Al Qaeda: Everywhere But Nowhere

Is Osama bin Laden still alive?  If so, where is he based?  Why is he silent in spite of repeated assertions from people claiming to speak for him that he will soon again appear on the TV?  Is his control over Al Qaeda intact?  What was the real strength of Al Qaeda before 9/11? What is its strength now? What damage it suffered from the US air strikes---in terms of numbers, infrastructure, funding, capability and motivation? Is it still capable of another 9/11?  What is the net result of almost one year of Operation Enduring Freedom---less or more terrorism or the same as before 9/11?  What happened to the surviving dregs of Al Qaeda? Where have they taken sanctuary?  Is the world in a position at least now to make a more precise assessment of the threat from Al Qaeda and foresee where, when and how its next attack will come?

Any professional counter-terrorism analyst will find it difficult to answer most of these questions without hedging.  There is too much of unverified and unverifiable data and too little of credible information. The resulting confusion has been worse confounded by the torrent of disinformation in the media, apparently planted by the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in order to over-demonise bin Laden in the eyes of the public, protect itself from future charges of lack of intelligence and alertness and reduce mental resistance to unquestioned co-operation with the US in Islamic countries such as Indonesia.

The flood of information of dubious origin and value and motivated disinformation tend to  distort analysis.  It would be incorrect to argue that the CIA did not take bin Laden, his Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front seriously before 9/11.  It did.  It could not have done otherwise after the explosions outside the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in August,1998, and on the US Naval ship USS Cole in Aden in October, 2000.

The errors which the CIA committed were to have under-estimated the capability of Al Qaeda to mount an operation of the kind seen on 9/11 in US homeland territory so early in the evolution of the organisation and to have over-assessed the role of its training infrastructure in Afghan territory in mounting such an operation in US territory. The Hart-Rudman Commission on national security during the 21st century did foresee the threat of an act of catastrophic terrorism in US homeland, but saw the threat as likely within 25 years, thereby giving the US time to prepare itself to ward it off.  The threat, thought to be years away, materialised within months and caught the US intelligence and security agencies totally off guard.

The focus of the US intelligence efforts before 9/11 was on the training infrastructure in Afghan territory due to a conviction, proved mistaken by 9/11, that the training and preparations for all major operations mounted by Al Qaeda were in Afghanistan.  There was very little surveillance on what was happening inside the US itself.  The result: A group of at least 19, if not more, suicide cadres of Al Qaeda, managed to get all the training they needed for 9/11 from US training establishments in US territory without being detected. A lone officer of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), who reportedly expressed in writing his concern over a large number of Arabs undergoing flying training in the US, found himself a voice in the wilderness.  What failed was not so much individual officers, but the CIA and the FBI as agencies.  Individual wisdom on  pan-Islamic terrorism, spearheaded by Al Qaeda, and the threat posed by it to national security in mainland US was there, though scattered here and there inside the agencies, but the agencies, as institutions,  lacked perceptive wisdom.

After a traumatic act of terrorism, intelligence agencies all over the world tend to swing dramatically from the one extreme of under- estimating the threat to the other of over-estimating it.  There is an  understandable tendency to accept all reports without a critical analysis. Mercenary sources take advantage of this to flood the agencies with highly exaggerated information.  The more gory the threat they project, the greater the attention and money they get from the agencies.  This is what happened in India after the Mumbai (Bombay) blasts of March, 1993.  And this is what happened in the US after 9/11.

The result: A picture of bin Laden and his Al Qaeda, which to discerning professional minds should appear to be far from reality, but which nobody has the courage to say so lest they be proved wrong by another 9/11 and their professionalism  doubted.  The CIA and the intelligence agencies of other countries have made bin Laden appear like one of those figures in Hindu mythology---with ten heads, 20 arms and 20 legs; the more the heads you cut off, the faster they are replaced.

So is the case with Al Qaeda.  The CIA, the FBI and academics, who reflect the CIA's thinking, have made Al Qaeda appear like an octopus of gigantic proportions, with the presence of its cells and networks reported  practically from everywhere in the world except the South and the North Pole.  Al Qaeda is like the  Loch Ness monster. Its sightings have been widely reported, but it has proved to be as elusive as the monster.  Many have been arrested as suspected Al Qaeda members, including Abu Zubaida, reportedly No.3 in the set-up, but even after their interrogation one is none the wiser as to what happened to bin Laden and his lieutenants and where are all the terrorists gone.  Speculations there are in plenty, but certainty there is very little.

The only questions that one can answer with some certainty is with regard to the damage to Al Qaeda's training infrastructure in Afghan territory and its motivation.  The US claims of having largely decimated its training infrastructure  seem to be correct.  So long as the US keeps up the intensity of its campaign against Al Qaeda and its accomplices in the International Islamic Front for Jehad Against the US and Israel, bin Laden, if still live, and his lieutenants would find it difficult to re-build a similar training infrastructure anywhere else in the world.  Not even in Pakistan.  However, they already have many highly motivated and well-trained cadres at their disposal, who can continue to operate without the need for further training.

There are credible indications that their motivation, despite the losses suffered by them, is as strong as ever.  It is likely to be further strengthened in the event of the US and UK intervening in Iraq to have President Saddam Hussain overthrown.

In the war against Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front, the US is committing the same mistake as it did in Vietnam---assessing the success of its campaign on the basis of body counts in disregard of other more important factors such as the impact on the capability on the ground and motivation.  One assesses the capability of an adversary not only on the basis of source reports, but also---more importantly--- during face to face fightings on the ground.  Al Qaeda has successfully avoided large-scale face-to-face encounters on the ground and has vanished into thin air.  Those involved in the encounters with the forces of the US and the Afghan warlords aiding it were mostly the dregs of the Taliban and the Pakistani jehadi organisations, which are members of the International Islamic Front and not of Al Qaeda.

bin Laden needs his own Arab dregs to ensure his physical security and for his future operations against the US and he has chosen not to lose them in direct encounters with the US forces.  Immediately after 9/11, there were highly inflated estimates of the strength of Al Qaeda going up to 42,000. This was a ridiculously absurd figure.  To prevent penetration by foreign intelligence agencies, bin Laden has kept  Al Qaeda small and tightly-knit, not taking non-Arabs into it.  Yes, thousands of  terrorists were trained in bin Laden's training establishments in Eastern Afghanistan, but they were not Arabs of Al Qaeda, but Pakistanis of Jehadi organisations such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HUJI), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ).  In order to down play the extent of the Pakistani involvement in jehadi terrorism radiating from Afghanistan, the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment deliberately underplayed the Pakistani involvement and over-played the Arab involvement.

The most dreaded terrorist organisations of the past such as the set-up of Carlos, the Baader-Meinhof, the Red Army factions of Japan and West Germany had their strengths running into a few dozens only.  Many of the most dreaded terrorist organisations of today such as the Hamas etc have strengths running into a few hundreds only.  Large strengths are a liability and not an asset to a terrorist organisation.

What brings success to terrorist organisations is not number, but strong motivation, a minimum capability and the inadequacies of the physical security set-up of the State.  Al Qaeda's success of 9/11 in the US was facilitated by the total failure of the physical security set-up in the US.

Almost one year of Operation Enduring Freedom has not made pan-Islamic terrorism spearheaded by Al Qaeda less of a threat to international peace and security.  The quantum and the seriousness of the threat remain as high as before 9/11.  To be able to deal with this threat, every country facing this threat needs better intelligence, better analysis, better physical security and better co-ordination. There is a need to constantly monitor the functioning of the intelligence and physical security set-ups to ensure that the requirements for better counter-terrorism are being met. 

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai)