Al-Qaeda: one year on - Volume 8, Issue 7 - September 2002

 

US-led military action in Afghanistan and the continuing allied military presence in that country – both in response to the 11 September 2001 attacks – have released the Taliban's grip on power. They have also deprived al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, his inner circle and hundreds of rank-and-file al-Qaeda members of a friendly host, a recruiting 'magnet' and a relatively comfortable physical base of operations. The military campaign killed some leaders, such as military planner Mohammed Atef, forced others further underground and hobbled al-Qaeda operationally. The global intelligence and law-enforcement mobilisation, meanwhile, has made communications, travel and financing more difficult for terrorists. Across numerous jurisdictions, according to US officials, about 2,700 known or suspected al-Qaeda operatives have been arrested – including al-Qaeda operations chief Abu Zubeida, arrested in March 2002 by Pakistani authorities, and al-Qaeda logistics officer and financier Wa'el Hamza Julaidan, arrested in September 2002 by Saudi authorities. And yet, it is also true that the counter-terrorism effort has impelled an already highly decentralised and elusive transnational terrorist network to become even more 'virtual' and protean, and therefore still harder to identify and neutralise. Al-Qaeda remains a potent transnational terrorist organisation that it may take a generation to dismantle.

 

The December 2001–January 2002 US-led offensive in the Tora Bora mountains of eastern Afghanistan did not result in the capture of fleeing Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders and subordinates, but apparently in their relocation to some Pakistani cities and 'tribal areas' of western Pakistan. Many of these areas are populated by conservative Muslims sympathetic to al-Qaeda. These groups are generally inhospitable to Pakistani as well as Western soldiers and are difficult for Western intelligence services to penetrate. Subsequent efforts to flush out al-Qaeda members have proved unsuccessful. In fact, a small number of al-Qaeda operatives are believed to have returned to Afghanistan. Coalition forces remain uncertain whether bin Laden is alive, but, prudently, continue to operate under the assumption that he is. Ayman al-Zawahiri, his Egyptian second-in-command, and Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar are presumed alive and at large. The use of advanced technical means such as Predator and Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles, has, however, significantly curtailed Taliban and al-Qaeda tactical freedom in Central Asia. Further, the fact that Westerners like American John Walker Lindh were admitted to the ranks of the Taliban suggests that human intelligence opportunities may be more promising than Western officials once believed.

 

Al-Qaeda's 'virtuality'

Al-Qaeda's greatest advantage is the logistical and operational flexibility it enjoys. Having no state to defend, it can maintain a flat, transnational and clandestine organisational scheme with minimal dedicated physical infrastructure. Al-Qaeda is present in up to 60 countries, and intelligence agencies estimate that at least 20,000 jihadists were trained in its Afghan camps since 1996. Since 11 September, military and law-enforcement efforts have resulted in the death or detention of one-third of al-Qaeda's 30 senior leaders and perhaps no more than 2,000 confirmed rank-and-file members. This would leave a rump leadership intact and over 18,000 potential terrorists still at large, with recruitment continuing.

 

Al-Qaeda, which absorbed Egyptian Islamic Jihad in 1998, can function on its own or through associated terrorist groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The group's cells operate semi-autonomously, maintaining links through field commanders to bin Laden and his shura (council), who can activate networks and give operational orders. Al-Qaeda members seem well versed in operational security measures, and have limited their use of electronically traceable telecommunications equipment – such as mobile phones, satellite phones and the internet – to hinder detection by technical means. Post-11 September investigations have demonstrated a high aptitude for improvisation and for eluding official scrutiny. An example is Moutel El-Moutassedeq, an al-Qaeda member in Germany, who was specifically tasked with assisting – though not directly participating in – the 11 September attacks. El-Moutassedeq signed legal documents in the names of active terrorists in the Hamburg cell run by suspected 11 September ringleader Mohamed Atta. Consequently, these terrorists appeared to be in Germany, when in fact they were in the US.

 

Since 11 September, roughly $112m of al-Qaeda's assets have been frozen, several terrorist financing organs have been shut down and money-laundering restrictions have been tightened world-wide. Yet al-Qaeda has been able to shield financial assets by converting them to gold and gems. It continues to move funds through the informal hawala remittance system – financial transfers that are difficult to regulate and have been used to launder money. An August 2002 draft report prepared by the United Nations Sanctions Committee estimated that al-Qaeda still had about $30m at its disposal.

 

'Fields of jihad'

The US military presence in Saudi Arabia and American support for Israel in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict are cited, in post-11 September al-Qaeda videotapes aired on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera news network, as justifications for al-Qaeda terrorist operations. Also referred to is the alleged historical humiliation of Islam at the hands of the Judeo-Christian West. Al-Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith has said that there can be no truce until the group has killed 4m Americans, whereupon others could convert to Islam. Thus, the US remains al-Qaeda's prime target, and measures to draw down American military deployments in the Middle East/Gulf region and constructive US intervention in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict would not defuse al-Qaeda's overriding intention to debilitate the US as a superpower. Unlike 'old' ethno-nationalist or ideological terrorist groups, al-Qaeda cannot be tamed or controlled through political compromise or conflict resolution. Operational counter-terrorist measures are required – primarily in intelligence and law-enforcement, and occasionally in the military sphere. There is a premium on inter-governmental cooperation insofar as al-Qaeda operates in multiple 'fields of jihad'.

 

The most obvious of these areas is the Middle East/Gulf region, where the group has exploited the Israeli–Palestinian conflict to gain recruits, attempting to penetrate Hamas. North Africa, where Algeria's Armed Islamic Group (GIA) embraces several thousand radicalised Muslims faced with shrinking local political opportunities, is also a fertile area for expanding membership. Kashmir is the site of an ongoing Muslim insurgency against India, a US partner in the 'war on terror'. This is a dispute with the potential to trigger a nuclear conflict that could draw in the US. It is, therefore, a logical al-Qaeda focus for both recruitment and operations. In South-east Asia, the Philippines hosts Abu Sayyaf, an opportunistic Islamic terrorist group with demonstrated al-Qaeda connections while Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population, is subject to intensifying radical Islamic influences. Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean Muslims were involved in an al-Qaeda plot, thwarted in January 2002, to attack US, UK, Israeli and Australian assets in Singapore.

 

Europe is a critical 'field of jihad'. It has proven invaluable to al-Qaeda as a recruitment, planning and staging area, and was the launch pad for the 11 September attacks. Countries with large Muslim populations, like France, or highly radicalised Muslim communities, like the United Kingdom, have already contributed notable personnel to al-Qaeda (for example Zacarias Moussaoui, the suspected '20^th hijacker', and 'Shoe Bomber' Richard Reid, respectively). Finally, the US itself is an object of infiltration as well as the main terrorist target. Al-Qaeda's interest in recruiting indigenous US operatives was demonstrated by the May 2002 arrest of US citizen José Padilla for his part in a nascent plot to stage a radiological 'dirty bomb' attack, and by the indictment of five Arab US residents on terrorism charges in August 2002.

 

Links with states

The danger from states appears to lie less in the possibility of proactive collusion with al-Qaeda than in that of passive acquiescence. The Mubarak government in Egypt is resolutely opposed to radicalism. Sudan, a perennial entry on the US State Department's official list of state sponsors of terrorism and bin Laden's landlord until 1996, appears interested in improving relations with major powers. It extended considerable intelligence assistance to the US shortly after the 11 September attacks. Syria and Libya have also cooperated. Smaller Arab nations, such as the United Arab Emirates, have tightened financial surveillance. Although Saddam Hussein is a potential al-Qaeda abettor, the US has not established any clear connection between Iraq and the attacks.

 

Nevertheless, authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia feel compelled to deflect political challenges by tolerating the radical sentiments that support al-Qaeda. Further, the Saudi Arabian and Indonesian governments, politically beholden to Islamists and wary of popular sympathies for bin Laden, remain reluctant to crack down on terrorist financing and make arrests. Iran, though constrained by traditional animosity between its Shi'ite sect of Islam and al-Qaeda's Sunni Wahhabi sect, may have allowed sanctuary to al-Qaeda and Taliban members fleeing Afghanistan and could be susceptible to conciliatory overtures from bin Laden. The Pakistani regime, though broadly cooperative with US counter-terrorism efforts, remains inhibited in the law-enforcement and intelligence areas by the domestic strength of radical Islam and Islamist elements in the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence directorate.

 

Post-11 September tactics

High-ranking al-Qaeda members consulted disaffected former Pakistani government nuclear-weapons scientists in the summer of 2001, and videotapes acquired by a British journalist in July 2002 graphically revealed al-Qaeda's substantial efforts to develop chemical and biological weapons. By September 2002, German investigations had confirmed American suspicions that planning for the 11 September attacks was well under way in November 1999, suggesting that al-Qaeda's operational cycle for mass-casualty attacks is two years or more. Law-enforcement and intelligence officials, then, must assume that al-Qaeda intends to stage another spectacular terrorist attack, although they cannot make a precise determination of al-Qaeda's current capabilities.

 

The organisation may be undergoing leadership changes owing to bin Laden's incapacity or death. Reports surfaced in Asia, in August 2002, that it was changing its name to Fath-e Islam (Victory of Islam). It is also struggling to re-establish a base for its senior leadership. As it re-consolidates, al-Qaeda appears content to use conventional terrorist operations aimed at soft Western targets, such as the suicide bombings that killed 19 (including 14 German tourists) in Tunisia in April 2002 and 15 (including 11 French submarine engineers) in Karachi in May 2002, and at US overseas assets, such as the American embassies in Paris and Rome and the US army headquarters in Germany. Al-Qaeda may be less inclined to stage conventional attacks in the US, which remains its principal 'far enemy' and therefore may be reserved for extraordinary mass-casualty attacks.

 

Coalition responses

Al-Qaeda is a resilient organisation with a religiously turbo-charged absolutist agenda; it will not go quietly. The US-led counter-terrorist coalition will need an integrated containment strategy that incorporates military, intelligence, law-enforcement, and diplomatic and economic measures. In the short-term, the US reaction to 11 September has been, appropriately, to decrease vulnerabilities by bolstering homeland security, denying al-Qaeda access to co-optable states and regions and to weapons of mass destruction, killing and arresting terrorists, and developing a horizontal, multi-national law-enforcement and intelligence network to better cope with al-Qaeda's virtuality and its standing threat.

 

American officials believe that at least half a dozen terrorist plots have been thwarted since the 11 September attacks. Not all vulnerabilities can be plugged, however. Accordingly, long-term political and economic diplomacy will be key to defeating al-Qaeda. But because its agenda is not negotiable, these instruments must aim to outflank rather than directly tame al-Qaeda. The US and its partners will need to adopt proactive and coordinated policies to set the Israelis and the Palestinians on a path to accommodation, thus vitiating one of bin Laden's central political pretexts. More broadly, through economic diplomacy and discreet pressure to democratise, they will need to convince untrusting and systematically misled Muslim populations that they can prosper without either destroying the West or relinquishing their traditions to Western cultural influences.