The Protean Enemy

Jessica Stern

WHAT S NEXT FROM AL QAEDA?

HAVING SUFFERED the destruction of its sanctuary inAfghanistan

two years ago, alQaeda's alreadydecentralized organization has become
more decentralized still. The group's leaders have largely dispersed to
Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and elsewhere around theworld (only a few still
remain inAfghanistan's lawlessborder regions).And with many of the
planet'sintelligenceagenciesnow focusingon destroyingitsnetwork,
alQaeda's ability to carryout large-scale attacks has been degraded.
Yet despite these setbacks, alQaeda and its affiliates remain among
themost significant threats toU.S. national security today. In fact,
accordingtoGeorgeTenet, theCIA's
director,theywilicontinuetobe this
dangerous for the next two to five years.An alleged alQaeda spokes
person has warned that the group is planning another strike similar
to those of September n. On May 12, simultaneous bombings of three
housing complexes inRiyadh, SaudiArabia, killed at least 29 people and
injuredover200,many of themWesterners. Intelligenceofficialsin
theUnited States, Europe, andAfrica report that alQaeda has stepped
up its recruitment drive in response to thewar in Iraq.And the target
audience for its recruitment has also changed. They are now younger,
with an even more "menacing attitude," as France's top investigative
judgeon terrorism-related
cases,Jean-LouisBruguiere,describesthem.
More of them are converts to Islam.And more of them arewomen.
What accounts for al Qaeda's ongoing effectiveness in the face
of an unprecedented onslaught? The answer lies in the organization's

JESSICA STERN is Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard's John F.

Kennedy School of Government and the author of The Ultimate Terrorists
and the forthcoming Terrorin theName ofGod:Why ReligiousMilitants Kill.

[27]
 JessicaStern
remarkablyprotean nature. Over its life span, alQaeda has constantly
willingness to adaptitsmission.This
evolvedand showna surprising
capacity for change has consistently made the group more appealing
to recruits,attractedsurprisingnew allies, and-most worrisome
from aWestern perspective-made it harder to detect and destroy.
Unless Washington and its allies show a similar adaptability, thewar
on terrorismwon't be won anytime soon, and the death toll is likely
tomount.

MALLEABLE MISSIONS

WHY DO religious terrorists kill? In interviews over the last five years,
many terrorists and their supporters have suggested tome that people
first join such groups tomake the world a better place-at least for
the particular populations they aim to serve. Over time, however,
militants have told me, terrorism can become a career asmuch as a
passion. Leaders harness humiliation and anomie and turn them into
weapons. Jihad becomes addictive, militants report, and with some
individualsor groups-the "professional"
terrorists-grievancescan
evolve into greed: formoney, political power, status, or attention.
terroristgroups,simplyperpetuatingtheir
In such "professional"
cadres becomes a central goal, andwhat started out as amoral crusade
becomes a sophisticated organization. Ensuring the survival of the
group demands flexibility inmany areas, but especially in terms of
mission. Objectives thus evolve in a variety ofways. Some groups find
a new cause once their first one is achieved-much as theMarch of
Dimes broadened itsmission from finding a cure for polio to fighting
birth defects after the Salk vaccine was developed. Other groups
broaden their goals in order to attract awider variety of recruits. Still
other organizations transform themselves into profit-driven organized
criminals, or form allianceswith groups that have ideologies different
from their own, forcing both to adapt. Some terroristgroups hold fast
to their original missions. But only the spry survive.
Consider, for example, Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ).Eij's original
objective was to fight the oppressive, secular rulers of Egypt and turn
the country into an Islamic state. But the group fell on hard times
after its leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, was imprisoned in the

[28] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume

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 The ProteanEnemy
United States and other EIJleaderswere killed or forcedinto exile.
Thus in the early l990s, Ayman al-Zawahiri decided to shift the
group's sights from its "near enemy"-the secular rulers of Egypt
to the "far enemy," namely the United States and other Western
countries. Switching goals in thisway allowed the group to align itself
with another terrorist aiming to attack theWest and able to provide
a significant influxof cash:Osama bin Laden. In return forbin Laden's
financial assistance, Zawahiri provided some 200 loyal,disciplined, and
well-trained followers,who became the core of alQaeda's leadership.
A second group that has changed itsmission over time to secure a
more reliable source of funding is the IslamicMovement ofUzbekistan
(IMu),which, like EIJ,eventually joined forceswith theTaliban and al
Qaeda. The IMU'S original mission was to toppleUzbekistan's corrupt
and repressive post-Soviet dictator, Islam Karimov. Once the IMU
formed an alliancewith theTaliban's leader,Mullah Omar, however, it
began promoting theTaliban's anti-American and anti-Western agenda,
also condemning music, cigarettes, sex, and alcohol.This new puritanism
reducedits appealamong itsoriginal, less-ideologicalsupportersin
Uzbekistan-one downside to switchingmissions.
Even Osama bin Laden himself has changed his objectives over
time.The Saudi terroristinheritedanorganizationdevotedto fighting
Soviet forces inAfghanistan. But he turned it into a flexible group of
ruthlesswarriors ready to fight on behalf of multiple causes. His first
call to holy war, issued in 1992,urged believers to killAmerican soldiers
in SaudiArabia and theHorn of Africa but barelymentioned Palestine.
The second, issued in 1996,was a 40-page document listing atrocities
committedagainst
and injustices Muslims,mainlybyWestern powers.
With the release of his thirdmanifesto in FebruaryL1998,however, bin
Laden began urging his followers to start deliberately targeting
American civilians, rather than soldiers. (Some al Qaeda members
were reportedly distressed by this shift to civilian targets and left the
group.)Although this thirddeclarationmentioned the Palestinian
struggle, itwas still only one among a litany of grievances. Only in
bin Laden's fourth call to arms-issued to the al Jazeera network on
October 7, 2001, to coincide with the U.S. aerial bombardment of
Afghanistan-did he emphasize Israel'soccupationof Palestinian
landsand thesufferingof IraqichildrenunderUNsanctions,concerns

FO0RE IGN A FFA IRS July/August2003 [ 29 ]

 AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS

Newffiends in lowplaces:Osama bin Laden, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh,

MirAimalKansi...

broadly shared in the Islamicworld. By extending his appeal, bin Laden

sought to turn thewar on terrorism into awar between all of Islam
and theWest. The events of September u, he charged, split theworld
into twocamps-believers and infidels-and the timehad come for
"everyMuslim to defendhis religion."
One of the masterminds of the September u attacks, Ramzi bin
al-Shibh, laterdescribedviolenceas "thetax"thatMuslims must pay
"forgainingauthorityon earth."This commentpoints toyet another
way that alQaeda's ends have mutated over the years. In his putative
Zawahiri calls the "NewWorld Order" a sourceof
autobiography,
humiliation forMuslims. It is better, he says, for the youth of Islam
to carry arms and defend their religionwith pride and dignity than to
submit to thishumiliation.One of alQaeda'saims in fighting the
West, inotherwords, hasbecome to restorethedignityof humiliated
youngMuslims. This ideais similarto theanticolonialisttheoretician
Frantz Fanon's notion that violence is a "cleansing force" that frees
oppressedyouth from"inferioritycomplexes," and"inaction,"
"despair,"
The realtarget
making them fearlessand restoringtheirself-respect.
audienceof violent attacks is thereforenot necessarilythe victims
and theirsympathizers,but theperpetratorsand theirsympathizers.
Violence becomes away to bolster support for the organization and
Hence, amongthejustifications
themovementit represents. for"special
operations" listed in al Qaeda's terroristmanual are "bringing new
members to the organization'sranks"and "boostingIslamicmorale
and lowering that ofthe enemy."The United States may have become

[30] FOREIGN AFFAIRS* VolumeR2No.4

 AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS GETTY

AftabAnsari,andMattHale
...Ramzi binal-Shibh,

alQaeda'sprincipalenemy,but raisingthemoraleof Islamistfighters

and theirsympathizersisnow one of itsprincipalgoals.

FRIENDS OF CONVENIENCE

APARTFROMthe flexibilityof itsmission, anotherexplanationforal

Qaeda'sremarkablestayingpower is itswillingness to forgebroad
andsometimesunlikely-alliances.In an effortto expandhis network,
binLadencreatedtheInternationalIslamicFrontforJihad Against the
Jews and Crusaders (IIF) in February 1998. In addition to bin Laden
Zawahiri,members includedtheheadof Egypt'sGama'a al
and EIJ'`
of thePakistanireligiouspartyknown
Islamiya,the secretary-general
as theJamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam GUI),and the head of Bangladesh's
JihadMovement. Later,the IIFwas expandedto includethePakistani
jihadi organizataons Lashkar-e-Taiba,Harkat-ul-Mujahideen,and
Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, the last an anti-Shi'a sectarian party. Senior
alQaeda lieutenantAbu Zubaydah was captured at aLashkar-e-Taiba
safe house in Faisalabad inMarch 2oo2, suggesting that some of
members are facilitatingand assisting themove
Lashkar-e-Taiba's
ment of alQaeda members in Pakistan. And Indian sources claim that
Lashkar-e-Taiba isnow trying to play a role similar to that once played
by al Qaeda itself, coordinating and in some cases funding pro-bin
Laden networks, especially in Southeast Asia and the Persian Gulf.
In addition to its formal alliances through the IIF, bin Laden's
organization has also nurtured ties and now works closely with a

FORE IGN AF FAIRS .July/A

ugUSt2003 [31]
 Jessica
Stern
variety of still other groups around the world, including Ansar al
Islam, based mainly in Iraq and Europe; Jemaah Islamiah in Southeast
Asia; Abu Sayyaf and theMoro Islamic Liberation Front in the
Philippines; and many Pakistani jihadi groups. In some cases, al
Qaeda has provided these allieswith funding and direction. In others,
the groups have shared camps, operatives, and logistics. Some "fran
chise groups," such as Jemaah Islamiah, have raisedmoney for joint
operations with alQaeda.
Perhapsmost surprising(andalarming)is the increasingevidence
that al Qaeda, a Sunni organization, is now cooperating with the
Shi'agroupHezbollah,consideredtobe themost sophisticated
terrorist
group in theworld. Hezbollah, which enjoys backing from Syria and
Iran, isbased in southern Lebanon and in the lawless "triborder"region
of South America, where Paraguay, Brazil, andArgentina meet. The
group has alsomaintained a fundraising presence in theUnited States
since the 1980S.According to the CIA'S Tenet, however, the group has
lately stepped up itsU.S. activities and was recently spotted "casing
and surveilling
American facilities."
Although low-levelcooperation
between al Qaeda and Hezbollah has been evident for some time
their logistical cooperation was revealed in the trial of al Qaeda
operatives involved in the 1998 embassy bombing attacks in east
Africa-the two groups have formed amuch closer relationship since
alQaeda was evicted from its base inAfghanistan. Representatives of
the two groups have lately met up in Lebanon, Paraguay, and an
unidentified African country.According to a report in Israel'sHa'aretz
newspaper, ImadMughniyah, who directs Hezbollah in the triborder
area, has also been appointed by Iran to coordinate the group's activities
with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The triborder region of South America has become the world's
new Libya, a placewhere terroristswith widely disparate ideologies
Marxist Colombian rebels, American white supremacists, Hamas,
Hezbollah, and others-meet to swap tradecraft. Authorities now
worry that the more sophisticated groups will invite the American
radicals to help them.Moneys raised for terrorist organizations in the
United States are often funneled through Latin America, which has
also become an important stopover point for operatives entering the
United States. Reports that Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is

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 The ProteanEnemy
allowing Colombian rebels andmilitant Islamist groups to operate in
his country aremeanwhile becoming more credible, as are claims that
Venezuela's Margarita Island has become a terrorist haven.
As these developments suggest and Tenet confirms, "mixing and
matching of capabilities, swapping of training, and the use of common
facilities"havebecome thehallmarkof professionalterroriststoday.
This fact has been borne out by the leader of a Pakistani jihadi group
affiliatedwith alQaeda, who recently toldme that informal contacts
between his group and Hezbollah, Hamas, and others have become
common. Operatives with particular skills loan themselves out to
different groups, with expenses being covered by the charities that
formed to ftind the fight against the Soviet Union inAfghanistan.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration's claims that alQaeda coop
eratedwith the "infidel" (read: secular) Saddam Hussein while he was
still in office are now also gaining support, and from a surprising
source. Hamid Mir, bin Laden's "official biographer" and an analyst
for alJazeera, spent twoweeks filming in Iraq during thewar. Unlike
most reporters,Mir wandered the country freely and was not em
bedded with U.S. troops.He reports that he has "personalknowledge"
that one of Saddam's intelligence operatives, Farooq Hijazi, tried to
contact bin Laden inAfghanistan as early as 1998.At that time, bin
Laden was publicly still quite critical of the Iraqi leader, but he had
become farmore circumspect byNovember 2001,when Mir interviewed
him for the third time.Mir also reports that he met a number of
Hezbollah operatives while in Iraq and was taken to a recruitment
center there.

NEW-STYLE NETWORKS
AL QAEDA SEEMS to have learned that in order to evade detection
in theWest, itmust adopt some of the qualities of a "virtualnetwork":
a style of organization used by American right-wing extremists for
operating in environments (such as the United States) that have
effectivelawenforcementagencies.Americanantigovernment
groups
refer to this style as "leaderless resistance."The ideawas popularized by
LouisBeam, theself-described staffpropagandist,
ambassador-at-large,
and "computer terroristto theChosen" forAryan Nations, anAmerican

FOREIGN AFFAIRS July/August

2003 [33]
 Jessica Stern

neo-Nazigroup.Beamwrites thathierarchical organizationisextremely

dangerous for insurgents,especially in "technologicallyadvanced
societieswhere electronicsurveillance
canoftenpenetratethestructure,
revealingits chain of command."In leaderlessorganizations,how
ever,"individualsandgroupsoperate independentlyof eachother,
and never report to a central headquarters or single leader for direction
or instruction, aswould thosewho belong to a typical pyramid organ
ization." Leaders do not issue orders or pay operatives; instead, they
inspire small cells or individuals to take action on their own initiative.
Lone-wolf terrorists typically act out of amixture of ideology and
personal grievances. For example, Mir Aimal Kansi, the Pakistani
national who shot several CIAemployees in 1993, described his actions
as "between jihad and tribal revenge" jihad against America for its
support of Israel and revenge against the CIA,which he apparently
felt had mistreated his father during Afghanistan's war against the
Soviets. Meanwhile, John Allen Muhammad, one of the alleged
"Washington snipers," reportedly told a friend that he endorsed the
September 1i attacks and disapproved of U.S. policy towardMuslim
states, but he appears to have been principally motivated by anger at
his ex-wife for keeping him from seeing their children, and some of his
victims seem to have been personal enemies. As increasingly powerful
weapons become more and more available, lone wolves, who face
few political constraints, will become more of a threat,whatever their
primary motivation.
The Internet has also greatly facilitated the spread of "virtual"
subcultures and has substantially increased the capacity of loosely
networked terrorist organizations. For example, Beam's essay on
the virtues of"leaderless resistance" has long been available on the
Web and, according to researcher Michael Reynolds, has been
highlighted by radicalMuslim sites. Islamist Web sites also offer
on-line training courses in the production of explosives and urge
visitors to take action on their own. The "encyclopedia of jihad,"
parts of which are available on-line, provides instructions for creating
"clandestine with units for intelligence,supply,planning
activitycells,"
and preparation, and implementation.
The obstacles theseWeb sites pose forWestern law enforcement
are obvious. In one article on the "culture ofjihad" available on-line,

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 The ProteanEnemy

a Saudi Islamist urges bin Laden's sympathizers to take actionwithout

waiting for instructions. "I do not need tomeet the Sheikh and ask
his permission to carry out some operation," he writes, "the same as
I do not need permission to pray, or to think about killing the Jews
and the Crusaders that gather on our lands."Nor does itmake any
difference whether bin Laden is alive or dead: "There are a thousand
bin Ladens in this nation.We should not abandon ourway, which the
Sheikh has paved for you, regardless of the existence of the Sheikh or
his absence."And according to U.S. government officials, alQaeda
now uses chat rooms to recruitLatino Muslims with U.S. passports,
in the belief that they will arouse less suspicion as operatives than
would Arab-Americans. Finally, as the late neo-Nazi William Pierce
once toldme, using theWeb to recruit "leaderless resisters"offers still
another advantage: it attracts better-educated young people than do
more traditionalmethods, such as radio programs.
Already the effects of these leaderless cells have been felt. In Feb
ruary 2002, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British national who
was recently sentenced to death for his involvement in the abduction
and murder of Wall Street Journal reporterDaniel Pearl, warned his
Pakistani interrogators that they would soon confront the threat of
small cells, working independently of the known organizations that
Pakistani President PervezMusharraf had vowed to shut down. Sure
enough, soon after Omar Sheikh made this threat, unidentified ter
rorists killed 5people in an Islamabad church known to be frequented
byU. S. embassy personnel, and another group killed u French military
personnel in Karachi inMay. And in July, still other unidentified
terroristsdetonated a truckbomb at the entrance of theU.S. consulate
inKarachi,killing12Pakistanis.

JOINING THE FAMILY

VIRTUALLINKSareonly part of theproblem;terrorists,including
members of bin Laden's IIF,have also started to forge tieswith tradi
tionalorganizedcrimegroups,especiallyin India.One particularly
troublingexample is the relationshipestablishedbetween Omar
Sheikh and an ambitious Indian gangster named Aftab Ansari. Asif
Reza Khan, the "chief executive" forAnsari's Indian operations, told

FORE IGN A FFA IRS July/August

2003 [135]
 Jessica Stern

interrogators that he received military training at a camp in Khost,

Afghanistan, belonging to Lashkar-e-Taiba,and that "leadersof
differentmilitant outfits inPakistanwere tryingto use his network
for the purpose ofjihad, whereas [Ansari]was trying to use themilitants'
networksforunderworldoperations."
Khan told his interrogators that the don provided money and
hideouts to his new partners, in one case transferring $100,000 to
Omar Sheikh-money thatOmar Sheikh, in turn,wired toMuhammad
Atta, the lead hijacker in the September ii attacks. According to
Khan, Ansari viewed the $1oo,ooo gift as an "investment" in a
valuable relationship.
Still another set of unlikely links has sprung up inAmerican prisons,
where Saudi charities now fund organizations that preach radical
Islam.According toWarith Deen Umar, who hiredmost of theMuslim
chaplains currently active inNew York State prisons, prisoners who
are recentMuslim converts arenatural recruitsfor Islamist organizations.
Umar, incidentally, told TheWall StreetJournal that the September ii
hijackers should be honored asmartyrs, and he traveled to Saudi Ara
bia twice as part of an outreach program designed to spread Salafism
(a radicalMuslim movement) inU.S. prisons.
Another organization now active inU.S. prisons isJamaat ul-Fuqra,
a terrorist group committed to purifying Islam through violence.
(Daniel Pearlwas abducted andmurdered inPakistanwhile attempting
to interview the group's leader,Sheikh Gilani, to investigate the claim
thatRichard Reid-who attempted to blow up an international flight
with explosives hidden in his shoes-was acting under Gilani's
orders.) The group functions much like a cult in theUnited States;
members live in poverty in compounds, some of which are heavily
armed. Itsmembers have been convicted of fraud,murder, and several
bombings, but so far, most of their crimes have been relatively
small scale. Clement Rodney Hampton-El, however, convicted of
participating with Omar Abdel Rahman in a 1993 plot to blow up
NewYork City landmarks,was linked to the group, andU.S. law en
forcement authorities worry that the Fuqra has since come under the
influence of alQaeda.
Still another surprising source of al Qaeda recruits is Tablighi
Jamaat (TJ), a revivalist organization that aims at creating better

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 The ProteanEnemy

Muslims through"spiritualjihad":good deeds, contemplation,and

proselytizing. According to the historian Barbara Metcalf, TJ has
traditionallyftinctionedas a self-helpgroup,much likeAlcoholics
Anonymous, and most specialists claim that it is no more prone to
violence than are the Seventh-Day Adventists, with whom TJ is
frequently compared. But severalAmericans known to have trained
in alQaeda camps were brought to Southwest Asia by TJ and appear
to have been recruited intojihadi organizations while traveling under
TJ auspices. For example, Jose Padilla (anAmerican now being held
as an "enemy combatant" for planning to set off a "dirty"radiological
bomb in theUnited States) was amember of TJ, aswere Richard Reid
and JohnWalker Lindh (the so-called American Taliban). According
to prosecutors, the "Lackawanna Six" group (an alleged al Qaeda
sleeper cell from a Buffalo, New York, suburb) similarly firstwent to
Pakistan to receive TJ religious training before proceeding to the al
Farooq training camp inAfghanistan. A Pakistani TJmember told
me that jihadi groups openly recruit at the organization's central
headquartersinRaiwind,Pakistan,includingat themosque.And TJ
members in Boston say that a lot of Muslims end up treating the
group, which is now active inAmerican inner cities and prisons, as a
gatewaytojihadiorganizations.
As such evidence suggests, although itmay have been founded to
createbetter individuals,TJhasproducedoffshootsthathaveevolved
into more militant outfits. In October 1995, Pakistani authorities
uncovered a military plot to assassinate Prime Minister Benazir
Bhutto and establish a theocracy.Most of the officers involved in the
attempted coup were members of TJ.The group is said to have been
stronglyinfluencedby retiredLieutenantGeneral JavedNasir,who
served as Pakistan's intelligence chief from 1ggo to 1993 but was
sacked under pressure from theUnited States for his support of militant
Islamistsaroundtheworld.
Totalitarian Islamist revivalism has become the ideology of the
dystopian new world order. In an earlier era, radicals might have
describedtheirgrievancesthroughother ideologicallenses,perhaps
Marxism,orNazism.TodaytheychooseextremeIslamism.
anarchism,
Radical transnationalIslam,divorcedfrom itscountriesof origin,
appeals to some jobless youths in depressed parts of Europe and the

FO0RE IGN AF FA IRS July/August2003 [3 7]

 Jessica Stern

United States.As theFrenchscholarOlivier Roy points out, leaders

of radical Islamic groups often come from themiddle classes, many of
them having trained in technical fields, but their followers tend be
working-classdropouts.
Focusing on economic and social alienation may help explain
why such a surprising array of groups has proved willing to join
forces with al Qaeda. Some white supremacists and extremist
Christians applaud al Qaeda's rejectionist goals and may eventu
ally contribute to al Qaeda missions. Already a Swiss neo-Nazi
named Albert Huber has called for his followers to join forces
with Islamists. Indeed, Huber sat on the board of directors of the
Bank al Taqwa, which the U.S. government accuses of being a
major donor to al Qaeda. Meanwhile, Matt Hale, leader of the
white-supremacist World Church of the Creator, has published a
book indicting Jews and Israelis as the real culprits behind the at
tacks of September 1i. These groups, along with Horst Mahler (a
founder of the radical leftist German group the Red Army Faction),
view the September 1i attacks as the first shot in a war against
globalization, a phenomenon that they fear will exterminate na
tional cultures. Leaderless resisters drawn from the ranks of white
supremacists or other groups are not currently capable of carrying
out massive attacks on their own, but they may be if they join
forces with al Qaeda.

MODERN METHODOLOGY

AL QAEDA HAS lately adopted innovative tactics aswell as new al

liances. Two new approaches are particularly alarming to intelligence
officials: efforts to use surface-to-air missiles to shoot down aircraft
and attempts to acquire chemical, nuclear, or biological weapons.
InNovember 2002, terroristslaunchedtwo shoulder-firedSA-7
missiles at an Israeli passenger jet taking off fromMombasa, Kenya,
with 271passengers on board. Investigators say that themissiles came
from the same batch as those used in an earlier, also unsuccessful
attack on a U.S. military jet in Saudi Arabia. And intelligence
officials believe that Hezbollah contacts were used to smuggle the
missiles into Kenya from Somalia.

[38] FOREIGNAFFAIRS Volume

82No.4
 The ProteanEnemy
Meanwhile, according toBarton Gellman of TheWashington Post,
documents seized in Pakistan inMarch 2003 reveal that alQaeda has
acquired the necessarymaterials forproducing botulinum and salmonella
toxins and the chemical agent cyanide-and is close to developing a
workable plan for producing anthrax, a farmore lethal agent. Even
more worrisome is the possibility that al Qaeda, perhaps working
with Hezbollah or other terrorist groups, will recruit scientists with
access to sophisticated nuclear or biologicalweapons programs, possibly,
but not necessarily, ones that are state-run.
To fight such dangeroustactics,
Western governmentswill also
need to adapt. In addition tomilitary, intelligence, and law enforcement
Washington shouldstartthinkingabouthowU.S. policies
responses,
are perceived by potential recruits to terrorist organizations. The
United States too often ignores the unintended consequences of its
actions, disregarding, for example, the negative message sent by
Washington's ongoing neglect of Afghanistan and of the chaos in
postwar Iraq. If the United States allows Iraq to become another
failed state, groups both inside and outside the country that support
alQaeda's goals will benefit.
Terrorists, after all, depend on the broader population for support,
and the right U.S. policies could do much to diminish the appeal of
rejectionist groups. It does not make sense in such an atmosphere to
keep U.S. markets closed to Pakistani textiles or to insist on protecting
intellectual property with regard to drugs that needy populations in
developing countries cannot hope to afford.
In countrieswhere extremistreligiousschoolspromote terrorism,
Washington should help develop alternative schools rather than attempt
to persuade the local government to shut down radical madrasahs.
In Pakistan, many children end up at extremist schools because
their parents cannot afford the alternatives; better funding for secular
educationcould thereforemake a positive difference.
The appeal of radical Islam to alienated youth living in theWest
is perhaps an even more difficult problem to address. Uneasiness
with liberalvalues, discomfortwith uncertain identities, and re
sentmentof theprivilegedareperennialproblemsinmodern societies.
What is new today is that radical leaders are using the tools of
globalization to construct new, transnationalidentitiesbased on

FO RE IGN A FFA IRS July/August2003 [ 3 9]

 Jessica Stern

death cults, turning grievances and alienation into powerful

weapons. To fight these tactics will require getting the input not
just of moderateMuslims, but of radicalIslamist revivalistswho
oppose violence.
To prevent terroristsfrom acquiringnewweapons, meanwhile,
Western governments must make it harder for radicals to get their
hands on them. Especially important is the need to continue up
grading security at vulnerable nuclear sites, many of which, inRussia
and other former Soviet states, are still vulnerable to theft. The
global systemof diseasemonitoring-a system sorelytestedduring
the SARSepidemic-should also be upgraded, since biological attacks
may be difficult to distinguish from natural outbreaks. Only by
matching the radical innovation shown by professional terrorists
such as alQaeda-and by showing a similar willingness to adapt
and adopt new methods and new ways of thinking-can theUnited
States and its allies make themselves safe from the ongoing threat
of terrorist attack.@

[40] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume82No. 4

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