Al-Qaida brand losing its global reach
By Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun
November 23, 2012 2:07 AM
In a speech on Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pointed to a
radical change in the al-Qaida terrorist network and its shrinking influence
since the killing of Osama bin Laden in May last year.
He didn't refer directly to the targeted attacks by missile-armed drones
against core al-Qaida groups in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen.
But Panetta said "al-Qaida's leadership ranks have been decimated."
However, "even with these gains," he cautioned, "the threat from al-Qaida
has not been eliminated. We have slowed the primary cancer, but we know that
the cancer has metastasized to other parts of the global body."
Indeed it has. But with the removal of bin Laden and his replacement by the
singularly uninspiring and lacklustre Ayman al-Zawahri, the whole nature of
the al-Qaida brand has changed.
Bin Laden's strategy in attacking the U.S. and the West - "the far enemy" -
was to remove support for Saudi Arabia - "the near enemy" - to enable
al-Qaida to liberate the holy sites of Islam and install a puritanical
religious administration.
But the strategy of "the far enemy" died with bin Laden.
No longer is al-Qaida a cohesive global network capable of mounting major
and sustained terrorist attacks against the West.
It has become a loose collection of regional affiliates in places like
Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Sahel region of West Africa, Iraq, Syria,
Libya and Egypt.
In most cases, these jihadist groups are inspired simply by local issues and
pay little or no attention to al-Zawahri, whose attempts to produce a grand
vision of holy war have fallen far short of what bin Laden was capable of.
These days, the biggest threat al-Qaida poses to the West is homegrown
terrorism by misguided people in Europe and North America.
There was a sharp illustration of this as Panetta was speaking to the Center
for a New American Security in Washington.
On the other side of the continent in Los Angeles, a 77-page affidavit was
released setting out the case against three California men who were arrested
just two days before they were to set off for terrorist training in
Afghanistan.
These were just the latest in a series of cases where U.S. residents have
been arrested before they trained to launch an American jihad.
There is a steady stream of similar incidents in Europe. Spanish police last
month arrested six people in Barcelona accused of sending stolen passports
to jihadists in Germany and Greece.
Besides the death of bin Laden, last year's Arab Spring has also diminished
the al-Qaida brand.
In Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, these revolutions have brought to power by
popular vote strongly Islamist administrations.
Democracy has also produced a religious regime in Iraq, and it may do the
same in Syria when that civil war ends.
This seriously undermines the al-Qaida message that terrorism is the only
route to an Islamic state.
Even in the lawless border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where
al-Qaida was born and thrived and where al-Zawahri is believed to be based,
the group is very much subservient to the dominant local organizations such
as the Taliban and the Haqqani family network.
Elsewhere, even though groups may attach the al-Qaida name to their own, it
is the local issues that dominate.
The exception is al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in Yemen,
the homeland of bin Laden.
AQAP still manifests the objective of bringing down the Saudi Arabian
monarchy and bringing the holiest sites of Islam under fundamentalist rule.
Al-Qaida in Iraq has become increasingly active in recent months, taking
advantage of the unstable political situation in Baghdad to carry out, on
average, 20 terrorist attacks a day. But it remains an organization fixated
on local issues.
And what one leader has called al-Qaida in East Africa is a misnomer. This
is the Somali al-Shabaab group and other leaders have denied the al-Qaida
affiliation, though there's no doubt some al-Qaida figures from Pakistan
have sought sanctuary there.
Even so, al-Shabaab has done more than its fair share to keep Somalia in the
bloody chaos that has dogged the country for 20 years.
But now, al-Shabaab is close to defeat by a combined military force launched
against it by the African Union with United Nations backing.
In retaliation, al-Shabaab has launched some terrorist attacks in Kenya and
kidnapped some tourists from Kenyan beach resorts. But the general level of
crime in Kenya is such that these incidents don't make much impact.
Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has taken hold of northern Mali after
a coup earlier this year left the Saharan country in chaos.
There have been reports of jihadists from places like Pakistan and Yemen -
where they are under threat of U.S. drone attacks - seeking safety in
northern Mali.
But AQIM has its roots in the long and bloody civil war in neighbouring
Algeria from 1991 to 2002, and which continues in some areas.
AQIM survives by kidnapping and smuggling. It is more a band of brigands
than a jihadist group, and is suffering increasing casualties as the highly
effective Algerian security forces take their toll in cross-border raids.
jmanthorpe_at_vancouversun.com
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