The assassination of Osama Bin Laden was greeted by European leaders as something that would make the world safer. ‘Tell that to the fairies’ concludes Tariq Ali in his latest attack on the motives and policies of the United States (‘America’s selective vigilantism will make as many enemies as friends’, The Guardian, 6 September).
Before his death, Bin Laden and his operations chief, Abu Abd al-Rahman Atiyyat Allah, otherwise known as Atiyyah, swapped views about the composition of an attack team to mount an operation in the US coinciding with the anniversary of 9/11, with bin Laden repeatedly rejecting names that Attiyah suggested.
At the end of August, the US government confirmed the death of Atiyyah who may have been killed by a drone strike in Waziristan.His death was regarded as highly significant, perhaps even more so than the death of Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s successor, were it to be brought about. Doubts about the claim have been expressed in Pakistan. This week has seen the arrest in Pakistan of Younis al-Mauretani, thought to be the jihadist name of Abd al-Rahman Ould Mohammed Hussein, an action for which the US has given appropriate credit to the ISI. This individual is important because of his links with Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which might indicate a closer relationship between AQIM and the Al-Qaeda core than experts have previously thought.
All of which prompts the question, whither Al-Qaeda, ten years after 9/11?
Is there substance to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s recent claim that the United States is ‘within reach of strategically defeating al Qaeda’?
If, as some have argued, Younis al-Mauretani acted as a quasi Al-Qaida ‘foreign minister’ what was he up to in the months preceding his arrest? ‘Mauritani was tasked personally by Osama bin Laden to focus on hitting targets of economic… importance in the United States of America, Europe and Australia’, a statement from the Pakistani military claims. ‘He was planning to target United States’ economic interests including gas and oil pipelines, power generating dams and [to] strike ships and oil tankers through explosive-laden speed boats in international waters.’ How far had such planning gone? Was there any realistic chance of such action being taken? Does Al-Qaeda still have the muscle to deliver a significant punch against the West - not a mortal blow such as on 9/11 - but a terrorist atrocity nonetheless?
Three observations are pertinent here. The first is that terrorist planning has clearly been disrupted by the assassination of bin Laden, the drone strikes on other leaders and the arrests that have taken place. Counter-terrorism has become more effective in recent years. This is hardly surprising, given ten years of warfare and the price countries in the West have paid in terms of curtailment of civil liberties. But the alleged ‘charisma deficit’ experienced by the loss of bin Laden as leader seems to be less important than the multiple challenges faced by his successors, including delayed decision-making caused by the need for greater caution – avoidance of electronic communication, more careful selection of couriers – a lack of ready funds and the potential drying up of recruits for the cause. None of these is necessarily a terminal problem, but the impatience of younger jihadists with the apparent inaction of the leadership could lead to factionalism which might weaken the movement. Alternatively, younger radicals might attempt a great strike themselves which, if it failed, could backfire on the terrorist credentials of the movement as a whole. To become just one of many terrorist groups, rather than the chief threat to the West, would be a serious setback to the movement.
A second observation is the lack of evidence, at least to date, that Al-Qaeda has gained access to weapons of mass destruction, especially materials for a ‘dirty bomb’. Ayman al-Zawahiri’s willingness to countenance the death of 10 million Americans in order to advance the jihadist cause has been well documented by Rolf Mowatt-Larssen. Yet for all the fears about nuclear security in Pakistan, so far so good: the worst has not happened. Disaster has so far been avoided, Michael Krepon notes. More problematic is the pillaging of Qadaffi’s arsenal of heating-seeking missiles, the SA7s or 9M32Ms to use their former Eastern bloc designation. Since these could bring down a passenger aircraft they do pose the serious threat of a relatively easily mounted land-based attack should the weapons fall into the wrong hands. As yet, there is no knowledge of their whereabouts, which remains a serious danger. The main hope here is that the weapons have not yet been mated with the smaller type of launcher known as the grip stock. This configuration, which would make the weapon similar to the American-made Stinger, is considered a grave danger to civilian aircraft because the weapon is readily portable and relatively simple to conceal and use. Libya was not, apparently, supplied with grip stocks for its heat-seeking missiles.
Finally, there is need to consider the continued ideological threat posed by Al-Qaeda. The consensus at present seems to be that if the revolutions resulting from the ’Arab Spring’ are successful, Al-Qaeda will be consigned to irrelevance. But given the potential divisions in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere, and the lack of progress by the rebels in Syria, success cannot be guaranteed. The question to be tested in all these countries, as also in Afghanistan, is whether the Islamists are more committed to democracy than they are to a hardline interpretation of the Sharia. Ayman al-Zawahiri has already criticized them for this: ‘We demand ... the government of the rightly guiding caliphate, which is established on the basis of the sovereignty of sharia and not on the whims of the majority. Its ummah chooses its rulers... If they deviate, the ummah brings them to account and removes them.’ Similarly, he writes: ‘Any government established on the basis of a constitution that is secular, atheist, or contradictory to Islam cannot be a respected government because it is un-Islamic and not according to sharia.’ This is what Al-Zawahiri means when he writes: ‘the Muslim movement in general, and the jihadi movement in particular, should wage the battle of intellectual argument just as much as the battle of weapons.’
It cannot be assumed that the intellectual argument has been lost by Al-Qaeda, particularly in the Pashtun homelands in southern Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan where commitment to a highly conservative view of sharia is widespread. Of great importance here is the inability of the present Afghan government and its Western advisers to recruit southern Pashtuns into the national Afghan army in any significant numbers. This reflects a deep and lingering fear of the insurgents, or sympathy for them, as well as doubts about the stability and integrity of the central government in Kabul. The New York Times reports that the predominantly Pashtun southern and south-eastern provinces — Kandahar, Helmand, Oruzgan, Zabul, Paktika and Ghazni — make up about 17 percent of Afghanistan’s total population, yet they have contributed just 1.5 percent of the soldiers recruited since 2009. While the overall representation of Pashtuns, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group, in the army is equitable — they make up about 42 percent of the population and roughly the same percentage of the army — the vast majority come from a few north-eastern provinces. The absence of southern Pashtuns reinforces the impression that the army is largely a northern institution — to be used against the southern provinces — in what is a potentially dangerous division of the country. This is potentially fertile territory for the ideological warfare which is likely to be conducted by Al-Qaeda under Ayman al-Zawahiri. Key factors to watch are the apparent strengthening of the Haqqani network at the expense of the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP), its ongoing links with Al-Qaeda and the continued commitment of the Haqqani network to fight against the US forces in Afghanistan as their principal enemy: it is by forging and maintaining such alliances that Ayman al-Zawahiri and Al-Qaeda could overcome recent setbacks and emerge as a continuing threat.
