Bali Blast Signals Terrorist Shift

The deadly weekend bombing in Bali signals a shift in targeting for a global coalition of Muslim extremists that puts U.S. tourists at higher risk of attack than ever before, U.S. officials and counter-terrorism experts said Monday.

Indonesian and U.S. officials say they believe that Al Qaeda or related organizations in Southeast Asia were responsible for the bombing, which killed at least 188 people and injured hundreds more. But so far, they have not released definitive evidence.

They also said the bombing -- at least the timing of it -- possibly was inspired by an audiotape message last week from Ayman Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s top aide, who spoke of targeting U.S. and Western economic interests. The bombing killed people from at least 25 countries, including two Americans.

Whoever ultimately is found responsible, U.S. officials said the attack is the most emphatic indication to date that Islamic militants are no longer content to focus on embassies, military installations and other well-protected “symbols of freedom” across the globe.

The attack also seemed intended to send shock waves through pro-Western regimes. It was potentially devastating to Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, according Daniel Benjamin, a Clinton White House counter-terrorism expert and co-author of “The Sacred Age of Terror.”

“It is a major source of embarrassment, and it will devastate the [Indonesian] economy because it will ruin the tourist business for a long time to come,” Benjamin said.

He said various recent attacks prove Al Qaeda’s continued global reach. “That’s an important part of the message,” he said. “They’re claiming a large portion of the globe as their area of operation.”

U.S. officials are investigating a rash of recent attacks to see whether they are related and whether they are the work of Al Qaeda operatives.

On Oct. 6, a French tanker exploded off the coast of Yemen under suspicious circumstances; U.S. officials say they suspect that terrorists rammed a boat into its hull and detonated explosives. Two days later, one U.S. Marine was killed and another wounded during exercises on an island off Kuwait; the attack was carried out by two gunmen who authorities say have been linked to Al Qaeda.

“Those are the areas [where] you would normally expect attacks,” said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But this [Bali] attack is evidence that they are not limiting their scope of attacks to them. Anywhere where our people go, or where we have assets, are vulnerable. It shows that they have such disregard for our culture and society that they will attack us wherever they can.”

After the Bali bombing, the State Department ordered all nonessential U.S. Embassy employees in Jakarta and their families out of Indonesia. In that advisory, it also warned of other, similar attacks in the future.

“As security is increased at official U.S. facilities, terrorists and their sympathizers will seek softer targets,” the advisory said. “These may include facilities where Americans are generally known to congregate or visit, such as clubs, restaurants, places of worship, schools or outdoor recreation events.”

Even before the Bali bombing, the State Department last week issued a global travel alert.

“It highlights what we have been saying, [that] terrorism is worldwide and targeting Westerners,” said a department official. Authorities have feared just such an attack since Al Qaeda became a global terrorist network in the 1990s, he said.

“We’ve been talking about these things for months and years,” the official said. He added that there is little the U.S. government can do to protect its citizens traveling overseas.

A taped message--professed to be from Bin Laden--was released last week warning of future attacks. A letter purportedly written by the Al Qaeda founder, who disappeared during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, was publicized by an Arab satellite TV network Monday. The letter praises the attacks on the U.S. Marines in Kuwait and the explosion of the French tanker.

U.S. officials, who have said they do not know whether Bin Laden is dead or alive, said they would scrutinize the letter to see whether it is authentic and to try to determine whether it holds any clues as to future attacks.

“The heroic operation in Kuwait proves the level of danger that threatens U.S. forces in Islamic countries,” said the letter, released by the Al Jazeera TV network. “The priority in this war, at this stage, must be against the infidels, the Americans and the Jews, who have not stopped their injustice.”

The Bali bombing has sent waves of concern through dozens of nations that, like Indonesia, rely on tourism to keep their fragile economies afloat, said Magnus Ranstorp, a counter-terrorism expert who consults with European governments on Al Qaeda.

Ranstorp and other experts said the attack might be a signal that Al Qaeda and its followers are trying to undermine moderate governments in Southeast Asia and elsewhere that have pledged to help the U.S. counter-terrorism effort by targeting their tourism businesses.

“The most important thing about this is the targeting of an economic infrastructure and its tourism industry,” said Ranstorp, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “It is an old tactic that Islamic militants have undertaken over the years. But the sheer scale of the attack is different, and it underscores foreign involvement” by Al Qaeda.

This is not the first attack in recent years on tourist attractions. In 1997, an Egypt-based group killed 58 people in a machine-gun attack at a tourist site in Luxor, Egypt. And Al Qaeda itself plotted at least one other series of large-scale attacks on the eve of the new millennium.

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. think tank in Santa Monica, said it “probably doesn’t matter” if Al Qaeda was directly involved in the Bali attack.

“The pattern we’re seeing is that groups strongly affiliated with Al Qaeda, who have received training from them, have cobbled together their own local operations,” he said.