> Are you saying that the USG, through it's intelligence and security
> apparatus, did not recruit/support Al Quaeda?
Damnit ;-) now I wish I had plopped down the $9 for a used copy of the expanded edition of, "Inside Al-Quaeda, " by Rohan Gunaratna, I found this morning. http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/sept11/story/0,1870,142638,00.html http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/data/023112/0231126921.HTM http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?userid=336X7511S9&pwb=1&ean=9780425191149 Can y'all who see the omnipresent, omniscient, always fully capable of pulling off complex plots w/ state and non-state actors like the, "network of networks, " (NetWar theorists Romfeldt and Arquilla's phrase for Al- Quaeda) Al-Q, that have quite complicated sets of relationships, in their origins w/ US intelligence and military bureaucracies, not reducible purely to system-supportive (borrowing from Sara Diamond's typologies of the US Right-Wing) or oppositional, ever read any academic or journalistic or think tank analysis of terrorism, before you reach for the cliched bromide that Al-Q must be a TOOL of the CIA? Can you note formulate an opinion that there are movements that turn on their benefactors and/or were always, for reasons not comprehensible to a framework that can only see all mass murdering thugs as having origins and sets of consequences that wholly benefit the USG? Some of us are getting as silly as Reagan when he said the FSLN dressed up as Contras to do their butchering. Or neighbors of mine in Maryland, who said that The NLF killed the victims in the My Lai massacre. That 99.9 % of the evil in the world comes from the normal, everyday mechanisms and actions of the capitalist system and as reinforced in a million ways by the repressive apparati of the USG, not enough proof of how fucked up this system is? And, that it creates, irrational movements like al-Quaeda and the Taliban, in the period after the collapse of a mass based, secular, Arab Left, that can be fantasized by some as, "anti- imperialist." http://www.flash.net/~comvoice/28cTaliban.html
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/sept11/story/0,1870,142638,00.html
> ...Al-Qaeda is replicating, rejuvenating and reorganising to strike in
> the region
DISMANTLED in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network - the most widely hunted terrorist group in recent history - remains fully functional and is relying increasingly on its extensive regional networks to continue its fight.
Indonesian Agus Dwirkana (right) was convicted in Manila in July of illegal possession of explosives. -- AFP
And in spite of the global manhunt for its leaders and key operatives, it continues to be a threat to South-east Asian governments and societies.
Only about a quarter of the operatives have been killed or arrested.
Its leadership, support structure - propaganda, recruitment, fund-raising, procurement, transportation, safe houses and the like - as well as operational organs used for surveillance and attack are intact.
Military commander Mohammad Atef has been killed and operations coordinator Abu Zubaidah captured.
But Sept 11 mastermind Khalid Shaik Mohammed, logistics chief Ramzi bin Al Shibh and finance chief Mustafa Ahmed Al Hawasawi remain at large.
These highly experienced and committed 'experts' are planning and preparing for the next operation.
Driven by the corruption, misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the Quran and Quranic texts, they are willing to kill and die for God.
Al-Qaeda has suffered gravely in Afghanistan and less so elsewhere where it operates. But the core leadership is alive and the group's ideology is intact.
Its members' on-going attacks and fresh propaganda indicate that they have not given up the fight.
Thus, even amid the wide-ranging security counter-measures that have been taken in the aftermath of those attacks a year ago, the group has been able to demonstrate its capacity to replicate, regenerate and reorganise.
In South-east Asia, its cells are probing the gaping holes in the post-9/11 security architecture to strike.
Wherever there are resources and opportunity, the compact and self- contained Al-Qaeda super cells will strike. And today, no single country can protect itself from a multinational terrorist organisation.
The group's penetration, over the past decade, of all levels of migrant and territorial Muslim communities has given it a cloak of invisibility - and ensured its future survival.
The lack of a multi-pronged, multi-dimensional and multinational approach in dealing with the organisation means that Al-Qaeda has been able to repair damage to its human and physical infrastructure and allowed it to continue to be a formidable threat to international security.
UNDERSTANDING AL-QAEDA
In the contemporary wave of terrorism, Al-Qaeda al-Sulbah (The Solid Base) is a unique 'organisation of organisations'.
While almost all the other groups consist of citizens of one country, this group's leadership and members are drawn from Muslims across at least 40 nationalities living in 94 countries.
And while all the other Islamist groups wage territorial campaigns - for example in Algeria, Egypt, Palestine, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Xingjiang, Kashmir and the Philippines - Al-Qaeda is waging a universal campaign and is taking on multiple actors.
Although it is an elite medium-sized force of 3,000 members, it has also trained several tens of thousands of Western, Middle Eastern, African, Caucasian, Balkan and Asian Muslims.
In keeping with its charter, authored by founder-leader Sheikh Abdullah Azzam in 1988, Al-Qaeda regards itself as the 'spearhead of Islam' or 'the pioneering vanguard of the Islamic movements'.
Because of the inspirational value, its preference is to attack strategic targets, usually resorting to suicide attacks - considered martyrdom operations.
Attacking high-prestige and symbolic strategic targets are usually difficult. These require extensive planning and preparation over a long period across several countries.
Unlike other groups, Al-Qaeda's targeting is also very selective and precise.
It expects the Muslims that it instigates and the Islamic movements that it inspires to at least strike at tactical targets.
Together with its erstwhile host, the Taleban, it strengthened Islamic movements worldwide.
Al-Qaeda is, therefore, a force multiplier.
SOUTH-EAST ASIAN NETWORK
Al-Qaeda is a difficult group to understand because it functions both operationally and ideologically.
In addition to sending its operatives to target countries - such as the Sept 11 team led by Mohamed Atta - it provides experts, training and resources to other Islamist political and military organisations to advance a common goal.
And just as it has penetrated existing Islamist networks worldwide, in South-east Asia, Al-Qaeda penetrated Jemaah Islamiah (JI), a regional organisation with networks extending from southern Thailand to Australia.
Among the groups it has infiltrated and influenced are the Kumpulan Militan Malaysia, Jashkar Jundullah in Indonesia, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines.
When JI wanted to destroy US, British, Australian and Israeli diplomatic targets in Singapore, Al-Qaeda dispatched four Afghan-trained Arab suicide bombers to South-east Asia.
In a debriefing, an Al-Qaeda detainee said: 'We did not want to risk using Asian Muslims for a landmark operation.'
Through physical and intellectual contact with its ideologues, trainers, operatives and literature, Al-Qaeda has physically and ideologically strengthened a dozen Islamist terrorist groups, political parties, charities and individuals.
In the region, it has created a mission and a vision for the Islamists to establish a caliphate comprising Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, Cambodia and Mindanao.
In working towards this goal of establishing a Darulah Islamiah Raya, about 400 Islamists have been trained since 1993 in facilities in Derunta and Khalden in Afghanistan; Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar in Pakistan; Negri Sembilan in Malaysia; Poso and Sulawesi in Indonesia; and Mindanao in the Philippines.
The regional leader, Indonesian national Riduan Isamuddin alias Hambali - a resident in Malaysia from 1985 to 1987 and who fought in the anti-Soviet Afghan campaign - built the Al-Qaeda network in the region from 1991.
Its plans included the assassination of Pope John Paul II and US President Bill Clinton in Manila and the blowing up of 11 airliners over the Asia- Pacific in early 1995.
Al-Qaeda also exploded a bomb in December 1994 that nearly destroyed a Tokyo-bound Philippine Airlines flight, killing Japanese businessman Haruki Ikegami and injuring 11 other passengers.
In addition to bombing the residence of the Philippine ambassador in Indonesia, its operatives in JI simultaneously bombed 30 churches in Jakarta, West Java, North Sumatra, Riau, Bandung and East Java on Christmas Eve in 2000. Bombers in Manila also targeted five sites in a Dec 30 operation in the same year.
It has also played a pivotal role in the violence in Indonesia's Maluku province that has killed more than 5,000 people.
Further, Al-Qaeda's Malaysian cell also hosted the planners of the attack on the USS Cole in Aden. It provided the critical cover and financing and almost sponsored the flight training of Zacarias Moussaoui, who has been charged in the US with conspiracy in the Sept 11 attacks.
Moussaoui was a substitute for Ramzi bin Al Shibh of a Hamburg cell who tried thrice but failed to get a visa to enter the US.
Hambali, who holds both Al-Qaeda and JI membership and featured in all these activities, is alive and active.
Recent discoveries from Afghanistan have helped shed new light on Al- Qaeda's South-east Asian spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, and on Hambali, as well as other directing figures of the network in the region.
Hambali has established contact with several new groups both within and outside South-east Asia with the aim of enhancing the strategic depth of both JI and Al-Qaeda.
As a result of a Spanish investigation into Al-Qaeda, the Indonesian government reluctantly admitted that Al-Qaeda operated a training camp in Poso.
Indonesian intelligence reported that a training camp led by one Omar Bandon 'consisted of eight to 10 small villages located side by side on the beach, and was equipped with light weapons, explosives and a firing range'.
Trainees included both local and overseas recruits. The instructor of physical training in the camp was identified as Parlindugan Siregar, a member of the Al-Qaeda network in Spain.
A videotape of the training was also recovered recently.
Except for the 10 bombers of the churches in Indonesia, the Indonesian government has failed to arrest and prosecute those who operated and trained at the Poso camp.
With significant intellectual and operational capabilities intact, Al- Qaeda's leaders are likely to use their regional network, knowledge and experience to mount operations across borders.
But instead of blaming Indonesia, governments within and outside the region must work steadfastly with President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her ministers, officials and the public.
Failure to do so will mean Islamism moving from the periphery to the centre - and threatening both Indonesia and the neighbourhood.
The region is now much more aware of the existence of this resilient terrorist network, largely due to the tireless efforts of the intelligence community, including the Singapore service.
But only a regional approach involving all the countries can ensure comprehensive and sustained action.
This is because Al-Qaeda has adapted to the dismantling of its state-of- the-art training infrastructure and operational base in Afghanistan by decentralising itself.
While it has not physically or ideologically abandoned Afghanistan, it is seeking to compensate for that loss by continuing to work together with the local groups.
And just as these local groups had depended on Al-Qaeda in the past, the parent organisation now depends on them.
Immediately after Al-Qaeda bombed US diplomatic targets in East Africa in August 1998 and when Pakistan began to arrest operatives travelling through the country to landlocked Afghanistan, Osama looked to the Philippines.
The then Peshawar-based Al-Qaeda head of foreign operations, Zein Al Abideen alias Abu Zubaidah, phoned the leadership of the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front movement in the Philippines and requested that they open new training facilities for foreign recruits in February 1999.
Before the Camp Abu Bakar complex was set up, Al-Qaeda recruits from Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia had trained in satellite camps elsewhere, including Palestine and Vietnam.
After Camp Abu Bakar was overrun, training was moved to Poso, Sulawesi.
Thus, its ties with local Islamist groups worldwide enabled Al-Qaeda to in fact decentralise before Sept 11.
With focused anti-terror targeting on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where both Al-Qaeda and Taleban factions belonging to spiritual leader Mullah Omar are concentrated, the group will increasingly depend on its regional networks to continue the fight.
The South-east Asian network is an integral part of Al-Qaeda - and the operations that were disrupted in Singapore clearly showed the group's intentions and capabilities.
Therefore, the threshold for terrorism - both support for conducting attacks and attacks itself - has clearly increased in South-east Asia.
Dr Rohan Gunaratna is author of the international bestseller Inside Al- Qaeda - Global Network of Terror (Columbia University Press, New York). He is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at Singapore's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies. -- Michael Pugliese
There were basically three forms of totalitarianism.... One was the various kinds of Fascism, the other was Bolshevism, and a third was corporate capitalism. Two are gone." -- Noam Chomsky