Five years after September 11, 2001, the terrorist attacks and the U.S. response—now called the global war on terrorism—have changed the world, and the terrorist enterprise that we know as al-Qaeda has changed with it.

The current status of al-Qaeda’s network remains unclear, but it is certain that it and other terrorist groups continue to threaten the lives and well-being of Americans, at home and abroad, and the security of our friends and allies. This continuing danger leads to ongoing U.S. and international efforts to monitor, disrupt, and dismantle terrorist groups before they can cause large-scale destruction to our people or our interests.

The objective of this RAND Corporation study, undertaken as part of a project entitled “Beyond al-Qaeda: Countering Future Terrorist and Other Nontraditional Threats to U.S. Security,” is to understand the shape of future threats to the United States and U.S. security interests from terrorist and other extremist organizations. We do this through analyses that draw together the various threat strands that are informing current U.S. thinking in the war on terror. The study looks specifically at four sources of threats:

2. Terrorist groups that may not be formally part of al-Qaeda but that have assimilated al-Qaeda’s worldview and concept of masscasualty terrorist attacks. This, we believe, is where the center of gravity of the current global terrorist threat lies.

3. Violent Islamist and non-Islamist terrorist and insurgent groups and other nontraditional threats with no known links to al-Qaeda. These groups threaten U.S. regional interests, friends, and allies.

4. The nexus between terrorism and organized crime. In each case, we examine how the presence of these threats affects U.S. security interests, and we identify distinct strategies that the United States and the U.S. Air Force may take to neutralize or mitigate each of these threats.

The results of the study are reported in two volumes. This book is the first of the two; the second, by Angel Rabasa, Peter Chalk, Kim Cragin, Sara A. Daly, Heather S. Gregg, Theodore W. Karasik, Kevin A. O’Brien, and William Rosenau, is entitled Beyond al-Qaeda: Part 2, The Outer Rings of the Terrorist Universe.

This research builds on previous RAND Project AIR FORCE work on counterterrorism, notably the following: Angel Rabasa, Cheryl Benard, Peter Chalk, Christine Fair, Theodore Karasik, Rollie Lal, Ian Lesser, and David Thaler, The Muslim World After 9/11, MG-246-AF, 2004 Nora Bensahel, The Counterterror Coalitions: Cooperation with Europe, NATO, and the European Union, MR-1746-AF, 2003 Kim Cragin and Sara Daly, The Dynamic Terrorist Threat: An Assessment of Group Motivations and Capabilities in a Changing World, MR-1782-AF, 2004 Lynn Davis, Steven Hosmer, Sara Daly, and Karl Mueller, The U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy: A Planning Framework to Facilitate Timely Policy Adjustments, DB-426-AF, 2004 David Ochmanek, Military Operations Against Terrorist Groups Abroad: Implications for the United States Air Force, MR-1738-AF, 2003.

This research was sponsored by the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations, U.S. Air Force (A3/5), and conducted in the Strategy and Doctrine Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE. Research for this project was completed in September 2004. This book should be of value to the national security community and to interested members of the general public, especially those with an interest in combating the blight of international terrorism.

Download Beyond al-Qaeda: The Global Jihadist Movement

PDF version, 2.5MB, 228Pages. RAND Corporation.

Al-Qaeda

Defeating the global jihadist movement—which we define as al-Qaeda and the universe of jihadist groups that are associated with or inspired by al-Qaeda—is the most pressing security challenge facing the United States today. The global jihadist movement can be distinguished from traditional or local jihads, which are armed campaigns conducted by Islamist groups against local adversaries with usually limited aims as well as geographic scope, in that it targets the United States and its allies across the globe and pursues broad geopolitical aims.

Although the U.S.-led global war on terrorism has had some notable successes—such as the destruction of al-Qaeda’s sanctuary in Afghanistan, the elimination of many of the group’s leaders, and the growing resolve of many countries to take action against al-Qaeda and its associates—no informed observers believe that al-Qaeda will be eliminated anytime soon. Indeed, in some respects al-Qaeda has metastasized into an even more formidable adversary, dispersed across the world, largely self-sustaining, and constantly adopting new and innovative terrorism tactics. Despite intense government countermeasures, it seems able to mount devastating operations from the air, land, and sea, such as the USS Cole operation in October 2000, the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Madrid railway bombing in March 2004, the Sinai resort bombings of October 2004, and the London bombings of July 2005. The United States itself continues to be threatened by large-scale attacks. Countering al-Qaeda is thus likely to preoccupy U.S. national security institutions for at least the remainder of the decade, and probably longer.

Although al-Qaeda clearly still exists, as we have seen with the recent discovery of detailed surveillance reports of a multitude of targets in the United States, the group has been substantially transformed.

Since September 11, al-Qaeda has gone through several phases: from a well-structured terrorist organization with headquarters in Afghanistan, to the hunted remnants of bin Laden’s inner circle during and after Operation Enduring Freedom, to a disaggregated and atomized enterprise with reduced command and control but a continued capability to operate. Moreover, al-Qaeda still serves as the source of motivation and inspiration for regional terrorist groups that are not formally affiliated with it but that share its ideology of global jihad and its concept of operations.

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About the RAND Corporation

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RAND Project AIR FORCE

RAND Project AIR FORCE, a division of the RAND Corporation, is the U.S. Air Force’s federally funded research and development center for studies and analyses. PAF provides the Air Force with independent analyses of policy alternatives affecting the development, employment, combat readiness, and support of current and future aerospace forces.
Research is conducted in four programs: Aerospace Force Development;
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