AKARTA, Indonesia, Feb. 7 ó The landscape of the terrorist threat has shifted, many intelligence officials around the world say, with more than a dozen regional militant Islamic groups showing signs of growing strength and broader ambitions, even as the operational power of Al Qaeda appears diminished.

Some of the militant groups, with roots from Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus to North Africa and Europe, are believed to be loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda, the officials say. But other groups follow their own agenda, merely drawing inspiration from Osama bin Laden's periodic taped messages calling for attacks against the United States and its allies, the officials say.

The smaller groups have shown resilience in resisting the efforts against terrorism led by the United States, officials said, by establishing terrorist training camps in Kashmir, the Philippines and West Africa, filling the void left by the destruction of Al Qaeda's camps in Afghanistan. But what is also worrisome to counterterrorism officials is evidence that like Al Qaeda, some of them are setting their sights beyond the regional causes that inspired them.

The Islamic militant organization Ansar al-Islam, for example, has largely fled its base in northern Iraq, and elements of the group have moved to several European countries, where they are believed to be actively recruiting suicide bombers for attacks in Iraq and Europe, officials said.

The mutation of the cells was illustrated in October when the authorities in Australia arrested a Caribbean-born French citizen who they believe was sent by a little-known Pakistani group to scout possible targets for attacks. The group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, was previously thought to be focused only on the struggle of Muslims in Kashmir.

The activity of such organizations is one reason intelligence officials believe that the threat of terrorism against the United States and its allies remains high. But the mobility and murky associations of the groups, most of which were operating before the Sept. 11 attacks, makes it difficult for agents to monitor their communications or follow their money.

"They are like little time bombs that have been sent out into the world," said Gwen McClure, an F.B.I. agent and the director of counterterrorism at Interpol, the international police organization based in Lyon, France. "You never know where it might go off."

The deepening concern about the strength of the regional groups comes as Al Qaeda is described by officials as having been hobbled by the capture or killing of its top lieutenants and less capable of mounting an attack like the one on Sept. 11. Evidence of Al Qaeda's activity continues to set off alarms, like the cancellation of several recent trans-Atlantic flights from Britain and France to the United States because of security concerns.

Beyond the recent concerns about Al Qaeda, counterterrorism officials in a dozen counties say they are also occupied by trying to understand the workings of obscure groups that appear capable of carrying out attacks without the financial or logistical support of Mr. bin Laden.

"Al Qaeda's biggest threat is its ability to inspire other groups to launch attacks, usually in their own countries," said a senior intelligence official based in Europe. "I'm most worried about the groups that we don't know anything about."

That view was reflected at a meeting of police officials from the Asia-Pacific region and Europe organized by Interpol last month in Bali, Indonesia. In conversations there and in interviews in Europe, officials voiced concern about the threat of regional terrorist networks, which they said would not be reduced even if Mr. bin Laden was captured or killed.

Many officials said they doubted that Mr. bin Laden was directing operations, although several officials said they believed that he was using couriers to deliver hand-written messages to associates in Pakistan. "From a cave in the mountains, how much can he do?" one official asked.

The officials said their view of Al Qaeda had changed. The terror network today is different from the Qaeda that existed before Sept. 11; a "credible argument can be made that it's finished," a senior Australian official said.

"However," he added, "to talk about it being finished is to ignore what it is." He said it was more accurate to see it as a movement of individuals who view the United States and the West as the enemy. "Every day around the world, we are discovering Al Qaeda members and cells previously unknown," he said.

Most of the members of the regional terror groups trained at the Qaeda camps, counterterrorism officials say. In December, a United Nations monitoring group estimated that there were 30 to 40 terrorist groups affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Most officials say they consider it unlikely that the dozen terror groups that they are most concerned about are capable of pulling off an attack on the scale of Sept. 11. But they said interrogations of captured terror suspects and other intelligence have made it clear that the groups have the training, explosives and money to strike "soft targets," similar to attacks last year in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Indonesia.

Officials said attacks like the bombing in November of the British Consulate in Istanbul illustrated a new phase of terrorism in which secular Islamic governments seen as aiding the United States were chosen as targets.

In recent months, terrorists in Saudi Arabia have tried to assassinate senior government officials. Qaeda operatives are believed to be behind some of the attempted killings, but a previously unidentified group, which calls itself Al Haramain Brigades, or the Two Mosques Brigades, said in a statement in January that it had tried to kill Maj. Gen. Abdelaziz al-Huweirini, Saudi Arabia's top counterterrorism official and the No. 3 official in the Interior Ministry. Senior American officials confirmed that in early December, General Huweirini was the target of a shooting attack in which his brother was wounded.

Several senior counterterrorism officials based in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region said they suspected that local and regional groups were coordinating their activities, but without direct contact with Mr. bin Laden or his lieutenants. They point to the May 12 suicide bombings of three Western housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that killed 25 residents, including 8 Americans. Four days later, in Casablanca, Morocco, suicide bombers carried out five simultaneous attacks, killing more than 30 people.

In both cases, local groups, with loose ties to Al Qaeda, carried out the attacks. While investigators have not found solid evidence that the attacks were coordinated, "we don't believe it was mere coincidence," a senior European intelligence official said.

The shifting picture of the terrorist threat flashed before the authorities in Australia last fall when Willie Brigitte, a 35-year-old French citizen, was arrested on terrorism charges. Mr. Brigitte hardly fit the terrorist profile. He was recruited after Sept. 11 and had never trained in the Afghanistan camps, officials said. His name was not on any country's watch list. He entered Australia without being detected, lived for five months in a Sydney suburb and was believed to be selecting targets for attacks, officials said.

But the most unusual part of the case is that the authorities believe that Mr. Brigitte was a low-ranking member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant Pakistani group that was formed a decade ago with help from Pakistan's intelligence service to fight against India in Kashmir. The group was not known to have operations outside that region.

Before the Taliban were driven from power, Lashkar-e-Taiba trained its men at camps in Afghanistan alongside Qaeda camps. Banned by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, it continues to exist with training camps in Kashmir, officials said.

Mr. Brigitte had contacts with Lashkar-e-Taiba members in the United States, Canada and Europe, a senior law enforcement official with knowledge of his interrogation said. When Mr. Brigitte was discovered, the Australian authorities had been on the lookout for members of Jemaah Islamiyah ó viewed as a Qaeda affiliate in Southeast Asia ó trying to slip into the country.

Jemaah Islamiyah has suffered serious reversals since it attacked a nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali in October 2002, killing 202 people. Scores of suspected members have been rounded up, and its operational mastermind, Riudan Isamuddin, who is better known as Hambali and was a member of Mr. bin Laden's inner circle, was captured by the C.I.A. last August.

Still, regional counterterrorism officials say the group is recruiting and reorganizing and training men in the Philippines. It has a dedicated cadre and access to large caches of explosives, which make it a serious threat, a Western diplomat here said.

It may also be switching tactics, to the assassination of important Westerners and the use of bicycles for suicide attacks, a senior Indonesian intelligence officer said recently.

On the other side of the globe, the story of Ansar al-Islam demonstrates the adaptability and mobility of these groups.

Ansar al-Islam was based for years in northern Iraq, where it opposed the Kurds as well as the rule of Saddam Hussein. The United States, which suspected it had links to Al Qaeda, made the group a target of bombing during the war last spring.

But now, intelligence officials said, the group has re-emerged in Europe as a well-organized terror threat that assists with training and logistical support for terrorist operations and is involved in recruiting terrorists to fight against American military forces in Iraq.

In December, the Italian and German police arrested three men believed to be members of Ansar al-Islam and accused them of helping would-be suicide bombers travel from Europe to Iraq.

Some officials say they suspect that Abu Musam Zarqawi, a Jordanian with close ties to Al Qaeda, is coordinating recruiting efforts in Europe with Ansar al-Islam. He is also suspected of playing a central role in planning car bombings in Turkey, as well as plotting chemical attacks in Europe.

The blurring of boundaries is also the case in Algeria, where the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, better known by its initials as the G.S.P.C., is growing more powerful and expanding its geographical operations, officials said.

A year ago, G.S.P.C. kidnapped a group of European tourists, including nine Germans. The hostages were released after the German government paid a ransom of more than $1 million, a European official said. The money, the official said, has allowed the group to buy weapons, including antiaircraft missiles.

The group has increased its activities in Mali and Niger in recent months, officials from several countries said. They say the group's leaders are suspected of setting up training camps in West Africa and of plotting attacks there.

But a senior Western official said finding the camps would be nearly impossible. "That's no man's land," he said.

Raymond Bonner reported from Jakarta for this article and Don Van Natta Jr. from London. Desmond Butler contributed reporting from Germany.