By Cliff May
Thursday, August 01, 2013
By all accounts, the attack was planned with care and
executed with precision. At two notorious Iraqi prisons, Abu Ghraib and Taji,
al-Qaeda combatants last week used mortars, small arms, suicide bombers, and
assault forces to free 400 prisoners, including several who had been on death
row. AQ spokesmen hailed those released as “mujahedeen,” holy warriors, who
will rejoin the jihad on battlefields throughout the Middle East and beyond.
Soon after, we were seeing headlines such as this: “Al
Qaeda Is Back.”
Where had al-Qaeda gone? Dig deep in the memory hole —
all the way to last summer. At the prestigious Aspen Security Forum, Peter
Bergen, CNN’s national-security analyst and a director at the New America
Foundation, gave a talk titled, “Time to Declare Victory: Al Qaeda Is
Defeated.”
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Lynch III (retired), a
distinguished research fellow at the National Defense University, was writing
and speaking widely on the same theme. And President Obama’s reelection
campaign was making similar claims, e.g. “The tide of war is receding,” “Osama
bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.” Mitt Romney hardly attempted to
rebut the thesis.
I don’t like to say “I told you so” — oh, who am I
kidding? Of course I do. But in this instance there is more than ample
justification. Scholars at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, in
particular Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio, have argued consistently and
forcefully, based on solid evidence, that the May 2011 killing of Osama bin
Laden, followed by the elimination of other al-Qaeda leaders, did not, by any
stretch of the imagination, mean the demise of al-Qaeda.
Instead, it led AQ to adapt, evolve, and morph. It is
essential to study these changes and probe their strategic significance — an
assignment unlikely to be seriously undertaken by those convinced al-Qaeda
swims with the fishes.
On July 18, Joscelyn testified before the House Committee
on Foreign Affairs, attempting to make clear to members of Congress that AQ has
become “a global international terrorist network . . . that, despite setbacks,
contests for territory abroad and still poses a threat to U.S. interests both
overseas and at home.”
The nodes of AQ’s network are affiliates that pledge
bayat, unswerving allegiance, to “core AQ” while retaining substantial
operational autonomy. That makes them harder for intelligence operatives to
monitor, penetrate, weaken, or eliminate. Nine years ago, FDD’s Jonathan
Schanzer wrote a book called Al-Qaeda’s Armies predicting that such AQ
affiliates would increasingly constitute the organization’s “outer perimeter
and the pools from which new terrorists can be drawn. Indeed, al-Qaeda
affiliates, in the Arab world and beyond, represent the next generation of the
global terrorist threat.”
Since the waving of the “mission accomplished” banner
last summer, AQ affiliates have killed an American ambassador in Libya, and
hoisted their flag above the U.S. embassy in Cairo. They have taken the lead in
the rebellion against the Assad dynasty in Syria. They have fought an
American-backed government in Yemen, and they conquered much of Mali before
French troops drove them back into the desert. They continue to slaughter
Christians in Nigeria — more than a thousand last year. They have regenerated
in Iraq since the departure of American troops, killing 700 people in July
alone. They remain undefeated in Afghanistan and Pakistan, poised for the
opportunity further American troop withdrawals will present. Last week, they
attacked Turkish diplomats in Somalia. On Monday, AQ’s close ally, the Taliban,
attacked a jail in northwest Pakistan, freeing as many as 200 prisoners.
Joscelyn and Roggio have been making another argument
that has challenged the conventional wisdom: They maintain that al-Qaeda has
long had a working relationship with Iran’s rulers. Two years ago the U.S.
government formally confirmed that hypothesis, yet now as then many Iran
experts deny the links, arguing that there is no way that Sunni AQ and Shia
Iran could collaborate.
What those experts fail to grasp is that Iran’s rulers
and al-Qaeda’s commanders, despite very real theological disagreements and
differing strategic interests — indeed, they are literally at each other’s
throats in Syria — are united in their commitment to what they see as the moral
imperative of Islamic supremacy and domination. Their shared goal is a global
revolution leading to the defeat or submission, or both, of those they regard
not just as inferior, but also as “enemies of God.” America and Israel top both
their lists.
This worldview is very difficult for Westerners to take
seriously. Surely, there must be a less medieval explanation — perhaps
grievances that can be addressed or fears that can be assuaged. But this
conflict is deeper and more complex. Until that is understood, the U.S. and its
allies cannot possibly devise a coherent strategic response — which is why 34
years after Iran’s revolution and twelve years after 9/11, we still don’t have
one. That is another point that Joscelyn and Roggio have long been making, and
which too many in the government and the foreign policy community have been
either unable or unwilling to grasp.
No comments:
Post a Comment