General:



AL QAEDA AS A BUSINESS ORGANIZATION:

A REALISTIC PORTRAYAL

OF WHAT AMERICA AND THE WORLD SHOULD UNDERSTAND

Anita Dhand

December 17, 2004

Professor Perritt

Economic Development of Countries in Transition

INTRODUCTION

[1]For years, the West has been unable to fully understand radical Islam. We picture it as a backwards and barbaric culture. We see so little of ourselves in it; we are technologically advanced and free, while they come from impoverished nations and live under oppressive religious governments. Our government is secular, while their religion controls all aspects of their lives. We fail to understand their lifestyles, customs, dress and gender roles. It was not until the attacks of September 11th that the average Westerner ever even heard – or cared - about Al Qaeda. After the attacks, we were consumed by anger and fear. Television stations showed video clips of Al Qaeda training camps, depicting bearded men in long loose clothes, climbing monkey bars and running barefoot in the dirt. There have been so many misconceptions about Al Qaeda, the most prominent of which are their lack of sophistication and incompatibility with the structure and form of any legitimate Western organization. These notions are incorrect.

In reality, Al Qaeda, despite its mission, shares a surprisingly broad array of characteristics with business and volunteer organizations in the West. Terrorist expert, Jessica Stern, in her book, “Terror in the Name of God,” asserts that “the requirements for running terrorist organizations are similar to those of running a firm or non-government organization (NGO).”[2] Indeed, Al Qaeda is structured much like any Western organization: It receives aid from outsiders as well as financing from charities and business operations and networks; It acquires the materials necessary to complete its mission; Recruits are attracted to Al Qaeda by a charismatic, entrepreneurial leader; It advertises its mission like any other business, and trains its new recruits in its trade. In these ways, and in the next chapters, I demonstrate that Al Qaeda is not backwards and isolated. Instead, it is a global network, that reaches to all continents and that attracts individuals from all nations. It is an organization on which many more will be modeled in the future.

THE HISTORY OF MILITANT ISLAM

Before delving into Al Qaeda, it is first necessary to understand its roots. Al Qaeda is derived from Militant Islam, which is “an inward-looking reaction to modernization.”[3] It is “anti-West and anti-globalization, [and i]ts anti-Israel and anti-Zionist rhetoric is a reflection of its anti-Western stance, and is not the basis for its philosophy or goals.”[4] Militant Islam is based on fundamental Islamic Law, known as Sharia Law.[5] “Sharia” means “the path to follow God’s law.”[6] Sharia law regulates all public and private behavior.[7] There are several sources of Sharia law, including the Quran and the Sunna, which come from the teachings of the Prophet, Mohammed.[8] Mohammed’s teachings play a crucial role in the history and construction of militant Islam. In fact, Ibn Taymiya, a thirteen-century traditional legal philosopher to whom the earliest form of Militant Islam can be traced, advocated a return to the Islam practiced in the seventh-century by Mohammed. Taymiyah started a revolution against the innovation and deviation from fundamental Islam that he felt were all around him; he violently opposed Islam’s incorporation of external influences. [9] He fought against everything that he believed wrongfully claimed to be Islam.[10] Ibn Taymiyah was set restoring Islam to what he believed to be its purest form – before the influences and additions, and without taking anything away from it.[11] His powerful speaking ability and great historical knowledge helped him to gain a huge following in a short time.

Taymiya belonged to the Hanbali School, which is one of four orthodox schools of law within Sunni Islam.[12] The school derives its decrees from the Qur'an and the Sunnah, which it places above all forms of consensus, opinion or inference.[13] The Hanbali School is conservative and extremist, focusing on puritanical Islam and resistance to the modernization of Islam.[14] Ibn Taymiya served as inspiration for Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab, founder of Wahhabism and the Wahhabi revolution, the first and most successful modern militant Islamic movement.[15] Wahhabis sought to overturn un-Islamic practices, and fought Muslim rulers who they believed had failed to implement a “pure form of Islam.”[16] The Wahhabis attempted to reform Islam, based on the conception that absolutely every idea added to Islam after the third century of the Mulsim era (about 950 CE) was false and should be eliminated.[17] Al-Wahhab claimed that because so many Muslims really lived in “jahiliyya,” (a state of barbarism and ignorance that existed before Islam) that those people were not really Muslims at all.[18] Only those who followed the teachings of al-Wahhab were still truly Muslims, because only they still followed the path laid out by Allah.[19]

Wahhabis differentiate themselves from orthodox Sunnis[20] by labeling themselves Salafis, a reference to the time period in which the early Muslims lived in the first three-hundred-years after the emigration of the Prophet Muhammad.[21] Wahhabis believed that it was necessary to live in the manner that Mohammed and his followers lived in the seventh century. When a Wahhabi calls himself a Salafi, he claims to be a genuine follower of pristine Islam.[22] Adherents of Wahhabi Islam do not regard it as simply one school of thought out of many; rather it is the only path of true Islam — nothing else really counts.[23] The Wahhabi movement is historically violent; because Wahhabis believe that anyone who did not practice their precise form of orthodoxy isheretical, they kill Muslims and non-Muslims indiscriminately.[24] Osama bin Laden is Wahhabi, and it is evident that Wahhabi extremism and radical ideas of purity have significantly influenced him.[25]

It was an alliance between the Wahhabis and the Saud family that led to the establishment of the Saudi Kingdom in 1932. In the 18th Century, Mohammed bin Saud, ruler of a desert oasis in the Nejd, adopted the religious doctrine of Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab, a Sunni scholar.[26] The men formed an alliance between their families, and set out to conquer the Arabian peninsula.[27] The alliance first proved successful in 1803 when it captured Mecca, and again in 1902, when it took Riyadh.[28] The attack was led by the Ikhwan (“brothers”) – Wahhabi warriors, who, “over three decades helped consolidate [the Saud’s] control over the peninsula.”[29] The zealous Wahhabi fighters helped to install the Saud family dynasty in battles against other religious and political sects.[30] Over the years, the Wahhab and Saud families intermarried, thus solidifying their control over the region.[31] The two families relied on each other for power and legitimacy. Wahhabism had a monopoly on religion based on the legitimacy granted to it by virtue of its alliance with the ruling family.[32] Similarly, the Wahhabi’s continuing approval provided the Saud family with legitimacy to rule. The Saud family actively supported international proselytizing by the Wahhabis in order to create useful, external outlets for the intense Wahhabi fervor that pervaded the region. This support served another purpose as well; the strict and often violent Wahhabis ensured the absolute obedience of its followers to the Saud rulers.[33]

The next major modern emergence of militant Islam was in the 1960’s and 1970’s, where it was employed as a tool to deflect socialism in the Arab world.[34] The revolution was led by Sayyid Qutb, leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, who opposed Egyptian leader, Nasser’s socialist regime.[35] Qutb wrote from prison that “Arab leaders like Nasser, who claimed to be Muslim, actually were non-believers, or infidels, as were their governments . . . [And that] real Muslims had the religious duty to overthrow by force these false leaders.”[36] Qutb’s advocation of radical Islam similar to that of Ibn Taymiya, as well as his constant calls for jihad against the Egyptian government, lead to his execution, whereby he became a martyr for militant Islam.[37] The Muslim Brotherhood lived on, advocating a return to Sharia because of what it perceived as the inability of Western values to secure harmony and happiness for Muslims.[38] Since only divine guidance could lead humans to happiness, Muslims should “eschew democracy and live according to divine-inspired sharia.”[39] The Brotherhood was one of the first groups to advocate jihad against all those who do not follow Islam.[40] After Qutb’s execution, Nasser banished the remaining members of the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt.[41] Members of the Brotherhood settled elsewhere in the Middle East, and were utilized by other nations as teachers of their Islamic ideology.[42] Thus, doctrines of Militant Islam began to spread, radicalizing Muslims and gaining increasing support and power in the Arab world.

In the 1980’s, Islam fought another war, this time in Afghanistan against Soviet invaders.[43] The war between Militant Islam and the communist Soviet Union lasted from 1979 until 1989, and was seen as a jihad between Islam and communism.[44] At the end of 1979, military units were sent by the Soviet government to ensure that Afghanistan would remain under Soviet control.[45] The Soviets invaded the nation’s infrastructure, assassinated the president, and replaced him with a “docile Soviet puppet.”[46] They also began a “systematic campaign to suppress Islamist subversion.”[47] The occupation of the Muslim state of Afghanistan by Communist Soviet Union shocked and infuriated the entire Muslim world, and “insulted the most basic sensitivities of Islam.”[48] Islamic forces responded with a powerful national resistance movement that defeated the controlling Soviet forces.[49] Thousands of Muslims worldwide flocked to Afghanistan, inspired to engage in jihad and rescue the nation from the atheist Soviet invaders.[50] These anticommunist Muslim rebels - known as “mujahedeen,” or holy warriors - received support from the United States and from many Muslim countries, particularly Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.[51] Osama bin Laden was one of these young mujahedeen, inspired by Islam and the plight of Muslims against outsiders.[52]

Finally, in April of 1988, the Afghan jihad won victory, and the Soviet forces withdrew from the area. A new generation of Islamic terrorists emerged from the mujahedeen camps; they were young and untrusting of outsiders and non-Muslims. “Radicalized and frustrated youth were diverted from the socialist-nationalist movements into the fold of traditionalist radical Islam . . . The radicalized youth were joining the banner of Islamism in unprecedented numbers . . .”[53] In addition to the youth, veterans of all ages from the Afghan jihad maintained their militant Islamic ideology. Many later became involved in other battles involving Muslims and non-Muslims. “They view these struggles as different battles within a larger war with the dar al-harb, or sphere of war, and the dar al-Islam, the sphere of Islam . . .”[54]

Thus, the seeds of militant Islam were sown as far back as the thirteenth century, and have blossomed ever since. The growth of militant Islam was spurred on by the influence of radical sects and by a perceived religious obligation to overthrow non-Muslims that threatened to take power in the Arab world. Invasions by foreign infidels have failed to suppress or deter the growing presence of militant Islam. Many factors contributed to the success of Militant Islam, particularly in the Middle East. These factors, which are discussed later on in detail, include the economic stagnancy and enormous population growth in the 1980’s, which left many Arab nations unable to provide jobs for their own citizens. In addition, many schools in these Arab nations were taught by members of radical Islamist groups, who focused almost entirely on religious indoctrinization. The result was a large radical Islamic population, without steady employment or stable lives. With nowhere else to direct their energies, many of these young men became vulnerable to the militant Islamist movement, which offered them direction, friendships, and a sense of empowerment and belonging.

The goal to which militant Islam aspires is both simplistic and lofty: “to secure power and maintain it through any and all means.”[55]

THE FORMATION OF AL QAEDA

Al Qaeda did not form from the abstract. It was built over time from the seeds of a concrete liberation movement that changed with the times and with the needs of a young Muslim population. In the late 1970’s - early 1980’s, thousands of Muslims worldwide flocked to Afghanistan, inspired to engage in jihad and rescue the nation from the atheist Soviet invaders.[56] Osama bin Laden was one of these young mujahedeen – or “holy warriors” - inspired by Islam and the plight of Muslims against outsiders.[57] In 1979, bin Laden, with the help of Abdallah Azzam, leader of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, established a “Bureau of Services known as MAK (Maktabu l-khidmat).[58] The organization recruited and trained over 10,000 volunteers to fight in the Afghan jihad. During the cold war era, U.S. foreign policy centered on resisting Communism.  After the unexpected number of deaths of U.S. soldiers in the Vietnam War, however, the American public was no longer comfortable with the idea of sending US troops far away to places with which they were not familiar. In addition, U.S. policy-makers feared direct confrontation with the Soviets, which might well have turned nuclear. So instead of sending troops to Afghanistan to help fend off the Soviets, the CIA funneled money through the Pakistani military intelligence service.[59] The Pakistani intelligence service – the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate – known as “ISID,” recruited more mujahedeen from poor Muslim countries, and sent them first to training camps, such as MAK, and then to war against the Soviets. [60] The success of MAK and the anti-Soviet jihad, however, depended not only on the recruits themselves, but on the financial support network, known as the “Golden Chain.”[61]

The Golden Chain was officially established in 1988, along with the formation of Al Qaeda. It was simply the title given to a group of investors – wealthy Saudi and Persian Gulf financiers - who believed in bin Laden’s future as an entrepreneur, and who donated millions of dollars towards his cause.[62] They acted much like venture capitalists investing funds into a start-up company. “Former Al Qaeda operatives have explained how Golden Chain financiers donated funds earmarked for bin Laden by way of the Saudi evangelical charity the Muslim World League”[63] as well as through other charities and nongovernmental organizations. Bin Laden primarily used these funds to “buy arms and supplies for the mujahedeen.”[64] Thus, even in the early days, bin Laden functioned as an entrepreneur of an ordinary business, requiring investors and outside funding in its start-up phase. These Golden Chain investors who invested money, and the mujahedeen who invested their lives, would get back not money, but the pride of a flourishing organization, and the satisfaction of achieving the goals of Islam. The success of the mujahedeen, many of whom had been recruited and trained by bin Laden and MAK, established bin Laden as a successful entrepreneur. Long before bin Laden was known as the anti-Western Islamic extremist behind the 9/11 attacks, he was simply “a person who generously helped fund the anti-Soviet jihad.”[65]

After the victory of the mujahedeen in the anti-Soviet jihad, Bin Laden and Azzam decided that MAK should not be dissolved. They decided that it should be maintained as a base or foundation (“Al Qaeda”) of operations - as “a standing Islamic legion, prepared to serve at a moment’s notice not just in Afghanistan, but in still ill-defined jihads to come.”[66] This is not unusual; organizations often evolve to meet new demands or the changing times. Al Qaeda’s evolution of organization is quite similar to that of a modern organization known as The March of Dimes. The March of Dimes was originally known as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, officially founded in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to combat worsening polio epidemics.[67] Millions of Americans sent dimes directly to the White House, and the campaign was so successful that the organization’s name was officially changed to The March of Dimes.[68] Over the next 17-years, the organization focused on funding research to develop a cure for polio, until 1954, when a cure was finally discovered.[69] In the years after, the polio vaccine became a standard among childhood immunizations.[70] Polio became virtually non-existent in the U.S., but instead of winding up its affairs, the March of Dimes decided to channel its great success elsewhere. As a result, the March of Dimes currently has taken on a new mission; the fight against prematurity in babies, which can lead to mental retardation, blindness, and other birth defects.[71] Similarly, MAK, which was originally created for the narrow purpose of defeating the Soviets, evolved after the jihad into a much larger, continuing, organization - Al Qaeda - whose goal would be much broader – the defeat of corrupt regimes in the Muslim countries, and especially defeating the foreign powers that infiltrate the Muslim world.[72] This evolution was possible because of the success of the original organization and the notoriety it obtained. Bin Laden believed that the invasion of Arab Islamic lands by atheist foreigners would certainly happen again elsewhere. He saw jihad as “a moveable feast of sorts,”[73] that could be transplanted wherever necessary. Al Qaeda was the organ through which he sought to do this. In November, 1989, Azzam was killed in an explosion, and Osama bin Laden was left as the foremost leader of Al Qaeda.[74]

The early days after Al Qaeda was formally brought to life were marked with frequent, and often violent struggles among various Arab and Islamic groups, particularly rival Afghan mujahedeen groups, with different goals. Such organizational competition is not uncommon, according to James Q. Wilson, scholar and author of the book “Political Organizations,” particularly when different organizations or associations have similar objectives.[75] Organizations in cases such as these might compete for resources, autonomy, reputation, and members. Competition occurs most often in groups that lack both resources or autonomy, or either of the two.[76] In an e-mail message from one of Al Qaeda’s most prominent leaders, Ayman al-Zawahiri, discovered after the fall of Kabul, al-Zawahiri states, “conflicts take place between [various jihadi groups] for trivial reasons, due to the scarcity of resources.”[77] Bin Laden and Al Qaeda became increasingly radical, attempting to drive out Arab governments that did not support them, and various groups that tried to compete with them.[78]

This radicalism appealed to many young Middle Eastern Muslim men. Schools throughout the Middle East focused on religion, particularly on Islam and the teachings of the prophet Mohammed and Ibn Taymiya. Having been schooled in radical Islam, and raised with the hate of the “impure” West, many of these young Muslims found that Al Qaeda mirrored and even expanded on their own beliefs. Furthermore, Al Qaeda’s bombings of the U.S embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi had distinguished the organization from other jihadi groups as one with power and willingness to act. This too attracted many young Muslims. Despite Al Qaeda’s eagerness to dominate the rival groups, the young organization needed to find a way to justify the constant and violent struggles. Since Islam does not permit rebellion against Muslim rulers, these struggles were justified by the writings of Ibn Taymiyah, who taught that any leader or person who followed any religion or teaching other than that of Mohammed was not truly Muslim.[79] Therefore, the Islamic rule forbidding rebellion against them would not apply, and the bloodshed was justified.

I. Aid From Other Nations

Al Qaeda did not survive on its own, however. The blossoming organization received aid from and formed alliances with other nations, such as Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the United States, and Afghanistan. According to James Q. Wilson, coalitions are mechanisms for coordinating the actions of the members of various organizations “in order to survive or . . . because a situation has been created in which all can benefit.”[80] Ad hoc alliances, he suggests, often take the form of loose cooperative relations between two or more associations with respect to the attainment of a particular end or a specific task.[81] Examples of such coalitions are the mujahedeens’ alliances with the state agencies in the U.S., Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Even though these countries did not support Al Qaeda in its modern form, their support in the early 1980’s helped the mujahedeen to grow in strength, morale, and numbers. Without this support, it is unlikely that the mujahedeen would have survived the jihad, and would not have had the opportunity to develop into Al Qaeda. Furthermore, the support of these powerful nations gave the mujahedeen a certain amount of legitimacy throughout the world.

The United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia

As discussed earlier in this chapter, the U.S. supported radical Islam in the anti-Soviet jihad, when anti-Communist fervor led the US government to send money and supplies to mujahedeen forces fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the early 1980’s. The U.S. needed the mujahedeen fighters to engage in a war to which it wanted to avoid sending its own soldiers; they wanted Communism stopped in its tracks and to drain the Soviets of finances and supplies. The mujahedeen wanted the atheist Communist government out of its Islamic lands. In accordance with Wilson’s assertions, therefore, the U.S., particularly through the CIA, was willing to coalesce with the radical Islamic group, because both sought to achieve a mutual goal – the stoppage of Communist expansion. Similarly, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (“ISI”) also aided the mujahedeen by allowing the U.S. to use them through which to funnel money and supplies into Afghanistan. Like the U.S., the Pakistani coalition with the mujahedeen was not done altruistically; Pakistan too had its own agenda. Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq desired to use his Cold War alliance with the U.S. to help build “a new Mongol empire extending from Pakistan all the way to the still very Soviet republics of Central Asia. Afghanistan lay at the center of both policies, with Pakistan determined to install a compliant government in Kabul . . .”[82] Pakistan, therefore, controlled the flow and distribution of money and supplies into Afghanistan, thus retaining a great deal of indirect control over the country.[83] Ul-Haq also feared that the Soviet focus on Afghanistan was the initial stage of a Soviet push westward into the Middle Ease. He aided the mujahedeen, therefore, to further Pakistan’s own interests. The benefit sought by the mujahedeen from this coalition with Pakistan is obvious; the mujahedeen were volunteer forces, many who had nothing to contribute except their own bodies and spirit. They desperately needed supplies, finances, bases and safe havens in order to survive and be victorious. Thus, the two countries coalesced in a mutually beneficial relationship, in order to fulfill their own personal goals.

Saudi Arabia also supported the mujahedeen in the early 1980’s, contributing, like the U.S., billions of dollars in support. The Saudis were a Muslim, and anti-Communist nation. During the anti-Soviet jihad, bin Laden had a good relationship with the Saudi ruling family; he was a member of a prominent Saudi family, and he counted Prince Turki ben Faisal al-Saud of the Saudi royal family and also head of the Saudi intelligence service as one of his strongest supporters. After the Afghan jihad, however, Saudi Arabia withdrew its support from the mujahedeen. Not only was mutual goal of the Saudi’s and the mujahedeen achieved when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, but the Saudis had other reasons for withdrawing their support. The Saudi government grew uneasy with bin Laden’s meddling in Yemini affairs and his attempts to recruit Yemini fighters.[84] The Saudi’s had long feared the Southern Yemini Marxist regime and its large and unruly population, and warned bin Laden to desist.[85] Furthermore, bin Laden began interfere with Saudi relations with Iraq by publicly voicing negative and demeaning opinions about Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party.[86] As James Q. Wilson asserted, coalitions arise when the there is some outcome that will benefit both parties.”[87] The Saudi government found a new beneficial association, and chose to ally itself with the U.S. in a coalition that substantially benefited both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. needed the Saudis’ oil and desired an alliance with a Muslim nation; Saudi Arabia, which had begun to feel threatened by the various militant groups and hostile states in the region, needed the U.S. for military protection and security.

Bin Laden was completely opposed to any sort of alliance between Muslim and Western states. He condemned the Saudi-U.S. coalition as contrary to the goals of Islam. In addition, the Saudi government permitted U.S. troops to be stationed in the Kingdom.[88] Bin Laden was furious at this apparent betrayal of Saudi Arabian Islamic roots, and began to speak out against the Saudi government and to denounce its alliance with the U.S. In response to bin Laden’s constant and public critiques of the Saudi government and its relationship with the U.S., the Saudi government revoked bin Laden’s passport, and in 1994, froze his financial assets and revoked his citizenship.[89] The government could no longer tolerate any more association with bin Laden, especially after a bomb plot carried out in 1995 by men who claimed to have been inspired by bin Laden, killed members of the U.S. military working for the Saudi National Guard.[90] Bin Laden’s love of Saudi Arabia as his homeland and an Islamic state simply could not withstand Saudi Arabia’s alliance with the West. Ironically, Saudi Arabia would contribute much more to Al Qaeda than even Bin Laden himself could ever imagine: 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

Iran and Iraq

Al Qaeda received additional support from Iranian security forces, who supplied Al Qaeda with “bombs ‘disguised to look like rocks,’ . . . and arranged for the group to receive training in explosives at Hezbollah-run camps in Lebanon.”[91] In addition, Iranian officials were willing to “facilitate the travel of Al Qaeda members through Iran on their way to and from Afghanistan. For example, Iranian border inspectors . . . [did not] place telltale stamps in the passports of these travelers.”[92] Bin Laden also desired to form an alliance of some sort with Saddam Husein in Iraq, due to their mutual anti-American and anti-Western sentiments. His desires amounted to nothing, however, because the Iraqis were apprehensive about bin Laden’s radical Islamist agenda.[93] Al Qaeda was instead confined to the northern Iran-Iraq border, near Kurdistan. There is little evidence of strong or lasting alliances between Iraq and Al Qaeda before the U.S.- Iraq war in 2003. After the US invasion, however, hundreds of suicide bombings occurred against U.S. forces in Iraq, “bearing [Al Qaeda fighters’] trademark willingness to sacrifice themselves.”[94]

Sudan

Al Qaeda’s greatest support, however, came from Sudan and the Afghani Taliban. In June of 1989, an Islamic theorist and politician named Hassan al-Turabi staged a coup and successfully took control of power in Sudan.[95] He desired to created a “new Sudan” based on a strict interpretation of Islamic law, with the help of the National Islamic Front (“NIF”) and the financial support of Osama bin Laden.[96] This goal was quite compatible with the goal of Al Qaeda, involving strict adherence to the Sharia and Islam dating back to Mohammed. Bin Laden was anxious to leave Afghanistan. In 1991, at the urging of Turabi, he arrived in Sudan, and was followed soon after by thousands of former mujahedeen fighters. Turabi and bin Laden were allies with a mutually beneficial relationship: Bin Laden agreed to help Turabi in “an ongoing war between African Christian separatists in southern Sudan, and to do some road building.”[97] In exchange, bin Laden was permitted to use Sudan as a base for “worldwide business operations and for preparations for jihad.”[98]

The relationship allowed bin Laden to “build training camps, establish safe houses, and plan terrorist operations from Sudanese territory.”[99] He bought property there, and set up legitimate businesses including “a global network of bank accounts and non-governmental institutions.”[100] Sudan became a safe haven in which to build Al Qaeda, make alliances, and plan for future jihads. The NIF supplied Al Qaeda with communication equipment, radios, rifles and fake passports. [101] In addition, the NIF looked the other way as Al Qaeda established training camps, planned terrorist operations, maintained offices in various parts of the world and established businesses which were operated to support In addition, while in Sudan, bin Laden and his officers expanded their terrorist network; they acquired weapons, explosives, and technical equipment; [102] they “trained, smuggled arms, and provided financial support to groups based in the Philippines, Jordan, Eritrea, Egypt, Yemen, and elsewhere.”[103] Bin Laden also made crucial contacts with foreign radical Islamic groups, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.[104] Bin Laden’s network included branches, offices and enterprises in Cyprus, Sarajevo, Azerbaijan, Vienna, Zagreb, and Budapest, as well as alliances with various groups in Indonesia, Kashmir and the United States.[105]

In addition, bin Laden established an “Islamic Army Shura,” which would serve as the “coordinating body for the consortium of terrorist groups with which he was forging alliances.”[106] He enlisted groups from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Oman, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Somalia, and Eritrea in building this Islamic army.[107] In essences, in the short time that he was in Sudan, before his expulsion in 1996, bin Laden was able to use his stature and respect among Islamic groups, as well as his reputation, to build alliances and intricate networks to empower Al Qaeda. He turned Al Qaeda into an organization with global reach and influence, with support coming from all over the world. In 1996, the Sudanese government under Turabi ousted bin Laden, due in great part to pressure from the U.S. and other Western governments, who warned Sudan to stop harboring international terrorists.[108] At the same time, the Sudanese regime began to change, and bin Laden and Al Qaeda were no longer welcome guests.[109] Thus, the mutually-beneficial coalition between Sudan and Al Qaeda ended when the impending costs of harboring a wanted man outweighed the benefits that Sudan received from Al Qaeda. Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, where he had risen to fame and respect in the anti-Soviet jihad.

The Afghani Taliban

The Taliban government, which was in power in Afghanistan in 1996, welcomed bin Laden, because they felt they could benefit from both bin Laden’s wealth and strict Islamic values, and because they were already familiar with bin Laden from his help in the anti-Soviet jihad over a decade before. There, bin Laden began to reestablish Al Qaeda as a vibrant and powerful organization. He built strong relationships with the Islamic Taliban leadership, and established training camps in Jalalabad.[110] He also set up ground and air defense facilities in the Tora Bora.[111] Despite pressure from the West, the Taliban government protected bin Laden fiercely. His protection was anchored in the “Pushtunwali” – the “domestic code of behavior of the Pushtun tribes of Pakistan and Afghanistan.”[112] Bin Laden received such protection in great part because his oldest daughter married Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar.[113] At that point, bin Laden became related to the Taliban by blood; thus extraditing him to outsiders, and especially to non-Muslims was inconceivable.[114] Pushtunwali tradition, therefore, ensured that bin Laden would not be betrayed, and in March of 1997, the Taliban formally announced its support and protection of bin Laden.[115] Even in 1999, the Taliban and Islamist leaders in Afghanistan continued to protect bin Laden in the face of increasing pressure to surrender him; “Mujahideen would sacrifice their lives to defend the hero of Islam. The Taliban will never hand over Osama to the enemies of Islam . . . And if the US tries to take him to their land, they will have to pass over the bodies of Mujahideen.”[116]

Al Qaeda and the Taliban formed a coalition so that both parties would benefit. The Taliban’s fierce support of bin Laden derived not only from from bin Laden’s support and dedication to Islam, but also in great part from his wealth. When bin Laden first arrived in Taliban-run Afghanistan, he shelled out money to support the government; he bought cars for the Taliban to use as “modern-day cavalry” in their war against the Northern Alliance, built a palace in Kandahar for Omar, and repaired roads all over the country.[117] Indeed, Bin Laden’s cash helped Osama gain much of what he wanted for Al Qaeda: “guarantee [for] Al Qaeda recruits and officials [of] virtually unimpeded passage in and out of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and what amounted to sovereign immunity from Taliban interference in the archipelago of camps and offices Osama established or expanded upon his return.”[118] Al Qaeda members were able to travel anywhere in Afghanistan, or enter and leave the country without visas or any kind of (valid) identification or immigration papers.[119] They were able to buy vehicles and weapons and bring them into Afghanistan, use official Afghan Ministry of Defense license plates, and use state-owned airlines to bring money in and out of the country.[120] Thus, bin Laden was able to use Afghanistan as a resource without having to answer to a formal government or other authority.[121] In short, the relationship between Al Qaeda and the Taliban was so strong because it was mutually beneficial: bin Laden was shut out of Saudi Arabia and Sudan, and was in danger of extradition in other countries. He needed a place to safely establish and expand his networks, investments, and ---. The Taliban, which was also Islamist, needed money and infantry. Bin Laden was able to supply the Taliban with money from his personal wealth, and Al Qaeda’s volunteer infantry became an essential support to the Taliban’s own army.

According to James Q. Wilson, not all organizations can achieve a high level of autonomy; new or weaker organizations, therefore, must either compete or coalesce in order to survive.[122] Organizations may coalesce when “the total supply of resources available [to them] is increased [by their merger or alliance].”[123] Over the years, Al Qaeda has gained in reputation, prosperity, and numbers. It is an independent organization, able to function independently of other terrorist organizations, however “it also functions through some of the terrorist organizations that operate under its umbrella or with its support.”[124] According to U.S. congressional statements, these other terrorist organizations that Al Qaeda has supported or taken under its wings include: the Al-Jihad, the Al-Gamma Al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group - led by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and later by Ahmed Refai Taha, a/k/a "Abu Yasser al Masri,"), a number of jihad groups in other countries, including the Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Albania, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, the Philippines, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, the Kashmiri region of India, and the Chechen region of Russia. Al-Qaeda also maintained cells and personnel in a number of countries to facilitate its activities, including in Kenya, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.[125]

Over the years, Bin Laden had formed a close relationship with Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. In the spring of 2001, despite much internal tension and disagreement, al-Zawahiri proposed “a formal merger with al-Qaeda.”[126] Discussed in global business terms, al-Zawahiri advocated the merger by warning of “increased market share for ‘international monopolies’ – the CIA and probably also Egyptian intelligence.”[127] He claimed that the merger could “ ‘increase profits’ – [meaning] the publicity and support that terrorism could produce.”[128] A great deal of Al Qaeda’s strength came from its ability to network and to coalesce with and assist other organizations.

II. The Structure of Al Qaeda

According to Jessica Stern, “the requirements for running terrorist organizations are similar to those of running a firm or a non-governmental organization (“NGO”).”[129] She describes “today’s multinational terrorist leader” as “an entrepreneur who brings together mission, money, and market share[, and . . .] hires skilled and unskilled labor [ . . .].”[130] Al Qaeda most closely resembles a hybrid organization, as described by Stern, which includes “lone wolf avengers, commanders, cadres, freelancers, and franchises.”[131] In this form of organization, there is a combination of network-style with minimal communication among nodes, and a commander-cadre style.[132] Bin Laden is the entrepreneur who Stern described, whose leadership and organizational skills, goal, and charisma attracted so many Muslims to Al Qaeda.[133] Assisting bin Laden directly are advisors, deputies, and strategic planners, who directly assist the president include Ayman al-Zawahiri, Muhammad Atef, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. Directly below them is the Shura Council, which is similar to a senior management council. The Shura Council consists of about a dozen members, whose job is to oversee the committees into which the various issues that the organization deals with are broken down.

The Committees include (1) the Military Committee, which is responsible for training camp and procurement of weapons; (2) The Islamic Study Committee, which issues fatwas and other religious rulings; (3) the Media Committee, which publishes newspapers; (4) the Travel Committee, which is responsible for the procurement of tickers and false identification papers. (This Committee also comes under purview of Finance Committee); (5) the Finance Committee, which oversees bin Laden’s businesses.[134] It is here in the various committees that Al Qaeda begins to take the form of a network-style operation, where leadership is widely distributed. Each committee performs its specific function, and is kept separate from the others. However, within each individual committee, the organizational-style takes the form of commander-cadre. The clearest example of this is the Military Committee, where the actions of the committee is undertaken by operatives. Operatives are member volunteers who pledge their allegiance to Al Qaeda. They do not receive salaries, however, they might either be paid for a specific job, or they might be compensated for travel and other expenses leading up to a job. These operatives are compartmentalized into groups at many different training camps around the Middle East and even the world. Social ties are created at the training camps in order to commit the members to each other in ideology and solidarity.[135] The interest of these recruits is maintained by permitting small-group enforcement at the training camps, of higher-level directives.[136]

At each camp, operatives are directly overseen by commanders, managers, and cadres, who closely supervise the operatives’ skills and commitment to the organization. Among these operatives are “sleepers.” Sleepers provide examples of the compartmentalization of information within Al Qaeda; they are usually informed of their tasks immediately before the operation; thus, they function on a “need to know” basis.[137] Instructions come from the top, and then are filtered down slowly and deliberately to the Shura council and then to the commanders in various camps, who then divulge such information to the operatives only when and as much as is necessary.[138] Because of technological advances in recent years, networks and decentralized organizations such as Al Qaeda can now be “decentralized but also highly focused. Members can travel nearly anywhere and communicate with one another anywhere.”[139] Al Qaeda has formed “the kind of network of networks connected by weak ties that network theorists argues is the most effective style of organization, and making use of sleepers and freelances, which increases the resilience of the alliance.”[140] There are undoubtedly many “lone wolf avengers,” attracted to Al Qaeda, whom Stern defines as individuals who “come up with their own ideologies that combine personal vendettas with religious or political grievances.”[141] However, the extent to which these individuals played a part in the overall functioning of Al Qaeda is of yet unknown.

Much of what the operatives were trained in was recorded in an instruction manual. Because intelligence and counterintelligence is a priority for Al Qaeda, the manual includes instructions on how to disappear into enemy territory by “shaving one’s beard, avoiding typical Muslim dress or expressions, not talking too much, wearing cologne.”[142] The manual also instructs sleepers to “find residence in new buildings where tenants are less likely to know each other.”[143] Included in the manual is the “Military Series.” The first lesson of the series explains that the main mission for the Military Organization is to “overthrow . . . the godless regimes and . . . replace them with an Islamic regime.”[144] The manual goes on to list “Military Organization Requirements,” including forged documents and counterfeit currency; apartments and hiding places; communication means; transportation means; information; arms and ammunition; transport.[145] Other missions in the first lesson regarded issues such as: gathering information; kidnapping of enemy personnel, arms, documents, etc.; assassinating enemy personnel as well as enemy tourists; freeing the brothers who are captured by the enemy; instigating people against the enemy; blasting and destroying the places of amusement, immorality and sin; blasting and destroying the embassies and attacking vital economic centers; blasting and attacking bridges leading into and out of the cities.[146]

The Second lesson listed necessary qualifications and characteristics of the organization’s members.[147] These qualifications include commitment to Islam and to the organization’s ideology. This lesson is discussed in greater detail in the section on “Recruiting.” Other lessons teach how to forge documents, establish safe houses and hiding places, establish safe communications, procure weapons, and gather intelligence.

III. Financing Al Qaeda

Like any other voluntary organization, Al Qaeda needs funds in order to survive. An e-mail from bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri discussed various expenses, such as salaries, loans, and typical business expenses, such as fax machines, computer renovations, and cellular phones.[148] Al Qaeda also needs money to purchase weapons and for traveling expenses. Jessica Stern suggests that Al Qaeda raises money in several ways; (1) financial or in-kind assistance from states or state agents; (2) businesses; (3) charitable donations; and (4) criminal activities.[149] In its early stages, however, Al Qaeda (at the time, the mujehedeen) was funded by the Golden Chain, a group of wealthy Persian Gulf financiers who donated substantial amounts of money to bin Laden and the mujahedeen, especially through charities (described above). In addition, as described earlier, the mujahedeen were also financed by the U.S., Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, and received assistance “in kind” from Iran, Sudan and the Afghani Taliban government. Bin Laden himself used his vast family inheritance to help finance both the mujahedeen and Al Qaeda, although not nearly to the extent that the U.S. had originally believed; the U.S. thought that bin Laden was worth around $300 million dollars, when in reality this number was greatly exaggerated. Bin Laden, in actuality, had received $1 million per year from his personal inheritance, from 1970 to 1994 – a substantial amount, but not nearly what the U.S had believed, and not even close to what it would cost to finance Al Qaeda.[150] After the U.S., Pakistan and Saudi Arabia cut off their funds at the end of the anti-Soviet jihad, the newly developing Al Qaeda was reliant primarily on other sources of income, such as businesses and assistance from other nations, like Afghanistan.

When the Saudi government froze bin Laden’s assets in Saudi Arabia in 1994, bin Laden escaped to Sudan, where he set up many businesses, including: “Wadi-al-Aqiq, a corporate shell that he referred to as the ‘mother’ of all the other companies: Al Hijra Construction, a company that built roads and bridges; Taba Investments, Ltd., a currency trading group; Themar al-Mubaraka, an agricultural company; Quadarat, a transport company; Laden International, an import-export business.”[151] In addition, Al Qaeda controlled “the Islamic bank al-Shamal and held accounts at Barclays Bank in London as well as unnamed banks in Sudan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Cyprus, the United States, and Dubai.”[152] In fact 9/11 hijackers used banks in the U.S., choosing both major international banks and small regional banks.[153] They opened accounts using their own names and valid identification, thus giving authorities for suspicion.[154] However, the 9/11 Commission Reports maintain that these businesses could not have provided Al Qaeda with significant income, since most were “small or not economically viable.”[155] In addition, when bin Laden and Al Qaeda were expelled from Sudan in 1996, the Sudanese government appropriated all of bin Laden’s assets.[156] After arriving in Afghanistan from Sudan, the Taliban financially supported Al Qaeda, however, their financial support was limited by their own lack of funds. In reality, it was bin Laden who supplied the Taliban with a significant amount of money – about $10-20 million per year - in exchange for their protection and permission to establish Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.[157]

Like many other voluntary organizations, Al Qaeda raised money primarily through fund-raising and charitable donations. The Salvation Army is a well-known international organization which engages in similar practices. The Salvation Army is funded primarily by external donors, who feel comfortable giving money because of the organization’s reputation and notoriety.[158]

Similarly, Al Qaeda relies heavily on charitable donations. Because of its dependence on outside donations, Al Qaeda, like the Salvation Army, must rely heavily on its reputation in order to convince potential donors to contribute to their organization rather than to another. As described more fully in the last section of this paper, funding through donations is a scarce resource for which Al Qaeda must compete with other jihadi groups. The CIA estimates that it cost Al Qaeda about $30 million per year to sustain its activities before 9/11 and that this money was raised almost entirely through donations.”[159] Some donors contributed willingly and knowingly to Al Qaeda, while others believed that they were contributing to a legitimate charity, unbeknownst that their money was finding its way, in whole or in part, to Al Qaeda.[160]

Al Qaeda also relies on charitable organizations to provide cover and also for money laundering.[161] One such example is the al-Wafa organization, which was controlled entirely by Al Qaeda operatives, thus giving them free access to bank accounts.[162] Another example is the Mercy International Relief Agency – a humanitarian relief organization located in Nairobi.[163] This organization “served as a front organization for [Al Qaeda] operatives during the period they were planning the Africa embassy bombings.[164] In many cases, money donated for legitimate humanitarian causes ended up in Al Qaeda’s network. The 9/11 Commission Reports assert that much of this fund-raising was done in Saudi Arabia, where “extreme religious views are very common and charitable giving was both essential to the culture and subject to very limited oversight.”[165] The 9/11 Commission Reports also acknowledge that there is no evidence that the Saudi government or officials thereof individually funded Al Qaeda, however it insists that it is likely that there was significant Saudi government sponsorship involved in diverting funds to Al Qaeda.[166] Al Qaeda transmitted funds acquired through charities or legitimate businesses through the use of “hawala,” which are informational transactions “based largely on trust and extensive use of family or regional connections.”[167] The hawala network had branches throughout the Middle East, used primarily to transfer funds efficiently and without outside scrutiny.[168]

Al Qaeda is also involved in some criminal activities, such as attempts to develop “a more potent strain of heroin” for export; and a “network of honey shops, to transfer funds around the world . . . and [convert] cash into diamonds and gold.[169] However, despite allegations to the contrary, there is no hard evidence to suggest that Al Qaeda benefited from the drug trafficking that was a source of income for the Taliban, nor is there evidence that Al Qaeda benefited from “manipulation of the stock market based on advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.”[170]

IV. Arming Al Qaeda

Like any other business, Al Qaeda needs the tools necessary to achieve its goal. In addition to competent and knowledgeable personnel, for many businesses, these tools include communication devices, computers for communication and research, cars for transportation - perhaps to visit clients. The necessary tools vary depending on the purpose of the particular organization: the Red Cross needs a wide range of medical supplies; United Airlines needs airplanes equipped with communication and navigation devices; the U.S. Army needs camouflage garb, weapons and communication equipment. Similarly, since the goal of Al Qaeda is to engage in jihad in order to cleanse Islam of the impure influence of the West,[171] it needs the tools necessary to wage its “holy wars.” These tools include primarily weapons, both conventional and unconventional.

There are many different facets of Al Qaeda, each divided into committees (described previously) in order to achieve maximum efficiency.[172] It is the job of the Military Committee to procure weapons, both conventional and unconventional.[173] In the early days, during the anti-Communist jihad, the mujahedeen acquired weapons from a variety of sources. The Chinese sold weapons to the mujahedeen in an effort to “weaken its Communist rival.”[174] Egypt and Israel were also eager to sell weapons to the mujahedeen, especially those acquired from the Soviets themselves in past Soviet-Arab wars.[175] The mujahedeen also acquired a significant portion of its weapons from the U.S., particularly after the development of the U.S.’s Weapons Upgrade Program, designed to encourage Congress to fund a multi-million dollar program to design and produce “lightweight exotic killing devices” for the mujahedeen to use to fight the Soviets.[176] The program was initiated by Charlie Wilson, a Texas Congressman who took his idea to the Pentagon, in order to ensure that the mujahedeen army of young, inexperienced and badly equipped warriors would defeat the powerful Red Army – the mutual enemy of the mujahedeen and the U.S. The acquisition of weapons exemplifies the international aid procured by the mujahedeen, aided by the U.S. and its many alliances - “Saudi kings and princes serving as bankers, with earnest Communist Chinese offering their weapons to shoot down Soviet Communists . . . Everyone was secretly a part of it – the British, French, Canadian, and German intelligence services; even Singapore was doing its part.”[177]

In addition to the weapons acquired by the mujahedeen in the late 1970’s – early 1980’s, Al Qaeda itself also acquired weapons from a variety of sources. The 055 Brigade – Al Qaeda’s guerilla organization – used weapons left behind by the Soviet Red Army, when it fought against the Northern Alliance. It also used “weapons from the Taliban and the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI.”[178] Al Qaeda also acquired weapons while in Sudan; “Al Qaeda’s global reach [through the businesses that bin Laden established while in Sudan] . . . enabled it to establish a worldwide network of procurement officers.”[179] In addition, Al Qaeda has obtained various conventional weapons from organized crime rings in Russia and the Ukraine.[180]

The weapons obtained as described above include bombs, which Al Qaeda has used in car bombings, such as those against the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya; Al Qaeda has also used bombs in suicide missions (described below). In addition to bombs, Al Qaeda has acquired shoulder-held Stinger missiles, from the U.S. for use against the helicopters of Soviet invaders.[181] The missiles were designed in such a way that anyone could use them effectively: “they were sufficiently user-friendly to make it possible for a simple man with no technological knowledge to put the dull tube on his shoulder, get a MiG or helicopter in his sights, pull the trigger, and bring down a $20 million jet fighter or gunship.”[182] In short, the missiles were designed for use by the mujahedeen soldiers, and proved very effective, especially in response to the Soviets’ deadly Mi-24 Hind flying gunships.[183] In addition to Stinger missiles, the US contributed ammunition, rockets, rifles, SA-7’s and Blowpipes to the mujahedeen cause, unaware that years later, many of the now-experienced and empowered warriors would unite and evolve into Al Qaeda.

In addition to the above-described weapons, Al Qaeda uses human beings as perhaps its most effective weapons--using individuals as “suicide bombers”, who are willing to sacrifice their own lives in order to act as a potent weapon against an enemy. This practice is relatively inexpensive, since all that it needed for the operation is one human being and one bomb. In addition, particularly when used against a more powerful enemy, the suicide bomber is likely to be seen as a martyr, willing to sacrifice his own life for the good of a cause. This in turn gives momentum to the cause itself, by drawing attention to it, and demonstrating dedication. Jessica Stern asserts that “suicide seems to spread more readily in subcultures heavily exposed to violence.”[184] Al Qaeda has been exposed to violence even before its birth. The mujahedeen engaged in a violent war against the Soviet Union in the early 1980’s. Those jihadi’s who transferred their loyalties to Al Qaeda were exposed to violence in later battles between Al Qaeda and other jihadi groups, and between Al Qaeda and other nations, especially the West.

With the combination of constant exposure to violence and the undeniable effectiveness of suicide bombings, even against the most powerful enemies, it is not surprising that suicide missions have become increasingly common, particularly against enemies who are difficult to infiltrate, like the U.S. Ironically, Islam expressly forbids suicide. The Q’ran instructs Muslims, “And do not kill yourself, for God is indeed merciful to you.”[185] It further instructs, “And do not throw yourself into destruction with your own hands.” [186] According to Stern, however, terrorist leaders contend that suicide missions are not suicides, but acts of martyrdom, and “although God punishes the suicide, he rewards the martyr.” [187] Suicide missions, therefore, have been legitimized and even praised under Islam, as a selfless means towards achieving a greater good. Their effectiveness was demonstrated by Al Qaeda’s attacks against the U.S. on September 11th, and there is little doubt that other anti-Western jihadi groups took note of the destruction.

Al Qaeda does not rely solely on conventional weapons; it has its hands in unconventional weapons as well, and desires to acquire more. In fact, bin Laden told a reporter in 1999, “Acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty . . . [and that ] It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess the weapons that would prevent the infidels from inflicting harm on Muslims.”[188] After the fall of Kabul, a file known as the “Yogurt” project was discovered on a computer taken from an Al Qaeda office building, citing details about Al Qaeda’s aspiration to establish a chemical and biological weapons program.[189] According to the data in this file, Al Qaeda deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri had begun a program in 1999 to develop chemical and biological weapons.[190] In an e-mail from al-Zawahiri to Muhammad Atef, al-Zawahiri states that “the enemy drew our attention to [chemical and biological weapons] by repeatedly expressing concerns that they can be produced simply with easily available materials.”[191] The e-mail goes on to state al-Zawahiri’s understanding of the destructive power of attacks by such weapons, and his understanding of “a germ attack.”[192] He acknowledges that “defense against such weapons is very difficult, particularly if large quantities are used.”[193] He states his desire to find a specialist to help Al Qaeda embark on a chemical and biological weapons program as quickly and cheaply as possible.[194]

Beginning in 1995, “the CIA began to receive reports that Sudanese leaders had approved bin Laden’s request to begin production of chemical weapons to use against U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia.”[195] Furthermore, two different Al Qaeda operatives, apprehended at different times for their involvement in different plots, asserted that the organization had chemical weapons, and that operatives were trained to use them in Al Qaeda’s training camps.[196] Further evidence of Al Qaeda’s acquisition of chemical and biological weapons includes a manual which “provides instructions for using chemical weapons; a manual that provides recipies for producing chemical and biological agents from readily available ingredients; and intercepted phone conversations between Al Qaeda operatives who were discussing unconventional agents .”[197] More documents were found that reveal that Al Qaeda has acquired the necessary materials for producing various chemical and biological agents, including anthrax.[198]

Evidence also suggests that Al Qaeda has access to nuclear weapons, through organized criminal groups in the former Soviet Union, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.[199] Furthermore, “U.S. government officials reportedly believe that Al Qaeda successfully purchased uranium from South Africa.”[200] In 2001, CIA director, George Tenet told Congress that “the U.S. had uncovered rudimentary diagrams of nuclear weapons in a suspected al-Qaeda house in Kabul.”[201] These diagrams “describe the essential components – uranium and high explosives – common to nuclear weapons.”[202] Furthermore, a document entitled “Superbomb” was discovered in the homes of a senior Al Qaeda official.[203] The document “discusses various types of nuclear weapons, the physics of nuclear explosives, properties of nuclear materials needed to make them, and the effects of nuclear weapons.”[204] Although some of the information is incorrect, the document is evidence of Al-Qaeda’s understanding of, and desire to acquire, such weapons. In addition to weapons, Al Qaeda has also acquired other materials necessary for jihad from various countries: “communication equipment from Japan; scuba gear and range finders from Britain; satellite phones from Germany; night-vision goggles [rifles and planes] from America.”[205]

SETTING THE STAGE FOR INSURGENCY

I. Economics and Education: Reasons that Insurgencies Survive

It seems that once the fervor and passion that gave birth to a new organization, dies down, there must still be something that continues to compel individuals to join and that keeps the organization alive. Wilson suggests that three characteristics, “roughly corresponding to an alternative definition of social class,”[206] that might account for differential participation, particularly in voluntary organizations: economic status, psychological reasons, and social position.[207] Turning first to economics and psychological attributes, Wilson suggests that the more resources that one has, such as “money and personal control over time schedules,”[208] the greater one’s propensity to join voluntary organizations.[209] He also asserts that upper-class individuals are more likely to join voluntary organizations.[210] Since class is often directly correlated to societal status, while wealthy individuals tend to avoid joining any organization that might threaten their existing status, lower-class (and hence, often lower-status) individuals do not have this same concern.[211] They understand the value of joining an organization when their presence “serves some symbolic purpose.”[212] Wilson contends that lower-class individuals join organizations that allow their “focal concerns . . . to be more easily and immediately achieved.”[213] Wilson also suggests that lower-class organizations usually do not survive without “selective, individual incentives.”[214] Thus, lower-class people can be persuaded to join voluntary organizations if the benefits that encourage them to join are “immediate, substantial, and personal.”[215] “If money, it must be forthcoming promptly . . .; if solidarity, it must provide opportunities for vivid and uninhibited expression of core life-style values; if a sense of purpose, it must involve personal and intense . . . experience.”[216]

Al Qaeda is an organization that exemplifies Wilson’s perspective on why lower-class individuals join volunteer groups. Many members joined Al Qaeda to achieve their “focal concerns” “more easily and immediately.[217] Al Qaeda provided these men the opportunity to die to protect their nation and their way of life.[218] It offered them immediate incentives, such as group solidarity in ideology and objective, as well as an intense sense of purpose.[219] However, despite Wilson’s assertion that wealthy individuals are more likely to join volunteer groups, Al Qaeda proves that in some circumstances, the opposite might be true. Wilson fails to account for the fact that many new members were attracted to Al Qaeda (or the mujahedeen before it) because of their lack of wealth, prosperity and status. It appears that the hopelessness stemming from their bleak financial status and their condition of “relative deprivation” led many individuals to join Al Qaeda. Wilson suggests that violence often occurs in such situations of “relative deprivation[220],” when people become dissatisfied and restless because their achievements fall short of their aspirations, and they have few options.[221] This can be seen the economic chaos that followed the anti-Soviet jihad.

When the Soviet jihad ended in the 1980s, the Arab oil states were left in economic turmoil. Oil revenues became a major source of income for many of the Arab oil states in the 1960s, 1970s and beyond.[222] The revenues were spent primarily on infrastructure and other internal developments.[223] The 1970s and 1980s marked a decade that saw oil prices rise and fall dramatically,[224] but it wasn’t until the early 1980s that the economy of the Arab oil states began to slow down significantly.[225] The slow-down is attributable primarily to “lower oil revenues, the completion of several large industrial and infrastructure projects, and the Iran-Iraq War.”[226] The mid-1980s were a period of recession, caused in large part by a 40 percent drop in oil revenues. Exports and federal trade surplus plummeted.[227] “[D]iminishing oil revenues, economic drain from many unprofitable development projects, and population growth created enormous cutbacks from the wealth of the Middle East of the 1970s.”[228] The people of these affected Arab states greatly resented these cutbacks, and this resentment only increased as the public came to understand “how much oil income had gone straight into the pockets of the rulers, their friends, and their helpers.”[229] The governments of these distressed Arab nations were more concerned with “preserving the elite’s grip in national wealth” than with taking any viable steps towards fostering “dynamic economies that could create jobs attractive to educated young men.”[230] As a result, the Arab oil nations were left economically stagnant, and unable to provide their own citizens with jobs.

Turning now to Wilson’s assertion that social position is a reason for joining volunteer organizations, Wilson contends that some persons are more likely than others to join such organizations because they are members of a “distinctive, self-conscious subculture that forms a natural basis for associational life.”[231] Wilson provides an example of religious subcultures having their own internal sense of collective identity, which may constitute a basis for organization.[232] This is certainly true of the men who joined Al Qaeda or the mujahedeen; both can be characterized as religious subcultures, since they are grounded in Militant Islamic ideology. However, many of these young men were not born into these beliefs – they learned it through national educational systems.

In the educational systems of many Arab oil states, members of Muslim organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups were accepted as teachers in Arab nations.[233] Teachers such as these often radicalized their young students.[234] At the same time, Saudi Arabia and other conservative monarchies “promoted Islam as part of a strategy to defeat Nasser's socialism.”[235] These ideologies spread quickly through the Muslim world, resulting in education of the youth that was neither moderate not well-rounded. Mamoun Fandy is a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, who predicts in his research project entitled “The Crisis of Education in the Muslim World,” that the future of Muslim education is not promising: “While world population growth averages about 1.2 percent annually, it is nearly 3 percent in the Arab states . . . The governments will not be able to meet this demand for education, and the majority will be educated with the [radical ideologies] of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Jihadist organizations.”[236]

Thus, due in great part to economic conditions and high birthrates, there exists an ever-increasing population of young Muslim men, many with only religious or ideological education, who lack marketable skills, and who live in a stagnant economy.[237] These men “become easy targets for radicalization.”[238]

II. Loss of Confidence in the Regime

Insurgencies do not succeed unless the people of a given state, nation, or region realize that their aspirations cannot be recognized until the existing regime is displaced; the people must essentially lose hope in the regime. Such is the perspective of rational human beings, who strive towards certain goals. “A potential revolutionary situation exists in any country where the government consistently fails in its obligation to ensure at least a minimally decent standard of life for the great majority of its citizens. If there also exists even a nucleus of a revolutionary party able to supply doctrine and organization, [239] all that is needed is “the instrument for violent revolutionary action[240]” and the hope and belief of the citizens in the success of the revolution.

Wilson provides an example of such revolutionary organizations in the Civil Rights Organizations of the mid-1900’s, specifically the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (“SNCC”). SNCC was established in the early 1960’s as “the organizational outgrowth of the lunch-counter sit-ins begun by black college students in the South . . .”[241] SNCC and the civil rights movement in its entirety was born out of the realization of blacks in the U.S. that their goal of equality could not be fulfilled under the existing regime. The existing regime - the United States’ federal and state –mostly state government intransigence, combined with federal passivity--governments - had failed to ensure the basic rights and liberties, set out in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to its black citizens. Thus, the seeds for this (non-violent) insurgency were planted. SNCC managed to “increase chaos by their acts of insurgency,” in organizing freedom marches, economic boycotts, and all-black political parties, as well as in helping blacks register to vote.[242] It acted to spur the “transformation of [the] existing society,”[243] and in doing so, (along with the civil rights movement as a whole), succeeded in undermine the existing regime and forcing drastic change.

A similar scenario can be seen in the Middle East in the post-World War I Mandate System. Since WWI, the Islamic Middle Eastern nations have almost consistently been ruled by foreign or oppressive powers, thus resulting in the utter loss of confidence in the existing regimes, and rebellion by insurgents. Before the war, many of the present-day Arab nations existed only as geographic regions, not as separate and individual nations. During the war, France and Britain partitioned the regions and turned them into separate countries under the “Mandate System.”[244] Initially, there were only three “mandates;” Palestine under Britain, Mesopotamia under Britain, Syria under France.[245] However, a few years later, these mandates were divided even further, establishing more nations under Britain and France.[246] During the War, France and Britain, with the assent of Russia, issued the “Sykes-Picot agreement,” which was a secret understanding for “the division of Turkish-held region of the Fertile Crescent (Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine) into various French and British-administered areas.”[247] The agreement conflicted with pledges already given by the British that the Arabs would receive an important share of the territory won.[248] The geographical division of these Middle-Eastern Arab regions “tore the socio-economic cycle of the region apart. It broke up centuries-old trade routes, created new economic barriers, impeded the process of social interaction, and provided for an unstable future.”[249]

Most of these Arab nations achieved independence in the mid to late 20th century, usually by war or other violence. After World War II, the monarchies in Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen were overthrown and replaced with secular nationalist revolutionaries. These regimes usually emerged as dictatorships that were intolerant of any resistance, and who “forced their critics to choose silence, exile, or violent oppression.”[250] Confidence in these regimes was lost, since the people were unable to participate in government, and were instead subject to the whims of oppressive leaders. In order to maintain control by gaining the approval of threatening opposition groups, the rulers sometimes attempted to buy off local Islamic movements.[251] Bolstered and not satisfied by these occurrences, Islamists in several of these Arab nations pushed for more power and for a beginning of political Islam. But their attempts to gain power were repeatedly and often brutally crushed. In Egypt, after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat by militant Islamic insurgents in 1981, the Egyptian government went to great and vicious lengths to repress and drive out Islamic scholars, authors, and militants.[252] In Algeria, where Muslims seemed certain to win power through poplar vote in 1991, the military “preempted their victory, triggering a brutal civil war.”[253] Islamists in these nations are increasingly aware that their aspirations of pure Islamic governments will not be recognized by the existing regimes. In fact, in many of these countries, “opponents of today’s rulers have few, if any, ways to participate in the existing political system. They are thus a ready audience for calls to Muslims to purify their society, reject unwelcome modernization, and adhere strictly to the Sharia.”[254]

MOBILIZING IDEOLOGIES

I. Emphasizing Religion and Nationalism

Once the stage has been set for radicalization and rebellion by relative deprivation, radical religious education, and loss of confidence in the existing regime, the ideology infused into the group must be mobilized. Insurgent groups like Al Qaeda are able to do this by exploiting religion and nationalism, by demonizing the foreigner, and by emphasizing threats to old orders. Wilson suggests that violence between different groups or organizations is “an extreme form of a heightened sense of . . . group identification stimulated by real or imagined threats arising from the incursions or domination of another group.”[255] He suggests that threats arising from outside the group tend to enhance group cohesiveness and integration.[256] An example of this phenomenon is the war between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, which was depicted an Islamic jihad against an atheist invader.[257] This portrayal attracted thousands of young Muslims from around the world – the “mujahedeen,” who were willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the Muslim community – to save Islam from atheists. In fact, since the time of Ibn Taymiya in the thirteenth century, jihad has been seen as a necessary, legitimate, and honorable component “of the permanent revolution of the Islamic movement.”[258] Al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden called and continues to call for Islamic jihad against America and the West, but more significantly, against “the Crusaders and the Jews.”[259] He uses “Christian” and “Western” interchangeably. In doing so, he has made the conflict strictly religious – no longer is it nation against nation – instead it is a Christian and Jewish “conspiracy against Islam.”[260] Thus, these young men, who were educated primarily in Islamic ideologies, were influenced and perhaps exploited by references to religion and nationalism to sacrifice themselves.

For Muslims, religion and nationalism are very closely related.[261] For strict Sunni Muslims, there is no distinction between the two; there is no separation of church and state; “The religion of Islam and the government are one. Islamic Law is controlled, ruled, and regulated by the Islamic religion. The theocracy controls all public and private matters . . . all law, government and civil authority rests upon [religion] and it is a part of Islamic religion.”[262] Further evidence of the inseparability of religion and nationalism is the Muslim education system, which focuses primarily on the history of Islam and Islamic law. Islamic law, known as Sharia law, “controls, rules and regulates all public and private behavior.”[263] Indeed, Islamic law regulates “personal hygiene, diet, sexual conduct, and elements of child rearing.”[264] It also can be used as “ a guide for how an individual acts in society, and . . . to settle border disputes . . . international disputes, conflicts and wars.”[265] Since Muslims’ lives are controlled almost completely by Islamic law, mobilization these religious and national ideologies has proven greatly successful in justifying violence to protect it

II. Demonizing the Foreigner or Enemy

Emphasizing national and religious aspirations, goals, and myths is reinforced when insurgents capitalize on the foreign nature of the regime or foreign domination of the regime.[266] According to Wilson, this tactic of demonizing the foreigner is often employed by protest groups:[267] “protest group[s] will illegitimate the target group [the foreigner] by claiming that the target group [the foreigner] is self-seeking and elitest, but that the protestors are public spirited and mass-based.”[268] Protest groups will accuse the foreigner of “seeking the wrong ends by accusing them of being racist, anti-labor . . . [They will] describe the other’s position as ‘rigid,’ ‘unreasonable,’ and ‘unyielding’.”[269] By demonizing the foreigner, outsider or enemy, the protest group itself becomes increasingly cohesive – advocating an “us vs. them” mentality. The group becomes stronger and the value of being an insider increases. Members will strive to maintain their place in the group for fear of being on the outside. Furthermore, this us vs. them mentality serves to reduce normative barriers to killing the foreigners.

An example of this phenomenon is black slavery in the United States. White Americans portrayed blacks as less than human; as inferior to whites in all meaningful aspects. Blacks were not considered “people” or citizens of the nation or the state in which they lived, and were thus prevented from voting or having any decision-making ability in their own lives. White Americans maintained a distinct separation between whites and blacks, in terms of rights and privileges. This separation was took on an “us vs. them” form. This demonization of blacks as the foreigners or outsiders, not only increased the cohesiveness of white America, but reduced normative barriers to beating, selling and lynching blacks. Similarly, Al Qaeda seeks to demonize the West (or any other foreigner, enemy, or non-Muslim) by characterizing them as brutal, arrogant, and having complete disregard for Islamic culture, customs, and beliefs.[270] Indeed, “the enemy must be portrayed as a monstrous threat . . . with no moral boundaries, and who only understands the language of violence.”[271] Thus, according to Zawahiri, deputy of Osama bin Laden, jihadis are urged to “choose weapons and tactics capable of inflicting maximum casualties on the enemy . . . [They are warned that] the enemy will make use of a variety of tools and proxies . . .”[272] In this way, they compel the jihadis to violence and brutality, instilling in them the belief that the enemy is evil and must be stopped immediately, and that the only way to defeat them is through violence.[273]

Bin Laden has had great success in demonizing the enemy by understanding the importance of nationalism and religion to Muslims, and by using these ideologies to reach his own goals. For example, bin Laden published a fatwa[274] claiming that “America has declared war against God and his messenger . . .”[275] His fatwa went on to call for the murder of “any American, anywhere on earth” as the “individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.”[276] Bin Laden had previously exploited the strong national and religious ideologies of many Muslims in issuing another fatwa, urging Muslims to drive American soldiers out of Saudi Arabia, stressing in his fatwa that Saudi Arabia is the location of some of Islam’s most revered sites.[277] In appealing to Muslims by virtue of their religion and nationality, and by stressing that their culture and very lives were in danger from the Christians and the Jews – the outsiders – bin Laden instilled in many the “us vs. them” mentality. This mentality not only increased the cohesiveness of the group, but also reduced the normative barriers to killing the outsiders. In 1998, Al Qaeda stuck the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 220 people. It justified the killing of so many innocents. The following statement by a senior Al Qaeda operative sums up this justification: “God said to assault whoever assaults you, in a like manner . . . In killing Americans who are ordinarily off limits, Muslims should not exceed four million non-combatants, or render more than ten million of them homeless. We should avoid this, to make sure the penalty [that we are inflicting] is no more than reciprocal. God knows what is best.”[278] In this statement, the evil acts of Americans are expressed as a reason for retaliation in kind. By demonizing them and portraying them as killers, Al Qaeda has granted permission to itself and its recruits to murder innocent Americans. It has also presented itself as justified by killing only in proportion to the wrong done to them. Al Qaeda would have no way of knowing the precise number of people it has killed or left homeless, however by saying that they would only kill in proportion, they validate themselves.

Aside from increasing group cohesiveness and reducing the normative barriers to killing the outsiders, there are still other purposes of demonizing the foreigner through protest. Wilson asserts that protest groups act as they do for any of several reasons: (1) as a strategy to acquire resources with which to bargain; (2) as a strategy to make credible the willingness of a group to use the bargaining resources it already has; (3) to “enhance the protesting organization.”[279] In this case, the third reason is the most relevant. Wilson asserts that the protesting organization can be enhanced in several ways: by “attracting new members, radicalizing old members, obtaining valuable publicity, or increasing the sense of solidarity and competence of existing members.”[280] Al Qaeda seeks to enhance its organization in all of these ways. In fact, one of the strongest methods by which Al Qaeda attracts recruits is through demonizing the foreigner. For example, Bin Laden’s fatwa stating that America has “declared war on God and his messenger,” is meant to appeal to the Muslim sense of religion, and hence, nationalism. It is intended to attract new recruits - Muslims who are angry at the thought of a foreign, atheist nation declaring war on God’s chosen people. It is meant to build the organization in strength and numbers, and to ignite the fire in existing members. This in turn ensures the life and vitality of the organization.

III. Emphasizing Threats to Old Orders

Another way that groups are mobilized is by emphasizing threats to old orders. This is also another way that a group leader might “demonize the foreigner.” Wilson asserts that violence by protest groups often arises when feelings of group solidarity are intensified or threatened, and the survival of the organization appears to be at stake.[281] (This is quite similar to the elements of nationalism and religion, mentioned earlier). He also suggests that increased activity of the organization is facilitated by the same conditions that may well have caused the group to form in the first place; namely perceived threats to existing values.[282] “Nostalgia for Islam’s past glory remains a powerful force,”[283] thus, any threat – real or perceived - to these nostalgic ideals, risks violence. Threats to old orders may derive from internal or external phenomenons; they may come from domestic reforms or from foreign invaders. An example of the former is Saudi Arabian King Faisal who was assassinated in the mid-1960’s, in part because of his modernizing reforms.[284] Faisal was a modern man in an “unmodern landscape.”[285] He hailed technology, and “believed in balanced budgets [and] social investments.”[286] He even sent his son, Turki, to receive an American education at a boarding school in New Jersey.[287] Faisal was murdered partially because of his attempt to combine modernization with Orthodox Islamic ideals. The fear that his reforms generated among the Saudi population, of losing the nation’s historical and religious ideals, proved to be Faisal’s downfall.

An example of a threat to old orders from foreign invasion is the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The ensuing jihad was depicted as a holy war between the atheist, communist Soviets and the God-fearing Muslims. As a result, it attracted thousands of young Muslims around the world to protect the “old order” from a new and unwelcome secular way of life. Similarly, theories as to why the terrorist attacks of 9/11 occurred, suggest perhaps the attacks had to do with U.S. support of Israel and presence in Saudi Arabia, which are locations of some of Islam’s holiest sites.[288] Thus, perhaps violence occurred due to a fear that the old, revered Islamic sites will be tainted. More broadly, since the goal of militant Islam is to rid Islam of the impure Western influences, perhaps Western influences such as globalization, democracy, and women’s rights, presented a perceived threat to the Islam of old.

Providing Charismatic Leadership

Any attempt by an organization to mobilize ideology and increase group cohesion by demonizing the foreigner and emphasizing threats to old orders, is futile without good leadership. “Insurgent leaders must be able to explain and rationalize what otherwise would be a confused, sporadic, and apparently random series of acts of defiance. They must be able to relate each incident to a great cause and project it into eventual success.”[289] Wilson suggests several bases of authority and/or legitimacy of an organization’s leader. Legitimacy can arise in the “mere fact of holding office,” to which Wilson refers as the “authority of office.” [290] In such a case, a member is more easily persuaded to do something than he would be by an outsider or other member.[291] Legitimacy can also be the product of expertise on the subject which the organization is focused, or personal fealty, which may exist simply due to one’s popularity or indispensability.[292] Charisma, however, is perhaps the most difficult basis of authority to achieve. It allows the leader to persuade members and even outsiders to do things such as attend meetings, donate money, and sacrifice their time.[293] This charisma-induced legitimacy may even arise from the leader’s “apparent possession of exceptional, even divine powers and qualities.”[294] Charisma is a multiplier in getting the leader’s message to stick.[295] The determinants of charisma include rhetorical effectiveness. A charismatic leader can package his message in a way that it is more likely to be received sympathetically.[296]

Osama bin Laden is a modern example of charismatic leadership at its best. His charisma came in part from his understanding of followers; he demonizes the enemy to appeal to their defenses, and also appeals to the strong Muslim adherence to religion and nationality. Thus, he issues fatwas, which have religious significance in themselves, and in turn appeal to cherished religious beliefs. He “seizes on symbols of Islam’s past greatness”[297] to appeal to the Muslim sense of nationalism, and to induce in Muslims the fear that unless they take action, they might never achieve that greatness again. He “promised to restore pride to a people who consider themselves the victims of successive foreign masters,”[298] thus appealing to the peoples’ sense of personal dignity. Bin Laden has remained credible for so long by remaining while “other leaders and symbols faded,”[299] and in this way has become a symbol of resistance.[300] Bin Laden’s use and knowledge of Islamic values enhances his charisma; he uses “cultural and religious allusions to the holy Qur’an and some of its interpreters.”[301] He also misuses Islamic values, however, in order to persuade his followers, by selectively drawing from multiple sources – “Islam, history, and the region’s political and social malaise.”[302] In this way, he is able to pick and choose what material will best support his cause, regardless of whether such material is taken out of context or not.

Bin Laden’s charisma derives from his many and significant contributions to Al Qaeda and the jihadi movement. First and foremost, his wealth makes him valuable; “As a rich man’s son, he know how to talk to rich people, how to get them to contribute to jihad.”[303] In addition, because of his personal wealth, he is seen as above “skimming off the proceeds” of Al Qaeda’s fundraising efforts.[304] His name and “credentials” are quite influential in acquiring aid and allies.[305] Bin Laden’s wealth, which allows him to contribute so significantly to the organization, also has led his followers and fellow jihadis to trust him. But Bin Laden is valuable not only for his wealth, but also for the trust that his followers have in him; such a wealthy, upper-class man does not have to consort with the lower class; nor does he need to contribute so much time, money and effort towards an ideological cause, far from the comforts of home. In fact, Bin Laden is remembered for “visiting the wounded, handing out . . . chocolates, taking down the names and hometowns and making sure families received both news and cash.”[306] These are all seen as evidence of his utter love of and commitment to Islam and the values that he seeks to protect, and these characteristics appeal to Muslims.

Bin Laden’s charisma also derives from his “battlefield heroism.”[307] The people know that he was a mujahedeen who fought alongside thousands of other young Muslims against the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan. Stories of his courage in the face of almost certain death circulate like tall tales; he tells of a time when he and forty other mujahedeen withstood an attack by a much larger and better equipped Soviet and Afghani force, for more than ten days.[308] His story reads like the Biblical tale of David and Goliath, with the underdog, filled with God, able to defeat the more powerful enemy. Thus, Bin Laden has amassed followers from his heroic and even religious perspective on war and death. When asked if he is afraid to die, Bin Laden replied, “No, I was never afraid of death . . . As Muslims, we believe that when we die we go to heaven. Before a battle, God sends us seqina, tranquility. Once, I was only 30 meters from the Russians . . . I was under bombardment but I was so peaceful in my heart that I fell asleep.”[309] His stories conjour up visions of a modern-day Christ figure, walking on water; “I saw a 120 mm mortar shell land in front of me, but it did not blow up.”[310] Thus, he portrays himself much like Jesus; as a man chosen and steeled by God, willing to sacrifice his worldly possessions and even his life for his beliefs and his followers.

But what makes Bin Laden distinct from other jihadi leaders before him is his focus on attacking America rather than local rulers or Israel.[311] He stresses grievances against he U.S. that are shared by most of the Muslim world: he protested U.S. support of Israel and spoke out against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, “the home is Islam’s holiest sites.”[312] He also spoke of the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War.[313] Hussein (known only by that name), leader of the group that bombed the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, described Bin Laden as “persuasive, authoritarian, and a very strong leader.”[314] He stated that Bin Laden had “an impressive knowledge of Islam,” and was like a brother to those training at the Al Qaeda camps and to the mujahedeen,[315]

V. Osama bin Laden as an Entrepreneur

According to Wilson, an entrepreneur is a person who “exploits . . . an . . . untried possibility by launching a new enterprise.”[316] This involves substantial risk and uncertainty and “requires a willingness to defer immediate gratifications for future gains.”[317] Entrepreneurs promise the people that they will work to produce a collective good or establish an organization to collect funds and other forms of support.[318] They must supply “tangible and intangible incentives to individuals in order that they will become, or remain, members and will perform

certain tasks.”[319] The entrepreneur has a more “distant time horizon than his followers.”[320] He or she also must have organizational skills, personal persuasiveness and necessary resources.[321]

Indeed, as detailed above, Osama bin Laden has such persuasiveness and resources. He has deferred immediate gratification – a life a wealth and comfort, for “a collective good” – the unity, dominance, and purification of Islam worldwide. His “new enterprise” is Al Qaeda, in which Bin Laden played a major role in building, and to which he has contributed substantial amounts of time, money, and effort. In fact, Bin Laden is perhaps Al Qaeda’s most powerful and prevalent symbol, since the death of his colleague, Abdullah Azzam, in 1989.[322] But a great part of his effectiveness as a leader, and hence his charisma is his ability to provide incentives to his followers.

In recruiting trainees for Al Qaeda’s training camps, bin Laden provided the men primarily with intangible incentives, since the majority of trainees were not paid monetarily. Bin Laden promised his recruits that those who adhered to their duty as Muslims and participated in jihad would go to heaven; and that if they died in the jihad, they would be heroes and martyrs for their cause. Jessica Stern, US expert on terrorism, defined martyrdom as “the supreme act of heroism and worship.”[323] She also asserts that “when religious terrorist groups form, ideology and altruism play significant roles. Commitment to the organization, and the spiritual benefits of contributing to a ‘good cause’ are sufficient incentives for many operatives.”[324] Bin Laden glorifies the idea of martyrdom and the duty of Muslims to contribute to the jihadi movement. In calling for the continuation of jihad against the West, bin Laden proclaimed, “ [I]t is obligatory for all Muslims to continue Jihad by sacrificing their wealth and life as long as their holy places are not liberated from the subjugation of Jews and Christians. This freedom is not possible until we sacrifice all our wealth and our lives.”[325] Although Islam explicitly forbids suicide, terrorist leaders contend that suicide-bombing attacks are not suicide, but martyrdom; “Although God punishes the suicide, he rewards the martyr.”[326] They base their argument on a phrase from the Koran, “Think not of those who are slain in the cause of God as dead. Nay, they are alive in the presence of the Lord and are granted gifts from him.”[327] Other non-material incentives that participation in groups, such as Al Qaeda, provide, such as adventure, glamour, status, prestige and comraderie, will be discussed in another section.

Bin Laden sometimes provided recruits with material incentives, such as cash, paid to the recruits themselves or to the families of suicide-bombers. Another material incentive that Bin Laden used to attract Yemini’s to Al Qaeda is the chance to win back land confiscated from them by their enemies.[328] This ploy was quite successful in attracting Yeminis, who desired both money and the pride that they derived from fighting for their land. Bin Laden also provided material incentives to nations and governments in exchange for their services, aid, and protection. In 1996, Bin Laden was expelled from the Sudan, and went to Afghanistan seeking safety. Over a five-year period, he paid over $100 million to the Taliban government for their hospitality and loyalty.[329]

RECRUITING

Regardless of its mission, Al Qaeda is above all a complex, intricate business organization. As such, it must advertise itself and its mission, and recruit members. James Q. Wilson defines the term “association” as “the public assent which a number of individuals give to certain doctrines . . . [whereby] they contract to promote[,] in a certain manner[,] the spread of those doctrines.” [330] He claims that rational individuals do not join organizations that do not strive to achieve a larger purpose.[331] Wilson defines “rational behavior” as that which is directed towards objectives, whether selfish or unselfish;[332] persons and firms rationally seek to maximize their utility, which is anything that a person values, be it money, honor, power, or anything else that a person or group feels is worthwhile.[333] The goal or purpose of organizations differ depending on the type of organization. The goal of a typical corporation or firm is to maximize profit; the goal of volunteer organizations are typically directed towards a cause. For example, the goal of the Mothers Against Drunk Driving (“MADD”) is to prevent drunk driving, especially by working to strengthen existing laws and to enact new ones.[334] Al Qaeda’s goal, like that of any other volunteer organization, is directed to the cause of Islam - to engage in jihad in order to cleanse Islam of the impure influence of the West.[335] Organizations do not only count success as the achievement of their ultimate goal; marginal gains are also valued highly by organizations, as important steps towards the final end. For Al Qaeda, two examples of marginal gains are the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. Although these acts did not accomplish Al Qaeda’s ultimate goal, it did target the “impure” West and engage in jihad, albeit one-sided.

Recruiting Through Advertisement

Organizations attempt to attract recruits, employees, and members primarily through advertisement and incentives. Al Qaeda advertises its mission like any other organization, through auctions, fundraising dinners, and press conferences; by putting up posters and printing newspapers, making use of journalists, soliciting donations at houses of worship, sending leaders on fundraising missions abroad, arranging for private meetings between leaders and major donors. Al Qaeda makes use of the mail, the telephone, and the internet, often providing its bank account numbers and the bank’s address in order to make it easier for sympathizers to make donations. They use sophisticated websites, often including photographs or videos of successful operations and of the atrocities perpetuated against the group they aim to help, or by the group they oppose.[336] Al Qaeda even has its own media organization, “al Sahab Productions,” which is notorious for its involvement in the numerous video-tapes released by Al Qaeda, and shown on news stations around the world.[337]

Recruiting Through Incentives

“Individuals possess a myriad of interests. Because a single individual cannot usually provide for all the goods he may desire, individuals band together with other like-minded individuals. These individuals join a particular group or organization in order to further their own interests, and the organization exists in order to further the common interests of their members.”[338] There are two primary means through which a collective good may be provided for by a large group: (1) coercion; or (2) positive inducements.[339] Although it is likely that there are incidents of coercion to induce individuals to join Al Qaeda, positive inducements are a far more valuable means of acquiring new members. Like any other organization, Al Qaeda must provide incentives in order to show potential members that the organization can help them further their own interests. Wilson defines four general types of organizational incentives: material incentives, “specific solidarity incentives,” “collective solidarity incentives,” and “purposive incentives.”[340] The type of incentive employed varies depending on the nature of the organization or business itself. For example, a sales team would provide material incentives, such a raise, a bonus, or an office instead of a cubicle.[341]

The two primary types of incentives that Al Qaeda provides its prospective members are specific solidarity incentives and purposive incentives, although material incentives, such as sex[342] and money[343], were also important in recruiting young men. Specific solidarity incentives are “intangible rewards arising out of the act of associating.”[344] Since many of the Al Qaeda terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks were not religious zealots, they must have had other reasons for joining.[345] Terrorist expert, Jessica Stern, asserts that leaders of terrorist groups do not rely on moral convictions to sustain the recruits; they offer “ friendship, status, adventure, ‘glamour,’ and jobs.”[346] She hypothesized that recruits may have been attracted to Al Qaeda especially for adventure and for a sense of belonging.[347] Stern discovered that new Al Qaeda recruits began spending less and less time with their families, and more time with the “brothers” they had gotten to know at Al Qaeda training camps.[348] She also cited the social ties that were created at the training camps, in order to commit the members to each other in ideology and solidarity.[349] Similarly, Mancur Olson cites social incentives as powerful means of inducing individuals to join organizations.[350] Like Stern, Olson asserts that friendship, prestige and respect are all ways in which social incentives act upon individuals to compel them to join.[351] Olson suggests that social incentives only operate successfully in small groups, since large groups are impersonal, and their individual contribution will be negligible. Social incentives are applicable to Al Qaeda, however, because of the decentralization of the organization, particularly with regards to its training camps. Upon joining Al Qaeda, recruits are sent to any of many relatively small training camps. There they are likely to feel a social pull, since the training camps are small and personal. Recruits are carefully monitored while in the camps to determine their potential and their individual capabilities.

The purposive incentives that Al Qaeda offers its prospective members are “intangible

rewards that derive from the sense of satisfaction of having contributed to the attainment of a worthwhile cause.”[352] These are said to derive from demands for the enactment of a certain law, adoption of certain practices, or the alteration of certain institutions for the benefit of a larger public.[353] Jessica Stern asserts that with religious terrorist groups, ideology and “the spiritual benefits of contributing to a ‘good cause’ are [often] sufficient incentives for many operatives.”[354] The goal of Al Qaeda - to engage in jihad in order to cleanse Islam of Western impurities – is that “worthwhile cause” that attracts many recruits.[355] James Wilson suggests that in organizations such as political parties or church groups, members are recruited from among the ideologically committed;[356] members are attracted and maintained by emphasizing indoctrination and training in the most intense forms, touching all aspects of the member’s life and sometimes absorbing virtually all their time.[357] Similarly, many members of Al Qaeda were drawn to the organization due to their religious affiliation. Since Al Qaeda seeks to cleanse and spread Islam, many recruits are initially attracted to it by virtue of their religious affiliation. In fact, “talent scouts” find potential Al Qaeda operatives by keeping track of those who frequently attend radical mosques.[358]

Wilson asserted that rational individuals seek to maximize their utility, which is anything that a person values, be it money, honor, power, prestige, or anything else that a person feels is worthwhile.[359] Individuals have preference functions; they value different things, depending on such factors as one’s culture, socio-economic status, education, and individual personal preference. It naturally follows, therefore, that the individuals who join an organization will also vary, since they might all join a particular organization in order to maximize very different utilities. For example, one might join Al Qaeda for the honor of martyrdom fighting, if honor is what he values. Another might join to make friendships or to enlarge his social circle, if that is what he values. The inevitable result of this wide scope of “utilities” is that the members themselves will be very different. They may be educated or uneducated, rich or poor, devout or not concerned with religion. Successful recruiting portrays the organization as able to supply the things demanded by the preference functions. Al Qaeda has had such great success by doing just this; by taking a widely variable population and offering them a range of benefits: honor, notoriety, friendship, family, adventure, religious indoctrinization, etc.

In order to ensure that members have certain minimum necessary qualifications, many businesses have some hard and fast rules that they follow in hiring employees. For example, a corporation might require an applicant to be a college graduate; a volunteer organization dealing with children might require potential members to pass a drug test; a law firm might require secretaries to achieve a certain score on a typing test. By setting these standards, organizations deter those who are not qualified for the job. Volunteer and especially religious groups, however, are unlikely to have many strict and exclusionary requirements. Because they do not pay their members, and are often unable to offer other material incentives to join, they must not be so exclusive as to deter potential members. Narrowing the potential pool of volunteers would be detrimental to the organization, which relies on willing volunteers to achieve its goals. The “Second Lesson” of the Al Qaeda Training Manual lists “Necessary Qualifications and Characteristics of the Organization’s Member.”[360] The list contains some hard and fast rules, such as the requirement that all recruits be Muslim,[361] and that recruits must be free from illness.[362] Much of what Al Qaeda lists as qualifications, however, are broad characteristics, that do not narrow the pool of potential recruits too much, but that do weed out those who are not willing to commit to the organization:

( commitment to Islam and to the organization’s ideology;[363]

( maturity;[364]

( sacrifice, including willingness to martyr oneself;[365]

( listening and obedience;[366]

( keeping secrets and concealing information;[367]

( patience;[368]

( “tranquility and unflappability;”[369]

( intelligence and insight;[370]

( caution and prudence;[371]

( truthfulness and counsel;[372]

( ability to observe and analyze;[373]

( ability to act.[374]

In addition to general qualities, Al Qaeda recruiters determined several other important qualities of recruits, such as willingness to martyr oneself;[375] patience, since planning for the attacks could take years;[376] having a clean record to avoid raising alerts.[377] These three qualities are particularly evident in the 9/11 hijackers. Furthermore, some have suspected that Saudi nationality was an important quality in choosing the 9/11 hijackers; perhaps so many Saudi nationals were chosen because Al Qaeda wanted to send a message to the Saudi government about its relationship with the United States, and vice versa.[378] However, members of Al Qaeda have said that ethnicity played no role in selecting the terrorists, and that ethnicity was only important in as far as it was needed for security reasons;[379] prior to 9/11 it was easiest for Saudi’s to enter the United States.[380]

Based on the above criteria for recruitment, as well as the wide scope of what individuals may value as “utility,” it is not surprising that the members of Al Qaeda vary quite broadly. The 9/11 terrorists are an example of this phenomenon. There were 13 “muscle-hijackers” – the Al Qaeda operatives who would “storm the cockpits and control the passengers” onboard the hijacked planes on September 11, 2001.[381] They did have some things in common: none of them were physically imposing; all were between 5’5” and 5’7” in height; twelve of them were Saudi nationals, many coming from underdeveloped and weakly policed regions in Saudi Arabia; most were unmarried and unemployed; all were between the ages of 20 and 28.[382] This is where the similarities ended. Some had studied at universities, while others had very little education; some were described as “devout,” others as “lacking in faith,” and still others were totally unconcerned with religion, even known to break Islamic laws.[383] Some had expressed interest in taking part in jihad; others had never said any such thing.[384]

The common denominator among the recruits is the time and place in which they lived. According to the 9/11 Commission Reports, economic stagnation as well a high birth rates and low rates of infant mortality in the Arab oil states in the 1990’s resulted in a “large, increasing population of young Muslim men “without reasonable expectation of suitable or steady employment.”[385] Many of the men in these countries had little or no education; many of the educated were trained only in religious schools. Thus, with little chance for financial success and stability, many of these young men looked to Al Qaeda as a means with which to achieve their goals. Some of the men, seeking religious fulfillment as their utility, joined Al Qaeda in order to defend Islam in jihad. Others, who viewed utility as adventure, glory, friendship, or comraderie, joined Al Qaeda seeking these ends. They thus entered Al Qaeda’s training camps as a common mean towards achieving different ends.

The training camps, however, are only the first step towards joining Al Qaeda. Although it is estimated that between 70,000 and 100,000 men graduated from Al Qaeda training camps, only a select few were chosen to move “up the corporate ladder” to join Al Qaeda itself.[386] This is very similar to practices employed by athletic organizations, where many amateur athletes train, but only a few are chosen to move on to play professional sports. The athletes who are chosen are typically chosen for their individual skills and abilities. Like an athletic organization, individuals are chosen to join Al Qaeda for what they can individually offer the organization. According to testimony of Al Qaeda members who testified at the trial for the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, there are several types of Al Qaeda operatives, including “sophisticated operatives” and “good Muslims.” Sophisticated operatives are highly skilled, and are valuable because of their involvement in “intelligence collection, choosing targets, surveillance, and making the bombs.”[387] “Good Muslims” are “not experts in anything that would have a long-term benefit to the rest of the group. The main thing they have to offer is their knowledge of the local languages and customs.”[388] An example of a “good Muslim” recruit is a young man named Khalfan Khamis Mohammed, who participated in the bombing of the US embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.[389] Mohammed was seemingly like any other Al Qaeda recruit: he was a young man who came from a very poor family, and who attended a radical mosque.[390] He was barely educated with few skills, but was valuable to Al Qaeda because of his language skills and Tanzanian citizenship; he had a passport and would not stand out as a foreigner in Dar es Salaam.[391]

Another more recent example is “Azzam the American,” the alleged American Al Qaeda operative who warned the U.S. about attacks to come. Former FBI agent, Jack Cloonan told ABC news that “[a] member of al Qaeda who professes to be a U.S. citizen was always coveted and looked for by the al Qaeda.”[392] If the allegations are true, then it is certain that like Khalfan Khamis Mohammed, “Azzam the American” is also valuable to Al Qaeda for his nationality and citizenship.

Similarly, an example of a skilled operative is a man named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who, like Khalfan Khamis Mohammed (described above), was valuable to Al Qaeda for what he could personally offer. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s personal history and characteristics are quite different from those of Khalfan.[393] Khalid was wealthy and well educated; he attended college in North Carolina, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering.[394] Unlike Mohammed, who learned of the U.S. from third parties and video-tapes, Khalid’s anger towards the U.S. derived from U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.[395] Upon joining Al Qaeda, Khalid became valuable because of his education, his skills in electronics and engineering, his knowledge of how to communicate in Afghan caves, which he had learned in a job he had once had. He is an example of a highly skilled operative, whose educational skills made him valuable to Al Qaeda.

A CRUCIAL MARGINAL GAIN:

THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11TH 2001

There are many different theories as to why the attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred. Once Al Qaeda was determined to be responsible, many believed that the attacks occurred as revenge for the U.S.- Saudi Arabian alliance, because of which U.S. troops are stationed in Saudi Arabia where some of Islam’s most sacred sites are located. Others cited U.S. involvement in Israel, where it has sought to protect the Israeli Jews over the Palestinian Muslims. Others cited U.S. involvement in Iraq – that this is yet another example of America imposing itself onto other nations, and American capitalism, just involved for the oil. Still others blamed radical Islam, asserting that bin Laden and Al Qaeda hate the West for its secularism, capitalism, and its casual attitude towards sexuality and alcohol. It is likely that many of these reasons were involved simultaneously, however an article by Allan Cullison, viewed in connection with James Q. Wilson’s chapter on “Competition and Coalitions” allows us some insight into this question. After the 9/11 attacks, Cullison, an American reporter, raced to Afghanistan to write about the U.S. war with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.[396] Through a bizarre series of events, he came across a computer dealer in Kabul who had serviced computers belonging to the Al Qaeda and the Taliban.[397] He paid the dealer $1000 for two of Al Qaeda’s computers, which had been taken by the dealer from Al Qaeda’s central office the night before Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance.[398]

Wilson asserts that “associations that oppose one another typically don’t compete with one another.”[399] He contends that competition between similar groups arises when they are forced to compete for scarce resources and a distinct identity.[400] According to Wilson, in order to achieve these ends, “one must first call attention to itself, and [ . . .] this often means picking a fight with an established group. The bigger the opponent, of course, the more attention one obtains.”[401] It appears from Cullison’s article, that that is precisely what Al Qaeda attempted to do on September 11, 2001. According to an e-mail sent from Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s deputy, “[c]onflicts take place between [different jihadi groups] for trivial reasons, due to the scarcity of resources.”[402] Indeed, exactly as Wilson asserted, jihadi groups competed for resources such as autonomy, donations, arms, and reputation. In order to prove itself and to stand out against the other jihadi groups, Al Qaeda had to take action. According to Cullison’s report of the files contained in Al Qaeda’s hard drive, “the blow against the United States was meant to put an end to the internal rivalries,”[403] most likely those between Al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups who differed enough to compete, rather than ally, with. By successfully launching an unprecedented attack against a powerful nation like the U.S., Al Qaeda did in fact draw a great deal of attention to itself.

One might wonder why Al Qaeda owned up to the attacks, knowing that American would surely retaliate in kind. According to Cullison’s article, Al Qaeda did in fact fear a U.S. response to the attacks, however, it predicted that it could defeat the U.S. as it had defeated the Soviets in the 1980’s.[404] Moreover, Al Qaeda knew that the attacks would by no means cripple America. Its goal was not so broad and lofty - to tempt the US to retaliate in such a way so as to create sympathy for the organization.[405] In this way, perhaps, it could acquire even more of the scarce resources, as sympathizers recognized and respected Al Qaeda, and began to send money or other support.

After the attacks, however, much of the world sympathized instead with the U.S., as a nation that had just suffered a massive and unprovoked attack on its own soil, costing them thousands of innocent lives. It was not until the U.S., in a surprising and controversial move, launched an offensive attack against Iraq, citing links to Al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction, neither of which were ever found, that Arab resentment against the US began to spread. The U.S.’s attack on Iraq inadvertently fulfilled Al Qaeda’s prophecy; it created vast anti-American sentiment throughout the Middle East. The sympathy many felt for America after the 9/11 attacks was forgotten, and in place of the victim stood a heartless, vilified world power.

CONCLUSION

What the future holds for Al Qaeda is unclear. No new information has been released regarding the whereabouts of bin Laden, or the current status of Al Qaeda. Video tapes from Al Qaeda continue to surface from time to time, however, reminding the U.S. not to rest easy. Many eyes were opened in late October, with the release of the video-message from “Azzam the American;” the alleged American Al Qaeda operative, who warned that “what took place on Sept. 11 was but the opening salvo of the global war on America . . . [and] Allah willing, the magnitude and ferocity of what is coming your way will make you forget all about Sept. 11.”[406] Perhaps this is a sign of things to come – or a dramatization of what we already know – that there is increasing hostility towards the U.S. from nations and people all over the world. This document is a realistic portrayal of Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is not a gang; not a collaboration of criminals; not an ad hoc group of radical Muslims. Al Qaeda is an increasingly modern organization that extends into the international sphere with countless alliances, branches, and supporters. These facts should not be ignored, because to do so would be to severely undermine an organization that has proven itself dangerously capable. Further, Al Qaeda is not an organization in isolation; it will likely outlive its actual existence, having planted the seeds for similar and even more modern and complex organizations to come.

-----------------------

[1] Structure of article drawn from Henry H. Perritt, Jr., The Kosovo Liberation Army: Lessons of Modern Insurgency (2004) (unpublished manuscript, on file with of Prof. Henry H. Perritt, Jr.).

[2] Jessica Stern, Why Religious Militants Kill: Terror in the Name of God 142 (2003).

[3] Militant Islam: Roots, History, and Ideology, at

(last visited December 13, 2004).

[4] Id.

[5] Dennis J. Wiechman, Jerry Kendall, Mohammad Azarian, Islamic Law: Myths and Realities, at

(last visited December 14, 2004).

[6] Id.

[7] Id.

[8] Id. The Sunna is the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed not explicitly found in the Quran.

[9] Militant Islam: Roots, History, and Ideology, at

[10] Shaikh al-Islam Ibn-Taymiyah: One of the Best Muslim Scholars, at

(last visited December 13, 2004).

[11] Id.

[12] Hanbaliyyah, at (last visited December 13, 2004), and Sunni Islam, at (last visited December 13, 2004). The four schools of Orthodox Sunni Islam are the Hanafi School, comprised primarily of Barelvi and Deobandi; the Hanbali School, comprised primarily of Wahhabis; the Maliki School; and the Shafii School. They differ with regard to the different weight each school gives in “legal opinions to prescriptions in the Quran, the hadith or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, the consensus of legal scholars, analogy (to similar situations at the time of the Prophet), and reason or opinion.”

Sunni Islam and Shi’a Islam are different forms of religious beliefs. The Shi’a/Sunni split occurred after the death of the Prophet, Mohammad in 632. Sunnis regard Ali as the fourth and last of the "rightly guided caliphs" (successors to Mohammed as leader of the Muslims). Shias feel that Ali should have been the first caliph and that the caliphate should pass down only to direct descendants of Mohammed via Ali. The line of Mohammed became extinct in 873CE when the last Shia Imam, Al-Askari, who had no brothers disappeared within days of inheriting the title at the age of four. The Shias refused to accept that he had died, preferring to believe that he was merely "hidden" and would return. When after several centuries this failed to happen, spiritual power passed to the ulema, a council of twelve scholars who elected a supreme Imam. The Shia Imam is believed to infallible, and the Shia is comprised of a clerical, religious hierarchy. Sunni Islam, in contrast, does not have a formal clergy, just scholars and jurists, who may offer non-binding opinions.  One of the major differences in the two Muslim sects, therefore, is that unlike the Shi’a, the Sunni approach God directly, without an intermediary clergy. (Islam for Today, ) (last visited December 13, 2004).

[13] Id.

[14] Militant Islam: Roots, History, and Ideology, at



[15] Zubair Qamar, Wahhabism: Understanding the Roots and Role Models of Islamic Extremism, at

(last visited December 13, 2004).

[16] Militant Islam: Roots, History, and Ideology,at

[17] Wahhabism and Wahhabi Muslims, at (last visited December 13, 2004).

[18] Id.

[19] Id.

[20] (last visited December 13, 2004). Sunni Muslims must be differentiated from Shia Muslims: Shia Muslims accept Alli, the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammed, as the legal successor of Muhammad and disregard three of the other four caliphs who succeeded him. They also regard twelve descendants of Ali as Imams, or spiritual successors of the Prophet.

. Regarding Sunni Muslims, on the other hand, Sunnis believe the name Sunni derives from the word Sunnah which represents the prophet Muhammed’s manner of conduct. They hold themselves as the followers of the sunna (practice) of the prophet Muhammad as related by his companions (the sahaba). Sunnis also maintain that the Islamic community (ummah) as a whole will always be guided. They were willing to recognize the authority of the Caliphs, who maintained rule by law and persuasion, and by force if necessary. Sunnis base their religion on the Quran and the Sunnah, which is recorded in the books of Hadith. .

[21] Militant Islam: Roots, History, and Ideology, at

[22] Id.

[23] Wahhabism and Wahhabi Muslims, at

[24] Id.

[25] Id.

[26] Jonathan Randal, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist 48 (2004).

[27] Id at 48.

[28] Id.

[29] Id. 48.

[30] Id. at 49.

[31] Id.

[32] Id.

[33] Id. The Saud family both feared and needed the Wahhabis. The Wahhabis helped the Saud family acquire power, and the Saud family needed the Wahhabis’ support to remain in power. At the same time, however, the Saud family feared the violence and extremism of the Wahhabis, and took on the Islamic cause in part to give the Wahhabis a purpose at which to direct their fervor.

[34] Militant Islam: Roots, History, and Ideology, at



[35] Id.

[36] Id.

[37] Id.

[38] Militant Islam, at (last visited December 13, 2004).

[39] Id.

[40] Id.

[41] Militant Islam: Roots, History, and Ideology, at



[42] Id.

[43] Id.

[44] Id.

[45] Id.

[46] Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America 8 (1999).

[47] Id.

[48] Id.

[49] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States 55 (2004).

[50] Id.

[51] Terrorism Q & A: Council on Foreign Relations, at (December 13, 2004).

[52] Militant Islam: Roots, History, and Ideology, at



[53] Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America 27 (1999).

[54] Militant Islam: Roots, History, and Ideology, at



[55] Id.

[56] Id.

[57] Militant Islam: Roots, History, and Ideology, at



[58] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States 56 (2004).

[59] Eurolegal Services, Al Qau-ida and Bin Laden, at. . (last visited December 13, 2004). See also

The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 56 (2004).

[60] Eurolegal Services, Al Qau-ida and Bin Laden, at

[61] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 55 (2004).

[62] Matthew Epstein, Trails Lead to Saudis, National Review Online, at

(last visited December 13, 2004).

[63] Id.

[64] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 55 (2004).

[65] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 55 (2004).

[66] Jonathan Randal, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist 92 (2004).

[67] March of Dimes, at (last visited December 13, 2004).

[68] Id.

[69] Id.

[70] Id.

[71] Id.

[72] Encyclopedia of the Orient: Osama bin Laden, at . (last visited December 13, 2004). This is just one of many theories of the goals of Al Qaeda.

[73] Jonathan Randal, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist 93 (2004).

[74] Id. at 96. Osama bin Laden was suspected by many of being involved in the “sophisticated” assassination of Azzam, by a remote controlled explosion. Perhaps this was an attempt to become the foremost leader of Al Qaeda, or, alternatively, since bin Laden had “shaken off” ties with the Muslim Brotherhood which had been so prevalent in establishing MAK, bin Laden was attempting to destroy or weaken a rival group.

[75] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 264 (1973).

[76] Id. at 264-65.

[77] Alan Cullison, Inside Al-Qaeda’s Hard Drive, The Atlantic Monthly,

September 2004, at 55.

[78] James M. Buchanan Jr., Public Choice Theory, at . (last visited November 22, 2004). A sub-program developed under the umbrella of Public Choice doctrine is a new doctrine known as rent seeking. Essentially, according to this theory, “if the government is empowered to grant monopoly rights or tariff protection to one group, at the expense of the general public or of designated losers, it follows that potential beneficiaries will compete for the prize.” Many different-yet-similar groups compete for resources, therefore, causing those that receive the price to grow, and those that do not to either continue to struggle or to fail altogether.

[79] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 275 (1973).

[80] Id. at 278.

[81] Jonathan Randal, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist 72 (2004).

[82] Id. at 72. Ul-Haq desired to thwart direct U.S. contacts in Afghanistan in order to avoid any potential American interference in his plans. He encouraged the U.S. to use Pakistan as an intermediary through which to funnel money and supplies; the U.S. would keep its hands clean and its nose out of ul-Haq’s plans.

[83] Id. at 102.

[84] Id.

[85] Id. at 103.

[86] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 268 (1973).

[87] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 57 (2004).

[88] Id. at 57

[89] Jonathan Randal, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist 111 (2004).

[90] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 253 (2003).

Testimony in 2001 by Ali Mohamed, a witness for the US government in the trial regarding the bombing of the

US embassies in Africa.

[91] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 240 (2004).

[92] Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America 323 (1999).

[93] Jonathan Randal, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist 296 (2004).

[94] Id. at 115.

[95] Id. at 117.

[96] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 57 (2004).

[97] Id.

[98] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 253 (2003).

[99] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 57 (2004)

[100] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 253 (2003).

[101] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 57 (2004).

[102] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 253 (2003).

[103] Id.

[104] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 58 (2004).

[105] Id.

[106] Id.

[107] Id. at 62.

[108] Id.

[109] Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America 195 (1999).

[110] A network of caves near the village of Tora Bora, in Afghanistan's eastern White Mountains.

[111] Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America 307 (1999).

[112] Id.

[113] Id.

[114] Id. at 273.

[115] Id. at 384-85. (Quote from Omar Farooq, leader of Islamist group, Lashkar-e-Tuiba).

[116] Jonathan Randal, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist 214 (2004).

[117] Id. at 215.

[118] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 66 (2004).

[119] Id.

[120] Jonathan Randal, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist 215 (2004).

[121] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 263 (1973).

[122] Id. at 276.

[123] Federal Bureau of Investigation, at

(last visited December 13, 2004).

[124] Id.

[125] Allan Cullison, Inside Al Qaeda’s Hard Drive, The Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 2004, at 64.

[126] Id.

[127] Id.

[128] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 142 (2003).

[129] Id.

[130] Id. at 145.

[131] Id. at 144.

[132] Bin Laden as a charismatic leader and entrepreneur will be discussed in detail in Section 3.

[133] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 250 (2003).

[134] Id. at 260.

[135] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 106 (1973).

[136] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 272 (2003).

[137] Id. at 249.

[138] Id. at 272. Note that increases in technology in modern businesses allow for virtual businesses that operate solely on or almost entirely dependent on PC and internet technology. In addition, computer technology has served to flatten the old hierarchical form and to decentralize many businesses. For example, many businesses can operate with great efficiently in a very wide area – even worldwide, with the use of modern technology. Those in charge can acquire important information more quickly, and can respond to problems more easily. Overall efficiency is increased, and the businesses structure is flattened as a result. The extent of use of technology by Al Qaeda is not well-known at this point. It is known that Al Qaeda leaders used computer technology for communication purposes, and that this technology provided for increased efficiency in operations. It is likely that this also allowed for Al Qaeda, like any other modern business, to become decentralized and less hierarchical, with information flowing across between Committees. It is likely that further information about Al Qaeda’s use of technology will increase in upcoming years.

[139] Id.

[140] Id. at 172.

[141] Id. at 249.

[142] Id.

[143] Al Qaeda Training Manual, at . (last visited December 13, 2004).

[144] Id.

[145] Id.

[146] Id.

[147] Allan Cullison, Inside Al Qaeda’s Hard Drive, The Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 2004, at 62-63.

[148] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 272 (2003).

[149] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 170 (2004).

[150] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 273 (2003). According to testimony from Al-Fadl. Cited from Richard Wolfe, Carola Hoyos, and Harvey Morris, “Bin Laden’s Wealth Put in Doubt by Saudi Dissidents,” Financial Times, 5 (2001).

[151] Id. at 273. Cited from Paul McKay, The Cost of Fanatical Loyalty, Ottawa Citizen, 2001 at A8.

[152] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 237 (2004).

[153] Id.

[154] Id. at 170.

[155] Id.

[156] Id. at 171.

[157] The Salvation Army: International Headquarters, at (last visited December 13, 2004).

[158] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 170 (2004).

[159] Id.

[160] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 250 (2003).

[161] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 170 (2004).

[162] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 273 (2003).

[163] Id. at 274.

[164] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 171 (2004).

[165] Id.

[166] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 273 (2003).

[167] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 171 (2004).

[168] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God:Why Religious Militants Kill 273 (2003). Citing Douglas Frantz, Ancient Secret System Moves Money Globally, New York Times, October 2001 at B5. See also Judith Miller and Jeff Gerth, Business Fronts: Honey Trade Said to Provide Funds and Cover to bin Laden, New York Times, October, 2001 at A1.

[169] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 171-172 (2004).

[170] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 265 (2003).

There are many different opinions regarding the goal of Al Qaeda. For example, the “First Lesson” in the Military Series of an Al Qaeda training manual describes “the main mission for which the Military Organization is responsible ‘as the overthrow of the godless regimes and their replacement with an Islamic regime’.” Al Qaeda Training Manual, at . The introduction to the manual includes prayers, songs and stories offering insight into Al Qaeda’s goal:

“Islam is not just performing rituals but a complete system: Religion and government, worship and Jihad [holy war], ethics and dealing with people, and the Koran and the sword. The bitter situation that the nation has reached is a result of its divergence from Allah’s course and his righteous law for all places and times. That [bitter situation] came about as a result of its children’s love for the world, their loathing of death, and their abandonment of Jihad [holy war] . . .

[A]n Islamic government would never be established except by the bomb and rifle. Islam does not coincide or make a truce with unbelief, but rather confronts it.

The confrontation that Islam calls for with these godless and apostate regimes does not know Socratic debates, Platonic ideals, nor Aristotelian diplomacy. But in knows the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing and destruction, and the diplomacy of the canon and machine gun.”

Although the 9/11 Commission Reports offer significant evidence of the initial purpose of Al Qaeda – to wage jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan – and why it continued even after defeating the Soviets – “preparing the mujahideen to fight anywhere in world” – there are many differing opinions by different experts and authors as to a singular goal of Al Qaeda. The opinion offered by Jessica Stern, in her book cited above, is in my opinion, the most convincing.

[171] These committees include (1) the Military Committee; (2) The Islamic Study Committee; (3) the Media Committee; (4) the Travel Committee; (5) the Finance Committee.

[172] Al Qaeda Training Manual, at .

[173] Id. at 72.

[174] Id.

[175] George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War 390 (2003).

[176] Id. at 411. Charlie Wilson described these alliances of many world nations against the Soviets in an effort to educate the US Congress about the Anti-Soviet Jihad in Afghanistan, and as propaganda to encourage the government to send still more support to the mujahedeen.

[177] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 255 (2003).

[178] Id.

[179] Id.

[180] Jonathan Randal, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist 71 (2004).

[181] George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War 404 (2003). Wilson and others fought to allow the use of the Stinger missiles by the mujahedeen against the Soviets. The US government was hesitant to allow this, for fear that its active alliance with the mujahedeen against the Soviets would become obvious. Finally, however, the government gave in, and the Stinger missiles were sent out to the mujahedeen fighters. Charlie Wilson, in an apparent attempt to justify the deployment of such destructive devices, stated that the missiles would “become a symbol of the special relationship that had been forged between the United States and Pakistan. It would serve to identify the two countries as partners in a great battle against Soviet tyranny.” (Id. at 420).

[182] Id.

[183] Jonathan Randal, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist 53 (2004).

[184] Id. at 52.

[185] Id.

[186] Id.

[187] Id. at 255.

[188] Allan Cullison, Inside Al Qaeda’s Hard Drive, The Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 2004, at 62.

[189] Id.

[190] Id.

[191] Id.

[192] Id.

[193] Id.

[194] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 255 (2003).

[195] Id. at 243, relying on the testimony of Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, a Tanzanian Al Qaeda operative, apprehended for his involvement in the bombing of the U.S. embassy at Dar es Salaam. (Relying on the testimony of Ahmed Ressam, an Al Qaeda operative arrested in the millennium plots, who described “crude chemical-weapons training at camps in Afghanistan, including experiments on animals.”) (Id. at 256).

[196] Id. at 256.

[197] Id.

[198] Id. at 257.

[199] Id.

[200] Asia Times Online, Middle East: Al-Qaeda’s Quixotic Quest to go Nuclear, at (last visited December 13, 2004).

[201] Id.

[202] Id.

[203] Id.

[204] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 255 (2003).

[205] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 58 (1973).

[206] Id. at 58-59

[207] Id. at 58

[208] Id.

[209] Id.

[210] Id. at 61

[211] Id.

[212] Id. at 71

[213] Id. at 72. Incentives are described in greater detail in the section on Recruiting

[214] Id. at 73.

[215] Id.

[216] Id. at 71. More on incentives to join Al Qaeda in the section on Recruiting.

[217] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 6 & 54 (2003). The Q’ran in interpreted by many radical Islamic scholars in such a way as to portray dying in jihad as a privilege and an honor.

[218] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 73 (1973).

[219] Henry H. Perritt, Jr., The Kosovo Liberation Army: Lessons of Modern Insurgency (2004) (unpublished manuscript, on file with of Prof. Henry H. Perritt, Jr.). Relative Deprivation is defined as “the gap between expectations and the ability of regimes to deliver results meeting expectations.” This is a major “determinant of a willingness to rebel[,][and] [. . .] can be stimulated by regime vacillation between repression and liberalization.

[220] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 297 (1973).

[221] (last visited December 13, 2004).

[222] Id.

[223] Id.

[224] Id.

[225] Id.

[226] Id.

[227] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 53 (2004).

[228] Id. at 53.

[229] Id.

[230] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 59 (1973).

[231] Id.

[232] Mamoun Fandy, The United States Institute of Peace: Crisis of Education in the Muslim World, at (last visited December 13, 2004).

[233] Id.

[234] Id.

[235] Id.

[236] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 54 (2004).

[237] Id.

[238] Henry H. Perritt, Jr., The Kosovo Liberation Army: Lessons of Modern Insurgency (2004) (unpublished manuscript, on file with of Prof. Henry H. Perritt, Jr.) citing Mao Tse-Tung, On Guerrilla Warfare 5-6 (1961).

[239] Id.

[240] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 180 (1973).

[241] Id. at 183.

[242] Id. at 185.

[243] Dr. Adel Beshara, National and Political Crisis in the Fertile Crescent, at

(last visited December 13, 2004).

[244] Id.

[245] Id.

[246] Id.

[247] Id.

[248] Id.

[249] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 52 (2004).

[250] Id.

[251] Id.

[252] Id. at 52-53.

[253] Id. at 53.

[254] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 299 (1973).

[255] Id. at 309: this is Wilson’s social psychological explanation for the mobilizing effect of threats.

[256] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 55 (2004).

[257] Id, at 46.

[258] Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: the Man Who Declared War Against America 294 (1999).

[259] Id. at 296

[260] While Sunni Muslims and militant Islamics view religion and nationalism as one and the same, this is not necessarily true for other Muslims who might recognize competing national, religious, and ethnic identities. For example, one might view him or herself as an Arab, an Iraqi and a Muslim. He or she might struggle with the different and perhaps conflicting meanings of these, and with struggling to remain faithful to all of these. He or she might also struggle with the relative strengths of each of these attachments.

[261] Islamic Law: Myths and Realities, at

[262] Id.

[263] Id.

[264] Id.

[265] Henry H. Perritt, Jr., The Kosovo Liberation Army: Lessons of Modern Insurgency (2004) (unpublished manuscript, on file with of Prof. Henry H. Perritt, Jr.).

[266] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 282 (1973). Protest is defined as “a process by whereby one party seeks by public display or disruptive acts to raise the cost to another party of continuing a given course of action.” Wilson describes protest groups as a type of organization involving “an important element of confrontation.” Id.

[267] Id. at 293

[268] Id. at 291 & 293

[269] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 262 (2003).

[270] Id.

[271] Id.

[272] Id. at 47. Bin Laden, in one of his fatwas against the United States, stated, “We believe that the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are Americans. Nothing could stop you except perhaps retaliation in kind.” In this way, leaders like Bin Laden lead his followers to believe that the only way to stop the monstrous enemy is through violence and brutality.

[273] Fatwas are interpretations of Islamic law by a respected Islamic authority; Bin Laden, however, is not a scholar on Islamic law.

[274] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 47 (2003).

[275] Id.

[276] Id.

[277] Allan Cullison, Inside Al Qaeda’s Hard Drive, The Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 2004, at 68.

[278] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 282-83 (1973).

[279] Id. at 283.

[280] Id. at 300.

[281] Id. at 309.

[282] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 50 (2004).

[283] Steve Coll, Ghost Wars 79 (2001).

[284] Id. at 77.

[285] Id.

[286] Id.

[287] Id. at 51.

[288] Henry H. Perritt, Jr., The Kosovo Liberation Army: Lessons of Modern Insurgency (2004) (unpublished manuscript, on file with of Prof. Henry H. Perritt, Jr.) citing Robert Taber, War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerrilla Warfare 152 (2002) (originally published 1965).

[289] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 219 (1973).

[290] Id.

[291] Id. at 219-220.

[292] Id. at 218.

[293] Id. at 220.

[294] Henry H. Perritt, Jr., The Kosovo Liberation Army: Lessons of Modern Insurgency (2004) (unpublished manuscript, on file with of Prof. Henry H. Perritt, Jr.) citing Bard O’Neill, Insurgency & Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare 75 (1990): (acknowledging charismatic attraction as important technique for gaining popular support).

[295] Henry H. Perritt, Jr., The Kosovo Liberation Army: Lessons of Modern Insurgency (2004) (unpublished manuscript, on file with of Prof. Henry H. Perritt, Jr.) citing Truong Nhu Tang, A Viet Cong Memoir 5-17 (1985) (detailing how upper middleclass Vietnamese was transformed into “fervent partisan” of Vietnamese insurgency, initially by insults and other humiliation at the hands of the French, and then by the power of Ho Chi Minh’s charisma and simple, concrete plans for success, communicated in a meeting between Ho and a group of young professionals).

[296] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 48 (2004).

[297] Id.

[298] Id. at 54

[299] Id.

[300] Id. at 48

[301] Id.

[302] Jonathan Randal, Osama: the Making of a Terrorist 87 (2004). Quote from young Palestinian.

[303] Id.

[304] Id.

[305] Id. at 88.

[306] Id.

[307] Id. at 88-89.

[308] Id. at 89: in an interview with Robert Fisk.

[309] Id.

[310] Id. at 54.

[311] Id. at 48-49.

[312] Id. at 49.

[313] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 244 (2003).

[314] Id.

[315] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 196 (1973).

[316] Id.

[317] Id.

[318] Id. at 13

[319] Id. at 198.

[320] Id.

[321] Jonathan Randal, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist 86-96 (2004). Azzam was a Palestinian Muslim Brother who taught at the International Islamic University in Pakistan. He was “a respected counselor to rival Afghan leaders, an eloquent preacher on the jihad’s behalf and a wide-ranging raiser of funds and volunteers . . .” His influence derived from the war in Afghanistan, in which he had promoted Islamic jihad as a “tool to persuade Muslims from all over that they must join the fight.” He and bin Laden became quite close and traveled together. They took somewhat different paths after the founding of Al Qaeda as an organization (after the Soviet jihad), but remained friends and colleagues until Azzam’s assassination in November, 1989.

[322] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 6 (2003).

[323] Id.

[324] Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America 348 (1999).

[325] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 52 (2003).

[326] Id.

[327] Jonathan Randall, Osama: The Making of a Terrorist 100 (2004). Bin Laden promised Yemini recruits that he would train them and help them win back the land “the Marxist government had confiscated.”

[328] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 254 (2003).

[329] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 19 (1973).

[330] Id. at 20.

[331] Id, at 23.

[332] Id. at 24.

[333] Mothers Against Drunk Driving, at (last visited December 13, 2004).

[334] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 265 (2003).

See also Al Qaeda Training Manual, at . For goal of Al Qaeda, see p. 32.

[335] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 265 (2003).

[336] ABC News, Alleged American Al Qaeda Warns of U.S. Attacks, at (last visited December 17, 2004).

[337] Jacob Ramer and Henry H. Perritt, Jr.,The Kosovo Liberation Army: Lessons of Modern Insurgency (2004) (unpublished manuscript, on file with of Prof. Henry H. Perritt, Jr.) citing Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (1965). Olson suggests that rational individuals will not join groups, especially large groups, for two main reasons. First, because the costs of joining will outweigh what they stand to gain; and second, because particularly in large groups, the benefits and the collective good sought by the group will extend even to those who did not participate. Free-riders, therefore – those who did not expend the costs of joining - will thus receive the same benefits, without the costs. Olson asserts that rational individuals will prefer to free-ride, since it is preferable to acquire the benefits without the costs. However, Al Qaeda’s decentralization is such that free riders will not be tolerated. Recruits are monitored at training camps, and will not be permitted to join Al Qaeda unless they have proven themselves, or unless they have something to contribute. Free-riders, therefore, will not likely be permitted to join Al Qaeda. In addition, many members are young men, in a stagnant economy, without marketable skills or secular education. Many of these men join Al Qaeda because for the benefits of joining greatly outweigh the costs of NOT joining. Without Al Qaeda, many of these young men are left hopeless and without direction, stability, or direction. Many are swept up in the organizations, because they feel that it is better to belong to something and serve some purpose than the alternative.

[338] Jacob Ramer and Henry H. Perritt, Jr.,The Kosovo Liberation Army: Lessons of Modern Insurgency (2004) (unpublished manuscript, on file with of Prof. Henry H. Perritt, Jr.) citing Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action 44 (1965).

[339] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 33-34 (1973).

“Material Incentives” are defined as “tangible rewards, money, or things and services readily priced in monetary terms. They include wages and salaries, fringe benefits, reduction in taxes . . . discounts on various commodities and services,” etc.

“Specific Solidarity Incentives” are defined as “intangible rewards arising out of the act of associating that can be given to or withheld from specific individuals . . . Some of these intangible rewards can on occasion be purchased . . . but they are not ordinarily exchanged on a regular market and they typically have little resale value.”

“Collective Solidarity Incentives” are defined as “intangible rewards created by the act of associating that must be enjoyed by a group if they are to be enjoyed by anyone.”

“Purposive Incentives” are defined as “intangible rewards that derive from the sense of satisfaction of having contributed to the attainment of a worthwhile cause. They depend crucially on the stated objectives of the organization and are general in that any member of such a group can derive some satisfaction from group efforts even if he himself contributed nothing but his name.”

[340] While some businesses provide other types of incentives, virtually all businesses employ material incentives.

[341] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 54 (2003). “terrorist organizations emphasize that ‘seventy-two virgins’ are a special reward for martyrdom.” Islamic scholars, however, contend that according to tradition, the “seventy-two virgins” are a reward for “every believer who is admitted to paradise, not only martyrs.” According to the Israeli Defense Forces report cited in Stern’s book, one of the suicide bombers whose attack had been prevented, had wrapped his genitals in toilet paper to protect them for later use in paradise.

[342] Id. at 4. Terrorist leaders sometimes provide money to the families of martyrs.

[343] Id. at 33.

[344] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 232 (2004).

[345] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 6 (2003).

[346] Id. at 244.

[347] Id.

[348] Id. at 260.

[349] Jacob Ramer and Henry H. Perritt, Jr.,The Kosovo Liberation Army: Lessons of Modern Insurgency (2004) (unpublished manuscript, on file with of Prof. Henry H. Perritt, Jr.) citing Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action 60 (1965).

[350] Id.

[351] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 34 (1973).

[352] Id. at 35.

[353] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 6 (2003).

[354] Id. at 265.

[355] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 105 (1973).

[356] Id. at 106

[357] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 237 (2003).

[358] Id. at 24.

[359] Al Qaeda Training Manual, at

[360] Id. This requirement specifies that all members be Muslim since an “unbeliever, someone from a revealed religion, a secular person or a communist”[361] cannot “protect Islam and defend their goals and secrets”

[362] Id. This requirement is accompanied by the consolation that there is no blame on those who are too poor or ill to participate.

[363] This requirement goes hand in hand with the requirements of sacrifice and Islamic religion. Commitment is absolutely essential, because of the suffering and sacrifice that members must endure.

[364] This requirement is essential due to the dangerous nature of the work involved, mentally, physically and emotionally.

[365] Perhaps the most selfless act possible, this requirement goes hand in hand with commitment to the ideology, and having Islamic faith. Without faith and absolute commitment, no rational person would sacrifice themselves. This requirement also permits Al Qaeda to involve its members in suicide bombings and suicide missions, which are most difficult to prevent or stop, even with the most sophisticated intelligence or equipment.

[366] This requirement essentially requires discipline, which is required by all armies, and likewise by this Military Training Manual.

[367] For the same reason as noted above, secrecy is crucial to any militant organization.

[368] This requirement is essential, since planning for attacks can take years, and because the goal of jihad, as described earlier, is not imminent.

[369] This requirement is necessary to endure physical and psychological traumas.

[370] Such characteristics are always valuable to any and all organizations.

[371] Necessary element, especially since the “enemy” (the West) is likely to have many resources at its disposal. This element is essential to any business, and to any military force.

[372] The training manual refers to this requirement in terms of spies; that those chosen to spy should be honest about the information they have attained. “The deceiver is a spy against you and not for you.”

[373] This requirement stresses the idea that in some situations, passive observation and analysis will fare much better and lead to a preferable result, than would immediate action. This goes hand in hand with patience – over time, and after lying in wait, the right time to act will arrive.

[374] This element is crucial to most businesses and organizations, particularly one that is militant. By its definition, militant groups – and those involved in war and jihad – must act violently in order to achieve their goals. The training manual also includes “ability to change positions and conceal oneself,” which are always valuable to militant groups.

[375] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 234 (2004).

[376] Id.

[377] Id.

[378] Id. at 232.

[379] Id.

[380] Id.

[381] Id. at 231.

[382] Id.

[383] Id. at 232.

[384] Id.

[385] Id. at 54.

[386] Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill 260 (2003).

[387] Id. at 248.

[388] Id.

[389] Id. at 237.

[390] Id. at 237-239.

[391] Id. at 238.

[392] ABC News, Alleged American Al Qaeda Warns of U.S. Attacks, at

[393] The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon

the United States 145 (2004).

[394] Id. at 146.

[395] Id. at 147.

[396] Allan Cullison, Inside Al Qaeda’s Hard Drive, The Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 2004 at 55.

[397] Id. at 55.

[398] Id.

[399] James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations 263 (1973).

[400] Id. at 266.

[401] Id.

[402] Allan Cullison, Inside Al Qaeda’s Hard Drive, The Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 2004 at 67.

[403] Id. at 58.

[404] Id.

[405] Id.

[406] ABC News, Alleged American Al Qaeda Warns of U.S. Attacks at .

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