The franchised terrorism of al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden
Tuesday 8 April 2014 5:26PM
Annabelle Quince
Australian Broadcasting Network
After the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, al-Qaeda became one of the great modern bogeymen, claiming credit for terrorist attacks all over the world. However, the jihadist group is less a centralised organisation than a loose coalition of franchises, writes Annabelle Quince.
Last week Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, was convicted in New York for conspiring to kill US nationals and conspiring to assist a terrorist organisation, al-Qaeda. The conviction is just one of a number of blows the US has landed against al-Qaeda in recent years. Yet despite these setbacks, the organisation is rematerialising as a political force. The al-Qaeda that is re-emerging in North Africa and the Middle East today is very different from the al-Qaeda that first emerged under Osama bin Laden in the 1990s. Al-Qaeda was originally created as a highly hierarchical organisation with clear aims and philosophy.
Al-Qaeda, at least as it was initially conceived by Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and others ... had a range of committees that reported directly to bin Laden, that were involved in financing, religious elements, [issuing] fatwas or religious edicts, propaganda and information operations, military and combat operations, and then finances, both externally bringing in money but also overseeing how money was spent within the organisation,’ says Seth Jones, associate director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation.
That bureaucratic structure changed completely after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda faced very severe losses and much of its membership was either arrested or killed. Leadership was scattered in two directions, the majority, including Zawahiri, bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, fled to Pakistan. Bin Laden also sent his backup command and control regime to Iran. Initially this was supported by the Iranian regime, but then many of them were put under house arrest.
Al-Qaeda decentralised completely and became a loose organisation with sub-groups in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, North Africa and Libya. ‘Al-Qaeda now is a franchised organisation, they have branches in most of the Middle East and most of the Islamic worlds, and it is growing,’ says Abdel Bari Atwan, the author of The Secret History of Al Qaeda and After bin Laden: Al Qaeda, The Next Generation.
Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/5375448