Al Qaeda Operatives Research Articles

Militant Recruitment in Pakistan: Implications for Al Qaeda and Other Organizations

Despite Pakistan's extensive contribution to the global war on terrorism, many questions persist about the extent to which Al Qaeda and its associated outfits are currently operating within Pakistan. This article examines this issue by posing several empirical questions: (1) What are the general contours of militancy in Pakistan? (2) What motivates individuals to join specific Pakistan-based militant outfits? (3) By what means do groups recruit specific individuals? (4) What do these findings suggest for Al Qaeda operations in Pakistan? (5) What linkages exist between Pakistan-based organizations to Al Qaeda? These issues are addressed through regional fieldwork, extensive literature reviews, and consultation with numerous highly regarded analysts to South Asia. This article concludes that Al Qaeda likely does not have an explicit and dedicated recruiting infrastructure to recruit Pakistanis for its operations. Rather, Al Qaeda relies upon a web of informal relations with groups based in Pakistan to gain access to operational collaborators and individuals to execute attacks within Pakistan.­

Civilization and its enemies: the next stage of history

CIVILIZATION AND ITS ENEMIES The Next Stage of History Lee Harris New York: Free Press, 2004. xxi, 232pp, $39.00 cloth (ISBN 0-7432-5749-9)Lee Harris offers a quirky, idiosyncratic, and unconventional verview of the challenges facing western civilization since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of the communist vision. The attacks of 9/11 highlighted the presence of a new of civilization, the radical Islamic terrorist acting out a religious fantasy by exposing the vulnerability of the Great Satan. What the current enemy has in common with previous totalitarian ideologies in the 20th century is the will to ruthlessness without inhibitions regarding the use efforce. What is different from the earlier communist challenge is that the religious fanatic is more irrational, unpredictable, and essentially part of a movement with no clear military strategy or overarching political objectives.The most controversial aspect of the author's interpretation of radical Islam is his explanation of the motivation behind the 9/11 attacks. This was not an act of war in the Clausewitzian sense that it served to weaken the United States strategically or to produce an alteration in policies, notably support for Israel. Nor was the objective to undermine the general morale of the American public. Thus there were no follow-up attacks-bombing of shopping centres or communications lines. In short, the attacks were part of a symbolic drama to demonstrate the power of Allah, a God that favoured the Muslim world over the militarily and economically superior western world. The audience that al Qaeda was trying to impress was the Arab street, not Pennsylvania Avenue.This view is questionable if only because we still don't have the appropriate documentation from the terrorist side. It is quite probable at this time that intelligence agencies have a much clearer picture about what is driving bin Laden based on interrogations of captured al Qaeda operatives. One plausible interpretation suggests that al Qaeda had launched a series of escalating attacks against the United States, beginning with the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and culminating in the massively destructive attacks of 2001. These attacks did indeed serve a larger design to antagonize the United States into a reckless military overreaction, thus further alienating Muslim states. In the end, the radicals believed their particular brand of religious enthusiasm would topple the most vulnerable Muslim states and perhaps lead to the acquisition of either the nuclear weapons of Pakistan or the oil riches of Saudi Arabia. Probably the clearest example that there was a Clausewitzian objective was the recent terrorist attack in Spain that prompted the new Socialist government into announcing the withdrawal of its troop contribution to the Iraq occupation forces.This reviewer has a few minor quibbles about historical inaccuracies. The author mistakenly identifies Captain Dreyfus as a colonel and incorrectly interprets the United States' demands on Japan in 1941, notably the removal of occupying forces in Manchuria. In fact, it was the Chinese territory acquired after 1937 that most concerned the United States. Sometimes the author employs terms that are vague and over-generalized, such as all previous threats in the history of mankind (25). …

Yemen’s War on Terror

Yemen has emerged of late as one of the more fertile locations for Al Qaeda activity. Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate, the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan (IAA), has executed a number of spectacular attacks against Western interests in recent years. It was responsible for the 1998 kidnapping of sixteen Western tourists in the southern province of Abyan, the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, and an assault on the French tanker the Limburg in 2002, among other attacks. Despite these international strikes, the IAA is the classic Al Qaeda affiliate: a local phenomenon that assists the larger jihadi network in its war against the West. Historically, Yemen has often been the site of proxy battles among foreign powers, from Pan-Arabists to communists. Not surprisingly, Al Qaeda has also used Yemen as a staging ground. The network has been active in Yemen since its inception: Al Qaeda’s first-ever attack took place in Aden in 1992. What started as a loose network of Yemeni Afghans—soldiers who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan and then brought radical Islam back to Yemen when they returned home in the early 1990s—slowly became a node in the Al Qaeda system. More than fourteen years after the end of the Soviet withdrawal in 2003, government officials in Yemen confirmed that several senior Al Qaeda operatives were still at large in Yemen, with dozens of lesser militants roaming the countryside. 1 While Yemen has cooperated with the United States on counterterrorism issues, making significant arrests and thwarting several plots, Al Qaeda is nonetheless likely to maintain deep roots there for years to come.

Creating a Force for Peace Operations: Ensuring Stability with Justice

The terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001 took the world by surprise. Yet the US military and its coalition partners were prepared to provide an effective response to international terrorism across the spectrum of capabilities. The military response has been measured and effective. Special operations forces and air assets took their toll on the Taliban and al Qaeda, and the role of conventional ground forces expanded to meet tactical and strategic requirements. In addition to supporting special operations forces in their direct strikes on terrorist organizations, conventional forces have two continuing missions: humanitarian relief operations, and the assurance of general security in order to enable post-conflict reconstruction in critical areas. Governments united in the war against terrorism are beginning to recognize these tasks as the same ones that have been required since the need to prepare to fight the massed armies of the Soviet Union fell away with the Berlin Wall. They are als o the same peacekeeping tasks performed by military forces in the Balkans during stability and support operations there. The US ability to participate in peace operations has become more important, not less so. Before the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the Department of Defense had begun a strategy for reshaping the US military. As one might expect, defense policy now reflects an emphasis on homeland defense against the asymmetric threats to our national interests that flow from international terrorism; cyber-warfare; transnational organized crime; illegal migration; illicit trafficking in narcotics, weapons, and people; and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Such threats are most likely to originate in regions with significant ethnic and religious turmoil. The world will not be safer, nor the homeland secure, if in fighting the immediate terrorist threat we allow the Balkans, Afghanistan, and other trouble spots to produce future threats to our security. Desperate people do desperate things. Desperate regimes seek financial and military support from terrorist organizations to remain in power. Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda operatives found sanctuary in Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, and other countries with intractable internal conflicts. The writings and rhetoric of the post-Cold War years have been prolific on the challenges faced by the sole surviving superpower. Indeed, the perils of such a position have become clear. While there is no certain way to negate America's vulnerability to hostile sentiment and actions, providing essential services to the international community and setting an example for other states to follow is the country's best bet. As the United States leads the way in the war against international terrorism, it will require near worldwide support in many forms-- diplomatic, economic, and intelligence. It will be forced to address the concerns of other states and forced to provide international services, which ironically will ultimately benefit America's position in the world. No longer can the nation afford to be grudging in its attention to troubled regions and situations heretofore defined as distinct from the traditional geopolitical definition of vital interests. Like the Cold War, the current struggle and its require ment for post-conflict intervention and reconstruction is likely to preoccupy the United States for decades. A New Approach to Conflict Intervention Accordingly, the United States will need both new forces and a new approach to post-conflict intervention. It must and can maintain its warfighting ability while becoming more adept at integrating civilian actors and processes. The mission of the military remains one focused on security, yet in peace operations civilian actors also have a critical role to play in achieving sustainable security. The division of labor is not always clear, and in fact, the way forward is not to divide labor so cleanly that we erect firewalls between actors. …

Applying Order-of-Battle to Al Qaeda Operations

Since the global war on terror began, the pursuit of Al Qaeda is widely considered as warfare and not the pursuit of criminals. In light of counter-terrorism being redefined as war, the criteria ap...

Is Southeast Asia the Second Front?

PHASE 1.5 IN LATE JANUARY 2002, the Bush administration sent 66o U.S. troops to the Philippines, deploying them in the south ofthe archipelago to assist in hostage rescue and counterinsurgency operations. The move was widely heralded as the opening of a second front in Wash ington's war on terrorism. And that perception was understandable: after all, the deployment followed hard on the heels of the arrests of dozens of alleged al Qaeda operatives in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. With the Taliban in Afghanistan having been routed, Southeast Asia-home to radical Islamist groups such as the Jemaah Islamiah (ji), Abu Sayyaf, and the Kumpulan Mujahideen Malaysia (KMM)-was starting to seem like the new home base for the terrorist movement that had brought down the World Trade Center. Whether or not this is actually the case, September ii and its after math have already transformed U.S. relations with many Southeast Asian nations. America's previously chilly interactions with Muslim majority Malaysia have thawed considerably; Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad has won plaudits from Washington for supporting the U.S. war on terrorism. Indonesia, meanwhile, has come in for heavy American criticism for failing to be similarly cooperative and crack down on its own extremists (although the United States has softened its tone on this issue in recent months). At the same time, many U.S.