2013 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of al-Qaeda and twelve years since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States. Despite the global counterterror campaign conducted against al-Qaeda, the organization and its affiliates are still responsible for the vast majority of terror attacks in the world, which kill and wound thousands of people every year. In addition to their involvement in terrorist attacks, al-Qaeda and its affiliates exert much influence in the international system, far more than their numbers and military power suggest. This memorandum explains how one terrorist organization, which at the height of its activity numbered a few hundred operatives, established a worldwide, highly influential phenomenon called the “global jihad movement” and succeeded, more than any other terrorist organization in modern history, in harming, harassing, and exhausting a hegemonic superpower and its allies and entangling them in bloody and costly military campaigns around the world.
The unique status of terrorism as a major national and multinational security issue was a consequence of the massive destruction and loss of life caused by the bold and fearless attack of a handful of suicide bombers in the heart of US political, economic, and military nerve centers, an event unprecedented in any nation. Video footage of the collapse of the World Trade Center played throughout the world and was broadcast over and over again by virtually every media outlet – in the news, in documentaries, and in fictional films devoted to the attack and the organization that carried it out. This attention was accompanied by repeated threats by al-Qaeda and its affiliates that the 9/11 scenario would be played out again and again until all of the organization’s demands were fully met. Thus, al-Qaeda succeeded in creating shockwaves that went far beyond physical and economic ruin and damaged morale, by presenting international terrorism as having unparalleled demonic powers that threaten to flood the world with rivers of blood.
Al-Qaeda activities dragged the United States and its allies into a number of extended military campaigns in the Middle East and Afghanistan. These campaigns demanded massive financial resources that taxed the economies of all the countries involved and caused thousands of deaths among military personnel and hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, both directly during military campaigns and indirectly because of rampant terrorism in the countries where the confrontations took place. Yet while during the years immediately after 9/11 the war on terrorism was the common denominator uniting all nations engaged in the campaign, recent years have seen a reversal of this trend.
More specifically, the nations that were forced to bear the brunt of terrorism and the war on terror have come under harsh criticism, including the Western countries whose armed forces were involved in military activities and incurred high casualty rates. The fear of frequent attacks that resulted from the events of September 11, 2001 has abated over the years, and to a great extent terrorism is once again viewed as one of many challenges on the national security agenda. Al-Qaeda has been driven into defensive warfare as attacks on it have taken the lives of most of its leaders, the majority of whom have been eliminated or apprehended, including Osama Bin Laden.
Since 2005 and despite its ongoing efforts, al-Qaeda failed to carry out any massive attack on Western soil. The center of gravity of jihadi terrorist activity has shifted away from al-Qaeda on to affiliate groups and inspired individuals that are active primarily in distant locations, though there are still sporadic attempts to carry out attacks in the West as well. Al-Qaeda, now headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, holds a leadership position, playing primarily a mentoring and guiding role as it directs, inspires, and assists the terrorist activity of others.
The global campaign against terrorism lasted many years and was extremely costly in terms of casualties and money, amounting to several hundred billions of dollars in direct and indirect costs. In addition, the West’s military intervention opened an internal Pandora’s Box within states where the war on terrorism was conducted, reigniting past local, internal struggles of an ethnic, tribal, or religious nature. Thus the United States and its allies found themselves chasing groups, organizations, networks, and even individual terrorists who succeeded in commanding tremendous resources in terms of leaders’ attention and time, money, and manpower – disproportionate to their true threat potential.
Al-Qaeda’s success in upsetting the West’s lifestyle and mentality, compelling many countries to devise defensive measures far beyond the tremendous scope of damage it inflicted, is manifested in several ways. First, al-Qaeda challenged the status of the West, led by the US, and shook the confidence of the world’s sole superpower by daring to attack it directly on its sovereign soil, in a way that was unprecedented in its audacity and damage. Second, al-Qaeda actions and threats challenged the routine in the public sphere and local and international travel, greatly complicating day-to-day life in many countries.
Third, al-Qaeda has positioned itself as an international emblem and its legendary leader, Osama Bin Laden, became one of the world’s archetypal terror-inducing figures on the one hand, and a widely admired symbol of resistance to the West for many Muslim youths on the other. Fourth, al-Qaeda’s ideas have captivated many Muslims around the world, even if their relative number compared to the world’s Muslim population is miniscule.
Fifth, al-Qaeda has generated and motivated a new worldwide movement known as the "global jihad." Finally, the organization has managed to survive despite the intensive international war waged against it for more than a decade, as the vast efforts and resources invested to defeat it by many nations, chiefly the United States, remain unsuccessful to date.
Despite its substantial success, al-Qaeda’s attempts to oust the military and end the involvement in Middle East affairs by Western countries, mainly the United States, has not borne fruit. On the contrary, the activity of the organization and its affiliates has actually resulted in increasing deployment of the United States and its allies in Muslim countries throughout the world. Many countries supported the United States’ retaliation after the 9/11 attack and joined the campaign against al-Qaeda and its affiliates out of concern that the threat of terrorism to their own nations and citizens had become a transnational strategic problem that demanded confrontation and required significant resources in order to completely eradicate it.
In addition, al-Qaeda’s stated desire to implement sharia (Islamic law) according to the model of the prophet Muhammad and the Salafists, as the only rule of the land, has not yet been realized. In fact, al-Qaeda was the reason that the Taliban – the first and only group in the modern era that has actually implemented sharia as state law, the type of rule al-Qaeda preaches – was ousted from the government in Afghanistan as a consequence of the US-led Western offensive that followed the 9/11 attacks.
Nonetheless, the weakening of the international terrorist threat posed by al-Qaeda in recent years should not be regarded as "mission accomplished," nor is the effort to prevent its return complete. In fact, understanding the near-term trends and developments of al-Qaeda, its affiliates, and inspired elements, and implementing the countermeasures necessary to contain and stop them can, to a large extent, determine al-Qaeda’s ability to survive, direct, fuel, and conduct the campaign of global jihad.
The recruitment of a new generation of volunteers, some from Western countries, to the ranks of global jihad in peripheral warfare zones such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Mali, and Yemen, and in the last two years, Syria, will probably be reflected in attempts to shift radical Islamic international terrorism into high gear. Therefore Western nations, primarily the United States, must continue their intensive counterterrorist activity at home and abroad in order to foil attempts to carry out attacks by networks, cells, or lone wolves who have adopted the global jihad worldview.
The effectiveness of the West’s concerted counterterrorist activity, alongside economic, intelligence, military, and security assistance to peripheral nations fighting al-Qaeda and its affiliates tin their own countries, accompanied by a comprehensive, coordinated campaign to undermine the validity of the radical Salafist jihadi ideology, will largely determine whether international terrorism as championed by global jihadists will rear its ugly head again or will resume the relatively low profile it had until the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
