Harmony and Disharmony:
Exploiting Al-Qa'ida's Organizational Vulnerabilities

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Introduction

       A proliferation of research on al-Qa’ida within the last decade has revealed much about the strategic objectives, ideology, members, tactics, finances and other relevant aspects of this organization. Scholars such as Bruce Hoffman, Rohan Gunaratna, Michael Scheuer, Peter Bergen and Gilles Kepel have described in great detail the nature of political Islam and how al-Qa’ida has incorporated its own interpretation of jihad into a global insurgency against sectarian political regimes and symbols of western globalization.[1] Other researchers, like John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, have explored the growing incidence of networked organizations in areas of transnational crime, insurgency, and terrorism.[2] By integrating these areas of research into an analytical framework informed by organization and agency theories, this report seeks to identify specific vulnerabilities within the al-Qa’ida network that can be of value to combined efforts to combat terrorism.

A Networked Terrorist Organization

       An understanding of today’s al-Qa’ida requires an appreciation for the organization’s adoption of fourth generation warfare tactics.[3] The concepts of fourth generation warfare were first presented in a 1989 Marine Corps Gazette article entitled “The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation,” which argued that such warfare was “likely to be widely dispersed and largely undefined; the distinction between war and peace will be blurred to the vanishing point.”[4] The authors of this article also provide what became an ominous prediction of the terrorist threat we now face: The “political infrastructure and civilian society [will] become battlefield targets.” Adherents of fourth generation warfare call for the use of psychological operations (including propaganda) and terrorism to erode an enemy’s moral, mental and physical ability to wage war over many years until they eventually lose their willingness to stay in the fight. According to one well-received definition, fourth generation warfare is an “evolved form of insurgency [that] uses all available networks—political, economic, social, military—to convince the enemy’s decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly for the perceived benefit.”[5]

      The advantages of this approach for any sub-national or transnational group are fairly obvious: decentralized, networked terrorist organizations are less vulnerable to the traditional counterterrorism measures used by the hierarchically organized security forces of a national government. In February 2002, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported that an al-Qa’ida document posted to the Internet embraced fourth-generation warfare. “This new type of war presents significant difficulties for the Western war machine” the publication said. “Fourth generation wars have already occurred and . . . the superiority of the theoretically weaker party has already been proven; in many instances, nation-states have been defeated by stateless nations.”[6] Al-Qa’ida’s adoption of fourth generation warfare tactics offer a useful case study for understanding networked terrorist organizations.

      According to most counterterrorism analysts today, al-Qa’ida has evolved from a centrally directed organization into a worldwide franchiser of terrorist attacks.[7] Indeed, since the war in Afghanistan, which significantly degraded bin Laden’s command and control, al-Qa’ida has become increasingly decentralized, and is seen by some as more of a “movement” than any other form of organization. Experts involved in counterterrorism have observed “a growth in this global Sunni extremist movement, partly driven by Iraq, but also by other events, which is much more difficult to track, follow and ultimately disrupt. So as we’re doing really well against what was al-Qa’ida, we’ve got a new threat—this movement, which is much more of a challenge.”[8]

      As inspirational leaders of this movement, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri have provided ideological guidance, while leaving planning and financing of operations to the local commanders of allied but autonomous organizations. The March 2004 attack in Madrid, which killed 191 people, is often cited as the key turning point in the evolution of this global Islamist extremist movement. Initially, Spanish and U.S. counterterrorism officials sought to identify organizational links between al-Qa’ida and the Madrid bombers, but quickly they realized those connections were tenuous at best. The Madrid attack was organized and implemented within eight weeks, using stolen explosives and cell phone detonators assembled by one of the conspirators. It required no central direction from the mountains of Pakistan, simply a charismatic leader with links to men trained in the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. For motivation, though, they had Spanish help for the U.S. war in Iraq, and for inspiration they had bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks.

      Since the March 2004 Madrid bombings, other groups have followed this model. For example, there is no evidence to suggest the attacks that killed dozens of westerners in Casablanca, Morocco, were carried out with the knowledge of al-Qa’ida leadership. Further, investigators do not believe al-Qa’ida played any role in the July 2005 mass transit attack in London, although a videotape produced afterward by al-Zawahiri applauded the suicide bombers. In essence, al-Qa’ida is becoming what its earliest architects had hoped it would be: a support “base” for Islamist radicals around the world. Even “al-Qa’ida in Iraq,” the new name for Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s group, does not take orders from bin Laden or his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri—rather, the Iraqi insurgents draw inspiration, technical support and military guidance.[9]

      From a strategic perspective, it makes sense that Osama bin Laden and his colleagues would seek to nurture a loosely-organized terrorist movement. Indeed, several years ago al-Qa’ida’s leaders recognized that the achievement of their ultimate goals and objectives required a more decentralized, networked approach. In 2001, following the ouster of the Taliban from Afghanistan, a number of al-Qa’ida leaders suddenly found themselves in detention centers facing long months of interrogation. Abu Zubaydah, al-Qa’ida’s “dean of students,” who directed training and placement for the group, was captured in Faisalabad, Pakistan, in February 2002. Ramzi Bin al Shibh, the organizer of the Hamburg, Germany cell that formed the core of the 9/11 hijackers, was captured in Karachi, Pakistan, on the first anniversary of the attacks. These and other counterterrorism successes ultimately led to the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11 and the financier of the first World Trade Center attack, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March 2003. And a month later, Tawfiq Attash Kallad, the mastermind of the USS Cole attack, was apprehended in Karachi. In response to the loss of key leaders, al-Qa’ida allegedly convened a strategic summit in northern Iran in November 2002, at which the group’s consultative council came to recognize that it could no longer exist as a hierarchy, but instead would have to become a decentralized network and move its operations out over the entire world.[10] By evolving in this way over the past few years, al-Qa’ida is demonstrating the type of adaptive flexibility that has become a hallmark of networked terrorist organizations.

The Vulnerabilities of Networked Terrorist Organizations

      By their unique nature, terrorist organizations face difficult challenges in almost any operational environment, particularly in terms of maintaining situational awareness, controlling the use of violence to achieve specified political ends, and of course, preventing the authorities from degrading the group’s capabilities. But, as Jacob Shapiro describes in the next chapter of this report, they also face problems common to other types of organizations, including private firms, political parties, social movements, and traditional insurgencies. For example, political and ideological leaders—the principals—must delegate certain duties to middlemen or low-level operatives, their agents. But because of differences in personal preferences, as well as the need to maintain operational secrecy, terrorist group leaders cannot perfectly monitor what their agents are doing. Thus, preference divergence creates operational challenges which can be exploited to degrade a terrorist group’s capabilities.

      Overall, the goal of this analysis is to provide a framework which can help us identify where and under what conditions organizations can expect the greatest challenges in pursuing their goals and interests. Understanding a terrorist organization’s internal challenges and vulnerabilities is key to developing effective strategies to combat the threats they pose and degrade these groups’ ability to kill.

Summary

      As explored in greater detail throughout the remainder of this report, a networked terrorist organization like al-Qa’ida has vulnerabilities that can be exploited. We begin Part 1 of this report by developing a robust theoretical framework that helps us identify and understand these vulnerabilities. When combined with an assessment of what is known about the current characteristics of the al-Qa’ida network, this analysis reveals emerging organizational challenges, internal divisions, and an appreciation for where, and under what conditions, the network is most vulnerable to exploitation.[11]

      This theoretical analysis is followed by a case study which highlights the challenges faced by various jihadist movements in Syria during the 1970s and 1980s, providing a historical precedent for discussing current al-Qa’ida organizational challenges and associated network vulnerabilities. A number of interesting parallels between the jihadi’s’ experience in Syria and contemporary challenges faced by Zarqawi’s “al-Qa’ida in Mesopotamia” are incorporated into this fascinating and relevant case analysis. This case study not only expands our understanding of the al-Qa’ida network, it also provides a useful model for other researchers to follow in applying a similar theoretical framework to the study of other terrorist organizations and their potential vulnerabilities.

      Part 1 of this report concludes with policy-relevant findings inspired by the captured al-Qa’ida documents supporting this study and suggests opportunities to exploit al-Qa’ida’s inherent organizational vulnerabilities. A number of prescriptions, both lethal and non-lethal, are presented here that respond more efficiently to al-Qa’ida’s diversity in preferences and commitment to its cause, in an effort to induce debilitating agency problems that increase existing organizational dysfunction.

      In Part 2 of our report we describe the methodology used to generate the document sample and present summaries and cursory analysis of all 28 captured al-Qa’ida documents used in this study. The full text translated to English as well as the original Arabic are accessible through hyperlinks in the document summaries. 

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