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55–931 PDF 2010

S. HRG. 111–363 

CONFRONTING AL-QAEDA: UNDERSTANDING THE 

THREAT IN AFGHANISTAN AND BEYOND 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

OCTOBER 7, 2009 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: 

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut 

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin 

BARBARA BOXER, California 

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania 

JIM WEBB, Virginia 

JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire 

EDWARD E. KAUFMAN, Delaware 

KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York 

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana 

BOB CORKER, Tennessee 

JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia 

JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho 

JIM DEMINT, South Carolina 

JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming 

ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi 

JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma 

DAVID MCKean, Staff Director

KENNETH A. MYERS, JR., Republican Staff Director

(II)

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Bergen, Peter, senior research fellow and co-director, Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative, The New America Foundation, Washington, DC ...................... 23 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 26 

Grenier, Robert, former director, DCI Counterterrorist Center and former 

CIA Station Chief in Pakistan ............................................................................ 6 

Kerry, Hon. John F., U.S. Senator from Massachusetts ...................................... 1 

Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana ............................................ 4 

Marc Sageman, senior fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Washington, 

DC .......................................................................................................................... 9 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 11 

(III)

(1) 

CONFRONTING AL-QAEDA: UNDERSTANDING 

THE THREAT IN AFGHANISTAN AND BEYOND 

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2009 

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:40 p.m. in Room 

SD–419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. John F. Kerry, 

Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Kerry, [presiding], Feingold, Menendez, Casey, 

Shaheen, Lugar, and Risch. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN F. KERRY, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS 

The CHAIRMAN. This hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee 

will come to order. 

My apologies to all for being a little late. I had a couple thousand 

veterans, actually, on the phone simultaneously, all of whom have 

an interest in this and a couple of other issues. 

We come together today by happenstance on the eighth anniversary of our entry into Afghanistan. Today we begin the ninth year 

of the war in Afghanistan. If my memory serves me right, I think 

the war in Vietnam was 10 years, and it was the longest war in 

American history. 

So we are obviously in a very different kind of war from that. 869 

Americans have died in Operation Enduring Freedom, 220 of our 

British allies, and 357 from other allied nations, and unknown 

numbers of civilian causalities and of collateral damage. 

This is an important time for us to be reevaluating our strategy 

as we go forward. Senator Lugar and I yesterday came out of the 

White House meeting and made very clear our sense that it is appropriate to determine the best strategy, the best way forward. Before you start committing X amount of dollars, X number of troops, 

you have to know exactly what you are trying to achieve and what 

is achievable. 

This is also part of a larger challenge to all of us, which is the 

nature of this ongoing struggle against violent religious extremism, 

violent radicalized ideology, people who don’t hesitate to take civilian lives, sometimes for the most nihilistic of rationales. In fact, 

sometimes it is very difficult to even wrap some kind of a legitimate description of the rationale around some of these acts. But 

this is the world we live in today. 

What we are going to do today is to consider the threat posed by 

al-Qaeda, specifically, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond, and to 

2 

understand the progress that has been made toward our goal of 

disrupting, dismantling, and defeating the terrorist organization 

that attacked us on September 11th. 

This was, as everybody knows, at the center of President Bush’s 

strategy in taking us into Afghanistan originally, together with the 

near unanimous consent of the United States Congress. and it is 

critical to understanding what our mission should be as we go forward. 

This hearing takes place at the center of this backdrop of a significant national debate over the future of American policy toward 

Afghanistan. And I say significant because what the President decides to do, and what we decide to do, either in consent or dissent, 

will be critical to the amounts of money that we ask Americans to 

pay over a long period of time. Much more significantly, in the light 

of what I said about those lives lost, is number of Americans who 

will be called on to go abroad and into harm’s way and potentially 

give their lives in furtherance of that policy. 

So it is important for us to get this right because I dare say we 

have been down the road before where a year and a half, 2 years, 

5 years later, we wind up a Nation deeply divided and debating 

after the fact why we don’t like being where we are or how we got 

there. So this is the time, and the stakes are high. 

The specter of a reenergized al-Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan, 

I believe, is real. You have to have several scenarios to make that 

happen, and we are duty bound to examine those scenarios. And 

the reality of a worrisome al-Qaeda presence in Pakistan is existent and significant in that discussion. 

As I have said before, the history of past wars has taught us to 

question our assumptions at every turn in order to ensure that conventional wisdom doesn’t harden into dogma. I have also said repeatedly that wars and history don’t repeat themselves exactly. 

There are lessons that you can draw from them and that we should 

draw from them. 

But just because something happened a certain way 35 or 40 

years ago doesn’t mean it is going to happen the same way or that 

the circumstances are the same today. So we have to be discerning 

in drawing the similarities, in drawing the distinctions, and of appropriately drawing the right lessons from all of that. 

In a series of recent hearings before this committee, we have 

tried to balance some of these questions. We are not finished. But 

today, we are going to hear about al-Qaeda specifically, about our 

ongoing efforts against al-Qaeda. Also, we are going to hear about 

our efforts to counter terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan and how 

those efforts fit into the larger fight against a global network. 

Remember, the al-Qaeda that was in a very few countries—and 

most specifically in Afghanistan in September of 2001—is now an 

al-Qaeda that is in about 58, 59—who knows precisely, but we put 

it at around 60 countries. It is a global network, which it wasn’t 

in 2001. We need to examinewhat our offshore counterterrorism efforts in places like Somalia and Yemen may tell us with respect to 

what is possible and not possible in Afghanistan or Pakistan, 

whether there is, in fact, legitimacy to thinking about some kind 

of a narrower focus like the one that al-Qaeda enjoyed in Afghanistan before 9/11. 

3 

When al-Qaeda terrorists bombed American embassies in Africa 

and then attacked us on our own soil, their declaration of war 

against us was clear. Our response in the years since, while far 

from perfect, has been forceful and it has been tireless. And it is 

true that we have severely damaged al-Qaeda. 

We should acknowledge the enormous debt that we owe to the 

courageous men and women of our intelligence community who 

have worked night and day, often without recognition, without adequate thanks, in many cases without anybody knowing who they 

are in order to ensure that the unthinkable doesn’t happen again. 

And I want to say a word about those real successes that we 

have had. We have hunted down much of al-Qaeda’s leadership. We 

have disrupted terrorist networks in South and East Asia, Europe, 

and right here in the United States. And while many Americans 

have been killed fighting terrorists overseas, we are blessed to note 

that there has not been an attack on the soil of the United States 

in 8 years. 

But let me say a word about that. I remember, and I think many 

of you do, how the last administration—particularly the President, 

the Vice President, and the Secretary of State—reminded us frequently that it was not a question of if, it is a question of when. 

And all of us need to be sober-minded about that reality, notwithstanding the last 8 years. 

U.S. and international intelligence officials tell us they have succeeded in recruiting spies inside al-Qaeda and around it who have 

helped us disrupt future attacks. Targeted air strikes and enhanced assistance from allied governments have broadened our 

reach and diminished the effectiveness of the al-Qaeda network. 

Just last week, The Washington Post reported that these tactical 

advances have led to the deaths of more than a dozen senior figures in al-Qaeda and allied groups in the past year alone. A U.S. 

counterterrorism official said that Osama bin Laden and his main 

lieutenants are isolated and unable to coordinate high-profile attacks. 

Now, of course, defeating terrorist networks is more than just 

killing terrorists and disrupting their operations. In many ways, 

our efforts to combat terrorism can best be thought of as a global 

counterinsurgency campaign, where deterring tomorrow’s terrorists 

is every bit as important as killing or disrupting today’s. 

At its core, this is a battle against the extremists for the future 

of people’s minds in many different parts of the world, and success 

will require a comprehensive strategy to address the root causes of 

terrorism. We must delegitimize terrorists and win over the hearts 

and the minds of those in the Muslim world. 

Even as we mark our progress in this endeavor, we are going to 

have to remain vigilant. We cannot confuse the absence of an attack on our soil for the absence of a threat. The Director of National Intelligence told Congress that, for all of our programs, alQaeda and its affiliates continue to pose a significant threat to 

America and that the group’s central leadership has been able to 

regenerate the core operational capabilities needed to conduct at 

least small-scale attacks inside the United States. 

As our tactics have evolved, so have the terrorists’. Al-Qaeda and 

its affiliates have begun hitting softer Western targets—a subway 

4 

train in Madrid, buses in London, and the business district in 

Istanbul. U.S. law enforcement officials remain vigilant against the 

possibility of attacks against U.S. transportation hubs, tourist attractions, and anywhere that people gather. 

Some places, however, are more dangerous today than they have 

ever been. Yemen and Somalia present two very serious challenges—fragile societies made even more lawless by the presence of 

terrorists trained in camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is 

something we have to consider as we think about our policies toward both of those countries. 

Morocco and Algeria have suffered attacks by al-Qaeda, with dozens of civilians losing their lives. The Philippines faces a daunting 

challenge from groups allied with al-Qaeda seeking to forge an 

Islamist state in the country’s south. 

We are succeeding in our efforts to disrupt al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but there remains an enormous amount of work to do in 

places like Pakistan and Somalia and many other parts of the 

world. The issue is going to be with us, I fear to say, for years to 

come, and our thinking needs to evolve along with the threat. 

We are fortunate to have with us today three highly regarded experts on al-Qaeda and its tactics, each of whom has already made 

real contributions to our understanding of terrorism and how to 

prevent it. 

Robert Grenier is the former director of the DCI Counterterrorist 

Center and former CIA station chief in Pakistan. 

Peter Bergen is the Schwartz senior fellow at the New America 

Foundation, where he co-directs the Terrorism Strategy Initiative. 

And Mr. Bergen produced Osama bin Laden’s first television interview in 1997 in which he declared war on the United States. 

Dr. Marc Sageman is the senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute Center on Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and 

Homeland Security. 

So we thank you, all three. Did I pronounce that correctly— 

Sageman? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. It is not Seg-man? I apologize. And we are very, 

very grateful to each of you being here to help us think through 

this very important topic. Thank you. 

Senator Lugar? 

STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM INDIANA 

Senator LUGAR. Well, I thank the chairman for holding this important hearing. 

As we debate policy in Afghanistan and the merits of our approach to stability in the region, we take this opportunity to explore the broader issues presented by the continuing terrorist 

threat emanating from al-Qaeda. The Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, released the National Intelligence 

Strategy in August. It identified key countries and issues of concern to our national security for the next 4 years. 

The report explains that violent extremists ‘‘are planning to use 

terrorism—including the possible use of nuclear weapons or devices 

if they can acquire them—to attack the United States. Working in 

5 

a number of regions, these groups aim to derail the rule of law, 

erode societal order, attack U.S. strategic partners, and otherwise 

challenge U.S. interests worldwide.’’ 

A loose network of extremist al-Qaeda cohorts has sprung up 

across the globe. Its affiliates have aligned their actions and rhetoric with the core al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan to gain notoriety 

and financing. 

The largest al-Qaeda affiliate, although greatly diminished, remains al-Qaeda in Iraq. Some of its foreign fighters are returning 

home to local terrorist branches. For example, a fading domestic 

Algerian rebel group absorbed fighters from Iraq, expanded its aspirations, and transformed itself into ‘‘al-Qaeda of the Islamic 

Maghreb.’’ 

Affiliates of al-Qaeda also emerged in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, 

and Yemen. The Saudi and Yemeni groups recently merged into 

‘‘al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula,’’ as both accepted fighters returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. These and other extremists 

well beyond the region are connected to the Pakistan core and its 

nexus of training, planning, and operations. 

Reportedly, al-Qaeda no longer has a major presence in Afghanistan, although witnesses in our previous hearings have indicated 

that its reestablishment would be nearly inevitable if a Taliban 

government returned to Kabul. Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, testified in the Senate last week 

that al-Qaeda’s core in Pakistan still represents the most dangerous component of the wider network. 

He stated that our intelligence community assessed that ‘‘this 

core is actively engaged in operational plotting and continues recruiting, training, and transporting operatives, to include individuals from Western Europe and North America.’’ 

In addition, thousands of virtual adherents are connected to alQaeda through the Internet. These autonomous affiliates exist 

across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Because of this diversification, eliminating al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan would 

not solve the global terrorism problem. But al-Qaeda’s leadership 

continues to be an operational and ideological threat that requires 

our strongest efforts. 

Successes in arresting or killing terrorists and disrupting terrorist plots are essential in keeping the threat at bay, but insufficient for solving the problem. There is a far more enduring undercurrent of finance and ideology fueling terror. 

Consequently, one of the most important aspects of combating alQaeda is the international effort to identify and to eliminate its 

sources of finance. Money is a key ingredient for recruitment of 

new terrorists and the staging of any large operation. Despite some 

success in narrowing al-Qaeda’s funding options, its financing system has adapted over time. 

The United States and its allies should be more forceful and 

vocal about sources of finance for extremist groups. The information might prove disquieting to some friends, but governments 

must be held accountable for tacitly enabling those who fuel violent 

extremism. 

We also must ask if our current strategy sufficiently accounts for 

the roles of diplomacy, international exchange, and foreign assistVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:26 Apr 19, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\DOCS\10709.TXT MIKEB
6 

ance, so that we can reach Muslims who currently hear a message 

of hate from their most radical ranks. How do we counter not just 

al-Qaeda’s tactics, but enlist support to discredit this strategic plan 

and vision within the worldwide Muslim community? 

I welcome our witnesses and look forward to their assessments 

of the current state of the terrorist threat and the effectiveness of 

U.S. policies to combat it. 

And I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Lugar. Thanks for helping to 

take part in this and lead it. I appreciate it. 

Gentlemen, if you would begin? We look forward to your testimony very much and to a good dialogue with the members of the 

committee. 

Mr. Grenier, if you would begin, and we will just run right down 

the line. Thanks. 

Mr. GRENIER. Very good. 

The CHAIRMAN. Your full statements will be placed in the record 

as if read in full and welcome any summary comments. Thanks. 

STATEMENT OF ROBERT GRENIER, FORMER DIRECTOR, DCI 

COUNTERTERRORIST CENTER AND FORMER CIA STATION 

CHIEF IN PAKISTAN 

Mr. GRENIER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to thank you and the other members of the committee for the opportunity to come and testify before you today. It 

is a great honor and a privilege. 

I take very seriously the admonition that we have been given to 

keep our opening remarks brief. I will attempt to do that. And so, 

rather than trying to answer all conceivable questions at the outset, instead I will try to take a couple of minutes just to frame 

some of the issues in ways that I hope will be useful to our subsequent discussion. 

I should also say at the outset that I confront the questions that 

we will be discussing today not as a scholar—God knows that the 

scholars are off to my left here—but rather, as a former operator, 

albeit a former operator who is now 3 years out of Government and 

whose sources of information, therefore, are largely confined to 

what he reads in the newspaper. 

But as I read the newspaper and I attempt to read between the 

lines, it seems to me that there are aspects of our overall confrontation with al-Qaeda that are going quite well and others substantially less so. 

As we look at the confrontation with al-Qaeda, it seems to me 

that it consists of three distinct, discrete aspects. One is what we 

might call the tactical fight, the international cooperative effort to 

track down, to capture, and to kill terrorists. Secondly, it is the effort to deny al-Qaeda safe haven. And the third is what the chairman just referred to as a global counterinsurgency, what is often 

referred to as the war of ideas, the effort to confront al-Qaeda as 

an ideological movement as opposed to a terrorist organization. 

Well, without belaboring the point, it seems to me that the tactical fight is going quite well. Whether we look at North America 

or Europe or much of North Africa, much of the Arabian Peninsula, 

Southeast Asia, we can see that al-Qaeda is fundamentally on the 

7 

back foot. They have suffered significant losses, and those losses 

extend, importantly, to the relative safe haven that they now enjoy 

along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. 

And it seems to me that at the end of the day, one of the more 

prominent—in fact, from our perspective, the most prominent indication of that success in that global cooperative effort will prove to 

be the recent arrest of Najibullah Zazi. Again, I am reading between the lines. I am speculating here. But I suspect that the end 

of the day, as more of the onions are peeled back, we will discover 

that our ability to thwart the threat that he poses, such as it may 

prove in the end to be, will have come as a result of effective cooperation among a number of countries extending back over a significant period of time. 

But as we look at the parts of the struggle that aren’t going as 

well, as we look at the areas that cause the experts and the security officials concern, almost without exception, those involve 

ungoverned space. Whether we are talking about desert areas in 

Mauritania and Southern Algeria, where there is a relative resurgence of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, whether we are talking 

about Somalia and the growing strength of al-Shabaab and its AQ 

adherents, whether we are looking at Yemen, whether we are looking, yes, at Afghanistan and Pakistan, the areas that are highly 

problematic for us now involve ungoverned space and, therefore, 

the real or the potential for terrorist safe haven. 

Now there are those who raise a fundamental question. There 

are those who ask whether safe haven is actually important to alQaeda or, otherwise put, is safe haven of sufficient importance to 

al-Qaeda as to justify the effort and the losses that we must incur 

if we are to counter those safe havens? 

Well it seems to me that the answer to that question, without 

necessarily knowing what the costs will be, is yes. 

And I come at that as a former operator. I spent much of my career engaged in clandestine operations, working against hostile 

governments, trying to hide my activities from those who were 

charged with discovering those activities, operating on turf that 

was controlled by them and not me. It is not a place that you want 

to be if you can help it. 

If you don’t have safe haven, you are very limited in terms of 

what you can achieve, sustainably, over time. And as an operator, 

as a clandestine operator in the past, we had safe haven. We would 

not have been as successful as we were without it. And the same, 

I believe, is true of al-Qaeda. 

And you can say that in this day and time, yes, there is safe 

haven that you can find on the Internet. There is safe haven in 

apartments in Hamburg. But unless you have a real safe haven, 

there are certain aspects of your mission that you simply are not 

going to be able to do effectively, particularly involving recruitment 

and training. We can drill into that further. 

So as we take a look at those issues in the context of Afghanistan 

and Pakistan, where the two key aspects that we are discussing 

today of the confrontation with al-Qaeda come together, the tactical 

fight and the fight to deny safe haven, there are those who raise 

a number of significant questions. There are those who say, well, 

look, our objective at the end of the day is to counter al-Qaeda and 

8 

affiliated groups. Well, everyone concedes that al-Qaeda does not 

have a substantial presence currently in Afghanistan. So why are 

we there? 

Well, we know that al-Qaeda has a substantial presence across 

the border in Pakistan. And the fact that they are on the Pakistani 

side of the border right now is a matter of tactical convenience to 

them. If the pressure were reduced on the Afghan side and it were 

increased on the Pakistani side, it would be very easy for them to 

cross the border. 

More fundamentally, though, there are those who say, well, look, 

even if the Taliban were to gain control of substantial portions of 

Afghanistan, as it has in the past, we don’t know that they would 

provide a safe haven to al-Qaeda. Haven’t they learned the lesson 

of 9/11? 

Well, I think they have learned a lot of lessons since 9/11, but 

they are not the ones that we would have them learn. There are 

at least two factors that I would point to. One is that as you look 

at the number of disparate groups that are active in Afghanistan, 

Pakistan, elsewhere, in South Asia—whether it is the Afghan 

Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, the Kashmiri groups, sectarian 

groups—they all cooperate far more closely now than they did at 

the time of 9/11. Pressure on all has forced them to cooperate in 

ways that would have been unthinkable before 9/11. 

Secondly, there has been an evolution in their thinking. They 

think of themselves differently now than they did 8 years ago. Yes, 

they are seized with their own parochial interests, but they see the 

pursuit of those parochial interests as being part of a global effort. 

They see themselves as part of a global jihad that most of them 

simply did not, apart from a handful of leaders, back before 9/11. 

For the Taliban, the question as to whether they should provide 

safe haven for al-Qaeda is not an open-ended strategic discussion. 

For them, it is a very simple religious question. The question for 

them is, are we enjoined to support co-religionists who are engaged 

in a legitimate struggle against infidel oppressors, or can we simply 

pursue our own ends and ignore them? 

And if you ask the question, the answer for them is very, very 

clear. There is only one answer that they can reach. If they are 

asked for support by al-Qaeda, they cannot and they will not say 

no. 

Leaving aside this whole question of the importance of safe 

haven, even if we don’t accept that, there are those who say, well, 

couldn’t we limit ourselves to a counterterrorism effort in Afghanistan much more narrowly defined? Well, that is a long discussion, 

which I hope that we will get into, but I would raise two points. 

One is that even to do the counterterrorism effort based in Afghanistan, we need a very robust presence there. 

Much of our relative success against the al-Qaeda leadership, 

particularly across the border in Pakistan, is owing to the intelligence and military platform that we have inside Afghanistan. If 

that were to be diminished, I believe our success would diminish 

along with it. 

Secondly, there is the whole issue of Afghan tolerance. The Afghans are much less interested in al-Qaeda. They are much more 

interested in wresting control of their country from the Taliban. It 

9 

is hard to imagine that they would continue to welcome us in the 

way that they do if there weren’t something in it for them. 

And there are those who pose the question in even more stark 

terms. Well, couldn’t we simply do this as a counterterrorism effort 

from offshore? Well, we considered whether we could do that when 

I was sitting in Islamabad immediately after 9/11, and the short 

answer is no. We can’t. You absolutely have to have a platform 

there on the ground if you are to conduct counterterrorism operations effectively. It was the Pakistanis who provided that to us 

initially. 

Which gets us down to the final question—the one that we 

haven’t been asked today, but which, obviously, the administration 

is struggling with—and that is the question of troops. If we accept 

that we need to do both a counterterrorism effort and a counterinsurgency effort to deny safe haven, what sort of a force posture 

do we need? Well, I don’t think that I can answer that question. 

But it seems to me that the more fundamental question, the far 

more important one, quite apart from the numbers of troops required, is do we have an achievable objective, and do we have an 

effective strategy to achieve that objective? 

And as I look at the situation right now, unfortunately, my answer to both questions is no. 

I fear that we are trying to achieve the unachievable in Afghanistan. I fear that we are trying for an outcome which current reality 

will not admit. And secondly, I think that the tactics or the strategy that we are employing to achieve that objective is simply not 

going to work over time, relying as it does on building up national 

institutions in Afghanistan of a sort that have never existed in the 

past. 

So having raised more questions than answers, I will terminate 

my remarks. 

The CHAIRMAN. Those are good remarks and good questions, and 

ones we want to pursue. So we look forward to that. 

Mr. Sageman? 

STATEMENT OF MARC SAGEMAN, SENIOR FELLOW, FOREIGN 

POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, D.C. 

Dr. SAGEMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Lugar, members of the committee. 

I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the threat of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and beyond. 

I also talk not only as a scholar, but as a former operator being 

involved in the insurgency, Afghan insurgency against the Soviets 

in the 1980s where I had the privilege of serving under Milt 

Bearden, who was here last week. 

Al-Qaeda is once again at the forefront of U.S. Government policy debate. To clarify its threat to the homeland and to those of 

other Western nations, I would like to share with you the result 

of a comprehensive survey that I conducted of all plots, successful 

and unsuccessful, over the past 20 years carried out by al-Qaeda, 

its transnational allies, and homegrown groups inspired by alQaeda. 

10 

I included all the plots that had any loose link to al-Qaeda, its 

ideology, had reached a level of maturity, were violent in nature, 

and were initiated by the terrorists. 

The top graph that you see over there demonstrates that there 

were 60 plots carried out by 46 different networks. It started out 

in New York City with the first World Trade Center bombing. The 

first peak that you see over there is a large wave of GIA bombings 

in France in the summer of 1995. Then the number of plots kind 

of diminished. It spread around the world, peaked again in 2004, 

probably as a reaction to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and it has declined ever since. Last year, I think there were only three plots 

around the world. 

The bottom graph that you see there demonstrates the command 

and control of the various plots by transnational terrorist organizations. I erred on the side of being over inclusive. That is including 

plots as being under a group’s command and control. 

As you see, there were 12 al-Qaeda core plots in blue, 15 alQaeda affiliate—other terrorist organization—in red, and 32 homegrown plots in green without any physical link to any formal terrorist organization. 

After the Algerian plots of the 1990s, al-Qaeda plots started after 

bin Laden‘‘ 1998 declaration of war against the West. It peaked in 

2001 and then decreased thereafter to about one plot a year. Over 

the past 5 years, 80 percent of the plots were homegrown, autonomous plots. 

In terms of training, about 57 percent of the terrorist group had 

received some training with a terrorist organization in Afghanistan 

and Pakistan. Over the past 7 years, it has only been Pakistan. 

The trained networks have a 20 percent probability of inflicting a 

casualty on the Western population, which was much greater than 

5 percent probability of success of an untrained group. 

In terms of damages, of all the 60 plots, only 14 succeeded in afflicting any casualty. Of these, 9 were that Algerian group in 1995, 

2 were al-Qaeda—namely, 9/11 and the London 7/7 bombing—and 

3 were independent plots. The fact that only two al-Qaeda plots in 

the West were successful in the past two decades has been obscured by the horrible lethality, of course. 

So what are the implications of this comprehensive survey for 

the present policy options? One, the threat to the West has expanded beyond al-Qaeda to include Pakistani and Uzbeki groups. 

None of these groups are located in Afghanistan, and there really 

is no Afghani al-Qaeda. However, almost 80 percent of the plots in 

the past 5 years are homegrown groups with no physical links to 

any transnational terrorist group. 

Two, counterterrorism is working. There has been no casualty in 

the United States for the past 8 years and no casualty in the West 

in the past 4 years, thanks a lot to the effort of Mr. Grenier here. 

At home, counterterrorism consists of a combination of good domestic police work, good domestic intelligence, and good cooperation with foreign and domestic intelligence agencies. Abroad, it consists of an effective strategy of containment of young wannabes 

going to Pakistan through good airport security abroad, good border control at home, keeping up the pressure on al-Qaeda and its 

transnational allies in Pakistan, supporting the Pakistan military 

11 

to dislodge foreign militants from Waziristan while sealing the border on the Afghan side, and continuing sanctuary denial. 

Three, this counterterrorism strategy will continue, no matter 

what. So the real question is whether there is any added value to 

the military surge in Afghanistan for protection of the homeland. 

Clearly, such a surge would not help us protect the homeland from 

al-Qaeda and its allies because they are not in Afghanistan. The 

Afghan Taliban is not al-Qaeda and does not share internationally 

its ambition. 

Will the military surge prevent the return of al-Qaeda to Afghanistan? The assumption is that the Taliban return to power will 

automatically allow al-Qaeda to reconstitute in Afghanistan and 

threaten the homeland. 

The capture of Afghanistan by the Taliban is not a sure thing. 

It took more than 3 years for much better armed and a far more 

popular insurgency to capture the power after the complete withdrawal from the Soviet forces in Afghanistan 20 years ago. The 

Taliban is really a collection of rival and fractious groups united 

against us, but lacking the ability to coalesce in the future or in 

the near future, I should say, into an offensive force capable of 

marching on to Kabul. 

Taliban return to power does not automatically mean an invitation to al-Qaeda to return to Afghanistan. The relationship between 

al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups with a major faction constituting the Afghan Taliban has always been strained. This provides 

the U.S. government with the opportunity to play on internal rivalries and use political skills and economic incentive to discourage 

the Taliban from hosting al-Qaeda again. 

And even if al-Qaeda returns to Afghanistan in some form, it is 

not going to be in the same form as in the 1990s, when not so benign neglect by Western forces allowed them to grow to the threat 

that we saw on 9/11. 

Sanctuary denial is the appropriate mission for the military. So 

there is definitely no necessity and little added value to the military surge in this counterinsurgency option. It is the most costly 

in terms of blood and treasure, probably the least likely to succeed, 

and may even increase terrorism in the homeland through homegrown wannabes’ reaction to the inevitable increase in killing of 

Muslims by Western forces. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Sageman follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MARC SAGEMAN, M.D., PH.D. 

Mr. Chairman, Senator Lugar, and Members of the Committee: I thank you for 

the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the threat of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and beyond. 

Al-Qaeda is once again at the forefront of U.S. Government policy debate. Our 

strategic interest in Afghanistan is linked to the protection of the homeland and 

that of our Western allies against terrorist attacks. A moment’s reflection will demonstrate this. Al-Qaeda found sanctuary in the Sudan for four years, from 1992 to 

1996, when the Sudanese government expelled it. During this Sudanese phase, alQaeda developed its strategy to target the West, and especially the United States 

and trained potential terrorists there. Indeed, the planning of the simultaneous 

bombings of our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam was done in Khartoum. 

Had al-Qaeda not been thrown out of the Sudan, I have no doubt that we would 

be discussing strategy options about the Sudan rather than Afghanistan. 

12 

1For an analysis of the concept of jihad through Muslim jurisprudence and history,see Richard Bonney, 2004, Jihad: From Qur’an to bin Laden, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Our ultimate goal of homeland security will be served through a better understanding of the threat confronting it in order to ‘‘disrupt, dismantle, and eventually 

defeat al-Qaeda and its allies.’’ Let me describe this global threat through a comprehensive survey that I conducted of all the al-Qaeda plots in the West, all the alQaeda affiliate plots in the West and all the plots done ‘‘in the name of al-Qaeda’’ 

in the West since the formation of al-Qaeda in August 1988. It is necessary to expand our inquiry because al-Qaeda is now only one of the many actors in this global 

neo-jihadi terrorist threat against the West. I call it neo-jihadi because the terrorists 

have appropriated this contested concept to themselves much to the protest of respected Islamic scholars and the mainstream Muslim communities worldwide.1 Terrorism for the purpose of this project is the use of violence by non-state collective 

actors against non-combatants in the West in pursuit of a self-appointed global 

jihad. 

I conducted this survey when I spent a year at the U.S. Secret Service and an 

additional year at the New York Police Department as its first scholar-in-residence. 

Although both organizations helped me immensely, the following remarks are my 

own and cannot be read as their position or opinions. Because homeland security 

in the West essentially means population protection in the West, I have limited the 

inquiry to violent plots to be executed in the geographical territory of the West. By 

the West, I mean North America, Australia and Western Europe, with the exception 

of the civil war in the Balkans since terrorism is often a tactic of war, but wartime 

terrorism may not teach us much about terrorism during peace time. To be included 

in the survey, each plot had to have some loose operational or inspirational link to 

al-Qaeda or its affiliates; it had to reach a certain level of maturity, characterized 

by overt acts in furtherance; it consisted of violent acts targeting people in the West, 

and therefore excluded cases of purely financial or material support for terrorist acts 

committed elsewhere; some planning had to be done in the West; and terrorists had 

to initiate the plot. To accurately evaluate the threat, I of course included both successful and unsuccessful plots, which are the true measure of the extent of the 

threat, rather than just the successful ones. The global neo-jihadi terrorist threat 

includes plots under the control of al-Qaeda core; al-Qaeda affiliates like the Algerian Groupes Islamiques Armes (GIA), Pakistani Lashkar e-Toyba (LT), the Uzbek 

Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), the Pakistani Tehrik e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).; and 

threats by autonomous groups inspired by al-Qaeda like the Dutch Hofstad group. 

I excluded lone wolves, who were not physically or virtually connected to anyone in 

the global neo-jihad, for they often carry out their atrocities on the basis of delusion 

and mental disorder rather than for political reasons. 

My sources of information were legal documents, trial transcripts, consultations 

with foreign and domestic intelligence and law enforcement agencies, to which my 

position gave me access. Although all these plots are within the open source domain, 

I did corroborate the validity of the data in the classified domain. 

The specified criteria yielded a total of 60 global neo-jihadi terrorist plots in the 

West, perpetrated by 46 terrorist networks in the past two decades, from the first 

World Trade Center attack on February 26, 1993 to the December 16, 2008 arrest 

of Rany Arnaud, who was plotting to blow up the Direction Generale du 

Renseignement Interieur, the French FBI equivalent, in a suburb of Paris. Although 

people associate al-Qaeda plots with airplanes or bombs, the plots were quite diverse: simple assassinations, attempted kidnapping and decapitation, car/truck 

bombs, airplane hijacking, and improvised explosive devices. Some operations were 

suicidal, but most were not. Of all the plots, only one is completely unsolved—the 

bombing of the Port Royal Metro station in Paris on December 3, 1996, which resulted in many casualties. Although completely unsolved, the timing, context and 

mode of operation seem to point to the GIA, trying to avenge its followers, who were 

put on trial around that time.The following graph is the timeline distribution of the 

plots. 

13 

Figure 1. Timeline distribution of global neo-jihadi terrorist plots in the West. 

We can see from the above graph that global neo-jihadi terrorist plots preceded 

the 9/11/01 attack when the Western public first started to appreciate the true extent of the threat confronting it. The first plot in the West was the first World Trade 

Center bombing in February 1993, or about four and a half years after the creation 

of al-Qaeda proper. The timeline distribution of the plots is bi-modal. The first peak 

consisted of raids by the Algerian GIA against France and stopped in 1996; the later 

plots were more widely geographically distributed and reached a peak in 2004, after 

which they declined. In the recent controversy over whether al-Qaeda (however defined, here I am using a more inclusive and therefore much wider definition of the 

threat in the West) is on the move or on the run, we can see that the wider ‘‘al 

Qaeda’’ threat or the global neo-jihadi terrorist threat is definitely on the run since 

its high water mark of 2004. 

Some networks of terrorists, who temporarily escaped arrest, carried out multiple 

plots in the West. This is especially true of the 1995 wave of ten GIA plots against 

France, carried out by the same network in France. In order to understand the actual threat, as opposed to the inability of local police forces to disrupt existing networks, I also coded the global neo-jihadi threat to the West according to the specific 

terrorist networks carrying out operations (as opposed to plots). Coding the data according to networks rather than plots gives the following graph. 

What is most affected by this coding is the collapse of the GIA wave of bombings 

in France in 1995, now represented by the same group rather than the ten separate 

plots. Again, loosely global neo-jihadi networks in the West preceded the 9/11/01 operation. Here, the graph indicates that global neo-jihadi networks in the West became more numerous in 2001, experienced a temporary small decline, and reached 

its 2004 high water mark, after which it declined, especially after 2007. So, here 

again, ‘‘al-Qaeda’’ is on the run and not on the move. I suspect the post 2003 bump 

in the number of networks threatening the West in the name of AQ was a reaction 

to the Western invasion of Iraq. 

Figure 2. Timeline distribution of global neo-jihadi terrorist networks in the West. 


sage1.eps sage2.eps
14 

Although the press likes to call any militant Islamist plot an al-Qaeda plot, let 

us see how many are truly al-Qaeda plots. I coded the command and control of each 

plot according to the following classification (I did not code the 1996 Paris Metro 

plot because it is still unsolved): 

• AQ Core means that AQ proper directed and controlled the operation. 

• AQ Affiliated means that an international terrorist organization affiliated with 

AQ, such as LT or IJU, directed and controlled the operation. 

• AQ Inspired means that there was no direction or control by any of the above 

organization for the plot. In other words, the plot was completely autonomous. 

In this coding system, I leaned backward to give credit to a terrorist organization when there was any doubt about its command and control over an operation. I did this to increase the probability of detecting any coordination of global neo-jihadi terrorism by a single entity, a sort of neo-jihadi equivalent of the 

Comintern—the Soviet Central Committee in Moscow that tried to coordinate 

Communist activities worldwide. 

The result is: 

12 AQ Core controlled operations (20%) 

• LAX millenial plot (1999) 

• Strasbourg Christmas Market bombing plot (2000) 

• 9/11/01 attack (2001) 

• Paris Embassy bombing plot (2001) 

• Belgian Kleine Brogel US Air Force base bombing plot (2001) 

• Shoe bomber plot (2001) 

• London fertilizer bomb plot (Operation Crevice, 2004) 

• London limousine bombing plot (Operation Rhyme, 2004) 

• London 7/7 bombings (Theseus case) (2005) 

• London 7/21 bombing plot (Vivace case) (2005) 

• London airplanes liquid bomb plot (Operation Overt) (2006) 

• Danish Glasvej bombing plot (Operation Dagger) (2007) 

15 AQ affiliated terrorist organizations controlled operations (25%) 

• 11 GIA plots against France (1994–5) 

• German al-Tawhid bombing plots (Zarqawi group) (2002) 

• Sydney bombing plot (Brigitte-Lodhi, LT controlled) (2003) 

• German Sauerland bombing plot (IJU controlled) (2007) 

• Barcelona bombing plot (alleged TTP control) (2008) 

32 AQ inspired terrorist plots, carried out either on behalf of al-Qaeda or other 

transnational terrorist organizations (54%) 

Figure 3. Timeline of global neo-jihadi terrorist plots in the West: 

Command & Control. 


Sage3.eps
15 

2See Lawrence, Bruce, ed., 2005, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, 

London: Verso, page 61. 

Al-Qaeda-inspired autonomous plots constitute the majority of all the plots, followed by al-Qaeda affiliated plots, with true al-Qaeda plots closing out the sample 

at only 20%. Viewing the graph chronologically, al-Qaeda Core did not start this terrorist campaign against the West. Indeed, all al-Qaeda Core plots in the West took 

place after bin Laden’s 1998 hukm (his ‘considered judgment,’ not fatwa as is incorrectly reported in the West and which carries much less authority than a fatwa).2

Two attacks in New York City conducted by former Afghan Arabs inaugurated this 

worldwide wave of bombings against the West. They were conducted locally, and 

there is no evidence that there was any guidance, direction or control by al-Qaeda 

Core. If anything, they were more closely connected with the Egyptian Islamic 

Group than al-Qaeda or its ally, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. These attacks were followed by a large wave of GIA attacks against France, which had to do with the internal dynamics of the Algerian civil war in the 1990s, and again had no guidance, 

direction or control from al-Qaeda Core. The actual al-Qaeda Core plots in the West 

began in late 1999, as part of a wave of worldwide bombings to mark the dawn of 

the new Western Millennium, peaked in 2001, and decreased thereafter to about one 

plot per year, with a small uptick in 2004–2005 and fading over the next two years. 

Despite even recent claims that al-Qaeda is on the move, it is clear that al-Qaeda 

in the West has been on the decline since its apogee of 2001. When studying a phenomenon, it is important to count and look at the trend. When one relies on out 

of context anecdotal evidence, it is easy to make mistakes. I suspect that the recent 

advocates for a ‘‘resurgent’’ al-Qaeda were confused by the complexity of the 2006 

London airplanes liquid bomb plot (Overt case) and mistook complexity for resurgence. The fact is clear that since its loss of sanctuary in Afghanistan in 2001, alQaeda proper has had trouble projecting to the West. It was able to operate locally 

in South Asia and Iraq, especially after al Zarqawi proclaimed a merger of his organization with al-Qaeda. 

Let’s look at the past five years: 

• 6 AQ Core plots (2004 Rhyme and Crevice plots; 2005 Theseus and Vivace 

cases; 2006 Overt case, all in Britain, and 2007 Dagger plot in Denmark) 

• 2 AQ Affiliated plots (2007 Sauerland & 2008 Barcelona Plots) 

• 25 AQ Inspired autonomous plots, conducted by homegrown perpetrators, with 

no connections whatsoever with any formal transnational terrorist organizations 

The above statistics are crystal clear: 78% of all global neo-jihadi terrorist plots 

in the West in the past five years came from autonomous homegrown groups without any connection, direction or control from al-Qaeda Core or its allies. The ‘resurgent al-Qaeda’ in the West argument has no empirical foundation. The paucity of 

actual al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorist organization plots compared to the 

number of autonomous plots refutes the claims by some heads of the Intelligence 

Community (Hayden, 2008) that all Islamist plots in the West can be traced back 

to the Afghan Pakistani border. Far from being the ‘‘epicenter of terrorism,’’ this 

Pakistani region is more like the finishing school of global neo-jihadi terrorism, 

where a few amateur wannabes are transformed into dangerous terrorists. 

The graph also shows a sporadic involvement of al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist 

groups in plotting against the West in the past six years. These groups located in 

Pakistan are showing an increased ability to project against the West, although 

most of their operations are still confined to South Asia. However, in the internal 

rivalry among terrorist groups in South Asia, the quickest way to establish one’s 

reputation is to demonstrate an ability to strike in the West. Although it is rare 

for al-Qaeda core to claim credit for its operations in the West, its rivals in South 

Asia have been quick to claim credit, even for failed plots. The Islamic Jihad Union 

claimed credit for the failed Sauerland group plot in September 2007 and Baitullah 

Mehsud, the deceased chief of Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan claimed credit for the 

failed Barcelona Plot of January 2008—although this last claim must be taken with 

a great deal of caution because he has claimed credits for mishaps in the West that 

had nothing to do with his organization, like the power outage in the U.S. Midwest 

in 2007 and the mass murder incident in Binghamton, New York on April 3, 2009. 

These empty self-promotions have been categorically refuted by federal authorities. 

The West may well find itself caught in this militant rivalry for global neo-jihadi 

supremacy. 

My coding probably overestimated the importance of formal terrorist groups. Most 

of the recent plots coded as under al-Qaeda command and control, like the 2004 

London fertilizer bomb plot, did not involve such frequent communication with alVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:26 Apr 19, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\10709.TXT MIKEB
16 

3See Sageman, Marc, 2008, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century, 

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Qaeda, but included instead a short meeting with a high level representative of alQaeda, where local Western terrorist wannabes informed al Qeada representatives, 

Abdal Hadi al Iraqi and his lieutenant, of their own initiative to conduct operations 

in the West. In such cases, it seems that the meeting with al-Qaeda leadership did 

not affect the desire of the local terrorists to conduct such operations. Here the role 

of the al-Qaeda was passive agreement with little influence on the plot. 

IThe dramatic increase in global neo-jihadi terrorism in the first decade of the 

21st Century has come from al-Qaeda inspired autonomous groups with no link to 

formal transnational terrorist groups. This is especially true since the 2003 invasion 

of Iraq, which has inspired local young Muslims to strike out against the West. It 

seems clear that this invasion has created more terrorists in the West, refuting the 

thesis that ‘‘we are fighting them there, so we don’t have to fight them here.’’ The 

fact that these plots peaked in 2004, one year after the invasion of Iraq provides 

empirical support linking the two events. These scattered plots, not coordinated by 

any central terrorist body and constituting almost 80% of the plots against the West 

in the past five years, illustrate how the threat against the West is degenerating 

into a ‘‘leaderless jihad.’’ 3 Far from being directed by a Comintern, global neo-jihadi 

terrorism is evolving to the structure of anarchist terrorism that prevailed over a 

century ago, when no such global coordinating committee was ever found despite 

contemporaneous belief in its existence. 

Within this cluster of al-Qaeda inspired autonomous groups is a troubling emerging pattern of lone wolves, directly linked via the Internet to foreign al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations: the 2004 Rotterdam Plot (Yehya Kadouri), the 2007 

Nancy plot (Kamel Bouchentouf), the 2008 Exeter plot (Nicky Reilly) and the 2008 

French Direction Centrale du Renseignement Interieur plot (Rany Arnaud). Although these young men are willing to sacrifice themselves for these affiliate terrorist groups, they have never met them face to face. This may become a trend that 

will increase in the future. 

Another dimension of allied al-Qaeda involvement in plots against the West is financial support of these plots. Again, in examining each global neo-jihadi terrorism 

network for such support, I have erred on the side of inclusiveness of al-Qaeda support in this coding scheme. 

Out of forty-five global neo-jihadi terrorist networks in the West, al-Qaeda at least 

partially funded ten. But this overstates its importance in this regard. The funding 

of the 1993 World Trade Center plot was minimal, and consisted of Khalid Sheikh 

Mohammed sending a few hundred dollars to his nephew Ramzi Yousef. It is unclear where the money came from, but for the sake of this study, let us assume it 

came from al-Qaeda. The same goes for the GIA wave of bombings in France in 

1995. Bin Laden funded the Al Ansar newsletter in London via Rachid Ramda, who 

funded the bombing campaign. I do not know where the money for this campaign 

(as opposed to the newsletter) came from. I suspect that it came from the GIA itself 

through its fund raising campaign throughout Europe. However, let us again assume that it came from bin Laden either directly or indirectly. 

Figure 4. Al-Qaeda Financial Support for Terrorist networks in the West. 


Sage4.eps
17 

We can see that from 1999 to 2001, al-Qaeda either partially or fully funded its 

operations against the West. This was either in the form of seed money ($10,000 

given to Ahmed Ressam for the 1999 LAX bombing plot or the 2000 Strasbourg 

Christmas Market bombing plot). In each case, the perpetrators were supposed to 

supplement their initial funds via their own means (robbery in Ressam’s case; drug 

sales for the other). Sometimes, the funding was paid in full, as in the 9/11/01 plot. 

I assume that al-Qaeda at least partially funded the rest of the 2001 al-Qaeda plots 

since I came across no evidence that these perpetrators raised any money on their 

own. The two alleged al-Qaeda plots in 2005 were a departure from this pattern, 

as there is no evidence that the two London bombing plots of July 2005 received 

any money from al-Qaeda. The last alleged al-Qaeda plot, the Danish Glasvej (Dagger) case indicates that the main perpetrator, Hamad Khurshid, came back from 

Pakistan with $5,000 in cash. It is true that, except for the 9/11/01 operation, terrorist plots are not expensive to carry out. Autonomous terrorists had no choice but 

to raise the funds for their operation themselves. 

On the other hand, the al-Qaeda-affiliated transnational terrorist groups seemed 

to have funded their own operations. The GIA plots were fully funded from outside 

and none of the perpetrators were tasked with raising money for the plots. The 2002 

German al Tawhid plot was probably funded by Zarqawi. LT funded the Sydney plot 

through money transfers to Willie Brigitte in 2003, and the IJU seemed to have 

funded the 2007 German Sauerland plot. It is unknown the degree of financial support that the potential perpetrators of the 2008 Barcelona plot received from 

Mehsud’s organization. 

For those who like to follow the money, only a very few plots have been funded 

from the outside in the past five years. Of the twenty-nine global neo-jihadi terrorist 

networks involved during that period, al-Qaeda core funding has been implicated in 

only two—Hamad Khurshid and the London Rhyme case. Even if we add the nonal Qaeda funded Sauerland case and possibly the TTP Barcelona case, the total increases to only three or four out of twenty-nine cases (10% or 14%). Since the money 

involved was mostly in the form of cash, following the trail of money will not detect 

global neo-jihadi terrorism plots in the West. The vast majority these networks in 

the past five years have raised their own money. 

It has been argued that training by a formal terrorist organization is critically important because it transforms amateurs into seasoned terrorists. Several Western 

intelligence leaders have stated that all significant global neo-jihadi terrorist plots 

lead back to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (FATA). The next 

graph tests this claim. I plotted the overseas training for all the terrorist networks 

and coded them as receiving training from al-Qaeda, an al-Qaeda affiliate, or no 

training at all—just al-Qaeda inspired. Again, I erred on the side of over-inclusiveness of such training, even if just one person in the network, who might not have 

been involved in the planning of the plot, had simply undergone familiarization 

training, which did not teach any significant bomb making skills. For this graph, 

I coded Bouyeri as being separate from the Hofstad network because he carried out 

the assassination of Theo van Gogh on his own in 2004 and had not gone to any 

training camp. 

Out of 46 different networks attempting terrorist operations in the West, 

• 16 had at least one member that underwent training at an AQ Core facility 

(35%) 

• 10 had at least one member that underwent training at an AQ affiliated facility 

(22%) 

• 20 had no training at all (43%) 

Figure 5. Global neo-jihadi terrorist overseas training. 


Sage5.eps
18 

Lumping the data together hides some important trends. First, more people have 

trained from al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda affiliates than are under the control of these 

respective organizations. Lately, in the press and perhaps the intelligence community, there is a presumption that attendance in a formal terrorist organization training camp is equivalent to being under control of that organization. So, I included 

the 2004 London fertilizer plot (Operation Crevice) and the two 2005 London underground bombing plots as al-Qaeda controlled because the perpetrators had allegedly 

received al-Qaeda training. However, there was no evidence of extensive communication between the perpetrators in the field and al-Qaeda Core in Pakistan, unlike 

the 9/11/01 plot or the 2006 London airplanes liquid bomb plot, where the perpetrators were in almost daily communication with al-Qaeda core, or the 2007 Sauerland 

plotters, who were in constant e-mail contact with their IJU sponsors. 

This equation of training camp attendance with foreign terrorist organization control was not presumed for the pre-2001 plots, when attendance in an al-Qaeda camp 

did not mean al-Qaeda control. For example, Ramzi Yousef, the bomb maker for the 

first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, never belonged to al-Qaeda, but had undergone extensive training at al-Qaeda funded camps and had taught at Abdal Rabb 

Rasul Sayyaf’s University of Jihad. Likewise, members of the 2002 al Tawhid plot 

had been trained at al-Qaeda camps before joining Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al 

Tawhid organization. Again, the two ricin plots (the 2002 French Chechen network 

and the 2003 British ricin plot [Operation Earth]) included members who had 

trained in al-Qaeda camps, even though neither plot seemed to have been known 

or sanctioned by al-Qaeda as far as I know. 

Al-Qaeda funded most of the training camps in Afghanistan before the U.S. invasion in the fall of 2001. Anyone who had traveled to Afghanistan for training at that 

time was bound to have been trained in an al-Qaeda funded camp. The cases just 

cited included members who had been in Afghanistan before the fall of the Taliban 

regime. The result was that graduates from al-Qaeda camps in the 1990s dominate 

global neo-jihadi terrorism from 1999 to 2002. By the time they were planning their 

operations in the West in 2002 or 2003, they no longer had any active link to alQaeda. Since 2002, al-Qaeda trained terrorists averaged just one plot a year. 

As the availability of al-Qaeda training faded over time, al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations in Kashmir or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, such as Laskhar-e Toyba or the Islamic Jihad Union, began to fill in the gap 

starting in 2003 and the graduates of their camps also average about one plot a 

year. So, while terrorist networks that had training dominate the overall sample 

(57%), this trend has been reversed in the past five years as only 40% had such 

training. Indeed, all those who underwent training in the past five years, acquired 

it in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. 

Although I use the generic term ‘‘training camp’’ to describe the place of training 

before and after 2001, the meaning of the term has since changed dramatically and 

overestimates the formality and sophistication of training received by global neojihadi terrorist networks in the West after 2001. Gone are the large formal camps 

like Khalden, Farooq or Darunta in Afghanistan, which could accommodate hundreds of novices and had a formal curriculum with increased levels of sophistication 

sometimes lasting up to a year for the select few (see Ahmed Ressam’s training for 

the 1999 LAX millennium plot). After the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, these 

formal training facilities were destroyed. People traveling to Pakistan afterwards either went to formal training facilities conducted by Kashmiri terrorist groups in 

Kashmir (see the legal judgment on Willie Brigitte for a description of such camps) 

or had to arrange for their training through hiring of a private trainer. These new 

‘‘camps’’ were nothing like the former ones: they were small rented housing compounds or even two tents in a goat patch, where one instructor and his son gave 

private lessons to at most a dozen students, who directly paid for their instruction, 

the duration of which could be as short as two days to about three weeks (see the 

transcripts of the 2004 Crevice or the 2005 Theseus cases, which describe this process). 

Later, after a series of truces signed between FATA tribal leaders and the government of Pakistan between 2004 and 2006, al-Qaeda or IJU provided more formal 

training in Waziristan, but they never reached the level of sophistication in instruction that prevailed before 2001. These new facilities in Waziristan were more visible 

than before and could accommodate up to about twenty trainees at a time. Indeed, 

the presence of these camps probably led to alarms that al-Qaeda was resurgent. 

Strangely enough, the presence of these new ‘‘camps’’ did not affect the frequency 

of al-Qaeda linked plots in the West. The slight bump in frequency of terrorist 

trained arrests or actual bombings in 2004 and 2005 was not due to these truces, 

because the training of the perpetrators preceded the truce agreements. Despite the 

19 

widespread alarms in the West, the truces do not appear to have any effect on global neo-jihadi terrorism in the West. 

In any case, the graph shows clearly that the majority of global neo-jihadi terrorist networks from 2004 onwards did not have any formal training from foreign 

terrorist groups (60%), contrary to the statements of Intelligence agency chiefs on 

both sides of the Atlantic. They were purely homegrown and had no link to the 

FATA, which some have called ‘‘the epicenter of terrorism.’’ Instead, they had to rely 

on themselves and the Internet for their acquisition of terrorist skills, consistent 

with the leaderless jihad argument. 

How dangerous is global neo-jihadi terrorism? In other words, what is the result 

of global neo-jihadi terrorist plots in the West? I coded all 60 plots in the West in 

terms of whether they caused any injuries; were carried out but failed (no explosion 

because of a technical error); or were interrupted through law enforcement arrests. 

The results are as follows: 

14 Plots were successful in terms of incurring any injury and or death (23%) 

• Only 2 al-Qaeda core plots in the West in the past two decades were successful 

(9/11/01 and 7/7/05). Of course, they were among the most devastating, resulting 

in about 3,000 fatalities for 9/11 and 52 fatalities for 7/7. 

• 9 were GIA plots against France, from 1994 to 1996 (I have counted the 1996 

Paris Port Royal metro station bombing in this total. The total for all of these 

attacks is 17 fatalities) 

• 3 were al-Qaeda inspired plots (1993 World Trade Center bombing, resulting in 

6 fatalities; 2004 Madrid bombing, resulting in 191 fatalities; 2004 Bouyeri’s assassination of Theo van Gogh) 

10 Plots resulted in failure to explode (17%) 

• 3 failures in networks that had succeeded elsewhere (2 by 1995 GIA network 

in France; and by 2004 Madrid network when bomb on the AVE train line near 

Toledo failed to detonate) 

• 2 failures by al-Qaeda trained networks (2001 Shoe bomb plot and 7/21/05 London underground bombing plot) 

• 1 failure in network of French Bosnian war veteran (Roubaix group) 

• 4 failures in networks that had no foreign terrorist organization training (2004 

Rotterdam plot; 2006 Koblenz train plot; 2007 Doctors’ plot; and 2008 Exeter 

bomb plot) 

36 Plots were interrupted through arrests (60%) 

It is interesting to note that for all the fear of al-Qaeda, the organization managed 

only two successful plots in the West in the last twenty years! The fact that they 

were so deadly overshadows this truth. Indeed, successful independent plots outnumber successful al-Qaeda plots in the West. However, both are eclipsed by the 

GIA, which infiltrated a team of trained terrorists to France, whose wave of terror 

in the mid-1990s accounts for almost two thirds of all successful global neo-jihadi 

bombings. 

This low rate of success (23%) should not be much comfort to intelligence or law 

enforcement agencies. In ten plots, the terrorists succeeded in setting their bombs 

down without being detected. The bombs simply did not detonate, which cannot be 

due to good intelligence or police work. So, the rate of a plot going to termination 

without being detected is 40%, a very high rate indeed, no cause for comfort. 

Figure 6. Extent of damages of global neo-jihadi terrorist plots. 


Sage6.eps
20 

Lest the reader thinks that the cause for failure to detonate was the lack of training by homegrown wannabes, six out of the ten failures happened to groups that 

had been trained or been successful before. So, 60% of the failures to detonate were 

not due to poor training but to poor execution by experienced terrorists. 

It appears that either we are getting luckier or this terrorist threat is diminishing. In the United States, the last casualty dates back eight years to 9/11/01. 

There has not been even one plot that went to termination since then. In the rest 

of the West, there has not been a single casualty in the past four years. The last 

casualty dates back to 7/7/05, the first London underground plot. However, in the 

past four years, Europe has witnessed a series of bombs that failed to detonate: the 

2005 second London underground plot (Vivace case); the 2006 German Koblenz trolley bombs; the 2007 London and Glasgow Doctors’ plot; and the 2008 Exeter bomb 

plot by Nicky Reilly. The last three plots have no physical link to any transnational 

terrorist groups. 

How effective is formal terrorist training for the successful completion of a plot? 

Several critics have tried to downplay the recent surge of autonomous homegrown 

plots as less dangerous than those of formally trained terrorists. I analyzed the results of global neo-jihadi terrorist networks according to their type of training: alQaeda core training; al-Qaeda affiliates’ training; or no formal training at all (al 

Qaeda inspired). Excluding the unsolved 1996 Paris Port Royal metro bombing because of lack of information, this leaves forty-five networks. But an untrained member of the Hofstad network, Mohammed Bouyeri, carried out a successful assassination on his own. His ‘‘trained’’ colleagues, Jason Walters and Ismail Akhnikh, had 

not been aware of his plan and provided no guidance or help. Therefore, I decided 

to code Bouyeri’s assassination of Theo van Gogh as a separate network, and as alQaeda inspired. 

The results are the following: 

16 AQ Core trained networks: 

• 3 succeeded (1993 World Trade Center bombing; 9/11/01; and 7/7/05 London underground bombing) [19%] 

• 2 failed to explode (2001 Shoe bomber; 7/21/05 London underground plot) 

• 11 were detected and arrested before hand 

10 AQ Affiliate trained networks 

• 2 GIA networks succeeded (1994 AF hijack; 1995 wave of bombing in France) 

[20%] 

• 1 failed to explode (1996 Lille plot) 

• 7 were detected and arrested beforehand (including Hofstad network) 

20 AQ Inspired networks (no formal training) 

• 2 succeeded (2004 Madrid bombings & 2004 Bouyeri assassination of van 

Gogh)[10%, but only 5% if we don’t count the assassination, which requires no 

training] 

• 3 failed to explode 

• 16 were detected and arrested beforehand. 

The above results seem to indicate that formal training matters. Both al-Qaeda 

core and al-Qaeda affiliate formal training resulted in an approximate success rate 

of 20%, while lack of training led to a success rate of 10%. So, training doubles the 

probability of success in a terrorist network. However, if the assassination of Theo 

van Gogh is eliminated from the sample, the resulting rate of success of the untrained networks falls to 5%. In this case, training would quadruple the probability 

of success in a terrorist network. 

Viewing the sample as a whole obscures the degradation of the importance of 

training in the past five years. During this period, of twelve trained terrorist networks, only one succeeded in causing any casualty, the 7/7/05 London underground 

bombing. Two untrained networks out of sixteen succeeded in inflicting casualties: 

the 2004 Madrid bombing—where the bombers got access to dynamite, det-cord and 

detonators, and did not have to manufacture their explosive—and the 2004 Bouyeri 

assassination of van Gogh. 

I am sorry to have been so lengthy in the presentation of the survey, but the devil 

is in the empirical details to escape another round of hysterical rhetoric so common 

in discussion of global neo-jihadi terrorism. Now that I’ve laid down the facts, let 

me address some of the unexamined assumptions, myths and misconceptions about 

the ‘‘al Qaeda threat’’ in Afghanistan and beyond. 

21 

1. The threat to the West has unfortunately expanded beyond al-Qaeda per 

se. The various terrorists attempting to carry out operations in the West for alQaeda allies or in its name clearly outnumber al-Qaeda operations. In the past 

five years, al-Qaeda core has been responsible for only 18% of these plots. 78% 

of these plots during this period have been carried out by homegrown terrorists, 

inspired by al-Qaeda, but with no connection with any formal transnational terrorist organization—evolving into a Leaderless Jihad. This survey does not include the new al Shabaab threat to the West, which has too recently surfaced 

to be included. But it stems from Somalia and not Afghanistan. 

2. The dichotomy of the present policy options between counter-terrorism 

and counter-insurgency is a false one. The choice is not between counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, but between counter-terrorism and counter-terrorism plus counter-insurgency. No matter what happens in Afghanistan, all 

Western powers will continue to protect their homelands with a vigorous 

counter-terrorism campaign against al-Qaeda, its allies and its homegrown 

progeny. The policy option really boils down to, what is the added value of 

counter-insurgency in Afghanistan to a necessary and continuing counter-terrorism strategy worldwide? 

3. The proposed counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan is at present irrelevant to the goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating al-Qaeda, which 

is located in Pakistan. None of the plots in the West has any connection to any 

Afghan insurgent group, labeled under the umbrella name ‘‘Afghan Taliban,’’ be 

it a part of Mullah Omar’s Quetta Shura Taliban, Jalaluddin Haqqani’s 

Haqqani Network, or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami. There has not 

been any Afghan in al-Qaeda in the past twenty years because of mutual resentment between al-Qaeda foreigners and Afghan locals. In the policy debate, 

there is an insidious confusion between Afghan Taliban and transnational terrorist organizations. Afghan fighters are parochial, have local goals and fight locally. They do not travel abroad and rarely within their own country. They are 

happy to kill Westerners in Afghanistan, but they are not a threat to Western 

homelands. Foreign presence is what has traditionally unified the usually fractious Afghan rivals against a common enemy. Their strategic interest is local, 

preserving their autonomy from what they perceive as a predatory corrupt unjust central government. They do not project to the West and do not share the 

internationalist agenda of al-Qaeda or its allied transnational terrorist organizations. 

4. The second prong of the proposed counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan is the prevention of al-Qaeda’s return to Afghanistan through a military 

surge. The assumption is that the return to power by the Taliban will automatically allow al-Qaeda to reconstitute in Afghanistan, complete with training 

camps and resurgence of al-Qaeda’s ability to project to the West and threaten 

the homeland. 

a. The possibility of Afghan insurgents winning is not a sure thing. 

Twenty years ago, it took a far better armed and far more popular insurgency more than three years to take power after the complete withdrawal 

of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. Unlike 1996, when the Taliban captured 

Kabul, the label Taliban now includes a collection of local insurgencies with 

some attempts at coordination on a larger scale. The Taliban is deeply divided and there is no evidence that it is in the process of consolidating its 

forces for a push on Kabul. Local Taliban forces can prevent foreign forces 

from protecting the local population, through their time honored tactics of 

ambushes and raids. General McChrystal is right: the situation in the countryside is grim. But this local resistance does not translate into deeply divided Taliban forces being able to coalesce in the near future into an offensive force capable of marching on to Kabul. Command and control frictions 

and divergent goals hamper their planning and coordination of operations. 

They lack popular support and have not demonstrated ability to project beyond their immediate locality. 

b. Taliban return to power will not mean an automatic new sanctuary for 

al-Qaeda. First, there is no reason for al-Qaeda to return to Afghanistan. 

It seems safer in Pakistan at the moment. Indeed, al-Qaeda has so far not 

returned to Taliban controlled areas in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda’s relationship with Taliban factions has never been very smooth, despite the past 

public display of Usama bin Laden’s pledge of bayat to Mullah Omar. AlQaeda leaders seem intimately involved in the Haqqani network in North 

Waziristan, less so with Mullah Omar’s Quetta Shura, and even less with 

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s forces. Indeed, the presence of al-Qaeda in AfghanVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:26 Apr 19, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\10709.TXT MIKEB
22 

4See Mountstuart Elphinstone, 1815, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, and its Dependencies in Persia, Tartary, and India; Comprising a View of the Afghaun Nation, and a History 

of the Dooraunee Monarchy, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown; Olaf Caroe, , 

1958, The Pathans: 550 B.C.–A.D. 1957, Oxford: Oxford University Press; and Akbar Ahmed, 

2004, Resistance and Control in Pakistan: Revised Edition, London: Routledge, for sophisticated 

examples of effective governance in the Afghan tribal areas. 

istan divided Taliban leaders before their downfall. Likewise, loyalty for 

Taliban leader Mullah Omar also divided al-Qaeda leadership. This complex relationship between al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban factions opens up 

an opportunity for the U.S. Government to mobilize its political savvy based 

on a deep understanding of local history, culture and politics to prevent the 

return of a significant al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan.4

c. Even if a triumphant Taliban invites al-Qaeda to return to Afghanistan, its presence there will look very similar to its presence in the FATA. 

Times have changed. The presence of large sanctuaries in Afghanistan was 

predicated on Western not so benign neglect of the al-Qaeda funded camps 

there. This era is gone because Western powers will no longer tolerate 

them. There are many ways to prevent the return of al-Qaeda to Afghanistan besides a national counter-insurgency strategy. Vigilance through electronic monitoring, spatial surveillance, a networks of informants in contested territory, combined with the nearby stationing of a small force dedicated to physically eradicate any visible al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan 

will prevent the return of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The proper military 

mission in Afghanistan and elsewhere is sanctuary denial. 

5. Counter-terrorism is working. The escalation from a more limited and focused counter-terrorism strategy to a larger combined counter-terrorism and 

counter-insurgency strategy (in a country devoid of the al-Qaeda presence!) is 

predicated on the assumption that the terrorist threat is either stable or increasing—meaning that counter-terrorism has failed. The timeline graphs clearly show that the threat is fading, from its high water mark of 2004. There has 

been no global neo-jihadi terrorist casualty in the United States in the past 

eight years and none in the West in general in the past four years. Of course, 

al-Qaeda is not dead as long as its top leadership is still alive. This cannot be 

attributed to a loss of intent from al-Qaeda and its militant rivals. From all indications, including recent debriefs of terrorist wannabes captured in Pakistan 

and the West, the respective leaders of global neo-jihadi terrorism are still enthusiastically plotting to hit the West and do not hesitate to proclaim their desire on the Internet. Nor is this due to the counter-insurgency in Afghanistan 

because al-Qaeda and its allies all have their training facilities in Pakistan. It 

is due to effective counter-terrorism strategy, which is on the brink of completely eliminating al-Qaeda. A dead organization will not be able to return to 

Afghanistan. 

6. The reasons for the effectiveness of the counter-terrorism strategy so far 

are multiple. First and foremost is al-Qaeda’s inability to grow. Unlike the pre9/11/01 period, al-Qaeda leaders have generally not incorporated new recruits 

among its ranks. The leadership of al-Qaeda still harks back to the fight against 

the Soviets in the 1980s. Because he has been hiding full time, Osama bin 

Laden has not been able to appoint and train a new group of top leaders and 

there is no evidence that he trusts anyone whom he has not known from the 

anti-Soviet jihad. In the 1990s, al-Qaeda incorporated the brightest and most 

dedicated novices who came to train in its network of camps in Afghanistan. 

They became its cadres and trainers. In the past five years, al-Qaeda has not 

been able for the most part to incorporate new recruits among its ranks. Western novices traveling to Pakistan in the hope of making contact with al-Qaeda 

have been turned around and sent back to the West to carry out terrorist operations. Meanwhile, the success of the predator drone strike campaign on the 

Pakistani border has dramatically thinned the ranks of both al-Qaeda leaders 

and cadres. Now it appears that these strikes are also targeting al-Qaeda allies 

with a transnational agenda. 

7. Protection of Western homeland involves an effective strategy of containment of the threat in the Afghan Pakistan area until it disappears for internal 

reasons. In the past five years, al-Qaeda or its transnational allies have not 

been able to infiltrate professional terrorists into the West, as Ramzi Youself 

did in New York in 1993 or the GIA did in France in 1995. None of the plots 

during that time involved any full time professional terrorist. This is probably 

due to good cooperation among intelligence agencies around the world, good inVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:26 Apr 19, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\10709.TXT MIKEB
23 

telligence databases and increased vigilance and security at airports around the 

world. To carry out operations in the West, these global neo-jihadi terrorist organizations are completely dependent on Western volunteers coming to the Pakistani border to meet terrorist groups or on inspiring young Western terrorist 

wannabes to carry out operations on their own without any guidance or training. These organizations are stuck with the people traveling to the border area 

to meet with them, mostly through chance encounters. These travelers are relatively few in number, totaling in the dozens at most. The emerging details 

from the terrorist trials and the interrogations of the Westerners captured in 

Pakistan are quite clear on this score. Terrorist organizations can no longer 

cherry pick the best candidates as they did in the 1990s. There is no al-Qaeda 

recruitment program: al-Qaeda and its allies are totally dependent on self selected volunteers, who come to Pakistan. Global neo-jiahdi terrorism also has 

no control over the young people who wish to carry out operations in the West 

in its names. The result is a dramatic degradation of the caliber of terrorist 

wannabes, resulting in the decrease in success of terrorist operations in the 

West despite the increased number of attempts. Containing those who travel to 

Pakistan for terrorist training is a counter-terrorism problem and is much easier problem to solve than transforming an adjacent nation through a national 

counter-insurgency strategy. The West has been doing well in this strategy of 

containment with Pakistan’s active collaboration. 

8. The decrease of global neo-jihadi terrorism in the last five years is testimony to the effectiveness of international and domestic intelligence as well as 

good police work. The timeline analysis of global neo-jihadi terrorism shows 

that the major threat to Western homelands is al-Qaeda inspired homegrown 

networks. Disrupting such homegrown plots has always been a domestic 

counter-terrorism mission through domestic intelligence and law enforcement. 

Indeed, there is a strong probability that the proposed counter-insurgency military surge may result in moral outrage in young Muslims in the West, who 

would take it upon themselves to carry out terrorist operations at home in response to the surge—just as the invasion in Iraq resulted in a dramatic increase 

in terrorist operations in the West. So, far from protecting the homeland, the 

surge may actually endanger it in the short term. After going through a learning process, Western law enforcement agencies, in coordination with their foreign counterparts, have done an effective job in protecting the homeland. 

9. In conclusion, counter-terrorism works and is doing well against the global neo-jihadi terrorist threat. It consists of a combination of good domestic police 

work, good domestic intelligence, good cooperation with foreign domestic intelligence agencies, good airport security, good border control, keeping up the pressure on al-Qaeda and its transnational allies in Pakistan through arrests and 

Predator drone attacks, using political and economic skill to deny terrorist sanctuary in Pakistan, supporting the Pakistan military to dislodge foreign militants from Waziristan while sealing the border on the Afghan side, and continued sanctuary denial in Afghanistan. These are measures that will continue regardless of what is done in Afghanistan. There is definitely no necessity and 

very little value added for the counter-insurgency option, which is the most costly in terms of blood and treasure, probably the least likely to succeed and may 

even make things worse in the short run. 

10. Counter-insurgency and nation building in Afghanistan may be important 

for regional reasons and I would be honored to address these complex issues at 

another time. I am pleased to see that the committee invited my former chief, 

Milton Bearden, to testify on these issues last week. I had the privilege to serve 

under him in Islamabad, where I spent almost three years in personal contact 

with the major Afghan Mujahedin commanders fighting against the Soviet 

Union. I stand ready to comment on counter-insurgency strategy and tactics in 

Afghanistan based on my personal experiences with important Afghan insurgents. But counter-insurgency in Afghanistan has little to do with global neojihadi terrorism and protecting the homeland. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Sageman. 

Mr. Bergen? 

24 

STATEMENT OF PETER BERGEN, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW 

AND CO-DIRECTOR, COUNTERTERRORISM STRATEGY INITIATIVE, THE NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, 

D.C. 

Mr. BERGEN. Thank you very much, Senator Kerry and Senator 

Lugar and other members of the committee for this invitation to 

speak today. It really is an honor and a privilege to be here. 

I guess I am going to provide something of a threat assessment. 

First of all, the threat to the United States of a 9/11 attack is close 

to zero now. Al-Qaeda itself, if it got lucky, might be able to pull 

off something like the first Trade Center attack or maybe the Oklahoma City bombing. These would be second-order threats. They 

wouldn’t change, reorient our entire national security policy. 

But al-Qaeda is able to kill hundreds of Americans overseas still. 

If the planes plot of the summer of 2006 had succeeded, seven 

American, Canadian, and British airliners would have gone down. 

Fifteen hundred people would have been in the middle of the Atlantic. Mostly, it would have been Brits, Canadians, and Americans. 

So that is sort of a threat assessment in terms of our—the 

United States interests. What are the pressure points that are 

being put on al-Qaeda right now? al-Qaeda is slightly pressured. 

The drone attacks obviously we have heard. Half the leadership in 

the federally administered tribal areas have been killed. 

I do caution something about the drone attacks. You know, when 

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed, the violence in Iraq actually 

went up. So they are not a sufficient policy, but obviously, they are 

quite useful. 

Second, one of the biggest and most important strategic shifts 

since 9/11 is the changing view of the Pakistani public, military, 

and government. This is seismic. If you think about the center of 

gravity of this whole war, in a sense, it is for the Pakistani population. 

If they believe that it is in their interest to get rid of the Taliban, 

if they believe it is in their interest to get rid of al-Qaeda, we are 

in a very different situation. Now the operation in Swat by the 

Pakistani government against the Pakistani Taliban was very popular in Pakistan. 

Support for al-Qaeda, support for bin Laden, support for suicide 

bombing is cratering in Pakistan. It used to be 33 percent support 

in Pakistan for suicide bombings. It is now 5 percent. So this is a 

very positive development. 

This situation is also mirrored in the Muslim world in general, 

where support for suicide bombing has gone down to 12 percent in 

Indonesia from something like 30 percent, to 12 percent in Jordan 

from something like 30 percent—in country after country—because 

al-Qaeda keeps killing Muslim civilians. 

And this gets to the four strategic weaknesses that al-Qaeda has. 

It kills a lot of Muslim civilians. It doesn’t have a positive vision 

of the future. If bin Laden was here testifying, you ask him, ‘‘What 

are you trying to do?’’ 

He would say the restoration of the caliphate. 

Well, when the caliphate existed, it was the Ottoman Empire, a 

relatively rational group of people. But what bin Laden means is 

25 

Taliban-style theocracies from Indonesia to Morocco. Most Muslims 

don’t want to live in that kind of utopia. 

The third problem that these groups have is that they have made 

a world of enemies. This is never a winning strategy. You are supposed to add to your allies, not your enemies. But bin Laden and 

al-Qaeda have said they are opposed to pretty much every government in the world—Jews, Christians, Muslims who don’t precisely 

share their views, the Shia, international media, the United Nations. The list goes on and on. 

And because they won’t make the real-world political compromises that are necessary, they will not be able to turn themselves into mass political movements like Hezbollah. So they have 

major strategic problems. These are being recognized around the 

Muslim world. They are even being criticized from people who used 

to be their supporters—for instance, major religious clerics in Saudi 

Arabia, former militants who have come out publicly against them. 

So in terms of losing the war of ideas, they are certainly losing 

those. 

On the other hand, al-Qaeda’s obituary has been written many 

times, and it would be premature to be writing it during this hearing. The group has still preserved its leadership. Leadership is important. If Hitler had been killed in 1944 by von Stauffenberg, 

World War II would have ended a year earlier. 

Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri may not be in operational 

control of this movement because they can’t call people on the 

phone, but they don’t need to because they have the global communications revolution. They just release a videotape or an audiotape. 

And on those tapes are not only commanders’ intent—kill Westerners, kill Jews—but often specific instructions like, for instance, 

we are going to react to the Danish cartoon controversy. Well, 

about 3 months after bin Laden made that statement in 2008, a 

suicide attacker blew up the Danish embassy in Islamabad, and 

there are many other examples. 

Another factor in their longevity is al-Qaeda—and I have got to 

disagree with my friend and colleague Marc Sageman here a little 

bit. Al-Qaeda has influenced the Taliban ideologically and tactically 

to a very great degree. The reason that we are having an epidemic 

of suicide attacks and beheadings of hostages and IED attacks is 

because the Taliban sent people to Iraq to learn from the insurgency, and they copycatted the insurgency. 

And al-Qaeda and the Taliban today are far closer than they 

were before 9/11. The idea that if the Taliban were in power, they 

wouldn’t bring back al-Qaeda is absurd. The whole Taliban project 

has been about protecting al-Qaeda. And if international forces 

pulled out of Afghanistan or we lowered our commitment, the 

Taliban would eventually take control of parts of the country and 

could even take it over entirely not because the Taliban is so 

strong, but because the Afghan government and the Afghan military right now are so weak. 

And I have 7 seconds left, and I would just like to say then— 

because I will keep the 5-minute rule—that one of the most common myths, by the way, about Afghanistan is that Afghans are resistant to foreign forces. In poll after poll since the fall of the 

26 

Taliban, 83 percent favorable, in 2005, views of international 

forces. 

In the most recent poll, 63 percent of Afghans had a favorable 

view of the U.S. military. Can we think of a country in the world, 

other than our own, which would have this kind of view? 

So Afghans want us to perform. They want international forces. 

They have had a totalitarian invasion, a civil war, and the Taliban. 

Obama doesn’t have to be turning Afghanistan into Belgium, but 

they do want us to get it right and they do want us to stay. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bergen follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF PETER BERGEN

Senator Kerry, Senator Lugar and other members of the committee, thank you 

for the opportunity to testify today. 

My testimony will attempt to cover the following areas: al-Qaeda’s current threat 

to the United States; to American interests around the world, and to US allies; likely targets that al-Qaeda will attack over the coming years and the kinds of tactics 

the group is likely to employ in the future; the impact of US counterterrorism measures on al-Qaeda as well as other factors that have an impact on the group’s viability; the current status of al-Qaeda’s closest allies; and will conclude with some broad 

observations about American policy in Afghanistan, and how that might impact alQaeda in the future, as this is a matter of current interest to many policymakers. 

A. AL-QAEDA’S THREAT TO THE AMERICAN HOMELAND. 

Al-Qaeda’s ability to attack the United States directly is currently low. Why? 

First, the American Muslim community has rejected the al-Qaeda ideological virus. 

American Muslims have instead overwhelmingly signed up for the ‘‘American 

Dream,’’ enjoying higher incomes and educational levels than the average. Second, 

when jihadist terrorists have attacked the United States, they have arrived from 

outside the country. The 19 hijackers of 9/11, for instance, all came from elsewhere, 

while Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 Trade Center bombing, flew to 

New York from Pakistan. Today’s no-fly list and other protective measures make entering the country much more difficult. Third, measures like the establishment of 

the National Counterterrorism Center, where officials from different branches of 

government share information and act on terrorist threats have made us safer. And 

so, a catastrophic mass-casualty assault in the United States along the lines of 9/ 

11 is no longer plausible. 

But the recent case of Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-American resident of Denver 

Colorado, does raise some serious concerns about al-Qaeda’s continued ability to target the United States. Unlike many of the post-9/11 American terrorism cases, 

Zazi’s case does not appear to have been informant-driven. Zazi appears to have 

been either the leader or a foot soldier in the first genuine al-Qaeda sleeper cell discovered in the United States in the past several years. 

Zazi travelled to Pakistan in late August 2008 where by his own admission he 

received training on explosives from al-Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal regions along 

the Afghan border. On Zazi’s laptop computer the FBI discovered he had stored 

pages of handwritten notes about the manufacture and initiation of explosives and 

the components of various detonators and fusing systems, technical know-how he 

had picked up at one of al-Qaeda’s training facilities in the tribal regions sometime 

between the late summer of 2008 and January 2009, when he returned to the 

United States. 

In the Denver area over the summer of 2009 Zazi bought at least 18 bottles of 

hydrogen peroxide-based hair products and was allegedly planning to use the seemingly innocuous hair bleach to assemble deadly homemade bombs. Early last month, 

in a Denver motel room that he had rented for that purpose, Zazi laboriously mixed 

up batches of the noxious chemicals before he was arrested. 

The Zazi case is a reminder of al-Qaeda’s ability to attract recruits who are ‘‘clean 

skins’’ without previous criminal records or known terrorist associations and who 

are quite familiar with the West-Zazi’s family first arrived in the United States 

when he was fourteen. And although much of the case still remains murky, Zazi 

appears to have had associates in the U.S. who traveled with him to Pakistan and 

may have been helping him to assemble large quantities of hydrogen peroxide. And 

if the government’s allegations are correct and Zazi had managed to carry out his 

plans, he could have killed scores of Americans. 

27 

1Michael Maples, ‘‘Current and Projected National Security Threats to the United States,’’ 

Statement for the record, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, January 11, 2007. http:// 

www.dia.mil/publicaffairs. 2 Henry Chu and Sebastian Rotella, ‘‘Three Britons convicted of plot to blow up planes,’’ Los 

Angeles Times 8 September 2009 http://www.latimes.com. 

That said, today the al-Qaeda organization no longer poses a direct national security threat to the United States itself, but rather poses a second-order threat in 

which the worst case scenario would be an al-Qaeda-trained terrorist managing to 

pull off an attack on the scale of something in between the 1993 Trade Center attack, which killed six, and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, which killed 168. 

While this, of course, would be tragic, it would not constitute a mass casualty attack 

sufficiently large in scale to reorient American national security policy completely 

as the 9/11 attacks did. 

B. AL-QAEDA’S THREAT TO AMERICAN INTERESTS AND ALLIES OVERSEAS. 

The threat posed by al-Qaeda to American interests and allies overseas continues 

to be somewhat high. Despite all the pressure placed on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan 

and Pakistan since 9/11, training has continued in Pakistan’s tribal areas and is the 

common link between the terrorist group’s ‘‘successes’’ and its near-misses since 

then; for instance, the deadliest terrorist attack in British history—the four suicide 

bombings on London’s transportation system on July 7, 2005, which killed 52 commuters—was directed by al-Qaeda from the tribal regions. 

The four bombs that detonated in London on what became known as 7/7 were all 

hydrogen peroxide-based devices. This has become something of a signature of plots 

that have a connection to Pakistani training camps. Two weeks after the 7/7 attacks 

on July 21, 2005 there was a second wave of hydrogen peroxide-based bombs set 

off in London, this one organized by a cell of Somali and Eritrean men who were 

first-generation immigrants to the U.K. Luckily their bombs were ineffective. 

Hydrogen peroxide-based bombs would again be the signature of a cell of British 

Pakistanis who plotted to bring down seven passenger jets flying to the United 

States and Canada from the U.K. during the summer of 2006. The plotters distilled 

hydrogen peroxide to manufacture liquid explosives, which they assembled in an 

apartment-turned-bomb factory in East London that they had recently purchased for 

the cash equivalent of some $200,000. The case resulted in the immediate ban of 

all carry-on liquids and gels, and rules were later put in place to limit the amounts 

of these items that travelers could bring on planes. 

The ‘planes plot’ conspirators were arrested in August 2006 and in subsequent 

congressional testimony Lieutenant General Michael Maples, the head of the US 

Defense Intelligence Agency, said the plot was ‘‘directed by al-Qaeda leadership in 

Pakistan.’’ 1

During the trial of the eight men accused in the ‘planes plot’ the prosecution argued that some 1,500 passengers would have died if all seven planes had been 

brought down. The plot, which was entering its final stages in the summer of 2006, 

seemed designed to ‘‘celebrate’’ the upcoming fifth anniversary of 9/11 by once again 

targeting commercial aviation, a particular obsession of al-Qaeda. Most of the victims of the attacks would have been Americans, Britons and Canadians. 

The seriousness of the intent of the plotters can be seen in the fact that six of 

them made ‘‘martyrdom’’ videotapes recovered by British investigators. At their trial 

prosecutors played the video made by the ringleader, 25-year old Abdullah Ahmed 

Ali. Against a backdrop of a black flag adorned with flowing Arabic script and 

dressed in a Palestinian-style black-and-white checkered head scarf. Ali lectured 

into the camera, ‘‘Sheikh Osama warned you many times to leave our lands or you 

will be destroyed. Now the time has come for you to be destroyed.’’ 

Last month, Ali and two of his co-conspirators were found guilty of planning to 

blow up the transatlantic airliners. Some of the key evidence against them was 

emails they had exchanged with their handler in Pakistan Rashid Rauf, a British 

citizen who has worked closely with al-Qaeda, who ordered them ‘‘to get a move on’’ 

with their operation in an email he sent them on July 25, 2006.2 Those emails were 

intercepted by American spy agencies which led to the arrests of Ali and his cell. 

Pakistan’s tribal regions have continued to attract Westerners intent on inflicting 

jihadist mayhem against American targets, like the two Germans and a Turk residing in Germany who were planning to bomb the massive US Ramstein airbase there 

in 2007. Before their arrests, the men had obtained 1,600 pounds of industrial 

strength hydrogen peroxide, enough to make a number of large bombs. 

Today the al-Qaeda the organization continues to pose a substantial threat to US 

interests overseas and could still pull off an attack that would kill hundreds of 

Americans as was the plan during the ‘planes plot’ of 2006. No Western country is 

28 

3This section draws on Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, ‘‘The Drone War,’’ The New 

Republic, June 3, 2009. http://www.tnr.com/. 4Transcript of Director’s Remarks at the Atlantic Council, Michael Hayden, Washington, DC, 

November 13, 2008. https://www.cia.gov/news-information. 

more threatened by al-Qaeda than the United Kingdom, although a spate of arrests 

and successful prosecutions over the past four years have degraded the terrorist’s 

group’s capability in the UK. 

C. FACTORS PUTTING PRESSURE ON AL-QAEDA AND ALLIED GROUPS. 

Al-Qaeda is today facing a combination of circumstances that is putting a great 

deal of pressure on the organization, including ramped-up American drone attacks 

in the tribal regions of Pakistan where the group is headquartered; far better intelligence on militants based in those tribal areas; increasingly negative Pakistani public and governmental attitudes towards militant jihadist groups based in Pakistan; 

and similar sentiments among publics and governments around the Muslim world 

in general. 

1. Drone attacks. 

The relatively slow pace of drone attacks against al-Qaeda’s leaders quickened 

dramatically in the waning six months of the Bush administration after it had become clear that the terror group was reconstituting itself in Pakistan’s Federally 

Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).3

Since the summer of 2008 U.S. drones have killed scores of lower-ranking militants and at least a dozen mid-and upper-level leaders within al-Qaeda or the 

Taliban in FATA. One of them was Abu Laith Al Libi, who orchestrated a 2007 suicide attack targeting Vice President Dick Cheney while he was visiting Bagram air 

base in Afghanistan. Al Libi was then described as the number-three man in the 

al-Qaeda hierarchy, perhaps the most dangerous job in the world, given that the 

half-dozen or so men who have occupied that position have ended up dead or in prison. 

Other leading militants killed in the drone strikes include Abu Sulayman Al 

Jazairi, an Algerian jihadist; Abu Khabab al Masri, a WMD expert; Abdul Rehman, 

a Taliban commander in South Waziristan; Abu Haris, al-Qaeda’s chief in Pakistan; 

Khalid Habib, Abu Zubair Al Masri, and Abdullah Azzam Al Saudi, all of whom 

were senior members of al-Qaeda; Abu Jihad Al Masri, al-Qaeda’s propaganda chief; 

and Tahir Yuldashev, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an insurgent group with long ties to al-Qaeda. 

One consistent target of the drone attacks has been the South Waziristan stronghold of Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. American and Pakistani officials identify Mehsud as the mastermind of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination 

in December 2007. He was killed in a drone strike in early August. 

None of the strikes has targeted Osama bin Laden, who seems to have vanished 

like a wraith. 

Officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations have been leery of discussing the highly classified drone program on the record, but a window into their 

thinking was provided by the remarks of then-CIA director Michael Hayden on November 13, 2008, as the drone program was in full swing. ‘‘By making a safe haven 

feel less safe, we keep al-Qaeda guessing. We make them doubt their allies; question 

their methods, their plans, even their priorities,’’ he explained. Hayden went on to 

say that the key outcome of the drone attacks was that ‘‘we force them to spend 

more time and resources on self-preservation, and that distracts them, at least partially and at least for a time, from laying the groundwork for the next attack.’’ 4

This strategy seems to have worked, at least in terms of limiting the ability of 

al-Qaeda and other FATA-based militant groups to plan or carry out attacks in the 

West. Since the summer of 2008 when the drone program was ramped up, law enforcement authorities have uncovered only one plot against American targets traceable back to Pakistan’s tribal regions (the Zazi case mentioned above). 

President Obama has not only continued the ramped-up drone program he inherited from President Bush, he has ratcheted it up further. In 2007, there were three 

drone strikes in Pakistan; in 2008, there were 34; and, by the date of this hearing 

in early October 2009, the Obama administration has already authorized 39. 

Two officials familiar with the drone program point out that the number of ‘‘spies’’ 

al-Qaeda and the Taliban have killed has risen dramatically in the past year, suggesting that the militants are turning on themselves in an effort to root out the 

sources of the often pinpoint intelligence that has led to what those officials describe 

as the deaths of half of the top militant leaders in the FATA. This death rate also 

29 

5 International Republic Institute, Survey of Pakistan Public Opinion, October 1, 2009. http:// 

www.iri.org. 6 Juliana Menasce Horowitz, ‘‘Declining Support for bin Laden and Suicide Bombing, ‘‘Pew 

Global Attitudes Project, September 10, 2009. http://pewresearch.org. 7 Ismail Khan, ‘‘Good Riddance, Killer Baitullah,’’ Dawn 8 August 2009 http://www.dawn.com. 

demonstrates that American intelligence operations have dramatically improved in 

FATA. 

One way of measuring the pain that the drone program has inflicted on al-Qaeda 

is the number of audio-and videotapes that the terrorist group has released through 

its propaganda arm, As-Sahab (‘‘the clouds’’ in Arabic). Al-Qaeda takes its propaganda operations seriously; bin Laden has observed that 90 percent of his battle is 

waged in the media, and Zawahiri has made similar comments. In 2007, As-Sahab 

had a banner year, releasing almost 100 tapes. But the number of releases dropped 

by half in 2008, indicating that the group’s leaders were more concerned with survival than public relations. However, since the beginning of 2009, al-Qaeda is on 

track to produce a record number of tapes, suggesting that its media arm has moved 

from the FATA deeper into Pakistan, likely to cities such as Peshawar. 

There are three important caveats about the success of the drone operations: 

First, the Afghan-American Najibullah Zazi was still able to receive training on explosives from al-Qaeda in the tribal regions of Pakistan during the fall of 2009 after 

the drone program had been dramatically ramped up there. Second, militant organizations like al-Qaeda are not like an organized crime family, which can be put out 

of business if most or all of the members of the family are captured or killed. AlQaeda has sustained and can continue to sustain enormous blows that would put 

other organizations out of business because the members of the group firmly believe 

that they are doing God’s work and tactical setbacks do not matter in the short run. 

Third, it is highly unlikely that the drone program will be expanded from FATA into 

other non-tribal regions of Pakistan because of intense Pakistani opposition to such 

a move. Understanding that fact, some militants have undoubtedly moved out of 

FATA and into safer parts of Pakistan. 

2. Increasingly negative Pakistani attitudes toward the militants based on their territory. 

If there is a silver lining to the militant atrocities that have plagued Pakistan in 

the past several years it is the fact that the Pakistani public, government and military are increasingly seeing the jihadist militants on their territory in a hostile 

light. The Taliban’s assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the country’s most popular politician; al-Qaeda’s bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad; the attack on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore; the widely circulated video images of the 

Taliban flogging a 17-year-old girl; a cell phone video recording of militants executing a couple for supposed adultery—each of these has provoked real revulsion 

among the Pakistani public, which is, in the main, utterly opposed to the militants. 

In fact, historians will likely record the Taliban’s decision to move earlier this 

year from the Swat Valley into Buner District, only 60 miles from Islamabad, as 

the tipping point that finally galvanized the sclerotic Pakistani state to confront the 

fact that the jihadist monster it had helped to spawn was now trying to swallow 

its creator. 

The subsequent military operation to evict the Taliban from Buner and Swat was 

not seen by the Pakistani public as the army acting on behalf of the United States 

as was often the case in previous such operations, but something that was in their 

own national interest. Support for Pakistani army operations against the Taliban 

in Swat increased from 28% two years ago to 69% today.5

In fact, arguably not since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 have American strategic interests and Pakistani strategic interests so closely aligned. This 

month it looks virtually certain that the Pakistani military will launch an operation 

into Waziristan in FATA against the militants based there. That comes on the heels 

of an aggressive American drone campaign in the Waziristan region that Pakistani 

leaders have privately encouraged. 

Support for suicide bombing has dropped from 33% to 5% in Pakistan over the 

past several years and the number of Pakistanis who feel that the Taliban and alQaeda operating in Pakistan are a ‘serious problem’’ has risen from 57% to 86% 

since 2007.6 When Baitullah Meshud—the Taliban leader who had unleashed his 

suicide bombers across Pakistan in the past two years—was killed two months ago 

in a US drone strike, the tone of the Pakistani media coverage was celebratory. 

‘‘Good Riddance, Killer Baitullah’’ was the lead headline in the quality Dawn newspaper.7

30 

8 Horowitz op. cit. http://pewresearch.org. 

9Quoted in Turki Al-Saheil, ‘‘Reaction to Salman Al Ouda’s Bin Laden Letter,’’ Asharq alAwsat, September 18, 2007. http://www.aawsat.com. 

The changing attitudes of the Pakistani public, military and government constitutes arguably the most significant strategic shift against al-Qaeda and its allies 

in the past several years as it will have a direct impact on the terrorist organization 

and allied groups that are headquartered in Pakistan. However, changing attitudes 

in Pakistan do not mean, for the moment, that the Pakistani military will do much 

to move against the Taliban groups on their territory that are attacking US and 

other NATO forces in Afghanistan such as Mullah Omar’s Quetta shura, the 

Haqqani network and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezbi-Islami. 

3. Increasingly hostile attitudes towards al-Qaeda in the Muslim world in general. 

Hostility to militant jihadist groups is growing sharply in much of the Muslim 

world today. This is because most of the victims of these groups are Muslim civilians. This has created a dawning recognition among Muslims that the ideological 

virus that unleashed September 11 and the terrorist attacks in London and Madrid 

is the same virus now wreaking havoc in the Muslim world in countries like Pakistan and Iraq. It is human nature to be concerned mostly with threats that directly 

affect one’s own interests and so as jihadi terrorists started to target the governments and civilians of Muslim countries this led to a hardening of attitudes against 

them. Until the terrorist attacks of May 2003 in Riyadh, for instance, the Saudi government was largely in denial about its large scale al-Qaeda problem. There have 

been some twenty terrorist attacks since then in the Kingdom and as a result the 

Saudi government has taken aggressive steps—arresting thousands of suspected terrorists, killing more than a hundred, implementing an expansive public information 

campaign against them, and arresting preachers deemed to be encouraging militancy. 

A similar process has happened in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the 

world, where Jemaah Islamiyah, the al-Qaeda affiliate there, is more or less out of 

business; its leaders in jail or dead, and its popular legitimacy close to zero. Polling 

around the Muslim world shows also sharp drops in support for Osama bin Laden 

personally and for suicide bombings in general. Support for suicide bombings has 

dropped in Indonesia, for instance, from 26% to 13% in the past seven years and 

in Jordan from 43% to 12%.8

4. Jihadist ideologues and erstwhile militant allies have now also turned against alQaeda. 

It’s not just Muslim publics who have turned against al-Qaeda; it is also some of 

the religious scholars and militants whom the organization has relied upon in the 

past for various kinds of support. Around the sixth anniversary of September 11, 

Sheikh Salman Al Oudah, a leading Saudi religious scholar, addressed al-Qaeda’s 

leader on MBC, a widely watched Middle East TV network: ‘‘My brother Osama, 

how much blood has been spilt? How many innocent people, children, elderly, and 

women have been killed ... in the name of al-Qaeda? Will you be happy to meet God 

Almighty carrying the burden of these hundreds of thousands or millions [of victims] on your back?’’ 9

What was noteworthy about Al Oudah’s statement was that it was not simply a 

condemnation of terrorism, or even of September 11, but that it was a personal rebuke, which clerics in the Muslim world have shied away from. Al Oudah’s rebuke 

was also significant because he is considered one of the fathers of the Sahwa, the 

fundamentalist awakening movement that swept through Saudi Arabia in the 

1980s. His sermons against the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia following 

Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait helped turn bin Laden against the 

United States. And bin Laden told CNN in 1997 that Al Oudah’s 1994 imprisonment by the Saudi regime was one of the reasons he was calling for attacks on U.S. 

targets. Al Oudah is also one of 26 Saudi clerics who, in 2004, handed down a religious ruling urging Iraqis to fight the U.S. occupation of their country. He is, in 

short, not someone al-Qaeda can paint as either an American sympathizer or a tool 

of the Saudi government. 

More doubt about al-Qaeda was planted in the Muslim world when Sayyid Imam 

Al Sharif, the ideological godfather of al-Qaeda who is also known as Dr. Fadl, sensationally withdrew his support in a book written last year from his prison cell in 

Cairo. Dr Fadl ruled that al-Qaeda’s bombings in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere were illegitimate and that terrorism against civilians in Western countries 

was wrong. He also took on al-Qaeda’s leaders directly in an interview with Al 

Hayat newspaper describing ‘‘bin Laden and other leaders of al-Qaeda as ‘‘extremely 

31 

10This section draws on The New Republic piece by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, ‘‘The 

Unraveling,’’June 11, 2008, http://www.newamerica.net. 

immoral.I have spoken about this in order to warn the youth against them, youth 

who are seduced by them, and don’t know them.’’ 10

And leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was once loosely aligned 

with al-Qaeda, have this past summer officially turned against the terrorist group 

issuing statements against al-Qaeda from their prison cells in Libya and their offices in London. This is the first time that an affiliate has withdrawn its support 

from al-Qaeda. 

5. Al-Qaeda’s four key strategic problems. 

Encoded in the DNA of apocalyptic jihadist groups like al-Qaeda are the seeds of 

their own long-term destruction: Their victims are often Muslim civilians; they don’t 

offer a positive vision of the future (but rather the prospect of Taliban-style regimes 

from Morocco to Indonesia); they keep expanding their list of enemies, including any 

Muslim who doesn’t precisely share their world view; and they seem incapable of 

becoming politically successful movements because their ideology prevents them 

from making the real-world compromises that would allow them to engage in genuine politics. 

a. Al-Qaeda keeps killing Muslims civilians. 

This is a double whammy for al-Qaeda as the Koran forbids killing civilians and 

fellow Muslims. 

b. Al-Qaeda has not created a genuine mass political movement. 

While bin Laden enjoys some personal popularity in the Muslim world that does 

not translate into mass support for al-Qaeda in the manner that Hezbollah enjoys 

such support in Lebanon. That is not surprising—there are no al-Qaeda social welfare services, schools, hospitals or clinics. 

c. Al-Qaeda’s leaders have constantly expanded their list of enemies. 

Al-Qaeda has said at various times that it is opposed to all Middle Eastern regimes; Muslims who don’t share their views; the Shia; most Western countries; Jews 

and Christians; the governments of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Russia; most 

news organizations; the United Nations; and international NGOs. It’s very hard to 

think of a category of person, institution, or government that al-Qaeda does not oppose. Making a world of enemies is never a winning strategy. 

d. Al-Qaeda has no positive vision. 

We know what bin Laden is against, but what’s he really for? If you asked him, 

he would say the restoration of the caliphate. In practice that means Taliban-style 

theocracies stretching from Indonesia to Morocco. A silent majority of Muslims don’t 

want that. 

Al-Qaeda is, in short, losing the war of ideas in the Islamic world, although as 

Bruce Hoffman has pointed out, even terrorist groups with little popular support or 

legitimacy such as the Baader-Meinhof gang in 1970s Germany can continue to 

carry out frequent terror attacks. 

FACTORS THAT CONTINUE TO WEIGH IN AL-QAEDA’S FAVOR

1. Preservation of the group’s leadership. 

The two top leaders of the organization, bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al 

Zawahiri, are still at liberty. Why does this matter? First, there is the matter of 

justice for the almost 3,000 people who died in the September 11 attacks and for 

the thousands of other victims of al-Qaeda’s attacks around the world. Second, every 

day that bin Laden remains at liberty is a propaganda victory for al-Qaeda. Third, 

although bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al Zawahiri aren’t managing al-Qaeda’s 

operations on a daily basis, they guide the overall direction of the jihadist movement 

around the world, even while they are in hiding through videotapes and audiotapes 

that they continue to release on a regular basis. 

Those messages from al-Qaeda’s leaders have reached untold millions worldwide 

via television, the Internet and newspapers. The tapes have not only instructed alQaeda’s followers to continue to kill Westerners and Jews, but some also carried 

specific instructions that militant cells then acted on. In March 2008, for instance, 

bin Laden denounced the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a 

Danish newspaper as a ‘‘catastrophe’’ for which punishment would soon be meted 

out. Three months later, an al-Qaeda suicide attacker bombed the Danish Embassy 

in Islamabad, killing six. 

32 

11 BBC News, ‘‘Afghanistan: Taleban second coming,’’ June 2, 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk 12 Carlotta Gall, ‘‘A mile from Cheney, Afghan bomber kills at least 23,’’ The New York Times 

28 February 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/world/asia/28cheney.html; Alisa Tang, 

‘‘Libyan blamed for bomb at Cheney visit,’’ 3 May 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com. 13 Anne Stenersen,’’Are the Afghan Taliban involved in international terrorism?’’ CTC Sentinel, September 2009, http://www.ctc.usma.edu. 14 Andrew Kramer, ‘‘Iraqi military extends control in northern city,’’ 1 June 2008 http:// 

query.nytimes.com. 15 Bill Roggio, ‘‘Al Qaeda in Iraq under pressure in Balad, Anbar,’’ Long War Journal, Februar 

10, 2008. http://www.longwarjournal.org. 

2. Al-Qaeda’s ideological influence on other jihadist groups is on the rise in South 

Asia. 

This influence has been particularly marked on the Taliban on both sides of the 

Afghan/Pakistan border. The Taliban were a quite provincial group when they ran 

Afghanistan before 9/11 and many of their leaders opposed bin Laden’s presence in 

their country on the grounds that he was interfering with their quest for recognition 

by the international community. But since the 9/11 attacks the leadership of the 

Taliban has adopted al-Qaeda’s worldview and see themselves as part of a supposedly global jihadist movement. They have also imported wholesale al-Qaeda’s 

tactics of planting roadside bombs and ordering suicide attacks and beheadings of 

hostages, which until recently were largely unknown in Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

These tactics are a key reason why the Taliban insurgencies have become far more 

effective on both sides of the Durand line in the past three years. 

One of the key leaders of the Afghan Taliban as it surged in strength in 2006 

was Mullah Dadullah, a thuggish but effective commander who like his counterpart 

in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, thrived on killing Shia, beheading his hostages, and 

media celebrity. In interviews with al Jazeera and CBS Dadullah conceded what 

was obvious as the violence dramatically expanded in Afghanistan: that the Taliban 

had increasingly morphed together tactically and ideologically with al-Qaeda. He 

said, ‘‘Osama bin Laden, thank God, is alive and in good health. We are in contact 

with his top aides and sharing plans and operations with each other.’’ 11 Mullah 

Dadullah explained that bin Laden himself had supervised the suicide operation targeting Vice President Dick Cheney in Bagram Air Force base during his visit to Afghanistan on February 27, 2007, an attack that killed nearly two dozen, including 

an American soldier. The US military dismissed that claim but said that another 

al-Qaeda leader Abu Laith al Libi was behind the operation, which seemed more 

of a confirmation than a denial of al-Qaeda’s role in the attack.12

And in 2008 for the first time the Taliban began planning seriously to attack targets in the West. According to Spanish prosecutors, the late leader of the Pakistani 

Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud dispatched a team of would-be suicide bombers to Barcelona in January 2008. Pakistani Taliban spokesman Maulvi Omar confirmed this 

in August in a videotaped interview in which he said that those suicide bombers 

‘‘were under pledge to Baitullah Mehsud’’ and were sent because of the Spanish 

military presence in Afghanistan.13

And the Mumbai attacks of 2008 show that al-Qaeda’s ideas about attacking 

Western and Jewish targets have also spread to Kashmiris militant groups like 

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), that had previously focused only on Indian targets. On November 28, 2008 LeT burst on to the international stage with its multiple attacks 

in Mumbai on two five star hotels housing Westerners, a Jewish center and a train 

station. The attacks showed that LeT had learned from the al-Qaeda playbook of 

multiple simultaneous attacks on symbolic Western and Jewish targets. 

3. Al-Qaeda’s affiliates in the Middle East and Africa are proving resilient. 

In 2008 there was a sense that al-Qaeda in Iraq was on the verge of defeat. The 

American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker said last May, ‘‘You are not going to 

hear me say that al-Qaeda is defeated, but they’ve never been closer to defeat than 

they are now.’’ 14 Certainly al-Qaeda in Iraq has lost the ability to control large 

swaths of the country and a good chunk of the Sunni population as it did in 2006, 

but the group has proven surprisingly resilient as demonstrated by the fact that 

American officials say that it pulled off the bombings in central Baghdad on August 

19 that destroyed two Iraqi ministry buildings and killed more than one hundred. 

And al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) could regain a role in Iraq despite its much weakened 

state today. There are some signs that AQI is trying to learn from its mistake of 

imposing Taliban-style social policies on the Iraqi population. One of AQI’s leaders 

in January 2008 issued a directive to his flock, ‘‘Do not interfere in social issues 

such as head covering.and other social affairs which are against our religion until 

further notice.’’ 15 AQI could also play the nationalist card quite effectively in the 

north, especially over the disputed city of Kirkuk, which is claimed by both Iraq’s 

33 

16Peter Bergen, ‘‘Saudi investigation: Would-be assassin hid bomb in underwear,’’ CNN.com, 

September 30 ,2009. http://www.cnn.com. 

Arabs and Kurd, after all, despite its largely foreign leadership, AQI is made up of 

mostly Iraqis. Also Iraqi officials believe that AQI is entering into new marriages 

of convenience with Sunni nationalist groups that only two years ago it was at war 

with. 

Similarly al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has taken a punishing beating from the Saudi government in the past several years, remains capable of pulling 

off significant attacks. The group almost succeeded in killing Saudi Arabia’s leading 

counterterrorism official Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in August. A Saudi government official characterized it as a ‘‘miracle’’ that the al-Qaeda assassin, who had secreted a bomb in his underwear, did not manage to kill the prince.16 And in neighboring Yemen the group has found something of a safe haven taking advantage of 

the weak government control of that country. 

In Africa, the Somali Islamist insurgent group Al Shabbab pledged allegiance to 

bin Laden last month and has recruited dozens of Somali-American and other Muslims from the United States, including two Americans who have conducted suicide 

operations there, the first US citizens to undertake suicide missions anywhere. And 

the North African group al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has in the past 

two years since it announced its alliance with al-Qaeda conducted a wide range of 

operations including bombing the United Nations building in Algiers, murdering 

French tourists and attacking the Israeli embassy in Mauritania, and in May executing a British citizen in Mali who the group had kidnapped earlier in the year. 

FUTURE AL-QAEDA TARGETING AND TACTICS

1. Commercial aviation 

From the so-called shoe bomber Richard Reid to the 9/11 attacks to the ’planes 

plot’ of 2006 attacking commercial aviation continues to preoccupy al-Qaeda and its 

allies. In 2007 two British doctors who are reported to have had links to al-Qaeda 

in Iraq attempted to crashed a SUV they had set on fire into an entrance at Glasgow airport. And in 2002 an al-Qaeda affiliate in Kenya almost succeeded in bringing down an Israeli passenger jet with a surface to air missile. And in 2003 a plane 

belonging to the DHL courier service was struck by a surface to air missile as it 

took off from Baghdad airport. The same year militants cased Riyadh airport and 

were planning to attack British Airways flights flying into Saudi Arabia. Bringing 

down a commercial jet with a missile and attacking an airport will remain important goals for al-Qaeda, goals that could well be realized in coming years. 

2. Western economic targets, particularly hotels 

Since the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups have increasingly attacked economic and business targets. The shift in tactics is in part a response to 

the fact that the traditional pre-9/11 targets, such as American embassies, war 

ships, and military bases, are now better defended, while so-called ’soft’ economic 

targets are both ubiquitous and easier to hit. 

Al-Qaeda and its affiliated terrorist groups are also increasingly targeting companies that have distinctive Western brand names. In 2003, suicide attackers bombed 

the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta and attacked it again this year. They also attacked the Ritz Carlton hotel in the Indonesian capital. Similarly a Marriott was 

bombed in Islamabad Pakistan in 2008. In 2002 a group of a dozen French defense 

contractors were killed as they left a Sheraton hotel in Karachi, Pakistan, which 

was heavily damaged. In October 2004 in Taba, Egyptian jihadists attacked a Hilton 

Hotel. In Amman, Jordan in November 2005, al-Qaeda in Iraq attacked three hotels 

with well known American brand names—the Grand Hyatt, Radisson and Days Inn. 

3. Attacking Israeli/Jewish targets 

Attacking Jewish and Israeli targets is an al-Qaeda strategy that has only 

emerged strongly post-9/11. Despite bin Laden’s declaration in February 1998 that 

he was creating the ‘‘World Islamic Front against the Crusaders and the Jews,’’ alQaeda only started attacking Israeli or Jewish targets in early 2002. Since then, alQaeda and its affiliated groups have directed a campaign against Israeli and Jewish 

targets, killing journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi, bombing synagogues and Jewish 

centers in Tunisia, Morocco and Turkey, and attacking an Israeli-owned hotel in 

Mombasa, Kenya, which killed thirteen. As mentioned above, one of al-Qaeda’s 

North African affiliates attacked the Israeli embassy in Mauritania in 2008. 

34 

17 BBC/ABC polling, February 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk. 

4. American suicide bombers? 

The news that two American citizens have engaged in suicide operations in Somalia raises the possibility that such operations could also start taking place in the 

United States itself. To discount this possibility would be to ignore the lessons of 

the British experience. On April 30, 2003, two Britons of Pakistani descent walked 

into Mike’s Place, a jazz club near the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, the Israeli 

capital. Once inside one of the men succeeded in detonating a bomb, killing himself 

and three bystanders, while the other man fled the scene. Similarly, Birminghamborn Mohammed Bilal blew himself up outside an army barracks in Indian-held 

Kashmir in December 2000, killing six Indian soldiers and three Kashmiri students, 

becoming the first British suicide bomber. 

Despite these suicide attacks the British security services had concluded after 9/ 

11 that suicide bombings by British citizens would not be much of a domestic concern in the U.K. itself. Then came the four suicide attackers in London on July 7 

2005, which ended that complacent attitude. 

AMERICAN POLICY IN AFGHANISTAN AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR AL-QAEDA

Why is the Afghan-Pakistan safe haven so important to al-Qaeda? The answer lies 

in its own history. Al-Qaeda was founded in Pakistan in 1988 by bin Laden and 

some one dozen other militants who had cut their teeth in the anti-Soviet jihad in 

Afghanistan. And bin Laden and Zawahiri have spent most of their adult lives in 

Afghanistan and Pakistan arriving in the region for the first time respectively in 

the early- and mid-1980s, so it’s an area they are deeply familiar with. In recent 

years Zawahiri has even married into a local tribe. And al-Qaeda’s leaders have had 

close relations going back to the mid-1980s with key Taliban leaders based along 

the Afghan-Pakistan border such as the Haqqani family and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. 

If the Taliban did come back to power in Afghanistan, of course they would give 

safe haven to al-Qaeda. Despite all the pressures military and otherwise exerted on 

them over the past decade, giving safe haven to al-Qaeda has been at the heart of 

the Taliban project; first in the five years before 9/11 when they ran Afghanistan, 

and since then in the areas of Pakistan’s tribal regions that they now control. 

Taliban leader Mullah Omar was prepared to lose everything on the point of principle that he would not give up Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks. And he 

did lose everything: after 9/11, the Taliban were swiftly removed from power by U.S. 

forces. This does not suggest a talent for realpolitik. Foreign policy ‘‘realists’’ often 

take the view that everyone else is also a realistic and rational as they are, but history does not provide much comfort in this matter. 

In a speech in August, President Obama laid out the rationale for stepping up 

the fight in Afghanistan: ‘‘If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an 

even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So 

this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.’’ Obama’s ‘‘Af-Pak’’ plan is, in essence, a counter-sanctuary strategy that denies 

safe havens to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, with the overriding goal of making America and its allies safer. 

This is a sound policy. If U.S. forces were not in Afghanistan, the Taliban, with 

its al-Qaeda allies in tow, would seize control of the country’s south and east and 

might even take it over entirely. A senior Afghan politician told me that the Taliban 

would be in Kabul within 24 hours without the presence of international forces. This 

is not because the Taliban is so strong; generous estimates suggest it numbers no 

more than 20,000 fighters. It is because the Afghan government and the 90,000-man 

Afghan army are still so weak. 

The objections to an increased U.S. military commitment in South Asia rest on 

a number of flawed assumptions. The first is that Afghans always treat foreign 

forces as antibodies. In fact, poll after poll since the fall of the Taliban has found 

that a majority of Afghans have a favorable view of the international forces in their 

country. A BBC/ABC News poll conducted this year, for instance, showed that 63% 

of Afghans have a favorable view of the U.S. military.17 To those who say you can’t 

trust polls taken in Afghanistan, it’s worth noting that the same type of poll consistently finds neighboring Pakistan to be one of the most anti-American countries in 

the world. 

Another common criticism is that Afghanistan is a cobbled-together agglomeration 

of warring tribes and ethnic factions that is not amenable to anything approaching 

nation-building. In fact, the first Afghan state emerged with the Durrani Empire in 

1747, making it a nation older than the U.S. Afghans lack no sense of nationhood; 

rather, they have always been ruled by a weak central state. 

35 

18 U.S. Department of Justice, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov; ‘‘Afghanistan: Annual report on protection of civilians in armed conflict, 2008,’’ United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, 

Jabuary 2009. http://www.reliefweb.int. 19This section draws on Peter Bergen’s piece in TIME magazine, ‘‘Give it time,’’ October 5, 

2009. http://www.time.com. 

A third critique is that Afghanistan is simply too violent for anything constituting 

success to happen there. This is highly misleading. While violence is on the rise, 

it is nothing on the scale of what occurred during the Iraq war—or even what happened in U.S. cities as recently as 1991, when an American was statistically more 

likely to be killed than an Afghan civilian is to die in the war.18 Finally, critics of 

greater U.S. involvement suggest that there is no realistic model for a successful 

end state in Afghanistan. In fact, there is a good one relatively close at hand: Afghanistan as it was in the 1970s, a country at peace internally and with its neighbors, whose towering mountains and exotic peoples drew tourists from around the 

world. 

These flawed assumptions underlie the misguided argument that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. Some voices have begun to advocate a much smaller mission in Afghanistan, fewer troops and a decapitation strategy aimed at militant 

leaders carried out by special forces and drone attacks. Superficially, this sounds 

reasonable. But it has a back-to-the-future flavor because it is more or less the exact 

same policy that the Bush Administration followed in the first years of the occupation: a light footprint of several thousand U.S. soldiers who were confined to 

counterterrorism missions. That approach helped foster the resurgence of the 

Taliban, which continues to receive material support from elements in Pakistan. If 

a pared-down counterterrorism strategy works no better the second time around, 

will the United States have to invade Afghanistan all over again in the event of a 

spectacular Taliban comeback? 

Having overthrown the ruling government in 2001, the U.S. has an obligation to 

leave to Afghans a country that is somewhat stable. And a stabilized Afghanistan 

is a necessary precondition for a peaceful South Asia, which is today the epicenter 

of global terrorism and the most likely setting of a nuclear war. Obamas ‘Af-Pak’ 

plan has a real chance to achieve a stable Afghanistan if it is given some time to 

work.19

The CHAIRMAN. Well, very provocative by all of you, very 

thoughtful, and there is a lot of experience at this table. Mr. Bergen, you have written extensively on it, and others of you have 

been on the ground and understand this. 

So help us dig into this now. 

Mr. Bergen, you and Mr. Grenier have both sort of made some 

conclusions about the Taliban. This is pretty essential to the judgments that we are trying to make here because the underlying assumptions are—I mean, if the Taliban are X or Y or al-Qaeda is 

X or Y, maybe we have to do something, but if they are not, maybe 

we don’t. And so, we want to try to understand that. 

Mr. Grenier, you have made a couple of statements here about 

al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Now the President‘‘ strategy is to disrupt, 

dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. That is sort of the 

first part of the strategy. Is it a fair judgment to say that that has 

happened, that has been accomplished? 

Mr. GRENIER. Mr. Chairman, I don’t think that it has been accomplished in a sustainable way. Yes, they— 

The CHAIRMAN. I want to get to that. Is it you said in your testimony al-Qaeda is not really in Afghanistan. 

Mr. GRENIER. That is right. 

The CHAIRMAN. So in terms of in Afghanistan, they have been 

disrupted and dismantled and defeated. They are not in Afghanistan. Correct? 

Mr. GRENIER. That is true. 

The CHAIRMAN. They are an influence maybe there, but they are 

not there? 

36 

Mr. GRENIER. That is substantially true. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bergen, do you agree with that? 

Mr. BERGEN. al-Qaeda is a force multiplier. It is like having U.S. 

special forces. So even General Jones, the national security adviser, 

said there were 100 members of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan right 

now. Those are the people who are helping with the IEDs. Those 

are the people helping with the training. Those are the people with 

the experience. 

So while the number may be small, and al-Qaeda has always 

been a small organization, just fixating on the numbers isn’t very 

helpful because it is about their influence ideologically and 

tactically that is important. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, let us pursue that. From a larger strategic 

interest of the United States or how do we protect the interests of 

the United States, the larger piece goes to the next step, isn’t it, 

Mr. Grenier, which is you don’t want them coming back to have a 

sanctuary where they can plot at will against the United States? 

I mean, that, it seems to me, is sort of the next tier. He also said 

in his strategy to prevent their return to either country. So to 

what—I mean, some people are alleging that the Taliban of today 

will not behave in the same way because we—as you said in your 

testimony, when the Soviets left, we departed the playing field. 

We actually assisted in the transfer of Osama bin Laden from 

Sudan to Afghanistan, and he was kind of given free rein. Here is 

the country, and the Taliban took over and took it down into the 

chaos. There was chaos, and they sort of took over. But we didn’t 

play. We weren’t there at all. Is that fair? 

Mr. GRENIER. We certainly didn’t have a presence on the ground 

in Afghanistan, and we certainly had no effective means of countering al-Qaeda or bin Laden or, for that matter, by extension, the 

Taliban from Pakistan. We would have required a certain amount 

of cooperation from the Pakistanis to do that, and we didn’t have 

it. 

The CHAIRMAN. So today, as we think about the threat, is it your 

judgment that we do need to think about the legitimacy of a new 

union with the Taliban that winds up again threatening the United 

States, and therefore, we have to think about the Taliban as central to any considerations we have? 

Mr. GRENIER. Yes. Obviously, to us, whether al-Qaeda has safe 

haven on the Afghan side of the border or the Pakistani side of the 

border is almost a matter of indifference. We don’t want them to 

have safe haven for all the reasons that we can describe. 

With regard to their ability, al-Qaeda’s ability to establish an effective safe haven for itself within Afghanistan, that very much relies—certainly with the current configuration of forces in Afghanistan, that very much relies on their relationship with the Taliban 

and on the future intentions of the Taliban. 

So I think you are absolutely right, Mr. Chairman. That is a critical question. You have got to get that one right. 

The CHAIRMAN. And help us to do that. I mean, you had a rather 

fascinating, amazing experience as a station chief in Islamabad, 

and it was your decisions, many of them, that resulted in—and advice that helped 300 operatives and the Northern Alliance to topple 

the Taliban very easily. 

37 

Share with us sort of your judgment of what could flow now if 

you, let us say—I mean, the President made it pretty clear yesterday he is not planning to draw down on the current numbers right 

now, and also that there is no discussion—as many of us have said 

for some time, there has been no discussion of just pulling up 

stakes. We all understand there is an interest here. 

So is there, in your judgment, a more effective way to be able to 

prevent the Taliban from gaining a stronger foothold, from preventing al-Qaeda from creating a relationship that threatens us, 

but engaging in less kinetic kind of activity? I mean, do you see a 

different equation here? 

Mr. GRENIER. Mr. Chairman, you just made reference to some of 

the decisions that we made immediately after 9/11 as we considered how we were going to move the campaign forward. And it 

seemed to me very strongly at the time and, in fact, it became one 

of the touchstones of our effort that we couldn’t go in on our own. 

It was simply not a matter of U.S. forces invading Afghanistan. 

That we had to be in a situation where we were helping Afghans 

to be instruments of their own liberation from the Taliban. 

In the case of the Northern Alliance, well, that was easy. They 

were already engaged in a civil war with the Taliban. We knew 

that we had allies there. In the south, it was far more problematic, 

and we had a pretty good picture about the situation in southern 

and eastern Pashtun-dominated Afghanistan before 9/11. It got a 

lot better in the days and weeks immediately afterwards. 

But essentially, you had a great deal of discontent with the 

Taliban and really no real support for al-Qaeda. The question was 

finding Afghans who were brave enough to take the lead, who 

could marshal tribal forces that we could then support to topple the 

Taliban in the south as the Northern Alliance was doing in the 

north and up to Kabul. 

There were only two Pashtun warlords, if you will, who were 

willing under those circumstances to take that up. One of them 

was Hamid Karzai, currently president of the country. And the 

other one was a traditional tribal leader, his family had traditionally been the governors of Kandahar, by the name of Gul Agha 

Sherzai. 

And they went in. They rallied their tribal followers. And then, 

as you have pointed out, we sent in very amazingly small numbers 

of special forces operatives to work with them, and through them 

and bringing U.S. air power to bear, we were able to drive the 

Taliban out. 

Now I hasten to add that the Taliban, in terms of its tactics, was 

far less sophisticated then than it is now. They were almost laughably unsophisticated then. They have learned a great deal since. 

But it seems to me that there is a fundamental issue here. And 

that is that at the end of the day, it is Afghans who need to be 

the agents, with our help, but the agents of their own liberation. 

In any part of the country that we are talking about, unless we 

have the active support of the Afghans against the Taliban, we will 

not succeed. 

And my concern is that the Afghan army in much of the country 

is essentially a foreign army. It doesn’t mean that it has the active 

opposition of much of even the Pashtun population, but it is not 

38 

Pashtun army. And if they come in, I think most people will be 

content to do with them as they are essentially doing with American forces now, and that is to sit on the fence and wait and see 

who wins this thing. 

Unless we have their active cooperation, I just don’t think that 

we are going to get any real traction in this campaign. And so, the 

concern that I have is that we are placing much too much of the 

emphasis currently on the buildup of an Afghan army which is essentially unsustainable. 

I am no expert in this area. If we were to build up an Afghan 

army, as some are talking about, in the range of over 200,000, the 

people who claim to know something about this talk about the 

yearly expense of maintaining such an army in multiples of Afghan 

GDP. Not multiples of the Afghan national budget, multiples of 

GDP. It is simply not sustainable. 

The CHAIRMAN. What is sustainable? 

Mr. GRENIER. What I think is sustainable is actually something 

which is far harder, and that is to work with local officials, local 

warlords, in many cases, to help empower them and to—and to sustain them in their efforts to build up local armed power. 

One of the real mistakes I think that we have made for most of 

the last 8 years is that we have made the excellent the enemy of 

the good. We have had opportunities to build up local leaders. We 

have had opportunities to build up local militias of the sort, frankly, that we did with great success finally in western Iraq. And we 

refused to do it because our knee-jerk reaction has been, no, those 

are the bad old days. That is what we want to avoid. We don’t want 

to build up more warlords. 

Well, yes, we would love to have a coherent government powerful 

in Kabul that could sustain its benign control over the entire country. I just don’t think it is going to happen. I don’t think that they 

are capable of it. And so, I would argue that we need not fewer 

warlords, but more warlords. 

Now, there are warlords, and there are warlords. Warlords, as 

we learned during the active part of the campaign immediately 

after 9/11, can be influenced. We need to be working on a sustainable relationship between the national government in Kabul and 

other centers of power out in the provinces, and the Afghan army 

plays a role in all of that. 

The CHAIRMAN. The role of our troops. How do you provide adequate security to be able to do that, or do you not? They do it. Do 

you let the Afghans who invest, i.e., local warlord, provide the security? 

Mr. GRENIER. Well, I think that, initially, the security has to 

come from some combination of U.S. and Afghan forces. In many 

cases, the Afghan army simply is not large enough and/or not willing to show up. And so, in some of those cases, I think the initial 

effort has to come from the Americans. 

But again, focusing primarily on significant population centers, 

I think that the key is to incentivize local leaders who are oriented 

in the right way to build up local militias that we can then support. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Lugar? 

Senator LUGAR.Mr. Sageman, in the charts that you have given 

to us, you have indicated that at least the number of terrorist plots 

39 

in the West has been in decline from 2004 to the present. In the 

case of the United States, there hasn’t been an attack in 8 years. 

When it comes to Europe or various other places, the number of attacks that have been been carried out is in the single digits. The 

logic of what you are saying is that the al-Qaeda groups, given the 

cover of the Taliban, have not been very productive in creating terrorist attacks. 

Let me be the devil’s advocate for a moment, and ask the following question. What if the Taliban not only continued to operate 

in the part of the country which they still are dominant—we are 

told it is 37 percent or some such amount—but expanded their control to an even larger area? How many more attacks are likely to 

occur as a result? 

In other words, describe to us why what we are discussing today, 

which is how we need to maintain control of the country—by ‘‘we,’’ 

I mean the allies, plus ‘‘reliable’’ Afghan forces—is important with 

regard to the prevention of terrorist acts throughout the world? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. I have only focused on the homeland and Western 

homeland because that is the crux of our goal. We are getting a little bit too bogged down in Afghan politics here, and I am not really 

sure that we have a real vital interest outside of terrorism in Afghan politics. Had al-Qaeda not been kicked out of the Sudan in 

1996, we would be talking about the Sudan right now, not Afghanistan. 

So let us see what is our interest in Afghanistan? And I completely agree with Bob here on the necessity of playing the tribal 

game. That is what everybody has done in Afghanistan because, 

frankly, you can’t really control those areas. 

Right now, none of the plots that you see in the West, you cannot 

trace any one of them to Afghanistan. They all right now, in the 

last 7 years, have come from the Pakistani side of those people who 

traveled back to that area. So if let us say the Taliban controls part 

of the country, we are making a mistake by, first of all, using the 

same term for a lot of different groups. 

I think General McChrystal was correct in his analysis showing 

that we are not really facing one large network, but really three 

networks, namely, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jalalhuddin Haqqani, 

and then the Quetta Shura of Mullah Omar. But even within those 

networks, you have tremendous rivalries, mostly cousins—cousins 

vying for leadership within that group. 

We are seeing right now in the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan internal fight that we have witnessed in the last few weeks that people 

are getting killed in trying to vie for that leadership. So I don’t 

really think that even if one of those groups can get some control 

locally that we are going to see an increase in plots in the West. 

We will see far more plots locally. 

We may even see plots elsewhere in the world. They actually 

have a lot of trouble, even now from Pakistan, to project to the 

West because of a fairly coordinated strategy that Bob did when he 

was the chief at CTC at the CIA. So, you know, it is a very difficult 

question. 

We should focus on the foreigners in Afghanistan. Afghans have 

not projected out of Afghanistan for a very long time, for about almost 250 years since the last time they sacked New Delhi. OtherVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:26 Apr 19, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\10709.TXT MIKEB
40 

wise, they are very much local. It is a kind of local jealous egalitarianism to make sure that nobody is too big because then it is 

a threat of the other guy. So you are going to have alliances 

against him to take him down. We can play on that. That is exactly 

what the British did. 

Senator LUGAR. Let me interrupt for a second because you are 

now, I think, on the same track that Mr. Grenier was that we 

shouldn’t necessarily play the network game. But a very difficult 

situation has become apparent when you look at our insistence 

upon the purism of democracy as opposed to the current nature of 

governance in Afghanistan. Let me just ask this, though. 

Part of the debate here in the Senate and elsewhere consists of 

people who say we ought to have something comparable to Iraq, a 

surge of American forces going after whoever. And that means a lot 

more soldiers, Americans on the ground, maybe our allies. 

And now the question I raise and you have been trying to respond is who would we be surging against? How would this have 

any effect whatsoever on the incidence of terrorism in the United 

States, Western Europe, or what have you? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. Yes, let me answer that with an old Middle Eastern proverb. It is me and my brother against my cousin, but me 

and my cousin against a foreigner. 

So if we send 40,000 Americans, they are going to be foreigners, 

no matter what, even though they are well seen. But that will coalesce every local rivalry. They will put their local rivalry aside to 

actually shoot the foreigners, and then they will resume their own 

internecine fight. 

Senator LUGAR. To what extent could we find the Pashtun, who 

stretch over Afghanistan and Pakistan and are at least at the heart 

of the matter, useful to our efforts? They are not all Taliban, certainly not very many of them are al-Qaeda. But at the same time, 

they are a group of people who, as I believe all three of you suggested—have been very instrumental in the difficulties we have 

faced. 

To what extent is it possible for us to find Pashtun as allies, and 

to introduce President Karzai again to some Pashtun who might be 

allies in the coalition? In other words, is it possible to have some 

effective Afghan governance as well as Pakistani support because 

of this Pashtun affiliation? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. Well, I think we can. I mean, Afghans are for rent. 

You can’t buy them, but you can rent them. Because you do flipflop very often. Am I wrong? 

Mr. GRENIER. No, that certainly, of course, was my experience. 

Dr. SAGEMAN. Well, and so you have to really have a local expert, 

a real expert on the internal dynamic, and that means posting people there for years to really acquire this type of expertise, to really 

know the people, to really understand how to play that game. Most 

political agents under the British were in the British civil service 

for about 30 years. They knew those guys very well. We don’t have 

any equivalent right now in our country to be able to do that, and 

sending troops with weapons just will unify everybody against 

those troops, unfortunately. 

Senator LUGAR. Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Lugar. 

41 

Senator Feingold? 

Senator FEINGOLD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to commend you again on what has turned out to be one 

of the most thorough series of hearings this committee has held 

since I have had the opportunity to serve on the committee, which 

is 17 years. 

The key question we face in this region is how do we disrupt and 

dismantle the al-Qaeda network without further destabilizing the 

region in the process? And while I certainly supported the decision 

to go to war in Afghanistan, I am concerned that our military-centric approach in Afghanistan has had a counterproductive effect of 

mobilizing militants in the region, many of whom do not share alQaeda’s international terrorist agenda. And I think Dr. Sageman’s 

remarks just reinforce that. 

Rather than finding ways to divide them from al-Qaeda, I think 

our current approach may be driving them together. So one option 

we should certainly be considering is whether simply stating the 

obvious, that we don’t plan to stay in Afghanistan forever, would 

help divide those with local agendas from al-Qaeda. 

This does not mean that we should set a firm deadline or leave 

tomorrow. That is the distortion that is always placed on the end 

of any attempt to suggest that maybe this shouldn’t be an eternal 

operation. It is simply a statement designed to assuage fears that 

all we are offering the Afghan people is a state of perpetual war. 

And, Dr. Sageman, do you believe that completely denying alQaeda access to Afghanistan is an achievable objective? Does the 

current debate and focus on this goal in Afghanistan distract us 

from a broader goal, which is relentlessly pursuing al-Qaeda and 

its affiliates globally and ensuring that they cannot conduct training and plotting in Afghanistan and elsewhere? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. I agree with Peter on this one that until you eliminate the top leadership of al-Qaeda— 

The CHAIRMAN. Is your mike on? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. Oh, I am sorry. Until you eliminate the top leadership of al-Qaeda, it is still a threat. But however, having said that, 

right now, as I said, they are in Pakistan. And even if they return 

to Afghanistan, I think they will return in the same way they are 

now in Pakistan—in hiding. They don’t really want to be targets 

for either our drones, missiles, or special forces units going there 

to eliminate them. 

So the type of threat—things have changed. It is not going to be 

the type of training camps, huge training camps that we saw in the 

1990s. Right now, what we see, even in the few plots that are projected to the West, are really small, rented houses, half a dozen 

people who get a few days’ training, and they are not as well 

trained as the previous guys in 1990s. So you are talking about a 

very different threat. 

So even if they do come back to Afghanistan, and I am not sure 

that it is absolutely possible to prevent them from coming back, if 

they have—whether it is Taliban or not, whatever we call them, if 

they have friendly tribal leaders who are willing to not so much 

welcome them, but hide them, their threat and their ability to 

project is still not going to be what it was in the 1990s because of 

the counterterrorist measures that we have worldwide, namely, 

42 

good airport security, good coordination with the Pakistanis, good 

coordination around the world, or even stopping them in Istanbul 

when they change planes. There is no direct plane from Afghanistan to the United States right now. 

Senator FEINGOLD. Well, Doctor, I think it is a very wise remark, 

and it really helps advance the debate because all we get is a simplistic notion if we don’t stay in Afghanistan for very long term, 

Taliban or the al-Qaeda will be right back. Well, what does ‘‘right 

back’’ mean? 

And you are starting to truly address that in a substantive way, 

and it begs the question of what happens if they go to Yemen? 

What happens if they go to Somalia? What happens if they stay in 

Pakistan? 

How can it be that an international strategy against a global network can be that heavily concentrated on one place, on the assumption that they will reconstitute themselves in a way that is exactly 

the same as that which allowed them to conduct the 9/11 attacks? 

It is far too simplistic for something that is that important to our 

national security. 

Mr. Grenier, recent polls show that despite some support among 

Afghans for U.S. troops, the majority want all foreign troops to 

leave within 2 years, and only 18 percent support an increase in 

foreign troops. What impact are these public attitudes likely to 

have on the viability of any plan that involves a massive openended foreign military presence? 

Mr. GRENIER. Senator Feingold, I haven’t seen those poll results 

that you are citing. But they do accord at least with my experience 

of the Afghan mentality, if one can characterize it that way. And 

in this, I agree very much with Mr. Sageman that there is a high 

degree of xenophobia that is endemic among Afghans, and they do 

tend to coalesce against what is perceived as an outsider. 

So I guess in the context of the question you previously raised, 

well, what about the reaction to a surge, and would a surge be effective? My view is that you are best advised to begin as you mean 

to go on. 

My concern is that if there is a large surge in U.S. troops, we 

would be using them to do what essentially Afghans must do. I am 

not sure that having that surge in the early stages would make it 

easier for us to bring Afghans on in the role that we need, and as 

I mentioned before, I don’t think that that role is going to be primarily played by the Afghan National Army. 

But another aspect of this I think is something that, again, I 

think Dr. Sageman touched on, and that is what is a reasonable 

objective here? And tell me if I have got this right, but it seems 

to me that what he is suggesting, and what I would believe as well, 

is that the best that we can hope for is not a permanent elimination of safe haven or the opportunity for safe haven on the part 

of al-Qaeda, but rather, the elimination of uncontested safe haven, 

that we need to be in a place where we can continue to play the 

game, which means that we need to be able to do that on a sustainable basis. 

The chairman just mentioned that we have been in Afghanistan 

for we are now beginning our ninth year. I suspect that we need 

43 

to be able to sustain the kind of effort that we are talking about 

probably for another 10. It is very, very difficult to say. 

But again, I think, therefore, that needs to be a sustainable effort. What we are currently doing, I believe, is not sustainable either by us or by the Afghans. 

Senator FEINGOLD. Thanks so much. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Feingold. 

Thank you for your comments. 

Before I recognize Senator Risch, and then, obviously, we will 

just keep going, Senator Lugar and I need to go and receive the 

Dalai Lama. So we are going to leave the chair in the hands of the 

good Senator from New Hampshire, Senator Shaheen. 

If I could ask, just indulgent of one question before we run out 

of here, is there an impact on Pakistan, any kind of negative or 

positive, whatever kind of impact, as a consequence of an increase 

of troops in Afghanistan? And if you could just kind of really quickly, both—Mr. Grenier? 

If we increase troops in Afghanistan and there is an increased 

kind of confrontation there, is there any—I don’t know if there is. 

Is there any kind of—you spent so much time in Pakistan, and you 

have a sense of it. Is there any negative consequence to that? Some 

have argued there is a destabilization in Pakistan or something. I 

just don’t know. 

Mr. GRENIER. Well, I think that a large increase in the U.S. presence in Afghanistan would not be welcomed by the majority of 

Pakistanis. I think that it would make the struggle seem all the 

more starkly one of the U.S. against Muslims as opposed to the 

U.S. supporting Afghans in their own struggle. 

Everything that Mr. Bergen stated before about popular Pakistani support against extremists who are targeting Pakistan is absolutely true. When you look at this in the context of Afghanistan, 

they see things rather differently. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Thank you very much. 

And if you want to comment on that in my absence, I would appreciate anything. 

Senator Shaheen, do you want to take the chair? 

Senator Risch? 

Senator RISCH. Dr. Sageman, your graph shows a decline in recent years. What—in a sentence or two, to what do you attribute 

the decrease? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. There are many internal and external factors. One 

is that, Peter is right, the ideology of al-Qaeda is not attracting as 

many young people as before. But many young people go elsewhere, 

like in Somalia, not so much because of the ideology, really, it is 

to fight off the infidel. And so, by sending more troops and killing 

more Muslims, Westerners killing Muslims, may actually increase 

a greater flow. 

But I think that, one, the bomb in 2004 was very much a reaction to Iraq. And as that faded and especially when Iraq was not 

this very simple sound bite like it is Westerners killing Muslims, 

where it was very much Muslims killing Muslims and it became 

very confusing to a lot of young people, they became less attracted 

in terms of going to Iraq, and at the same time, they were less attracted doing things at home. 

44 

Senator RISCH. Well, can an argument be made that, in fact, the 

campaign that the United States has mounted against al-Qaeda 

leadership—be it through drones, be it through assets, be it 

through whatever, direct confrontation—and successes in that regard, can an argument be made that that has contributed to this? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. The drones, no. But I think the counterterrorist 

measures, such as airport security, stopping people from going to 

Afghanistan, arresting them in Pakistan, that has contributed. 

The drone campaign really started too late to really have an effect on these graphs. Because if you look at even the 2008, the 

three plots in 2008, they were really trained in 2007 for it, and the 

drone campaign really started ramping up in 2008. I think it is 

contributing to eliminating future plots, but I don’t think that it is 

reflected in the graph. 

Senator RISCH. Thank you. 

Mr. Bergen, I don’t think a person can go over there and travel 

and meet with the people and not come away with at least a suspicion that our view of governance is such that we will never be 

able to impose or facilitate or encourage or establish that type of 

governance in that country. Am I right or am I wrong on that? 

Mr. BERGEN. I am suspicious of that view as a general proposition because we used to think that about Latin American countries, and we used to think that about other countries that have 

now become democracies. And the notion that is somehow embedded in the cultural psyche of—I am not saying that Jeffersonian democracy is the natural tendency in Afghanistan, but I think representative government, as they understand it, certainly is. 

The participation in that last Afghan election, it was a 70 percent turnout. The United States hasn’t had an election since 1900 

where there was a 70 percent turnout. In the most recent election, 

it was lower because of concerns about security. So— 

Senator RISCH. The thing that troubled me was the lack of sense 

of nationality amongst the people. I mean, if you ask them ‘‘what 

are you,’’ the answer is Pashtun, or it is one thing or another. But 

it just doesn’t seem like they have the nationality that a group 

needs in order to coalesce. 

Mr. BERGEN. Again, I would mildly disagree. I mean, Afghanistan, as a modern state, was founded in 1747. So it is an older 

country than the United States. Afghans do have a sense of nationhood. What they do not have is they have never lived under a 

strong central state. So, in that sense, I agree with you. 

And trying to impose some sort of strong central government on 

them doesn’t really make sense. Tribal identity, of course, is very 

important. 

Senator RISCH. We have common ground there. For you, let me 

ask this question. One thing that we haven’t touched on at all 

today is the drug situation. And when I was there, again, I don’t 

see—everybody says, well, there is so much corruption, and they 

want to get rid of the drugs and what have you. 

But you know, corruption is going to exist as long as they depend 

on drugs, it seems to me. I kind of put it in terms of, well, all right, 

we are telling the mafia you can be in charge of drugs, but we don’t 

want any corruption within your ranks. 

45 

I don’t see how you can stand up a government or an army or 

a police force so long as that drug influence is there. To me, it is 

just staggering the influence that that has in the entire Afghan society. 

Dr. SAGEMAN. I agree. If you look at the history of Afghanistan, 

it has really been resistance to a predatory corrupt central government. And sorry, Peter, but they did have a strong central government between 1880 and 1901 under King Amir Abdurrahman. And 

he was involved every year into a large campaign where he slaughtered thousands and thousands of people. 

The problem with Afghanistan is that you don’t have this relationship between the central government and its people. The central government has always relied on foreign aid, whether it was 

Russian, British, and now ours. And that is what is different between Afghanistan and Latin American people where they actually 

do raise taxes. They do have this type of relationship between people and government. That has never existed in Afghanistan. 

Senator RISCH. Thank you, Mr. Sageman. 

Can you comment on the drug situation? 

Mr. GRENIER. Yes. One thing I would point out is that in recent 

history, poppy production in Afghanistan was very nearly wiped 

out, and it was done by the Taliban in 2001. 

Now if you had asked me beforehand whether that was possible, 

I would have felt very strongly that it was not. And yet Mullah 

Omar and the Taliban and managed to do it. It was absolutely extraordinary. 

Now I am not saying that that would be easy to duplicate, and 

I think that there were elements of power that were available to 

the Taliban that would not be available to anyone with whom that 

we would be allied. And I agree with you that so long as you have 

this very large illicit economy, it is almost inconceivable to think 

that you can do away with corruption. 

I don’t tend to see a line of causality between drug production 

and the rise of the Taliban. It seems to me that the issue there is 

who controls the turf where narcotics are being produced. If it is 

people who are allied with Hamid Karzai and the government in 

Kabul, well, then they will get the benefits. And if it is the Taliban, 

then they will manage to tax it, the benefits. 

These are institutions that have existed for a long, long time in 

Afghanistan. It is not like these are institutions that have now 

been taken over and are currently dominated by the Taliban. 

Senator RISCH. Thank you. Time is up. Madam Chairman? 

Senator SHAHEEN. [presiding] Thank you, Senator Risch. 

Senator Menendez? 

Senator MENENDEZ. Thank you, Madam Chairlady. 

Thank you all for your testimony. 

As I think about the President trying to make this decision, it 

seems to me that the central question is how do you strike at the 

core of al-Qaeda in a way that does significant damage? We love 

to always say we want to eliminate them, but that is a much more 

difficult proposition. 

But strike them in such a way at their core, which is largely 

within the Pakistan region, as I understand it, and how do you do 

that—how do you do that most successfully? And secondly, what 

46 

does that mean in the context of our policy in Afghanistan as it relates to that central mission? 

I mean, if our central mission at the end of the day is to do everything we can to disrupt, to kill its leadership, to ensure that at 

the end of the day they are not a threat to the national security 

of the United States, then it seems to me all of your focus is how 

is that best achieved? Afghanistan, which is the topic of today‘‘ 

hearing, is a part of that. 

And if I had you all in the situation room with President Obama 

and he was trying to make a decision, and I asked you what is it 

that, in fact, your recommendations would be to strike successfully 

at al-Qaeda and what that policy should be, what would each of 

you say? 

Mr. GRENIER. Well, Senator, I would say that we need to be in 

a position where we can deny al-Qaeda not necessarily some form 

of safe haven—because I think that is going to be the task of a generation on both sides of the border—but rather, that we put ourselves in a position where we can deny them uncontested safe 

haven. 

I don’t think that the Pakistanis are going to be able in the short 

term to exert a level of control in the tribal territories that will preclude al-Qaeda from being able to operate there. I think that with 

our assistance, they can make it problematic for al-Qaeda. 

With a wink and a nod, there are some things that perhaps we 

can do unilaterally, provided that we have a base in Afghanistan. 

And over time, they need to be drying up the pond within which 

those alligators thrive. But as I say, that is a long project, and it 

involves as much political and economic development as it does 

military action. 

The same I would say is true on the Afghan side of the border. 

We should not fool ourselves that there are policies that we can 

pursue in the near term that will solve this problem for us in a definitive way in either the short or the medium term. I think we 

need to be very realistic about what is going to be required. And 

if we don’t think that we can sustain those costs, then maybe we 

need to rethink this entire enterprise. 

Senator MENENDEZ. So it sounds like you are talking about constant disruption of safe haven. 

Mr. GRENIER. Constant disruption and over time a diminution of 

the area in which al-Qaeda can effectively find safe haven. 

Senator MENENDEZ. And one other question before I turn to the 

others. You have mentioned several times in your testimony 

‘‘ungoverned spaces.’’ Is this part of what you are just defining 

now? When you say ‘‘ungoverned spaces,’’ how is it that we best try 

to deal with ungoverned spaces? 

Mr. GRENIER. Well, again, at the end of the day, whether we are 

talking about Afghanistan or Somalia or virtually anywhere else, 

a permanent solution to a substantial physical space, which is not 

under the effective control of a responsible government or, in many 

cases, any government at all, is a natural safe haven for terrorists. 

Not to say that all ungoverned spaces are safe havens for terrorists, but the safe havens for terrorists are all ungoverned spaces. 

47 

And at the end of the day, we cannot permanently exert control 

over any of them. At the end of the day, it is the native inhabitants 

who have to do that, and that is what makes this so difficult. 

Senator MENENDEZ. Doctor? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. In a few days perhaps, the Pakistani army is going 

to have a fairly large sweep in south Waziristan, the same way 

they are trying to re-create the success that they had in Swat Valley and in Buner. This may be critical because, in a sense, that region has always been a huge rivalry between two large tribes, the 

Mehsud and the Waziris. 

And right now, the Mehsud tribe has been more welcoming of alQaeda and its ally, namely, the IJU and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan is very much a Mehsud tribe, 

and all three organizations seem to have the ability to project outside of the area, the IJU threatening our ally Germany. Not so 

much the United States, but most German plots seemed to have 

some connection with those Uzbeki terrorists. 

So, traditionally, what happened is that when the British always 

tried to have a sweep like that, a punitive sweep, to thin out the 

enemy is what happened and that people don’t recognize that you 

are applying that is a border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

They just go on the other side of the border, wait it out, and come 

back. 

So what we need to do is to try to seal that border to prevent 

some of the bad guys that we are trying to thin out from that region from taking temporary refuge to Afghanistan at this point. 

This is a critical issue that is very urgent because it has to be coordinated with the Pakistani campaign that is going to take place 

down there. They are not going to be— 

Senator MENENDEZ. Sealing the border is a really— 

Dr. SAGEMAN. I am sorry? 

Senator MENENDEZ. Sealing the border in that region is an enormously tough challenge. 

Dr. SAGEMAN. Absolutely. 

Senator MENENDEZ. I mean, I don’t even understand how many 

troops would be necessary to do that. 

Dr. SAGEMAN. I think that we can get some people to really—I 

mean, through various ways to try to prevent people from just 

going and taking refuge across the border. But in that sense, we 

shouldn’t really fool ourselves that once we thin out people, all the 

Pakistan army is going to maintain control. 

No, like anything else, it is usually a large raid. You thin out 

your enemy, and then you play the internal rivalries. So perhaps 

the cousin of the various Hakimullah Mehsud at this point or to 

then deny the return of the people who took temporary refuge in 

Afghanistan from coming back and playing the Waziri tribe against 

the Mehsud. 

I mean, again, you need some kind of push to kind of disrupt all 

of this, and then you consolidate through playing internal rivalries. 

Senator MENENDEZ. Mr. Bergen? 

Mr. BERGEN. I would say the following to the President. We have 

tried three approaches in Afghanistan. The first is doing nothing. 

We closed our embassy in ’89. We zeroed out aid. We got the 

Taliban, and then we got al-Qaeda. 

48 

Then in 2001, we did it on the cheap. We got the Taliban coming 

back, which had morphed together with al-Qaeda. 

Now we have a somewhat serious plan, which has a real chance 

of success, and we should give it time. And we should explain that 

we plan to be in Afghanistan—I would disagree with Senator Feingold on this. We should not say that there is—we should say that 

we are going to be there for a while because the most important 

thing we have to do is persuade the Pakistanis that it is in their 

interest to stop supporting the Afghan Taliban. 

If they feel that we are going to be there for some period of time, 

they are going to change their hedging strategy. Right now, they 

have not taken the Afghan Taliban card off the table because they 

are not convinced that we are going to be there for a long time. 

Senator MENENDEZ. Thank you. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Senator Casey? 

Senator CASEY. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for 

taking over the hearing. I know everyone is busy, and we are 

grateful for you doing that. 

I want to thank all three of our witnesses for your appearance 

here and for your work on these issues. The title of the hearing is 

confronting al-Qaeda. That is the first part of the hearing title. But 

of course, our policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan is going to be impacted by what we discuss today. 

I really have a two-part question, and there is an obvious overlap. The first question I will direct at Mr. Bergen. We have talked 

a little bit about—but not a great deal—about what is often described on the Afghan-Pakistan border as the three insurgencies: 

QST, Quetta Shura Taliban; the Haqqani network; and also HIG, 

and their relationship to al-Qaeda. Mr. Bergen, looking at page 11 

of your testimony, I think you made an important point. In your 

testimony, but also in the last part of your answer to Senator 

Menendez about the connection between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, 

the point you made, I am not sure it is believed by enough people 

in Washington. You say in the first paragraph on page 11, ‘‘The 

leadership of the Taliban has adopted al-Qaeda’s world view and 

sees themselves as part of a supposedly global jihadist movement.’’ 

That is one reference. And then the second paragraph, you state in 

part, ‘‘The Taliban has increasingly morphed together tactically 

and ideologically with al-Qaeda.’’ 

So the general point about the Taliban’s connection to al-Qaeda— 

but in particular those three insurgencies—is it that all three of 

these groups are connected, or two out of the three connected more 

than the others? Or is one—I guess there is an implicit assumption 

that Haqqani—has more connections to al-Qaeda than the other 

two. Please tell us what you can about these connections. 

Mr. BERGEN. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who runs Hezb-e-Islami, 

has been a close friend of bin Laden’s probably since 1988 or 1989. 

In the case of the Haqqanis, the relationship goes back to the early 

‘80s. Haqqani himself, the senior, speaks Arabic, has at least one 

Arabic wife. His kids also speak Arabic, have taken over the family 

network. 

In the case of Mullah Omar, Mullah Omar was prepared to lose 

everything on the point of principle in not handing over Osama bin 

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49 

alpolitik. This is somebody who is at the heart of the Taliban 

project, has been protecting al-Qaeda, and it is crazy to think that 

somehow just because we are foreign policy realists doesn’t mean 

that everybody else in the world is a foreign policy realist. We have 

learned from history that people behave irrationally. 

So the Taliban, if they came back to power, would bring al-Qaeda 

back. 

Senator CASEY. So you made a connection between all three 

insurgencies and al-Qaeda? 

Mr. BERGEN. Absolutely. 

Senator CASEY. I, also, think that is an important point because 

we are hearing a lot on this subject. You know how Washington 

gets. We get pretty simplistic around here. The President said dismantle, disrupt, and defeat al-Qaeda, and people say that is a 

great goal, but they are not the right goals in Afghanistan. So let 

us change the policy. So I just wanted to establish that point. 

The second point is to Mr. Grenier—did I pronounce it right? 

Okay. The second point is about the connection between those 

three insurgencies now and the government of Pakistan or at least 

the ISI. What can you tell us about their connections because these 

connection are also part of this equation? So it is the same question, but just substitute the word ‘‘Pakistan’’ for the word ‘‘alQaeda.’’ 

Mr. GRENIER. Well— 

Senator CASEY. At least for the purposes of the question. 

Mr. GRENIER. The calculus for the Pakistanis, I would start out 

by saying that I absolutely agree with Peter Bergen that there is 

nothing among any element of the Taliban which resembles 

Kissingerian realpolitik. The same, however, is not true of the 

Pakistanis. The Pakistanis are, I think, working multiple simultaneous equations in all of this. 

I can tell you from personal experience that while after 9/11 we 

had very, very close cooperation with and effective cooperation with 

the Pakistanis focusing on al-Qaeda in the settled parts of the 

country where essentially they controlled the turf. There was nothing that we asked them to do that they wouldn’t do, and I think 

that that is still the case now. 

When it comes to tribal areas where they don’t control the turf, 

then their calculus becomes much more complicated. There they 

have to make judgments between those who are—who pose primarily a threat to others and those who pose primarily a threat to 

themselves. The people that they are most concerned about are 

what we now refer to loosely as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the 

Pakistani Taliban. 

The most prominent among whom, at least until his recent demise, was Baitullah Mehsud. Well, they were very concerned about 

Baitullah Mehsud. They were very concerned about Nek Muhammad and a range of other individuals, those who were responsible 

for the infiltration of the Swat Valley and local areas. And to the 

extent that the Pakistanis think that they can manipulate the 

Gulbuddin Hekmatyars and the Haqqanis with whom they have relations that go back literally a couple of decades, as well as the Afghan Taliban with whom that they have had a very close relationship in the past, they are prepared to try to do that. 

50 

And these individuals and these organizations, not being foolish, 

are quite willing to get into that game and try to manipulate it in 

ways that benefit themselves. 

When you add Afghanistan into the equation and the strategic 

concerns that the Pakistanis have with the government in Kabul, 

it becomes more complicated still. And one of the things that Peter 

just brought out a moment ago and which I don’t think we have 

spent nearly enough time on, but which I think is an extremely important aspect of this entire question, is if there were a substantial 

drawdown of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, such that there 

were essentially a recurrence of the civil war that pertained back 

when the Taliban was in power, essentially a Taliban-dominated 

Pashtun part of the population in civil war with the ethnic minorities that were formerly grouped under the Northern Alliance and 

are now disproportionately represented in the government in 

Kabul, the Pakistanis clearly would see their national interest in 

support of the Afghan Taliban. I don’t think there is any question 

about that. 

They are concerned about being surrounded. They see a close relationship between the government in Kabul and India, and it literally drives them crazy. I don’t think there is any question that 

they would shift policy there. 

And under those circumstances and with a diminished U.S. pressure on them focused on preserving our troops and stopping crossborder attacks on our troops, I think that it would be very easy for 

the Pakistanis to devolve to along the path of least resistance, if 

you will, and to try to strike some sort of separate peace at least 

with those elements in the tribal territories that don’t directly 

threaten them. And that would put us overall in a strategic situation which would not be at all positive. 

Senator CASEY. Doctor, I didn’t have time. I ran out of time for 

you, but if you want to say anything or add something to the record 

that is a lot longer? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. No, actually, I disagree with Peter. The Taliban 

and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar have not seen eye to eye. As a matter 

of fact, when the Taliban was in control of Afghanistan between ‘96 

and 2001, they exiled Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to Tehran. He was not 

in Afghanistan at the time. 

Mr. BERGEN. The question was about al-Qaeda’s relationship 

with these groups. 

Dr. SAGEMAN. Right. And al-Qaeda’s relationship was with Abdul 

Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf and not Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the early 

days. 

Senator CASEY. I am going to let you guys figure this out with 

the new chairwoman. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you very much, Senator Casey. 

Just to dispel anybody‘‘ notions, I have the least seniority. So I 

always go last. So that is why I am chairing the remainder of the 

hearing. 

And thank you all for really fascinating presentations. 

I want to see if I understand what I think you said, which was 

I think there has been general agreement that one way forward 

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51 

ghanistan—I hesitate to call them the warlords, but I think that 

is essentially what you were saying. 

Would you also promote the notion that we can reconcile with 

certain elements of the Taliban and that that would be one of the 

ways forward? 

Mr. GRENIER. Senator, a little truth in advertising here. I have 

not been in Afghanistan since 2005. And there is a lot about the 

situation on the ground that I think I understand imperfectly. And 

one of those is the real—the texture of the Taliban. Yes, I think 

as part of the shorthand, we refer to these three elements of the 

insurgency. I suspect that the picture on the ground, district to district, is a lot more complicated than that. 

I believe that it is quite possible—that the different elements of 

the Taliban in different areas have different motivations. I think 

many of them are young men who could be won over and who 

would just as soon take a paycheck from the local governor and 

serve in his militia as they would serve with the Taliban, or if you 

had more constructive engagements for them that benefited them, 

that they would pursue those instead. 

There are other elements of the insurgency, however, that are 

clearly ideologically oriented and that you really can’t deal with. I 

suspect that on a local level, there are elements of the insurgency 

who could be won over to the other side, if you will. But in terms 

of striking some sort of a grand bargain with Mullah Omar that 

would allow him to come in and take a share of power in Kabul 

and that somehow you would reach some grand negotiated solution, 

I just don’t think that is possible. 

I think that he is ideologically driven. I don’t think that—he does 

not recognizable legitimacy of the government in Kabul, and I don’t 

think you could ever reach that sort of an agreement with him. 

Senator SHAHEEN. But you do see the potential to engage with 

some elements of the Taliban? 

Mr. GRENIER. Oh, yes. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Is there agreement among the rest of you 

about that? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. Oh, absolutely. I think that we make a mistake in 

kind of labeling everybody that is not for us with the same name, 

and I completely agree with Bob that on the ground what you have 

is a collection of a lot of young—groups of young people who resist 

the central government because they are foreigners anyway, and 

those really are not ideologically motivated. 

I don’t think we can cut a deal with Mullah Omar, but we certainly can take most of his followers and a huge part of his followers away from him. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Mr. Bergen? 

Mr. BERGEN. I am going to take a very different tack. 

Who are the moderate Taliban? Are they the people who send 

their kids to school, their daughters to school once a month or once 

a week, as opposed to not at all? This whole concept of moderate 

Taliban I think is not a particularly very helpful one. 

We are now 8 years into this. The moderate Taliban who might 

have come over have already done so. The people engaged in the 

peace talks with the Afghan government are not the people running the insurgency, the ones that met in Saudi Arabia. Mullah 

52 

Omar has repeatedly rejected any kind of deal. The Taliban either 

think that they are winning Afghanistan or at least they are not 

losing, which in an insurgency amounts to the same thing. So why 

would they negotiate? 

I am agreeing with Marc and also with Bob. The local guys, you 

can always do a deal with. You can buy them. You can co-opt them. 

You can pressure them, give them jobs, or whatever. But the people who are actually running the insurgency, the Mullah Omars, 

the Haqqanis, these are not people you can negotiate with, and I 

can say that with a great deal of confidence because it has already 

been tried. 

In Pakistan, there have been three separate major peace deals 

with the Taliban—in Waziristan in 2005, 2006, and again in Swat. 

Every time the peace deal was done with the Taliban, they used 

it as an opportunity to extend their power. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Well, so you talked about some of the liabilities of al-Qaeda now. How can we exploit those liabilities in a way 

that allows us to be successful against them? 

Mr. BERGEN. I wouldn’t do anything. I mean, there is the kiss 

of death problem the United States has in this area. This is happening anyway. It is happening in the Islamic world. It is even 

happening, you know, the jihadists themselves, lot of them are 

turning against al-Qaeda. So just let this process play out. 

Senator SHAHEEN. So are you arguing that we should withdraw? 

Mr. BERGEN. From Afghanistan? 

Senator SHAHEEN. Yes. 

Mr. BERGEN. No, I thought you were talking about the ideological 

disputes. Sorry, I thought you were talking about the lack of support they have in the Muslim community increasingly. But I don’t 

think we should withdraw from Afghanistan, no. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Well, given then I think I understand you and 

the other panelists to be talking about some type of a third way 

that doesn’t rely on a military buildup but looks at developing another strategy. So what would a fully resourced, nonmilitary-focused campaign against al-Qaeda look like? 

Mr. BERGEN. In Afghanistan, for instance? 

Senator SHAHEEN. You could start there. 

Mr. BERGEN. I was just in Helmand. There are 11,000 Marines 

in Helmand, and there are probably three American officials working for the Government directly, not contractors. And our stated 

policy as a counterinsurgency strategy is 80 percent nonmilitary, 

20 percent military. Yet in practice, we are doing quite the opposite. 

And the President has talked about a civilian surge, which I 

think is very important, but it is an ooze right now. No one is surging. People are not coming. And we need to change that equation, 

I think, if we are going to be successful in Afghanistan. 

Senator SHAHEEN. I don’t disagree with that, and that is what 

we have heard from other folks. But what we have also heard is 

that it is very difficult to do the civilian economic aid, the support, 

without having security to back up what is going on there. So how 

do we do a civilian surge without at the same time having the military to support that? 

53 

Mr. BERGEN. I agree. You have to have—I mean, security precedes everything else. And right now, as in terms of the overall Afghan strategy, the one thing we are not providing that everybody 

wants is security. And that does have an implication about the 

troop commitments. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Can I ask if either one of you want to comment on that? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. The way you phrased the question is what would 

a strategy against al-Qaeda look like, and I think you are confusing 

al-Qaeda with the Taliban. 

Senator SHAHEEN. No, I am not confusing the Taliban with alQaeda. He asked me about going after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. I 

said you could start there. 

Dr. SAGEMAN. Well, there is no al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. It is 

mostly in Pakistan. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Well, right. I think you testified there were 

about 100. Intelligence officials suggest about 100 al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. 

Dr. SAGEMAN. Well, that is actually in dispute. What we are 

looking at the al-Qaeda, the al-Qaeda that project to the West because our goal is homeland security. It is really to defend our 

homeland, and the people in Afghanistan do not project abroad. 

There is none—I mean none of the plots in the last 7 years that 

originate in Afghanistan. They all originate in Pakistan. So our 

strategy in al-Qaeda is to eliminate it. I don’t think that you can 

negotiate with them. They are beyond the pale. 

If they are al-Qaeda right now, they know very well what they 

are doing. These are really true, hard-core, hardened people, and 

but they are mostly on the Pakistan side. On the Afghan strategy, 

to try to perhaps develop the country a little bit more, we have to 

start relying on the Afghans themselves and not so much on American troops to protect Americans who are there. 

We have to almost remove ourselves and to allow in terms of 

long term, we can’t make Afghans dependent on the United States 

because we are going to leave at some point. And at that point, 

they are going to be very upset, just like they were in 1989. You 

have to gradually shift it to an Afghanized, the Afghan strategy. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Well, can I just follow up with you on are you 

suggesting then that we don’t need to continue a campaign in Afghanistan in order to address al-Qaeda? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. That is correct. 

Senator SHAHEEN. And so, can you then answer my initial question about what that nonmilitary focused campaign against alQaeda would look like? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. I think that a nonmilitary campaign would be to 

try to flip some of the locals who are hiding al-Qaeda and protecting al-Qaeda to betray them and to allow us to either arrest 

them or eliminate through other means. 

Mr. GRENIER. I think that, Senator, the problem with the approach that was just articulated by Dr. Sageman is that while 

there may be many local leaders and tribal leaders in Afghanistan 

who would be quite willing to be flipped and who would like to get 

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54 

icans and from their own government, they are afraid to do that 

simply because they are under threat of the Taliban. 

The Taliban, even today in most of the Pashtun- dominated parts 

of the country, is not a popular force. They primarily thrive on the 

basis of intimidation. And therefore, while I think it is true that 

there has to be a very strong nonmilitary, development-focused effort as part of the overall strategy, security also has to be a key 

part of the strategy. 

And then, I think that as I mentioned before, I only know these 

days what I read in the newspapers. But I read recently about an 

area where, which I think eventually served as a model. It is a district just outside of Kandahar called Dand. And it is an area that 

fell within the Canadian area of operations. 

And what the Canadians did, one of the things that made Dand 

particularly susceptible to this approach, actually, was that it is 

dominated by the Barakzai tribe. And so, you don’t have the mixture of competing tribes there that you do in other districts. There 

are a number of other tribes represented, but they are primarily 

Barakzai. 

Well, the Canadians went to the tribal leaders of the Barakzai 

in that district, and they said, look, we are going to extend you protection. Oh, and by the way, we would like for you to come up with 

economic development projects that we can support, which they 

did. And these projects went forward. 

It strengthened them in the eyes of their own people, and it gave 

a motivation to their tribal members to try to make sure that they 

protected these projects because they were deriving clear benefit 

from it. And you had local village defense forces that were springing up, again with the Canadians to back them up and support 

them. And a clear message was sent from those tribal leaders to 

Taliban in the district to stay out of our district because if you do— 

if you do come in, we will resist you. 

Now I am not saying that it is going to be easy in all places. But 

I think that, roughly speaking, is the sort of a model that we need 

going forward. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

My time is up. But I actually have a final question that I would 

like to ask each of you, and that is about the funding for al-Qaeda 

and where they are getting their funding and whether it would be 

worthwhile for us to try and pursue those funding streams as a 

way to address how they are operating? 

Mr. BERGEN. Terrorism is a very cheap form of warfare. The London attacks cost maybe 8,000 pounds, self- finance, credit cards. 

Even 9/11 was only $500,000, very transformational event in the 

world for a relatively small amount of money. 

So I think it is a case of mirror imaging to sort of think that because money is important to a lot of things that we do, that somehow it is important to terrorists. Terrorists tend to be volunteers. 

They don’t need to be paid. 

What is important on the money front is the Taliban because 

insurgencies cost money to run. You have to pay people to plant 

IEDs. You have to have to pay them money to be on the payroll. 

And so, certainly, the Taliban funding streams are something that 

55 

we should be looking at, whether it is drugs or donations from the 

Gulf. 

Kidnappings are a very important part of this. If you kidnap a journalist in southern Afghanistan now, you can make $2 million. 

That is a lot of money in southern Afghanistan. 

So as far as the al-Qaeda element, I think that money is sort of 

a red herring. For the Taliban, for any insurgency, whether it is 

the insurgency in Iraq or Afghanistan, financing is very important. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

Do you both agree with that? 

Dr. SAGEMAN. Yes. Yes. 

Mr. GRENIER. I would as well. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Well, thank you all very much for your very 

insightful testimony. 

The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:33 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD SUBMITTED

BY SENATOR CASEY TO PETER BERGEN

AL-QAEDA AND ASSOCIATED MOVEMENTS (AQAM)

Al-Qaeda has morphed into a fractured network of groups across Asia, the Middle 

East and Africa. We’ve seen an increase in the activities associated with these 

groups as our operations have driven al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

Question. What role is al-Qaeda’s core leadership playing in supporting the associated movements we see such as those in Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa? 

Answer. Al-Qaeda’s core leadership plays an inspirational role more than an operational role in these movements. However, in the cases of al-Qaeda in both Saudi 

Arabia and Yemen and also al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) they operate 

very much in line with al-Qaeda Central policies; attacking, for instance, in the past 

two years the American Embassy in Yemen and the Israeli embassy in Maruitania, 

and in the case of AQIM attacking the United Nations building in Algiers. 

Question. Do any of the major associated movements pose a significant threat to 

U.S. interests? 

Answer. They pose a real threat to American Embassies, businesses, and Americans working in the oil business in the region. 

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