The Structure Of Al-Qaeda
What does Al-Qaeda want?
It's difficult often to say what Al-Qaeda want. They talk about a collifat, they talk about establishing a form of global Islamic state certainly within those lines of which are traditionally claimed historically as Muslim. It's very easy to establish what they don't want. They see themselves and they say the Islamic world is generally under attack from an alliance of western largely powers that are set on dividing, humiliating and exploiting Muslims around the world. That is the basis of their world view and they see themselves as fighting back against that.
When was Al-Qaeda formed?
Al-Qaeda was formed, in terms of a hard-knit group in the late 1980's by Osama Bin Laden and various others in Peshawar, the Pakistani city on the Afghan frontier just at the end of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
How many cells' are there?
It's very difficult at any stage to talk about numbers when you're talking about Al-Qaida It's very difficult to talk about how many militants there might be. Equally it's very difficult to talk about how many cells. We do not carry a membership card as someone who's part of Al-Qaida. Cells form they tend to form independently they then seek out Al-Qaida for resources, for direction, for help. How many of them are there is almost an infinite number you can't you simply can not put numbers on it. The most recent numbers for UK come from MI5 and they talked about 2000 people who are under surveillance. Are they members of Al-Qaida probably not, certainly not, are they active dangerous, we just don't know.
Are all domestic terrorists being instructed by Al-Qaeda HQ?
Trying to trace out the exact links between terrorist on the ground and the headquarters is very difficult what you can say is a sliding scale. At one end of the scale there are attacks that are very closely planned, monitored, commissioned by Al-Qaeda hardcore and Al-Qaeda HQ. At the other end of the scale you have attacks that are entirely autonomous, that have no direct, indeed often no indirect link with Osama Bin Laden and the people around him for example. An example of the former, tightly knit control group would be the 1998 bombers in east Africa, the 2001 9-11 bombers, and the example of the latter, those with no link to the Al-Qaeda hardcore, would be the Madrid bombings in, 2004. And then you can have pretty much, any permutation in between as well.
How realistic are depictions of Al-Qaeda in movies and on TV?
The standard cinematic depictions or TV depictions of Al-Qaeda vary. They're getting better. A lot of them are very poor in that it was basically the James Bond villain idea of a man sitting in a cave in Afghanistan, with or without a white cat, effectively, at a big bank of controls running global terrorism. It doesn't happen like that. What has also come through, at the same time, though, are some quite good representations of militants, radicalization of terrorists on the ground, where you see how personal and individual a process that actually is.
Is Al-Qaeda interested in expanding into the West, or simply protecting itself?
Al-Qaeda has two interests in the West, the first is a tactical and strategic interest, if you like, are now involved developing bases of support, developing operations in the West which enabled to strike what they call the "Far Enemy". The "Near Enemy" is the Middle East and Middle Eastern regimes who are all their primary targets and always have been. The second interest is ideological, partly there is a will to spread the word of Radical Islam as far as possible, partly, there is an idea of re-establishing some kind of Islamic State, either in historical bounds as we've seen some centuries ago or even broader than that.
What was the impact of the September 11th attacks?
The September 11th attacks had a series of different consequences. They obviously triggered the War on Terror, which itself has had a series of consequences. In practical terms Al-Qaeda lost their best sanctuary to date, which was Afghanistan. That is still seen by many Al-Qaeda militants as a tactical error, a strategic error. What they did do with September 11th and the subsequent reaction to it, which they'd hoped to provoke, was bring about a situation of greatly increased radicalization, mobilization, and consciousness amid their target audience, which is Muslims around the world -- in the West, in the Middle East, and elsewhere.
How much does Al-Qaeda have to do with religion?
Al-Qaeda formed part of a broader movement that can be termed modern Islamic radical militancy. Clearly, Islam the religion plays an enormously important role in that. When you talk to militants you can see they are men of a profound faith, they are men who see religion as an incredibly important part of the world, their world view they refer continue to religion. It is very much a part of how they live their lives and why they want to take the lives of others. When you look beyond that, as in all militant radical movements, you're into a world of causes, root causes, whether those be socio-economic, whether those be historical, whether those be cultural, an enormously complex area. What you can say is radical Islamic militancy is a phenomenon that has long reaching roots going back decades, centuries in the Islamic World and in the Islamic World's interaction with the West.
What is a Jihad?
Jihad is a very commonly used word in Arabic, which has a wide variety of meanings. It could mean an effort, it could mean a campaign to war to a given goal, so you could have a Jihad for literacy if you'd like. You can have a Jihad against deforestation, you could have Jihad for all sorts of goals that are not necessarily militant, or in another context, wouldn't necessarily be religious. The Jihad that we hear most about is taken from Islamic religious history, taken from Islamic texts, and it means a military struggle. There are huge numbers of debates over the exact definition of that Jihad: militants have one definition saying that it can be against - should be the duty of every individual Muslim - defensive war against an attack from the enemies of Islam. Others have a different definition saying it's a far more personal effort or indeed it should be the responsibility of the government or the leaders of the Islamic community to declare any such war or Jihad. So it's an incredibly complex, rich area of theology and of politics among those often simplified representations, certainly in the West.
How truthful are news reports on Al-Qaeda?
News reports on Al-Qaeda vary in how accurate they are. Some are extremely good, some are extremely bad - sensationalizing Al-Qaeda, playing on the fear and the consequent interest that Al-Qaeda can provoke. One problem for journalists, and as a working journalist I'm very much aware of this, is a great lack of resources and of sources. So if you don't have newspapers who are prepared to send reporters out on the ground for long periods of time to learn about the subject, to get behind the subject, to put the subject in its context, you won't get a very good interpretation of what Al-Qaeda is. Similarly, there are fewer and fewer people who can and will speak about these subjects from either side, and that means that there's a greater reliance on government sources of information, which necessarily need to be tweaked to within a certain degree of circumspection.
Can you tell if someone's been radicalised?
Radicalisation is a very varied phenomenon when you look at the paths that militants have taken into terrorist activity, they are very, very different, often. Some people clearly show changes in patterns of behavior, show that they become far more religious for example, show that they become far angry, more violent. Many don't. Many continue with what, to their friends and family, would be a completely normal way of behaving and acting, and as we so often hear, their final act, the terrorist act, comes as a shock to those who knew them. Radicalisation is again, a difficult area and there is no one silver bullet will end it or will reveal that someone will become radicalised.