What Is Al Qaeda, Part 3

This is the final batch of results from the "What is Al Qaeda" survey, conducted with major assistance from Clint Watts of SelectedWisdom.com.

Part 1: What is Al Qaeda (definition)

Part 2: Which groups are part of the U.S. war on Al Qaeda?

The third and final question in the survey asked about specific people and whether they are part of Al Qaeda. Click here to see the count for each category, or check out the percentages below.

Name	Yes	No	Don't know
Abu Muhammad Al Maqdisi	29%	30%	41%
Anwar Awlaki	77%	6%	17%
Abdel Majid Zindani	13%	34%	53%
Ramzi Yousef	58%	20%	22%
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed	87%	6%	7%
Abu Zubaydah	69%	6%	24%
Omar Abdel Rahman	35%	36%	29%
Omar Hammami	29%	26%	45%
Abu Bakr Bashir	27%	34%	39%
Hambali	24%	25%	51%

The results for this section were very much influenced by lack of information. As with the previous results, I have broken out academic and government responders for closer scrutiny. Given below are the percentage of "yes" votes as compared to "no" votes only (i.e., "don't know" answers were not counted). Yellow blocks show votes with less than two-thirds consensus, red blocks highlight near 50-50 splits.

Name	Academics	Government
Abu Muhammad Al Maqdisi	29%	59%
Anwar Awlaki	81%	96%
Abdel Majid Zindani	0%	22%
Ramzi Yousef	63%	64%
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed	90%	96%
Abu Zubaydah	88%	100%
Omar Abdel Rahman	26%	50%
Omar Hammami	20%	53%
Abu Bakr Bashir	20%	39%
Hambali	8%	60%

As you can see, government responders were much less likely to find consensus on these questions than academics, which is significant given that government employees are more directly responsible for implementing policies and making decisions about targeting. However, the sample size is so small (and the pool of government responders so diverse) that these figures should be used very cautiously when drawing conclusions of any kind.

That said, the results are quite interesting and rather confusing, often failing to apply the criteria for Al Qaeda affiliation outlined in Question One or specific groups identified in Question Two. So, for instance, the responses on Abu Zubaydah were quite strongly in favor of considering him part of Al Qaeda despite there being some confusion about this issue in the public record.

A majority of every professional group in the survey voted to include Ramzi Yousef in Al Qaeda, although the margins varied, with both government and academics failing to reach a two-thirds consensus. Relatively few people voted "don't know." While Yousef was known to have trained in Al Qaeda camps, the evidence that he acted at the direction of Al Qaeda is somewhat thin, and the evidence he was financed by Al Qaeda is significantly disputed. That said, there is enough evidence to make the argument and probably succeed in doing so, but it's hardly a slam dunk.

In contrast, the overall vote on Omar Abdel Rahman was sharply split and government voters went straight down the middle on the question. With some caveats, there is reasonably strong evidence that Rahman was signficantly financed by Osama bin Laden while he lived in America, and he effectively led the Al Kifah Center in Brooklyn, which was at least loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda, if not a full-blown "Al Qaeda outpost" as recent reports have mostly characterized it. You can find more on this in my book.

Here are a couple of charts showing a couple other interesting divergences in the data.





For both Omar Hammami and Abu Muhammad Al Maqdisi, we saw wild swings in the data. I will probably try to assemble some thoughts on this later. For now, I just note it.

This is the final installment of the results. I am going to ponder these numbers for a while, trying not just to make sense of them but to draw some useful conclusions and talk about how they inform our national discussion about terrorism. In the meantime, feel free to drop in and discuss your thoughts with me on Facebook or Twitter.

Finally, many thanks again to Clint and SelectedWisdom.com for making the charts above and for making the overall survey happen. A lot of work went into both assembling the survey and making the results comprehensible, and it is much appreciated.

Check out J.M. Berger's new book, Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam, on sale everywhere.

Labels: Abdul-Majid-Zindani, Abu-Mansour-Al-Amriki, Abu-Zubaydah, Al-Qaeda, Anwar-Awlaki, Omar-Abdel-Rahman, Omar-Hammami, Ramzi-Yousef, Survey

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

What Is Al Qaeda, Part 2

Part one
| Part two | Part three

In the first part of the "What is Al Qaeda" survey, we looked at textbook definitions for the kinds of people and organizations that experts consider to included in Al Qaeda. Click here to read the results.

In the second part, we're looking at what specific organizations those same experts consider to be part of the U.S. government's mandate to wage war against Al Qaeda. The answers are, again, interesting, showing a lack of consensus on key groups, and they do not always sync with the definitions identified in the first question. The bar charts below are once again thanks to Clint Watts of SelectedWisdom.com who also set up the survey page and collected and coded its results.

The survey asked respondents to comment on the following groups. The percentage of "yes" answers is given for each organization. Questions which did not achieve a two-thirds consensus are marked in yellow, questions which were close to a 50-50 split are marked in red.

Organization	Yes votes
Al Qaeda in Afghanistan	96.3%
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula	94.5%
Al Qaeda in Iraq	92.7%
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb	81.5%
Al Shabab	58.2%
Lashkar e Tayyibah	48.1%
Afghan Taliban	50.4%
Tehrik e Taliban	50.9%
Haqqani Network	53.7
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group	31.7
Revolution Muslim	26.7

Once you get past the groups with Al Qaeda in the name, consensus rapidly fell apart in this segment of the survey.



Responses on whether the Taliban should be considered part of Al Qaeda split almost perfectly down the middle, with different groups of respondents coming in all over the map. Academics voted no by two-thirds, while their students voted yes by the same amount. I find that disconnect pretty interesting. Government employees voted yes by just 55.5 percent. Media voted yes by 57.1 percent, and private sector voted no by 54.3 percent.

The status of the Taliban is a crucial question in the wsr in Afghanistan, as the U.S. considers negotiations with the Taliban as part of its withdrawal from Afghanistan. The differences among the various sectors of respondents are less important than the fact that no more than two-thirds of any given segment could agree on the question. Given that no one in government has ever seriously broached the idea that the U.S. could negotiate with Al Qaeda, the question is not a light one.



Pakistani militant group Lashkar e Tayyiba has shared facilities with Al Qaeda Central and provided support to AQC personnel. It would seem to qualify (at best) under "nominally independent extremist networks that provide significant services used in Al Qaeda operations,such as training camps or money laundering." Voters on Question One split 50-50 on whether that description could be considered part of Al Qaeda.

About the same percentage of respondents were willing to include LeT in the U.S. mandate to wage war on Al Qaeda than the Afghan Taliban, whose overt alliance with Al Qaeda was responsible for the invasion of Afghanistan in the first place.

Academics voted "no" by 71.4 percent, while government and media voted no by two-thirds and 62.5 percent respectively. Students and the private sector voted yes by 65.7 percent and 75 percent respectively. Government and academics as a combined group voted no by 68.7 percent, suggesting that there is more agreement among those in a position to know than the overall number might indicate.

Similar numbers were seen on the Haqqani network, within academics voting no by 65 percent, government almost evenly split, and media, private and student groups all voting yes by varying margins. I'd be interested to revisit this question in light of the CTC at West Point paper published this week by Dan Rassler and Vahid Brown on the Haqqani network's interconnections with Al Qaeda.

Outside of Af-Pak, Al Shabab is certainly one of the more pressing questions in counterterrorism at the moment. The Question One category best fitting Al Shabab based on open-source data at the time the survey was taken was "organizations whose leaders have publicly expressed loyalty to AQ or its emir," for which respondents could not come to a consensus, splitting 60-40 in favor of inclusion. Academics split on the question 61 percent against inclusion, while government responders could only muster a slim 52 percent support.

The survey was conducted prior to recent allegations of operational links between Al Shabab and AQAP and a corresponding uptick in U.S. strikes in Somalia. As the American CT effort in Shabab grows, the question of its classification also grows. The breakdown among professions shows very sharp divisions among different groups as to whether Shabab should be part of the U.S. war against Al Qaeda:



Academics voted "no" by a strong majority of 71.5 percent, while government employees voted "yes" by a less convincing 59.2 percent. The government vote is particularly interesting since, individual views aside, the Obama administration has made it crystal clear over the last several days that Shabab is on its targeting list. With votes from both groups taken together, 54.2 percent voted "yes," indicating a massive lack of consensus.

Once you get past those two key demographics, media respondents split 50-50 on the question of Shabab, whereas students and the private sector relatively strongly voted to include the Somali militant group, by 76.5%.

The next post on the survey, probably next week some time, will look at individual people and whether they are considered part of Al Qaeda. These results are all over the map and the most erratic of all three polls when evaluated on a factual basis and in comparison to the principles outlined in Question One, so be sure to check back.

Labels: Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda-In-Iraq, Al-Qaeda-In-The-Arabian-Peninsula, Al-Shabab, AQAP, AQIM, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Survey, Taliban

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

What Is Al Qaeda, Part 1

Part one | Part two | Part three

What is Al Qaeda?

It seems like a simple question. The United States has been at war with Al Qaeda for nearly 10 years, and Al Qaeda has been at war with the United States for even longer. With thousands of lives lost and trillions of dollars spent, surely there should be a single, clear answer to the question of identifying the enemy.

But it's not that simple. Not only are there sharp differences among different interest groups -- such as government (including contractors), academics and the media -- regarding exactly what comprises Al Qaeda, but even within those groups there is no consensus on key questions.

I have observed this anecdotally for some time, but I wanted to put some preliminary data on the question. With massive help from Clinton Watts of SelectedWidsom.com, a survey was created. Clint also provided the charts below.

We received 112 responses, which is fairly good given the unavoidable complexity of the survey. Respondents were solicited on Twitter and LinkedIn. A few random people crept in, including a couple of joke answers, but for the most part the group was fairly controlled. The survey consisted of three questions, each of which contained a number of sub-questions. The primary questions were:

What is Al Qaeda? (this post)

What groups are included in the U.S. mandate to wage war on Al Qaeda?

Which of the following individuals are part of Al Qaeda? (to come)

It will take a few posts to process and present these results, then at some point I will make an effort to write something more ambitious dealing with the big picture. This post will feature the results of the first question, "What is Al Qaeda?"

The question was presented with a series of descriptive sentences describing partial definitions of Al Qaeda on which respondents could vote "yes" or "no" as to whether the criteria met the definition of Al Qaeda. The results are below. I have highlighted questions where less than two-thirds of respondents agreed on the answer in yellow, and questions that are close to a 50-50 split in red.

Question	Percentage of yes votes
1. Muslim extremists who have sworn bayat (allegiance) to Osama bin Laden or the current emir of the Al Qaeda organization	87.4
2. Extremists who take orders from Al Qaeda's emir or his appointed deputies but may or may not have sworn bayat (allegiance)	83.5
3. Extremists who are significantly financed at the direction of Al Qaeda's emir or his deputies	71.8
4. Extremists based in the Af-Pak region	15.9
5. Formally branded Al Qaeda franchises (AQIM, AQAP and AQI)	85.2
6. Organizations whose leaders have publicly expressed loyalty to AQ or its emir	60.6
7. Nominally independent extremist networks that provide significant services used in Al Qaeda operations,such as training camps or money laundering	50
8. Ideologues who explicitly justify or defend Al Qaeda ideology and tactics without strong operational ties to the organization	27.5
9. People who take part in the broad social movement inspired by Al Qaeda but who may not have direct or operational links to terrorist leaders	21.5

Virtually all serious responses agreed, by about 90 percent, that people who have sworn bayat to Al Qaeda's emir should be considered part of Al Qaeda. More than 80 percent agreed that extremists who take orders from Al Qaeda's emir (regardless of oath) and Al Qaeda's officially sanctioned franchises should be included in the definition of Al Qaeda. More than 80 percent agreed to exclude people who only take part in Al Qaeda's social movement and Islamic extremists when being based in the Af-Pak area was the sole criteria.

From there, things get interesting.

On the question of whether ideologues who explicitly justify or defend Al Qaeda ideology and tactics without strong operational ties to the organization, the split was 72.5 percent voting "no" to 27.5 percent voting "yes," slightly less than three-quarters agreeing to exclude people in this category. While a clear majority, the split here shows a significant amount of dissent.

Real divisions emerged on the question of organizations whose leaders have publicly expressed loyalty to Al Qaeda or its emir, without being formally sanctioned franchises using the Al Qaeda name. Only 60.6 percent said yes, with 39.4 percent voting no. That represents very weak support for the most visible group that fits this criteria, Al Shabab. (The results were different when asked about Al Shabab specifically, as we will see in a subsequent post).

Respondents were split 50-50 on the question of nominally independent extremist networks that provide significant services used in Al Qaeda operations, such as training camps or money laundering. This gets into a whole host of organizations and sticky questions about people which will be touched on in follow-up posts, but for now I will just note that the people guiding U.S. drone activities seem to be following a philosophy that such networks can be targeted under the "war on Al Qaeda" mandate.

The two questions which lack a two-thirds consensus represent significant theaters in which the U.S. is operating fairly aggressively with an inclusive definition despite a lack of consensus on whether those groups should be considered part of Al Qaeda. This indicates to me that we need to be having more conversations about how our definitions impact policy.

DIFFERENCES BY PROFESSION

An important element of this discussion is looking at how different interest groups qualify their definitions of Al Qaeda.

On the question of whether groups significantly financed by Al Qaeda should be considered part of Al Qaeda, 57 percent of academics voted yes, compared to 63 percent of government respondents. That represents a significant lack of consensus. Students voted yes by 67 percent.

In comparison, media and private sector respondents (including a large number of people working in security-related fields but not direct government contractors) voted overwhelmingly -- more than 81 percent -- to include Al Qaeda-financed groups in the definition of Al Qaeda. That represents a meaningful disconnect, especially in the media sector which is charged with translating government and academic views on Al Qaeda for the general public.

Fracture lines also emerged over whether groups whose leaders have declared their loyalty to Al Qaeda should be considered part of Al Qaeda.

Students and private sector respondents were again much more inclined to classify such groups as part of Al Qaeda, voting yes 67 percent of the time. The media overwhelmingly voted yes on this question too.

In contrast, academics voted no by a margin of 61 percent, and government responders split almost evenly down the middle. Given the amount of activity around Al Shabab recently this is an extremely interesting result, although Shabab has other qualities which debateably could lead someone to include it under the umbrella of AQ.

The sharp lack of agreement among government responders also raises some significant questions, although the sample size is too small to make sweeping conclusions. A rigorous survey of government workers from the street level through the policy level would no doubt produce some very interesting results as well.

On the question of whether "nominally independent extremist networks that provide significant services used in Al Qaeda operations, such as training camps or money laundering," sharp differences again emerged depending on profession.

Academic responders voted no by 71 percent, while government responders voted yes by a slim margin of 51 percent. The media responders were almost evenly divided, while private sector and student responders voted yes by about 60 percent.

This question is particularly interesting in light of the case of Abu Zubaydah, who is or is not a member of Al Qaeda depending on who you talk to. Depending on who you talk to, Zubaydah's training camp and logistics operations would potentially fall under this description. The U.S. government has traditionally come down in favor of classifying Zubaydah as part of Al Qaeda.

Even though government responders voted yes on this issue by the slimmest of margins (one vote), in question three of the survey, to be discussed in a later post, government responders overwhelmingly classified Abu Zubaydah as part of Al Qaeda.

Given the relative importance of academia as a rigorous process for examining the evidence about Al Qaeda and government as the main implementer of action based on these definitions, I am breaking out their responses below for comparison to the overall field. All numbers are percentage of "yes" responses. Isolating these two important groups highlights notable failures to arrive at consensus with more categories being disputed and the splits being closer to even.

Question	Acad	Govt
1. Muslim extremists who have sworn bayat (allegiance) to Osama bin Laden or the current emir of the Al Qaeda organization	85.7	77.7
2. Extremists who take orders from Al Qaeda's emir or his appointed deputies but may or may not have sworn bayat (allegiance)	85	81.5
3. Extremists who are significantly financed at the direction of Al Qaeda's emir or his deputies	57.1	62.9
4. Extremists based in the Af-Pak region	9.5	19.2
5. Formally branded Al Qaeda franchises (AQIM, AQAP and AQI)	80	88.9
6. Organizations whose leaders have publicly expressed loyalty to AQ or its emir	38	51.9
7. Nominally independent extremist networks that provide significant services used in Al Qaeda operations, such as training camps or money laundering	28.6	38.4
8. Ideologues who explicitly justify or defend Al Qaeda ideology and tactics without strong operational ties to the organization	14.2	37
9. People who take part in the broad social movement inspired by Al Qaeda but who may not have direct or operational links toterrorist leaders	14.2	29.6

OVERALL CONSENSUS

The average "consensus" on all questions asked (averaging the majority scores from each response) works out to be 74.4 percent.

Academic responders average consensus score was 78.1 percent, somewhat higher. The average consensus for government responders was 71 percent. Government responders came from different sectors of government, which no doubt accounts at least in part for the lower score.

NEXT

Question Two: What groups are included in the U.S. mandate to wage war on Al Qaeda?

Labels: Al-Qaeda, Survey

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink