Security Research Review

The Incredible Legend of Al Qaida

Narayanan Komerath

Executive Summary

“The perpetrator of the September 11 attacks was not a nation-state but an organization not formally affiliated with any particular country and whose members were mostly non-Americans”.

This basic assumption sets the context for a 400-page report[i] prepared by an august panel of US technology leaders on “Making the Nation Safer – The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism”. Most public writings in the U.S. and Britain go further in identifying this perpetrator as “Al Qaeda” (a/k/a Al Qaida). An exploration of these assumptions is an essential prelude to examining the models of the terrorist threat which derive thence. The choice of model appears to be as significant to the planning to counter terrorism, as the consequences of guessing wrong are catastrophic.

Many experts are bemused when asked why they think the enemy is “Al Qaeda”.  This appears to be a given – yet the precise reasons they cite for this conviction form circular arguments. What is Al Qaeda? What are its genesis and its present scope? Do our models of these make sense? Clearly there is a large amount of information on these in the open literature. Equally clearly, there is reason for pause. CNN reports[ii] on September 2, 2004:

“Recent investigations into al Qaeda, including by the September 11 commission, have substantially altered the commonly held view that Osama bin Laden's inheritance and massive fortune are being used to finance his international terror operations.”

 The story goes on to say that a Congressional Research Service analyst has revised his estimates of bin Laden’s wealth from $300M  to  “anywhere between $50M and 300M”[iii]. The 911 Commission reports[iv],[v] estimate bin Laden’s personal fortune at an income of $1M per year (Saudi Arabia froze his claim to family assets of upto $300M in 1994) and Al Qaeda’s annual expenditures at $30M, of which $20M per year went to support the Taliban before the end of 2001. The Commission estimates that when bin Laden left the Sudan in 1996 (reportedly on a Pakistan Air Force C130 to Jalalabad, Afghanistan) he had to leave his enterprises and wealth behind. The Staff Monograph⁵ sees the difficulty with the monolithic Al Qaeda model in explaining the finances:

“As al Qaeda becomes more diffuse—or becomes essentially indistinguishable from a larger global jihadist movement—the very concept of al Qaeda financing may have to be reconsidered. Rather than the al Qaeda model of a single organization raising money that is then funneled through a central source, we may find we are contending with an array of loosely affiliated groups, each raising funds on its own initiative.”  

Nuclear-armed Godzilla or a profusion of slimy tentacles? And if Al Qaeda is a set of tentacles, what is the creature that controls the tentacles? A careful consideration of our assumptions is essential before discussions of countermeasures can be meaningful. This might also save us from dissipating our energies building 21^st century Maginot Lines.

Contents

Genesis of the "Al Qaeda" Name

Al Qaeda as a legendary Goliath

The Holton Classification of Terrorist Types

The Global Terrorist Enterprise, Model A, Based on Holton Type 1

Is Al Qaeda by some other name not so fair game?

Conclusions

References and Footnotes

Genesis of the "Al Qaeda" Name

The American Heritage dictionary[vi] translates “Al Qaida” as [Arabic al-q 'ida, the base: al-, the + q 'ida, foundation, base, feminine participle of qa'ada, to sit.] It then goes on to explain that the words now mean:

“An international organization of loosely affiliated cells that carry out attacks and bombings in the attempt to disrupt the economies and influence of Western nations and advance Islamic fundamentalism.”

 This explanation is neither obvious nor complete, though it may be true in the sense that the base camp of a mountain-climbing expedition is the visible part of the organization that sends climbers up the mountain – or a smallpox blister sends out germs to infect and kill other humans. Destroying the base camp or the blister (no equivalence implied!)  is not going to destroy the expedition’s real organizers – or the disease - and therein is the important nuance to consider in developing counter-terrorism plans.

The website “WordIQ”[vii] translates “Al Qaida” as “The Foundation” and gives other transliterations as “al-Qaeda, al-Qa'ida, al-Quaida, el-Qaida, äl-Qaida, or al Qaeda.”

The site points out the organization’s aliases: The Base, Islamic Army, World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places, Osama bin Laden Network, Osama bin Laden Organization, Islamic Salvation Foundation, The Group for the Preservation of the Holy Sites.

Microsoft Encarta’s essay on Al Qaeda[viii], written by Bruce Hoffman of RAND corporation, summarizes how Osama bin Laden co-founded the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK or “Offices of Services”) in 1984 with Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, a “Palestinian militant”. The MAK “functioned as a recruiting office and coordinating center for the international Muslim brigade that fought in Afghanistan.”

Mid-East scholar Maha Azzam[ix], well-versed in Arabic, admits that no satisfactory conclusions have been reached regarding the extent and strength of Al Qaeda. However he then drops that line of curiosity and seeks the nature and appeal of Al Qaeda instead by focusing on ideology. This appears natural. After all, “Al Qaeda” is an Islamist terrorist organization as everyone assumes – but as stated above, this is a circular argument. It assumes one particular line of acceptable answers – that the terrorism is driven by religion. The difficulty is that it also rules out the other possible motivations, associated with a possible larger structure of which “Al Qaeda” is only the “ideological” front. Azzam sees symptoms of this difficulty early when he points to the heterogeneous composition of the recruits to bin Laden’s organization. Some came as committed Muslims, while others needed basic instruction in Islamic dogma and practice. Azzam derives the connection between bin Laden and the Taliban as a collusion of interests and defiance in the face of a common enemy, rather than as a confederation of Wahhabi-influenced Islamists. This should have been the first hint of something wrong with the ideological model of the motivations of the global terror enterprise. A more plausible reason for the Taliban - Osama connection is simply that both were sponsored – and dependent – on national armies and governments. These entities provided the protection, supplies and transportation to Afghanistan for both bin and his recruits. Bin Laden was extricated from Sudan to Jalalabad in 1996 under Pakistani protection and sponsorship.  Recruits to the jehad apparently received at least a 75% fare reduction on Saudia Airlines to Islamabad for onward transport to Peshawar and the Khyber Pass.

According to Azzam, the earliest reference to “Al Qaeda” came from (Egyptian lieutenant of bin Laden) Ayman Al Zuwahiri’s book[x] in 1996, where the term was used to denote the base of future worldwide operations in Afghanistan. This is very different from the notion of “Al Qaeda” being formed in the late 1980s or early 90s – it appears that the decision to conduct worldwide operations from Afghanistan was coordinated with the entities who brought bin Laden from the Sudan and established him under the protection of the (new, Taliban-approved) Governor of Jalalabad.

The “911 Report” [iv] on page 46 cites the source for the name as  “Abdullah Azzam, ‘Al Qaeda al Sulbah’ (The solid foundation), Al Jihad, April 1988”. The report also cites the wealth of information on al Qaeda’s evolution and history obtained from seized materials, including files labeled “Tareekh Usama” (Usama’s history) and “Tareekh al Musadat” (History of the Services Bureau”), cited at the January 2003 trial of Mr. Enaam Arnout, former head of the Benevolence International Foundation.  The indictment in the Arnout case[xi] charges that Mr. Arnout had been involved in a meeting where the original pledge of allegiance for bin Laden’s organization was drawn up, and that he had helped purchase weapons and military equipment for the Hizb-e-Islami of Pakistani-sponsored Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, widely blamed for most of the carnage in Kabul in 1992.

Most interesting in these sources is the continuing common thread showing that Al Qaeda was one of many outfits, under the Mekhmat e Khidemat (Bureau of Services). Equally implicated is the Hizb e Islami. Hekmatyar, who appears to be now on a “Wanted Dead or Alive” list of the US forces in Afghanistan as well as the Afghan government, is reputed to have run training camps for the “Special Forces” of the Hizb e Islami in Afghanistan. We now turn to the other evidence of the role of the “guesthouse” in the terrorist enterprise. From the 9/11 report, page 64:

"It is unlikely that bin Laden could have returned to Afghanistan had Pakistan disapproved. The Pakistani military intelligence service probably had advance knowledge of his coming, and its officers may have facilitated his travel. During his entire time in Sudan, he had maintained guesthouses and training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. These were part of a larger network used by diverse organizations for recruiting and training fighters for Islamic insurgencies in such places as Tajikistan, Kashmir, and Chechnya. Pakistani intelligence officers reportedly introduced bin Laden to Taliban leaders in Kandahar, their main base of power, to aid his reassertion of control over camps near Khowst, out of an apparent hope that he would now expand the camps and make them available for training Kashmiri militants.”

This version of the origin of the name is at variance with the summary given (without evidence citations) in the indictment of Osama bin Laden in the US District Court of Southern New York in 1999. The indictment states[xii]:

“At all relevant times from in or about 1989 until the date of the filing of this Indictment, an international terrorist group existed which was dedicated to opposing non-Islamic governments with force and violence. This organization grew out of the ‘mekhtab al khidemat’ (the Services Office) organization, which had maintained (and continues to maintain) offices in various parts of the world, including Pakistan (particularly in Peshawar) and the United States… From in or about 1989 until the present, the group called itself “Al Qaeda” (“the Base”). From 1989 until in or about 1991, the group was headquartered in Peshawar, Pakistan…In February 1998 Al Qaeda joined forces with Gamaa’t, Al Jihad, the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh, and the Jamaat ul Ulema e Pakistan to issue a fatwah declaring war against American civilians worldwide under the banner of the “International Islamic Front for Jihad on the Jews and Crusaders...Al Qaeda had a command and control structure which included a majlis al shura, which discussed and approved major undertaking including terrorist attacks.”

Bruce Hoffman’s colleague and terrorism author Rohan Gunaratne[xiii] expands on the 1988 Abdullah Azzam definition of  “Al Qaida”. It referred to the qualities sought in people who would form the core, the foundations, of the jehad.  Gunaratne then lays out the massive scope of Al Qaeda, “..how the charismatic fanatic Osama bin Laden provides much of the brain power and most of the inspiration behind Al Qaeda, how the organization trains combat soldiers and vanguard fighters for multiple guerrilla, terrorist and semi conventional campaigns in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, the Caucasus and the Balkans” in addition to its operations in the West. He declares that one-fifth of international Islamic charities and non-governmental organizations are “infiltrated” by Al Qaeda. Claimed links to the Hizb’allah are used to explain how Al Qaeda got the knowledge “ to conduct coordinated, simultaneous attacks on multiple targets, including failed plans to destroy Los Angeles Airport, USS The Sullivans, the Radisson Hotel in Jordan and 11 US commercial airliners over the Pacific Ocean”.

The first hint that “Al Qaeda” may not be a meaningful description of organizational scope comes from considering names of terrorist groups. They are all named after Armies or Parties of the Almighty, Islam the Prophet, the Pure, or freedom-fighters (Hizb’ Allah, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Jemaah Islamia, Al Badr, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Khalistan, Hizb ul Mujaheddin, Harkat ul Anasar, Moro Islamic Liberation Front). Some others are named after memorable battles, warriors or atrocities (Black September), or more secular terms such as “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine”. There appears to be little heroic or paradise-admissible about detonating oneself for “The Base”.

Only “The Base” and “The Foundation” appear to be literal translations.  Despite mention in the Arnout indictment, there is no reason to believe that the translation to “Foundation” implies the western meaning of  “non-profit organization set up to fund worthy causes” in Arabic. For instance, Arnout’s own “Benevolence International Foundation” did not include the term “qaeda” in its Arabic names [xi] - “Lajnat al Birr Al Islamiah”, later renamed “Al Birr Al Dawalia”.  Did it merely mean the equivalent of “Base camp” as in “the house from which we send fighters into the Khyber Pass and Soviet lines”? One reader opinion, not necessarily flippant, attributes the inspiration for the name to a mid-1970s Hindi movie “Khoobsoorat” (equivalent of “pretty woman”) where a song goes “qaeda-qaeda-qaeda”, referring to “the basic rule” to be observed while breaking all other rules – reminiscent of the American “Golden Rule”. The movie was highly popular in Afghanistan, and the fighters of the jehad, religious purity and tickets to houri-filled heaven notwithstanding, have been known to go to their deaths (e.g. in the Kargil war) with pictures of film actresses in their breast pockets.

From the philosophical rants by Al Zuwahiri, Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden in various Islamist fora, it appears that the meaning is “the basis for the jehad” or “the core of the jehad”, or “the essential features of the jehad” as in a terrorist equivalent of the American concept of  “The Right Stuff”.  Just as the “Right Stuff” refers to certain legendary qualities of the Chosen Few, the initial Mercury Seven astronauts, the “Al Qaida” stamp might apply to a few chosen close associates of bin Laden.  However, just as The Right Stuff only represented a very few of the huge NASA establishment, it appears rather simplistic to ascribe the “achievements” of the global terrorist enterprise to just this small group of hunted men operating from caves or remote villages in Waziristan.  The other names cited above are symptoms of the problem – all activities and plots involving any of these (and other) organizations are today ascribed to “Al Qaida”. This dangerous oversimplification ignores other, perhaps more dangerous, entities.

Mr. J.T. Caruso, Acting Assistant Director of the Counterterrorism department of the FBI, described Al Qaeda thus to the Senate Subcommittee on December 18, 2001[xiv]:

“AL-QAEDA INTERNATIONAL  : ``Al-Qaeda'' (`The Base'') was developed by Osama Bin Laden and others in the early 1980's to support the war effort in Afghanistan against the Soviets. The resulting ``victory'' in Afghanistan gave rise to the overall ``Thad'' (Holy War) movement. Trained Mujahedin fighters from Afghanistan began returning to such countries as Egypt, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia, with extensive ``jihad'' experience and the desire to continue the ``jihad''. This antagonism began to be refocused against the U.S. and its allies.

Sometime in 1989, Al-Qaeda dedicated itself to further opposing non-Islamic governments in this region with force and violence. The group grew out of the ``mekhtab al khidemat' (the Services Office) organization which maintained offices in various parts of the world, including Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States. Al-Qaeda began to provide training camps and guesthouses in various areas for the use of Al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups. They attempted to recruit U.S. citizens to travel throughout the Western world to deliver messages and engage in financial transactions for the benefit of Al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups and to help carry out operations. By 1990 Al-Qaeda was providing military and intelligence training in various areas including Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Sudan, for the use of Al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups, including the Al-Jihad (Islamic Jihad) organization.

One of the principal goals of Al-Qaeda was to drive the United States armed forces out of Saudi Arabia (and elsewhere on the Saudi Arabian peninsula) and Somalia by violence. Members of Al-Qaeda issued fatwahs (rulings on Islamic law) indicating that such attacks were both proper and necessary.”

From MSN Encarta:

 “Toward the end of the anti-Soviet struggle, bin Laden and Azzam quarreled. The dispute arose over whether MAK should focus on Afghanistan, as Azzam wanted, or global jihad, as bin Laden argued for. In this respect, bin Laden was greatly influenced by radical Islamic theologians such as Sayyid Qutb, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and (Pakistani journalist) Maulana Sayed Abdul A’la Maudoodi.. They taught that jihad was a personal, individual responsibility and that it was therefore required of all Muslims to establish true Islamic rule in their own countries—through violence, if necessary…Although the broad outlines of al-Qaeda began to take shape during 1987 and 1988, it was only after Azzam was assassinated in 1989 that al-Qaeda formally split from MAK to become a jihadist movement in its own right. That same year, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan."

Al Qaeda as a legendary Goliath

The cumulative effect of the various stories on Al Qaeda is to paint a picture of a giant organization with essentially unlimited powers. Western leaders have been at once claiming immense progress in the War on Terror, and pointing to a growing rather than receding threat. Below are some excerpts, which capture different aspects of Al Qaeda’s claimed prowess. MSN Encarta says:

 “Western intelligence agencies have learned much about al-Qaeda’s internal organization from defectors and informants, especially from the testimony of four men convicted in a federal district court in New York City for their role in the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. According to this information, al-Qaeda’s organizational structure incorporates both top-down and bottom-up approaches.”  

Caruso cites evidence at the trial in New York in 2001:

 “That witness revealed that Bin Laden had a terrorist group, Al-Qaeda, which had privately declared war on America and was operating both on its own and as an umbrella for other terrorist groups, The witness revealed that Al-Qaeda had a close working relationship with the aforementioned Egyptian terrorist group known as Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The witness recounted that Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were seeking to obtain nuclear and chemical weapons and that the organization engaged in sophisticated training. He also revealed that Al-Qaeda obtained specialized terrorist training from and worked with Iranian government officials and the terrorist group Hezballah.”  The principal participants in the embassy bombings in East Africa were claimed to be “members of Al Qaeda”. and/or the affiliated terrorist group EIJ.

Perhaps the trial to which Mr. Caruso refers is “U.S. vs. Usama Bin Laden” [xv]. Two points come across from those transcripts. The first is that “Al Qaeda” is assumed, but not shown, to be the name of the organization to which the defendants belonged. Secondly, membership of this organization appears to have involved the taking of a “bayat” – a pledge of allegiance to bin Laden “as long as his instructions were 'Islamically correct'”. A special feature of “Al Qaeda” as opposed to other jehad outfits appears to be the reputation that Al Qaeda treated all Muslims the same regardless of nationality.

Let us see another view of “Al Qaeda’s” origins. Dr. Saad Al-Fagih, described as a Saudi “dissident” living in London, and a physician, veteran of the Afghan resistance against the Soviets, explained Al Qaeda’s origins to PBS[xvi]:

“Well, I [really] laugh when I hear the FBI talking about Al Qaeda as an organization of bin Laden. ... [It's really a] very simple story. If bin Laden is to receive Arabs from Saudi Arabia and from Kuwait--from other regions--he is [to] receive them in the guest house in Peshawar. They used to go to the battlefield and come back, without documentation… There [was] no documentation of who has arrived. Who has left. How long he stayed. There's only [a nice general reception]. And you go there. And you join in the battlefield. ... Very simple organization. Now, he was embarrassed by many families when they called him and ask what happened to our son. He don't know. `Cause there's no record. There's no documentation. Now he asked some of his colleagues to start documenting the movement of every Arab coming under his umbrella. ... It is recorded that [they] arrived in this date and stayed in this house. ... And then there was a record of thousands and thousands of people. Many of them had come only for two weeks, three weeks and then disappeared. That record, that documentation was called the record of Al Qaeda. So that was Al Qaeda. There's nothing sinister about Al Qaeda. It's not like an organization--like any other terrorist organization or any other underground group. I don't think he used any name for his underground group. If you want to name it, you can name it "bin Laden group." But if they are using the term Al Qaeda ... Al Qaeda is just a record for the people who came to Peshawar and moved from there back and forth to the guest house. And moved back to their country. And if they want to follow the number, they must be talking about 20, 30 thousand people. Which is impossible to trace. And I think most of those records are in the hands of the Saudi government anyway, because people used the Saudi airlines, [at] a very much reduced fare. Twenty-five percent of the total fare of a trip to Islamabad. ...

It's not a secret organization at all. It was common knowledge to many people who went there. ... Al Qaeda was public knowledge. It was a record of people who ended up in Peshawar and joined, and move from Peshawar to Afghanistan. It was very [benign] information. A simple record of people who were there just to make record available to bin Laden if he's asked by any family or any friend what happened to Mr. so-and-so.”

We have read elsewhere that “Al Qaeda” had been trying to get access to nuclear weapons, that as early as 1993, Al Qaeda operatives had been sent by Osama bin Laden to Somalia to acquire fissile material from some unnamed source, that Al Qaeda has been conducting biological weapon experiments on dogs, that Al Qaeda was planning nuclear / biological attacks in a house in Kabul belonging to a top-ranking official in the Pakistani nuclear establishment, and recently that Al Qaeda was casing downtown areas and transit systems of American cities (as well as remote power stations and water purification plants).

Finally, the origin of the term comes from Webster’s[xvii]:

“Al-Qaida was established by Osama bin Laden in 1988 to expand the resistance movement against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan into a pan-Islamic resistance movement. Although "al-Qaida" is the name of the organization used in popular culture, the organization does not use the name to formally refer to itself. The name al-Qaida was coined by the United States government based on the name of a computer file of bin Laden's that listed the names of contacts he had made in Afghanistan, which talks about the organization as the "Qaida-al-Jihad" — the base of the jihad.”

In other words, the organization might as well have been called “Root Directory” – of bin Laden’s file system. The point of this demonstration is this: what is so easily assumed to be the official name of the enemy, turns out to be nothing more than a convenient label attached to the phenomenon of terrorism in the name of extreme Islam. The name does not mean that there is a single organization – nor that the visible organizations are the full scope of the global terror enterprise.

Why does this matter? The answer is that the technological response strategy, if nothing else, would be quite different to deal with a single organization motivated by religion-based issues, than to deal with national governments which support global terrorism – or with international entities whose motivation is financial rather than religious.   

The Holton Classification of Terrorist Types

Gerald Holton[xviii] says that a historic transition has occurred, where two distinct types of terrorism have merged to form a third type. He fears this third type to be far more deadly since it neutralizes many of the response options open to civilized society.

 “Type I terrorism consists of acts by individuals or small groups that aim to impose terror on other individuals and groups, and through them indirectly on their governments.  Type II terrorism is the imposition by a government on groups of local or foreign populations. The new type of terrorism — Type III — is carried out by a substantially larger group of individuals, is aimed directly at a national population, and has all the components for success.” 

Professor Holton’s conclusions are ominous: “Since operationally the condemnations that both Type I and Type II terrorism have received so far have generally been ineffective, there is no reason to think that Type I terrorists will continue to limit themselves to paleotechnic means and to essentially unsuccessful missions.  On the contrary, the same dynamic that escalated the technological sophistication of state terrorism is bound to act also within individual and group terrorism of Type III.  Therefore three developments may be expected.  One is the attempt by one or more states to disseminate, not directly but through hired gangs, both the technology and also the cultural ground for successful terror, i.e., to secure the marriage of advanced technology and the intent to traumatize through cataclysmic disaster.  The second is that gangs, not necessarily or openly associated with states but motivated by a fervid ideology (analogous to the case of the Bolsheviks), will perform that same sinister marriage on their own. Third, a nation targeted for the new terrorism will not have open to it the conventional response — i.e., a balance of terror against an identifiable Type II threat.  Therefore it will have to devise new measures, both for making terror acts unacceptably costly to each or all probable instigators, and for initiating policies that might defuse the conditions likely to be animating the potential terrorists.

There is a final point.  As Type III terrorists scale up the levels of activity, chances are that some terrorists may experience technical failures, particularly in their early preparations.  Any attempt to produce damage on a very large scale requires a certain amount of technical mastery that may not be easy to transmit locally to what previously would have been merely a band of Type I terrorists.  The distance in competence between the supplier of the new weapon on the one hand and the operator on the other hand can be very large, even in the cases where such weapons are used by advanced states in warfare.

However, even "failures" of weapons (nuclear, chemical, or biological) on the scale of Type II agents but in the hands of Type III agents could be attended by enormous deleterious effects, devastating to life in unintended areas.  It may well be that precisely such a catastrophic "failure" could serve to mark the full extent of the discontinuity in world history.”

The Global Terrorist Enterprise, Model A, Based on Holton Type 1

The descriptions from the CIA and other US government entities fit Prof. Holton’s description of a “Type 1 terrorist organization” However, the dilemma facing counter-terrorism efforts is seen from the following summary of the terrorist threat.  From MSN Encarta:

“As part of the top-down approach, bin Laden is regarded as al-Qaeda’s emir-general. The emir-general provides spiritual guidance as well as strategic and operational oversight and is the preeminent leader of the movement, the most highly respected figure in al-Qaeda. As emir-general, bin Laden outlines al-Qaeda’s objectives and issues orders to ensure their implementation. A majlis al-shura (consultative council) addresses important policy and strategy issues, approving fatwas and authorizing major terrorist operations. Four operational committees, which are responsible for military activities, finance and business, fatwas and other religious matters, and publicity and media, report to the majlis al-shura.

At the same time, bin Laden also seeks ideas for attacks from below, encouraging creative approaches and “out of the box” thinking from al-Qaeda operatives and sympathizers. He then provides funding to those proposals he finds most promising. In this respect, al-Qaeda is unlike most other terrorist groups, which tend to be organized hierarchically—that is, in a rigid pyramidal fashion with a commander at the top issuing orders to the individual cells below. Instead, al-Qaeda was conceived as a flatter, less rigid network. Accordingly, some al-Qaeda operations—especially the most important and spectacular attacks..  — were likely planned and ordered by bin Laden and the majlis al-shura. However, others—like the shoe bomb attempt and the handheld missile attack—may have been independently carried out by local groups inspired or motivated, but perhaps only indirectly assisted, by bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda is therefore less cohesive in membership than traditionally organized terrorist groups, with a more diffuse and open structure. This flatter, more networked organization is a key strength that likely accounts for the movement’s continued longevity despite the global onslaught directed against it. Individual terrorists or groups under al-Qaeda’s umbrella are able to operate without having specific orders issued from a central command authority. This loose structure means that al-Qaeda does not have one set method of operating or a single, identifiable footprint. This makes it that much harder for military and law enforcement officials to effectively fight and ultimately defeat al-Qaeda.”

In other words, we are told that “Al Qaeda” is at once a disciplined top-down organization, and a loose bottom-up proposal-driven clearing-house for diverse autonomous terrorist groups all over the world.  Greenberg et al:[xix] describes terrorist financing:

“Al-Qaeda differs from traditional, state-sponsored terrorist groups in one critical way: it is financially robust. Having developed multiple sources of support, it is free from the control of any government and able on its own to maintain its organizational infrastructure, communications systems, training programs, and operations. .. Building al-Qaeda’s financial support network was Osama bin Laden’s foremost accomplishment, and the primary source of his personal influence. … Al-Qaeda’s financial network continues to support the organization today, even after being driven from its Afghan base, and allows it to maintain its capacity to attack Americans at home and abroad. .. Organizationally, al-Qaeda is notably and deliberately decentralized, compartmentalized, flexible, and diverse in its methods and targets. The same description applies to its financial network. If al-Qaeda were financed only by Osama bin Laden’s personal inheritance, or only by a small number of state sponsors, and if it were limited in scope to only a small area of the globe, or weren’t continuously replenishing its coffers, the problem would be much easier to solve. Alas, there is not one big pile of al-Qaeda’s loot somewhere, waiting to be discovered and confiscated.”

Very recently, an AFP story titled ‘  Three years on, Islamist terrorism hard to define”, started with the following[xx]: “Once personified by Osama bin Laden, Islamist terrorism has a more fluid image three years after the September 11 attacks due to a scattering of networks and the increased use of the Internet, experts say.”  Louis Caprioli, “former top French counter-terrorism official” is cited as saying that "Once it was chased out of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda's sphere of influence shifted to northern Iraq, the Middle East and the Caucasus”. His theory is that “By giving rise to the dispersal and decentralization of the network, the loss of al-Qaeda's Afghan power base weakened its control over extremist groups, encouraged a more anarchic structure and sparked more violence.” Marc Hageman, an American psychiatrist and former CIA agent, reflects the direction of US thinking on this phenomenon: "Until now, we envisioned al-Qaeda as a centralized organisation controlled by bin Laden and his lieutenants. But we're dealing with an uncoordinated, decentralized Islamist social movement. It's a much more dangerous configuration".

Strikingly similar conclusions are reached by BBC Security Correspondent Gordon Corera[xxi], who sees that Al Qaeda has evolved, has survived US efforts to cut off its money supply, its leadership and its communications, However he does not convey any possibility that there are larger entities involved.

The main point in the extensive quotes above is that there is nothing particularly significant about the “Al Qaida” name. There is in fact no reason to believe that the global terrorist enterprise calls itself “Al Qaida”. Accordingly, there is no reason to believe in the monolithic model of a terrorist organization devoid of powerful state support and protection. Such a model would have to possess stunningly advanced organizational and damage-tolerance skills, robust but adaptable communication networks and information security, and a continuing stream of “projects”. It would be able to orchestrate these projects despite the most terrible conditions experienced in the purported headquarters inside war-torn Afghanistan or remote Waziristan. At the same time this tightly-led and utterly secretive, compartmentalized organization is supposed to be able to operate, not just a world-class terrorist outfit, but also a massive fund-collection classification and disbursement system. Thus, “Al Qaeda” is at once both a Goliath of monolithic discipline, and a forest of tentacles, all operating autonomously.  Somehow this massive organization is sustained and nourished with money, weapons, recruits and information. It is also increasingly ‘successful’ in its destructive mission over the past 3 years despite the best efforts of the world community and President Bush’s War on Terror.

Once we realize that the “Al Qaida” name was an accident, the rest of this convoluted model unravels. It becomes evident to the outsider that this legend is becoming increasingly untenable, despite brave attempts to defend it.  

Is Al Qaeda by some other game not so fair game? [xxii]

Let us first consider why not. The Holton Type 1 model of a mysterious Al Qaeda, with its implications of Goliath size and power, has convenient advantages for those who do not want the war on terror to end – at least, not in an American victory. Two years ago, the evidence clearly showed[xxiii], using the same facts used in British Prime Minister Blair’s first “dossier”, that Pakistan, not Afghanistan, was the source of the threats to the UK and US.  Today, Pakistan’s supposedly vigorous campaigns against elusive “High Value Al Qaeda Targets” every couple of months in the remote Frontier and Tribal Agencies (FATA) are excellent examples. This war is supposedly being waged against the same “jehadis” that General Mohammed Aziz, chief of the Pakistan Army of Islam, described to General Musharraf in their famous taped Beijing phone call during the 1999 Kargil war as “we have them by the scruff of the neck, sir, they will do as we tell them”. 

The “Al Qaeda” name compartmentalizes American attention on the terrorist organizations run by the Pakistani government. Thus, terrorist camps in western Pakistan are supposed to be “Al-Qaeda” infested with numerous Arabs, Chechens etc., while the larger terrorist camps in the east are protected from American attention. The versatility of this model was demonstrated again in September 2004, when President Vladimir Putin of Russia called General Musharraf and demanded an end to Pakistani financial support and training of Chechen and Arab terrorists such as those who conducted the atrocities in Beslan, Russia. Within two days, Pakistani fighter-bombers had struck terrorist bases[xxiv] in Waziristan, and killed some 70-odd “Chechen, Uzbek, Arab and other Al Qaeda terrorists”. Meanwhile, the training camps in occupied Kashmir and West Punjab continued to expand under ISI/ Pakistan Army sponsorship, with several innocents being murdered every week inside India.

This model also ensures an on-demand, inexhaustible supply of “Al Qaeda members” for capture or extermination whenever progress reports are needed in the War on Terror – and herein lie both its strength and one of its potentials for catastrophe. As seen from Gunaratne’s exposition, the model dictates that essentially every Islamic charity or NGO is susceptible to “infiltration” by Al Qaeda. Potentially, any Pakistani resident who does not like the US is easily defined as “Al Qaeda” – a pool of 150 million, minus General Musharraf, the Frontline Ally of the US.  Thus, this model prevents better resolution of the full scope of the global terrorist enterprise, and identification of other common linkages than “Al Qaeda” behind terrorist attacks. By preventing such identification, this model reduces the chances of a near-term victory against global terrorism, or of the arrest of any of the top planners of the enterprise. Instead, it puts the US and UK on a path of escalating hostilities with the entire Islamic world, much like the Crusades, while the Pakistani rulers remain free to pursue their jehad against India, Central Asia and Russia at their leisure. Greenberg above provides an excellent demonstration of the success of this strategy, where he blithely asserts that the “major” attacks come from Al Qaeda, whereas “minor” ones like the Shoe Bomber Reid(trained in Pakistani Punjab) come from unrelated autonomous organizations. Lost is the reason why the Shoe Bomber was so ominous – the shaped-charge design of the shoe bomb, and Reid himself were obviously sent as a message rather than a determined attack.

Two other implications of the findings above: The very evidence used to point to the existence of an Al Qaeda reveals quite clearly the role of the Mekhtab e Khidamat, with its obvious translation to “Services Bureau” and its clear ties to its founders the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence department of the Pakistan Armed Forces (no implication that the term “services” means the same in both cases). In fact, purchases of weapons and military equipment by accused Al Qaeda members appear to have been for another of the Mekhtab’s enterprises. That is the Pakistani-backed Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb e Islami, which also ran the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. The linkages to the Taliban’s military, almost entirely Pakistani, are obvious.

Today the eager use of the Al Qaeda designation by Pakistani and US/UK authorities alike is eerily reminiscent of the ancient custom of “shikaars” – tiger hunts – where the locals gladly indulge the wild-tiger chases of western visitors for good money. This keeps attention away from the larger hand behind the total global-terror enterprise.

Conclusions

This paper explores the origin of the belief that the organization conducting terrorist attacks all over the world is “Al Qaeda”.  Based on the evidence found, the term “Al Qaeda” originated in the western nomenclature from an American intelligence agent viewing a computer disk believed to have belonged to Osama bin Laden, where a file listing personnel is referred to as the base of the jehad. A reference in a book on “the meanings of jihad in the operation of Islamabad” speaks of Al Qaeda, the basis of the jehad.

The origins of the organization which bin Laden headed, are believed to be in the “Services Organization” which ran a transit house in Peshawar, Pakistan, in the late 1980s to provide orientation to volunteers heading across the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. This organization is believed to have been set up by the Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) arm of the Pakistan Army, and the “Services Organization” may have some connection to that origin. This organization also ran the Hizb e Islam, headed by warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, which in turn ran terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, imported weapons, and conducted military operations. 

A Saudi physician who served with the Afghan resistance against the Soviets, refers to a list of persons being prepared by bin Laden in order to be able to inform next of kin should the fighters go missing in Afghanistan. He cites Laden’s “embarrassment” at not being able to respond to queries from relatives, and hence having made such a list, which included perhaps over 25,000 persons who passed through the guesthouse. 

Evidence from accused participants in the East African embassy bombings and in funding weapons for the Hizb e Islam shows that there was indeed an oath of loyalty taken by recruits to bin Laden’s group of those dedicated to pure Islamic jehad, and from which they took orders and received resources. However there is no evidence that they actually called it “Al Qaeda” except as a common point of reference in statements to western investigators.

Today there is no clear explanation of how a non-state terrorist network, which is the target of worldwide manhunts using all the resources of the United States government, remains able, increasingly so, to conduct large terrorist attacks. Prior beliefs based on the personal wealth of Osama bin Laden are seen to have been greatly exaggerated. The model of an organization of super-terrorists operating without state support is clearly failing.

The evidence points to a larger hand behind the organization ascribed to Osama bin Laden and his immediate associates. Several reasons are evident why various entities would rather not pursue this line of enquiry. However, it should be pursued in any serious effort to gauge the implications for the counter-terrorism strategies and immediate priorities of the free world. 

The author is a Senior Nunn Security Fellow at the Center for International Strategy, Technology and Policy, School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta

References and Footnotes