By Eric Vandenbroeck
and co-workers
The internal
organization of Al Qaeda up to the 9/11 attacks was relatively hierarchical.
There was a strict separation between the leadership and the rank and file.
Most members swore bayat, a feilty,
to bin Laden, although others did not. Al Qaeda’s structure featured the
Emir-General, Osama bin Laden, at the top. Immediately following him was the
shura majlis, or consultative council, which consisted of very experienced
members. Four operational committees were directly below the shura majlis and
reported to it, and these committees handled Al Qaeda’s daily operations. They
were the military committee, which was responsible for training, procuring,
recruitment, transportation, military operations, tactics, and special
operations; the finance and business committee; the fatwa and Islamic study
committee; and the media and publicity committee. (For the above see The 9/11
Commission Report pp. 56, 67.)
Strategy And Goals of al Qaeda.
In short, al Qaeda is
an Islamic revivalist program that aims to restore Islam’s strength, as
manifested in the early centuries of its existence, which were marked by a
dramatic and incredibly rapid physical expansion of the dar
al-Islam, the territory formerly ruled by Muslims. (According to Islam the
entire world is divided into two parts: Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, the Domain or House of Islam, and the Domain or House
of War.) Its ultimate goal is the establishment of the Caliphate.
Precedents of this supranational Islamic form of government are found in the Umayyad and Abbasid
empires in the early centuries of Islamic existence up to the Mongol conquests
as well as, in more recent centuries, in the Ottoman empire, whose formal
existence span over 600 years, from 1299 to 1923. The style of the Caliphate
envisioned by Al Qaeda, however, would resemble more that of the Taliban than
that of the historical empires, since it would be guided by the doctrinaire,
puritanical, and relentlessly stringent form of practice of Islam currently
advocated by Al Qaeda and like-minded groups.
Case Study Muslim Eschatology:
Al Qaeda’s strategy
to achieve its aim is jihad, which is understood by the entity as a violent,
holy struggle that is at once sanctioned by God and fought for His sake. Jihad
is used as a strategy because it is understood to be pleasing to God, but also
because it is the only activity that can bring about three partial goals on the
way to the desired caliphate: the reawakening of Muslims; the defence of Islam; and the defeat of the enemy. From its
very founding, jihad has formed the gist of Al Qaeda’s strategy to bring about
its vision of a better form of government for Muslims and end the perceived
attack on Islam by the West. It was Abdullah Azzam who elevated the role of jihad at the early phase of
Al Qaeda,. He saw it as a way of overcoming the strong sense of nationalism
that has influenced local movements in Palestine and elsewhere. He believed
that the entire umma of believers would identify with a jihad in Afghanistan,
which in his eyes was clearly legitimate, since it was defensive. The jihad in Afghanistan,
he hoped, would later serve as a model for the waging of jihad in other places
where Muslims had been or would come under attack. Rather than using jihad to
create a state in Afghanistan, or to simply wage a campaign of terrorism
against ‘infidels,’ Azzam regarded the struggle against the Soviet Union as a
training ground that would create the vanguard of a reawakened Islam. This
vanguard, he hoped, would spark an overall resistance against the encroachments
of the enemies of Islam against the umma. Hence, for Azzam, Olivier Roy notes,
“the first virtue of jihad [was] to magnify the faith and commitment of
believers, whatever its real success on the ground.” (Globalized Islam , 296.)
A look at Al Qaeda’s
bylaws leaves no doubt about the central role that jihad plays in bringing
about the caliphate. According to its own bylaws, Al Qaeda defines itself as a
“religious group of the nation of Mohammad [who] … are adopting Jihad as a
method for change so that the ‘Word of God’ becomes supreme, and … are working
to provoke Jihad, prepare for it, and exercise it by whatever means possible.”
(These documents are accessible at
http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony_docs.asp). Osama bin Laden has since
repeated the duty of jihad in nearly every statement of his. In his1998 “Fatwa
against Jews and Crusaders” Bin Laden quoted verses from the Quran that
call upon believers, “But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and
slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in
wait for them in every stratagem (of war).” Jihad is the
sixth undeclared element
of Islam. Every anti-Islamic element is afraid of it. Al Qaeda wants to keep
this element alive and active and make it part of the daily lives of Muslims.
The waging of this jihad is an individual duty of which no Muslim is exempted,
because America has clearly declared war on Islam. “All these crimes and sins
committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger,
and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that
the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries …
Nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy who is attacking
religion and life.” ("World Islamic Front Statement of Jihad against Jews
and Crusaders," 23 February 1998.)
Jihad is also the
unifying concept under which Al Qaeda hopes to unite all true Muslims to wage
the global struggle against the Crusader-Zionist alliance. In his book,
Zawahiri describes the fundamentalist coalition of jihadist movements designed
to repel the Western-led attack as a coalition that is rallying under the
banner of jihad for the sake of God and operating outside the scope of the new
world order. It is free of the servitude for the dominating western empire. It
promises destruction and ruin for the new Crusades against the lands of Islam.
It is ready for revenge against the heads of the world’s gathering of infidels,
the United States, Russia, and Israel. It is anxious to seek retribution for
the blood of the martyrs, the grief of the mothers, the deprivation of the
orphans, the suffering of the detainees, and the sores of the tortured people
throughout the land of Islam, from Eastern Turkestan to Andalusia.A
first step on the way to the creation of the Caliphate, and in itself a
fundamental goal of Al Qaeda, is to act as the vanguard that reawakens and
reinvigorates Muslims from their perceived slumber, to inject them with
confidence, and instill in them the spirit of jihad. Mobilizing the Muslim
masses is important because the war against the West is portrayed as one of
cosmic proportions—i.e., a protracted and monumental battle of good versus
evil. As Zawahiri puts it, “an important point that must be underlined is that
this battle, which we must wage to defend our creed, Muslim nation, sanctities,
honor, values, wealth, and power, is a battle facing every Muslim, young or
old.” (Al-Zawahiri, Knights under the Prophet’s Banner, Part 11.) Al Qaeda’s
bylaws confirm, and spell out Al Qaeda’s role in this global Islamic awakening:
1- To spread the feeling of Jihad throughout the Muslim nation.2- Prepare and
qualify the needed personnel for the Muslim world by training and practical
fighting participation. 3- Support, aid and help the Jihad movements around the
world as possible. 4- Coordinate among the Jihad movements around the Islamic
world in order to create a united global Jihad movement.
Reawakening Muslims
from their hibernation would also create unity among Muslims, and thus
establish a true global community of believers. The unity of Muslims is based
on the belief, held among all Salafi-Jihadists, but even among many non-Salafi
Muslims that nation state borders are irrelevant, since Muslims are but one extended
family. According to bin Laden, for example, “geographical boundaries have no
importance … It is “incumbent on all Muslims to ignore these borders and
boundaries, which the kuffar [i.e., the infidels] have laid down between Muslim
lands, the Jews and the Christians, for the sole purpose of dividing us.” In
other words, as a high-level Al Qaeda operative, Mahfuz
ibn al-Walid (better known as Abu Hafs al-Muritani) put it, “the land of Islam is one single abode.”
(Quoted in John C.K. Daly and Stephen Ulph, "How and Why: The 9-11 Attacks
on America," Spotlight on Terror 1, no. 2 , 22 December 2003).
The reawakening of
Muslims requires that Al Qaeda pay particular attention to Muslim popular support.
Remarkably, Zawahiri does not shy away from admitting at this point that the
incitement of hatred of Israel and the United States is used not only because
it reflects ideological principles, but also because it is the most useful tool
in mobilizing the masses. According to the Al Qaeda deputy leader, The one
slogan that has been well understood by the nation and to which it has been
responding for the past 50 years is the call for the jihad against Israel. In
addition to this slogan, the nation in this decade is geared against the US
presence. It has responded favourably to the call for
the jihad against the Americans… The fact that must be acknowledged is that the
issue of Palestine is the cause that has been firing up the feelings of the
Muslim nation from Morocco to Indonesia for the past 50 years. In addition, it
is a rallying point for all the Arabs, be they believers or non-believers, good
or evil.In portraying itself as the vanguard of the
umma, Al Qaeda uses a number of tactics, which it has perfected. First, it makes
use of the media to lower the morale of its enemies and to uplift the spirit of
Muslims for whose sake it purports to act. Zawahiri made it abundantly clear
that Al Qaeda understood that the struggle it is waging is in large part about
public perceptions when he stated, “We are in a battle, and more than half of
this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. And this media
battle is a race for the hearts and minds of our people.”( Craig Whitlock,
"Keeping Al-Qaeda in His Grip," Washington Post, 16 April 2006, A1.)
A second step on the
way towards the redemption of Muslims by means of a creation of a new Islamic
super-state is the need to defend Islam against the perceived attack by a
conspiracy led by an alliance between ‘Crusaders,’ ‘Zionists,’ and apostate
regimes in Arab and Muslim countries. Al Qaeda’s entire narrative rests on the
assumption that the group is merely acting in self-defence.
Thus, in an interview with John Miller, bin Laden said, “And my word to
American journalists is not to ask why we did that [attack U.S. targets] but
ask what their government has done that forced us to defend ourselves.” (Quoted
in Anonymous, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, xviii.)
Defending Islam is,
first and foremost, presented as a religious duty for all Muslims. For Al
Qaeda, however, the call on Muslims to rise up and defend their religion is, no
less importantly, an integral part of its project to reawaken Muslims from
their hibernation and take their destinies into their own hands. Al Qaeda presents
a long list of Western infractions that it accuses of having caused the killing
and suffering of millions of Muslims, including the deaths of innocent children
and the dishonouring of women. These infractions
revolve first and foremost about the occupation of Muslim lands by the United
States, Israel, and previously by other Western countries such as France and
Britain. Bin Laden said, for example, that the September 11 attacks occurred
after he had witnessed “the iniquity and tyranny of the American-Israeli
coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon,” which gave birth to his
“resolve to punish the aggressors” and give the Americans “a taste of what we
have tasted and to deter it from killing our children and women …Should a man
be blamed for protecting his own? And is defending oneself and punishing the
wicked an eye for an eye, is that reprehensible terrorism?” (MEMRI Special
Dispatch Series No. 811, 5 November 2004).
The notion of
occupation is extended to the ‘apostate’ regimes such as Jordan and Saudi
Arabia, which bin Laden accuses of collaboration with the West and hence as
traitors to Islam whose fate shall be death. Even the United Nations is deemed
to be “part of the Crusader kingdom, over which resigns the Caesar in
Washington, who pays the salaries of Kofi Annan and his ilk,” as Zawahiri
declared in December 2005 in an interview to Al-Sahab TV. No less important,
bin Laden accuses the West and its collaborators in the Middle East of having
utterly humiliated the Muslim nation at large and robbed it of its honor. Al
Qaeda therefore demands the West to treat Muslims with respect, as Ayman
al-Zawahiri noted in a statement in January 2006:“The reality you refuse to
admit is that the Islamic nation will not allow you to treat it as you treat
slaves and animals. Unless you deal with the Islamic nation on the basis of
understanding and respect, you will continue to face one disaster after
another. Your disasters will not end unless you leave our homelands, stop
stealing our wealth, and stop corrupting leaders in our countries.” (Quoted in
Michael Scheuer, "Zawahiri: Foreshadowing Attacks on Israel and
America?," Terrorism Focus 3, no. 2, 18 January 2006).
Al Qaeda leaders also
charge the United States with depriving the Middle East of its riches. In his
book, Zawahiri accuses the United States of invading Afghanistan because of the
large quantities of petroleum lying under the Caspian Sea. Similarly, Zawahiri
finds unforgivable America’s sin of helping to establish and then provide aid
to Israel, which he describes as “in fact a huge US military base.” Foreign
occupation, however, is not the only way in which the West is allegedly
attacking Islam. For Al Qaeda, and even for many less violent-prone Islamists,
Western countries are involved in a conspiracy to incite non-Muslims against
the followers of Muhammad. Thus, underlying Zawahiri’s and bin Laden’s
opposition to U.S. and Western involvement in Islamic countries is a firm
belief that the United States is bent on preventing Islam from becoming a
dominant force throughout the Middle East and beyond. U.S. policies, its aid of
Israel, and its opportunistic and devilish alliance with local Arab regimes,
Zawahiri believes, are all designed to stem the rise of Islam, and thus
constitute an attack on Islam, the faith chosen by God as the ultimate truth.
In the words of Zawahiri, The United States, and the global Jewish government
that is behind it, have realized that (government by) Islam is the popular
demand of the nations of this region, which is considered the heart of the
Islamic world. They have realized that it is impossible to compromise on these
issues. Hence the United States has decided to dictate its wishes by force,
repression, forgery, and misinformation. Finally it has added direct military
intervention to all the foregoing methods. Zawahiri believes that the United
States has taken its drive to stem the spread of Islam to the entire globe, and
U.S. presence on any Islamic territory is framed as part of the American grand
plan to defeat Islam. The United States is accused of “leading the battle”
against Muslims “in Chechnya, the Caucasus, and also in Somalia where 13,000
Somali nationals were killed in the course of what the United States alleged
was its campaign to distribute foodstuffs in Somalia.” Zawahiri adds that “in
the name of food aid, the United States perpetrated hideous acts against the
Somalis, acts that came to light only later. Detainees were tortured and their
honor violated at the hands of the international coalition forces that
allegedly came to rescue Somalia.” (-Zawahiri, Knights under the Prophet’s
Banner, Part 7.)
When in September
2005, Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper, published a number of cartoons, some
of which depicted the Prophet Muhammad in ways offensive to Muslims, bin Laden
linked this incident with other perceived Western aggressions, saying that “the
crime [of the caricatures] should be placed within the framework of the general
aggressive trend [of America and the West] against our nation [umma] for the
past several years and decades.” (Quoted in Michael Scheuer, "Osama Bin
Laden: Taking Stock of the 'Zionist-Crusader War'," Terrorism Focus 3, no.
16, 25 April 2006). Thus, leading members of Al Qaeda hardly miss an
opportunity to remind their listeners of the alleged wrongdoings of the West,
which make it incumbent on every individual member of the umma to wage jihad in
order to avenge the attack on Islam. Violence is necessary because the United
States and other infidel countries do not understand the language of logical
reasoning.
Closely related to
the perceived attack against Islam, and partly as a response to it, is the need
to attack the aggressors and defeat them. The aggressors consist of a powerful
composition of Christians and Jews, the ‘Crusader-Zionist alliance,’ which is
supported by an array of Arab regimes in the Middle East whose support and
subservience to this alliance has rendered them ‘apostates,’ i.e., non-Muslims
for all purposes. The aggressions committed by this unholy alliance must be
avenged, and the enemies defeated in order for Islam to reign supreme. This
aggressive stance is partly dictated by Al Qaeda’s intrinsic urge to avenge
Muslim suffering. In a statement in early 2006 by Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s deputy
elevates the need for vengeance almost to the status of worship: “Allah has
made Qisas [retribution] an observed law. So it is
our right to attack whoever attacks us, and destroy the towns and villages of
those who destroy ours, and destroy the economy of those who plunder our wealth,
and kill the civilians of the country that kills our civilians.” Al Qaeda’s
leaders portray America as inhuman and evil, and find proof for this in
countless U.S. policies, from the firebombing of Tokyo and the nuclear attack
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to its sanctions on Libya, Iran, Syria, and Sudan,
and from its occupation of Iraq to its support of Israel.60 According to
Michael Scheuer, “Bin Laden’s genius lies not in his call for a defensive
jihad, but in constructing and articulating a consistent, convincing case that
an attack on Islam is underway and is being led and directed by America.”
(Anonymous, Imperial Hubris , 6-7.)
But al Qaeda is not
interested merely in routing the United States out of Muslim lands, but wants
to defeat it entirely and humiliate it. It has a precise plan of how it wants
to achieve this aim, namely by eroding its military power by spreading U.S.
military and intelligence forces thinner and in more costly manners. Bin
Laden’s contempt for the United States finds an expression in his desire to hit
the United States where it hurts. He hopes to punish the Americans
economically, and boasts whenever he appears to have succeeded in doing so. In
his late October 2004 speech, for instance, bin Laden bragged that “each of Al-Qaida’s
dollars defeated one million American dollars, thanks to Allah’s grace.” Ayman
al-Zawahiri’s call, in late December 2005, to attack Gulf oil facilities, was
similarly designed to punish Western economic interests, while also hurting the
despised apostate regimes in the Persian Gulf. Statements made by bin Laden in
an audio tape released on December 16, 2004 serve as a good example of Osama’s
contempt as well as of takfir, the process in which an individual or a state
are labeled infidels. On the tape, bin Laden says that: The acts of
disobedience [against Allah] committed by the [Saudi] regime are very grave.
They are worse than merely grave offenses and mortal sins; they are so serious
that those who commit such things are no longer Muslims… The government of
Riyadh joined a world alliance with the Crusader heresy under the leadership of
Bush against Islam and its people, as has happened in Afghanistan, and likewise
the conspiracies in Iraq, which have begun and not yet ended. (MEMRI Special
Dispatch Series No. 838, 30 December 2004).
Al Qaeda’s goal of
re-establishing a caliphate is a recurrent theme among many of Al Qaeda’s
leaders and ideological supporters. In a speech by Bin Laden from July 2003
which was posted on a number of Islamic internet forums, bin Laden decried the
abolition of the last Caliphate by Turkey in 1924 as a historic crime and
claimed the reinstatement of the caliphate as one of its central goals: Since
the fall of the Islamic Caliphate state, regimes that do not rule according to
the Koran have arisen. If truth be told, these regimes are fighting against the
law of Allah. Despite the proliferation of universities, schools, books,
preachers, imams, mosques, and [people who recite the] Koran, Islam is in
retreat, unfortunately, because the people are not walking in the path of
Muhammad… I say that I am convinced that thanks to Allah, this nation has
sufficient forces to establish the Islamic state and the Islamic Caliphate, but
we must tell these forces that this is their obligation. (MEMRI Special
Dispatch Series No. 539, 18 July 2003).
Al Qaeda’s operations
chief Saif al-Adl,
described Al Qaeda’s envisioned program up to the year 2020. Its ultimate goal,
according to al-Adl, is the establishment of a
caliphate. Al Qaeda believes that beginning at around 2013, the preconditions
for the establishment of this new Islamic empire will be perfect. By that time,
al- Adl writes, the Islamic nation will have woken up
from its hibernation and Al Qaeda will have long been a household name. The
battle with the Israeli enemy will have started, and most importantly, Iraq
will have been taken over by the mujahideen and become a base from which to
build the new Islamic army. Between 2010 and 2013, local regimes will be
overthrown, paving the way for the establishment of the Caliphate. After that
Caliphate has been established over as large a territory as possible, the
Islamic nation will be victorious, and the West will be deterred from future
invasions of Muslim lands. (Husayn, Al-Zarqawi: The Second
Generation of Al-Qa'ida, Part 8.)
A letter dated July
9, 2005, purportedly written by Ayman al-Zawahiri to then-leader of Al Qaeda in
Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, sheds additional light on the importance of
establishing a caliphate in Al Qaeda’s thinking. In the letter, Zawahiri
describes the short-term goals of the jihad in Iraq as expelling the United
States from Iraq and establishing an emirate, an Islamic entity led by an Emir,
which will pave the way for a future Caliphate. Toppling neighbouring
regimes and incorporating them into the Caliphate is a long-term goal, as is
the eventual extension of the Caliphate to as large a territory as possible. As
an in-depth analysis of the letter concluded, a long-term goal of Al Qaeda that
can be deduced from Zawahiri’s letter to Zarqawi is,[t]he expansion of the
Islamic Caliphate throughout the whole of Iraq, al-Sham, Syria, Lebanon,
Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, and the Arabian peninsula. Even these are not final
borders, however, as the Caliphate is eventually supposed to spread its domain
over the entire Land of Islam (Dar al-Islam) from North Africa to South-eastern
Asia, and ultimately, over the entire world. (Shmuel Bar and Yair Minzili, "The Zawahiri Letter and the Strategy of
Al-Qaeda," Current Trends in Islamist Ideology 3, February 2006, 40.) Iraq
has presented Al Qaeda with an opportunity to establish such an Islamic state
that will serve as the core for a future Caliphate in ‘the heart of the Muslim
world,’ and in an Arab country on top of that. Moreover, Iraq’s importance is
amplified by the fact that it had once served as a seat of the Abbasid
Caliphate, as bin Laden has emphasized. (Scheuer, "Osama Bin Laden: Taking
Stock of the 'Zionist-Crusader War'," Terrorism Focus 3, No. 16.)
No other tactic symbolizes
Al Qaeda’s tenaciousness and ability to inspire a large number of Muslims
worldwide as much as ‘martyrdom operations,’ as Al Qaeda members usually refer
to these attacks. No other tactic has been perfected to the extent that SAs
have, and no tactic is known to create as much fear, terror, and confusion
among the enemy. Because the spirit of self-sacrifice has embedded the cult of
martyrdom in the collective psyche of virtually all of its fighters, Al Qaeda
has institutionalized SAs more than any other group. As a result, a large
number of Al Qaeda’s attacks are SAs, which it has been able to stage
successfully by air, land, and sea. Adding that self-sacrifice is a moral code
for Al Qaeda with which SAs against its enemies are justified. Khaled Sheikh
Mohammed (KSM), the operational planner of the 9/11 attacks, told his
interrogators that the most important quality for any Al Qaeda operative was a
willingness to sacrifice himself. KSM stated that operatives used for a suicide
mission were not, for the most part, placed under any pressure to volunteer for
a suicide mission. Instead, when a recruit arrived at the training camp in
Afghanistan, he would fill out an application with standard questions. Every
mujahideen who arrived was asked if he would be prepared to serve as a suicide
operative. Those who answered in the affirmative where subsequently interviewed
by operations chief Muhammed Atef. (The 9/11 Commission Report , 234.)
Given the importance
of this tactic, Al Qaeda designed special programs by which it trained
volunteers for martyrdom operations, most of whom, according to KSM, where
Saudis and Yemenis. For major operations, such as the 9/11 attacks, bin
Laden himself would select recruits. KSM told his investigators that bin Laden
selected recruits for the “planes operation,” as the 9/11 plots were known
during the planning phase, in as little as ten minutes. When the trainee was
chosen, bin Laden would ask him to swear loyalty for a suicide operation. After
the selection and oath-swearing, the operative would be sent to KSM, where he
would receive training, and where a martyrdom video of him would be filmed.
This function was supervised by KSM as the head of al Qaeda’s media committee.
A key aspect of the training and subsequent execution of the SA was the
empowerment of the martyrs, which would occur, inter alia, by forming teams of
suicide attackers. As Schweitzer and Ferber point out, the linking up of
suicide attackers in pairs reinforced the dynamic of mutual support and
identification through “twinship,” a process that helps reduce the sense of
isolation embedded in the idea of suicide and the need to keep the attack
secret. (Yoram Schweitzer and Sari Goldstein Ferber, "Al Qaeda and the
Internationalization of Suicide Terrorism," in Jaffee Center for Strategic
Studies Memorandum No. 78 ,Tel Aviv, 2005, 41.)
Thus, charismatic
leaders such as bin Laden perform a crucial role in inspiring suicide attackers
who at times feel a personal loyalty to these figures. In the case of bin
Laden, a factor that played an important role was his willingness to accept
many foreign fighters who had been rejected elsewhere. Through martyrdom, they
had a chance to return the favor to bin Laden.( Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda ,
59.) This desire for martyrdom has been inculcated into the minds of Al Qaeda’s
rank and file, and potential recruits both in the training camps as well as in
statements released on videotape and the Internet. Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman
Zawahiri, regularly elevates martyrdom as the most honorable act for Muslims.
Like other groups that have engaged in SAs as part of their repertoire, Al
Qaeda is well aware of the tactical benefits that this tactic offers. During Al
Qaeda’s years in the Sudan, the group’s then-chief of operations, Mohammed Atef,
reportedly conducted a study concluding that traditional terrorist hijacking
operations did not suit the needs of Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda leaders believed that
hijackings did not inflict mass casualties, but merely helped negotiate the
release of prisoners. As a result, the study considered
the feasibility of hijacking planes and blowing them up in flight, a concept
that had been tried in the so-called Bojinka plot.
(The 9/11 Commission Report, 153.)
Martyrdom operations
furthermore are portrayed as the weapon of the weak in an asymmetric battle
against a materially more superior enemy. In this battle, the mujahideen, who
do not possess the weaponry and technological sophistication of the West,
nevertheless defeat the West with their willpower, selflessness, as well as
ingenuity, illustrated in the mujahideen’s ability to beat the West at its own
game by utilizing the West’s technologies against itself. As Mahfuz ibn al-Walid put it when he described the September
11 hijackers, “the attackers did not come armed with any weapon from outside,
nor did they manufacture any weapon on the inside; they came …armed only with
their resolve and their spirit of sacrifice, and with that they managed to turn
pacific, recreational, peaceful American technology into the strongest tool of
military destruction with all the annihilation and the demolition they wrought.”It is no wonder then, al-Walid adds, that the West
is stumbling in confusion in the face of this tactic against which there is
virtually no remedy: When a man can put himself at the top of the list of
victims of an operation he is about to carry out, when he dissolves himself and
his soul and his ‘ego’ in the target he is aiming for, he paralyses the most
sophisticated means of the adversary’s defense and throws all his calculations
and plans for defense and security, even retaliation, into confusion. As more
than one leading American figure has said: no one can prevent or stand in the
way of one who wishes for death. (Daly and Ulph, "How and Why: The 9-11
Attacks on America," Spotlight on Terror 1, no. 2.)
SAs thus weaken the
morale of the enemy, throwing him off-balance. His spirit is further undermined
when several SAs are carried out simultaneously, as occurred in the 1998
suicide attacks against the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, and
the September 11 attacks, among other suicide missions. At the same time that
the enemy is humiliated and his morale lowered, the self-confidence of the
mujahideen and, by extension, that of the entire Muslim umma is given a boost.
The 9/11 Commission Report, for instance, suggests that bin Laden believed that
an attack against the United States would benefit Al Qaeda by attracting more
suicide operatives, eliciting greater donations, and increasing the number of
sympathizers that are willing to provide logistical assistance. Hence, a
positive side-effect of SAs is that the stature of Al Qaeda in the eyes of the
umma is raised, as members of the umma are eager to join a movement that seems
to be at the frontlines of a battle between good and evil. Thus one can say
that the apocalyptic vision of Al Qaeda is on the rise, while jihadists feel as
if they are living at the peak of Muslim history. SAs magnify, and indeed
exaggerate the power of Al Qaeda, leading many Islamists to want to join the
winning side of history in this epic battle.
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