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Volume 101 • Number 2 • April 2011

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Volume 101 • Number 2

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WORLD Special Issue From Structural Violence to Violent Activism around the Persian Gulf

April 2011

Special Editors

Laurent Bonnefoy, François Burgat and Pascal Menoret

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M uslim WORLD THE

Volume 101 • Number 2 • April 2011

Contents

From Structural Violence to Violent Activism around the Persian Gulf Special issue of The Mulim World edited by Laurent Bonnefoy, François Burgat and Pascal Menoret

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Introduction by Laurent Bonnefoy, François Burgat and Pascal Menoret

I. Structural Violence

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Ibn Taymiyya’s “New Mardin Fatwa”. Is genetically modified Islam (GMI) carcinogenic? Yahya Michot

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The S. ada War in Yemen: between Politics and Sectarianism Samy Dorlian

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Performing Political Domination in Yemen. Narratives and Practices of Power in the General People’s Congress Marine Poirier

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Statelessness & Administrative Violence: Bidu¯ns’ Survival Strategies in Kuwait. Claire Beaugrand

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The Militarization of Islamism: Al-Qa¯‘ida and Its Transnational Challenge muwo_1358

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Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva; author of Understanding Al Qaeda (Pluto, 2011)

ince al-Qa¯‘ida has emerged as the dominant international security threat of our time, its marked characteristic has been as much its lethality as the novelty it has embodied as the first full-fledged incarnation of a militarized form of transnational terrorism. Such consequential variance from other Islamist militant groups and qualitative innovation by international standards of terrorism were featured from the very inception of the group’s activities in the late 1980s taking the form of a politico-militarist expression of Islamism. To be certain, the organization, which coalesced in Afghanistan under the initial troika leadership of Palestinian teacher ‘Abd Alla¯h ‘Azza¯m, Egyptian ¯ ¯, and Saudi businessman Usa¯ma Bin La¯din in August 1989, surgeon Ayma¯n al-Zawahirı was born in the context of a major international armed conflict, namely the Soviet Union’s failed take-over of Afghanistan from December 1979 to February 1989. War instead of social protest, political opposition or religious reform was hence the organization’s historical marker. This paper sets outs to understand the context in which the violence of al-Qa¯‘ida has historically manifested itself transnationally. It presents a narrative of the history of al-Qa¯‘ida in which successive phases of this transnational militant project are identified as key moments of Islamism, only to culminate in a paradoxical return to regional and domestic concerns. While this lens allows us to inquire whether the story of al-Qa¯‘ida is an anomaly in the cumulative experience of Islamist movements or a natural evolution resulting, notably, from its coincidence with globalization, such an approach admittedly runs the risk of appearing deterministic due to the ex post facto nature of its conclusions. Indeed, counter-narratives stressing other key moments or evolutionary markers can be put forth questioning the coherence of al-Qa¯‘ida’s original vision and step-by-step management as proposed below. Such dimensions taken into account, it is here submitted that the detailed examination of the operations conducted by al-Qa¯‘ida, the variegated materials released by its ¯ , al-Malahim ¯ media branches (Mu’assasat al-Sihab and al-Andalus), and the statements of its leadership reveal, firstly, with substantial cogency a militant Islamist activism planned and executed as a transnational project. Specifically, locating the causes of al-Qa¯‘ida’s

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resort to force in the fermentation of contemporary religious Islamic culture, rather than the militarization of the politics of a sub-state Islamist armed groups with transnational ambitions masks three key notions: the sui generis aggrandizement of the principle of “reactive necessity” within which armed violence is illegally channelled as war (purportedly reacting to the Arab and Muslim states’ failure to protect their citizens), the literalization of (Western) civilian responsibility as targets of a new type of post-modern terrorism (in the name of alleged electoral support to aggressive policies) and the tactical acknowledgment of technological imbalance with a view to use structural weakness as opportunity (instrumentalization of asymmetry through modification of the locus and tempo of operations) rather than impediment1. Such investigation brings to light, secondly, the increasing reinterpretation of these al-Qa¯‘ida aims and preferred modus operandi by its regional franchises. What, in the 1990s and early 2000s, had constituted the group’s unique strength — strategic reversal of its weaker asymmetric stance, tactical agility, planned geographic expansion and long-term planning within a transnational mode of force projection — ended up, in the mid-to-late 2000s, being held back by the immediacy and “provincialism” of the franchises’ immediate concerns. To the extent that al-Qa¯‘ida developed as a transnational movement but got trapped by local contingencies, we may, in the final analysis, ask whether ultimately there is compatibility between transnational and local movements.

A Transnational Islamist Army The denominations that were initially opted for by the group’s leadership confirm that the thinking behind the entity’s sociogenesis was clearly to assemble an international Islamist striking force. Al-Jaysh al-Isla¯mı¯ (the Islamic Army), Sijil al-Qa¯‘ida (the Base’s Registry) and al-Qa¯‘idah al-‘Askariyya (the Military Base) had been among the first names of the group, which would also briefly be known as the al-Jabhah ¯ ¯ (World Islamic Front for al-Isla¯miyya al-‘Alamiyya lı¯-Jiha¯d al-Yahu¯d wa al -Salıbiyın Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders) during a February 1998 attempt to build an 1 In the August 1996 and February 1998 declarations of war and in subsequent speeches, Usa¯ma Bin La¯din addressed explicitly the nature of this strategy meant to “disrupt the enemy” (notably, in the statements released on 12 November 2002, 15 April 2004, 29 October 2004, and 19 January 2006), as has ¯ ¯ in his two books: Fursa¯n Tahta Rayat al-Nabı¯ (“Knights Under the Prophet’s Ayma¯n al-Zawahirı Banner”, December 2001) and Tabri’a Umat al-Qalam wa al-Sayf min Manqasa Tuhmat al-Khawr wa al -Da f (“Treaty Exonerating the Nation of the Pen and the Sword from the Blemish of the Accusation of Weakness and Fatigue”, March 2008). Al-Qa¯‘ida lead operator Mustafa¯ Bin ‘Abd al-Qa¯dir Sit Mariam formulated ideas partaking of Nasar ¯ , known as Abu¯ Mus ab al-Su¯rı¯ (arrested in October 2005), has also the same strategy in his 2004 work Da‘wat al-Muqa¯wama al-Isla¯miyya al-‘Ala¯miyya (“The Global Islamic Resistance Call”). On al-Su¯rı¯, see Paul Cruickshank and Mohannad Hage Ali, “Abu Musab Al Suri: Architect of the New Al Qaeda”, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 30, pp. 1–14, 2007; and Brynjar Lia, Architect of the Global Jihad — The Life of Al Qaeda Strategist Abu Mus’ab Al Suri (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

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international coalition of armed Islamist groups2. The organization eventually settled on Qa¯‘idat al-Jiha¯d (the Base of Jihad), known commonly as al-Qa¯‘ida. In contradistinction to most previous forms of Islamism, al-Qa¯‘ida was therefore inherently eminently martial in its conception and outlook. Whether in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Iraq or elsewhere in the Muslim world, the leading Islamist groups that had seen the day over the past half century had overwhelmingly been characterised by solid social anchoring in their national environment, and the presence of a program of societal reform which expressed itself in ideological and religious terms. Groups like the Muslim Brotherhood rose up as a popular movement in 1930s Egypt, grew radical in the midst of mid-1950s nationalist turmoil and Nasserist repression and embraced violence temporarily before renouncing it formally3. Others like al-Jabhah al-Isla¯miyya li-l-Inqa¯dh (Islamic Salvation Front) in Algeria built a large infrastructure of social welfare services at the communal level in response to the severe socioeconomic crisis that rocked that country throughout the 1980s, and hoped, to no avail, to achieve political power through the ballot in 1991. But if the Muslim Brotherhood ended up transcending Egypt’s borders with the founding of sister organisations in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, thus expressing an early form of transnationalism and pan-Islamism, and if the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front had come in the late 1980s on the heels of Mustafa¯ Bu¯ya‘lı¯’s early 1980s al-Jama¯‘ah al-Isla¯miyya al -musalaha (Islamic Armed Movement) in that country, both were undeniably first and foremost the expression of local Egyptian and Algerian socioeconomic frustration and political anomie wherein religious revival was seen as remedying state failure and embodying hopes for a better future for the nation. (Indeed, Bu¯ya‘lı¯ began his militant activism relatively peacefully in 1979, turned to petty criminality, and only engaged in armed confrontation with the Algerian authorities after the killing of his brother in 1982. He would himself be shot dead at a police roadblock in 1987.) Removed from such (admittedly limited) belief in the reform of the system on the part of those Islamist factions that began by playing by the rules, al-Qa¯‘ida, for its part, was never concerned with electoral contests or national development questions. Inversing Louis XIV’s dictum that “L’État, c’est moi” (I am the State), al-Qa¯‘ida has been in effect saying “La guerre, c’est moi” (I am war). Al-Qa¯‘ida started as an Arab-dominated group set up outside of an Arab country with a global Islamist program of action meant first and foremost to counter perceived Western hegemony in Muslim lands, and to respond to that dominion through the use of force targeting centrally the United States and its allies. The ascendancy of this rationale meant not the premorse of a frustrated local ambition but, rather, that domestic state failure and repression of the “near enemy”

2 ¯ ¯ ”, World Islamic Front “Nass Baya¯n al-Jabhah al-Isla¯miyya al-‘Ala¯miyya li Jiha¯d al-Yahu¯d wa l-Salıbiyın Statement, al-Quds al-‘Arabı¯, London, 23 February 1998, p. 3. 3 ¯ See notably ‘Abd Alla¯h Imı¯m, ‘Abd al -Nasir wal Ikhwa¯n al-Muslimu¯n — al-‘Unf al-Dı¯nı¯ fı¯ Misr (Cairo: Da¯r al- Khiya¯l Printers, 1997); and Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).


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(al-‘adu¯ al-qarı¯b) should be separated strategically from the “far enemy” (al-‘adu¯ al-ba‘ı¯d), namely that party which allows the unjust situation and exploitation to persist and benefits from them4. Whereas traditional Islamist groups began establishing themselves through a combination of religious preaching, political discourse, and, most importantly, networks of domestic social services — the Islamic Salvation Front public assistance performance during the November 1990 earthquake in Algeria crucially revealed governmental ¯ ( Justice and Reform) was built on a shortcomings; Morocco’s al-‘Adl wa al -Ihsan grassroots system of social welfare; and, in Lebanon, Hizb Alla¯h’s vast and multifaceted efforts such as Mu’assasat Jiha¯d al-Bina¯’ (Holy Struggle Reconstruction Foundation) often outshined official Lebanese government programs — al-Qa¯‘ida’s first embodiment was to serve as a welfare service provider originating in the rentier-state Arabian Gulf but one whose action was oriented outwardly. As a replenishing way station for fighters on their way to the Afghan-Soviet front, the Maktab al-Khadama¯t li-l-Muja¯hidı¯n (Office of ¯ (Hospitality Works for the Combatants), sometimes referred to as Maktab al -Diyafa House), had been set up in 1983 to coordinate increasingly organized activity by large numbers of Islamist operatives that had travelled to Afghanistan since the early 1980s to battle, in the name of Jihad, the Russian troops which had invaded the country. In such a context, “the base” thus refers at once to the database of those fighters, the headquarters where these individuals were housed and cared for, as well as the martial basis in which the movement anchored its overall action5. This structure, which now crystallized hierarchically around the bicephalous leadership of Bin La¯din and ¯ ¯ (‘Azza¯m having been assassinated with his sons in November 1989) as al-Zawahirı gha¯zı¯6 warriors, began, from thereon, expanding its financial and technical support of a transnational pan-Islamic web to encompass logistical coordination activities, leading in time to the setting up of training camps and planning of operations. Al-Qa¯‘ida’s differencia specifica was characteristically illustrated by the first set of programmatic actions it then undertook during its set-up phase. Between 1989 and 1995, the group’s focus was to staff its army and train its men. In time, this took the form of several training camps in Afghanistan. Yet during the developmental phase, training experiments took place in the Sudan when Usa¯ma Bin La¯din had taken up residency in that country until 1996 before moving to Afghanistan, following an agreement with the 4

Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, Understanding Al Qaeda — The Transformation of War (London: Pluto Press, 2007), 45. 5 On the multifaceted meanings of al-Qa¯‘ida and its variegated usages as a “pragmatic precept”, see Flagg Miller, “Al Qaida as a ‘Pragmatic Base’: Contributions of Area Studies to Sociolinguistics”, Language and Communication, 28 (2008), pp. 386–408. 6 From ghazwa or ghazzou (raid), ‘gha¯zı¯ warriors’ refers to those fighters that took part in the Islam-founding battles fought by the Prophet Muhammad and the subsequent early military expedi this context, a desire by latter-day contemporary tions of the Islamic empire. The term connotes, in Islamists to provide a lineage of nobility to their contemporary militantism. On the larger historical context, see Michael Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War — Studies in the Jihad and the Arab-Byzantine Frontier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).

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¯ Husayn’s Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990 and Taliban. Similarly, when Saddam threatened to advance onto Saudi Arabia, Bin La¯din wrote to King Fahd offering his nascent army as bulwark against the Iraqis instead of the American military protection the House of ¯ l Sa‘u¯d would ultimately opt for opening a pandora’s box for the Middle East region7. A The initial al-Qa¯‘ida “army” itself took the form of a transnational grouping of some twenty thousand men8 that sprang from three distinct horizons: (i) disbanded, aging, but battle-hardened “Arab Afghans” available in the wake of the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan; (ii) new, younger recruits lured by the appeal of the Afghan “success” story and functioning as mid-level operational actors under the supervision of a guild of senior managers (Abu¯ ‘Ubayda al-Banshı¯rı¯, Abu¯ Hafs al-Masrı¯, Abu¯ Zubayda); and, increasingly after the mid-1990s, (iii) secret transnational cells immersed in the Middle East, Europe and Eastern Africa waiting to be activated for a new type of attacks in the Western metropolises. The latter sub-group, which would be best embodied in the Hamburg cell led by Muhammad Atta¯ and which would in time produce the matrix for the decentralized al-Qa¯‘ida from 2006 onwards, was to become the vehicle for the series of spectacular operations led by al-Qa¯‘ida in the 1995–2005 decade. As it were, the first two instances of transnational projection of force which can arguably be attributed to al-Qa¯‘ida were both a coordinated terrorist attack on the Movenpick and Gold Mohur hotels in Aden, Yemen in December 19929, where U.S. soldiers had been staying, and support to the October 1993 Somali militiamen ambush of U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu. Terrorism and insurgency, the twin cousins of non-state armed groups’ use of force, would subsequently remain recurrent forms of expression of al-Qa¯‘ida in its manifestations around the world. Al-Qa¯‘ida’s founding militarism was then logically contained in two declarations of war issued respectively in 1996 and 1998. On 23 August 1996, a “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Holy Lands” (i.e., Saudi Arabia) was penned by Usa¯ma Bin La¯din “from the Hindukush Mountains in Khurasan” and published in the London-based Arabic daily al-Quds al-‘Arabı¯. It was followed by a second pronouncement by the World Islamic Front on 23 February 1996 at a public conference in 7

Abdelbari Atwan, The Secret History of Al Qaeda (London: Saqi Books, 2006), 161–162. International Institute for Strategic Studies, Strategic Survey 2003/04 — An Evaluation and Forecast of World Affairs (London, IISS, May 2004). 9 A direct implication of al-Qa¯‘ida qua al-Qa¯‘ida is questionable since the operational branch of the recently-created group was in effect still being assembled. However, the United States government concluded that “[Osama] Bin Laden had almost certainly played a key role” in the attack. See US Congress, The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Final Report, Part III, The Attacks of September 11, 2001, 108th Congress, 1st Session, 23 July 2003. In addition, Bin La¯din himself stated in 1998: “The Arab mujâhidin related to the Afghan jiha¯d carried out two bomb explosions in Yemen to warn the United States, causing damage to some Americans staying in those hotels. The United States received our warning and gave up the idea of setting up its military bases in Yemen. This was the first al-Qa¯‘ida victory scored against the Crusaders.” Cited in Michael Scheuer, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes — Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America (Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, 2006), p. 147. 8


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¯ ¯ and three other Islamist leaders — Abu¯ Afghanistan attended by Bin La¯din, al-Zawahirı ¯ ¯ (Egypt), Shaykh Mı¯r Hamza (Pakistan) and Fazlul Rahma¯n Ya¯sir al-Rifa¯‘ı¯ Ahmad Taha (Bangladesh). In these two founding documents and in subsequent official statements by the core al-Qa¯‘ida leaders and senior operators, the organization, using distinct politico-religious phraseology and issuing of fatwas, presented its actions as being motivated centrally by opposition to Western policies and military presence in the Muslim world, and support of autocratic regimes in the region (e.g., “aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on [the people of Islam] by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators”, as written in the 1996 Declaration of War). Initially, this central aspect of al-Qa¯‘ida’s discourse was focused on the United States’ presence in Saudi Arabia and Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. Subsequently, it would come to encompass the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, with occasional reference to the situation in Lebanon. The focus on military opposition to an external enemy was clearly the hallmark of al-Qa¯‘ida’s initial war effort. In the 1996 Declaration, it stated that: “[E]very one [within al-Qa¯‘ida] agreed that the situation cannot be rectified . . . unless the root of the problem is tackled. Hence it is essential to hit the main enemy who divided the Umma into small and little countries and pushed it, for the last few decades, into a state of confusion.” The stage was set for al-Qa¯‘ida to pursue its war. Arising from these specific antecedents, by the mid-to-late 1990s and unbeknownst to most expert observers, including leading intelligence services, al-Qa¯‘ida had mutated from a single service station outpost devoted to a particular guerrilla front functioning within territorial contiguity to a transnational non-state armed group of unprecedented calibre, which could and would attack across and within state boundaries and using a complex network of operators relying on the latest communication technologies. Between 1995 and 2005, al-Qa¯‘ida conducted a staccato campaign of some twenty major international operations including the largest terrorist attack in history and the first on American soil: Saudi-American base in Riyadh (13 November 1995); housing site of U.S. soldiers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia (25 June 1996); U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (7 August 1998); USS Cole vessel in Aden, Yemen (12 October 2000); targets in New York and Washington (11 September 2001); synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia (11 April 2002); Sheraton hotel in Karachi (8 May 2002); nightclub in Bali (12 October 2002); French oil tanker Limburg near al-Mukkala, Yemen (6 October 2002); Israeli-patronized hotel and chartered airplane in Mombasa, Kenya (28 November 2002); Western housing compounds in Riyadh (12 May and 8 November 2003); Western and Jewish targets in Casablanca (16 May 2003); Marriott hotel in Jakarta (5 August 2003); two synagogues in Istanbul (15 November 2003); central train station in Madrid (11 March 2004); subway and bus system in London (7 July 2005); and three Western housing hotels in Amman, Jordan (9 November 2005). The insistent nature of this sequence indicated the emergence of a private entity claiming the use of violence against a group of states and their citizens primarily in the name of the “Umma’s defence”. Such revolutionary matrix — the circumventing of a state

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meant to be rendered obsolete — was introduced by al-Qa¯‘ida in relation to a history of Islamism previously characterized by opposition to or take-over of the state, but also in relation to a novel international context wherein military affairs themselves were fast moving from the predictable framework of monopoly, distinction, concentration and brevity (with the role of the state attenuated) to an unpredictable order of privatization, indifferentiation, dispersion and open-endedness (in which the place of non-state actors had become central10). Such structural transformation partakes indeed of al-Qa¯‘ida’s militarism, but it is also furthered by it in turn as the swiftness of the group’s campaign in the late 1990s and early 2000s generated widespread impact. To wit, years later, a “territorial” Islamist organisation such as Hizb Alla¯h, which had independently and successfully established its own efficiency in opposing Israel’s presence in South Lebanon since the early 1980s, would find unacknowledged inspiration in the matrix ushered by al-Qa¯‘ida. When in the summer of 2006, Lebanon found itself under a full-fledged military assault by another country, Israel, with its capital’s airport and central neighbourhoods being bombed, as well as several cities and bridges across its territory and a naval blockade, it was not the government or the army that responded. Rather, it was the private group Hizb Alla¯h which conducted war in their stead11. With the important differences between Hizb Alla¯h and al-Qa¯‘ida taken into account (most importantly the Sunna/Shi‘a divide and the groups’ antipathy towards each other as well as their competition for Muslim attention) and as a sign of the times, the full panoply of al-Qa¯‘ida’s previously-displayed modus operandi was nonetheless resorted to by Hizb Alla¯h in 2006: public declarations of war, commando operations, strategically targeted use of weaponry, highlighting of the responsibility of the citizenry of the enemy state and extended video and audio messages by charismatic leaders. As the flagship organization of the militarization of Islamism, al-Qa¯‘ida had shined violent light on the weakness of Arab states unable to address the political issues besetting the Middle East and North Africa. To the Arab and Muslim masses, Hizb Alla¯h was fully revealing their governments as naked emperors unwilling to lead on the most crucial of Muslim matters: Palestine. In effect, the combined failure and emasculation of post-colonial Arab states has led to the privatization of the struggle against foreign domination, ushering the emergence of non-state actors filling the power vacuum with demonstrated military ambitions. Another instance of such debilitation played out in the ¯ ¯ rebellion in the Yemen, at a time (2010/2011) when the Arabian Peninsula with theHuthı Yemeni government was deepening its alliance with the United States12.

10

See Andrea J. Dew and Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, Empowered Groups, Tested Laws, and Policy Options — The Challenges of Non-State Armed Groups, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University, 2007. Available at www.tagsproject.org/_data/global/images/Report_Empowered_ Groups_Nov2007.pdf. 11 On Hizb Alla¯h’s July–August 2006 war with Israel, see, notably, Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry study, “How Hezbollah Defeated Israel”, Asia Times, 12, 13 and 14 October 2006. three-part 12 See Laurent Bonnefoy, “Violence in Contemporary Yemen: State, Society, and the Salafis” in this issue. © 2011 Hartford Seminary.

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Yet in so autonomizing the use of force, al-Qa¯‘ida, took the international system to pre-Westphalian notions of legitimacy in the conduct of warfare and led itself into an impasse as the United States-led Global War on Terror replied in kind to the group’s transnational attacks with extraterritorial operations that targeted al-Qa¯‘ida’s leadership and membership throughout the world (with drone attacks in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and secret prison sites in Eastern Europe). What is more, as an actor whose very war-making potential was anchored in its ability to disrupt and paralyze its enemies through constant reminders of its indefatigability, al-Qa¯‘ida faced a new challenge of its own, namely how to sustain its increasing martial empowerment while maximizing its moral force without succumbing to overstretch.

Regionalisation and Hybridisation The London 7 July 2005 bombings arguably represented the last operation initiated and coordinated directly by what I have termed elsewhere13 al-Qa¯‘ida al-Umm or the ¯ ¯ released a videotape aired on the mother al-Qa¯‘ida. In July 2006, Ayma¯n al-Zawahirı al-Jazı¯ra network in which he threatened the United Kingdom of further attacks and presented video footage of a statement by London tube bomber Shehzad Tanweer on the same “filmed testament” model that the organization had used for some of the 11 ¯ ¯, ‘Abd al-‘Azı¯z al-‘Umarı¯ and Sa‘ı¯d September commando members (Ahmad al-Haznawı ¯ media branch. al-Gha¯midı¯) and released through its Mu’assasat al -Sihab From thereon, the attacks which took place, beginning with the 1 October 2005 bombings in a shopping mall and beachside restaurant in Bali were the works of local organisations — now loosely inspired by al-Qa¯‘ida, now acting on their own (even when, for publicity sake, they claimed al-Qa¯‘ida links). This development, the result of two coincidental phenomena, namely al-Qa¯‘ida’s conscious strategy of regionalisation and decentralisation, and a franchise demand within regional Islamists organisations themselves after the 11 September attacks, would nonetheless paradoxically yield a weakening and confused picture for the original al-Qa¯‘ida group. In subsequent years, it would become impossible to speak of al-Qa¯‘ida in the singular. As early as 2002, seemingly compelled as it is to enact a strategic retreat in the face of advancing U.S. and British troops in Afghanistan, al-Qa¯‘ida’s leadership appears to have realized the value of multiplying the number of its operational sites, both as a survival mechanism and as a force-multiplier. However, increased surveillance of Islamist pockets in the Western world (in mosques, universities and other organized public venues) renders the work of the cells far more dangerous and harder to supervise closely from headquarters under assault in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In such a context, al-Qa¯‘ida appears then to order, in the period 2002–2004, a series of operations in the periphery of Western states (in Tunisia, Pakistan, Yemen, Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco, 13

Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, “Al Qaeda: From the Near to the Far Enemy and Back, 1988–2008,” in Klejda Mulaj, ed., Violent Non-State Actors in World Politics (London: Hurst and Company, 2009), pp. 207–237.

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Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) to spread militarily the centre of gravity of the engagement and confuse its opponents, who consequently found themselves unable to know precisely what to expect, where, when and under what guise. Though a substantial measure of independent decentralized decision-making was already in place, notably in the case of Saudi Arabia14, the attacks usually but not exclusively targeted countries whose governments al-Qa¯‘ida accused of enabling the U.S. war against it (Germans in Tunisia; Australians in Bali; Israelis in Kenya; Spaniards in Casablanca; and so forth). All these attacks were claimed and regular pronouncements made by the organization in videotaped messages released — usually to Middle Eastern media outlets, notably the Qatar-based satellite all-news Arabic language channel, al-Jazı¯ra — ¯ . The group’s savvy use of by al-Qa¯‘ida’s official media branch, Mu’assasat al -Sihab technology, including sporadic postings on Islamist websites (e.g., alneda.com, jehad. com, ansar.info and azzam.com — many of which were subsequently shut down), was also a distinctive feature of the organization’s modus operandi transcending boundaries. To the extent that these operations necessarily relied, in the post-11 September context, on increased independence by mid-level operators (who could select, for instance, the nature of targets), they ended up highlighting to the mother al-Qa¯‘ida the value of decentralisation setting the stage for a strategy of regionalisation which appeared to have been pursued actively from 2005 onwards. Hence between 2005 and 2007, six official branches would be created formally by al-Qa¯‘ida. These were: (i) ¯ al-Qa¯‘ida fı¯ Bila¯d al-Ra¯fidayn) led successively by al-Qa¯‘ida in Mesopotamia (Tanzım Abu¯ Mus ab al-Zarqa¯wı¯ (killed in June 2006) and Abı¯ Hamza al-Muha¯jir, also known as ¯ al-Qa¯‘ida fı¯-Jazı¯rat Abu¯ Ayyu¯b al-Masrı¯; (ii) al-Qa¯‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula (Tanzım al-‘Arab) in its various forms and locations spearheaded serially by Yu¯suf al-‘Uyayrı¯, ¯ , ‘Abd al-‘Azı¯z al-Muqrin, Salih ¯ ¯ al-Wihayshı¯ and Sa‘ı¯d ‘Alı¯ Kha¯lid al-Hajj al-‘Awfı¯, Nasir al-Shihrı¯; (iii) al-Qa¯‘ida in Europe (Qa¯‘idat al-Jiha¯d fı¯ Awru¯ba¯) with no known official ¯ al-Qa¯‘ida fı¯ Misr ) headed by Muhammad leadership; (iv) al-Qa¯‘ida in Egypt (Tanzım al-Hukayma ¯ ; and (v) al-Qa¯‘ida in Afghanistan led by Mustafa¯ Abu¯ al-Yazı¯d (killed in May ¯ ¯ 2010). In addition, in September 2006, Ayma¯n al-Zawahirı would announce that the Algerian Islamist organization al-Jama¯‘ah al-Salafiyya li-l-Da‘wa wa l-Qita¯l (Salafist Group for Predication and Combat, commonly GSPC from its French acronym) had formally been integrated in al-Qa¯‘ida, emerging officially in January 2007 as (vi) al-Qa¯‘ida ¯ al-Qa¯‘ida fi-l-Maghrib al-Isla¯mı¯) jointly directed by ‘Abd in the Islamic Maghreb (Tanzım ¯ ¯ known as al-Ma¯lik Daru¯dka¯l known as Abu¯ Mus ab ‘Abd al-Wadu¯d and ‘Abı¯d Hammadu ¯ Abu¯ Zayd. ‘Abd al-Hamıd Moreover, a short-lived, never officially endorsed al-Qa¯‘ida in Palestine would issue a communiqué in October 2006, and the Lebanese group Fatah al-Isla¯m claimed, in May 2007, inspiration from al-Qa¯‘ida and expressed readiness to follow Usa¯ma Bin La¯din’s fatwas. Similarly, the Somali rebel group al-Shaba¯b would in February 2010 unilaterally 14

See Thomas Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia — Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).


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declare that it was joining al-Qa¯‘ida’s global jiha¯d campaign. Finally, the presence amongst al-Qa¯‘ida’s central leadership of a U.S. citizen, Adam Gadahn (whose nom de guerre is ‘Azza¯m al-Amrikı¯), and his regular messages to America were a constant indication of the group’s permanent threat to the United States, as would subsequently those of another US citizens of Yemeni origin, Anwar al-‘Awlaqı¯. If initially the rapid proliferation of such regional representations of al-Qa¯‘ida were arguably an added indication of the organization’s impressive global reach (in the Asian subcontinent, the Gulf, the Levant, East Africa, North Africa, Europe and possibly North America) and its ability to operate transnationally years after a War on Terror had been launched against it, it gradually emerged that the regional entities differed significantly and their relationship to the mother al-Qa¯‘ida was, at best, tenuous. Little is known about the European branch, which, within hours of the 7 July 2005 London bombings had claimed the attack, by way of an online message, under a ¯ denomination indeed stressing the secretive nature of the group: Jama¯‘at Tanzım al-Sirrı¯ li -Munazzama Qa¯‘idat al-Jiha¯d fı¯ Awru¯ba¯ (Group of the Secret Organization of Al Qaeda in Europe). The group had certainly operated within the modus operandi of ¯ ¯ would, in July 2006, confirm that the the mother al-Qa¯‘ida, and Ayma¯n al-Zawahirı operation had been commandeered by al-Qa¯‘ida; the commando’s leaders — Muhammad Siddiq Khan and Shezhad Tanweer — having reportedly travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan to be trained in preparation for the operation. European-based al-Qa¯‘ida militants had also previously conducted the 11 March 2004 attack on the Atocha train station in Madrid and had claimed that attack through an email sent to al-Quds al-‘Arabı¯ and signed under the name “Abu¯ Hafs al-Masrı¯ Brigades”, in reference to al-Qa¯‘ida’s original chief of military operations Muhammad ‘Atif who had been killed in November 2001 during the US bombing of Kabul. The relationship between the two European groups was arguably asserted when on 30 May 2005, ahead of the London attack, the Abu¯ Hafs al-Masrı¯ Brigades posted a message on several Islamist websites stating: “We ask all waiting muja¯hidı¯n, wherever they are, to carry out the planned attack.” Since the London attacks both entities have remained silent. The episode of the Egyptian avatar is the less significant in al-Qa¯‘ida’s international ¯ ¯ pedigree, and met in effect with failure. On 5 August 2006, Ayma¯n al-Zawahirı announced that the Egyptian al-Jama¯‘ah al-Isla¯miyya (Islamic Group) had joined al-Qa¯‘ida to form a branch in Egypt under the leadership of Muhammad Khalı¯l al-Hukayma ¯ . In short order, the Jama¯‘a denounced the announcement, and it turned out ¯ that al-Hukayma was a low-level Egyptian Islamist operator with no significant following ¯ ¯ himself, in Egypt or elsewhere. As this might have been known to al-Zawahirı alternatively the move may have constituted a way for the former Egyptian Islamist ¯ leader to use al-Hukayma to offset the “legitimacy” of non-violent Islamist groups in Egypt and lure a new generation of recruits from the region to the newly-announced entity. Worthy of a try as this may have seemed to headquarters, al-Qa¯‘ida in Egypt did not conduct any operations and little was heard of it subsequently except for a call made ¯ by al-Hukayma in June 2007 to attack American and Israeli targets in Egypt “including 316 © 2011 Hartford Seminary.


women and children”, which did not correspond to explicit language used elsewhere by al-Qa¯‘ida. In contradistinction to the European and Egyptian incarnations, the Iraqi, North African and Arabian Peninsula al-Qa¯‘ida franchises turned out to be more serious menaces though they again evolved in different ways. In Iraq, Abu¯ Mus ab al-Zarqa¯wı¯, who had began agitating against U.S. forces in Iraq as early as June 2003,offered publicly on 28 October 2004 to transform his organization,al -Tawhıd ¯ wal Jiha¯d, into an al-Qa¯‘ida in Iraq15. Following Bin La¯din’s official agreement in a message aired the following 27 December16, al-Zarqa¯wı¯ launched what probably was the fiercest and most violent al-Qa¯‘ida campaign, hitting indistinctly at Westerners in Iraq and Iraqi Shi‘a. Near-daily bombings, kidnappings and filmed beheadings would mark the brutal reign of al-Zarqa¯wı¯ until his death on 8 June 2006. His successor, Abu¯ Hamza al-Muha¯jir apparently expressed bay‘a (oath of allegiance) to Bin La¯din the very next day and maintained the level and violence, but ultimately the organization would come to be subsumed under an Iraqi national umbrella resistance syndicate initially known as the Muja¯hidı¯n Shu¯ra¯ Council and then Dawlat al-‘Ira¯q al-Isla¯miyya (Islamic State of Iraq) formed on 15 ¯ October 2006 alongside several other Iraqi groups including Junu¯d al -Sahaba (The ¯ ¯ (The Army of the Liberators). Soldiers of the Prophet’s Companions) and Jayshal -Fatihın In spite of the 2008 U.S. withdrawal, al-Qa¯‘ida in Iraq continued its relentless attacks in the country, whether as Islamic State or on its own, often targeting anti-al-Qa¯‘ida units and recruits and displaying its flag on the scene of attacks it had conducted17. The genesis of al-Qa¯‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb was yet again different. In this case, the Algerian group al Jama¯‘ah al-Salafiyya li-l Da‘wa wa l Qita¯l (GSPC), which had been set up in Algeria in 1998 towards the end of the civil war in that country, pursued from 2003 onwards a strategy of integration into al-Qa¯‘ida. The group — which was led ¯ and Nabı¯l Sahrawı¯ who, upon being killed in June 2004 by initially by Hasan Hattab the Algerian security forces, was replaced by ‘Abd al-Ma¯lik Daru¯dka¯l — began by unilaterally releasing statements of support to al-Qa¯‘ida’s global activities. The group’s new Emir, Daru¯dka¯l, wrote subsequently to al-Zarqa¯wı¯ to congratulate him on his ¯ ¯ eventually announced actions in Iraq. Agreeing to a GSPC request, Ayma¯n al-Zawahirı on 11 September 2006 that the GSPC was joining al-Qa¯‘ida. Four months later, on 11 January 2007, the GSPC changed its name and became al-Qa¯‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb. Al-Zarqa¯wı¯’s story and his late association with al-Qa¯‘ida is complex, and highlights the perennial conundrum posed to the central organization ever in need of projecting its force and implementing a global vision while having to rely on local actors who bring in their local concerns, and often their ambiguous relations with their immediate environment, including friend and foe. On al-Zarqa¯wı¯’s saga, see, for instance, Laurent Bonnefoy, “Le Mythe Al-Zarkaoui ou la Légitimation de la Guerre en Irak,” in Didier Bigo, Laurent Boneli, and Thomas Deltombe, eds., Au Nom du 11 Septembre — Les Démocraties à l ’Épreuve de l’Antiterrorisme (Paris: La Découverte, 2008). 16 In an audiotaped message released on 1 July 2006, Bin La¯din would also pay a posthumous homage to al-Zarqa¯wı¯ following the latter’s killing on 8 June of the same year. 17 Salah Hemeid, “Iraq: Return of Al Qaeda,” Al Ahram Weekly, Issue 2010, 5 August 2010. 15


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It is to be noted that several authors — François Geze, Salima Mellah, and Jeremy Keenan in particular — have long questioned the nature of the origins of the GSPC itself. Arguing that members of the GSPC, notably ‘Ama¯r al-Sayfı¯ known as ‘Abd al-Raza¯q “al-Bara” (a former parachutist in the Algerian army), and at times the group itself, may allegedly have had links with the Algerian and the American intelligent services, these researchers have cast consequential doubt on the narrative of an independent radical militant Islamist group, putting forth arguments and an alternative assessment of it as a stoked-up regional threat for domestic and international strategic interests18. In spite of the publicized name change, the new North African group arguably never mutated from its GSPC identity to an al-Qa¯‘ida one. But for its first year of existence, during which time it pursued half-heartedly a Maghreb-wide strategy with a view to constitute a menace to the whole region, and conducted two attacks in Algiers on 11 April and 11 December, on the now-familiar al-Qa¯‘ida mode (high-profile simultaneous attacks, selection of symbolic targets, active use of the media and the Internet and evasive, forward-looking preparations), al-Qa¯‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) rapidly reverted to the old GSPC mode of sporadic skirmishes with Algerian police and military, and hijacking of Westerners in the larger Sahel region (in 2003, the GCSP had kidnapped ¯ ¯ appeared anew on 3 November 2007 to 32 German tourists). By the time al-Zawahirı announce that a little-known Libyan Islamist group, The Libyan Islamist Fighting Group, was joining AQIM, the latter was already beginning to simply expand its own hostage-hustling and drug-trafficking with a series of kidnappings in Mali, Niger and Mauritania. The November 2007 announcement, made, significantly, by headquarters and not by AQIM might also have been prompted by the perception that, for all its regional mission, al-Qa¯‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb had remained mostly an Algerian affair lacking the ability to establish itself regionally. Indeed, after having failed in January and April 2007 to hit Tunis and Casablanca (dozens of militants had been apprehended), and unable to penetrate the notoriously closed Libyan security system, AQIM targeted repeatedly Mauritania (24 December 2006; 1 February 2007; 12 September 2008; 23 June, 8 August, 29 November and 18 December 2009) whose vast territory made it an easier target. In time, this prompted a large-scale military response by the Mauritanian authorities conducted in September and October 2010. Too, when expressed AQIM’s casus belli tended to exclusively concentrate on France and its problematic relationship with its Muslim immigrant community, precisely as the GSPC (and other Algerian Islamist groups) had long done. On 22 July 2010, France and Mauritania conducted a joint raid on an AQIM base in northern Mali. Meant to free a French hostage (held since 19 April), the assault failed, the hostage was subsequently

18

See Salima Mellah, “Le Mouvement Islamiste Algérien entre Autonomie et Manipulation”, Comité Justice pour l ’Algérie, May 2004, www.algerie-tpp.org/tpp/pdf/dossier_19_mvt_islamiste.pdf; François Gèze and Salima Mellah, “Al Qaida au Maghreb ou la Très Étrange Histoire du GSPC Algérien”, Algeria Watch, September 2007, www.algeria-watch.org/fr/aw/gspc_etrange_histoire_intro.htm; and Jeremy Keenan, The Dark Sahara — America’s War on Terror in Africa (London: Pluto, 2007).

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executed and four AQIM fighters escaped. The French Prime Minister then declared that his country was “at war with al-Qa¯‘ida” thus opening a new more muscular phase of frontal confrontation between AQIM and France, which might have been precisely what AQIM itself had been praying for in order to expand internationally. Indeed, two months later, AQIM kidnapped seven individuals, including five Frenchmen, working in Niger. Finally, al-Qa¯‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was established in a context strongly linked to the history of the mother al-Qa¯‘ida itself. Firstly, Usa¯ma Bin La¯din’s dual personal links to Yemen, from where his father originated, and Saudi Arabia, of which he is a national, always endowed the group’s dynamic towards the area with a special dimension. In that respect, the 1996 and 1998 declarations of war made extensive and specific references to the “occupation of the Land of the Two Holy Places” as the mainstay of the casus belli. Secondly, the region itself had had a long history of Islamist activity, which was closer in nature to the eventual military expression of al-Qa¯‘ida than the socially- and economically-oriented Islamists of the Nile Valley, the Maghreb and the Levant. In the early twentieth century, ‘Abd al-‘Azı¯z Ibn Sa‘u¯d’s successful tactical alliance with the Bedouin religious fighters known as the Ikhwa¯n (the Brothers) to conquer the Hejaz and the Najd areas of the Peninsula and unseat the Hashemite and the ¯ l Rashı¯d families had ended in a dispute between the two predatory allies. The A confrontation, caused by Ibn Sa‘u¯d’s desire to tame the Ikhwa¯n and sideline them in the power configuration of the recently-established Saudi Arabia, turned military and the two sides fought a series of engagements culminating in the battle of Sabı¯lla in 1930 at which the Ikhwa¯n were decisively defeated. Nevertheless, the Ikhwa¯n’s powerful imprint on the region’s state-building process, their legendary transnational military prowess (in August 1924, they mounted a raid on Amman, a thousand miles from their Najd base repelled only by the British Royal Air Force; in November 1927 they attacked southern Iraq; and in January 1928 they targeted Kuwait), and their religious zeal left an important and lasting Islamist undercurrent in Saudi Arabia. At regular intervals, most notably with the November 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, armed militancy would express itself in the country. Similarly, the endemic tribal agitation in Yemen, which often had as well a religious coloration, provided additional natural ground for Bin La¯din’s restless desire to foment rebellion against the Sa‘u¯d. It was from within such population (particularly from the south-western ‘Ası¯r province) that Bin La¯din selected fifteen of the nineteen men that conducted the 11 September 2001 attacks. A characteristic of late twentieth and early twenty-first century Arabian Peninsula expression of militarized Islamism is then that it moved according to a logic of “reconnection”19 with regard to a referential identity matrix that had already expressed itself decades ago in similar martial terms. This key feature is also an indication that whatever ups and downs al-Qa¯‘ida in the Gulf is bound to encounter (as it did indeed; defeated in the mid-2000s, it made a comeback in the early 2010s), its staying power is For an analytical history of contemporary Islamism leading to al-Qa¯‘ida, see François Burgat, Islamism in the Shadow of Al Qaeda (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008). 19


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inherently structural, as opposed to derivative (Mesopotamia), outwardly (Maghreb), or exogenous (Nile Valley) versions of the group. In the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, the loose network, which had served ¯ as springboard for the dispatching of the fifteen men that had joined Muhammad Atta’s commando in mid-2001 to attack the United States, reorganised into a more formal structure aligned with the mother al-Qa¯‘ida’s global strategy and composed of several, smaller cells. Under the initial leadership of Yu¯suf al-‘Uyayrı¯, the Saudi Arabia-centred group went on to launch a wave of attacks in 2003–2004. The operations grew crescendo targeting Westerners’ housing compounds (12 May and 8 November 2003), oil facilities (1 May 2004), the US consulate in Jeddah (6 December 2004) and the Saudi Ministry of Interior (29 December 2004). In the face of stepped-up Saudi police work and several ¯ setbacks, including the killing of Salih al-‘Awfı¯, the branch adopted a lower profile and, in a replay of the 1980s Afghan campaign flight, large numbers of its members travelled to Iraq to conduct jihad against the US troops in that country. The rather swift defeat of the first generation of al-Qa¯‘ida’s branch in the Gulf after a series of impactful attacks in Saudi Arabia, on a terrain it had long worked on, has surprised many. Yet it can be attributed to a tactical desire to expose hastily the Saudi authorities when the branch itself was still in the process of building its network; a move that also contradicted al-Qa¯‘ida’s traditional patient trademark preparations. It took several years of new underground work and an alliance with a Yemeni branch for a second generation al-Qa¯‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula to emerge in 2008, announcing its arrival with an attack on the US embassy in San’a on 17 September of that ¯ al-Wihayshı¯ and Sa‘ı¯d ‘Alı¯ al-Shihrı¯ (who had been year. The merger was lead by Nasir released from the Guantanamo prison in 2007). The introduction of the Yemeni element spelled as well an added element of insurrection-cum-guerrilla. Hence, the new group combined traditional terrorist technique — on 29 August 2009, it attempted to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Minister of Interior, Prince Muhammad Bin Na¯yif; in June 2010, it attacked the Yemeni intelligence services headquarters in Aden — with insurgency battle with the Yemeni and Saudi armies at the countries’ borders in December 2009. The latter battles also took place in the context of the wider Sa da conflict highlighting the fact that the simultaneous development of that secessionist movement blurred further the nature of the local al-Qa¯‘ida membership while colouring its militancy with insurgency dynamics. Generally, we can observe the following in relation to the regionalisation phase in al-Qa¯‘ida’s history. When the franchises were created ex nihilo (Egypt) or when independently-organised existing groups (Somalia’s al-Shaba¯b, Lebanon’s Fajr al-Isla¯m) announced that they were rallying al-Qa¯‘ida, the latter’s strategy was minimally impacted and, in the case of the Egyptian attempt, adversely so as there was public opposition to the design on the part of al-Jama¯‘ah al-Isla¯miyya. When groups came into existence in the context of a tactical campaign designed carefully by the mother al-Qa¯‘ida (weakening the United States in Iraq, exposing Western vulnerabilities in Europe), the strategy was more successful. Finally, when the franchises were established

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on top of formally existing Islamist groups (Algeria’s GSPC) or hubs (Yemen/Saudi Arabia), there was impact but the newly-created organizations reverted rapidly to their own modus operandi (kidnappings in North Africa and insurgency in the Arabian Peninsula). An important nuance in the Arabian Gulf is that whereas in Saudi Arabia the insurgency failed due to a successful repression campaign by the Saudi authorities, in Yemen the militants’ behaviour appeared to shift from 2008 onwards towards more frontal opposition to the state. All in all, what can be read as a regionalisation of al-Qa¯‘ida ended up confusing the global picture of the organisation. The necessary elasticity the group adopted, partly voluntarily, partly as a way to adapt to the international counter-terrorism campaign, created an ever-growing distance with already independent units. In a first phase of the regionalisation (2006–2008), al-Zawahirı ¯ ¯ near-trimestrial audio and video releases provided a sort of strategic review and executive update to the global jihadists, often accompanied by targeted messages to specific audiences (in Iraq, the Maghreb, ¯ ¯ pronouncements Afghanistan, Pakistan, and so on). From 2009 onwards, asal-Zawahirı’s became less focused, constituting progressively a sort of background noise to international affairs, the branches themselves increased their own pronouncements, which ultimately made little or no reference to the mother organization. An indication of this perceptible independence is that the franchises began less and less resorting al-Qa¯‘ida’s ¯ , and developed their own media organs whose official media outlet, Mu’assasat al-Sihab ¯ logos they displayed on their videos (e.g., al -Malahim Media for al-Qa¯‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula; al-Andalus for al-Qa¯‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb). As for Usa¯ma Bin La¯din, he has not appeared in a videotaped release since 29 October 2004 (this author harbours reservations as to the authenticity of video footage released on 7 September 200720), and ¯ ¯ regular review. his audio taped messages, if genuine, added little to al-Zawahirı’s Above and beyond these variances, the very strategies of the centre and periphery al-Qa¯‘ida groups were at times noticeably at odds. Whereas the mother al-Qa¯‘ida has sought to maintain a level of familiarity with the inner workings of Western Societies, the branches have resorted to more local concerns with unsophisticated leaderships composed of former inmates or mid-to-low level army officers, which, to the exception ¯ Ph.D. of Anwar al-‘Awlaqı¯, compared poorly to Hamburg cell leader Muhammad Atta’s credentials. For instance, the replacement of senior al-Qa¯‘ida operator Kha¯lid Shaykh ¯ alleged liaison officer for the 11 September 2001 operation who Muhammad — Atta’s had been detained by Pakistani and U.S. authorities in March 2003 in Pakistan — was ‘Adna¯n Shukrı¯ Juma‘a, who has lived extensively in the United States. Accordingly, Shukrı¯ Juma‘a has been reportedly linked with attempted attacks on New York’s subway system in 2009, and two other apparently thwarted attack in the United Kingdom and Norway21. 20

See my discussion of this issue in “Towards the Real Al Qaeda”, www.opendemocracy.net, 10 September 2007. 21 Curt Anderson, “New Al Qaeda Leader Knows US Well,” Associated Press, 6 August 2010. © 2011 Hartford Seminary.

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Yet that seemed a minimal result for a regionalisation strategy, which on its face seemed as well to pursue a peripheral encirclement of its enemies with the North African group being able to threaten Europe, al-Qa¯‘ida in Iraq meant to engineer a quagmire for foreign troops in that country and the Gulf branch replaying a penetration of the United States as the original 11 September group had been able to. This last aim was partly achieved as al-Qa¯‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula figure Anwar al-‘Awlaqı¯ (who is also regenerating the mother al-Qa¯‘ida’s ideological base through increased familiarity with the West, as demonstrated by his alleged launch of an al-Qa¯‘ida English-language magazine in June 2010) was apparently linked to U.S. Army Major Nidal Hassan who killed thirteen people at Fort Hood on 5 November 2009; and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the perpetrator of the failed 22 December 2009 attack on the Detroid-bound Northwest Airlines flight, had reportedly been in contact with AQAP during a year spent in San’a in 2004–2005 and subsequently in 2009 (additionally, video footage of Abdulmutallab’s “filmed testament” was featured in an October 2010 release by al-Qa¯‘ida operator Adam Gadahn). After two decades of operation and having spawn or inspired at least ten other groups, the central question for al-Qa¯‘ida had become the one of singular versus plural identity. Twenty years after its creation, the group was experiencing success of a peculiar nature. Had the focus on militarization not been pursued at the expense of political cogency? Has not ‘al-Qa¯‘ida ism’ proved detrimental to al-Qa¯‘ida ? Is there really one al-Qa¯‘ida or several? And if so, what fundamentally is the meaning of such proliferation22? Questions that will have to wait to be answered in light of the group’s history third act.

Conclusions

Al-Qa¯‘ida has experienced a number of important and rapid changes. These transformations have been consequential both in terms of what the organization set out to achieve originally — namely, a new type of radical armed opposition to local Muslim governments and international Western powers through sustained and decentralized simultaneous campaigns — and as regards the internal mutation of a transnational armed group whose innovative militaro-political techniques have single-handedly ushered a new era of modern terrorism. Following the early phases of establishment and operation planning which culminated in the 11 September 2001 attack on targets in New York and Washington, al-Qa¯‘ida found itself involved since in a decade-old conflict with the United States and its allies — ever mutating in novel forms of complex interaction and secret wars spreading to new territories. Yet the War on Terror spearheading that effort and targeting al-Qa¯‘ida primarily has not been entirely successful, and the organization, if contained partially by ubiquitous counter-terrorism measures, persisted in a second phase as a recurring threat taking the form of regional franchises. ¯ al-Qa¯‘ida: Qira’a¯ Jadı¯da” (Al-Qa¯‘ida: A New See also the report by Mohammad Abdel’ati, “Tanzım Reading), Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, July 2010. 22

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However, the mother group’s global elasticity strategy was gradually contradicted by the local branches concerns with their immediate environment. The original al-Qa¯‘ida had placed emphasis on fast-moving agile elements. Bin La¯din himself had been explicit on this point in 1996: “Due to the imbalance of power between our armed forces and the enemy forces, a suitable means of fighting must be adopted, namely using fast-moving light forces that work under complete secrecy. It is wise in the current circumstances for the armed military forces not to be engaged in conventional fighting with the forces of the enemy”. Yet in the time-honoured fashion of Arab armies’ improbable statements, the franchises kept boasting instead about large numbers of soldiers. On 10 November 2006, al-Qa¯‘ida in Iraq leader Abu¯ Hamza al-Muha¯jir claimed to be at the helm of twelve thousand men. Similarly, al-Qa¯‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula declared on 29 July 2010 that it had also assembled an army of twelve thousand fighters. If this unexpected development brought limitations to the war effort of a mother al-Qa¯‘ida bent on a global mission, it nonetheless highlighted its political nature, however unsuccessful. As the days of Usa¯ma Bin La¯din’s “truce” discourse and Ayma¯n ¯ ¯ commentary on the global financial crisis evanesced, young members of al-Zawahirı Islamist militias in Somalia, for instance, came to only too naturally perpetuate that country’s endemic instability and insecurity, and disenfranchised Algerian Islamists associated with Sahel brigands multiplied their kidnappings of French tourists. As one analyst noted: Wilderness ghazi groups like Al Qaeda have only one path open to them: to aspire to eventual political leadership. They must use their symbolic authority to assert a supranational political authority. As a result, all fighter groups begin locally but then shake off their small town roots. Only by leaving Arabia could Al Qaeda announce a bigger vision. So the wilderness framework not only plays to piety by tracing the steps of [the Prophet] Muhammad. It also plays to deep chords of Muslim universalism. Nevertheless, Al Qaeda shows that playing to the world, or even creating a physical international network, does not necessarily lead to pan-Muslim political authority, and so their franchises tend to express the local identity of the places where they do business23.

In overseeing imperfectly the democratization of its own brand of militarized transnational Islamism, what was once al-Qa¯‘ida al-‘Askariyya had nonetheless “bottled” a new terrorism concept. But it had also developed its own Islamist mythology framed around ¯ ¯ ‘ulama¯’ warriors”, as Ayma¯n al-Zawahirı the contemporary actions of the “murabitun ¯ ¯ refers to them (‘Abd Alla¯h ‘Azza¯m, ‘Abd al-Rashı¯d al-Gha¯zı¯, Mullah Daddulah, Abu¯ ‘Umar ¯ al-‘Uqla, implicitly himself and naturally Usa¯ma Bin al-Sayf, ‘Abd Alla¯h al-Rashu¯d, Hamud La¯din). These where the paradoxical crossroads where al-Qa¯‘ida found itself two decades after it had begun its transnational military campaign: a fading central organization that had spun successfully an international movement it no longer controlled. 23

Michael Vlahos, “Non-State Actors and Change in the Muslim World,” Strategic Assessments Office, National Security Analysis Department, John Hopkins University, January 2005, 13. © 2011 Hartford Seminary.

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