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New Global Jihad Host: Al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization led and bankrolled by Osama bin Laden is in disarray. Bin Laden is on the run, if he is alive. Al-Qaeda no longer has a safe haven in Afghanistan. And a majority of the group’s leaders have been killed or captured in the two and a half years since Al-Qaeda’s hijackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And yet, success against Al-Qaeda has not stopped radical Islamic terrorists from continuing to attack. In the last year, there have been bombings in Madrid, Riyadh, Istanbul, Jakarta and Casablanca. And there have been numerous car bombs and other terrorist atrocities against civilians in Iraq. Some of the attacks have been mounted by graduates of Al-Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan. Other attacks have been committed by terrorists who, though not necessarily affiliated with Al-Qaeda, were inspired by bin Laden’s deadly example. How has the terror threat changed, and is the threat growing? I’ll ask my guests: Corine Hegland, a correspondent with the National Journal magazine; Ali Al-Ahmed, executive director of the Saudi Institute; and joining us by phone from Austin, Texas, Lawrence Wright, staff writer with the New Yorker magazine. Welcome and thanks for joining us. Host: Corine Hegland, you wrote recently that “Al-Qaeda is dead.” That’s a bold statement. What do you mean? Hegland: The organization is dead. The ideology, which was always the predominant goal of Al-Qaeda, to spread it’s idea of a global jihad, is still very much alive. But the organization of men that very carefully planned, from a central location, the attacks on September 11th no longer has that capacity. Host: How degraded is the organization? Are there still some of those members who are operating cells? Hegland: I’m sure there are. The issue is that there is no longer any command and control. From everything that we know there is no longer a central place giving orders: “Do this. Do that. Carry this out. You go help him.” Rather you have decentralized cells across the world carrying out attacks with help from people who jump back and forth across the cells. So there’s no longer a central location directing activities. It’s now decentralized across the globe. Host: Ali Al-Ahmed, is Al-Qaeda dead? Al-Ahmed: I don’t think that Al-Qaeda itself is dead. Maybe that is sort of a poetic statement. The Al-Qaeda -- I agree with Corine though in that it’s not the same Al-Qaeda that opened camps in training and command and control, but there are – I mean, the organization is still pretty much alive. Everybody who commits these crimes associates themselves with the organization. Sometimes they even receive orders from Osama bin Laden directly, or inspiration from him to carry out attacks. Host: Lawrence Wright, are you there by phone? Wright: I am. Host: What’s your sense of the extent to which cells are operating as part of a structural Al-Qaeda, or as independent entities at this point? Wright: I think that in many cases they’re taking direction from, or cues from bin Laden or [Ayman al-] Zawahiri, who are still alive and trying to get the word out. And so, they may hear something on Al-Jazeera, a fatwah* from one of those gentlemen, that would indicate for instance, Spain. And that might prompt a local group with very distant ties to Al-Qaeda to turn it’s attention to attacking people in Spain. In that sense, they’re still taking direction, but it’s indirect. Host: Corine Hegland, you’ve talked about this ideology, are the groups operating on the same ideology? Or are the ideologies localized, if you will. Hegland: Well, there’s both. I mean, on the one hand when groups try to carry out attacks in the methodology that Al-Qaeda has used previously: a suicide attack on a boat, for example. We tend to intervene. We tend to catch it. When cells exhibit methodology that has been used previously, we tend to catch that. What we can’t catch is the merger of Al-Qaeda’s ideology towards global targets with local tactics, local ideas and local methodologies. So, there’s a mixture. On the one hand, Al-Qaeda’s putting out targeting information and people talk to each other through all sorts of formats with regard to what to attack and what the implications would be, and then local groups carry that out using both the global ideology but also they’re own local beliefs and own local methods. Host: Ali Al-Ahmed, are these beliefs growing? Is there active recruitment going on? Al-Ahmed: I think there is an active recruitment. There is an environment that is susceptible to recruitment, you know, the occupation of Iraq and the situation in the Palestinian territories. But the most important element of it is the governments’ acquiescence to creating, allowing this environment to continue. For example, if you see that the Middle Eastern governments are very, very sharp and very successful when they are targeted. They can capture -- like in Jordan, before the guy even did anything, they captured the whole cell and they got [him]. Everything stopped. Host: This was a terrorist attack that was being planned in Jordan. Al-Ahmed: In Jordan against the Jordanian government. They were able to catch and get everybody before they did anything. The same organization that does that -- the Jordanian government does that -- is not catching anyone who is going through Jordan to Iraq to commit much larger atrocities against the Iraqi people and the American soldiers. It’s the same thing with Saudi Arabia. They’re catching hundreds of people, but they’re not catching the Saudi terrorists who are going to Iraq and killing, for example, the head of the governing council and other suicide bombers. And they are not catching that network because they want that to continue. They are allowing for this sort of spreading of terrorists who are targeting against the United States and other countries. Host: Lawrence Wright, what do you think of that? Is there still a lot of governments that are turning a blind eye to terrorists who decide to attack going through their territories, but if they decide not to attack in the particular territory that they’re moving through? Wright: Yes. I think that in particular in Europe, they’re still going with how to deal with people that are in many cases, citizens now of their countries and who might be allied with terrorist groups. For instance in Hamburg, I was recently in Hamburg and the police there said that there’s still an active cell there. Even after the attacks of nine-eleven, [the investigation] it’s still hampered by German law. It’s a real problem. But I think that on the issue of recruitment, I think that that’s really kind of negligible. The real problem is that there are thousands of mainly young men who are begging to get in. They’re not having to be recruited. They’re knocking on the doors trying to find a way to get into Al-Qaeda or whatever affiliated group. If there were recruiters, it would be easier to find them. They’re volunteers. Host: And where are these young men coming from? Wright: All over the Muslim world. And they’ve been very animated by some of the strikes against the West. They’re motivated by many of the political issues, in particular, Israel and Palestine. They’re angry at their own governments. They’re disappointed. In many cases they’re unemployed. You know, they’re a very volatile, boiling-over group. Host: Corine Hegland, last month in Thailand, on an island in Thailand, there was a whole soccer team worth of young men who went off to attack a police station acting as they said, as part of the global jihad. And they were all killed in this attack. What does that incident say about the nature of the groups that are popping up? Hegland: It says it’s very scary. I mean, in southern Thailand there has long been a Muslim separatist movement, but that movement largely settled for organized crime sometime ago. Today the children of that group, now seething with Islamic extremist ideas, they’re going back to the ideals that their parents abandoned. And this time, instead of being within a self-contained world, to debate whether to separate or not, to fight separate or not, they have an entire global support network. They have lots and lots of people saying, “Yes, by all means attack. Yes, by all means pull out.” They can draw support from beyond just their small region. And that they would go ahead and attack, armed with machetes against men carrying machine guns, is really quite terrifying. Host: Ali Al-Ahmed, one of the things that the families of the young men in Thailand who went off on this suicide terrorist attack talked about was the sense that these young men felt that Muslims were victims worldwide and they would point to the Palestinians, to Iraq and, as you’ve talked about this, the climate being there. And yet, we see in so many of the terrorist attacks that happen, whether it’s in Riyadh, whether it’s in Iraq, the terrorist attacks in Iraq or in Istanbul, in Casablanca, we see predominantly Muslims who are the victims of these terrorist attacks. Does that fact not come into the discussion in the Muslim world of the effect of terrorism? Al-Ahmed: Well, there are discussions regarding this issue, for example, even in Saudi Arabia. A lot of the government entities support extremism and terrorism outside the country, but when they are targeted, they cry foul and they say “We are Muslims and you shouldn’t kill us.” It’s okay for them to kill Iraqis, or to bomb Moroccans or to bomb other countries, but it’s not okay to do the same thing [at home]. In that, there is a hypocrisy. The problem, the governments of the Middle East, the Muslim world at large, they have not made their stand clear. The religious institutions have not made their stand clear regarding terrorism, not only against Muslims, or against their own nationals but against the larger humanity. For example when we saw the beheading of Mr. Nick Berg. I mean, their reaction to that was mute. The killing of the head of, of the Iraqi president, basically, yesterday, the reaction to it was mute in the Arab world even, very mute, as if this guy would deserve to die in this horrible way. There is a problem that the government regimes are dictators and they want this managed violence to continue so nothing can be achieved in political reform. And now, the United States can not pressure them further on reforming themselves. That’s why they keep the managed violence going. Hegland: Can I actually respond to part of that? Host: Corine Hegland. Hegland: With regard to the impact that killing Muslims has on the groups. One of the groups, Jemaah Islamiyah, based, in [Indonesia] -- nominally sought a single Islamic state throughout that region of Asia. After they carried out the Bali bombing, which killed a number of Australian tourists and a bombing on a hotel in Jakarta, which killed predominantly Indonesians and after that the group began to splinter. There’s a serious backlash within the group, and it looks like the predominant group wants to return to its role within the provincial wars, to pull out of this global jihad, which predominantly kills other Muslims in their area when they carry out attacks. So, there is a tension and there is a backlash, but how long it takes for that to work it’s way through the groups, we don’t know. Jemaah Islamyah is the first group to pick up Al-Qaeda’s song. And it’s the first group to show the tensions of doing so. Host: Lawrence Wright, what do you think about the issue of terrorism killing predominantly Muslims? Wright: Well, I would echo what Corine just said. It’s interesting, in Egypt, where much of this began in the eighties or early nineties, [there was] very savage warfare between the jihadis and the Egyptian government. And now, we see both Jamaah Islamiyah and the Islamic Jihad repenting for what they did because of the anger of the population. That’s the only hope, is that the people that are in those countries decide that they’ve had enough of it and they can’t stand it anymore and they won’t support it. All that advertising that the U-S puts on Al-Jazeera or whatever, won’t affect that. It’ll have to come from people who’ve decided they’ve had enough. Host: Corine Hegland, that issue of the reaction that people have is very much tied up with media images people see. And Ali Al-Ahmed brought up the issue of the beheading of Nick Berg, a civilian in Iraq. What’s your sense of how the reality of terrorism is seen by the populations that are being targeted for recruits by the global jihad? Hegland: I’m not sure the question is so much, how is terrorism seen as much as how is violence seen period. The largest split is in terms of the perceptions of the war in Iraq and the way in which the image plays in the U-S and the way in the which the war plays on Arabic media are very, very different. I don’t read Arabic and I don’t speak Arabic and I don’t have good access to Arabic sources other than second hand. What I’ve been told though, is that there were strong, loud, immediate condemnations of the beheading of Mr. Berg. They didn’t get the same cyclical play that attacks on predominantly Muslims get, whether carried out by whomever. It was condemned. It wasn’t continued on through a megaphone, so to speak afterwards. Host: Ali Al-Ahmed, what was the nature of the condemnation of the beheading of Nick Berg? At least in one case, Hezbollah put out a statement denouncing it, but on the grounds that it undermined efforts to fight America. To what extent do you see there being a reaction to that killing? Al-Ahmed: In Arabia, actually, I was going to point to the Hezbollah condemnation, that’s a change. That’s a change. That’s important. And I say that’s why. The idea is, in my opinion, it’s not that we don’t want people opposing the United States. There will always be people opposing the United States. What we would like to see is a change in tactics. If you are opposing me and you don’t agree with me, you don’t have to resort to these savage tactics and terrorism. There are other means to deal, to iron our differences, violently even, but not in this savage manner. It is time now to use civil and civilized tools to iron people’s differences, even fight each other. There is war, but there is a civilized way of doing war. What happened to Nick Berg, I think, if the Middle East, if we see hope, we must see clear and unquestionable condemnation to such acts, not against Muslims, against people like Nick Berg, who was a Jew. If we see that, then we will see terrorism in these countries will stop before we see clear condemnation of killing the other, the foreign, the different religion, the different languages. Even if he was a military man, if this kind of act was done and he was killed this way, if we see a condemnation, a true and sincere condemnation, we can talk about a terrorism-free the Middle East. Host: Lawrence Wright, what hope is there for building this sense of condemnation in the face of things like the killing of Nick Berg? Wright: Well, I think there is some, because we have seen examples in the Arab world where they have reacted against terrorism on their own soil and they’ve taped it, what it’s like. I think that it has to come along though with the building of some kind of democratic institutions. One of the main problems, I believe, in the Middle East is people aren’t responsible for what they say. All the rhetoric that comes out of there is because the countries are run by autocrats and people have no power to express themselves. I think a lot of these terrorists wouldn’t be terrorists if they had the opportunity to be politically involved. And that’s where our real goal should be. We should be directing our efforts at building civil institutions and trying to spread democracy, try to project American values the way that we have been projecting American power. Host: Corine Hegland, if U-S involvement in Iraq is one of those things that has been driving the ideological response, how does the U-S try to have any kind of hand in promoting democracy in the region without simply contributing to that backlash? Hegland: I’m not sure anyone knows. There are a lot of ideas on the table. Building local institutions within Iraq, the idea of handing power over to the local councils that have been established rather than leaving them hanging up in the air. I mean, there are local institutions in Iraq. There are local institutions in the Arab world. There are local institutions in the Muslim world, or multiple worlds. The question is how do you protect them so they can actually talk, so they can actually act, so they can respond to concerns and grow into national parties, grow into national structures and grow into national powers? And how you do that really isn’t clear. Host: Ali Al-Ahmed, let’s look at the example of Saudi Arabia, where you have some terrorist attacks now happening in Saudi Arabia and yet, does that provide the government there with an excuse not to do any move toward democratic opening up in the country? Al-Ahmed: Yes, that’s absolutely correct. This is what Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, said when they arrested the leaders of the democracy movement in Saudi Arabia. They said, “These people are divisive, they are creating division while the country is starting a war against terrorism.” The war on terrorism is being used to stifle any movement for peaceful, democratic movement in Saudi Arabia and the region. Like I said, I really believe truly, I mean, I have sources, people have said this from the royal family, that “We are very fortunate that these terrorists are attacking so we don’t have to do anything now. We just have to play victim and that’s it. Everybody’s not going to do anything to us. The United States now is on our side instead of being against us. Now we are the victims of terrorism and we can cry all day about terrorism and nobody asks us: ‘What about reform? What about democracy? What about voting? What about elections?’” Now the terrorism -- that’s why managed violence, I call it, is being used by all the regimes, by all the dictators in the region to maintain their holding power and prevent reform. Host: Lawrence Wright, we have about fifteen seconds left. What’s your thought on that? Wright: I think that the goal of terrorism is repression. The whole dialectic of terrorism is to create a repressive state that people will react against. And we have unfortunately fallen into the trap of only using repressive measures when we should be pushing back with strong democratic institutions and spreading these ideas of liberty. That’s the way to fight it. Host: That’s going to have to be the last word for today. We’re out of time. I’d like to thank my guests: Corine Hegland of the National Journal magazine; Ali Al-Ahmed of the Saudi Institute and joining us by phone from Austin, Texas, Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker magazine. Before we go, I’d like to invite you to send us your questions and comments. You can e-mail them to Ontheline@ibb.gov For On the Line, I’m Eric Felten. |