Al-Qaeda (5 page)

Most of these ‘traders’ came for purely pragmatic reasons. Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 was an excellent place to be. For militants who had spent years trying to mobilize and act, struggling all the while with domestic security services or ‘international monopoly companies’ like the CIA, Afghanistan was a department store designed specifically for them, where everything was available at cut-price rates. Recruits, knowledge, ideas and even cash could be had off the shelf. Bin Laden and his associates were running a whole floor – the biggest, the best-stocked and the most high profile.

By the time of the 11 September attacks, bin Laden and his dozen or so close associates had been able to attract and retain the loyalty of around a hundred highly motivated individuals from throughout the Islamic world, who all had key skills and expertise and were committed to a similar agenda. A substantial proportion of these men
were veterans of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and many had taken part in fighting in Bosnia or Chechnya, Algeria or Egypt. Some had been putting together terrorist attacks against ‘the enemies of Islam’ for nearly a decade. Some had looked to exploit bin Laden’s ability to access funds before. Others had had no previous contact with him.

Once in Afghanistan, these men, expressing a nominal loyalty to bin Laden, pooled their talents and experience. They acted as trainers and administrators and, on occasion, were sent overseas to recruit for bin Laden’s group, to act as emissaries or ambassadors to other militant organizations, or, more rarely, to run specific terrorist operations. However, it is a mistake to see even this ‘hardcore of al-Qaeda’ as monolithic. Even among the few dozen individuals who had remained physically and ideologically close to bin Laden from the end of the Afghan war to 2001, there were significant divergences of opinion over methods, tactics and political and religious beliefs.

There was nothing inevitable about the emergence of this group, or indeed any of the individuals within it, as pre-eminent. Modern Islamic militancy pre-dates the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan by several decades and draws on traditions going back to the very earliest days of the Muslim faith. Among the thousands of militants radicalized, hardened and inspired by their military victory in Afghanistan there were hundreds of groups and many potential leaders. In 1989 scores of men had, like bin Laden, expertise, charisma, access to funds and motivation. Bin Laden, at every stage of his career, can only ever be considered
primus inter pares
. His current pre-eminence is likely to prove merely a temporary phase in the history of modern Islamic militant activism.

The second element of ‘al-Qaeda’ in the 1996–2001 period involved the scores of other militant Islamic groups around the world that were somehow linked to bin Laden and his associates. Again, a careful examination of the situation shows that it is wrong to imagine that there was any kind of of international network of active groups obedient to bin Laden or created by him.

To label local groups as ‘al-Qaeda’ is to overlook the particular local factors that led to their emergence. It is true that elements within
many local groups may have had some associations, though often very tenuous ones, with members of the ‘al-Qaeda hardcore’. But similar links tie almost all Islamic radical groups and individuals active in the world today. Groups and individuals have multiple associations and multiple lines of logistic support. Even during the 1996–2001 period there were many other sources of funding and of expertise and training beyond bin Laden or those close to him. Funds, for example, could be obtained locally or from a range of wealthy overseas donors. Groups, or elements within them, cooperated with each other or with bin Laden on occasion, if they felt it suited their purpose. But, though many of them may have seen bin Laden as a heroic figure who symbolized their collective struggle, individuals and groups had their own leaders and their own agendas, often ones that were deeply parochial, which they would not subordinate to those of bin Laden or his close associates or any other sponsor.

In addition, relations between groups were dynamic. They evolved over time. Consider the Ansar ul Islam group that emerged in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq in the autumn of 2001. It was built out of three different factions, each of which had a different relationship with bin Laden and those around him. Representatives from two of the factions had travelled to Afghanistan to meet senior ‘al-Qaeda’ figures in the spring of 2001, but a third had been unwilling to deal with bin Laden or those around him. By the end of that year, however, an emissary from bin Laden had convinced the recalcitrant faction to join the other two and to accept the nominal leadership of the Saudi. In the spring of 2002 Ansar ul Islam was joined by Arab fighters fleeing the US-led onslaught in Afghanistan, some of whom had been close to bin Laden, altering the relationship again.

In addition, Ansar ul Islam also contained individuals who were not interested in any broader agenda beyond Kurdistan and did not, despite the group’s supposed loyalty to ‘al-Qaeda’, recognize bin Laden as anything more than a fellow traveller. One (failed) Iraqi Kurdish suicide bomber told me in the summer of 2002 that he did not want to go to Afghanistan for training because ‘he did not want to travel’ and was interested only in the affairs of his own country.
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These men did not care for bin Laden and his vision of an international struggle. It did
not interest them at all. And they were not alone. Algerian groups consistently resisted a series of attempts by bin Laden to co-opt them. The Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA) rebuffed his advances in 1993. The leader of the Indonesian Lashkar Jihad group refused to ally with bin Laden because to do so would have involved a significant sacrifice of autonomy.
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Bin Laden’s increasingly clumsy attempts to hijack the campaign of Palestinian militants have been consistently resisted by local groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Both, at least for the moment, are concerned that links with the Saudi would have a negative impact on their image at home and overseas. Neither have any need for the moral or material advantage that an alliance with bin Laden might bring.

One way of characterizing the relationship between bin Laden’s and other groups between 1996 and 2001 would be by analogy with that of the USSR or America with their various proxies during the Cold War. The US State Department’s 1998 report on terrorism outlined the advantages of state support for a militant group. ‘With state sponsorship a… group often receives a safe haven, money, weapons, training, logistic support or use of diplomatic facilities. Some of the most violent terrorist attacks on record would not have been possible without such sponsorship.’
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In many ways the ‘hardcore of al-Qaeda’ outlined above played the role of a state. By late 2001 bin Laden and the men around him had access to huge resources, both symbolic and material, which they could use to project their power and influence internationally. They even, effectively, had a country they could virtually call their own. They were thus able to offer everything a state could offer to a militant group by way of support. As during the Cold War, this was a two-way, mutually beneficial process. The local groups had their roots in a whole variety of local factors, often stretching back decades or even longer, but, for a variety of short-term reasons, were keen to ally with the major power. Indeed, many had been proxies before. Another area of continuity is the tactic, used both by Washington and Moscow during the Cold War and adopted by bin Laden and his associates, of attempting to broker deals between warring factions of local groups. If successful, ‘al-Qaeda’ established a degree of influence over everyone concerned. There are other models too that can be
of use. Between 1996 and 2001 ‘al-Qaeda’ acted in a similar way to a venture-capitalist firm, sponsoring projects submitted by a variety of groups or individuals in the hope that they would be profitable. Together these links, some tenuous, some more direct, allow us to speak of a loose ‘network of networks’. This is not an ‘al-Qaeda network’. It is a way of describing those elements within the broad movement of Islamic militancy which had some connections to the ‘al-Qaeda hardcore’. But along with that hardcore and the ‘network of networks’ was a third element: the idea, worldview, ideology of ‘al-Qaeda’ and those who subscribe to it. After 2001, it is this latter element that has become most important.

Bin Laden did not kidnap young men and brainwash them. The young men who flocked to Afghanistan to seek military and terrorist training did so of their own volition. As is clear from the testimony of recruits in the training camps run by the ‘al-Qaeda hardcore’ in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, nobody was kept there against their will. Discipline was tight, but anyone who wanted to leave was allowed to go. Most of the volunteers were dedicated to the cause long before they reached the camps. Indeed many overcame considerable obstacles to reach Afghanistan. Importantly, bin Laden’s associates spent much of their time in the 1996–2001 period selecting which of the myriad requests for assistance they would grant. The requests – for money, expertise, advice and other logistical support – came from everywhere, from Morocco to Malaysia. These were not requests for help in building refugee camps or new mosques. They were requests for assistance with bomb attacks, assassinations and murder on a horrific scale.

These requests, like the recruits who carried them, originated in the huge swathe of largely young men who were sufficiently motivated to want to devote substantial proportions of their lives and energies to the most extreme end of Islamic militancy. In very broad terms they shared the key ideas, and the key objectives, of bin Laden and the ‘al-Qaeda hardcore’. They subscribed, whether involved in a radical group or not, to the ‘al-Qaeda’ worldview. They spoke the ‘al-Qaeda’ language. This is a difficult concept and is examined in greater detail in the following chapters but, certainly in the wake of the 2001 war in
Afghanistan, it is perhaps the most helpful of the various ways of conceiving of ‘al-Qaeda’. It is not about being part of a group. It is a way of thinking about the world, a way of understanding events, of interpreting and behaving. It is the composite of the common elements of all the various strands of modern Islamic radical thought and currently it is the most widespread, and the fastest growing, of what makes up the phenomenon currently, and largely erroneously, labelled ‘al-Qaeda’.

Bin Laden’s ability to co-opt groups and to attract experienced militants and willing neophytes to his banner depended on the resources he could offer. With the loss of his bases in Afghanistan in late 2001 and the continued attention of American, Pakistani and other security forces, those resources largely disappeared. The base that he had built was destroyed and much of his power with it. The hardcore was scattered. A few of the experienced militants who came together in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 have escaped capture or death and are still active, but a large number have been rendered inoperative one way or another. The ‘network of networks’ has been disrupted by new campaigns by security forces all over the world. New groups, barely allied to bin Laden, have sprung up. Some seek leadership or direction from bin Laden and those who are still around him. Others operate entirely independently of the Saudi. Most activism is now by individuals who look up to bin Laden as a symbolic leader but are acting in the style of al-Qaeda, along the agenda of al-Qaeda but are not controlled in any meaningful way by ‘al-Qaeda’. Islamic militancy has lapsed into the chaotic variety that characterized the early nineties, except for one major factor: the efforts of Western governments, local regimes and security agencies across the world have been unable to break up the third element of al-Qaeda. The
idea
of ‘al-Qaeda’ – the precept, the maxim, the formula, not ‘the base’ – is more powerful than ever.

As time has passed since 11 September there has been a steady increase in understanding of the true nature of al-Qaeda. The debate over the right tactics to counter the threat against us has become more informed as a result. Yet in many quarters the misconceptions about ‘al-Qaeda’
are proving as persistent as medieval depictions of the Prophet Mohammed as a philanderer or of Muslims as saturnine sensualists. Why is this?

The first reason is that the idea that a single man and a single group are behind the current threat is convenient and reassuring. It is enormously difficult to conceive of the nature of modern radical Islamic militancy without simple ideas that make sense of hugely varied and shifting phenomena. Blaming bin Laden implies that his elimination will end the problem. A ‘gang of evildoers’, to use President George W. Bush’s term, can be hunted down. Creating ‘al-Qaeda’ as a traditional terrorist group constructs something that can be defeated using traditional counter-terrorist tactics.

Often, there are also more consciously cynical motives too. Labelling opponents ‘al-Qaeda’ allows repressive governments to do what they want with limited international criticism. After 11 September governments can expect American support, both material and moral, to help counter any perceived Islamic extremist threat. During the autumn of 2001 al-Qaeda cells, previously undetected, were ‘discovered’ in scores of countries. Tashkent suddenly branded the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a group whose links to bin Laden are tenuous, as ‘al-Qaeda’. For Beijing it was the Uighur Muslims who were designated as the local branch of bin Laden’s network, despite the fact that, though some individuals in some of the various Muslim groups resisting Chinese rule in the southeast of China may, at one time or another, have spent time in Afghan training camps, unrest in the region dates back to the first moments of Chinese domination. In Macedonia in March 2002 eight young Pakistani men were shot dead by police. The minister of the interior was swift to proclaim a victory for his, fairly unsavoury, government in the war against bin Laden. The men were merely illegal economic migrants.
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When I visited the Tunisian embassy in London in January 2002 I was shown a list of ‘Muslim extremists living in the UK allegedly linked to bin Laden’. The list comprised well-known, largely left-wing, dissidents who the Tunisians had been trying to quieten for a decade or more.