Al-Qaeda

Template:TOC-right al-Qaeda is both terrorist organization and a "brand name" of affiliates, all of an extreme Salafist ideology centered around reestablishing the Caliphate through armed jihad. Its immediate predecessor was the Services Office created to support the Afghanistan War (1978-92) by Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden. It was joined by Egyptian Islamic Jihad under Ayman al-Zawahiri. They, in turn, trace their origins to modern Salafism, articulated in part by Azzam and by the late Sayyid Qutb, derived from the medieval concepts of Ibn Tamiyya.

The group has been conducting terrorist operations since the mid-1990s, including the 9-11 attack, when its leadership was in Afghanistan. It has become a distributed worldwide organization, but the leadership is believed to be in the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Origins

Its core began with the Services Office in Pakistan, supporting the resistance in the Afghanistan War (1978-92), a Pakistan-based groups supporting the Afghans, but also helping foreign volunteers, especially Arabs, to come to Afghanistan. Abdullah Azzam was its leader, with Osama bin Laden as his deputy. Bin Laden had an informal relationship with the Saudi General Intelligence Department (GID), international Islamic organizations and Saudi-backed Afghan leaders. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said it had no contact with Bin Laden during this time, although they did interact with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which, in turn, worked with GID. The CIA, however, did fund a U.S. division of the Services Office, al-Khifa.

In the summer of 1989, Azzam became concerned with the approach of bin Laden and Zawahiri, who wanted to expand the fight. Azzam's concern was finishing Afghanistan, and then dealing slowly with other Muslim states. Zawahiri wanted to act against Hosni Mubarrak of Egypt. Bin Laden thought worldwide. Others were concerned with Pakistan. Zawahiri told his son-in-law, Abdullah Annas, that he was worried about Bin Laden if he stayed with the radicals: "This heaven-sent man, like an angel; I am worried about his future if he stays with these people."

Services Office and al-Qaeda

Azzam was assassinated in November 1989; there are many conjectures but no consensus on who did it. Bin Laden took over the Services Office, Maktab al-Khadamat (MAK), which had a U.S. branch called al-Khifa. There are links, although not definitive ones, between either MAK and al-Khifa and terrorist acts before the formal founding of al-Qaeda, and before bin Laden's fatwa declaring war against the U.S. Al-Qaeda's actions often do not follow a strict organization table; there may well have been informal support or actual support under a cover identity.

Al-Qaeda proper was created in 1989, organized by Abu Ayoub al-Iraqi and bin Laden. Volunteers gave an oath of bayat to bin Laden. Their motivation was to carry on after the Soviets left. Some reports put its creation in 1988; there are also reports of terrorist acts where the jihadists, outside Afghanistan, were in contact with the Services Office. Besides bin-Laden and al-Zawahiri, others have been associated with its formation, such as Abu Ayoub al-Iraqi. Their immediate followers changed with time and war; Mohammed Atef was the first military commander, killed in action. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed worked with bin Laden, but did not formally swear allegiance (bayat) until some years later.

Its first combat operation was the siege of Jalalabad, in 1989, where bin Laden demonstrated himself to be brave but tactically unskilled. He and his followers, often Arabs motivated by martyrdom, participated in the Afghan civil war until 1992, when Kabul fell to the Taliban.

Gulf War

Bin Laden had come home to Saudi Arabia and witnessed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. He offered his fighters to the Saudi government, who infuriated him by accepting Western troops on Saudi land. Prince Turki al-Faisal, head of Saudi intelligence, saw bin Laden's personality change after that meeting, "...from a calm, peaceful gentle man interested in helping Muslims to a person who believed he would be able to amass and command an army to liberate Kuwait. It revealed his arrogance and his haughtiness."

Complaining overtly, they stripped him of his citizenship. Exiled to Sudan, his hate for the Saudi royal house continued to motivate him.

Doctrine and affiliations

One translation of al-Qaida is "the base". It cannot be overemphasized that al-Qaeda, certainly as it evolved from its beginning, is not a centralized hierarchy like a conventional military. It is decentralized, sometimes funding rather than directing, and sometimes with no direct connection other than individual training and inspiration. Even in its directly controlled operations, with a signature of simultaneous attack, it still used "mission-type" orders and left the details of execution to the operational cells.

A current analysis breaks the idea of the al-Qaeda "brand" into four levels, perhaps overlapping:

• Al-Qaeda Central is the remaining pre-9/11 core, with replacements for senior leaders such as Khalid Sheikh Muhammed or Mohammed Atef. This contains the most professional operatives reserved for the high-value "spectacular" attacks such as the 1998 Embassy bombings in Africa and the 9-11 attack. For such operations, teams are deployed well in advance, and may take support only from local organizations.
• Al-Qaeda Affiliates and Associates are groups that have received significant funding, training and cooperation from the core. These include the groups in the Phillipines, Bosnia, Indonesia, Chechniya, etc.; Jemaah Islamiya under Hambali was one of the most closely affiliated, as was Al-Qaida in Iraq under Abu Musab Zarqawi. Bin Laden wanted to join these into a global jihad, create a "critical mass" of worldwide operations, and establish reliable affiliates that could either provide local support to operations from the core or launch attacks that would complement ore operations.
• Al-Qaeda Locals with members, often individuals, that have had training and even operational experience with the core, but now operate with only minimal direction. Ahmed Ressam is one such example; he had belonged to the Armed Islamic Group, received training from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. For his opeation, however, he had only nonspecific instructions to attack the United States, was given only seed money, and told to recruit his own cell members.
• Al-Qaeda Network are local individuals and groups with no direct connection to the core, but who follow its ideology. They may carry out sophisticated attacks; the 2004 Madrid bombings appear to have carried out such agroup.

Sudan period

At this point, from 1992 to 1996, al-Qaeda was principally a centralized organization, operating under the patronage of Hassan al-Turabi. Eventually, al-Turabi expelled them, but not before al-Qaeda had supported the Somalian resistance.

During this period, al-Qaeda both conducted operations, and began its pattern of cooperating with other militant groups, some of which would later merge. One of these, Jamaat al-Islamiyya or the Islamic Group, was an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, was a spiritual leader of the Jamaat al-Islamiyya faction that carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and possibly other operations in the U.S.

East Africa

Al-Qaeda carried out a series of programs against the Western involvement in Somalia. It began with a December 1992 of a hotel in Aden, Yemen, used by American military personnel traveling to the U.N. Operation RESTORE HOPE. Bin Laden issued a fatwa in 1993, telling Somalis to attack and eject Americans.

Its first clearly identified attack against Americans was a December 1992 bombing of a Yemeni hotel in Aden used by American soldiers traveling to Somalia to participate in Operation RESTORE HOPE. By April 1993, bin Laden issued a fatwa calling upon all Somalis to attack American forces and eject them from their country; he sent trainers and planners, including Mohammed Atef, to Somalia. They played a role in the Battle of Mogdishu on June 5.

Balkans

After the Somalia conflict, al-Qa’ida sent Arab fighters, led by leadership of Shaykh Anwar Shaaban and Amir Abu Abdel Aziz Barbaros, to Bosnia, to fight with Muslims under to fight alongside their Muslim brothers.

This refined al-Qaeda's techniques, including recruiting and training local fundamentalists, as well as channeling funds through Islamic charities and NGOs, creating the complex al-Qaeda financing networks.

North Africa

In August 1994, two Spaniards shot to death three French Muslims in a hotel in Marrakesh, Morocco. The investigation was reported to have established telephone contact between the killers and the Office of Services, and learned that the suspects had been in Afghanistan.

Four Algerians belonging to the Armed Islamic Group hijacked an Air France jet in December 1994, apparently planning a suicide attack on the Eiffel Tower, but French counterterrorists diverted them to Marseilles and successfully killed them in a raid there.

Middle East

Al-Qaeda did direct the June 25, 1996 Khobar Towers bombing.

North America

Several significant terrorist incidents took place in the United States before Bin Laden's formal [fatwa]] in August 1996, as the “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places” (i.e., Saudi Arabia). Some of the participants were associated with al-Khifa, the U.S. branch of the Services Office. Al-Khifa had been under surveillance by the New York Police Department and FBI since 1988; it clearly reported to Abdullah Azzam but bin Laden's, and al-Qaeda's involvement was less clear.

On November 5, 1990, an Egyptian El Sayyid Nosair shot and killed Rabbi Meir Kahane, head of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in New York City, as well as two others as he made his escape. Two accomplices found in his apartment were arrested: Mohammed Salameh and Mahmoud Abouhalima. They were linked to al-Khifa.

Nosair was found to be heading military training at a Jersey City, New Jersey mosque, of which Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman was a spiritual leader. Rahman, who had been associated with Egyptian Islamic Jihad and suspected in its 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, had been on a terrorist watchlist but managed to enter the United States.

Ibrahim el-Gabrowny, Nosair's cousin, went to Saudi Arabia to receive $20,000, from, Osama bin Laden for Nosair's legal fees. According to the New York task force, Nosair and Aboualima were being linked outside the U.S., but nothing was definitive. Nosair was acquitted of the Kahane killing but convicted of the two others in 1991.

In 1992, Ramzi Yousef arrived in the U.S., and linked up with the Jersey City cell, meeting with Abouhalima, and then moving into Salameh's apartment. "Yousef was the catalyst," said Charles Stern, one of the FBI agents in the subesequent 1993 World Trade Center bombing investigation. "Either somebody sent him over and said hook up with these guys or someone here reached out overseas and said we need a guy." Yousef was the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was not yet associated with bin Laden. According to these investigators, while bin Laden did not know Yousef, he was funding Rahman, and it is argued that the 1993 bombing was an "affiliate" operation of al-Qaeda although generally not considered under its direction.

Back to Afghanistan

El-Hage had visited Nosair in prison and also acquired some weapons for Abouhalima after the Kahane murder.

Organization

Many analysts now call al-Qaeda a "franchise" or "brand" rather than a monolithic organization. The core ran a number of operations, but, even early on, used decentralized execution in the field.

Core

The spiritual head of al-Qaeda is called the Emir (Commander), presumably Osama bin Laden. He interprets religious guidance but is not himself a theologian; there is controversy if he does have the authority to issue fatwas. He has an inspirational goal, and exercises authority through the shura council.

Al-Qaeda's majlis al-shura Council sets policy, based on the Quran and religious documents (for example, the writings of Qutb), ensure guidance from the Emir is followed, approves fatwas, and authorize major terrorist operations. Its decisions are binding, if and only when a quorum for shura consultation is reached, through regularly-scheduled or emergency sessions and by preserving the principle of secrecy—often decided by secret ballots. Members are picked by the Emir.

It consists of bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, a general secretary, and averages between 7 and 10 total members.It supervises the work of the six major committees: Military, Political, Information, Administration-Financial, Security, and Surveillance.

Military Committee

Responsible for preparing young Islamic freedom fighters, training and organizing them for combat, and teaching them tactical and technical skills. Also develops and implements procedures for the greater fighting forces in accordance with Islamic law. The committee is subdivided into five separate divisions:

• President
• training-combat
• training-operations,
• nuclear weapons section
• library and research section.

Political Committee

The "foreign ministry" of al-Aqeda, which deals with its relations to organizations, whether Islamic republics or other jihadi organizations. It is organized into:

• president of the committee
• representative to the president
• political section
• operational political officers.

It focuses on religious interpretation within the political interactions available to it, and "spreading the brand."

Information Committee

Al-Qaeda understands the role of information operations; the committee has a wider range than psychological warfare alone. The committee does produce political intelligence. Its goals are to:

• Proselyze the ca;; upon all Muslims to embark on a personal jihad in the name of Islam.
• Spread and enforce the general rules and concepts of al-Qa’ida ideology (includes salafism, Qutbism, and when necessary, takfir).
• Conduct information operations to spread the ideology and ignite global jihad. Attack the West wherever and whenever possible and do so in accordance with the shari’a.
• Uncover, reveal, and exploit the weaknesses of secular governments and nationalist parties. Reinforce the importance of Islamic jihad as each Muslim’s individual mission.

Administration and Financial Committee

The functions of this committee may appear mundane, but have to operate within a context of protecting them from financial intelligence It provides salaries, vacations and leave, disability and medical benefits, as well as severance benefits. It does accounting, safeguards funds, provides loans if needed, and oversees financial policies and services for the organization. Loans may seem odd, until it is realized that two of its major defectors, L'Houssaine Kherchtou and Jamal al-Fadl, broke away over financial issues.

Security Committee

Responsible for counterintelligence, this committee guards the leadership as well as operations, and deals with host countries. Led by a committee chairman, the committee is comprised of a lesser council and an executive branch composed of:

• investigations section,
• imprisonments and torture section
• documents section
• coordination and relations section.
• guard detail
• security education.

Surveillance Committee

This is the intelligence arm of al-Qaeda, about which little is known in the open literature.