Al Qaeda Fragments

25 November, 2004

Al-Qaeda is set to become even more fragmented and nebulous.

This will increase the difficulty of fighting it, or of preventing terrorist attacks, despite growing concern that it has the capability to make a 'dirty' nuclear-armed bomb.

A key issue is the relationship between

• Osama Bin Laden.
• Aymar al Zawahri, his second-in-command,
• Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of the most brutal 'foreign fighter' group in Iraq.

Bin Laden

Bin Laden's video appearance just before the US presidential election still has intelligence analysts fumbling to answer a number of questions:

• Why did he abandon his military props of guerrilla fatigues and submachine guns?
• How had he recovered from the seemingly incapacited arm and fevered look of previous appearances?
• Where was he, in seemingly comfortable surroundings that contrasted with the cave-like context of earlier videos?
• Above all, why did he take the new line of declaring that 'every state that does not harm our security will remain safe'?

Al Zawahri

What needs to be kept in mind is the way in which Aymar al Zawahri, the Egyptian Islamic Brotherhood fundamentalist who has sometimes been credited with turning Bin Laden against the West, issued a tape which declared the exact opposite - the need to launch pre-emptive strikes on America.

'We should not wait until US, British, French, Jewish, South Korean, Hungarian or Polish forces enter Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen and Algeria before we resist,' he said.
'We can't wait, or we will be eaten up country by country'.

The most obvious conclusion to be drawn from the two statements is that Bin Laden was seeking to damp down the message put out by al Zawahri.

Indeed the two men may have fallen out, with bin Laden seeking a ceasefire while al Zawahri wants to ratchet up terrorist attacks.

Saudi

So where is bin Laden?

The suggestion that he has taken refuge in a safe house in an urban area of Pakistan seems improbable. The danger of discovery would be too great.

One possibility is a peaceful area of Baluchistan or Waziristan outside Pakistan's control, though good medical treatment would be hard to come by there.

A more intriguing possibility is that he has escaped back, possibly by boat, from southern Baluchistan, to Saudi Arabia or the Yemeni border areas from which his clan originates.

There, he could be protected by powerful dissident allies within the fragmented Saudi royal family - the bin Ladens remain the kingdom's chief civil contractor - or the faction-ridden Yemeni government.

Iraq

As a fundamentalist Wahhabi Sunni, his latest message may also reflect dismay at the growing influence of Iranian-based Shias in Iraq.

His prime ambition has been to seize power in a Sunni Islamic revolution in Saudi Arabia along with, if possible, that other 'holy land' of Iraq - which he has no wish to see come under Teheran's sway.

Al Zawahiri, who craves a wider Islamic revolution spreading to his native Egypt, would regard bin Laden as selling out if he restricted his attention to Saudi Arabia.

Al Zarqawi

The brutality of Abu Musab al Zarqawi and his group should not be taken as a measure of its strength. Though American officials portraying him as being closely linked with bin Laden, Zarqawi, a Jordanian criminal released in 1999, only first established contact with al-Qaida in Afghanistan in the winter of 2000.

It is far from clear that he was ever formally a member of the wider organisation.

Moving to an area in western Iraq outside Saddam Hussein's control, he was often cited as an example of al-Qaeda's links with the dictator - although he had none.

It was alleged during the American election campaign that he was spared pinpoint aerial attack by US planes in 2003 to preserve an example of the alleged Saddam-al-Qaida connection.

Brutal

Despite proclaiming loyalty to bin Laden, al Zarqawi is regarded as too unintelligent to be a senior al-Qaeda figure.

American sources believe he is an independent operator, with little control over other similar groups in western Iraq.

Certainly his role in the much wider local Iraqi resistance is negligible, however much publicity he attracts as a foreigner who can be linked to al-Qaida in contrast to the native resistance.

A more intriguing question still is whether there is any genuine relationship between him and bin Laden, as the latter seeks a role in the Sunni insurgency against the Americans and the Shia government of Ayad Allawi.

Rather than a genuine al-Qaeda leader, he looks like just another among the chiefs of autonomous Islamic guerrilla groups round the world that use al-Qaeda as a flag of convenience, pursuing their own course as they see fit.