A couple more
things on al-Qaeda
January 14, 2010
I wanted to highlight two more recent publications related to the
theme I discussed in yesterday's post; really they're suited to go
in that one --I can't believe I didn't think to include them --
but I figured no one would notice if I just updated.
First is Steve Coll's brief Talk of the Town piece for last week's
New Yorker, "Threats":
The attempted Christmas attack also put Al Qaeda’s resourcefulness
on full display. In its third decade, under severe pressure, it
has evolved into a jihadi version of an Internet-enabled
direct-marketing corporation structured like Mary Kay, but with
martyrdom in place of pink Cadillacs. Al Qaeda shifts shapes and
seizes opportunities, characteristics that argue for its
longevity. It will be able to wreak havoc periodically for as long
as it can recruit suicide bombers and well-educated talent, as it
has done consistently.
Yet Al Qaeda is also weakening. Osama bin Laden sought to lead the
vanguard of a spreading revolution. Instead, he and his deputy,
Ayman al-Zawahiri, are hunkered down, presumably along the
Afghan-Pakistani border, surrounded by only about two hundred
hard-core followers. Their adherents in Yemen and Africa number no
more than a few thousand. Al Qaeda in Iraq is a tiny fragment of
its former self. Bin Laden’s relations with the Taliban seem
brittle. Unlike Hezbollah, Al Qaeda provides no social services
and thus has built no political movement. Unlike Hamas, its bloody
nihilism has attracted no states that are willing to defend its
legitimacy. In a world of at least one and a half billion Muslims,
this does not a revolution, or even a vanguard, make.
Next is Thomas Rid's most recent article for The Wilson Quarterly,
"Cracks in the Jihad." This is a much more well-developed essay
than Coll's, as you might imagine from the different format, and
it expands on the same themes referenced in the passage I've cited
above. Here's a highlight:
In the years since late 2001, when U.S. and coalition forces
toppled the Taliban regime and all but destroyed Al Qaeda’s core
organization in Afghanistan, the bin Laden brand has been
bleeding popularity across the Muslim world. The global jihad, as
a result, has been torn by mounting internal tensions. Today, the
holy war is set to slip into three distinct ideological and
organizational niches. The U.S. surge in Afghanistan, whether
successful or not, is likely to affect this development only
marginally.
The first niche is occupied by local Islamist insurgencies, fueled
by grievances against “apostate” regimes that are authoritarian,
corrupt, or backed by “infidel” outside powers (or any combination
of the three). Filling the second niche is terrorism-cum–organized
crime, most visible in Afghanistan and Indonesia but also seen in
Europe, fueled by narcotics, extortion, and other ordinary illicit
activities. In the final niche are people who barely qualify as a
group: young second- and third-generation Muslims in the diaspora
who are engaged in a more amateurish but persistent holy war,
fueled by their own complex personal discontents. Al Qaeda’s
challenge is to encompass the jihadis who drift to the criminal
and eccentric fringe while keeping alive its appeal to the Muslim
mainstream and a rhetoric of high aspiration and promise.
The most visible divide separates the local and global jihadis.
Historically, Islamist groups tended to bud locally, and assumed a
global outlook only later, if they did so at all. All the groups
that have been affiliated with Al Qaeda either predate the birth
of the global jihad in the early 1990s or grew later out of local
causes and concerns, only subsequently attaching the bin Laden
logo. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, for example, started out in
1998 as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, an offshoot
of another militant group that had roots in Algeria’s vicious
civil war during the early 1990s. Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Taiba, the
force allegedly behind the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, that
killed more than 170 people, was formed in the 1990s to fight for
a united Kashmir under Pakistani rule. In Somalia, Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, and other countries, the Al Qaeda brand has been
attractive to groups born out of local concerns.
By joining Al Qaeda and stepping up violence, local insurgents
have long risked placing themselves on the target lists of
governments and law enforcement organizations. More recently,
however, they have run what may be an even more consequential
risk, that of removing themselves from the social mainstream and
losing popular support.
Rid explores the local/global split and briefly touches on takfir
(there's really a LOT in common with Bobby's thesis that I
mentioned yesterday); this obviously overlaps significantly with
the ideas I sort of inelegantly explored in the post about Yemen,
too.
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