"Al Qaeda has four different networks," Aristegui told me in Madrid, the day after the Socialists took power. "First, there is the original network, the one that committed 9/11, which uses its own resources and people it has recruited and trained. Then, there is the ad-hoc terrorist network, consisting of franchise organizations that Al Qaeda created-often to replace ones that weren't bloody enough- in countries such as the Philippines, Jordan, and Algeria." The third network, Aristegui said, is more subtle, "a strategic union of like-minded companies." Since February 1998, when Osama bin Laden announced the creation of the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Crusaders and Jews-an umbrella organization for Islamist groups from Morocco to China-Al Qaeda has expanded its dominion by making alliances and offering funds. "Hamas is in, or almost in," Aristegui said. "Bin Laden is trying to tempt Hezbollah to join, but they are Shia, and many Sunnis are opposed to them." Finally, there is the fourth network-"imitators, emulators," who are ideologically aligned with Al Qaeda but are less tied to it financially. "These are the ones who committed Madrid," Aristegui said.
Until the Madrid attacks, the Al Qaeda operations-in Dhahran, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Aden, New York, Washington, Jerba, Karachi, Bali, Mombasa, Riyadh, Casablanca, Jakarta, and Istanbul- had been political failures. These massacres committed in the name of jihad had achieved little except anger, grief, and the deaths of thousands. Soon after September 11, Al Qaeda lost its base in Afghanistan and, along with that, its singular role in the coordination of international terror. New groups, such as the bombers in
Madrid, were acting in the name of Al Qaeda, and although they may well have had the blessings of its leaders, they did not have the training, resources, or international contacts that had bolstered the previous generation of terrorists. Some operations, such as the 2003 attack on Western compounds in Riyadh, which killed mainly Muslims, were such fiascos that it appeared that Al Qaeda was no longer able to exercise control.
"Al Qaeda is not a hierarchical organization, and never was," Marc Sageman, a psychiatrist, a former CIA case officer, and the author of UnderstandingTerror Networks, told me. "It was always a social movement." The latest converts to the cause didn't train in Afghanistan, and they approach jihad differently. "These local guys are reckless and less well trained, but they are willing to kill themselves, whereas the previous leaders were not," Sageman said. Moreover, as the Spanish attacks showed, the new generation was more interested in committing violence for the sake of immediate political gain.
The kind of short-term tactical thinking displayed in the "Jihadi Iraq" document and the March 11 bombings is decidedly out of step with Al Qaeda's traditional world view, in which history is seen as an endless struggle between believers and infidels. It is the mind-set of fundamentalists of all religions. This war is eternal, and is never finally won until the longed-for Day of Judgment. In this contest, the first goal is to provoke conflict. Bold, violent deeds draw the lines and arouse ancient resentments, and are useful even if they have unsought consequences. Polarization is to be encouraged, radical simplicity being essential for religious warfare. An Al Qaeda statement posted on the Internet after the March 11 bombings declared, "Being targeted by an enemy is what will wake us from our slumber." Seen in this light, terrorism plays a sacramental role, dramatizing a religious conflict by giving it an apocalyptic backdrop. And Madrid was just another step in the relentless march of radical Islam against the modern, secular world.
Had the Madrid cell rested on its accomplishment after March 11,
Al Qaeda would properly be seen as an organization now being guided by political strategists-as an entity closer in spirit to ETA, with clear tactical objectives. April 2 throws doubt on that perspective. There was little to be gained politically from striking an opponent who was complying with the stated demand: the government had agreed to withdraw troops from Iraq. If the point was merely humiliation or revenge, then April 2 makes more sense; the terrorists wanted more blood, even if a second attack backfired politically. (The Socialists could hardly continue to follow the terrorist agenda with a thousand new corpses along the tracks.) April 2 is comprehensible only if the real goal of the bombers was not Iraq but Spain, where the Islamic empire began its retreat five hundred years ago. "Spain is a target because we are the historic turning point," Aristegui said. "After this, they are going to try to hit Rome, London, Paris, and the United States harder than they did before."
Juan Aviles, a history professor at Madrid's Autonomous University and an adviser to the Civil Guard, told me, "From our Western point of view, it doesn't make sense that the killings of Atocha are meaningless. In Spain, we expect ETA to behave in certain ways. With Al Qaeda, the real dimensions of the threat are not known. And that produces uneasiness."
In the weeks after the March 11 attacks, Spanish police combed the immigrant neighborhoods outside Madrid, carrying photographs of suspects. "We didn't have them perfectly located, but we knew they were in Leganes," a police official told me. Leganes is a bland suburb of five-story red brick apartment complexes. The wide streets are lined with evenly spaced, adolescent oaks. In the mornings, the sidewalks are full of commuters rushing for the trains; then the place is vacant, except for grandmothers and strollers. In the evenings, the commuters return and close their doors.
At three o'clock on the afternoon of April 3, the day after the discovery of the bomb on the AVE tracks, police approached an apartment building on Calle Carmen Martin Gaite. They saw a young Moroccan man with a baseball cap on backward who was taking out trash. He yelled something in Arabic, then ran away at an impressive pace. (He turned out to be a track champion; the police did not catch him, and he remains at large.) A moment later, voices cried out, "Allabu Akhbar," and machine-gun fire from the second floor of the apartment house raked the street, scattering the cops. Over the next few hours, the police tactical unit, Grupo Especial de Operaciones, evacuated the residents of nearby apartments. Tanks and helicopters moved in, and the siege of Leganes began.
Inside the apartment were seven young men. Most of them were Moroccan immigrants who had come to Europe seeking economic opportunity. They had gone through a period of becoming "Westernized"-that is to say, they had been drinkers, drug dealers, womanizers. They hung out in cybercafes. They folded into the ethnic mix of urban Madrid. But they also lived in the European underground of Islamic radicalism, whose members were recruited more often in prison than in the training camps of Afghanistan.
Their leader was Sarhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, who was thirty-five years old and had a round, fleshy face and a patchy beard. He was a real-estate agent who had come to Madrid eight years earlier on a scholarship to study economics. His boss told the Spanish press that Fakhet was "a wonderful salesman," who held the record for the number of apartments sold in a month. Yet he did not talk to his coworkers or make friends with other Spaniards; he remained sequestered in his Muslim world.
"He was very soft and well educated," Moneir Mahmoud Aly el-Messery, the imam at the principal mosque in Madrid, told me. The mosque-a massive marble structure, built with Saudi money-is the center of Muslim cultural life in the Spanish capital. It overlooks the M-30, one of the main freeways feeding into Madrid. When Fakhet was a student, he worked in the restaurant that is attached to the mosque, and he sometimes came to Messery's weekly religion class. In the beginning, the imam noticed that