The Al Qaeda Clubhouse: Members lacking

By Ken Silverstein

The June 30 issue of Newsweek carried a story titled “The Myth of Al Qaeda” by Michael Hirsh, which argues that the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and his followers has been long overestimated by the United States. Hirsh argues that there is substantial evidence that “up to 9/11, Al Qaeda could barely hold its act together, that it was a failing group, hounded from every country it tried to roost in (except for the equally lunatic Taliban-run Afghanistan) . . . This is the reality of the group that the Bush Administration has said would engage us in a ‘long war’ not unlike the Cold War—the group that has led to the transformation of U.S. foreign policy and America's image in the world.”

Meanwhile, Peter Bergen wrote an article in the July 2 Washington Post that paints Al Qaeda as a more potent threat and suggests that despite suffering setbacks after 9/11, the group “may be staging a comeback.” Bergen disputes the notion that “self-starting, homegrown terrorists who have few formal links to Al Qaeda” are largely responsible for post-9/11 attacks and also suggests that bin Laden and his core followers still play an important role, citing last July's London bombings as an example. “Almost five years after the attacks on Washington and New York, Al Qaeda not only remains in business in its traditional stronghold on the Afghan-Pakistan border, but also continues to project its ideology and terrorism abroad,” wrote Bergen.

I'm a fan of Bergen's work on Al Qaeda, but I'm with Hirsh on this one. Al Qaeda Central was and is capable of carrying out deadly actions, and at some point, it's safe to say, it will again try to attack the United States. But the fact that bin Laden hasn't carried out an attack in nearly five years—and he obviously would love to—suggests that an attack on U.S. soil is something that he can't easily accomplish. Why is that?

Even though Al Qaeda can be translated as “the base,” a base is one thing that the organization lacks ever since the United States and coalition forces invaded Afghanistan. The invasion deprived Al Qaeda of its headquarters and disrupted bin Laden's international network. Wherever bin Laden is now, it's doubtful that he is capable of providing much strategic support to would-be terrorists elsewhere, or running training camps like those that used to exist in Afghanistan.

The invasion of Iraq has enhanced bin Laden's ideological appeal and served as a huge recruiting boon for radical groups in general, but the recruits heading to Iraq to fight the U.S. occupation are not operating under the direct control of Al Qaeda Central, which has no significant role in the Iraqi insurgency. For example, the recently killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed to represent Al Qaeda in Iraq, but he basically ran a franchise: he didn't work for the main office.

Indeed, as Hirsh argues, Al Qaeda isn't the all-powerful group that it is often portrayed to be; its strength and reach have been exaggerated, partly because of the extraordinary impact of the 9/11 attacks, and partly because the Bush Administration has found it politically useful to hype the group's capabilities.

Two years ago, I interviewed Jack Cloonan, a 25-year veteran of the FBI who, between 1996 and 2002, served on a joint CIA–FBI task force that tracked bin Laden. “How many members of Al Qaeda do you think there are?” he asked me. Cloonan laughed when I pegged its membership at several thousand. The real numbers, he said, “are miniscule.”

Documents discovered by the joint task force, Cloonan said, showed that Al Qaeda had 72 members when it was founded in 1989. Twelve years later, the task force got its hands on an updated membership list after a CIA Predator destroyed a building near Kabul during the American invasion of Afghanistan. The membership list was discovered in the rubble, along with dozens of casualties, including Mohammed Atef, one of bin Laden's closest aides. It showed that bin Laden had a grand total of precisely 198 sworn loyalists. (Hirsh's Newsweek article said that the intelligence community “generally agrees that the number of true A-list Al Qaeda operatives” at the time of 9/11 probably between 500 and 1,000, most of them in and around Afghanistan.)

“A lot of people went through Al Qaeda training camps over the years,” said Cloonan, “but that doesn't mean they have sworn allegiance to bin Laden or taken part in terrorist acts.” The Bush Administration “thinks everyone who wears a turban and stands up in a mosque and screams against the U.S. is a terrorist. We're casting this huge net, picking up everybody whose first name is Mohammed, and sending them off to be interrogated [at Guantánamo]. Ninety-nine percent of them don't know anything.”

Cloonan supported the invasion of Afghanistan, but when we spoke in 2004 he told me that he regarded the subsequent “war on terrorism” as a disaster. “All we're doing,” he said, “is creating Fortress America and pissing off a lot of people.” As for the people sent off to Guantánamo and other interrogation centers, Cloonan said, “If they weren't radicals when they went in, they will be when they come out.”

Terrorism is a real threat, but “Al Qaeda” is less of an organization than it is an impulse. And while bin Laden isn't the all-powerful terrorist mastermind he's often portrayed to be, the war in Iraq, Guantánamo, extraordinary renditions, and other Bush Administration brainstorms have ensured that his message is broadcast loud and clear throughout the world.

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