in business.

Afghanistan's al-Qaida bases are smashed and their occupants are gone, captured or dead. But beyond those borders it might be a different story -- one of an organization alive, with nerve centers spreading from Asian jungles to European cities.

It was that view of al-Qaida that administration officials, pressing for the largest increase in military spending in 20 years, wanted Americans to keep in mind when hearing Bush's State of the Union speech Tuesday night.

The roundup of militants linked to al-Qaida in Singapore, the arrest of the British man accused of trying to blow up an airliner with explosives in his shoe and the preliminary U.S. military actions in the Philippines and Somalia all underscore the breadth of the terrorist organization's perceived threat.

Experts skeptical

But White House officials ran into skepticism from intelligence experts when they claimed, as Bush adviser Karen Hughes said, that "as many as 100,000 terrorists were trained in Afghanistan's camps" -- a number far larger than estimated before. They later backed off.

"Al-Qaida has never had that kind of strength," said Stanley Bedlington, a former CIA terrorism analyst.

David Isby, author of several books on Afghanistan and its war with the Soviet Union, said: "I think that may well be a decimal place too high, especially if you're talking about people who got real terrorist training, rather than just got their picture taken on a knocked-out tank."

Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network is shredded in Afghanistan, its principal home for five years, and its fleeing fighters have yet to regroup as a significant force anywhere else, U.S. intelligence suggests.

Yet bin Laden and most lieutenants have eluded their hunters. And their organization's sphere of influence -- its own cells as well as al-Qaida-trained local insurgents in dozens of countries -- has not been taken apart.

"We now believe as many as 100,000 terrorist killers were trained in Afghanistan, and I think that illustrates the scope of the problem," Hughes said in a round of TV talk show appearances before Bush's speech.

But a senior White House official said later that figure included all fighters who came to Afghanistan dating back to the 1979 Soviet occupation -- many fighting on the side supported by the United States.

U.S. officials believe 15,000 to 20,000 terrorists have been trained in al-Qaida's Afghan camps since bin Laden established them in 1996.

Bush's speech settled on "tens of thousands."

Several thousand al-Qaida fighters were thought to have been in the country before the war, and they were bombed relentlessly when found.

In the heyday of the Afghan camps, courses lasted from a few weeks to a few months and encompassed an array of disciplines -- math, machine-gun training and bomb-making among them.

Jeffrey T. Richelson, an intelligence expert at the Washington, D.C.-based National Security Archive, said it's possible the more worrisome picture of al-Qaida's reach has been pieced together from captured fighters like those imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Unlike many other terrorist groups, al-Qaida's draw has extended throughout the Islamic world and in some cases, beyond.

Bin Laden's core followers come from Arab countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, but his ranks also have included Sunni Muslims from southeast Asia, non-Arab Africa, numerous former Soviet republics and Europe.

"He made a major point in his writing -- he stresses not pan-Arabism, but pan-Islamism, to give his ideology greater resonance in the Muslim world," Bedlington said. "His ambitions went beyond running a group attacking the U.S. He had intentions to be the caliph of the Muslim world."

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