The Evolution of the Global Terrorist Threat, edited by Bruce Hoffman and Fernando Reinares

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Introduction B ru ce H offman and F ernando Reinares

On September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists hijacked four airplanes and changed the course of history. What followed was no less consequential: a global war on terrorism led by the United States that resulted in al-Qaeda’s expulsion from Afghanistan; the loss of its training camps, operational bases, and command headquarters in that country; and the killing or capture of hundreds of al-Qaeda leaders and operatives, which has continued to this day. More than a decade after the 9/11 attacks, it remains clear that even if we always knew why we were fighting this war, we arguably were never entirely certain whom we were fighting.

When the enemy appeared to be exclusively the core al-Qaeda organization, founded and led by Osama bin Laden, the answer was obvious.

But when it involved the multiplicity of actual, putative, or suspected al-Qaeda branches or so-called franchises, its affiliates and associates, casual hangers-on, or the array of wannabe jihadists and lone wolves, the answer was often less clear.

The purpose of this book is to provide that answer. In the decade since the September 11 attacks, disagreement in academic as well as government circles has persisted over the nature of the threat, al-Qaeda itself, bin Laden’s authority over the movement after its expulsion from Afghanistan, and whether a leaderless process of terrorist radicalization and violence had superseded a leader-led one. Arguments were often voiced that al-Qaeda had ceased to be an organized entity; that it had practically disappeared as a hierarchical structure; and that the movement that existed

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at the time of the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., had disintegrated into an ideology and an amorphous phenomenon devoid of leadership and strategy. The main terrorist threat, some claimed, no longer came from distinct jihadist groups and organizations but rather from independent, self-constituted local cells or from isolated, self-recruited individuals.

A countervailing view throughout this period challenged these same assumptions. It held that al-Qaeda persisted as an articulate and active terrorist organization and that bin Laden continued to exercise an important degree of command and charismatic influence over both alQaeda and the global jihadi movement allied or associated with it. Far from being an amorphous phenomenon, the al-Qaeda global terrorist threat was seen as a polymorphous phenomenon, composed of an admittedly heterogeneous collection of like-minded groups led by a variety of leaders who embraced the same strategy and conformed to observable patterns of organizational conduct.

These divergent interpretations of both the jihadi threat and the nature and organization of the al-Qaeda movement became the subject of an intense debate that appeared in the pages of the May/June and July/August 2008 issues of Foreign Affairs.1 In a review of Marc Sageman’s Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century, one of this volume’s editors challenged the book’s core thesis that terrorism in the twenty-first century had drifted from the provenance of top-down direction and implementation provided by established, existing organizations to an entirely bottom-up, loosely networked phenomenon of radicalized individuals gravitating toward one another and sharing a penchant for violence.2 This “bunch of guys” theory of leaderless jihad defined these collections of individuals as the new threat we all had to prepare for: self-selected, self-radicalized, and mostly self-trained wannabes with a limited capacity for violence who were allegedly multiplying and spreading to challenge both the more traditional conceptions of terrorism and the attendant countermeasures and security responses based upon this anachronistically organized style of terrorism. Indeed, with the rise of the leaderless jihad, it was argued, organizations had become as immaterial as they were superfluous. In response, Hoffman addressed the accumulating evidence attesting to al-Qaeda’s planning and oversight of all of the most consequential terrorist attacks and plots since September 11 [x]

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and argued that rather than solely the product of radicalization, the terrorist threat actually represented the fruition of strategic, organizational decisions made by al-Qaeda years before.

Now that this first phase of the war on terrorism is over—demarcated by the killing of bin Laden in 2011 by U.S. Navy SEALS—it is possible to look back at its first decade and reflect on the contours of this debate and more clearly assess which interpretation of al-Qaeda was more accurate. To do so, this volume gathers twenty-five case studies that analyze the most significant terrorist attacks and plots that occurred between September 11, 2001, and May 1, 2011, in the West, along with some of the most serious and protracted campaigns of terrorism in countries and regions beset with conflict, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as Southeast Asia, East Africa, and North Africa. The editors included acts of violence committed by lone individuals, such as the 2004 murder of the controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, that would appear to substantiate the “bunch of guys” theory along with terrorist acts with clear al-Qaeda pedigrees, such as the 2005 suicide bombings on London public transport and the 2006 plot to bomb seven commercial airliners in flight from London’s Heathrow Airport to a variety of American and Canadian destinations. It also considers incidents such as the 2004 Madrid commuter-train bombings and the “Sauerland” plot in Germany where al-Qaeda played a different role, in combination with other jihadist organizations such as the Islamic Jihad Union or the now extinct Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group. In addition, the editors included studies focusing on the al-Qaeda terrorist campaigns in countries as diverse as Afghanistan and Iraq and in such regions as South Asia.

To assess the part that al-Qaeda may or may not have played throughout the war on terrorism’s first ten years, this book considers the following pressing questions: Did al-Qaeda in fact virtually cease to exist following Operation Enduring Freedom, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the subsequent U.S.-led global counterterrorism campaign, or did it adapt and persist as a distinctive terrorist organizational entity? Had Osama bin Laden been reduced to a mere figurehead in the years preceding his death, or had he continued to provide strategic guidance and exercise continuing command and control over worldwide al-Qaeda operations up until the end? Did the global al-Qaeda, as it existed following the expulsion from Afghanistan, evidence the attributes of an articulated, [ xi ]

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transnationally connected structure, or was it nothing more than a loose collection of individuals and ideas amorphously arrayed around a decaying ideology? Depending on the answers to these questions, what is the preeminent terrorist threat today, and what will it likely be in the future?

As 9/11 fades further into the past, should the world, particularly the West, anticipate and confront the terrorist threat as emerging from independent, self-constituted cells or from larger groups and organizations?

To answer these questions and test the various hypotheses put forward over the years about the al-Qaeda movement, we embraced the traditional case study. It is reasonable to assume that a significant number of relevant cases, covering the corpus of al-Qaeda activity over the past decade, would evidence the attributes and behavioral characteristics needed to assess both of these contrasting interpretations. Given the wealth of empirical material and data now available from this enormously important period, we, as the editors, were convinced that it was now possible to render this judgment. Moreover, in addition to the empirical evidence presented throughout this volume, we hoped to indicate critical theoretical implications for further study and research of the al-Qaeda and global jihadism phenomenon. We believe that an intellectual and practical effort of this magnitude would yield a great amount of substantive knowledge on jihadist terrorism generally, which remains as poorly documented as it is understood. As editors, we hope that having this material collected in one volume will benefit fellow scholars, students, policy makers, and counterterrorism practitioners alike.

In order to intellectually bound this examination of relevant cases, we decided to focus, on the one hand, on most of the post-9/11 jihadist attacks and foiled attempts that occurred in Western countries since 2002 and, on the other hand, on events outside the West until the killing of Osama bin Laden, particularly in countries with predominantly Muslim populations, including those immersed in profound conflict.

To provide these in-depth analyses on the selected terrorist cases and campaigns, we assembled an international collection of renowned experts from academia, think tanks, and media. This was possible thanks to the generous financial support offered by Elcano Royal Institute and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Spain as well as the Center for Security Studies in Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in the United States. We would also be remiss not to acknowledge [ xii ]

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the absolutely invaluable assistance provided in the course of this project

by Amy Buenning Sturm and, later, by Caitlyn Turgeon and Christopher Wall, of Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program, and by Carola García-Calvo, of Elcano Royal Institute and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.

The book is divided in two parts. The first examines jihadist terrorist attacks and foiled plots in the West between the September 11 attacks and bin Laden’s killing. These include chapters on the evolution of the al-Qaeda terrorist threat in the United States following the September 11 attacks by Lorenzo Vidino; Fernando Reinares on the 2004 Madrid train bombings; Lindsay Clutterbuck on the case of Dhiren Barot, a Hindu convert to Islam and al-Qaeda operative, which British police refer to as Operation “Rhyme”; Peter R. Neumann and Ryan Evans on Operation “Crevice,” another British counterterrorism effort against a homegrown cell led by a U.K. citizen named Omay Khayam; Beatrice de Graaf ’s examination of the murder of the controversial Dutch artist Theo Van Gogh; Stewart Bell on the case of the Toronto 18; Sally Neighbour’s study of the Australian counterterrorist investigation, known as Operation “Pendennis”; Bruce Hoffman on the July 7, 2005, bombings of London transportation targets; Javier Jordán on the series of foiled attacks in Italy; Guido Steinberg analyzing Germany’s “Sauerland” plot; Michael Taarnby on the Danish Glasvej Case and its connections to Pakistani jihadists; Fernadno Reinares on the 2008 plot to attack the Barcelona subway; and, finally, Jean-Pierre Filiu on the Iraq-related jihadist networks active in France after 2003.

The second part of the book is concerned with jihadist terrorism attacks and campaigns conducted outside the West during the same time frame. Seth Jones begins this part with a study of al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan; the Southeast Asia jihadist terrorist organization known as al-Jemaah al-Islamiyah (or Jemaah Islamiyah) is the subject of Rohan Gunaratna’s chapter; Jonathan Fighel examines the 2002 Mombassa attacks; al-Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate is analyzed by Mohammed M. Hafez; the series of suicide bomb attacks in Istanbul in November 2003 is addressed by Guido Steinberg and Philipp Holtmann; Holly L. McCarthy and Ami Pedahzur provide a case study of the mysterious series of terrorist attacks in the Sinai Peninsula; Jack Kalpakian examines al-Qaeda’s operations in Morocco; Anneli Botha considers the 2007 suicide attacks in Algeria; Thomas Hegghammer examines the 2003 and 2008 al-Qaeda [ xiii ]

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bombing campaigns in Saudi Arabia; C. Christine Fair addresses al-Qaedarelated or -inspired terrorism in Pakistan; and Anneli Botha examines the 2010 suicide bomb attacks in Kampala.

Our conclusions, as editors, on the nature of the global jihadist phenomenon and on the evolving global terrorism threat complete this volume.

Notes 1. Bruce Hoffman, “They Myth of Grass-Roots Terrorism: Why Osama bin Laden Still Matters,” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 3 (May/June 2008): 133–38; and Marc Sageman, “The Reality of Grass-Roots Terrorism” and Bruce Hoffman, “Hoffman Replies,” in “Does Osama Still Call the Shots: Debating the Containment of al Qaeda’s Leadership,” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 4 (July/August 2008): 163–66.

2. Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

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