In the wake of an al-Qaeda threat that threw Western governments into turmoil, it is clear the terror network is far from defeated
By
Con Coughlin
For an organisation that is said to be in terminal decline, al-Qaeda will draw
immense satisfaction from the events of this past weekend, when it
demonstrated its ability to disrupt the work of Western governments by
forcing the temporary closure of dozens of diplomatic missions throughout
the Arab world.
While it is unclear what kind of threat prompted the US government to initiate
such radical measures, or the Foreign Office to shut the British mission to
Yemen, American intelligence officials are convinced that al-Qaeda is
planning a spectacular attack to mark the festival of Eid, which comes at
the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Specifically, they say the intelligence relates to a deadly al-Qaeda cell
operating in Yemen, a war-torn country where the writ of the government
barely extends beyond the confines of the ancient capital, Sana’a.
In recent years, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has emerged as one of the
more deadly arms of the wider al-Qaeda franchise. This brand of terrorism
thrives in Muslim countries with weak governments – and Yemen, which has
been afflicted by decades of civil war and instability, was an obvious
target for exploitation.
Having established a base there at the start of the last decade, the country’s
al-Qaeda offshoot gained international notoriety via the so-called
“underpants bomber”, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. In December 2009, an attempt
by this British-educated Nigerian terrorist to blow up a plane as it
prepared to land at Detroit only failed when an explosive device hidden in
his underwear failed to detonate.
Britain and America had another lucky escape the following year, when an
explosive device was found hidden in an ink cartridge on a cargo flight due
to leave East Midlands Airport for the US. It was primed to detonate as the
aircraft approached America’s eastern seaboard.
Both these plots are said by intelligence officials to have been the work of
Ibrahim al-Asiri, a 31-year-old Saudi who fled to Yemen after being jailed
for his association with al-Qaeda. Despite a number of high-profile drone
strikes in Yemen that have killed a number of key al-Qaeda leaders,
including the group’s American-born founder Anwar al-Awlaki, Asiri still
remains at large – and tops the list of America’s most wanted terrorists.
The fact that Asiri and his associates, both in Yemen and elsewhere in the
Arab world, retain the ability to cause a global security alert suggests
that, for all the efforts undertaken by Western counter-terrorism agencies, al-Qaeda
remains a considerable threat to our security.
The widespread closure of diplomatic missions over the weekend certainly
appears to contradict President Obama’s claim last summer that the “war on
terror” was drawing to a close, and that the al-Qaeda organisation
originally founded by Osama bin Laden no longer had the ability or capacity
to cause wholesale carnage in the West.
The President made his comments in the wake of the successful mission to
eliminate bin Laden at his hideaway in Pakistan in May 2011. Bin Laden’s
death – together with the targeted killing by drone strikes of scores of
senior al-Qaeda terrorists hiding in the remote mountainous region between
Afghanistan and Pakistan – was used to justify the impending withdrawal of
American and other Nato forces from Afghanistan. After all, if al-Qaeda no
longer had the capacity to terrorise the West, then there was no need for
American and British soldiers to continue risking their lives.
The impression that America is winding down its long war against al-Qaeda was
strengthened last week during a visit by Senator John Kerry, the US
Secretary of State, to Pakistan. He dropped a strong hint that America was
planning to end its controversial drone strikes in the tribal areas “very,
very soon”, because al-Qaeda no longer posed a threat.
“I think the programme will end, as we have eliminated most of the threat and
continue to eliminate it,” said Mr Kerry.
Yet within hours of this statement, the Secretary of State was obliged to
authorise an immediate lockdown of all American embassies and consulates in
the Arab world, for fear that al-Qaeda might be planning a repeat of last
September’s attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in Libya, which claimed
the lives of the American ambassador Chris Stevens and three other staff
members.
The Obama administration faced fierce criticism over the Benghazi attack,
particularly when it was revealed that Hillary Clinton, Mr Kerry’s immediate
predecessor, had ignored warnings that al-Qaeda was planning to target the
compound (Sir Dominic Asquith, Britain’s ambassador to Libya, had survived
an al-Qaeda assassination attempt the previous summer). The US government
then appeared deliberately to mislead the American public about the nature
of the attack, claiming that it was a demonstration that got out of control,
rather than a carefully planned al-Qaeda operation.
This time, Mr Kerry and his officials are taking no chances. But even if no
attack materialises, this episode reflects one of the more frustrating
aspects of the decade-long campaign against al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorists: that no sooner has the threat posed by
one group been eliminated, than another pops up to take its place. As the
former director of the CIA, General David Petraeus said, the West needed to
adopt a “whack-a-mole” policy, so that it could deal with different al-Qaeda
cells popping up around the world at the same time.
Certainly, to judge by the recent upsurge in al-Qaeda activity, the
organisation is currently experiencing something of a renaissance – whether
it is organising mass prison breakouts, as have recently taken place in Iraq
and Libya, or attempting to exploit the recent wave of Arab uprisings to
suit its own Islamist agenda.
When anti-government protesters first took to the streets of the major Arab
capitals two years ago to demand wholesale reform, it was seen as yet
another nail in al-Qaeda’s coffin. The protesters wanted democracy and
economic prosperity, not sharia law and a different system of repressive
government. Notably, none of those taking part in the protests in places
like Tahrir Square carried the black flag of al-Qaeda.
But as the protests have faltered, so al-Qaeda has moved quietly to seize the
initiative for itself, exploiting the inexperience of newly installed
governments in countries like Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. Secular politicians
who voice their opposition to Islamist government have been targeted – two
prominent secularists have been assassinated in Libya and Tunisia in recent
weeks.
The chaos created in Libya by the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime has also
been to al-Qaeda’s benefit. Apart from acquiring a significant arsenal of
hi-tech weaponry from the regime’s stockpiles – including shoulder-fired
anti-aircraft missiles – the removal of Gaddafi’s authoritarian government
has allowed al-Qaeda cells to flourish with impunity throughout Libya’s vast
desert expanse, even allowing its supporters to seize control of large areas
of neighbouring Mali.
But arguably al-Qaeda’s most impressive recent achievement has been its
infiltration of Syria’s moderate opposition movement, and its success in
re-establishing a foothold in neighbouring Iraq, where it is once more doing
its best to provoke a new round of sectarian conflict.
In Syria the al-Nusra Front, which makes no secret of its allegiance to al-Qaeda,
has managed to provoke a civil war within a civil war by murdering a
prominent commander of the Syrian Free Army. But its main objective remains
the removal of President Bashar al-Assad and the establishment of an
uncompromising Islamist government in Damascus – especially if it can seize
control of Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons in the process.
For years, one of al-Qaeda’s central aims has been to obtain access to weapons
of mass destruction, thereby enabling it to achieve its goal of inflicting
widespread carnage against the West.
To date, it has failed, but if its allies in Syria or elsewhere in the Arab
world ever succeed in getting their hands on such destructive weapons, then
the Obama administration and its allies will have rather more to worry about
than the security of their diplomatic missions.
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