London, Nov 11: Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network
has been largely dismantled, but the threat posed by extremist
Muslim terrorists remains high and has grown harder to track,
a report said today.
The number of countries likely to pose a "medium"
security risk to western businesses operating in them grew to
71 for 2004, with 14 countries bumped up from "low" risk, said
the report by the London-based control risks group.
Many of those were gulf nations, including Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar, said the report, which was
meant to aid companies in evaluating risks in different parts
of the world. Among the other nations moved from "low" to
"medium" risk were Thailand, Bolivia and Morocco.
Kevin Rosser, one of the report's authors, said
worldwide counter-terrorism efforts, including the arrests of
al-Qaeda leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged
mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, had significantly
disabled the network.
"The al-qaeda organization that existed on Sept. 11
(2001) ... Really no longer exists, it's been largely
dismantled," he said.
"What we're beginning to see is a much more disparate
movement of people who are sometimes coordinating their acts
and sometimes not, but who are inspired by the example of
al-Qaeda and who are carrying out attacks," he continued. "So
we see the threat becoming much more elusive and the danger is
that it becomes much harder to track."
Bureau Report
