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Unlike other terrorist groups, AI Qaeda presents an unprecedented threat to America, its allies, and to global security in general. In addition to training its own members-(4000 was the October 2001 estimate, according to the Western intelligence community)-AI Qaeda and the Taliban regime trained 70,000 members in its camps in Afghanistan. While AI Qaeda conducted one major attack every year prior to 9/11, AI Qaeda and its associated groups have conducted one attack every three months since 9/11. Although it is the most hunted terrorist group in history, the campaign of holy war unleashed by AI Qaeda is likely to outlive itself and the current generation of Islamists.
This is because Al Qaeda's real strength lies not in its global infrastructure and membership perse but in its overarching and highly appealing ideology. In keeping with its original mandate, Al Qaeda's principal aim today is to inspire and incite Islamist movements and the Muslim masses worldwide to attack those perceived to be the enemies of Islam. Although the majority of Muslims worldwide do no support AI Qaeda, AI Qaeda is constantly seeking to reinvigorate the global jihad movement by exploiting the widespread suffering, resentment, and anger in the Muslim world and turning it against the United States and its allies. Considering the sympathy and new recruits it has gathered from Islamist groups in Asia, Africa, Middle East, and elsewhere, the ideological campaign unleashed by AI Qaeda has been a partial success.
Although bin Laden and his associates have been scattered, arrested and killed, the organization has survived and the ideology is intact. With the diffusion of Al Qaeda's ideology around the globe, especially after 9/11, the threat it poses has moved beyond the group and individual figures like bin Laden. Israeli intelligence services now prefer to describe AI Qaeda as the "Jihadi International" and the British Special Branch refers to AI Qaeda and its associated groups as "international terrorism."1 Al Qaeda's radical ideology-sustained internationally by anti-Western and anti-Semitic rhetoric-has adherents among many individuals and groups, few of whom are currently linked in any substantial way to bin Laden or those around him. They merely follow his precepts, models and methods, acting in the style of AI Qaeda. Therefore, the AI Qaeda ideology, and how it...