the “ internecine fi ghting within the mujahedeen movement and among
the Arabs congregated around it in Pakistan. ” He also notes that Azzam
and the Egyptian radical Ayman al-Zawahiri competed for bin Laden’s
support and money.8 Other sources corroborate this competition.
BIRTH OF AL-QAEDA
Al-Qaeda, Arabic for the “ the base, ” grew out of the Maktab al Khidmat
lil Mujadidin al Arab (Afghan Services Offi ce), founded in 1984 or 1985
by bin Laden and Azzam to facilitate recruitment and travel of foreign
mujahedeen to fi ght the Soviets in Afghanistan. Several accounts document
the formation of al-Qaeda, although they do not always agree on
specifi c details. Bin Laden himself provides one account. “ Abu Ubaidah
al Banjshiri established the training camps against Russia’s terrorism
during the 1980s, ” he observed. “ We used to call the training camp al
Qaeda. And the name stayed. ”9 In an April 1988 article in his Jihad
magazine, Azzam provided a fuller explanation of the organization:
Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward and, while forcing
its way into society, puts up with heavy tasks and enormous sacrifi
ces. There is no ideology, neither earthly nor heavenly, that does
not require such a vanguard that gives everything it possesses in order
to achieve victory for the ideology. It carries the fl ag all along
the sheer endless and diffi cult path until it reaches its destination.
The vanguard constitutes the solid base (al Qaeda Sulbah) for the
expected society.10
Captured documents reveal that the idea of broadening al-Qaeda’s mandate
may have come from Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Islamic Jihad organization.
“ This future project is in the interest of the Egyptian brothers, ”
remarked Abu al Rida to bin Laden in an August 1988 meeting.11 Zawahiri
continues to play a major role in al-Qaeda to the present day, so much
so that some analysts consider him the brain of al-Qaeda, even though
bin Laden is its heart and spiritual leader. The account of an early Saudi
recruit supports the conclusion that the idea for al-Qaeda originated with
Egyptian radicals. “ The establishment of al Qaeda was discussed in the
home of Osama bin Laden in Peshawar following the departure of the
AL-QAEDA 55
Russians from Afghanistan and the end of the Jihad, ” reported Hasan
Abd-Rabbuh. “ I was one of those who witnessed the birth of al Qaeda.
The idea of al Qaeda is an Egyptian one by the Islamic Jihad group led
by Abu-Ubaidah al Banjshiri and Abu-Hafs. ”12
Al Banjishiri explained to this young Saudi recruit the goal of this
new organization and bin Laden’s role in its creation. “ You are aware of
brother Osama bin Laden’s generosity, ” the Egyptian said.
He has spent a lot of money to buy arms for the young mujahedeen
as well as in training them and paying for their travel tickets. We
should not waste this. We should invest in these young men and
we should mobilize them under his umbrella. We should form an
Islamic army for jihad that will be called al Qaeda. This army will
be one of the fruits of what bin Laden has spent on the Afghan jihad.
We should train these young men and equip them to be ready to
uphold Islam and defend Muslims in any part of the world. The
members of this army should be organized and highly trained.13
In its early days, al-Qaeda did not yet have the global agenda it later
acquired. It had not even focused on Muslim governments failing to rule
by strict sharia law, although its Egyptian members certainly wanted to
remove the hated regime of President Hosni Mubarak. One of bin Laden’s
associates recounts the fi rst time the Saudi millionaire broached the
idea for a permanent jihadist group. “ Osama believed he could set up
an army of young men responding to the jihad call, ” recalled Abu
Mahmud. “ When he presented the idea to us, he did not speak of jihad
against Arab regimes, but of helping Muslims against the infi del government
oppressing them, as was the case in Palestine, the Philippines, and
Kashmir, especially Central Asia, which was under Soviet rule then. ”14
ORGANIZATION
Al-Qaeda soon developed into a formal organization with a hierarchy of
leaders and a series of committees. Bin Laden emerged as its leader, although
he may have initially been reluctant to accept the job. According
to his brother-in-law, the rather humble and unassuming bin Laden had
to be persuaded to accept the position.15 The founders set up fi ve standing
56 OSAMA BIN LADEN
committees to run the organization: a military committee that ran
training camps and procured weapons; an Islamic Study committee that
issued fatwas (religious decrees) and rulings; a media committee that
published newspapers; a travel committee that took care of passports,
visas, and tickets; and a fi nance committee that raised money. A ruling
shura (council) oversaw the work of the committees.16 Eventually,
al-Qaeda evolved into a more decentralized organization with regional
bureaus linked to cells with 2 to 15 members each. Some cells had specialized
responsibilities, while others were created for a single terrorist
operation.17
Al-Qaeda benefi ted from the folklore that had enveloped the Afghan
Arabs. Following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the number
of foreign mujahedeen journeying to the country actually increased, attracted
no doubt by stories of the great jihadist victory there and eager
to help overthrow the communist puppet government the Soviets had
left behind in Kabul. Not all of these young men were acceptable to
al-Qaeda. The new organization had to develop membership standards
and training protocols. The shura laid down specifi c requirements for
membership. Applicants had to make an open-ended commitment to
the organization. They had to be obedient and well mannered and agree
to obey all of al-Qaeda’s statutes and instructions. They also had to be
referred by someone already in the organizations that al-Qaeda’s leaders
knew and trusted.18 Initial acceptance did not guarantee a membership.
Recruits entered “ a testing camp and [the] best brothers of them are
chosen to enter Al Qaeda Al Askariya [the military base]. ”19 According
to one recruit, initial training lasted two weeks, during which instructors
carefully screened applicants. “ They looked for certain specifi c qualifi -
cations among these young men, ” he reported. “ The most important
criteria is [ sic ] that the ones who are chosen should be young, zealous,
obedient, and with a weak character that obeys instructions without
question.”20 These criteria defi ne the generic profi le of recruits to almost
any terrorist organization or religious cult, for that matter.
Al-Qaeda attracted far more recruits than it could absorb, but it
turned very few volunteers away. Of the thousands of men who passed
through its training camps, only a small percentage stayed with the main
organization in Afghanistan. Some of those not admitted were sent to
fi ght in the confl icts in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Kashmir, but the vast
AL-QAEDA 57
majority returned to their own countries to await further instructions
from bin Laden and the Shura. They would become the nuclei of al-
Qaeda’s worldwide network of cells. Estimates of the number of those
trained in al-Qaeda camps between 1989 and 2001 vary widely, ranging
from 10,000 to 110,000. No more than 3,000 of these volunteers joined
al-Qaeda itself.21 Most of the trainees came from Arab countries. While
no complete registry of them has yet been found, the Pakistani government
during the 1990s asked foreign mujahedeen in their country to register
with the authorities. The registry for Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier
Province, immediately adjacent to Afghanistan, provides a rough indication
of the number of foreign fi ghters by country of origin: “ 1,142 were
Egyptian; 981 Saudis; 946 Sudanese; 792 Algerians; 771 Jordanians; 326
Iraqis; 292 Syrians; 234 Sudanese; 199 Libyans; 117 Tunisians; and 102
Moroccans.”22
The al-Qaeda organization headquartered in Afghanistan during the
1990s might be compared to a multinational corporation. Its leadership,
committees, camps, and permanent cadres in Afghanistan made up the
corporate head offi ce. Al-Qaeda central also commanded a global network
of cells in 76 countries by 2001.23 In addition to its permanent cells,
al-Qaeda also recruited local operatives within countries in which it
carried out attacks. These local recruits, who had never been to Afghanistan,
performed routine tasks that would have exposed the foreign
terrorist specialists (such as bomb makers) brought in for an operation
to capture by local authorities. The 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy
in Darussalam, Tanzania, illustrates how al-Qaeda combined such local
recruits with professional operatives to carry out a mission. The organization
recruited Khalfan Khamis Mohamed in a local mosque and won
him over to the jihadist cause. Once they were sure of his loyalty, they
told him he would take part in an important mission, but they kept him
in the dark as to its details. The foreign operatives in the cell asked Mohamed
to rent the safe house the group needed and to buy the truck
that would carry the explosives. As a local Tanzanian, he could perform
these tasks inconspicuously. The cell brought in an expert to build the
bomb, but this specialist and the rest of the foreign operatives left the
country before Mohamed drove the truck to the embassy.24 He may not
even have known the target until the day of the attack. Perhaps the
planners even intended him to be killed by the bomb. “ We, the East
58 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Africa cell members, do not want to know about the operations plan
since we are just implementers, ” proclaimed a document found on a computer
seized in Tanzania after the attack.25 Terrorist organizations have
long maintained security by keeping local cells ignorant of the larger organization
and providing individual cell members just enough information
for them to carry out their portion of the operation.
Since 9/11, U.S. counterterrorism operations have concentrated on
denying al-Qaeda safe havens and on targeting its leadership. In his 2002
book, Rohan Gunaratna, one of the world’s leading authorities on al-
Qaeda, argued that “ the most effective state response would be to target
Al Qaeda’s leadership, cripple its command and control, and disrupt its
current and future support bases. ”26 This approach might have been effective
before 9/11, when al-Qaeda was still a considerably more centralized
organization, but even then such a “ decapitation strike ” would have left
most of the terrorist network intact. However, al-Qaeda consists of much
more than its head offi ce. It exists on two other, far more menacing levels:
a network of linked organizations and an ideological movement
spread through personal recruiting via the Internet, both of which are
very hard to disrupt.
AL-QAEDA THE NETWORK
If al-Qaeda worked like an international corporation with headquarters
and branch offi ces, it also functioned as a conglomerate, a sort of holding
company linking many terrorist organizations under its broad ideological
umbrella. Analysts have also described it as a “ network of networks, ” a
vast global spider web of extremist groups united through radical Islamism
and committed to attacking what it deems apostate Muslim regimes, as
well as the United States and its European allies.
The al-Qaeda network developed further during bin Laden’s years in
Sudan. In 1995, an Islamic People’s Conference met in Khartoum, Sudan.
The conference brought together militants from Algeria, Pakistan, Jordan,
Eritrea, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, and the Philippines. Al-Qaeda forged
links with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and perhaps even Lebanese
Hezbollah, a Shi’a group once considered incompatible with the Sunni
extremists.27 In Febuary 1998, Osama bin Laden announced the formation
of a new conglomerate: “ The World Islamic Front for Jihad against
AL-QAEDA 59
Jews and Crusaders. ” Many known terrorist leaders from groups in Egypt,
Pakistan, and Bangladesh signed the alliance agreement, but bin Laden
kept the identities of most of the organizations gathered under the new
umbrella secret to protect them.28
Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, this
association, along with al-Qaeda’s own global network of cells, grew in
importance. The affi liates and branch offi ces carried on the struggle while
al-Qaeda central rebuilt itself in Pakistan. As bin Laden relocated to the
remote southeast border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, his capacity
to control or even infl uence the course of the terrorist campaign abroad
was temporarily disrupted. This disruption of the headquarters in Afghanistan
made it more diffi cult for al-Qaeda to move personnel and
resources around its global network and to concentrate them for an operation
like the 1998 embassy bombings in Darussalam, Tanzania, and
Nairobi, Kenya. The network has, however, picked up the slack as local
cells or affi liates organized, funded, and conducted operations such as the
2004 Madrid and 2005 London bombings. These cells may have enjoyed
some support and guidance from the central organization, but they recruited
locally and enjoyed considerable independence in carrying out
their operations.
AL-QAEDA THE IDEOLOGICAL MOVEMENT
Considerable evidence suggests that al-Qaeda has continued to evolve
beyond even the network level. Terrorism analyst Michael Chandler
describes what he calls “ third-generation ” terrorism. Bin Laden and his
shura, the “ fi rst generation, ” directed operations from Afghanistan until
the American invasion disrupted their central organization. This invasion
sent fi rst-generation al-Qaeda members fl eeing back to their
countries of origin. There they rejoined existing cells and organizations
or set up new ones, recruiting the “ second generation ” of terrorists. In
addition to these affi liates, the past few years have seen the rise of new,
“ third-generation ” groups whose members have no experience of Afghanistan
or even a direct connection to those who trained in terrorist
camps there. Al-Qaeda central provides inspiration and guidance
and perhaps some support but probably does not exercise complete control
of the new local groups. Third-generation terrorists may constitute
60 OSAMA BIN LADEN
themselves into their own local groups, raise their own funds, plan and
even conduct operations, and only then link up with or at least seek the
approval of the parent organization.29 In response to President George W.
Bush’s assertion that any state not with the United States was with the
terrorists, al-Qaeda seemed to say, “ Anyone who is against the United
States is with us. ”
Even more ominous than this cancerous spread of al-Qaeda through
direct recruitment by terrorist camp graduates is the spread of radical ideology
via the Internet. Despite their intense dislike of Western secularism
and democracy, bin Laden and his followers have readily adopted
the technological tools of the civilization they hate. The communications
revolution has reached into the most remote corners of the globe.
An astounding 1.6 billion of the world’s 6.7 billion people have Internet
access.30 Six out of 10 people on earth, or 4.1 billion people, use cell
phones.31 Solar panels power satellite televisions for people without access
to reliable electricity. These facts have profound implications. People
who are illiterate can access a wealth of online video and audio content.
Communities that lack clean water and adequate food, health care, and
jobs can log on to the Internet and make international calls using their
mobile telephones. Access to the overwhelming amount of information
on the Internet can have a very destabilizing effect. Al-Qaeda’s pronouncements
about the decadence of the West and its spread to the
non-Western world are made manifest by material that can be viewed online.
Pornography, crass materialism, and subversive ideas abound, and
the ease of accessing them validates for the Islamists their conclusion
that Western secularism does indeed threaten traditional Islamic societies.
The Internet also highlights the gap between the haves and the
have-nots of the world, showing the poor and marginalized how much
they lack.
In addition to facilitating extremism through its destabilizing effects,
the communications revolution has made it easier for al-Qaeda and its
affi liates to mobilize and focus the anger that the destabilization generates.
Previously an angry young man had to be radicalized solely by
other terrorists. Now he need only log on to discover that he belongs to
a global community of like-minded individuals. A host of Web sites
preach al-Qaeda’s extreme version of Islam to convince the alienated
young adult living in Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, London, or Minneapolis
AL-QAEDA 61
that all his problems stem from the Godless culture that surrounds and
yet rejects him. Only by signing up for the jihadist cause and working to
restore the uma of true Muslim believers can he free himself and his community
from such oppression. Through the Internet, the terrorist recruit
may be encouraged to join a local cell or al-Qaeda affi liate. The local group
that he joins can then fi nd detailed bomb-making instructions and valuable
information on suitable targets and their vulnerabilities, all online.
His cell might even receive fi nancial help via phony online charities
that raise money for al-Qaeda. The cost of some terrorist attacks is so low,
however, that the young recruit and his associates may raise the money
simply by pooling their resources or by engaging in petty crimes like
credit card fraud.
FUNDING AND FINANCING
Like any organization, al-Qaeda needs money. Terrorist funding refers to
raising money to conduct a specifi c operation, whereas terrorist fi nancing
refers to raising money for the day-to-day operations of the terrorist organization.
Operational expenses are similar to those for any organization
or institution and include personnel costs (salaries and benefi ts), supplies,
publicity, and so on. Conducting individual terrorist attacks can be relatively
cheap; fi nancing a terrorist organization and its worldwide network
of cells and affi liates is considerably more expensive. Some analysts
estimate al-Qaeda’s pre-9/11 operating budget to have been $30 million
per year.32 The London Underground bombings cost a few hundred British
pounds, the 2004 Madrid train bombings cost around $10,000, and
the 9/11 attacks cost as much as $500,000.33 The leader of the Madrid
attacks funded that operation out of proceeds from his drug business, but
the London bombers could pay for their attacks out of their own pockets.
Al-Qaeda central, of course, funded 9/11.
Al-Qaeda has had numerous sources of income during its 20-year history.
During its early days, bin Laden probably funded it himself out of his
considerable personal fortune. He also received donations from wealthy
Saudis and other supporters throughout the Muslim world. Islamic charities
provided an additional source of revenue. Many contributors to these
charities had no idea that their money was fi nancing terrorism. Two legitimate
businesses dealing in honey also funneled their profi ts to al-Qaeda.34
62 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Local cells and affi liates fi nanced their activities and funded specifi c missions
through criminal activity such as credit card fraud and identity
theft.
Narcotics traffi cking currently provides the greatest source of revenue
for both al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan
has increased dramatically since the fall of the Taliban, rising from
fewer than 50,000 hectares in 2001 to more than 150,000 hectares in
2008.35 Afghanistan now produces about 75 percent of the world’s
opium.36 Neither al-Qaeda nor the Taliban produces or sells illegal drugs.
The groups make their money by taxing opium cultivation, heroin production,
and drug smuggling. NATO estimates that the Taliban gets 40
to 60 percent of its income from narcotics.37 This revenue sources is incredibly
lucrative.
Countering terrorist fi nancing is extremely diffi cult given al-Qaeda’s
numerous sources of revenue and the ease with which organizations can
move money around the globe. Terrorism analysts disagree on whether
to freeze and seize terrorist assets or to follow the money trail in an effort
to garner intelligence on the terrorist organization. Both approaches have
merit, and they should be employed in tandem. The low cost of terrorist
operations make it seem that no counterfunding or counterfi nancing
strategies will be effective. The diffi culty al-Qaeda has had in mounting
operations against the United States and Western Europe since 2005,
however, suggests that the West has had some success in disrupting terrorist
fi nancing.
BIN LADEN’S ROLE
Osama bin Laden’s precise role in al-Qaeda during the fi rst decade of
its existence is not entirely clear. He was, of course, the organization’s
titular leader and public face. He also provided much of the fi nancing
for its activities, contributing money from his personal fortune and raising
money from wealthy Saudi donors. Both the Afghans and the Arabs
wanted bin Laden’s money, but they had serious reservations about his
abilities. They competed for his support and deferred to him as necessary,
but it is not clear how much they trusted his judgment or actually
allowed him to make decisions.
AL-QAEDA 63
One mujahedeen commander gave a candid appraisal of Osama bin
Laden during the early days of al-Qaeda. “ To be honest, we didn’t care
about bin Laden, ” declared Haji Deen Mohamed. “ We didn’t notice him
much. The only thing he did have was cash. The only thing was that he
was rich. ”38 If they coveted his wealth, the various factions thought far
less of bin Laden’s abilities in al-Qaeda’s early days. A member of the Afghan
Services Offi ce made a scathing comment on bin Laden’s organizing
ability:
Osama, he had to create an organization and to keep everything
under his control, but as an organizer, I think he had many mistakes
during this period. In 1991 he had a project to enter Kabul and he
spent 100 million rupees (more than 1.5 million dollars) and after a
few weeks, everything collapsed and the people took his 100 million
rupees. Osama as an organizer — completely a catastrophe, I consider
him.39
The low opinion in which some Afghan leaders held the Saudi millionaire
is further indicated by what happened when bin Laden returned
to Afghanistan in 1992. He quickly discovered that his beloved Arab
fi ghters had been incorporated into Afghan units and that he no longer
controlled them. “ I remember the people who were with Hekmatyar
warned Osama, ” Abdullah Anas, Azzam’s son-in-law, remembered. “ You
are not anymore a leader. And after that, he immediately decided to go
to Sudan. ”40 Ahmed Rashid, an expert on al-Qaeda and the Taliban,
provides an accurate if unfl attering portrait of bin Laden during these
years:
Arab Afghans who knew him during the jihad say he was neither
intellectual nor articulate about what needed to be done in the
Muslim world. In that sense he was neither the Lenin of the Islamic
revolution, nor was he the international ideologue of the Islamic
revolution such as Che Guevara was to the revolution in the third
world. Bin Laden’s former associates describe him as deeply impressionable,
always in need of mentors, men who knew more about
Islam and the modern world than he did.41
64 OSAMA BIN LADEN
THE EMERGING LEADER
These critical assessments of Osama bin Laden during al-Qaeda’s early
days do not diminish his importance to the movement in the long run.
Without his personal fortune and ability to raise money, the organization
might never have been formed; even if it had been, it would not have
progressed very far. In 1992, he was only 35. Unlike his older brothers,
he had very little experience living or even traveling outside Saudi Arabia.
Nor had he been given major assignments in the Binladen Group,
the conglomerate created by his eldest half-brother, Salem, which might
have provided him greater managerial experience. Before joining the Afghan
jihad, he had lived a very sheltered life.
Afghanistan had, however, profoundly changed bin Laden. “ What I
lived in two years there, ” he later refl ected, “ I could not have lived in a
hundred years elsewhere. ”42 This refl ection suggests that he got an emotional
high from danger and military activity, which he would miss when
he returned to his ordinary life. During the next decade, he would fi nd
that he needed jihad and the exhilaration and notoriety it brought him.
He would also grow into the role of international terrorist leader as his
organization developed. While he might never be the brains of al-Qaeda,
he would be its heart and soul, inspiring a vast, complex international Islamist
extremist network to make war against the most powerful nation
on earth.
In 1992, however, these developments lay in an uncertain future,
which might have unfolded quite differently. Bin Laden left Afghanistan
elated by the experience of war but demoralized about the future of jihad.
His worldview had developed considerably but was still largely unformed.
He believed in the commitment to engage in jihad on behalf of Muslims
in lands occupied by infi dels, but he had not yet accepted that apostate
regimes must be removed. He spoke of the Palestinian cause but was unwilling
to become directly involved in that struggle.43 He seriously considered
continuing jihad against the Soviet Union in its Central Asian
Muslim republics or fi ghting the Indians on behalf of the Muslims of
Kashmir or the government of the Philippines on behalf of its Muslim
minority.44
Ultimately, he decided to return to the land of his birth. Despite his
mixed record and the minor role he had played in the Afghan war against
AL-QAEDA 65
the Soviets and the subsequent Afghan civil war, he arrived home to a
hero’s welcome. After a brief stint on the speaking circuit in Saudi Arabia,
he might have reverted to the quiet life of a younger brother in the
family business. Once again, however, world events energized his religious
zeal and focused his anger not only on unfaithful Muslim governments
but also on the great Satan across the Atlantic.
NOTES
1. Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know (New York: Free Press,
2006), p. 74.
2. John Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 7.
3. Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
(New York: Penguin, 2008), p. 355.
4. Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
(New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 138.
5. Coll, Bin Ladens , pp. 334 – 335.
6. Quotation and previous discussion in this paragraph from ibid., p. 336.
7. Ahmad Zaidan, quoted in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know ,
p. 97.
8. Brian Riedel, Search for Al-Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future.
Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 2008), p. 45.
9. Osama bin Laden, interview with Taysir Alouni, Al Jazeera, October
2001, cited in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 74.
10. Abdullah Azzam, “ Al Qaeda al Sulbah, ” Jihad 41 (April 1988), excerpted
in ibid., p. 75.
11. Transcript of conversation between Abu al Rida and Osama bin Laden,
August 11, 1988, excerpted in ibid., p. 78.
12. Account of Hasan Abd-Rabbuh al Surayhi in ibid., p. 83.
13. Ibid., p. 83.
14. Abu Mahmud, quoted in Michael Scheuer, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes:
Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America (Washington, DC:
Potomac Books 2007 ), p. 110.
15. Account of Jamal Kalifa, quoted in ibid., p. 81.
16. Description of al-Qaeda structure from Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name
of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), p. 250.
17. Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2002), p. 10.
66 OSAMA BIN LADEN
18. Captured al-Qaeda document, reproduced in ibid., p. 81.
19. Ibid.
20. Account of Hasan Abd-Rabbuh al Surayhi in ibid., p. 84.
21. Ibid., p. 8.
22. Esposito, Holy War, Inc. , p. 90.
23. Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda , p. 79.
24. Account based on that given by Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of
God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), pp. 239 – 245.
Stern had access to classified evidence from Mohamed’s trial.
25. Esposito, Holy War, Inc. , p. 30.
26. Ibid., p. 13.
27. Ibid., p. 85; Stern, Terror in the Name of God , p. 253.
28. Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda , p. 45.
29. Michael Chandler, “ The Global Threat from Trans-national Terrorism:
How It Is Evolving and Its Impact in Europe, ” presentation at the George C.
Marshall Centre for Security Studies Conference on NATO and EU Strategies
against Terrorism, July 19 – 21, 2005.
30. Internet World Status, http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
(accessed May 12, 2009).
31. “ World’s Poor Drive Growth in Global Cellphone Use, ” USA Today,
March 2, 2009, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-03-02-un-digital_N.
htm (accessed May 12, 2009).
32. Victor Comas, “ Al Qaeda Financing and Funding to Affiliate Groups, ”
Strategic Insights 4, no. 1 ( January 2005), http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2005/Jan/
comrasJan05.asp (accessed July 1, 2009).
33. Michael Buchanan, “ London Bombs Cost Just Hundreds, ” BBC Online,
January 3, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4576346.stm (accessed
July 7, 2009).
34. Comas, “ Al Qaeda Financing and Funding. ”
35. UN Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2009 , p. 35, http://
www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/ WDR-2009.html (accessed July 7,
2009).
36. Ibid., p. 35.
37. Jerome Starkey, “ Drugs for Guns: How the Afghan Heroin Trade Is Fuelling
the Taliban Insurgency, ” The Independent (UK), April 29, 2008, http://www.
in dependent.co.uk/news/world/asia/drugs-for-guns-how-the-afghan-herointrade-
is-fuelling-the-taliban-insurgency-817230.html (accessed July 7, 2009).
38. Haji Deen Mohammed, quoted in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know ,
p. 105.
AL-QAEDA 67
39. Abdullah Anas in ibid., p. 104.
40. Ibid., p. 106.
41. Esposito, Unholy War , p. 11.
42. Ibid., p. 9.
43. Wright, Looming Tower , p. 131.
44. Ibid., p. 131.
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Chapter 5
FIGHTING THE GREAT SATAN
Osama bin Laden emerged from the Afghan war against the Soviets
with a powerful sense of mission but no clear focus. He had helped create
an organization with international membership and potentially
global reach. However, that organization was still very loose and lacked
direction. Bin Laden did enjoy considerable notoriety and still possessed
charisma and wealth. Perhaps more important, he had constructed
a powerful myth that he had probably come to believe himself,
a deeply held conviction that foreign mujahedeen using his money,
inspired by his zeal, and enjoying Allah’s blessing had defeated the
mighty Soviet empire. Bin Laden had also accepted the general principle
that he should continue jihad against any and all who oppressed
Muslims anywhere in the world. Despite this conviction, however, he
lacked direction.
IN SEARCH OF JIHAD
The world of the early 1990s afforded many possibilities for bin Laden
to employ his talents, resources, and experiences. The end of the Cold
War and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union created power
70 OSAMA BIN LADEN
vacuums all over the world, many of them in Muslim lands. The East
African country of Somalia, with its large Muslim population, became
the icon of a new post– Cold War phenomenon—the failed state. Yugoslavia
disintegrated as three of its component republics seceded from
the federation. Slovenia, with a homogenous Roman Catholic population,
left fi rst, with virtually no violence. Croatia seceded next, but
Serbia intervened to seize predominantly Serb areas, which it held for
four years. Bosnia, with the most heterogeneous population of all the
Yugoslav republics, voted for secession and immediately descended into
civil war. Bosnia’s Muslim population faced ethnic cleansing as Bosnian
Serbs, through the systematic use of rape, murder, and torture, drove
them from territory they claimed. Then Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian
Croats fell to fi ghting among themselves. The Soviet Muslim republic of
Chechnya, with its Muslim population, wanted the independence the
Soviet Union had granted to the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Georgia.
Moscow refused to comply and sent in what remained of its army to
conduct a brutal and largely ineffective counterinsurgency campaign
against Chechen rebels. In the Philippines, a Muslim separatist movement
had fought a desultory war against the government in Manila for
decades. Pakistan continued to send irregulars into Indian Kashmir to
stir up unrest among its Muslim population. Some Afghan Arabs went
off to fi ght in these confl icts, although, according to one of his supporters,
bin Laden did not order them to do so. 1 None of these endeavors
fi red his imagination as the Afghan jihad had done, perhaps because
they lacked the worldwide attention of the Afghan struggle. Bin Laden
enjoyed notoriety as much as he embraced jihad.
Fortunately for him, a confl ict much closer to home presented itself
within a year of his return. His offer to form a Muslim army to liberate
Kuwait from Saddam Hussein and its rejection by the Saudi monarchy
stung bin Laden. It also helped crystallize his thinking. The real obstacles
to recreating the uma (community of believers) of Islam’s early
days were the apostate regimes of countries such as Egypt and Saudi
Arabia. They were the “near enemy.” Behind them stood the United
States, with its military might and vast fi nancial resources —the “ far
enemy,” whose infl uence had to be driven from Muslim lands so that the
near enemies could be defeated.
FIGHTING THE GREAT SATAN 71
When he returned a hero from Afghanistan in 1989, however, these
developments were not even on the horizon. The Afghan experience had
changed him. For one thing, he had developed a defi nite anti-American
rhetoric, although it had not yet turned violent. His main grievance, like
that of many in the Arab world, was U.S. support for Israel. “ The Americans
won’t stop their support of the Jews in Palestine,” he proclaimed,
“until we give them a lot of blows. They won’t stop until we do jihad
against them.” At this point in his life, bin Laden appears to have been
speaking fi guratively. “ What is required is to wage an economic war
against America,” he went on to explain. “ We have to boycott all American
products. . . . They’re taking the money we pay them for their products
and giving it to the Jews to kill our brothers.” 2
Bin Laden also voiced criticism of the Saudi regime, which he had
not done before his Afghan sojourn. Saudi Arabia was an Islamist state,
but it did not conform to the jihadist ideal of how Muslims should be
governed. Bin Laden and his followers advocated an Islamic Republic
governed by religious elders supporting a leader through the principle
of consultation or “shura,” not a monarchy. He also found fault with
the less than pious behavior of the royal family, which included hundreds
of princes and wealthy hangers-on, most of whom enjoyed lavish
lifestyles. Meanwhile, the majority of Saudis lived modest lives, while
a vast underclass of foreign workers had a low standard of living.
SOUTH YEMEN
Soon after he arrived home, bin Laden became embroiled in another
jihad. South Yemen, at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, had been a communist
state since the withdrawal of the British from their colony there in
1967. A small group of insurgents sought to overthrow the government,
and bin Laden wanted to support them. Family history strengthened
his moral conviction. His father had come from the remote Hadramut
region of South Yemen, and the younger bin Laden had turned his attention
to the anticommunist struggle even before he left Afghanistan.
According to one of his associates, bin Laden believed that, after their
success in against the Soviets, the Afghan Arabs should be employed to
liberate South Yemen. 3
72 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Bin Laden approached the chief of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki,
offering to send al-Qaeda fi ghters into South Yemen to support the rebels.
He would even help fund the operation. The prince later claimed
that he turned bin Laden down fl at. “ I advised him at the time that that
was not an acceptable idea,” Turki recalled. However, Richard Clarke, a
terrorism expert in the Clinton administration, maintains that Turki actually
asked bin Laden “to organize a fundamentalist religion-based resistance
to the communist-style regime.” 4 Steve Riedel, a former CIA
specialist on the Middle East, maintains that the Saudi government
wanted to overthrow the communists in Yemen but that “it did not want
a private army doing its bidding.” 5 Whatever transpired between the leader
of al-Qaeda and the head of Saudi intelligence became moot when the
Cold War ended. North and South Yemen reunited peacefully in May
1990. Bin Laden did not like the arrangement, which incorporated former
communists into the new government, and continued to fund rebel
activity without permission from the Saudi government. His defi ance of
the monarchy brought a swift and harsh response. The Saudi minister of
the interior, Prince Nayif bin Abdul Aziz, a full brother of the king, called
bin Laden into his offi ce, ordered him to cease his activities at once, and
confi scated his passport. 6
THE GULF WAR
Bin Laden had little time to brood about this offi cial rebuke before
another more ominous crisis developed. On August 2, 1990, Saddam
Husain invaded the tiny country of Kuwait, at the head of the Persian
Gulf on Saudi Arabia’s northern border. Angry that Kuwait had refused
to cancel Iraqi debts accumulated during the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam
accused the wealthy emirate of driving down oil prices through overproduction
and of slant drilling into Iraqi oilfi elds. The 100,000-man
Iraqi invasion force, part of Saddam’s army of half a million, posed an
immediate threat to Saudi Arabia. The tiny Saudi army could not possibly
defend the kingdom against Iraqi forces within easy striking distance
of its oilfi elds and population centers.
Fresh from what he considered his victory over the Soviets, Osama
bin Laden offered to defend his country and to expel the hated dictator
from neighboring Kuwait. He approached the Saudi government,
FIGHTING THE GREAT SATAN 73
the Arabs congregated around it in Pakistan. ” He also notes that Azzam
and the Egyptian radical Ayman al-Zawahiri competed for bin Laden’s
support and money.8 Other sources corroborate this competition.
BIRTH OF AL-QAEDA
Al-Qaeda, Arabic for the “ the base, ” grew out of the Maktab al Khidmat
lil Mujadidin al Arab (Afghan Services Offi ce), founded in 1984 or 1985
by bin Laden and Azzam to facilitate recruitment and travel of foreign
mujahedeen to fi ght the Soviets in Afghanistan. Several accounts document
the formation of al-Qaeda, although they do not always agree on
specifi c details. Bin Laden himself provides one account. “ Abu Ubaidah
al Banjshiri established the training camps against Russia’s terrorism
during the 1980s, ” he observed. “ We used to call the training camp al
Qaeda. And the name stayed. ”9 In an April 1988 article in his Jihad
magazine, Azzam provided a fuller explanation of the organization:
Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward and, while forcing
its way into society, puts up with heavy tasks and enormous sacrifi
ces. There is no ideology, neither earthly nor heavenly, that does
not require such a vanguard that gives everything it possesses in order
to achieve victory for the ideology. It carries the fl ag all along
the sheer endless and diffi cult path until it reaches its destination.
The vanguard constitutes the solid base (al Qaeda Sulbah) for the
expected society.10
Captured documents reveal that the idea of broadening al-Qaeda’s mandate
may have come from Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Islamic Jihad organization.
“ This future project is in the interest of the Egyptian brothers, ”
remarked Abu al Rida to bin Laden in an August 1988 meeting.11 Zawahiri
continues to play a major role in al-Qaeda to the present day, so much
so that some analysts consider him the brain of al-Qaeda, even though
bin Laden is its heart and spiritual leader. The account of an early Saudi
recruit supports the conclusion that the idea for al-Qaeda originated with
Egyptian radicals. “ The establishment of al Qaeda was discussed in the
home of Osama bin Laden in Peshawar following the departure of the
AL-QAEDA 55
Russians from Afghanistan and the end of the Jihad, ” reported Hasan
Abd-Rabbuh. “ I was one of those who witnessed the birth of al Qaeda.
The idea of al Qaeda is an Egyptian one by the Islamic Jihad group led
by Abu-Ubaidah al Banjshiri and Abu-Hafs. ”12
Al Banjishiri explained to this young Saudi recruit the goal of this
new organization and bin Laden’s role in its creation. “ You are aware of
brother Osama bin Laden’s generosity, ” the Egyptian said.
He has spent a lot of money to buy arms for the young mujahedeen
as well as in training them and paying for their travel tickets. We
should not waste this. We should invest in these young men and
we should mobilize them under his umbrella. We should form an
Islamic army for jihad that will be called al Qaeda. This army will
be one of the fruits of what bin Laden has spent on the Afghan jihad.
We should train these young men and equip them to be ready to
uphold Islam and defend Muslims in any part of the world. The
members of this army should be organized and highly trained.13
In its early days, al-Qaeda did not yet have the global agenda it later
acquired. It had not even focused on Muslim governments failing to rule
by strict sharia law, although its Egyptian members certainly wanted to
remove the hated regime of President Hosni Mubarak. One of bin Laden’s
associates recounts the fi rst time the Saudi millionaire broached the
idea for a permanent jihadist group. “ Osama believed he could set up
an army of young men responding to the jihad call, ” recalled Abu
Mahmud. “ When he presented the idea to us, he did not speak of jihad
against Arab regimes, but of helping Muslims against the infi del government
oppressing them, as was the case in Palestine, the Philippines, and
Kashmir, especially Central Asia, which was under Soviet rule then. ”14
ORGANIZATION
Al-Qaeda soon developed into a formal organization with a hierarchy of
leaders and a series of committees. Bin Laden emerged as its leader, although
he may have initially been reluctant to accept the job. According
to his brother-in-law, the rather humble and unassuming bin Laden had
to be persuaded to accept the position.15 The founders set up fi ve standing
56 OSAMA BIN LADEN
committees to run the organization: a military committee that ran
training camps and procured weapons; an Islamic Study committee that
issued fatwas (religious decrees) and rulings; a media committee that
published newspapers; a travel committee that took care of passports,
visas, and tickets; and a fi nance committee that raised money. A ruling
shura (council) oversaw the work of the committees.16 Eventually,
al-Qaeda evolved into a more decentralized organization with regional
bureaus linked to cells with 2 to 15 members each. Some cells had specialized
responsibilities, while others were created for a single terrorist
operation.17
Al-Qaeda benefi ted from the folklore that had enveloped the Afghan
Arabs. Following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the number
of foreign mujahedeen journeying to the country actually increased, attracted
no doubt by stories of the great jihadist victory there and eager
to help overthrow the communist puppet government the Soviets had
left behind in Kabul. Not all of these young men were acceptable to
al-Qaeda. The new organization had to develop membership standards
and training protocols. The shura laid down specifi c requirements for
membership. Applicants had to make an open-ended commitment to
the organization. They had to be obedient and well mannered and agree
to obey all of al-Qaeda’s statutes and instructions. They also had to be
referred by someone already in the organizations that al-Qaeda’s leaders
knew and trusted.18 Initial acceptance did not guarantee a membership.
Recruits entered “ a testing camp and [the] best brothers of them are
chosen to enter Al Qaeda Al Askariya [the military base]. ”19 According
to one recruit, initial training lasted two weeks, during which instructors
carefully screened applicants. “ They looked for certain specifi c qualifi -
cations among these young men, ” he reported. “ The most important
criteria is [ sic ] that the ones who are chosen should be young, zealous,
obedient, and with a weak character that obeys instructions without
question.”20 These criteria defi ne the generic profi le of recruits to almost
any terrorist organization or religious cult, for that matter.
Al-Qaeda attracted far more recruits than it could absorb, but it
turned very few volunteers away. Of the thousands of men who passed
through its training camps, only a small percentage stayed with the main
organization in Afghanistan. Some of those not admitted were sent to
fi ght in the confl icts in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Kashmir, but the vast
AL-QAEDA 57
majority returned to their own countries to await further instructions
from bin Laden and the Shura. They would become the nuclei of al-
Qaeda’s worldwide network of cells. Estimates of the number of those
trained in al-Qaeda camps between 1989 and 2001 vary widely, ranging
from 10,000 to 110,000. No more than 3,000 of these volunteers joined
al-Qaeda itself.21 Most of the trainees came from Arab countries. While
no complete registry of them has yet been found, the Pakistani government
during the 1990s asked foreign mujahedeen in their country to register
with the authorities. The registry for Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier
Province, immediately adjacent to Afghanistan, provides a rough indication
of the number of foreign fi ghters by country of origin: “ 1,142 were
Egyptian; 981 Saudis; 946 Sudanese; 792 Algerians; 771 Jordanians; 326
Iraqis; 292 Syrians; 234 Sudanese; 199 Libyans; 117 Tunisians; and 102
Moroccans.”22
The al-Qaeda organization headquartered in Afghanistan during the
1990s might be compared to a multinational corporation. Its leadership,
committees, camps, and permanent cadres in Afghanistan made up the
corporate head offi ce. Al-Qaeda central also commanded a global network
of cells in 76 countries by 2001.23 In addition to its permanent cells,
al-Qaeda also recruited local operatives within countries in which it
carried out attacks. These local recruits, who had never been to Afghanistan,
performed routine tasks that would have exposed the foreign
terrorist specialists (such as bomb makers) brought in for an operation
to capture by local authorities. The 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy
in Darussalam, Tanzania, illustrates how al-Qaeda combined such local
recruits with professional operatives to carry out a mission. The organization
recruited Khalfan Khamis Mohamed in a local mosque and won
him over to the jihadist cause. Once they were sure of his loyalty, they
told him he would take part in an important mission, but they kept him
in the dark as to its details. The foreign operatives in the cell asked Mohamed
to rent the safe house the group needed and to buy the truck
that would carry the explosives. As a local Tanzanian, he could perform
these tasks inconspicuously. The cell brought in an expert to build the
bomb, but this specialist and the rest of the foreign operatives left the
country before Mohamed drove the truck to the embassy.24 He may not
even have known the target until the day of the attack. Perhaps the
planners even intended him to be killed by the bomb. “ We, the East
58 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Africa cell members, do not want to know about the operations plan
since we are just implementers, ” proclaimed a document found on a computer
seized in Tanzania after the attack.25 Terrorist organizations have
long maintained security by keeping local cells ignorant of the larger organization
and providing individual cell members just enough information
for them to carry out their portion of the operation.
Since 9/11, U.S. counterterrorism operations have concentrated on
denying al-Qaeda safe havens and on targeting its leadership. In his 2002
book, Rohan Gunaratna, one of the world’s leading authorities on al-
Qaeda, argued that “ the most effective state response would be to target
Al Qaeda’s leadership, cripple its command and control, and disrupt its
current and future support bases. ”26 This approach might have been effective
before 9/11, when al-Qaeda was still a considerably more centralized
organization, but even then such a “ decapitation strike ” would have left
most of the terrorist network intact. However, al-Qaeda consists of much
more than its head offi ce. It exists on two other, far more menacing levels:
a network of linked organizations and an ideological movement
spread through personal recruiting via the Internet, both of which are
very hard to disrupt.
AL-QAEDA THE NETWORK
If al-Qaeda worked like an international corporation with headquarters
and branch offi ces, it also functioned as a conglomerate, a sort of holding
company linking many terrorist organizations under its broad ideological
umbrella. Analysts have also described it as a “ network of networks, ” a
vast global spider web of extremist groups united through radical Islamism
and committed to attacking what it deems apostate Muslim regimes, as
well as the United States and its European allies.
The al-Qaeda network developed further during bin Laden’s years in
Sudan. In 1995, an Islamic People’s Conference met in Khartoum, Sudan.
The conference brought together militants from Algeria, Pakistan, Jordan,
Eritrea, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, and the Philippines. Al-Qaeda forged
links with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and perhaps even Lebanese
Hezbollah, a Shi’a group once considered incompatible with the Sunni
extremists.27 In Febuary 1998, Osama bin Laden announced the formation
of a new conglomerate: “ The World Islamic Front for Jihad against
AL-QAEDA 59
Jews and Crusaders. ” Many known terrorist leaders from groups in Egypt,
Pakistan, and Bangladesh signed the alliance agreement, but bin Laden
kept the identities of most of the organizations gathered under the new
umbrella secret to protect them.28
Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, this
association, along with al-Qaeda’s own global network of cells, grew in
importance. The affi liates and branch offi ces carried on the struggle while
al-Qaeda central rebuilt itself in Pakistan. As bin Laden relocated to the
remote southeast border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, his capacity
to control or even infl uence the course of the terrorist campaign abroad
was temporarily disrupted. This disruption of the headquarters in Afghanistan
made it more diffi cult for al-Qaeda to move personnel and
resources around its global network and to concentrate them for an operation
like the 1998 embassy bombings in Darussalam, Tanzania, and
Nairobi, Kenya. The network has, however, picked up the slack as local
cells or affi liates organized, funded, and conducted operations such as the
2004 Madrid and 2005 London bombings. These cells may have enjoyed
some support and guidance from the central organization, but they recruited
locally and enjoyed considerable independence in carrying out
their operations.
AL-QAEDA THE IDEOLOGICAL MOVEMENT
Considerable evidence suggests that al-Qaeda has continued to evolve
beyond even the network level. Terrorism analyst Michael Chandler
describes what he calls “ third-generation ” terrorism. Bin Laden and his
shura, the “ fi rst generation, ” directed operations from Afghanistan until
the American invasion disrupted their central organization. This invasion
sent fi rst-generation al-Qaeda members fl eeing back to their
countries of origin. There they rejoined existing cells and organizations
or set up new ones, recruiting the “ second generation ” of terrorists. In
addition to these affi liates, the past few years have seen the rise of new,
“ third-generation ” groups whose members have no experience of Afghanistan
or even a direct connection to those who trained in terrorist
camps there. Al-Qaeda central provides inspiration and guidance
and perhaps some support but probably does not exercise complete control
of the new local groups. Third-generation terrorists may constitute
60 OSAMA BIN LADEN
themselves into their own local groups, raise their own funds, plan and
even conduct operations, and only then link up with or at least seek the
approval of the parent organization.29 In response to President George W.
Bush’s assertion that any state not with the United States was with the
terrorists, al-Qaeda seemed to say, “ Anyone who is against the United
States is with us. ”
Even more ominous than this cancerous spread of al-Qaeda through
direct recruitment by terrorist camp graduates is the spread of radical ideology
via the Internet. Despite their intense dislike of Western secularism
and democracy, bin Laden and his followers have readily adopted
the technological tools of the civilization they hate. The communications
revolution has reached into the most remote corners of the globe.
An astounding 1.6 billion of the world’s 6.7 billion people have Internet
access.30 Six out of 10 people on earth, or 4.1 billion people, use cell
phones.31 Solar panels power satellite televisions for people without access
to reliable electricity. These facts have profound implications. People
who are illiterate can access a wealth of online video and audio content.
Communities that lack clean water and adequate food, health care, and
jobs can log on to the Internet and make international calls using their
mobile telephones. Access to the overwhelming amount of information
on the Internet can have a very destabilizing effect. Al-Qaeda’s pronouncements
about the decadence of the West and its spread to the
non-Western world are made manifest by material that can be viewed online.
Pornography, crass materialism, and subversive ideas abound, and
the ease of accessing them validates for the Islamists their conclusion
that Western secularism does indeed threaten traditional Islamic societies.
The Internet also highlights the gap between the haves and the
have-nots of the world, showing the poor and marginalized how much
they lack.
In addition to facilitating extremism through its destabilizing effects,
the communications revolution has made it easier for al-Qaeda and its
affi liates to mobilize and focus the anger that the destabilization generates.
Previously an angry young man had to be radicalized solely by
other terrorists. Now he need only log on to discover that he belongs to
a global community of like-minded individuals. A host of Web sites
preach al-Qaeda’s extreme version of Islam to convince the alienated
young adult living in Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, London, or Minneapolis
AL-QAEDA 61
that all his problems stem from the Godless culture that surrounds and
yet rejects him. Only by signing up for the jihadist cause and working to
restore the uma of true Muslim believers can he free himself and his community
from such oppression. Through the Internet, the terrorist recruit
may be encouraged to join a local cell or al-Qaeda affi liate. The local group
that he joins can then fi nd detailed bomb-making instructions and valuable
information on suitable targets and their vulnerabilities, all online.
His cell might even receive fi nancial help via phony online charities
that raise money for al-Qaeda. The cost of some terrorist attacks is so low,
however, that the young recruit and his associates may raise the money
simply by pooling their resources or by engaging in petty crimes like
credit card fraud.
FUNDING AND FINANCING
Like any organization, al-Qaeda needs money. Terrorist funding refers to
raising money to conduct a specifi c operation, whereas terrorist fi nancing
refers to raising money for the day-to-day operations of the terrorist organization.
Operational expenses are similar to those for any organization
or institution and include personnel costs (salaries and benefi ts), supplies,
publicity, and so on. Conducting individual terrorist attacks can be relatively
cheap; fi nancing a terrorist organization and its worldwide network
of cells and affi liates is considerably more expensive. Some analysts
estimate al-Qaeda’s pre-9/11 operating budget to have been $30 million
per year.32 The London Underground bombings cost a few hundred British
pounds, the 2004 Madrid train bombings cost around $10,000, and
the 9/11 attacks cost as much as $500,000.33 The leader of the Madrid
attacks funded that operation out of proceeds from his drug business, but
the London bombers could pay for their attacks out of their own pockets.
Al-Qaeda central, of course, funded 9/11.
Al-Qaeda has had numerous sources of income during its 20-year history.
During its early days, bin Laden probably funded it himself out of his
considerable personal fortune. He also received donations from wealthy
Saudis and other supporters throughout the Muslim world. Islamic charities
provided an additional source of revenue. Many contributors to these
charities had no idea that their money was fi nancing terrorism. Two legitimate
businesses dealing in honey also funneled their profi ts to al-Qaeda.34
62 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Local cells and affi liates fi nanced their activities and funded specifi c missions
through criminal activity such as credit card fraud and identity
theft.
Narcotics traffi cking currently provides the greatest source of revenue
for both al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan
has increased dramatically since the fall of the Taliban, rising from
fewer than 50,000 hectares in 2001 to more than 150,000 hectares in
2008.35 Afghanistan now produces about 75 percent of the world’s
opium.36 Neither al-Qaeda nor the Taliban produces or sells illegal drugs.
The groups make their money by taxing opium cultivation, heroin production,
and drug smuggling. NATO estimates that the Taliban gets 40
to 60 percent of its income from narcotics.37 This revenue sources is incredibly
lucrative.
Countering terrorist fi nancing is extremely diffi cult given al-Qaeda’s
numerous sources of revenue and the ease with which organizations can
move money around the globe. Terrorism analysts disagree on whether
to freeze and seize terrorist assets or to follow the money trail in an effort
to garner intelligence on the terrorist organization. Both approaches have
merit, and they should be employed in tandem. The low cost of terrorist
operations make it seem that no counterfunding or counterfi nancing
strategies will be effective. The diffi culty al-Qaeda has had in mounting
operations against the United States and Western Europe since 2005,
however, suggests that the West has had some success in disrupting terrorist
fi nancing.
BIN LADEN’S ROLE
Osama bin Laden’s precise role in al-Qaeda during the fi rst decade of
its existence is not entirely clear. He was, of course, the organization’s
titular leader and public face. He also provided much of the fi nancing
for its activities, contributing money from his personal fortune and raising
money from wealthy Saudi donors. Both the Afghans and the Arabs
wanted bin Laden’s money, but they had serious reservations about his
abilities. They competed for his support and deferred to him as necessary,
but it is not clear how much they trusted his judgment or actually
allowed him to make decisions.
AL-QAEDA 63
One mujahedeen commander gave a candid appraisal of Osama bin
Laden during the early days of al-Qaeda. “ To be honest, we didn’t care
about bin Laden, ” declared Haji Deen Mohamed. “ We didn’t notice him
much. The only thing he did have was cash. The only thing was that he
was rich. ”38 If they coveted his wealth, the various factions thought far
less of bin Laden’s abilities in al-Qaeda’s early days. A member of the Afghan
Services Offi ce made a scathing comment on bin Laden’s organizing
ability:
Osama, he had to create an organization and to keep everything
under his control, but as an organizer, I think he had many mistakes
during this period. In 1991 he had a project to enter Kabul and he
spent 100 million rupees (more than 1.5 million dollars) and after a
few weeks, everything collapsed and the people took his 100 million
rupees. Osama as an organizer — completely a catastrophe, I consider
him.39
The low opinion in which some Afghan leaders held the Saudi millionaire
is further indicated by what happened when bin Laden returned
to Afghanistan in 1992. He quickly discovered that his beloved Arab
fi ghters had been incorporated into Afghan units and that he no longer
controlled them. “ I remember the people who were with Hekmatyar
warned Osama, ” Abdullah Anas, Azzam’s son-in-law, remembered. “ You
are not anymore a leader. And after that, he immediately decided to go
to Sudan. ”40 Ahmed Rashid, an expert on al-Qaeda and the Taliban,
provides an accurate if unfl attering portrait of bin Laden during these
years:
Arab Afghans who knew him during the jihad say he was neither
intellectual nor articulate about what needed to be done in the
Muslim world. In that sense he was neither the Lenin of the Islamic
revolution, nor was he the international ideologue of the Islamic
revolution such as Che Guevara was to the revolution in the third
world. Bin Laden’s former associates describe him as deeply impressionable,
always in need of mentors, men who knew more about
Islam and the modern world than he did.41
64 OSAMA BIN LADEN
THE EMERGING LEADER
These critical assessments of Osama bin Laden during al-Qaeda’s early
days do not diminish his importance to the movement in the long run.
Without his personal fortune and ability to raise money, the organization
might never have been formed; even if it had been, it would not have
progressed very far. In 1992, he was only 35. Unlike his older brothers,
he had very little experience living or even traveling outside Saudi Arabia.
Nor had he been given major assignments in the Binladen Group,
the conglomerate created by his eldest half-brother, Salem, which might
have provided him greater managerial experience. Before joining the Afghan
jihad, he had lived a very sheltered life.
Afghanistan had, however, profoundly changed bin Laden. “ What I
lived in two years there, ” he later refl ected, “ I could not have lived in a
hundred years elsewhere. ”42 This refl ection suggests that he got an emotional
high from danger and military activity, which he would miss when
he returned to his ordinary life. During the next decade, he would fi nd
that he needed jihad and the exhilaration and notoriety it brought him.
He would also grow into the role of international terrorist leader as his
organization developed. While he might never be the brains of al-Qaeda,
he would be its heart and soul, inspiring a vast, complex international Islamist
extremist network to make war against the most powerful nation
on earth.
In 1992, however, these developments lay in an uncertain future,
which might have unfolded quite differently. Bin Laden left Afghanistan
elated by the experience of war but demoralized about the future of jihad.
His worldview had developed considerably but was still largely unformed.
He believed in the commitment to engage in jihad on behalf of Muslims
in lands occupied by infi dels, but he had not yet accepted that apostate
regimes must be removed. He spoke of the Palestinian cause but was unwilling
to become directly involved in that struggle.43 He seriously considered
continuing jihad against the Soviet Union in its Central Asian
Muslim republics or fi ghting the Indians on behalf of the Muslims of
Kashmir or the government of the Philippines on behalf of its Muslim
minority.44
Ultimately, he decided to return to the land of his birth. Despite his
mixed record and the minor role he had played in the Afghan war against
AL-QAEDA 65
the Soviets and the subsequent Afghan civil war, he arrived home to a
hero’s welcome. After a brief stint on the speaking circuit in Saudi Arabia,
he might have reverted to the quiet life of a younger brother in the
family business. Once again, however, world events energized his religious
zeal and focused his anger not only on unfaithful Muslim governments
but also on the great Satan across the Atlantic.
NOTES
1. Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know (New York: Free Press,
2006), p. 74.
2. John Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 7.
3. Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
(New York: Penguin, 2008), p. 355.
4. Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
(New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 138.
5. Coll, Bin Ladens , pp. 334 – 335.
6. Quotation and previous discussion in this paragraph from ibid., p. 336.
7. Ahmad Zaidan, quoted in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know ,
p. 97.
8. Brian Riedel, Search for Al-Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future.
Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 2008), p. 45.
9. Osama bin Laden, interview with Taysir Alouni, Al Jazeera, October
2001, cited in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know , p. 74.
10. Abdullah Azzam, “ Al Qaeda al Sulbah, ” Jihad 41 (April 1988), excerpted
in ibid., p. 75.
11. Transcript of conversation between Abu al Rida and Osama bin Laden,
August 11, 1988, excerpted in ibid., p. 78.
12. Account of Hasan Abd-Rabbuh al Surayhi in ibid., p. 83.
13. Ibid., p. 83.
14. Abu Mahmud, quoted in Michael Scheuer, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes:
Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America (Washington, DC:
Potomac Books 2007 ), p. 110.
15. Account of Jamal Kalifa, quoted in ibid., p. 81.
16. Description of al-Qaeda structure from Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name
of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), p. 250.
17. Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2002), p. 10.
66 OSAMA BIN LADEN
18. Captured al-Qaeda document, reproduced in ibid., p. 81.
19. Ibid.
20. Account of Hasan Abd-Rabbuh al Surayhi in ibid., p. 84.
21. Ibid., p. 8.
22. Esposito, Holy War, Inc. , p. 90.
23. Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda , p. 79.
24. Account based on that given by Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of
God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), pp. 239 – 245.
Stern had access to classified evidence from Mohamed’s trial.
25. Esposito, Holy War, Inc. , p. 30.
26. Ibid., p. 13.
27. Ibid., p. 85; Stern, Terror in the Name of God , p. 253.
28. Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda , p. 45.
29. Michael Chandler, “ The Global Threat from Trans-national Terrorism:
How It Is Evolving and Its Impact in Europe, ” presentation at the George C.
Marshall Centre for Security Studies Conference on NATO and EU Strategies
against Terrorism, July 19 – 21, 2005.
30. Internet World Status, http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
(accessed May 12, 2009).
31. “ World’s Poor Drive Growth in Global Cellphone Use, ” USA Today,
March 2, 2009, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-03-02-un-digital_N.
htm (accessed May 12, 2009).
32. Victor Comas, “ Al Qaeda Financing and Funding to Affiliate Groups, ”
Strategic Insights 4, no. 1 ( January 2005), http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2005/Jan/
comrasJan05.asp (accessed July 1, 2009).
33. Michael Buchanan, “ London Bombs Cost Just Hundreds, ” BBC Online,
January 3, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4576346.stm (accessed
July 7, 2009).
34. Comas, “ Al Qaeda Financing and Funding. ”
35. UN Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2009 , p. 35, http://
www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/ WDR-2009.html (accessed July 7,
2009).
36. Ibid., p. 35.
37. Jerome Starkey, “ Drugs for Guns: How the Afghan Heroin Trade Is Fuelling
the Taliban Insurgency, ” The Independent (UK), April 29, 2008, http://www.
in dependent.co.uk/news/world/asia/drugs-for-guns-how-the-afghan-herointrade-
is-fuelling-the-taliban-insurgency-817230.html (accessed July 7, 2009).
38. Haji Deen Mohammed, quoted in Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know ,
p. 105.
AL-QAEDA 67
39. Abdullah Anas in ibid., p. 104.
40. Ibid., p. 106.
41. Esposito, Unholy War , p. 11.
42. Ibid., p. 9.
43. Wright, Looming Tower , p. 131.
44. Ibid., p. 131.
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Chapter 5
FIGHTING THE GREAT SATAN
Osama bin Laden emerged from the Afghan war against the Soviets
with a powerful sense of mission but no clear focus. He had helped create
an organization with international membership and potentially
global reach. However, that organization was still very loose and lacked
direction. Bin Laden did enjoy considerable notoriety and still possessed
charisma and wealth. Perhaps more important, he had constructed
a powerful myth that he had probably come to believe himself,
a deeply held conviction that foreign mujahedeen using his money,
inspired by his zeal, and enjoying Allah’s blessing had defeated the
mighty Soviet empire. Bin Laden had also accepted the general principle
that he should continue jihad against any and all who oppressed
Muslims anywhere in the world. Despite this conviction, however, he
lacked direction.
IN SEARCH OF JIHAD
The world of the early 1990s afforded many possibilities for bin Laden
to employ his talents, resources, and experiences. The end of the Cold
War and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union created power
70 OSAMA BIN LADEN
vacuums all over the world, many of them in Muslim lands. The East
African country of Somalia, with its large Muslim population, became
the icon of a new post– Cold War phenomenon—the failed state. Yugoslavia
disintegrated as three of its component republics seceded from
the federation. Slovenia, with a homogenous Roman Catholic population,
left fi rst, with virtually no violence. Croatia seceded next, but
Serbia intervened to seize predominantly Serb areas, which it held for
four years. Bosnia, with the most heterogeneous population of all the
Yugoslav republics, voted for secession and immediately descended into
civil war. Bosnia’s Muslim population faced ethnic cleansing as Bosnian
Serbs, through the systematic use of rape, murder, and torture, drove
them from territory they claimed. Then Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian
Croats fell to fi ghting among themselves. The Soviet Muslim republic of
Chechnya, with its Muslim population, wanted the independence the
Soviet Union had granted to the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Georgia.
Moscow refused to comply and sent in what remained of its army to
conduct a brutal and largely ineffective counterinsurgency campaign
against Chechen rebels. In the Philippines, a Muslim separatist movement
had fought a desultory war against the government in Manila for
decades. Pakistan continued to send irregulars into Indian Kashmir to
stir up unrest among its Muslim population. Some Afghan Arabs went
off to fi ght in these confl icts, although, according to one of his supporters,
bin Laden did not order them to do so. 1 None of these endeavors
fi red his imagination as the Afghan jihad had done, perhaps because
they lacked the worldwide attention of the Afghan struggle. Bin Laden
enjoyed notoriety as much as he embraced jihad.
Fortunately for him, a confl ict much closer to home presented itself
within a year of his return. His offer to form a Muslim army to liberate
Kuwait from Saddam Hussein and its rejection by the Saudi monarchy
stung bin Laden. It also helped crystallize his thinking. The real obstacles
to recreating the uma (community of believers) of Islam’s early
days were the apostate regimes of countries such as Egypt and Saudi
Arabia. They were the “near enemy.” Behind them stood the United
States, with its military might and vast fi nancial resources —the “ far
enemy,” whose infl uence had to be driven from Muslim lands so that the
near enemies could be defeated.
FIGHTING THE GREAT SATAN 71
When he returned a hero from Afghanistan in 1989, however, these
developments were not even on the horizon. The Afghan experience had
changed him. For one thing, he had developed a defi nite anti-American
rhetoric, although it had not yet turned violent. His main grievance, like
that of many in the Arab world, was U.S. support for Israel. “ The Americans
won’t stop their support of the Jews in Palestine,” he proclaimed,
“until we give them a lot of blows. They won’t stop until we do jihad
against them.” At this point in his life, bin Laden appears to have been
speaking fi guratively. “ What is required is to wage an economic war
against America,” he went on to explain. “ We have to boycott all American
products. . . . They’re taking the money we pay them for their products
and giving it to the Jews to kill our brothers.” 2
Bin Laden also voiced criticism of the Saudi regime, which he had
not done before his Afghan sojourn. Saudi Arabia was an Islamist state,
but it did not conform to the jihadist ideal of how Muslims should be
governed. Bin Laden and his followers advocated an Islamic Republic
governed by religious elders supporting a leader through the principle
of consultation or “shura,” not a monarchy. He also found fault with
the less than pious behavior of the royal family, which included hundreds
of princes and wealthy hangers-on, most of whom enjoyed lavish
lifestyles. Meanwhile, the majority of Saudis lived modest lives, while
a vast underclass of foreign workers had a low standard of living.
SOUTH YEMEN
Soon after he arrived home, bin Laden became embroiled in another
jihad. South Yemen, at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, had been a communist
state since the withdrawal of the British from their colony there in
1967. A small group of insurgents sought to overthrow the government,
and bin Laden wanted to support them. Family history strengthened
his moral conviction. His father had come from the remote Hadramut
region of South Yemen, and the younger bin Laden had turned his attention
to the anticommunist struggle even before he left Afghanistan.
According to one of his associates, bin Laden believed that, after their
success in against the Soviets, the Afghan Arabs should be employed to
liberate South Yemen. 3
72 OSAMA BIN LADEN
Bin Laden approached the chief of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki,
offering to send al-Qaeda fi ghters into South Yemen to support the rebels.
He would even help fund the operation. The prince later claimed
that he turned bin Laden down fl at. “ I advised him at the time that that
was not an acceptable idea,” Turki recalled. However, Richard Clarke, a
terrorism expert in the Clinton administration, maintains that Turki actually
asked bin Laden “to organize a fundamentalist religion-based resistance
to the communist-style regime.” 4 Steve Riedel, a former CIA
specialist on the Middle East, maintains that the Saudi government
wanted to overthrow the communists in Yemen but that “it did not want
a private army doing its bidding.” 5 Whatever transpired between the leader
of al-Qaeda and the head of Saudi intelligence became moot when the
Cold War ended. North and South Yemen reunited peacefully in May
1990. Bin Laden did not like the arrangement, which incorporated former
communists into the new government, and continued to fund rebel
activity without permission from the Saudi government. His defi ance of
the monarchy brought a swift and harsh response. The Saudi minister of
the interior, Prince Nayif bin Abdul Aziz, a full brother of the king, called
bin Laden into his offi ce, ordered him to cease his activities at once, and
confi scated his passport. 6
THE GULF WAR
Bin Laden had little time to brood about this offi cial rebuke before
another more ominous crisis developed. On August 2, 1990, Saddam
Husain invaded the tiny country of Kuwait, at the head of the Persian
Gulf on Saudi Arabia’s northern border. Angry that Kuwait had refused
to cancel Iraqi debts accumulated during the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam
accused the wealthy emirate of driving down oil prices through overproduction
and of slant drilling into Iraqi oilfi elds. The 100,000-man
Iraqi invasion force, part of Saddam’s army of half a million, posed an
immediate threat to Saudi Arabia. The tiny Saudi army could not possibly
defend the kingdom against Iraqi forces within easy striking distance
of its oilfi elds and population centers.
Fresh from what he considered his victory over the Soviets, Osama
bin Laden offered to defend his country and to expel the hated dictator
from neighboring Kuwait. He approached the Saudi government,
FIGHTING THE GREAT SATAN 73
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