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| Volume XIII, Winter 2006, Number 4 |
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BOOK REVIEW
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Al Qaeda Now: Understanding Today’s Terrorists, edited by Karen Greenberg, Cambridge University Press, 2005. 257 pages, including index. $60.00, hardcover.
Thomas Mattair
Independent author and consultant
This volume is based on a one-day seminar convened in December 2004 by the New America Foundation and the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. The volume also provides the text of six representative letters, interviews and audiotape recordings by Osama bin Laden out of a total of eighteen that had been released at that time. It is a handy reference, providing succinct statements of the views of many important analysts and highlighting significant agreements and disagreements among them. Major developments since then make reflection on these panels and texts interesting.
The volume reveals general agreement that after the U.S.-led response to September 11, 2001, particularly in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda has been seriously weakened as an organization but has evolved into a potent transnational ideological movement; that anti-Americanism is rampant in the Middle East; that the profile of the membership of this movement is increasingly the educated youth exposed to the West rather than the uneducated and unemployed youth; that terrorist cells and support networks are proliferating in Europe and preparing attacks both there and in the United States; and that the United States and its allies need significant improvements in their intelligence-gathering and law-enforcement efforts.
The volume reveals disagreement on the role that the media play in the conflict with al-Qaeda. Some argued that al-Jazeera and even CNN legitimize al-Qaeda’s terror; others claimed that these media outlets are a necessary source of information. Some argued that the United States should use the media in a public diplomacy campaign to project a better image of the United States; others countered that this will be futile unless there are significant changes in U.S. foreign policy. There was notable disagreement on the impact of the war in Iraq and the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict on al-Qaeda.
During the first panel discussion, “Al-Qaeda Then and Now,” CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen noted that, even though al-Qaeda the organization has been disrupted, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri continue to influence followers around the world. He, therefore, disputed the argument that it is no longer important to capture and prosecute them. This position was also stressed by Michael Scheuer, the former CIA official who was responsible for tracking Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Since that time, in the summer of 2006, the CIA has disbanded the unit responsible for capturing Bin Laden and his top associates, explaining that it will concentrate on the proliferation of emerging networks around the world. Scheuer has criticized the agency for the decision to disband this unit.
In the second panel, “Who Joins al Qaeda?” Harvard analyst Jessica Stern stressed that adherents were motivated by an aversion to globalization, an interest in moral, spiritual and emotional rewards as well as financial support for themselves or their families, a desire to overcome the humiliations experienced at the hands of the west, and anger over festering conflicts. She argued that a strategy to ease the feeling of humiliation is needed. Former CIA analyst Marc Sageman argued that this strategy requires changes in U.S. foreign policy, particularly toward the Arab-Israeli conflict and Iraq. Stern agreed, as did many others during the day. Indeed, Rohan Gunaratna, the author of Inside Al-Qaeda, pointedly countered the view prevalent among many Americans that al-Qaeda hates the West because of its values, arguing that “…al-Qaeda has no problem at all with your values. Al-Qaeda’s problem is with your foreign policy.” This is what the polling data show, but leading members of the Bush administration continue to make the unhelpful argument that it is primarily about values.
In another panel, “The U.S. vs. al-Qaeda,” American Enterprise Institute analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht argued that the United States should promote democratic transformation in the Middle East in order to defeat the tyranny that provokes Islamic extremism and that the U.S. war in Iraq was a necessary part of this effort. However, he agreed with Scheuer and former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Patrick Lang that the United States cannot export its own form of liberal democracy.
Iraq has demonstrated, however, that the promotion of democratic institutions and procedures may not overcome the emergence of sectarian and ethnic divisions in full force after years of economic sanctions and under conditions of military occupation. Moreover, Iraq was not a base for al-Qaeda prior to the U.S. military operations of 2003. As the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on “Global Trends in Terror” noted in mid-2006, however, Iraq has become not only a magnet and breeding and training ground for terrorist followers of the al-Qaeda ideology since 2003, but it has also become a cause that has fueled the growth of this “jihadist” threat worldwide. As for the Palestinian territories, the democratic elections in January 2006 produced an Islamist government that neither Israel nor the United States will accept as a partner in negotiations for Palestinian statehood. Moreover, a hard push for democratic transformation in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Cooperation Council states, as opposed to support for an evolutionary process of reform, could possibly advance Islamist extremism there, which is what Bin Laden would like to accomplish.
In the panel on “Al-Qaeda in Europe,” Gunaratna warned that some of the terrorist networks that have emerged in Iraq since 2003, including that of the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have expanded into the Levant and Europe with the intention of carrying out operations there. Ursula Mueller of the German embassy in Washington also argued that Europe continues to face threats from individuals associated with al-Qaeda the organization, but increasingly also faces threats from members of Muslim communities in Europe inspired by al-Qaeda’s organization. She argued that the European coalition partners of the United States military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan face the greatest threat. The subsequent bombings on the London subway system in the summer of 2005 seemed to bear this out.
Finally, the statements of Osama bin Laden included in this volume are very important reading. I recently heard a very respected journalist say on a Sunday morning talk show that Bin Laden did not begin to address the Israeli-Palestinian issue until after the second Palestinian intifada in autumn of 2000. She was not challenged by anyone else on the show. Yet in the “religious edict” that he issued in 1996, which is included in this volume, Bin Laden repeatedly referred to the “Zionist-Crusader” occupation and the Muslim blood spilled in Palestine. It was an integral part of his general denunciation of the American-Israeli occupation of Muslim lands, particularly the Arabian peninsula, and his call for the use of guerrilla war and terror to attack Western interests and drive them out. In his interviews and recordings since September 11, 2001, he has continued to cite Palestine as a part of the general fabric of grievances that explain that attack inside the United States itself. Those who argue that Bin Laden was planning the 2001 attacks even while the Clinton administration was trying to broker a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that this must mean that Bin Laden is not really motivated by this issue miss the point. Bin Laden and other leaders of this movement will not be satisfied with a two-state solution to the conflict. But a two-state solution, along with other foreign-policy changes, will shrink the pool from which Bin Laden can recruit. It is important to understand what motivates al-Qaeda and other terrorists. Ignoring, forgetting or dismissing what Bin Laden has said is dangerous. The U.S. media could do a better job of educating the American people, and having this book in their hands could help American journalists. It could also help the administration.
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