Al-Qaida now tougher to defeat, US says

The United States' initial military success against Al-Qaida and other Islamist extremists has yielded a diffuse organization of independent elements that are now more difficult to defeat, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday.

"Early successes in these campaigns - disrupting command and control centers, and taking away safe havens - have only yielded a franchised and networked enemy that is more diffuse, an ideological movement that is no longer tethered to any strict hierarchy," the Pentagon chief said in the most downbeat assessment he has given on the Bush administration's progress in the war on terror.

"It has become an independent force of its own, capable of animating a corps of devoted followers without direct contact and capable of inspiring violence without direct orders," Gates told a gathering of special operations forces, the military commandos who lead the US-declared war on terrorism.