The name--al-Qaeda, the base--hasn't made sense in years, at least not since al-Qaeda training camps were incinerated in the post-9/11 strikes on Afghanistan. But jihadism is an especially centrifugal force, flinging adherents across borders until what we still notionally call al-Qaeda exists everywhere and nowhere, more an impulse than an organization. Men and boys with small lives and big hopes for the afterlife visit jihadist websites, meet like-minded rejects at the local mosque, pay a visit to one of the overseas imams known for radical preaching and then--well, no one can say for sure. Some return home--to Lodi, Calif.; to Casablanca; to London--each the site of recently captured jihadist suspects. Others go to Iraq to join the insurgency. Many are captured and killed; others resolve to sleep for a few years before striking. And so al-Qaeda seems--still--both fearsome and diaphanous.

Those who track jihadists can't tell you where or when the next strike will come, not least because the West's war on terrorism has deprived al-Qaeda's "leaders"--even Osama bin Laden (especially Osama bin Laden)--of the ability to move or communicate effectively. U.S. intelligence officials say 75% of al-Qaeda's top bosses have been killed or captured. Today, says French terrorism expert Roland Jacquard, "the most militant groups are forming on their own initiative, on the margins of the movement ... They certainly aren't going to wait for the fatwas permitting attacks on civilians. They figure the previous ones are all they need." It's a free-for-all.

After London, however--as after Madrid before it and Casablanca before that and Riyadh and Bali--we do know a bit more about the al-Qaeda movement's capabilities and priorities. A clear picture of who carried out the attacks may take days to come into focus. But the location, targets and timing of the 7/7 bombings do, to differing degrees, provide lessons about the nature of the threat posed by al-Qaeda today--and how it's changing. Here are three of the big ones:

Lesson #1: EUROPE IS BURNING

The attacks on 7/7 were a reminder that Europe is, more than ever, a center of the threat. That's partly because European nations like Britain have a tradition of welcoming immigrants from North Africa and Pakistan. The children of those immigrants--many of them jobless and ghettoized in insular suburban tracts or city centers--often feel alienated from the ambient permissiveness of London or Paris. Alienated and bored: Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc., wrote in the New York Times last week that the unemployment rate among 16- to 24-year-old Muslim men in Britain is 22%. He cited a British government report leaked to the Sunday Times in London last year that estimates between 10,000 and 15,000 British Muslims support al-Qaeda and similar groups.

They are the lumpen jihadists. "Today Europe is facing a Europeanized form of jihad," says Eric Denece, director of the French Center of Intelligence Research in Paris. "These are young men who were born and grew up in Europe. They look like normal Europeans; they sound like normal Europeans; and they harness this seething anger and sense of righteous outrage in a manner adapted to what they see as jihad in Europe." While there is some evidence that the bombing of four Madrid trains on "3/11"--March 11, 2004--was inspired by seasoned radicals who had been to al-Qaeda's Afghan camps before 9/11, those attacks were perpetrated mostly by Moroccans who had been living in Spain for years.

And yet even after Madrid, Europe has been slow to respond. The office of the European terrorist czar, created after 3/11, has just three employees. "Often we need attacks to get serious," says, Italy's top antiterrorism magistrate until last year. Until recently, the British were notoriously indulgent of hate-spewing imams and the fanatics who worshipped at their mosques. "It took years to convince the British authorities that they had a significant homegrown Islamic threat," says a recently retired FBI counterterrorism official. "I remember being there in 1999, and one of our guys joked, 'If you don't start paying attention to the radical elements in your country, the Queen's going to be living in Ireland.' They didn't think that was very funny." Just in March, the British released a detainee called Abu Qatada, considered the spiritual leader of al-Qaeda in Europe. The British are watching Abu Qatada carefully, but authorities in half a dozen countries would like to question him, and he was indicted by a Spanish antiterrorism judge in 2003.

For the U.S., it's the second-generation European Muslims--most of them European Union citizens--who are a security risk. "As E.U. citizens, they're eligible for U.S. visa waivers, which means they can represent a direct threat to the U.S.," says Robert Leiken of the Nixon Center, a Washington-based foreign policy think tank founded by the former President. "Local groups that are already in place, that grew up in Western Europe and can conduct surveillance for multiple bombings without arousing a great deal of suspicion--this can be an enormous problem." Right now the FBI has no evidence of any hard-core al-Qaeda operatives left in the U.S. But a senior U.S. intelligence official says American law enforcers have ramped up surveillance of what he called "possible facilitators" for terrorists. The official put the number of such "individuals of interest" at fewer than 100. Still, when FBI director Robert Mueller spoke to the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this year, he was worried about "the potential recruitment of radicalized American Muslim converts ... The process of recruitment is subtle and, many times, self-initiated, and radicalization tends to occur over long periods of time."

Lesson #2: THE ENEMY ADAPTS

Time, of course, works to the terrorists' advantage. The other lesson underscored by the London bombings is that despite losing their command-and-control structures, the terrorists have adjusted. After Richard Reid's foiled attempt to detonate the bomb in his shoe on an American Airlines flight in December 2001, jihadists have mostly avoided hard targets such as planes and government buildings. Instead they attack nightclubs, hotels--and commuter rails. The newer terrorist network has found that even in a war zone like Afghanistan, spending a little on motorcycles and satellite phones can make killing infidels that much easier.

Bin Laden, who is incommunicado anyway, isn't required to authorize such comparatively minor maleficence but merely to inspire it. "The Old Guard is all gone," says a German security official. "We are no longer dealing with the generation [that trained in Afghanistan], a close group of activists who knew each other. We are now dealing with a generation which has kept a low profile." A French official adds that this generation is "learning without leaving"--training to become jihadists right at home, through videos and the Internet. Some radical propaganda videos are now even shot or subtitled in English so Western Muslims who don't speak Arabic can understand them.

Supervising all this is a far more informal network of radical Islamists who facilitate contacts clandestinely from Europe to the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan. "Previously, the rule always was networks were run by several jihad-hardened veterans of Bosnia, Afghanistan or Chechnya," says Denece, a former officer in French military intelligence. "Today officials are finding groups with no foreign-trained members, and only one or two external contacts with deeper al-Qaeda roots." Cells from England to Somalia manage their own ops. Consequently, says a European-based U.S. official, "their chances are low of taking over a plane again ... But they can obviously get down into the subway system. If you make yourself a harder target, you push them to softer targets."

It's inevitable that in the wake of the London attacks, authorities in major cities will step up security measures to guard against subway bombings. But it's just as inevitable that the terrorists will shift tactics in response. There is plenty of evidence, for instance, that al-Qaeda cells are interested in getting their hands on a small amount of biological, chemical or radiological weaponry, with the intent of producing a giant death toll from a soft target. Imagine if the London bombs were filled with anthrax or sarin.

Lesson #3: LOOK BEYOND IRAQ

If the London attack limned al-Qaeda's limitations and strengths, it has not yet helped clarify what role the Iraq war has played in helping or hurting the jihadist movement. We know that some of the Madrid terrorists had watched videotaped messages from Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq. Did he also help inspire the London attackers? Jihadist groups in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations say they have found it easier to lure new recruits because the American invasion has encouraged a climate of social approval for radical Islamism. And it's virtually certain that some terrorists are improving their homegrown skills with live combat training in Iraq. David Kay, who led the CIA's hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, says European intelligence officials told him at a meeting in May that their nations are seeing "episodic evidence" of jihadists who had returned from Iraq refulgent with anti-American hatred and well-versed in bombmaking. "There is all this opportunity in Iraq for them to learn how to counter our tactics," says a U.S. counterterrorism official.

On the other hand, the roots of Islamic extremism in Europe go back much further than the beginning of the Iraq war. After all, al-Qaeda was originally founded in the 1980s to depose the Saudi monarchy, and that goal remains very important. (Just last week a Qaeda leader was killed in a shoot-out in Riyadh.) In London, North African extremists were preaching at the Finsbury Park mosque well before 9/11. And France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe, has battled Muslim extremism for decades. Finally, as Bush Administration officials point out, every jihadist who gets killed in Iraq is one more who won't be plotting in Barcelona or Jakarta or Los Angeles. Denece describes the scores of European terrorists who have ended up in Iraq as "cannon fodder."

Now that extremists have attacked in both Madrid and London, one hope is that the larger, law-abiding Muslim communities in Europe will more effectively marginalize their radicals. A British intelligence expert says British Muslims seem to be hardening toward jihadists in their midst. Muslim leaders in Britain--including the new moderate imam who runs Finsbury Park--condemned last week's attacks and appealed for tips to help find the perpetrators.

But the most enduring lesson terrorism experts have learned is that a movement as far-flung as bin Ladenism can't easily be contained. "It's been a constant truth in this discipline that by the time you've figured out what Islamists are up to, they've already moved on to something else," the French official says. At another point, he says, "We work tirelessly. We use every means at our disposal to discover and avert attacks. And we work as much as possible with our partners." Sometimes, he adds, the work pays off and attacks are averted; he mentions the bust of a Paris-based cell a couple of years ago. "But when we see what it was these people had in store for us, it makes your hair stand on end. Fortunately, we got that group. It's virtually assured that one day, we will miss another like it."

“基地”，这个名称近年来正在被人淡忘，至少在“ 9 · 11 ”事件后，美国对阿富汗发动战争取缔“基地”训练营后是这样的。但是圣战思想有一种特别强的凝聚力，它的追随者越过边境，让概念上的“基地” 组织变得无处不在，却又无影可循，更多地成为了一种力量而不是一个具体的组织。男人和男孩们把他们的生命看得微不足道，却对死后的灵魂和来世抱有极大的憧憬。他们访问圣战组织的网站，在当地的清真寺里聚会，甚至拜访国外激进的伊斯兰教长，然后——好了，就没有人能说得清楚了。有些人回到了家，比如加利福尼亚州的洛代，有的到了卡萨布兰卡，有的去了伦敦——最近有逮捕到圣战组织嫌疑人的每一个城市。而其他人则到伊拉克加入了反政府武装。很多人被捉拿，被击毙，而另一些则决定在发动袭击前先隐蔽起来。因此，“基地”组织仍然是既可怕却又潜在着。

那些追查圣战者的人之所以无法预知下一次袭击什么时候，在哪里发生的一个重要的原因就是，西方国家的反恐战争已经让“基地”组织的“领袖”们——甚至是本·拉丹（尤其是他）——丧失了有效的转移和通信能力。美国情报官员称，“基地”组织的 75% 的高层人员已经被击毙或逮捕。今日，法国恐怖主义问题专家罗兰德· 雅克卡德就说，“大多数的武装组织是自发形成的，而非在“基地”的号召下才展开的。……他们当然不会等着法学家来批准他们去袭击平民。他们知道，他们原先拥有的就已经足够了。”这是一件“谁都能干”的事。

然而，在伦敦，在马德里，或是更早以前的卡萨布兰卡、利雅得以及巴厘岛爆炸案之后，我们确实掌握了更多关于“基地”组织的行动能力和行动趋势的信息。也许，要描绘出那些袭击发动者的清晰图像需要很多时间，但是伦敦 7 · 7 爆炸案所发生的地点、针对的目标和发生的时间却能多多少少为我们了解今天“基地”组织所带来的威胁的本质和它的变化趋势提供一些经验教训。下面是主要的三点：

启示一：恐怖之火燃烧到欧洲

伦敦 7 · 7 爆炸案提醒人们，现在的欧洲今非昔比，已是恐怖威胁的中心。部分原因是因为欧洲国家，如英国，有着接纳北非和巴基斯坦移民的传统。这些移民的子女们很多都没有工作，聚居在封闭的郊区或是市中心。在伦敦或巴黎自由放纵的氛围中，他们却经常感到孤独。一名隶属为“神圣战争”公司的作家皮特·卑尔根，在上周《纽约时报》刊登的《疏远与厌烦》一文中写到，英国 16 至 24 岁的穆斯林男性的失业率为 22% 。他援引了一份去年《星期日泰晤士报》得到的英国政府报告称，估计大约有 1 万到 1 万 5 千名英国穆斯林人支持“基地”组织或类似的组织。

他们是无业游民中的圣战者。“今天欧洲面对的是欧洲版的圣战”，巴黎法国情报研究中心主任爱立克·丹尼斯说，“这些年轻人生在欧洲，长在欧洲。他们看起来就像普通的欧洲人，说起话来也像普通的欧洲人，他们心中充满的愤恨和对种种暴行的正义感从某种意义上正符合他们所认为的欧洲的圣战。”虽然有证据表明 3 · 11 （ 2004 年 3 月 11 日）马德里四列火车上的爆炸事件是由曾在“ 9 · 11 ”事件前参加过阿富汗“基地”训练营的资深极端分子策划的，但那些直接参与袭击的人却大多是已在西班牙居住了数年的摩洛哥人。

甚至在马德里爆炸案后，欧洲的反应依然迟钝。在 3 · 11 爆炸案后建立起来的欧洲恐怖主义事务所也只有区区 3 名雇员。直到去年，意大利的最高反恐官员斯蒂凡诺·丹布罗索还说，“我们只有在经常被袭击的情况下才会对反恐重视起来”。就在最近，英国人对那些在清真寺里散布仇恨思想的教长和狂热的教徒们仍然过分地纵容。“让英国当局相信他们正面临着严峻的本土化伊斯兰分子的威胁还需要数年时间”，一位最近退休的 FBI 反恐官员这样说道，“我记得 1999 年我到过那里，我们一个同事开玩笑说：‘如果你们不开始关注你们国家的极端分子，你们的皇后就得到爱尔兰去生活了。’但他们却并不觉得这好笑。”就在三月份，英国释放了一名叫阿布·卡塔达的被拘留者，他据信是 “基地”组织在欧洲的精神领袖。英国人一直在严密的监视他，有半打的其他国家政府想要提审他， 2003 年他还被西班牙的反恐法官起诉。

对于美国来说，第二代的欧洲穆斯林才是安全隐患，因为他们中的大多数都是欧盟公民——。“作为欧盟的公民，他们符合美国免签证的条件，这意味着他们可以对美国构成直接威胁”，尼克松中心，尼克松在华盛顿创建的外交政策智能团成员罗伯特·雷肯说，“那些已经成形的，在西欧发展的，并可为同时组织多次爆炸而进行调查，却不会引起怀疑的本土组织，可说是一个重大问题。”现在 FBI 没有任何关于“基地”组织核心分子留在美国的证据。可是一位美国高级情报官员称，美国的执法者们已对所谓的恐怖分子“潜在协助者”们采取了监视。这位官员说这样的“值得关注的个人”的数目少于 100 人。尽管这样，当 FBI 负责人罗伯特·穆勒在今年早些时候，向参议院情报委员会做报告时仍然说道，他在担心“潜在的美国激进穆斯林的招募行动正在转变……这种招募的过程不引人注意，并且，很多时候是自发的。而且激进行为往往在一段较长的时间后才发生。”

启示二：恐怖敌人适应了新形势

时间，当然是对恐怖分子有利的。伦敦爆炸事件给我们的另一重要启示就是，虽然已经失去了决策和控制机制，恐怖分子却已适应了这一新形势。自从 2001 年 12 月在美联航的班机上，里查德·雷德引爆藏在其鞋子里的炸弹的企图被挫败后，圣战组织成员就开始回避一些硬性目标，比如飞机和政府大楼。相反，他们袭击夜总会，宾馆——还有交通轨道。新的恐怖组织发现即使在阿富汗这样的战争地区，花些钱在摩托车和卫星电话上，就会使他们袭击异教徒的目的更容易达到。

与外界隔绝的本·拉丹并不需要亲自授权去发动这些相对较小的袭击，他所要做的只是激励一下。“以前的对手都已经不在了”，一位德国安全官员说，“我们不再是对付（在阿富汗接受训练的）那一代人，一个互相认识彼此的紧密团体。我们现在对付的是一直很低调的新一代人。”一位法国官员补充说，这一代人正在“本土化地学习”，他们呆在家中，通过录影带和互联网，就能变成圣战组织的成员。有些激进组织传播的录影带现在甚至用英语拍摄或加上了英文字幕，如此一来，那些不懂阿拉伯语的西方穆斯林们就能看懂它们了。

在这一切的幕后，是一个非常不正规的由激进的伊斯兰教徒网络，这个网络便利了欧洲与中东、北非和巴基斯坦间的秘密接触。“之前的规则总是这样：网络由数名来自波斯尼亚、阿富汗或是车臣的圣战组织的核心成员管理”，法国军事情报机构的前官员丹尼斯说，“现在官方在寻找那些没有在国外训练过的成员，只与“基地”组织的高层有少量接触的组织。”从英格兰到索马里，各地的成员分管他们自己的工作。结果，用一名美国驻欧洲的官员的话说：“他们再次劫持飞机的机会变小了……可是他们显然可以将目标转移到地铁系统上去。如果你让自己成为一个困难的目标，你也就把他们推向了那些更容易的目标。”

在震惊于伦敦爆炸案的同时，各大城市必然会加强应对地铁爆炸的安全措施。但是，恐怖分子也必然会相应地改变他们的策略。例如，有足够的证据表明，“基地”组织成员对如何使用生化和放射性武器很感兴趣，因为这些武器对软目标可造成巨大的伤亡。试想一下，如果伦敦的炸弹装满了炭疽或是沙林，后果将是怎样。

启示三：不要只盯着伊拉克

如果说伦敦爆炸案反映出了“基地”组织的优势和局限，但却并不能让我们了解伊拉克战争在帮助或是抑制圣战运动中扮演了怎样的角色。我们知道制造马德里惨案的一些恐怖分子观看过“基地”组织在伊拉克的领导人扎卡维的录影带。那他是否也曾激励过伦敦爆炸案的参与者呢？在沙特阿拉伯和其他穆斯林国家的圣战组织称，由于美国入侵伊拉克导致了一种对激进伊斯兰运动的社会认同氛围，招募新成员变得更容易了。另外一个确凿的事实是，部分恐怖分子在伊拉克接受的实地战斗训练提高了他们在本土学到的一些能力。 CIA 伊拉克大规模杀伤性武器调查组领导人大卫·凯称，欧洲情报官员曾在五月的一个会议上告诉他，他们国家发现一些“断断续续的证据”表明圣战组织成员带着高涨的对美国的仇恨，以及炸弹制作方面的娴熟技能正从伊拉克归来。“他们在伊拉克学到了所有如何对付我们策略的方法，”一位美国反恐官员说。

而另一方面，伊斯兰极端主义运动在欧洲的起源比伊拉克战争的开始要早得多。毕竟，“基地”组织最早建立于 80 年代，其目的是废除沙特阿拉伯的君主制，这个目标到现在仍然非常重要。（就在上周，一个“基地”组织的头目在沙特阿拉伯首都利雅得的枪战中丧命。）在伦敦，北非的极端主义分子早在“ 9 · 11 ”事件之前就在芬斯伯里公园的清真寺里集会了。还有法国，这个拥有欧洲最大的穆斯林人口的国家，与伊斯兰极端主义的作战也已经持续了数十年。最后，就像布什的政府官员指出的那样，每多一个在伊拉克被击毙的圣战组织成员，就少一个以后在巴塞罗纳、雅加达或是洛杉矶图谋不轨的人。丹尼斯将那些在伊拉克丧命的欧洲恐怖分子称为“炮灰”。

既然极端主义者已经袭击了马德里和伦敦，还有一个就是希望那些为数更多的，平时遵纪守法的欧洲穆斯林社团能更有效的孤立那些伊斯兰极端分子。一位英国情报专家称，英国的穆斯林似乎已经对他们中的圣战组织分子逐渐采取了强硬态度。英国的穆斯林领导们，包括经营芬斯伯里公园清真寺的新温和派教长在内，纷纷谴责上周的袭击，并呼吁寻找罪犯的线索。

然而，恐怖主义专家们学到的最有用的一点是，像本·拉丹领导的这样分布广泛的恐怖主义活动，是难以轻易遏制的。“这个领域一个经常性的现象是：到了你发现那些伊斯兰教徒们要干什么的时候，他们往往已经将目标转移到别的地方去了”，法国官员如此说道。另一方面，他还说：“我们不知疲倦地工作。我们用尽所有可能的办法来发现和避免袭击。同时我们尽力与同盟们合作。”他补充道，有时他们的工作取得了成效，袭击被避免了，比如几年前捣毁了一个巴黎的“基地”分支。“但是当我们看到这些人用来对付我们的东西时，我们不寒而栗。幸运的是，我们最终取缔了那个组织。但是可以肯定的是，有一天，我们终归会漏掉另一个的。”