al Qaeda's Woes

Amir Taheri, The NY Post: courtesy of Benador Associates

'OH, no! Not him again!" This is how several Arab friends reacted as we watched a re-run of Ayman al-Zawahiri's latest "message" on al-Jazeera the other day in a café in Edgware Road, London's Arab quarter.

A fugitive terrorist of Egyptian origin, al-Zawahiri is often identified as al Qaeda's chief theoretician and No. 2 to its paymaster, the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden. In his message he endorsed the 7/7 attacks in London and threatened more such operations against both Britain and the United States.

The message merits attention for a number of reasons. READ MORE

To begin with, al-Zawahiri shows that although al Qaeda — with its leaders dead, captured or hiding in caves in remote regions — no longer exists as an organization, the ideology (or brand name) it represents is still a threat not only to several Muslim countries but also to the major Western democracies.

Then, too, al-Zawahiri acknowledges that those responsible for almost daily killings in Iraq are al Qaeda-style Arab terrorists, rather than Iraqi nationalists supposedly fighting against foreign occupation.

Al-Zawahiri spells out their strategy in Iraq with chilling simplicity. He brushes aside the fact that Iraq now has a free elected government that represents the will of its people. He demands that the United States and its allies abandon the Iraqi people so that the terrorists can seize control in Baghdad and continue their massacre on a grander scale.

This shows that the Arab terrorist movement associated with the al Qaeda brand knows that it has absolutely no chance of winning power in Iraq or any other Muslim country through normal political means.

More importantly, al-Zawahiri acknowledges the fact that the terrorists have no chance of winning a straight military victory over the U.S.-led Coalition in Iraq. He clearly shows that his only hope of victory lies in the belief that the terrorists could turn American and British public opinion against support for building a new and democratic Iraq.

Al-Zawahiri 's entire analysis on that score is based on al Qaeda's single victory so far: the changing of the Spanish government under the pressure of the March 2004 Madrid bombings.

Islamist terrorist circles have already woven quite a few myths around what they describe as their "victorious ghazva" (raid) in Madrid. "We taught the Spaniards a lesson," says Shamsul Dhoha, who runs a pro-al Qaeda Web site from Pakistan. "Our heroes struck, and the Spaniards scattered like hens. This is the way to deal with [all other] infidel [enemies]."

Yet what is perceived as Spain's surrender to al Qaeda has so far proved to be the exception rather than the rule. Other members of the coalition in Iraq — President Bush himself, plus Prime Ministers John Howard (Australia), Tony Blair (Britian) and Anders Fogh Rasmussen (Denmark) — have been re-elected, often with increased majorities. Meanwhile, almost all those who opposed the liberation of Iraq have suffered losses in all subsequent elections — most notably France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder.

Al-Zawahiri's message reveals another interesting fact: Al Qaeda appears to have severed ties with the Taliban. The Egyptian makes no mention of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader to whom both he and Osama bin Laden had pledged allegiance as the "Emir al-Momeneen" (Commander of the Faithful) in 2001. Instead, al-Zawahiri referred to bin Laden as the "sheik" and the sole religious authority of the remnants of al Qaeda.

It now seems that the al Qaeda-Taliban divorce is something more than mere speculation. At least a section of the Taliban leadership, possibly including Mullah Omar, now regard the partnership with al Qaeda as a strategic error. Some Taliban chiefs, notably their former No. 2, Mullah Ahmad Wakil Mutuwakkil, are negotiating a deal with the new Afghan government under President Hamid Karzai. Others, notably Mullah Muhammad Haqqani, have formed an alliance with the Pushtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a protégé of the Pakistani secret services.

However deep, the rift between the Taliban and al Qaeda could make it harder for bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to continue hiding in the caves of Waziristan in northeastern Pakistan.

The message reveals another interesting fact. For the past three years, al-Zawahiri had advocated a policy of focusing the terrorists' efforts on winning power in "vulnerable" Muslim countries — Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt. Yet his latest message shows that he is now persuaded that such a strategy has little chance of success. All the countries targeted are doing well in their war on terror; Afghanistan and Pakistan may have already turned the tide.

With no prospect of victory in any Muslim country, al-Zawahiri now seems closer to bin Laden's strategy of organizing raids against major Western democracies in the hope of terrorizing their publics into abandoning their Islamic allies.

Al-Zawahiri's message deserved more than a mere yawn. For it was an implicit admission that the terrorists, though still dangerous and deadly, are facing grim prospects.

Iranian author and journalist Amir Taheri is a member of Benador Associates.