30 May 2008
U.S. Intelligence Official Reports Major Gains Against Al-Qaida
Growing number of former supporters now repudiate group’s ‘immoral’ tactics
Washington -- Al-Qaida essentially has lost in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and continues losing ground elsewhere thanks to strengthening global counterterrorism partnerships and an increasing number of Islamic scholars and former militants who publicly are repudiating the terrorist group’s legitimacy, says Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden.
“On balance, we are doing pretty well,” Hayden told the Washington Post in a rare public interview May 30. “Near strategic defeat of al-Qaida in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaida globally -- and here I'm going to use the word ‘ideologically’ -- as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam.”
While al-Qaida remains a serious threat, Hayden said, stepped-up intelligence sharing and worldwide operations continue to keep the terrorists off balance, even in the Afghan-Pakistan border region, where experts believe the group has been rebuilding its organization and where it is believed that leaders Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, remain in hiding.
In Iraq, al-Qaida’s steady series of attacks against civilians in 2005 and 2006 betrayed its false claims of acting on behalf of Iraq’s minority Sunni community, which also is a frequent terrorist target.
“Despite this ‘cause célebre’ phenomenon, fundamentally no one really liked al-Qaida's vision of the future,” Hayden said. That is a key factor contributing to better security conditions in Iraq, he said.
In a major blow against al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia, security services arrested 28 militants in Mecca, Medina and Riyadh who were planning to attack pilgrims gathered for the Hajj and religious leaders critical of the terrorist group.
“One of the lessons we can draw from the past two years is that al-Qaida is its own worst enemy,” Robert Grenier, a former top CIA counterterrorism official, told the Washington Post. “Where they have succeeded initially, they very quickly discredit themselves.”
SCHOLARS, FORMER SUPPORTERS CONDEMN “IMMORAL” AL-QAIDA
Opposition to al-Qaida’s tactics extends beyond Iraq and Saudi Arabia, say researchers Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank in “The Unraveling: The Jihadist Revolt Against bin Laden,” featured in the June 2008 issue of The New Republic magazine.
“Al-Qaida and its affiliates have killed thousands of Muslim civilians elsewhere since September 11: hundreds of ordinary Afghans killed every year by the Taliban, dozens of Saudis killed by terrorists since 2003, scores of Jordanians massacred at a wedding at a U.S. hotel in Amman in November 2005,” write Bergen and Cruickshank. “All this has created a dawning recognition among Muslims that the ideological virus that unleashed September 11 and the terrorist attacks in London and Madrid [Spain] is the same virus now wreaking havoc in the Muslim world.”
"How much blood has been spilt?” asked Sheikh Salman Al Oudah, a world-renowned Saudi religious scholar who bin Laden has claimed as an influence. “How many innocent people, children, elderly and women have been killed ... in the name of al-Qaida?”
Two months later, Noman Benotman, a former Libyan militant leader who fought beside bin Laden in Afghanistan, published an open letter to al-Qaida urging the group to end attacks in the Arab world and the West. The letter became the subject of widespread debate across the Middle East.
In another high-profile criticism, former terrorist leader Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, a close friend and one-time mentor to al-Zawahiri, published a book serialized in Egyptian newspapers repudiating the manipulation of Islamic theology to justify violence.
Al-Sharif, also known as “Dr. Fadl,” is the subject of Lawrence Wright’s new article “The Rebellion Within: An Al Qaida Mastermind Questions Terrorism,” featured in the June 2008 issue of The New Yorker.
He studied with al-Zawahiri in Egypt during the 1960s, and the two men founded al Jihad, a terrorist group that became a key component of the future al-Qaida. While he remains a strong critic of the West, al-Sharif also has turned against the group he helped to shape.
“Zawahiri and his Emir bin Laden [are] extremely immoral,” al-Sharif said. “I have spoken about this in order to warn the youth against them, youth who are seduced by them and don't know them.”
Amid these renewed debates, surveys indicate that public support for al-Qaida and its tactics continues to decline, say Bergen and Cruickshank, citing rising opposition to suicide bombing in Indonesia, Lebanon and Bangladesh, as well as plummeting rates of people reporting favorable views of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and elsewhere.
“Encoded in the DNA of apocalyptic jihadist groups like al-Qaida are the seeds of their own long-term destruction,” write Bergen and Cruickshank. “Their victims are often Muslim civilians; they don't offer a positive vision of the future (but rather the prospect of Taliban-style regimes from Morocco to Indonesia); they keep expanding their list of enemies, including any Muslim who doesn't precisely share their world view.”
But while similar debates have led other terrorist groups such as the Irish Republican Army or the Red Army Faction to abandon violence, other experts caution against expecting the same from al-Qaida.
“Al-Qaida's obituary has been written far too often in the past few years for anyone to declare victory,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. “I agree that there has been progress. But we're indisputably up against a very resilient and implacable enemy.”
