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Al Qaeda: Al-Qaedas
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Al-Qaeda's training in piety, discipline, unity and fatalism is designed to produce a mujahid who is part of an elite vanguard organization that is deployed in multiple areas of the Muslim world. Al-Qaeda doctrine tells each mujahid that he is "fighting for the whole [Islamic] nation to preserve its religion, sanctities, the blood, honor, and property of the [Muslim] people, and to repulse injustice and aggression." That said, the doctrine notes that al-Qaeda fighters may not encounter a fully supportive population when they first arrive in the theater of fighting. This is because the mujahedin themselves are outsiders as far as the locals are concerned, and they have not yet proved they can protect the local population. In many instances, therefore, the most the mujahedin can expect is passive assistance. "The mujahedin," al-Muqrin explained, "must pay attention to the fact that most people are busy with life and pursuing their own livelihood.
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Although the broad outlines of al-Qaeda began to take shape during 1987 and 1988, it was only after Azzam was assassinated in 1989 that al-Qaeda formally split from MAK to become a jihadist movement in its own right. That same year, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. The mujahideen’s success in repelling one of the world’s two superpowers from a Muslim land had a significant impact on bin Laden. To his mind, the Soviet Union’s defeat set in motion the chain of events that resulted in the collapse of the USSR and the demise of Communism. Bin Laden, accordingly, concluded that confronting the United States would produce a similar result: causing U.S. withdrawal from the Arab and Muslim world and in turn toppling the corrupt, pro-Western regimes in those countries.
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Additional proof of the involvement of Al-Qaeda and EIJ in the East Africa bombings came from a search conducted in London of several residences and business addresses belonging to Al-Qaeda and EIJ members. In those searches, a number of documents were found, including claims of responsibility in the name of a fictitious group. Al-Owhali, the would-be suicide bomber, admitted that he was told to make a videotape of himself using the name of a fictitious group, the same name found on the claims of responsibility. The claims of responsibility were received in London on the morning the bombings occurred, likely before the bombings even occurred. The claim documents could be traced back to a telephone number that was in contact with Bin Laden's satellite telephone. The claims, which were then disseminated to the press, were clearly authored by someone genuinely familiar with the bombing conspirators as they stated that the bombings were carried out by two Saudis in Kenya and one Egyptian in Tanzania.
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The initial opinion inside al-Qaeda was that WMD (what constituted WMD was not defined) would provide a considerable deterrent against the much more powerful enemy of the United States. If such a deterrent could be obtained, the group’s stature and coercive influence would be substantially increased. Because nuclear weapons were regarded as the most convincing deterrent, an effort to procure such weapons was initiated. The outcome of these deliberations placed Abu Hafs al-Masri, the rising military commander of al-Qaeda, in charge of a “plan” to acquire WMD. Although no time period was given for these discussions, the earliest known attempt to acquire material for a nuclear weapon occurred in late 1993 or early 1994 in Khartoum, Sudan.
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Lately, al-Qaeda was ... linked to militant Islamic Courts Union (ICU) front in Somalia. It is believed several terrorist attacks were orchestrated from Ras Kamboni, in the extreme southern tip of Somalia adjacent to Kenya, including the 1998 United States embassy bombings and the 2002 Mombasa hotel bombing.[107] On June 22, 2006, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer announced the U.S. was seeking the assistance of the ICU in the apprehension of suspects who carried out attacks against its East African embassies and a hotel in Kenya.[108] She listed the following persons as suspected of being in Somalia (name and nationality): Fazul Abdullah Mohamed (Comoros), Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan (Kenya), and Abu Taha al-Sudan (Sudan). When the ICU did not cooperate, the U.S. first financed the rival warlord factions, and then followed with limited air strikes as the ICU rule in Mogadishu fell in the face of Ethiopian Army assault. The Pentagon said a high level al-Qaeda member from the ICU was captured in Somalia and transferred to the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay.[109][110]
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Against this new backdrop, Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Ayman al-Zawahri became icons, beacons of al-Qaedism, semi-supernatural figures who inspire the jihadists via al-Qaeda's code. While al-Qaeda's traditional sponsors established new channels, all inside the booming Islamic economic system, to fund Zarqawi and the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, in Europe the network of sponsors underwent a profound restructuring. Cross-border transactions were replaced by cash couriers (people carrying suitcases full of money to faraway countries). Underground mosques, some as small as prayer rooms in universities, indoctrinated and radicalized young European Muslims, teaching them how to raise money among friends to fund suicide missions inside their country of birth and residence. Thus, spontaneous groups of friends, as was the case with the July 7 bombers, united to stage attacks.
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