example of Marxism by gaining control of states or nations. This similarity is no accident. An Al Qaeda training document discovered in Afghanistan in 2002 specifically referred to Mao Zedong's three stages of insurgency: (1) recruitment and indoctrination; (2) sustained terrorist warfare; and (3) the ultimate seizure of territory and the levers of state power. Of course, Al Qaeda came closest to achieving the third and final stage of power during its pre-9/11 alliance with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
More recently, leaders of this extremist ideology have reiterated this goal. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, proclaimed in July 2006 on an extremist web site that “the whole world is an open field for us.” And the uncompromising view of these radicals is made clear by a line in Al Qaeda's charter that reads as follows: “We will not meet the enemy halfway and there will be no room to dialogue with them.” In order to grasp fully the implications of such rhetoric, we need only recall the conditions in Afghanistan under the Taliban. They harbored Al Qaeda, inflicted horrific punishment on dissenters, and drove women from public life, making them the virtual property of husbands and fathers and denying them an education along with other rights recognized by the modern world. It was only through the overthrow of that regime that these rights were restored.
But the destruction of Al Qaeda's headquarters in Afghanistan—while a major positive step—did not obliterate this terrorist organization or the virulent ideology it represents. Following this substantial setback, Al Qaeda and its key members retreated to other parts of the world. They removed to the frontier areas of Pakistan, where over time they have obtained breathing space to train, plan, experiment, and maintain a pipeline of operatives. They extended into the Maghreb in North Africa, and carried out attacks against UN facilities, courts, and schoolchildren. They have returned to parts of Somalia, whose weakened government produced a climate conducive to lawlessness, including piracy on the high seas. In Somalia, Al Qaeda and its cohorts hope to control territory and increase their capability of launching further attacks.
When we outline the continued threats we face from terrorism, we must begin with an extremist ideology and with Al Qaeda, its most potent representative. Vice-Admiral J. Michael McConnell, U.S. director of intelligence in the second Bush administration, noted, “Al Qaeda remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States, both here at home and abroad.”1 Indeed, Al Qaeda and its affiliates form a truly global terrorist network, with a presence on multiple continents. While Al Qaeda remains a significant threat to the U.S. homeland, it continues to target societies across the Muslim world that reject its message and its methodology. It has launched numerous attacks against Muslims with ferocity and contempt for human life and dignity.
Al Qaeda and similar groups have killed thousands of people, mostly Muslims, over the past several years. Among their targets have been political candidates and government leaders. In December 2007, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto by Al Qaeda-allied militants brutally ended her quest to become Pakistan's elected leader again. In February 2008, in Rawalpindi, near Pakistan's capital, a suicide bombing killed that country's surgeon general. Also in February, an Al Qaeda plot was uncovered to assassinate the president of the Philippines.
But these extremists have seen fit to murder ordinary citizens as well. In November 2005, in Amman, Jordan, a bride and groom and the fathers of the two newlyweds were among the dozens of Muslims slaughtered in the middle of a wedding celebration by a triple suicide bombing. In April 2008, in a town north of Baghdad, at least forty-five people were killed during a funeral for two Sunni tribesmen.
Every report of wanton killings by Al Qaeda and its affiliates serves as a grim reminder of the lethal threat they pose. But here is the vulnerability that Al Qaeda has now created for itself: this unending slaughter of innocent Muslims sows the potential seeds for Al Qaeda's failure. Simply stated, these acts of extremism are alienating the very pool of people terrorists wish to convert to their creed. Tellingly, the two Sunni tribesmen mentioned above were part of an Awakening Council that was battling Al Qaeda and its minions in Iraq. Within the Sunni sections of Iraq, there has been a rising tide of revulsion against the mounting atrocities of Al Qaeda and other foreign fighters. Sunni leaders have taken up arms to free themselves from these terrorists. Coupled with the American military surge, the result has been a dramatic setback for Al Qaeda in Iraq.
This undeniable backlash against the extremists is not limited to Iraq. Clerics and other Muslim leaders around the world have begun a dialogue in which the apologetic for violence is emphatically rejected. Salman al Oudah, a well-known Saudi cleric, sent an open letter to bin Laden in 2007 criticizing Al Qaeda's attacks against innocent civilians. In his letter, Oudah asked, “How many innocents among children, elderly, the weak, and women have been killed and made homeless in the name of Al Qaeda?”2 As a result, potential recruits to violent Islamic extremism are hearing an alternative view with growing clarity. They are beginning to learn from respected clerics that those who would recruit them to a creed that glorifies death and destruction are offering a false path.
Individual Muslims are now questioning Al Qaeda's indiscriminate violence. In a web-based question-and-answer session, al-Zawahiri was forced to strike a defensive tone in the face of sharp questioning of bombings that killed innocent Muslims, including schoolchildren.3 One questioner asked, “Do you consider the killing of women and children to be jihad?” In response to such questions, al-Zawahiri became defensive, alternately denying the charges, claiming that some of the innocents had been used as shields, and awkwardly insisting that Al Qaeda is entitled to destroy people who get in the way of their operations. Coupled with other Al Qaeda statements designed to discredit Muslim religious leaders who are opposing them, it appears that Al Qaeda's leaders are becoming worried about the growing, active opposition from within the Muslim community.
These are significant developments in the battle against extremism and terrorism. Every effort we make to counter the terrorist threat will fail if terrorist groups are able to recruit operatives faster than we can capture or kill them. Clearly, in the long run, the war against terrorism will be largely won or lost in the recruitment arena. The threat of violent Islamist extremism will not soon pass. Al Qaeda will continue pursuing platforms, recruitment and training opportunities, and laboratories in which to experiment with weapons. Therefore we dare not abandon our vigilance. In the short run, capturing and killing Al Qaeda leaders and operatives; frustrating the flow of their communications, money, and travel; and disrupting their plots are crucial tasks. But the strategic battle will be for the allegiance of a critical mass of Muslims. In that effort, the fulcrum must be a growing counterforce to extremism. It cannot emerge from governments or from their leaders in the West. It must come from within the Muslim community, finding its voice and rejecting the attempts to hijack Islam.
Although Al Qaeda and its network are our most serious immediate threat, they may not be our most serious long-term threat. There are other terrorist organizations, also driven by radical beliefs and practices, that pose a strategic risk to our nation and its allies. Among them is Hezbollah, a word that literally means the “party of God.” Hezbollah has a history that reaches back to the early 1980s, with its creation as a pro-Iranian Shi`a militia. Long before Al Qaeda was formed, Hezbollah had helped pioneer suicide bombing, including the 1983 bombing of U.S. Marine peacekeepers in Lebanon and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.
Former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage once called Hezbollah “the A-team of terrorists,” and for good reason.4 Having operated for more than a quarter-century, it has developed capabilities about which Al Qaeda can only dream, including large quantities of missiles and highly sophisticated explosives, uniformly well-trained operatives, an exceptionally well-disciplined military force of nearly 30,000 fighters, and extraordinary political influence. Hezbollah shows what an ideologically driven terrorist organization can become when it evolves into an army and a political party and gains a deeply embedded degree of control within a state, as Hezbollah has done in Lebanon's democratic infrastructure. This is, in many ways, a terrorist group that has “graduated” from Mao's second stage of insurgency to the third stage, where it is steps away from ruling part or all of a functioning nation-state.
