AN ANALYSIS OF AL-QAEDA AS A TRANSNATIONAL MILITANT GROUP

Masood Ur Rehman KhattakLecturerDepartment of Politics and I.R

Outline

1. Introduction2. Al Qaeda’s Agenda/Goals3. Measures to achieve these goals

Islamic reformDefensive jihadAttacks on the “far enemy.” Removal of apostate regimesEconomic warfareAttacks on non-Sunni Muslim religious

groups

Outline

4. Al-Qaeda’s Affiliate Groups Al-Nusra in Syria TTP/ LeJ in Pakistan Haqqani Network/ Afghan Taliban Boko Haram in Nigeria Al-Shahab in Somalia Afghan Taliban Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan Jemaah Islamiyah East Turkestan Islamic Movement

Outline

5. Primary source of funding for Al-Qaeda

Wealthy individual patrons/ Private donations

Infiltrated charitiesCriminal activities/ Bank robberies Legitimate businessesHuman traffickingPiracyThe drug trade.Kidnapping for Ransom

Outline

6. Al-Qaeda Strength7. Pakistan’s efforts against ALQ8. Counter measures

Capacity building Counter-Radicalization/Countering

ExtremismDevelopment and AidDemocracy PromotionCurb Terrorist FinancingImprove Intelligence/ coordination with

other states

Introduction

In 1988, Osama bin Laden formally established Al Qaeda from a network of veterans of the Afghan insurgency against the Soviet Union.

The group conducted a series of terrorist attacks against U.S. and allied targets, including the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole docked in Aden, Yemen.

After the attacks of September 11, the United States redoubled its counterterrorism (CT) efforts, forcing the group’s leadership to flee Afghanistan—where they had been hosted by the Taliban—and seek refuge in the tribal belt of northwest Pakistan.

224- Killed 4000-

injured

19 killed 500

wounded

17- US Soldiers Killed

34- Injured

1993 World Trade Center bombing

Bali Bombing- 2002 202- Killed209- injuries

Ayman al Zawahiri leader of Al-Qaeda

U.S. forces in 2011 located and killed Bin Laden in Pakistan, and Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al Zawahiri assumed leadership of the group.

U.S. intelligence officials have argued in open testimony to Congress that persistent CT operations against Al Qaeda since 2001

have significantly degraded the group’s ability to launch another major attack in the United States.

Al Qaeda’s Agenda/Goals

1. The expulsion of foreign forces and influences from traditionally or predominantly Islamic societies.

2. The eventual creation of an Islamic state ruled by a system of Islamic law (Sharia).

Measures to achieve these goals

1. Islamic reform

2. Defensive jihad

3. Attacks on the “far enemy.”

4. Removal of apostate regimes

5. Economic warfare.

6. Attacks on non-Sunni Muslim religious groups

1. Islamic reform

The group advocates for the enforcement of a strict interpretation of sharia,

although Al Qaeda leadership has differed on how quickly sharia should be imposed on

populations under the group’s control or that of its affiliates.

2. Defensive jihad

Adherents are called to pursue armed resistance to counter what Al Qaeda describes as Western aggression.

They are instructed to fight Western encroachment, such as the presence of U.S.

Troops in the Arabian Peninsula or in other areas they consider to be Muslim lands.

3. Attacks on the “far enemy.”

The organization largely achieved its notoriety for the series of fatal attacks

it planned and implemented against symbolic targets, including the September 11 attacks in the United States and

Subsequent attacks in London, Madrid, and Istanbul.

It justifies these attacks as part of its effort to eradicate foreign influences.

4. Removal of apostate regimes

Al Qaeda calls for the removal of governments not based on its interpretation of sharia law

because it views such governments as empowering human rulers and man-made legal systems over divine law.

Al Qaeda leaders have described democratic principles as un-Islamic and tantamount to apostasy, which is punishable by death.

They have also called for the overthrow of regimes they judge to be insufficiently Islamic, such as the Saudi monarchy.

5. Economic Warfare.

Bin Laden and Zawahiri urged followers to attack economic targets to weaken both the West and local regimes.

In particular, they called on supporters to conduct attacks on oil infrastructure in the region to deny the West access to the region’s oil resources.

6. Attacks on non-Sunni Muslim religious groups

Al Qaeda considers Shia Muslims to be apostates, and some leaders have encouraged attacks against local Shia populations.

Other Al Qaeda leaders argue that such attacks should not be a priority as they can alienate the broader Muslim population.

Al Qaeda leaders also regularly espouse anti-Israeli rhetoric, although there have been few, if any, operational missions against Israel.

7. Gathering support from NON-Arabs

In their advocacy and recruitment efforts, Al Qaeda leaders have expressed support for and appealed

To non-Arab Muslims—particularly those engaged in conflicts in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kashmir, and the Philippines

Emphasizing that Muslims constitute one global nation or Ummah.

Al-Qaeda’s Affiliate Groups

1. Al-Nusra in Syria2. TTP/ LeJ in Pakistan 3. Haqqani Network/ Afghan Taliban4. Boko Haram in Nigeria5. Al-Shabab in Somalia6. Afghan Taliban Taliban7. Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan8. Jemaah Islamiyah9. East Turkestan Islamic Movement

Al-Qaeda in IRAQ

In 2004 Zarqawi formally merged his group Tawhid wal Jihad (Monotheism and Jihad) with Al Qaeda to form Al Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers (also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, or AQ-I).

Following Zarqawi’s death in a U.S. airstrike in 2006, AQ-I leaders repackaged the group as a coalition known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).

The Nusra Front

In late 2011, the Nusra Front emerged in Syria, rising to prominence through high profile attacks on Syrian government military and leadership targets.

Nusra distinguished itself from other armed groups not only with the lethality and efficiency of its operations.

ISI leader Baghdadi stated that he had dispatched Nusra’s leaders to Syria to serve as ISI’s vanguard in the struggle against the Asad government.

Al-Qaeda in Yemen and the Horn of Africa

Al Qaeda’s attack against the USS Cole in 2000, coupled with the attacks of September 11, 2001, made Yemen a front in the U.S. confrontation with Al Qaeda.

After the 9/11 attacks, the Yemeni government became more forthcoming in its cooperation with the U.S. campaign to suppress Al Qaeda.

The Al Qaeda Organization in the Southern Arabian Peninsula

In 2006, 23 of Yemen’s most wanted terrorists escaped a Public Security Organization (PSO) prison, in what many analysts believe was an inside job from within a Yemeni intelligence organization notorious for employing former “Arab Afghan” volunteers and other jihadists.

Some of these escapees would eventually form a Yemeni affiliate of Al Qaeda, called, “The Al Qaeda Organization in the Southern Arabian Peninsula,” though most observers simply referred to it as Al Qaeda in Yemen.

In January 2009, Al Qaeda-affiliated militants based in Yemen announced that Saudi militants had pledged allegiance to their leader and that the group would now operate under the banner of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Al-Qaeda’s Khorasan Group

The air strikes against Islamist terrorist groups in Syria that the U.S. launched on September 22 included strikes against a group that few Americans had heard about before: the Khorasan group.

Although sometimes mistakenly characterized as a new terrorist group, Khorasan is a new tentacle of an old organization—the al-Qaeda high-command or core group.

The rise of the Khorasan group underscores that al-Qaeda’s core remains a dangerous threat, and that it has grown stronger by feeding off the corpses of failed states and by recruiting foreign fighters.

Al-Qaeda in Horn of Africa

Al Qaeda operatives and other violent Islamist extremist groups have had a presence in East Africa for almost 20 years, although the extent of their operations there has varied over time.

Al Shabaab emerged in the early 2000s amid a proliferation of Islamist and clan-based militias that flourished in predominately Muslim Somalia in the absence of central government authority. I

n 2006, an alliance of local Islamic courts established control over Mogadishu with support from Al Shabaab.

Al-Qaeda in Horn of Africa

Loosely affiliated with local Islamic courts, Al Shabaab, unlike the clan militias, drew members from across clans, ascribing to a broader irredentist and religiously driven vision of uniting ethnic Somali-inhabited areas of Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Somalia under an Islamist caliphate.

Several of Al Shabaab’s leaders had reportedly trained and fought with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and known Al Qaeda operatives in the region were associated with the group in its formative years.

North and West Africa

Armed Islamist groups have proliferated in North and West Africa amid political upheaval in the Arab world, governance and security crises in Libya and Mali, and a growing Islamist insurgency in northern Nigeria.

Many of these groups appear primarily focused on a domestic or regional agenda, but some groups also have targeted U.S. or other foreign interests in the region and some may aspire to more international aims.

North and West Africa

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. AQIM was formed when a former armed faction in Algeria’s 1990s civil conflict known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) declared allegiance to Al Qaeda in 2003, “united” with Al Qaeda in 2006, and renamed itself the following year.

The largest-scale AQIM attacks to date, a series of bombings targeting Algerian and international institutions, were carried out in 2007 and 2008 in Algiers and surrounding areas.

Reasons of militancy in North Africa

In North Africa, violent extremist groups have exploited political uncertainty and tensions over national identity in the wake of domestic uprisings in Tunisia and Libya that toppled authoritarian regimes.

Numerous reports suggest that southwestern Libya is a growing hub for regional terrorist actors.

Political institutions in Algeria and Morocco have remained comparatively stable.

Still, terrorism remains a threat within the country, and Algerian leaders have expressed growing concern about security threats emanating from neighboring states, especially Libya.

Nigeria, Boko Haram

In Nigeria, Boko Haram appears to draw support predominately from an ethnic Kanuri base in the northeast,

where the group is most active, although extremist operatives linked to both AQIM and Boko Haram appear intent on expanding the group’s recruitment base,

its operational reach, and the scope of its targets.

Fund raising for Al-Qaeda

However, terrorist organizations have to defray both the costs of carrying out an attack and the more substantial structural costs of maintaining the organisation and disseminating its ideology.

In addition to purchasing weapons, vehicles, explosive material and detonators to be used in attacks, terrorist groups need to anticipate other needs.

Why militants needs funds

1. Living costs for its members and sometimes also their families.

2. A terrorist cell also needs for its members reliable channels of communication, including highly secret channels to its leadership, from which it receives its instructions.

3. Training new recruits

4.Travel costs for group members in preparation of an attack

5. Propaganda for the cause via various channels of communications.

Primary sources of funding for Al Qaeda

1. Wealthy individual patrons/ Private donations

2. Infiltrated charities 3. Criminal activities/ Bank robberies 4. Legitimate businesses 5. Human trafficking 6. Piracy and 7. The drug trade. 8. Kidnapping for Ransom

Attack Date Estimated Cost

Madrid Railway 11 March 2004 100,000 Euro

Istanbul 15 & 20 November 2003 40,000 US $

Marriot Hotel Jakarta 5 August 2003 30,000 US $

Bali Bombings 12 October 2002 50,000 US $

New York Twin Towers 11 September 2001 400,000-500,000 US $

USS Cole, Aden 12 October 2000 10,000 US $

US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania

7 August 1998 50,000 US $

Al-Qaeda Funding

Kidnapping for ransom

Al-Qaeda is increasingly funding terror operations thanks to at least $125 million in ransom paid since 2008.

Mainly by the European governments to free western hostages.

  The payments totaled $66 million in 2013

alone.

Kidnapping for ransom

The paper listed more than $90 million paid to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb since 2008.

Somalia's Shebab insurgents received $5.1 million from Spain,

while Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula received nearly $30 million in two payments, one from Qatar and Oman, the other of undetermined origin.

Bank robberies

The group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen also uses similar tactics, according Saeed Obaid al-Jemhi, who is based in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a and is the author of a book on al-Qaeda in the country.

When militants attacked Seyoun in the southeast province of Hadramaut, they looted the National Bank, the Agricultural Bank and the International Bank of Yemen, he said.

Al-Qaeda Strength

Afghanistan- Pakistan: 300–3,000 The Maghreb: 300–800 Arabian Peninsula: 1,000 India: 300 Somalia: 7,000–9,000 Syria: 5,115

Al Qaeda Weakened

In a 2013 speech on counterterrorism policy, President Obama described Al Qaeda’s senior leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan as being “on the path to defeat.”

He discussed the rise of Al Qaeda affiliates, characterizing them as lethal but “less capable” than the central organization that planned the 9/11 attacks.

He also discussed a third category of armed militants, which he described as “simply collections of local militias or extremists interested in seizing territory,” with primarily local objectives.

Al Qaeda Expanding

In early 2014, DNI James Clapper responded in the negative to a question on whether Al Qaeda was on the path to defeat, noting that the group was instead, “morphing and franchising itself.”

Retired Marine Corps general James Mattis in late 2013 described predictions of Al Qaeda’s demise as “premature” and “discredited”.

Al Qaeda Expanding

The organization is resilient and has adapted to changes.

Proponents of this view contend that there is an undue focus on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, even as Al Qaeda affiliates expand into Syria, Iraq, and North Africa.

These groups, by virtue of their affiliation or ideological similarity with Al Qaeda, will inevitably pose a threat to the United States.

Terror attacks on rise in 2014

There were 9,707 terrorist attacks in 2013, a 43% increase from 2012, according to statistics compiled by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

Attacks resulted in more than 17,800 deaths and more than 32,500 injuries.

The majority took place in Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Thailand and Yemen.

Last year's most lethal incidents were carried out by the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, Nigeria's Boko Haram, al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and ISIL.

Pakistan’s efforts against ALQ

Pakistan played crucial role in defeating Al-Qaeda.

Since 2002-2015 Pakistan carried out numerous successful operations across Pakistan,

killed and captured over 400 Al-Qaeda linked militants.

 Palestinian Abu Zubeida.

Captured in Pakistan March 28,

2002: He was operational chief of Al-Qaeda, apprehended in

Faisalabad by Pakistan security forces.

Ramzi BinalshibhHe was a Yemeni national and one-time roommate of Mohamed Atta, suspected ringleader of the September 11 hijackers, was captured in Karachi in September 2002.

Khalid Sheikh MohammedHe was arrested in Rawalpindi a. A Pakistani by origin, Khalid had grown up in Kuwait. Besides having masterminded the 9/11 attacks on the US, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad is also known to have beheaded the Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi in February 2002.

Yassir al-Jaziri

He was a high value al-Qaeda target arrested in Lahore.

His capture had resulted after information was extracted from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

He was then described as the seventh most important al-Qaeda member.

  Yassir as “Osama’s moneyman” and a

“computer wizard” who was captured with two laptops. 

Khalid bin Attash or Walid bin Attish- 2003

He was captured In April 2003.

He is the man believed to have been a prime suspect in the case relating to

The October 2000 attack on the American naval ship “USS Cole” at Aden, was seized in Karachi.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani- 2004 On July 30, 2004 after

a 14-hour long encounter, a Tanzanian national and a wanted al-Qaeda commander Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was arrested from the city of Gujrat.

Wanted by the US for his involvement in the explosions outside the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Musaad Aruchi- 2004

Musaad Aruchi, a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed with a $1 million bounty on his head, was arrested in Karachi in June 2004.

He was a Pakistani courier who worked in connection with al Qaeda, before his capture in April 2004.

Some of his files, secured when he was captured.

Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan-2004

In August 2004 an al-Qaeda computer wizard known as Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan was arrested in Lahore.

He was believed to have had extensive links with Khalfan Ghailani, who was arrested just days before him.

Mustafa Setmarian Nasar: 2006

In May 2006 a man called Mustafa Setmarian Nasar was captured Quetta.

The dual Syrian-Spanish national was carrying a head money of $5 million.

He was wanted in Spain in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings.

191- killed2000+ Injured(2004)

Abu Faraj al-Libbi May 2, 2005:

Libyan Abu Faraj al-Libbi, Al-Qaeda's number three and the head of the network in Pakistan,

was arrested in the northwest of the country.

Abu Hamza Rabia

Abu Hamza Rabia, an al Qaeda commander ranked the third most senior leader in the network,

was killed in a tribal region of Pakistan  in December 2005 while making an IED.

Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah

Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah (also known as Abdul Rehman),

an Egyptian al Qaeda member wanted for involvement in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya,

was killed by Pakistani forces close to the Afghan border in April 2006.

Abu Laith al-Libi

Jan 29, 2008: An Al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan, Abu Laith al-Libi,

one of bin Laden's leading lieutenants,

was killed by a US missile in northwest Pakistan.

Bin Laden Dead May 1, 2011: US

President Barack Obama announces that US forces killed bin Laden

and recovered his body during a commando operation at Abbottabad.

Adnan el Shukrijuma- 2014 One of al-Qaeda’s most

senior leaders who had been implicated in plots to blow up the London Underground and the New York metro has been killed during a raid on his hideout in Pakistan.

Adnan Shukrijumah, the terror group's chief of global operations,

died along with two other suspected terrorists in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal area early on Saturday, the country’s military said.

Counter measures

Building Partner Capacity Counter-Radicalization/

Countering Violent Extremism Programs

Development and Aid Democracy Promotion Curb Terrorist Financing Improve Intelligence Collection

and Gaps Multilateral Engagement