Interesting article in today's
FT by Stephen Fidler on how AQ has been beaten up and its effectiveness reduced but is still quite dangerous.
Fidler notes that Michael McConnell, the US director of national intelligence, told Congress as recently as February that al-Qaeda was attracting an influx of western recruits and said the terror group continued to pose significant threats to the US at home and abroad. But in the months since, evidence has been mounting that the organisation responsible for the September 11 attacks has suffered some serious reversals. Fidler offers an examination of that evidence.
A couple of excerpts:
Quote:
Exhibit one in the case is al-Qaeda’s recent failure to mount successful attacks on western targets. The group has not lost the ability to launch such attacks. On the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and in parts of the Middle East, it also remains potent. But unless it shows the capacity to sustain a tempo of attacks on western targets or demonstrates a capability with biological or nuclear weapons, it is hard to describe it as the strategic threat that it was once widely thought to constitute.
...
Al-Qaeda has suffered some key losses in recent months – the second exhibit in the argument that it is in decline. Three important commanders have been killed in the Pakistani tribal territories where its headquarters operation is based, two of them reportedly to attacks from US unmanned aerial vehicles. The three were significant figures and their loss, coming so close together, is likely to be a blow.
...
Perhaps the most powerful evidence that al-Qaeda is in decline is the recent series of setbacks it has suffered in its heartlands. Here the official case was put by Michael Hayden, director of the CIA (right). “On balance we are doing pretty well,” he told The Washington Post last month. “Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally – and here I’m going to use the word ‘ideologically’, as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form on Islam.”
|
Fidler asks, "Does all this mean, then, that Al Qaeda can be written off?"
He answers that question as follows:
Quote:
The answer is, of course, No. Al-Qaeda appears to be down, but it is not out. The network is still attempting to establish affiliates across the Middle East and into Africa and continues to be operationally active on the Pakistan-Afghan border and in Iraq and North Africa. Routes through which terrorists can flow between Europe and Pakistan and North Africa are a cause of continuing concern. Iraqi blowback could emerge late after struggle with the US in Iraq dies down. It was, after all, years after the Soviets left Afghanistan before the wider al-Qaeda threat emerged out of that conflict.
Some western terrorism officials now see the danger of al-Qaeda to derive not from its operations but from the group’s anti-democratic, illiberal and violent ideology, which risks becoming embedded among a significant minority of the population. Moreover, western governments have provided – for example in the invasion of Iraq – and may continue to provide motivation for the radicalisation of new generations of terrorists.
But the main concern is the risk that al-Qaeda gains access to chemical, biological, nuclear or radiological weapons – technology its leaders have repeatedly said they wish to acquire. Such a high-impact event is highly improbable. Mr Sheehan says attacks using chemical, biological and radiological weapons would all be difficult to mount and may cause less damage than is popularly estimated. It is possible that only an attack with a nuclear device, the most difficult type of operation for a terrorist to launch, would constitute a true strategic threat to the west. But that is enough to mean the group will have to remain in western government sights for years to come.
|
There is much more. Read the whole thing.
Re: Down but dangerous: how al-Qaeda has been pushed on to the defensive 
Linear Mode
Main
Extras
