Confronting Al Qaeda

Al Qaeda killed over 3,000 US citizens on September 11, 2001, and terrorism leapt to the fore of US strategic and political priorities. Yet, after nearly six years of concentrated effort by the United States, the dominant power in the international system, Al Qaeda survives and is still acknowledged as a potent threat. This begs the question not just of why, but also of what the United States can do to redress the situation. Confronting Al-Qaeda asserts that Al-Qaeda is primarily a political threat, not a military one. This is because terrorists subvert legitimate political processes to achieve political ends. Al-Qaeda challenges not only specific U.S. policy decisions, but also the very nature of the U.S. political system and the U.S.-lead international order created after World War II. Therefore the character of the U.S. political response to the threat from Al-Qaeda is critical. Al-Qaeda’s capacity for violence is the direct source of its power. This must be reduced, and coercive means, such as the military, intelligence, and law enforcement, are necessary, for they alone directly degrade Al-Qaeda’s potential. A singularly coercive approach, however, is insufficient. As the leader of the international system, the United States is in a position to politically undercut Al-Qaeda. The United States can do so by adhering to globally revered traditional US political values and foreign policy.

Based on in-depth interviews with tribal Sheiks involved in the Awakening and their American military counterparts, Confronting al Qaeda is a study of decision-making processes and the political psychology of the Sunni Awakening in al Anbar. It traces the change in American military strategy that made the Awakening collaboration between the Sunni tribes and the U.S. forces possible. It explains how the evolution of the tribal leaders’ perspective and of the American military strategy led to defeat al Qaeda in al Anbar. The process of these changing mutual images is detailed as well as how the cooperation between groups led to further evolution of perceptions. Political and military realities urgently forced these perceptual and social identity shifts initially, but the process of cooperation and engagement accelerated these shifts through increasingly mutually beneficial cooperation and interaction during the battle with al Qaeda in Iraq.

Provides a better understanding of the threat confronting our homeland security in order to ¿disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al Qaeda and its allies.¿ Sageman conducted a comprehensive survey of all the al Qaeda plots in the West, all the al Qaeda affiliate plots in the West and all the plots done ¿in the name of al Qaeda¿ in the West since the formation of al Qaeda in August 1988. The global neo-jihadi terrorist threat includes plots under the control of al Qaeda core; al Qaeda affiliates like the Algerian Groupes Islamiques Armes, Pakistani Lashkar e-Toyba, the Uzbek Islamic Jihad Union, the Pakistani Tehrik e-Taliban Pakista; and threats by autonomous groups inspired by al Qaeda like the Dutch Hofstad group. Graphs.

The Threat From Within examines what drives Al Qaeda-inspired radicalization to violence, how to detect it, and how to confront it. The chapters discuss behaviors and ideologies that are observable and tangible in radicalized individuals or those on the path to violent radicalization. These behaviors are drawn from a variety of cases, such as planning acts of terrorism, traveling to join terrorist groups, or participating in violent jihadi conflict outside the country. The main case study is Canada, and each chapter features many examples that range from Ted Kaczynski (the “Unabomber”) and Anders Brevik in Norway to Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Damian Clairmont, a Canadian citizen who died fighting in Syria. The text begins by introducing general concepts, such as terrorism, extremism, and radicalization, before presenting contributing factors to those embracing political violence. A comprehensive list of behavioral indicators that someone is becoming a violent extremist is provided, followed by a look at what is being done to confront this threat as well as what could be done.

Al Qaeda and associated movements (AQAM) have become an increasingly diffuse security threat. Although the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands may have represented the epicenter of global terrorism in the past decade, al Qaeda's various regional affiliates are growing in prominence. The past several years also have seen a rise in al Qaeda-inspired plots by small cells or unaffiliated individuals based in the West. This flattening and expansion of al Qaeda's global scope, both physically and virtually, has complicated U.S. and international efforts to combat global terrorism. Counterterrorism professionals work tirelessly to confront existing threats. But the need to focus on today's exigencies, combined with officials' limited resources for alternative and long-range planning, means that governments tend to pursue reactive, rather than anticipatory, policies and strategies vis-à-vis terrorism. Containing, if not defeating, AQAM will require that policymakers and practitioners shape a global environment that is inhospitable to terrorism. Doing this, in turn, necessitates a better understanding of where and how future AQAM threats are likely to emerge. This report seeks to help fill this need for anticipatory knowledge and assist in the development of improved counterterrorism policies and strategy.

This book focuses on the crises facing Al Qaeda and how the mass killing of Muslims is challenging its credibility as a leader among Islamist jihadist organizations. The book argues that these crises are directly related to Al Qaeda’s affiliation with the extreme violence employed against Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the decade since 9/11. Al Qaeda’s public and private responses to this violence differ greatly. While in public Al Qaeda has justified those attacks declaring that, for the establishment of a state of ‘true believers’, they are a necessary evil, in private Al Qaeda has been advising its local affiliates to refrain from killing Muslims. To better understand the crises facing Al Qaeda, the book explores the development of Central Al Qaeda’s complex relationship with radical (mis)appropriations and manifestations of takfir, which allows one Muslim to declare another an unbeliever, and its unique relationship with each of its affiliates in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The author then goes on to consider how the prominence of takfir is contributing to the deteriorating security in those countries and how this is affecting Al Qaeda’s credibility as an Islamist terror organization. The book concludes by considering the long-term viability of Al Qaeda and how its demise could allow the rise of the even more radical, violent Islamic State and the implications this has for the future security of the Middle East, North Africa and Central/South Asia. This book will be of much interest to students of political violence and terrorism, Islamism, global security and IR.