Olivier Guitta, a Washington-based counter-terrorism consultant born in Morocco, said some militants have alerted authorities to impending bomb attacks so they could be stopped. "They don't mind hitting the government of Algeria, or France for supporting Algeria. But they do not want their kids to go off and fight in Iraq against the Americans."
In Yemen, old guard Al Qaeda operatives have split with a newly emerging generation of fighters in the last year over the younger militants' violent tactics, starting with a suicide bombing in July that killed seven Spanish tourists and two Yemenis.
In Pakistan, recent polls suggest that Bin Laden's popularity has suffered because of the widespread belief that Al Qaeda has been behind the killing of many Muslims there, including former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Cilluffo said that on a recent trip to the Middle East he interviewed fighters who had just returned from Iraq, many of them disillusioned. "People are saying, 'I didn't sign up to kill fellow Muslims,' " he said.
Fawaz Gerges, an author of two books on Islamic militants who has spent the last several years interviewing militants, cited evidence of "major fault lines" within Al Qaeda in chat rooms and other Internet venues. "Bin Laden's statement and this one [from Zawahiri] really tell us about the gravity of the crisis."
But several officials and experts suggested that Al Qaeda was mostly trying to do a better job of reaching out to more mainstream recruits.
"Using this Q-and-A is a way to legitimize Al Qaeda and seek input and increase their following, and not be seen as a hierarchical organization that is divorced from its followers," said Farhana Ali, a counter-terrorism analyst at Rand Corp. "This is an issue of survival. They are trying to stay plugged in to Muslim opinion."
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josh.meyer@latimes.com
Times staff writer Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo contributed to this report.
