Posted by Contd... on 28/6/2004, 17:37:47, in reply to "Saddam and al-Qaeda " There is little credible evidence that Saddam directly funded the 9/11 attacks. Given that the United States has occupied Iraq for over a year and that our intelligence agencies have had nearly three years to uncover such evidence, it is quite likely that there was no such connection. Nonetheless, we know that Saddam funded Islamist terrorists. We know that his government had significant and repeated contact with al Qaeda. Regardless, this is essentially a semantic debate. As terrorism expert Steve Emerson explains, the Islamist terrorist threat is singular; the particular name associated with a faction hardly matters: "The dream of a world under Islam has engendered Muslim dissidents everywhere in the world over the last two decades. Almost every Islamic country has its own militant faction, often two or three. The Hamas of Palestine, Hizballah of Lebanon, the Islamic Salvation Fron (FIS) and Armed Islamic Group (GIA) of Algeria, An-Nahda of Tunisia, Al Jihad and al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya of Egypt, Lashkar e-Tayyiba of Pakistan, and the Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines and the Holy Warriors in Chechnya-all share the same goal of an Islamic world, or, as they refer to it, a Khilafah."[3] Jason Burke, writing in the May/June Foreign Policy, goes further, noting: "The Arabic word qaeda can be translated as a "base of operation" or "foundation," or alternatively as a "precept" or "method." Islamic militants always understood the term in the latter sense. In 1987, Abdullah Azzam, the leading ideologue for modern Sunni Muslim radical activists, called for al-qaeda al-sulbah (a vanguard of the strong). He envisaged men who, acting independently, would set an example for the rest of the Islamic world and thus galvanize the umma (global community of believers) against its oppressors. It was the FBI -- during its investigation of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa -- which dubbed the loosely linked group of activists that Osama bin Laden and his aides had formed as "al Qaeda." This decision was partly due to institutional conservatism and partly because the FBI had to apply conventional antiterrorism laws to an adversary that was in no sense a traditional terrorist or criminal organization. "Although bin Laden and his partners were able to create a structure in Afghanistan that attracted new recruits and forged links among preexisting Islamic militant groups, they never created a coherent terrorist network in the way commonly conceived. Instead, al Qaeda functioned like a venture capital firm -- providing funding, contacts, and expert advice to many different militant groups and individuals from all over the Islamic world. "Today, the structure that was built in Afghanistan has been destroyed, and bin Laden and his associates have scattered or been arrested or killed. There is no longer a central hub for Islamic militancy. But the al Qaeda worldview, or "al Qaedaism," is growing stronger every day. This radical internationalist ideology -- sustained by anti-Western, anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic rhetoric -- has adherents among many individuals and groups, few of whom are currently linked in any substantial way to bin Laden or those around him. They merely follow his precepts, models, and methods. They act in the style of al Qaeda, but they are only part of al Qaeda in the very loosest sense. That's why Israeli intelligence services now prefer the term "jihadi international" instead of "al Qaeda." Obviously, Saddam was no Islamist. Saddam supported these groups, not because he believed in their cause -- indeed, they would likely have turned on him at some point -- but because doing so bolstered his standing in the Arab world and harmed his enemies, especially the Americans. In war, the enemy of my enemy is often my friend. James H. Joyner, Jr., Ph.D. is Managing Editor of Strategic Insights, the journal of the Naval Postgraduate School. He writes about national security policy at the Outside the Beltway weblog. He recently wrote "Bouncing the Security Check" for TCS. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [2] Ledeen, The War Against the Terror Masters, p. 179. [3] Steven Emerson, American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us (New York: Free Press, 2002), p. 2.
[1] Michael A. Ledeen, The War Against the Terror Masters, Newly Updated Edition (New York: St. Martin's, 2003), p. 178.
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