Al Qaeda as a Dune Organization: Toward a Typology of Islamic Terrorist Organizations

Abstract

Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups offer the analyst a highly complex challenge. The current literature classifies Islamic terrorist organizations as either networked or hierarchical. Yet, this classification fails to account for the appearance on the international stage of a new type of global terrorism. Most notably, it does not capture the structure and mode of operation of Al Qaeda as it emerged after the 2001 U.S.-led assault on Afghanistan. This article therefore introduces a new concept-the Dune organization-that is distinct from other organizational modes of thinking. This conceptualization leads to a new typology of Islamic terrorist organizations.This typology concentrates on organizational behavior patterns and provides a framework for a comparative analysis of terrorist movements, which is applied to a study of Al Qaeda, Hizballah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Civilizational futures: Clashes or alternative visions in the age of globalization?

“…From this perspective, it is obvious that the ideological side of Al-Qaeda is much more crucial than the organizational structure to keep the organization alive and operable. This was proved by Al-Qaeda's survival and operability even after its camps and facilities in Afghanistan were destroyed in 2001 [33].…”

“…Bin Laden and AlZawahiri arrived at the recruitment base of Peshawar located on the Afghan-Pakistani border, along with other fighters who streamed in from all over the Arab and Muslim world to join the Jihad against the Soviet invasion [33]. At the end of the Soviet invasion, Osama bin Laden continued his struggle for political Islam in the anarchical political situation of Afghanistan, but this time he did not limit himself to the battle against the Soviets.…”

Terrorist Organization Typologies and the Probability of a Boomerang Effect

“…The typology they propose adds the concept "Dune organization" to the typology of networks, evaluating the process of vacillation between territorial presence and a mode of disappearance. 20 The wide variety of typologies that researchers of terror have proposed since the early 1970s deal with many different aspects of the phenomenon of terror and of terror organizations. Figure 1 presents a model for combining the main categories used in different typologies of terror organizations and adds some categories in a manner that makes it possible to sharpen the distinctions between terror organizations based on the following factors:…”

On Heterogeneous Covert Networks

“…It is currently widely known that Al Qaeda morphed from a bureaucratic, hierarchical organization into an ideological umbrella for loosely coupled jihadi networks (Mishal et al 2005). We argue that the changing environment pressured the Al Qaeda leadership into adopting network topologies that maintain secrecy while simultaneously providing some possibility to coordinate and control.…”