KEY POINTS:
For his 40th birthday, Osama bin Laden's followers gave their leader a white stallion. Bin Laden, a keen horseman despite back problems, rode for hours through the dusty farmland and hills around his base north of Jalalabad, the eastern Afghan city.
Last week the leader of al Qaeda turned 50. It is unlikely that the gesture was repeated. Almost all the men who gave their chief the stallion are now dead, the base has been dismantled and to undertake a similar ride would be to risk detection, and a pinpoint missile strike.
Though he may lack horses and veteran associates, bin Laden is far from finished. Indeed, nine years after his declaration of war on the West and 5 1/2 years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, their leader is as present as ever on the world stage.
At the weekend there was talk of an al Qaeda connection to the recent spate of particularly bloody bombings in Iraq. The claims from Guantanamo Bay by Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the terror group's associate who originally planned the 9/11 strikes, sparked massive media interest. In Britain a series of trials of alleged Islamic militants, some accused of having links to bin Laden's closest collaborators, continues. In Afghanistan Taleban militants boast of the forces ready for a "spring offensive".
The camp near the Afghan city of Khost, at the end of a dirt track on the border with Pakistan, is not much to look at - a few mud buildings and some tents barely visible on the satellite photographs Western intelligence experts spend hours poring over. It does not even have a name. But it is the symbol of a newly resurgent al Qaeda "hard core" that is, according to analysts, "more dangerous than ever".
For the camp is a training centre, run by a mixed team of Afghan, Arab and Pakistani instructors, fundraisers and ideologues. It is only one of half a dozen such installations set up in the past 18 months.
It is in these camps that dozens of British citizens are thought to have been trained and then sent into Afghanistan to fight in recent months. Security services have traced the individuals to the camps - most of which are on the Pakistani side of the border - but then lost the trail. The men have either died in combat, are still fighting American, British or other Nato nations' forces in the country or are "on their way home", say sources in the US, Britain and southwest Asia.
One source admitted: "It's best that they blow themselves up over there rather than over here."
The men, like the camp, are part of a new wave of al Qaeda activism that has astonished security services. Though only a tiny minority are involved in militancy, the ease of access to the country for Urdu-speaking Britons is a huge advantage to those bent on violence.
Al Qaeda has re-established its "nerve centre" in the lawless tribal areas of western Pakistan. The country is now considered the "centre of gravity" of al Qaeda by security services and the "critical battlefield" in the years to come.
Contrary to the British Government's public claim, every source spoken to by this reporter, official or otherwise, in Britain and elsewhere, believes the Iraq war has exacerbated the threat to the United Kingdom specifically and to the West generally. Major co-ordinated attacks on the critical infrastructure of Western nations are said to be "within the capability and ambition" of militants close to the al Qaeda leadership and acting independently and are being actively planned.
All sources consulted believe Osama bin Laden is alive. However, his death would "make little operational difference", analysts say, possibly damaging "the organisation" but not "the movement".
All thought the struggle against Islamic terrorism was growing and would last "many decades".
Western analysts now usually split al Qaeda into three elements. The first is a "hard core" of well-known leaders such as bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, his Egyptian-born associate, in Afghanistan.
Security officials believe key decisions and operations take place at a new "middle management" level dedicated to training volunteers who make their way to Pakistan and to co-ordinating both propaganda and bomb attacks around the world.
The second element is the "network of networks", defined as the series of groups affiliated to the al Qaeda hard core in Iraq, elsewhere in the Middle East and, increasingly, in some North African countries. These "franchises" have links to individuals inside Western European countries, particularly the Algerian Groupe Salafiste de Predication et le Combat, and are seen as a potentially major threat. Analysts see a "clear convergence, practically and ideologically, among militant groups globally" with greater co-ordination between them.
"There is subcontracting of functions," said one expert in Casablanca. "Groups in Morocco were tasked with logistics for groups elsewhere, in Spain for example. So, like multinational companies, al Qaeda 'delocalises' key functions - and constructs cosmopolitan leadership teams."
So the arrest of two French militants returning from Iraq, who were allegedly planning to strike in Italy, has not surprised officials in Paris.
"Plot an attack here, execute it in another country and hide somewhere else is very logical," said Christophe Chaboud, head of France's Anti-terrorism Co-ordination Unit.
The third element of "al Qaeda Mk 2", say security officials, is ideology. This has mobilised thousands of young Muslims from a wide variety of backgrounds around the world in the past five years. Analysts now say their radicalisation is occurring far faster, aided by the internet.
"We are talking about a group of guys deciding to do something in West Yorkshire, Paris, Casablanca or Montreal", said one Western intelligence official. "It's still amateur."
But it can be horribly effective. France's Mr Chaboud says the largest source of danger "is the home-grown extremist".
Belgian officials point to a recently arrested teenager who had "gone from no engagement at all to full commitment to a suicide attack" in the space of a few weeks "alone with a computer in his bedroom". British officials talk of suspects so young that "September 11 is virtually a childhood memory" being radicalised by "slick, effective" propaganda and contacts with older people. "Teenagers' bedrooms are difficult to penetrate," said one official.
Group thinking plays a major role. "In reinforcing each other's view of the world, there is a shift in the perception of what is acceptable and normal," said a senior counter-terrorism official. One Whitehall official described the sentiments of embryonic militants, often second or third-generation immigrants, as: "I am unhappy, I have an identity problem, I have too much testosterone, I have some mates who feel the same way."
It is not the poorest people who are drawn to militancy. The standard profile is male, mid-20s, often with a degree and with parents who have migrated, often from southwest Asia or north Africa to the West. There are also an increasing number of converts.
But though, according to one London official, "there is not a single person who has posed a major threat here in recent years who was not radicalised primarily in the UK", the crucial "x-factor" which changes angry young men into terrorist killers does comes from overseas, British and French analysts have concluded. They point to journeys by the leader of the July 7 London bomb plotters, Mohammed Siddique Khan, to Pakistan, where he is said to have met top al Qaeda figures.
The videos featuring the logo of al Sabah, the al Qaeda production house, now emerge within days of an event rather than taking weeks. It is the continually evolving interaction between the hard core, the network of networks and the ideology that makes Islamic terrorism so resilient.
Ten years ago, when bin Laden rode his horse across the Afghan hills, few outside specialised circles had heard of him. Now he is one of the best-known individuals on the planet. And therein may lie, for him at least, the best birthday present of all.
* Jason Burke is one of the world's leading experts on terrorism. His latest book, On the Road to Kandahar, is published by Allen Lane
