The prospects for Al Quaeda

By Paul Rogers, The Progressive Response, Vol. 7, no. 02, 24 January 2002

(Editor's Note: This is excerpted from a longer Outside the U.S. global affairs commentary located at http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2003/0301alqaeda.html .)

Sixteen months after the attacks of 11 September, what is the status of al Qaeda and what are its prospects?

Al Qaeda and its associates have been maintaining a level of activity over the past sixteen months that is actually higher than in the months leading up to the New York and Washington atrocities. Major incidents include the killing of French technicians in Karachi and the attempt to bomb the U.S. consulate in the same city, the attack on the Limberg oil tanker, the Bali bomb, the Paradise Hotel bomb at Kikambala, and the attempt to shoot down an Israeli charter airliner taking off from Mombasa airport.

There have been many lesser incidents in numerous countries, and a number of major attempted incidents have been intercepted, including planned attacks in Paris, Rome, and Singapore. Away from al Qaeda itself, Chechen rebels laid siege to a Moscow theater and, more recently, bombed the Russian administrative building in Grozny that was presumed to provide the greatest place of safety in the city for Russian civilians. There have, in addition, been frequent bombings in the Philippines.

Though some of these may not be directly connected to al Qaeda, they should be analyzed in the context of a number of other incidents in a range of countries where there are also no clear links with al Qaeda as such. The ricin incident in Britain may be an example of this, and some other interceptions in Europe seem to show little connection.

More generally, the trend now appears to be for al Qaeda and its associates to be proselytizing among Islamic communities in many parts of the world via videos, tapes, and direct contacts, replacing the single safe haven of Afghanistan with many small safe havens around the world.

In general, such a dispersal of a paramilitary organization would be regarded by western security authorities as a success. On this measure, al Qaeda would be considered to be in retreat. This is clearly not the case, given the extent of current activity.

There are two explanations for this. The first is that al Qaeda might have appeared to be thoroughly centered on Afghanistan, but this was never the whole picture. Long before 9/11, it was an organization with affiliates and supporters across much of the Middle East and North Africa as well as in some communities in Asia, Europe, and North America.

The second explanation is that there is probably more support for al Qaeda in many countries than there was two years ago. Although al Qaeda previously gave little support to the Palestinians, and even less to the secular regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, it has embraced both causes and is achieving considerable success in promoting the view of a deeply anti-Islamic U.S./Israeli axis of evil.

In Afghanistan, thousands of U.S. troops are tied down trying to kill or capture Taliban and al Qaeda militias, and there have been substantial recent tensions with Pakistan over border crossings. Osama bin Laden, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar all elude capture, and the CIA is authorized to kill more than twenty al Qaeda leaders if it cannot capture them.

This very decision has its own consequences, as was seen in Yemen with tragic results. First, a CIA drone was used to destroy a vehicle in which an al Qaeda leader was travelling but, within a few weeks, a secular politician, Jarallah Omar, was assassinated and two days later three missionaries from the U.S. were murdered.

Some western security analysts argue that these independent attacks are proof that al Qaeda is in retreat, and is unable to coordinate its operations. This may miss the point. Al Qaeda has always been a partially dispersed network, and what is now significant is its greater concentration on this aspect of its organization, a process aided by increasing support for at least some of its overall aims.

In particular regions, local paramilitary groups may concentrate on local issues, but they are doing so as part of a loose international movement that may on balance not be losing any of its force. Once again, we are faced with a situation in which all the emphasis in the war on terror is focused on pre-emption and capture--beating the terrorists into submission. Meanwhile, there is scarcely any focus on the reasons for the groundswell of support for al Qaeda and its associates in the first place, a support that is likely to be enhanced still further by a war with Iraq.