Terrorist War Will Be Fought in the Shadows

Now that the United States and Osama bin Laden have publicly declared war on each other, the question becomes: What’s next?

The answer reflects the difficulty of dealing with the kind of low-intensity conflict that has redefined warfare in the post-Cold War world.

The threat posed by Bin Laden, the millionaire Saudi dissident linked to the Aug. 7 embassy bombings in East Africa, is expected to be far more amorphous--and thus in some ways more dangerous--than those presented by traditional conflicts with defined front lines, conventional weapons and identifiable troops.

The range of targets is likely to be much wider. The weapons will be more imaginative but no less potent, as shown by the grisly scenes in Kenya and Tanzania earlier this month.

The time frame, stretching over the coming weeks, months and perhaps years, is likely to be looser and more unpredictable. And even who is winning or losing might be difficult to tell.

“It’ll be a war that is often without tangible victories,” said Bruce Hoffman, author of “Inside Terrorism” and director of Scotland’s Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence.

The U.S. fully joined the war last week with missile attacks against alleged Bin Laden camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical weapons plant in Sudan. But the U.S. still confronts what appears to be an extensive Bin Laden network, operating under a new umbrella called the International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, that is hard to pinpoint and looks different even from past patterns of terrorism.

“When terrorism first emerged in the late 1960s, the groups were self-contained entities, so eliminating the group or its issue solved the problem,” Hoffman said. Later, when state-sponsored terrorism increased, the U.S. could retaliate by arresting the terrorists or punishing the state.

“But in the 1990s, terrorism has become a mass movement defined by a constellation of people with similar religious beliefs who operate globally,” he said.

The new war with the suspected Bin Laden network may well serve as the kind of test case for international cooperation against terrorism that 1991’s Operation Desert Storm was for such cooperation in a conventional war.

The challenges include:

* Targets.

Bin Laden’s preferred targets might still be official American diplomatic and military installations, but virtually any U.S. site or citizen abroad is a potential target.

“Targets are likely to be quite indiscriminate,” said Robert B. Oakley, a former ambassador to Pakistan and a Reagan administration official in charge of South Asia policy.

The fortification of American embassies, military bases and other official facilities might force Bin Laden and his allies to look for people, businesses, schools, cultural organizations and other nonofficial targets that are more vulnerable, experts say.

“The places to look are those where the United States has some kind of presence and Bin Laden’s people also have direct or indirect connections. They may not always be obvious, as in the case of Kenya and Tanzania,” Oakley said.

With heightened security at home, U.S. analysts think an attack inside the United States is less likely--at least at this point.

“The primary dangers are abroad,” said L. Paul Bremer III, former head of the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism and now with Kissinger Associates. “But attacks against the United States shouldn’t be excluded, since Bin Laden was involved one way or another with the World Trade Center bombers.”

* Timing.

On Friday, Bin Laden pledged he would strike at U.S. interests again, leading counter-terrorism specialists to expect a revenge attack.

“In the next couple of weeks to a month, there will be a heightened threat from Bin Laden, the groups that he supports that have not been damaged or are outside Afghanistan, and other like-minded terrorists in the Mideast,” Bremer predicted.

But Bin Laden has great flexibility in terms of timing. While the U.S. must maintain readiness full time, he can strike at will. He can afford to wait until the shock of the East African bombings wears off and the U.S. guard is lower.

The Clinton administration acknowledges that this war is unlikely to end as quickly as Operation Desert Storm.

“It’s important for the American people to understand that we’re involved in a long-term struggle. This unfortunately is the war of the future. We have to understand the importance of having a sustained operation here,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warned Friday after briefing Congress.

* U.S. response.

The use of military force is unlikely to provide the kind of conclusive resolution expected in a conventional war.

“No one should have illusions about military force getting us out ahead. It’s hard to find good targets that are directly applicable,” Oakley said.

The area targeted by U.S. missiles south of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Thursday was also the site of intensive aerial attacks and infantry battles during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, said Milton Bearden, who ran the U.S. covert operation in Afghanistan for six years.

U.S. warships can launch Tomahawk cruise missiles “until the national Treasury runs dry” and still have no guarantee that Bin Laden’s operation will be permanently crippled, Bearden added.

Hoffman said that missiles provide an “opening salvo” without a lasting solution. “To combat this kind of warfare will require a completely different conception of warfare than we’ve had for the past century.”

The United States will also need significant assistance from other key countries, including Muslim governments. “We don’t win wars without allies,” Bearden said.

Americans should have no illusions about a dramatic Delta Force or Navy SEAL operation to nab Bin Laden and remove the threat he poses. Experts agree that such an operation probably is not doable--at least without an unacceptable cost in human life. “Only in the movies,” one former intelligence official said.

Others compare the difficulty of responding to terrorism to the problems of the Vietnam War.

“The Vietnam War was so difficult because the enemy didn’t wear uniforms, we didn’t know the targets, and virtually everyplace was vulnerable. This is Vietnam on a global scale,” said Patricia Schroeder, a former member of the House Armed Services Committee.

At the same time, the extent of the threat can be exaggerated. While the images and death toll from the twin bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were anguishing, the dangers from terrorism might be less extensive than in the 1980s because the number of terrorist groups has decreased, even among Islamic militants.

“The old-line Palestinian extremists of the 1970s and 1980s are not a factor anymore. And around the world, there’s been significant progress isolating or eliminating terrorists in Ireland, Spain, Peru and elsewhere,” Bremer said.

“Those are pluses. It’s not a totally bad picture out there anymore.”

* BOMBINGS SUSPECT: Man linked to Kenya blast is bright, intense and deeply religious, relatives say. A20

* SUDAN ASSAILS U.S.: Leader says Sudanese are prepared to die in holy war. A24