Transcript

Host: This is "On The Line," and I’m Eric Felten.

Eight men are on trial in London, accused of plotting to bomb seven transatlantic passenger planes, attacks that would have killed thousands. Prosecutors say that the plan was inspired by al-Qaida, the terrorist network responsible for the September 11th attacks in New York and Washington. Speaking in London, FBI Director Robert Mueller said that al-Qaida continues to adapt and survive:

Mueller: "In the wake of the September 11th attacks, our path was clear. We knew our enemies were al-Qaida terrorists, and, together, we went after them, from their training camps to their funding to their leadership. And working together, we diminished their sanctuary in Afghanistan, froze millions of dollars in financing, and captured or killed many of al-Qaida's top leaders. But al-Qaida will not go quietly into the night. It is resilient. Its network is now diffuse, and it continues to adjust its strategies and tactics."

Host: In the wake of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, al-Qaida focused its efforts on bringing chaos to postwar Iraq. The commander of coalition forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, says that al-Qaida’s ability to act in Iraq has been significantly reduced and that the Sunni Iraqis, who had previously tolerated or welcomed the terrorists, have largely turned against them:

Petraeus: "Since the first Sunni awakening in late 2006, Sunni communities in Iraq increasingly have rejected al-Qaida Iraq’s indiscriminate violence and extremist ideology."

Host: Al-Qaida’s leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, are still believed to be in the tribal areas of Pakistan, near the Afghan border. Al-Qaida’s closest allies -- the ousted extremist rulers of Afghanistan, the Taliban -- also operate out of Pakistan’s lawless border region. The Taliban continues to commit terrorist attacks in southern Afghanistan. The new government in Pakistan says it will try negotiating with Islamic militants in the borderlands, but only with those willing to renounce violence. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said, "Pakistan will not negotiate with terrorists."

What sort of threat does al-Qaida pose now? I’ll ask my guests: Brian Bennett, Foreign Affairs Correspondent for "Time" magazine; and the Vice President of Research for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross; and joining us from our London studio, Sajjan Gohel, Director of International Security at the Asia-Pacific Foundation. Welcome. Thanks for joining us today.

Let’s start by talking a little bit about al-Qaida and what its structure has become. When FBI Director Mueller was in London speaking at Chatham House, he gave a breakdown of how he believes al-Qaida is currently structured. Let’s hear what he had to say:

Mueller: "The top tier is core al-Qaida, the core al-Qaida organization, which has established new sanctuaries in the ungoverned spaces, the tribal areas, and the frontier provinces of Pakistan. And new sanctuaries mean that al-Qaida can reconstitute its leadership, recruit new operatives, and regenerate its capability to attack. The middle tier is perhaps the most complex. We are finding small groups who have some ties to an established terrorist organization but are largely self-directed. Think of them as al-Qaida franchises, hybrids of homegrown radicals and more sophisticated operatives. The July 7th bombers are an example of this middle layer. Two of them trained at camps in Pakistan, but they came back to Britain and lived among you while they plotted their attacks. And the arrests last September of small terrorist cells in Denmark and Germany are yet other examples. And then the bottom tier is made up of homegrown extremists. They are self-radicalizing, self-financing, and self-executing."

Host: Brian Bennett, what’s your sense -- a three-tiered organization in al-Qaida at this point?

Bennett: What Mueller’s describing here is that al-Qaida has become more than just one group with a top-down leadership. It has created a leaderless resistance, to use some of the language that’s used in analyzing terrorist groups. Basically, they’ve set out an ideology. They set out a way of pursuing that ideology through violence. And anyone who has access to websites and literature can decide they want to form their own extremist group in whatever country. And so this is what Mueller is describing here, in the way that al-Qaida has diffused its methods all the way out to homegrown cells operating without a direct link to the top leadership.

Host: Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, what’s your sense?

Gartenstein-Ross: I basically agree with what Mueller put forward, but one of the key debates that’s out there among analysts is just how important is that core al-Qaida? And I think a lot of times, when you look at that middle tier -- that is, the tier with some connections back to the central network but that’s largely self-directed -- people underestimate the importance of the central network. If you compare the plots where people have trained in Pakistan or in other areas where there’s a strong jihadist presence versus those where there’s no training, no connection to the core leadership, those who’ve trained, those who have a connection to the core leadership are far more effective. The 7/7 bombers were quite effective, and there’s good --

Host: Now, the 7/7 bombers we’re talking about in London -- the bus bombings that happened in London.

Gartenstein-Ross: Yes, where both Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer trained in Pakistan. They were quite effective, and there’s very strong evidence that al-Qaida’s core leadership had advance knowledge of the plot, because they were able to immediately air the martyrdom tapes of both of these men on Al Jazeera. They wouldn’t have been able to do that had they not had that information. Now, compare that to plots in the United States, like the JFK cell that wanted to blow up some major gas fuselages at the JFK Airport, the Miami cell that wanted to blow up the Sears Tower. These guys were very serious about what they wanted to do, but they were completely operationally incompetent, which I think makes the core leadership very important. And people tend to underestimate what it can do, even if it’s just training people or linking up operational capabilities.

Host: Sajjan Gohel, what’s your sense of the importance of the core leadership of al-Qaida at this point?

Gohel: Keep in mind that after September 11th, al-Qaida central took a few hits with some of its senior members being captured, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi Binalshibh. But what has happened since then, worryingly, is that al-Qaida central command and control has re-emerged. It’s reconstituted its ranks. It’s replenished itself. It’s been able to recruit new individuals and new adherents. And al-Qaida has continued to evolve. After September 11th, from being an organization, it became an ideological movement to, yet again, we’re seeing it become an organization. The large number of plots that have been foiled and disrupted in the U.K., for example, have shown clear linkages from cells in Britain being tied to the al-Qaida command in Pakistan. And, of course, as was mentioned, the July 7th transit bombings in London clearly showed that there was a direct control to al-Qaida in Pakistan itself.

And what is also worrying, which is the new dimension, is the franchise of al-Qaida. So, for example, you’ve got groups around the world that are changing their name and taking the al-Qaida brand. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which used to be based in Algeria but is now based throughout north Africa, is becoming a huge concern for the authorities in Europe, particularly for the French, because they’re worried that these groups have the ability to carry out attacks not just regionally but transnationally.

Host: Now, Brian Bennett, when these groups take the name "al-Qaida in the Maghreb" or whatever or wherever it may be, are they assuming the brand and continuing to be local organizations locally directed? Or, in assuming the brand, are they also putting themselves under the leadership, putting themselves at the direction of the leaders in the borderlands of Pakistan?

Bennett: This is what’s interesting, is that, you know, in theory, they are swearing biat to the leadership of al-Qaida, but in practice, we’ve seen a lot of divergence from the franchises away from what the leadership wants them to do. We saw this in Iraq with the formation of al-Qaida in Iraq. The founder of that was far more radical than -- in his methods, in attacking Shi’ites and innocent Iraqis -- than the al-Qaida leadership in Pakistan wanted him to be. And the U.S. Intelligence Community intercepted communications between Zawahiri and Zarqawi.

Host: Zarqawi being the guy who founded --

Bennett: The guy who founded -- who’s now dead -- founded and really brought al-Qaida into Iraq into its own. Zarqawi said he had a stated objective of inciting a civil war inside of Iraq, of trying to bring the Shi’ites out and create an inter-sectarian conflict. And Zawahiri was saying, "Hold on. This may not be that good." And as we saw over the last twelve months in Iraq, that method had backfired on al-Qaida. Al-Qaida in Iraq still has a presence in the Mosul area and in Diyala province, but they were really rejected by the locals in Anbar because of their really extreme tactics.

Host: Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Ayman al-Zawahiri said in an online chat that asked what the most important field for the Mujahid vanguard is in wrestling with the enemies of Islam -- Zawahiri said, "Iraq is the most important of these fields." How big a setback has it been for Iraq that you had al-Qaida -- or, rather, a setback for al-Qaida that you had al-Qaida in Iraq not only suffering a military setback but also a sort of propaganda setback in the sense that people in Iraq turned against them after the atrocities that were being committed against tribal leaders and their families in Iraq?

Gartenstein-Ross: I think the past sixteen months have been devastating for al-Qaida overall. Now, the Iraq War has also -- if you look beyond that, further into the past, it served a lot of purposes for al-Qaida -- recruitment purposes, propaganda purposes -- but a couple of significant things have happened over the past sixteen months. One of them, as you referred to, is the tribal movements, the Sahwah movements, in Iraq, which is the Awakening movements. This is something that started in the Anbar province but has since then migrated throughout the country. And what they have formed is a localized resistance -- primarily Sunni tribesmen -- a localized resistance to al-Qaida and the brand of extremist governance and the brand of fighting that al-Qaida has brought to these areas. Now, what that does is it both shows localized Muslim opposition to what they’re doing, thus giving lie to al-Qaida’s claim that they’re the liberation movement against the United States. And a second thing that it does, in people rebelling against al-Qaida’s tactics, it really puts a spotlight on the brutality that al-Qaida has been carrying out in these areas, so it undercuts their propaganda, as well, the kind of thing that they’ve used for recruitment. Now, of course, this is something that al-Qaida can recover from, but I think that the past sixteen months have definitely been significant in terms of what’s been occurring in Iraq.

Now, one final thing I’d like to add, with respect to Brian’s comments -- I definitely agree with the kind of clash that there’s been between the AQI -- al-Qaida in Iraq -- leadership and al-Qaida central. At the same time, when groups adopt the al-Qaida moniker, like al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, one thing that we’ve seen is more tactics from al-Qaida central or from other franchises migrating to those areas. So, the suicide bombings that we saw at the end of last year, in December, in Algeria -- those had the kind of -- those had the kind of TTP -- the tactics, techniques, and procedures -- that are commonly associated with Iraq. And likewise, we’ve seen militants there in Somalia and elsewhere utilizing Iraq-type tactics. And you’ve seen -- Of course, correlation doesn’t prove causation, but you’ve seen that accelerating every time the groups formally announce ties to al-Qaida, which gives a concern that this isn't just them adopting a name and putting that name on a pre-existing relationship but that things actually get tightened when they adopt these names.

Host: Sajjan Gohel, what’s your sense of the ability of al-Qaida central at this point to pass along the techniques and the -- the institutional knowledge, if you will, of terrorist practices?

Gohel: I very much agree with what Daveed was saying. It’s not just the name that is being transferred, but it’s also the skills. It’s the use of the ideological platform that people like Ayman al-Zawahiri and bin Laden use, because, keep in mind, whenever they issue an audio or a video message, it’s designed to illicit a psychological reaction to motivate their adherents and their supporters to take up arms against their host nations like they have often done in a number of plots in Europe, for example. The other worrying dimension is that a lot of the attacks that are now taking place in Algeria with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb features individuals that actually trained and fought with the insurgency in Iraq. They applied their trade there. They learned the skills of using deadly improvised explosive devises, and they’ve brought that know-how back with deadly effect in Algeria itself.

And, of course, what we’re seeing is the expansion, not just with al-Qaida affiliated groups but with the Taliban, too. The Taliban, in effect, is now a terrorist group. They are carrying out suicide bombings. They are beheading people. They’re taking teachers out of schools and killing them in front of their students. This is a group that has now followed the tactics of al-Qaida central, and, of course, it’s a very worrying situation and the fact that they are now more able and skilled in launching attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan -- something that has proven to be a huge concern. In fact, if you talk to British troops on the ground that are fighting the Taliban in Helmand province, they’re talking about that it’s become a very difficult situation because the Taliban crosses the border from Pakistan, launches attacks, goes back across, and, of course, the British troops do not have the remit to go into Pakistan itself. So, it remains to be a huge concern that al-Qaida, based in Pakistan, is continuing to assist and orchestrate a number of attacks, whether it’s through their affiliates or through groups that are closely protecting them.

Host: Brian Bennett, what happens with this area in Pakistan, where al-Qaida is operating, their allies, the Taliban are operating? Is there no recourse to what goes on in that part of Pakistan?

Bennett: This is a major concern for U.S. officials right now, is how can they go into that area, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan in particular, where, due to tradition of hospitality, the tribes there have been able to protect al-Qaida leaders for months and months and months, not years now. And there’s been -- There were negotiations with Musharraf for many years about him taking more action, and there were mixed results with that. And that strategy proved to be a complete failure. And then, now with a new government in Pakistan -- an elected government – we’ll have to see how that pans out -- but already some of the politicians that are being put into power in Pakistan have said that they’d rather go to the negotiating table with the tribes there in Pakistan and try to come to some sort of Convivencia rather than try to push the limits and really allow for the U.S. and their own forces to go after al-Qaida in that region.

Host: Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, you had -- in Iraq, you had terrorists who had protection of tribal groups at the outset, and yet those ties, that hospitality, if you will, was -- at the end of the day, could be unraveled. What would it take, what needs to happen in Pakistan to unravel the tribal protection of al-Qaida and the Taliban?

Gartenstein-Ross: That’s a good question and one which I’ve been doing a lot of study on, because it’s one of these important things that we need to shift to in the Pakistan/Afghanistan theater. One of the important dynamics is that of Pashtoon identity. You know, you have a strong Pashtoon-Taliban component, and the Pashtoon-Taliban component gets some support from people who you wouldn’t expect to support it, including some secular parties in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. But one of the key things that we did in Iraq, when we aligned ourselves with tribal leaders like Sheikh Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, is we provided them with protection.

Now, there’s been some reports in the open source, including in the "New York Times," that we’re trying to move towards more of a tribally based model in Pakistan and Afghanistan. My concern is that we’re going to have these overtures and reach out to tribal leaders without actually providing them with protection, which could be a very bad situation. The U.S. has a bad reputation internationally for not standing by its allies. Certainly, the Kurdish uprising under Saddam Hussein is one example of that, but there are a lot of other examples, and if, in this situation, we end up mucking things up by trying to ally with people, reaching out, talking to them, getting some feelers, and providing no protection, we could very well end up with dead allies and a further tarnished reputation. So, what we need to do is provide them with the requisite protection.

Host: We only have a couple of minutes left. Sajjan Gohel, what’s your sense of what needs to be done to try to break the ties between the tribes and al-Qaida?

Gohel: I think one very important component is to look at the fact that the military in Pakistan has not always been fully on board in the war on terrorism itself. Bear in mind that some have ideological sympathies with the Taliban, and Pakistan was, perhaps, a reluctant ally after September 11th, because keep in mind the Taliban was the creation of Pakistan’s military. So, until the military itself comes fully on board, there’s always going to be this huge challenge. And as we’ve seen, the U.S. is now beginning to take matters into their own hand, like the Predator-drone strike against a senior al-Qaida member in the tribal region -- Abu Laith al-Libbi -- and you may see more actions like this in the future because U.S. authorities are beginning to become concerned about the way the Pakistani authorities are not acting enough in dealing with this threat and the fact that perhaps the suggestion is they’re even assisting them. So, it’s a huge concern and a huge challenge, and one has to now look at whether Musharraf himself is part of the solution or, in fact, whether he’s actually part of the problem, because more of these problems will emerge, and we’ll see more plots emanating from Pakistan itself, and, of course, it will have a huge global repercussion.

Host: I’m afraid that’s going to have to be the end of the show. That’s all the time we have for today, but I’d like to thank my guests: Brian Bennett, Foreign Affairs Correspondent for "Time" magazine; also the Vice President of Research for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross; and joining us from our London studio, Sajjan Gohel, Director of International Security at the Asia-Pacific Foundation. But before we go, I’d like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can reach us through our website at www.voanews.com/ontheline. For "On The Line," I’m Eric Felten.