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Volume 2, Issue 18 (October 4, 2005) | Download PDF Version

Al-Qaeda's Next Generation: Less Visible and More Lethal

By Michael Scheuer

Experts speculate widely about the composition and
tactics of the next generation of mujahideen. This
speculation stems from the fact that transnational groups
are harder collection targets than nation-states. Such
ambiguity and imprecision is likely to endure indefinitely,
and is particularly worrisome concerning
"next-generation" terrorism studies.

Osama bin Laden has been planning for the next generation of mujahideen
since he began speaking publicly in the mid-1990s. Bin Laden has always
described the "defensive jihad" against the United States as potentially a
multi-generational struggle. After the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden explained that,
even as the anti-U.S. war intensified, the torch was being passed from his
generation to the next. "We have been struggling right from our youth," bin
Laden wrote in late 2001:

"We sacrificed our homes, families, and all the luxuries of this worldly life in
the path of Allah (was ask Allah to accept our efforts). In our youth, we
fought with and defeated the (former) Soviet Union (with the help of Allah), a
world super power, and now we are fighting the USA. We have never let the
Muslim Ummah down.

"Muslims are being humiliated, tortured and ruthlessly killed all over the
world, and its time to fight these satanic forces with the utmost strength and
power. Today the whole of the Muslim Ummah is depending (after Allah) upon
the Muslim youth, hoping that they would never let them down." [1]

The question arising is, of course, what threat will the next generation of
al-Qaeda-inspired mujahideen pose? Based on the admittedly imprecise
information available, the answer seems to lie in three discernible trends: a)
the next generation will be at least as devout but more professional and less
operationally visible; b) it will be larger, with more adherents and potential
recruits; and c) it will be better educated and more adept at using the tools
of modernity, particularly communications and weapons.

Religiosity and Quiet Professionalism

The next mujahideen generation's piety will equal or exceed that of bin
Laden's generation. The new mujahideen, having grown up in an internet
and satellite television-dominated world, will be more aware of Muslim
struggles around the world, more comfortable with a common Muslim identity,
more certain that the U.S.-led West is "oppressing" Muslims, and more
inspired by the example bin Laden has set—bin Laden's generation had no
bin Laden.

While leaders more pious than bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are hard to
imagine, Western analysts tend to forget that many of bin Laden's
first-generation lieutenants did not mirror his intense religiosity. Wali Khan,
Abu Zubaidah, Abu Hajir al-Iraqi, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, Ibn Shaykh
al-Libi, and Ramzi Yousef were first generation fighters who were both
swashbuckling and Islamist. Unlike bin Laden and Zawahiri, they were
flamboyant, multilingual, well-traveled, and eager for personal notoriety.
Their operating styles were tinged with arrogance—as if no bullet or jail cell
had been made for them—and each was captured, at least in part, because
they paid insufficient attention to personal security. Now al-Qaeda is
teaching young mujahideen to learn from the security failures that led to the
capture of first-generation fighters.

"The security issue was and still is one of the aspects that most influence the
practical course of the conflict [with the West] and one of the fronts that
most affect the war's outcome. As long as the Islamic movement does not
take this aspect seriously, the promised victory will continue to lack the most
important means for its realization.

"What is required is that the security consciousness be present with a
strength that causes it to mix with the natural course of daily action.…
However, a consideration of history and a study of events lead us to
conclude that the enemy's gain in the security conflict [with al-Qaeda]
basically cannot be due to the extraordinary strength of those organizations
or to the superior skill of those in charge of them. They are derived from the
state of defenselessness caused by the sickness of [security] laxity in Islamic
circles!" [2]

The rising mujahideen are less likely to follow the example of some notorious
first-generation fighters, and more likely to model themselves on the smiling,
pious, and proficient Mohammed Atef, al-Qaeda's military commander, killed in
late 2001 and, to this day, al-Qaeda's most severe individual loss. A former
Egyptian security officer, Atef was efficient, intelligent, patient, ruthless—and
nearly invisible. He was a combination of warrior, thinker, and bureaucrat,
pursuing his leaders' plans with no hint of ego. Atef's successor as military
commander, the Egyptian Sayf al-Adl, is cut from the same cloth. Four years
after succeeding Atef, for example, Western analysts cannot determine his
identity—whether he is in fact a former Egyptian Special Forces colonel
named Makkawi—or his location—whether he in South Asia, Iraq, or under
arrest in Iran. Similarly, the Saudis' frequent publication of lengthening lists of
"most wanted" al-Qaeda fighters—many unknown in the West—suggests the
semi-invisible Atef-model is also used by Gulf state Islamists. Finally, the
U.K.-born and -raised suicide bombers of July 7, 2005 foreshadow the next
mujahideen generation who will operate below the radar of local security
services.

Numbers

At the basic level, the steady pace of Islamist insurgencies around the
world—Iraq, Chechnya and the northern Caucasus, southern Thailand,
Mindanao, Kashmir and Afghanistan—and the incremental "Talibanization" of
places like Bangladesh, Pakistan, and northern Nigeria, ensure a bountiful
new mujahideen generation. Less-tangible factors will also contribute to this
bounty.

-Osama bin Laden remains the unrivaled hero and leader of Muslim youths
aspiring to join the mujahideen. His efforts to inspire young Muslims to jihad
against the U.S.-led West seem to be proving fruitful.

-Easily accessible satellite television and Internet streaming video will
broaden Muslim youths' perception that the West is anti-Islamic. U.S. public
diplomacy cannot negate the impressions formed by real-time video from
Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan that shows Muslims battling "aggressive"
Western forces and validating bin Laden‘s claim that the West intends to
destroy Islam.

-The adoption of harsher anti-terror laws in America and Europe, along with
lurid stories about Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib prison, and the handling of
the Qur'an will give credence to bin Laden's claim that the West is
persecuting Muslims.

-The ongoing "fundamentalization" of the two great, evangelizing monotheist
religions will enhance an environment already conducive to Islamism. The
growth of Protestant evangelicalism in Latin America, and the aggressive,
"church militant" form of Roman Catholicism in Africa, has and will revitalize
the millennium-old Islam-vs.-Christianity confrontation, creating a sense of
threat and defensiveness on each side.

Compounding the threat posed by the next, larger generation is the
possibility that analysts underestimated the first generation's size. Western
leaders have consistently claimed large al-Qaeda-related casualties;
currently, totals range from 5,000-7,000 fighters and two-thirds of al-Qaeda's
leadership. If the claims are accurate, we should ponder whether the West
has ever fought a "terrorist group" that can lose 5,000-7,000 fighters,
dozens of leaders, and still be assessed militarily potent and perhaps
WMD-capable? The multiple captures of al-Qaeda's "third-in-command"—most
recently Abu Ashraf al-Libi—and the remarkable totals of "second- and
third-in-commands" from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's organization suggests the
West's accounting of Islamist manpower—at the foot soldier and leadership
levels—is, at best, tenuous.

Modernity

Recent scholarship suggests al-Qaeda and its allies draw support primarily
from Muslim middle- and upper-middle classes [3]. This helps explain why bin
Laden places supreme importance on exploiting the internet for security,
intelligence, paramilitary training, communications, propaganda, religious
instruction, and news programs. It also points to the West's frequent failure
to distinguish between the Islamists' hatred for Westernization—women's
rights and secularism, for example—and their openness to modernity's tools,
especially communications and weaponry.

Several features of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's forces demonstrate that the
mujahideen embrace modern tools. Two-plus years after the U.S. invasion,
for example, Zarqawi's technicians continue building Improvised Explosive
Devices (IEDs) and car bombs that defeat the detection/jamming technology
fielded by U.S. forces. Indeed, each new iteration of defensive technology
has been trumped by improved insurgent weaponry.

Zarqawi's media apparatus is likewise the most sophisticated, flexible, and
omnipresent U.S.-led forces have encountered since 9/11. Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq's
media produce daily combat reports, near real-time video of attacks on
coalition targets, interviews with Zarqawi and other leaders, and a steady
flow of "news bulletins" to feed 24/7 satellite television networks. In doing
so, Zarqawi's media are telling the Muslim world al-Qaeda's version of the
war professionally, reliably, and in real-time. So good has Zarqawi's media
become since joining al-Qaeda that it is fair to assume the most important
help he has received is from bin Laden's world-class media organization.

Conclusion

Despite satellites, electronic intercept equipment, and expanding human
intelligence, the West does not understand al-Qaeda the way it knew the
Soviet Union. Transnational targets are substantially more difficult collection
targets than nation-states. We are, for example, unlikely to build an accurate
al-Qaeda order-of-battle or recruit assets to penetrate the al-Qaeda
equivalent of Moscow's politburo. As a result, Western analysts must closely
track broad trends within al-Qaeda and its allies, and the trends toward
greater piety, professionalism, numbers and modernity merit particular
attention.

Notes
1. Osama bin Laden, "Message to Muslim Youth," Markaz al-Dawa (Internet),
December 13, 2001.
2. Sayf-al-Din al-Ansari, "But Take Your Precautions," Al-Ansar (Internet),
March 15, 2002.
3. See especially, Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, (University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), and Robert Pape, Dying to Win. The Logic of
Suicide Terrorism, (Random House, 2005).

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