There is currently a media blitz spreading misinformation regarding the power and presence of al-Qaeda in Libya (see for example, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...). We are told that documents seized in Iraq prove that the greatest number of "jihadis" not al-Qaeda (but that does not matter to most commentators) came from Libya (see "Sinjar documents": http://news.yahoo.com/...) which were supposedly from al-Qaeda or "linked" groups and first published by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point. What is the authenticity of these documents? They had the function, like the "proofs" for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, to build support for the war at home. For a decade now this spectre of terror has haunted American and the West with little to show for its existence. It has produced millions of pages of articles and books and blogs, but in action and ideology it is less developed than a teenager. One, in fact, has to wonder how it can be used to produce so much ink and spend so much money to fight, when it has materialized as much reality as the ectoplasm of a ghost. If any incident has proven that this scourge of the 20th century is a figment of politicians' and weapons' dealers imaginations and PR, it is Libya. Strangely enough official agencies have published a report "explaining" the failure of al-Qaeda and purporting to have effective and authentic sources in the organization (http://www.ctc.usma.edu/...). Given the analysis below and this history we must conclude that the presence of al-Qaeda in Libya is a fantasy.
The chaos on the ground and the opportunity to use tactics that the Taliban has used with great effect in Afghanistan and Sunni rebels in Iraq, has failed to materialize. Where we hear that thousands of Libyans went to Afghanistan to fight, few have appeared in Libya today. But more telling is the failure of al-Qaeda to produce any infrastructure in any theater of operations. No community organizing, no strategic development, and no ideological growth or opportunism that one sees in other groups, including the Taliban. From the beginning the sources used to identify the existence and history of al-Qaeda are the same used to give background to the development of the mujahideen in Afghanistan, Bill Moyers's sources are an example: http://www.pbs.org/.... Most are written by journalists like that by Abdel Bari Atwan (The Secret History of al-Qaeda). Others by people like Bruce Hoffman (http://en.wikipedia.org/...) someone whose background is steeped in both the profits of a war contractor (RAND) and in the history of the Middle East struggle of Israel against her neighbors. Like many following this line of reasoning, he argues, ""It amazes me that people don't think there is a clear adversary out there, and that our adversary does not have a strategic approach." A worldwide conspiracy, of an invincible organization stalks a peaceful world. The image could be turned upside down with ease and we could view the entire anti-terrorist edifice as one great conspiracy to deprive the world of peace, freedom and prosperity. One of the glaring consequences of the post-9/11 world is the dramatic increase in wealth inequality and if we follow the money, the vast funneling of funds into security and military hardware since 9/11 has benefitted a select sector of investors.
As an anthropologist reading over this literature on al-Qaeda, I find it has certain interesting qualities. In other words, the al-Qaeda story has the mirror structure of many myths: for example, al-Qaeda is so well organized that it cannot be infiltrated and yet we know all about it because we have certain unnamed or elusive sources that can be counted on to produce detailed information about the organization. Usually such organizations are found in the popular press as conspiracy theories of one kind of Illuminati creation myth or another dating back to either the beginnings of civilization or the founding of America (http://en.wikipedia.org/... a more creative view is found in Robert Shea and Robert Wilson's books or their various followers). A paranoid personality is required to believe such tales and yet all the world believes in the al-Qaeda myth.
In these conspiracy myths everything can be explained by the secret organization. This is true of al-Qaeda. The defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan, a number of terrorist attacks from the 1980s and 1990s and the substantial organization necessary for 9/11 and then a host of others since of varying quality of execution and goal. No internal logic is necessary to unite the events or the actors. Goals and ends are secret knowledge and cannot be determined. The failure, however, of al-Qaeda to produce any infrastructure has been attributed to similarities to 19th century anarchists or nihilists without any understanding of these movements which would contradict the comparison.
The failure of al-Qaeda to take advantages of opportunities that are obvious that would further their power and build a movement is generally ignored. al-Qaeda has not linked with the international drug movement or illicit arms trade as underground leftist terrorists are supposed to have done in the 1970s, 80s and 1990s. One could assume this is due to their superior analysis that such involvements were detrimental to the movements that did, but this is open to interpretation. The same lack of action is true in regards to incidents of terror against the poor and disenfranchised in places like Africa, India and Central and South America, or any presence in labor struggles in the Middle East. Their supposed presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has been their central image, but in these areas their ability to produce any substantial base or victories is curious. Again, al-Qaeda seems more like a myth, a brutal Robin Hood who seldom wins anything but is always present to take the blame for everything. There could not be a more perfect bogeyman.
al-Qaeda and bin Laden is the reason for the loss of freedom and yet his pursuit is the definition of the struggle to regain it. A more coincident construction to Eric Blair's 1984 would be hard to fabricate. Like a religion, belief in the existence of al-Qaeda cannot be proven or disproven and skeptics are worse than heretics or the old unbelievers of international communism being behind every protest or uprising of the 1950s. Such attitudes define "fellow travelers" in the anti-communist vernacular of "unpatriotic co-conspirators."
Yet if we use logic to address the ideology of the "al-Qaeda conspiracy" and follow the money, we see that the focus of attention in this arena as been on individuals and kin groups who have operated outside of the banking industry to transfer funds to family members either by word of mouth means as typical in the Middle East (http://findarticles.com/...) and Asia prior to 9/11 or by wire (http://en.wikipedia.org/...). While these sums have been significant they pale in comparison to the shadow banking industry (http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/...) and "dark pools" of credit (http://www.marketswiki.com/...) in play through complex financial transactions under the counter each and every day by corporations, banks, hedge funds and individuals (http://blogs.forbes.com/...).
Is there a way out of this straight-jacket the world finds itself in?