After Bin Laden

Al-Qa'ida, the Next Generation

Abdel-Bari Atwan, Abdel Bari Atwan

• Publisher: Saqi Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780863564192
• eBook ISBN: 9780863568527
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Terrorism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Osama bin Laden is dead but al-Qa'ida remains the CIA's 'number one threat'. With branches in strategic hotspots from Yemen and Somalia to North Africa and an increasing influence among 'home grown jihadis' in the West, journalist and al-Qa'ida expert Abdel Bari Atwan investigates how the organisation has survived all attempts to destroy it. Al-Qa'ida after bin Laden has expanded its reach by cementing new alliances and exploiting the opportunities regional turmoil affords. The Arab Spring has opened new battlegrounds for jihadists, particularly in Libya, the Sahel, Syria and Egypt. As the extremist zeal for a global caliphate shows no sign of abating, Atwan profiles the next generation of foot soldiers and leaders and explores the new methods they embrace in the pursuit of jihad in a digital age.

1

The Arab Spring and al-Qa‘ida

Oh how great are these days we are living. Praise Allah who has
lengthened our life to witness these great events and momentous
happenings and to view with our own eyes the fall of the Arab tyrants
– those slaves of America – and the collapse of their regimes.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, 14 October 2011

The series of successive revolutions across the Arab world, which began in Tunisia in January 2011, took everybody by surprise – from the ousted dictators and their Western backers to al-Qa‘ida, which had long sought their downfall. Preconceptions and political narratives about ‘the Middle East’ were shattered; only now are the pieces coming back together to form a new reality through the prism of the Arab Spring. The purpose of this chapter is to consider the nature and role of al-Qa‘ida in the emerging political landscape.

The youthful protestors’ demands for freedom and Western-style democracy – the antithesis of the Islamist agenda – initially suggested that extremist, jihadi groups were facing redundancy, that peaceful protest could achieve what decades of violence had not, that the jihadis’ demands for Sharia rule were outdated and unwelcome.

When the first round of free elections brought unanticipated success for Islamist parties in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco, however, another interpretation was called for. The largely secular and middle-class leaders of the uprisings were outnumbered at the ballot box by poor, conservative Muslim voters opting for an Islamic state.

Many of the protestors’ concerns and demands dovetail with those of conservative Muslims and radical Islamists alike, and they are essentially political demands: the call for an end to corruption, elitism, the plundering of national wealth for the benefit of the few, societal inequalities, the absence of a free and fair judiciary and so on. The question now is whether a new kind of political system will emerge from the Arab Spring: a form of democratic government which can incorporate the disparate elements of Arab societies and meet their needs.

There are already signs that the democratic process has been tampered with to side-line the Islamists, however. In Egypt, ten presidential candidates, including three prominent Islamist hard-liners, were ‘disqualified’¹ in April 2012 by ruling military junta, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). In June 2012 SCAF went even further and dissolved the Islamist-dominated parliament. Days later SCAF announced new constitutional rules limiting the powers of head of state and boosting those of the military before conceding, after several days delay, that the Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘spare candidate’, Mohammed Morsi, had won the Presidential election.

In Libya, electoral legislation underwent several changes since it was first drafted in January 2012 and the June 2012 ballot for 200 seats in a ‘National Conference’ saw 120 ‘constituency seats’ for independent candidates and just 80 ‘list seats’ for members of political parties – apparently in an effort to reduce the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Justice and Development Party. [At the time of writing, the liberal National Forces Alliance, headed by Gaddafi’s former economic advisor, Mahmoud Jabril, had won more than half the party seats.]

In a March 2012 interview, a Pakistani Taliban commander, Wali-ur-Rehman Mehsud, voiced the AQAM interpretation of events: ‘America and the West are trying to make their cause “democracy” and impose it on them but the people are becoming more aware … the people are selecting religious parties to govern them. Therefore the effort is purely an Islamic movement.’²

Writing in April 2011, Osama bin Laden was already celebrating the ‘unprecedented opportunities’ offered by the Arab Spring and the popularity of Islamist parties; he asserted that, ‘most of the region will have governments [formed from] the Islamic parties’ and asked his correspondent to remind his fellow jihadis in Arab Spring countries to be ‘patient and deliberate, and warn them against entering into confrontations with the Islamist parties’. He expressed the hope that: ‘The more time passes … the more widespread will be the correct understanding [i.e. the al-Qa‘ida vision, apparently contained in a book by Muhammad Qutb called Concepts that should be Corrected] among the coming generations of Islamic groups’ and noted, ‘A sizeable element within the Muslim Brotherhood and those like them hold the Salafi doctrine … so their return to true Islam is only a matter of time, Allah willing.’³ Nor was al-Qa‘ida against the principle of the ballot as has been suggested. Ayman al-Zawahiri stated as long ago as 2009 that ‘Elections under the umbrella of an Islamic constitution, run by trustworthy hands, are to be welcomed.’⁴

In Libya, the revolution swiftly developed into an armed confrontation. Osama bin Laden had already signalled ‘the necessity of sending some qualified brothers to the field of revolution in their countries’⁵ and significant numbers of al-Qa‘ida-linked jihadis were among the leaders and fighters who eventually defeated Gaddafi – with help from NATO after UN Security Council Resolution 1973 sanctioned the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya.

By October 2011, the world’s press noted with some astonishment that al-Qa‘ida and Islamic State of Iraq flags were being flown in several places across Libya. Meanwhile, two distinct elements had emerged within the triumphant National Transitional Council (NTC): the secularists and the Islamists. This schism would come to characterise the post-revolutionary landscape in other countries too.

Rather than losing its relevance, AQAM potentially benefits from the post-revolutionary process in the following ways:

• Confrontation between the Islamists and secularists is inevitable, with polarisation bringing greater extremism in its wake; a weakened central government will produce a power vacuum which AQAM is always quick to inhabit.

• In some countries the interim government or military might block the Islamist parties’ participation in elections or, if they succeed at the ballot box, deny their mandate to rule. In such a case, violent extremism gains legitimacy and support: exactly this scenario occurred in Algeria in 1991, leading to a decade of bloody civil war and the deaths of up to 200,000 people.

• If revolution fails to usher in widely anticipated changes for the better, disappointment may produce more extremist ideological tendencies; Niall Ferguson, Professor of History at Harvard University, is one leading academic who has predicted that the Arab Spring will benefit al-Qa‘ida in this way.⁶

• In Syria, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the Arab Spring is likely to re-energise the burgeoning Shi‘i–Sunni sectarian conflict which al-Qa‘ida has been fomenting for years in Iraq and which increases its operational room throughout the region.

• Western security experts have pointed out that both domestic and foreign intelligence agencies were greatly compromised by the uprisings and that this, too, benefits al-Qa‘ida.⁷

The Arab Spring has yet to run its course but it is my feeling that the upheavals across the region will benefit reactionary elements among the Islamists, in the short term at least. Yes, the revolutions were prompted by economic factors such as unemployment and the unfair distribution of wealth, but other factors to do with self-respect and national pride were, arguably, even more important. I agree with those commentators who explain the Islamists’ success at the ballot box in terms of international politics: ‘there is a problem of dignity in the Arab world,’ Maati Monjoub, a Moroccan political analyst, told AP following his country’s November 2011 elections. ‘People see the Islamists as a way of getting out of a sense of subjugation and inferiority towards the West.’

The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan by the US-led Coalition were widely perceived as humiliating and belittling. These feelings, of course, were mirrored on the domestic level where the individual felt her/himself to be disempowered by the state.

Post-revolution opinion polls, conducted by both Western and reputable Arab companies, found that the vast majority of citizens in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya want their new governments to oppose continued US military presence in the region, refuse conditional aid packages and break ties with Israel.⁸ The failure of regional leaders to stand up to Israel in the past – particularly during the 2008–9 winter onslaught on Gaza which left 1,400, mostly civilian, Palestinians dead – highlighted the gap between the will of the people and the policy of governments wishing to avoid the ire of the Washington administration. In several countries, including Egypt, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, pro-Gaza marches and demonstrations were banned.

The region’s conservative Muslims (who presently form the majority) do not view ‘the West’ and its values with admiration or envy. The preferred model is Islam, which provides both a sense of shared regional identity and a framework on which to construct post-revolutionary societies. For Osama bin Laden, the Arab Spring marked the beginning of a ‘new era for the whole umma’ which would see ‘the end of American influence in the Islamic world’.⁹

A Political Tsunami

The Arab Spring erupted in January 2011 following the death by self-immolation of a vegetable peddler, Mohamed Bouazizi, the main bread-winner for a widowed mother and six siblings. Bouazizi, who was just 27 years old, staged his deadly protest outside the offices of the municipal authority whose officials had earlier solicited bribes from the impoverished young man and then confiscated his stock and overturned his cart. The revolution that followed toppled 75-year-old Tunisian dictator Zine el Abidinde ben Ali – who had been in power since 1987 – in just ten days.

The story of jobless Mohamed Bouazizi gives us a snapshot of the immediate causes for the uprisings. Across the region, youth unemployment is between 25 and 30 percent in countries where social security benefits are virtually non-existent. Even graduates cannot find a position and, in countries rife with corruption, anyone who does have a job will have had to pay a bribe for it. There are millions of Bouazizis across the Arab world. Day after day they get on with their lives, patiently doing whatever it takes to scrape by. Protest and complaint were unthinkable for decades under autocratic regimes kept firmly in place by brutal force and a ruthless security apparatus.

The secret police are swift to identify potential troublemakers who get to taste the regional speciality – torture – before being imprisoned or disappearing. The US favoured the Arab world for its ‘extraordinary rendition’ programme; an ex-CIA officer described how, ‘If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.’¹⁰

In the past, anything resembling a march or demonstration would be put down in the most violent manner. We witnessed the knee-jerk reactions of the Tunisian, Egyptian, Bahraini, Yemeni, Algerian, Libyan and Syrian regimes – all used extreme violence on their own people: 30,000 civilians died in the Libyan revolution and at least 20,000 had been killed in Syria at the time of writing (July 2012); 219 were killed in Tunisia when security forces opened fire on protestors; 384 died in Egypt, with 6,467 wounded mostly due to gunshots, firebombs and rocks hurled by paid thugs; in Bahrain seven protestors were shot dead as they slept in Pearl Square and 150 were injured.

Meanwhile the ruling families and a nepotistic, corrupt ‘elite’ lived lives of ostentatious wealth – wealth that had often been plundered from the nation’s natural resources, including oil, and, in some cases, foreign aid. Leaders’ families and fellow clansmen monopolised the most lucrative contracts and franchises for which they also received hefty bribes.

The Tunisian ex-President Ben Ali fled with a personal fortune of more than $3 billion whilst it is estimated that Egypt’s Mubarak had accumulated some $70 billion. Libya’s main financial vehicle, the Libyan Investment Authority, used oil revenues not to provide schools or hospitals for the Libyan people but to invest more than $60 billion around the world – in companies such as the Financial Times, Fiat and Juventus football club – and to set up a hedge fund in London.

There are demographic causes too: around 50 percent of the region’s population are now under 25, while the average age of the autocratic rulers is over 70 years old. There is also a growing middle class, many of whom have studied abroad and speak European languages. It was mostly this class, together with workers’ unions in countries where they are allowed, that organised the protests.

Nor can we underestimate the role played by the internet in informing and galvanising the Arab street. Fifty-six million Arabs are regular cybernauts and their number is rapidly increasing. Despite efforts by most Middle Eastern regimes to censor and control the internet, technically savvy young people are able to outwit their oppressors in this respect. Indeed, the elderly dictators seemed oblivious of the independent digital media – the Egyptian regime’s first response to the uprising was to send tanks to protect the television centre.

The unprecedented freedom of information available in cyberspace helped fuel resentment. WikiLeaks detailed the nouveau-riche excesses of the Tunisian regime, for example, which explained why ben Ali’s ex-hairdresser wife was popularly referred to as the Reine des voyous (Queen of the Louts); Libyan cyber-surfers unearthed disgraceful incidences of their nation’s wealth being squandered abroad by Gaddafi’s sons – Muatassim paid Beyoncé and Usher $5 million to entertain guests at his New Year’s Eve party on the Caribbean island of St Barts in 2010/11, in grotesque one-upmanship with brother, Saif al-Islam, who had reportedly paid Mariah Carey $1 million to sing four songs the year before. The Saudi Arabian people were dumbfounded by the news, freely available on the internet, that Prince Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: After bin Laden
• 1. The Arab Spring and al-Qa‘ida
• 2. Al-Qa‘ida in the Arabian Peninsula
• 3. Somalia’s al-Shabaab
• 4. The Taliban–al-Qa‘ida Nexus: Afghanistan
• 5. The Taliban–al-Qa‘ida Nexus: Pakistan
• 6. Al-Qa‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and the Sahel
• 7. Al-Qa‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb: Libya
• 8. Ongoing and New Alliances
• 9. The Digital Battleground
• Conclusion: The Next Generation
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• Copyright