How to define al-Qaeda as it continues its rise

By Ahmed Rashid.

An intense debate has broken out among western law enforcement officials, intelligence agencies and academics about who or what today constitutesal-Qaeda. It is an important debate because AQ – the network and the ideology – remains a potent force and still one of the greatest threats to global stability.

The US intelligence chief James Clapper said last month that 7,000 foreign fighters have joined AQ affiliates and other groups in Syria to fight Bashar al-Assad’s regime. AQ now officially recognises branches of its network in seven new regions in Africa and the Middle East, while major European cities have become AQ recruiting centres for disaffected Muslim youth.

None of these network branches or recruiting centres existed on September 11 2001, when President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed to crush Al-Qaeda and to never allow failed states to emerge which could threaten the west or be taken over by AQ.

Clearly we are on the cusp of failure as Al-Qaeda expands relentlessly across the Middle East and Africa, even as the US and other western powers announce their withdrawal from these regions. For me the personal shock is to see AQ in Iraq control Fallujah and Ramadi; for AQ to capture cities is something I could not have imagined since meeting my first AQ fighters in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

The conflict in Syria has been “a game changer”, in the words of one British counter-terrorism official. The Euphrates valley has become a new FATA, similar to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan where AQ and the Taliban still hang out. Syria has helped escalate the meltdown of Iraq where a thousand people are killed every month in sectarian war.

It has become increasingly difficult for the US to actually define the enemy it calls AQ. Many groups who claim to be affiliated to AQ are actually just Islamic fundamentalist groups with local or regional agendas – not having the desire for global jihad and wanting to attack Washington that constitutes a true AQ group.

Thus the desire to conduct global jihad must remain as a defining principle of who is AQ.

However, many of these local groups such as al-Shabaab in Somalia or the Pakistani Taliban, who control territory, are also training foreigners to carry out bomb attacks in their countries of origin. Such groups may have local political agendas, but satisfy AQ by keeping their interests global. AQ Arab fighters who used to train foreigners have been replaced with Pakistani or Somali trainers, fighters and ideological messengers who carry on as before.

Thus local groups with local agendas, but who continue to train foreigners, must be termed affiliates of AQ. The continuation of the core AQ group in Pakistan is no longer dependent on the presence of Arab militants.

Another defining principle is the capture of territory in order to eventually establish an AQ-run caliphate or Islamic state whose borders will not be confined to any present day borders. Osama bin Laden virtually controlled Afghanistan, but he could not convince the then Taliban leadership to set up a caliphate.

Today various Sunni groups fighting in Syria and Iraq want to set up a caliphate along the Euphrates river. Even though they are presently divided by acute infighting and AQ chief Ayman al-Zawahiri had formally disowned one group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, all these groups still want to carve out a new caliphate.

Thus capturing and controlling territory for the eventual creation of a caliphate, rather than hit-and-run terrorist actions, remains a key benchmark of who constitutes AQ.

Mr Zawahiri has recognised affiliates as part of the AQ network in seven regions including Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and west Africa. Katherine Zimmerman, who has authored a report on AQ for the American Enterprise Institute think-tank, concludes that Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – which is capturing large parts of Yemen, defeating local armed forces and made three attempts to attack the US since 2009 – is the most important and consistent AQ affiliate. The group fulfils all the conditions of a modern definition of AQ.

Such attempts at a parsed-down definition of AQ should not minimise the fact that many militants who aspire to become AQ fighters just join the wrong group which does not have an agenda to carry out global jihad. In Syria and Iraq such complications are multiplied because new splinter groups emerge every other day.

Nevertheless, the break-up of Syria which is now ever more clearly on the cards and the civil-sectarian war in Iraq constitute the biggest threats. It is here that AQ is sending both raw recruits from European university campuses and experienced fighters from Afghanistan and Kashmir.

The 7,000 foreigners already there include an estimated 700 French, 300 Britons, 70 Americans and thousands of Arabs. AQ is being regenerated but the threat is not being taken seriously enough by western governments as they reduce their involvement in the Middle East.

The writer has followed terrorist groups for three decades. His latest book is ‘Pakistan on the Brink: the Future of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the West’