The Search for Al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future

***** The Search for Al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future. By Bruce Riedel, published by Brookings Institution Press, www.brookings.edu (Web); 180 pages; $26.95.

 

The number of books written about al Qaeda since 9-11 is inordinately large, but few have strengthened our understanding of the group. The Search for Al Qaeda by Bruce Riedel is one that does.

 

Riedel, a career CIA analyst and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., examines al Qaeda in a novel way. Where most books focus on the words of leader Osama bin Laden and the group’s related actions, Riedel looks at al Qaeda in a functional way, looking also at Ayman al-Zawahiri, the group’s principal ideologue; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq until his death in 2006; and Mullah Omar, the Taliban chief who provided al Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan. Riedel argues that only through understanding their relationships and roles in the group’s development can one understand how the organization emerged as a global threat and how that threat persists to this day.

 

Riedel provides thorough biographies of al Qaeda’s key leaders before sharing his view of the organization’s game plan, which he breaks down into four basic areas: “bleeding wars,” such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, that will weaken the West; consolidation of safe havens in Afghani­stan and Pakistan; influence in the Palestinian movement against Israel; and attacks against tar­gets in the West. He shares the view that the Iraq war diverted efforts from Afghani­stan, which aided al Qaeda and likely cost us the chance to destroy the group’s leadership after 9-11.

 

Riedel suggests a game plan of our own to defeat al Qaeda. The first step is to “defeat the al Qaeda narrative” the group uses to justify its war against the West and the United States in particular. That narrative is focused largely on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and can be fatally weakened, Rie­del says, by a just resolution of that conflict.

 

His second step is to destroy the key leadership, sanctuaries, and branches of the organization. This effort should be accompanied by increased U.S. efforts in Afghan­i­stan and Pakistan that include a major economic reconstruction program. This two-pronged approach, he believes, will reduce the activities and effectiveness of the organization over time. I won’t get into the third and fourth prong in this review.

 

Although Riedel begins his book with a couple of small assertions that are questionable, the overall analysis is first-rate and its implications for U.S. policy are clear. The Search for Al Qaeda is an excellent source for understanding the threat of al Qaeda and ways to counter it, and a book best suited for analysts and internationally oriented security professionals.

 

Reviewer: Mayer Nudell, CSC, is an independent consultant on crisis management, contingency planning, and related issues and an adjunct professor at Webster University. He is a member of ASIS International.