An Assessment of the State of Al-Qaeda
Washington D.C. – Almost eight years after aircrafts flown by terrorists hit the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C., the U.S.-led ‘war on terror’ is far from won and Al-Qaeda, identified as the perpetrator of those and many other attacks on American military forces as well as civilians, has grown into the name-brand for an international franchise of increasingly decentralized terrorist groups.
Estimates on the overall cost of the so-called ‘war on terror’ vary widely and range from the $700 billion calculated by the Congressional Research Service to the about $4 trillion some private analysts claim have been spend. This money includes budget appropriations for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other military operations decided by the Bush Administration in response to 9/11. We are talking about a rather large sum, independent of the exact amount; which begs the uncomfortable question of how effectively this money has been used and with what results.
“Al-Qaeda probably is weaker than it was in 2001, because its leadership has been on the run and it has suffered losses of much of its cadre,” Paul Pillar says to Washington Prism in an e-mail interview. Pillar is a former CIA and National Intelligence officer and a visiting professor at Georgetown University where he teaches security studies.
American anti-terrorism operations have been focused on the military structure of Al-Qaeda, and on its leadership. The long list of targeted assassinations of the organization’s high-level officials, (for example Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s, Al-Qaeda’s number one in Iraq, in 2006), is a testimony to this strategy.
“The elimination of a number of senior Al-Qaeda militants has damaged the network,” argues Paul Wilkinson in a separate interview, “but the damage is likely to be repaired very rapidly. There is no evidence that Al-Qaeda is short of new recruits or experienced operatives.” Wilkinson is a former professor of International Relations and former Director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He’s one of Europe’s foremost experts on Al-Qaeda and terrorist networks.
The fact is that, however painful a setback the removal of senior operatives might be for Al-Qaeda, the organization has shown a strong track record in filling vacancies at mid-to-senior-levels. Moreover, Al-Qaeda has repeatedly shown itself able to reorganize after major blows. “They suffered a major setback in Iraq but they have consolidated their position in Pakistan and are expanding their influence and pressure in Africa, including not only the Horn of Africa but also in West Africa,” claims Wilkinson.
As a result, it is hard to say what the overall balance of targeted assassinations might be. For example, what is the real effect of the operation carried out by the CIA that reportedly killed Abu Laith al-Libi, one of Al-Qaeda’s most senior officials, in a frontier province of Pakistan at the end of last year? “The loss of valuable experience probably is a net minus for the group, although as with any organization, the possibility of upward mobility and fresh blood can be an offsetting advantage,” Paul Pillar explains.
Moreover, while targeting Al-Qaeda’s central structure might hamper the activities of the ‘parent’ cell, it simultaneously propels the outgrowth of many smaller and far flung offspring. “We have noticed that, beginning with 9/11 and then continuing with the attacks in London, Madrid and Mumbai, we are experiencing more of the phenomenon that Mark Sageman called ‘the bunch of guys,’” argues Gary LaFree during a telephone interview. LaFree is the Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a center of excellence of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security based at the University of Maryland. The result of this American strategy intensely focused on “Al-Qaeda central” has been increased activity on the part of people that have very little or almost no contact between one another or with the Al-Qaeda’s leadership. “They are increasingly like a decentralized franchising operation,” says LaFree, “which is very much alive and well.”
This increasing decentralization is changing the definition of terrorism, and it creates problems for those experts and academics that try to categorize the activities of terrorist groups. “The definition of what Al-Qaeda really is and what can be counted as Al-Qaeda’s actions is especially problematic in Iraq. In this country the violence is so widespread that it is very difficult to separate out what might be just military actions, insurgencies, ordinary crime or terrorism,” LaFree explains. He outlines the challenges he faces in recording attacks in Iraq to his database of over 80,000 incidents of terrorism that have happened all over the world since 1970. While more traditionalist terrorist groups, such as the Irish IRA, would normally claim responsibility for their action (55% of LaFree’s 80,000 recorded attacks have a clear attribution,) Al-Qaeda rarely does the same. In Iraq, for example, after the U.S. invasion of 2003 terrorist cells claimed responsibility for only 9% of all episodes of violence. This significantly complicates the job of those who are tasked with assessing the fluctuating strength of Al-Qaeda and the developments in its internal power structure.
Overall, LaFree is convinced that the U.S. has been relatively successful in weakening the leadership of Al-Qaeda. “The part that we probably have been much less successful with is stopping the social movement that has grown around Al-Qaeda,” he argues. According to LaFree, removing the opponent’s leadership has always been a critical strategy of conventional war-fighting, but is not as true anymore. “Hitting the opponent’s leadership doesn’t have the same meaning when there is a fair amount of support and sympathy for the kind of ideas that are being propounded,” he says.
LaFree’s START Center, in partnership with worldpublicopinion.org, conducted several surveys of public opinion in the Middle East: “We have found a fair amount of support from the general population for either Al-Qaeda or ideas associated with it,” explains LaFree. Worldpublicopinion.org, managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, is a consortium of research centers studying the response of global public opinion to international developments. The results of the latest round of polling, released on February 24th, show for example that large majorities throughout the Muslim world agree with Al-Qaeda’s goal of pushing U.S. military forces out of predominantly Muslim countries. This is true for 87 percent of Egyptians, 64 percent of Indonesians, and 60 percent of Pakistanis. The survey also indicates that Muslim public opinion overwhelmingly rejects the use of attacks on civilians as a tactic to pursue these goals. Nevertheless, this poll illustrates that some of Al-Qaeda’s claims resonate well beyond its military operatives and to ordinary people throughout the Muslim world. Substantial numbers, in some cases majorities, of those interviewed by START and worldpublicopinion.org even approve of attacks on American troops based in Muslim countries.
The lack of a more comprehensive approach on the part of the U.S., one that would address the social implications of Al-Qaeda rather than its military prowess alone, has resulted in a three-legged and inconclusive war, at least thus far. “The organization is not crippled. Even less crippled is the wider radical Islamist movement, which extends well beyond Al-Qaeda,” argues Paul Pillar. And Wilkinson echoes him: “I suspect that the prediction of a fatal schism in the network is premature.”
Gary LaFree is wary of an exclusively military approach to fighting international terrorism. “Simply going after what the military calls ‘the bad guys,’ has little impact on people living in a remote part of Pakistan or Iraq or Afghanistan,” he warns. Instead, the U.S. should pay more attention to winning over people’s hearts and minds. “We have to remember that our opponents are providing social services, that they actually have a presence in the communities. If this battle is lost, then it is likely that the whole war will be lost too,” argues LaFree.
Of the specific policies undertaken by the Bush Administration, Paul Pillar appreciates the increased attention paid to security countermeasures on American territory as the most effective step taken in recent years. “What has not worked has been the outgoing administration’s tendency to lump all terrorism into a single category and to use a ‘either you’re for us or for the terrorist’ approach,” Pillar argues.
According to Pillar, the new Obama Administration should “quietly discard the harmful and misleading ‘war on terror’ terminology.” In his opinion, this rhetoric has played into the view put forward by extremists of a religious war in which the United States is waging war on Islam. For Gary LaFree, the new U.S. Government must look for international partners. “The idea that one country can go at it alone without international cooperation is a dangerous one,” he says. LaFree concludes on a quasi-optimist note, by recalling the spontaneous outburst of global support for the U.S. that followed 9/11, and which has been squandered thereafter: “the world community as a whole is not happy with random violence and people being tortured and killed, no matter who is behind it.”
