Qaeda Network Research Articles

War and the Iraq Dilemma: Facing Harsh Realities

children of darkness are evil because they know no law beyond the self. They are wise, though evil, because they understand the power of self-interest. The children of light are virtuous because they have some conception of a higher law than their own will. They are usually foolish because they do not know the power of self-will. They underestimate the peril of anarchy in both the national and international community. Clearly it has become necessary for the children of light to borrow some of the wisdom of the children of darkness; and yet be careful not to borrow too much. -- Reinhold Niebuhr The Children of Light and The Children of Darkness, 1944 The tragic events of 11 September 2001 have given Americans a painful reminder of the evil that men are capable of inflicting on others, as Reinhold Niebuhr warned long ago, witnessing the destruction wrought by Nazi Germany. The World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks dealt heavy blows to the American liberalism that sees humankind as perfectible and on a steady historical march toward democracy and international peace. That dark day jarred American innocence and alerted us to the hatred of the United States that seethes in the Middle East and the lengths to which adversaries will go to harm our citizens and interests. The day should serve as a loud wake-up call that adversaries want to inflict massive devastation on the United States and would be able to accomplish this task more readily if armed with chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons. Al Qaeda was working feverishly along these lines, judging from documents and plans captured in the Afghanistan campaign. Other sub-state actors may foll ow al Qaeda's lead. The substantial infrastructure needed to support weapons of mass destruction programs--particularly for nuclear weapons--and their delivery systems such as aircraft and ballistic missiles, however, will likely remain more within the reach of nation-states than sub-state actors. The Bush Administration casts the American military campaign as a against terrorism. That characterization might be useful as oratory but is amorphous and causes considerable confusion. After all, is a method or tactic of warfare, not an entity. A against terrorism is akin to a on war, which comes perilously close to the crusading liberalism of Woodrow Wilson and his to end all wars. A against terrorism is an open-ended pledge that causes potential international partners to step back from cooperation in areas where they share interests with the United States out of fear that the next American steps could be sharply at odds with their interests. The Bush Administration would have been wiser to call the American military campaign what it is--a war to destroy the al Qaeda network, and the regimes and entities that support it, and to deter others from lending any support to the network responsible for slaughtering thousands of innocent American civilians in our homeland. Such directness would have lent a strategic clarity needed to link ends and means in statecraft, reinforced the war's objectives, and reduced a fair amount of second-guessing and downright back-stabbing at home and abroad. When President Bush surveyed the global geopolitical landscape through his post-9/11 lenses in his State of the Union address, he rightly viewed major threats to American security as coming from Iraq, Iran, and North Korea--his axis of evil. Bush's characterization was a rhetorical means to succinctly capture three nation-state threats, although it mistakenly suggested that there is an active concert of planning or conspiring between Baghdad, Tehran, and Pyongyang. What these countries do share is robust weapons of mass destruction capabilities and delivery systems coupled with political intentions to work against US interests. …

Operational Combat Analysis of the Al Qaeda Network

Contemporary network organizational structures have gradually developed over the last decades of the twentieth century. These new structures are challenging the traditional hierarchical structure form in a number of venues. In conflict and war, they made their potentials unequivocally known on 11 September 2001 via Al Qaeda's strategic suicide bombings against the United States. To better understand the military potentials of networks, an operational combat analysis of the Al Qaeda network was conducted. This analysis, a modification of weapons systems analysis, focused on network speed, along with offensive, defensive and combat multiplier attributes. Such analysis allows for a better understanding of the military capabilities and vulnerabilities of non-state OPFORs (opposing forces) and our own emergent counter-insurgency networks.

Preparing to Fight Unloved Wars

The American response to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 has given the world another glimpse of how the U.S. military will use its technological advantages to fight distant wars in the twenty-first century. The Pentagon is unlikely to withhold any new weapons systems from its operations against Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network, because his terrorist attacks are seen as unprincipled aggression against the American nation. The tactics used appeared for the first time in the fighting in Bosnia and Kosovo, but those were more limited operations, without the use of ground forces, and some technologies deployed in Afghanistan were not used there. However, like the wars in former Yugoslavia and Somalia, the war waged over Afghanistan was an “unloved” war: Americans did not want to see their troops die in it. The lessons of such wars are many, relating to the entire continuum of warning, conflict termination, and reconstruction. All of these phases must be addressed in planning to face such conflicts, or they will not be won. America is steeling itself to fight such “unloved” wars, for these are the types of challenges the world’s only superpower will face in the years ahead. Since the end of the Cold War, the international community, particularly the United States, has increasingly been called upon to respond to conflicts where their essential national interests have been only marginally engaged. At the same time, there has been very little readiness among Western publics to sustain casualties in these conflicts. Engagement in such wars has simply not been considered essential for national survival and therefore not worth loss of life. The September 11 attacks changed this equation because, for the first time, such an “unloved” conflict was brought directly to the American homeland. “Loved” wars are conflicts in which human sacrifice is seen as heroic and worthwhile. The Second World War was a “loved” war; we are still rapturously watching films that evoke the heroism and sacrifice of those who fought it. But wars that are distant from our national interests, or must be fought over issues to which Americans cannot relate, are not “loved.” Losses of American lives are considered unjustifiable in such wars; these are other peoples’ wars, even when they include direct attacks on Americans. “Unloved” conflicts share a number of characteristics. They are local wars, fought in remote, unfamiliar regions. They are based on obscure ethnic rivalries and competing claims to territory, or on extreme and suicidal interpretations of scriptures that most Westerners do not understand. These conflicts are sustained

Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones

Journalist Greg Campbell leads the reader down the international diamond trail of brutality, horror, and profit - providing an on-the-ground and in-the-mines story of global consequence. First discovered in 1930, the diamonds of Sierra Leone have funded one of the most savage rebel campaigns in modern history. These blood diamonds are smuggled out of West Africa and sold to legitimate diamond merchants in London, Antwerp, and New York, often with the complicity of the international diamond industry. Eventually, these very diamonds find their way into the rings and necklaces of brides and spouses the world over. Blood Diamonds is the gripping tale of how the diamond smuggling works, how the rebel war has effectively destroyed Sierra Leone and its people, and how the policies of the diamond industry - institutionalized in the 1880s by the De Beers cartel - have allowed it to happen. Award-winning journalist Greg Campbell traces the deadly trail of these diamonds, many of which are brought to the world market by fanatical enemies, including the Al Qaeda network. These repercussions of diamond smuggling are felt far beyond the borders of the poor and war-ridden country of Sierra Leone, and the consequences of overlooking this African tragedy, as the world has seen, are both shockingly deadly and unquestionably global.