Al Qaeda reveals signs of weakness

The US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, said Thursday that Al Qaeda is 'simply gone' from some areas.

from the October 26, 2007 edition

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"Iraq was Al Qaeda's greatest achievement and its greatest failure," says Evan Kohlmann, an author and consultant on jihadi movements who closely tracks Al Qaeda and aligned propaganda that is spread on the Internet. "At one time they were riding high from what was happening in Iraq, people were talking about [similar] movements popping up in Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and that time has come and gone.

"Al Qaeda has gone, in the minds of many Muslims, from being this kind of chivalrous organization run by Muslim knights seeking to defend the purity of the Muslim world and, instead, they've been revealed for what they are. They've done it to themselves."

But according to a recent US National Intelligence Estimate, Al Qaeda and its allies appear as strong as ever in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, the two countries that have served as the movement's core training and planning sites from virtually the day it was founded. Major plots could emanate from the area where the 9/11 attacks were mapped out. In Iraq, despite the group's weakened profile, suicide bombers will almost certainly continue to strike.

No analyst, academic, or intelligence officer goes so far as to predict that the organization won't carry out mass casualty attacks again in Europe, the US, or the Arab countries whose regimes it has long sought to topple.

Given the relatively cheap financial cost of a terrorist attack and the small number of operatives required, a successful strike – someday, somewhere – is a certainty.

Bruce Reidel, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst now at the Brookings Institution in Washington, points out in a recent article in Foreign Affairs that Al Qaeda has successfully reversed its early losses from the invasion of Afghanistan and now has a strong base of operations in Pakistan.

He argues that with those advances, a strong propaganda operation, and continuing support in what he calls a "global jihadi subculture," the group is well placed to "threaten global security in the near future," but also says the group has suffered major reverses in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. Any concern they could overthrow an Arab regime is misplaced, he writes. "Al Qaeda is still too weak to overthrow established governments equipped with effective security services; it needs failed states to thrive."

What looked a few years ago to be a fertile moment for Al Qaeda, moving from the initial defeat in Afghanistan to success via the Iraq insurgency and savvy use of the Internet and satellite television stations to create a base of operations in the heart of the Arab and Islamic world, has dried up.

Iraq's Sunni Arab community has largely rejected Al Qaeda's vision of creating an Islamic state in its image in that country. There is still a vast, Sunni Arab insurgency there, but it is largely focused on using violence to improve the domestic political position of its supporters.

But, analysts say, what were the heady days of 2004-05 for Mr. bin Laden, when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was carrying out attacks in Iraq at will, may be long past.

• Sam Dagher contributed reporting from Baghdad.

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