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In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda's command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.
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Little more than a year ago, Al Qaeda's core command was thought to be in a financial crunch. But U.S. officials said cash shipped from Iraq has eased those troubles.
"Iraq is a big moneymaker for them," said a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official.
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It also made travel easier for operatives migrating to Pakistan after taking part in the insurgency in Iraq.
Some of these veterans are leading training at newly established camps, and are positioned to become the "next generation of leadership" in the organization, said the former senior CIA official.
"Al Qaeda is dependent on a lot of leaders coming out of Iraq for its own viability," said the former official, who recently left the agency. "It's these sorts of guys who carry out operations."
The former official added that the resurgent Taliban forces in Afghanistan are "being schooled" by Al Qaeda operatives with experience fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.
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Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, as the network's Iraq branch is known, has drawn increasingly large contributions from elsewhere in the Muslim world — largely because the fight against U.S. forces has mobilized donors across the Middle East, officials said ...
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