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<h1 itemprop="name headline ">Al-Qaida: how great is the terrorism threat to the west now?</h1><p itemprop="description" id="stand-first" class="stand-first-alone" data-component="comp : r2 : Article : standfirst_cta - rummble v2">In
the aftermath of the Algerian hostage crisis, David Cameron issued an
ominous warning of the continued threat from terrorism. But is al-Qaida
more, or less, dangerous than before?</p>
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<span itemscope="" itemprop="author" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span itemprop="name"><a class="contributor" rel="author" itemprop="url" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/jasonburke">Jason Burke</a></span></span> </div>
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<a itemprop="publisher" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian">The Guardian</a>,
<time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2013-01-28" pubdate="">Monday 28 January 2013</time>
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<img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2013/1/28/1359393416838/Hostages-surrender-to-Isl-010.jpg" alt="Hostages surrender to Islamist gunmen who overtook the gas plant in the Algerian desert" itemprop="contentUrl representativeOfPage" height="276" width="460">
<div class="caption" itemprop="caption">Hostages surrender to Islamist gunmen who overtook the gas plant in the Algerian desert. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images</div>
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<div id="article-body-blocks"><p>Last week the world took another step towards succumbing to an existential threat. Again.</p><p>Speaking in the aftermath of the spectacular seizure and siege of an Algerian gas refinery by Islamist extremists 10 days ago, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jan/18/david-cameron-algeria-mali-eu%29" title="">David Cameron warned</a>
of how "we face a large and existential terrorist threat from a group
of extremists based in different parts of the world who want to do the
biggest possible amount of damage to our interests and way of life".</p><p>There was little further detail, leaving it unclear if the prime minister was referring to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/al-qaida" title="More from guardian.co.uk on al-Qaida">al-Qaida</a>,
the group founded by the late Osama bin Laden 25 years ago. Or possibly
al-Qaida-type groups in the middle of the Saharan desert. Or maybe
other offshoots around the world. Or possibly the ideology of al-Qaida.</p><p>However,
the broad thrust of what he was saying was obvious: if you thought the
threat from al-Qaida, however defined, had gone away, you were wrong. It
is here, and will be here for decades to come. And it endangers the
very foundation of our societies. The intervening week, one imagines,
replete as it was with a range of shootings, bombings, arrests and court
judgments across the world all involving Islamist extremism, has not
improved things.</p><p>Such rhetoric was once familiar. We heard much of
it in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and through the
months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But as the years have passed
however, such pronouncements of imminent danger became rarer. The
public naturally learned to be suspicious of rhetoric raising fears that
appeared unreasonable and unfounded. We all learned enough about the
complex phenomenon of contemporary Islamist militancy to be able to
challenge the sillier claims ourselves. Policymakers recognised that any
exaggeration, particularly of the "global" nature of a threat that
their own security services were increasingly seeing as local, simply
played into the hands of the enemy.</p><p>So Cameron's words last week, echoed elsewhere, were unexpected.</p><p>Rather
like al-Qaida's own rhetoric in the wake of the changes wrought by the
Arab spring, they sounded dated; at worst, they were an indication of
wilful ignorance, a nostalgia for simpler times when leaders could
promise "iron resolve" against a threat without provoking widespread
scepticism. They have however usefully provoked a new debate on two very
old questions, both still urgent and important: what is al-Qaida? And
is it more or less dangerous than it was?</p><p>Answering the first
question is, for once, relatively straightforward. Islamist militancy
is a phenomenon going back much further than the foundation of the group
al-Qaida by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden in 1988. There have been waves
of revivalism in the Muslim world since the days of the Prophet
Muhammad. These have frequently come in response to external challenges,
whether political, social, cultural and military. Intense and very
varied reactions were provoked by European colonialism in the 19th
century from Afghanistan to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/algeria" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Algeria">Algeria</a>,
from Morocco to Malaysia and beyond. The end of European colonialism in
the Muslim world in no way diminished the immediacy of that challenge
nor the venality, brutality and incompetence of local regimes. In the
late 1980s and early 1990s, scores of different violent extremist
movements, in part products of a massive new interest in "Islamism"
across the Muslim world, were waging armed struggles against local
governments in the name of religion.</p><p>Al-Qaida (usually translated
as "the base") was founded – in Pakistan towards the end of the war in
Afghanistan against the Soviets – to channel and co-ordinate the
dispersed efforts of these movements into a single campaign. It believed
that striking at a universally accepted global enemy, the US, would
lead to the destruction of "hypocrite" unbelieving regimes across the
Muslim world in the short term and, eventually, the creation of a new
ill-defined and utopian religious rule. This latter goal was long-term, a
cosmic struggle, possibly indefinite and certainly undefinable in terms
of time.</p><p>Aided by a range of external factors, al-Qaida was to
some extent successful in achieving its less abstract aims, striking the
US hard and drawing together an unprecedented network of affiliates in
the late 1990s. This then helped – particularly by the response to the
9/11 attacks and other operations – disseminate its ideology further
than ever before in the noughties.</p><p>The high point, however, was
reached around 2004 or 2005. Even as it appeared to peak, the wave of
extremism was receding. Since then, the central leadership of al-Qaida
has suffered blow after blow. It is not just Bin Laden who has been
killed or rendered inactive, but pretty much everyone else in the senior
and middle ranks of the organisation. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/ayman-al-zawahiri" title="">Ayman al-Zawahiri</a>,
the leader of al-Qaida central, may be an effective, utterly dedicated
and experienced organiser but he lacks Bin Laden's charisma. Saif al
Adel, the only other veteran leader remaining, lacks his stature and may
not be at liberty at all but detained in Iran.</p><p>Key players who
few, beyond specialists, had ever heard of – such as the very capable
Libyan Atiyah Abd al-Rahman – have gone. British security officials
describe "al-Qaida central" as being "hollowed out", largely by the
controversial drone strikes. Equally damaging for the group, al-Qaida's
training infrastructure is minimal, certainly compared with the dozens
of fully fledged camps that were in use on the eve of the 9/11 attacks.
Back in 2008, according to interrogation documents, handlers were forced
to admit to new recruits coming straight from Europe that their
facilities unfortunately bore no resemblance to those depicted in <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/10/al-qaida-terrorism-bin-laden" title="">recruiting videos</a>.</p><p>Nothing
has improved since. Volunteers are fewer than before. There are younger
members rising up the thinning ranks, but this is promotion by default
not merit.</p><p>Equally damaging has been the rejection by successive
communities over the past two decades. Almost every attempt by al-Qaida
central to win genuine popular support has failed – in Iraq, Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Polls show approval ratings for Bin Laden
peaking around 2004-5 and then steep decline. This is particularly true
when communities have direct experience of extremist violence or rule.
The al-Qaida brand is irremediably tarnished. Even Bin Laden was
apparently thinking of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/03/osama-bin-laden-rebranding-al-qaida" title="">relaunching the group under a new name</a>, his correspondence reveals.</p> <span class="inline wide">
<img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2013/1/28/1359395541889/The-Mumbai-terrorist-sieg-010.jpg" alt="The Mumbai terrorist siege had no links with al-Qaida." height="276" width="460">
<span class="caption" style="width: 460px;">
The terrorist siege of Mumbai had no links with al-Qaida. Photograph: Sebastian D'souza/AP
</span>
</span><p>The two most spectacular attacks in recent years – in Algeria and the
strike on Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba
organisation – were carried out by entities that have, in the first
instance, tenuous connections with al-Qaida's senior leadership and, in
the second, none at all. This indicates the degree to which the remnant
led by al-Zawahiri have become, at best, only one player among many.</p><p>The
result is that the centripetal force the group once exerted has gone
and we have returned to a situation similar to that of the old
"pre-al-Qaida" days with a whole series of different local groups
involved in local struggles with negligible central co-ordination.</p><p>There
are major differences with the previous period, of course. Decades of
violence have led to much higher structural levels of radicalisation and
polarisation. The technology and tactics used by all protagonists in
these current "shadow wars" has evolved. Then there are the consequences
of the Arab spring – for the Sahel and Syria and elsewhere. But,
nonetheless, the unthinking use of the term al-Qaida, as has so often
been the case in the past, obscures rather than illuminate the real
chaotic and fractured, if still dynamic, nature of modern Islamist
militancy. This is something Cameron's own security services will have
told him.</p><p>Of course a threat remains. But the big attacks – those
that could potentially pose something a little closer to "an existential
threat" – are unlikely. These would need to be in a major European or
US city or involve at least one passenger jet. If British intelligence,
despite having a team devoted for months to checking and rechecking
every possible potential lead, could not come up with a single credible
threat to the London Olympics last year and their US counterparts were
confident enough to declare a similar lack of immediate danger during
the recent presidential campaign, it appears fair to assume that bombs
in London or New York are a fairly distant prospect for the moment. The
biggest threat to airplanes comes from a single highly proficient
bombmaker in the Yemen.</p><p>The location of the major spectacular
attacks appears closely related to al-Qaida's ability to focus the
dispersed energies of contemporary Sunni Islamist extremism. Through the
1990s, attacks were restricted to targets – in Pakistan, Algeria,
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere – which were distant from western
populations, with the exception of the first abortive plot to bomb the
World Trade Center in New York in 1993. US troops who were attacked in
Somalia in that year in the famous "Blackhawk Down" episode had simply
strayed into someone else's war.</p><p>By the late 1990s, US interests were being attacked, but in east <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Africa">Africa</a>
or the Yemen. It was only through the first six years of the past
decade that the violence approached the west – first in Indonesia,
Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, then in Madrid and London. But since,
the dynamic has reversed, tracking the new weakness of the al-Qaida
senior leadership. The big attacks still come – but in Islamabad,
Mumbai, Kabul, Baghdad, and now in the deserts of the Sahara. Nor do
they strike targets that resonate throughout the Muslim world. A gas
refinery in southern Algeria is not the Pentagon.</p><p>Partly this is
due to vastly improved security precautions and competent intelligence
services that co-operated much more effectively.</p><p>Intermittent
attempts to down airplanes have been defeated, if only just. Hundreds of
potential troublemakers have been stopped long before they even begin
to contemplate actually perpetrating a violent attack. MI5 officials say
that, in part due to closer collaboration with a range of other
agencies and particularly the police, they are able to head off possible
threats much earlier. One compared their operations to the famously
tedious stonewall tactics of the Arsenal team 20 years ago. "It's boring
but it works," he said.</p><p>There is, of course, the fear of a "lone
wolf", a solo, self-radicalising extremist. The example most often cited
is Mohamed Merah, the French-Algerian who killed three soldiers as well
as three Jewish schoolchildren and a teacher last March.</p><p>A
spokesman for Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the man who orchestrated the recent
refinery attack in Algeria, told French media on Monday that France
could expect "dozens like ... Merah and Khaled Kelkal" <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2013/01/22/01016-20130122ARTFIG00476-belmokhtar-veut-des-dizaines-de-merah-et-de-kelkal8230.php" title="">who would spontaneously rise up to kill and maim</a>.</p> <span class="inline wide">
<img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2013/1/28/1359394985791/Islamist-militia-leader-M-010.jpg" alt="Islamist militia leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar" height="276" width="460">
<span class="caption" style="width: 460px;">
Islamist militia leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who orchestrated the Amenas refinery attack in Algeria. Photograph: AP
</span>
</span><p>But real lone wolves are extremely rare. Kelkal, who carried out a
series of attacks in France in 1995, plugged into a broader network of
militants run and recruited by Algerian groups active at the time. Merah
did the shooting on his own but came from a family steeped in extremist
versions of Islam and anti-Semitism, had been to Afghanistan and
Pakistan to train and was, French and Pakistani officials say, connected
to Moez Garsalloui, a high-profile known Belgian militant, now dead,
who had been recruiting widely and was well-known to intelligence
services. Merah was thus not only part of an old style of terrorism –
recruits making their way to the badlands of Pakistan to get trained and
then returning to carry out attacks – but was also much less effective
than predecessors such as those responsible for the 7/7 attacks in
London. The number of people making that journey is now a fraction of
the levels of six or seven years ago. Back then, scores, if not
hundreds, made their way to the Afghan-Pakistan frontier to fight
alongside the Taliban or other groups. Now the number is in the low
dozens, according to intelligence officials in Pakistan, the UK and
elsewhere.</p><p>The other fear is of a new generation of veteran
militants returning from the battlefields of the Sahel to wreak havoc in
the US or, more realistically, Europe. There are some reports that
Canadian or even French passport-holders <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21126533" title="">were among those who attacked the refinery</a>. However, there are two reasons to be relatively sanguine.</p> <span class="inline wide">
<img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2013/1/28/1359395309035/Islamist-fighters-from-Is-010.jpg" alt="Islamist fighters from Islamist group Ansar Dine in Mali." height="276" width="460">
<span class="caption" style="width: 460px;">
Islamist fighters from the Islamist group Ansar Dine in Mali. Photograph: AP
</span>
</span><p>First, the facilities available for training in the region are
minimal and there would seem to be no reason why extremists graduating
in terrorist studies from there would be better able to carry out
effective mass casualty attacks than men such as Merah.</p><p>Second, we
are yet to see a wave of violence involving veterans of much more
longlasting and extensive violence elsewhere in the Maghreb or the core
of the Middle East. British intelligence officials pointed to the
experience of the horrific conflict in Iraq when asked about the
possibility of veterans of the current fighting in Syria, where
extremist religious groups are playing an increasingly significant role,
posing a threat to the UK. Only one attack – the abortive 2007 London
and Glasgow strikes – has been definitively linked to someone involved
in that previous conflict, and he was not a former fighter. Iraqi
veterans have proved dangerous in Saudi, even in Afghanistan and in the
Maghreb. But that is not the same as posing a direct existential threat
to the west. There seems, the officials say, to be no reason why the
Syrian theatre should produce a greater threat today than the Iraqi
theatre has done. Nor, indeed, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/mali" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Mali">Mali</a>.</p><p>Does
this all mean that Islamist militancy will simply die away? Of course
not. A phenomenon with such long and complex roots will evolve rather
than disappear. That is what is currently happening in this new
post-al-Qaida phase. Wherever the various factors that allow the
"Salafi-Jihadi" ideology to get traction are united, there is likely to
be violence. Extremists do, as Cameron said, "thrive when they have
ungoverned spaces in which they can exist, build and plan" and the
aftermath of the Arab spring has not just opened up new terrain but also
exacerbated existing problems of lawlessness and criminality. Flows of
arms from Libya have made a bad situation worse.</p><p>And if you take
the fighting in Mali and the attack on the refinery, and add it to a
list of all the incidents occurring around the globe involving extremist
Islamist violence, it is undoubtedly a frightening picture.</p><p>In
the last few days there were arrests in the Philippines, anti-terrorist
operations in Indonesia, deaths in Pakistan (due to infighting between
extremist groups), air raids in Afghanistan on suspected al-Qaida bases,
<a href="http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Jan-28/204059-yemeni-troops-and-tanks-attack-al-qaeda-stronghold.ashx#axzz2JH5aCiZE" title="">battles in the Yemen</a>,
shootings and executions in Iraq following the release of a video
showing brutal executions, reports of trials in the UK and Germany as
well as fighting in Mali.</p><p>But does this all add up to al-Qaida 3.0, <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/03/al-qaeda-3-0-terrorism-s-emergent-new-power-bases.html" title="">more dangerous than ever before</a>?
There's a simple test. Think back to those dark days of 2004 or 2005
and how much closer the violence seemed. Were you more frightened then,
or now? The aim of terrorism is to inspire irrational fear, to
terrorise. Few are as fearful today as they were back then. So that
means there are two possibilities: we are wrong, ignorant or
misinformed, and should be much more worried than we are; or our
instincts are right, and those responsible for the violence are as far
from posing an existential threat as they have ever been.</p><p>• This
article was amended on 29 January 2013. The abortive attacks on London
and Glasgow took place in 2007, not 2006 as originally stated.</p>
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