In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

CHAPTER SIXTEEN Al Qa’ida: A Force Multiplier

SINCE ITS CREATION IN 1973, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) has provided U.S. policymakers with assessments on current and future threats to U.S. national security. Located at the CIA’s wooded headquarters near the Potomac River in northern Virginia, the NIC meets on a regular basis to craft perhaps its most important official assessments: National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs). These documents contain the judgments and predictions of the U.S. intelligence community on a wide range of issues. In 2007, representatives from U.S. intelligence agencies met to hone and coordinate the full text of a document on the terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland. The directors of the CIA, National Security Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and Defense Intelligence Agency, as well as the assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, submitted formal assessments that highlighted the strengths, weaknesses, and overall credibility of their sources in developing the document’s key judgments. In other words, it had been thoroughly vetted by the U.S. intelligence community.

The conclusions of the document, titled The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland, were grim: “Al-Qa’ida is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the Homeland.” Although many commentators in the United States had looked to Iraq as the center of international terrorism, the report revealed that the core al Qa’ida threat emanated from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border regions. “We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership.”¹ The best and brightest minds in the American intelligence community had effectively discovered that since the September 11, 2001, attack, al Qa’ida had barely moved from its base in eastern Afghanistan. Scarcely 100 miles separated al Qa’ida’s Darunta camp complex near Jalalabad—one of bin Laden’s most significant training complexes before September 11—from North Waziristan, a key al Qa’ida haven after September 11. American military action, then, had succeeded in moving senior al Qa’ida leaders only the distance between New York City and Philadelphia.

The significance of the 2007 NIE was clear: al Qa’ida presented an imminent threat to the United States, and it enjoyed a sanctuary in Pakistan. Another U.S. intelligence assessment unambiguously concluded:

Al-Qa’ida has been able to retain a safehaven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that provides the organization many of the advantages it once derived from its base across the border in Afghanistan, albeit on a smaller and less secure scale. The FATA serves as a staging area for al-Qa’ida’s attacks in support of the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as a location for training new terrorist operatives, for attacks in Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the United States.²

The FBI came to a similar conclusion, warning in a June 2008 report: “A large number of terrorists have escaped from prisons around the world, raising the threat these terrorist escapees might pose to U.S. interests.” FBI officials were particularly concerned about several operatives in Pakistan, including Abu Yahya al-Libi and Rashid Rauf. “Al-Libi is arguably the most dangerous,” the FBI concluded, “because of his demonstrated ability to spread al-Qa’ida ideology” and to target the United States.³

The Return of al Qa’ida

By 2007, if not before, it was clear that al Qa’ida had enjoyed a resurgence in Pakistan’s tribal belt and that it remained committed to conducting attacks on a global scale, not just in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al Qa’ida had launched successful attacks and had been foiled in other plots, including the successful attack in London in July 2005 and the thwarted transatlantic plot in the summer of 2006 to detonate liquid explosives aboard several airliners flying from Britain to the United States and Canada. In 2007, officials drew worldwide attention when they broke up an al Qa’ida cell in Denmark and an Islamic Jihad Union cell in Germany led by Fritz Gelowicz. In 2008, police and intelligence forces uncovered several terrorist plots in Europe (including in Spain and France) linked to militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas. People taking part in each of these operations received training and other assistance in Pakistan.

The July 2005 terrorist attack in London serves as a useful example. British authorities initially believed that the attacks were the work of purely “home grown” British Muslims. However, subsequent evidence compiled by British intelligence agencies indicated that key participants, including Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shahzad Tanweer, between November 2004 and February 2005 visited Pakistani terrorist camps, where they were trained by al Qa’ida operatives. In September 2005, Ayman al-Zawahiri said that al Qa’ida “was honoured to launch” the London attacks. “In the Wills of the hero brothers, the knights of monotheism,” Zawahiri remarked, “may God have mercy on them, make paradise their final abode and accept their good deeds.”⁴

A year earlier, British and American authorities had foiled a plot by a London-based al Qa’ida cell, led by Dhiren Barot, to carry out suicide attacks on the New York Stock Exchange and the Citi-Group Building in New York City; the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey; and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC. The trail similarly led back to Pakistan.⁵

Al Qa’ida was also involved in the infamous 2006 transatlantic plot.⁶ One of the controllers of the operation, which the British MI5 code-named Operation Overt, was Abu Ubaydah al-Masri, a senior al Qa’ida operative. What surprised U.S. intelligence analysts, however, was how little they knew about some of the individuals involved. “When the British government handed us the names of the individuals they believed were involved in the 2006 translatlantic plot,” remarked Bruce Riedel, a longtime CIA officer who was at NATO, “we had no idea who many of them were. They were complete unknowns.”⁷

Al Qa’ida was involved in more terrorist attacks after September 11, 2001, than during the previous six years. It averaged fewer than two attacks per year between 1995 and 2001, but it averaged more than ten major international attacks per year between 2002 and 2006 (excluding in Afghanistan and Iraq).⁸ Between 1995 and 2001, al Qa’ida launched approximately a dozen terrorist attacks—beginning on November 13, 1995, when they detonated an explosive device outside the office of the program manager of the Saudi Arabian National Guard in Riyadh, killing five Americans and two Indian government officials. The Saudi government arrested four perpetrators, who admitted connections with Osama bin Laden.⁹ Over the next several years, al Qa’ida conducted attacks in Kenya, Tanzania, and Yemen, among other places. In 1996, bin Laden issued a declaration of jihad against the United States, in part because he felt that the “presence of the USA Crusader military forces on land, sea and air of the states of the Islamic Gulf is the greatest danger threatening the largest oil reserve in the world.” Consequently, America’s oppression of the Holy Land “cannot be demolished except in a rain of bullets.”¹⁰

In 1998, bin Laden called specifically for the murder of any American, anywhere on earth, as the “individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.”¹¹ A growing number of extremists all over the world sought training from al Qa’ida in Afghanistan and other countries. A British House of Commons report noted that, as “Al Qaida developed in the 1990s, a number of extremists in the UK, both British and foreign nationals—many of the latter having fled from conflict elsewhere or repressive regimes—began to work in support of its agenda, in particular, radicalising and encouraging young men to support jihad overseas.”¹²

After 2001, as al Qa’ida significantly increased its number of attacks, it continued to operate most actively in Saudi Arabia. But the group also expanded operations into North Africa (Tunisia and Algeria), Asia (Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Pakistan), the Middle East (Jordan and Turkey), and Europe (the United Kingdom). Most of these attacks were located in the area that had been controlled by the Caliphate, notably the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 to 750 AD, the land in which al Qa’ida wanted to establish its own pan-Islamic empire.¹³

An Apostate Regime

Al Qa’ida leaders based in Pakistan had three main objectives in Afghanistan. First, they wanted to overthrow the “apostate” regime of Hamid Karzai. In their mind, Karzai was doubly guilty of failing to establish a “true” Islamic state and of cooperating with the infidel Western governments. Second, al Qa’ida leaders wanted to replace the Afghan regime with one that followed a radical version of sharia law envisioned by Sayyid Qutb and other Islamist thinkers. Al Qa’ida leaders appeared content with the prospect of another Taliban victory in Afghanistan and the establishment of a Taliban-style interpretation of Islam, including sharia law—even though the Taliban had objectives that were largely parochial and limited to Afghanistan. The third objective was to wage a war of attrition against the United States and other Western governments, with the hope of weakening them and ultimately pushing them out of Muslim lands.

All of these goals were interconnected and consistent with the philosophy of bin Laden, Zawahiri, and others—an ideology that had been forged in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union and the struggle against Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other “apostate regimes.” They wanted to unite Muslims to fight the United States and its allies (the far enemy) and to overthrow Western-friendly regimes in the Middle East (the near enemy).¹⁴ Ultimately, they envisioned the establishment of an “Islamic belt” that connected Pakistan to Central Asia, cut through the Caucasus, and then moved into Turkey and the Middle East.¹⁵

In an audio message in 2007, bin Laden rhetorically asked the people of Europe: “So what is the sin of the Afghans due to which you are continuing this unjust war against them? Their only sin is that they are Muslims, and this illustrates the extent of the Crusaders’ hatred of Islam and its people.”¹⁶ Westerners brought with them such concepts as democracy, which Islamists considered nizam al-kufr (a deviant system). They viewed democracy—as evidenced by the free elections in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005—as supplanting the rule of God with that of a popular majority. Jihadis were obsessed with controlling state bureaucracies and using them to advance their Islamic project.¹⁷

Al Qa’ida leaders were also quick to draw parallels between the United States and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The Afghan jihad, Zawahiri argued, was an extension of the struggle against the Soviets. The rhetoric was very much the same. Discussing the necessity of attacking the United States, he wrote that it is “of the utmost importance to prepare the Muslim mujahideen to wage their awaited battle against the superpower that now has sole dominance over the globe, namely, the United States.”¹⁸

Al Qa’ida’s Organizational Structure

After the overthrow of the Taliban, al Qa’ida evolved a fairly decentralized and nonlinear network based out of Pakistan. Terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman divided the group into four categories, or a series of concentric circles: al Qa’ida central, affiliated groups, affiliated cells, and the informal network.¹⁹

Al Qa’ida central included the remnants of the pre-9/11 al Qa’ida organization. Despite the death or capture of key al Qa’ida figures, such as Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the core leadership included many old faces, such as bin Laden and Zawahiri.²⁰ Much of the founding core was scattered across Pakistan. After the death of his wife and two children during U.S. attacks in Afghanistan, Zawahiri married a woman from the Mahmund tribe in Bajaur Agency. This enabled him to develop even stronger tribal links to the leadership of militant Deobandi groups, such as Mullah Faqir Muhammad, the leader of Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM).²¹

As we have seen, al Qa’ida central was directly or indirectly involved in a number of terrorist efforts outside of Pakistan, such as in London in July 2005 and the foiled transatlantic plot in 2006. In some cases, this included direct command and control, such as commissioning attacks and planning operations. Relative freedom to operate in Pakistan enabled al Qa’ida to maintain operational capabilities, conduct training, and arrange meetings among operational planners and foot soldiers, recruiters, and others in relative safety. It also gave al Qa’ida’s leaders the space to focus on future attacks rather than to waste effort trying to hide from U.S. or Pakistani forces. Hoffman writes that this freedom allowed them the same latitude to operate as when they planned the 1998 East African embassy bombings and the September 11 attacks. Such attacks were entrusted only to al Qa’ida’s professional cadre—the most committed and reliable individuals in the movement—though locals were usually critical to executing the operation.²²

The affiliated groups included formally established insurgent or terrorist groups that cooperated with al Qa’ida. They benefited from bin Laden’s financial assistance and inspiration and received training, arms, money, and other support. In some cases, such as al Qa’ida in Iraq, burgeoning groups also funneled funds back to al Qa’ida central. Al Qa’ida in Iraq sent money to al Qa’ida in Pakistan—funds they had raised from donations as well as kidnappings and other criminal activity.²³ These affiliated groups hailed from countries as disparate as Pakistan, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Morocco, and the Philippines, as well as Kashmir. Among them were al Qa’ida in Iraq, Ansar al-Islam, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and the various Kashmiri Islamic groups based in Pakistan, such as Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) officially merged with al Qa’ida in September 2006, changed its name to al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and attacked a U.S. contractor bus in December 2006 in greater Algiers, marking its first attack against a U.S. entity.²⁴

The affiliated cells were small, dispersed groups of adherents who enjoyed some direct connection with al Qa’ida, though it was often tenuous and transitory. These units were not large insurgent organizations attempting to overthrow their local government but often self-organized and radicalized small groups, much like the Hamburg cell that helped plan and execute the September 11 attacks in the United States. That cell included Muhammad Atta, Marwan al Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah. In some cases, they comprised individuals who had some prior terrorism experience in previous jihadi campaigns in Algeria, the Balkans, Chechnya, Afghanistan, or perhaps Iraq. Others were individuals who had recently traveled to camps in Pakistan and other locations for training, as with the British Muslims responsible for the July 2005 London bombings.²⁵

Finally, the informal network included individuals who had no direct contact with al Qa’ida central but were outraged by Western attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and the Palestinian territories and thus were inspired to join the jihadi cause. Without direct support, these networks tended to be amateurish and clumsy. The four men charged in June 2007 with plotting to blow up fuel tanks, terminal buildings, and the web of fuel lines running beneath John F. Kennedy International Airport (which was code-named Chicken Farm by the plotters) belong in this category. They had no direct connections with al Qa’ida but were prepared to conduct attacks in solidarity with it.²⁶

Though less reliable, the informal network could occasionally be lethal. The terrorist cells that conducted the Madrid train bombings in March 2004 emerged from a loose association of Islamic extremists. What links there were to al Qa’ida and other groups were tangential at best. According to court documents from the case, the terrorists “were part of a cell that was formed, both locally and internationally, to operate in Spain (Catalonia and Madrid) and outside the country (Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, Morocco, Syria, and Iraq).”²⁷ In December 2003, intelligence officials discovered an al Qa’ida Internet strategy document that showed the Madrid attack to have been motivated by Spain’s unpopular involvement in the Iraq War. “In order to force the Spanish government to withdraw from Iraq,” it said, “the resistance should deal painful blows to its forces.”²⁸ Another example of this category included the so-called Hofstad Group in the Netherlands, of which a member (Mohammed Bouyeri) murdered the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam in November 2004.²⁹

Musical Chairs

In 2008, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri still ran al Qa’ida’s Pakistan contingent. But security concerns prohibited many of al Qa’ida’s operational commanders from gaining daily access to bin Laden and Zawahiri. For security purposes, al Qa’ida adopted a four-tiered courier system to communicate. There was an administrative courier network designed for communication pertaining to the movement of al Qa’ida members’ families and other administrative activities. Another courier network dealt with operational instructions. Where possible, unwitting couriers were substituted for knowledgeable people in order to minimize detection. A media-support courier network was used for propaganda. Messages were sent in the form of CDs, videos, and leaflets to television networks such as Al Jazeera. Finally, a separate courier network was used only by al Qa’ida’s top leadership, who usually did not pass written messages to each other. Often, their most trusted couriers memorized messages and conveyed them orally.

By 2008, there had been some recent successful apprehensions of senior al Qa’ida operatives by Pakistani and American intelligence forces. One was Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, whose real name was Nashwan Abd al-Razzaq Abd al-Baqi. He was born in Mosul, Iraq, in 1961, served in the Iraqi military, and was one of al Qa’ida’s highest-ranking and most experienced senior operatives. Abd al-Hadi served on al Qa’ida’s ruling Shura Council—a ten-person advisory body to Osama bin Laden—as well as on the group’s military committee, which oversaw terrorist and guerrilla operations and paramilitary training. The U.S. Department of Defense said, “He had been one of the organization’s key paramilitary commanders in Afghanistan from the late 1990s and, during 2002–04, was in charge of cross-border attacks in Afghanistan against Coalition forces.” It continued: “Abd al-Hadi was known and trusted by Bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Abd al-Hadi was in direct communication with both leaders and, at one point, was Zawahiri’s caretaker.”³⁰

Abd al-Hadi also served as a conduit between al Qa’ida in Iraq, the Taliban, and al Qa’ida senior commanders operating inside Pakistan, and he was involved in the foiled 2006 transatlantic-aviation plot. According to a report compiled by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center, based at MI5’s London headquarters, Abd al-Hadi “stressed the need to take care to ensure that the attack was successful and on a large scale.”³¹ He was captured in 2006 in Turkey.

In 2007, al Qa’ida appointed a new leader to run operations in Afghanistan: Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu al-Yazid. Abu al-Yazid was born in Egypt’s al-Sharqiyah governorate in the Nile Delta in 1955; in his youth, he became a member of the country’s radical Islamist movement. In 1981, he took part in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and spent three years in prison, where he became a member of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Abu al-Yazid left Egypt for Afghanistan in 1988 and accompanied bin Laden from Afghanistan to Sudan in 1991. While there, he served as the accountant for bin Laden’s Sudan-based businesses, including his holding company, Wadi al-Aqiq.³² He also may have arranged the funding for the June 1995 failed assassination attempt by the Egyptian Islamic Group against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa. Convicted in absentia in several trials in Egypt, he was sentenced to both life imprisonment and the death penalty.

Abu al-Yazid apparently returned to Afghanistan with bin Laden in 1996. By that time, he was a confidant of bin Laden, a senior al Qa’ida leader, a member of its Shura Council, and a key manager of the organization’s finances. He was reported to have supplied the requisite funding for Muhammad Atta—the leader of the September 11, 2001, attackers—and to have received from Atta the return of surplus funds just before the attacks occurred. In 2002, the U.S. government placed Abu al-Yazid’s name on the list of terrorists and organizations subject to having their financial accounts frozen. Pakistan’s Daily Times (Lahore) reported in December 2004 that Abu al-Yazid had some unspecified duties in maintaining the relationship between al Qa’ida and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.³³ One of his daughters married the son of the incarcerated Egyptian Islamic Group spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman. The daughter and her husband, Muhammad Abd al-Rahman, were captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in early 2003.

There were a number of other senior al Qa’ida leaders operating out of Pakistan, such as Abu Ubaydah al-Masri, an Egyptian who died of hepatitis in 2007. Al-Masri served as one of al Qa’ida’s senior external-operations figures after the death of Abu Hamza Rabi’a, who was killed by a missile strike in Pakistan in 2005. He was implicated in the 2006 transatlantic-aircraft plot, which was to be carried out by a terrorist cell operating in London, but which involved al Qa’ida’s central leadership. Another operative, Fahid Muhammad Ally Msalam, a Kenyan, served as a facilitator for communication between Osama bin Laden and the East Africa network and was located for a time with senior al Qa’ida leaders based in Waziristan. He was reported as killed in a U.S. missile strike on January 1, 2009.

Despite the loss of these key leaders, however, al Qa’ida remained capable of conducting lethal attacks regionally and globally. According to a CIA assessment of al Qa’ida, “the group’s cadre of seasoned, committed leaders has allowed it to remain fairly cohesive and stay focused on its strategic objectives.”³⁴ In fact, they began opening new channels of communication by issuing propaganda directed specifically at American audiences, either in translation or given directly by English-speaking al Qa’ida members based in Pakistan. One of the spokesmen most visible to the West was Adam Gadahn, an American raised in Southern California who converted to Islam at the age of seventeen and moved to Pakistan in 1998. With his head wrapped in a black turban and sporting a jet-black beard, he expressed profound rage in his video exposés on YouTube. “We love nothing better than the heat of battle, the echo of explosions, and slitting the throats of the infidels,” he thundered in one video. In another, he callously quipped: “It’s hard to imagine that any compassionate person could see pictures, just pictures, of what the Crusaders did to those children and not want to go on a shooting spree at the Marines’ housing facilities at Camp Pendleton.”³⁵

A Force Multiplier in Afghanistan

Afghanistan remained the most important strategic component for al Qa’ida. According to a Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, “Al-Qa’ ida remains committed to reestablishing a fundamentalist Islamic government in Afghanistan and has become increasingly successful in defining Afghanistan as a critical battleground against the West and its regional allies.” Al Qa’ida was also able to leverage its resources through its “increasingly cooperative relationship with insurgent networks.”³⁶ Al Qa’ida personnel met with wealthy Arab businessmen during the Tablighi Jamaat annual meeting in Raiwind, Pakistan, which attracted one of the largest concentrations of Muslims after the hajj.³⁷ Appealing to the international jihadi network was consistent with historical patterns. During the rise of the Taliban, an important source of funding was the “Golden Chain,” an informal financial network of prominent Saudi and Gulf individuals established to support Afghan fighters. This network collected funds through Islamic charities and other nongovernmental organizations. Bin Laden also drew on the network of Islamic charities, nongovernmental organizations, and educational institutions to recruit volunteers.³⁸

The Golden Chain provided financial backing, but bin Laden offered Afghan fighters much more than financial assistance. Afghan groups were able to tap into the broad international jihadi network. For example, al Qa’ida was instrumental in improving the communications capabilities of Afghan groups. These groups leveraged Al-Sahab, al Qa’ida’s media enterprise, to distribute well-produced video propaganda and recruit supporters. “Al-Qa’ida spreads its propaganda through taped statements,” a CIA assessment reported, “sometimes featuring relatively sophisticated production values.”³⁹ A UN report similarly found that there was an “increasing level of professionalism achieved by Al-Sahab, the main Al-Qaida media production unit.” It continued by noting that Osama bin Laden’s September 2007 video was “expertly produced and, like previous videos, was subtitled in English and uploaded almost simultaneously onto hundreds of servers by what must be a large group of volunteers.”⁴⁰ In January 2007, federal prosecutors in Chicago indicted Rockford, Illinois, resident Derrick Shareef (also known as Talib Abu Salam Ibn Shareef) on one count of attempting to damage or destroy a building by fire or explosion and one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. He had been inspired by watching one of Adam Gadahn’s propaganda videos that justified killing women and children.⁴¹

Senior Afghan leaders began to appear in videos produced with the help of al Qa’ida, reciting passages of the Qur’an and outlining their ideology. Taliban leaders such as Mullah Omar increasingly adopted al Qa’ida’s global rhetoric. In a statement in December 2007, for example, Omar turned to Muslims across the globe: “We appeal to Muslims to help their Mujahideen brothers against the international invader economically…. Now you know both religion and country are in danger, you follow the way of good and religious leaders and leave the way of bad and dishonest and do Jihad.”⁴² And jihadi Websites with links to al Qa’ida, such as those run by Azzam Publications (including www.azzam.com and www.qoqaz.net, which were eventually shut down), helped raise funds for the Taliban.⁴³ Some solicited military items for the Taliban, including gas masks and night vision goggles.⁴⁴

Insurgent groups also used al Qa’ida support to construct increasingly sophisticated improvised explosive devices (IEDs), including remotely controlled detonators.⁴⁵ For example, al Qa’ida ran a handful of manufacturing sites in the Bush Mountains, the Khamran Mountains, and the Shakai Valley in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. They ranged from small facilities hidden within compounds that built IEDs, to much larger “IED factories” that doubled as training centers and labs where recruits experimented with IED technology. Some of this explosives expertise came from Iraqi groups that provided information on making and using various kinds of remotely controlled devices and timers. In return for this assistance, al Qa’ida received operational and financial support from local clerics and Taliban commanders in Waziristan. They recruited young Pashtuns from the local madrassas and financed their activities through “religious racket”—forced religious contribution, often accompanied by death threats.

There is even evidence of cooperation between insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Islamic militants in Iraq apparently provided information through the Internet and face-to-face visits with Taliban members, Hezb-i-Islami forces, and foreign fighters from eastern and southern Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas. In addition, there is some evidence that a small number of Pakistani and Afghan militants received military training in Iraq, and Iraqi fighters met with Afghan and Pakistani extremists in Pakistan. It is clear that militants in Afghanistan had great success with homemade bombs, suicide attacks, and other tactics honed in Iraq.⁴⁶

One effective IED was the “TV bomb,” which was pioneered by Iraqi groups. The bomb was a “shaped”-charge mechanism that could be hidden under brush or debris on a roadside and set off by remote control from 300 yards or more. It was useful for focusing the energy of a bomb toward a specific target. Taliban commanders learned from Iraqi groups to disassemble rockets and rocket-propelled-grenade rounds, remove the explosives and propellants, and repack them with high-velocity shaped charges—thus creating armor-penetrating weapons. In addition, Afghan groups occasionally adopted brutal terrorist tactics, such as beheadings, used by Iraqi groups. In December 2005, insurgents posted a video of the decapitation of an Afghan hostage on al Qa’ida-linked Websites. This was the first published video showing the beheading of an Afghan hostage, and it sent the message that the Taliban was no less serious about repelling the Americans than Iraqi insurgent groups were.⁴⁷ The Taliban also developed or acquired new commercial communications gear and field equipment from the Iraqi insurgents, and they appeared to have received good tactical, camouflage, and marksmanship training, too. Some Taliban units even included al Qa’ida members or other Arab fighters, who brought experience from jihadi campaigns in Iraq and Chechnya.⁴⁸

Perhaps most troubling, insurgents increasingly adopted suicide tactics, especially in such major cities as Kandahar and Kabul.⁴⁹ Afghan National Police were common targets of suicide bombers. Al Qa’ida leaders in Pakistan encouraged the use of such attacks. Ayman al-Zawahiri argued that “suicide operations are the most successful in inflicting damage on the opponent and the least costly in terms of casualties among the fundamentalists.”⁵⁰ Al Qa’ida’s involvement was particularly important in this regard because Afghan insurgent groups were surprisingly inept at suicide attacks. Even a UN study of suicide bombing led by Christine Fair acknowledged: “Employed by the Taliban as a military technique, suicide bombing—paradoxically—has had little military success in Afghanistan.”⁵¹

Despite their initial reluctance, Afghan insurgents began to use suicide attacks for a variety of reasons.⁵² First, the Taliban had begun to rely more and more on the expertise and training of the broader jihadi community, especially the international al Qa’ida network, which advocated and condoned such attacks. These militants—with al Qa’ida’s assistance—helped supply a steady stream of suicide bombers. Second, al Qa’ida and the Taliban saw the success of such groups as Hamas in the Palestinian territories, Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, and Iraqi groups, and they concluded this was an effective method for disrupting Coalition actions.⁵³ Suicide attacks allowed insurgents to achieve maximum impact with minimal resources, and the chance of killing people and instilling fear increased exponentially with suicide attacks.⁵⁴ Third, al Qa’ida and the Taliban believed that suicide attacks raised the level of insecurity among the Afghan population. This caused some Afghans to question the government’s ability to protect them and further destabilized the authority of local government institutions. Consequently, the distance widened between the Afghan government and the population in specific areas. Fourth, suicide attacks provided renewed visibility for the Taliban and al Qa’ida, which previous guerrilla attacks did not generate. Because each attack was spectacular and usually lethal, every suicide bombing was reported in the national and international media.

Most of the bombers were Afghans or Pakistanis, though some foreigners were also involved.⁵⁵ Many were recruited from Afghan refugee camps and madrassas in Pakistan, where they were radicalized and immersed in extremist ideologies. Taliban-affiliated Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan afforded ready access to bombers, and the Taliban prevailed on some teachers and administrators to help recruit them.⁵⁶ Al Qa’ida continued to play an important role by funding suicide bombers, and they paid as much as several thousand dollars to the families of suicide bombers.

Al Qa’ida’s role in Afghanistan can be accurately summed up by the advertising slogan used by the German-based chemical giant BASF: “We don’t make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better.” Al Qa’ida leaders improved the tactical and operational competence of Afghan and Pakistani groups, who were able to manufacture a better array of products—from improvised explosive devices to videos. Al Qa’ida strengthened the competence of insurgent groups, although its leaders generally shied away from direct involvement in ground operations in Afghanistan, leaving the dirty work to local Afghans. Instead, it operated as a force multiplier, improving the groups’ capabilities. Even as al Qa’ida enjoyed a resurgence in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, however, some U.S. military forces began to make limited progress in eastern Afghanistan in late 2007 and early 2008.