In the 1970s and 1980s, the United States and its allies combated generally secular and nationalist terrorist groups, many of which depended upon active state sponsors. While problems of state sponsorship of terrorism continue, years of sustained counterterrorism efforts, including diplomatic and economic isolation, have convinced some governments to curtail or even abandon support for terrorism as a tool of statecraft. The collapse of the Soviet Union--which provided critical backing to terrorist groups and certain state sponsors-- accelerated the decline in state sponsorship. Many terrorist organizations were effectively destroyed or neutralized, including the Red Army Faction, Direct Action, and Communist Combatant Cells in Europe, and the Japanese Red Army in Asia. Such past successes provide valuable lessons for the future.
With the end of the Cold War, we also saw dramatic improvements in the ease of transnational communication, commerce, and travel. Unfortunately, the terrorists adapted to this new international environment and turned the advances of the 20th century into the destructive enablers of the 21st century.
A New Global Environment
Al-Qaida exemplifies how terrorist networks have twisted the benefits and conveniences of our increasingly open, integrated, and modernized world to serve their destructive agenda. The al-Qaida network is a multinational enterprise with operations in more than 60 countries. Its camps in Afghanistan provided sanctuary and its bank accounts served as a trust fund for terrorism. Its global activities are coordinated through the use of personal couriers and communication technologies emblematic of our era--cellular and satellite phones, encrypted e-mail, internet chat rooms, videotape, and CD-roms. Like a skilled publicist, Usama bin Laden and al-Qaida have exploited the international media to project his image and message worldwide.
Members of al-Qaida have traveled from continent to continent with the ease of a vacationer or business traveler. Despite our coalition's successes in Afghanistan and around the world, some al-Qaida operatives have escaped to plan additional terrorist attacks. In an age marked by unprecedented mobility and migration, they readily blend into communities wherever they move.
They pay their way with funds raised through front businesses, drug trafficking, credit card fraud, extortion, and money from covert supporters. They use ostensibly charitable organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for funding and recruitment. Money for their operations is transferred surreptitiously through numerous banks, money exchanges, and alternate remittance systems (often known as "hawalas")--some legitimate and unwitting, others not.
These terrorists are also transnational in another, more fundamental way--their victims. The September 11 attacks murdered citizens from Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, El Salvador, France, Germany, India, Israel, Jordan, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and scores of other countries.
As the al-Qaida network demonstrates, the terrorist threat today is mutating into something quite different from its predecessors. Terrorists can now use the advantage of technology to disperse leadership, training, and logistics not just regionally but globally. Establishing and moving cells in virtually any country is relatively easy in a world where more than 140 million people live outside of their country of origin and millions of people cross international borders every day.
Furthermore, terrorist groups have become increasingly self-sufficient by exploiting the global environment to support their operations. Whether it is the FARC's involvement in the cocaine trade in Colombia, al-Qaida's profiting from the poppy fields in Afghanistan, or Abu Sayyaf's kidnapping for profit in the Philippines, terrorists are increasingly using criminal activities to support and fund their terror. In addition to finding sanctuary within the boundaries of a state sponsor, terrorists often seek out states where they can operate with impunity because the central government is unable to stop them. Such areas are found in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. More audaciously, foreign terrorists also establish cells in the very open, liberal, and tolerant societies that they plan to attack.