Assessing Al-Qaeda (merged thread)

[davidbfpo]

Hat tip to FP Blog for 'Why Is It So Hard to Find a Suicide Bomber These Days?', which is sub-titled 'A decade after 9/11, the mystery is not why so many Muslims turn to terror - but why so few have joined al Qaeda's jihad'.

Link:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article..._days?page=0,0

The author starts looking at the case of Mohammed Taheri-Azar, who launched a vehicle attack on fellow students at the University of North Carolina in 2006.

For several decades now, Islamist terrorists have called it a duty for Muslims to engage in armed jihad...Tens of thousands have obeyed, perhaps as many as 100,000 over the past quarter-century, according to the U.S. DHS...At the same time, more than a billion Muslims -- well over 99 percent -- ignored the call to action....by my calculations, global Islamist terrorists have managed to recruit fewer than 1 in 15,000 Muslims over the past quarter-century and fewer than 1 in 100,000 Muslims since 9/11. (Moving on)

By the U.S. Justice Department's count, approximately a dozen people in the country were convicted in the five years after 9/11 for having links with al Qaeda. During this period, fewer than 40 Muslim Americans planned or carried out acts of domestic terrorism... None of these attacks was found to be associated with al Qaeda.

(Final sentence) We may not be so lucky in the future. But even if they succeed in killing thousands of us, attacks like these do not threaten our way of life, unless we let them.

I am sure we will see more such commentaries before the 9/11 anniversary. SWC has touched upon this issue before, although on a quick scan I failed to identify other thread(s). Often I cite Bob Jones reference to the difference between those who are angry and those who are motivated to take action.

What FP Blog did not state is the author, Charles Kurzman, has written a book 'The Missing Martyrs: Why There Are So Few Muslim Terrorists' and was reviewed on:http://motherjones.com/mixed-media/2...zman-jihadists

Amazon link, no reviews:http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...orists&x=0&y=0

[Umar Al-Mokhtār]

the answer lies in that there just are not that many psychopaths per 100,000 people, regardless of theology or culture, and using coercion to engage in suicide bombing only goes so far.

I also cannot fail to notice how the most strident calls for violent jihad come from those exhorting for others to do it.

[CWOT]

Ten years ago, I remember sitting with some co-workers discussing how many people were in al Qa’ida. Recently, J.M. Berger from Intelwire initiated an interesting discussion on “What is al Qa’ida?” which tallied the votes of readers. The findings were quite interesting. Following up on “what is al Qa’ida?”, I ask “How many people are in al Qa’ida?” This question, unlike most of my past survey questions, should be ideally suited for crowdsourcing. Essentially, if enough people vote, we should, on average, be relatively close to the right answer- or at least that is what crowdsourcing advocates say.

"How many people in the entire world are members of al Qa'ida?"
So please cast your vote at this link:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AlQaedastrength

I think it will take less than 30 seconds to vote.
Please enter one number and only one number!
If you enter a range I can’t average the collective answers to come up with a single estimate.

Use any definition of “al Qa’ida” you prefer and take a guess. I’ll post the results of the collective estimate in a few days. I also ask for your professional category so we can see how different groups see the size of al Qa’ida. Click on “Done” after the second question and your vote will be submitted.

Thanks for your participation and I'll post the results here at SWJ!

[CWOT]

Thanks to those that have already casted their vote. I'll leave the voting up for another 48 hours or so. For anyone remaining that would like to make your estimate on the size of AQ at this link:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AlQaedastrength

Thanks.

[CWOT]

Thanks to all those that voted on this post.
For some reason this post got stuck in OIF section.
So I just posted the results in the GWOT section.
Here is the link to the results here.

[Bob's World]

Come on, while I am the first guy to stand up and say that the Intel community TOTALLY exaggerates AQ by conflating all manner of nationalist insurgents into their count, to ask people to just pull a number out of their 4th point of contact makes our intel guys look like rocket scientists.

This poll is worse than being of no value. It is dangerous and irresponsible.

[davidbfpo]

A Newsweek article, that appeared on The Daily Beast, which opens with a sub-title:

A young jihadist returns to his former unit on the Afghan border and finds only the desperate remnants of bin Laden’s once-dreaded organization.

Deep among North Waziristan’s mountains, far from any village, Hafiz Hanif finally tracked down the remnants of his old al Qaeda cell last summer. The 17-year-old Afghan had wondered why he hadn’t heard from his former comrades in arms. They didn’t even answer his text messages in May, after the death of the man they all called simply the Sheik: Osama bin Laden. Now Hanif saw why. Only four of the cell’s 15 fighters were left, huddled in a two-room mud-brick house, with little or no money or food. Except for their familiar but haggard faces, they looked nothing like the al Qaeda he once trained with and fought beside. They welcomed him warmly but didn’t encourage him to stay. They said the cell’s commander, a Kuwaiti named Sheik Attiya Ayatullah, had gone into hiding. The others had either run off or died. “Why should we call you back just to get killed in a drone attack?” Hanif’s friends explained.

Link:http://www.thedailybeast.com/newswee...ide-story.html

Worth reading. Some may find it chimes with the stated impact of the drone attacks, the ambivalent stance of the Pakistani Army and more.

[davidbfpo]

Leah Farrell's comment:

By my count AQ core has resurrected itself three times--each when it had less than 50 members.

Nothing like an Australian to ask painful questions. For those not familiar with Leah's background:http://allthingscounterterrorism.com/about/

On SWC we have looked a number of aspects about AQ, not its ability to resurrect itself.

My first thoughts are: a) it is the resilience of the message, b) 'small is beautiful' easy to finance, organise etc and c) will it work minus OBL?

[ianaj]

Even providing for a total kill of Al Qaeda, the organization is likely to reestablish itself given just a few years time. This is primarily due to the first of three points David made above.

Removing ourselves from a specific Islamic extremist group for a minute and taking a step back to look at the larger picture that is developing within the Muslim world, what we see is a religious revival, a reformation of what it means to be "Muslim". The change is not completely dissimilar to the protestant reformation in its scope or implication. A man wakes up in Cairo, he sees poverty all around him, he has a graduate degree but he drives a taxi, his political leaders are corrupt but there is naught to do about any of it. All of this is filtered through the stories he learned as a child of the Golden Age of Islam, the disparity is obvious.

At this point the man could choose to go several different routes in finding a solution to his problem - but a not wholly illogical route would be to state to himself "all of these man-made institutions have failed, it is time to get back to God, because he is infallible". Indeed, such a sentiment is one often shared among Christian conservatives here in the US.

While most on this path will seek to change their political situation through *relatively* peaceful means (Moorsi & Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) there are many who will see this revival as an opportunity to violently shrug off non-Islamic (Qutb's "jahili") rulers.

AQ's stated purpose is to reestablish the former Islamic Caliphate, but this is only a best case scenario, the realization that this is unachievable is hardly enough to end their campaign. As long as there are rulers in Muslim countries who do not appear to live or govern by Islamic standards, the recruitment pool for AQ will always replenish itself, it will always be capable of funding itself, and now that OBL has set the example, it needs no other charismatic leader to keep it going.

[Fuchs]

The Bolsheviks were down to about four members in exile afaik, but one of the four was their leader, nobody attempted to assassinate them and they later got decisive foreign assistance.

Today's AQ leaves on me the impression of being what its name says; a base. It may have some chieftains, and his certainly has enough indoctrinated supporters (just as the few dozen RAF terrorists had a supportive base of up to several thousand Germans) as well as some groups who think using the franchise is a good idea, but it appears to lack what makes a terror organisation so dangerous: The active, violent terrorists who are available for imagining, planning, preparing and executing terror attacks.

This may be related to the built-in defect of AQ; almost 0% of their terrorists return from a mission.
In the end, suicide attacks may have been too costly (and too much of a recruiting liability).

[jcustis]

ianaj makes excellent points David, and to this specific line:

My first thoughts are: a) it is the resilience of the message, b) 'small is beautiful' easy to finance, organise etc and c) will it work minus OBL?

I'd like to offer that once we (or we/Israel) attack Iran, the message will become resurgent. Amid the disarray that comes from trying to resolve the Iran situation, we won't be able to focus quite as clearly on AQ for a brief spell. I may not look like the AQ of 9/11 vintage, and it make lack the charismatic leader it had in OBL, but it absolutely has the ability to rise from the ashes (if it is actually there now).

[Dayuhan]

c) will it work minus OBL?

I'd submit that a dead charismatic leader is probably the most effective kind: he can be infinitely romanticized without the risk that he'll say or do something inconsistent with the image.

[Bill Moore]

I'd submit that a dead charismatic leader is probably the most effective kind

Moses, Jesus, Martin L. King, Nathan Hale, Che comes to mind among others. Mythology is very powerful.

Can't forget Eddie would go.

Now he's going to bundle them all into one!

David likes an orderly house, where I'm quite content with somewhat of a mess :-)

[Bob's World]

AQ was never so much about the man or the ideology, but rather about "the cause."

Little, other than the Arab Spring, has been designed to address the cause of AQ; or to help address the many diverse causes of the many diverse populaces that AQ is reliant upon to operationalize their vision or tactics. Instead we have worked in many ways to reinforce the causes and to validate the unifying message of AQ, while at the same time being overly focused on the group itself, and those groups that turn to them for support.

While people are being biblical, 50 is plenty for a dead martyr; look what Jesus did with 12...

[davidbfpo]

Hat tip to a "lurker":

CSIS (the Canadian one) has done a really rather good foresight paper about the future of AQ

Link:.https://www.csis.gc.ca/pblctns/cdmct...130501_eng.pdf

Just over eighty pages looking forward to 2018, with sections on: AQ core & AQ in Iraq, AQIM, AQ in East Africa and AQAP.

This thread fits in with other strategic threads in this section.

[davidbfpo]

A CNN commentary 'Terrorism at a moment of transition' by an ex-CIA officer, John McLaughlin, for an Aspen event:http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2013/0...of-transition/

Remarkably the only focus is on an evolving AQ, as if it was the only terrorist group. It does have some succinct passages, like:

So this is a highly fluid moment of transition for international terrorism – when we can confidently discern trends but cannot predict end states with any assurance.

This one struck me as odd, read first:

It is no accident that the two most significant terrorist attacks in the last six months occurred here: the assault on the U.S. base in Benghazi, Libya, and the attack on the In Amenas natural gas plant in Algeria.

Emblematic of the freedom that terrorists have here, the leader of the latter attack was able to use networks across the region to gather weapons and recruit fighters from Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, and Mauritania.

I think it is significant that the In Amenas attack needed such a range of fanatics; we invariably miss that so few Muslims are attracted to the violent Jihad. It is a sign of weakness IMHO.

Maybe a minor point, but why use 'the U.S. base in Benghazi', my emphasis. It was a diplomatic building, although we now know some murky activity was under-way elsewhere.

[bourbon]

Maybe a minor point, but why use 'the U.S. base in Benghazi', my emphasis. It was a diplomatic building, although we now know some murky activity was under-way elsewhere.

Just as the State Department has an embassy in a capital city and consulates in other cities - CIA has a 'station' in the embassy and 'bases' in other cities.

[davidbfpo]

Transnational networks are indeed a function of modern Islamist terrorism, as they are of almost every other aspect of modern life. Just as with cross-border fraud or organised crime, they require an enhanced international response. But they have not been unknown in the past. The Fenian bombing campaign in London of the 1880s depended upon its foreign training camp – the Brooklyn Dynamite School – and the propaganda produced under First Amendment freedoms including that notable New York periodical, “Ireland’s Liberator and Dynamite Monthly”. The identification of religiously-inspired plotters with foreign powers and foreign training goes further back than that: several of the Gunpowder plotters of 1605 were educated by foreign Jesuits; while their explosives expert Guy Fawkes was recruited for the task in Flanders, where he had learned his skills as a mercenary, originally for the same King of Spain – Philip II – who had recently launched the Spanish Armada.

From an article 'Shielding the Compass: How to Fight Terrorism Without Defeating the Law' by David Anderson, a UK lawyer and now the Independent Reviewer of Terrorist Legislation - which I am currently reading:http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...act_id=2292950

The passage cited illustrates that so much of contemporary terrorism is not new and has some odd historical episodes.

[davidbfpo]

Somewhere there is a thread on the management style of AQ, but on a quick search it has eluded me.

Returning to this issue, assessing AQ's future, was prompted by a short article in Foreign Affairs 'The Business Habits of Highly Effective Terrorists Why Terror Masterminds Rely on Micro-Management' by Jacob Shapiro, which has some illuminating insights:http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articl...ists?page=show

[davidbfpo]

A short, simple explanation by the British FCO. Fascinating assessment and a public document too; the weblink IMHO suggests a regular publication, although first time I've seen this:https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...newsletter.pdf

The summary:

For the first time, AQ’s top leader has appointed a deputy from beyond the Afghanistan/Pakistan based “AQ Core”, from Yemen based AQ in the Arabian Peninsula (AQ-AP). This geographical spread at the top mirrors the spreading threat posed by the wider AQ Movement which has already been underway for four years. It means that we should stop calling Af/Pak based AQ figures “AQ Core” since they do not necessarily have a higher standing than any of the other AQ groups - the top leadership is multi-national and in that sense “AQ Core” is no more.