The Architect of the New Global Jihad

When US intelligence officials confirmed in May that Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar, one of the top five wanted al-Qaeda leaders and better known to the world under his nom de guerre, Abu Mus’ab al-Suri (“The Syrian”), was in US custody after being taken in a sting in Quetta, Pakistan last November, few mainstream media outlets in the US outside of the Associated Press and NBC News took notice at the time. The Washington Post finally stepped up to note the importance of al-Suri’s capture and career in a May 23rd article, Architect of New War on the West.

In fact, al-Suri’s capture may be the most significant in the Global War on Terror since that of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the Number 3 man in al-Qaeda and the operational leader of the 9/11 attacks, in March 2003. One analyst has called al-Suri “the most dangerous terrorist you’ve never heard of”. Identified by European intelligence officials as one of the operational leader of the al-Qaeda bombings in Madrid and London, al-Suri is also responsible for crafting and implementing a new terror strategy to unleash a new campaign of indiscriminate attacks at America and its allies in Europe and the Middle East. Unfortunately, despite his detention by US authorities, al-Suri’s legacy as the architect of the new global jihad will continue well into the forseeable future.

In March 2006, Brynjar Lia, a senior researcher for the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) and the author of a forthcoming book on al-Suri’s career and ideological innovations, published an extended profile on the al-Qaeda strategist (which I have relied on heavily in preparing this article), noting his impressive terrorist resume:

• Al-Suri began his career in the early 1980s with the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, where he received extensive training from Egyptian, Iraqi and Jordanian military officials in guerilla warfare and explosives engineering. He served in the organization’s leadership in Baghdad after the Syrian Ba’ath regime suppressed a revolt by the Brotherhood in 1982, finally breaking with the group due to their growing ties to Saddam Hussein.
• He moved to Spain in 1985 where he opened an import business and planned to continue the resistance in Syria. During this time he authored an extensive and advanced study of the strengths and weaknesses of the Syrian resistance, The Syrian Islamic Jihadist Revolution – Pains and Hopes, marking his talents in theory and strategy. He also penned a number of essays under the pen name Umar Abd al-Hakim. After marrying a Spanish convert to Islam in 1988 (thereby gaining Spanish citizenship), he left to join the muhajadin in Afghanistan, who were still fighting the Soviet occupation.
• During his tenure in Afghanistan from 1987-1992, he quickly rose to prominence due to his extensive training in Syria and after catching the attention of Abdullah Azzam, the father of the Arab-Afghan movement, mentor to Osama bin Laden, and one of the chief founders of al-Qaeda. Al-Suri claims to have been in constant company with Azzam until Azzam’s assassination in 1989 in a struggle over direction of the Afghan resistance. He eventually was promoted to al-Qaeda’s Shura Council as Emir of the Syrians, representing the Syrian contingent in Afghanistan. In 1990, al-Suri published the first draft of his Call for a Global Islamic Resistance, which has gone through several subsequent revisions and expansions. As Lia notes (p. 6), this period is when al-Suri recognized the local emphasis of jihadist revolution needed to be expanded to a global scale.
• In 1992, al-Suri left Afghanistan and moved back to Spain to establish an al-Qaeda cell there. As a result of his many international contacts obtained in Afghanistan and as one of the most experienced leaders in the global Islamist movement, the Spanish cell became a primary backbone for al-Qaeda operations in Europe and al-Suri became one of its most important leaders. During this time he also became actively involved in supporting the Islamists in Algeria and Bosnia.
• In 1994, he moved to London to establish an al-Qaeda media center, the Islamic Conflicts Study Bureau, where he organized interviews for the BBC and CNN with Osama bin Laden. As Lorenzo Vidino of the Investigative Project noted in a May 2004 National Review article, al-Suri was one of the chief architects of the radical Islamic scene now referred to as “Londonistan”. He also contributed a number of articles to the UK-based Al-Ansar Magazine in defense of the murderous Algerian GIA; and his close associate, Abu Qatada, described as “Bin Laden’s Ambassador to Europe” and chief editor of Al-Ansar, issued a fatwa allowing for the killing of women and children by the GIA. Because al-Suri was suspected of being involved in the 1995 Paris metro bombing and his active contacts with bin Laden, he was briefly arrested by British authorities and released.
• Al-Suri returned to Afghanistan in 1998 after the Taliban takeover to escape what he thought was increased scrutiny by British intelligence. He initially directed a training camp for bin Laden schooling Arab jihadists, and in April 2000 he swore bayat to Taliban leader Mullah Umar and was charged with establishing a Taliban military camp, al-Ghuraba (“The Aliens”), at the Taliban’s Kargha military base for training sleeper cells made up of Muslims from all over Europe and the US. He was also involved in WMD training at the Durunta training complex near Jalalabad.
  

Safely back in Afghanistan, al-Suri began producing a series of strategic studies of the global jihad movement, including a detailed and frank analysis of the Taliban regime, which, according to Lia, concluded that “despite some weaknesses, must be considered a true Islamic Emirate, and the only true Islamic State on the planet” (p. 10).

It is during this critical period in the life of the jihadist movement and al-Suri’s career that he began reevaluating al-Qaeda’s tactics and began questioning the direction of the group’s leadership. One of the most telling indicators of the shift in his thinking is an email sent by al-Suri and his associate Muhammad al-Bahayah to bin Laden in July 1999, which was discovered when a reporter covering the fall of the Taliban regime in November 2001, Alan Cullison, unknowingly purchased an al-Qaeda official’s laptop that had been left behind in the evacuation of Kabul. The email is reprinted in Cullison’s September 2004 article in The Atlantic, Inside Al-Qaeda’s Hard Drive.

In al-Suri’s email, he expresses frustration with bin Laden’s obsession with international publicity and the danger that it posed to their Taliban safe haven by attracting the attention of Western authorities. “I think our brother has caught the disease of screens, flashes, fans, and applause,” the pair wrote. Disagreements notwithstanding, when suspicions were raised about a fracture within al-Qaeda, al-Suri appeared on al-Jezeera TV in 2000 to dismiss the rumors, and he still served among the highest ranking officials within al-Qaeda.

But the 9/11 attacks changed the playing field for al-Qaeda and for al-Suri’s thinking on the future of the global jihadist movement in particular. Some intelligence reports place him at the July 2001 “Tarragona Summit” in Spain when Mohammad Atta met with al-Qaeda officials to complete instructions for the 9/11 attacks. Ominously, in December 2004 after it was announced that the US government had put a $5 million bounty on al-Suri’s head and listed him as one of the top five wanted al-Qaeda leaders, he posted on his website a denial of his involvement in the 9/11 attacks and offered his assessment of how weapons of mass destruction should have been included in the planning:

I – along with millions of other Muslims – enjoyed watching the beginning of the collapse of America…if I had been consulted about this operation, I would have advised them to select aircraft on international flights and to have put weapons of mass destruction aboard them. Attacking America with weapons of mass destruction was – and still is – a difficult and complicated matter, but it is still a possibility in the end, if Allah permits us. More importantly, it is becoming a necessity…Let the American people – those who voted for killing, destruction, the looting of other nations’ wealth, megalomania, and the desire to control others – be contaminated with radiation! We apologize for the radioactive fallout.

In the wake of the American response to the 9/11 attacks and the fall of the Taliban, al-Suri’s prediction of the end of their Afghan safe haven was realized. For three years he was on the run, alternating hiding places between Iran and Pakistan before his capture last November. According to his December 2004 statement, he claimed he had not seen bin Laden since November 2001, at which time he pledged bayat to the al-Qaeda leader.

During that time in exile, he reassessed the global jihad strategy and reworked his tactical masterplan, Call for a Global Islamic Resistance. What his post-9/11 experience had taught him was that the standard tactic used against the Soviets of drawing them into a protracted conflict in a Muslim territory and waging a war of attrition was now futile. Not only had the American military learned the lessons from the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan by working with indigenous opposition forces, the overwhelming US airpower decimated the ranks of the al-Qaeda fighters. The muhajadin strategy was suicidal against the US.

What the situation demanded, and what al-Suri proposed when he republished his 1,600 page revised version of Call for a Global Islamic Resistance in 2004, was a dramatic restructuring of the global jihad. According to Lia,

Al-Suri concluded that in the post 9/11 era territorial consolidation and guerrilla warfare from fixed bases in rugged terrain is impossible. A new Afghanistan is unimaginable, at least in the short term. Instead, the future jihadist war must be led by small decentalised, mobile units operating completely independently of any centralised organization. (p. 16)

The changes recommended by al-Suri in his “individualized terrorism” strategy include:

• Identifying the weaknesses of past strategies, especially the reliance on safe havens, like Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan.
• Understanding the vulnerability of the current hierarchical model and moving to an independent, decentralized structure for operations.
• Reorienting the emphasis from confrontation in one particular country to a regional goal of pushing Western forces out of the Muslim world.
• Requiring that all cells be financially self-sustaining to reduce the risk of detection.
• Recognizing that the global jihad should no longer be the exclusive domain of an Islamic vanguard, but should be responsibility of the entire Islamic ummah. Jihad should be open to Muslims everywhere, and not limited to one group or set of leaders.
• Expanding the operational parameters beyond the Middle East to create a global theatre of terror.
  
  

What is perhaps most important about the shift in al-Suri’s doctrine of jihad is his advocacy for jihadists to impose a “template of terror” in their actions worldwide, as Lia explains:

Al-Suri’s slogan is: nizam, la tanzim, ‘System, not organisation’. In other words, there should be ‘an operative system’ or template, available anywhere for anybody, wishing to participate in the global jihad either on his own or with a small group of trusted associates, and there should not exist any ‘organisation for operations’…The glue in this highly decentralised movement is nothing else than ‘a common aim, a common doctrinal program and a comprehensive (self-) educational program’. (p. 17)

Al-Suri’s “template of terror” and “individualized terrorism” is what has been used in the post-9/11 al-Qaeda attacks in Bali, Istanbul, Madrid and London. In the case of bombings in Madrid and London, this new strategy has been put into practice effectively in the West. Evidence indicates that these operations were under the direct oversight of al-Suri. Documents recovered after the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings, which left 191 innocent civilians dead, indicate that al-Suri not only had direct control of the operation and ordered the action to immediately precede the Spanish parliamentary elections, but he also planned a second wave of suicide bombings in Spain – a plan that was foiled when Spanish authorities trapped the bombers in their hideout, where they blew themselves up rather than surrendering.

Spanish intelligence authorities also recovered evidence in the wake of the Madrid massacre that al-Suri was planning an action in the UK and reported such to British intelligence at least four months before the 7/7 bombings in London last summer. Needless to say, despite the advanced warning of al-Suri’s plans, British officials were not successful in defusing the threat. Immediately after the 7/7 bombings, Western intelligence agencies were already acknowledging al-Suri’s role in the attack, as reports from the London Times and the Chicago Tribune indicate.

The Madrid and London attacks are both textbook examples of al-Suri’s “template of terror” strategy, and probably foreshadow the kind of attacks to be launched in the future against the US. In his last public statement before his capture published in August 2005, al-Suri stated his hope to see these kinds of operations conducted in the American heartland:

We also have mujahidden living amongst you. We will unleash the mujahideen to detonate themselves amongst you so that you will all taste the death and terror that you have forced on all of our people, including targeting women and children…In short, and in a sincere way, we would like to tell the Americans and their European allies that we will never obey you…Do you really understand why so many people are so excited to become human bombs and blow you up?

Despite his capture and detention (hopefully he is experiencing the kind hospitality that the CIA is well-known for), al-Suri’s legacy as the architect of the new global jihad extends far into the foreseeable future. I suggest there are four identifiable reasons why this is so:

1. Al-Suri has trained through his studies, manuals, sermon tapes and instructional videos, as well as his tenure directing al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, a new generation of terrorists, what one analyst has called “the Third Generation of Salafi-Jihadists”. The breadth of training he has provided this new generation is stunning in its scope: media relations, tactical operations, organizational structure, long-term strategy and planning, and individual disciplines critical for the future of jihad (guerilla warfare, explosives engineering, WMD, etc.).
2. He has rightly identified the best method for advancing the cause of Jihad by recognizing America’s special vulnerability to his “individualized terrorism” tactics. And because of the decentralized nature of the sleeper cells that he himself has planted, most, if not all, of the details about these cells waiting for activation in Europe and the US are unknown to him and may not be exposed no matter how much interrogation he is subject to. In many respects, he prepared al-Qaeda for his own capture.
3. When reading his writings, it is clear that in recent years his attitude towards the West – particularly Britain and the US – had degenerated into an unbalanced rage. This is reflected in the terror methods he advocates: terror is no longer a means, but an end in itself. He recommends terror for terror’s sake. It might be a difficult contention for Americans to swallow and to look at objectively, but even the 9/11 attacks had concrete strategic value beyond terror: the attacks were aimed at destabilizing our governmental, military and economic institutions, which it accomplished to varying degrees (more economic, less governmental and martial). But bombing a school bus, shooting up a shopping mall, or bombing a church in middle America solely has terror as its objective. Terrorism is no longer to change American policy, but for perceived blood vengeance.
4. The one area that should be a concern for all Americans is the shift in al-Qaeda strategy related to WMD represented by al-Suri and the technical training he has provided. Just last year, al-Suri posted a 15-page “how-to” instructional pamphlet entitled Biological Weapons on his website. As one WMD terrorism analyst has observed, “Al-Suri, in a sense, has departed from the current strategy of al-Qaeda’s traditional leadership. Al-Qaeda’s leadership has been primarily concerned with providing the justification for jihadis to use WMD, while al-Suri advances this to actively advocating CBRN weapons as essential to the ‘end-game’ strategy.” Al-Suri has shifted the debate from seeing WMD as one of many options for al-Qaeda to use to WMD as a key component to victory of jihad against the US, going so far as to say that their use is “a necessity”.
   
   

The capture of al-Suri is a significant accomplishment for the US, but in realistic terms, it might have done nothing to mitigate the threat from his sleeper cell network which may begin operations on their own without activation by al-Qaeda. As the architect of the new global jihad, through the execution and improvement of his “individualized terrorism” and “template of terror”, along with his ideological shift regarding the use of WMD, Americans may experience the victims of al-Suri’s legacy for many years, or even many generations, to come.