How al Qaeda is imploding - The Jewish Chronicle

Analysis
Radio 4, Thursday August 8

The credit crunch is biting, fuel and food prices are sky-high, and recession seems just around the corner, so where is the good news? Well, the BBC's security correspondent, Frank Gardner, came up with some strong evidence that Osama bin Laden's erstwhile colleagues in al Qaeda are attempting to undermine the organisation and causing it to lose support in the Islamist community. And news doesn't come much better than that.

Libyan jihadist Naaman bin Othman, formerly a serious al Qaeda player, was willing to go on the record to accuse bin Laden of making "terrible mistakes". He now felt that the policy of indiscriminate killing was both wrong and counter-productive.

Another Islamist ideologue, Sayed Imam, known as Dr Fadhl, an Egyptian jihadist jailed for his part in terrorist attacks in the 1980s and 1990s, attacked his former student, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda's number two, calling his violent methods "un-Islamic".

Western analysts have also noticed a shift in dogma in the Islamist community, particularly over Al Qaeda's perceived arrogance in Iraq, where its bloodthirsty policies have accounted for the lives of thousands of Muslims and alienated its allies.

In Egypt, the backlash started nearly 10 years ago, when, after a terrorist attack which killed tourists in Luxor, Egypt's Islamists renounced violence. Indeed, many former terrorists have now started to speak of murdered president Anwar Sadat as a martyr rather than a traitor for his policy of making peace with Israel.

However, before we all start to get too excited, there is another side to this story. While Islamist thinkers might be questioning the Islamic justification for indiscriminate killing and suicide bombing, at grassroots level, things are looking decidedly less positive. East London community leader Hanif Qadir, who came very close to fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan a few years ago before renouncing violence, feels that the youth is still alienated. As far as he is concerned, their thinking is not governed by the debate at elevated levels over the justification for armed resistance against the West but rather by their hatred of the effects of British and American foreign policy. Even so, claimed Qadir, those who go to fight in Afghanistan often come back feeling hostile towards al Qaeda's tactics.

Gardner felt that the shifts in opinion could be compared to two tectonic plates grinding against each other. Islamist thinkers are moving one way, but among young, radicalised Muslims who have only a tenuous hold on Islam but a great hatred for Western actions, resistance to the USA is paramount.

Analyst and academic Nigel Inkster agreed that al Qaeda was not yet in full retreat but did feel that it was helpful that its theological justification was being questioned.

And now the bad news. There is one area where all Islamists are still united - and that is in their opposition to Israel. There is evidence that the organisation may seek to regain its credibility by concentrating its attacks on Israel.

With its stronghold in Afghanistan still as firm as ever, there is no immediate prospect of al Qaeda disappearing from the map. However as this fascinating and ultimately optimistic analysis suggested, it could be that the criticism of al Qaeda from within could begin to corrode the organisation's operational ability.

According to Bin Othman, al Qaeda will soon be unable to mobilise outside Afghanistan and the border with Pakistan populated by Pashtun fighters, because their support is melting away. Let's hope so.