NEWSWEEK: Can we be sure that the attacks last week on Israeli targets in Mombasa, Kenya, were the work of Al Qaeda?
Magnus Ranstorp: They certainly bear the hallmarks of Al Qaeda: synchronicity of attacks; creativity in attack mode using suicide and missiles. Few groups other than Al Qaeda have that modus operandi, though I would suspect that localized cells were used alongside Somali elements. We cannot discount that a hybrid group carried out the attacks, possibly with local assistance and logistical help from other terrorist groups with global reach and a vested interest in attacking Israeli interests abroad.
What significance do you attach to the attacks? Do they say anything about whether the war on terror is being won or lost?
Three hundred Israelis narrowly escaped being killed in the attacks. Had the attack been successful, it could have set in motion an Israeli response that could trigger major destabilization in the region. Certainly Israel will expend major resources to hunt down those responsible, wherever their address may be. Meir Dagan, the new head of [the Israeli intelligence service] Mossad, has a proven track record in ’neutralizing’ those responsible and will be ‘reorienting’ Israeli sleeper agents in Arab states to locate and target those responsible. The Kenya attack reconfirms that the Al Qaeda network is alive and well across the globe. It is going to take at least another five years before it is significantly degraded to diminish the threat it poses. We have arrested about 160 Al Qaeda operatives in Europe since [the attacks of] 9-11. Few suspects have been apprehended inside the United States, and there exist many ‘blind spots’ around the world where Al Qaeda can reconstitute and plan new attacks against the West.
The headlines in the European press in recent weeks give the impression that Al Qaeda may be making a concerted effort to hit European targets. Does that square with what you know?
A lot of this concern arises out of the interrogation of [suspected Al Qaeda] detainees in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, Cuba, and elsewhere. But it’s very difficult to sort out what is fiction and what is fact, and I think a lot of the nervousness is because of that. In many ways today’s environment, with all these multiple signals and warnings, resembles what I experienced right before September 11, 2001. During the whole of that summer, there was a sense as I was traveling in the Middle East that something was in the works. But no one knew exactly what it was. Today we don’t know either.
Do you think that recent terrorist attacks fit into some sort of Al Qaeda master plan?
We in the West like to structure things, and we like hierarchies. Al Qaeda is an umbrella. Many of these radical Islamist groups have a local agenda. They have local operatives, they have a Diaspora, they have international connections, and they follow a similar ideology. They may also be inspired by acts of terror that take place somewhere else. In this way, what we are seeing is very much like a virus. It mutates, it changes-and it has led to a hyper-mobility that intelligence agencies have difficulty responding to. All of this is a tremendous challenge, because we have to pre-empt these attacks, not just react to them.
Does that mean going after links between terrorism and organized crime?
One of the best ways to follow the contours of Al Qaeda is to follow the financial trail. Everyone’s been focusing in on the more than $100 million that has been frozen in terrorist assets from official philanthropic charities and so forth. And yet it’s been very clear to me for a long time that particularly in Europe criminal enterprise has been the main backbone of all financing of terrorism. Identity theft-credit card theft, bank fraud-is hugely important to Al Qaeda, as it is to many terror groups. I’ve been astonished that there’s been so little attention paid to it. The pattern was very clear within the North African contingent of Al Qaeda members operating in Europe. Every time you arrest one of them he has 20 different identities and 20 different credit cards. In today’s international financial system, unfortunately, money moves much quicker than the police.
Do you think that as the so-called West wages war on terror, it perhaps is losing sight of the need to focus also on the causes of terrorism?
There are huge pressures on regimes in the Middle East. Their legitimacy has been eroded. Demographically, there’s been a youth explosion in the region; 40 percent of the people, in some countries even more, are under the age of 14. At the same time, you’ve had stagnant economic growth. A good example of the challenges and the problems is Saudi Arabia, where you’ve had a pretty stagnant or declining oil income, you’ve had a doubling of the population in 10 years, you’ve had a decline of the per capita income from $17,000 to about $8,000, and they’ve schooled a whole generation in religious studies, in Wahhabism [a fundamentalist strain of Sunni Islam], with no transferable skills. Now, all of that in and of itself does not produce terrorism, but certainly it’s representative of the regional malaise. There are so many systemic problems in the region that it’s quite overwhelming to even begin tackling them, let alone being able to resolve conflicts like the Israel-Palestine dispute. In the absence of a Marshall Plan, what many governments are doing now is really basically containment and no more.
You’ve said that there have been some missed opportunities in the fight against Al Qaeda.
Yes. The weakest aspect of militant Islamic movements is their legitimacy. The major mistake we made in the aftermath of 9-11 was not to use the United Nations as a forum to delegitimize the actions of bin Laden. Call it public diplomacy, if you will. We in the West may not believe in Huntington [Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis]. But they [some Islamists] do. So we’ve got to make our case whenever we have the chance to do so.
Some people in the Bush administration were anxious to find a link between Saddam Hussein and international terrorism. Have you come across links during the course of your investigations Al Qaeda in St. Andrews?
No, no links, absolutely no links that would constitute a reason for even highlighting Iraq in a major way.
Would Saddam Hussein, assuming he has weapons of mass destruction, share those resources with others?
No, I don’t think so. I think that would be an over-estimation of Iraqi capability and Iraqi thinking. What you could well see in the outbreak of war-and it’s not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’; I think it will probably occur before Christmas-is that Saddam will reserve what WMD he has to use against Israel and invading armed forces. As for Al Qaeda, it doesn’t really need Saddam Hussein’s help.
