Groups,Networks, or Movements: A Command-and-Control-Driven Approach to Classifying Terrorist Organizations and Its Application to Al Qaeda

Appropriately describing the properties and defining the boundaries of terrorist groups is frequently challenging. Public and policy discussion of Al Qaeda as a group, network, or broad social movement is described as an example of this problem, with an emphasis on the consequences of placing a terrorist organization in each of these different categories. To resolve the confusion that such uncertainties can introduce into discussion, an approach is described focusing on the strength of command-and-control linkages within an organization for laying out the differences between groups, networks, and movements and defining the boundaries between them.     

Militant Recruitment in Pakistan: Implications for Al Qaeda and Other Organizations

A considerable body of unchallenged literature describes al-Takfir wa'l Hijra and its followers—“takfiris”—as a contemporary and highly dangerous trend within the global jihadi movement. Variously described as a network, movement, or group, its members are portrayed monolithically as ultra-secretive, highly skilled militants who easily blend into Western societies and specialize in “quality” operations against Western targets. This article critically assesses these claims using analytical approaches grounded in social movement theory and Netwar, and data drawn from historical and Islamist sources.     

Al Qaeda: A Different Diagnosis

When doubt and confusion reign, when things are--or look--complicated, one should revert to fundamental questions. What is Al Qaeda? This is the question addressed by this article. But as a first step, and in a broader perspective, the real danger in the world today is defined.‐     

The Sources of Terrorist Financing: Theory and Typology

Terrorism costs money. Although the costs of specific operations may be relatively inexpensive, terrorist organizations require much larger budgets in order to function. But how do terrorist groups acquire funding? What explains the variation in the particular sources used by different groups? This article develops a theory of terrorist financing that identifies criteria by which we can evaluate the different sources of terrorist funding, particularly in terms of their advantages and disadvantages to the terrorist group. These criteria are then applied across a typology of four primary types of terrorist financing: state sponsorship, illegal activity, legal activity, and popular support.     

Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon: Anatomy of a Terrorist Organization

The objective of this study is to provide through an in-depth investigation of the Fatah Al-Islam organization, emergence, programs, and external links, and the inner operation of this underground Salafi-jihadi group. By divulging secret confession statements to the public, it has uncovered many of the mysteries that surrounded the evolution and goals of the group. On the other hand, and more important, it has examined the application of certain conventional approaches to the study of terrorist behavior. The findings, based on the biographies of FI terrorists, seem to negate much of the advanced explanation about political violence. Economic destitution, poverty, lack of education, young age, and marital disruption for instances do not determine adherence to the group. Members of the jihadi group of FI stem from a diversified occupational background, not lacking in education, mature, married, and influenced by various motivations, specifically religious dogma.     

Al Qaeda and the Innovative Firm: Demythologizing the Network

This piece attempts to add to the discourse on violent substate political activism by underscoring certain overlooked elements in the study of groups such as Al Qaeda as it relates to organizational paradigms. Specifically, this essay sheds light on the nature of networks in the business world and the ways in which firms utilize organization as a method of creating value. This article starts with the assumption that the end of firm organization is ultimately the maximization of innovative capacity. The conclusion of this essay finds that Al Qaeda's use of networks has not created the indestructible conglomerate many students of terrorism fear, but rather that the resort by Al Qaeda to an all-channel network was the result of poor strategy and indeterminate political goals that have robbed it of much of its effectiveness. This study uses cursory examinations of several other similar organizations to underscore the difference in strategy and firm innovation between firms considered to have high added-value and Al Qaeda.‐     

Creating the Ideology of Al Qaeda: From Hypocrites to Salafi-Jihadists

This article investigates the rationales of different explanatory models that have been utilized to explain the ideology of Al Qaeda. From perceptions of madmen and religious hypocrites to Wahhabis of the twenty-first century and Salafi-Jihadists, what these approaches have in common is an “outside-in” perspective that assumes a concept of the underlying logic of Al Qaeda without sufficient reference to primary sources. It is argued that particularly those explanations that seem to have become the official wisdom regarding the fundamental logic of Al Qaeda, Wahhabism and the Salafi-Jihadist discourse, are concepts that are poorly understood and subject to much controversy. In the anxious quest to explain Al Qaeda, the terrorism studies community seems to have deviated from the guidelines of academic conduct and restricted itself to re-assuming for its own use oversimplifications of the complexity of Islamic thought, thereby granting those oversimplifications a new lease on life. The risk of such conduct is that one ends up with a misrepresentation of the very issue he or she seeks to comprehend.     

Investing in the Market of Violence: Toward a Micro-Theory of Terrorist Financing

Terrorist financing is the dedicated pursuit of adequate capitalization within a market of violence, wherein terrorist organizations seek to extract resources and funding from the social, political, and economic environment in which they operate. At the same time, the effectiveness of a terrorist group in this pursuit is highly dependent on their organizational type and design, its leadership capabilities, and its capacity for organizational learning—factors that shape the ability of terrorist groups to identify and exploit a limited set of investment and rent-seeking opportunities.     

Looking for the Pattern: Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia--The Genealogy of a Terror Network

The aim of this study is to analyze the process by which Al Qaeda has sought to co-opt essentially localized struggles in Southeast Asia into an evolving network of worldwide jihad. The article illustrates how, long before it was appropriate to speak of an entity called Al Qaeda, Islamists have been thinking transnationally since the 1980s. The argument attempts to piece together available evidence to reveal a plausible explanation of the origins, growth and direction of the main Islamist grouping in Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah, and its deepening relationship with Al Qaeda. The article suggests that the roots of a Southeast Asian terror network can be traced to two geographically separate ethno-religious struggles in the Philippines and Indonesia. The analysis demonstrates that these guerrilla groups orchestrating their distinct struggles were eventually combined through the auspices of Al Qaeda and the globalized franchising opportunities it exploited from the early 1990s.‐     

Terrorist Organization Typologies and the Probability of a Boomerang Effect

Since the 1970s, many researchers have proposed typologies to sort the phenomenon of terror into different categories and to divide terror organizations into groups based on various characteristics of their activities. These typologies were designed to facilitate understanding of the phenomenon of terror and of terror organizations’ processes, structures and operative methods. They relied on a variety of diagnostic criteria such as: motives for using terror, targets of the attacks, terrorists’ demands, organizational structure; arenas of operation; and more. This article surveys major typologies of terror, notes the differences between them, presents a model to combine the different classifications of the typologies into a single typology, and proposes a new typology that sorts terror organizations by the variables that limit their activities. The proposed typology makes it possible to analyze terror organizations’ behavior and even to forecast their reactions to a situation in which they are attacked by the enemy state—the boomerang effect.     

Al Qaeda,Deterrence, and Weapons of Mass Destruction

This article takes issue with the frequently-made assertion that Al Qaeda cannot be deterred from employing weapons of mass destruction. It argues that Al Qaeda's leadership employs terroristic violence in a manner calculated to achieve a set of political goals. They are, in other words, rational actors who are sensitive to the potential costs and benefits associated with their actions, and thus are to some extent deterrable. The article examines a number of ways in which the lack of discrimination and proportionality associated with weapons of mass destruction might be expected to produce more problems than benefits for Al Qaeda and thus deter their use. It also considers some ways in which the West might seek to bolster these deterrent effects.     

Al Qaeda in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan and Beyond

After the U.S. led coalition forces attacked Al Qaeda and Taliban infrastructure in Afghanistan beginning in October 2001, the epicenter of global terrorism moved from Afghanistan to tribal Pakistan. Known as the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) in Pakistan, this region has emerged as the premier hunting ground for the Al Qaeda leadership. With the co-option of new groups in FATA and its adjacent North Western Frontier Province (NWFP), the Al Qaeda threat has proliferated. The threat posed by the Afghan Taliban has been compounded with the addition of a new range of actors notably the Pakistani Taliban. Working together with multiple threat groups, both foreign and Pakistani, Al Qaeda directs its global jihad campaign from FATA. Unless the terrorist enclave is cleared on the Afghan-Pakistan border, the threat to Afghanistan and mainland Pakistan will continue. This article seeks to map the evolution of Al Qaeda and its associated groups since their relocation to FATA.     

Al Qaeda,Trends in Terrorism,and Future Potentialities: An Assessment

The Manhattan trial of four men linked to Osama bin Laden was the result of the largest overseas investigation ever mounted by the U.S. government. The trial generated thousands of pages of documents and the testimony of dozens of witnesses with some knowledge of bin Laden's group. What was learned from the trial is that bin Laden's organization experienced severe cash flow problems in the mid-1990s; that the U.S. government has had some real successes in finding informants within bin Laden's organization; that bin Laden has taken steps to acquire weapons of mass destruction; that the training of bin Laden's followers in his camps in Afghanistan is quite rigorous, featuring tuition on a wide range of weapons and explosives and terrorism techniques; and that bin Laden's group operates transnationally, its membership drawn from four continents. Finally, the trial underlines the strengths and limits of the law enforcement approach to bin Laden.     

The Question is When: The Ideology of Al Qaeda and the Reality of Bioterrorism

The subject of women fighting in jihad has been a controversial and under-researched topic in classical and contemporary Muslim religious literature. In general, classical authorities did not see women fighting except in the most extraordinary circumstances yet did not expressly forbid it. Today radical Muslims seeking to widen their appeal have modified these conclusions and made it possible for women to participate together with men on the battlefield and in martyrdom operations. This article looks at the classical religious and legal literature to contextualize the arguments being made for females participating in jihad in contemporary times.     

Reformation of a Terrorist Group: Hezbollah as a Lebanese Political Party

Despite the classification of Hezbollah as a terrorist group by several states, Hezbollah is recognized as a legitimate political party within Lebanon. The purpose of this article is to probe at the reasons why Hezbollah was able to achieve its current status in the Lebanese government while it still maintains a powerful, well armed military branch that has used force recently to influence Lebanese politics. An examination of Hezbollah's life cycle suggests that two major factors were decisive: 1) Hezbollah's political leverage over the majority government, and 2) choices by Hezbollah's leaders to moderate their objectives to achieve domestic political goals.     

The Changing Face of Al Qaeda and the Global War on Terrorism

This article assesses current trends and developments in terrorism within the context of the overall progress being achieved in the global war on terrorism (GWOT). It examines first the transformation that Al Qaeda has achieved in the time since the 11 September 2001 attacks and the variety of affiliated or associated groups (e.g., what are often referred to as Al Qaeda "clones" or "franchises") that have emerged to prosecute the jihadist struggle. It then focuses on recent developments in Saudi Arabia and especially Iraq in order to shed further light on Al Qaeda's current strategy and operations. In conclusion, this article offers some broad recommendations regarding the future conduct of the GWOT.­     

From Ocalan to Al Qaida: The Continuing Terrorist Threat in Turkey

The most recent terrorist attacks in Turkey suggest a new phase in the country's war against terrorist groups. Although the PKK has largely been neutralized as a major threat to internal stability, the continued existence of other militant organizations--particularly Islamist groups who appear to be cooperating with elements of al Qaida--suggests continued security problems for the government.‐     

Managing the Global and Local: The Dual Agendas of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

On 29 October 2010, authorities in the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates intercepted explosive packages that had been placed on U.S.-bound planes. Less than a year earlier, Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate explosives aboard Northwest Flight 253. These attacks originated and were organized in Yemen under the supervision of a local Al Qaeda affiliate known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. These attacks are a manifestation of the group's growing international ambitions, yet little scholarship on Al Qaeda explores how affiliates with robust ties to Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan balance their dedication to global and local jihad(s). This article contends that despite its strong ties to Al Qaeda Central and international posture, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula still must maintain local relevance and support. Its ability to do so carries implications for counterterrorism policymakers and the broader Al Qaeda movement.     

Radicalization and Subversion: Al Qaeda and the 7 July 2005 Bombings and the 2006 Airline Bombing Plot

This article analyzes the suicide bomb attacks on four London transportation targets on 7 July 2005 and the plot to bomb simultaneously at least seven American and Canadian passenger airliners as they departed from London's Heathrow Airport. American, British, and Pakistani authorities thwarted this planned attack in August 2006. Both incidents are among the most important Al Qaeda operations in recent years. Initially, they were dismissed by the authorities, pundits, and the media alike as the work of amateur terrorists—untrained “bunches of guys” acting entirely on their own with no links to Al Qaeda. Subsequent evidence, however, has come to light, which reveals clear links to senior Al Qaeda commanders operating in Pakistan's lawless frontier border area with Afghanistan.