By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
The fact that in
2005, 53% of all groups employing SAs were Salafi-Jihadist in nature clearly indicates
that suicide operations have become increasingly associated with
Salafi-Jihadism. Based on an in depth dataset of the NSSC, University of Haifa;
until 2003, non-Salafi-Jihadist groups, were responsible for a higher number of
SAs per year than Salafi-Jihadist groups. This picture changed when, some time in 2003, the number of attacks by Salafi-Jihadist
groups outnumbered attacks by ‘Mainstream Islamist’ and ‘Other’ groups. After
2004, Salafi-Jihadist attacks appear to have risen exponentially, while the
number of attacks by ‘Mainstream Islamist’ and ‘Other’ groups, save for those
in the ‘Hybrid’ and ‘Unknown’ categories, have declined. Only attacks by groups
whose identity remains elusive have increased even more than Salafi-Jihadist
attacks. However, it is important to remember that over 90 % of attacks by
unknown groups occurred in Iraq, and that U.S. officials have stated repeatedly
that jihadist groups are the main perpetrators of suicide bombings in Iraq.
Hence, it is all but certain that in actuality, the line representing
Salafi-Jihadist attacks is rising even more steeply than represented in the
conclusion by the NSSC, University of Haifa. According to data provided by the
NSSC, although Salafi-Jihadist groups are responsible for only 21 % of attacks
in the time frame of 1981 to 2005, nearly half (46.4 %) of all casualties of
SAs, 5,965 dead out of a total number of fatalities of 12,849, are caused by Salafi-Jihadist groups. In fact
attacks by Salafi-Jihadist groups are in fact three times as lethal as attacks
by non-Salafi-Jihadist groups.Only groups in the
Hybrid category, mainly represented by Chechen separatists, have a similarly
high lethality rate. The rise of Salafi-Jihadist ideology and the establishment
of Al Qaeda have been identified as the primary drivers of the globalization of
martyrdom. Yet, what accounts for the rise of Al Qaeda and its guiding ideology
in the first place? Designed as an effort at conducting a ‘root cause
analysis,’ this section identifies five central factors that explain the spread
of global jihad. These factors have been arrived at in an inductive faction,
after conducting an extensive literature review and ordering the findings
around five major themes.
The first factor that
has contributed to the rise of Salafi-Jihadist ideology and has enabled the
emergence of Al Qaeda is the crisis that has beset Islam especially since the
late 1970s. This has manifested itself in the deterritorialization of Islam and
the crisis of social authority in Islam, but also in economic paralysis
especially of the Arab world. These developments have been accompanied by a
religious revivalism that culminated in the Islamic Revolution of Iran in
1979.According to for example Olivier Roy, the Muslim world contends with a
process by which Islam is trying to live up to its de facto political marginalisation.” (Roy, Globalized Islam, 4). Several
processes are responsible for this marginalization, including the privatization
of religion, the formation of closed religious communities, the construction of
“pseudo-ethnic or cultural minorities,” the identification by many Muslims with
Western forms of religious practices, and the attraction to violent
interpretations of Islam.(Ibid., 5). A key challenge to Islam is what Roy calls
the growing ‘deterritorialization’ of the religion. Largely a product of
globalization and the decreasing relevance of territorial borders, the
deterritorialization of Islam denotes a trend whereby a growing number of
Muslims, perhaps a third of all Muslims, live as minorities. This creates a
host of problems revolving around the question of how these Muslims identify
themselves and their religion in a globalized world. Simply put,
“deterritorialization leads to a quest for definition,” Roy argues. (Ibid.,
20).
The search for a new
meaning has resulted in the definition of a new universal Islam that rejects
local, cultural forms of Islam. Examples for the rejection of local Islams and
certain traditions can be found in Saudi Arabia, for example, where Wahhabis (a
form of Salafism) resist the celebration of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday and
the veneration of his shrine, as well as local, pagan traditions. Examples can
also be found in the activities of the Taliban or by Salafi-Jihadist insurgents
in Iraq, who attempted to suppress Sufi traditions. Roy prefers to call this
form of re-Islamization neofundamentalism rather than
Salafism. This “re-Islamization,” which adopts the form of Salafism, attempts
to rebuild a new, global Muslim community of believers (umma) on a purely
religious, as opposed to cultural and local, basis. By inducing Muslims
with a new identity, that of a larger, transnational group, Salafism provides
Muslims with a new identity. The crisis of Islam however, does not affect
merely those Muslims living as minorities in the West,but
also many Muslims in the Arab and Muslim world. Because of the process of globalization,many Muslims living in Muslim countries share
the sense of belonging to a minority with their co-religionists in the West.
More conservative Muslims may even feel as if they are a minority in their own
countries if they believe that the regime does not truly represent them. Roy
argues as a consequence of these processes that there is a weakening connection
between the umma and a territorial entity. Instead, the Muslim community has to
be conceptualized increasingly in “abstract or imaginary terms.”
Another manifestation
of the crisis of Islam is the crisis of its social authority. Religious
teaching institutions are in poor shape and in need of reform, as is the ulama,
the body of Islamic scholars. Large madrassas are challenged by the emergence
of smaller, private ones, as well as by clerics who now speak on radio and
television rather than in these religious schools. Another indication for the
crisis of social authority is the growing use of brutal punishments called for
in religious law (sharia) in countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, and
Nigeria. Roy points out that these countries have meted out these punishments
out of fear and weakness. Traditional Muslim societies are endangered, Roy
suggests, and these regimes know it. How does this crisis of Islam affect
Muslims, especially in places where they live as minorities? Farhad Khosrokhavar, who conducted extensive interviews of several
Salafi-Jihadists in prisons, writes that Muslims living in the West, usually
second- or third-generation immigrants, often feel dislocated and mentally
confused. Their parents or grandparents’ generation had high hopes to
integrate, become successful, and maintain part of their Muslim identity, but
the interviewees do not cherish these hopes any longer. Instead, they feel as
if the West excludes and represses them, an exclusion made all the worse
because the West has attempted to seduce them with its initial promise of
integration, and continues to seduce them with the temptations that liberalism
has to offer. In a similar vein, Stephen Holmes hypothesizes in a brilliant
essay on the 9/11 suicide hijackers that one possible explanation for the
motivations of the 9/11 attackers may be that “the ripest recruits for [suicide
missions] … would be half-way men, stuck in transit between the Middle East and
the West, whose frustration is mingled with a feeling of being tainted by a
society that seduces them. The hijackers’ felt need to erase such a stain on
their souls could conceivably have become so obsessive that it eclipsed all
thought of future consequences.” (Holmes, "Al-Qaeda, September 11,
2001," 153).
Many Muslims in the
West appear torn between their parents’ and grandparents’ traditional values
and traditions, nuclear family structures, patriarchal authority, and sexual
chastity, and the realities of the West, which include sexual promiscuity, the
deregulation between men and women, homosexuality, family instability, and the
loss of traditional family structures. The interviewees view life in the West
as being dictated by consumerism and “a mediocrity that do not seem to offer
any future,” rendering life meaningless. Coupled with deep feelings of
repression by the West, this emptiness helps fuel Islamic radicalism. It is
this struggle with an existential question that leads these young Muslims to
adopt a militant faith. “Struggle,” Khosrokhavar
writes, “is the best way to purify their faith and to protect the believer from
the temptations of a corrupting modernity that serves the purposes of a
perfidious West.” (Khosrokhavar, Suicide Bombers,
156).
The Repression and
emptiness sensed by these young Muslims produces intense feelings of
humiliation, which is experienced in several forms. According to Khosrokhavar, there is the humiliation they experience in
everyday life because they feel that they have been economically marginalized
and made to feel socially inferior, as is the case with the excluded Maghrebin
youth in France, or young West Indians and Pakistanis in Great Britain. Second,
thanks to the media, they experience the humiliation of the Muslim world in
Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq or Palestine. Mechanisms of identification then lead
to the internalization of that feeling. Finally, there is sometimes a feeling
that their immersion in the Western world has defiled them. For immigrants or
their sons, the fact that they left their country of origin, either as children
or at some later date, makes them feel that they have unfairly been spared the
sufferings of their coreligionists in Muslim societies. (Ibid., 152).
The impact of
globalization is the second factor that has supported the emergence and
strengthening of Al Qaeda and Salafi-Jihadism, and will be examined next.The impact of globalization on Muslims living in the
West is particularly challenging, because many Muslims are used to traditional
social and family structures, as well as values that appear to be threatened by
globalization. According to Reuven Paz, the “inability of a large section of
the Muslim public to cope with the technological, cultural, or economic aspects
of Western modernization” lies at the root of the development of the doctrine
of global jihad. This is the reason why a substantial part of Muslims seek
salvation in the idea of a return to the past, the glorious past of Islam.
(Paz, "The Brotherhood of Global Jihad," 2). As a result of what Khosrokhavar labels an “exaggerated individualism.”, many
young Muslims consider the West to be impersonal, insular, and lonely places
where they sense a loss of dignity.( Khosrokhavar,
Suicide Bombers , 155). Muslims in general are particularly affected by
globalization because Islam teaches that it is the ultimate religion that
prevails above all others. Yet, Islam has been in decline for centuries.
Globalization has contributed to this cognitive dissonance felt by many Muslims
because, it has made “the backwardness of the Arab-Muslim region, compared to
others, impossible to ignore.”
Another
unintended consequence of increased globalization is the use by terrorist
organizations, including Al Qaeda, of technological innovations for its own
purposes. Terrorists have often used inventions originally designed for
peaceful purposes to help them carry out acts of wanton violence. Alfred
Nobel’s invention of dynamite in 1866, for example, was supposed to
revolutionize the construction business, not terrorism. In the end, it turned
out that it did both, when many anarchist groups, including in the United
States, began using dynamite to terrorize their political opponents. For
example al Qaeda-type terrorist networks are an outgrowth of
globalization because networks are dependent on the modern technologies that
are characteristic of globalization. The products of increased globalization
include cellular and satellite phones, fax machines, laptop computers, news
networks such as CNN, and e-mail. Transnational networks would not exist if it
were not for the ease of travel in modern times. Networks also use modern means
of communication that enable its members to exchange messages across continents
quickly and inexpensively.
Finally, increased
globalization has been a platform for the immediate transnational diffusion of
grievances. While human tragedies in a local area have always elicited empathy
among humans in another area, globalization has enabled the immediate and global
diffusion of human tragedies, with the result that local conflicts, tragedies,
and grievances can now be seen, watched, or heard by an unprecedented number of
people in nearly all countries of the world. This has led some people who are
far removed from the area of crisis or conflict to produce visceral grievances,
grievances that result from a suffering that an individual has not personally
experienced. As one young man in Luton in England said shortly after the July
7, 2005 London bombings: “It’s not just the BBC and ITV any more. We have al-Jazeera, we have the internet. If something happens to
innocent people in Iraq, the Muslims of Luton will know about it and feel that
grief.” (Brian A.Jackson, "Groups, Networks, or
Movements: A Command-and-Control-Driven Approach to Classifying Terrorist
Organizations and Its Application to Al Qaeda," Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism 29, no. 3, April-May 2006).
Where the Internet
has, more than any other medium, been used to indoctrinate many young Muslims
(and some non-Muslims) toward the adoption of Al Qaeda’s Salafi-Jihadist
ideology. Satellite television stations such as Al Jazeera have similarly
helped radicalize young Muslims towards adopting Salafi-Jihadism by producing
visceral grievances.During the Iraq war, for example,
Al Jazeera portrayed coalition troops as inhuman enemy invaders, with “the
camera lingering with apparent delight on coalition dead and gloating over
prisoners of war. Long, drawn-out shots of wounded Iraqi children underlined
the message that ‘the enemy has done this’ and is to be treated mercilessly in
return.” (Patrick Sookhdeo, "How Television
Creates Terrorists," Spectator, 31 May 2003, 14).
Case Study: al-Jazeera P.1 and P.2:
Salafi-Jihadism, has
also been diffused by means of what Sidney Tarrow has called “mediated
diffusion” aided by brokers that “help to bridge cultural and geographic
divides and diffuse new forms of collective action across borders.”(See Tarrow,
The New Transnational Activism, Cambridge University Press,2005). According to
Tarrow, collective action “requires activists to marshal resources, become
aware of and seize opportunities, frame their demands in ways that enable them
to join with others, and identify common targets.”In
fact the spread of Salafi and Salafi-Jihadist doctrine, and the rise of Al
Qaeda cannot be explained without the physical diffusion of individuals,
institutions, and financial assets around the globe. Beginning in the
mid-1970s, Saudi Arabia embarked on a massive spending spree to spread its
fundamentalist form of Wahhabism, a puritan form of Islam virtually synonymous
with Salafism—to as many countries as possible. Over the next three decades,
the kingdom would muster some $70 billion in overseas aid, over two thirds of
which was destined for “Islamic activities” such as the building of mosques,
religious learning institutions, or Wahhabi religious centers. The campaign
resulted in an estimated construction of 1,500 mosques, 210 Islamic centers,
202 colleges, and almost 2,000 schools in non-Islamic countries by 2003. (David
E. Kaplan, "The Saudi Connection: How Billions in Oil Money Spawned a
Global Terror Network," U.S. News & World Report, 15 December 2003,
18).
Led by Wahhabist clerics, charities closely linked to the royal
family such as the Muslim World League, the International Islamic Relief
Organization, or the al-Haramain Foundation provided
money, relief services, and Wahhabist literature that
preached mistrust of infidels, and extolled the practice of takfir and the
pursuit of jihad as the key to the eventual domination of true Islam, thus
paving the way for Al Qaeda and like-minded terrorist groups that came in its wake.While money was also used to fund commendable projects
such as orphanages and medicine to refugees, many charities provided funding
for terrorist groups, some knowingly, others less so. Al Qaeda alone is said to
have collected between $300 and $500 million, mostly from Saudi charities. (2002
United Nations Security Council Report.)
Case Study: Saudi Arabia:
$150 million poured
into Bosnia in 1994 alone, much of it to charities that abetted terrorist
activity, a CIA investigation later found that about a third of Islamic
charities active in the Balkans facilitated activity of groups such as Hamas
and Hizballah. A 1996 report compiled by the CIA found that of over 50 Islamic
charities engaged in international aid, a third were linked to terrorist
groups. These charities, some of which were present in as many as 30, and even
90 countries, at times acted as fronts, providing terrorist groups with safe
houses, false identities, and travel documents. They were overseen by religious
leaders and overseen by members of the Saudi royal family. The Muslim World
League had branches in about 30 countries in the mid-1990s, Al-Haramain had 50, and the IIRO as many as 90.
Naturally, the spread
of Salafist institutions and schools was accompanied by the spread of Wahhabi
and Salafist scholars. In the mid-1990s, many young Salafi scholars repressed
by the Saudi kingdom left Saudi Arabia to London, including such figures as Saad
al-Faqih and Abu Baseer al-Tartousi. There, they met
with other radical Algerian and Palestinian scholars such as Abu Qatada to
further develop the Salafi-Jihadist doctrine. These clerics would subsequently
help radicalize young Muslims in the West by playing on their sense of
victimhood, exclusion, and solitude, calling on them to join jihad in distant
countries, and sometimes at their host societies.The
importance of the physical diffusion of individuals, institutions, and assets
lies in the geographic spread of Salafi-Jihadist ideas. Over time, these
nonviolent NGOs and movements have created what Reuven Paz has called an
“Islamic atmosphere” by carrying out Islam’s political, social, and educational
work, while acting as a “greenhouse” for the emergence of violent groups “and
the preservation of world views of hostility towards the West or Western
culture.” (Paz, "The Brotherhood of Global Jihad," 9). They would
often preach in private, unregulated mosques which would become the hotbed of Salafi-Jihadism.
As we have seen in P.1 of this Global Jihad update,
the narrative of Al Qaeda and its guiding Salafi-Jihadist ideology revolves in
large measure around the perception that Islam is under attack by a global
conspiracy of ‘Crusaders’ and ‘Zionists.’ The contempt for what
Salafi-Jihadists view as a Western domination of Islam is not the only
grievance that lies at the root of the surge of Salafi-Jihadism and Al Qaeda,
but it is the most central grievance. Al Qaeda’s list of real or perceived
Western aggressions is long. It contains real and perceived, past and present,
Western occupation of Muslim lands by such countries as Britain, France, the
Soviet Union, the United States, and Israel; the existence of despotic,
“apostate” regimes such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia that
Salafi-Jihadists regard as puppets of the West who collaborate in the
subjugation of ordinary Muslims; the West’s exploitation of Muslim riches; and
the belief that the West, and especially the United States, is on a quest to
dominate the Middle East culturally and economically.
But according to
Salafi-Jihadists, by far the most severe aggression against Islam is the
physical presence of foreign troops in Muslim countries. In August 1990, King
Fahd invited the United States Army to set foot into Saudi Arabia to defend the
country from a possible attack by Saddam Hussein, while rejecting a
counter-offer by Osama bin Laden to have an international army of Muslim
fighters protect the kingdom instead. By doing so, the Saudi royal family
committed a sin of unimaginable proportions in the eyes of Salafi-Jihadists.
Bin Laden and his fellow jihadists found the notion that infidel troops
accompanied by Christian and Jewish clergy now defiled Islam’s two holiest
places—Mecca and Medina—unbearable.Beginning in March
2003, the U.S. presence in Iraq provided further “proof” to Salafi- Jihadists
that the United States was on a mission to rein in and dominate Islam. Much as
Afghanistan had served as a haven and training ground for jihadists during the
1980s and 1990s, Iraq would subsequently attract thousands of Arab and Muslim
mujahideen who would stream to Iraq to fight the occupiers and their
collaborators, and realize their dream of establishing a caliphate from the
heart of the Arab world. A classified National Intelligence Estimate report admitted
that Iraq helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism. (Karen DeYoung,
"Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Hurting U.S. Terror Fight," Washington
Post, 24 September 2006, A1.)
Iraq, presented
Salafi-Jihadist ideologues and terrorist operatives affiliated with or inspired
by Al Qaeda with a golden opportunity “to consolidate, direct, and reinforce
the insurgency and to reinvigorate militant and radical Islam around the Muslim
world by elaborating a new set of ideas about the meaning and purpose of
Jihad.” (Reuven Paz, "The Impact of the War in Iraq on the Global
Jihad," Current Trends in Islamist Ideology 1, 2005, 39.) According to Al
Qaeda’s guiding ideology, the infractions against Muslims described above and
many others constitute a clear attack on Islam. Attacks on Islam, in turn,
require a defensive jihad waged against the aggressor, a jihad in which each
and every Muslim must participate in one way or another. Violence is an
integral part of this jihad because of the belief that the United States, the
devil incarnate, and its cronies understand no other language. Some Western
analysts believe that Western infractions brought about by misguided policies
are the primary cause of Salafi-Jihadism. As the former head of the CIA’s bin
Laden unit, Michael Scheuer, puts it, “what the U.S. does is the cause … the
focused and lethal threat posed to U.S. national security arises not from
Muslims being offended by what America is, but rather from their plausible
perception that the things they most love and value, God, Islam, their
brethren, and Muslim lands, are being attacked by America. What we as a nation
do, then, is the key causal factor in our confrontation with Islam.” (Anonymous,
Imperial Hubris, 9.)
Blaming U.S. policies
alone for the emergence of jihadist terrorism, however, ignores the intrinsic
goals of Al Qaeda and its guiding ideology, which adopts an aggressive form of
expansionist Islam that attempts to establish a caliphate in as many countries
as possible. No shift in U.S. foreign policy would appease Al Qaeda as long as
the United States is considered an infidel country. Short of a complete
surrender and obsequiousness to Al Qaeda and the adoption of a Taliban-style
version of Islam by America, the United States will find itself in an ongoing
war against an ideologically inspired enemy.
The crisis of Islam, the effects of globalization, and the proactive diffusion
of radical Salafi-Jihadist individuals, institutions, and assets are other,
critically important parts of the story.
The fifth, factor
without which the rise of Al Qaeda and its guiding ideology cannot be
understood is the opportunity afforded to Al Qaeda and Salafi-Jihadism in
Afghanistan. It presented a unique gathering opportunity for thousands of
Muslims willing to fight against an occupying superpower. Tens of thousands of
foreign fighters joined the Afghan mujahideen in the nine-year long attempt to
rout the Red Army from Afghanistan. Later, after many of the fighters would
return to their home countries or would continue on to fight in third
countries, the deep friendships and bonds that had been forged among some of
these fighters would enable the formation of transnational terrorist cells.Afghanistan also helped internationalize the jihad
through the friendships and personal ties bin Laden was able to forge during
the war, which helped him create a virtual rolodex of global leaders of the
Islamic movement. These ties would later help bin Laden to establish bonds with
similar minded organizations, thus contributing to the global diffusion of Al
Qaeda’s ideology, while providing itself and other groups with the synergistic
benefits of cooperation between terrorist groups. The result was the
establishment of a transnational terrorist network whose geographic spread had
been unprecedented in scope.As it helped build up
self-confidence and an aura of invincibility among the mujahideen. After all, a
handful of poor and poorly fed warriors had just defeated one of the world’s
two superpowers. Seizing upon the momentum of the humiliating defeat of the
Soviet Army, Azzam began propagating his idea of a global Islamic jihad, while
bin Laden suspected that henceforth, future battles would be a cakewalk.
“Having borne arms against the Russians in Afghanistan,” the Al Qaeda leader
told an interviewer, “we think our battle with America will be easy by
comparison… We are now more determined to carry on until we see the face of
God.” (Kenneth Timmerman, "This Man Wants You Dead," Readers' Digest,
July 1997).
Similarly, the
experience of the Afghan war gave rise to the idea of creating a global Islamic
umma. The obstacle in the way of establishing this universal nation of
believers was identified, first, in the local regimes. These however, were
perceived as merely pawns in the game of larger Western powers, led by the
United States. This way, the U.S. became the main obstacle in the way of
establishing a global Muslim community of believers. Afghanistan also afforded
Al Qaeda the opportunity of a physical safe haven, thanks to the generous
support of Mullah Omar and the Taliban regime, who provided Al Qaeda virtual
freedom of action. The carte blanche given to Osama bin Laden, coupled with the
necessary space provided, helped Al Qaeda train the members of the future
global Islamic insurgency without disturbance. Between 1996, after spending
some five years in Sudan, Osama bin Laden helped transform Afghanistan into the
key training ground for Islamic militants. In the next five years, between
10,000 and 20,000 fighters would undergo training in camps in Afghanistan
supported by Osama bin Laden.
The creation of Al
Qaeda was the outcome of the war waged by self-described Islamic holy warriors
(mujahideen) in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union after the latter invaded
Afghanistan in December 1979. During the nine years that the war lasted, tens of
thousands of foreign fighters joined the Afghan mujahideen in their efforts to
repel the Soviet Army and oust their puppet government in Kabul. The arrival of
most of these ‘Afghan Arabs,’ as they came to be known, was organized by Dr.
Abdullah Azzam, an Islamic teacher and ideologue of Palestinian background, and
Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born son of a construction magnate. In 1984, Azzam and
bin Laden established the Makhtab al-Khidamat (MAK), or Services Bureau, an Islamic
non-governmental organization (NGO) with branches in several countries that
helped receive Arabs who wished to join the fight against the Soviet Army, as
well as train them and send them to the battlefield. The idea to establish what
came to be known as Al Qaeda was born in 1988, and was partly the result of a
bureaucratic reorganization. Towards the end of the Afghan-Soviet war, a
growing number of families inquired about the whereabouts of their children,
husbands, or fathers who had come to Afghanistan. Bin Laden, however, had failed
to maintain proper records of all the fighters. Embarrassed by his
organizational faux-pas, he decided to reorganize the records of the Afghan
Arabs to include the dates of arrival and details of their activities while in
the camps and the battlegrounds. Bin Laden and his cohorts referred to these
records as the “records of Al Qaeda.” (Fuad Husayn, Al-Zarqawi: The Second
Generation of Al-Qa'ida: Published in Arabic in 15
Parts by Al-Quds al-Arabi; Translation by Foreign Broadcast Information
Service, London, 2005, Part 8).
For Azzam, the jihad
in Afghanistan, whose success was perceived as a clear sign that God was on the
side of the Muslims, was to be only the first step in a global endeavor to
resurrect the spirit of Muslims through holy war. It was incumbent upon each
and every Muslim to contribute his part to the continued success of the Islamic
project in every region of the world that at one point has been under Muslim
control and was now under the reign of the ‘infidels.’ “This duty will not end
with victory in Afghanistan; jihad will remain an individual obligation until
all other lands that were Muslim are returned to us so that Islam will reign
again: before us in Palestine, Bokhara, Lebanon, Chad, Eritrea, Somalia, the
Philippines, Burma, southern Yemen,Tashkent and
(Spain)Andalusia.” (Quoted in Burke, Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam,
73.)
In November 1989,
when Azzam was assassinated along with two of his sons, bin Laden was the
undisputed leader of Al Qaeda.In 1991, bin Laden
completed his move to Sudan, where he set up a large and elaborate system of
businesses and enterprises, along with a global network of bank accounts and
NGOs that would well serve him in his future occupation as the world’s most
notorious terrorist.9 While in Sudan, bin Laden also forged contacts with other
militant Islamic organizations, some of which had been set up by alumni of the
Afghan war, and began establishing an extensive network of terrorist and
insurgent organizations in places like Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Lebanon, Morocco,
Tunisia, Somalia, London, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. He also consolidated
links with various groups in Kashmir, and with Jemaah Islamiyya
in Indonesia. Besides helping to create a global brotherhood of jihad, the
geographic expansion of Al Qaeda also brought practical advantages to Al Qaeda
in that it helped diversify the network’s assets, thus rendering the entity
less vulnerable to attack.Bin Laden returned to
Afghanistan in May 1996, where he reassumed full control over the Arab Afghans
who had remained in Afghanistan. Over the next years, he allied himself, and
his recently expanded Al Qaeda, with Taliban leader Mullah Omar, an alliance that
would help the Taliban eventually defeat Ahmed Shah Massoud’s Northern
Alliance. (Anonymous, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, 156-160.)
In these five years
leading up to 9/11, Al Qaeda resembled more or less an organization. It had a
hard core and was built around its undisputed leader, ‘Sheikh’ Osama bin Laden,
a consultative council, and committees tasked with different responsibilities.
Al Qaeda in these years embodied the base of jihad, from where new generations
of fighters were trained.After his return to
Afghanistan in 1996, bin Laden formalized his new focus on the United States as
his main enemy. He consolidated links to other terrorist groups, and the global
network spearheaded by Al Qaeda steadily increased in size with groups of
terrorists joining the network from the Maghreb, core Arab states, and South
East Asia. According to U.S. intelligence, between 1996 and until the attacks
of September 11, 2001, between 10,000 and 20,000 fighters underwent training in
camps in Afghanistan supported by Osama bin Laden. These camps were oftentimes
aligned with groups that swore allegiance to one of the various factions of the
Afghan civil war that followed the defeat of the Soviet Union. Other camps
belonged to groups fighting in places like Kashmir, such as Hizb-ul
Mujaheddin or Lashkar-e-Taibeh. Bin Laden’s support of a large number of
training camps in Afghanistan affiliated with these various groups enabled Al
Qaeda to screen and vet candidates it wanted to retain for its own
organization. Al Qaeda, however, was picky, and only a select few who went
through Al Qaeda sponsored or Al Qaeda-operated training camps were asked to
join the group. Many of these had special language or technical skills. The
authors of the 9/11 Commission Report estimate that probably no more than a few
hundred of these actually became members of Al Qaeda by swearing allegiance (bayat) to Osama bin Laden. (The 9/11 Commission Report,
67.)
The training that
mujahideen received in about a dozen training camps was, according to U.S.
military officials, “on par with the world’s best guerrilla forces,” and at
times emulated some of the training methods of the U.S. Army, Army Rangers, and
the Marine Corps. Documents and intelligence recovered from camps in
Afghanistan and from prisoners after 9/11 showed that Al Qaeda was not an
ordinary terrorist group but that it had become what it had set out for itself,
a vanguard to train Islamic fighters that would be dispatched to all corners of
the globe in order to assist Muslims wherever they were in need, in places like
India, Chechnya, Kashmir, Indonesia, Central Asia, South Eastern Europe, and
other regions. The veterans of these training camps would also train other
fighters, thus creating future generations of mujahideen. Of the 10,000-20,000
recruits that passed through Al Qaeda training camps, all received basic
infantry training and heavy doses of Islamic indoctrination. Gunaratna points
out that Al Qaeda is special among terrorist organizations in that it considers
psychological and indoctrinational training even more
important than physical training. (Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda, 72-73.)
Particular emphasis
was placed on instilling such values as “perseverance, patience, steadfastness,
and adherence to firm principles,” as Zawahiri indicated. (Al-Zawahiri, Knights
under the Prophet’s Banner, Part 11.)
Those students who
had special abilities, or particular language skills, were identified in basic
camps and often sent to advanced courses that prepared them for more difficult
missions, including terrorist missions. The training itself was also designed
to help the graduates proliferate the knowledge that they gained. One notebook
that was found in an Al Qaeda camp ended with an Arabic passage:“We
ask you, dear brother, to spread around this document on all the mujahideen. Do
not keep what you know a secret, if you please.” To that end, Al Qaeda
produced several training manuals, including, most importantly, the 7,000 page,
multi-volume Encyclopedia of the Afghan Jihad, which covered issues such as
weapons production, operational planning and security, first aid, handguns,
topography and land surveys. It began to be collected in 1989, shortly after
the withdrawal of Soviet forces, to maintain the collective wisdom gathered. A
subsequent volume, Vol. 11, covered chemical and biological warfare, and was
presented in a separate CD.
Until October 2001,
when Al Qaeda’s organizational infrastructure was substantially eroded by the
American-led response to the 9/11 attacks, Al Qaeda’s leadership appears to
have been structured, in relative terms, like a hierarchy, and its day-to-day
operations were subject to the constraints and necessities reminiscent of other
bureaucratic organizations. Fighters, for example had to sign an employment
contract with Al Qaeda. For an example of a contract, see "Document
Afgp-2002-600045," in Harmony Document Series (Undated), available online
at http://www.ctc.usma.edu/aq/AFGP-2002-600045-Trans.pdf.
A report by the
Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point presented insights into Al
Qaeda’s daily operations based on captured Al Qaeda documents made available to
the CTC by a Department of Defense database called Harmony. As the report put
it, “perhaps the most interesting insight from the present collection of
documents [from the Harmony database] is the way in which they demonstrate how
al-Qa’ida executives deal with the same banal
challenges that occupy any other organization—be it employee salary and
benefits, debates over strategic vision, or underlying doctrinal
interpretations.” (Combating Terrorism Center, "Harmony and Disharmony:
Exploiting Al-Qaida's Organizational Vulnerabilities," United States
Military Academy, West Point, 2006, 40.)
In Conclusion: At the
beginning of the twentieth century, the term "Salafiyya"
was linked to a transnational movement of Islamic reform whose proponents
strove to reconcile their faith with the Enlightenment and modernity. Toward
the end of the twentieth century, however, the Salafi movement became
inexplicably antithetical to Islamic modernism. Its epicenter moved closer to
Saudi Arabia and the term Salafiyya became virtually
synonymous with Wahhabism.
What happened is that
the rise of a transnational and generic Islamic consciousness, especially after
the First World War, facilitated the growth of religious purism within key
Salafi circles. The Salafis who most emphasized religious unity and conformism
across boundaries usually developed puristic inclinations that proved useful in
the second half of the twentieth century. Due in part to their affinities with
the Saudi religious establishment, they survived the postcolonial transition
and kept thriving while the modernist Salafis eventually disappeared.
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