Al Qaeda's Global Crisis

V. G. Julie Rajan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317645375
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Terrorismo

Examines Al Qaida's crisis of support and tensions with regional affiliates of its global jihad

Fills a gap in the literature by focusing on takfir and the random violence it justifies against other Muslims

Author is a recognised expert in this field

Will be of much interest to students of Al Qaida, global jihadism, terrorism, Islamism, Middle Eastern Studies, Asian Studies, intelligence, security studies and IR in general

Al Qaeda's Global Crisis

This book focuses on the crises facing Al Qaeda and how the mass killing of Muslims is challenging its credibility as a leader among Islamist jihadist organizations.

The book argues that these crises are directly related to Al Qaeda’s affiliation with the extreme violence employed against Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the decade since 9/11. Al Qaeda’s public and private responses to this violence differ greatly. While in public Al Qaeda has justified those attacks declaring that, for the establishment of a state of ‘true believers’, they are a necessary evil, in private Al Qaeda has been advising its local affiliates to refrain from killing Muslims. To better understand the crises facing Al Qaeda, the book explores the development of Central Al Qaeda’s complex relationship with radical (mis) appropriations and manifestations of takfir, which allows one Muslim to declare another an unbeliever, and its unique relationship with each of its affiliates in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The author then goes on to consider how the prominence of takfir is contributing to the deteriorating security in those countries and how this is affecting Al Qaeda’s credibility as an Islamist terror organization. The book concludes by considering the long-term viability of Al Qaeda and how its demise could allow the rise of the even more radical, violent Islamic State and the implications this has for the future security of the Middle East, North Africa and Central/South Asia.

This book will be of much interest to students of political violence and terrorism, Islamism, global security and IR.

V.G. Julie Rajan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, USA. She is the author of Women Suicide Bombers: Narratives of Violence (Routledge 2011).

Introduction

Global crisis: insecurity, terrorism, and human rights¹

DOI: 10.4324/9781315761503-1

I was motivated to write this book for three reasons. My main agenda is to draw attention to the ongoing Sunni Islamist genocide of Muslim civilians in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and how it is exacerbating the insecurity of Muslims in those nations, the nations themselves, and the region in general. Another core agenda is to highlight how this genocide is directly impacting regional and global security, especially that of Western nations and Israel. Finally, my research reveals that the genocide of Muslims is posing an unprecedented challenge to Al Qaeda (AQ), the likes of which it has not encountered in its nearly 30-year history. AQ’s authority is being publically subverted by the radical jihadist organization, the Islamic State (IS; originally, The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant/al-Shām/Greater Syria [ISIS]; al-Dawlah al-Islāmīyah fī al-‘Iraq wa-al-Shām [DAESH OR DAISH]). While news that AQ is facing any crisis may be well received by the international community, it is important to recognize that the radical IS may also pose an equal, if not greater, crisis for the global community. In relation to AQ, the IS presents a far more solid infrastructure, management and militant capability, an unambiguous vision of its goals, global support even from AQ officials, and a mission against the West that is as aggressive and violent, if not more, than that of AQ. November 2014 surfaced rumors of a potential merger between AQ and the IS. While this merger might increase AQ’s global agency, it would irreparably undermine its original identity and reputation among Muslims globally as an advocate for pan-Islamic interests and security internationally.

Local and global security

The international community has been privy to the wide-scale violence executed in the ongoing civil wars in these nations by both state and non-state actors. Civilians are being killed by all parties involved in these wars, including state actors (official military and unofficial state militias); anti-state Islamists located within and outside of national borders; anti-state secular rebels (labeled by the West as “moderate”); and foreign forces, including by the U.S.-led troops stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and military activities in Pakistan. Yet it is only recently that international media have recognized that Sunni Islamist insurgents in all four conflicts are also waging separate cleansing campaigns against non-Sunni Muslims and, increasingly, even against Sunni Muslims in those same wars. Global attention to this genocide is most likely due to the emergence of the Sunni Islamist group, the Islamic State (IS), which is intensifying this genocide in Syria and Iraq. My research suggests that upwards of 313,000 plus civilians have died directly as a result of these four wars. ² A significant proportion of those civilians were directly targeted and killed by pro-Sunni Islamists (discussed later).

The genocide of Muslims is impacting the security ³ of these nations as a mass, transnational humanitarian crisis (examined later). These campaigns are escalating, for example, the humanitarian crises these nations and the region are experiencing, including the millions of civilians who are internally and externally displaced; the thousands who have disappeared; the thousands of women who are experiencing egregious forms of sexual torture and other forms of gender-based violence; children of all ages who are being tortured and sexually violated, and killed execution-style or by bombs; and the number of civilians dying from the indirect affects of war, including from insecure housing, malnutrition, and starvation—a figure which almost always exceeds the numbers who have died directly as a result of the war.

The insecurity of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan is also directly impacting global security. This is because this genocide is driven predominantly by AQ-backed insurgents in these four nations where the U.S. and its allies have a strong military presence (Iraq and Afghanistan), have executed ongoing military operations (Pakistan), or are being closely monitored by the global community (Syria). The civil wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan were initiated by AQ-backed Islamist insurgents demonstrating both against the Western military presence in their nations as well as against the Muslim regimes governing those nations backed by U.S./foreign support. The U.S. and its international partners have viewed their military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as necessary to stabilizing the security of those nations. They aim to stabilize these nations mainly by assisting the national governments and military to manage the terror executed by AQ-backed militants within their national borders. Insurgents aim to undermine the security of these nations so that they can take control of the nations.

The same Islamist groups in all four conflicts also harbor anti-Western, anti-Israeli (anti-Semitic in nature) biases that are leading them to also threaten the security of Western nations and their allies. The Islamists’ success in destabilizing Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan will foster their success in attacking Western nations and their allies globally. For example, the rise of the Pakistani Taliban in Pakistan secured AQ’s base in Pakistan’s tribal areas; it also allowed the Pakistani Taliban to develop and plan the failed AQ-backed Times Square bombing in May 2010 in the U.S. ⁴ Since the rise of the IS in Syria/Iraq in spring 2014, Western nations have been targeted by terrorists specifically engaged in the Syrian/Iraqi civil war. In May 2014, a man who had fought with the IS in Syria for over a year shot and killed four people at a Jewish Museum in Belgium. ⁵ In July 2014, Norway received credible information about a potential terror threat posed by Norway residents who had been fighting with Islamist rebels in Syria. ⁶

By managing the AQ-backed terrorism in these nations (and other nations with an AQ presence), the global community surmises that it can better manage the threat that those same operatives pose to Western and global security. That rationale has guided the U.S. and allied military involvement in Afghanistan since October 2001. The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is meant to assist the Afghan government and military to regulate the AQ-backed Afghan Taliban, who have been harboring AQ since 1998 and who, since 2001, were initially executing suicide and other terror-related attacks against foreign troops and the Afghan government. Their resurgence in 2006 has destabilized the nation. The incoming Afghan President has renewed Afghanistan’s bilateral immunity agreements with the U.S. (BIAs), U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan past December 2014 when they were slated to leave (this is addressed later).

The U.S. and its allies were also present in Iraq from March 2003 through December 2011. Since 2004, while AQ-backed Sunni insurgents have attacked foreign troops stationed in Iraq, they have also waged a violent sectarian war against the Shia government and Shia population. The IS’s startling success in Iraq has escalated the sectarian violence. Since June 2014, the U.S. re-deployed several groups of military advisors to Iraq to explore how to manage the IS.

In March 2004, the Pakistani government attempted to root out the AQ and Taliban insurgents in FATA (Federally Administered Tribal areas) through a violent mission known as the Kaloosha Operation. Despite its militant agenda, the Operation killed numerous non-AQ, non-Taliban Pakistani civilians and forced the displacement of numerous families from FATA, stoking anti-government sentiments. ⁷ Those sentiments were further bolstered when Pakistan signed BIAs with the U.S. in 2003 that have since allowed the U.S. to conduct drone campaigns in Pakistan’s tribal areas from 2004 (more on this later). Both events initiated the rise of the Pakistani Taliban, which has since been fighting against the central government. This civil war has received little visibility globally despite AQ’s involvement in it and the mass numbers of civilians who have died directly as a result of the war. One report cites that between 2005 and May 2014, 52,000 Pakistani civilians and combatants have died and another 50,000 have been wounded. ⁸

Finally, the global community has been monitoring the Syrian civil war since it began in February 2011. The mass violence executed in this conflict is undermining Syria’s security to the point that the IS has been able to secure territory within Syria. Through that Syrian base, the IS has secured additional territory in Iraq, which it has annexed to its lands in Syria. The IS is now using this transnational base to plan future terror attacks against, and invasions into, neighboring and Western nations, as noted. It is specifically the unwillingness of the international community to intervene in this conflict that is engendering the rise of the IS (more on this later).

As noted, I also wrote this book to reveal and examine how this genocide of Muslims and the resulting insecurity arising from it in the Muslim-dominated Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan and the Muslim-dominated region is compromising AQ’s immediate viability and long-term sustainability. In the post-9/11 era, the primary agenda of AQ’s core leadership (Central Al Qaeda [CAQ] or Central Command) has been subverted by the activities of its local Islamist affiliates in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. When CAQ initially engaged in these conflicts, the local insurgents it supported pursued CAQ’s primary agenda: to oust Western military and other foreign presences from those Muslim lands and to depose the apostate/tyrant (heretical) Muslim leaders ...