Al Qaeda's shallow bench to be tested

AP:

They rose up quickly to take up Osama bin Laden's call for jihad, ruthless men in their 20s and 30s heralded as the next generation of global terror.

Two years later, 40 percent are dead, targets of a worldwide crackdown that claimed its biggest victory with the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's front man in Iraq.

Manhunts in Asia, Africa and Europe have pushed most of the rest deep underground _ finding refuge in wartorn Somalia or the jungles of the southern Philippines. While there are still recruits ready to take up al-Qaida's call to arms, analysts say the newcomers have fewer connections than the men they are replacing, less training and sparser resources.

'There are more people popping up than are being put away,' said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College. 'But the question is whether the new ones have the fortitude to take up the mantle and carry the struggle forward. I don't see that they have.'

A 2004 Associated Press analysis named a dozen young terror suspects as front-line leaders, their hands stained with the blood of attacks from Bali to Baghdad, Casablanca to Madrid.

Al-Zarqawi, who sat atop the 2004 list as the biggest threat after bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, died Wednesday when U.S. forces dropped two 500-pound bombs on his hideout northeast of Baghdad.

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But Ranstorp said it was far from clear if al-Zarqawi's replacement will have the contacts, resources or capacity to match the dead leader's effectiveness at the helm of Iraqi insurgent forces.

'I'm not convinced that there is somebody ready to step in and fill Zarqawi's shoes,' he said. 'There may be, but it will take some time.'

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There is more on the others who have met their demise. US attacks on al Qaeda's mid-level leadership have already degraded al Qaeda's operation in Iraq. The organization ws humiliated in several elections last year. Attracting people to explode like ordinance in a crowd of civilians cannot be easy.