Michael Burleigh: Al-Qaeda's Decade of Terror
[Michael Burleigh is the author of Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism.]
Around the world, the decade of terror has generated different anniversaries, the latest being the 12 months separating Indians from the Mumbai gun and grenade atrocities. The announcement that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 atrocity, and four accomplices are to be tried in New York, also makes this an apt moment to assess the deeper impact of terrorism.
Al-Qaeda's leadership has been either captured or killed, whether during the B-52 strikes on Tora Bora, or by the CIA's Predator drone assassinations along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Although it is claimed that a voice on audio cassettes is that of Osama bin Laden, it is strange that a movement so reliant on the charismatic Saudi has not released any filmic evidence that he is still among the living. Nor, despite Bali, Atocha station, and the July 7 London bombings, has there been another al-Qaeda "spectacular'', the mass casualty attacks which commenced in Africa in 1998, and which any terrorist movement needs to sustain its brand for reasons of recruitment.
Intelligence experts reckon there are probably 120 core al-Qaeda operatives, their overriding concern being to get through each night still in one piece by day break. Most
al-Qaeda members come from north Africa or the Gulf states, with a few Indonesians and Uzbeks tacked on. Since their chief animus is against the rulers of those states, by their own lights they have failed, for not a single authoritarian republic or reactionary monarchy has fallen as a result of terrorist activity. The one thing the Bouteflikas, Gaddafis, Mubaraks and Sauds are very, very good at, is remaining in power. Further east, the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore seems to have crushed jihadism – notably by the killing of Noordin Top, al-Qaeda's chief operative in the tri-state region. According to MI5, the real danger comes from such
al-Qaeda affiliates as Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based organisation responsible for the Mumbai murders.
Some things have been irrevocably changed by international terrorism. The use of commercial aircraft as flying bombs, and conspiracies to down them with passenger-assembled explosives, has made international travel a trial. Mumbai was an example of a mass casualty gun attack, of the sort hitherto used to murder unwitting tourists, as happened in 1997 at Luxor in Egypt. Although attempts to gun down soldiers have been foiled at barracks in Australia and Fort Dix in the US, one succeeded at Fort Hood last month.
Many government buildings are now ringed with security barriers, and most senior politicians have got used to having bodyguards or armed policemen outside their homes. The threat of terrorism has also justified the proliferation of CCTV cameras and the storage of credit card transactions, mobile phone records and email, all of which have been produced in court whenever there is a major terrorist trial.
Of course there have been changes of a more complex kind: September 11 enabled international Islamism to impose itself on our collective consciousness, which was surely one of its major objectives. While only policemen and intelligence officers rushed to purchase the Koran and the more radical texts of such ideologues as the Egyptian radical Sayyid Qutb, most of us have become depressing familiar with a range of alien terms, such as jihad, mujahadeen, and sharia. Our knowledge has expanded to encompass remote provinces in Afghanistan, not to mention Xinjiang in China, where there is a problem with Muslim Uighurs...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
Around the world, the decade of terror has generated different anniversaries, the latest being the 12 months separating Indians from the Mumbai gun and grenade atrocities. The announcement that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 atrocity, and four accomplices are to be tried in New York, also makes this an apt moment to assess the deeper impact of terrorism.
Al-Qaeda's leadership has been either captured or killed, whether during the B-52 strikes on Tora Bora, or by the CIA's Predator drone assassinations along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Although it is claimed that a voice on audio cassettes is that of Osama bin Laden, it is strange that a movement so reliant on the charismatic Saudi has not released any filmic evidence that he is still among the living. Nor, despite Bali, Atocha station, and the July 7 London bombings, has there been another al-Qaeda "spectacular'', the mass casualty attacks which commenced in Africa in 1998, and which any terrorist movement needs to sustain its brand for reasons of recruitment.
Intelligence experts reckon there are probably 120 core al-Qaeda operatives, their overriding concern being to get through each night still in one piece by day break. Most
al-Qaeda members come from north Africa or the Gulf states, with a few Indonesians and Uzbeks tacked on. Since their chief animus is against the rulers of those states, by their own lights they have failed, for not a single authoritarian republic or reactionary monarchy has fallen as a result of terrorist activity. The one thing the Bouteflikas, Gaddafis, Mubaraks and Sauds are very, very good at, is remaining in power. Further east, the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore seems to have crushed jihadism – notably by the killing of Noordin Top, al-Qaeda's chief operative in the tri-state region. According to MI5, the real danger comes from such
al-Qaeda affiliates as Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based organisation responsible for the Mumbai murders.
Some things have been irrevocably changed by international terrorism. The use of commercial aircraft as flying bombs, and conspiracies to down them with passenger-assembled explosives, has made international travel a trial. Mumbai was an example of a mass casualty gun attack, of the sort hitherto used to murder unwitting tourists, as happened in 1997 at Luxor in Egypt. Although attempts to gun down soldiers have been foiled at barracks in Australia and Fort Dix in the US, one succeeded at Fort Hood last month.
Many government buildings are now ringed with security barriers, and most senior politicians have got used to having bodyguards or armed policemen outside their homes. The threat of terrorism has also justified the proliferation of CCTV cameras and the storage of credit card transactions, mobile phone records and email, all of which have been produced in court whenever there is a major terrorist trial.
Of course there have been changes of a more complex kind: September 11 enabled international Islamism to impose itself on our collective consciousness, which was surely one of its major objectives. While only policemen and intelligence officers rushed to purchase the Koran and the more radical texts of such ideologues as the Egyptian radical Sayyid Qutb, most of us have become depressing familiar with a range of alien terms, such as jihad, mujahadeen, and sharia. Our knowledge has expanded to encompass remote provinces in Afghanistan, not to mention Xinjiang in China, where there is a problem with Muslim Uighurs...