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

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Organizational Vulnerabilities
and Recommendations to Exploit Them

       The recently declassified documents used in support of this study are a small sampling of those contained in the Harmony Database. These documents do not provide compelling evidence that U.S. counterterrorism policies to date have been misguided or have overlooked any major developments. To the contrary, the documents reflect ongoing jihadi concerns about operational security and sustainability in the midst of America’s counterterrorism efforts. Encouragingly, some of the documents even reflect al-Qa’ida’s fear that U.S. intelligence collection efforts are in some cases exceeding al-Qa’ida’s ability to enact countermeasures.

      Perhaps the most interesting insight from the present collection of documents is the way in which they demonstrate how al-Qa’ida executives deal with the same banal challenges that occupy any other organization—be it employee salary and benefits, debates over strategic vision, or underlying doctrinal interpretations. This report’s application of principle-agent theory and organizational approaches to this declassified document collection are meant to provide a useful model for conducting terrorism analysis as well as identify new insertion points for counterterrorism policy.

      Any external assessment of al-Qa’ida’s weaknesses will have inherent limitations. The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point believes an internal assessment—from actual members of the al-Qa’ida organization—is the best method to accurately assess their own true vulnerabilities.[1] Whereas Western analysts rely on incomplete information and informed speculation about such matters, jihadi strategists are enmeshed in the daily functioning of their own organization, and have a privileged perspective from which to view such shortcomings. Although the jihadis have been quite open with one another about those weaknesses, few in the U.S. Government have recognized the significance of these internal “lessons learned” documents. Abu Musab al-Suri’s reflections on “what not to do” based on the experiences of the mujahadeen in Syria, for instance, need to be viewed as a guidebook for the United States in formulating policy recommendations. The following section will illustrate how even a seemingly eclectic and disparate set of documents such as these can produce important and novel counterterrorism policy recommendations, when taken in concert with an existing body of scholarship and a rigorous theoretical framework.

      Like all terrorist groups, Al-Qa’ida values the ability to achieve political impact. In the pursuit of this, the organization must balance its need for security with operational control as well as with financial efficiency. Government efforts to degrade al-Qa’ida’s capacity will succeed if they reduce its security environment, the degree to which it can control operations, and/or its ability to fund its activities. We identify potential points of pressure and methods for achieving these ends. We also suggest methods of exploiting al-Qa’ida’s network vulnerabilities and creating internal discord within the organization that leverage underlying preferences for security, control, and efficiency of its leadership.

1. Disrupt al-Qa’ida’s control of operations and limit its financial efficiency.

      Government interventions that reduce operational control and/or efficiency within the al-Qa’ida organization generate a corresponding reduction in the political impact al-Qa’ida is capable of generating. These captured documents shed further light on al-Qa’ida’s organizational preoccupation with their ability to control their membership as well as their position vis-à-vis other jihadist organizations. Abu Huthayfa’s memo to Bin Laden for instance, shows an al-Qa’ida member calling for the establishment of a database on al-Qa’ida members and programs, the goal being to guide the organization and the broader jihadi movement by the study of its people.[2]

      This need for control is not limited, however, to just intra-organizational activities. For example, an al-Qa’ida employment contract from another Harmony document reveals the obligation for new members to swear loyalty to al-Qa’ida alone and the requirement that members “have no dealings with any other Islamic group.”[3] The document describing al-Qa’ida’s bylaws reinforces the same theme, arguing that al-Qa’ida should not be “distracted” by relief and aid operations around the world.[4] This obsession with control is a vulnerability that can be exploited by the government. Figure 4 illustrates the consequences of external efforts that decrease the maximum possible level of control over al-Qa’ida’s organizational functions.

      In this diagram, the line C¢ represents the projected impact of government actions to increase internal dissension within the group and other interventions that degrade the leadership’s ability to control their operatives. As indicated here, the resulting best feasible tradeoff for the group has shifted down from U to U’, meaning the group has to accept much less control than before to maximize political impact. The optimal tradeoff between security and financial efficiency is reduced in the same manner through efforts to increase inefficiencies in the financing of operations.
 

Figure 4: The Impact of Constraining Organizational Control

      The U.S. Government can intervene to reduce al-Qa’ida’s control and financial efficiency within the organization—thus limiting its potential political impact—by pursuing carefully crafted policies grounded in al-Qa’ida’s own assessments of their vulnerabilities. The following general prescriptions highlight possible ways governments can thwart al-Qa’ida’s organizational development.

Refrain from actions that encourage preference alignment. Al-Qa’ida members who appear less committed should not necessarily be removed from the network if they can be reliably observed, even if they present easy targets. By leaving them in place, the probability that the group will identify agency problems and hence adopt security-reducing measures increases. Consider the February 11, 1999 e-mail by Ayman al-Zawahiri to a Yemeni cell leader:

“With all due respect, this is not an accounting. It’s a summary accounting. For example, you didn’t write any dates, and many of the items are vague. The analysis of the summary shows the following:

1–You received a total of $22,301. Of course, you didn’t mention the period over which this sum was received. Our activities only benefited from a negligible portion of the money. This means that you received and distributed the money as you please....

2–Salaries amounted to $10,085–45 percent of the money. I had told you in my fax...that we’ve been receiving only half salaries for five months. What is your reaction or response to this?

3–Loans amounted to $2,190. Why did you give out loans? Didn’t I give clear orders to Muhammad Saleh to...refer any loan requests to me? We have already had long discussions on this topic...

4–Why have guesthouse expenses amounted to $1,573 when only Yunis is there, and he can be accommodated without the need for a guesthouse?” [5]

      The individual on the receiving end of Zawahiri’s ire increases agency problems and organizational dysfunction that may arguably contribute more to degrading al-Qa’ida’s capabilities if he is allowed to remain in the organization than if he were selected out. Importantly, it is the perception of financial inefficiency that is important not the inefficiency itself. This can be achieved by pursuing measures that incriminate financial agents and add to suspicions of graft and corruption in the eyes of their leaders 

Make credible punishment of operatives harder for al-Qa’ida. This is most easily done by providing an exit option for members other than indefinite detention or death. This approach can yield benefits in two ways. First, it will make it harder for groups to enforce discipline-hence control- through the use of force against their own members.[6] This will reduce the level of political impact groups can achieve. Second, offering well-publicized amnesty or reduced punishment for defectors will encourage those dissatisfied with the organization to leave by reducing the perceived costs of exit. In response, al-Qa’ida will have to become more careful about screening applicants, which will in turn reduce the pool of potential members, or increase the use of problematic screening mechanisms.

Increase internal dissension within the al-Qa’ida leadership.  Dissension among the leadership of al-Qa’ida decreases cohesiveness and control within the organization. An  example from Harmony includes a letter to “Mukhtar” that refers to senior al-Qa’ida military director Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In this letter, one ‘Abd al-Halim Adl expresses concern that al-Qa’ida is “experiencing one setback after another and have gone from misfortune to disaster.” ‘Abd al-Halim Adl blames this series of failures on faulty leadership, arguing that those in charge rush “to move without vision.” Focusing on the negative impact that Osama Bin Laden has had on the organization in particular, the letter pleads with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to reject Bin Laden’s orders and instead concentrate efforts on reorganizing and reinvigorating both the organizational infrastructure and the relationship between the commanders and the foot-soldiers. Effective information operations can achieve similar effects and will bring into question the theological justification for actions as well as the legitimacy of key leaders within al-Qa’ida.

Publicly emphasize the differences between al-Qa’ida leaders and affiliate groups. Agency problems can be enhanced within al-Qa’ida by reducing incentives for al-Qa’ida subgroups to remain closely linked to the center. Giving Osama bin Laden credit for Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi’s terrorist attacks only legitimizes and strengthens their relationship. Publicly recognizing the differences between peripheral groups and the center, however, may generate competition for authority between them. Terrorist organizations are inherently weak relative to their opponents and must overcome that weakness in order to rally supporters to their cause. Al-Qa’ida’s central leadership maintains nominal relationships with peripheral groups in part to generate a perception that it is a powerful group that can realistically challenge its enemy. Effective policies to degrade al-Qa’ida’s capacity will avoid supporting this tactic and highlight differences in the movement instead.

Make the management of al-Qa’ida’s financial assets more difficult. One way to accomplish this is to refrain from publicizing the freezing of funds or seizure of assets. When government freezes funds in this way, the individual responsible for those funds has to explain what happened. Either he must make up the funds from his pocket, or come under suspicion within the group, creating the perception of diverging preferences that lead to agency problems. Keeping asset seizures secret also increases the perceived uncertainty of the operational environment, making it more difficult to maintain effective oversight in many interactions.[7] This in turn leads to a worsening of many agency problems in the long term.

Crack down on fundraising through legitimate businesses and charities. Forcing al-Qa’ida to resort to criminal fundraising will greatly reduce the efficiency of its financial transactions. Illicit fundraising has historically created dissent over both resource allocation and tactics. With respect to resource allocation, money from illicit purposes must be laundered to prevent investigators from using the predicate offense to gain information on the group. The laundering process is inefficient and requires secrecy, making it harder for leaders to monitor how funds are used, and making the group more prone to corruption. Moreover, as the IRA experience shows, terrorist cells trained in illicit fundraising are extremely likely to begin seeking opportunities for personal profit, even at the expense of political goals.[8] In the tactical arena, reliance on criminal fundraising also creates opportunities to generate negative reactions in the community.[9] So, when al-Qa’ida’s cells are allowed to choose their own targets to enhance security, and they choose targets that arouse public ire, the leadership faces an unpalatable tradeoff. Efforts to exert greater control in response to this tradeoff will lead to a reduction in potential political impact.

Make sole source funding unavailable. One further implication of  the agency theory framework presented in the first section is that central control over al-Qa’ida’s funding provides at least a minimum level of organizational control to its central leaders. Leaders can control their agents by withholding funds if they do not behave as desired. PIJ leaders in Lebanon reportedly use this method to condition logisticians arranging suicide bombings.[10] Central control of funding occurs when groups rely on a few deep-pocket donors who prefer to deal with one leader rather than several factions, or when they raise funds from sources requiring centralized infrastructure.[11] This centralized process guarantees leaders de facto control over resources. So, to the extent that government actions can deter donations from deep-pocket al-Qa’ida donors, the frequency of agency problems will increase.

2. Constrain al-Qa’ida’s security environment.

      Government interventions that make the environment less secure for al-Qa’ida also reduce al-Qa’ida’s ability to create a political impact. An illustration of this is provided in Figure 5.[12] Here we see the projected impact of government actions that reduce the maximum feasible level of security from S to S’. Maintaining sufficient operational control and/or financial efficiency in this changed security environment forces the group to move to a lower indifference curve and accept a corresponding reduction in political impact—U’. In other words, the government’s security reducing interventions produce environmental changes that increase preference divergence among the group’s membership.

Figure 5: The Impact of Constraining the Security Environment

Create uncertainty about operationally relevant technical information. One key vulnerability of all terrorist organizations is communications. A greater volume of communications between operational cells and others presents a proportionally greater number of opportunities for compromise. If al-Qa’ida’s operators can readily find reliable technical information on bomb-making and the like, they can operate with a great deal of independence. However, if public technical data sources are rife with misinformation, then cells will need to communicate more to make sure they are using appropriate materials/techniques. These increased communications reduce the maximum feasible level of security.

Make screening strategies appear risky. Al-Qa’ida can reduce preference divergence, and hence increase their ability to achieve political impact, by screening their membership more closely. A common strategy to do so is to recruit within familial networks. By openly monitoring the family relations of known al-Qa’ida members, governments can create the perception that using family ties to screen potential members is a security risk. This takes away a useful screening strategy, reducing the maximum feasible level of security. Note that this is an additional benefit not available when monitoring is strictly covert.

Enhance intelligence collection operations. The greater the level of intelligence activity in an area al-Qa’ida intends to operate in, the lower the feasible level of security it can achieve. This is not a new observation, but it is worth noting that although increasing the density of all types of intelligence collection will reduce al-Qa’ida’s political impact, it does not have a definite effect on how it is organized. Depending on the political goals of the respective al-Qa’ida group’s leadership, it may actually adopt measures to achieve greater control.

3. Prioritize efforts based on sub-group vulnerabilities.

      We believe that al-Qa’ida sub-groups’ critical organizational vulnerabilities are largely determined by their need for discrimination in the use of violence to achieve political objectives. For example, a group like the IRA is attempting to achieve objectives that require significant popular support. They need to be very careful about who they hit in order to avoid losing this critical support. In contrast, groups like Zarqawi’s in Iraq operate with very loosely defined political goals which appear to extend little beyond driving out the United States and preventing a political settlement. Given their objectives do not hinge on winning broad based popular support, Zarqawi’s group does not need to be as careful about whom they inflict casualties upon.[13]

      Our application of this theory to the Harmony documents and related cases leads us to conclude that, in cases where terrorist leaders have strong preferences for controlling operatives, interventions that reduce this control have greater impact on the organization than those that degrade the security environment. However, in cases where government is combating terrorist factions that place a lesser value on control, they will do better pursuing actions that reduce the group’s security. For example, when developing strategies to limit the political impact of al-Zarqawi’s group, reducing control does not matter much because he values it less.[14]

However, for al-Qa’ida terrorists operating in groups whose leaders insist on greater discrimination in their application of violence, reducing their level of control should lead to a greater probability of accepting a lower level of political impact. Terrorist leaders with such preferences would therefore be more likely to scale back on violent actions than risk collateral damage and alienating others.

4. Conduct an aggressive study of jihadi strategy and foreign policy.

      Operational approaches discussed thus far must be pursued in concert with strategies that focus on undermining the body of ideas driving this violence.  Students of al-Qa’ida would be remiss to think that the organization did not have its own understanding of international politics and its own foreign policy objectives informed by that understanding. Each stated objective, however, should be viewed as a new avenue by which to fracture the movement from within. The captured documents presented in this study reflect an important point of tension on the strategic level regarding the prioritization of countries in which to wage jihad, and the criteria for determining whether a population is ripe for accepting jihadi ideology.

      The prioritization of countries to be attacked continues to be disputed both inside and beyond the al-Qa’ida movement. One captured document details a scouting trip, likely from the mid-1990s, on the prospects of waging jihad in Kenya.[15] Other documents reveal that senior leaders looked to Yemen as a high priority target. In other Harmony documents, jihadi commanders argue for the need to preserve strong, secure rear areas in places like Sudan and Afghanistan while launching offensive strikes into Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.[16] The United Arab Emirates slowly made its way up the targeting chain through the 1990s. But Somalia was seen as not being “ready for classic jihad” because the Somali movement had already come close to alienating itself from the masses.[17]

      The importance of maintaining connections between jihadi leadership and the people has been critical to most jihadi policy planning since Abdallah Azzam advocated such a policy in the 1980s. Al-Qa’ida strategist Abu Musab al-Suri argues, in documents found in this collection and elsewhere, that this loss of connection between jihadi leadership and the people has been a key factor in the failure of jihadi movements, particularly in Syria. By understanding both consensus and dissension among al-Qa’ida strategists about targeting priorities, U.S. policymakers increase their options for posing challenges to the organization’s operations.

5. Deny jihadi groups the benefit of security vacuums they seek to exploit and create.

      Policymakers are correctly concerned about the existence of ungoverned spaces as being potential safe-havens for terrorist groups. The Harmony documents demonstrate that al-Qa’ida has been thinking about the necessity to exploit such spaces since their organizational founding.

      The Somali document referenced above identifies a five-point strategy to unite Somali forces and create an Islamic national front.[18] The author argues for:

1.     expulsion of the foreign international presence;

2.     rebuilding of state institutions;

3.     establishment of domestic security;

4.     comprehensive national reconciliation; and

5.     economic reform and combating famine.

      This approach parallels the June 2005 Zawahiri letter addressed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq.[19] In this letter, Zawahiri argues that jihad in Iraq should proceed incrementally, according to the following phases:

–       expel the Americans from Iraq;

–       establish an Islamic authority or emirate, then develop it and support it; and

–       extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq.

He also notes that jihad in Iraq may coincide with what came before: the clash with Israel, because Israel was established only to challenge any new Islamic entity.

Both of these documents focus on the need to create viable operational space by first expelling occupiers and then by establishing and nurturing their own system. By identifying, catalyzing and swallowing ungoverned spaces, jihadi strategists believe they will be able to consolidate their strength and pursue their broader political and internationalist agendas. Notice that what is important to these thinkers is not the existence of a security vacuum, but what comes next, establishing functioning state institutions under jihadi control. In fact, existing security vacuums have not proven to be a viable base for exporting attacks abroad. No major international attacks, for example, have been supported out of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Somalia.

Thus, while a concern with security vacuums is warranted, the implication is not that we must consistently prevent security vacuums.[20] That takes immense resources, as the largely unsuccessful effort to end the security vacuum in Iraq show.[21] Indeed preventing all security vacuums would be a Herculean task involving American power in numerous failed and failing states around the world. However, denying terrorists the benefits of security vacuums is likely a more feasible strategy. The massive troop deployment in Iraq has so far denied terrorists the use of that country as a staging ground for attacks in the West. Meanwhile, terrorists are denied the benefits of a potential Afghan security vacuum with 18,000 troops, while CJTF HOA effectively denies jihadis the use of Somalia and the rest of that region with only 1,600 troops[22]—in both cases, these deployments are far less resource-intensive than would be required to actually end the security vacuum. A more cost-effective strategy, we believe, may be to maintain the capability to act decisively when necessary in security vacuums, without embarking on an unsustainable mission to end security vacuums worldwide.[23]

6. Turn the jihadi vanguard back on itself.

      The strategic proponents of al-Qa’ida are what Vladimir Lenin, among a wide variety of other revolutionaries, described as the “vanguard.” These “professional revolutionaries” possessed both the intellectual capacity and the fighting spirit to blaze the trail toward revolution. As most students of jihadi terrorism know, Abdallah Azzam employed this same notion of the vanguard in his early conceptualization of the al-Qa’ida organization. The application of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist revolutionary doctrine is critical to understanding jihadi strategy. Jihadi strategists have formulated a general roadmap for breaking what they see as America’s physical and virtual chokehold on the periphery—both in the literal international political sense, but also in a cognitive sense. Their solution draws not only on Lenin but also on Mao’s “Rural Strategy” or “Encirclement” path to revolution. Mao argued that the vanguard party needed to engage the masses, who in China were predominantly “poor and blank” peasants. These peasants provided the perfect launching pads for establishing pockets of resistance in the periphery. Although Mao’s long-term goal was to actually overthrow the urban centers of capitalist entrenchment, his immediate objective was to encircle these centers with strategic footholds and wage stealth, pinpoint strikes. In Harmony AFGP-2002-600053, the author (Hassan) bolsters this point when he argues that “the strategy of the ‘Jewish West’ is to strike at the periphery of the Muslim lands.”[24]

      As jihadi strategists see it, their Mao-styled mobility has allowed their own resistance to seamlessly open new fronts of battle when other ones close, thereby causing American action to be perpetually defensive in nature. This logic is not only reflected in the upper echelons of al-Qa’ida leadership. Indeed, in a letter included in this Harmony sample from a Central Asia-based jihadi commander, Hassan al-Tajki, one can see this calculus play out. Tajiki sees Russia in a state of economic, political and military chaos. However, as much as jihadi forces would like to exploit this political space, he identifies that “America is planning, indeed has actually begun, to fill the political vacuum occurring in the area.”[25] Unpredictable waves of jihadi “attack and retreat” campaigns serve, in their eyes, to confuse coalition forces and paralyze their ability to formulate and implement their own offensive strategy, thereby freeing jihadists to proceed virtually unencumbered.

      We can learn a great deal from jihadi strategists and their application of historical insurgency tactics against our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. can similarly employ tactics that seek to surprise and exhaust jihadi safe-havens by coordinating attacks in an unpredictable yet continuous fashion. Effective strategies will aggressively seek opportunities to create power vacuums within jihadi areas of responsibility

7. Confuse, humiliate, demoralize and embarrass the jihadi rank-in-file.

      Taken in context with our theoretical model, the Harmony documents suggest government policies would find success facilitating intra-movement rivalries and competition within al-Qa’ida. As one of the Harmony documents details, Tajik mujahideen had been demoralized by the intimidation and bullying from other jihadi forces. Subsequently, “the majority of the young men snuck away and went back looking for work with their old area commanders.”[26] Jihadi-on-jihadi tension has historically run high, seen in the conflict between the “Afghan Arabs” and the Afghan mujahadeen, as well as in other jihadi combat experiences. When jihadi recruits, at least in this case, felt unwanted, they were compelled to leave the movement and return home. Government efforts to stymie recruitment of new jihadis ought to capitalize on the psychological need by many of these men to feel a sense of belonging to an organization. By denying that psychological payoff, jihadis on the margins of support for the cause may otherwise return home, like the Tajik mujahideen described in the Harmony document above.

8. Subvert the authority of senior commanders.

      The sample of documents from Harmony released for this study highlight the long-standing concern that the al-Qa’ida organization has had with securing the right kind of leader, often referred to as the Emir. Senior strategists learned from past jihadi experience. As Abu Musab al-Suri’s observations on the Syrian experience illustrates, without an active and highly trained cadre of senior leaders, any movement is destined to fail.[27] This dearth of senior jihadi leaders reduces the maximum level of control al-Qa’ida can exert and thus reduces the potential for political impact as discussed earlier in this section.

      While al-Suri’s treatment focuses on general trends concerning the role that commanders play in jihad, other documents contain sections dedicated solely to articulating the professional qualifications, personality characteristics and organizational duties of commanders.[28] Still others concentrate on the need for providing leaders with real-time information about the movement, its members and the broader political space in which it operates. In fact, among the documents that speak to the role and activities of leaders, they almost uniformly reflect having learned al-Suri’s lessons from Syria: not letting untrained people into senior command positions; not letting the senior leadership lose touch with its operatives on the ground; and the importance of training junior members not just with tactical and operational knowledge but with the strategic relevance of their participation in jihad.

      With the goal of turning jihadi strengths against them, increased focus on pursuing strategies that seek to separate leaders from their troops may be effective. Identifying the lines of communication among jihadis is key to this effort. Sometimes these are best monitored clandestinely. In fact, there is significant anecdotal evidence from jihadi use of the Internet that the paranoia about being monitored hampers operations by significantly increasing the types of operational security measures that may be employed. In other instances, those tasked with counterterrorism efforts should seek to inundate those lines of communication with alternative discourse, thereby disorienting and confusing jihadis. In rare instances, it may be both operationally expedient and necessary to shut down these lines of communication.

9. Facilitate misunderstanding as well as understanding of America’s intentions and capacity.

      Throughout its historical evolution, the al-Qa’ida organization has internally wrestled with a number of strategic concerns, particularly those related to where and how to implement violence. The Harmony documents provide insight into the jihadi understanding of American foreign policy priorities, which jihadis believe to have been significantly handicapped by the American experience in Vietnam.

      In one series of letters extracted from Harmony regarding the American military experience in Somalia, one jihadi author writes that:

The Somali experience confirmed the spurious nature of American power and that it has not recovered from the Vietnam complex. It fears getting bogged down in a real war that would reveal its psychological collapse at the level of personnel and leadership. Since Vietnam,  America has been seeking easy battles that are completely guaranteed. It entered into a shameful series of adventures on the island of Grenada, then Panama, then bombing Libya, and then the Gulf War farce, which was the greatest military, political, and ideological swindle in history.[29]

      This statement reveals several important insights. First, at least throughout the 1980s and 1990s, al-Qa’ida believed the United States to be an aggressive and belligerent power, perpetually seeking opportunities to exercise its military domination. Those following al-Qa’ida rhetoric over the recent decade have heard statements arguing that the only language the United States understands is that of violence.[30] America’s perceived bellicose leanings, however, were seen as being tempered by the lessons learned in Vietnam—namely, that protracted wars of attrition should be avoided at all costs. Jihadists writings generally portray the United States as a paper tiger, one that possessed overwhelming military power, but constrained in its ability to employ this strength by a domestic population and leaders who lacked the resolve to sustain military campaigns without public support.

      Jihadi assumptions about America’s reluctance to use military force were reinforced following the perceived lack of response to the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as to the USS Cole attack in 2000. The predominant jihadi assumptions about America’s perceived risk aversion likely caught them off guard and facilitated American military success against those jihadists in the early 2000s. There may be an advantage in allowing jihadists to underestimate American resolve and power, in certain situations, as it may lead to a decreased perception within al-Qa’ida of the need for operational security measures.

10. Force jihadi propagandists back on their heels.

      Ultimate success for al-Qa’ida lies in reshaping mass perceptions about good and evil. As was the case since Hasan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood, it is essential to grasp the fact that the long-term goal of this jihadi salafi movement is to change the face of society. Al-Qa’ida has been relatively successful in packaging and marketing their message in a social movement. Through the persuasive figurehead of Osama Bin Laden, the persistent continuation of global terrorism and the work by an army of propagandists to spin the tale of jihad, al-Qa’ida as an idea is actually much more difficult for governments to counter than when it was more or less an organization or confederation with its associated organizational vulnerabilities described earlier in our analysis.

      The jihadi movement’s strategic coherency to this point is attributable, in large part, to how skillfully its members used propaganda instruments, particularly since 9/11, for weaving a historical record, as one senior al-Qa’ida ideologue called it. As a repository of images, videos and stories, the Internet has come to codify a particular jihadi foundational myth, accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Publishing their ideas in short forum postings, longer articles floated online or in voluminous books, jihadi strategists not only recruit new members into this worldview, but they spoon-feed recruits with their virulent (and tedious) vocabulary for expressing their anger, and provide direction to operators on the ground, both in Iraq and abroad.

      In a Harmony document written in 1994, the author (Hassan) contends that “more effective radio broadcasts are needed to launch a propaganda campaign in Yemen and Somalia.” Much like the prolific jihadi propagandists at work today, Hassan believed that “radio stations are more powerful than atomic bombs.” Again, the target of propaganda campaigns, he argues, must be the youth, who in small numbers can bring “correct teaching” to a large area.[31] Bin Laden himself, in a captured letter he wrote to Mullah Muhammad ‘Omar, wrote “It is obvious that the media war in this century is one of the strongest methods; in fact, its ratio may reach 90% of the total preparation for the battles.”[32] In “A Memo to the Honorable Sheikh Abu Abdullah,” the author, Abu Huthayfa, suggests that Muslims should seek to integrate jihad into all aspects of their lives. For example, he argues, marriage ceremonies “should include speeches, songs, and poetry promoting jihad.”[33]

    It seems imperative that combating terrorism efforts do everything possible to contain the spread of the jihadi body of ideas. The insight gained from the application of our theoretically informed model to this limited number of documents suggests that governments would find success implementing policies that focus on denying jihadis the operational space they seek; pitting groups, ideologues and even propagandists against one another; encouraging parochial squabbles within organizational leadership; and demoralizing new recruits while providing viable alternatives and exit strategies to them.

11. Understand and exploit the ideological breaks in the jihadi movement.

      Combating the al-Qa’ida movement over the long term requires identifying where key jihadi thinkers break with one another. The documents in this report reveal how such doctrinal disagreements have historically driven wedges within the upper echelons of al-Qa’ida. It is this intra-movement contention that comprises the soft underbelly of violent jihad, which can be exploited to great ends. Interdicting and corrupting the lines of al-Qa’ida’s ideological influence strikes at the core of its ability to exert indirect control of its members. Ideological influence may prove to be al-Qa’ida’s center of gravity as a social movement; efforts to attack this should be weighted accordingly.

      One Harmony document, for instance, points to debate among al-Qa’ida thinkers about Muhammad Nasir-ud-deen, better known as Shaikh Al-Albani, who is a renowned name among salafists and a revered Hadith scholar. He—like other late salafi sheikhs (part of what is known as the Awakening Movement) including Abd al-Aziz Bin Baz, Salim al-Hilali, and Rabee Madkhalee, among others—preached about the deviations made by Sayyid Qutb and those who follow in his path, which includes followers of al-Qa’ida. In this document, Ayman al-Zawahiri criticizes Sheikh Albani for constraining the pursuit of jihad to “forgiveness, education and prayer.”[34] Zawahiri, like his ideological comrades—whom Awakening Salafis label “Qutubis” for their ardent following of Qutb’s deviant teachings—rejects such limits as appeasement. It is necessary for Muslims to go beyond simply gaining knowledge and education, which implicitly means enduring the oppression of perceived apostate leaders and “imperialist infidels,” and instead take action. This ideological break is but one of many that exist within the broader movement that can be usefully exploited.

12. Anticipate al-Qa’ida’s transformation from an organization to a social movement.

The United States and its allies have found great success fighting al-Qa’ida as an organization. We have significantly degraded its formal command structure, debilitated its capabilities to readily move money and closed most of its training facilities. Despite the success against the organization, however, terrorist attacks in the name of al-Qa’ida, such as those witnessed in London or Madrid, continue. While not coordinated by the al-Qa’ida organization, they are informed by the model that al-Qa’ida popularized. This report highlights a number of effective methods for limiting al-Qa’ida’s potential political impact in cases where the terrorist group can be characterized to a greater degree as an organization. Al-Qa`ida’s continued transformation into a broad-based social movement, however, will pose overwhelming challenges to U.S. and other governments’ counterterrorism efforts and therefore must be stopped at all costs.

One senior al-Qa’ida strategist, Abu Musab al-Suri, advances in one of the included Harmony documents—as well as in other writings found elsewhere—a comprehensive call to violent revolution among Muslims.[35] His writings need to be understood for what they are: a template for morphing the loose coalition of organizations, personalities and ideas that has come to be known as al-Qa’ida into a global revolutionary movement. His movement is well-conceived and designed it to be organic, clandestine, adaptable to changes in political reality and self-sustaining.

Since the Afghan training camp system had been shut down, Suri argues for the need to transfer the training to each house of each district in the village of every Muslim. By making appropriate training materials available to more than a billion Muslims in the world, Suri believes that he can catalyze a revitalized culture of preparation among them. Taking advantage of information technology like the Internet, Suri contends that anyone interested can access military and ideological training in any language, at any time, anywhere. Muslim homes, as envisioned by Suri’, not only become the new training camps, where families can recruit, educate and train, but also serve as staging grounds from which ideological adherents are able to consolidate their strength and wage terrorism.  Further complicating matters, Suri articulates expanded opportunities to participation in jihad for the large numbers of Muslims who may agree with the ideology he advances but are reluctant to engage in acts of violence.  

Aggressive and proactive efforts are needed to curtail al-Qa’ida’s transformation from a terrorist organization to that of a social movement. Increasing opportunities and mediums for individuals to support jihad, along with greater variation in the types of roles available, will require ever more comprehensive responses and mechanisms to deter them.   

Concluding Remarks

      The analysis provided in this report and accompanying selection of recently declassified documents from the Department of Defense’s Harmony database included in Part 2 will hopefully accomplish three basic objectives. First, they provide a new source of raw data to scholars, analysts and others interested in learning more about al-Qa’ida from the perspective of the organization’s members. The 28 documents presented here represent a small number of an ever-growing collection of al-Qa’ida related material, which will be increasingly made available to the public.

      Second, this report seeks to demonstrate the utility of organization and agency theory for conducting terrorism analysis. Based on the logical frameworks of this field of inquiry, the analysis provided here illustrates concepts and insights that can help conduct a more nuanced study of primary source documents. Its focus on the dynamic interplay between organizational necessity for concomitantly pursuing security, efficiency and control emphasizes opportunities for those tasked with countering the terrorist threats.

Finally, the policy recommendations presented here are meant to expand the   perspective of the US Government and all concerned states on the types of instruments and timelines it can use to combat al-Qa’ida. This list is not exhaustive, and as more information is provided through additional documents, the Combating Terrorism Center and other researchers can continue to research, analyze, develop, and refine recommendations. Certainly, this report represents just one component of a much larger, comprehensive effort to combat al-Qa’ida with increasing sophistication and success.

The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and not of the U.S. Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or any other agency of the U.S. Government.

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