Al Qaeda grows by adding affiliates

Sometimes, it is not clear exactly what influence senior Al Qaeda leaders have. Three men arrested this month in Germany for allegedly plotting attacks there against Americans have been linked to an extremist group based in Uzbekistan that broke away from an organization long under Al Qaeda's umbrella. Authorities fear that the group, the Islamic Jihad Union, might have been drawn tightly into Al Qaeda's orbit and aimed far beyond its previous targets in Central Asia.

From its early years in the 1990s, Al Qaeda has been an umbrella organization of groups in Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other countries that has fostered symbiotic relationships with like-minded militant organizations without necessarily directing their operations.

Al Qaeda's links to many outlying parts of its network were severed after the post-Sept. 11 attacks.

Signs of the rebuilding effort began to become apparent at least two years ago, but they have intensified significantly since then. U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials say they have seen indications in numerous terrorist plots and attacks and other extremist violence in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe.

In congressional testimony Sept. 10, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said Al Qaeda's "mergers with regional groups . . . have created a more diffuse violent Islamic extremist threat that complicates the task of detecting and deterring plots against the homeland."

U.S. officials and private experts described it as a two-way process in which Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, including chief strategist Ayman Zawahiri and perhaps Bin Laden himself, reach out to the groups, sending them emissaries and providing them with financing, logistical support and training.

And they said the groups were also reaching out to Al Qaeda, sending their recruits to Pakistan for training and indoctrination.

U.S. officials say these liaisons combine Al Qaeda's money, training, finely honed tactics and muscle with the widespread support and participation that the local and regional groups enjoy from within their communities.

Some of those groups have jumped at the chance to align themselves with the Al Qaeda "brand name," which has soared in popularity because of its increasingly sophisticated multimedia campaigns and widespread opposition to U.S. foreign policy, particularly the war in Iraq, the officials and private experts say.