Has Core Al Qaeda in Pakistan Become a Bunch of Elderly Terrorist Has-Beens?

Con Coughlin

Daily Telegraph

February 14, 2014

The new jihadists make al-Qaeda look like tired old has-beens

The creation of a de facto Islamic state in Syria could act as a springboard for a takeover of the Arab world

There is something rather laughable about the fugitive leader of al-Qaeda railing – as he has been recently – against the violent tactics employed by a new generation of Islamist militants.

This, after all, is an organisation that is no stranger to committing wanton acts of unprovoked violence, such as last year’s assault on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall. Judging from reports this week, it may also have radicalised the first British man to carry out a suicide bombing in the Syrian civil war.

But what really seems to be bugging Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s ideological linchpin, is not so much the violent methods being employed by militants fighting in Syria and Iraq, but the fact that they are no longer prepared to take orders from him. He is the godfather of Islamist terrorism – but an increasingly isolated one.

This is certainly the view of American intelligence officials, who closely monitor every aspect of Islamist activity around the world.

“What we are looking at is the replacement of al-Qaeda by a new generation of Islamist militants who have a far more radical and focused agenda,” a senior US counter-terrorism official told me in an interview in Washington. “The new generation of these terrorists are far more ambitious. They are not just content with plotting terror attacks against the West: they are determined to create their own Islamist state.”

This would certainly explain the deepening rift between traditional al-Qaeda-affiliated groups such as the Nusra Front, which have waged a sustained campaign of terror against the Assad regime in Syria, and their even more aggressive rivals such as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Speaking from his hideout in Pakistan’s tribal areas last week, Zawahiri was reduced to issuing a pathetic statement complaining that the new generation of Islamist terrorists were pursuing their own agenda.

“We weren’t informed about its creation, nor counselled,” Zawahiri said of ISIS. “Nor are we satisfied with it: rather we ordered it to stop… Nor is al-Qaeda responsible for its actions and behaviour.”

In many respects, Zawahiri and the remnants of the original al-Qaeda leadership seem to be vainly shouting in the wilderness. It is now nearly three years since Osama bin Laden, the iconic founder of their organisation, was tracked down to his Abbottabad lair in Pakistan and killed by a team of US Navy Seals.

Zawahiri, by all accounts a softly spoken Islamic cleric, eventually succeeded to the leadership, not least because nearly all bin Laden’s senior lieutenants had been either killed or captured during the relentless, decade-long mission undertaken by a team of dedicated CIA agents to find him.

But he has never been able to match bin Laden’s charismatic leadership, and the restrictions on his freedom of movement, as well as his ability to communicate, have hampered his ability to control his followers. Consequently, a new generation of Islamist terrorists – what American intelligence officials now refer to as al-Qaeda II – has filled the void, with potentially disastrous implications for Western security.

Unlike al-Qaeda, which under bin Laden often seemed to pursue a nihilistic agenda of attacking Western targets just for the sake of it, the jihadists fighting with ISIS – said to include a number of British fighters – have a far more radical agenda of establishing their own Islamist state based on the rigorous application of Sharia law.

ISIS fighters have already given the world a taste of what to expect if they achieve their goal. In the autonomous enclaves they have created for themselves in parts of northern Syria and western Iraq, mass executions of captured fighters, public beheadings and violent punishments meted out against those accused of minor crimes are almost daily occurrences.

The mounting concern for US intelligence officials is that, if groups like ISIS succeed in their attempts to usurp the traditional al-Qaeda leadership and create their own de facto state in Syria, the threat to the West will be significantly more potent.

“This new generation of Islamic terrorists is better organised and more focused about what they want to achieve than bin Laden’s original organisation,” explained a senior US intelligence official. “Our fear is that if they succeed in establishing even a small Islamist state, it will act as a springboard for a wider takeover of the Arab world.”

While Zawahiri may be isolated from the main battleground in Syria and Iraq, his followers are not giving up without a fight. Fierce clashes in Syria between al-Qaeda and other Islamist factions are reported to have resulted in the deaths of 2,300 people since fighting erupted in early January, bringing the overall total of deaths in the country to around 5,800, making it the bloodiest month so far in Syria’s three-year civil war.

American security officials fear that the uncompromising vision of an independent Islamist state articulated by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, will prove more attractive to the modern generation of jihadists than bin Laden’s more modest vision of reducing Western influence in the region.

Certainly, in countries as far afield as Yemen and Egypt, armed extremist groups have expressed a preference for ISIS over older militant groups. It seems the future of Islamist militancy lies with the newcomers, then, rather than the tired old has-beens of al-Qaeda.