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Al Qaeda: Al-Qaeda
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Al-Qaeda operative Khalil Deek runs military training camps in Southern California in the early 1990s. Those trained in the camps include followers of the “Blind Sheikh,” Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, and some of the people involved in the 1993 “Landmarks” plot (see June 24, 1993). Deek is a member of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell based in Orange County and has reportedly been under investigation by US intelligence since the late 1980s (see Late 1980s). Rita Katz, a private counterterrorism expert who sometimes works with US officials, will learn of these camps when speaking to an FBI agent in early 2002. According to Katz, she is told that the FBI had known about the camps for “years” but had not acted because of the “wall” between criminal and intelligence investigations. The FBI agent will tell Katz that the information about the camps was “Intel information.
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Al-Qaeda has ... shown a strong interest in radiological dispersal devises (RDD). These weapons are technically unsophisticated enough for them to produce, with the only obstacle being the limited access of appropriate radioactive materials. Al-Qaeda even kept libraries of documents pertaining to the construction of a RDD [9]. Trafficking of suitable radioactive materials was, and still is, occurring in Central Asia and the terror network would have had little trouble accessing this market and constructing a RDD.
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Al-Qaeda supports these groups in two ways, both by training group members in its camps and by sending its own members to help these groups in their struggles around the world. Training for its own members and for members of allied groups has focused on insurgent warfare in addition to the classic “terrorist” techniques that are usually associated with the group. Some experts even believe that the ratio of insurgent fighters to terrorists in al-Qaeda’s camps may be 15 to 1. American military officials have described the majority of those training in al-Qaeda’s camps as “irregular ground combatants.” Fighters such as these engaged U.S. troops at Shai-e-Kowt and Tora Bora in Afghanistan.
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Al-Qaeda began as a logistical network to support Muslims fighting against the Soviet Union during the Afghan War; members were recruited throughout the Islamic world. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the organization dispersed but continued to oppose what its leaders…
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Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an “extraordinary crisis”. Last year’s mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military “created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight”. The terrorist group’s security structure suffered “total collapse”. Read more here:timesonline
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Al-Qaeda's leadership oversees a loosely organized network of cells. It can recruit members from thousands of "Arab Afghan" veterans and radicals around the world. Its infrastructure is small, mobile, and decentralized—each cell operates independently with its members not knowing the identity of other cells. Local operatives rarely know anyone higher up in the organization's hierarchy.
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