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http://www.jamestown.org/news_details.php?news_id=147

Can al-Qaeda Endure Beyond bin Laden?

10/31/2005 - By Michael Scheuer -- The question
of al-Qaeda’s longevity after the demise of its
figurehead is ultimately unanswerable until bin
Laden is actually gone. There are those who
believe bin Laden is dead—which would surely be
one of history’s best kept secrets—and argue
that al-Qaeda has proven its survivability. While
never saying never, it seems exceedingly likely
that bin Laden is alive, and on that presumption
the following analysis is based.

Man or Organization

Too often, al-Qaeda’s post-bin Laden future is
discussed solely on the basis of who will place
him. It is asked whether the successor will have
bin Laden’s intelligence, charisma, and jihadi
credentials. Or, can Zawahiri, Sayf al-Adl,
Zarqawi, one of bin Laden’s sons, or a
now-unknown mujahid fill the top position? Thus,
much of the analysis about a new al-Qaeda
leader’s impact focuses on personalities and their
respective strengths and weaknesses, and
frequently fails to examine the nature of the
organization bin Laden’s successor will inherit.

The al-Qaeda organization, as all know, was
formed in the last months of Moscow’s
occupation of Afghanistan, around mid-1988. Bin
Laden played the lead role in its formation, but
his colleagues—Wali Khan Amin Shah, Abu Hajir
al-Iraqi, Wael Julaidan, Muhammed Jamal
Khalifah, etc.—also played a part. What was the
group’s goal in establishing al-Qaeda? It was
meant to maintain the Islamist momentum
attendant to the Red Army’s defeat. It was also
intended to be an organization governed by
Islamist principles. Furthermore, it was meant to
be patterned on the Afghan Islamist insurgent
groups—those of Khalis, Hekmtayar, Sayyaf, and
Masood—which had defeated the Soviets. (It
always is worth noting that al-Qaeda is not
modeled on a terrorist group.) Finally, from its
inception, al-Qaeda has targeted the United
States.

Yet, the foregoing are intentions to be
accomplished, they are not the basic reason for
al-Qaeda’s creation. The best phrase to describe
why al-Qaeda was created is “long-term
durability.” At the most fundamental level,
al-Qaeda’s founders wanted to build an
organization that would preserve and—here bin
Laden’s CEO talents came into
play—institutionalize the mechanisms built during
the 1980s to support the Afghan mujahideen and,
once institutionalized, use them to support
militant Islam worldwide. How to enumerate
these mechanisms is an open question, but it fair
to list five mechanisms that al-Qaeda’s founders
thought essential to the long-term durability of
their organization, regardless of who was serving
as its chief.

Funding

The Afghan jihad was expensive, and bin Laden
saw this reality first hand. Bin Laden, moreover,
was directly involved in the funding process,
serving early in the war as a channel through
which private and official Saudi monies went to
the mujahideen. (Bin Laden’s counterpart in
funding was Shaykh Abdullah Azzam, who
brought money from the non-Gulf Middle East
and the Muslim Brotherhood.)

By the Afghan war’s mid-point, moreover, bin
Laden and other Arab mujahideen began forming
all-Arab insurgent units. While it is likely that
Pakistani intelligence diverted some official U.S.
and Saudi funds to the groups, bin Laden has
explained that the Arabs did not want to be
tainted by U.S. support and so developed funding
sources and channels independent of those
supporting the Afghans.

Since the end of the Afghan war, al-Qaeda’s
funding capability has been solidified and
expanded on the basis that established it in the
1980s. Al-Qaeda’s worldwide growth and
multifaceted activities—attacking America,
supporting Islamic insurgencies, training fighters,
etc.—demanded reliable funding. The group’s
well-documented record of success suggests
funding is ample and that the channels carrying
the funds are hidden and not susceptible to
interdiction.

Procurement

Many wealthy Muslims were willing buy weapons
for the Afghans but were unwilling to work with
Riyadh or the U.S. government. Faced with this
reality, bin Laden and other Arabs crafted a
weapons-procurement system for the Afghan
mujahideen that, like the funding mechanism,
ran parallel to the U.S.-Saudi system. Bin Laden
and his colleagues ran this parallel mechanism
and used it to arm the Afghans and themselves.
Before al-Qaeda was formed, therefore, its
leaders were well-versed in clandestine
procurement and transportation of arms,
communications gear, and military
accoutrements.

Since 1988, bin Laden and his lieutenants have
improved their procurement system to
accommodate the al-Qaeda group‘s needs, as
well as to arm its allies. There is no evidence
that al-Qaeda and its allies have ever suffered
more than a temporary shortage of conventional
weapons. Al-Qaeda also has created a second,
separate procurement channel for acquiring
weapons of mass destruction (WMD), particularly
nuclear weapons. This system benefits from
al-Qaeda’s successful recruitment of scientists,
engineers, technicians, and hands-on
practitioners of building such weapons from, at
least, Pakistan’s WMD programs. The extent of
this second system’s success is not known, but if
the targeted application of money, time,
expertise, and leadership pressure can yield
success, it would be a mistake to assume that
WMD-acquisition is too difficult for a non-state
actor like al-Qaeda.

Manpower and Logistics

Bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, and their colleagues
began their jihad careers building and managing
a network that supplied men for the Afghan war.
Bin Laden et al. brought non-Afghan Muslims
from across the Islamic world to Pakistan to
serve as fighters and as workers in hospitals,
arms dumps, refugee camps, clinics, and NGOs.
Their effort was successful and created a network
of travel routes, trusted facilitators, and way
stations where jihad-bound travelers could be
succored. By war’s end, this system had matured
to the extent that very few volunteers could not
reach the jihad.

At its founding, al-Qaeda faced the task of
turning this single-direction system—all roads led
to Afghanistan—into one that could continue
bringing men to South Asia for training, transport
trainees to camps in Yemen and Sudan, and
move trained fighters to combat theaters in
Tajikistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya. Al-Qaeda
obviously succeeded in a systemic expansion
which has accommodated ever larger numbers.
Indeed, manpower never has been a problem for
al-Qaeda; it is now present in 75-plus countries,
has sizeable contingents in Afghanistan and Iraq,
and has combat trainers, logisticians, and
veteran fighters involved in most of the world’s
Islamist insurgencies. Al-Qaeda’s manpower and
logistical capabilities—like those for funding and
procurement—can be described as effective and
relatively immune from disruption.

Training and Personnel Services

Bin Laden’s 1988 operational priority was for
al-Qaeda to train Muslim militants from around
the world at the groups’ camps, and provide
far-flung Islamist insurgencies with a cadre to
train fighters locally and be a “stiffening agent”
for local forces. The al-Qaeda cadre added to
Taliban forces in 1996, for example, added skill
and professionalism to Mullah Omar’s campaign
against the Northern Alliance around Kabul. The
al-Qaeda cadre had the same impact on
Kashmiri insurgent forces in the late 1990s.
Today, al-Qaeda’s training capability in
Afghanistan is constrained, but the steady pace
of combat in the insurgencies in the Philippines,
Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere
suggests training remains an al-Qaeda priority
and is being executed outside Afghanistan.

As for any military organization, al-Qaeda’s
personnel services for combatants and their
families are vital both to maintain morale and
prevent disgruntled fighters or their families from
publicly denigrating the group or, worse,
providing information about it to the enemy.
After a decade of war with the United States, we
know little about how al-Qaeda’s personnel
services work. We do know, however, that no
individual has come forward in the media to
attack al-Qaeda for the treatment he or she
received from the group, nor have there been
intelligence leaks about an ill-treated al-Qaeda
fighter or family member providing information
that damaged group—data Western governments
surely would have leaked if it existed. On the
other hand, anecdotal accounts abound of
al-Qaeda providing health care and financial aid
to the families of fighters killed in battle or
absent on operations; doing everything possible
to provide special care such as prosthetic devices
for wounded fighters; and delivering monthly
stipends to families of imprisoned fighters. In
sum, al-Qaeda’s personnel services seem to help
maintain high morale and stubborn loyalty
toward the organization.

Propaganda

From al-Qaeda’s first day to the present, bin
Laden’s priority has been to incite and instigate
Muslims to support and participate in a defensive
jihad against the United States and its allies. He
and his lieutenants have spent large amounts of
money, time and imagination to build a
world-class media and propaganda apparatus.
Today, that apparatus is in full operation. Bin
Laden and Zawahiri appear on and dominate the
international media at times of their choosing. As
important, al-Qaeda’s multifaceted Internet
presence keeps its religious views, political and
ideological commentary, and news reports
constantly before its most important
constituency, the Muslim world’s
computer-literate middle- and upper-middle
classes.

Al-Qaeda also has used the Internet to
drastically reduce the need for would-be
mujahideen to travel to places like Afghanistan,
Yemen, or Sudan for training. By mounting
military and intelligence manuals on the Internet,
al-Qaeda has created a situation where training
can be conducted in virtually any country on
earth, thereby increasing the chance of evading
the eye of Western governments.

Conclusion

Al-Qaeda’s post-bin Laden effectiveness will, in
significant measure, depend on leadership
qualities of his successor. Realistically, there is
little reason to think a potential successor will
have the same credentials and talents that have
powered bin Laden’s leadership. Yet, his
successor may not need equivalent credentials
and talents. Al-Qaeda is now a well-established,
17-year-old firm; indeed, the parts of it that
developed from mechanisms that supported the
Afghans against the Soviets have been operating
for 25 years. In short, al-Qaeda is now what its
founders intended: a reliable, professional
organization that has demonstrated long-term
durability. Thus, bin Laden’s successor will
inherit a proven, well-functioning organization,
one that will give him time to grow on the job
without the need to spend most of his time
keeping the organization running.

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