I tend to think that whatever we think we know about the insurgency's inner workings is largely wrong. Too much fog of war, too much misinformation by both sides, too many possibilities for internet games by just about any interested party on the planet with a modem. The media cant even figure out whats going on in the Cubs lockerroom, thinking we know much about how Al Qaeda actually operates is ultimately pretty futile.

"In Inside al Qaeda, Rohan Gunaratna documents Osama bin Laden’s ruthless rise to power, which culminated in the assassination of Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, his trusted mentor and the spiritual founder of al Qaeda. Osama ruthlessly killed anyone who stood in his way in the wake of Azzam’s death. Expect no less from the successor of Zarqawi, Inshallah. Let them fight amongst themselves."

Uh, no. That was EIJ.

Somehow I'm reminded of this

prakike. What exactly are ou disputing? Azzam is said to be the spiritual founder of al Qaeda. His ideas guided the formation of the organization.

If I'm not mistaken, Ayman al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) killed Azzam, not Osama.

"On 24 November 1989 three bombs planted along the route that Abdullah Azzam regularly traveled to the mosque detonated as he passed. The Sheikh was killed, along with two of his sons. Rumors have consistently linked Osama Bin Laden to Azzam’s assassination, though there is no proof of a connection."

http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=388

More interesting, however, is the dispute between Azzam and Usama, or more precisely, between Azzam and Ayman al Zawahiri's Egyptian terrorists, where Usama took Zawahiri's side. Describing the dispute finally leading to Azzam's assassination with a car bomb on 24 Nov. 1989 in Peshawar . . .

http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~aphamala/pe/2003/gunar2.htm

On November 24, 1989, Shaikh Azzam and his two sons, Ibrahim and Muhammad, among others, were killed while on their way to Friday prayers in Peshawar when unknown assassins detonated land mines as Sheik Azzam’s vehicle approached . . .

http://www.answers.com/topic/abdullah-yusuf-azzam

Well . . . I would say it seems likely that Usama had a finger in but then maybe not . . . So? Is Osama ruthless or not? I guess I'd say "Yeah, he's probably ruthless. . ." Will there be an internicine power struggle. As Bill would say, "Let's hope so."

Zarqawi. Zarqawi. Zarqawi....This site is seemingly spending more time speculating on the health, death and succession of Zarqawi than it did on Pope John Paul II. So what? Just a thought. And on that note I decided to undertake a little research to verify my suspicion. Regarding the death of JPII and memorializing thereupon I found:

The Death of the Pope
and
Combines
A grand total of two, count'em two, headline entries, with a combined 14 comments!
Regarding the Papel succession I find:
Pope Benedict (Ratzinger) 16th
and
In Defense of The Grand Inquisitor
Here we're doing a little better. We still have two headline posts but the comments sections total 46 and 148 respectively. (The 148 figure however, reflects the judicious reasoning of P Lukasiak egging everyone on. Joe K abruptly ends the thread declaring it past its due date.)


Compare all that with 4 headline posts exclusively featuring speculative news on Zarqawi with a combined total of 47 comments thus far. This does not include headline posts involving Winds of War, Hate Watch, Operation Matador, and related anti-terror actions where Zarqawi also features.


So what's my conclusion, maybe its not as bad as I thought - yet. But show me a body guys. Once they parade the body then give me a call. I'm going out.

I think ricksamerican makes my point perfectly. Making a distinction between Zawahiri and Osama in the death of Azzam really is pointless. It's liek asking if Hitlet or Himmler approved the establishmen tof the concentration camps. What's the difference? Osama walked on the back of Azzam to take control of al Qaeda, and butchered several opponents along the way. I will stand by Rohan Gunaratna's assertion regardless.

JD,

My apologies, but I discuss current events in the War on Terror. It's what I do. There are many other threads that you can enjoy if this topic is not to your liking.

Succession battles can be intense, but I've just been mulling over some insights gleaned from a conference at GMU on the "political economy of terrorism," and I'm not sure that the implications of some of those presentations conform to what you and Dan have said. I'm thinking especially of some work by Ronald Wintrobe and Eli Berman. Both are based on the notion that extremist movements such as Al Qaeda, Hamas, etc. are rational at their core. In addition, there are certain implications of this for the "corporate structure" of a terrorist organization. On the one hand, according to Wintrobe an exchange of solidarity for autonomy is what governs the rapid descent to extremism (the primary engine being the desire or need to be liked and appreciated by others). On the other hand according to Berman the ability of the group to deliver certain components of social welfare in a way that excludes free-riders creates an organization structure that works just as well for terrorist violence as the distribution of social goods. Wintrobe's conception is more leader-dependent, at least to the extent that a strong leader helps to define the values that the members adhere to, as they relinquish their own. But if the values are sufficiently institutionalized (as they probably are through what Hadek calls "the method of Muhammed," then the key to the organization is not the top-level generals but the middle-management "lieutenants" who perform the recruiting functions. (Wintrobe posits a "cell structure" that makes the leader independently accessible to the cells, while the cells are not accessible to each other.)

This caveat: The "lieutenants" have a powerful need to belong, because in many cases they come from elements within the Islamic world that were marginalized... some even pro-western. They have moved from an "out" group to an "in" group, and the sense of empowerment that gives them is something they won't easily relinquish. How they'll react in the absence of a leader who provided most of that sense of solidarity is anyone's guess. They may simply disintegrate as a functional unit.

The bottom line is that although there's some reason to hope that a succession battle might ensue, it's definitely not a foregone conclusion. At the end of this iteration we may know a lot more about the corporate organizational structure of terrorism than we do now. (My intuition, unfortunately, is that the structure is more robust than we believe, because of the sort of thing Mary Hadek observes.)

JD, the Pope was unequivocably dead, and his succession process fixed. There is a lot more speculation about Zarqawi's state and potential successors, room for analysis and projection.

I think Bill is doing a great job. ;)

Is there any correlation between the terrorist cell network and the structure of the old Sov cell network? umm, i think it was triplets and each branch had a wetware cell, umm, for assassinations.

It's important to recognize that there at one point was an argument about strategy that was won by the Egyptians, and won violently by killing Azzam. Azzam didn't support overthrowing "apostate" regimes, and Zawahiri and his EIJ pals did. Azzam was more interested in "liberating" formerly Muslim lands.

"Is there any correlation between the terrorist cell network and the structure of the old Sov cell network? umm, i think it was triplets and each branch had a wetware cell, umm, for assassinations."

I remember reading somewhere about the Soviet network in Pakistan during the Afghan jihad and being surprised by how ineffective it was. They got Zia though, I guess.

So, praktike, are terrorist networks just sort of organic and amorphous in terms of cell size? The is no doctrine?

Come to think of it, I don't know what the doctrine is. Some of them seem like pickup teams, like the early EIJ cells that were based on family ties. They were all larger than three people, though. Five, six ...

Zarkawi is not the problem. Osama is not the problem. Kill them both and you will have someone else. Its frustrating that US and British troops are so incompetent in Irak.