The reinvented, more youthful al-Qaeda

The reinvented, more youthful al-Qaeda
By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE - The arrest of several al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and Britain in recent months is reported to have provided US intelligence agencies with considerable information about al-Qaeda's structure and operations. The information, which reveals the immense resilience of al-Qaeda and its remarkable ability to reconstitute itself, negates yet again claims made by the administration of US President George W Bush that al-Qaeda has dispersed and is now on the run.

While it is true that al-Qaeda has lost several of its operational commanders, such as the masterminds of the September 11, 2001, attacks - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Walid Muhammad Salih bin Attash, who have been captured - al-Qaeda has been able not just to survive this loss, but to thrive in difficult circumstances. This is because it has quickly adapted itself to the changed situation.

The recent arrests have revealed that there has been an infusion of young blood into al-Qaeda. At the same time, the younger operatives have strong links with the old guard. They are linked by blood and friendship to senior al-Qaeda members. For instance, Abu Musab Baluchi, who was captured in June, is a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a cousin of Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. Juliette Kayyem, head of the national-security program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, has described the operatives arrested recently as "descendants of the old guard".

The most obvious feature of al-Qaeda's new operatives is that they belong to a younger generation. The original al-Qaeda network consisted of people in their 40s or 50s. That generation shares the experience of having fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. This and personal acquaintance appear to have bonded them together. The new recruits - who seem to be rising fast in the hierarchy to occupy posts left empty by leaders arrested or killed - are in their 20s or 30s. Unlike their seniors, they do not seem to have acquired their fighting skills in one of the original al-Qaeda camps or cut their teeth on a common battleground. Their skills have been acquired on rather diverse battlegrounds - Chechnya, the Balkans, and now Iraq.


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