foto Ansa

Qaedism is a movement with great capacity for adaptability. It understands the transformations on the terrain; absorbs the many hits carried out by the forces of law and order; it changes its forms of financing; it merges its cells into grey areas, where there are many potential militants, but very few ‘real’ terrorists. This last detail is not, by any means, unimportant, because it allows the movement to survive investigations and possible trials. To all the above, we must add a tactical change of primary importance. Having partially lost the Afghani zone behind the front lines, following the intervention of the allied troops, the Qaedists have recreated a simulacrum of logistic structure.

In a more stable way, where the Qaedist presence is pronounced, is the case of the Afghan-Pakistan border and some Sunnite areas in Iraq. In a more flexible form, in regions where the numbers do not allow the realization of sanctuaries, is the case of the sub-Sahara zone and Somalia. The camps, like the cells – to say it in the word of a specialist – very much resemble the dunes of the desert. They form and melt according to the winds that blow.
At the same time, the central Al Qaeda - that which gathers around the icons of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri – although without direct involvement in “military” operations, has maintained a supremacy at a propagandistic level.
The enormous volume of video films and audio messages, diffused by a well-oiled machine, has permitted the leaders to remain at the centre of attention. Indisputable merit goes to the Internet. It is through the web that the movement maintains contact, emanates a uniform image and permits the militants of different origins to speak the same language.
Today, Bin Laden – supposing that it is really he – remains the source of inspiration, the model, the prompter: while his closest collaborators think of how to repeat the assault on America. These last, in any case, need time, particular men and the right moment.
We can say that Al Qaeda used its ”special forces” in the blitz of 11th September and now it trusts to its infantry.
A reality, in continual transformation in a horizontal way, has been developed around the Osama symbol. It is that of the spontaneous cell. Groups of firebrands which start up autonomously – or almost –take care of their own training, are self-indoctrinated with Internet, and are self-financed.
According to Marc Sageman, ex-CIA agent, psychiatrist and sociologist, we find ourselves facing a “rising phenomenon”, a movement from the bottom towards the top. “I am not recruited by an evil teacher, but it is I who offer myself to become part of a global strength”. And we are not talking of small numbers. In the summer, British MI5 calculated that 200 groups were active, for a total of 1,600 people. Once again, the tie with Al Qaeda is a geometric variable: it exists, it does not exist – it exists, but it is partial.
Another expert, the French Gilles Kepel, speaks of the “video clip kids”.
There are those who make their own blog to exchange ideas and those who, instead, bend it to their own militiaman objectives.
According to the judgement of many researchers, it is as if Al Qaeda counted on two distinct apparatus, but both equally capable – if necessary and when possible – to communicate. The first involves the original Qaedists, the professionals of terror, with solid experience behind them. The second is that of the amateur followers. It is they who occupy a space in the West, giving the idea, thanks to the means of modern communication, that Qaedism is really widespread. In the meantime the old guard studies – according to the times of the Islamists, therefore, on the long term – sizeable actions.
The new generation of the Jihad do not need preachers, it need not attend a particular mosque. The area of mass aggregation is much reduced. It can be a nucleus of friends, a family clan (ideal against infiltration), a neighbourhood quarter, the simple dwelling which one occupies with others of the same way of thinking.
In a certain sense, these cells are like real “time-bombs” which can be primed, for example, by an indirect message from the Qaedist executive – let us think for a moment of a video transmitted from any TV satellite – or by a local emir (military leader). And this figure does not necessary need to have had a high profile background, like having been in Afghanistan or Bosnia. It is only the person with the most charisma, or he who knows the password to access Internet sites where it is possible to read the integralist literature. Once, the key-word was the telephone number of Peshawar (Pakistan), to hook up with the contact for the training camps. Now, it is the picklock to open the virtual world of the guerrilla warfare.
And it is interesting to note how these cells – often composed of 3-4 elements – have a correspondence to the phenomenon of the white “lone wolves”. Disturbed and isolated young people who decide to take it out on the society which surrounds them. They arm themselves and commit massacres on a campus, in a high school, in a shopping mart.
A tendency which had its growth in the United States, but which is now rapidly infecting – thanks again, to Internet – the North European Countries (in particular, Germany and Finland).


The doctrine

The birth of the spontaneous cells was certainly favoured by the operative difficulties. The controls adopted by the international community reduced the possibility of reaching the lands which held a good reception for the Jihadists.
Before the 11th September, it was almost a kid’s game to leave for Afghanistan. Not only. Once arrived, the volunteers were managed by
“houses” that took care of the preparation, accommodation, food, arms and documents. Today, it is certainly more arduous, but above all, it is more hazardous to return to the West. Another consideration. Once in Afghanistan or Iraq – the second destination of the “jihadist tourism” – the initiate must immediately go into action. In many cases, the heads are not just content with someone ready to shoot. No, they want suicide attackers. And despite what is said, not all – especially if you have been brought up in the West – are ready for the final step.
To stay in Europe or the United States offers the callow militant more time to mature his choice. It is not a definitive move. In the sense that the extremist has the possibility of leading a double life. The first: regular, within the host society. The second: illegal, between the walls of an apartment - it is in this phase that the initiate divests himself of his civilian clothes, to put on, in a virtual way, those of the “sacred warrior”.
The recruit can remain in these conditions for years: happy to live his experience on a theoretical level, training himself mentally for an attack, which, perhaps, will never materialize. Only a few – and it is fortunate – pass to the operative phase.
With this, we do not want to re-dimension the threat, but only to confer upon it, the correct dimension. Also because this reality did not take form only as a “second best”.
There is, at the base of the spontaneous cells, a project elaborated by the most important prompters of the eurojihadism, Mustafa Nasr Setmariam, alias Abu Musab Al Suri. His personal story allows us to understand why it is so important.
Syrian born, member of a radical wing of the Brotherhood, expert in terrorist techniques, Setmariam has an advantage with respect to other extremists. He lived a long time in Europe. First, in Great Britain, where, for many years, he edited the publication of the “Al Ansar” bulletin, an organ of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group. He married in Spain where he started a family. But – a significant aspect – the Syrian made frequent visits to the Afghani camps, building relations with different protagonists of the integralist nebular, gaining, in fact, a very wide listening audience.
Having understood the importance of the circulation of news and information, Setmariam entrusted the task to the Internet, putting a ponderous treatise of 1600 pages on the Net, entitled “An Appeal to the Islamic Global Resistance”, a much followed document in the extremist ambient of Europe and North Africa.
The starting point of Al Suri is inherent to how a militant can survive in the post Cold War world. The Syrian, who had experienced in person failed conspiracies and revolts, is convinced that the real Achille’s heel is the hierarchical structure set in a centralized organization.

To belong to a “party” is important, but it can be counter-productive. If one falls into the hands of the Police, everyone else is pulled in with you. Furthermore, the advance of the western forces in the Arab world – a process begun after the invasion of Kuwait and the deployment of foreign troops in Saudi Arabia – has changed the reality of the enemy. From an indirect occupation, through support to friendly regimes, it has passed to a direct occupation. Therefore, the number one objective is to attack the foreigners on any occasion and with whatever instrument. Within this framework, Al Suri insists, it is possible to adopt the “individual jihad” which can collaborate, when the conditions present themselves, with the companions who operate on the true fronts, like Afghanistan or Iraq. For Al Suri, the spontaneous cells must grow around a key principle: “nizam, la tanzim”, that is, “system, not organization”. In the sense of an operative system that permits the single individual, in the same way as for a group of people, to adhere to a struggle, without setting up a network.

photo Ansa

The leaders limit themselves to indicate the general guide lines of behaviour: exactly that which has happened in the last years. But what is it that keeps together the individuals of the “system”? Al Suri writes: “A common objective, a common programmed doctrine, a plan of self-education”.
In the treatise, the “teacher” insists upon the fact that the same rule goes for the training. “No more, in camps, bases, centres, which are easily identifiable by modern intelligence, but in every home, every quarter, every village”. A lesson, as we shall see further on, well assimilated by the disciples of Al Suri.
The teachings of the theory clearly remind us of what happened in the first phase of Qaedism.
The attempted attack in 1993 against the Twin Towers in New York was targeted by a team created specifically for the operation. It was what the CIA, in the distant past of 1995, defined as “ad hoc terrorism”. At that time, however, the Ramzi Youssef gang had a solid connection with the summit of the Al Qaeda, and only in the final phase of the operation, it moved autonomously. The Syrian points decidedly to an evolution. Five elements come to an agreement, find the means and hit. It will be the main branch to claim the attack, giving the idea that the autonomous cell acted on superior indications. It is important, Al Suri emphasizes, that the nucleus moves along three well-defined steps: the will to do, the preparation, and the execution.
From the ideological viewpoint, to know how to shoot and prime bombs is not sufficient. An extensive work of indoctrination is necessary, which toughens the individual for the difficult challenges that await him.
Al Suri, apart from constituting a reference point – despite the fact that today, he is in American hands – gained a following. A research study carried out at the Centre of Studies of the Academy of West Point (United States), shows how the real source of inspiration for many hundreds of sympathizers and activists is not only Bin Laden, but rather, thinkers at the middle level. It is they who appear in the texts and in the sites read by the militants, it is they who dictate the “tablets of law” for the neo-terrorism, also guaranteeing a religious legitimacy to whoever wished to embrace the armed struggle.


The model

On the 26th August, a brief manual appeared on the web, entitled “How to enrol in Al Qaeda”.
It is not clear when it was written and the only certain element is that it was compiled by someone close to the Egyptian component of the movement. The text is interesting because it represents a model for spontaneous formation.
Any Moslem, the author sustains, must consider the jihad as a personal duty and is, therefore, authorized to form an Islamic cell, without awaiting recognition by Al Qaeda.
The document explains how to form and organize the team; how to collect funds and select a target. The strategy does not have enormous attacks in mind. It writes, “a cell can assassinate an American ambassador” and to do it “it requires nothing more than a weapon and a bullet”. Like Al Suri, the manual emphasizes preparation. Here is an extract from the text. “You feel you have the will to arm yourself, fight and kill the invaders and that it is our duty to call to the jihad in the same way as to prayers…. All that is asked is a firm personal decision to fulfil this duty, the participation in the Jihad and the resistance….”.
What follows, therefore, are the rules that open the doors of the fight to anyone. “Must you really meet Osama Bin Laden in person to become a soldier of the jihad? Must you be recognized by Al Qaeda as one of its members to become a fighter of the jihad? If the commanders of Al Qaeda were killed, would the jihad be eliminated? What would you do today, if Al Qaeda did not exist? How can Osama Bin Laden be different from you, even though he created and organized the global jihad? Who trained Osama Bin Laden or Abdallah Azzam when they went to Afghanistan to become the first Arab fighters of the jihad?”.
The author replies to the questions by indicating a path. “I do not need to know Bin Laden to be a fighter of the jihad. Furthermore, there is not even the necessity to know a fighter of jihad to become one. And I do not need to be recognized by Al Qaeda…..As a first step, imagine that Al Qaeda does not exist and you are interested in the jihad. What would you do in this case? If you know some young people, one, two or more, in your neighbourhood, in your mosque or university, who are as zealous and enthusiastic as you are, concerning the jihad. Come to an agreement with them to form a cell in which the objective is to help Islam and only Islam…. At the beginning, your cell need have no more than five members; all absolutely trustworthy … the cell must have a commander, a shura, an advisor. The commander must be aware that he has to be, for the members of his cell, Osama Bin Laden himself … each cell must have a source of financing. When you have several members, you will certainly find funds for your cell… Then you must buy the arms and establish a plan. Discuss a strategy with the members, check the important objectives of your enemy and study the moves. Establish an objective: for example, assassinate the American Ambassador – is it so difficult? Is it really so difficult for someone who has already struck America in its territory?”.
The Egyptian site recalls clearly the teachings of Al Suri and tries to collocate individual terrorism on a global level. “What is the difference between you and the hero of the attack in New York, Mohammed Atta, who planned an operation that, still today, makes the world tremble when it is spoken of? To kill an Ambassador requires nothing more than a weapon and a bullet. One could disguise oneself as a peddler to tail a target, something which would cost very little … The cells must maintain contact with each other, but never in a conventional or direct manner. The tie must be spiritual. Even if the contacts are indirect, you must meet once a month, but never twice, consecutively, in the same place. More private and restricted meetings must be organized once a week …. From the moment a cell is formed, its members must be divided between secret members, (that is,) members who do not take action openly and are not sought by the authorities; and members who are sought by the authorities or have been arrested in the past or have a record with the intelligence apparatus.
The secret members must carry out work of intelligence, collect information, raise funds, recruit new members and guarantee assistance in the operations. The members who are not sought by the authorities have military tasks, such as assassinating a targeted person or hitting an enemy infrastructure. You must know that you have brothers everywhere and they are awaiting your actions and those of your friends, even if they do not know your name or know you personally…..”.
“Each and every cell of the jihad is a microcosm of the global jihad”.


The case of Europe

Holland, Denmark, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy: the spontaneous cells have already appeared in a marked or sporadic way in these Community Countries. The terrorists who assassinated the director, Teo Van Gogh (2nd November, 2004) had certain ties with the nebular of the Moroccan terrorism, but who grew up in Holland. We could define them as “a group of friends” converted to extreme radicalism.
The ties – perhaps underground – with the “professional” Qaedism have not been determinant if not as a form of emulation. The same happened in nearby Denmark, where the Authorities arrested numerous self-managed elements. Although having relations abroad – in Bosnia, in Sweden – they formed themselves on Danish territory, without taking orders from a superior entity.
These are extremist groups at low intensity, not sophisticated, with reduced means. So much so that they have always been discovered before they could act, and when they succeeded in some action, they have always been identified.
The operative isolation of the cell is an advantage and, at the same time, a weak point: when one comes out into the open, he must employ his – scarce – strength. It is rare that he can return to the attack. However, it is easily possible that one becomes a model. It is this that has happened in Great Britain.
The group responsible for the bombing on 7th July, 2005, chose their objectives autonomously; they made the bombs in the house bathroom, utilizing civil material, and left for their last mission without any logistic support. Only after the carnage, Al Qaeda claimed the attack with a strange video depicting Ayman Al Zawahiri, ideologist of the movement, and one of the terrorists. According to the experts it was a posthumous claim and, still today, it is debated whether the cell had received instructions from the outside. Some of the terrorists had made a trip to Pakistan, perhaps used as a cover for an operative summit. However, once re-entering Britain, they acted solitarily. This was a terrorist group composed of British citizens of Asiatic and Caribbean origin, which embodied the figure of the Jundallah, the soldier of Allah. On the 21st July, a second cell entered into action, this time, with African roots.
Once again, the link with the Qaedist main branch is missing and relations with those of the 7th July do not exist. The possible contacts with the fundamentalist environment of the Horn of Africa have not been, in any way, proven.
The pattern repeats itself, in a more complete manner, with the failed attacks in Glasgow and London, in 2007. Up until the moment of the attack, the members of the team had lived like perfect citizens. They had families, work and appear integrated. It is significant that the news media define the group “the cell of the doctors”.
In fact, many of them were medical doctors. When they step over the line of legality, it is too late to stop them. Fortunately, they failed.
A false step tied to the spontaneous character. Only one of the members could have received some form of training: for the rest, the only weapon they had was determination, driven by the desire for martyrdom.
The behaviour corresponds to the criteria of Al Suri. “Use what you have to attack; what is important is your will power”.
In Germany, for different reasons, two conspiracies, where the protagonists enjoyed total independence, failed. The first was organized by a micro-organization of young people of Lebanese origin. They tried, and failed, to explode a rudimentary explosive device on a train. The nucleus had some relation – very vague – with the Hizb Hut Tharir movement, but according to intelligence, they organized the hit by themselves.
For the cell, Internet and the jihadist propaganda had substituted the courses in Afghanistan. A few notions of how to construct a propane bomb had replaced the classes dedicated to explosives in the bases of Kalden (Afghanistan).
Instead, the second plot, which surfaced in September, represented a variant. The terrorists were converted Germans or young people of Turkish origin, but to command them by long-distance radio was Gofir Salimov, head of the Uzbeko Islamic Union of the jihad. This minute faction had received and prepared them and had then sent them home with an assigned mission. Long-distance assistance had been added to the “Spontaneity”.
A modus operandi which was destined to grow. The traditional Qaedist formations will no longer risk employing their own soldiers and will entrust the Western converts or European citizens of Eastern origin to the so-called “blue-eyed emirs”. In fact, during the course of 2007, the indications of the presence of “whites” in the front line of Al Qaeda have increased – especially in Britain and Germany.
In Italy, an investigation by the magistracy of Perugia has shown how, by now, a “second life” of terrorism exists: a virtual world of a holy war and martyrdom.
An imam remained seated for hours in front of the computer as if it were a trench in the front line. He downloaded as many as 20 thousand documents a week: videos of ambushes, fervent preaching, and military instruction. The PC becomes Academy, gymnasium, firing range, laboratory and source of doctrine. Everything can be done without ever leaving your room. Everything can be shown to a tight circle of very trusted supporters, without fear of discovery. Alternatively, the individual proceeds autonomously on the jihadist path. It is the classic example of the lone wolf. Something similar was discovered at Nancy, in France, in May, 2007. The Anti-terrorist Services arrested a French-Algerian who, through a forum on Internet, had been able to contact Al Qaeda on the territory of Maghreb. The extremist passed, in a short time, from ideological solidarity to active solidarity. In fact, with a series of messages, he declared himself ready to undertake attacks against French targets. A desperate form of the so-called “volunteer for martyrdom”. The initiate had no fear of working alone because he did not consider himself so. Internet places him in an army with units present everywhere. A click on the mouse, the arrival of an e-mail is equivalent to an explosive device sent from a commander.


The American experience

The United States have lived the post 11th September in the fear of a new attack and their defences have been raised to head off the blow. The wall has held, even if the price in terms of privacy and citizens’ right has been high. However, the protection against the outside enemy has not impeded – and it could not have been otherwise – the birth of numerous amateur cells, not one of which, fortunately, has been able to go beyond the embryonic stage; numerous are the episodes.
A band created in the penitentiary system in California; a handful of Afro-Americans in Florida (the Sects of Liberty City); a formation with ramifications in the Caribbean; a group of firebrands composed of refugees from Kosovo, in New Jersey.
Controversial cases: where the defenders have attempted to re-dimension the dangerousness and the accusers have tried to demonstrate the apparent presence of an undiscovered threat – immediately labelled by the executives of the FBI as “Pepsi Jihad”.
These are the elements in common: 1) Local bases; 2) Scarce military preparation; 3) Indirect and modest knowledge of the religious principles; 4) Utilization of the Internet as surrogate for training and indoctrination; 5) Belonging to the same family nucleus or to groups of friends; 6)Ambitions in the study of targets, beside operative naivety.
With respect to the others, the New Jersey episode was one which reverberated. The cell was animated by certain Kosovars who were perfectly integrated in the United States. Influenced by what was happening in the Mid-East, they decided to organize their own private war. If they had succeeded, they would have attacked Fort Dix, the barracks which had hosted them when they arrived from Kosovo. But they knew that they did not have the basic religious knowledge. To the point that the presumed leader of the cell had asked advice of a friend, revealed later to be an infiltrator of the FBI.
Some experts – both military and civil – have recognized contact points between the spontaneous cells and the urban gangs. They are dynamic; they collude with the small criminality they represent anti-State or anti-authority. Furthermore, it is not important how and who fight, but rather, with whom you align yourself. Gangs and cells tend to operate in a trans-national way, with indiscriminate violence and coercion, taking the Police and State as targets. Both gangs and cells participate, on different sides, in the “net war”: warfare conducted by dispersed groups, without a central command and linked telematically (Internet).
In the long run, the Qaedist bands could seek the collaboration of the gangs: to obtain arms, to guarantee safe movement for their own members, to conduct activities which bring in money.
The financing in the autonomous cells is of a reduced volume. The militants often live on their salaries, they do not have to sustain expenses for travel; they are not forced to buy arms, limiting themselves to the purchase of chemical products – legal products – only in the last phase of the plan. The major expenses could be represented by the “communications sector”; the latest models of mobile phones; speedy Internet connections; computers. They are guerrillas at low intensity and at low cost. To increase the budget, some may risk collusion with the small criminality: drug peddling; trafficking of documents; involvement in the immigration racket. Otherwise, a quota is set aside for the cause from their own commercial activities. In certain Western Countries and in the United States, cases of relations between the neo-terrorists and the huge market of falsification (handbags, T-shirts, spectacles, watches) have been reported.


Conclusion

If we judge from the results, one could say that the autonomous cells are only moderately dangerous. This is because we are used to measuring terrorism from the number of dead suffered in each single attack. The independent cells concluded murderous attacks in London, but for the remainder, have almost always failed. However, the threat must be considered in perspective and not limited only to the Qaedist phenomenon. If we look at the figures, it is indisputable that the number of volunteers for terrorism is growing. The cases rapidly follow one after the other and are spreading like wildfire. They are springing up in Morocco, Scandinavia, Southern Europe and the United States. The great flexibility, together with a reduced need of logistics, allows the extremists to advance without impediments. Furthermore, the relative simplicity of forming these cells constitutes incentive to create new ones. And the great possibilities offered by the present systems of communication – Internet, mobile phones, satellite, Skype – transform the local into global, guaranteeing a publicity sound box without precedent.
It is not too daring to say that some nuclei originate, not only because they gather under the banner raised by Bin Laden, but simple because they want “to be there”. It is the same motive that drives the Iraqi rebels to carry out spectacular bomb attacks and film them contemporaneously.
The film counts more than the actual attack. The almost immediate diffusion by the traditional media transforms a secondary episode into something much more important. And the cell, which up to that moment has lived in a cramped reality, in an instant, goes beyond many boundaries: that of the neighbourhood where the members live, the city where it has recruited the men, and that of the Country where it has acted.
The “autonomies” also have the “easier way of doing things”. They do not have to climb an Afghani mountain, find the right imam, pass the tests, or take the bayat, the solemn oath. Everything is close at hand; near the house, or in a friend’s apartment. The militant, when he really believes, is able to sustain two parallel existences. Run a shop and think of the jihad; take his children to school and study the targets. His house is, at the same time, a safe roof and a barracks.
All this poses serious problems to anti-terrorism. Those who investigate lack indicators to the terrorists. The autonomy is careful not to attend the radical mosques. He avoids being seen in the wake of “bad” people. His passport carries no suspicious visas and neither is he obliged to undertake trips which could indicate the contiguity with terrorist environments.
And yet there arrives a moment when the lone wolves leave their den. Having to do everything themselves, they are forced to go out and explore. Recognition in the area of the target could be a weak point where, finally, the red light of detection goes on. The other huge trail to follow is that of the controls on Internet.
Finally, but with great delay, the impact of the Net has been realized. In Germany, they have suggested the introduction of an aggressive monitoring, a repetition of what is already done in the United States: easier to talk about than put into practice. The fears for the violation of privacy and for possible misuses make the work of the Legislator complicated. On the other hand, it is not possible to permit the terrorists – real and potential – the liberty to communicate at their pleasure.
Parallel to the lone wolves of Osama, there are other predators, harmless in appearance. Young recluses, disturbed, perhaps with serious mental problems, who decide to revenge themselves for presumed wrongs by taking up a gun and opening fire against their fellow creatures. A shopping mall, classrooms of a school, a parking lot of a university is their battle-grounds.
Also these killers are autonomous: they prepare in the solitude of their own houses, preparing videos and – chilling news – they maintain connection with Internet.
The Qaedists kill in homage to Al Zarkawi. The students with the gun commemorate the insane shootings of Columbine.