te sponsors. While problems of state
sponsorship of terrorism continue, years of sustained counterterrorism
efforts, including diplomatic and economic isolation, have convinced
some governments to curtail or even abandon support for terrorism as a
tool of statecraft. The collapse of the Soviet Union--which provided
critical backing to terrorist groups and certain state sponsors--
accelerated the decline in state sponsorship. Many terrorist
organizations were effectively destroyed or neutralized, including the
Red Army Faction, Direct Action, and Communist Combatant Cells in
Europe, and the Japanese Red Army in Asia. Such past successes provide
valuable lessons for the future.

With the end of the Cold War, we also saw dramatic improvements in the
ease of transnational communication, commerce, and travel.
Unfortunately, the terrorists adapted to this new international
environment and turned the advances of the 20th century into the
destructive enablers of the 21st century.

+A New Global Environment+

Al-Qaida exemplifies how terrorist networks have twisted the benefits
and conveniences of our increasingly open, integrated, and modernized
world to serve their destructive agenda. The al-Qaida network is a
multinational enterprise with operations in more than 60 countries. Its
camps in Afghanistan provided sanctuary and its bank accounts served as
a trust fund for terrorism. Its global activities are coordinated
through the use of personal couriers and communication technologies
emblematic of our era--cellular and satellite phones, encrypted e-mail,
internet chat rooms, videotape, and CD-roms. Like a skilled publicist,
Usama bin Laden and al-Qaida have exploited the international media to
project his image and message worldwide.

Members of al-Qaida have traveled from continent to continent with the
ease of a vacationer or business traveler. Despite our coalition's
successes in Afghanistan and around the world, some al-Qaida operatives
have escaped to plan additional terrorist attacks. In an age marked by
unprecedented mobility and migration, they readily blend into
communities wherever they move.

They pay their way with funds raised through front businesses, drug
trafficking, credit card fraud, extortion, and money from covert
supporters. They use ostensibly charitable organizations and
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for funding and recruitment.
Money for their operations is transferred surreptitiously t