Reply #19: A different perspective on Al-Qaeda [View All]

[Make7]

Part of a 1999 Frontline interview with Dr. Saad Al-Fagih (bold text is Frontline, regular text is Dr. Al-Fagih):

But there's some confusion here apparently. Today in the United States, we hear from law enforcement about Al Qaeda.

Yes.

But to you that's something different.

Well, I really laugh when I hear the FBI talking about Al Qaeda as an organization of bin Laden. ... It's really a very simple story. If bin Laden is to receive Arabs from Saudi Arabia and from Kuwait--from other regions--he is to receive them in the guest house in Peshawar. They used to go to the battle field and come back, without documentation.

What do you mean without documentation?

There was no documentation of who has arrived. Who has left. How long he stayed. There's only a nice general reception. And you go there. And you join in the battle field. ... Very simple organization. Now, he was embarrassed by many families when they called him and ask what happened to our son. He don't know. `Cause there's no record. There's no documentation. Now he asked some of his colleagues to start documenting the movement of every Arab coming under his umbrella. ... It is recorded that they arrived in this date and stayed in this house. ... And then there was a record of thousands and thousands of people. Many of them had come only for two weeks, three weeks and then disappeared. That record, that documentation was called the record of Al Qaeda. So that was Al Qaeda. There's nothing sinister about Al Qaeda. It's not like an organization--like any other terrorist organization or any other underground group. I don't think he used any name for his underground group. If you want to name it, you can name it "bin Laden group." But if they are using the term Al Qaeda ... Al Qaeda is just a record for the people who came to Peshawar and moved from there back and forth to the guest house. And moved back to their country. And if they want to follow the number, they must be talking about 20, 30 thousand people. Which is impossible to trace. And I think most of those records are in the hands of the Saudi government anyway, because people used the Saudi airlines, at a very much reduced fare. Twenty-five percent of the total fare of a trip to Islamabad. ...

So Al Qaeda ... is not a secret organization at all, is it?

It's not a secret organization at all. It was common knowledge to many people who went there. ... Al Qaeda was public knowledge. It was a record of people who ended up in Peshawar and joined, and move from Peshawar to Afghanistan. It was very benign information. A simple record of people who were there just to make record available to bin Laden if he's asked by any family or any friend what happened to Mr. so-and-so.

And most have now returned to their homes?

Yes. Most of them is, are back. Now if they want to talk about the bulk or the core of bin Laden followers, I don't think there is any name of that group. You can very correctly and very accurately describe it as "bin Laden group." Full stop. As a small core, probably a few hundred of people who are around bin Laden. And the bulk of those are in four countries. Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia. Yemen. And Somalia. Very, very few or probably none in other countries. ...

I take it that the description that's given by US law enforcement of a well organized cell organization in the bin Laden organization, is not really the case--from what you're saying. That it's really very diffused and disorganized in some ways.

Well, there's a mixture. Bin Laden does have a small core of followers who are unlikely to be anywhere but in Afghanistan and Yemen. Probably a good number in Saudi Arabia and a good number in Somalia. And then you have the wider group. In thousands, maybe tens of thousands, who are sympathetic to bin Laden and who look at him as their father, and arrange themselves in small groups here and there. A very loose network with that hierarchy. You can never eradicate them. ... Each small group has its own chain of command, its own logistics. Now they wait for somebody like bin Laden to give them moral support and give them directions. They might try to contact him to get advice from him. But they don't belong to him like a special organization with a pyramidal structure or anything like that. He does have a small core of followers probably in the hundreds. But some ... have estimated the number to be 600 or 700. But the danger for the west or for Saudi Arabians--for the regime in Saudi Arabia--is not only this 600 people. The danger lies with all those small groups. Which probably, the people who did the Khobar and Riyadh bombings were among them. They just planned the purchase themselves. They went to bin Laden. They took his encouragement and his sanctioning. And they did it. But they don't belong to his close core of followers.

So what you're saying is that even if the FBI and CIA were extremely efficient and rounded up the individuals who did the bombing in Nairobi, there will be no end to this problem until the underlying issues are dealt with?

Exactly. No end at all. The only solution to the bin Laden problem for the Americans is to understand it as phenomena. Not as a single terrorist who is staying there, sending one or two of his followers to have an explosion here or to have a bomb there. They have to understand the problem as phenomena. And they have to deal with its grass roots. They cannot deal with the problem of Muslims versus America. But they can at least reduce the huge resentment in Saudi Arabia by reducing the tension against him by moving the military presence from Arabia. And also by pressing the regime to be more open, have more power sharing, more freedom of expression and more freedom of assembly in Saudi Arabia. And they have to prove to the people that it is their effort which forced the Saudi regime to be more friendly to its nation. Otherwise they will lose the battle I believe....

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/interviews/al-fagih.html#alqaeda

I always found the statements by the Bush administration about how they have killed or captured a high percentage of the leaders of Al Qaeda rather amusing. Always in vain, I waited for a reporter to ask how many leaders there were to begin with, how many have been killed, how many have been captured, and have any new ones taken the place of those captured or killed? I suspect that they have very little more than a general idea of the numbers that might be involved... maybe...

-Make7