A Western commentator recently compared two upcoming events — the capture of Osama Bin Laden and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. At first glance it would seem that the end of Bin Laden spells the end of his organization and the end of Saddam means the end of Iraq’s Baath Party.
The author is correct in his assumption that it is easy to overthrow a regime by toppling its leader, and he confirms that the situation in Iraq will be difficult to contain. He is, however, incorrect in his belief that it would be so easy to be done with the extremist religious organization Al-Qaeda by simply capturing its leader.
His error is in comparing between an administrative regime and an ideological one. The first is an apparatus so organized as to break apart once the head is removed. But the second is an ideological organization capable of rebirth even if its leadership is eliminated. This is what the Americans fail to understand when they propose to apply the same scalpel to all the problems in the region.
They have undoubtedly achieved great successes in breaking apart Al-Qaeda’s infrastructure in Afghanistan and are quite capable of bringing down the Iraqi regime. But they will not so easily eliminate the religious organization even if they succeed in getting rid of Bin Laden and other pillars of its structure. Al-Qaeda is not a criminal organization along the lines of the mafia, whose members are easy to capture once the leadership is put out of work. It is an idea that exists in camps and villages as well as cities and palaces.
Leaders of the movement — including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaida, Abdel Rahim Al-Nashiri, Ramzi bin Al-Sheiba, Al-Hawasari, and hundreds of others — have been captured. But these are just seats waiting to be filled.
These organizations are like mind factories, capable of replacing what they have lost by arming others, and able to rebuild cells from scratch. Nor are their operations expensive. The destruction of the USS Cole in the port of Aden was achieved using a small boat and didn’t cost more than $10,000; the Sept. 11 attacks themselves weren’t very costly.
Let us compare the results. The American government has described the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as dealing a deathblow to Al-Qaeda. But have we forgotten that they said exactly the same thing eight years ago when they captured his nephew Ramzi Yusuf, also in Pakistan? The American security forces thought that the 1993 explosion at the World Trade Center would mark the end of a dangerous secret organization — whose name they didn’t know at the time. Yet it was that same building that Al-Qaeda returned to destroy on Sept. 11, 2001.
The secret of Al Qaeda is not in the mosques, Islamic centers, charitable organizations, youth camps or bank accounts, and not in Bin Laden and Bin Sheiba and others. Locations and tools can be changed. This is a battle of minds — a huge ideological battle in the region, which will take more than American military power to win.
