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What Are Al-Qaeda's Main Tactics And Techniques? Why Has Al-Qaeda Preferred These Tactics And Techniques?

The al-Qaeda of today is a vastly different entity from the al-Qaeda formed by Osama bin Laden towards the end of the Afghan war against the Soviets in 1988 (Alexander and Swetnam, 2001: 37).   The evolution, or as Burton (2006) has termed it “devolution”, of al-Qaeda, is partially linked to its terrorist acts, and, in particular, the counter-terrorist measures employed by governments to deal with them.   This is most evident in reference to the single most expensive, in terms of life lost and economical impact, terrorist act in modern history, the destruction of the World Trade Centre, and the subsequent declaration of a “war on terror” by George Bush’s United States and its Allies.   It is the actions in response to terrorist acts that has propagated these dynamic changes in the tactics and techniques used by al-Qaeda.   This adaptation has seen the ideologies of al-Qaeda survive, despite constraints being placed on its operations.   It has also ensured the continued jihad against the near enemy of apostate Islamic governments in the Middle East, and the far enemy of the United States and its Allies (Hoffman, 2004: 553) to further pursue its goal to establish a Caliphate muslim state governed by the Sharia (Alexander and Swetnam, 2001).

There are many variations of the accounts as to how the al-Qaeda network was originally established.   The common theme to all of these variations is that al-Qaeda was born out of Soviet-Afghan war, from the training camps set up in Afghanistan and Preshawar, Pakistan, by Osama bin Laden, and others, to combat the Soviet invaders.   The original concept of ‘al-Qaeda’ (‘the base’) was a network used as a means of keeping track of mujahideen fighters passing through these camps and also a means of informing families of the fighters about their loved ones (Smith 2002: 35, Alexander and Swetnam, 2002: 4).   At the end of the Soviet-Afghan war, some of the foreign mujahideen left Afghanistan to continue jihad with Islamic militant groups in...