Bin Laden’s Henchmen: Al Qa’ida’s Commanding Officers who are

Leading the Global Jihad

Sarah Catanzaro

Professor Martha Crenshaw, Advisor

Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies
Center for International Security and Cooperation
Stanford University

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………...4
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………....5

Chapter 1: Building a Complex Organization………………………………………....6

I. Evolution of Al Qa’ida’s Organizational Structure…………………………………..7
II. A Description of Complex Organizations………………………………...…………..12
III. The Role of “Mergers and Acquisitions”………………………..…………………...13
IV. Initial Thoughts on Policy Implications……………………………………………….15

Chapter 2: Literature Review………………………………………………………….17

I. Literature on Al Qa’ida’s Foreign Affiliates…………………………………………17
II. Literature on Joining Radical Movements……………………………………………20
A. Ideological motivations………………………………………………20
B. Psychosocial motivations…………………………………………….22
C. Strategic/opportunistic motivations………………………………….23
III. Literature on Terrorist Leadership…………………………………………………….25
A. The personality of terrorist leaders…………………………………..25
B. Targeting leadership………………………………………………….26

Chapter 3: Methodology………………………………………………………………..28
I. Background……………………………………………………………………………….28
II. Assessing Q1……………………………………………………………………………...30
III. Assessing Q2……………………………………………………………………………...38
IV. Developing the Universe of Cases……………………………………………………..40
V. Selection of Study Subjects……………………………………………………………...42
VI. Problems Regarding Information Gathering…………………………………………43
VII. Case Study………………………………………………………………………………...44
VIII. Relevance………………………………………………………………………………….44

Chapter 4: Universe of Cases…………………………………………………………..46

I. Al Qa’ida’s Affiliates: An Evolving Network…………………………………………46
II. Al Qa’ida’s Affiliates: The Geographic Distribution………………………………..53
III. Al Qa’ida’s Affiliates: Mergers? Partnerships? Or Collaborations?...................57
IV. Summary of Findings…………………………………………………………………….59

Chapter 5: Results of Statistical Hypothesis Testing…………………………………60

I. Data Analysis and Results for Q1: What motivates local jihadist leaders to affiliate
with Al Qa’ida’s and its pan-Islamic agenda?.......................................................60
II. Data Analysis and Results for Q2: What type of role do local jihadist leaders play
within Al Qa’ida’s network when the organization for which they are responsible
affiliates with Al Qa’ida……………………………………………………………….. 61

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Chapter 6: Al Qa’ida in the Maghreb and Abdelmalek Droukdal – A Well Executed
Merger…………………………………………………………………………………64
I. The Origins of Islamic Violence in Algeria after the War of Independence……...64
II. The Birth of the Salvation Islamic Front……………………………………………...65
III. The Beginnings of the GIA and the Onset of an Epoch of Violence……………….66
IV. An Alternative Emerges: The Origins of the GSPC…………………………………67
V. Fissions Form Within the GSPC……………………………………………………….67
VI. The Rise of Droukdal…………………………………………………………………….71
VII. Droukdal’s Program: Toward Global Jihad……………………………...………….73
VIII. The Announcement of Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb………………..………...77
IX. A New Organization……………………………………………………………………..78
X. Final Observations………………………………………………………………………80

Chapter 7: Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya: The Unrealized Merger………………………83

I. The Emergence of the GAI from the Ashes of the Muslim Brotherhood………….83
II. The Sadat Assassination………………………………………………………………...84
III. Crackdown under Mubarak…………………………………………………………….84
IV. Campaign of Terror……………………………………………..………………………85
V. Collapse of an Armed Group…………………………………………………………...86
VI. Reconciliation…………………………………………………………………………….88
VII. Explaining the Decision not to Affiliate with Al Qa’ida…………………………….89
VIII. Final Observations………………………………………………………………………91
Chapter 8: Conclusion and Discussion – Al Qa’ida’s Commanding Officers: A Skilled
Management Team……………………………………………………………………..93
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...107
Appendix I: List of Terrorist Groups………………………………………………..115
Appendix II: Sources by Terrorist Group…………………………………………...116
Appendix III: Commanding Officer Attribute Codebook……………………….....135
Appendix IV: Commanding Officer Attributes……………………………………..136
Appendix V: Data on Universe of Cases……………………………………………..138
Appendix VI: Data on Q1…………………………………………………………….139
Appendix VII: Data on Q2……………………………………………………………140

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Abstract:
Al Qa’ida has allied with indigenous terrorist groups for over a decade. However, only in recent
years, has Osama Bin Laden increasingly relied upon these franchises to prosecute his pan-
Islamic struggle. This paper examines first the motivations of local jihadist groups who associate
with Al Qa’ida to understand the transformation that Al Qa’ida has achieved. It then focuses on
the role that local jihadist leaders play in the aftermath of the affiliation to shed further light on
Al Qa’ida’s current strategy and operations. The conclusion of this paper finds that while
opportunistic, rather than ideological concerns are the primary motivating factors for joining Al
Qa’ida, after these affiliations occur, shared visions become essential. The local jihadist leaders
who become Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers ensure ideological alignment with Al Qa’ida.
Based on this analysis, this paper offers some broad recommendations regarding the future
conduct of the Global War on Terror (GWOT).

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Acknowledgements:
The ideas of more people than I can possibly mention have affected my thinking about terrorist
organizations and Al Qa’ida over the years, and more recently into the making of this thesis. I
hope that a general acknowledgement here of the wisdom and understanding may be counted to
me for righteousness.
I have benefited particularly from communications with Professor Martha Crenshaw. Professor
Crenshaw helped answer my questions promptly, at length, and with enthusiasm. She also put at
my disposal her insights on numerous topics. Without a doubt, this project would have been
poorer without her invaluable comments. Moreover, Professor Crenshaw lives as a role model
for the next generation of female investigators researching international security, a traditionally
male-dominated discipline. Admiration should be earned, not given, and Professor Crenshaw
most certainly earned mine through her impressive career. Thank you so much for your patience,
objectivity, and coaching, but most importantly for serving as an incredible mentor.
It gives me great pleasure to thank Professors Paul Stockton and Michael May for the
opportunity to participate in the CISAC Interschool Honors Program. I would have been hard-
pressed to get this project done in anything like a timely fashion had it not been for this program.
Through the CISAC seminars, I have had the opportunity to try out some of my ideas and receive
valuable criticism from my peers, for whom I would also like to show gratitude. Moreover,
Professors Stockton and May helped me clarify and expand my views about this project on
numerous occasions. I have been so fortunate to benefit from their generosity and acumen.
I am also grateful to Dara Kay Cohen, who listened to my presentations with great attention and
offered so many thoughtful suggestions and useful comments. I was so fortunate to have had
Dara around as an academic example and important mentor. Since my sophomore year at
Stanford, she has offered me practical and affectionate support.
In addition, I would like to thank Colonel Joseph Felter and Jarrett Brachman who introduced me
to several primary and secondary documents. These sources proved to be a treasure-chest indeed.
I would be remiss not to acknowledge my parents. Their constant support, both personal and
intellectual is more important than can adequately be acknowledge in such a brief note. I would
also like to thank my brother, who is currently a junior in high school. Despite his youth, he
continues to inspire me every day with his thoughtfulness and intelligence.
Finally, I want to recognize my community, Port Washington, New York which was tragically
impacted by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. I distinctly remember
the sense of dissociation and unreality as we struggled to understand how our beloved Twin
Towers were destroyed, how friends and neighbors had disappeared and presumably perished
during this devastating attack on America’s soil. There were cars parked at our train station that
were never recovered and fathers and mothers who never returned from work. Yet despite a
pervasive sense of insecurity, the members of my community began to dig themselves literally
and metaphorically from the ruins of the 9/11 disaster. Acts of kindness and heroism became
increasingly visible in my community as people mobilized to help one another. This solidarity
and resiliency consolidated my faith in humanity and sparked my interest in homeland security
studies. Thus, I dedicate my thesis to the population of Port Washington.

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Chapter 1: Building a Complex Organization
Prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks, Al Qa’ida was a relatively centralized

organization that used Afghanistan as a base from which to strategize, to plan attacks, and to

dispatch operatives worldwide. However, since the onset of the Global War on Terror (GWOT),

Al Qa’ida has transformed into a more ambiguous entity that scholars cannot easily define. A

few dominant camps have emerged within this scholarly debate. The first maintains that Al

Qa’ida Central Command retains ideological and operational control over the organization and

preserves a certain degree of tactical influence, Ronfeldt 2005,Stern 2003). Others suggest that

Al Qa’ida has become a decentralized network of individualized and local cells bound together

exclusively by common beliefs (Diebert and Stein 2003, Gunaratna 2004). Some scholars even

contend that the main threat no longer emanates from Al Qa’ida but from unassociated

radicalized individuals and groups who meet and plot in their neighborhoods and on the Internet

(Sageman 2008, Dishman 2005).

While each perspective has its merits, all oversimplify the command configuration

utilized by Al Qa’ida. Moreover, most fail to assess the exchange relationships that distinguish

Al Qa’ida. An organization characterized by “loose coupling” has cells that are relatively

autonomous and independent. In contrast, an organization characterized by “tight coupling”

includes cells that associate intimately, communicate often, and depend upon each other.

Currently, Al Qa’ida utilizes a mix of both loose and tight coupling to attain a remarkable degree

of adaptability. Although most scholars perceive Al Qa’ida as an organization in stasis, they fail

to acknowledge that this combination of loose and tight coupling has enabled Al Qa’ida to

become a modern hydra that readily adapts to changes in its environment. Thus, Al Qa’ida’s

structure and degree of centralization may fluctuate within a period of months or weeks. One can

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therefore classify Al Qa’ida as a complex organization a concept that will be elaborated in this

chapter (Marion and Uhl-Bien 2003).

One method whereby Al Qa’ida achieves such adaptability is by merging or partnering

with local jihadist groups. Al Qa’ida has affiliated with indigenous terrorist groups for almost

twenty years. However, since the onset of the Global War on Terror, Al Qa’ida has begun to

depend on these affiliates to obtain organizational flexibility to a considerable extent. Although

Al Qa’ida has cooperated with local jihadist groups for years, recently, these external

relationships enabled Al Qa’ida to transform into a complex organization, characterized by an

efficient blend of both tight and loose coupling. This study will examine the incentives and role

of former local jihadist group leaders who now serve as Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers. It is

important to analyze these individuals because they have assumed more authority since

September 11, 2001.

This study will draw upon open source and primary source information to understand

why and how Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers promote the pan-Islamic agenda. By defining the

new structure of Al Qa’ida (characterized by loosely integrated and operationally attached sub-

units, each led by a commanding officer), distinguishing the groups with which Al Qa’ida is

strongly associated, and identifying and assessing the role of the commanders who interact with

Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri and the core of Al Qa’ida, this study may affect the

allocation of resources in Washington for counterterrorism efforts. Moreover, the conclusions

drawn from this analysis may present policymakers with new and novel ways of targeting Al

Qa’ida and its partners.

I. Evolution of Al Qa’ida’s Organizational Structure:

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 In the 1980s, a large number of jihadists from the Middle East traveled to Afghanistan to

combat the Soviet Union. Osama bin Laden, a multimillionaire from a wealthy Saudi family, and

Abdullah Azzam, an Islamic scholar and founding member of the Kashmiri jihadist group

Lashkar-e-Taiba, established an office in Peshawar, Pakistan to serve as a hostel for Arabs

coming to fight the Soviets and as a press agency to produce propaganda to promote jihad. The

Services Bureau (“Maktab al Khadamat”) provided travel funds and guesthouses in Pakistan for

recruits and volunteers to facilitate the struggle against the Soviet forces. However, it was not

until the summer of 1988, that Bin Laden began calling his cadre al Qaeda al Askariya (“the

military base”) and developing a greater organizational structure (Riedel 2008).

At the conclusion of the Soviet-Afghan war, Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia as a

hero of jihad. However, in 1991, after the liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein by the

American-led multinational army, Bin Laden was disenchanted with his native Saudi Arabia,

which had rebuffed his offer to defend the kingdom. He relocated to the Sudan at the invitation

of the government of Hassan Turabi and the National Islamic Front. In the Sudan, Bin Laden

expanded the Al Qa’ida organization, developing a membership roster and establishing a

hierarchical arrangement to guide and oversee its functions (Riedel 2008). The organization was

centered upon the “shura” (i.e. advisory council) consisting of Bin Laden’s closest associates,

most of whom he knew since his formative days in Afghanistan. This council promoted common

goals, coordinated targets, and authorized asset sharing for terrorist operations. The shura majilis

(consultative assembly) received information from four subordinate committees designed to

direct specific segments of planning and operations. The military committee was responsible for

recruiting, training, procuring, and launching support and military operations. The finance

committee oversaw and developed financial resources. The religious committee justified Al

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Qa’ida’s actions and operations within the theological parameters of Al Qa’ida model of Islam.

Finally, the media committee produced propaganda intended to generate Muslim support for the

organization and its objectives (Harmony Database Released Documents: Al Qa'ida Goals and

Structure 2006). Once a specific operation was decided upon, it would be assigned to a carefully

selected cell headed by a senior Al Qa’ida operative who reported personally to Bin Laden

(Wright 2007). Thus, although Al Qa’ida also assisted two other Salafi terrorist groups during

this formative period in the Sudan, in its earlier incarnation, Al Qa’ida could be classified as a

centralized organization.

In May 1996, Bin Laden left the Sudan to return to Afghanistan as a result of combined

pressure from the United States, other western governments, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Libya, all

three of which faced indigenous terrorist groups supported by Bin Laden. Afghanistan’s lack of

central government provided Bin Laden with greater leeway to pursue his agenda and centralize

his operations. Moreover, Bin Laden was able to forge his closest alliance yet with the Taliban

by providing it with significant financial and human resources to support the ongoing war against

other factions in northern Afghanistan. In May 1997, Bin Laden cemented his ties to Ayman

Zawahiri, the last emir of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, thereby strengthening Al Qa’ida Central

Command and forming a close-knit group of jihadists uniquely capable of executing terror

operations like the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States (Bergen 2002).

The September 11, 2001 attacks reveal the former nature of Al Qa’ida’s decision-making

apparatus. The plot to attack the United State began in 1999 after Al Qa’ida executed the

simultaneous bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Bin Laden and

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Al Qa’ida’s former propaganda chief, hatched the plan to target the

Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the Capitol Building. Bin Laden personally recruited the plot’s

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tactical leader, Mohammed Atta as well as the fifteen operatives who would intimidate the

passengers during the airline hijackings. Additionally, he personally handled other elements of

the conspiracy, for instance, he engaged the Taliban and its leader, Mullah Omar in the

preparation (Riedel 2008).

Although Bin Laden and Al Qa’ida considered 9/11 an astonishing success, the attacks

precipitated the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Prior to 9/11, Al Qa’ida was a centralized

organization, which used Afghanistan as a base from which to carry out major operations against

American targets and did not significantly depend upon its affiliates to support its operations in

the Middle East. After the first year of the GWOT and the ouster of the Taliban from

Afghanistan, many Al Qa’ida leaders were imprisoned. These arrests led to subsequent arrests of

other senior officers. Captives revealed the names of their commanders and associates thereby

highlighting the need for loose coupling between local operatives and Al Qa’ida’s executive

leadership in order to evade government interference and limit the consequences of any further

compromises. In November 2002, Al Qa’ida allegedly convened a strategic summit in northern

Iran at which the shura recognized that Al Qa’ida could no longer function as a hierarchy. The

shura concluded that a decentralized, networked terrorist organizations would be less vulnerable

to traditional counterterrorism measures used by hierarchically organized security forces. From

this point forward, individual cells, composed of less than ten operatives, were instructed to

develop their own organizational structures, detached from Al Qa’ida Central Command and

other cells. While they operated in support of centralized directives, they established their own

individual plans (Felter et al. 2006).

Nevertheless, Al Qa’ida soon learned that there are limitations to a strictly decentralized

structure. When operations are so decentralized, it becomes particularly difficult to maintain

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situational awareness and control the use of violence to achieve specific political ends. Like most

other organizations, Al Qa’ida faced challenges when Central Command was forced to delegate

certain duties to low level operatives, who espoused different personal preferences. Often, these

low-level operatives sought more violence than was useful due to the cognitive dynamics of an

underground organization, competition for prominence within the movement, and their own

talent at conducting aggressive attacks (Shapiro 2007). Within a decentralized framework, Al

Qa’ida could not effectively monitor its agents’ activities, nor could it punish renegade agents

(Felter, Bramlett, Perkins, Brachman, and Fishman 2006). In 2002 and 2003, prior to the

invasion of Iraq, Al Qa’ida leadership found itself cornered along the border between Pakistan

and Afghanistan and unable to coordinate its low-level operatives.

However, the U.S. decision to go to war with Iraq and the Pakistani decision to provoke a

crisis with India allowed Al Qa’ida to survive by regaining a degree of centralization. Invading

Iraq diverted troops from the mission of finding Al Qa’ida’s leadership; rather than consolidating

its victory in Afghanistan, the US allowed Al Qa’ida to reconstitute itself in the tribal areas of

Pakistan. Moreover, after five Kashmiri terrorists attacked Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s

parliament in New Delhi, India began to mobilize along the border; thereby provoking Pakistan

to divert to the east troops that were needed in the west. Thus, Al Qa’ida was able to reestablish

some of its pre-9/11 operational capabilities by exploiting Pakistan’s Federally Administered

Tribal Areas (Riedel 2008). As the result of restoration of central control, Al Qa’ida can rely

upon closer relations with its commanding officers (the former leaders of indigenous terrorist

groups), who are the most important link in the formation of a resilient, complex organization.

These commanding officers ensure that preference divergence does not result in the loss of

11
operational success or security.

II. A Description of Complex Organizations:

As this history indicates, Al Qa’ida’s demand for operational secrecy, highly visible

organizational personnel, intricate nature of resource gathering and allocation, and large size

dictated its organizational decisions. Although a decentralized organization form was more

appropriate and prudent after 9/11, it was not very efficient. Empowered by the establishment of

its safe haven in Pakistan and increased reliance upon its commanding officers, Al Qa’ida

continues to morph into a complexly structure organization (Marion and Uhl-Bien 2006).

Complex organizations are composed of a diversity of agents, who interact with and mutually

affect one another. Unlike strictly centralized organizations, qualified by tightly coupled systems

or exclusively decentralized organizations, qualified by loosely coupled systems, complex

organizations can exploit a diversity of systems (Marion and Uhl-Bien 2001). Al Qa’ida now

relies heavily upon semiautonomous cells found in operational territories that are horizontally

and vertically integrated into the centralized command structure. While the relationships within

the cells are tightly coupled, the relationships between cells and between operatives and Al

Qa’ida Central Command are loosely coupled. Before Al Qa’ida Central Command reorganized

itself in the tribal areas of Pakistan, the relationship between its commanding officers and central

authorities were also loosely coupled (thus, Al Qa’ida was effectively a decentralized network).

By contrast, today, the relationship between Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers and central

authorities are moderately coupled (thus, Al Qa’ida is a true “complex organization”). This

flexible structure allows the Central Command to maintain control over specifically identified

strategic operations through its commanding officers while enabling cells to maintain their

autonomy in local and regional operations (Marion and Uhl-Bien 2006). While it is difficult to

12
determine if Al Qa’ida assumed this structure by conscious design or coincidence, the extensive

negotiations that continue to occur between Al Qa’ida and its affiliates suggest that Al Qa’ida

has consciously utilized these arrangements to remain resilient.

III. The Role of “Mergers and Acquisitions:”

By affiliating with local jihadist movements, Al Qa’ida has achieved an optimal

combination of coupling. Previously, Bin Laden did not seek to exert strategic or operational

control over the leaders of its regionally based affiliates. However, now when Al Qa’ida merges,

partners, or collaborates with a local jihadist groups, it employs the groups’ leaders as its

commanding officers and integrates them into Al Qa’ida Central Command by establishing

communication channels and by offering financial and technological resources to these leaders

for their local outlets with stipulations. Al Qa’ida theorist Abu Musab al-Suri noted the

importance of a highly trained cadre of senior commanding officers. He observed that a dearth of

such leaders reduces the maximum level of control Al Qa’ida could exert thereby undermining

the potential for political impact (Felter, Bramlett, Perkins, Brachman, and Fishman 2006).

These commanding officers can serve a crucial role since they are better able to monitor the

behavior of their agents and can punish and reward them for their performance. Moreover, these

commanding officers are effective because they can develop mature relationships with their

operatives. Since they are already closely coupled to their agents, they can build differentiated

relationships with their rapports rather than espousing an “average” leadership style. These

relationships are characterized by a high degree of leader-member exchange and commitment

that was impossible to achieve between Al Qa’ida Central Command executives and operatives

due to their lack of physical proximity. Communication frequency, interactive communication

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patterns, leader-member value agreement, subordinate loyalty, decision influence, and member

affect are all key in this dyadic relationship (Graen and Uhl-Bien 1995).

Studies from the corporate world as well as observations by Al Qa’ida theorists reveal

that when agents develop high quality relationships with their leaders, their performance, and

their overall unit performance improves (Graen and Uhl-Bien 1995). There is a positive

correlation between the level of ideological indoctrination of cell members and the degree of

control a leader exerts. Local leaders can also effectively monitor operative’s personal and social

network, ensuring that relationships that could dilute commitment are avoided and those that

enhance commitment are strengthened(Brachman and McCants 2006). Moreover, these new,

cohesive units can innovate and adapt to the demands of the environment because they do not

need to conform to a strict set of guidelines passed down from Central Command.

Commanding officers now serve an important role as interlocutors with Al Qa’ida

Central Command. The moderate coupling between Al Qa’ida Central Command and local

leaders is essential to the performance of the organization. Because affiliations are often

preceded by several months of bargaining and negotiations, Al Qa’ida can ensure that strategic

and tactical differences between it and its commanding officers are reconciled. Thus, Al Qa’ida

Central Command can rely upon its commanding officers to handle finance and logistic tasks and

to engage in auditing strategies. Providing funds on a need-to-have basis to smaller groups of

operatives is a risky strategy because each additional transfer entails communications and

financial transactions, which can be tracked by counterterrorist forces. Moreover, relying on

lower-level operatives (who are often less committed, since the most devoted operatives are

obliged to engage in riskier or inherently fatal assignments) is a more hazardous strategy (Felter,

Bramlett, Perkins, Jarrett Brachman, and Fishman 2006).

14
 By allowing its commanding officers to retain significant freedom to interact with other

local leaders and with resource providers, they are given latitude to exploit their specific

environment. Moreover, these commanding officers can ensure the dissemination of innovation

and information by acting as an intermediary between their cell members and Al Qa’ida Central

Command. Currently, they act as a hub of communication, transmitting new, up-to-date,

information between operatives and Al Qa’ida authorities (McAllister 2004).

Thus, at present, local leaders-cum-commanding officers perform a crucial function by

liaising with Al Qa’ida Central Command, thereby allowing Al Qa’ida to maintain ideological

and operational control over the organization and by closely interacting with local operatives,

thereby ensuring the unity, efficiency, and competence of local cells.

Although these commanding officers have significant responsibilities (for example, the

use of force, finances, and equipment, obligations to Al Qa’ida Central Command, accountability

for operation effectiveness, duty of care to their agents, and powers including discipline and

punishment of their agents) no researcher has analyzed their role or background. This is the first

study that pinpoints the organizations with which Al Qa’ida has affiliated and identifies their

leaders (who subsequently become Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers). Drawing upon documents

and transcripts of legal proceedings involving global Salafi mujahedin and their organizations,

government documents, press and scholarly articles, and Internet articles, this study compiles the

biographies of over forty Al Qa’ida commanding officers, scrutinizing their stories for patterns to

determine their motivation. Moreover, this study provides valuable insight into the

transformation that these leaders undergo when they become Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers

by looking at their responsibilities before and after they affiliate with Al Qa’ida.

IV. Initial Thoughts on Policy Implications:

15
 Government efforts to degrade Al Qa’ida’s capacity should focus on undermining its

security environment, minimizing the degree to which it can control operations, and abort its

ability to fund its activities. By identifying the crucial role played by commanding officers in

sustaining Al Qa’ida, this study will suggest additional means of undermining Al Qa’ida.

The government should increase dissension between local leaders and Al Qa’ida Central

Command. The US government should publicly recognize and highlight the differences between

the acquired groups, who originally espouse ambitions such as regime overthrow and Al Qa’ida,

which is committed to a pan-Islamic program. Moreover, the government can disrupt

communications channels between local leaders and Al Qa’ida central command by utilizing

misinformation and flooding information channels, thereby forcing the commanding officers to

communicate more frequently with Al Qa’ida Central Command, possibly revealing crucial

information. There may be “psychological” tactics that can be employed to generate dissension,

to exploit certain aspects of human or group dynamics that would lead to competition, or

rebellion. Moreover, there may be certain personality characteristics of the types of individuals

employed at each level of organization that can be manipulated.

Finally, government efforts should deny jihadist groups the benefit of security vacuum in

vulnerable areas; thereby barring the emergence of potential Al Qa’ida partners. Through troop

deployment, the US government can deny terrorists the use of vulnerable countries as staging

grounds for the attacks in the West.

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Chapter 2: Literature Review

Recently, counterterrorist agents and military officers have mounted efforts to combat Al

Qa’ida and Bin Laden supporters. However, there is considerable controversy among scholars

regarding the structure of Al Qa’ida and therefore, how best to target this formidable foe. The

debate regarding the nature of Al Qa’ida’s threat will inevitably impact upon the allocation of

influence and resource by the U.S. federal government in the Global War on Terror (GWOT)

embarked upon following the September 11, 2001 attacks. The outcome of the bureaucratic turf

wars over funding for programs under the new Obama administration will surely define future

directions and strategies to confront Al Qa’ida specifically and global terrorism in general.

In the introductory chapter, I highlighted the newfound importance of Al Qa’ida’s

commanding officers, which lead the groups with which Al Qa’ida has recently merged or with

whom it remains associated. Although Al Qa’ida retains its core group and a well-trained

terrorist cadre, it has become increasingly engaged with regional affiliates in Egypt, the Sinai

Peninsula, Indonesia, and other sites in franchise operations.

I. Literature on Al Qa’ida’s Foreign Affiliates

Several scholars have investigated the process whereby Al Qa’ida has achieved a broader

geographic and operational reach by employing local jihadist groups. These researchers confirm

my commentary that such partnerships can provide Al Qa’ida with increased flexibility and offer

advantages in stimulating tactical level innovation within particular environments when they are

astutely directed by Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers.

In a report prepared for the Combat Studies Institute, Kalic describes Al Qa’ida as a

“modern hydra.” He observes that before the onset of the GWOT, Al Qa’ida functioned as a

regional indoctrination and training center for Islamic terrorist organizations. However, he

17
corroborates my observation that because of the loss of support and training centers in

Afghanistan due to Operation Enduring Freedom, Bin Laden was obliged to rely upon outside

groups in order to perpetuate Al Qa’ida’s agenda. Kalic suggests that Al Qa’ida’s alliances with

Abu Sayyaf, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Tunisian Combatant Group, and Libyan Islamic Fighting

Group have enabled Al Qa’ida to expand its geographic influence and diffuse its organizational

structure. He describes the process whereby Al Qa’ida supports local “walk in” Islamic groups

that pitch their plans to Al Qa’ida for financial support. These radical groups provide additional

reach to Al Qa’ida and expand its operational capability for minimal investment because they

can develop indigenous plans and operations based on local situations and observations.

Moreover, they allow Al Qa’ida to minimize exposure of its central command structure (Kalic

2005)

In a similar vein, Takeyh and Gvosdev have observed that after the destruction of its

sanctuary in Afghanistan, Al Qa’ida has remained buoyant by forging foreign alliances. Through

this strategy, Al Qa’ida has established a presence in failed states where it believes the US will

opt not to risk significant losses associated with urban/guerilla warfare. Al Qa’ida no longer

needs a strong state for funding and supplies since it can rely on its franchises in countries like

Kashmir, Kosovo, Chechnya, and Palestine (Takeyh and Gvosdev 2002).

Riedel avows that the US invasion of Iraq and subsequent efforts to quell sectarian unrest

have allowed Al Qa’ida to regroup in the tribal areas of Pakistan, where it has established a new

base of operations. Now, Al Qa’ida is once again focused on enlarging its network.

Consequently, Al Qa’ida has developed a closer relationship with Kashmiri terrorist groups, like

Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad that have a presence there. Moreover, while Al Qa’ida

has failed to topple the governments of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, its attacks against these

18
regimes demonstrate its expanded influence throughout the Middle East. In a similar vein, the

plot to destroy ten commercial airliners en route from the United Kingdom to the United States,

foiled in 2006, indicates that Al Qa’ida has established connections in Europe. Finally, Riedel

suggests that Al Qa’ida may seek a foothold in Gaza, Africa, or Lebanon in the near future

(Riedel 2007).

Mishal and Rosenthal describe Al Qa’ida as a “dune organization” that employs other

loosely affiliated organizations to carry out its missions. Al Qa’ida remains associated with these

groups as long as they cannot operate independently. However, when they prove that they no

longer need Al Qa’ida’s material or normative support to conduct independent maneuvers, Al

Qa’ida finds another organization that can attain its other goals and leaves this former associate

to continue the war on its own. The affiliated groups may employ a modus operandi, which is not

identical to Al Qa’ida’s tactics, thus, Al Qa’ida need not maintain constant supervision or control

over the activities of its old affiliate’s operatives (Mishal and Rosenthal 2005).

Stern observes that terrorist groups’ objectives have evolved to ensure their survival. She

maintains that many organizations will form alliances with groups that have ideologies different

from their own, obliging both entities to adapt. For instance, she suggests that both Egyptian

Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan compromised their original mission when

they joined forces with Al Qa’ida. Moreover, she avows that Bin Laden has adjusted his

objectives over time and describes Al Qa’ida as a “flexible group of ruthless warriors ready to

fight on behalf of multiple causes.” Due to the adaptability of its mission, Al Qa’ida can forge

broad, and sometimes unlikely alliances with other jihadist groups (like Jemaah Islamiyah), with

Shia organizations (like Hezbollah), with traditional organized crime groups (like Artab Ansari’s

[an Indian gangster] network), and revivalist organizations (like Tablighi Jamaat) (Stern 2003).

19
 Fishman is less worried about Al Qa’ida franchises than other scholars. He avers that Al

Qa’ida offers these franchises few benefits; offering only its name, reputation, and ideology. He

contends that Al Qa’ida’s franchises are likely to commit rash, strategic mistakes and are more

susceptible to counterterrorism offensives than their mother organization. He offers Al Qa’ida in

Iraq as an example of a group which compromised Al Qa’ida’s pan-Islamic mission by attacking

Muslim civilians and engaging in conflict with other Iraqi insurgent groups (Fishman 2008).

Desouza and Hengsen provide the most comprehensive analysis of Al Qa’ida’s

collaborative activities. They avow that terrorist groups cannot be self-sustaining and must

“engage in the fundamentals of established economic practices” to furnish protection from

outside threats. They analyze several possible arrangements, including “licensing agreements,”

whereby Al Qa’ida allows other groups to use its facilities, equipment, or personnel for a specific

purpose and duration and “minority equity investments,” whereby Al Qa’ida finances terrorist

groups with the intention of influencing their strategic activity. Finally, they describe mergers

and acquisitions, whereby Al Qa’ida combines with or subsumes another organization. They

contend that these interactions are the most complex form of equity engagements that terrorist

groups develop to survive in competitive environments and suggest that mergers/acquisitions

allow terrorist groups to consolidate their assets to compete more successfully or exploit

resources held by other parties (Desouza and Hengsen 2007).

II. Literature on Incentives for Joining Radical Movements

A. Ideological motivations

While these studies analyze Al Qa’ida’s strategy and explain why Al Qa’ida has pursued

such arrangements, they do not reveal why local jihadist groups choose to align with Al Qa’ida.

Many groups that merge or partner with Al Qa’ida adhere to a program based on the ethnic,

20
sectarian, linguistic, and state boundaries in which they arose. Upon allying with Al Qa’ida, they

must forsake their indigenous agendas to support the global pan-Islamic movement.

Consequently, many groups grapple with contradictions between national and supranational

aims. Unfortunately, few studies investigate the incentives of the local jihadist leaders who adopt

Al Qa’ida’s pan-Islamic program and transform their organization into part of Al Qa’ida’s

system.

Studies regarding why individuals join radical movements may inform our understanding

of the motivations of local terrorists leaders who connect with Al Qa’ida’s global enterprise.

Della Porta suggests that individuals are persuaded to enlist in underground organizations when

they are enticed by its ideology. She maintains that political organizations often orient their

ideology to support recruitment. Like Stern, she proposes that ideology is a strategic choice made

by the organization; it is a tool for enlarging the potential supporters of the organization. She

observes that the attention groups pay to adjusting their ideology to circumstance is revealed

when they explain and justify their strategies. In fact, enemies and allies are described in

different terms at different times (Della Porta 1995). Based on her interpretation, one might

expect that local jihadist leaders subscribe to Al Qa’ida’s global jihad because the idea of

establishing an Islamic Caliphate throughout the world is attractive to them. One could also

envisage that Al Qa’ida is promoting its pan-Islamic vision because it is aware of the magnetism

of this dream.

Jones, Smith, and Weeding validate this line of thought. They observe that although Al

Qa’ida was initially devoted to fighting the Soviet forces it now espouses more internationalist

objectives. Consequently, Al Qa’ida can co-opt local struggles into an evolving network of

worldwide jihad by asserting its dedication to an international agenda. They contend that Al

21
Qa’ida has improved its media wing to appeal to local jihadist groups in their native language

and honor regional customs. They offer Jemaah Islamiyah as an example of an organization that

was seduced by Al Qa’ida’s discussion of a pan-Islamic caliphate (Jones, Smith, and Weeding

2003).

Gunaratna also supports this argument. He avows that traditionally, Islamist groups

fought secular Muslim governments either to replace them or to form a separate state. However,

Al Qa’ida successfully transformed the parochial thinking of these groups through a

sophisticated propaganda campaign to orient them towards global, rather than local jihad.

Moreover, global events have provided the context for the new generation to gain exposure to

significant ideological training and indoctrination. As a consequence of the GWOT and the war

in Iraq, Al Qa’ida anti-Western curriculum is increasingly alluring (R. Gunaratna 2002).

B. Psychosocial motivations

Conversely, other studies suggest that individuals join terrorist networks for psychosocial

reasons. Post, Sprinzak, and Denny interviewed 35 incarcerated Middle Eastern extremists from

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah, as well as 14 secular terrorists from Fatah al-Islam. They

observed that most had a high school education and some had additional schooling and that most

came from respected families that supported their activism. Consequently, they concluded that

income and/or educational inequalities do not account for terrorism. They deduced that peer

influence and increased social standing were major reasons for joining a terrorist group (Post,

Sprinzak, and Denny 2003).

Similarly, Pedahzur, Perliger, and Weinberg observed 80 Palestinian suicide terrorists

from 1973 to 2002. They noticed that these terrorists exhibited a higher rate of religious

education, membership in fundamentalist organizations and repeat terrorist acts. As a result, they

22
proposed that the terrorists acted out of altruistic motives (devotion to a religious community)

and deduced that recruitment could be based on a network of shared social values(Pedahzur,

Perliger, and Weinberg 2003).

Although his research was biased towards leaders who have come to the public attention,

Marc Sageman’s book, Understanding Terror Network is particularly revealing. Sageman

compiled data from public sources on 172 individuals who he identified as members of a global

Salafi mujahedeen. He sample included expatriate leaders of the Egyptian Islamic Group,

members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Jemaah Islamiyah, the GSPC, and Al Qa’ida. He

observed that members of terrorist organizations were generally middle-class, educated young

men from caring and religious families. These participants in jihad grew up with strong positive

values of religion, spirituality and concern for their communities. Moreover, Sagemen found no

evidence of pathological narcissism or paranoid personality disorder amongst those who he

surveyed. On the contrary, he found that social bonds were the critical element in the process of

joining jihad and he suggested that such connections precede ideological commitment (Sageman

2004).

C. Strategic/opportunistic motivations

Alternatively, terrorist leaders may have opportunistic motives for securing a spot under

Al Qa’ida’s umbrella. Several academics believe that terrorist action derives from a conscious,

rational, calculated decision to execute a particular type of action, which they perceive to be the

optimum strategy to accomplish a sociopolitical goal. Sandler and Enders contend that terrorists

must choose between different strategies and modes of attack based on their perception of

“prices” associated with alternative operations. Each mode of operation has a per-unit price that

23
includes the value of time, resources and anticipated outcome. Thus, any act executed by a

terrorist organization can be perceived as a rational choice (Sandler and Enders 2004).

Hoffman notes that approximately 90 percent of all terrorist groups collapse within a year

and only half of the remainder survives another decade. He remarks upon long running

government offensives that have nearly crushed several terrorist groups. Based on these

observations he suggests that several local jihadist outlets need the Al Qa’ida imprimatur to raise

money. He further notes that local jihadist cells shed their outlaw status within radical Muslim

circles when they have Al Qa’ida’s backing. Finally, he mentions that the Iraq war has sapped

local jihadist groups of their most active militants. In this context, embracing global jihad may be

perceived as a way to control and recruit new group members (Bruce Hoffman 2004).

Based on these accounts, one can imagine three different rationales why local jihadist

group leaders would affiliate with Al Qa’ida. First, local jihadist group leaders may be lured by

Al Qa’ida’s ideology. It is possible that these groups take the transnational jihadist challenge

seriously because the idea of creating a single Islamic state or reviving the united Caliphate of

earlier times is captivating. Alternatively, local jihadist leaders may confederate with Al Qa’ida

due to psychosocial influences. These local jihadist leaders may have developed relationships

with Al Qa’ida officials during the Soviet-Afghan war, while incarcerated together, while

training together, etc. These affinities may compel local jihadist leaders to liaise with their old

compatriots and mutually assist each other in their subsequent struggles. Finally, local jihadist

leaders, who might otherwise be contained or co-opted by local regimes and, by extension, the

United States and its allies, may unite with Al Qa’ida to guarantee organizational survival. In

joining Al Qa’ida, these local jihadist leaders may seek concrete benefits such as the provision of

financial resources, access to training facilities, and association with the Al Qa’ida label.

24
III. Literature on Terrorist Leadership

A. The personality of terrorist leaders

While these studies enlighten the discussion regarding incentives for merging or

partnering with Al Qa'ida, very little literature directly addresses the role that local jihadist

leaders play before or after a merger. However, some researchers have attempted to identify

personality traits that enable leaders to attract and maintain large followings.

In the 1920s, German sociologist Max Weber defined charismatic leadership as “resting

on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of an individual person,

and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him.” He suggested that charisma

was a personality trait by virtue of which a leader appeared endowed with exceptional power or

superhuman competencies. Charismatic leaders gained authority through qualities unique their

own, not through positions that they occupied (Weber 1968).

Kostrzebski applied Weber’s theory of charismatic authority to examine leadership in the

context of Islamic tradition. He contends that a certain model of charismatic politico-religious

leadership, first exemplified by Mohammed, the prophet and founder of Islam, is prominent in

Islamic history. He notices that in the Islamic world, religious and political leadership is usually

embodied in the persona of a single charismatic individual. He cites Mahdi of Sudan, Ayatollah

Khomeini, and Osama bin Laden as examples of this archetype. Furthermore, he predicts that

this type of charismatic politico-religious leader will appear with greater frequency in the future

(Kostrzebski 2002).

Similarly, Bergen contends that Bin Laden’s charisma helped fuel an influx of recruits

and attracted aspiring jihadists to Afghanistan from Western countries. Moreover, he avows that

Bin Laden’s cult of personality prompted various militant Islamic groups to affiliate with Al

25
Qa’ida. He notes that Bin Laden left operational planning to trusted lieutenants and stood above

the fray. Consequently, few operatives received personal audience with him. However, those

who went through the vetting procedures and gained access to Bin Laden describe their

encounters with the legendary terrorist leader as “beautiful” (Bergen 2006).

B. Targeting leadership

While these studies suggest that a leader’s charisma can inspire a devoted following, they

do not address the role that such leaders play within an organizational framework. While

research addressing this topic has been extremely sparse, some scholars have discussed how the

arrest or neutralization of a terrorist leader can affect the group’s performance.

In a Joint Special Operations University report, Turbiville perceives that the United

States has emphasized targeting and eliminating key terrorist leadership since 9/11. He describes

the diverse experience of foreign operations against insurgent and terrorist high value targets.

Based on several case studies, he concludes that leadership targeting can be effective,

particularly when a group depends heavily on a charismatic leader. However, he cautions that

operations which target leadership must be integrated into an overall and effective

counterinsurgency and counterterrorist strategy and warns that abuses of national and

international law and human rights committed in terrorist leadership targeting programs have a

negative impact on larger counterinsurgency goals (Turbiville 2007).

Langdon, Sarapu, and Wells examined 35 leadership crises to determine what happens to

terrorist movements after the loss of a leader. Although they predicted that the assassination of a

leader would cause a dramatic change in ideology leading to increased violence, they found that

the assassination of a leader often causes the group to fail or disband. Moreover, they observed

that the assassination of a leader is more likely to devastate a terrorist group than an arrest. They

26
suggest that arrested leaders may continue to play an important ideological role by guiding their

group from their prison cell (Langdon, Sarapu, and Wells 2004).

These studies suggest that targeting leadership could damage a terrorist group by

depriving it of effective direction and demoralizing its rank and file members. However, while

these analyses intimate that terrorist leaders play an important role in ensuring organizational

survival, they do not expose the particular function that terrorist leaders must execute. Thus, this

study is valuable since its looks at both the motivations and specific responsibilities of Al

Qa’ida’s commanding officers.

27
Chapter 3: Methodology

Al Qa’ida has clearly transformed and evolved in ways described in the introduction. Its

terrorist activity, conducted by operatives capable of inflicting maximum civilian and economic

damages on both local and distant targets in pursuit of their extremist goals, remains an

important security threat. In fact, Al Qaida’s ability to mete out devastating destruction

worldwide has increased as cells have become progressively armed with modern technology.

Moreover, recently, Al Qa’ida has expanded its reach through its affiliations so that it is uniquely

positioned to target the West through spectacular attacks designed to inflict mass casualties and

damage to the global economy. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the motivations and

responsibilities of Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers. In order to understand why Al Qa’ida is

such a forceful and resilient organization, we must understand the strength that resides in its

leaders.

I. Background:

The introductory chapter explained how and why Al Qa’ida relies extensively upon the

leaders of regionally focused groups, who serve as Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers. By

depending upon its commanding officers (the former leaders of local jihadist groups), Al Qa’ida

has become a flexible, moderately coupled network of individuals united by a common need and

ultimately aligned behind an emergent leader, Osama bin Laden. Currently, Al Qa’ida’s

commanding officers have the ultimate authority over their region and are given wide latitude to

run their units within the boundaries of Al Qa’ida’s doctrines. As centralized communication

nodes within their system, they have become the main link between Al Qa’ida Central Command

and the organization’s operative units. As such, Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers are held

responsible for its success or failure in their region. During negotiations between Al Qa’ida and

28
the potential affiliate, commanding officers are influential arbitrators. Negotiations are often

lengthy processes, involving discussions regarding financial and capital resources and tactics.

Commanding officers also ensure that an operative’s incentives to supply effort are not

diminished and mediate conflict within their unit when the affiliation begins and as it matures.

Finally, they help stimulate interdependency and interaction among their units and other

branches of Al Qa’ida. Just as managers from the corporate arena trying to integrate newly

acquired companies and divisions, plan ahead, communicate often and address everyone

involved in the deal, so too must the commanding officers that merge their organization with Al

Qa’ida prepare accordingly (Marion and Uhl-Bien 2006).

Although these commanding officers play a vital role in expanding the agenda of Al

Qa’ida and adding legitimacy to its international campaign, researchers have overlooked them.

The previous chapter revealed that literature on the role of leadership in terror networks has

remained limited in scope. Past studies have ignored important hierarchical considerations,

focusing primarily on principals like Osama bin Laden. This study is the first to

comprehensively examine Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers. Thus, it will contribute to the bank

of information and stimulate vital discourse on the composition and function of Al Qa’ida today.

Unfortunately, because academic studies to date have not focused on Al Qa’ida’s

commanding officers, little is known about the characters, motivations, or credentials of these

officials. The surveys reviewed, which consider categories of influence factors and their effect

on an individual’s decision to join an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organization, do not

adequately explain why certain terrorists leaders affiliate with Al Qa’ida and its program of

global jihad nor do they reveal the precise role that these officers serve within the Al Qa’ida

network once affiliated. I theorized that by examining the demographic characteristics of Al

29
Qa’ida’s operatives, such as age, educational background, years of religious training, religious

affiliation, and by evaluating these operatives for their military backgrounds (e.g. war

experiences/participation in the Afghanistan conflict), incarceration/prison time, migration

patterns etc, I would be able to detect recognizable patterns that characterize these terrorist

executives. The patterns that I observed would help me answer two critical questions:

1) What motivates local jihadist leaders to affiliate with Al Qa’ida’s and its pan-Islamic

agenda?

2) What type of role do local jihadist leaders play within Al Qa’ida’s network when the

organization for which they are responsible affiliates with Al Qa’ida?

II. Assessing Q1:

The previous chapter outlined three explanations for why individuals join terrorist

organizations. Some researchers suggest that terrorists follow a strategic logic and are inspired

by opportunism; they perceive armed combat at the most effective way to generate significant

governmental concessions (Sandler and Enders 2004, Bruce Hoffman 2004). Others scholars

suggest that ideology plays an important role in pushing militants of some militants toward

terrorism (Della Porta 1995, Jones, Smith, and Weeding 2003, R. Gunaratna 2002). Finally,

some academics claim that individuals join terrorist organizations due to strong solidarity bonds

derived from interpersonal relations (Post, Sprinzak, and Denny 2003, Pedahzur, Perliger, and

Weinberg 2003, Sageman 2004). Since prior studies have not discussed what incentives

provoke local jihadist leaders to affiliate with Al Qa’ida, I assumed that the motivations for local

jihadist leaders to join Al Qa’ida’s global jihad were similar to the motivations for individuals to

30
join terrorist movements. Thus, to address my first question, I developed the following

hypotheses:

H11. Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers associated with Al Qa’ida due to

opportunistic motives

H21. Al Qa’ida commanding officers associated with Al Qa’ida due to

ideological motives

H31. Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers associated with Al Qa’ida due

psychosocial motives

H11 (Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers aligned with Al Qa’ida due to opportunistic

motives) reflects the observation that relatively undersized, less powerful indigenous assemblies

of terrorists can invigorate their organization by aligning with Al Qa’ida. In recent years, Al

Qa’ida has demonstrated unusual resilience and international reach. It has exhibited a

complexity, agility, and global scope that is unrivaled by any previous terrorist organization. Its

fluid operational style, based on a common mission statement and shared objectives rather than

standard-operating procedures has ensured its success (Stern 2003).

Al Qa’ida has a remarkable ability to attract membership by relying upon a web of

informal relations with various Islamic groups to gain access to operational collaborators and

individuals to execute attacks. Currently, Al Qa’ida’s recruitment process seems to be more a

matter of joining than being solicited. Moreover, the Salafi message, which has been

disseminated over the Internet by Al Qa’ida’s media division, has attracted numerous members

of alienated diasporas (sometimes second and third generation immigrants) who feel isolated

from their communities and seek to belong to a group (Bruce Hoffman 2003). By associating

with Al Qa’ida, local jihadist groups can shore up popular support and amp up recruitment.

31
 Al Qa’ida’s strength may also lie in its impressive coffers; Al Qa’ida has amassed

billions of dollars by building a strong network of financiers and operatives who are frugally

minded and business savvy. Moreover, Al Qa’ida’s finances are often hidden in legitimate and

illegitimate businesses; Bin Laden is reputed to own approximately eighty companies around the

world. Al Qa’ida has learned to effectively leverage the global financial system of capital

markets by utilizing small financial transfers, under regulated Islamic banking networks and

informal transfer systems throughout the world. Thus, it is difficult to choke off funds destined

for Al Qa’ida (Basile 2004). Consequently, Al Qa’ida can grant money to local terrorist groups

that present promising plans for attacks that serve Al Qa’ida’s general goals.

All terrorist organizations must engage in attacks to maintain support, to buttress their

organizational integrity, and to foster their continued existence. Associating with Al Qa’ida

ensures that a group has access to the necessary financial resources to conduct attacks. In a sense,

Al Qa’ida operates like a large multi-national company and the “product” that it exports is

terrorism. One must acknowledge the economic principles that underlie Al Qa’ida’s success, that

of supply and demand, limited resources, productivity etc.

Finally, Al Qa’ida has successfully exploited the technological tools of globalization to

communicate with various audiences. Al Qa’ida has launched an effective advertising campaign

worldwide using the latest technology and psychology to reach their desired addressees. Al

Qa’ida uses mobile phones, text messaging, instant messaging, websites, email, blogs, and chat

rooms for administrative tasks, fund-raising, research, logistical coordination of attacks, and

recruitment. When Al Qa’ida’s media division airs its hostage videos and films of terrorist

attacks or their aftermath, it provides the organization with the oxygen of publicity necessary to

sustain itself. Unless civilian populations are made aware of terrorist acts and cowed into fear by

32
such assaults, Al Qa’ida cannot influence the governments that it targets. Moreover, these

materials are seen by potential sympathizers who may be brought into the folds of terrorism itself

(Blanchard 2006). Terrorist groups that align with Al Qa’ida can benefits from Al Qa’ida’s

media and propaganda expertise.

In considering this hypothesis, it is important to remember that Al Qa’ida is a unique

terrorist organization; most modern terrorist groups do not last long. In fact, 90% of terrorist

organizations have a life span of less than one year. Cronin lists seven broad explanations for the

decline and ending of terrorist groups: 1) the capture or killing of the leader 2) failure to

transition to the next generation 3) achievement of the group’s aims 4) transition to a legitimate

political process 5) undermining of popular support 6) repression 7) transition from terrorist to

other forms of violence. More than one dynamic can be responsible for their decline (Cronin

2006).

Consequently, to assess H11, I searched for evidence of terrorist group decline based on

Cronin’s criteria. To do so, I developed timelines for each organization included in this study.

The timelines featured important events in their life cycle (e.g. the founding, the onset of series

of attacks, spectacular attacks, the beginning of a government offensive, etc.). Information was

gathered from various international security think tanks including the Center for Defense

Information, the Jamestown Foundation, the Council of Foreign Relations, the Institute for

Conflict Management in New Delhi, and the NEFA foundation. I judged that the local jihadist

leader, as a rational actor, would affiliate with Al Qa’ida if he desperately needed to give his

organization a second wind. Consequently, if there was strong evidence that the group was in a

state of imminent decline immediately prior to its merger with A Qa’ida, I assumed that

opportunism was the primary motivation for merging with Al Qa’ida (coded as 2). If there was

33
some data that suggested that the group had experienced minor setbacks, I determined that

opportunism was the secondary motivation for merging with Al Qa’ida (coded as 1). More

information on statistical hypothesis testing follows in the chapter on data analysis and results.

To assess H21 (Al Qa’ida commanding officers were inspired by Al Qa’ida’s ideology), I

considered the assessment of Al Qa’ida’s ideology published by MI5, the UK’s security

intelligence agency. According to MI5, Al Qa’ida’s ideology is centered upon three key points:

1) Al Qa’ida attributes the obstacles encountered by the Islamic world to the Jewish-

Christian apostate Muslim alliance. Al Qa’ida strongly opposes Western influences

and ideologies that it perceives as “un-Islamic.”(Al Qa’ida is an anti-Western

organization)

2) Al Qa’ida aims to establish a caliphate based on an extreme interpretation of Sunni

Islam. Al Qa’ida would like to replace all existing governments with a supranational

caliphate and impose a strict and exclusive government based on their interpretation

of Sunni Islam. (Al Qa’ida is a pan-Islamic organization)

3) Al Qa’ida promotes violence against other Muslim denominations as well as non-

Muslims. Al Qa’ida’s supports a narrow interpretation of Sunnism, the largest

denomination and is violently opposed to other Islamic denominations that it regards

as “infidel,” most notably Shiite sects. (Al Qa’ida is anti-Shia) (Al Qaida's Ideology)

Thus, to evaluate H21, I determined if the local jihadist leaders who affiliated with Al

Qa’ida espoused anti-Western, pan-Islamic, or anti-Shia agendas. To perform this appraisal, I

considered the leader’s prior involvement in Islamic societies, religious education, and

statements, which they had published regarding their ideology. To execute this assessment, I

relied predominantly upon newspaper articles published in both the domestic and international

34
press and, where available, communiqués, statements, speeches and other primary source

materials authored by the leaders themselves. If I found that the leader placed more emphasis on

anti-Western, pan-Islamic, or anti-Shia goals than regional initiatives, I resolved that ideological

alignment was the primary motivation for joining Al Qa’ida (coded as 2). However, if the leader

seemed more committed to local programs, yet also expressed anti-Western, pan-Islamic, or anti-

Shia sympathies, I concluded that ideological alignment was a secondary motivation (coded as

1).

Finally, to assess H31 (Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers associated with Al Qa’ida due to

prior social network affiliations), I considered operatives’ involvement in four episodes that

served to rally jihadists around Al Qa’ida principals and fostered the development of social

bonds between mujahedeen figures. In December 1979, fearing the collapse of communism in

Central Asia, the Soviet Union launched a military invasion to restore Soviet control over

neighboring Afghanistan. Countless numbers of Afghanis joined the Islamic resistance, which

was organized into several native mujahedeen organizations with headquarters in Peshawar,

Pakistan. Soon thereafter, operatives from foreign countries began trickling into Pakistan. While

some arrived to provide money and weapons to support the fight, others enlisted in the growing

corps of “holy warriors” under the lead of the legendary Palestinian Sheikh Dr. Abdullah Azzam

and the Saudi billionaire, Osama bin Laden. However in January 1993, eager to put the Afghan

jihad in the past, the Pakistani government ordered the closure of Arab mujahedeen offices in the

country and threatened official deportation to any illegal foreign fighters who attempted to

remain in Pakistan. Thus countless numbers of mujahedeen veterans who had formed tight bonds

with their fellow fighters returned to locations in the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere

35
(Wright 2007). When presented with the opportunity to reunite with their “brethren,” these

former combatants may have opted to rejoin Al Qa’ida.

The events that unfolded subsequent to the assassination of Anwar Sadat may have

played a similar role in forging social bonds amongst jihadists. In 1981, President Sadat of Egypt

died after being shot by gunmen who opened fire as he watched an aerial display at a military

parade. Following President Sadat's assassination, more than 700 people were rounded up. Two

trials took place. The first was held in camera and consisted of 24 suspects directly involved in

the assassination. The second trial consisted of 302 defendants charged with conspiracy and

being members of the illegal Tanzim al-Jihad. In prison, these jihadists developed strategies for

establishing an Islamist state and established important personal connections. Many focused on

mobilizing the population to overthrow the government. Most jihadists rallied around Ayman al-

Zawahiri, who became a spokesman for the defendants because of his eloquence and knowledge

of foreign languages. Ultimately, despite the prosecution demand of 299 death sentences the

judges gave out none. Only 58 sentences were given and most of the defendants were released

after three years in prison. After being released, several former prisoners left Egypt (Wright

2007). However, in subsequent years, they may have decided to reunite with Zawahiri and the

other jihadists with whom they were imprisoned.

After the Soviet-Afghan War, Osama bin Laden journeyed to the Sudan, where the new

regime had raised an Islamic banner. In the Sudan, he was treated as a special guest, who

appeased his hosts by mobilizing construction equipment and bankrolling construction projects.

Moreover, he convinced several Saudi businessmen to invest in Sudan and several of his brothers

and Jeddah merchants did invest in Sudanese real estate, farming, and agriculture (Gunaratna

36
2002). During this time he established links to Sudanese Islamists as well as fundamentalists in

Somalia and Yemen. In the years after departing from the Sudan, he could rekindle these ties.

Finally, local jihadist leaders may have established social connections with Bin Laden in

Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks and the Global War on Terror. By September 1996, the

Taliban had captured Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul. The Taliban rule was characterized by a strict

form of Islamic law, requiring women to wear head-to-toe veils, banning television, and jailing

men whose beards were deemed too short. Before its ouster by U.S.-led forces in 2001, the

Taliban controlled some 90 percent of Afghanistan's territory. As ethnic Pashtuns, a large part of

the Taliban’s support came from Afghanistan's Pashtun community, disillusioned with existing

ethnic Tajik and Uzbek leaders. After Bin Laden fled the Sudan in 1996 as a result of

international pressure, he established residency in Afghanistan. Subsequently, Bin Laden set up

numerous training camps in the region, and embarked upon his jihad against America. His

second presence in Afghanistan attracted many mujahedeen to return there (P. L. Bergen 2001).

The bonds that these jihadists formed prior to the US invasion may have sparked their

cooperation with Al Qa’ida after the onset of the Global War on Terror.

When considering the relevance of social network affiliations, I determined whether the

group member was involved in the Soviet-Afghan war, participated in the Sadat trial, or spent

time in the Sudan before 1996 or Afghanistan during the reign of the Taliban. However, I

assumed that social network affiliation was a permissive factor (i.e. a precondition which set the

stage for the merger). This treatment was based upon my observation that not every participant in

these episodes, although subject to the same or similar influences, became an Al Qa’ida

associate. Thus, while social affiliations may animate a small minority to engage in Al Qa’ida’s

program of global jihad, they do not explain why these particular leaders aligned with Al Qa’ida.

37
Unless the local jihadist leader was clearly not incentivized by opportunism or ideological

concerns, I considered social network affiliation to be a secondary motivation rather than a

primary motivation.

III. Assessing Q2:

To answer my second question (What type of role do local jihadist leaders play within

Al Qa’ida’s network when the organization for which they are responsible merges or

partners with Al Qa’ida?), I posited that Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers would fall into one

of three primary leadership categories after the affiliation occurred: operational, logistical, or

ideological. Consequently, I developed another three hypothesis:

H12. Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers play an increasingly operational role after

affiliating with Al Qa’ida

H22. Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers play an increasingly logistical role after

affiliating with Al Qa’ida

H32. Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers play an increasingly ideological role after

affiliating with Al Qa’ida.

Operational commanders are primarily responsible for conducting operations (including

“spectacular attacks”), developing military tactics, and running training camps. They have

military experience or formation and/or expertise in weapons or explosives. Logistical leaders

are accountable for the administrative and financial activities of their units. They direct the

group’s bureaucratic development and organize recruitment drives. They have vocational,

financial, or legal expertise, or foreign language competencies. Finally, ideological/media leaders

are responsible for expressing the organizational culture and philosophy of their group through

media activity and possibly fatwa as well as personal interactions with their operatives. They

38
 have granted interviews, published books or articles, and released audio or videotapes. To

determine the role played by the commanding officer, considered the following variables:

Type of leader

Operational Logistic Ideological

Military/Front line experience Administrative/financial Media activity

activities

Weapons/explosives training Recruitment experience Media innovations

Indications

Training camp participation Organizational restructuring Involvement in ideological

transitions

Operational innovations Vocational skills Fatwa issues

Involvement in major attacks Language skills Documented political or

religious guidance proffered

to operatives

After analyzing these variables, I assessed the commanding officer’s operational, logistic,

and ideological leadership abilities before and after the merger. I did not compare leadership

performance across categories because different measures were used to evaluate leadership

faculty for each category. Thus, this estimation would have been biases. Instead, I compared

leadership performance pre- and post-merger. If the leader demonstrated at least two of the

factors in the operational leadership category, I coded him as a strong operational leader (3). If

he demonstrated one of the factors in this category, I coded him as an average operational leader

39
(2). If he exhibited none of these factors, I coded him as a weak operational leader (1). If the

leader was not involved with the organization at the time, I coded him as such (0). I used the

same criteria to assess logistic and ideological leadership. To perform this evaluation, I used the

same secondary and primary source materials listed earlier in this chapter. A discussion of the

comparison of leadership performance pre-and post-merger follows in Chapter 5.

IV. Developing the Universe of Cases

To develop my universe of cases, I considered two questions: 1) With whom has Al

Qa’ida affiliated? 2) Who led these organizations? To answer the first question, I used the

Terrorist Organization Profiles (TOPs) Database included on the website of the National

Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terror (START). From 2004 to 2008

the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security funded the creation and

maintenance of the Terrorism Knowledge Base, developed by the Memorial Institute for the

Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT). MIPT collaborated with Detica, a business and technology

consultancy, to collect information on terrorist groups and key leaders of terrorist groups, which

is now available to the public through an agreement between MIPT, DHS, and START (About

START). However, since START has not evaluated this data and cannot assure the reliability of

the information provided, I conducted further analyses to determine its accuracy by confirming

with at least two separate, non-partisan sources, including reports available through the

Jamestown Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Federation of American Scientists,

the Library of Congress, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, and The

Washington Post. I also used these sources to determine the date that the affiliation commenced.

Although the TOPs database listed thirty-six Al Qa’ida allies, I eliminated several from my study

based on the following criteria using open source materials.

40
 1) The group must have been engaged in operations independently of Al Qa’ida (the group

must not be a front for Al Qa’ida

My study considers the deliberate decision to affiliate with Al Qa’ida. Leaders who head front

organizations for Al Qa’ida do not make a pre-meditated choice to cooperate with Al Qa’ida,

thereby potentially compromising their local agenda.

2) The group must not have renounced violence

I did not include political movements that supported Al Qa’ida’s aims because armed groups

operate differently than other clandestine non-violent organizations.

3) While not grounds for immediate disqualification, an official denial of connections with

Al Qa’ida should induce caution (and invoke more thorough analysis of the relationship)

Based on my evaluation, I determined that twenty-one groups conformed to these the above

standards.

After performing this assessment, I coded each affiliation as a merger, a strong affiliation

(partnership), or a weak affiliation (collaboration). To qualify as a merger, the group must have

formally announced that this arrangement existed through a communiqué broadcast to a wide

audience. To qualify as a strong affiliation, the organization must have developed a symbiotic

relationship with Al Qa’ida, whereby they supported Al Qa’ida, for example by contributing to

its recruitment efforts or operations in Afghanistan or Iraq. In return, Al Qa’ida aided the local

organization, perhaps by providing access to operatives, informants, or logisticians, contact with

its network of financiers, intelligence, assets, and media specialists, or opportunities for training.

Those groups that I coded as weak affiliates received financing or training from Al Qa’ida, but

did not actively conduct operations outside their region nor did they contribute to Al Qa’ida’s

other initiatives in any meaningful way. Finally, I separately examined al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya

41
(GAI), a group that did not affiliate with Al Qa’ida as a control group. In order to understand

what motivates certain groups to align with Al Qa’ida, it is equally important to comprehend

what deters other groups from associating with Al Qa’ida. Thus, I included a detailed

investigation of the GAI in Chapter 7.

Next, I identified the leaders (past and present) of each of these 21 groups. I considered

all of the commanding officers of each group from the onset of their relationship with Al Qa’ida

to the present. While some groups did not experience any leadership transitions after they

partnered with Al Qa’ida (ex. the Taliban, Asbat al-Ansar), others experienced numerous

leadership transitions (ex. Jemaah Islamiya, Al Qa’ida in Iraq). In a few instances, I included a

leader who was had not actively cooperated with Al Qa’ida if this leader had communicated with

Al Qa’ida Central Command and if his successors vigorously pursued relations after his term.

Some organizations had more than one nominal chief at times, in which case I treated both as

leaders. I did not consider Al Qa’ida’s regional staff officers, who coordinate and supervise the

execution of plans, operations, and activities, but who never had a vested interest in a particular

local jihadist group. I made this distinction because I was interested in investigating the

motivations and role of those leaders who came from outside Al Qa’ida’s orbit but became

involved in its program later in their career. In performing this assessment, I used open source

materials including reports by non-partisan research institutions and newspaper articles. Based

on this data, I generated a list of 41 Al Qa’ida field commanders as study subjects, both past and

present.

V. Selection of Study Subjects

My prior discussion focused on terrorist organizations that are overtly in pursuit of Salafi

objectives, namely the establishment of an Islamic state. Selection of my study subjects/study

42
sample was based on demonstrated and documented overt commitment to the principles of

Salafism and all of the organizations that I studied were well defined with leadership that

supported terrorist operations. I chose to limit my sample to in order to reveal certain patterns

that might not have otherwise emerged with less stringent exclusion criteria.

Although I eliminated all non-Muslim terrorists from the study sample, I did include

many groups that were deeply invested in domestic uprising and urban warfare against their own

governments. For instance, I included Muslims fighting for the liberation of Kashmir and those

fighting an internal insurgency in Central Asia.

In contrast, I did not include Palestinian groups, who are fighting a jihad that involves

complex social, economic, and political grievances and who may be less committed to the

principles of Salafism and thus, less magnetized by Al Qa’ida pan-Islamic agenda. Moreover, I

did not include the amorphous social movement, Salafia Jihadia, which exists in Morocco. This

grouping is just an assemblage of small illegal clusters centered around charismatic preachers.

VI. Problems Regarding Information Gathering

To conduct this assessment, I used sources from the public domain. Because clandestine

organizations are often very secretive about their members and operations, the data from this

study is inevitably biased towards information about those organizations and individuals who are

regarded as more visible and who appear publicly with greater frequency.

In addition, there may have been ascertainment bias introduced by the difficulties

accurately assessing leaders’ competence in organizing and conducting important attacks. Often,

terrorist organizations will not take credit for successful operations for fear of provoking the

government to conduct a counterterrorism response. Moreover, bias was introduced by the actual

leader interviews and communications that can be considered well-orchestrated propaganda

43
exercises that may not appropriately reflect the leader’s true motivations and ideology. As a

result, a comparison of leadership performance across categories was impossible, as mentioned

earlier.

These concerns withstanding, I used the materials available to me to try to best collect

information about and understand the leaders and organizations that I profiled. These sources

included: government documents, press and scholarly articles, and Internet articles. When

assessing the data, I considered the source of information and its degree of reliability. With the

aforementioned limitations in mind, empirical data about Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers was

collected and analyzed.

VII. Case Study

Finally, I completed one comprehensive case study (in addition to my detailed discussion

of the GAI). I investigated Abdelmalek Droukdal, leader of Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb,

formerly the Groupe Salafist pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC), who merged his

organization with Al Qa’ida despite the objections of the GSPC’s former leader Hassan Al-

Banna (Guidère 2007). I considered Droukdal’s prior experiences and the history of the GSPC

to determine why he embraced Al Qa’ida’s internationalist agenda rather than remaining

committed strictly to jihad in Algeria. Next, I assessed the role he played before and after

aligning with Al Qa’ida.

VIII. Relevance

By seeking to understand who Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers are, what motivates

them, and how they aligned their own local jihadist group with Al Qa’ida’s pan-Islamic program,

I arrived at a better understanding of how to recognize and predict who may become Al Qa’ida’s

commanding officers and how to anticipate and counter their efforts. My observations regarding

44
motivations will serve two purposes. First, they will help develop a model to identify local

jihadist leaders who may merge or partner with Al Qa’ida in the future. Secondly, my analyses

may suggest that our battles in the Middle East and our policies regarding imprisonment are

creating gathering places for global Salafi jihadists. The fundamentalists who form interpersonal

bonds through these venues may be persuaded by Al Qa’ida’s pan-Islamic partisans to become

the next-generation of Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers in locations scattered across the globe.

This realization, if proven, has strong implications for US foreign policy in the post 9/11 era and

greater attention should be paid to identifying such settings. Finally, by understanding the role

that Al Qa’ida commanding officers play, we can better understand Al Qa’ida’s overall strategy

(e.g. are they focused on promoting their message through propaganda or are they intent on

conducting more attacks?). Based on our knowledge of Al Qa’ida’s strategy, we can better

allocate resources to address this threat.

45
Chapter 4: Universe of Cases

I. Al Qa’ida’s Affiliates: An Evolving Network

Although the purpose of my study was to investigate Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers, I

also observed noticeable patterns while developing my universe of cases. First, I considered the

development of Al Qa’ida’s affiliation over a period of time from 1991 until 2005 (Table 1). To

assess the date of the affiliation, I determined the year that the group first received or conveyed

assistance to Al Qa’ida. It is important to keep in mind, therefore, that a cumulative effect

occurs, since a group does not merely affiliate with Al Qa’ida and then sever all relations.

Although I have recorded the first year in which the group cooperated with Al Qa’ida, in every

case, this relationship has perpetuated to the present day. In many instances, the relationship

between Al Qa’ida and its affiliate has strengthened or weakened (such is the case with the

Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who consolidated relations with Al Qa’ida, and Abu Sayyaf,

who diluted relations with Al Qa’ida). To address this concern, I have classified the affiliation

according to its current state. The investigation of Al Qa’ida’s patterns of affiliation with respect

to time is very interesting and indeed, surprising.

Most of researchers who I discussed in my literature review perceive Al Qa’ida’s strategy

of franchising as a new development. They contend that after September 11, 2001, Al Qa’ida

was deprived of a “state within a state” in Afghanistan, lost several of its top officials, and failed

to overthrow the governments in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Since 2001, they argue, Al

Qa’ida has transformed into an international enterprise with like-minded local representatives

loosely connected to a central ideological base (Riedel 2007). Despite the popularity of this

argument, the evidence indicates that Al Qa’ida’s strategy is not new: it has operated like an

international franchise by providing financial and logistical support, as well as name recognition

46
to terrorist groups operating in such diverse places as the Philippines, Algeria, Eritrea, Afghanistan,

Chechnya, Tajikistan, Somalia, Yemen, Kashmir and Iraq, for years.

Al Qa’ida first seriously affiliated with other terrorist organizations in 1991. In this year,

Al Qa’ida linked up with Al-Ittihaad al-Islami (AIAI) and Abu Sayyaf. However, when one

considers the historical context, this observation is not nearly as stunning. On August 7, 1990,

the first US troops were dispatched to Saudi Arabia as part of Operation Desert Shield. For Bin

Laden, this was as perturbing and foreboding an event as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan

that had occurred a decade earlier. Bin Laden perceived this intrusion as part of a larger Western

design to dominate the whole Arab and Muslim world. After Hussein’s forces invaded the small,

oil rich state of Kuwait on August 1, 1990, thereby threatening the security of Saudi Arabia, Bin

Laden had immediately volunteered his services and those of his holy volunteers but the Saudis

did not take this offer seriously (Gunaratna 2002).

After the Saudi government, tired of Bin Laden’s critiques, effectively put him under

house arrest, he departed for the Sudan, where he was warmly welcomed by Hassan al-Turabi,

the leader of the National Islamic Front. While Bin Laden was situated in the Sudan, Turabi and

Bin Laden engaged in a convenient symbiotic relationship. Bin Laden could operate freely in the

Sudan and in return he would invest millions of dollars in the desperately poor country.

Consequently, during his time in the Sudan, Bin Laden organized training camps at which

hundred of his followers were tutored in paramilitary tactics as revealed in the previous chapter.

As a result of the Sudanese government’s hospitality and support, Bin Laden had the opportunity

to interact with other terrorist units to expand Al Qa’ida’s reach. He was able to send Al Qa’ida

operatives to Somalia in 1991-1992 to liaise with their leaders and then help AIAI organize itself

militarily. These operatives also offered advice to their Somali counterparts on how to set up

social services for the local population. This relationship strengthened throughout the nineties.

47
Bin Laden ramped up his assistance to the Somali terrorists after the Bush administration sent

US peacekeeping troops to Somalia in 2002. Soon thereafter, he broadcast a fatwa in which he

avowed that having already taken over the Persian Gulf area and now encroaching upon Somalia,

the US military, if successful, would next march into Southern Sudan and then into other Islamic

countries(Gunaratna 2002).

Concurrently, while residing in the Sudan, Bin Laden convinced several Saudi

businessmen, including some of his brothers, to invest in the country’s moribund financial

institutions, where their transactions would go unnoticed and in its infrastructure projects, which

would elicit support from the Sudanese population, many of whom would be employed by these

Arabic executives. While occupied with these financial negotiations, he persuaded his brother in

law, Muhammad Jamal Khalifah to support the Abu Sayyaf Group, which sought to pursue a

more fundamentalist battle against the Philippine authorities than the Moro National Liberation

Front, their parent organization. Bin Laden probably saw the struggle in the Philippines as an

opportunity to open a second front for his organization without becoming embroiled in the

conflicts in the Middle East. Moreover a number of ASG members had fought in Afghanistan in

the 1980s (Rogers 2004). Thus, Bin Laden exploited a cache of trustworthy warriors who he

could rely upon to cultivate his vision of global jihad.

After associating with these groups, my data indicates that Al Qa’ida did not engage

another affiliate until 1996. From 1991 to 1996, Al Qa’ida was preoccupied with other pursuits

and could not devote energy towards developing such high-maintenance relations. Instead, Bin

Laden focused his efforts on other missions like determining how best to attack US forces in

Somalia. Moreover, he attempted to centralize the core of Al Qa’ida’s operations and develop its

human resources as discussed in Chapter 1. By 1991, between a thousand and two thousand

48
members of Al Qa’ida converged upon the Sudan and within three years, Bin Laden had set up a

number of military camps in the north. He also sought to acquire weapons for these militants. He

turned his attention to exotic weaponry and weapons of mass destruction. Simultaneously some

members of the group undertook the massive task of writing the Encyclopedia of the Afghan

Jihad, a multi-volume series detailing everything the Afghan Arabs had learned in the jihad

against the Soviets. Finally, hundreds of Afghan Arabs engaged in fighting in Bosnia (P. L.

Bergen 2001). As a result of this multitude of tasks, Bin Laden and his cadre were engrossed by

other concerns and did not focus on developing external relations with other jihadist groups.

Thus, no affiliations were observed between 1991 and 1996.

By 1996, intense pressure had been placed on the Sudanese government by the United

States and Egypt to expel Bin Laden, who left the Sudan to return to his familiar stamping

grounds in Afghanistan. From Afghanistan, Bin Laden was able to function unimpeded,

attracting Muslim militants to a country, which became the modern world’s first jihadist state.

Bin Laden knew Afghanistan well and greatly admired the Taliban religious warriors who had

taken control over much of the country. Upon Bin Laden’s arrival, Mullah Muhammad Omar

sent a delegation to assure Bin Laden that the Taliban would be honored to protect him because

of his role in the jihad against the Soviets (Gunaratna 2002). Given this stable and secure

environment, it is not surprising that between 1996 and 2001, Al Qa’ida engaged 15 of its 21

affiliates.

Having obtained sanctuary, Bin Laden began to focus, once again, on widening his

movement. During this time, Bin Laden issued a slew of radical pronouncements beginning with

a call to arms against the continued American military presence in Arabia on August 23, 1996.

These communiqués served to attract the attention of various local jihadist leaders. To

49
supplement this strategy, Laden convened conferences of several Afghan ulema. While Bin

Laden was well read in the Koran, he was not a religious scholar. Thus, he needed the backing of

religious scholars and the clerical cover to call for a real global jihad. The clerics who Bin Laden

summoned also had acquaintances with jihadists beyond Afghanistan who they could introduce

to Bin Laden (Bergen 2001).

Amidst this background, in 1998, one observes a surge of new Al Qa’ida affiliates. In

part, this is due to the fact that in 1998 Bin Laden created the International Islamic Front for

Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders (IIF). According to this Word Islamic Front manifesto, “in

order to obey the Almighty, we hereby give all Muslims the following judgment: the judgment to

kill and fight Americans and their allies, whether civilians or military, is an obligation for every

Muslim who is able to do so in any country.” Based on this quotation, the establishment of the

IIF can clearly be interpreted as an effort by Al Qa’ida to expand its battle against Western

influence. In addition to Bin Laden and EIJ’s Ayman al-Zawahiri, members included the head of

the violent faction of Egypt’s Gama’a al Islamiyya, the secretary general of the Pakistani

religious party known as the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam, and the head of Bangladesh’s Jihad

Movement. Later the IIF was expanded to include the Pakistani jihadist organizations Lashkar-e-

Taiba, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, an anti-Shia sectarian party

(Carafano 2005).

In addition to its formal alliances through the IIF, in the years before the September 11,

2001 attacks, Bin Laden’s organization nurtured ties with a variety of other armed jihadist

groups. These sequential steps were part of Bin Laden’s plan to expand his multi-national

terrorist campaign. However, before 2001, he probably did not rely extensively upon the leaders

of these organizations.

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 Contrary to popular belief, after 2001 and the onset of the Global War on Terror, Al

Qa’ida has not enlisted many new affiliates. As stated in the introduction, Al Qa’ida aims to

establish itself as a complex organization with a flexible structure in order to preserve control

over specifically identified strategic operations while offering cells a degree of autonomy in local

and regional operations. As elaborated upon in Chapter 1, complex organizations, characterized

by semiautonomous cells that are horizontally and vertically integrated into the centralized

command structure, are built up through mergers, partnerships, and collaborations (Marion and

Uhl-Bien 2006). Thus, the dearth of new Al Qa’ida affiliates seems puzzling given what

scholars perceive to be Al Qa’ida’s organizational strategy. There are two explanations for this

observation.

Firstly, few can deny the United States and its allies achieved progress in the first phase

of the Global War on Terror. Aggressive US and allied efforts impeded Al Qa’ida’s ability to do

anything; be it to plan attacks or to align with other jihadist groups. Al Qa’ida’s training camps,

operational bases, infrastructure, and command-and-control nucleus in Afghanistan were

destroyed and uprooted, temporarily crippling it. After 2001, Osama Bin Laden was compelled

to makeover his organization. Whereas before Al Qa’ida had a distinct center of gravity, after

9/11, Bin Laden had to engineer a colossal transformation of his organization from a more or less

unitary, near bureaucratic entity to a fluid movement tenuously bound by a loosely networked

transnational constituency (i.e. from an actual center to a virtual network) (Bruce Hoffman

2004).

To more easily engineer this metamorphosis, Bin Laden elected to strengthen existing

affiliations rather than pursue new ones. Groups such as the Groupe Salafist pour la Prédication

et le Combat and Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad were brought further into Al Qa’ida’s folds.

51
Moreover, Bin Laden and Al Qa’ida Central Command relied more heavily and interacted more

frequently with the leaders of these groups, who had become his commanding officers. For

instance, prior to 2005, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Tawhid, was responsible for

developing his own strategy and operations. However, in 2004, Ayman Zawahiri, who had

become Bin Laden’s second-in command, began to instruct Zarqawi regarding tactics and

specific theater-of-war concerns. For example, in a letter dated July 9, 2005, Zawahiri

reprimanded al-Zarqawi for indiscriminate attacks on Shias, beheading of hostages, and lack of

concern for public support. Moreover, he urged Zarqawi to prepare for a precipitous American

military withdrawal from Iraq, for establishing a post-US Islamist emirate governed by a

coalition of Islamic groups, including Shias, and for maintaining the momentum of an Islamist

victory by expanding operations into Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt (Michael 2007).

Another observable and notable trend is that the number of affiliates that Al Qa’ida

enrolled has increased since the onset of the war in Iraq in 2003. Al Qa’ida now teams up with

terrorist groups who can send foreign jihadists to Iraq where they conduct guerilla warfare

against the America and British troops. For instance, the Uzbek fighters associated with the

Islamic Jihad Union have supported fighting in South Waziristan against the Pakistani

government and US forces hunting Al Qa’ida fugitives (Steinberg 2008). Additionally, Al

Qa’ida has exploited the Iraqi occupation for rousing propaganda and as a recruitment tool for

the global jihadist cause. Bruce Hoffman has suggested that for Al Qa’ida, “Iraq’s preeminent

utility has been a useful side show” – an effective means to sidetrack American military forces

and divert US attention while Al Qa’ida and its affiliates make inroads and strike elsewhere.

Nowadays, Al Qa’ida and its affiliates can conduct attacks in countries that are venerable sources

of Bin Laden’s antagonism or where an opportunity has presented itself. In fact, terror attacks

52
around the world tripled in 2004, according to statistics released by the US government’s

National Counterterrorism Center. Notable incidents conducted by or with the assistance of Al

Qa’ida’s affiliates since the beginning of the Iraq war, include the 2004 bombings against

Madrid’s commuter trains, the 2005 bombings against London’s public transport system, the

2006 transatlantic aircraft plot to detonated liquid explosive carried on board from the United

Kingdom to the US and Canada, and the 2007 terrorist attacks in Algiers (Bruce Hoffman 2004).

II. Al Qa’ida Affiliates: The Geographic Distribution

Having assessed the development of Al Qa’ida’s affiliations over time, it is interesting to

consider the geographic distribution of Al Qa’ida’s affiliates (Figure 2). Considering the sample

as a whole, over forty percent of the 21 affiliates are based in the Core Arab states (Iraq,

Afghanistan, Egypt Uzbekistan, Lebanon, and Yemen). The other large clusters come from the

Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia) and Southern Asia (namely, Pakistan). The smaller

clusters come from Southeast Asia and Northeast Africa.

One can anticipate that the majority of affiliates would hail from the Core Arab states and

Maghreb Arab states. These regions have a history of conflict with the West. Samuel Huntington

observed that after World War II, when colonial empires began to retreat, Arab nationalism and

then Islamic fundamentalism strongly manifested. In the aftermath of this transition, conflicts

along the fault line between western and Arab Islamic civilizations frequently erupted. For

instance, France fought a war in Algeria and British and French forces invaded Egypt. Later, the

American forces went into Lebanon. The warfare between Arabs and the West culminated in

1990 when the United States sent a massive army to the Persian Gulf to defend some Arab

countries against aggression by Saddam Hussein The Gulf War left some Arabs feeling

humiliated and resentful of the West’s military presence in the Persian Gulf (Huntington 1992).

53
 These struggles had a profound effect on the development of jihadist outlets; Ayubi

suggests that the general Islamic resurgence that one observes today represents a reaction to

alienation and a quest for authenticity by disaffected Muslims who resent Western participation

in their lands. He maintains that most Islamic revolutions evolve from movements for indigenous

self-assertion. For those countries resisting foreign dominance, Islam can provide a medium of

cultural nationalism that is defiant and self-assuring. Secular prescriptions (whether nationalist or

leftist) are regarded as unsuccessful European importations introduced by intellectuals exposed

to French and Italian cultures, whereas the religious-framed prescriptions of Arabia Islam have a

thirteen century-old legacy (Ayubi 1980).

There is also a simpler explanation to account for the plethora of Al Qa’ida affiliates

hailing from the Core Arab states. Since 1996, Al Qa’ida has appealed to militants in the four

neighboring former Soviet Central Asian republics, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and

Uzbekistan, all of which are in immediate proximity to Afghanistan. These states have porous

borders, weak security apparatuses and crisis-torn economies. Additionally, for years, the

Taliban controlled the Afghan territory bordering Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.

Thus, Al Qa’ida and the Taliban could facilitate the transportation of militants moving back and

forth across the borders. Furthermore, they could permit leaders of these jihadist groups to

establish training camps without fear of government intervention. For instance, Tahir Yuldashev,

one of the masterminds behind the assassination attempt against Uzbek President Islam A.

Karimov, and leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, fled to Afghanistan where he set

up a military training camp, just a few miles from the border (Luong and Weinthal 2002).

Moreover, at the present time operatives from these organizations can assist the Al Qa’ida-

54
supported insurgency in Afghanistan; thus, affiliates from these nations are particularly

desirable.

Similarly, terrorist operatives in the Maghreb move easily across international borders.

Conservative estimates suggest that at least several hundred North African volunteers have

traveled to Iraq. With the assistant of Al Qa’ida’s Algerian affiliates, fighters transit through

Syria. Upon returning to the Maghreb, these militants can stage local campaigns due to their

recently acquired front line experience (Boudali 2007).

I also observed that a large percentage of the groups that merged with Al Qa’ida hailed

from Pakistan (20%). This too, should be expected. The conflict between Muslims and Hindus in

the subcontinent manifests itself in the rivalry between Pakistan and India. Separatist violence in

India’s Muslim majority Jammu and Kashmir state has continued unabated since 1989. However,

after the September 2001 attacks, President Musharraf, under strong US diplomatic pressure,

offered to President Bush Pakistan’s unqualified cooperation in the fight against terrorism.

Pakistan has allowed the US military to use bases within the country, has helped to identify and

detain extremists, and has helped to tighten the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the

wake of these changes, thousands of Muslim extremists were detained. Consequently, several

Kashmiri separatist terrorist groups turned to Al Qa’ida for support. Al Qa’ida, eager to regroup

in Pakistani cities where police control was more negligible, quickly granted this concession in

return for safe haven. Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are now believed to be in

Pakistan’s rugged tribal areas, where Islamabad exercises limited authority. In addition, these

groups help Al Qa’ida attack coalition troops in Afghanistan and then escape across the Pakistani

frontier (Fair 2004).

55
 Within my sample, there were fewer groups from the Eastern African region and from the

Southeast Asian region. Again, this can be easily explained. Although Muslims represent a

majority in countries like Somalia and Eritrea, in general Muslims are a minority in East Africa,

where the other major Abrahamic faiths dominate. Moreover, while Somalia has served as a

transit route for terrorists, most visibly Al Qa’ida, the depth of its involvement with terrorists is

constrained by the very disorder seen as a classical setting for terrorism. There are almost no

legitimate terrorist targets and terrorists themselves can be subject to extortion in largely lawless

settings. Unlike Eastern European countries, in which there is just enough government control

and economic security to provide an adequate target for terrorist groups, in East Africa, a central

government with even rudimentary influence has yet to emerge. Also, hostility from indigenous

religious authorities may also impede the growth of Wahabism (Dickson 2005).

Despite the fact that Southeast Asia seems like a good candidate for the second front in

the US campaign since it is home to the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country,

Indonesia, and two other mostly Muslim states, Malaysia and Brunei, it has not emerged as such.

In Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines, Muslims are a minority, while Buddhism and

Roman Catholicism are dominant respectively. Additionally, the profound ethnic and religious

diversity (including in the practice of Islam) that characterizes the area militates against the

establishment of a fundamentalist hegemony by any one group. In fact, many Islamic

organizations in Southeast Asia genuinely oppose Al Qa’ida and most are nonviolent. The largest

and most influential are either political parties or revivalist organizations, such as the Moro

National Liberation Front (MNLF). In Indonesia, the rise of political Islam can be linked

principally to the collapse of Suharto's regime, the nation's continuing economic crisis, and the

fragility of local democracy. Political organizations representing modernist Muslims were

56
banned from the 1950s to the 1980s, and many of their leaders were imprisoned. Although such

groups have since become a major political force in recent years, more extremist forms of

Islamism still remain at the fringes (Gershman 2002).

III. Al Qa’ida’s Affiliates: Mergers? Partnerships? Or Collaborations?

Finally it is important to consider distribution by type of affiliation (Figure 3). The

preponderance of affiliations (over 70%) could be classified as partnerships or collaborations.

Mergers were much less common (approximately 17%). Through partnership and collaborations,

Al Qaida can provide financial or logistic support to other terrorist groups with the intention of

influencing their strategic activities. This sort of arrangement is convenient when Al Qa’ida

wants to spread its radical ideas and has financial resources but does not necessarily care for the

local politics in the region. Supporting local terrorist groups in this manner makes noise, causes

havoc, and distracts the enemy while Central Command plans for more detailed attacks

elsewhere. Additionally, it is difficult to cut off centralized funding due to the complex nature of

Al Qa’ida’s financial network. Both partnerships and collaborations permit Al Qa’ida to

structure itself as a complex organization, described in the first chapter. Through partnerships

and collaborations, Al Qa’ida achieves the ideal mix of tightly and loosely coupled systems.

While the relationships within the cells are tightly coupled, the relationships between cells and

between operatives in Al Qa’ida central command are loosely coupled.

By contrast, mergers, the highest order form of equity-based engagement, were much less

common. Although this type of arrangement allows Al Qa’ida and the merged group to

consolidate their assets so that they can compete more successfully, the group that Al Qa’ida

subsumes must be capable of completely integrating Al Qa’ida’s methods and approaches into

their repertoire. When a group merges with Al Qa’ida, they forfeit a degree of control. While Al

57
Qa’ida Central Command does not usually plan operations, they can “offer” tactical advice,

which the merged group must obey, as observed with the Zarqawi-Zawahiri letter referenced

earlier. Moreover, mergers often end up splintering as a result of differences of ideologies, goals,

and strategies. Oftentimes, operatives are estranged when Al Qa’ida takes credit for the operation

and they are forced to assume a more “behind-the-scenes” role (Desouza and Hengsen 2007).

There are other practical difficulties, which should be addressed when discussing

mergers. For instance, when groups officially merge with Al Qa’ida, they often become the

targets of counterterrorist offensives by foreign governments, most prominently, the United

States. Executive Order 13224 provides the means to disrupt the support network that funds

terrorism. Under this order, the United States government may block the assets of individuals

and entities providing support, financial or otherwise, to designated terrorists and terrorist

organizations. Such blocking actions are a critical tool in combating the financing of terrorism

(Mayer and Price 2002). In addition, designation under the UN Security Council’s 1267

Committee’s consolidated list will trigger international obligations on all member countries,

requiring them to take steps to prevent designated individuals and entities from continuing to

fund or otherwise support terrorism. Through this measure, supporters of terrorism are publicly

identified thereby providing warning to other entities that they are prohibited from doing

business with the Al Qa’ida affiliate (Uruena 2008). Finally, groups that merge officially with

Al Qa’ida may risk alienating the local population. When a group commits to jihad against the

far enemy, they may split their own ranks and upset surrounding communities, who have no

interest in establishing a global Islamic caliphate, but are more interested in deposing their

current government.

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 Given these considerations, it is also important to acknowledge that organizational issues

must be addressed up front when a merger is negotiated since this type of affiliation is a long-

term contract. Like corporations settling a merger, organizations must have the patience and

resolve to work through issues. As the example of Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb, provided in

Chapter 6 proves, mergers only occur when terrorist groups have developed a close relationship

and realize the mutual value of working together. Thus, Al Qa’ida may have several mergers in

the works that have not yet been publicly announced.

IV. Summary of Findings

Although Al Qa’ida’s policy of pursuing affiliations with local jihadist groups is not a

new development, evidence suggests that Al Qa’ida will continue to pursue such relations and

will rely upon them more heavily, since they offer increased organizational flexibility and

operational reach. Moreover, while Al Qa’ida’s affiliates are concentrated in the Core Arab and

Maghreb states, Al Qa’ida may be seeking to expand into other Muslim-dominated territories,

such as Western Africa. While in recent years, several groups have announced a formal merger

with Al Qa’ida; the data demonstrates that Al Qa’ida may be more likely to pursue lower-order

affiliations.

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Chapter 5: Results of Statistical Hypothesis Testing

I. Data Analysis and Results for Q1: What motivates local jihadist leaders to affiliate with

Al Qa’ida’s and its pan-Islamic agenda?

Data were collected on 41 individual subjects (i.e. known or suspected terrorists). To

assess the effects of motivational factors contributing to individual terrorist's decision to affiliate

with Al Qa’ida, each subject was rated on one of three scales: "opportunist motives,”

"ideological alignment,” and "social network affiliations.” Each subject was rated 0-2 for each

scale, corresponding to 0= not a motivation, 1= secondary motivation, 2 = primary motivation

(for a more detailed explanation regarding coding, please refer to Chapter 3 on Methodology).

Statistically significant differences among subjects were evaluated using a chi-squared test

statistic for variation within each scale. The null hypothesis tested for each scale was that there

was no difference in the frequency of incidence of each level of motational factor.

This analysis yielded the results contained in Table 1. The chi-squared test yielded p-

values of 1.146E-09, 0.0188, and 1.606E-06 for “opportunistic motives,” “ideological

alignment,” and “social network affiliation” respectively, when three scales were used. All three

statistics are significant with a p-value less than 0.05; thus, in each case, the null hypothesis was

rejected. Based on this analysis, one can conclude that opportunistic motives, ideological

alignment, and social network affiliation all motivate local jihadist leaders to an extent, although

the smaller values of p for “opportunistic motives” and for “social network affiliation” suggest

that these incentives are more robust. By comparison, ideological alignment appears to be of

less powerful significance as a motivating factor for local jihadist leaders.

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 To supplement this analysis and clarify the relative impact of each incentive, scores 0 and

1 were combined into a single scale "not a motivation,” while score 2 was considered as

"motivation.” The null hypothesis, tested for both scales, was that there was no difference in the

frequency of incidence of each level of motivational factor.

This analysis produced the results recorded in Table 2. The p-values associated with the

chi-squared test statistic were 1.289E-06, 0.639, and 0.042 for “opportunistic motives,”

“ideological alignment,” and “social network affiliation” respectively. The p-value for

opportunistic motives permits us to reject the null hypothesis of no effect. This implies that

opportunism is the primary motivation among the variables considered in this study for

affiliating with Al Qa’ida. The p-value associated with social network affiliation also allows us

to reject the null hypothesis. It is of note that the statistical significance for social network

affiliation is far less impressive than that for opportunistic motives. In contrast, the effect of

ideological alignment does not even reach statistical significance, thereby suggesting that this

particular factor is not a significant motivating variable for local jihadist leaders in this sample.

Based on this analysis, H11 (Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers associated with Al Qa’ida
due to opportunistic motives) is proven. H21 (Al Qa’ida commanding officers associated with Al
Qa’ida due to ideological motives) is rejected. H31 ( Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers
associated with Al Qa’ida due psychosocial motives) requires further investigation. However,
the data suggests that psychosocial motive(i.e. social affiliations) have some influence on the
decision to associate with Al Qa’ida.

II. Data Analysis and Results for Q2: What type of role do local jihadist leaders play within

Al Qa’ida’s network when the organization for which they are responsible affiliates with Al

Qa’ida?

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 Subjects were evaluated on their performance in each of three categories: “Operational,”

“Ideological,” and “Logisitic” on a scale of 0-3, pre and post merger. The null hypothesis tested

in this analysis is that there is no difference in each category post-merger, compared to pre-

merger, across all terrorists considered as a group.

The chi-squared test statistic was used to evaluate the overall difference in performance

in each of the three categories post-versus pre-merger. Results are presented in Table 3. Paired

statistics were then applied to compare the scores for each individual terrorist, pre- and post-

merger. These included the Wilcoxon statistic (Table 4), which utilizes both the direction and

magnitude of the change, as well as the simpler paired sign test (Table 5), which considers only

the direction of change. The null hypothesis tested in this analysis is that there is no difference

in each category post-merger, compared to pre-merger, across all terrorists considered

individually.

The Wilcoxon statistic was negative for all groups; thus based on this statistical test, we

could not reject the null hypothesis for any category. Accordingto this test,there was no statistic

difference between the pre- and post-merger score for any category. However, the paired signed

test rejected the null hypothesis for ideology (p=0.015). This suggests that ideological leadership

performance does actually improve after a merger. Additionally, the p-value for overall

leadership performance was borderline (p=0.0501), which suggests that leadership performance

may generally improve as well.

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 The results obtained through the paired sign test suggest that the direction of the change

for ideological performance was significant; however, the variability among subjects in the

magnitude of the changes may have affected the results, thereby hindering us from rejecting the

null hypothesis using the Wilcoxon statistic. Most frequently, ideological performance improved;

however, there were a few changes in the opposite direction in particular subjects that were

large, and these swamped the overall effect.

Figures 4-5 demonstrate that for ideological performance, most changes were positive,

whether they were categorized as only positive or positive plus no change. Moreover, for the

ideological performance, there were the fewest number of negative changes post-merger.

Figure 6, a plot of the distribution of scores, demonstrates that each group had a similar

number of “no change” results (i.e. a pre-post score of 0). The operational category had the

largest number of “-3” results and “+3” results. Generally, for all three categories, there was a

tendency to improve scores post-merger. However, this was clearly most prevalent and only

statistically significant for the ideology category.

This analysis allows us to accept H32 (Al Qa’ida’s commanding officer play an increasingly
ideological role after affiliating with Al Qa’ida). Moreover, it lets us to reject both H12 (Al
Qa’ida’s commanding officers play an increasingly operational role after affiliating with Al
Qa’ida) and H22 (Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers play an increasingly logistical role after
affiliating with Al Qa’ida).
Effectively what we are observing from this study’s data analysis is that while ideological

concerns do not appear to be primary motivating factors for joining Al Qa’ida, after mergers with

Al Qa’ida occur, shared ideological views become important.

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Chapter 6: Al Qa’ida in the Maghreb and Abdelmalek Droukdal –

A Well Executed Merger

On September 11, 2006, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qa’ida in Iraq

announced the allegiance of the Groupe Salafist pour la Prédication et le Combat (Salafist Group

for Call and Combat or GSPC), the only remaining armed terrorist group in Algeria, to Al

Qa’ida. Three months later, Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb was born. After the merger of the

GSPC with Al Qa’ida, the new organization radically changed its tactics: the series of suicide

bombings and violent attacks executed in 2007 by Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)

operatives demonstrated this strategic evolution. However, this metamorphosis of a relatively

smaller, less powerful Algerian indigenous assembly of terrorists would not have been possible

without the leadership of Abdelmalek Droukdal. Abdelmalek Droukdal served as the

commanding officer of Al Qa’ida in the Maghreb region and directed the internationalization of

the former GSPC's war in order to revitalize a movement that was slowly dying in Algeria. He

accomplished this revitalization and expansion of goals and activities by providing compelling

ideological leadership and by organizing sophisticated public relations and media campaign both

locally and globally.

I. The Origins of Islamic Violence in Algeria after the War of Independence

The GSPC was founded with a regional focus: it sought to establish an Islamic state in

Algeria and rejected the legitimacy of secular democratic governance. While the first official

communiqué of the GSPC appeared in September 1998, the Islamic movement in Algeria

originated in the 1960s. Algeria achieved independence from France in 1962, whereupon Ahmed

Ben Bella was elected the first president of Algeria. However, in 1965, Defense Minister Houari

Boumedienne staged a bloodless coup to remove Ben Bella from power. He then adopted an

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authoritarian, one-party, socialist political system, which he codified in the Algerian constitution

in 1976. This socialist government's repressive secularism and one party rule were oppressive for

many people in Algeria and helped fuel a fundamentalist backlash when Islamic leaders branded

the government as “a band of atheists” and called for a return to an Islamic government (Johnson

2006).

Before the independence, the Algerian Islamic movement was centrist, nationalist, and

maintained an affirmative orientation towards Western learning and culture. However, in

response to the dictatorial and exclusionary policies proffered by the Socialist party, the weak

alliance between the secular and religious groups (the Ulama and the academic elite who led the

liberation movement against the French) collapsed. Thus, during the 1970s, the fundamentalist

Islamic movement became increasingly radicalized in response to President Boudemedienne’s

abortive leftward shift in economic and cultural policies. Mustapha Bouyali, a fundamental

Islamic preacher established the Armed Islamic Algeria Movement (MAIA) in 1982 to establish

an Islamic state. The MAIA sought to resolve the social and economic injustices that had

emerged in Algeria by forcible means if necessary (Johnson 2006).

II. The Birth of the Salvation Islamic Front

In 1989, under Boumedienne’s chosen successor Colonel Chadli Benjedid the right to

establish political parties was accorded in Algeria and with this decision, the Salvation Islamic

Front (FIS) was formed, directed by Abdallah Djaballah. Unlike the MAIA, the FIS was a

political organization, not an armed group that sought to reverse the economic decline in Algeria

by implementing Sharia, Islamic religious law. This political platform resonated with the

Algerians, disgruntled by the failure of Socialist economic policies. The FIS became popular

amongst the Algerian population who supported the group financially and politically. In 1991,

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the FIS achieved a victory in national elections. However, with the prospect of the FIS in control

of the parliament, the secular and military elite forced Benjedid's resignation, halted the electoral

process, and suspended parliament. A High Committee was established with Mohammed

Boudiaf named as president. The new regime calculated that the repression of the FIS would

ignite a wave of extremist fundamentalist violence, which would divide and alienate the FIS’s

many Algerian supporters. Thus, it dissolved the FIS (Celso 2008).

III. The Beginnings of the GIA and the Onset of an Epoch of Violence

As the new regime predicted, after the cancellation of the 1992 general elections in

Algeria, several Islamists became disenchanted with the political process and defected from the

FIS to form armed splinter groups. Many Islamists became increasingly interested in radical

approaches. The GIA was formed from a collection of Algerian militant groups who had been

executing a series of significant military operations against government targets in an attempt to

overthrow the secular government in Algeria.

However, the GIA quickly alienated itself from other Algerian Islamic activities by

adopting stringent interpretations of Islamic law. The GIA was responsible for the murder of

over 2000 schoolteachers guilty of “taming the youth” and more than 100 other competing, less

militant Muslim clerics and political leaders whom it designated heretics. In an effort to racially

purify the country, GIA supreme commander Saifullah Ajffar ordered the assassination of over

90 innocent civilians and eventually forced a mass European exodus from Algeria. After

subsequent leadership transitions, Antar Zouabri became the head of the GIA on July 18, 1996.

He was an illiterate criminal and his reign, which lasted until his violent death in February 2002,

was marked by barbaric methods and attacks against entire civilian communities. He repelled

most members of the GIA when he issued a fatwa condemning the entire Muslim population of

66
Algeria as “kuffar, apostates, and hypocrites” for “not supporting them in their struggle against

the government” (Blom, Bucaille, and Martínez 2007).

IV. An Alternative Emerges: The Origins of the GSPC

The GSPC was not set up as a pan-Islamic movement; the decision to establish the GPSC

was the direct result of the GIA’s strategic impasse. Zouabri’s attacks on innocent Muslims

estranged many former GIA military commanders, who were left without an ideological

umbrella. In 1998, these officers founded the GSPC as a military organization dedicated to the

Salafist creed and the battle against the Algerian regime to restore the Caliphate and implement

Sharia. However, the GSPC denounced the massacres that the GIA had committed and entered

the international arena with the goal of restoring the credibility of armed groups in Algeria and

attracting embittered Algerian youths for whom the ideology of Islamic guerilla war had lost its

appeal. Consequently, the GSPC was able to amass hundred of defectors from the FIS and the

GIA (Guidère 2007).

The first prominent leader of the GSPC, Hassan Hattab, a former GIA commander,

clearly articulated the narrow agenda of the GSPC. He asserted that the GSPC sought to

overthrow the government in Algiers and to install an Islamic regime in Algeria. He depicted the

Algerian government as a postcolonial lackey at war with Islam. However, he rejected the policy

of terror executed by the GIA under Zouabri and enforced symbiosis with the local population.

While he preferred not to engage in force-on-force confrontations with the Algerian military to

avoid depleting his cadre, he encouraged operatives to target Algerian government officials,

military, police, and gendarmerie through the use of false roadblocks, ambushes, bombings, and

incursions on towns to steal saleable goods (Guidère 2007).

V. Fissions Form Within the GSPC

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 The GSPC was originally organized as a loose confederation of regional divisions under

a supreme emir who supervised the organization. Each of the regional groups, katibats,

controlled a territory that roughly aligned with the governments’ own military districts. Although

as supreme emir, Hattab provided religious guidance; the katibats were responsible for supplying

and funding their own operations. Nevertheless, it was difficult for the local leadership to

coordinate or control the activity of its fighters since attempts to communicate could result in

discovery or interception by security services. Thus, the organization was plagued by internal

rivalry. Several GSPC cadres were killed or captured by Algerian security services

following leads provided by rival GSPC elements (Celso 2008). These fault-lines were

exacerbated by external events that occurred soon after the founding of the GSPC.

By the end of the twentieth century, Algerians had become less tolerant to the violence of

the GSPC. Consequently, the Algerian government implemented a law that offered amnesty to

the combatants who capitulated. In July 1999, the Civil Harmony Law was adopted and

overwhelmingly endorsed in a national referendum the following September 2000. This law

declared that citizens not involved in massive killings, bombing of public places, or sexual

crimes would be placed under probation for a period ranging from 3 to 5 years, and could even

participate in the fight against the remaining active terrorist groups. Imprisonment sentences

were reduced; death penalty and life imprisonment were commuted to a maximum of eight years

imprisonment for individuals under probation. The law set a deadline of January 13, 2000 for

members and supporters of armed groups to surrender to the authorities (Black 2007).

The issue of whether or not to accept the terms of the Civil Harmony Law created

considerable dissension within the GSPC. A study conducted at the Naval Postgraduate School

determined that although the probability of defection by GSPC members was less than 10

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percent before the implementation of the law, the probability of defection reached a high of 60

percent during the Civil Concord period (Gyves and Wyckloff 2006). Due to this amnesty

program, which resulted in the demobilization of hundreds of militants from both the GIA and

the GSPC, the GSPC’s operational reach diminished. It was thus effectively limited in scope by

the Algerian government.

The September 11, 2001 attacks were another defining moment for the GSPC. Fifteen

days after the attacks, on September 26, 2001, 23 people were killed, and 9 were injured in a

massacre that occurred in the Algerian town of Al-Abri. The GSPC denied involvement,

reasserting their dedication to avoiding civilian atrocities. They accused the Algerian secret

service of executing the attack to isolate the GSPC from its popular base amongst the Algerian

people and of attempting to align the existing Algerian governmental agency with the

intelligence services of the United States in the Global War on Terror. However, certain

members of the GSPC dissented, believing that it would be better to take credit for the attack and

thereby imply GSPC’s collusion with Al Qa’ida. They suggested that courting Al Qa’ida would

enable the organization to maintain its relevancy and shore up declining recruitment. Members of

this organization realized that a merger with Al Qa’ida could have both political and financial

benefits to GSPC (Guidère 2007).

This became a point of friction between Hattab and the younger members of the GSPC

and two dominant camps emerged within the organization. The pan-Islamists encouraged

solidarity with their “brothers in Islam” (Al Qa’ida agents) while the Islamo-nationalists were

preoccupied with Algerian politics and the installation of an Islamic state there. They were

devoted to regime change and preferred not to actively support the “Muslim brothers.” This

69
minority faction opposed such a merger and preferred to remain like a small, independently

operated company that could focus on their own regional national agenda (Guidère 2007).

Moreover, in July 2003, Algeria, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria signed a co-operation

agreement on counterterrorism, thereby joining both sides of the Sahara in a complex map of

security arrangements. The United States also provided support for the war on terrorism in North

and West Africa and in the Sahara desert through the Pan Sahel Initiative (PSI), implemented in

November 2003. Funded by the United States State Department, the Pan Sahel Initiative

consisted of training regional military units by soldiers from the US Special Forces in Niger,

Mali, Chad, and Mauritania in an effort to improve border security and counterterrorism

capacity. The PSI was judged to be a success by US officials and local participants. Thus, its

next iteration was expanded to include Algeria. As a result of hard-hitting endeavors by these

transnational partnerships, the GSPC was forced to retreat from urban areas (Ellis 2004).

Although the GSPC was able to recover from the infighting provoked after 9/11 and

aggressive counter-terror measures, the war in Iraq further exacerbated the debates that were

occurring within the GSPC concerning the strategies to adopt with regards to Al Qa’ida. Hattab

refused to send Algerian combatants to Iraq to battle the Americans because he predicted that

doing so would deprive the GSPC of its best combatants when they joined the insurgency.

However, others within the GSPC did not share this perspective. Although Hattab invoked the

original Charter of the GSPC, which stated that the objectives of armed conflict should be to

fight the Algerian regime and not other governments, his efforts were in vain. Observing the

images of Iraqi soldiers and citizens humiliated by the American invaders, the many GSPC

fighters sought to engage in the struggle in Iraq. Moreover, the majority of the local emirs seated

on the GSPC’s shura believed that the war in Algeria was lost, thus, the organization should

70
focus on preserving the honor of the Iraqis. They also believed that participation in the war in

Iraq would enable the GSPC to establish connections with other jihadist groups in North Africa

and introduce them to new strategies and tactics. Finally, they could use the war in Iraq to attract

new recruits who believed that they would be sent to Iraq after basic training in Algeria, but who

would, in fact be absorbed into the GSPC’s domestic campaign. When the shura of the GSPC

voted to actively support the “Iraqi brothers,” Hassan was obliged to resign. Soon thereafter, the

old guard members who espoused a nationalist orientation were expelled from the GSPC

(Guidère 2007).

Abou Ibrahim Mustapha, who succeeded Hattab in 2003, sought to actively support the

Iraqi insurgents in order to gain credibility for the GSPC. Although he wanted to eventually

establish his group as some sort of training authority, he did not yet possess an adequate network

of fighters. Nevertheless, he fostered pan-Islamic solidarity and internationalism in order to re-

establish a sense of unity amongst GSPC operatives. On September 2003, the 2nd anniversary of

September 11, he issued a communiqué of support for Al Qa'ida in which he criticized Hattab’s

position and extolled bin Laden. This was the first strong sign of official will to establish a

relationship between the GSPC and Al Qa’ida and the beginning of three years of efforts to

prove the GSPC’s will and commitment to Al Qa’ida. He continued to make entreaties to Al

Qa’ida; for instance, asserting his will to establish a community of Muslims dedicated to the

creation of a Caliphate and calling upon GSPC members to attack all foreigners who supported

the war in Iraq. However, his career was cut short when he was killed in a skirmish with the

Algerian army in the Béjaïa region in June 2004 (Antil 2006).

VI. The Rise of Droukdal

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 Upon Mustapha’s death, Abdelmalek Droukdal immediately assumed control of the

GSPC. Droukdal sought to provide a new focal point for his members by participating in the

global jihad. After losing combatants due to the amnesty program announced by the Bouteflika

regime, the GSPC was struggling to fill its ranks with recruits. Droukdal realized that in order to

maintain support, the GSPC needed to achieve a certain number of visible successes to appear

active and successful. By affiliating with Al Qa’ida, the GSPC would gain access to a network of

financiers, intelligence, assets, and media specialists who could reinforce the group’s capabilities

and help it lead operations. Additionally, by supporting a cause that was seen to benefit the

global community of Muslims, the GSPC could more easily recruit operatives, informants, and

logisticians. Thus, a merger with Al Qa’ida was particularly appealing to Droukdal (Johnson

2006).

Born on April 20, 1970 in the small village of Zayan, situated near Mifan in the Blida

region, Droukdal was recognized as an exceptional student, who easily obtained his

baccalaureate in 1989 in mathematics. As a youth, he hoped to study engineering. Thus, from

1990 to 1993, he pursued a degree in technology from the University of Blida. Nevertheless, like

the majority of young Muslim students, he was attracted to the FIS and actively sought to get

close to its leaders. In 1992, he was enthused when an officer of the FIS and a former member of

the Algerian army, Said Makhloufi, recruited him. One year later, he officially joined the

organization and in December 1993, he went underground at the age of 23 (Guidère 2007).

As a member of the clandestine ranks of the FIS, he was assigned the mission of

fabricating explosives due to his scientific background and knowledge of chemical bases and

mechanical processes. He continued to hold this role when he enlisted with the GIA from 1993

to 1996. In 1996, he was promoted to chief bomb maker for one of the most important GIA

72
battalions. Soon thereafter, he was selected to command the Al-Quds Brigade (Abu Bakr al-

Siddiq Brigade) at the behest of the leader of the GIA (Guidère 2007).

Although he served the GIA in a military capacity, he allegedly opposed the massacres

conducted by the organization in the late 1990s. Thus, he seized to opportunity to serve as chief

military sergeant for the GSPC, which had been created in 1998. In 2001, Hattab selected

Droukdal as a member of his consultative council and made him a regional commander for the

GSPC. He occupied this position until 2003, when Hassan Hattab was forced to resign. After

Mustapha assumed power, he nominated Droukdal as the director of the consultative council.

Finally, one year later, he was promoted to the position of supreme emir of the GSPC after

Mustapha’s death. Upon his appointment as emir of the GSPC, he had not yet had any contact

with Al Qa’ida (Guidère 2007).

VII. Droukdal’s Program: Toward Global Jihad

Upon assuming power, Droukdal, incentivized by his opportunistic desire to revive the

demoralized GSPC, sought to align with other jihadist groups. His aspiration was to link his

organization to the wider Islamist campaign as represented by Al Qa’ida in order to reinvigorate

the group after government crackdowns and legislation had reduced its numbers. Thus, with his

inauguration, he commenced a policy of internationalization. While he was involved in planning

a limited number of attacks, he served the GSPC as an ideological figurehead, instructing his

followers in the ways of global jihad. In order to accomplish this feat, he conducted a nuanced

public relations campaign and comprehensive media reform.

Droukdal sought to inscribe the actions of the GSPC in an international context by

publicizing the GSPC’s activities in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Libya, Somalia, and the Sudan.

Instead of concentrating media attention on local attacks, he frequently issued communiqués

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regarding international politics and events affecting the Middle East and the Maghreb. For

instance, he circulated a communiqué congratulating the Chechen mujahedeen for the

assassination of Ahmed Kadirov, the President of the Chechen Republic in May 2004. Later,

Droukdal launched a magazine for the GSPC, which was inspired by that of Al Qa’ida in Iraq. It

included articles on Salafism, the crisis in Iraq, in Morocco, in Chechnya, and other international

themes (Guidère 2007). These initiatives allowed him to transmit his message to operatives

across the Maghreb region, which were still committed to local initiatives.

Droukdal’s media strategy became clear after the Summit of the Arab League in Algiers,

which took place from March 22-24, 2005. In response to this event, he issued a communiqué

addressed to the leaders meeting in Algiers. He criticized the Arab leaders who allegedly

embraced communism and capitalism and were becoming increasingly sensitive to the Judeo-

Christian coalition. He derided these leaders as puppets of the American government, thereby

promulgating Al Qa’ida’s anti-Western program. Finally, he urged jihad as a way to defend

Muslim honor, a more “global” goal. This communiqué, which was broadcast to a large audience

of operatives and supporters, was a reprisal of themes elucidated by Al Qa'ida. In publishing this

document, Droukdal sought to align the GSPC theoretically with Al Qa’ida and express his

obeisance to Bin Laden and Zarqawi (Guidère 2007).

The first operation undertaken by the GSPC outside its borders occurred in Mauritania in

June 2005. The communiqués published in conjunction with the operation in Mauritania

demonstrated Droukdal’s commitment to a pan-Islamic program and desire to indoctrinate his

operatives in the ways of global jihad. The communiqués included messages with international

themes. For instance, a GSPC statement posted by Droukdal on the Internet defending the raid

indicated that the attack was in response to U.S.-led military exercises in northern Africa dubbed

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the “Flintlock Plan” by military officials. These exercises were part of a broader U.S.

counterterrorism campaign in Africa, including Algerian, Malian, Mauritanian and Chadian

troops. The statement also denounced the recent arrests and trials by Mauritanian authorities of

dozens of Islamic extremists accused of having links to the GSPC. The communiqué ended by

urging the Islamic youth throughout North Africa to join the Algerian cause (Lecocq and

Schrijver 2007).

Moreover, a long video filming the combatants who had participated in the operation was

broadcast over the Internet in jihadist forums. Using this video, Droukdal sought to encourage

Maghreb jihadists to join the Algerians in their struggle. This was the first time that Droukdal

actively sought to recruit from outside the Algerian ranks. Droukdal realized that he could

encourage internationalization by amending his membership roster. He began to recruit several

operatives from abroad and encouraged his agents to train abroad and engage in jihadist activities

in other nations in an effort to expand the GSPC’s global profile. Furthermore, in 2005, Droukdal

began filming all operations conducted by the GSPC and distributing these clips online in the

same manner as Zarqawi (Guidère 2007)..

This operation provoked the first official reaction of Al Qa'ida to the GSPC. One week

after the attack, the director of the media division of Al Qa’ida in Iraq issued a communiqué

congratulating the GSPC. In fact, this was the first time Al Qa’ida had congratulated another

group not affiliated with their organization. This recognition was particularly meaningful for the

Algerian operatives because it made them feel more “secure” in their ventures, knowing that they

had Al Qa’ida’s support. Shortly thereafter, leaders from Al Qa’ida and the GSPC signed a pact

of fraternity (Jebnoun 2007).

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 In July 2005, Zarqawi signaled his complicity with the GSPC by seizing two Algerian

diplomats. Upon taking these hostages he promised to execute them unless the Algerian

government withdrew its support for the war in Iraq. When the Algerian government failed to

respond, he murdered the hostages. Droukdal responded by issuing a communiqué in which he

thanked Zarqawi and extolled Al Qa’ida in Iraq (Guidère 2007)..

During the summer of 2005, Droukdal launched a systematic communications reform to

improve the image of the GSPC amongst Algerians and the international Islamic community and

to enable him to preach pan-Islamic sermons to his operatives. First of all, he sought to bracket

the Algerian operations, including the attack in Mauritania and the execution of the Algerian

diplomats with other attacks that occurred during the same time period (including the

coordinated suicide bomb attacks on London’s public transport system that occurred on July 7,

2005). Moreover, he sought to centralize the GSPC’s communications. Prior to this effort, each

GSPC katibat possessed its own media bureau and published its own communications regarding

its operations and successes within its territory. Thus, there were numerous GSPC media outlets

transmitting information simultaneously. Algerian security services contributed to this

information overflow by distributing false reports on the GSPC’s channels. As a result, the

GSPC’s communications were characterized by a general cacophony and ataxia. Consequently,

Droukdal proposed a system of transmitting information whereby a central media committee

would transmit all communiqués. Those communiqués not approved by this committee could be

regarded as unauthentic. This system enabled the GSPC to elucidate several ambiguous

arguments and clarify dubious information(Gray and Stockham 2008).

Droukdal’s leadership during this time period was primarily ideological in nature, as

evidenced by the frequency of his declarations and interchanges and his efforts to improve the

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GSPC’s reception nationally and internationally. However, one cannot ignore the fact that prior

to the official announcement of the merger of Al Qa’ida and the GSPC, Droukdal also directed

several tactical changes to prepare his organization for international jihad. Therefore, overall his

leadership performance improved during this time period. On December 22, 2005, two bombs

exploded in the port de Delis. This was the first time that the GSPC had led an attack against a

maritime target. The attack involved immaculate planning: the GSPC had surveyed the location

for weeks and the day before, a group of combatants had penetrated the highly protected port.

Droukdal personally supervised all the preparations (Moss 2008).

VIII. The Announcement of Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb

Finally, on September 11, 2006, on the fifth anniversary of the World Trade Center and

Pentagon attacks, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy leader of Al Qa’ida, announced the merger of

Al Qa’ida and the GSPC. It is important to note that this announcement came one year after

Droukdal had made his first forays to Al Qa’ida. Al Qa’ida Central Command had stalled the

merger for one year, intent on ensuring that the GSPC’s membership, under Droukdal, could

positively contribute to Al Qa’ida’s ideological appeals and combat operations.

Droukdal’s role as an ideological leader steering the GSPC’s internationalization through

an assertive public relations drive continued after this announcement. Two days later, he

published a communiqué affirming the GSPC’s allegiance to Al Qa’ida and bin Laden, thereby

crystallizing the relationship. His communiqué was particularly revelatory because it reflected

the alleged changes in the official ideology of the GSPC. His discourse supported pan-Islamic

notions and highlighted the necessity of creating an “Islamic United States.” He spoke of the

need to suppress national borders in order to establish an Islamic caliphate and urged the

immediate union of the nations of North Africa under Islamic law. Moreover, he expressed the

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sentiment that Al Qa’ida was the only group that could unite all Islamic combatants and steer the

battle against the Coalition forces. He expressed confidence in the specific competencies and

ideological underpinning of Al Qa’ida’s leadership, thereby easing the qualms of his

subordinates (Guidère 2007).

Approximately six months later, Droukdal issued another claim in which he suggested

that after pledging allegiance to Islam and demonstrating his faith in Bin Laden, it was now time

for him to change the name of his organization. This change would demonstrate the solidarity of

Al Qa’ida and the GSPC. In changing the name of the GSPC to Al Qa’ida in the Islamic

Maghreb, Droukdal expressed concern about projecting a certain image of his organization to his

base as well as the international community; he wanted to highlight its role in global jihad.

Moreover, Zawahiri himself refused to allow the group to call itself “Al Qa’ida in Algeria” since

this name seemed too “local” and did not reflect the transnational and pan-Islamic agenda of Al

Qa’ida (Guidère 2007).

IX. A New Organization

In the months after the name change, Al Qa’ida in the Maghreb (AQIM), Droukdal and

his operatives began to target foreigners who continued to support secular regimes and

proselytize their culture (specifically the United States, Spain, and France). Some scholars have

suggested that AQIM remains sharply focused on its Kabylia strongholds despite Droukdals’s

global rhetoric (Filiu 2009), however, a few recent attacks indicate otherwise. For instance, in

December 2006, AQIM conducted an attack against a bus transporting employees from Brown &

Root-Condor, a joint venture between a Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, and the Algerian state-

owned oil company, Sonatrach, in an elaborate roadside bombing. The bomb attack killed an

Algerian driver in a convoy transporting the workers, nine of whom were wounded, including

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four Britons and one American. Always attentive to public reaction, Droukdal disclosed a

communiqué, in which AQIM admitted to the attack, in online jihadist forums about one month

later. A lengthy film of the operation, detailing the fabrication of the bombs, the surveillance and

lookout, and the explosions was also transmitted. This video, intended to galvanize combatants

and attract recruits, emulated the propaganda materials of Al Qa’ida in Iraq (Jebnoun 2007).

As a result of Droukdal’s press campaign, AQIM was able to establish communities in

Europe to provide money, recruit, indoctrinate, and train potential terrorists. These recruits were

then dispatched to Kashmir, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq and training camps in the Sahel to

pursue international jihad. Recent reports express fear that AQIM will be able to increased

recruitment in Mauritania or Nigeria. Some specialists fear that AQIM could severely damage

the energy sector in the Niger delta (Moss 2008).

While Droukdal’s role was primarily ideological, attention should be paid to the tactical

changes that he implemented. He encouraged his operatives to executed attacks inspired by the

Iraqi model. Originally, the GSPC was engaged in a war of attrition whereby combatants would

descend from the mountains and attack the armed forces. However, Droukdal encouraged the

evolution from guerilla-oriented operations such as armed assaults to terror-oriented operations

such as bombings. Under his leadership, the use of firearms plummeted while the use of

explosives augmented (Gyves and Wyckloff 2006).

The attacks that occurred on April 11, 2007 demonstrated Droukdal’s new tactics. On this

day, three cars driven by suicide bombers blew up in Algiers, killing at least 33 people and

injuring others. One bomber drove into the guard post at the government building housing the

offices of the prime minister and the Interior Ministry. Two other cars were detonated beside a

police station in the east of the Algerian capital (one at the seat of Interpol and the other at the

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office of the special forces of the police in Bab Ezzouar). These attacks utilized remote

explosives and were thus less costly in human lives. They also demonstrated the

professionalization of AQIM’s services. Now, simultaneous explosions, remote detonation,

rigged vehicles, kamikaze fighters, an effective propaganda and selective recruitment were

employed to make AQIM a formidable, and sustainable fighting force. This also permitted

AQIM officers to move from the periphery of Algeria back into its urban centers. Moreover, this

method consisted of engaging in spectacular attacks with a symbolic dimension that could

destabilize the regime. Such spectacular attacks could also appeal to younger sympathizers

(Algeria: Violence Returns 2007).

As always, Droukdal was compelled to publish a communiqué to outline his intentions

and defuse criticism. His communiqué suggested that the April 11 attacks were executed in

response to a concession agreement with the United States, which could allow the Western

power to use petroleum in Algeria for 100 years. Through this rhetoric, Droukdal positioned his

group as the defender of the riches of Muslim countries faced with avarice and imperialism of

the West. The second justification for the attacks was the Algerian government’s military

cooperation with the American forces. To capitalize upon his operatives’ anti-colonialist

concerns, Droukdal suggested that this was the beginning of a foreign occupation and deemed it

necessary to combat the Western presence in Algeria. Finally, Droukdal criticized the adoption

of an anti-Islamic policy allegedly championed by the Americans in their war against terrorism.

In doing so, he expressed a message frequently articulated by Al Qa’ida, thereby cementing the

link between the two organizations (Guidère 2007).

X. Final Observations

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 To this day, AQIM continues to conducted several suicide attacks and roadside

bombings, each accompanied by a revealing and incantatory communiqué. The merger, and its

success, can only be explained by highlighting Droukdal’s ideological leadership and the major

shifts that he pioneered on the propaganda front. Through his communications, Droukdal sought

to effectively straddle the divide between local and international Islamic terrorism. After the

ranks of his organization had been depleted at the turn of the twenty-first century, he effectively

brought the Algerians insurgents out of isolation so they could work more closely with

international Islamic networks to promote Islam. Thus, he directed an ideological shift – from a

philosophy based on regional preoccupations to a more internationally oriented perspective.

Droukdal recognized that by aligning itself with Al Qa’ida, the GSPC could render itself

capable of operating in the context of global jihad, rather than confining itself to local activity.

He incited the organization to expand by attacking foreign targets, most particularly French

interests. The most powerful French AQIM cell to date was dismantled in September 2005, when

French police thwarted a series of bombings set to occur in Paris as Algerians voted on the

National Charter for Peace and Reconciliation. By uniting radical Islamists to attack Americana

and French targets in northwestern Africa, Droukdal advanced the goal of undermining the

secular Algerian regime while damaging the interests of Western nations (Black 2007).

Moreover, he reflected AQIM’s international focus and the growing ratio of attacks against

foreign targets into an emphasis on international issues and threats against Western countries in

AQIM’s statements.

Droukdal recognized the global appeal of Al Qa’ida message, which had dramatically

expanded since the September 11, attacks. The US invasion of Iraq and media coverage of

American detention and interrogation policies lent credence to the Qa’ida narrative that

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portrayed isolated American actions as a coordinated war against Islam. A current of cultural

Islamization was created that has increased Al Qa’ida’s attraction. Droukdal capitalized upon

these trends by highlighting the importance of solidarity among the mujahedeen in face of

Western aggression against Islam. He saw clearly an opportunity for synergy; Al Qa’ida’s global

ideology intersected with local anger directed at the undemocratic regime would encourage

jihadists’ activity in the Maghreb. Having formulated an appropriate ideological stance, he was

able to tap into local grievances and tie them to the global jihad against the west. Thus, he

successfully aligned with Al Qa’ida to co-opt and exploit local, ready-made networks that could

be internationalized.

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Chapter 7: Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya: The Unrealized Merger

In the early 1970s, two prominent Salafi jihadist groups operated in Egypt: Al-Gama’a al-

Islamiyya (GAI) and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Both broke with the Muslim Brotherhood over the

latter’s commitment to nonviolence. Both campaigned to overthrow the secular Egyptian

government and to replace it with an Islamic regime. Both collaborated on the assassination of

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981 and both fell victims to the bitter campaign of state

violence, mass arrests, and financial crackdowns during much of the 1990s. However, in the late

1990s, members of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya apologized for the group’s involvement in the Sadat

assassination, renounced violence, and denounced Al Qa’ida. In contrast, the Egyptian Islamic

Jihad members joined forced with Al Qa’ida. Why did GAI repudiate terrorism rather than

affiliate with Al Qa’ida to continue its brutal campaign?

I. The Emergence of the GAI from the Ashes of the Muslim Brotherhood

Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (GAI) was formally organized as an offshoot of the Muslim

Brotherhood in 1973 in the Upper Nile regions of Al-Minya, Asyu’, Qina, and Sohaj. However,

the GAI rejected the Muslim Brotherhood’s gradualist approach to change, and instead based

their ideology on the principles articulated by Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian fundamentalist writer

and educator. Upon its birth, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat gave the group’s members free

reign, covertly supplying them with arms with which to defend themselves against potential

attacks by Marxists or Nasserites, his rivals. Moreover, GAI quickly gained strong support

among the university students in both Cairo and Alexandria by recruiting mid-level leaders from

the ranks of the unemployed university students who were disillusioned by Egypt’s lack of

economic opportunities. In addition, GAI recruited more indigent, uneducated individuals from

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the southern rural regions of Assiuet and Minya to further populate their rank and file (Keats

2002).

Sheikh Omar Abdel Al–Rahman assumed the mantle as spiritual leader for the group

during its infancy. He provided the moral justifications for the group’s moneymaking attacks on

Christian shopkeepers and small-business owners by his issuing fatwa – religious rulings that

justify actions normally outlawed by the Koran (Abdel Maguid 2003).

Perturbed by the rapid development and mobilization of the Salafi organizations in

Egypt, Sadat changed his political strategies to combat internal unrest in the mid 1970s. He

began rounding up several Islamic militants and placing them in jail. As a result of his policies,

Al-Rahman fled Egypt and toured the neighboring Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia,

where he found and developed financial supporters. During Al-Rahman’s time abroad, clashes

between Egyptian security forces and Islamic movements in the universities increased. Fearing

harsh repression (like that which the Muslim brotherhood has experienced under former

Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser), GAI leaders decided, “A need [had] arisen for a

military force for us to defend [themselves]” (Carmon, Feldner, and Lav 2006). Consequently,

they established a branch devoted to jihad and began to execute increasingly violent operations.

II. The Sadat Assassination

Upon returning to Egypt in 1980, Al-Rahman issued a fatwa that provided the religious

justification for the assassination of President Sadat in 1981. The GAI and Egyptian Islamic

Jihad allegedly cooperated in this conspiracy. As a result of his role in the assassination, Al-

Rahman served six months in an Egyptian prison, avoiding a sterner sentence on a technicality

(Keats 2002).

III. Crackdown under Mubarak

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 Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak began a brutal campaign against Egypt’s militant

groups that lasted throughout the 1980s. His methods included false arrests, torture, and

executions. Although fairly successful at curbing the number of violent attacks, this crackdown

further radicalized the university-educated population, who continued to struggle under high

unemployment(Gerges 2000).

During these years, many GAI members and leaders fled to Afghanistan, where they

were active in the jihad against the Soviet Union. In Afghanistan, they trained and fought

alongside al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad and other Afghan Arabs, such as Osama Bin

Laden. Moreover, following the Soviet withdrawal, many fighters moved on to combat the

Serbian forces that were decimating Bosnian Muslims in Yugoslavia. Several were implicated in

numerous plots directed against American diplomatic and military targets in the Balkans and

other parts of Europe. During the 1990s, many GAI members continued or commenced their

training in Al Qa’ida facilities in the Sudan and Afghanistan. Some, like Mustafa Hamza, a

leading member of the GAI, even worked for businesses owned by Osama bin Laden in Somalia

(Carmon, Feldner, and Lav 2006).

IV. Campaign of Terror

After the Soviet-Afghan war, some GAI members returned to Egypt where they initiated

a campaign against the influences of Western culture. Between 1992 and 1993, they carried out a

number of attacks on tourists that killed dozens of people. Al-Rahman, who had immigrated to

the United States by this time, again provided the religious justification for these attacks by

arguing that tourism in Egypt fostered poor morals, and spread diseases such as AIDS (Stacher

2002).

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 In 1993, Al-Rahman was arrested in the United States in connection with the first World

Trade Center bombing. In 1996, he and nine other operatives were convicting for conspiring to

destroy New York City landmarks, including the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels.

In 1993, Al-Rahman was arrested in the United States in connection with the first World

Trade Center bombing. In 1996, he and nine other operatives were convicted for conspiring to

destroy New York City landmarks, including the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels.

Yet despite his arrest, GAI continued to attack tourists throughout the 1990s and began

targeting Egyptian business establishments as well. The group bombed theaters, bookstores, and

banks. In 1995, the group allegedly collaborated with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in a failed

assassination attempt on President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In September 1997,

militants killed nine German tourists and their driver in front of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Two months later, the group killed 63 people at a tourist site in Luxor (including four Egyptians

and 59 foreign tourists, 36 of whom were Swiss) (Keats 2002).

V. Collapse of an Armed Group

As a result of GAI’s campaign in the late 1990s, Cairo clamped down on both the GAI

and Egyptian Islamic Jihad even more, arresting thousands of suspected terrorists and executing

or killing others during police raids. This prompted some influential militants to reconsider their

strategy and tactics and some GAI leaders renounced violence. On July 5, 1997, GAI announced

a unilateral initiative of conciliation with the Egyptian regime. During a court hearing, a GAI

member read aloud a communiqué, signed by six of the organization's leaders, which declared a

halt to all armed operations within and outside Egypt, and a stop to agitation to commit attacks.

Thus, when the Luxor attack occurred, several GAI leaders immediately conveyed their disgust,

86
insisting that the operation was not executed by the GAI, but rather by a breakaway faction

(Ghadbian 2000).

The Luxor attack and the reports of mutilation of the victims’ bodies had sparked public

repulsion at GAI. Consequently, the GAI spokesman Osama Rushdie, a Netherlands resident

announced his resignation (Cohen 2003). Moreover, the GAI was weakened both operationally

and financially by the aftermath effects of the attack. Therefore, it needed a publicity boost if it

was to continue functioning as a viable terrorist organization.

In 1997, the group split into two factions; the larger, moderate one, organized by Mustafa

Hamza, supported non-violence and the ceasefire, while the smaller, more radical faction, led by

Rifai Ahmad Taha deplored the ceasefire as cowardly and called for a return to armed

operations.

After the schism, Rifai Ahmad Taha courted bin Laden by making trips to Afghanistan

and even appeared sitting next to him and Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a

videotape released in September 2000 that threatened US interests. Moreover, Taha signed Bin

Laden’s 1998 Declaration of War against the “Jews and Crusaders,” thereby becoming a

signatory to the International Islamic Front. It is unclear whether Taha actually agreed with bin

Laden’s views, wanted to seize power in the GAI, or simply saw the financial and organizational

advantages that Al Zawahiri had reaped from making the decision to join Al Qa’ida.

Yet despite his efforts, he was unable to recruit many of his cadres to support Bin Laden

and a minimal number joined the global jihad (Botha 2006). The GAI had witnessed how the

Egyptian Islamic Jihad had suffered significant setbacks because of its decision to join Al

Qa’ida. For instance, as a result of increased governmental scrutiny, Zawahiri's organization

experienced a major upset when in 1998 Albania agreed to extradite 12 members of EIJ to Egypt

87
in the case known as the “Returnees from Albania” (Aboul-Enein 2004) Consequently, most

members of GAI preferred to go underground until the group regained its strength and influence

rather than align with Al Qa’ida and risk further setbacks.

VI. Reconciliation

In 1999, the group’s historic leadership declared a unilateral ceasefire. Even Al-Rahman,

who remained the group’s spiritual leader, agreed to this measure. The GAI has not conducted a

terrorist attack either inside or outside Egypt since August 1998. In 2002, the leadership issued a

statement reaffirming its commitment to end violence. Karam Zuhdi, a self-proclaimed leader of

the underground group, even said the GAI owes the Egyptian people "an apology for the crimes

which [the group] has committed against Egypt. We are even thinking of paying blood money to

the victims” (Halawi 2002).

Since this time, the historic leadership of the GAI has published a series of books, known

as the “Concept Correction Series” in which they renounce indiscriminate violence and extremist

interpretations of Islam. Nevertheless, despite their proclamations in favor of non-violence, in

August 2006, Ayman al-Zawahiri, by then the closest associate of Osama bin Laden, announced

that the GAI had merged with Al Qa’ida. GAI leadership in Egypt quickly rejected this claim.

During his interview with Asharq al-Awsat, Dr. Nageh Ibrahim, a senior leader and chief

ideological theorist for the GAI, stressed that significant differences in philosophy exist between

the GAI and Al Qa’ida. “Their aim is jihad, and our aim is Islam," he maintained. In doing so,

Ibrahim challenged Al Qa’ida’s Islamic credentials by emphasizing its dependence on violent

struggle as a means to further its goals and suggested that Al Qa’ida was propagating a false

definition of jihad. He asserted that Al Qa’ida’s aggressive tactics have failed Muslims. Since

this time, despite widespread skepticism in Egypt and abroad about the nature of its true

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intentions, the GAI has concentrated its efforts on revising its former extremist worldview and

distinguishing itself from Qa’ida (Zambelis 2006).

VII. Explaining the Decision not to Affiliate with Al Qa’ida

The leadership of the GAI had longstanding connections with Al Qa’ida, and exhibited

strong anti-Western proclivities, however, when their group was in a state of imminent decline,

they decided to renounce violent activity rather than appeal for Al Qa’ida for assistance to

continue their existence as a terrorist group. While this decision may seem counterintuitive,

evidence suggests that this choice was strategic. GAI was well established and active prior to Al

Qa’ida’s emergence in the international arena. Consequently, GAI members were less receptive

to Al Qa’ida’s ideology of global jihad than other groups that have emerged since that time, who

were not already entrenched in Salafi jihadist circles. Moreover, GAI interpreted their jihad

much more narrowly than groups affiliated or associated with Al Qa’ida. They believed that their

main foe was the Egyptian state and that the near enemy was more worthy of fighting than the

distant enemy. While they attacked Western targets, they perceived their struggle as regionally

confined to the Egyptian territory. GAI’s theoretical and operational priorities were the product

of a literal reading of the Quranic and prophetic texts, which gave precedence to doctrinal

correctness above all other issues, primarily to the establishment of an Islamic state in Egypt

(Rabasa et al. 2006).

When GAI reemerged in the early 1990s with a renewed sense of purpose after the return

of its members from the Afghan jihad, its leaders were convinced that they could accomplish in

Egypt what the mujahedeen had achieved in Afghanistan, the ouster of the “illegitimate”

governing power. They attacked Coptic Christians, banks, police, politicians, tourists, and the

media with the goal of undermining Egyptian state power, secular institutions, and the economy

89
and creating the perception that the Egyptian government could not protect its citizens (Keats

2002).

Nevertheless, in the late 1990s, GAI were compelled to shift strategies as a political

tactic. Reflecting on the seven years of GAI violence between 1992 and 1997, Osama Rushdie, a

former leader of GAI, admitted that the group was in a stronger position before it started

attacking the government. He attempted to rationalize this earlier aggression by suggesting that

adopting violence in 1992 " was mainly a reaction to what we saw as the suppression and killing

of our brothers” (Carmon, Feldner, and Lav 2006) It is possible that in mid-1997, when several

leaders of GAI announced its cease-fire initiative, this may have been a maneuver to buy time,

reunite the groups’ ranks, and prepare for a new offensive. However, the relative success of the

government’s security policy obligated the group to concede to what its leaders called “military

defeat.” Between arrests, deaths in armed clashes, stiff sentences that included dozens of

executions, and severe treatment in prisons and detention facilities, the ranks of the leadership

and general membership were decimated. This exceedingly severe security strategy disrupted the

ranks and cohesion of GAI prompting the group’s leaders to reconsider its acts and concepts.

Thus, by the turn of the century the group realized that it was useless to try to topple a powerful

regime by force, even with Al Qa’ida’s backing.

Additionally, after its initiative to end the violence, the security establishment facilitated

meetings between the group’s leader and members in Egyptian prisons to ensure that the group

honored this commitment. During their time in prison, the groups’ leaders acquainted themselves

with other schools of Islamic thought. In fact, the effect of their new, wider reading and

understanding is evident in the sources on which the leadership relied to compose the revisionist

books that they published (Halawi 2002).

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VIII. Final Observations

For GAI, terrorism was a means to a political end; it was meant to produce a change in

the Egyptian government’s political position, not to destroy the government’s military potential.

GAI used terrorism to influence political behavior by devaluing the state in the eyes of its

citizens. However, one must note that terrorism depends on the ability to generate the appropriate

level of terror and anxiety. Acts of terror induce psychological effects, which must fan out

among a possibly substantial population, the bulk of which may be able to make a reasonable

calculation that they are not a risk. Thus, terrorists groups must conduct a sequence of directed

attacks that creates a sufficient sense of threat for it to be understood that the campaign will

continue unless and until there is a change in state policy (Freedman 2007). Even with some

assistance from Al Qa’ida, GAI would not have been able to defeat the Egyptian government,

nor did GAI members have any interest in targeting the “far enemy.” When GAI was unable to

achieve its political goal through terrorism, they changed their strategic tactics.

Terrorist organizations engage in a process of constant adaptation to the strategic

environment and are apt to respond to policy-induced changes to their constraints since, by

definition, they lack resources. Crenshaw’s description of the instrumental approach to assessing

terrorist violence is useful for understanding GAI’s rationale. GAI acted on the basis of its

calculation of the benefit to be gained from violent action, the costs of attempting violent attacks

and of these attacks failing, the consequences of adopting a nonviolent position and the

probability of achieving its political goals through terrorist undertakings. A constant failure to

achieve its stated goals led to internal strife and its ultimate collapse as a terrorist group. The

costs of executing attacks became too high and the consequences of adopting a nonviolent

position seemed promising (Crenshaw 1987). Accordingly, the group abandoned its violent

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strategy. For GAI, terrorism was merely a means to an end and substitutes were available. GAI

now appears to be concerned with carving out some political space to operate in Egypt.

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Chapter 8: Conclusion and Discussion – Al Qa’ida’s Commanding

Officers: A Skilled Management Team

To understand terrorist organizations, it is necessary to examine the staff that operates at

each level of the hierarchy within the system. It is naïve to focus on chief executives, like Osama

bin Laden or Ayman Zawahiri or to concentrate on the suicide bombers who conduct operations.

While Osama bin Laden’s capture or death would be an important psychological blow to those

vested in his invincibility, his loosely affiliated, broad-based Al Qa’ida network augmented by

affiliations with various groups has durability that will surpass his mortality. Recent studies

indicate that strategies aimed at enabling stringent police techniques and punitive military action

will not succeed in deterring the Al Qa’ida suicide bombers(Atran 2003). Consequently,

interventions may need to be focused at understanding and disrupting Al Qa’ida’s mid-level

management, the commanding officers that direct Al Qa’ida’s affiliates.

In the first chapters, I posed the question: what motivates local jihadist leaders to affiliate

with Al Qa’ida? I hypothesized that opportunism, ideology, or social bonds could motivate local

jihadist leaders to enroll in Al Qa’ida’s pan-Islamic program. The data collected in this survey

and analysis of Al Qa’ida’s leadership has significantly demonstrated that leaders were strongly

incentivized by opportunism, while social bonds facilitated the process of affiliating (i.e. social

bonds served as a “permissive factor”). Moreover, the analysis of Al Qa’ida in the Islamic

Maghreb provides an example of an intelligent and shrewd local jihadist leader, Abdelmalek

Droukdal whose desire to revive his group inspired him to associate with Al Qa’ida while the

examination of Al Gama’a al-Islamiyya demonstrates why strategic calculations can rouse other

organizations to eschew violence and rebuff Al Qa’ida’s forays.

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 Previous studies depict terrorists as rational actors seeking to maximize political goals

(Lake 2003). Psychological surveys indicate that terrorists are not psychologically deviant or

ideologically blinded(Sageman 2004). My data analysis and case studies support these

conclusions. One should consider terrorism as “one of a set of rebel tactics that is consciously

selected in response to changes in funding, popular support, competition against other rebel

groups, the type of regime against which they are fighting, and counterinsurgency tactics” (Laitin

and Jacob Shapiro 2008) Like individual terrorists, insurgent groups should also be perceived as

rational entities that are more likely to adopt terrorist tactics when the benefits of other forms of

violence decrease, when the costs of other forms of violence increase, or both.

Since they are rational actors, it is not surprising that local jihadist group leaders have

opportunistic motives for joining Al Qa’ida. But what are these motives? In fact, the fundamental

purpose of any political organization is to maintain itself. Leaders, in particular, wish to enhance

and promote the organizations that they direct since their personal ambitions are tied to the

organization’s viability (Cronin and Ludes 2004).

In order to survive, organizations must attract and retain members. Counterterrorism

efforts aimed at winning battles and capturing terrorist actors deplete the ranks of terrorist

organizations by physically eliminating combatants. Conciliation programs can be a successful

counter-terrorism strategy when amnesty is offered to operatives who renounce violence, as was

the case with the GSPC (Sederberg 1995). Moreover, groups may lose members to other

terrorist groups when a competing group can put together a package of purposive goals and

selective incentives that is more appealing than that of the first organization. Factionalism is also

common amongst terrorist organizations. Within the larger understanding of a terrorist group’s

political aims, there may be a divergence of opinion on precisely what objectives should be

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pursued. This divergence compels operatives to defect. Finally, groups may alienate the

communities in which they operate by conducting particularly violent or poorly executed

operations (Crenshaw 1991). When this occurs, their public image shifts from well-intentioned

revolutionaries to common delinquents, making recruitment amongst these communities

increasingly difficult. Groups only enjoy popular support when the population believes their

actions are justified under the political conditions of the country (i.e. when they occupy a “moral

high ground”).

When loss of membership occurs, some groups may find it beneficial to renounce

violence and enter the political arena, like the GAI. However, transforming from an armed group

into a political party is no easy feat, especially in less democratic nations. Thus, many groups

may choose to align with Al Qa’ida to remain salient. For example, security sources in Algeria

said that the Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb offensive in August 2008 reflected the

recruitment of scores of operatives, including suicide bombers, combatants, and those with inside

knowledge of the military and police(Gray and Stockham 2008). Al Qa’ida can transfer

operatives to help support the local jihadist group since Al Qa’ida’s own recruitment is

accelerating. Bin Laden and Al Qa’ida’s elite cadre have convinced many volunteers to fulfill

the duty of jihad and to thus respond to “the call of Allah.” While it is impossible to know

precisely the size of Al Qa’ida due to the decentralized structure of its organization, Al Qa’ida

probably has several thousand members and associates. Since the 1980s, Al Qa’ida trained over

5,000 militants in camps in Afghanistan. In recent years, Al Qa’ida’s recruitment has picked up

in 30-40 countries. Recruiters for Al Qa’ida reportedly told researchers that volunteers were

“beating down their doors” to join (Atran 2004). Thus, Al Qa’ida can easily dispatch a few

combatants to assist local groups in desperate need of increased membership and expertise.

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 Additionally, Al Qa’ida is a high-value global brand that is esteemed amongst the Salafi

community, as discussed in Chapter 3. By aligning with Al Qa’ida, groups gain credibility and

respect that can be effectively leveraged to increase recruitment. Before joining forces with Al

Qa’ida, many terrorist groups are compared to criminal gangs. However, upon aligning with Al

Qa’ida, they are perceived as legitimate actors, striving for global jihad. Therefore, their social

status is enhanced. Al Qa’ida uses propaganda to foster its positive public image as the defender

of Islam. Recognizing the powerful potential of the media, Al Qa’ida established a

communications committee to promote this representation through a well-executed publicity

campaign. In fact, Bin Laden has created a company called al-Sahab, which produces the

professional tapes and promotional film clips disseminated throughout the Arab and Western

world, primarily by means of the Qatari television station al-Jazeera. In doing so, Al Qa’ida has

substantially promoted and publicized its image throughout the globe. To complement this

strategy, Al Qa’ida also selects sympathetic journalists to whom it grants interviews (Schweitzer

2008). These journalists present Al Qa’ida to the outside world in a supportive manner, depicting

its operatives as “freedom fighters.”

To supplement recruitment, Al Qa’ida encourages potential operatives to follow in the

footsteps of their pious predecessors (i.e. the Muslim warriors of the crusader period) by

establishing a territorial base for Islam and by protecting those who are oppressed by foreign

domination(Henzel 2005). Through a program of propaganda and indoctrination, Al Qa’ida

raises awareness amongst Muslims of the grievances that gave rise to its birth. For instance,

recruits are shown provocative photos of Iraqi women and children killed or bloodied by

Western bombardment, of coalition soldiers shooting wounded insurgents inside a mosque, or of

occupation forces stepping with their boots on the backs of Arabic men that have just been bound

96
and forced to the ground with black sacks over their faces. Such emotional narratives highlight

the theme of humiliation at the hand of callous and arrogant Western powers(Hafez 2007). Al

Qa’ida also attributes Muslim societies’ “greatest misfortune and decadence to their

abandonment of jihad due to the love of this world and abhorrence of death. Because of that,

tyrants gained dominance over the Muslims in every aspect and every land”(Calvert 2004).

Thus, it effectively encourages redemption through faith and sacrifice, even death. Al Qa’ida’s

affiliates learn from Al Qa’ida how to conduct comparable propaganda campaigns in their home

countries to attract and enhance their own recruitment efforts. Abdelmalek Droukdal certainly

modeled his publicity efforts on that of Al Qa’ida and benefited from advice from Al Qa’ida’s

media branch.

Moreover, Al Qa’ida can help groups conduct attacks. Al Qa’ida is infamous for

providing terrorist training and for establishing sites and camps where recruits are educated,

indoctrinated, and mentored. For instance, Al Qa’ida established numerous local military training

facilities in Mindanao and Indonesia in the last two decades. It can also offer groups information

on the government, physical environment, nature of the military and intelligence services,

financial services, etc. due to its exceptional intelligence-gathering skills. Al Qa’ida’s veterans

can offer groups tactical and strategic advice. For example, Riduan Isamuddin, known as

Hambali and Ali Gufron, known as Muklhas, both alumni of the Afghan jihad, helped Jemaah

Islamiyah plan and execute the 2002 Bali bombing that killed more than 2000 people (Abuza

2003). Finally, Al Qa’ida can offer groups financial resources, equipment, and weapons.

According to several reports, Ansar al-Islam was started with $300,000 to $600,000 of Al Qa’ida

seed money (Ward 2005).

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 Conducting attacks connotes a high degree of devotion and strength to potential recruits.

Suicide attacks, in particular, demonstrate that the organization has a loyal and impassioned

following. Also, just as a conventional military organization might glamorize its heroes to inspire

others to volunteer for field military actions, martyrdom operations not only produce spectacular

incidents of large-scale destruction, but also create and promote “heroes” that represent the

organization. Such missions create publicity events that effectively advertise the organization

and psychologically appeal to individual needs to feel important and meaningful through

membership in a “higher” movement (Atran 2003).

By joining Al Qa’ida, local jihadist leaders are presented with appealing and cost

effective opportunities to bolster their own recruitment and ensure organizational survival and

their ability to achieve their political aims without abandoning arms and investigating political

avenues. Moreover, the results of this study suggest that most local jihadist group leaders have

already established significant social bonding and networking with members of Al Qa’ida

Central Command. Due to these associations, local jihadist group leaders are positioned to seek

assistance from their colleagues when decline within their own organizations seems imminent,

rather than abandon their mission. While not a precipitant cause for an affiliation, social

networks can be thought of as a stipulation that pre-structures and facilitates the merger process.

Since Al Qa’ida provides local jihadist group leaders with numerous opportunities to

stimulate and expand their organizations, and because such affiliations are not difficult to initiate

due to the existence of prior social connections, it may be futile for counterterrorist forces to

discourage local jihadist group leaders from soliciting Al Qa’ida. Instead, strategies should be

developed to isolate these groups from Al Qa’ida, thereby making such affiliations more

problematic and risky. Efforts should ensure that the necessary resources (both human and

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capital) cannot be exchanged between Al Qa’ida and its weaker partner. If groups are precluded

from affiliating with Al Qa’ida, they are less likely to survive or recuperate from setbacks. For

instance, some suggest that AQIM’s globalization process has been impeded by the expulsion of

AL Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI) from Baghdad in 2008. Since the Iraqi branch of Al Qa’ida suffered this

setback, Bin Laden has devoted less attention and resources to AQIM, thereby crippling its

ability to supersede a regional dimension (Filiu 2009).

Throughout the 1990s, state borders were opened to international trade flows. In the age

of globalization, terrorists have learned how to make legal immigration channels and legitimate

immigrant communities serve their lethal jihadist ends. Thus, former Secretary of Homeland

Security, Tom Ridge, portrayed US borders as “conduits for terrorists, weapons of mass

destruction, and illegal migrants” (Ross 2003). To thwart Al Qa’ida’s connections with local

jihadist groups, border control measures must be established to prevent the movement of

terrorists and terror-related materials. However, it is necessary to treat carefully because

restrictive “fortress” responses and sweeping immigrant surveillance hinder cooperation with key

immigrant, especially Muslim, communities.

Unilateral approaches to border control will leave a mismatch of contradictory national

policies. In areas like the Core Arab states and the Maghreb, governments should implement a

networked border monitoring and border control system, which features a common visa policy

and region-wide fingerprint or iris photography database. A model system is that which is

utilized in the European Union. The new Schengen Information System computer database

contains information on criminals on the run, previous asylum applications, stolen cars and other

stolen property as well as biometric data. This system is also used to store and disseminate

information on extradition, third-country nationals refused entry to the EU and individuals

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subject to a European arrest warrant or under surveillance for criminal activity(One Single EU

Border 2005) A system for region-wide arrests would also be useful in areas where terrorist

activity is high.

The United States can provide assistance to foreign governments to enhance operational

capacity to tighten border controls. One impressive program was the East Africa Counter

Terrorism Initiative, whereby $50 million for security programs administered by the US

Department of Defense was offered to East African states to provide for military training for

border control and security of the coastline, police training, and aviation security capacity

(Kagwanja 2006).

Future research will center on the development of predictive models based on emerging

patterns among terrorist groups that align with Al Qa’ida. These predictive models could be used

in order to develop strategies for a pre-emptive counter-response. For example, an understanding

might be developed of what government initiatives trigger terrorist organizations to seek

partnerships with Al Qa’ida and of the strength of the alliance that materializes as a result. Future

research may also focus on how alliances mature and evolve over time since this article focuses

on aspects of maturity among terrorist groups who have engaged in networking with Al Qa’ida.

The second question that I sought to answer involved the type of role local jihadist

leaders played within Al Qa’ida. By understanding what function local jihadist leaders play,

counterterrorist forces can better undermine these leaders. I considered leadership roles before

and after the affiliation to uncover trends. While there were no significant patterns in the data on

the operational and logistic role of the leaders profiled, it appears that most leaders took on an

increasingly ideological role after the merger. After the merger, the leaders issued more

communiqués, gave more speeches, granted more interviews, etc.

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 To understand why this increase in evangelizing and political activity of these leaders

occurs, one must consider the philosophy and ambitions of local jihadist groups compared to Al

Qa’ida. The roots of most of the terrorist networks included in this study can be traced to

geographically separate, ethno-religious struggles. For example, al-Ittihad al-Islami was

established in the 1980s through the merger of Salafi groups. These groups enjoyed popularity in

Somalia in the 60s due to their attempts to regain lost Somali land after independence and to

their resistance to dictator, Siad Barre. Consequently, they gained the support of the Somali

people through nationalist causes more than through a common affinity for Salafism, an ideology

that was widely unpopular in the country in previous years (West 2006). In contrast, Al Qa’ida

conceives its resistance as a single, unified struggle that transcends local, state, and regional

concerns. Central to Al Qa’ida’s vision is the awakening of the Muslim ummah, the worldwide

community of believers(Sutton and Vertigans 2006). Although Bin Laden wants to align with

local militant groups with country-specific grievances to increase his global reach and influence,

he demands that his commanding officers convince their operatives to adopt and accept Al

Qa’ida’s pan-Islamic program. When local jihadist leaders are not interested in promoting this

agenda, as was the case with the GAI, an affiliation will not occur.

Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers are uniquely positioned to persuade uncommitted

followers that Al Qa’ida has a better ideology. As mentioned in earlier chapters, Al Qa’ida’s

commanding officers are tightly coupled to their operatives. The dyadic relationship between

these leaders and their followers is characterized by high quality leader-member exchange

resulting from frequent communication, interactive communication patterns, leader-member

value agreement, effective influence tactics, a high degree of decision influence, and subordinate

loyalty. The leaders of local jihadist groups develop differentiated relationships with their

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rapports, rather than using an average leadership style. Due to such high quality leader-member

exchange, followers trust their leaders and can be persuaded to engage in activities that they

otherwise would not and can be encouraged to move beyond their own self-interest to focus on

larger mutual interests(Graen and Uhl-Bien 1995).

Moreover, due to their close relationship with operatives, Al Qa’ida’s commanding

officers can ground their message in the narrative elements most likely to resonate with this

target group. When the security situation does not permit direct communications, Al Qa’ida’s

commanding officers correspond with their cohorts through communiqués, speeches, and

interviews, in which they clarify their vision, as Droukdal did on numerous occasions. Because

they know their audience well, they can apply effective message management, rhetoric, and spin.

Based on these motivational communications, followers are encouraged to take personal

initiative and exercise personal leadership to make their unit more effective. Thus, through their

ideological operations, Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers can convince their operatives to

integrate their previous regional ambitions with a wider transnational Islamic agenda. In doing

so, they subordinate their radical group to Al Qa’ida’s strategic goals and move their localized

Islamic resistance beyond sovereign state boundaries to transcend provincial frames of reference.

When a group first affiliates with Al Qa’ida, culture shock is inevitable. In addition to

accepting Al Qa’ida’s pan-Islamic program, operatives must also integrate new tactics and

strategies into their repertoire. For instance, the GSPC was encouraged to engage in suicide and

arson attacks(Guidère 2007). Valuable insights can be gained by considering the role that

managers play when two companies merge in order to understand the role that Al Qa’ida’s

commanding officers play in mitigating culture shock and encouraging integration. Like Al

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Qa’ida’s commanding officers, transition mangers assume full-time responsibility and

accountability for making integration work.

When corporate mergers occur, transition managers must make the case for integration to

large numbers of employees. Although some of the groups that Al Qa’ida merges with have less

than five hundred operatives, the burden of responsibility still rests on the commanding officers

to assuage their followers after the affiliation with Al Qa’ida commences. Soon after the GSPC

announced its merger with Al Qa’ida, Droukdal issued a communiqué explaining and justifying

this repositioning. For Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers and corporate transition managers, one

of the most common difficulties that arise during the merger is “cultural differences.” For

example, a corporation may encourage teamwork while the venture it subsumes may be more

oriented towards individual initiatives. Both transition managers and Al Qa’ida’s commanding

officers must be skilled in relinquishing and helping others relinquish past values and practices

that are not in tune with the current, shared vision of future organizational arrangements (Marks

and Mirvis 2000). This can only be achieved by providing ideological guidance through leader-

member exchanges and through public communications and appearances.

In addition, mergers represent sudden, major change and generate a great deal of

uncertainty due to the fact that organizational cultures are underpinned by deep assumptions that

are constant, patterned, and shared. The threat to old corporate values and organizational lifestyle

leaves organizational members in a state of defensiveness accentuated by low levels of trust

within the institution. Employees’ reactions most often pass through four distinct stages. They

commence with disbelief and denial and pass into anger and then rage and resentment, next

emotional bargaining begins, often accompanied by frustration and depression, finally

acceptance occurs. These are identical to Dr. Helen Kubler-Ross’s four stages of bereavement or

103
grief. What the operative grapples with is akin to the “death” of the previous organization and

the letting go of this relationship (Cartwright and Cooper 1990).

A wide range of factors affect organizational change as produced during a merger.

Leaders hoping to initiative organizational change and general follower acceptance face a

daunting task. They must assuage their followers’ fears and convince them of the saliency and

relevance of the new program through constant communication. Finally, they must inspire hope,

optimism, and a sense that the future will be better than the past through their speeches and other

outreach activities.

Leaders, like Droukdal, successfully promote change by implementing and campaigning

for a unique vision of the organization through a publicity campaign. Effective leaders possess

powerful persuasive personal characteristics and execute actions designed to change internal

organizational culture and substance. In this context, leadership can be viewed as the art of

mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations (Covin et al. 1997).

When a merger occurs, transition managers (and Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers) must

define the new “combination” goals, principles, and desired end state. Moreover, they should

clarify critical success factors for the merger, anticipate the impact of change, and address

inconsistencies between the espoused operating principles and actual management of change. It

is their responsibility to define, promote, and support necessary changes in behaviors and culture

to successfully realize the post-combination organization. Finally, they should serve as role

models on how to “work together” for the goals of the organization. These initiatives can only be

achieved by assuming an ideological role (Kavanagh and Ashkanasy 2006). Communication

should be their major priority throughout the merger process.

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 Understanding Al Qa’ida’s commanding officer’s role as transition managers during a

merger is important when designing initiatives to undermine their efforts. My data indicates that

these commanding officers are leading Al Qa’ida’s growing media offensive. The media has

become a crucial battlefield in the current conflict against radical Islamic terrorism (Blanchard

2006). Counterterrorism units can use media organizations to launch global propaganda pushes

that will taint the Al Qa’ida brand and make it even less attractive to local militants. It is

important to remember that some groups, like the GAI, do opt to renounce violence. Thus,

messaging should refute the imputation of malign Western intention in the Muslim world and

undermine the notion that terrorism is authentically Islamic. This program should expose tension

between Al Qa’ida leadership and supporters. For instance, authorities can publicize the rejection

of Al Qa’ida by credible local figures, especially religious ones. In fact, several leaders of GAI

and Al-Jihad al-Islami, another principle Islamist militant group in Egypt, have taken steps to

promote peaceful co-existence with the government and society(Gunaratna and Ali 2009).

Moreover, government communications strategy should build an attractive alternative to

the Al Qa’ida worldview by appealing to a sense of deracinated nationalism. Such propaganda

will appeal to communities anxious to retain their cultural heritage and religious integrity.

Approaching communications in this manner ensures that the government avoids exacerbating

feelings of alienation within Muslim communities.

Counterterrorist forces can also harness the power of the “Shayma effect” (which refers

to an incident where an Egyptian schoolgirl was killed in a jihadist attack) by broadcasting

images off jihadist attacks that have killed Muslim children. Proxies must manage from affair

and this sort of counter-terrorism publicity campaign. For example, counterterrorist units should

channel messages through volunteers in Internet forums(Brachman and McCants 2006). For

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instance, Salafi and Islamist communities in London have consistently demonstrated skill,

courage and commitment in countering al-Qaida propaganda and recruitment activity. Ed Husain

and Shiraz Maher were two young British Muslims who became involved with radical Islamist

politics with Hizb ut-Tahir before renouncing their affiliation and speaking out publicly about

the dangers of intolerant Islamism (MacEoin 2007).

Moreover, the government should continue to capture Al Qa’ida news and production

staff, along with their PCS and data files. The collapse of Al Qa’ida’s propaganda operations will

also cause the Arab media to move towards more coverage of the legitimate Iraqi government.

This study indicates that Al Qa’ida’s commanding officers are playing an increasingly

ideological role. The leaders of the Western world should follow suit. Ayman Al Zawahiri

acknowledges that the struggle between the secular governments in the West and the militant

jihadists of Al Qa’ida is a “battle of ideologies, a struggle for survival, and a war with no truce”

(Payne 2009). Our government should also realize this truism.

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114
 Appendix I: List of Terrorist Groups
Merger Partnership Collaboration Unaffiliated
(Control)

al-Qaeda Organization Ansar al-Islam/Jund al- Islamic Movement of Al-Gama’a al-

in the Land of the Two Islam/Ansar al-Sunnah Uzbekistan Islamiyya
Rivers (formerly
Jama'at al-Tawhid wal- Asbat al-Ansar Yemen Islamic Jihad
Jihad)
Taliban Aden Abyan Islamic
Egyptian Islamic Jihad Army
Islamic Jihad Union
al-Qaeda Organization Harkat ul-Ansar/Harakat
in the Islamic Maghreb Lashkar-e-Jhangvi ul Mujahidin
(formerly Groupe Lashkar-e-Taiba
Salafist pour la Jaish-e-Mohammad
Prédication et le Tunisian Combatant al-Ittihaad al-Islami
Combat) Group
Eritrean Islamic Jihad
Libyan Islamic Fighting Moroccan Islamic Movement
Group Combatant Group

Jemaah Islamiya

Abu Sayyaf

115
 Appendix II: Sources by Terrorist Group
Al-Qaeda Organization in the Land of the Two Rivers (formerly Jama'at al-
Tawhid wal-Jihad)
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 Appendix III: Commanding Officer Attribute Codebook
Type of merger Formal merger 4
Strong affiliation (partnership) 3
Loose affiliation (collaboration) 2
No affiliation 1
Opportunism Primary motive 2
Secondary motive 1
Not a motive 0
Pan-Islamic ideology Primary motive 2
Secondary motive 1
Not a motive 0
Social network Primary motive 2
Secondary motive 1
Not a motive 0
Operational leadership Strong leadership 3
Ideological leadership Average leadership 2
Logistic leadership Weaker leadership 1

Not applicable (Was not active in the

organization at the time) 0

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Appendix IV: Leadership Attributes

Ideological Logistic Operational Ideological Logistic

Organization Date of Ideological Operational leadership leadership leadership leadership leadership
country or foundin Date of Type of Opportunistic Alignment Social network leadership pre- pre- post- post- post-
Leader name Organization name Organization type origin g affiliation affiliation motives? ? affiliations? pre-merger merger? merger? merger? merger? merger?
Ansar al-Islam/Jund al-
Mullah Krekar Islam/Ansar al-Sunnah Core Arab Cluster Iraq 2001 2001 3 2 0 1 1 3 3 1 3 2
Ansar al-Islam/Jund al-
Abdullah Shafi Islam/Ansar al-Sunnah Core Arab Cluster Iraq 2001 2001 3 2 0 1 0 0 0 3 2 1
al-Qaeda Organization in
the Land of the Two
Rivers (formerly Jama'at
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi al-Tawhid wal-Jihad) Core Arab Cluster Iraq 1999 2004 4 2 0 1 3 2 3 3 3 2
al-Qaeda Organization in
the Land of the Two
Rivers (formerly Jama'at
Abu Ayub Al-Masri al-Tawhid wal-Jihad) Core Arab Cluster Iraq 1999 2004 4 2 0 1 0 0 0 3 1 2
al-Qaeda Organization in
the Land of the Two
Rivers (formerly Jama'at
Abu Khalil al-Souri al-Tawhid wal-Jihad) Core Arab Cluster Iraq 1999 2004 4 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 1
Abu Muhjin Asbat al-Ansar Core Arab Cluster Lebanon 1986 2000 3 2 0 0 2 2 2 1 1 2
Mohammed Omar Taliban Core Arab Cluster Afghanistan 1994 1996 3 2 0 1 3 2 2 2 3 2
Ayman Al Zawahiri Egyptian Islamic Jihad Core Arab Cluster Egypt 1987 1998 4 2 0 1 3 3 3 2 3 2
Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif Egyptian Islamic Jihad Core Arab Cluster Egypt 1987 1998 4 2 1 1 1 3 2 0 0 0
Islamic Movement of
Tahir Yuldashev Uzbekistan Core Arab Cluster Uzbekistan 1998 1998 2 2 0 1 2 3 3 2 3 2
Islamic Movement of
Juma Namangani Uzbekistan Core Arab Cluster Uzbekistan 1998 1998 2 2 0 1 3 1 2 3 1 2
Najmiddin Jalolov Islamic Jihad Union Core Arab Cluster Uzbekistan 2002 2005 3 1 2 1 3 1 2 3 2 2
Tariq al-Fasdli Yemen Islamic Jihad Core Arab Cluster Yemen 1990 1992 2 2 0 1 3 3 2 3 3 3
Zein al-Abideen al- Aden Abyan Islamic
Mehdar Army Core Arab Cluster Yemen 1990 1998 2 0 2 1 2 2 1 3 3 2
Aden Abyan Islamic
Khalid al-Nabi al-Yazidi Army Core Arab Cluster Yemen 1990 1998 2 0 2 1 2 3 2 2 3 2

Maulana Saadatullah Harkat ul-Ansar/Harakat

Khan ul Mujahidin Southern Asian cluster Pakistan 1985 1998 2 2 1 0 3 2 1 0 0 0

Harkat ul-Ansar/Harakat
Fazlur Rehman Khalil ul Mujahidin Southern Asian cluster Pakistan 1985 1998 2 1 2 1 1 2 3 2 3 3

Harkat ul-Ansar/Harakat
Farooq Kashmiri Khalil ul Mujahidin Southern Asian cluster Pakistan 1985 1998 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 3 1 2
Riaz Basra Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Southern Asian cluster Pakistan 1996 1999 3 0 2 1 3 2 3 2 3 3
Akram Lahori Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Southern Asian cluster Pakistan 1996 1999 3 1 2 0 0 0 0 3 2 2
Hafiz Mohammad
Saeed Lashkar-e-Taiba Southern Asian cluster Pakistan 1990 2001 3 0 2 1 2 3 2 1 3 3
Maulana Abdul Wahid
Kashmiri Lashkar-e-Taiba Southern Asian cluster Pakistan 1990 2001 3 2 1 0 0 0 0 3 1 2

Maulana Masood Azhar Jaish-e-Mohammad Southern Asian cluster Pakistan 2000 2000 2 2 1 1 1 3 3 2 3 2
Sheikh Ali Warsame al-Ittihaad al-Islami African cluster Somalia 1984 1991 2 2 1 0 1 3 3 2 3 3
Sheikh Hassan Dahir
Aweys al-Ittihaad al-Islami African cluster Somalia 1984 1991 2 2 0 1 3 1 2 3 3 3
Hassan Abdullah Hersi
al-Turki al-Ittihaad al-Islami African cluster Somalia 1984 1991 2 2 0 0 3 1 1 3 3 3
Sheikh Khalil Eritrean Islamic Jihad
Mohammed Amer Movement African cluster Eritrea 1988 1998 2 2 1 0 1 2 1 2 2 2

136
 al-Qaeda Organization in
the Islamic Maghreb
(formerly Groupe Salafist
pour la prédication et le
Hassan Hattab combat) Maghreb Arab cluster Algeria 1996 2005 4 2 0 0 3 3 3 0 0 0

al-Qaeda Organization in
the Islamic Maghreb
(formerly Groupe Salafist
pour la prédication et le
Nabil Sahraoui combat) Maghreb Arab cluster Algeria 1996 2005 4 2 1 1 3 2 1 0 0 0

al-Qaeda Organization in
the Islamic Maghreb
(formerly Groupe Salafist
pour la prédication et le
Abdelmalik Droukdal combat) Maghreb Arab cluster Algeria 1996 2005 4 2 1 0 3 3 3 3 3 3
Libyan Islamic Fighting
Anas Sebai Group Maghreb Arab cluster Libya 1995 1997 4 2 1 0 3 1 1 3 1 3
Tarek Ben Habib Tunisian Combatant
Maaroufi Group Maghreb Arab cluster Tunisia 2000 2000 3 0 2 1 3 2 2 1 1 3
Tunisian Combatant
Saifallah Ben Hassine Group Maghreb Arab cluster Tunisia 2000 2000 3 2 0 1 1 1 3 1 1 2
Mohammed Al Moroccan Islamic
Karbouzi Combatant Group Maghreb Arab cluster Morocco 1993 2001 3 2 0 1 1 2 3 3 2 3
Moroccan Islamic
Taeb Bentizi Combatant Group Maghreb Arab cluster Morocco 1993 2001 3 2 0 0 2 1 1 2 1 1
Abu Bakar Bashir Jemaah Islamiya Southeast Asian cluster Indonesia 1993 1998 3 2 0 0 1 3 3 3 3 3
Abu Rusdan Jemaah Islamiya Southeast Asian cluster Indonesia 1993 1998 3 2 0 1 2 1 2 3 3
Abu Dujana Jemaah Islamiya Southeast Asian cluster Indonesia 1993 1998 3 2 0 1 3 2 3 3 3 3
Abdurajak Janjalani Abu Sayyaf Southeast Asian cluster Philippines 1991 1991 3 2 0 1 1 2 3 3 3 3
Khadaffy Janjalani Abu Sayyaf Southeast Asian cluster Philippines 1991 1991 3 2 1 1 3 2 2 3 3 3
Yasser Igasan Abu Sayyaf Southeast Asian cluster Philippines 1991 1991 3 2 1 1 2 2 3 3 3 3

137
 Appendix V: Data on Universe of Cases
Figure 1: Number of Affiliations by Year
Number of Affiliations by Year
7

0
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Year

Figure 2: Distribution by Type of Affiliation

Figure 3: Distribution by Region

138
 Appendix VI: Data on Q1

What motivates local jihadist leaders to affiliate with Al Qa’ida’s and its pan-Islamic
agenda?
Table 1: Chi-Squared Test (Three Scales)
Opportunistic Ideological Social Network
Motive Alignment Affiliation
Total 0 (Not a
motivation) 5 22 14
Total 1
(Secondary
motivation) 3 11 27
Total 2 (Primary
motivation) 33 8 0
Expected Total 0 13.67 13.67 13.67
Expected Total 1 13.67 13.67 13.67
Expected Total 2 13.67 13.67 13.67
P Value 1.14786E-09 0.018767854 1.60648E-06

Table 2: Statistical Significance Testing (Two Scales)

Opportunistic Ideological Social Network
Motive Alignment Affiliation

Not a motivation 5 22 14
Motivation 36 19 27
Expected (Not a
motivation) 20.5 20.5 20.5
Expected
(Motivation) 20.5 20.5 20.5
P Value 1.28936E-06 0.639411853 0.042330234

139
Appendix VII: Data on Q2

What type of role do local jihadist leaders play within Al Qa’ida’s network when the
organization for which they are responsible affiliates with Al Qa’ida?

Table 3: Chi-Squared Test (Strength of operational, ideological, and logistic leadership before
and after the merger)
Operational Ideological Logistic
Before After Sum Before After Sum Before After Sum
Total Not
active (0) 7 4 11 6 4 10 6 4 10
Total
Weak (1) 10 5 15 7 10 17 8 3 11
Total
Average
(2) 7 12 19 16 5 21 11 17 28
Total
Strong (3) 17 20 37 12 22 34 16 17 33
Total 41 41 82 41 41 82 41 41 82
Expected
Not
active 5.5 5.5 5 5 5 5
Expected
Weak 7.5 7.5 8.5 8.5 5.5 5.5
Expected
Average 9.5 9.5 10.5 10.5 14 14
Expected
Strong 18.5 18.5 17 17 16.5 16.5
0.256764552 0.021962838 0.262682055

P Value

140
Table 4: Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test (Strength of operational, ideological, and logistic
leadership before and after the merger)
Wilcoxon Wilcoxon Wilcoxon
Signed Rank Signed Rank Signed Rank Wilcoxon
Test for Test for Test for Signed Rank
Operational Ideological Logistic Test for Overall
Leadership Leadership Leadership Leadership
Performance Performance Performance Performance
(pre-post) (pre-post) (pre-post) (pre-post)
# of 0
Differences 15 16 15 9
# of Ties 3 3 2 5
Z-Value -1.359 -1.466 -1.422 -1.898
P-Value 0.1742 0.1425 0.1549 0.0577
Tied Z-
Value -1.382 -1.526 -1.477 -1.91
Tied P-
Value 0.161 0.1269 0.1397 0.0562
Count 16 19 16 22
Sum of
Ranks 229 217 231.5 365.5
Mean
# Ranks <0 Rank 14.313 11.421 14.469 16.614
Count 10 6 10 10
Sum of
Ranks 122 108 119.5 162.5
# of Ranks Mean
>0 Rank 12.2 18 11.95 16.25

Table 5: Paired Sign Test (Strength of operational, ideological, and logistic leadership before
and after the merger)
Paired Sign Paired Sign
Test for Test for Paired Sign Test
Operational Ideological for Logistic Paired Sign Test for
Leadership Leadership Leadership Overall Leadership
Performance Performance Performance Performance (pre-
(pre-post) (pre-post) (pre-post) post)
# Differences >0 10 19 10 10
# of Differences
<0 16 6 16 22

# Differences =0 15 16 15 9
P-Value 0.3269 0.0146 0.3269 0.0501

141
Figures 4-6: Paired Sign Test Results
40

35

30
Score Difference (Post-Pre)

25
Improved
or no
20 change

15 Declined

10

0
Operational Ideologigcal Logistic Total

25

20
Score Difference (Post-Pre)

15

Improved
Declined

10

0
Operational Ideologigcal Logistic Total

142