Afghanistan

  Shia Muslims are, like the Zionist-Crusaders and the takfir Muslim leaders that accommodate them, a target of Al Qaeda’s narrative. Anti-Shia ideology contributed to the Pakistan Taliban attacking the Shia Touray Pushtuns starting in November 2007 and has inspired an increasing level of anti-Shia violence in Pakistan by 2008–10.

  Transnational Terror from the Vortex

  The transnational terrorist threats emerging from the Vortex include: those aimed at Afghanistan, those aimed at Pakistan (and India), and that targeted at “the primary enemy” of the US, UK, and the West. The global mission is more important to Al Qaeda than the war in Afghanistan they use to justify their narrative of Islam under attack. The main task of Al Qaeda in Pakistan is to prepare for new attacks on the primary enemy. According to Bruce Riedel, a US counter-terrorism expert and retired CIA officer, “Al Qaeda is recruiting and training individuals with Western European passports in their camps in Pakistan. There’s only one reason they’re doing that. They don’t need guys with British and French passports to attack the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.”86 If the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan appears remote in the West, their connection to Al Qaeda and its allies literally has their name on it; they are targeting the West and, just as Al Qaeda started this campaign years before the Western interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, even a future withdrawal would be unlikely to bring it to a halt.

  Even when Al Qaeda dominated Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in the years before 2001, terrorism did not spread across its borders isotropically. Rather, the Afghanistan-based Al Qaeda’s Declaration of War on America issued in 2000 promised war not in Afghanistan but against the West. Al Qaeda’s choice and their timing has reflected their focus on the “primary enemy” in America and Europe, such as the 2004 Madrid bombing attacks, immediately before the Spanish election. Awareness of the importance of timing was also seen in the October 2000 terrorist attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Aden harbor, at a time when its proximity to the US presidential election made retaliation appear unlikely. Bin Laden’s appearance on television on 29 October 2004, immediately before the US presidential election, was thought to be intended to remind the US electorate of the Al Qaeda threat. When Al Qaeda acts, it reflects its nature as a transnational threat.

  Al Qaeda has been able to use its relationship with Pakistani-based groups to implement its strategy of striking at the “primary enemy” worldwide, even though these groups had previously limited their operations to striking at targets in the region. Pakistani journalist Ahmad Rashid said “These people are militants who have been fighting in Kashmir, who have been fighting in other places and who are linked to Al Qaeda and are providing assistance to Pakistani groups worldwide. We saw, for example, the London [transport] bombing in July [2005]. They were clearly linked back to some of these Pakistani militant groups, who in turn were linked back to al Qaeda.”87

  The Vortex’s connection to transnational Islamic terrorism in the Anglo-American world has been revealed by attacks, arrests, and prosecutions. The support infrastructure in the Vortex, accessed by insurgents and terrorists alike, is attached to a network powered by a metaphorical “main circuit cable” that runs the Atlantic, from the US to the UK to Karachi all the way to the FATA, the origins of much of that metropolis’s population, and from there runs to Afghanistan.88 Significantly, Pakistani radical groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba have moved beyond their focus on India and Kashmir to participate in global terrorist planning. This has enabled them to use this same support infrastructure to present a terrorist threat to the US and UK, building on Al Qaeda’s model.89

  Al Qaeda has been able to work with other transnational jihadist organizations, through shared networks, to tap into the “culturally uprooted” among Europe’s Muslim population. Al Qaeda has uniquely positioned itself to feed and then take advantage of the social and psychological factors that are driving its members or those sympathetic to terrorist organizations’ goal even if not their methods. Most of the people that it has attracted to Al Qaeda or linked groups are not driven by poverty (except vicarious poverty) or by a longing for reform in their home country. Rather, many are motivated to exact retribution for real or imagined transgressions by the West against Islam.90 Al Qaeda has demonstrated an ability to appeal to individuals who, although neither poor nor uneducated, feel lost or have a deep-seated desire to empower themselves and serve a higher purpose. Those who feel themselves to be second-class citizens with no future even if they are nominally in the middle class, and those experiencing cultural victimization and political pointlessness, are particular targets for Al Qaeda or similar groups (especially those Pakistan-based groups that had their origins in the Kashmir insurgency, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba).91 Marginalized individuals, such as those in prison or converts that need to prove their sincerity as Muslims, are often among those recruited. In Europe, successful professionals have gone on to become suicide bombers. Terrorism is nothing if not empowering.

  The links between the UK and terrorist organizations operating in the Vortex are strong. The UK security services are aware of attempts by subversive and terrorist organizations to infiltrate and radicalize British Muslims dating back to the 1980s.92 In 2004, the Home Office estimated that Al Qaeda and aligned terrorist groups had some 10–15,000 supporters in the UK.93 It is estimated that some 3–4,000 British Muslims, most of Pakistani background, have been trained in camps, most in Afghanistan or Pakistan.94 A smaller number were trained in Yemen or elsewhere. Some subsequently left the UK, including those who joined insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan. Few have been sanctioned, and most remain living in the UK.

  While the number of active terrorist cells in the UK’s Muslim population is small, Al Qaeda and associated organizations provide these terrorists, as they do with the Taliban in Afghanistan, specific direction for high value operations as well as sharing planning and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). The 7 July 2005 terrorist bombings of London were carried out by native-born British terrorists, using the tactics of simultaneous attacks on soft targets and the use of powerful peroxide-based liquid explosives that originated with Al Qaeda.

  Starting in 2005–06, Pakistan-based Al Qaeda exerted greater hands-on direction of their networked supporters in the UK and Europe than in those Islamic countries where there was a “franchise” Al Qaeda presence. British intelligence sources have changed their characterization of the UK-Pakistani threat from a mere characterization to the assertion that the “command and control is provided by Al Qaeda in Pakistan.” Dame Eliza Manningham-Butler, then director general of MI5, said in a public speech in November 2006 that Al Qaeda’s command and control was still linked to “numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy. . . . What do I mean by numerous? Five? Ten? No, nearer 30 that we currently know of. These plots often have links back to Al Qaeda in Pakistan and through these links Al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale.”

  The “foot soldiers” she referred to are largely provided by radicalized individuals of the estimated 800,000 Pakistanis in the UK. In contrast to the relatively large number of supporters or even those that have undergone training, Western anti-terrorism experts estimate that there are hundreds of supporters with an active commitment to terrorism, certainly a much smaller commitment to political violence than was seen in home-grown movements such as those in Northern Ireland in recent decades. The UK’s Pakistani community has a greater degree of societal integration with the UK as a whole than most of the Muslim communities on the continent and has the ability to travel on a British passport for attacks on the US. There are an estimated 400,000 trips between Pakistan and the UK a year, many of them lasting several months, beyond the capabilities of any monitoring system to keep track. Only a small percentage of this community needs to embrace terrorism to create a formidable terrorist threat.

  The Transatlantic airline terrorist plot, whose members were arrested in the UK in A
ugust 2006 following a joint Anglo-American investigation with Pakistani cooperation, demonstrated the importance of Vortex-based Al Qaeda in directing the UK-based terrorist threats through directives and resources that moved down the main circuit cable from the FATA. The targeting of no less than 10 airliners—to be destroyed simultaneously, cutting the main transatlantic air links between the US and UK—was consistent with the Al Qaeda focus. The tactics also had the Al Qaeda mark. They apparently already had 20 volunteer suicide bombers trained. Some had already made their martyrdom videos.

  The 2006 airline plot was significant in that it was not being carried out by a haphazard collection of individuals but rather represented a cohesive action by teams of self-radicalized terrorists, directed by Al Qaeda in Pakistan as part of a multi-year, well-planned, and nearly well-executed process. It marked a break of post-2002 Al Qaeda action in striking soft targets, instead hitting a hard target set, civil aviation, and using advanced-technology liquid explosives. This was not the degraded Al Qaeda’s first apparent attack post-2001, hitting soft targets such as synagogues in Tunisia and weddings in Amman. Rather, it appeared to aim at nothing less than provoking a US-UK military response against Al Qaeda’s base in the FATA that would, ideally for them, have the impact of splintering the Pakistani state and putting them in the position of helping their Pakistani allies put together the pieces.

  The failure of the airliner plot did not end the threat from the Vortex but was merely an indication of the new direction Al Qaeda had taken and an additional indicator of the importance of this region in world affairs. The 2007 plot for attacks in Copenhagen was reported to have been organized from Pakistan.95 In Germany, the 2007 plot for an attack on Ramstein Air Base also had links back to Pakistan.96 In Belgium, suspects arrested in 2008, thought to be planning a suicide attack, included members trained in Afghanistan.97 Senior western European government officials have identified Pakistan-based terror as the biggest single threat to western Europe, eclipsing that originating with alienated indigenous communities.

  The threat of indigenous radicalization with links to Al Qaeda has now spread to the US, even though, by 2009, relatively few US citizens or permanent residents had been established to have trained with Al Qaeda and then returned to the US.98 In the eight years after 9/11, 693 terror suspects, a third of them citizens, were prosecuted in the US, a third of them for terrorism.99 The US, with its diverse population with worldwide links, is said to have connections with terrorist networks in 60 countries. Al Qaeda has been targeting recruits in the US.100 While the death of the first US-recruited suicide bomber (in Somalia in 2009) and other homegrown US terrorist threats had no immediately apparent Al Qaeda links, the impact of the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent prosecution of what were seen as home-grown “sleeper cells” has led to concern that such potential terrorists may be able to follow Al Qaeda’s example or even, through personal contacts, draw on Al Qaeda-related expertise.

  The Terrorist Threat to Afghanistan

  Al Qaeda has retained its vanguard nature and is still trying to achieve leadership through conflict in the Islamic world. Afghanistan is but one front in Al Qaeda’s global offensive, with its most important role being seen as helping to rally Muslims against the “Zionist-Crusader” invasion. The director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, LTG Michael D. Maples, said, in 2006, “Al Qaeda will remain engaged in Afghanistan for ideological and operational reasons.”101 In 2008, Al Qaeda was estimated to have 150–500 cadre and fighters in the Pakistani borderlands plus operational control over one to two thousand central Asians.102

  While numerically small and not a major combatant force in the insurgency in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda is important in providing outside ideas, concepts, and personnel, according to COL Patrick McNiece, ISAF deputy director of intelligence in 2008.103 He qualified it in this way: “Afghans are proud enough that they will not be led by Al Qaeda, but they will take money, ideas and, for many, TTPs [tactics, techniques, and procedures].” “Al Qaeda is very involved in training and facilitating the arrival of foreigners,” including the teenage madrassa students from Pakistan and elsewhere that make up many of the suicide bombers.104

  Afghanistan itself is not a hotbed of terrorists, nor do Afghans have a history of participation in terrorism. No Afghans participated in the 11 September 2001 attacks or other high-profile attacks in the West. The long and bitter Afghan jihad against the Soviets in 1978–92 did not include a campaign against Soviet or third-country targets outside of the region. Indeed, it was marked by an almost complete absence of such activities. Afghanistan’s history of physical and intellectual remoteness from the ideas running through the Islamic world included resistance to multinational terrorism. When Afghans showed up carrying weapons outside their country in the 1990s, as in Bosnia or Chechnya, they were largely low-level former mujahideen in search of money and status (many married local wives) unavailable to them at home. Just as availability of employment and education did not prevent middle-class young men from the Arab world and Europe’s Islamic communities from being involved in terrorist action in the West, the lack of these same opportunities, conversely, did not lead to Afghans becoming terrorists.

  Despite this lack of participation, ironically, no single country has been as affected by Al Qaeda and transnational Islamic terrorism as Afghanistan. Al Qaeda made pre-2001 Afghanistan the headquarters of its campaign to establish a global Khalifait. It operated in close alliance with, and ended up controlling, the Taliban—which, while they shared Al Qaeda’s worldview, was primarily concerned with waging Afghanistan’s bloody civil war and bringing Afghan society and life into line with its fundamentalist view of Islamic practice. Al Qaeda and its allied Pakistani terrorist groups such as the Sipah-e-Sahaba had previously added additional horrors to that of Afghan’s 1992–2001 civil war, massacring Shia Afghans in Mazar-e-Sharif and devastating the Hazara Jat and the Shomali Plain. Pre-2001, Kabul under the Taliban had attracted not only Al Qaeda but also other terrorist groups and a large number of Muslim common criminals.

  The impact of transnational terrorism in Afghanistan was seen when two Al Qaeda assassins killed Ahmad Shah Massoud on 9 September 2001. The Al Qaeda plan brought in two killers from Europe. It took over a year of Al Qaeda’s meticulous planning to get them in striking range of Massoud. It appears to have been the work of the same Al Qaeda planners that made possible the suicide bombing of the USS Cole. Even after 11 September 2001, Al Qaeda’s history of violence in Afghanistan, both providing fighting men in the civil war and carrying out atrocities, means that it has still killed many more Afghans than Westerners.

  While Al Qaeda is apparently not looking to recreate the effective control of a state it enjoyed in pre-2001 Afghanistan, they make effective use of the new sanctuary that has emerged in Pakistan’s borderlands. Since 2001, Al Qaeda has apparently learned that it is counterproductive to take over states or build mass movements. They now focus on escalating, extremely violent terrorist attacks. Al Qaeda will also act to take advantage of vacuums created by an absence of state power, especially in Pakistan.105

  In 2008–09, Al Qaeda’s military commander for Afghanistan was an Egyptian, Mustafa Abu al Yazid (known as Shaikh Said), who was reported killed by the Pakistani military in 2008 but was apparently still operating in 2009.106 He is thought to be part of the core of Al Qaeda’s Pakistan-based leadership, along with Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and Abu Yahya al-Libi. His statements have pointed to the growing number of non-Afghans fighting inside Afghanistan (for which Al Qaeda is claiming responsibility) as well as terrorist attacks in India as a reflection of the fact that they are winning the conflict. By 2008–10, the improving security situation in Iraq and the increasing hostility toward foreign fighters meant that many would-be jihadis instead made their way to Pakistan to fight in Afghanistan. Veterans of Al Qaeda in Iraq were providing training to Afghan and Pakistani insurgents as well these incoming foreigners.

  Terrorism in Afghanistan since 2001
has reflected the actions of Al Qaeda and its transnational allies as well as the Afghan Taliban and its insurgent allies. The rapid increase in these attacks from 491 in 2005 to 1127 in 2007 was an indication of the start of the deterioration of the security situation that had reached crisis proportions in 2008–10.107 In 2008, there were widespread Western press reports, citing intelligence sources, that the Pakistani ISI had had a direct role in several of that year’s terrorist actions in Afghanistan. These included the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul and attacks aimed at Karzai or leadership figures, most notably the 2008 Karzai assassination attempt and the 2007 Baghlan suicide bombing. Such attacks have also targeted Kabul-based Afghans and foreigners, as seen by the 2007 Hotel Serena attack, the 2008 Ministry of Culture and Information attack, and the 2009 suicide attack on the Ministry of Justice.

  To Al Qaeda, suicide bombing is not just effective terrorist tactics against an infidel that lacks resolve; it is a key part of their ideology and appeal to those it recruits.108 While the Taliban was already aware of suicide bombing techniques through their links to the Tamil guerrillas in Sri Lanka, it was Al Qaeda that introduced suicide bomb attacks to Afghanistan, starting with the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud on 9 September 2001 by attackers who Al Qaeda had recruited in Europe. By 2003, suicide bombers had emerged as part of the Afghan insurgency. But it was only after Al Qaeda’s recruiting and training foreign suicide bombers started to have an impact in 2005–06 that the numbers of attacks increased.109 More recently, the suicide bombers have been reportedly predominantly from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghanistan’s interior minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar said “Central Asians are used as expendable assets by terrorists. Uighurs have not been seen in Afghanistan as yet, though we do have reports they are harbored across the border. Al Qaeda has run out of assets.”110