
To emphasize this point, al-Suri even went so far as to suggest that "cell builders," perhaps the only tie to a much-reduced al Qaeda Central, should consider taking on a suicide mission of their own after planting some of terror's seeds. This way there would be little chance of counterterrorist forces following their trail of links from one operative and cell to another -- the manner in which some terrorist network affiliates have been taken down over this past decade, in locales ranging from the Sahara to Singapore.
If all this seems a bit dark, there is some good news. The al Qaeda leader's death could free up huge resources from the intelligence and special operations communities hitherto devoted to the bin Laden manhunt. So instead of simply shifting the targeting mechanism to possible new No. 1s, there is an opportunity to use the vast majority of these resources to help illuminate the myriad cells forming up in accordance with al-Suri's vision.
To be sure, some eyes in the sky should keep looking for the likes of Ayman al-Zawahiri and Anwar al-Awlaki, and some hard men should stand ready to undertake the raids that lie at the end of these searches. But more technical and human resources need to be focused on the rise of al-Suri's semiautonomous cells, for they will be the ones to launch the next wave of al Qaeda attacks. And unless the al-Suri system is disrupted, it will remain in operation long enough for one or some of these cells to acquire or develop true weapons of mass destruction.
So in the wake of bin Laden's death, it is time to take the fight to the far reaches of the network -- well beyond Afghanistan, where al Qaeda has precious little presence -- and well beyond Waziristan, too. Abu Musab al-Suri's vision is taking the network far from the Hindu Kush. America's gaze must turn far from there as well.

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