Another turning of the screws

by John Thompson

03/10/03

The recent capture of Walid Sheik Mohammed will not spell the end of al Qaeda. For that matter, if Osama Bin Laden is taken or killed in coming weeks, that won’t spell the end of al Qaeda either.

Combating terrorist groups is never easy. Normally, it is an exercise in attrition as the authorities of the nations confronted by a terrorist group have to kill or capture a terrorist group’s leaders and experts faster than they can be replaced. Sometimes, this can be done easily, if a group is small, badly organized and sloppy about its security. Canada’s Litton bombers (aka "The Squamish Five") from the early 1980s are an example of a group like this. The RCMP neatly bagged all five members as they traveled in a single vehicle after a practice in bomb-making techniques. Once they were taken, the group’s terror spree ended.

Al Qaeda is not small, it is superbly organized, and lavishes a lot of care and attention to the protection of the central nexus to this network of networks. Moreover, none of its members are exactly critical to the organization — even Osama Bin Laden can be replaced.

A trio of expert analysts have closely studied the central leadership of Al Qaeda (these being Yossef Bodansky, Paul Williams and Rohan Gunaratna). They outline it as follows:

The inner council of First Tier leaders is based on ‘the Emir" (for so bin Laden styles himself); his Egyptian planner and Chief Advisor, Ayman al-Zawahiri., and the members of his Consultation Council, the Shura. The Shura also comprises three Committees, one for ideological purposes, one for financial matters and one for what the terrorists style as ‘military’ concerns. In short, Osama has a very capable deputy, and a full set of ministers.

Assuming that this whole council is taken, it must be remembered that Al Qaeda is a network of mature seasoned terrorist organizations — around 35 of them. Each of these groups has its own leaders, its own command structures, and its own collection of experienced leaders, financial/logistics handlers, and veteran terrorists. All of these groups have found that al Qaeda was greater than the sum of its parts, because of the increased advantages all of them had from membership.

These groups constitute an enormous reserve of talent that can replace individual losses to the al Qaeda leadership, or who can reconstitute the entire leadership if it becomes necessary.

Taking out all of the al Qaeda leadership would be an incredible feat. Taking out the leadership of most — never mind all — of its 35 member groups would be impossible. Moreover, even if this did happen, there is yet another lair of leadership that would have to be addressed.

The core of al Qaeda and most of its member networks consists of "Arab Afghans" -- a network of older men who had joined together in the Pakistani training camps on the Afghan border during the 1980s and the war against the Soviet occupation, and of younger men who went through Bin Laden’s camps in the Sudan and Afghanistan in the 1990s. These men know each other, have common training, and share common experiences. Many of the more able people among them were ‘talent-spotted’ and received additional training beyond the basic six month course.

Al Qaeda also produced a lot of ‘how to’ videos and training guides — many of which have been widely distributed to local leaders.

It is true that Bin Laden did bring something to the Fundamentalist table that his replacements might not be able to provide. He was a billionaire in his own right when he first turned up among the Arab volunteers to fight in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s, so he has a degree of financial acumen and also brought personal contacts with a number of wealthy sympathizers.

However, Bin Laden has had a decade to secure al Qaeda’s core financial assets and prepare alternative funding routes. Moreover, a great many of the group’s personnel are ‘self-financing’, often through criminal enterprises such as counterfeiting, drug running, consumer and corporate fraud, etc.

One final consideration: One of the big delays on attacks as massive as those of the East Africa Embassy bombings and the 9-11 attacks has been the centralized planning and decision making in which Osama Bin Laden engages. But, if he is removed from the equation, then many of al Qaeda’s component networks, autonomous cells and even its autonomous individuals may have much more freedom to act. Look for more violence, rather than less when he goes.

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca