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BOOK REVIEW
Osama's
universe
Inside Al Qaeda,
Global Network of Terror by Rohan Gunaratna
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
"Look at
Osama. Look at his face. He is a good man. He is a kind
man. He is a man of God, He cares for poor
Muslims."
- A taxi driver in Jakarta, after
naming his baby "Osama my hero", October 2001
 Sri
Lankan intelligence expert Rohan Gunaratna has drawn on
his vast experience as a consultant to governments on
counter-terrorism and come up with a power-packed and
information-filled book on Osama bin Laden's universe
and its dreadful consequences for our universe. The
author personally conducted several hundred hours of
interviews of more than 200 terrorists, including
al-Qaeda members, in more than 15 countries, and
thoughtfully compressed the data into a book elucidating
the threat posed by Islamism's "operational vanguard"
and its prospect of "more or less continuous conflict
with the West". (p.2)
Brief history of The
Base
Until September 11, Osama bin Laden or his
coterie never used the term al-Qaeda, although the
shadowy organization was in existence since 1989, when
the Pakistan-based Maktab-al-Khidmat (MAK) was converted
from an Afghan jihad group into an "Islamic rapid
reaction force" aiding Muslims anywhere on earth.
Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, MAK's founder and mentor
of bin Laden, disfavored expansion into a global
terrorist force that would re-establish the Caliphate
through worldwide jihad. It is a closely guarded secret
that bin Laden sanctioned his teacher's assassination in
Peshawar in 1989 due to this fundamental difference.
Azzam's murderers belonged to the Egyptian "family", who
then went on to occupy the top rungs of al-Qaeda.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, Ali al-Rashidi and Mohammad
Atef, who held key positions within al-Qaeda, were all
followers of the Salafi school like bin Laden - a
universalist brand of Islamism that shrugged off
sectarian divides and believed in pragmatic alliances of
jihad forces, be they Shi'ite or Sunni, against the
common enemies of America, Russia and Israel. This
tendency was to later bear fruit in al-Qaeda-Hezbollah
cooperation (dealt at length in Yossef Bodansky's book,
Bin Laden. The Man Who Declared War on America).
From the early 1990s, bin Laden invited Islamists of
varied strands to join al-Qaeda's shura majlis
(consultative council), thus laying the foundation for a
formidable and gargantuan terrorist network that would
challenge the foundations of world power.
However, widening the orbit did not mean
dilution of cadre skills, as is the case with other
terrorist outfits. Quality of recruits being of
paramount importance, al-Qaeda accepted only 3,000 (3
percent) of the mujahideen who trained in Afghanistan
and Pakistan between 1989 and 2001. Al-Qaeda screens out
"all but the most committed, most trustworthy and most
capable operatives". (p.8) It is this exclusivity which
has made it legendary and enviable in the eyes of
Islamic fundamentalists around the world, who may or may
not be allied with al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda's
financial infrastructure was nurtured during bin Laden's
stay in Sudan (1991-1996) as the guest of the National
Islamic Front's Hassan-al-Turabi. Once the Soviets fled
Afghanistan, al-Qaeda fighters expressed restiveness and
a desire to find new pastures to fight. The relocation
to Sudan was with the hope that holy warriors "could go
to work again". In Sudan, bin Laden diversified his
businesses by establishing 30 companies, ranging from
genetic research labs and civil engineering to
construction and road building. From Sudan, al-Qaeda
spread like a hydra, using communication signposts of
the globalization era like encrypted web sites,
satellite telephones, laptops etc. It was also in Sudan
that al-Qaeda began investing in chemical, biological,
radiological and nuclear weapons.
The aborted
Operation Bojinka (the plan in 1994 to assassinate Bill
Clinton and Pope John Paul in Manila and simultaneously
crash 11 US airliners over the Pacific) and the failed
assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak in Ethiopia (1995) caused Sudan to request bin
Laden's departure from its soil in 1996. Al-Qaeda's
infrastructure in Pakistan was intact since the Afghan
war days and the "Sheikh" decided to shift back to the
original "land of jihad". Using material and military
goodies, bin Laden quickly consolidated his hold on the
Taliban leadership in neighboring Afghanistan,
especially the amir-ul-momineen (commander of the
faithful), Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
While in
Pakistan-Afghanistan, bin Laden and Zawahiri engineered
a tactical shift from concentrating mainly on puppet
Muslim rulers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to a "second
front" against the "King of Satan", America. In 1998,
al-Qaeda announced the formation of "a World Islamic
Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders", and
released new fatwa ordering the killing of
Americans. The link between munafiqeen
(hypocrites who pose as "true Muslims") and their
sponsors in America became crystal clear when the
Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam US embassy bombings (August 7,
1998) were timed to coincide with the arrival of
American troops in Saudi Arabia.
Bin Laden grew
in stature of radical Muslims between 1998 and 2000 by
calling for the induction of nuclear weapons into
Pakistan's arsenal "to prepare for the jihad",
persuading the Taliban to destroy the Buddha statues in
Bamiyan and successfully bombed the USS Cole in Yemen.
The last critical "gift" of bin Laden to the Taliban
before September 11 was the assassination of Ahmad Shah
Masoud, the Afghan resistance commander, two days
earlier. After striking at the heart of American
political and economic assets, the name bin Laden has
become associated with heroism "among many Muslim
communities, from Pakistan to Indonesia and from Nigeria
to Egypt". (p.52) After all, he has achieved what no
other force on earth has done since the British in 1812
- attacked mainland America with devastating impact.
Organization and ideology
Al-Qaeda is
organized on the principles of decentralization and
slippery fungibility. "Under severe pressure, it is
likely to mutate and disperse into less accessible
parts." (p.55) Constituent groups of al-Qaeda operate as
a loose coalition, each with its own command, control
and communication structures. It is a fluid, dynamic and
goal-oriented (rather than rule-oriented) body, whose
most potent weapon is the 055 Brigade, a guerrilla group
of 2,000 battle-hardened fighters, comprising Arabs,
Central, South and Southeast Asians.
Training
camps accept non-al Qaeda jihadis as well and run cadets
through practical and theoretical training far more
rigorous than those of a normal military academy. The
7,000-page textbook, Encyclopedia of the Afghan
Jihad, instructs trainees on urban, mountain, desert
and jungle warfare, surveillance, counter-surveillance,
forging of identity documents, and conducting maritime
or vehicle-borne suicide attacks. Religious
indoctrination is considered more important than combat
preparedness and bin Laden himself addresses elite
students on how "bitter situations came about as a
result of children's love for the world, their loathing
of death, and their abandonment of jihad". (p.74)
Al-Qaeda's finance and business committee -
comprising professional bankers, accountants and traders
- runs the group's funds across four continents. Wealthy
Arab benefactors in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are the mainstays, while an
extensive web of cover businesses from diamond-trading,
import-export, manufacturing, transport and Islamic
charities and "humanitarian" NGOs (such as the
International Islamic Relief Organization) provide the
second rung of monetary support. In Europe, al-Qaeda's
Algerian agents raise approximately $1 million a month
through credit card fraud and collaboration with
organized crime racquets.
Gunaratna credits
al-Qaeda for perfecting the art of "agent-handling",
that is, infiltrating political and security
establishments of many countries. "Several Egyptian,
Pakistani and Central Asian police officers and military
personnel have served in the ranks of al-Qaeda." (p.76)
Utmost precautions are taken to reduce the risk of
detection of attack plans and arrangements, as is
visible in setting up of small "urban training camps"
all over Europe and North America in private safe
houses, now that the public camps in
Afghanistan-Pakistan have been bombed. Cellular networks
that deny knowledge of other cells or are simply kept
ignorant of operatives on different missions, even
within the same town or city, enable high resistance to
intelligence service penetration. "Martyrdom operations"
are so chosen that few fidayeen have past
terrorist records, thereby diminishing the chances of
arrest.
Ideological brainwashing and
radicalization of Muslim communities is a very crucial
component of al-Qaeda tactics. It can "draw on the
support of some six-seven million radical Muslims
worldwide, of which 120,000 are willing to take up
arms". (p.95). Non-ejection of US troops from Muslim
lands is equated with "sin", and the same abhorrent sin
will be invoked to fresh cadres now regarding US troops
in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "No group has invested so
much time and effort as al-Qaeda in programming its
fighters for death." (p.91)
Global
outreach
Al-Qaeda is easily the world's biggest
multinational corporation, with branches in nearly 100
countries and countless billions of dollars in annual
turnover. In North America, Sheikh Kabbani of the
Islamic Council admitted, "Islamists took over 80
percent of the mosques in the United States ... the
ideology of extremism has been spread mostly to the
youth and the new generation." (p.103) In fact, bin
Laden entrusted the September 11 attacks to Hamburg and
Kuala Lumpur cells due to the knowledge that the FBI was
tracking radical American Muslims.
In Europe,
most operatives are immigrant Muslims, mainly Algerians,
Moroccans, Tunisians, Libyans and Egyptians. London,
with the infamous Finsbury Park Mosque, was "al-Qaeda's
spiritual hub in the Western world". (p.116) Indian
intelligence revealed recently that a suicide team of
al-Qaeda had planned ramming planes into the British
House of Parliament on the same day as the Pentagon and
World Trade Center were smashed. The interrogation of
Sheikh Omar, Daniel Pearl's Pakistani assassin, has
revealed that al-Qaeda's British-based operatives also
had a hand in the suicide attacks on the Jammu Kashmir
Legislature (October 2001), the parliament of India
(December 2001) and the US Information Center in Kolkata
(January 2002).
France is a sworn enemy of
al-Qaeda due to its support of "un-Islamic" dictators in
the Maghreb. The Algerian Groupe Salafiste and GIA
conduct most of al-Qaeda's propaganda and terrorist
campaigns in France. The Netherlands is a favorite
banking and investment destination of al-Qaeda.
Islamists have also taken over mosques for Muslim
immigrants - so much so that, "in addition to Dutch
citizens of Arab origin, there are several native Dutch
converts to Islam openly willing to sacrifice their
lives for Allah and go to Afghanistan". (p.126)
Similarly, Italian and German authorities believe that
al-Qaeda recruited heavily from mosques and
madrassas (religious schools). In the Balkans, up
to 4,000 foreign mujahideen fought against the
Serbs and Croats, with the ferocity of killings by the
"guest militants" shocking Bosnian Muslims. In the
Caucasus, around 1,500 Afghan veterans entered
Azerbaijan to fight Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, and
once fighting ceased there in 1994, they swiftly moved
on to Chechnya-Daghestan (Shamil Basayev was a bin Laden
associate).
Egypt is literally the cradle of
al-Qaeda, and bin Laden has carefully nurtured both
Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Group, bridging the gap
between fighting factions and putting up a united front
against the government in Cairo. A "high percentage of
radicalized Egyptian intellectuals, professionals and
military wish to see an Islamic regime in power",
forming the eyes and ears of al-Qaeda in a tightly
monitored society. Many of the Egyptian and North
African terrorist actions were launched from Yemen,
whose long-standing Islamic uprising against communism
was bin Laden's favorite cause since childhood. Saudi
Arabia, like Egypt, is a virtual police state and
disallows Islamist activities. But such is the aura of
bin Laden here that al-Qaeda raises most of its funding
from wealthy patrons, with some "pious" individuals
donating $1.6 million a day to "Islamic causes".
Iran, Syria and Lebanon play important
subsidiary roles for al-Qaeda due to the Hezbollah
connection. Imad Mughniyeh helped al-Qaeda develop
agent-handling and bombing big urban buildings. In
Israel and the occupied territories, al-Qaeda has a
wellspring of associates in Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and
the fact that bin Laden is viewed as the successor of
Abdullah Azzam adds to his legitimacy.
Islamists
see Africa and its 200 million Muslim inhabitants as
al-Qaeda's "newest theater". Bin Laden's followers
strongly believe that the Horn of Africa is "facing a
furious Christian onslaught". (p.152)
Al-ittihad-al-Islamiya, an al-Qaeda outfit, claims
responsibility for the Mogadishu ambush of 1993 which
"drove the crusaders out". In Sudan, although al-Turabi
has been imprisoned and President Bashir is dishing out
leads on al-Qaeda to the US, "the threat posed by
Islamists has not diminished and is likely to
resurface". (p.157) Ninety percent of the Islamic NGOs
in Uganda were either established or operated by Arabs
with al-Qaeda leanings.
Eastwards, in
Tajikistan, bin Laden supported the Islamist struggle to
topple the Russian-backed communist government, a
conflict spilling into a full-scale civil war after
1991. Uzbek Islamist, Juma Namangani, is said to be an
avid bin Laden follower and his IMU rebels have received
training in al-Qaeda facilities. Until October 2001,
al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan also prepared Uighurs to
fight the Chinese government in Sinkiang.
In the
Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf Group's organization,
ideology and target-selection are deeply influenced by
al-Qaeda. Through the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF), bin Laden's battalions have penetrated domestic
and international Islamic entities based in Southeast
Asia. Jemaah Islamiyah is a- Qaeda's "Asian arm", aiming
to establish "an Islamic republic unifying Malaysia,
Indonesia, Brunei, southern Thailand and Mindanao".
(p.192)
The Indian subcontinent is fertile
ground for al-Qaeda "sleeper" and active agents.
Pakistan is "the single most important refuge other than
Afghanistan, before and after 9/11". (p.205) Al-Qaeda
members are present in all major Pakistani jihad outfits
fighting India in Kashmir, that is Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
(HuM), Jaish-i-Muhammad, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and
Lashkar-I-Toiba. Al-Qaeda influenced a change in their
strategy by "encouraging and assisting them to strike at
the heart of India-New Delhi and the major cities rather
than in the periphery of Jammu and Kashmir". (p.206)
Gunaratna speculates that the reason that
Pakistan did not extradite Sheikh Omar to America,
unlike previous terrorists like Ramzi Yousef, is
"because of the complicity of the Pakistani state in his
training" in HuM camps. The author also quotes from an
al-Qaeda manual at a HuM camp: "We saw Russia
disintegrate. Now we will see India fall apart. In the
flames of jihad we will see America ablaze." (p.215) The
Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islam is also
reported to be benefiting from a 25-member al-Qaeda team
imparting sophisticated armed training since June 2001.
Recommendations
Gunaratna's solutions
to counter the "self-reproducing" al-Qaeda are
threefold, surprisingly stressing the non-military over
the military. In the short run, instead of aerial
bombardment that generates negative reactions,
"invisible black operations such as assassination of
terrorist leaders should be given priority". (p.235) If
the US unilaterally attacks Iraq, which has no
established connection with bin Laden, "the victor will
be al-Qaeda". In the medium term, Islamism should be
prevented from moving from the margins to the center in
Muslim societies and polities. The battle for the
future, to recall M J Akbar's phrase, will be fought "in
the mind". In the long term, schools and community
centers disseminating modern education and humane
non-sectarian values have to be promoted in place of
madrassas. Resolution of outstanding disputes
like Palestine and Kashmir will also take the wind out
of bin Laden's habit of adding new "causes" to his
diabolical mission.
Gunaratna has made a
valuable intelligence-redolent intervention into the
burgeoning market of bin Laden literature. Policy makers
and private citizens would be well advised to read
Inside Al Qaeda for their own good.
Inside Al Qaeda, Global Network of Terror
by Rohan Gunaratna, Columbia University Press, New York,
2002. ISBN: 0-231-12692-1. Price: US$22.95, 272 pages.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contactcontent@atimes.com for
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