Al-Qaeda: History Organization Ideology

By Ben Simon

The main argument in the book is that Al-Qaeda was established because of the internal political conflict within Islamic countries, and its leaders have understood that in order to be able to fight the Arabic-Muslim local regimes and become a proper alternative to them, it first has to fight the West, especially the United States. Besides the terror attack on the United States, I make my argument about historical events that took place during the organization's tenure, including its formation within Sudan, its fight and defeat within Iraq, and its taking root within Europe, which I see as the main danger to the West. I have conducted an analysis of the ideology guiding the organization, including its historical resources, its attitude toward the West, and the organization's present and future plans. Ultimately, I will analyze al-Qaeda's organizational aspects, including its leadership profile and its activists' profiles, while describing the way they are trained to perform terrorist activities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ben Simon
• Release date: Sep 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310087707

Ben Simon

The Author Ben Simon is a former major at the Israeli intelligence corps, where he served for 12 years. Ben Simon has three decades of experience in terrorism issues related to Middle East and Europe. Ben Simon holds MA in Middle Eastern Studies, MA in Conflict Resolution and LLM from Tel Aviv University in Cooperation with the University of California, Berkeley, all of which he graduated with honors. Since 2001, Ben Simon is a lawyer in the public service, including 7 years at the Supreme Court of Israel. Part of his book dealing with ideology won prize of excellence in writing from inbar Fund which operates under the auspices of Israel Intelligence Heritage center. Al-qaeda is his first book.

Book preview

In the core of this book, an attempt is made to figure out why young people, in the middle of their lives, found the courage to hijack airliners and be crushed along with them into the twin towers of New York. What motivated these young people to commit suicide? What motivated their leaders to send them to their own death? These are only a portion of the questions concerning al-Qaeda's enigma.

Indeed, in the beginning of my research, I tended to give the common answer, the answer that originally comes from Samuel Huntington's school of thought, which relates the violent global conflicts to the collision between various civilizations and the special violence Islam excels in. However, the truth that became clear to me is that none of the young people chose to end their lives because of the collision between various civilizations, but instead because of the political collision within Islamic countries between the political regimes and the nations that wish to be released from them. The Arab Spring, which first broke out in December 2010 in Tunisia and ended with the removal of the Tunisian ruler, and the national rebellion in Egypt, along with many other rebellions occurring within the Arabic-Muslim region, have all made it clear that my assumptions have a realistic basis.

This book poses several questions, including the following: why has al-Qaeda been established, what are the main milestones in its history, what the ideology that guides its beliefs is, and what the organizational features according to which it operates are. My main argument is that Al-Qaeda was established, as previously mentioned, because of the internal political conflict within Islamic countries, and its leaders have understood that in order to be able to fight the Arabic-Muslim local regimes and become a proper alternative to them, it first has to fight the West, especially the United States. Besides the terror attack on the United States, I make my argument about historical events that took place during the organization's tenure, including its formation within Sudan, its fight and defeat within Iraq, and its taking root within Europe, which I see as the main danger to the West. I have conducted an analysis of the ideology guiding the organization, including its historical resources, its attitude toward the West, and the organization's present and future plans. Ultimately, I will analyze al-Qaeda's organizational aspects, including its leadership profile and its activists' profiles, while describing the way they are trained to perform terrorist activities.

In addition to the book's intention to understand and explain the riddle named al-Qaeda, this text hopes to shed light on radical Islam within the Arab-muslim region, and even in Europe. The book thus aims to assist researchers and decision makers, and also act as a Guide to the Perplexed for common people who wish to understand this phenomenon that is so fateful in the lives of each human being in the twenty-first century.

This book is based on available sources only. As opposed to the conventional impression, there is plenty of knowledge on the subject of al-Qaeda; the problem is not the lack of knowledge but the enormous excess of it. The main goal of this text was to not let the trees hide the forest.

The chapter of this book that deals with ideology won a prize on behalf of Inbar Atia's foundation, which is a memorial foundation that encourages research into the fight against terror in cooperation with the legacy of the intelligence center in Israel.

Introduction

Humankind will forever remember September 11, 2001 as the day when terror rose to the level of strategic threat to the entire free world. On that day, al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, carried out the biggest and deadliest terror attack in history.¹ A group of Islamic extremists took control of huge passenger airplanes while they were in the air, and set them on a collision course with the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense in Virginia. This attack, like other al-Qaeda attacks, had a symbolic meaning extending beyond the huge damage and terrible loss it resulted in.² This was a declaration of war against the entire West, and against the United States in particular. This was an expression of the courage and religious determination of the terrorists who participated in the attack. Perhaps, more than anything else, this terrorist attack expressed hostility and rage against the new Crusaders³ that is, against the West and everything it represented.

On August 23, 1996, Bin Laden issued a legal pronouncement (Fatwa in Arabic), which declared that al-Qaeda's main goal was to expel the United States of America from the Arabian Peninsula.⁴ In November of the same year, Bin Laden announced to the American people that if the United States did not immediately remove its forces from the Persian Gulf, he would start a Jihad against the United States and its allies. It is clear from what he said that at the end of 1996, al-Qaeda arrived at a strategic decision to commence war against the US in retaliation for their military presence in the Persian Gulf region, particularly, in Saudi Arabia.⁵ Bill Clinton, the then president of the United States, claimed that the West had nothing against Islamic nations, but only against violent Muslim extremists. However, denying the existence of a conflict does not prove its non-existence.

Al-Qaeda's struggle against the United States—and the West in general—is often interpreted as part of what has been called an inevitable conflict between Christian civilization and Muslim civilization. This concept of conflict, or collision, was developed by Professor Samuel Huntington, who linked the collision to Muslim civilization and who lists several factors as explanations. First, he says, Islam is a sword religion and he magnifies military advantages. Second, he argues that since Islam has been established in the Arabian Peninsula its expansion all around North Africa and within a big part of the Middle East has brought the Muslims to a direct contact with many various nations. Third, he claims that Muslims' violence stems from their inability to digest nations that are not Muslim and show tolerance toward them.⁶

Professor Emmanuel Sivan, on the other hand, has determined that the collision within the Muslim civilization – and this is the meaningful collision and not the one existing between the civilizations which is nothing but imagination – it is between the Islamic extremists and the governments. Sivan explains that Huntington was fascinated and captivated by the rhetoric of the extreme aspect of the Muslim world, which is important, however small, that deals with the struggle between Islam and the West; however, this section, which is al-Qaeda, is far from representative of the entire Islam religion. Though Sivan's research does not focus on al-Qaeda, Sivan comments on it and says that al-Qaeda's ultimate goal is to defeat the near enemy—that is, atheistic Arab governments—before anything else. On the issue of al-Qaeda's ultimate goal, there has been disagreement between researchers as well; Gilles Keppel assumes, as opposed to Sivan, that al-Qaeda's ultimate goal is to defeat Europe and the United States.⁷

The first part of this book deals with the questions of why al-Qaeda was established and what was the context for its establishment. The first part will deal with the comprehensive historical background that allowed for al-Qaeda's appearance throughout the entire Muslim world, and even in Europe. On the basis of this part the allegation will be that al-Qaeda was established because three causes. The first, inside Islam, stems from Islamic countries' shaky situation at the end of the last century.⁸ The second is al-Qaeda's intention to manage a Jihad against the West, in order to expel them from Islamic lands. ⁹ The third cause deals with the desire of al-Qaeda to take control of the radical Islamic movement, both in the West and within local regimes.¹⁰ This third cause stems from what al-Qaeda sees as a failure of radical Islamic movement to take political control within the Islamic countries, which left these countries in the hands of evil and immoral rulers, subject to the exclusive control of the West.

In the second part, I will discuss the main events al-Qaeda experienced during the first two decades of its existence, starting with the organization's formation during the Afghanistan-U.S.S.R war and continuing up until 2005 and I will expand my discussion of a few key events in the organization's history. The first of these will deal with the Afghanistan-U.S.S.R war, which saw many Muslims recruited from various Muslim countries to create a multi-ethnic and transnational force that turned into the al-Qaeda organization at the end of the war. Next, I will review al-Qaeda's establishment in Sudan, where much of character of al-Qaeda has been shaped, including its international character. Another important era is the period of time in Afghanistan, when Osama Bin Laden returned and joined the Taliban, until its defeat by the United States in 2001. An important event I focus on is the terror attack on September 11, in the United States, the biggest achievement for al-Qaeda, and a moment which fortunately it did not succeed in repeating. I choose to end this part with al-Qaeda's terrorism in Europe, while emphasizing two different terrorist events: the first is the terrorist attacks in Britain on July 7, 2005, and the second is the terror attack in Spain on March 11, 2004.

Within the third part I wish to understand al-Qaeda's ideology; this section emphasizes the way in which the West is perceived in the eyes of al-Qaeda's deliberators and makes an effort to understand the main injustices al-Qaeda's deliberators ascribe to the new Crusade. Eventually, I will seek to identify what al-Qaeda's big plan is in relation to the West, what al-Qaeda's goals are, and what strategy they are planning to take in order to achieve them.

The fourth part will be dedicated to a discussion of al-Qaeda's organizational structure which includes its leadership, its activists, its operating methods, and the significance of Internet networks to its worldview in terms of the communication it has with its people and the recruitment of new activists to its lines. This subject matter is a human profile of al-Qaeda's leaders and activists.

Basically, I assume al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization with political ambitions that aspires to become an elite group that will occupy the regimes of the states within the Arab-muslim region and unite them into one Islamic state. As a rule, elites all over the Arab-muslim region are not open to The Outsiders knocking on their door. Most of these elites include army officers wealthy families or, in the case of Saudi Arabia, people from the royal family. The elites used to accept people who resembled them and shared the same political view which is essentially secular, and closed their doors in the face of all others who did not belong to the regime circle. Fouad Ajami said of these regimes that the officers and soldiers who usurp the regime turned into kings on their own way. Their regimes' cruelty, especially in Syria and Iraq, constituted a persuasive argument for the old royal family regime. ¹¹

The citizens' desire to penetrate the regime and take part in political action was formulated by the philosopher Pareto, as a political phenomenon called the Circulation of the Elites. According to this theory, the reigning elite is composed of the people who rule and their social class, and to this class participants from lower social classes or from the non-ruling Elite naturally penetrate.¹² When individuals and groups find their way is blocked and they are unable to penetrate the dominating elite, the situation degenerates and the opposing body among the lower classes or among those who do not dominate will gather strength.¹³ In this case, the social balance will be undermined and each slight shock might shake society until a revolution erupts. The revolution will, in turn, create new elites and establish a new social balance. According to this approach, a sophisticated leadership will aim to integrate talented people who do not belong to the dominant elite into their regime; the dominant elite will become stronger, but perhaps even more importantly, the competitive elite will become weaker.¹⁴

Implementing this theory for the case of al-Qaeda leads me to conclude that the al-Qaeda phenomenon can be explained by a group of people attempt to occupy the regimes of the countries in the Arab-muslim region and substitute alternative regimes. After the organization had been established for a period of time, it became clear that there was no longer hope for this kind of move without an act of violence. At the top of the organization are people who belong, according to Pareto's terms, to the non-dominant elite¹⁵ and who aim to become the ruling elite within their original countries as well as all other Islamic countries. When local regimes prevent political participation within their realm, they create a basic dissatisfaction that is translated into violence against the regime. Al-Qaeda is not the first Islamic movement to act this way. Many years before, an Islamic movement attempted to take control of local regimes while in direct conflict with these regimes and in the midst of acts of violence; however this attempt failed. After the Islamic people failed in their initial fight against the local regimes, al-Qaeda was established and first fought the West with the excuse that the West stands in the way of the Islamic movement, and, therefore, must be resisted until it is overpowered and retreats from Islamic lands.

In order to fully understand al-Qaeda's worldview, their main deliberators' manuscripts, which ascribe great importance to the beliefs behind their actions, must be analyzed in the sense of think on the end before you begin. While the generation of the 1970s and 1980s spread its doctrine mainly by means of cassettes,¹⁶ al-Qaeda spreads its doctrine mainly through the Internet, which is accessible to all people, fast, cheap, visual, and interactive. The cassettes brought public awareness to the doctrine of radical Islam while the internet, the outstanding technology product of the twentieth century, has given wings to al-Qaeda.)¹⁷ Through this medium, the organization and activist leaders have spread their words and ideas to their target audience. After the war between Afghanistan and the United States, this ideology performed an important function for al-Qaeda's agenda and this framework dictated al-Qaeda's operation planning, including both its short-term and long-term goals.

This book is structured, by al-Qaeda's years of activity, that is, since the day it was established in 1988 up until the most recent activity, a period of about twenty years. However, naturally a book that focuses on ideology, even today, will not be complete if it does not also investigate the organization's ideological roots; these roots extend back to the days of ibn Taymiyyah¹⁸ and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and even to the former century, during the days of Sayyid Qutb. This investigation mainly focuses on the organization's leaders and deliberators' manuscripts, whose writings and operations found expression mainly at the end of the last century.

The internet provides a very large reservoir for research on this organization.¹⁹ This reservoir contains, first, books and essays that have been written by al-Qaeda's leaders. These books allow for research on the al-Qaeda leaders' ways of thinking on various subjects. Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri 's books, for example address al-Qaeda's attitude toward the Muslim brothers found within his book Al-Hisad Al-Murr (The Bitter Harvest); ²⁰ he also has an interesting book that was written after the war between the United States and the Taliban, Knights Under the Prophet's Banner.²¹ Osama Bin Laden did not write books; however, the amount of manifestos he produced himself and the interviews he gave during the years, is enormous. In some sections of the manifestos and interviews, he expresses very interesting ideas and thoughts.²²

In my book, I will refer to the writings of philosophers identified with al-Qaeda, of whom the most prominent and notable are the Saudi Arabian Sheikh, Faris al-Zahrani, sometimes named Abu Jandal al-Azdi,²³ and the Saudi Arabian Sheikh, Abu Bakr Naji. This books is accompanied by many original documents that have been produced during the war between the United States and Afghanistan.²⁴

Concerning terminology, I make a clear distinction between Islam as a religion, which has 1.3 billion Muslim believers committed to it, and Islamism or radical Islam. The Islamist people who do not see Islam just a religion, relating to ceremony only, but instead see it as complicated political system dominating the judicial, economic, and social domains of the nation, and who prioritize the goal of redesigning the country by means of conservative and comprehensive inclusion of the Islamic law.²⁵ These Islamic people, who name themselves in al-Qaeda's context as Jihādīyūn or Mujahedeen as well, believe as a basic premise that Islam is not only a religion but also a political and cultural system involved in all domains of life. Often, Islamic trustees name themselves the Islamic movement. The ideology guiding al-Qaeda is the ideology called Salfia Jihadiya," which emphasizes the meaning of Salfia, that is the return to the first days of Islam on the one hand, and the meaning of Jihad as a means of achieving the organization's goals by force on the other hand.

Part One: The background for al-Qaeda's organization

Chapter 1: The condition of states within the Arab-muslim region

September 11 was a unique event regarding its scope of horror, however from the despair intensity point of view it has expressed this event isn't different than any former terror attack that predicted the end of the movements executing them. ²⁶ A deed of despair is how the important Arabic thinker, Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm, sees the terror attack of September 11. Was this indeed an act of despair? This chapter attempts to answer that question.

In the year during which el-Qaeda was established, 1988, the situation of the Arabic-Muslim countries was very bleak. Proof for this allegation was discovered when, about ten years later, the United Nations Organization (UN) appointed a chosen group of Arabic researchers to produce a report concerning the Arabic states' situation at the end of the twentieth century.²⁷ The report painted a very dire picture. According to the parameters examined, the Arabic world was at the bottom of the scales compared to the other countries in the world, or at best, above only the African nations.²⁸ The report showed that the analphabetic rate among the Arab world, even though it has declined during the past decades, is still high. The number of children attending elementary school is significantly lower than their numbers within developing countries. The expense for education per head, which in 1980 was 20% of the average within industrialized countries, had declined to 10% fifteen years later.²⁹

This report's research found that, in 1999, the Gross domestic product (GDP) of all the Arab countries combined, which totaled 531.2 billion dollars, was only lower that year than that of Spain, which totaled 595.5 billion dollars. This important UN document probably guided Osama Bin Laden, who indicated through a message broadcast on Al Jazeera—a message that was directed to all Muslim people—that the Muslim world was in a state of deterioration, and what could be more reflective of this situation than the comparison with the economy of Spain. Bin Laden referred to spain as Al-Andalus, which had been part of the Muslim world in the past, and asked how it could be even more powerful than all the economies of the Arab world combined.

During the past three decades, an economical trend of regression has been apparent. The labor productivity is low and still declining, while industry productivity remains unchanged and is still relatively low compared to other places in the world. While in 1960, the production per person was higher than the average of countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong-Kong, and Singapore, in 2003, it was half of South Korea's production. The unemployment rate within the Arab world is the highest among the developing countries.³⁰

The key to understanding the situation of the Middle East at the end of the twentieth century is located in the period following World War II, a time when British and French control came to an end. Some of the old regimes within the Islamic world were replaced by new regimes, and the rulers were encouraged to implement a policy of rapid development within societies that were in the middle of a significant transition. The population grew fast and the cities expanded, especially the capital cities. The social classes variously integrated, and the influence of new modes of communication, such as the cinema, radio, television, and audio cassettes, was evident in all domains of life. This rapid development was mainly beneficial to those who succeeded in dealing with the changes and adapting themselves to them. Those who immediate profits were the elites: the politicians, the army officers, the senior government officials, the businessmen, export and import sectors, and consumer products' industries, as well as the entrepreneurs whose businesses reached beyond national borders to the world market. Skilled workers also gained profits when political circumstances enabled them to efficiently organize themselves.³¹

In the big cities, especially on their margins, a population of small employers, small merchants, and service suppliers for the wealthy emerged and they were surrounded by a large population of people who earned their living from the informal sector, including vendors, people dealing with random employment, or the unemployed. Among the meaningful phenomena that particularly distressed societies following World War II, the phenomenon of population growth among Islamic societies especially stood out. For example, between 1965 and 1990, the Maghreb population grew at a rate of 2.65% per year, from 29.8 million people to 59 million people. The population in Algeria grew at a yearly rate of 3%, and in Egypt at a yearly rate of 2.3%, from 29.4 million to 52.4 million people between 1965 and 1990.³²

However, more than anything else, the 1967 military defeat by Israel reflected to the Muslim countries, especially to the Arab countries, their tragic situation. The military failure started a long process of self-criticism among the Arab-muslim countries, in the middle of which was a feeling of failure and lost opportunities in many other domains. The sense of failure also included the values exported from the West: thus, from the dream of socialism a bombastic bureaucracy and hidden unemployment remains, and from Arab unity nothing remains after the failed alliance signed by Syria and Egypt.

Egypt is a representative case. The 1950s reign of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who in the middle of the twentieth century many considered, that he signaled a better future in the political domain. It seemed as if the Arab people's dream of establishing a strong, independent country was about to come true. Nasser, who was known for his abounding charisma, succeeded in giving his people and the rest of the Arab world a sense of hope for a brighter future. As he spoke about the need to implement new secular ideas within the Arab world, such as Arabic socialism many people followed him with the desire to put their trust in him. Nasser's vision of a secular Arab country was indeed adopted by many Arab countries; however, during the last years of his life it was once again impossible to ignore his failures.³³ The economic growth slowed, the standard of living for people of modest means did not reasonably grow, the social services' situation was disgraceful, the regime remained authoritarian and political participation was forbidden to the public, the intellectuals felt alienated, and cultural creativity was offended. Moreover, Egypt's status within the Arab world was at its lowest point, its army had been defeated, and within Egyptian society, there was a prevailing sense of crisis and loss of direction. Following Nasser's death, ayman al-zawahiri wrote the following: his principles died as well because they didn't fit reality, and along with his death the myth that broke into pieces within the sand of the Sinai desert died as well. ³⁴ Nasser's successors, Sadat and Mubarak, did not fare well with the Egyptian people, who suffered from years of large-scale unemployment affecting millions of people, from disgraceful poverty, and from governmental corruption that ruined every good place.

Saudi Arabia is wealthier than Egypt, along with being different in several other ways, however, just like Egypt, Saudi Arabia has also been generous, especially to its elites.³⁵ While in Egypt the crisis was felt in the middle of the 1970s, Saudi Arabia underwent an economic crisis during the 1980s as a result of the drop in the price of crude oil on the world markets. This caused the gross domestic product per person to fall from 15,810 dollars in 1981 to less than 5,479 dollars in 1986.³⁶ The economic crisis weakened the