The Territorial Imperative of Al-Qa=eda:

Why Jihadists Require More Than Netwar 

and Tactical Momentum to Succeed

 

                                                                Sean K. Anderson

                                                             Idaho State University

 

Abstract: Following the apparent eradication of al Qa’eda from Afghanistan beginning in October 2001 discussions on the Awar against terrorism@ have been framed narrowly in terms of being able to eradicate al Qa=eda and its leaders.  It has been argued that the Aassymetric warfare@ of al Qa=eda represents a radically new form of terrorism which depends more on loose networks of cellular groups conducting intermittent strikes rather than upon a more traditional model of a terrorist group requiring territorial bases, a chain of command, and state sponsors.  Contrary to this interpretation an examination of the historical and theological background of Islamic resurgent movements, including al Qa=eda, reveals that such movements cannot be sustained without a visible leadership and open control over a territory and some population.  This territorial imperative explains the shift in al Qa=eda activities in choices of targets, tactics, and venues following the 9/11 attacks and the loss of a safe haven in Afghanistan.  This interpretation is also supported by an examination of the published communiques of the al Qa=eda leadership.

         

Al Qa=eda Organization: Machine, or ALife-Form?@

 

Since the 9/11 attacks the Awar on terrorism@ has been alternately defined as a universal Afight for civilization@ or more narrowly as a campaign to find and destroy al Qa’eda and Usama ibn Ladin, along with his cohorts.  The attempt by the U.S. Bush administration to use the war on terrorism as a justification for toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein has been criticized as a parochial detour from the global war on terrorism that has detracted from multilateral efforts to neutralize the al Qa’eda threat as well as weakening trust and cooperation between the United States and the more than ninety nations that initially had responded positively to the U.S. call for a common joint effort against global terrorism.[1] Ironically the  U.S. intervention against the Iraqi regime, whose ties to al Qa’eda were at best weak and tentative, has led to the Iraqi insurgency in which al Qa’eda elements are now playing a key role. For many observers and analysts the Aglobal war on terrorism@ remains identified largely with efforts to contain and neutralize al Qa=eda.  However as long as four years after the 9/11 attacks there has been little agreement about the nature of the al Qa=eda phenomenon and how best to counter it. 

 

Xavier Raufer holds that western criminologists and security analysts have fundamentally misunderstood al Qa=eda envisioning it on the model of a Western terrorist organization, or what he refers to as a Amachine.@  Instead he believes it is more useful to envision it as a Alife-form,@ a nebula of like-minded and largely autonomous cells which are propagated by a common ideology and that cooperate with each other in a loose network without need for a hierarchical structure: 

 

 It is not enough to just collect and process facts about [Usama ibn Ladin=s] finances, tactics, communications, and organizational skills.  One has to try to understand his vision and worldview. [2]

 

An alternative analysis of al Qa’eda, more in line with Raufer’s Alife-form@ analogy, is that it represents a form of netwar:  Netwar is a form of low-intensity conflict involving actions falling short of conventional warfare and often involving non-violent as well as violent confrontations in which like-minded protagonists consisting of small groups, joined together in a network organization, use related doctrines, strategies and information-age technologies to communicate, coordinate, and campaign in an inter-netted manner without one central command.[3]  During the 1990s, as state sponsorship of terrorist groups appeared to be declining, new non-state terrorist groups, such as Hamas and al Qa’eda, became more prominent which appeared to be loose networks operating without direct state sponsorship.[4] 

 

Bruce Hoffman holds that al Qa’eda has become an effective netwar organization capable of adapting itself rapidly in a changing, globalizing environment. Consequently he dismisses the importance of the loss of Afghanistan to al Qa’eda as not affecting substantially its ability to mount terrorist operations:

 

Afghanistan=s main importance to al Qa’eda was a massive base from which to prosecute a conventional civil war against the late Ahmad Shah Massoud=s Northern Alliance.  Arms dumps, training camps, staging areas, and networks of forward and rear headquarters were therefore required for the prosecution of this type of conflict.  These accoutrements, however, are mostly irrelevant to their prosecution of an international terrorist campaign.[5] 

 

According to this interpretation, the acquisition, or loss, of a territory such as Afghanistan, under the control of an allied or co-opted regime, has no crucial bearing on al Qa’eda=s ability to survive and operate.  Indeed, Hoffman and other RAND analysts believe the new tactics of netwar have freed terrorist groups from the need for state sponsors or specific territorial sanctuaries.  However, this interpretation does not consider the role of territory and statehood from the perspective of al Qa’eda, that is, the Avision and worldview@ that motivates al Qa’eda and frames their goals. 

 

Al Qa’eda’s Goals: Jihad and Caliphat

 

According to Rohan Gunaratna, al Qa’eda has passed beyond being merely a revolutionary Islamist group, content with attacking perceived enemies of Islam, or even an ideological Islamist group, which employs political violence as part of a more developed social and political strategy, to becoming a utopian or possibly even an apocalyptic group - seeking to destroy the current social order in favor of some millennial order.[6] Kimbra L. Fishel has analyzed the overall strategy of al Qa’eda to be the waging of a >hegemonic= war against the United States in order to displace the global hegemony of the West with a revived Islamic caliphat by elevating the tools and techniques of regional insurgency to the global level.[7] These ultimate goals are both utopian and apocalyptic as defined by Gunaratna: the utopian goal is the re-establishment of a unitary Islamic state on the traditional caliphat model, embracing all existing Muslim nations, while the apocalyptic goal is the destruction of the United States and its world system, seen as the antithesis of Islam and arch-enemy of the Muslims. These goals have recently been reaffirmed in interviews conducted by Fouad Hussein, a Jordanian journalist, with Abu Musab al Zarqawi and other top lieutenants of al Qa’eda.[8]  These goals require possession of territory under salafist control both as a means to pursue jihad to   ‘liberate’ Muslim lands and people under un-Islamic control and as a goal in itself:  the liberated territory under legitimate Islamic rule becomes part of the “Dar as Salam,” or “Realm of Peace” of   the caliphal state being restored.  As such, territorial control for al Qa’eda is not simply a matter of tactical convenience but rather a religious or ideological imperative:  the failure of al Qa’eda and its allies, such as the Taliban, to acquire and hold territory in which the salafists can impose their version of Islamic rule ultimately deprives the group of legitimacy in the eyes of its constituent audiences. 

 

Although al Qa’eda is viewed as a relatively new organization with unprecedented scope of operations and transnational capabilities it must also be understood according to its own sense of mission, or what Raufer calls its “vision and world-view.”  Al Qa’eda historically was linked to the Ikhwan al-Muslimin (Muslim Brotherhood) through its founder, Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian-born leader of the Jordanian branch of the organization.  Indeed most of the salafist movements active throughout the world have been connected to the Muslim Brotherhood through the ties of their founders, who began their activist careers as apprentices or middle-tier members of the Ikhwan.  Although the Ikhwan is known mainly as an Egyptian-based organization, most of whose members include Muslim scholars, laymen, and activists who are not directly involved in violence, in reality the organization has served to recruit and radicalize young Muslim men from all parts of the Islamic world who in turn have created several violent spin-off jihadist or salafist groups which proceed to operate in cellular fashion, without visible ties to, or direction from, the main Ikhwan group.  The ideology of these various groups has been shaped by the writings of Sayyid Qutb, one of the leading theorists of the Ikhwan who was executed in 1966 by the Egyptian government for his alleged role in a plot to assassinate Gamal Abdul Nasser.[9] In fact Usama ibn Ladin pursued Islamic studies in Medina under the guidance of Muhammad Qutb, the brother of Sayyid Qutb, prior to his joining the mujahidin in the Afghan war.[10]

 

The vision and world-view of Sayyid Qutb are laid out in his seminal work Maalim fi al Tariq (Milestones).  Qutb advanced the argument that since the main object of jihad was enforcing full enactment of the Islamic sacred law, rather than the defense of Muslim lands or conquest of non-Muslims as such, there was no reason for Muslims to abstain from initiating military force to advance Islam in the world.  While the classical doctrine of jihad did not necessarily exclude the use of force to spread the Islamic religion most modern Muslim jurists, including the late rector of al-Azhar, Sheikh Mahmud al Shaltut, had preferred an interpretation of jihad as being primarily a defensive form of warfare.[11] Qutb’s more pro-active and aggressive interpretation of jihad did not stop with marking foreign non-Muslims as lawful targets of jihad. His works also demonized            Westernizing and secular nationalist Muslim political leaders as agents of a revived jahiliyyah (pre-Islamic ‘ignorance’) who therefore were to be counted among those enemies of Islam who could be lawfully attacked at will by true believers.  The Egyptian Jihad group incorporated Qutb's thoughts into their doctrine and enacted them with the assassination of Anwar Sadat on October 6, 1981.  Ayman al Zawahiri, who is currently considered to be ibn Ladin’s confident and right-hand man, was a leading member of the same Jihad group and made his way to Afghanistan, along with Muhammad Atef, in 1985 where they joined al Qa’eda, and later brokered an effective merger of the Jihad group with al Qa’eda.[12]                                       

 

The various salafist groups hold in common certain beliefs with regard to the doctrines of jihad and caliphat, which may be summarized as follows: 

 

1.      The Islamic laws have comprehensive solutions for all economic, social, diplomatic, criminal, and civil problems; 

            2.   Islamic law is itself perfect, immutable, and organic, not to be abrogated in part or                              amended; 

3.      The current Islamic world, with its mixture of traditional Muslim and contemporary      Western laws and institutions, and the ending of the historic Islamic state (the caliphat)   in 1924 and its division into several nation-states, represents a deviation from true Islam;

4.      The religious duties of jihad, holy war, or of "enjoining the good and forbidding the         evil," permit and may even require violence to rid Muslim lands of un-Islamic laws, institutions, rulers, foreign powers, and agents when other means fail; and,

5.      The Islamic laws require a restoration of the unitary Islamic state established by the Prophet Muhammad in Medina in 623 c.e. that after his death in 633 c.e. was perpetuated and expanded by his ‘rightly-guided successors’ (al Khulafa ar Rashidun), which state became known as the  khalifat (caliphat).  Not only is the reestablishment of the caliphat seen as commanded by Islamic law but true implementation of the complete code of Islamic laws is held not to be possible apart from restoration of the caliphat.

 

This restoration is to take place through the piece-meal overthrow of the various separate governments of the Muslim nation-states, regarded by salafists as illegitimate, which nations then will be reunited into a unitary framework of government.  Thus the creation of the Taliban state in Afghanistan, along with future possible victories of the salafists in Algeria, Egypt, or Iraq, would constitute steps toward the restoration of the caliphat. Salafists emphatically reject the use of reformism, incrementalism, or democratic processes to achieve this goal as being ungodly compromises of Islam with unbelief (kufr), and instead insist that the goal of a restored caliphat can only be achieved through jihad.[13]

 

Jihad:  The Sword versus Democracy

 

            The obligation of jihad as an individual duty, referred to in ibn Ladin’s 1998 fatwa against Americans, needs some explanation.[14]  According to classical Islamic jurisprudence the ordinary                                                                                                                                                                status of jihad as a religious obligation is that of fard al kafiya, a “collective duty,” as opposed to fard al ‘ayn, an “individual duty,” which each Muslim must fulfill personally and which cannot be delegated to another.  When the Muslim territories are at peace and under Islamic rule, then the obligation to engage in jihad is fulfilled by the ruler establishing an organized military force which the community supports through supplying recruits and the funds needed to maintain these armed forces.  The conduct of jihad by the Muslim army is qualified by rules of war that are very similar to the precepts of the Just War doctrine of St. Augustine. However, in the event that Muslim lands are invaded by non-Muslims, or else Islamic rule over the country is displaced by non-Islamic rule, then the obligation of waging jihad falls on all Muslims of all descriptions within the occupied lands.  Whereas women, children, the aged, and the infirm are exempt from the obligation of jihad when it is fard al kafiya, once it becomes fard al ‘ayn, these classes of citizens are no longer exempt and must fight. Moreover, given the asymmetry between the organized armed occupying forces and the relatively weaker Muslim civilians, Islamic jurisprudence allows the defenders much greater latitude in permissible tactics to drive out the enemy.  Ibn Ladin cites the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia, U.S. support for Israel’s occupation of Arab lands (including the third most holy Muslim religious site, the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem), the U.S. use of Saudi Arabia as a base from which to attack Iraq, and also the effects of U.S.-led sanctions on the ordinary people of Iraq - all as instances of non-Muslim aggression against, and occupation of, the Muslim lands.  This then justifies the invocation of jihad as fard al ‘ayn.  What is novel and unusual in ibn Ladin’s fatwa is that the scope of the jihad is not simply limited to Muslim lands under alleged occupation but extends to any lands where Americans can be attacked.  Throughout al Qa’eda declarations the principle of jihad is linked to the issue of redeeming Muslim lands occupied by non-Muslims. It is also linked to freeing these lands from the rule of Muslim persons and groups regarded as insufficiently committed to the precepts of Islam:

 

            We – with God’s help – call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.  We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan’s U.S. troops and the devil’s supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them [emphasis added] so that they may learn a lesson.[15]

 

In this way the call to jihad is linked to the call to overthrow the current Saudi government (as well as other governments of Muslim nations) in favor of one more in line with the salafist vision of an Islamic state and caliphat.

 

The Territorial Issues:

 

            The territorial issues that have motivated al Qa’eda include the following: 1. A foremost concern is the protection of the holy places of Islam, namely, the cities of Mecca and Medina, and     also Jerusalem, with their principal mosques.  The sanctity of the Masjid al Haram complex in Mecca is perceived to have been violated by the Saudi government through its having allowed non-Muslim military forces to enter the complex directly or to have control over it indirectly through their presence in the Arabian Peninsula. American support for the Israeli presence in Jerusalem and   Palestine are also cited by al Qa’eda as reasons for waging jihad against the United States and its allies.  The role of the Saudi regime in facilitating these alleged desecrations is also seen as proving that regime unfit to remain as the guardian of the holy places. 2. Another concern is the invasion and occupation of other Muslim territories by non-Muslim forces, including the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Indian presence in Kashmir, the Russian presence in Chechnya, and the later American-led foreign presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Azzam and ibn Ladin have even both gone so far as to declare Spain to be occupied Muslim territory.[16]  In tandem with the issue of occupation of Muslim lands is the question of the division of the Muslim world into a collection of nation-states ruled by nominally Muslim governments but which are regarded as apostate regimes by al Qa’eda and kindred salafist groups. 3. Finally there is the very practical need for sanctuaries and some degree of state support from regimes that al Qa’eda may regard as long term strategic enemies but near term tactical allies.   

 

1.         Control of the Holy Places

 

Ibn Ladin, like many other Saudis, was troubled upon learning of the Saudi government’s having allowed French military special forces units into Mecca to storm the Masjid al Haram complex, Islam’s holiest shrine, to dislodge salafist militants who had occupied the mosque on November 20, 1979, a day which corresponded to the first day of the new Islamic hijri calendar year of 1400.[17] Non-Muslims are forbidden by Islamic law from entering either Mecca or Medina, but after two weeks of fighting the Saudis found that their elite guards were either unable or else unwilling to dislodge the rebels. At the request of the Saudi king, French special forces were deployed to overpower the roughly 1,000 rebels, killing 250 and wounding about 600 in the process. Eleven years later, after the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in August 1990, Usama ibn Ladin petitioned the Saudi government to allow him to mobilize his network of mujahidin veterans of the Afghan war to carry out a guerrilla insurgency to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.  Instead, the Saudi government invited U.S. troops into its territory which ibn Ladin regarded as another desecration of the holy places of Islam.  Although no U.S. troops were deployed in the vicinity of either Mecca or Medina, the fact that the Saudi king, who had assumed the title of ‘Protector of the Two Holy Places’ (al Khadem al Haramayn) himself required U.S. forces to protect his kingdom meant, in effect, that the holy places were under the virtual occupation of non-Muslim forces. In 1996 ibn Ladin called for the overthrow of the Saudi regime by fellow salafists and the people of “the land of the two holy places.”[18]

 

            The “two holy places” also hold another strategic significance for al Qa’eda.  Historically the caliphat controlled the holy places as a privileged mandate since possessing and maintaining these cities and their mosques was a mark of the legitimacy of the ruling Caliph.  In 683 c.e., rebels seized Mecca and its shrine in order to rally disaffected Muslims against the Umayyad Caliph who reclaimed the city nine years later.  In 939 c.e., a Shi’ite splinter group attacked Mecca and seized the Black Stone which was returned twenty years later.  In 1916, Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Cairo, persuaded Sherif Hussein ibn Ali, who was the head of the Hashemite clan and hereditary governor of Mecca, to break his ties to the Ottoman Empire and ally himself with Britain on the understanding that Britain would recognize him as the king of the Arab lands then       under Ottoman control.  Sherif Hussein’s forces dislodged the Turkish contingents occupying Mecca as well as Taif, the residence of the Turkish Governor-General of Hijaz Province, an act which deeply demoralized the Caliph, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V. Then Sherif Hussein declared himself to be the King of the Hijaz and Protector of the Two Holy Places, whereupon he also demanded that the Sultan relinquish the title of Caliph to him, which demand was refused.[19]  When the newly-formed Turkish Republic officially abolished the caliphat in 1924, Sherif Hussein declared himself to be the next Caliph. However his claim was not recognized outside of the Hijaz, and in the same year Abdul-Aziz As-Sa’ud and his forces drove Hussein out of Mecca, making his claim to the caliphat moot. Although Abdul-Aziz assumed the title “Protector of the Two Holy Places” he, and the Saudi kings who succeeded him, never officially claimed the title of Caliph. Nonetheless for the next fifty years the Wahhabi adherents of the kingdom regarded the Saudi king as their Imam, a Caliph in all by name.  The last Caliph, who was generally acknowledged as such in the Muslim world, was the deposed Turkish Sultan Mehmed VI, who died in exile in San Remo.[20]

 

            As the possession of the Holy Places gives the Saudi king a claim to precedence among the various Muslim rulers, groups opposing the Saudi dynasty have sought to wrest control of those places to embarrass the Saudi king and undercut his pretensions of pre-eminence. The attempted takeover of the Masjid al Haram by salafist extremists in November 1979, was not just an attempt to discredit the authority of the Saudi dynasty but also was an attempt to promote one of their members as being the ‘Mahdi,’ a messianic figure who would enjoy all of the prerogatives of the Caliph.  Although this pretender was killed the Saudi king’s reliance on non-Muslim troops to secure the shrine nonetheless tarnished his image as its guardian.  In the period 1978-1987 the Saudi king’s claim to be Protector of the Two Holy Places also came under assault from the Ayatollah Khomeini, whose theory of Islamic government advocated a revival of the caliphat under a different name and under Shi’ite auspices.[21]  Khomeini tried to de-legitimize Saudi control over the holy places by using Iranian pilgrims to incite anti-Saudi demonstrations and clashes during each Hajj pilgrimage season beginning in 1979. These demonstrations escalated each succeeding year culminating in riots during the 1987 Hajj season that killed over 400 people in Mecca and led the Saudi regime to suspend its diplomatic ties with Iran. More recently, beginning in 1996, ibn Ladin has repeatedly called for like-minded Muslims to overthrow the Saudi government and to restore the caliphat.  Seizure and control over the cities of Mecca and Medina would be prerequisites for any group seeking to establish a restored caliphat. Increased al Qa’eda terrorist actions in the kingdom since 2001 are aimed at overthrowing the Saudi regime and replacing it with a salafist regime which could proclaim itself as the restored caliphat since it would then become the de facto guardian of the holy places.  Such a coup would give al Qa’eda the stature and credibility among salafists and other Muslim fundamentalists everywhere to claim legitimate leadership over the Islamic world.  

 

2.         Recovering the ‘Occupied Lands’ and Restoring Islamic Rule

 

The Afghan Jihad is celebrated in al Qa’eda’s own annals as the exemplary salafist movement for not only did it defeat the Soviet occupation forces but also led to the creation of a model salafist ‘emirate,’ the Taliban state under the control of Mullah Omar.  Al Qa’eda contributed its own support troops, the 055 Battalion, to help fight the Northern Alliance and eventually               dispatched suicide-assassins, in the guise of Arab reporters, to Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance leader, whom they killed on September 9, 2001.  According to Gunaratna from 1996 until 2001 al Qa’eda became the first transnational terrorist group to succeed in co-opting and controlling an entire nation-state, the so-called ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.’[22] The importance of this territorial control was not limited to its usefulness to pursuing the war against the Northern Alliance but moreover in its demonstration effect that the salafists could remake a contemporary Muslim nation-state into their ideal of an Islamic state, one step towards the restoration of the caliphat.  It is during this time that ibn Ladin was emboldened to issue his 1996 and 1998 fatwas declaring jihad against the United States.  Also it is during this period that al Qa’eda launched its most deadly strikes on U.S. military and civilian targets. With the loss of this state not only has al Qa’eda lost a tactical base but also the claim that a restored emirate in the salafist mode would be able to prosper and withstand external assault.

 

Had the other salafist movements aligned with al Qa’eda achieved even modest success in seeking to topple their targeted secularist Muslim governments and replacing them with emirates on the model of Afghanistan, al Qa’eda could have claimed that the project of restoring the caliphat was proceeding. But the news from two key nations targeted by salafists aligned with al Qa’eda was not encouraging.  Egypt, from which al Qa’eda drew members of the Jihad Group, experienced its own salafist insurgency during 1990-1997.  By 1993 external observers feared Egypt might be taken over by the various salafist groups, including the Jihad group and the Jama’a al Islamiyah.  However the infighting of these groups, their killing of many innocent Egyptian Muslims, and their alienation of Egyptian public opinion, led to the demise of the salafist insurgency in Egypt.  In the words of Fawaz A. Gerges, “al Jama’a and Jihad are shadows of their former selves, with their rank and file in exile or on the run, deprived of any popular support…the Islamist insurgency has been reduced to insignificance.”[23] A similar outcome followed in Algeria, after nine years (1992-2000) of civil war between three salafist groups and the Algerian government, during which period an estimated 100,000 people were killed, most of whom were Algerian civilians and fellow Muslims. The degree of violence against Muslim civilians, which violated al Qa’eda’s principle of xeno-terrorism, that is, the tactic of avoiding targeting innocent Muslims but directing terrorism primarily against non-Muslims or the military-political personnel of ‘apostate’ Muslim governments, led al Qa’eda by mid-1996 to renounce its support for the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which had been its principal salafist ally in Algeria. Although the GIA continues sporadic attacks, the salafist insurgency in Algeria is also at a dead end.[24]  In short the Algerian and Egyptian cases showed that the salafist insurgencies were failing to duplicate the Afghan model in the heartland of the Muslim world.  When the Afghan model was overthrown in 2001 the next venue for proving the salafist doctrine of jihad would be Iraq.

 

3.         Reliance on State Sponsors

 

Another indication of the importance of territory for al Qa’eda has been its long history of reliance on various state sponsors. At various times al Qa’eda has sought either sanctuary, aid, training, or moral support from Sudan, the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and also from sub-state elements within Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. After his break with the Saudi royal family, ibn Ladin moved to Sudan in April 1991, where he developed the al Qa’eda organization                          further, financing it through several lucrative construction contracts with the Sudanese government as well as several commercial ventures.  With the knowledge and protection of Sudan’s government, al Qa’eda built training camps and also cultivated contacts with Lebanon’s Hizbullah group, itself sponsored by the Iranian regime. Al Qa’eda leaders there also held direct meetings with both Iranian and Iraqi officials.[25]  Although ibn Ladin initially had good relations with the National Islamic Front ruling Sudan by 1996 he was asked to leave due to pressure from Egypt, whose President, Hosni Mubarak, survived an al Qa’eda sponsored assassination attempt during his June 26, 1995 visit to Ethiopia.

 

Ibn Ladin returned to Afghanistan where his base outside Jalalabad held about 600 of his followers. He developed close relations with the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, whose forces seized Kabul in September 1996. Ibn Ladin contributed over 5,000 trained men to fight alongside Taliban forces which seized all but ten percent of Afghanistan by late 1999. As was described in the preceding section, the alliance between the Taliban state and al Qa’eda was so close and complete that it often appeared more a case of co-optation of the host state by al Qa’eda rather than state sponsorship of a dependent group. Although Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which had helped create the Taliban state,  also had al Qa’eda contacts, following the September 11th attacks the Pakistani government aligned itself with the U.S. campaign against the Taliban and al Qa’eda. After disclosures in 2002 that the Saudi-supported World Muslim League and International Islamic Relief Organization had each financially supported al Qa’eda, members of the U.S. Congress and others pressured the Saudi government to combat al Qa’eda. Until then, Saudi Arabia had tolerated limited fund raising and recruiting activities for al Qa’eda within their borders on the tacit understanding that in return al Qa’eda would not directly attack them. But with al Qa’eda attacks on Saudi targets in 2002, including planned attacks within the holy city of Mecca, the question of passive Saudi support for al Qa’eda has become moot.

           

            Following the September 11th attacks questions arose about Iraqi support for al Qa’eda and in particular about possible Iraqi sponsorship of those attacks. On September 27, 2002, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated there was evidence of Iraqi aid to al Qa’eda before 9/11 in bomb construction and training in the use of chemical and biological weapons.[26] Prior to the 2003 U.S. attack on Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi was reported to have been admitted to Iraq for medical treatment of wounds sustained during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. However on September 16, 2003, Rumsfeld admitted there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement in the September 11th attacks. Gunaratna notes that, unlike the contacts with Iran which led to substantial aid in explosives training and the development of suicide operations, the contacts with Iraq were tentative and lacking in substantive follow-up.  Although Laurie Mylroie, a former Clinton administration advisor on Iraq, and the journalist Stephen F. Hayes have claimed that a much closer relationship existed between al Qa’eda and the regime of Saddam Hussein, their arguments are flawed by use of questionable sources and excessive conjecture.[27]

 

            Finally there remains the question of Iranian state support. There is ample evidence of past active Iranian aid to al Qa’eda: Hizbullah trainers and Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security agents trained al Qa’eda fighters in al Qa’eda camps in the Sudan, in Hizbullah camps in Lebanon,   and in training bases within Iran. Imad Maghniyah, the Hizbullah mastermind of the October 23, 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marines compound, is known to have instructed al Qa’eda in his bombing expertise. Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Iran is reported to have allowed at least twenty senior al Qa’eda figures to escape through its territory and after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 other al Qa’eda figures were reported to have found refuge in Iran.[28] During October 2003 Saad ibn Ladin, one of  ibn Ladin’s sons, as well as Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the al Qa’eda biochemical weapons expert who later returned to Iraq to lead the al Qa’eda insurency there, and Turki al-Dandani, wanted for the May 12, 2003 Riyadh bombings, Suleiman Abu Gaith, an al Qa’eda spokesman, and Sayf al Adl, the military operations commander who succeeded  Muhammad Atef, were all hiding in Iran. While the Iranian government claimed they were under arrest, it has also rebuffed all attempts to extradite them and provided no indication that they were being tried there for offenses committed elsewhere, as required by the legal principle of aut dedere aut judicare.  Therefore, it appears that Iran, despite its claims to the contrary, provides at least passive support for al Qa’eda in the form of sanctuary. Similarly, Syria has appeared to allow insurgents passage through its territory into western Iraq while denying any active support for al Qa’eda or other insurgents within Iraq.

 

Tactics and Choice of Targets

 

Until the Iraqi insurgency began al Qa’eda had sought to avoid the killing of innocent Muslims in its operations, although ibn Ladin has used theological casuistry to justify the unintended killings of Muslims caught in cross-fire or those who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, i.e. the World Trade Center on 9/11.[29] Apart from obedience to Quranic strictures forbidding the killing of fellow believers, the deliberate targeting of non-Muslims is part of a tactic of xeno-terrorism: by focusing attacks on non-Muslims, al Qa’eda reinforces its message to its constituent target audience of the ordinary Muslim masses that they have nothing to fear from al Qa’eda, which claims to be exacting vengeance on their behalf upon their enemies for perceived wrongs. 

 

From 1991 to 2001 the targets of al Qa’eda were either U.S. military forces or diplomatic facilities in Muslim countries or else attacks on U.S. targets, including civilian targets, in either the United States or other non-Muslim countries. Examples of attacks within the Muslim countries include the following:  An attempted bombing of U.S. troops in Yemen in 1991; attacks on  U.S. troops in Somalia in 1993; a car-bombing in Riyadh, killing five U.S. military advisors to the Saudi National Guard in 1995; the truck-bomb attack on the Khobar Towers in 1996, killing 19 U.S. citizens and wounding some 500 persons; the failed attack on the U.S.S. Sullivans on January 3, 2000 and the successful attack on the U.S.S. Cole on October 12, 2000.  Attacks directed principally at American civilians outside of the Muslim nations as well as attacks on U.S. soil include the following: the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center; the foiled 1995 ‘Operation Bojinka’ in which at least 11 U.S. airliners were to be bombed in mid-air over the Pacific Ocean; the ‘Bojinka’ plotters also intended to assassinate U.S. President Bill Clinton and Philippines President Fidel V. Ramos during Clinton’s planned state visit; the two car-bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998; the foiled millennium bombing plot in 1999 directed against Los Angeles Airport, and, finally the 9/11 attacks which spurred vigorous crack-downs on al Qa’eda        elements throughout the world which have reduced, but not eliminated, continuing attacks on non-Muslim targets since 2001.

 

The Current Insurgency in Iraq:

 

            With the loss of Afghanistan and the failure of salafist revolts in Algeria and Egypt, al Qa’eda needs victory in Iraq to validate its claims to be the legitimate vanguard salafist movement for the restoration of the caliphat.  Ibn Ladin has indicated he believes the U.S. and allied forces there can be worn down in the same way that the mujahidin had exhausted the Soviets in Afghanistan.[30] A victory would also vindicate his earlier claims to the Saudi royal family that his forces could have expelled the Iraqis from Kuwait.  Moreover, the creation of a new ‘emirate’ in Iraq would put al Qa’eda on the doorstep of the “Land of the Two Holy Places” and closer to the goal of replacing the Saudi regime with a caliphat on the salafist model.

 

However the current insurgency in Iraq lacks many of the advantages that the mujahidin had during the Afghan war:  The Soviet Union was also being ‘bankrupt’ by the overall U.S.-led containment policy in effect since 1947.  The Afghan mujahidin  then had not only the backing of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran, but also the backing of the rival superpower, the United States. The role of Pakistan and Iran in providing sanctuary and aid was less covert and more generous than compared with the current level of state support being provided by Iran and Syria today.  Moreover much of the al Qa’eda cadre of battle-trained Afghan veterans suffered serious attrition during the U.S. assault on Afghanistan in late 2001. Like the failed salafist insurgencies of Algeria and Egypt, the current insurgency in Iraq also differs in another important respect from the Afghan war: whereas ibn Ladin could boast that the Afghan campaign had largely targeted Soviet and Kabul regime troops, and had avoided the targeting of civilians, the current Iraqi insurgency has disproportionately targeted Iraqi Muslim civilians rather than U.S. and allied troops. This cost the previous salafist insurgencies their legitimacy among their own constituencies.

 

In fact al Qa’eda’s more recent declarations regarding Iraq carry a tone of desperation.  Ibn Ladin has described the insurgency in Iraq as the central battle in a “Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation” [31] adding “it is either victory and glory or misery and humiliation.”[32]  Amir Taheri’s analysis of an al Qa’eda book, The Future of Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula After the Fall of Baghdad, by Yussuf al-Ayyeri, an associate of ibn Ladin killed in a shoot-out with Saudi security forces in 2003, also confirms that the al Qa’eda leadership views Iraq as the crucial battle-field between the salafist goal of a restored caliphat and “secularist democracy,” which would spread throughout the Muslim world if not checked in Iraq.[33]

 

Conclusion:

 

Al Qa=eda cannot survive simply as a transnational network of like-minded salafist groups engaging in regular terrorist strikes against the West because its ultimate goal is the creation of an Islamic state embracing all of the existing Muslim nation-states.  The conflicts to date involving both terrorist attacks on Western civilian targets and insurgent attacks on U.S. military forces in Iraq and   elsewhere are part of a wider Ajihad.@  However, the ultimate strategic goal of this jihad is always to preserve or to restore the Islamic order which salafist jihadists have conceived as the pan-Islamic caliphat.  The creation of Aemirates@ within countries such as Algeria or Afghanistan counts only as steps to the restoration of the pan-Islamic caliphat.  While such territories have a tactical value as staging areas and training bases they also hold immense strategic and ideological importance as beachheads for the Aliberation@ of the pan-Islamic caliphat and can also be claimed as visible proofs of God=s blessing on the jihadists= organization, activities and goals.  The failure to seize and hold such territory in the cases examined has always led to the demoralization and decay of the jihadist movements involved in each case.  Thus any long-term failure of salafist insurgents in Iraq, either to dislodge the U.S. forces there or to overthrow the current U.S.-aligned Iraqi regime, would present al Qa’eda not simply with another minor setback but rather constitute a major blow to its own credibility as an authentic salafist movement.

 

                                                                 References

 

 

 


[1].       Arquilla, John, and David Ronfeldt.  ANetwar Revisited: The Fight for the Future Continues,” in Networks, Terrorism and Global Insurgency, edited by Robert J. Bunker,  New York: Routledge, 2005, p. 14.

[2].    Raufer, Xavier. "Al Qa’eda: A Different Diagnosis," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 26: 391-398, (2003).

[3].       Arquilla, John, and David Ronfeldt.  The Advent of Netwar. Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, MR-789-OSD, 1996.

[4].       Emerson, Steve. AA Terrorist Network in America?@ New York Times, April 7, 1993.

[5].   Hoffman, Bruce. "Al Qa’eda, Trends in Terrorism, and Future Potentialities: An Assessment," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 26: 429-442, (2003).

[6].   Rohan Gunaratna, Rohan.  Inside Al Qa’eda: Global Network of Terror,  New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, pp. 92-94.  The four-fold classification used by Gunaratna was based on an interview with Magnus Ranstorp, Deputy Director of  the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, St, Andrews University.

[7].   Fishel, Kimbra L. “Challenging the Hegemon: Al Qa’eda’s Elevation of Astmmetric Insurgent Warfare Onto the Global Arena,” in Networks, Terrorism and Global Insurgency, edited by Robert J. Bunker,  New York: Routledge, 2005, pp. 115-128.

[8].   Hall, Alan.  “Al-Qa’eda Chiefs Reveal Their Design for World Domination,” The Age, (Melbourne, Australia), August 24, 2005, News Section, p. 12.

[9].   Anderson, Sean K. and Stephen Sloan.  Entry on “Qutb, Sayyid”  in the Historical Dictionary of Terrorism, (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow, 2002), pp. 413-414.   .

[10].  Rohan Gunaratna, Rohan. Inside Al Qa’eda: Global Network of Terror,  New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, p. 17.

[11].  Majid Khadduri, in his War  Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1955, p. 68 er seq.) points out the jihad was among the primary instruments for the conversion by force of nonbeliever,” a view held by classical Muslim jurists and scholars such as ibn Khaldun and ibn Rushd. These more pro-active and aggressive interpretations of the “lesser jihad” are surveyed by Rudolf peters’ Jihad in Mediaeval and Modern Islam, (E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1977, p. 3 et seq.).

[12].  Rohan Gunaratna, Rohan. Inside Al Qa’eda: Global Network of Terror,  New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, pp. 22-27, 86, 136-137.

[13].     For a fuller discussion of the tenets of salafi Islam see James A. Bill, "Populist Islam and U.S. Foreign Policy," SAIS Review, 9, 1 (1989): 125-139, and also, James A. Bill, "Resurgent Islam in the Persian Gulf," Foreign Affairs, (Fall 1984): 108-127.

[14].  Ibn Ladin, Usama. “Text of Fatwah Urging Jihad Against Americans,” published in Al Quds al ‘Arabi on February 23, 1998, and accessed at <http://www.ict.org/articles/fatwah.htm> on September 5, 2005.

[15].  ibid.

[16].  Rohan Gunaratna, Rohan. Inside Al Qa’eda: Global Network of Terror,  New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, p. 86.

[17].  Ibn Ladin, Usama.  Interview with Nida ul Islam, “The New Powder Keg in the Middle East,” accessed at http://ww.fas.org/iro/world/para/docs/LADIN.htm, on September 5, 2005, “The [Saudi] government extracted a fatwa to hand over Palestine to the Jews, and before this, to permit entry into the country of the two sacred mosques to the modern-day crusaders under the rule of necessity.” [emphasis added]

[18].  Ibn Ladin, Usama.  Interview with Nida ul Islam, “The New Powder Keg in the Middle East,” accessed at http://ww.fas.org/iro/world/para/docs/LADIN.htm, on September 5, 2005, “As for the other option, this is a very difficult and dangerous one for the regime, and this involves an escalation in the confrontation between the Muslim people and the American occupiers and to confront the economic hemorrhage.   Its most important goal would be to change the current regime, with the permission of Allah.”  [Note:  ibn Ladin never refers to Saudi Arabia by that name, as he abhors the Saudi family, but instead always calls it either “the land of the two holy places” [al Balad al Haramayn] or the “land of the two sacred mosques.”]

[19].  Esin, Emal.  Mecca the Blessed, Madinah the Radiant, (London: Elek Books, 1974), pp.134-135, 169, 189-193.

[20].  Mortimer, Edward, Power and Faith: The Politics of Islam,  New York: Random House, 1982, pp.162-165.

[21].  This theory of Islamic government, called by Khomeini, al wiliyat-i faqih, or “The Governance of the Islamic Jurist,” in essence is indistinguishable from the Sunni theory of the caliphat except in its insistence that the Islamic ruler be a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence of the Twelve Imam Shi’ite sect of Islam who functions as the na’ib, or ‘deputy,’ of the apostolic Twelfth Imam.  Khomeini did not use the terms khalifah, or khalifat since the Sunni concept of leadership over the united Islamic world known by those names had been deemed to be corrupt by earlier Shi’ite Imams and scholars of Islamic jurisprudence.  See Anderson, Sean K. and Stephen Sloan.  Entry on “Khomeini” in the Historical Dictionary of Terrorism, (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow, 2002), pp. 269-273

[22].  Rohan Gunaratna, Rohan. Inside Al Qa’eda: Global Network of Terror,  New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, p. 62.

[23].  Gerges, Fawaz A.  “The End of the Islamist Insurgency in Egypt? Costs and prospects,” Middle East Journal,  Vol. No. 4, Fall 2000, p. 609.

[24].  Hafez, Mohammad M.  “Armed Islamist Movements and Political Violence in Algeria,” Middle East Journal,  Vol. No. 4, Fall 2000, p. 591.

[25].  Rohan Gunaratna, Rohan. Inside Al Qa’eda: Global Network of Terror,  New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, pp. 146-147. Testimony of George Tenet to Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate.  Congressional Record, October 9, 2002, Page S10154. Addres of U.S. Secretary of State to the U.N. Security Council, February 5, 2003 accessed at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html   on October 2, 2005.

[26].  Garamone, Jim. “Rumsfeld Says Link Between Iraq, al Qaeda 'Not Debatable',” American Forces Press Service, ATLANTA, Sept. 27, 2002, accessed at <http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2002/n09272002_200209272.html> on October 2, 2005..

[27].  Mylroie, Laurie. The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks. (New York:  Regan Books, 2002), depends much on Yusif Ramzi’s use of Iraqi passports and the possibility of identity theft of another Iraqi national.  Hayes, Stephen F. The Connection: How al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America. New York: HarperCollins, 2004), relies excessively on the October 27, 2003 memorandum of Douglas J. Feith, then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which was characterized by former CIA Director George Tenet has having been unreliable in its assessment of classified data.

[28].  Confidential source within office of former Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.

[29].  Ibn Ladin, Usama.  Full transcript of bin Ladin’s speech [on the occasion of the 2004 U.S. presidential election.] Published by Al-Jazeera.Net on November 1, 2004, accessed on September 5, 2005 at <http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/79C6AF22-98FB-4A1C-B21F-2BC36E87F61F.htm>

[30].  Ibn Ladin, Usama.  Full transcript of bin Ladin’s speech [on the occasion of the 2004 U.S. presidential election.] Published by Al-Jazeera.Net on November 1, 2004, accessed on September 5, 2005 at http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/79C6AF22-98FB-4A1C-B21F-2BC36E87F61F.htm , “This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.”

[31].  Blanchard, Christopher M.  CRS Report for Congress. Al Qaeda: Statements and Evolving Strategy, Updated June 20, 2005, p. CRS-6,. accessed on September 5, 2005 at <http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/RL32759.pdf>

[32].  Ibn Ladin, Usama.  FBIS Report – FEA20041227000762.

[33].  Taheri, Amir. “The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After the Fall of Baghdad,” accessed at www.townhall.com/columnists/GuestCloumns/Taheri20030905.shtml    on September 5, 2005