The effects of a decentralized al-Qa'ida

So why does the US often report that "high level al-Qa'ida operatives" have been killed or captured? How many are there?

This article in US News on the decentralizaed structure of terrorist organizations, al-Qa'ida in particular, has been mentioned quite a bit (see here and here for example). The Monkey Cage builds on this article and points to the academic research behind the argument-- for example, a recent International Studies Quarterly article by Shaprio and Siegel which argues:

The puzzle for traditional perspectives on terrorist financial and logistical systems is that groups, which are purportedly organized to carry out attacks often provide inadequate funds to their operatives. … suppose that the members of a terrorist support network, middlemen, were not uniformly driven by mission accomplishment, but that some were driven by monetary rewards.

According to Shapiro's other work, al-Qa'ida has often been concerned with management issues. However, after the forced decentralization of the hierarchical structure in late 2002, monitoring of terrorist agents became problematic:

From the mid-1990s through late-2001, al-Qa’ida made every effort to become a fully bureaucratized organization, complete with employment contracts specifying vacation policies, explicitly documented roles and responsibilities for different jobs including detailed descriptions of the experiences required for senior leadership roles, security memos written by a specialized security committee,14 and standardized questionnares for those arriving at training camps. Al-Qa’ida did not decide to decentralize until 2002, following the ouster of the Taliban from Afghanistan and the arrest of a number of key al-Qa’ida leaders … In response these and other key losses, al-Qa’ida allegedly convened a strategic summit in northern Iran in November 2002, at which the group’s consultative council decided that it could no longer operate as a hierarchy, but instead would have to decentralize. Essentially, al-Qa’ida traded operational control and financial efficiencies for security and organizational survival.

So what does all this mean for the US ability to capture top operatives? As Henry Farrell points out:

Skeptics, ditch-hurlers and finger-pointers have suggested that the US may have slightly exaggerated the importance of these kills, going so far as to draw rather unkind comparisons between the life prospects (a) of someone appointed to the position of third-in-command in al-Qaeda, and (b) of someone appointed as drummer in Spinal Tap. But a less cynical take is possible. Perhaps, given the problems outlined above, Al-Qaeda (new model) needs lots and lots of executive vice-presidents for financial control and auditing to try to keep track of what their various subcontractors are up to.