One of the surprises of September 11 was that some of the suicide bombers had been living and studying in the West for years. We like to think that our way of life and the freedoms we enjoy are so attractive that anyone who lives among us will inevitably become pro-Western. The globalization of Al Qaeda—its recruitment of locals to participate in attacks, and its careful grooming of operatives, were discussed by the terrorists themselves in a New York City courtroom, where four of the 1998 African-embassy bombers were tried a year and a half before September 11. It is too bad that the terrorists’ revelations, including about the organization’s vast business holdings, its detailed planning of operations, its emplacement of sleepers, and its attempts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, didn’t receive more attention. If they had, perhaps we would not have been so astonished by Al Qaeda’s ability to operate inside America.
This chapter begins with a discussion of a terrorist who participated in the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in August 1998. His story is important for two reasons. First, he was a sleeper. A “talent scout” noticed that he attended a radical mosque regularly, and that he was increasingly agitated about the plight of Muslims around the world. Told that he would have to be trained at a camp to earn the trust of his new Islamist friends, he spent his own money to travel to Afghanistan. The real purpose of his training was to assess his potential. He was found to be barely educated, with few skills. But he had something else critically important to Al Qaeda at the time: language skills and Tanzanian citizenship. This is exactly the kind of operative that Americans are beginning to fear—a confused young man who thinks he is helping Muslims by serving as a sleeper for a terrorist group, whose principal value to the terrorists is his country of residence. Now we fear that the terrorist sleepers may be our next-door neighbors.
The second reason this operative’s story is important is that he comes from Africa, an area of the world that may well become an enclave of Islamist extremism and anti-American sentiment in the future. Americans tend to fixate on enemies that can be fought with military might. We have a much harder time seeing failing states, where terrorists thrive, as a source of danger. We need to assess why bin Laden’s and other extremists’ ideas spread. And we need to look for clues globally, not just in the Middle East.
America has had the luxury of ignoring countries at far geographic remove throughout most of its history. This is no longer possible. Nor is it sufficient to concentrate exclusively on one or two villains in a given decade. We have to be alert to the possibility that the villain may be a seductive, hateful idea about Us versus Them, rather than an individual; and that the hateful idea may be taking hold—in seemingly obscure or remote locations. The growing availability of powerful weapons, porous borders, and the communications revolution make it possible for smaller and smaller groups to wreak havoc almost anywhere on the globe.
In the spring of 2000 two American defense attorneys contacted me to ask whether I would be willing to serve as an expert witness in the trial of Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, an Al Qaeda operative who was involved in the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in August 1998. That attack, and the simultaneous bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, killed 224 people, most of them Africans, and injured thousands.
Mohamed had already admitted his guilt at the time his lawyers called me. He had told the FBI that he had rented the house where the bomb was built, bought the truck used to transport components, bought a grinder for grinding the explosive, and ground some of the TNT himself. After the bombing, he fled to South Africa with a new identity, a new passport, and $1,000 in cash, this last procured for him by Al Qaeda.
After a worldwide manhunt lasting longer than a year, South African authorities found Mohamed in Cape Town, working at an Indian fast-food restaurant called Burger World. The South African government extradited him to the United States. The U.S. government wanted him executed for his crimes. Mohamed’s lawyers wanted my help in arguing that his punishment should be to spend the rest of his life behind bars in a maximum-security federal prison, but that he should not be put to death.
Khalfan Khamis Mohamed was born in 1973 on the island of Pemba and grew up in the village of Kidimni on Zanzibar Island. His twin sister, Fatuma, was born in the evening, but he didn’t arrive until morning, giving his mother a lot of trouble, she recalls. But from that point on, she says, “He was just an ordinary child who went to school…. After school he performed the normal domestic chores and liked playing football, like all youth. He didn’t indulge in any antisocial behavior.”1
The family was poor. They lived in a mud hut with a thatched roof. His father died when Mohamed was six or seven years old. People on Zanzibar don’t pay close attention to dates, and Mohamed’s mother doesn’t recall exactly when her husband died. After the death of his father, Mohamed helped his mother support the family by working on the farm, harvesting fruits that grow wild in the forest, and taking care of a neighboring farmer’s cows.
Mohamed comes from a very different sort of place than many of the terrorists discussed so far in this book—a place that, ironically, benefited from globalization long before the term become popular. Zanzibar consists of two islands: Zanzibar (known locally as Unguja) and Pemba. The islands are in the Indian Ocean, twenty-five miles off the coast of Tanzania, six degrees south of the equator. Clove, jackfruit, mango, and breadfruit grow in the valleys of Pemba Island. Coconut trees, brought by Indian traders centuries ago, now grow wild. Monkeys, civets, bushpigs, and mongooses thrive in the forests. Some one hundred species of birds live in Tanzania, and thirteen species of bats have been identified on Pemba. The islands are also famous for their butterflies and the great variety of game fish found in the waters between them. Fishing and agriculture are Zanzibar’s main industries.
Today, Pemba and Zanzibar are largely isolated from the rest of the world. Foreign visitors tend to be adventurers attracted by the lush, undisturbed reefs or the profusion of game fish found in Pemba Channel. Visitors describe an extraordinarily friendly people who seem utterly mesmerized by their foreign looks and ways. They write of the remarkable melee of cultures—African, Arab, Persian, and Indian—magnificent Arabic architecture, abundant fruits and fishes, but also poverty and squalor, the scent of spices rising above the stench of sewage and rotting fish.
Although it is relatively isolated today, Zanzibar was once the trading center for all of Africa, with trade links to Arabia, China, India, Persia, and Southeast Asia. The nineteenth-century English explorer Richard Burton described Pemba as an “emerald isle” in a “sea of purest sapphire.” The scent of cloves, he said, was enticing even from the sea. The people were a mixed race who had retained, despite their conversion to Islam, the skills of divination and other “curious practices palpably derived from their wild ancestry.”2 The traditional dhow, a single-masted ship with a lateen sail, used by Arab merchants for two millennia to sail on the monsoon winds, is still in use today and is still built in the same way—with a hull of mangrove or teak, and ribs of acacia—with no nails.
A succession of invading powers left remnants of their cultures and languages. Shirazi Persians, who settled on the coast of East Africa in the tenth century, intermarried with the locals, giving rise to an Afro-Persian race.3 Omani Arabs, who settled on Zanzibar some six centuries later, have had the largest influence on the culture and language. The name Zanzibar is the Arabic expression for “land of blacks.” Kiswahili, Tanzania’s official language, contains a substantial fraction of Arabic, Farsi, and Hindi words, as well as some Portuguese and English ones.
Tanzania was formed as a sovereign state in 1964 through the union of Tanganyika, on the African mainland, and Zanzibar. Zanzibar and Pemba Islands have a separate government administration from the rest of Tanzania. Zanzibaris are seeking greater autonomy for their archipelago. They would like to reap more of the profits of the export of cloves, which the central government taxes heavily, and to control more of the tourist trade.
Tanzania’s ruling party, and Tanganyika itself, are predominantly Christian. The ruling party refers to any threat to its rule as motivated by Islamism, which, ironically, may incite precisely the kind of extremism the ruling party fears. During the last decade, elections have been declared fraudulent by multiple international observers, and protests have been met with violence perpetrated by the police, who are predominantly Christian, against Zanzibaris, who are predominantly Muslim. To the extent that Islamism is indigenous in the region, it is found more on the mainland than on the islands, as well as in neighboring Kenya, although this could change. Zanzibaris are deeply disappointed that the United States did not protest Tanzania’s tampering with the election results of 1995 and 2000 or the violence that ensued, although the government’s crimes were published widely.4 Although the region is remarkably tolerant historically, stimulated by its longtime exposure to multiple cultures, anti-Western Islamist sentiment could easily take root here if democracy fails and state repression continues.5
Muslims represent 97 percent of the population of Zanzibar, most of them Sunni. Shia represent 12 percent of the population. As in Indonesia, Islam coexists with Zanzibar’s traditional religions, including animism. Zanzibar is famous for its sorcerers, seers, and witch doctors. Spells often involve Arabic texts, and witches often dress in traditional Arab garb. Evelyn Waugh wrote that novices came to Pemba from as far away as Haiti to study magic and voodoo. A cult of witches “still flourishes below the surface,” he wrote, expressing his frustration that “everything is kept hidden from the Europeans.”6 Zanzibar is the home of a secret sect known as the Wachawi, who practice their arts even today. They are said to be able to take on the shapes of animals and birds. Haitian voodooists learned to animate corpses for labor in the fields by studying with the Wachawi, who reportedly developed the technique to escape their masters’ notice when they fled bondage. The Wachawi are said to be able to bring the recently deceased back to life, with personality and memory intact. Locals describe their neighbors returning from midnight meetings in the bush, pale and speechless, having seen their recently deceased loved ones restored to life.7 Early-twentieth-century visitors said that natives told them of powerful witch guilds, which required prospective members to offer up a near relation—a spouse or a child—to be eaten by other initiates.8
As a child, Mohamed attended a madrassah in the afternoons. The family described him as serious and quiet—more observant than his siblings, but also a better student. When he was in the middle of tenth grade, his older brother, Mohamed Khalfan Mohamed, asked Mohamed to come to live with him and his family in Dar es Salaam on the mainland to help out in the family dry-goods store. Mohamed intended to complete his schooling in Tanzania, but his time was taken up with his work at the shop and attending mosque. He had always been somewhat of a loner, his siblings recounted, but he became even more isolated after dropping out of high school, spending time only with his family and people he met at the mosque.9
The mosques in Dar es Salaam were more political than the one Mohamed attended in Zanzibar. There was a great deal of discussion about the plight of Muslims in Chechnya and especially in Bosnia. Worshipers were told that it was their duty to help fellow Muslims around the world in any way they could.10 One of Mohamed’s new friends was a man named Sulieman. Sulieman was from Zanzibar, but he worked on a fishing boat based in Mombasa, Kenya, owned by a man whom Mohamed knew only as “Mohamed the fisherman.” Mohamed the Fisherman turned out to be Mohamed Sadiq Odeh, a Saudi of Palestinian origin who was a member of Al Qaeda. Odeh would play an important role in the embassy-bombing conspiracy.11
Sulieman introduced Mohamed to Fahid, who would also participate in the bombing, who visited Dar es Salaam only occasionally. Mohamed started spending much of his free time with Fahid and Fahid’s friends, who were very religious. Sometimes they met in Dar es Salaam, and sometimes in Mombasa, Kenya. Mohamed says that they mainly talked about how to help Muslims around the world. Often, he said, they would meet in cars.12
By 1994, Mohamed began to despair at his own life, family members said. He spent more and more time at the mosque. He was radicalized in that mosque, his sister-in-law recalled.
Mohamed told Fahid he wanted to go to Bosnia to fight against the Serbs. Fahid told him that you cannot become a soldier for Islam without training. Fahid also told Mohamed that he did not trust him, and that he could earn Fahid’s trust only if he went to Afghanistan to be trained. Mohamed saved his earnings from the dry-goods shop and in 1994 traveled with Sulieman to Pakistan. Fahid had given them a contact in Karachi, who arranged for their trip to the camp. Fahid had been at the camp for around a month when Mohamed and Sulieman arrived. Mohamed told FBI investigators that the camp was called Markaz Fath, and that it was run by a Pakistani jihadi group called Harkat-ul-Ansar (the group we discussed in the previous chapter). He said his teacher was a Pakistani named Abu Omar. Mohamed said that he met a lot of people at the camp, one of whom was an American known as Sulieman America. The people he met were interested in helping Muslims around the world, Mohamed said, and in waging a jihad against America and against conservative Muslim states. He said he had never heard the name Al Qaeda.13
During the first two months at the camp, the group was trained to use light weapons (handguns and rifles), launchers, and surface-to-air missiles. Mohamed and his friends Sulieman and Fahid were selected for advanced training, which included learning how to manufacture explosives and how to join detonators and wires. Mohamed was not trained in the use of chemical weapons, although he said that other members of his group were. Afternoons were taken up with Islamic studies—including films of atrocities perpetrated against Muslims in Chechnya and Bosnia—and sports. Mohamed stayed at the camp for nine or ten months, he says.14 At the end of his training, Mohamed wanted to go to Bosnia, but he was not selected. He was told to leave a number in case he was needed at a later date. Mohamed went back to Dar es Salaam, bitterly disappointed that he had not been allowed to join the fight against the Serbs.15
Mohamed continued to spend time with the “brothers” he had met in the mosque or had gotten to know at the camp. He went to Somalia twice in 1997—once to teach Somali fighters what he had learned in Afghanistan, and once for a meeting with the men who would ultimately bomb the American embassy.16 Just before his first trip to Somalia, Fahid introduced him to a man named Hussein, who would later lead the group that bombed the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam. Fahid told Mohamed that Hussein is our brother, that he is a good man who had been trained to be a mujaheed. Odeh, explaining how Mohamed fell under Hussein’s influence, described Hussein as “persuasive, authoritarian,” and “a very strong leader, a man of compelling personality.” Mohamed was impressed by Hussein’s knowledge of Islam. Sometime after this meeting, Hussein moved to Dar es Salaam with his family. They stayed with Mohamed in a small flat.17
Three years after he returned from Afghanistan, Hussein approached Mohamed to invite him to participate, in a “jihad job.” Mohamed said that he would like to participate, although he was not informed about what the “jihad job” would entail. Eventually Hussein asked Mohamed to take certain actions. He instructed him to buy a truck, which Mohamed did in his own name. He paid for the truck, a white Suzuki, with cash that Hussein gave him. Fahid accompanied him and drove the truck because Mohamed did not know how to drive. The group used the truck to transport equipment needed for the bomb, including cylinder tanks, detonators, fertilizer, and TNT. Hussein also asked him to rent a house, large and private enough to conceal the group’s activities. Mohamed remembered Hussein telling him that he wanted the house to be hidden from the street, but that it should also be “nice.” Mohamed found a house with a high wall, which he rented in his own name. The owner insisted that Mohamed pay a year’s rent in advance, which he did, with money Hussein gave him.18
Mohamed, Hussein, and Hussein’s family moved into the house in the Ilala district of Dar es Salaam. Other team members came to the house, but no one ever discussed his role in the plot. Hussein instructed Mohamed to remain in the house most of the time, so that if any neighbors came by, there would be someone who could speak to them in Swahili. Other team members arrived soon before the bombing: an engineer named Abdul Rahman, whom Mohamed described as working with “all confidence”; and “Ahmed the driver,” whom Mohamed thought was Egyptian. Ahmed was the suicide bomber who would drive the truck into the embassy. Some five days before the attack, Hussein told Mohamed that the target of the bombing would be the American embassy. Mohamed helped load the tanks, boxes of TNT, and sandbags into the back of the truck. When the truck got stuck in the sand behind the house, Mohamed helped the driver dig it out.19
Hussein and the rest of the team left several days before the bombing. Most of them said they were going to Mombasa, without specifying their final destination. In fact, they had been instructed to return to Afghanistan before the bombing took place. Hussein asked Mohamed to remain in Dar es Salaam, to help the driver with any last-minute details, and to remove incriminating evidence from the house. Mohamed did as he was told, with one exception. He did not like the idea of throwing away the food grinder he had used to grind the TNT, since it was still usable. So he gave it to his sister Zuhura, asking her to clean it well and to pass it on to his mother.20
When he was captured by the FBI in October 1999, Mohamed told investigators he was not sorry that Tanzanians were killed, which he said was part of the business. He said he had bombed the embassy because it was his responsibility, according to his study of Islam. He said he thought the operation was successful because the bomb worked, it sent a message to America, and because it kept American officials busy investigating it. He also said that if he had not been caught, he would continue participating in the jihad against America or possibly against Egypt, and that if the U.S. government were to release him from custody, he would bomb Americans again. He told his investigators that he thought about jihad all the time. He told them he wants Americans to understand that he and his fellow warriors are not crazy, gun-wielding people, but are fighting for a cause.21
I travel to New York to watch Mohamed’s trial. Security is tight. The taxi drops me several blocks from the entrance to the courthouse because the street is blocked to traffic. You must pass through several layers of security before you get to the room where the trial is being held. There are metal detectors and guards on the first floor, and you have to show identification and sign in outside the courtroom. A guard is suspicious about why I am here. I explain that I am a defense-team visitor, and an agent instructs me to sit in the third wooden bench on the right. I can see from the back of the room that the bench is already full. When she sees that I mean to sit there, a woman pulls a child onto her lap and slides closer in toward her neighbor on the hard wooden bench. This is Mohamed’s family, I realize. The women wear bright Zanzibar cottons. The boys and men wear prayer caps. The little boy immediately to my right is wearing pressed white cotton. He stares at me with velvety eyes, not at all shy, seemingly delighted with the opportunity to examine such a strange foreign creature, whom good fortune has brought conveniently near at hand. His mother is too distracted to notice his staring and he is free to inspect every inch of me, which he does with obvious pleasure. It is a hot day. I notice the smell of anxiety in my benchmates’ sweat, but also the pleasant scent of spices. I see Mohamed’s mother at the far end of the bench. She sits tall, with dignity, but she looks modest and kind. She appears surprisingly calm, at least for now. There are brothers, sisters, children, and spouses also sharing the bench, as well as the family with whom Mohamed lived when he fled to South Africa.
A social worker has been called up to the witness stand to provide Mohamed’s social history. She has traveled to Zanzibar twice and shows the court pictures of Mohamed’s school, the neighborhood where he grew up, and the take-out restaurant where Mohamed worked as a chef in Cape Town. When she is done, various members of Mohamed’s family are called up to the stand. Each is asked what they remember about Mohamed. An older brother remembers him as good in school and good at soccer. Mohamed was kind and peaceable, he said, and would always try to break up fights. A younger sister recalls him helping her with her schoolwork. Another says that Mohamed played games with her children, his nieces and nephews. The mother of the family for whom he worked in Cape Town recalled how patient and kind Mohamed had been with her children and her elderly parents. He even taught her elderly mother to read the Koran. She said that she would gladly have given up her daughter in marriage to Mohamed. All but one of Mohamed’s family members said it was their first time traveling by airplane or traveling abroad.
The last witness was Mohamed’s mother, whose name is Hidaya Rubeya Juma. There was a hush in the room as a large lady dressed in bright cottons and a turban took the stand. I saw Mohamed looking down as his mother took her seat. It seemed to me that Mohamed had a harder time facing his mother than he did facing his victims or accusers. There was jolt of pain in the room, as though the air had been ionized with terror—his and ours. Not a fear of death, but the recognition of evil. The recognition that this person who had killed so many has a mother who loves him, despite his crimes, and that he is afraid to look her in the eye. That despite his evil actions, he is human, just like us. It is one thing to understand this intellectually. It is another to see a mother face her killer son, with his many victims looking on, seeing her fear, her agony, and her loss. The loss of her son—first to evil, and maybe to death.
Mohamed’s attorney, Mr. David Ruhnke, asked Mohamed’s mother, “After you leave and return to Africa next week, do you know whether you will ever see your son again?”
“I don’t even know,” she answered quietly.22
“Do you know what this is about, and that the people here have to decide whether your son is to be executed or put in prison for life? And I want to ask you a very difficult question, which is, if your son were executed, what would that do to you?”
“It will hurt me. He is my son.”23
Soon after this, the court was adjourned. Hidaya Rubeya Juma was the last witness to appear in the penalty phase of Mohamed’s trial. Closing arguments began at the next session.
In his closing arguments, the prosecutor, Mr. Fitzgerald, emphasized what he referred to as Mohamed’s two-sided personality. “I submit to sit before you and tell you that Khalfan Mohamed’s personal characteristics as an individual human being include the following: one, Khalfan Mohamed has exhibited responsible conduct in other areas of his life; two, Khalfan Mohamed has shown himself to be a person capable of kindness, friendship, and generosity; and three, Khalfan Mohamed lost his father at an early age and worked to help his family, which struggled financially after the death of the major breadwinner.” Mohamed can be very kind, Fitzgerald adds. “You want him to marry your daughter. You wouldn’t think he would hurt an ant. The next day he is in custody, saying, ‘Yeah, I bombed people and I’ll do it again.’ That’s what he is. He’s got two faces…. He fooled his family…. He is capable of savagery.”24
Jury members concluded that, if executed, Mohamed would be seen as a martyr and that his death could be “exploited by others to justify future terrorist acts.” He received a life sentence without parole.
When authorities interrogated Mohamed Sadiq Odeh in Pakistan, where he had flown on the day of the bombing, he admitted that he was a member of Al Qaeda and gave his interrogators the names of some of the Al Qaeda members involved in the plots. He also referred to “two or three locals,” whose names he appeared not to know, who had been left behind in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi to finish the job. One of those expendable locals was Mohamed.
According to several Al Qaeda members who testified at the trial, Al Qaeda is highly “tiered,” and for the most part, Africans were not admitted to the upper ranks. Mohamed was recruited as a sleeper because he had a passport, language skills, and would not stand out as a foreigner in Dar es Salaam. Odeh explained to the FBI that there are several types of Al Qaeda operatives: sophisticated operatives who are involved in intelligence collection, choosing targets, surveillance, and making the bombs. But another category of operatives includes “good Muslims” who “are not experts in anything that would have a long-term benefit to the rest of the group.”25 The main thing they have to offer is their knowledge of the local languages and customs.
These dispensable young men, recruited to act only in the implementation phase of an attack, are unlikely to join Al Qaeda in a formal sense. They are often identified in the mosque, Odeh said. Atrocities against Muslims—anywhere in the world—help to create a climate that is ripe for recruiting young men to become soldiers for Allah. It is not even necessary to mention the name Al Qaeda to recruit them, Odeh told Jerry Post, a psychiatrist who interviewed him.26 It is possible that many of the American, British, and Southeast Asian sleepers that law-enforcement authorities continue to discover all over the world were recruited to play a similar role. Like Mohamed, the group of Yemeni Americans taken into custody in September 2002 apparently went to Afghanistan for a relatively short course of training. In the camp, potential recruits’ skills and commitment can be closely observed so that trainers can funnel them into the appropriate tier of the organization. Because of Al Qaeda’s strict policy of sharing information only on a need-to-know basis, sleepers—who serve as a kind of reserve army in the targeted country—are unlikely to know precisely for what they have been recruited until immediately before an attack.
Some of the most important revelations of the trial were contained in an Al Qaeda instruction manual called the “Declaration of Jihad against the Country’s Tyrants,” which was entered into evidence. The manual makes clear that intelligence and counterintelligence (avoiding detection by the enemy intelligence agencies) is a priority for Al Qaeda. It instructs sleepers in the art of disappearing in enemy territory by shaving their beards, avoiding typical Muslim dress or expressions, not chatting too much (especially with taxi drivers, who may work for the enemy government), and wearing cologne. Sleepers are urged to find residences in new apartment buildings, where neighbors are less likely to know one another. Found by the Manchester (England) Metropolitan Police during a search of an Al Qaeda member’s home, the manual was located in a computer file described as “the military series” and was subsequently translated into English.27 In the “first lesson,” the manual describes the “main mission for which the Military Organization is responsible” as “the overthrow of the godless regimes and their replacement with an Islamic regime.”28 The second lesson spells out the “necessary qualifications and characteristics” of the organization’s members, which include a commitment to Islam and to the organization’s ideology, maturity, sacrifice, listening and obedience, keeping secrets, health, patience, “tranquillity and unflappability,” intelligence and insights, caution and prudence, truthfulness and counsel, ability to observe and analyze, and the “ability to act.”29 Subsequent “lessons” teach the trainee how to forge documents, establish safe houses and hiding places, establish safe communications, procure weapons, and gather intelligence. A large number of training manuals have been discovered in Afghanistan and elsewhere.30
Witnesses at the trial explained the structure of the organization in some detail. Bin Laden was known as the “emir,” or leader. Directly under him was the Shura Council, which consisted of a dozen or so members.31 The Shura oversaw the committees. The military committee was responsible for training camps and for procurement of weapons. The Islamic Study Committee issued fatwas and other religious rulings. The Media Committee published the newspapers. The Travel Committee was responsible for the procurement of both tickets and false-identity papers and came under the purview of the Finance Committee. The Finance Committee oversaw bin Laden’s businesses.32 Al Qaeda had extensive dealings with charitable organizations. First, it used them to provide cover and for money laundering. Second, money donated to charitable organizations to provide humanitarian relief often ended up in Al Qaeda’s coffers. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Al Qaeda provided an important social-welfare function. It was simultaneously a recipient of “charitable funds” and a provider of humanitarian relief, a kind of terrorist United Way.
In this sense, Al Qaeda is similar to the Pakistani and Indonesian jihadi groups we have examined in earlier chapters. Al Qaeda has a clear hierarchy. There are commanders, managers, and cadres; and cadres consist of both skilled and unskilled labor. Foot soldiers are likely to be found in schools or mosques, and only the best and brightest make it to the top. Some midlevel operatives are paid enough inside the organization that they may find it difficult to leave, while for others—generally those who come from wealthier families—the spiritual and psychological attractions of jihad are sufficient. Information is shared on a need-to-know basis, as in an intelligence agency.
Several Al Qaeda functions are worth discussing in somewhat more detail: planning operations, relations with states, recruitment, training, developing the mission, and weapons acquisition.
Some Al Qaeda operations take years to plan and implement, and sometimes the group reattempts attacks that failed the first time around. The idea to attack the World Trade Center appears to have originated well before the 1993 attack. Ramzi Yousef, who spent three years in a safe house provided by bin Laden prior to his arrest,33 made clear to the FBI that he intended to knock the two buildings down, but that lack of funds had prevented him from achieving his ambitious goals. He had also plotted, together with his right-hand man, Abdul Hakim Murad, as well as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, his uncle, to destroy eleven American airplanes midair, a plot that was successfully tested on a Philippine airliner in December 1994, killing one passenger and injuring at least six others.34 The plot became known as the Bojinka Plot, which is Serbo-Croat for “the explosion.”35 Numerous reports have emerged that Al Qaeda had considered using airplanes as weapons before, including the widely reported plot to attack the CIA headquarters. Bin Laden admitted on videotape that he had not expected the Trade Center buildings to collapse, but that he had rejoiced in the surprising effectiveness of the attack.
For some operations, leaders are involved in detailed planning. Ali Muhammad, an Egyptian-born naturalized U.S. citizen who admitted conducting photographic surveillance of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, told American investigators that bin Laden himself had looked at surveillance photographs and selected the spot where the suicide truck should explode in the 1998 attack.36 But not all plots receive this level of oversight. Members of Al Qaeda in Jordan, for instance, who were arrested while preparing for attacks to be carried out during the millennium, were providing for themselves, rather than receiving lavish sums. Ahmed Ressam testified that he had been given what amounted to seed money for his planned attack in Los Angeles during the millennium. During the trial of Mokhtar Haouari, a coconspirator in the “millennium plot,” Ressam testified that he had had to raise most of the funds on his own, which he did by making use of his long-standing expertise in credit-card, immigration, and welfare fraud; as well as other criminal activities such as theft and robbery.37
The attack on the USS Cole was originally planned on another U.S. destroyer, The Sullivans. The suggested target date for the attack on The Sullivans had been January 3, 2000, at the height of Ramadan. This first attempt to sink an U.S. warship failed when the explosives-laden boat sank.38
Al Qaeda is patient. A senior counterterrorism official of the FBI observes, “They plan their operations well in advance and have the patience to wait to conduct the attack at the right time. Prior to carrying out the operation, Al Qaeda conducts surveillance of the target, sometimes on multiple occasions, often using nationals of the target they are surveying to enter the location without suspicion. The results of the surveillance are forwarded to Al Qaeda HQ as elaborate ‘ops plans’ or ‘targeting packages’ prepared using photographs, CADCAM (computer-aided design/computer-aided mapping) software, and the operative’s notes.”39 This sophistication, coupled with a wealth of financial and material resources, allows bin Laden’s terrorist network to stage spectacular attacks.
The jihadi groups we have discussed in previous chapters built up strong relationships with individual politicians, intelligence agencies, or various factions of divided governments. The Pakistani jihadis were long sustained by Pakistan’s ISI and are still assisted by former ISI agents, who serve as trainers at terrorist-training camps. It is likely that some current ISI agents still support the jihadi groups, even after President Musharraf’s post–September 11 promise to force pro-jihadi elements out.40 As we discussed in chapter 3, active-duty military personnel helped to train Laskar Jihad mujahideen in Indonesia and have had a long-standing relationship with the leader of Jamaah Islamiyah, now closely associated with Al Qaeda.41 As we discussed in chapter 2, Saddam Hussein offered cash payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, and Saudi charities, purportedly unconnected to the government, do the same. Iran provides funding to a variety of jihadi groups around the world, including Sunni ones, as well as safe haven. Ali Mohamed, a witness for the U.S. government in the African-embassies bombing trial held in 2001, testified that Al Qaeda maintained close ties to Iranian security forces. The security forces provided Al Qaeda with bombs “disguised to look like rocks,” he said, and arranged for the group to receive training in explosives at Hezbollah-run camps in Lebanon.42
But bin Laden went beyond cooperating with states and state agents. He made himself so indispensable to leaders willing to provide him sanctuary that the assets of the state became his to use. He built a major highway in Sudan. Bin Laden’s businesses became major employers of Sudanese citizens. For example, Al-Damazine Farms, which manufactured sesame oil and grew peanuts and corn, employed some four thousand people.43
Bin Laden established a close personal relationship with Hassan al-Turabi, leader of the National Islamic Front in Sudan and a leading Islamist intellectual who was educated in the West. Al-Turabi was trying to establish an Islamic state in Sudan based on a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Bin Laden also worked closely with Sudan’s intelligence agency and military. As a result of these relationships—and Sudan’s financial dependence on bin Laden—he was able to build training camps, establish safe houses, and plan terrorist operations from Sudanese territory. The National Islamic Front supplied bin Laden with communications equipment, radios, rifles, and fake passports for his personnel.
BinLaden made important foreign contacts while living in Sudan. During an Islamic People’s Congress in Sudan in 1995, he met leaders of other radical Islamist groups, including Hamas and PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad), as well as extremist organizations from Algeria, Pakistan, and Tunisia. Al Qaeda further extended its worldwide network of contacts through training, arms smuggling, or providing financial support to groups based in the Philippines, Jordan, Eritrea, Egypt, Yemen, and elsewhere.
After the U.S. government pressured Sudan to expel bin Laden in mid-May 1996, he moved his operation to Jalalabad, Afghanistan. He reportedly lost $300 million in investments that he was forced to leave behind. Despite these losses, soon after his arrival in Afghanistan, bin Laden began buying the services of the Taliban. He offered up members of his elite unit, the 055 Brigade, to assist the Taliban in its efforts to destroy the Northern Alliance.44 Over five years, he gave the Taliban regime some $100 million, according to U.S. officials.45 In return, he received the Taliban’s hospitality and loyalty. According to Mohammed Khaksar, who served as the Taliban’s chief of intelligence, then as deputy minister of the interior prior to his defection to the Northern Alliance in 2001, “Al Qaeda was very important for the Taliban because they had so much money…. They gave a lot of money. And the Taliban trusted them.”46
Does Al Qaeda need the services of a state to continue to function as it did prior to September 11? I think the answer is that it probably does. But there is no reason to think that Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front (IIF)47 can’t change their way of functioning so that the services of a state are no longer as critical. The IIF is a learning organization. The movement is beginning take on some of the attributes of groups we’ve studied in previous chapters, encouraging leaderless resisters, virtual networks, and lone-wolf avengers. The IIF is also increasingly relying on what I will call franchises—groups that have their own regional agendas, but are willing to contribute (including financially) to Al Qaeda’s global, anti-American project when invited; and groups or individuals who may not be formal members but were trained at Al Qaeda’s camps and are willing to work as freelancers.
Conventional
The Al Qaeda body responsible for the procurement of weapons is the Military Committee—one of four committees that are subordinate to the shura majlis, the consultative council of the network. Apart from being responsible for the development and acquisition of both conventional and unconventional weapons, the Military Committee is also in charge of recruitment and training, as well as the planning and execution phases of Al Qaeda’s military operations.48
Al Qaeda acquires weapons and explosives from a variety of sources, depending on the type of operation and its location. The 055 Brigade, for instance—Al Qaeda’s guerrilla organization that fought alongside the Taliban against the Northern Alliance—used weapons left behind by the Red Army. It also received weapons from the Taliban and the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI.
During the 1990s, many of Al Qaeda’s procurement officers obtained weapons in Western countries. During bin Laden’s stay in Sudan, from 1991 to 1996, the establishment of businesses in the East African country provided much of the cover for the network’s procurement of weapons.49 Al Qaeda’s global reach has enabled it to establish a worldwide network of procurement officers. One of them, according to terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna, was bin Laden’s personal pilot, Essam al-Ridi, a U.S. citizen who obtained communication equipment from Japan; scuba gear and range finders from Britain; satellite phones from Germany; night-vision goggles, .50-caliber sniping rifles, and a T-389 plane from America.50 Al Qaeda has also procured weapons from Russian and Ukrainian organized criminal rings. Al Qaeda’s and the IIF’s links with organized criminal groups are likely to grow stronger in the aftermath of September 11, as many Western states are stepping up the pressure against Al Qaeda cells operating in some of these countries.
Unconventional Weapons
Bin Laden has repeatedly made clear his desire to acquire unconventional weapons. In January 1999 he told a reporter, “Acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so. And if I seek to acquire these weapons, I am carrying out a duty. It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess the weapons that would prevent the infidels from inflicting harm on Muslims.”51 After September 11, he pronounced that he already possessed chemical and nuclear weapons.52 Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman Zawahiri wrote in his memoirs that “the targets and the type of weapons must be selected carefully to cause damage to the enemy’s structure and deter it enough to make it stop its brutality,” probably in reference to unconventional weapons.53
Chemical and Biological Weapons Iraqi chemical-weapons experts shifted some of their operations to Sudan after the Gulf War, according to CIA assessments released to the press. Bin Laden moved to Sudan at about the same time. Beginning in 1995, the CIA began receiving reports that Sudanese leaders had approved bin Laden’s request to begin production of chemical weapons to use against U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia.54 Khidhir Hamza, the director of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program from 1987 to 1990, claimed that bin Laden’s agents had contacted Iraqi agents with the aim of purchasing weapons components from Iraq. Saddam Hussein reportedly sent Ansar al-Islam, the terrorist group that attempted to assassinate the prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Barham Salih, to train in Al Qaeda camps.
Ahmed Ressam, one of the Al Qaeda operatives apprehended in the millennium plots, described crude chemical-weapons training at camps in Afghanistan, including experiments on animals.55 In December 2000, special units of the Italian and German police arrested several Al Qaeda agents based in Milan, Italy, and Frankfurt, Germany, who had plotted to bomb the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, France, using sarin, a nerve agent.56 Other evidence of the group’s interest in chemical and biological weapons includes a manual that provides instructions for using chemical weapons;57 a manual that provides recipes for producing chemical and biological agents from readily available ingredients;58 and intercepted phone conversations between Al Qaeda operatives who were discussing unconventional agents.59
In August 2002, CNN bought a cache of Al Qaeda videotapes in Afghanistan that showed Al Qaeda’s gruesome chemical-weapons experiments, substantiating earlier reports about experiments on animals. On one of these videotapes, several men are seen rushing from an enclosed room, shouting at each other to hurry; they leave behind a dog. After the men leave, a white liquid on the floor forms a noxious gas. The dog is seen convulsing and eventually dies.
A large cache of documents and other materials was found during the raid that led to the capture of Al Qaeda’s operational planner, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, in March 2003. The seized documents revealed that Al Qaeda had acquired the necessary materials for producing botulinum and salmonella toxin and the chemical agent cyanide—and was close to developing a workable plan for producing anthrax, a far more lethal agent. Mohammed had been staying at the home of Abdul Quoddoos Khan, a member of Jamaat-i-Islami. Khan is reportedly a bacteriologist with access to production materials and facilities.60
The greatest worry, however, is that the International Islamic Front, possibly working together with Hezbollah or other terrorist groups, will acquire assistance from persons who have access to a sophisticated biological-weapons program, possibly, but not necessarily, one that is state run.
Nuclear Weapons The U.S. government has been concerned about Al Qaeda’s interest in acquiring nuclear weapons since the mid-1990s. In early February 2001, Jamal Ahmad al-Fadl admitted that one of bin Laden’s top lieutenants ordered him to try to buy uranium from a former Sudanese military officer named Salah Abdel Mobruk. The uranium was offered for $1.5 million. Documents described the material as originating in South Africa. Al-Fadl received a $10,000 bonus for arranging the deal. He testified that he does not know the outcome.61
U.S. government officials reportedly believe that Al Qaeda successfully purchased uranium from South Africa.62 Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a senior deputy to bin Laden, was extradited from Germany to the United States in 1998. The U.S. government accuses Salim of attempting to obtain material that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.63
Numerous reports have emerged that bin Laden has forged links with organized criminal groups based in the former Soviet Union, Central Asia, and the Caucasus in his attempts to acquire nuclear weapons.64 Russian authorities suspect the August 2002 murder of a nuclear chemist may have been linked to a clandestine effort to steal the country’s nuclear technology.65 They also report that they had observed terrorists staking out a secret nuclear-weapons storage facility on two occasions, and that they had thwarted an organized criminal group’s attempt to steal 18.5 kilograms of highly enriched uranium.66 This last claim is unusual and alarming, in part because of the quantity—enough to make several nuclear weapons—and in part because the material was actually weapons-usable. Most press reporting about nuclear thefts turn out, after investigation, to refer to caches of low-enriched uranium or radioactive but not nuclear-weapons-usable materials.
American officials are suspicious about the activities of two Pakistani nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majid, who reportedly met with bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and two other Al Qaeda officials several times during August 2001. Pakistani officials insist that despite Mahmood’s experience in uranium enrichment and plutonium production, the two scientists had “neither the knowledge nor the experience to assist in the construction of any type of nuclear weapon.”67 The two scientists, who were eventually released, reported that during one meeting, Osama bin Laden declared he possessed “some type of radiological material” and was interested in learning how he could use it in a weapon.68
If Al Qaeda builds a nuclear weapon or already has one, it is probably a relatively crude device. An extensive study conducted by the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington found “no credible evidence that either bin Laden or Al Qaeda possesses nuclear weapons or sufficient fissile material to make them,” but that if Al Qaeda obtained sufficient nuclear-weapons-usable material, it would be capable of building a crude nuclear explosive.69
In the years following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda’s recruitment was conducted by the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK—Services Office). Osama bin Laden and his spiritual mentor, the Palestinian head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Abdullah Azzam, established the MAK in 1984. The MAK recruited young Muslims to come to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet infidels. With branches in over thirty countries, including Europe and the United States, and a sizable budget, the MAK was responsible for propaganda, fund-raising, and coordinating recruitment. While bin Laden covered the costs for transporting the new recruits, the Afghan government provided the land, and training camps were soon established.70
Most Al Qaeda operatives appear to have been recruited by Islamist organizations in their home countries. A Spanish investigation in November 2001, for example, concluded that a group known in Spain as Soldiers of Allah gradually assumed control over the Abu Bakr mosque in 1994. It had financial ties with Al Qaeda and regularly sent volunteers for training in Bosnia, Pakistan, and the Philippines.71 Surveillance of a key recruitment officer based in Italy, Abu Hamza, revealed a tightly linked network of Al Qaeda recruitment officers in Europe, which included Abu Hamza and Sami Ben Khemais in Italy, Tarek Maaroufi in Belgium, and Abu Dahdah in Spain.72 In Germany, in addition to recruitment through mainstream Islamic associations and charitable agencies, Al Qaeda recruiting officers used amateur videos of fighting in Chechnya to attract recruits.73 One two-hour-long recruiting video that was probably produced in the summer of 2001 showed a mock assassination of former president Clinton, along with footage of training bases in Afghanistan. Methodically, the film moves from picture frames of Palestinian children killed or wounded by Israeli soldiers and Muslim women being beaten, to pictures of “great Muslim victories” in Chechnya, Somalia, and against the USS Cole. The video concludes with a call for Muslims to embark on the hegira, or migration, to Afghanistan.74
In Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia, seminaries are often fertile ground for recruitment. Many of them promote the excitement of joining the jihad as much as they do the horror stories of atrocities against Muslims. In Malaysia, a school associated with Al Qaeda issued brochures exhorting young radicals to forgo Palestine for Afghanistan, where they were promised three thousand kilometers of open borders and the friendship of many like-minded colleagues, who had made Afghanistan the international center of Islamic militancy. Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, the spiritual leader of Jamaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian terrorist group closely affiliated with Al Qaeda, championed bin Laden and exhorted students in Indonesia and Malaysia to carry on a “personal jihad” following bin Laden’s lead.75
The way Khalfan Khamis Mohamed was recruited is typical for foot soldiers. Recruiters locate raw talent in a seminary or a mosque. The raw talent is then sent to a camp, where it is assessed on various dimensions: commitment to Islam, psychological reliability, intelligence, and physical prowess. Identifying reliable recruits is considered the most difficult job. Among Al Qaeda’s most well-known and successful recruiters of elite operatives are Muhammad Atef, who was reportedly killed by U.S. bombs in November 2002, and Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian born in Saudi Arabia, now in U.S. custody.
Osama bin Laden provided training camps and guesthouses in Afghanistan for the use of Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups beginning in 1989. Western intelligence agencies estimate that by September 11, 2001, between 70,000 and 110,000 radical Muslims had graduated from Al Qaeda training camps such as Khalden, Derunta, Khost, Siddiq, or Jihad Wal.76 Of those, only a few thousand graduates—who distinguished themselves spiritually, physically, or psychologically—were invited to join Al Qaeda. The difficulty of making the cut as a full-fledged recruit meant that Islamists from all over the world regarded joining Al Qaeda as the highest possible honor, Gunaratna explains.77
The exact number of training camps in Afghanistan that are associated with Osama bin Laden is unknown, and estimates range from a dozen to over fifty such camps.78 In the mid-1990s, Al Qaeda shifted its headquarters to Khartoum and established or assisted in the establishment of an estimated twenty training camps in Sudan. Other training camps have been identified in lawless corners of Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Chechnya, and other countries. The camps serve a variety of purposes in addition to training members and reserves. They create social ties, so that operatives feel committed to the cause on both ideological and solidarity grounds. Specialists then funnel recruits into the right level of the organization and into the right job: public-relations officer, regional manager, trainer, sleeper, or other.
John Walker Lindh told investigators that the camp he attended near Kandahar offered both basic and advanced training. After the basic training course, trainees can select different tracks to follow, one involving battlefield training and the other “civilian warfare training.” The battlefield course includes “advanced topography, ambushes, tactics, battlefield formations, trench warfare…practicing assassinations with pistols and rifles, and shooting from motorcycles and cars.” The civilian warfare course includes “terrorism, forgery of passports and documents, poisons, mine explosions, and an intelligence course which teaches trainees how to avoid detection by police.” Most of the trainees were Saudi, he said. He also said that the leader of the camp approached all foreign trainees to recruit them for “foreign operations.” The foreign recruits were instructed not to discuss the conversation about foreign operations with their fellow trainees, and they were not given any details about what the foreign terrorist operations might entail.79 Trainees were also asked whether they were willing to work in their own country. Lindh said that the leader of the camp, Al Musri, interviewed him personally.
Tapes reportedly captured by the U.S. army in Afghanistan show Al Qaeda members training to carry out operations in the West. The tapes show a level of professionalism that suggests that Al Qaeda had received significant assistance from a professional military, according to an analyst who read the army’s assessment and viewed the tapes himself. On one tape, operatives are trained to carry out an ambush near a six-lane highway similar to those that are found in the United States and Europe. Hostage scenarios include raids of large buildings with many occupants. Trainees playing the role of terrorists dictate commands to the hostages in English, and the trainees playing the hostages respond in English. Operatives are trained to determine whether soldiers or other armed personnel are among the hostages so that those with weapons can be segregated from the rest. The armed hostages are then executed in front of television cameras. Another scenario prepares operatives for assassinating dignitaries—possibly national leaders—on a golf course. It is clear from the tapes that Al Qaeda is training its operatives to maximize media coverage, according to the army’s assessment.80
The most important aspect of training, however, is mental training and religious indoctrination. Religious indoctrination includes Islamic law and history and how to wage a holy war. The story that recruits must learn is about identity—it is about who we are as distinct from them, to whom Zawahiri, bin Laden’s deputy, refers to as the “new Crusaders.”81
Most importantly, camps are used to inculcate “the story” into young men’s heads. The story is about an evil enemy who, in the words of Zawahiri, is waging a “new Crusade” against the lands of Islam. This enemy must be fought militarily, Zawahiri explains, because that is the only language the West understands. The enemy is easily frightened by small groups of fighters, and trainees learn how to function in small cells.82
A professional terrorist chooses his mission carefully. He is able to read popular opinion and is likely to change his mission over time. Astute leaders may find new missions—or emphasize new aspects of the mission—when they realize they can no longer “sell” the old one to sponsors and potential recruits, either because the original mission was achieved or, more commonly, because the impossibility of achieving the mission has become obvious.
Terrorism grows out of seductive solutions to grievances. When revolutions succeed, which happens occasionally, the imperative to address the problems of the aggrieved group comes to be accepted by a wider population. But the techniques of terror—the deliberate murder of innocent civilians—are counter to every mainstream religious tradition. This is why the mission—the articulation of the grievance—is so important. It must be so compellingly described that recruits are willing to violate normal moral rules in its name.
The people on whose behalf the terrorists aim to fight must be portrayed as worthy of heroic acts of martyrdom. In his memoir, Zawahiri says that an alliance of jihadi groups and “liberated states” is anxious to seek retribution for the blood of the martyrs, the grief of the mothers, the deprivation of the orphans, the suffering of the detainees, and the sores of the tortured people throughout the land of Islam. He says that this age is witnessing a new phenomenon of mujaheed youths who have abandoned their families, countries, wealth, studies, and jobs in search of jihad arenas for the sake of God.83
The enemy must be portrayed as a monstrous threat. Zawahiri warns his followers that the new Crusaders respect no moral boundaries and understand only the language of violence. The enemy is characterized by “brutality, arrogance, and disregard for all taboos and customs.” He urges jihadis to choose weapons and tactics capable of inflicting maximum casualties on the enemy at minimal cost to the mujahideen. He warns followers that the enemy makes use of a variety of tools and proxies, including the United Nations, friendly rulers of the Muslim peoples, multinational corporations, international communications and data exchange systems, international news agencies and satellite media channels. The enemy also uses international relief agencies as a cover for espionage, proselytizing, coup planning, and the transfer of weapons.84 John Walker Lindh told interrogators that he had decided to “join the fight of the Pakistani people in Kashmir” when he was in a madrassah in Pakistan, where he heard reports of “torture, rape, and massacre of the Pakistani people by India.” He said that he was overwhelmed by the “guilt of sitting idle while these atrocities were committed,” and he volunteered for training, first in Pakistan, then in Afghanistan, ultimately ending up fighting with the Taliban.85 A trainer for HUM who was interviewed for this book said that he decided to join the jihad when he was in eleventh grade, after hearing about two Muslim women who were raped by Indian forces.86 Ironically, the enemy’s existence—and even his atrocities—help terrorist groups prove the importance of their mission. The Lashkar e Taiba public-affairs director told me he felt “happy” about the growth of the Hindu extremist group Bajrang Dal, the arch-nemesis of the Pakistani militant groups. It provides a raison d’être for Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan, he said. “What is the logic for stopping the jihadi groups’ activities if the Indian government supports groups like Bajrang Dal?” he asked.87
Peter Verkhovensky, a character in Dostoyevsky’s 1871 novel The Demons, claims to be a socialist but is ultimately exposed as a cheat and a fraud. But the real villains in the novel are the bad ideas that seduced young men to join revolutionary movements. Leaders, who may have been true believers in their youth, cynically take advantage of their zealous recruits, manipulating them with an enticing mission, ultimately using these true believers as their weapons. Joseph Conrad described terrorists as “fools victimized by ideas they cannot possibly believe…. While they mouth slogans or even practice anarchist beliefs, their motives are the result of self-display, power plays, class confusion, acting out roles.”88
Both Dostoyevsky and Conrad understood that the prospect of playing a seemingly heroic role can persuade young men to become ruthless killers in the service of bad ideas, but the bad ideas must be seductively packaged. Terrorist groups have to raise money by “selling” their mission to supporters—including donors, personnel (both managers and followers), and the broader public. Selecting and advertising a mission that will attract donations—of time, talent, money, and for suicide operations, lives—is thus critically important to the group’s survival.
Zawahiri observes that the New World Order is a source of humiliation for Muslims. It is better for the youth of Islam to carry arms and defend their religion with pride and dignity than to submit to this humiliation, he says.
Violence, in other words, restores the dignity of humiliated youth. This idea is similar to Franz Fanon’s notion that violence is a “cleansing force,” which frees the oppressed youth from his “inferiority complex,” “despair,” and “inaction,” making him fearless and restoring his self-respect.89 Fanon also warned of the dangers of globalization for the underdeveloped world, where youth, who are especially susceptible to the seductive pastimes offered by the West, comprise a large proportion of the population.90
Part of the mission of jihad is thus to restore Muslims’ pride in the face of a humiliating New World Order. The purpose of violence, according to this way of thinking, is to restore dignity and to help ward off dangerous temptations. Its target audience is not necessarily the victims and their sympathizers, but the perpetrators and their sympathizers. Violence is a way to strengthen support for the organization and the movement it represents. It is a marketing device and a method for rousing the troops.
In this regard, Zawahiri is conforming also with the views of Sayyid Qutb, whom Zawahiri describes as “the most prominent theoretician of the fundamentalist movements” and Islam’s most influential contemporary “martyr.” Qutb’s outlook on the West changed dramatically after his first visit to America, where he was repulsed by Americans’ materialism, racism, promiscuity, and feminism. Americans behave like animals, he said. They justify their vulgarity under the banner of emancipation of women and “free mixing of the sexes.” They love freedom, but eschew responsibility for their families.91 He saw the West as the historical enemy of Islam, citing the Crusades, European colonialism, and the Cold War as evidence. Qutb emphasized the need to cleanse Islam from impurities resulting from its exposure to Western and capitalist influence.
Western values have infiltrated the Muslim elites, who rule according to corrupt Western principles. The enemy’s weapons are political, economic, and religio-cultural. They must be fought at every level, Qutb warned.92 The twin purposes of jihad are to cleanse Islam of the impurifying influence of the West, and to fight the West using political, economic, and religio-cultural weapons—the same weapons the West allegedly uses against Islam.
Like more traditional humanitarian relief organizations, terrorists have to advertise their mission to potential donors and volunteers, and they tend to use similar techniques. As we have seen, they hold auctions, fund-raising dinners, and press conferences. They put up posters and put out newspapers. They cultivate journalists hoping for favorable press coverage. They openly solicit donations in houses of worship, at least where the state allows it. They send leaders on fund-raising missions abroad and arrange for private meetings between leaders and major donors. They make heavy use of the mail, the telephone, and the Internet, often providing their bank account numbers and the bank’s address. They demonstrate their effectiveness with sophisticated Web sites, often including photographs or streaming-video recordings of successful operations and of the atrocities perpetrated against the group they aim to help. All of these techniques are practiced by humanitarian organizations. As we discussed in the previous chapter, terrorist groups also advertise the kind of weapons that recruits will learn to use, in some cases including cyberwar. Person-to-person contacts, however, remain a critical component of fund-raising and recruitment drives.93
Astute terrorist leaders often realize that to attract additional funding, they may need to give up their original mission. The original mission of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, for example, was to turn Egypt into an Islamic state. By the late 1990s, the group had fallen on hard times. Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman was imprisoned in the United States for his involvement in a plot to bomb New York City landmarks in 1993. Other leaders had been killed or forced to move abroad. Zawahiri reportedly considered moving the group to Chechnya, but when he traveled there to check out the situation, he was arrested and imprisoned for traveling without an entry permit.94 After his release in May 1997, Zawahiri decided that it would be practical to shift his sights away from the “near enemy,” the secular rulers of Egypt, toward the “far enemy,” the West and the United States. Switching goals in this way would mean a large inflow of cash from bin Laden, which the group desperately needed. Islamists see Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who is supported by the United States, as a traitor to Islam on numerous grounds. He has continued his (assassinated) predecessor’s controversial policy of appeasing Israel at the expense of the Palestinians. His administration is widely viewed as corrupt and repressive. He has expelled or imprisoned most members of the Islamic resistance to his rule. Egyptian human rights organizations estimate that some sixteen thousand people with suspected links to Islamic organizations remain jailed in Egypt.95
The alliance between Zawahiri and bin Laden was a “marriage of convenience,” according to Lawrence Wright. One of Zawahiri’s chief assistants testified in Cairo that Zawahiri had confided in him that “joining with bin Laden [was] the only solution to keeping the jihad organization alive.”96 “These men were not mercenaries, they were highly motivated idealists, many of whom had turned their backs on middle-class careers…. They faced a difficult choice: whether to maintain their allegiance to a bootstrap organization that was always struggling financially or to join forces with a wealthy Saudi who had long-standing ties to the oil billionaires in the Persian Gulf,” Wright explains.
After Zawahiri shifted his focus away from Egypt, some of his followers left in protest, forming a splinter faction named Vanguards of Conquest (Talaa’ al-Fateh), which was weakened as a result of the Egyptian government’s clampdown on Islamists. In return for bin Laden’s financial assistance, Zawahiri provided him some two hundred loyal, disciplined, and well-trained followers, who became the core of Al Qaeda’s leadership. Zawahiri describes the new mission as a “global battle” against the “disbelievers,” who have “united against the mujahideen.” He adds, “The battle today cannot be fought on a regional level without taking into account the global hostility towards us.”
Another example of a group that changed its mission over time to secure a more reliable source of funding is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Its original mission was to fight the post-Soviet ruler of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, whose authoritarian rule is characterized by corruption and repression.97 When Juma Namangani, leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, was forced underground, together with his followers, they eventually made their way to Afghanistan, where they made contacts with Al Qaeda. Abdujabar Abduvakhitov, an Uzbek scholar who has studied the group since its inception, explains that the group found that by adopting Islamist slogans it could “make more money and get weapons.”98 The IMU shifted its mission from fighting injustice in Uzbekistan to inciting Islamic extremism and global jihad, thereby gaining access to financial supporters in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran, Abduvakhitov explains. The group’s new literature promoted the Taliban’s agenda, reviling America and the West, but also music, cigarettes, sex, and drink. Its new slogans made the movement repulsive to its original supporters in Uzbekistan, however.99
When the IMU terrorists returned to Uzbekistan in 2000, they had medical kits, tactical radios, and night-vision goggles. “All of this speaks to better funding, it speaks to better contacts,” an unnamed intelligence officer told the New York Times. “They made an impression on bin Laden.”100
In the spring of 2001 the group entered into an agreement with Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, to delay its Central Asian campaign and to fight the Northern Alliance. Namangani became commander of the 055 Brigade, bin Laden’s group of foreign fighters. After September 11, Namangani found himself at war with America. He had alienated his original supporters in his country, and the financial backers he attracted with his turn toward Islamism were no longer able to fund him because they were dispersed and largely broke. He was killed during the war in Afghanistan in November 2001.101
Changing the mission can cause a variety of problems. Volunteers may be wedded to the original mission and may resent the need to kowtow to donors, rather than focusing on the needs of the beneficiaries, as happened with the part of Egyptian Islamic Jihad that refused to join forces with bin Laden. Managers are vulnerable to the charge of mission creep. From the viewpoint of the original stakeholders in the organization, there is a principal-agent problem if the group’s mission shifts. An important example of this is when a state (or agencies within in a divided state) fund insurgent groups in the belief that they will have total control over the groups’ activities. But if a group diversifies its revenue stream, the state may find itself losing control. This is the case with regard to the militant and sectarian groups in Pakistan, which were largely created by the ISI. Now that a significant fraction of these groups’ income comes from other entities, the groups are increasingly engaging in activities that are counter to the state’s interests. Similarly, Indonesian jihadi groups that raise money from sources in the Gulf are slipping out of the control of their original backers in the Indonesian military. (In both these cases, it is important to point out again that the state is not a monolithic entity and that individual agents, or even agencies, may be acting in violation of state policy.)
Osama bin Laden himself has changed his mission over time. He inherited an organization devoted to fighting Soviet forces and turned that organization into a flexible group of ruthless warriors ready to fight on behalf of multiple causes. His first call to holy war, issued in 1992, urged believers to kill American soldiers in Saudi Arabia, the Horn of Africa, and Somalia. There was virtually no mention of Palestine. His second, in 1996, was a forty-page document listing atrocities and injustices committed against Muslims, mainly by Western powers. His third, in February 1998, for the first time urged followers deliberately to target American civilians, rather than soldiers. Although that fatwa mentioned the Palestinian struggle, it was only one of a litany of Muslim grievances. America’s “crimes” against Saudi Arabia (by stationing troops near Islam’s holiest sites), Iraq, and the other Islamic states of the region constituted “a clear declaration of war by the Americans against God, his Prophet, and the Muslims…By God’s leave, we call on every Muslim who believes in God and hopes for reward to obey God’s command to kill the Americans and plunder their possessions wherever he finds them and wherever he can,” bin Laden wrote.102 On October 7, 2001, in a message released on Al Jazeera television immediately after U.S. forces began bombing in Afghanistan, bin Laden issued his fourth call for jihad. This time he emphasized Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and the suffering of Iraqi children under UN sanctions, concerns broadly shared in the Islamic world. While most Muslims reject bin Laden’s interpretation of their religion, bin Laden felt the moment was ripe to win many over to his anti-Western cause. Bin Laden was competing for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims. He said that the September 11 “events” had split the world into two “camps,” the Islamic world and “infidels”—and that the time had come for “every Muslim to defend his religion” (echoing President Bush’s argument that from now on “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”103).
Bin Laden’s aim was to turn America’s response to the September 11 attack into a war between Islam and the West. With this new fatwa, bin Laden was striking at the “very core of the grievances that the common Arab man in the street has toward his respective government, especially in Saudi Arabia,” Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi analyst, explained.104 John Walker Lindh told U.S. investigators that Al Qaeda had come to believe that it was more effective to “attack the head of the snake” than to attack secular rulers in the Islamic world.
Al Qaeda and the IIF are not only changing their mission over time in response to new situations and new needs, but also their organizational style. With its corporate headquarters in shatters, Al Qaeda and the alliance are now relying on an ever shifting network of sympathetic groups and individuals, including the Southwest Asian jihadi groups that signed bin Laden’s February 1998 fatwa; franchise outfits in Southeast Asia; sleeper cells trained in Afghanistan and dispersed abroad; and freelancers such as Richard Reid, the convicted “shoe bomber,” who attempted to blow up a plane. Lone wolves are also beginning to take action on their own, without having been formally recruited or trained by Al Qaeda.
The Al Qaeda organization is learning that to evade law-enforcement detection in the West, it will need to adopt some of the qualities of the virtual network style we discussed in previous chapters. Coordination of major attacks in the post–September 11 world, in which law-enforcement and intelligence agencies have formed their own networks in response, will be difficult. Al Qaeda is adapting by communicating over the Internet and by issuing messages intended to frighten Americans and boost the morale of followers. The leadership of Al Qaeda appears to be functioning less as a group of commanders and more as inspirational leaders. A Web site that appeared after September 11 (but is no longer available) offered a special on-line training course that teaches the reader how to make time bombs and detonate enemy command centers. The site invited visitors to read a chapter on the production of explosives, saying, “We want deeds, not words. What counts is implementation.” Other sites made reference to the Encyclopedia of Jihad, which provides instructions for creating a “clandestine activity cell,” including intelligence, supply, planning and preparation, and implementation.105 In an article on the “culture of jihad,” a Saudi Islamist urges bin Laden’s sympathizers to take action on their own. “I do not need to meet the Sheikh and ask his permission to carry out some operation, the same as I do not need permission to pray, or to think about killing the Jews and the Crusaders that gather on our lands.” He accuses the enemies of Islam of attempting to alter the Saudi education system to describe jihad as a way of thinking rather than as mode of action. Nor does it make any difference whether bin Laden is alive or dead. “If Osama bin Laden is alive or God forbid he is killed, there are thousand Bin Ladens in this nation. We should not abandon our way, which the Sheikh has paved for you, regardless of the existence of the Sheikh or his absence.”106
An anonymous article in another Islamist forum, “the lovers of jihad,” argues, “The Islamist view of the confrontation with the United States is settled. Furthermore, it is going to be the new ideology of the second generation of the Jihadi movements around the world. They do not need the existence of bin laden, after he fulfilled his role in the call and agitation for this project.”107
As with any network, the challenge for the Al Qaeda network of groups is to balance the needs for resilience and for capacity. Resilience refers to the ability of a network to withstand the loss of a node or nodes. To maximize resilience, the network has to maximize redundancy. Functions are not centralized. (This decreases the efficiency of the organization, but terrorist networks are unlikely to optimize efficiency as they do not have to answer to shareholders and they tend to view the “muscle” as expendable.) Capacity—the ability to optimize the scale of the attack—requires coordination, which makes the group less resilient because communication is required. Effectiveness is a function of both capacity and resilience.
Network theorists suggest that a network of networks is a resilient organization. Within each cluster, every node is connected to every other node in what is known as an “all channel” network. But only certain members of the cluster communicate with other clusters, and the ties between clusters are weak, to minimize the risk of penetration.
The strength of ties is not static, however; it varies over time. Training together in camps establishes trust, the glue that holds a network together. (Recall Fahid’s claim that he would not be able to trust Mohamed unless he trained in Afghanistan.) But task ties, the term network theorists use for relationships needed to accomplish particular tasks, are likely to be weak or even nonexistent until a leader brings a group together to carry out an operation.
In a law-enforcement-rich environment, the most effective terrorist organization probably consists of many clusters of varying size and complexity held together by trust and a shared mission rather than a hierarchical superstructure. Individual clusters may find their own funding through licit or illicit businesses, donations from wealthy industrialists, wealthy diasporas, or the relationships they develop with states or state agents. Individual groups may even compete for funds in what is known as a chaordic network.108 They may recruit and arm their groups separately. Innovation—such as attempts to acquire or use unconventional weapons—is promoted at all levels. Some of the clusters will remain dormant until a concrete operation is being planned. Those that are active in failing states where the state either supports them or cannot fight them will be able to remain active full-time. The only thing the sub-networks must have in common is a shared mission and goals.
In this network of networks, leadership style will vary. Complex tasks require hierarchies—the commander cadre–type organization we discussed in chapter 8. For very small operations, of the kind that are carried out by the Army of God that we discussed in chapter 6, little coordination or leadership is required: small cells or lone wolves inspired by the movement can act on their own. Individual operatives can have a powerful effect, as the sniper in suburban Washington in the fall of 2002 made clear. As more powerful weapons become available to smaller groups, virtual networks will become more dangerous.
The use of sleepers can make an organization significantly more resilient. Sleepers are informed of their tasks immediately before the operation. They are likely to be told only what they need to know: information is strictly compartmentalized.109
Technology has greatly increased the capacity of networks. Networks can now be decentralized but also highly focused. Members can travel nearly anywhere and communicate with one another anywhere. Money is also easily shipped.110 This is especially true for organizations like Al Qaeda, which utilize informal financial transactions and convert their cash into gems or gold.
Since September 11 and the war in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda and the IIF have been forming the kind of network of networks connected by weak ties that network theorists argue is the most effective style of organization, and making use of sleepers and freelancers, which increases the resilience of the alliance.
As is the case for many terrorist groups, Al Qaeda raises money in four ways: criminal activities, businesses, financial or in-kind assistance from states or state agents, and charitable donations.
Businesses
Al-Fadl testified that bin Laden set up a large number of companies in Sudan, including Wadi-al-Aqiq, a corporate shell that he referred to as the “mother” of all the other companies: Al Hijra Construction, a company that built roads and bridges; Taba Investment, Ltd., a currency trading group; Themar al-Mubaraka, an agriculture company; Quadarat, a transport company; Laden International, an import-export business. Al-Fadl said the group controlled the Islamic bank al-Shamal and held accounts at Barclays Bank in London as well as unnamed banks in Sudan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Cyprus, the United States, and Dubai.111 According to the U.S. indictment, “These companies were operated to provide income and to support Al Qaeda, and to provide cover for the procurement of explosives, weapons, and chemicals, and for the travel of Al Qaeda operatives.”112
Like many terrorist groups, Al Qaeda is involved in both licit and illicit enterprises. Bin Laden attempted to develop a more potent strain of heroin to export to the United States and Western Europe, in retaliation for the 1998 air strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan. He provided protection to processing plants and transport for the Taliban’s drug businesses, which financed training camps and supported extremists in neighboring countries, according to the United Nations.113 Al Qaeda used informal financial transactions known as hawala, which are based largely on trust and extensive use of family or regional connections,114 and a network of honey shops, to transfer funds around the world.115 It is now converting cash into diamonds and gold.
Charitable Donations
Charities, purportedly unaffiliated with the terrorist groups, seek funding for humanitarian relief operations, some of which is used for that purpose, and some of which is used to fund terrorist operations. Many jihadi groups use charities for fund-raising abroad or as a front for terrorist activities. Al Qaeda members testified that they received ID cards issued by a humanitarian relief organization based in Nairobi called Mercy International Relief Agency. The organization was involved in humanitarian relief efforts, as its name suggests, but it also served as a front organization for operatives during the period they were planning the Africa embassy bombings.116
By soliciting charitable donations abroad, groups draw attention to the cause among diaspora populations. The Gulf States, North America, the United Kingdom, and European countries are important sources of funding for terrorist groups. The U.S. government looked the other way when the IRA engaged in fund-raising dinners in the United States, but began to see the downside to such a policy when the groups being funded began killing American citizens.
But perhaps even more importantly, by soliciting money from the people, a terrorist organization (or terrorist-affiliated organization) can establish its bona fides as a group devoted to the interests of “the people.” While much of the group’s money may actually come from criminal activities, business operations, or government assistance, charitable donations are important as a “defining source of revenue,” a point made in regard to more traditional NGOs by Mark Moore, a specialist in nonprofits at Harvard University. In my interviews, leaders tend to emphasize charitable donations as the most important source of revenue for their groups; while operatives, presumably less attuned to the public-relations implications of their words, admit that smuggling, government funding, or large-scale donations by wealthy industrialists are the main sources of funding.117 Money flows into jihadi groups through charities; but money also flows out to the needy. Sophisticated jihadi organizations function very much like the United Way.
The New World Order and its instruments—Al Qaeda’s new foes—are attractive targets to a surprising array of groups. By emphasizing the New World Order as its enemy, Al Qaeda will be able to attract a variety of groups that oppose Western hegemony and international institutions.
White supremacists and Identity Christians are applauding Al Qaeda’s goals and actions and may eventually take action on the Al Qaeda network’s behalf as freelancers or lone-wolf avengers. A Swiss neo-Nazi named Albert Huber, who is popular with both Aryan youth and radical Muslims, is calling for neo-Nazis and Islamists to join forces. Huber was on the board of directors of the Al-Taqwa Foundation, which the U.S. government says was a major donor to Al Qaeda.118 The late William Pierce, who wrote The Turner Diaries, the book that inspired the Oklahoma City bombing, applauded the September 11 bombers. Pierce’s organization, the Alliance Nahad, urged its followers to celebrate the one-year anniversary of September 11 by printing out and disseminating flyers from its Web site. One of the flyers included a photograph of bin Laden and the World Trade Center and the caption, “Let’s stop being human shields for Israel.”119 Matt Hale, leader of the World Church of the Creator, a white supremacist organization one of whose members killed a number of blacks and Jews, is disseminating a book that exposes the “sinister machinations” that led to September 11, including the involvement of Jews and Israelis, in particular, the Mossad.120
Horst Mahler, a founder of the radical leftist German group the Red Army Faction, has moved from the extreme left to radical right. He too rejoiced at the news of the September 11 attacks, saying that they presage “the end of the American Century, the end of Global Capitalism, and thus the end of the secular Yahweh cult, of Mammonism.” He accuses the “one-World strategists” of trying to create a smoke screen to prevent ordinary people from understanding the real cause of September 11, which America brought on itself through its arrogance. “This is war,” he says, “with invisible fronts at present, and worldwide.” September 11 was just the first blow against the Globalists, whose true aim is to exterminate national cultures, he says. “It is not a war of material powers,” he says. “It is a spiritual struggle: the war of Western civilization, which is barbarism, against the cultures of the national peoples…. The oncoming crisis inthe World Economy—independent of the air attacks of 11 September 2001—is now taking the enchantment from ‘The American Way of Life.’ The absolute merchandisability of human existence—long felt as a sickness—is lost, along with the loss of external objects, in which human beings seek recognition and validation—but cannot find them.”121
The racist right is also applauding the efforts of other “antiglobalists” in addition to bin Laden. Louis Beam, author of the leaderless-resistance essay we discussed in chapter 6, is urging all antiglobalists, from all political persuasions, to join forces against the New World Order (NWO). He applauds the participants of the Battle of Seattle, who, he says, faced a “real invasion of black booted, black suited” thugs, while the racist right continued talking endlessly about the impending invasion of foreign troops in United Nations submarines.
“Mark my words,” Beam says, “this is but the first confrontation, there will be many more such confrontations as intelligent, caring people begin to face off the Waco thugs of the New World Order here in the United States. The New American Patriot will be neither left nor right, just a freeman fighting for liberty. New alliances will form between those who have in the past thought of themselves as ‘right-wingers,’ conservatives, and patriots with many people who have thought of themselves as ‘left-wingers,’ progressives, or just ‘liberal.’ ”122
Perhaps the most articulate proponent of forming an anti-NWO coalition is Keith Preston, a self-described veteran of numerous libertarian, anarchist, leftist, labor, and patriot organizations and an active anarchist. He argues that the war between the “U.S. and the Muslim world” is one front in a larger war, “namely, the emerging global conflict between those interests wishing to subordinate the entire world to the so-called ‘New World Order’ of global governance by elite financial interests in the advanced countries on one side and all those various national, regional, ethnic, cultural, religious, linguistic, and economic groups who wish to remain independent of such a global order.” He believes that the rapid drive to create this NWO must be reversed or it will “likely produce a system of totalitarian oppression similar to that of the Nazi and Soviet regimes of the twentieth century only with infinitely greater amounts of economic, technological, and military resources. All forces throughout the world seeking to resist this development must join together, regardless of their other differences, and provide mutual support to one another in the common struggle. The current U.S.-led ‘coalition’ against so-called ‘terrorism’ is simply a cover for continuing the process of global consolidation of power and crushing all efforts at resistance.” Islamic fundamentalists, he says, are fighting the same global interests seeking to impose “global government, international currency systems, firearms confiscation, international police forces, NAFTA, and other regressive economic policies on the American people.” He proposes joining forces even with Jewish fundamentalist sects, “such as the Neturei Karta, who have condemned Israeli imperialism and expansionism.” He urges the “bandits and anarchists” to join together with the “tribes, sects, warlords, and criminals” to assert themselves forcefully.123
While the threat these groups pose is nowhere near as significant as that of current members of the Al Qaeda alliance, some of their members may decide to support Al Qaeda’s goals, as lone wolves or leaderless resisters, giving it a new source of Western recruits.
The tri-border area where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet is becoming the new Libya: The place where terrorists with widely disparate ideologies—the Marxist groups FARC and ELN, American white supremacists, Hamas, Hezbollah, and members of bin Laden’s International Islamic Front—meet to swap tradecraft. Authorities worry that the more sophisticated groups could make use of the Americans as participants in their plots, possibly to bring in materials.
Perhaps the best example of a freelancer—an individual trained by Al Qaeda who takes action largely on his own—is Richard Reid. In October 2002, Richard Reid pled guilty to the charge that he tried to blow up a plane with a bomb hidden in his shoe in December 2001. He also admitted that he was trained at an Al Qaeda camp and said that he was a member of Al Qaeda, a statement that some experts suspect is not literally true. Reid gave in to his interrogators almost immediately, suggesting that he had not undergone the kind of rigorous psychological training that is typical for Al Qaeda members. Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert who has studied the Islamist community in London, from which Reid was apparently recruited, argues that Reid is most likely a fringe amateur inspired by what he saw in Afghanistan and by the movement in general. Others point out that Reid was in contact with Al Qaeda members by e-mail.124
Jamaah Islamiyah—the Franchise
The group known as Jamaah Islamiyah grew out of Islamic opposition to Soeharto’s regime. Like that of Lashkar Jihad, the group we discussed in chapter 5, its goal was to establish an Islamic community, jamaah Islamiyah, throughout Southeast Asia. Its spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, founded and runs a pesantren (seminary) called Ngruki near Solo, Java, close to the pesantren we discussed in chapter 3. Ba’asyir and his closest followers fled to Malaysia in 1985 to escape Soeharto’s suppression of the group. Some members returned after Soeharto’s resignation in 1998, and some remained in Malaysia. Although some members of Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) have clear links to Al Qaeda, JI is the violent wing of a broader movement that supports Ba’asyir. The movement, known as the Ngruki network, named after Ba’asyir’s school, includes a broad range of prominent individuals, some of whom are active in the Indonesian government. Many Indonesians are deeply concerned that the war on terrorism, and the U.S. push to arrest suspects without clear evidence, could radicalize the Muslim community.125
Mobilizing terrorist recruits and supporters requires an effective organization. Effectiveness requires resources, recruits, hierarchies, and logistics. It requires adopting the mission to appeal to the maximum number of recruits and financial backers.126 As we have seen, contestants often choose to call competition for natural resources or political power a religious conflict when they believe it will make their grievances more attractive to a broader set of potential fighters or financial backers. (Governments may do the same by labeling opposition groups religious extremists to win international support for crushing them.)
Money—used to buy goods and services—is a critical component of what distinguishes groups that are effective from those that disappear or fail to have an impact. The terrorists discussed in these pages raise money in a variety of ways. They run licit and illicit businesses. They auction off “relics.” They run their own informal banks, which take a “charitable donation” in lieu of interest. They solicit donations on the Internet, on the streets, and in houses of worship. They appeal to wealthy industrialists, sympathetic diasporas, and to governments or their agents. By functioning as a foundation that provides social services, the groups spread their ideas to donors as well as the recipients of their largesse. Recipients of charitable assistance may be more willing to donate their sons to the group’s cause. Of the religious groups discussed in this book, only the Islamists are effective in this way.
But terrorist organizations need to balance the requirements for optimizing capacity with those of resilience. Resilience (the ability to withstand the loss of personnel) requires redundancy and minimal or impenetrable communication, making coordination difficult absent cutting-edge encryption technologies. The most resilient group discussed in this book is the save-the-babies group Army of God, a virtual network whose members meet only to discuss the mission, not concrete plans. The drawback from the terrorists’ perspective to this maximally resilient style of organization is that it requires individuals or small groups to act on their own, making large-scale operations difficult.127
The best way to balance these competing objectives is to form a network of networks, which includes hierarchical structures (commanders and cadres); leaderless resisters who are inspired through virtual contacts; and franchises, which may donate money in return for the privilege of participating.128 The networks are held together mainly by their common mission (although some may be pursuing multiple missions, including local agendas of little interest to the rest of the network). By expanding his mission statement, bin Laden was able to expand his network to include most of the Islamist groups discussed in this book. Groups that are not Islamist but oppose globalization may be willing to donate money or operatives to the anti–New World Order cause.
The Al Qaeda network of networks is at the cutting edge of organizations today. Law-enforcement authorities will continue to discover new cells or clusters, but they will not be able to shut down the movement until bin Laden, his successors, and his sympathizers’ call to destroy the New World Order loses its appeal among populations made vulnerable by perceived humiliation and violations of human rights, perceived economic deprivation, confused identities, and poor governance.
There is a trade-off for policy makers between the need to destroy the adversary that is about to strike and the need to fight the movement over the long term. Our military action becomes the evidence our enemies need to prove the dangers of the New World Order they aim to fight. It creates a sense of urgency for the terrorists seeking to purify the world through murder.
It is part of the human condition to lack certainty about our identities; the desire to see ourselves in opposition to some Other is appealing to all of us. That is part—but only part—of what religion is all about. One of our goals must be to make the terrorists’ purification project seem less urgent: to demonstrate the humanity that binds us, rather than allow our adversaries to emphasize and exploit our differences to provide a seemingly clear (but false) identity, at the expense of peace. In the final chapter we explore these ideas in more detail.