Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 4-1-AQIM-12

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Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 4-1-AQIM-12

In The "War of the Cross, we need a Strategy."They say those who forget history are doomed to repeat it again

Jan 20, As the Islamic State continues to vie for power against al-Qaeda in North Africa, ISIS-affiliated Twitter accounts have announced an online “Maghreb” campaign. C; remember: Maghreb Sep 2013 North Africa: Al-Zawahiri Unveils Maghreb Strategy; Al-Zawahiri called for followers to implant themselves in Algeria and spread al-Qaeda ideology throughout the Maghreb and West Africa

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, known as AQIM, sees the caliphate proclaimed by Islamic State in some areas of Syria and Iraq as illegal, Al-Akhbar news agency reported, citing Yahya Abu Hammam, the head of AQIM. “We do not recognize the legality of this caliphate nor the legitimacy of the allegiance to this organization,” Hammam, an Algerian national whose real name is Jemal Oukacha, said in an interview, extracts of which were published Saturday. This caliphate is “not on the road of the prophet,” which is “neither to do the war against the Muslims nor to sow the discord among the groups that support the Islam,” he said. Muslims don’t have to show allegiance to IS, he said. Al-Qaeda in Maghreb and the militant Mourabitoune group claimed joint responsibility for a Nov. 20 attack on a luxury hotel in Mali that killed 22 people, many of them foreigners.

Jan 20, As the Islamic State continues to vie for power against al-Qaeda in North Africa, ISIS-affiliated Twitter accounts have announced an online “Maghreb” campaign 1. Above is the alleged “official” announcement by ISIS. Yesterday, the Islamic State released three videos directed at the Maghreb, an Arabic word that means “sunset” and includes portions of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.

Jan 27, In a new video purportedly released by al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia, Somalian Islamists call for more violence against Israelis for occupying the land of “Palestine.” The video is titled “Hakuna Hifadhi: No Protection Except By Belief or Covenant of Security #5” and it was released on January 25, 2016. “Hakuna,” a word which many Americans will recognize from Disney’s The Lion King, means “there is no” in Swahili. “Hifadhi” means “reserve” or “conservation.

C; remember: Maghreb Sep 2013 North Africa: Al-Zawahiri Unveils Maghreb Strategy; Al-Zawahiri called for followers to implant themselves in Algeria and spread al-Qaeda ideology throughout the Maghreb and West Africa. . al-Zawahri is of the opinion that al-Qaeda should try to establish safe bases in these countries for promoting its ideas. The Al-Qaeda leader also encouraged the right of terrorists to fight Russians in Caucasus, Indians in Kashmir and the Chinese in Xinjiang and even in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Somalia. He certainly has a long-tern plan for Pakistan. - BY JEMAL OUMAR, 18 SEPTEMBER 2013. Al-Zawahri also called on his followers to refrain from targeting enemies at mosques and markets. The Maghreb, however, is an exception to the rule. Al-Zawahiri gave direct instructions to step up armed action there. "Al-Qaeda usually divides regions into areas for current jihad and areas not qualified for jihad, and sets its priorities accordingly," analyst Sid Ahmed Ould Tfeil told Magharebia. In the Maghreb 1 Remember: MALI-AL-QAIDA’S SAHARA PLAYBOOK This document lays out a con dential letter from Abdel- malek Droukdel, the emir of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, to his ghters in Mali.

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster”― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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region, he added, al-Qaeda "deems itself to have taken advanced steps and wouldn't want to abandon the jihadist work that has been achieved". After all,

he said, Maghreb countries are the cradle of the Arab Spring revolutions.

"Which paved the way for the spread of extremist groups into southern Libya, Jebel Chaambi, Mali and Niger," Ould Tfeil added.

Al-Zawahri specifically stated the need to weaken Algeria, which crushed militants in the civil war in the 1990s.

"Al-Qaeda has been sponsoring the various terrorist groups that defected from al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), such as the Movement for Tawhid and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and al-Mourabitounes," analyst Osman Wali told Magharebia.

Al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man who replaced Osama bin Laden as the head of al-Qaeda and subsequently al-Shabaab, purportedly declared war on ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an audio message released in September 2015.

Jan 15, One of the leaders of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has called for the “recapture” of the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla, located on the border with Morocco. In a 20-minute long video, Abu Obeida Yusuf Annabi, an Algerian national,





called for the taking of both cities, Europa Press news agency reported. He has also reportedly addressed Libyans, calling on them to “reject the

establishment of pseudo-democracy and not to connect terrorism to the activity of Islamic groups.”

Jan 26, Police in Senegal have detained 900 people as part of a security operation following militant attacks in Burkina Faso and Mali. The detentions, which were not terror-related, took place over the weekend in the capital Dakar and Thies. The assaults on a hotel in Mali and a hotel and restaurant in Burkina Faso, both claimed by Islamists, have raised security fears in the region. Police in Senegal have detained 900 people as part of a security operation following militant attacks in Burkina Faso and Mali. The detentions, which were not terror-related, took place over the weekend in the capital Dakar and Thies. The assaults on a hotel in Mali and a hotel and restaurant in Burkina Faso, both claimed by Islamists, have raised security fears in the region

Jan 27, The deadly assault scenes that recently played out in Burkino Faso stunned the poor yet normally calm West African nation. A 12-hour stand-off between troops supported by French forces on the one side and Takfiri militants on the other resulted in multiple deaths. The al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that the gunmen were from the al-Murabitoun group, which is led by Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar. They stormed the 147-room Splendid Hotel, frequented by foreigners and United Nations staff, taking over a hundred people hostage.

At least 29 people have been killed after at least three suicide bombers carried out a series of attacks at a market in northern Cameroon, Al Jazeera has learned. The coordinated strikes occurred in the village of Bodo near the border with Nigeria on Monday, a source in Cameroon's military told Al Jazeera. The first explosions struck the road leading to the market. The second and third blasts hit the entrance and interior of the marketplace. It was the second bombing incident to hit Cameroon this year. On January 13, a suicide bomber killed 12 people and wounded at least one other in an attack on a mosque in northern Cameroon.In December, two female suicide bombers also blew themselves up in Bodo. The attacks occurred about 27km from the town of Fotokol, also near the Nigerian border, which had been the subject of previous attacks last year. No one has claimed responsibility for the latest attacks, but Cameroon and neighbouring countries have been carrying out offensives against the Boko Haram group, which declared allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in 2015. Boko Haram, which wants to implement a strict form of Islamic law in Nigeria's northeast, has launched attacks in Nigeria and neighbouring countries including Cameroon over the past few months.

January 2016 The following is taken from our Country Risk Forecast Al-Qaida’s shift towards high-impact attacks targeting foreign interests increases the threat facing coastal capitals and economic hubs located outside the Sahel region. Global competition among Islamist militant groups and the continuation of France’s Operation Barkhane in the Sahel will encourage al-Qaida-linked groups to attempt attacks further from their northern Malian stronghold to demonstrate resilience and expanding reach. Several al-Qaida-linked groups in recent months have expressed a desire to stage attacks in the wider region. The threat of al-Qaida-linked attacks in urban hubs in Ghana and Guinea is lower. Senegal and





Côte d’Ivoire are symbolic of the long-standing relationship between francophone West Africa and France. Intelligence reports and statements by

Islamist groups indicate a clear intent by AQIM-affiliated factions to stage attacks in the two countries.

Regards Cees***Al Qaeda’s Affiliates Operating in Failed States: The Next Front in the War on TerrorBy Anthony Celso | OCTOBER 25, 2012The rise of Al Qaeda affiliates represents how jihadism has morphed into a multi-front struggle. Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) , Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Al Shabaab represent an acceleration of jihadist efforts to attack near and far enemies. Often hailed as an Al Qaeda success making the war on terror more difficult, this is far from the truth. These alliances represent mutual failure as local and international jihadists have failed to achieve their objectives. Al Qaeda groups have flourished in failed states and they have waged a simultaneous jihadist war against near and far enemies.





Failed States and States of Failure Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

One of the charms of the future is its powerful element of unpredictability, its ability to ambush us in lovely ways or bite us unexpectedly in the ass. Most of the futures I imagined as a boy have, for instance, come up deeply short, or else I would now be flying my individual jet pack through the spired cityscape of New York and vacationing on the moon. And who, honestly, could have imagined the Internet, no less social media and cyberspace (unless, of course, you had read William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer 30 years ago)? Who could have dreamed that a single country’s intelligence outfits would be able to listen in on or otherwise intercept and review not just the conversations and messages of its own citizens -- imagine the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century -- but those of just about anyone on the planet, from peasants in the backlands of Pakistan to at least 35 leaders of major and minor countries around the world? This is, of course, our dystopian present, based on technological breakthroughs that even sci-fi writers somehow didn’t imagine. And who thought that the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street were coming down the pike or, for that matter, a terror caliphate in the heart of the former Middle East or a Donald Trump presidential run that would go from success to success amid free media coverage the likes of which we’ve seldom seen? (Small career tip: don’t become a seer. It’s hell on Earth.)All of this might be considered the bad but also the good news about the future. On an increasingly grim globe that seems to have failure stamped all over it, the surprises embedded in the years to come, the unexpected course changes, inventions, rebellions, and interventions offer, at least until they arrive, grounds for hope. On the other hand, in that same grim world, there's an aspect of the future that couldn’t be more depressing: the repetitiveness of so much that you might think no one would want to repeat. I’m talking about the range of tomorrow’s headlines that could be written today and stand a painfully reasonable chance of coming true.I’m sure you could produce your own version of such future headlines in a variety of areas, but here are mine when it comes to Washington’s remarkably unwinnable wars, interventions, and conflicts in the Greater Middle East and increasingly Africa.

What “Victory” Looks LikeLet’s start with an event that occurred in Iraq as 2015 ended and generated headlines that included “victory,” a word Americans haven’t often seen in the twenty-first century -- except, of course, in Trumpian patter. ("We're going to win so much -- win after win after win -- that you're going to be begging me: 'Please, Mr. President, let us lose once or twice. We can't stand it any more.' And I'm going to say: 'No way. We're going to keep winning. We're never going to lose. We're never, ever going to lose.’") I’m talking about the “victory” achieved at Ramadi, a city in al-Anbar Province that Islamic State (IS or ISIL) militants seized from the Iraqi army in May 2015. With the backing of the U.S. Air Force -- there were more than 600 American air strikes in and around Ramadi in the months leading up to that victory -- and with U.S.-trained and U.S.-financed local special ops units leading the way, the Iraqi military did indeed largely take back that intricately booby-trapped and mined city from heavily entrenched IS militants in late December. The news was clearly a relief for the Obama administration and those headlines followed.And here’s what victory turned out to look like: according to the Iraqi defense minister, at least 80% of the city of 400,000 was destroyed. Rubblized. Skeletized. “City” may be what it’s still called, but it’s hardly an accurate description. According to New York Times





reporter Ben Hubbard, who visited Ramadi soon after the “victory,” few inhabitants remained. Of an Iraqi counterterrorism general there with him,

Hubbard wrote:“In one neighborhood, he stood before a panorama of wreckage so vast that it was unclear where the original buildings had stood. He paused when asked how residents would return to their homes. ‘Homes?’ he said. ‘There are no homes.’”Hubbard also cited the head of the Anbar provincial council as estimating that “rebuilding the city would require $12 billion.” (Other Iraqi officials put that figure at $10 billion.) That’s money no one has, including an Iraqi government increasingly strapped by plummeting oil prices -- and keep in mind that that’s only a single destroyed community. The earlier, smaller victories of the Kurds at Kobane and Sinjar in Syria, also backed by devastating U.S. air power, destroyed those towns in a similar fashion, as for instance has Bashar al-Assad’s barrel bombing air force and military in parts of the city of Aleppo and in the now thoroughly devastated city of Homs in central Syria. The Russians have, of course, entered the fray, too, in the American style, bombing and advising.Let’s add one more thing before we write our future headlines. The day after President Obama gave his final State of the Union address, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter visited the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Eighteen hundred of that division’s members are soon to be deployed to Iraq to aid Iraqi military units in their drive to retake parts of their country from the Islamic State. For those future advisers, Carter elaborated on the president’s plans, laying out in some detail how he (and presumably Obama) saw the conflict playing out. Favoring the image of the Islamic State as a metastasizing cancer, he said:“The ISIL parent tumor has two centers -- Raqqa in Syria, and Mosul in Iraq. ISIL has used its control of these cities and nearby territories as a power base from which to derive considerable financial resources, manpower, and ideological outreach. They constitute ISIL’s military, political, economic, and ideological centers of gravity.“That’s why our campaign plan’s map has got big arrows pointing at both Mosul and Raqqa. We will begin by collapsing ISIL’s control over both of these cities and then engage in elimination operations through other territories ISIL holds in Iraq and Syria.”In fact, such a campaign would give “elimination operations” new meaning, since it would clearly involve quite literally eliminating the urban infrastructure of significant parts of the region. Three cities are, in fact, at present targeted: Fallujah (population perhaps 300,000), the other major IS-controlled city in al-Anbar Province, Mosul (the second largest city in Iraq, with a population presently estimated at 1 to 1.5 million), and Raqqa, the Syrian “capital” of the Islamic State, now reportedly stuffed with refugees (population 200,000-plus). Put them together and you have a 2016 plan for a U.S.-backed set of campaigns in Iraq and Syria based on the same formula as the taking of Ramadi: massive American air power in support of heavily trained and advised Iraqi special ops forces and army units or, in Syria, Kurdish peshmerga outfits and assorted Kurdish and Syrian rebels. Add in the Islamic State’s urge to turn the urban areas it holds into giant bombs and what you have is a plan for the rubblization of yet more cities in the region.There has, of course, been much talk about an offensive to retake Mosul since relatively small numbers of Islamic State fighters captured the city from tens of thousands of fleeing Iraqi troops in June 2014. There was, for instance, a highly touted spring offensive against Mosul that was much discussed in early 2015 but never happened, so it’s impossible to be sure that the overstretched, generally underperforming Iraqi military will even make it to Mosul in 2016 or that there will be any non-American “boots” available to take Raqqa, especially since that city sits well outside any imaginable future Kurdistan. Still, assuming





all went “well,” we essentially know what the future holds: Ramadi-style “victories.”

As a result, the end of the year headline for American/Iraqi/Kurdish/Syrian rebel operations -- adapted from an infamous 1968 line by an anonymous American officer in Vietnam after U.S. planes had pummeled the provincial capital of Ben Tre -- would be: “We Destroyed the Cities to Save Them.”Based on Ramadi, you could then perhaps offer these "ballpark" (not that any stadiums would be left standing) future estimates for rebuilding: Falluja, $10 billion; Raqqa, $7 billion; Mosul, $20 to $25 billion. Those are obviously fantasy figures, but the point is that “success” against and “victory” over the Islamic State would undoubtedly leave much of the region a modern Carthage. And who would pay for a new Ramadi, or Mosul, or Fallujah, or Raqqa, no less all of them and more?Put another way, “victory” would mean that Iraq will have far fewer habitable cities and a far larger number of displaced people whose resettlement will undoubtedly be subject to the ethnic tensions that helped fuel the Islamic State in the first place. This represents a reasonably predictable future, one that should be obvious enough to anyone who took a half-serious look at the situation. It certainly should be obvious to Ashton Carter, as well as to American planners at the Pentagon and in the Obama administration. And yet the planning goes on as if “victory” were a meaningful category under the circumstances.And here’s the thing: you can join the Islamic State in blowing up the physical plant of Syria and parts of Iraq and then eject its fighters from the rubble, but you’ll be destroying the means of existence of a vast, increasingly unsettled population. What you may not be able to do in the process is destroy a movement that began in an American military prison in Iraq and has always been a set of ideas. You may simply create a legend.Unleashing the Special Operators and the DronesNow, let’s consider another set of potential future headlines linked to present planning and past experience. Secretary of Defense Carter claims that the U.S. strategy against the Islamic State is focused on creating “sustainable political stability in the region,” by which he means not just the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, but all of the Greater Middle East. As he said to the members of the 101st Airborne:“Next, let me describe the fight outside of Iraq and Syria. As we work to destroy the parent tumor in Iraq and Syria, we must also recognize that ISIL is metastasizing in areas such as North Africa, Afghanistan, and Yemen. The threat posed by ISIL, and groups like it, is continually evolving, changing focus and shifting location. It requires from us, therefore, a flexible and nimble response with a broad reach.”For this, he clearly plans to let loose American Special Operations forces not just in Syria but elsewhere on assassination missions against key Islamic State figures or those heading their distant franchises. He’s also intent on sending in the drones across the region in “counter-terror operations and strikes on high-value targets” to “act decisively to prevent ISIL affiliates from becoming as great of a threat as the parent tumor itself.”As with the future taking of cities in Iraq and Syria, there is an experiential baseline for such operations across the region. In his book Kill Chain, Andrew Cockburn has called this approach to the enemy “the kingpin strategy.” It was first used in the drug wars in Latin America and Central America in the 1990s and then, after 9/11, adapted to the weaponized drone and special operations forces. The idea was to dismantle drug cartels or later terror outfits from the top down by taking out their leadership figures.In fact, in both the drug wars and the terror wars, as Cockburn shows, the results of this strategy have been repetitiously calamitous. The drone, for instance, has proven remarkably capable of “eliminating” both the top leadership of terror groups and key





“lieutenants” as well as other influential figures in those organizations -- with the grimmest results: under the pressure of the drones and those special ops

raids, such organizations (like the drug cartels before them) simply replaced their dead leaders with often younger and even more aggressive figures, while attacks rose and the groups themselves, instead of folding up, spread across the Greater Middle East and deep into Africa. The drones, bringing with them relatively widespread “collateral damage,” including the deaths of significant numbers of children, have terrorized the societies over which they cruise and so proved an ideal recruitment poster for those spreading terror groups.Hence, first in the Bush era in a seat-of-the-pants way and then in the Obama years in a highly organized fashion, drone assassination campaigns in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Somalia killed leadership figures while functionally helping to spread the terror organizations they directed. They have, that is, been engaged not in a war on terror, but in a war for terror. When you look at the expansion of those terror outfits, including the growing numbers of “franchises” of the Islamic State, it should be obvious that, from special ops missions to drone assassinations, from full-scale invasions to the destruction of cities, the 14-plus years of varied American strategies and military tactics have repetitively contributed to one horror after another, sucking much of the region into the vortex.What’s striking when you listen to Secretary of Defense Carter is that, obvious as this may be, none of it seems to truly penetrate in Washington. Otherwise how do you explain the lack of any serious recalibration of American actions, the only debate being between those in the Obama administration, including the president, who favor a version of mission creep and their Republican critics who favor doing more in a bigger way? In other words, in 2016 we’re clearly going to witness further rounds of the utterly familiar with -- somehow -- the expectation that something different will happen. Since that’s not likely, for the next set of future headlines just reach into the familiar past, substituting, when necessary, the future terror kingpin’s name: “AQAP [al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula] announces death of [fill in name] in U.S. drone strike,” “U.S.: ISIS no. 2 killed in U.S. drone strike in Iraq,” “Army elite Delta Force kills top ISIS official, [fill in name], in daring Syria raid,” “Pentagon says senior al-Qaeda leader killed in drone strike,” and so on more or less ad infinitum.

The Arc of InstabilityRecently, with Ashton Carter’s strategy for “stability” on my mind, I caught a phrase in a news report that I hadn't heard for quite a while. A journalist, perhaps on NPR, was discussing the recent al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) terror attack on a hotel in Burkina Faso, a previously relatively stable country in West Africa, where at least 30 died, mainly foreigners. He spoke of a spreading “arc of instability” in the region.Back in the early years of the century, officials of the Bush administration and supportive neocons regularly used that phrase to describe the Greater Middle East, from Pakistan to North Africa. Strangely enough, it disappeared in the post-Iraqi invasion years and remained largely absent in the Obama years as the disastrous Libyan intervention, presidentially orchestrated drone assassination campaigns, and other actions helped further transform the Greater Middle East into a genuine "arc of instability."Today, in a way that would have been unimaginable back in 2002-2003, the region is filled with failing or failed states from Afghanistan and Syria to Libya, Yemen, and Mali. While Iraq may not quite be a failed state, it is no longer exactly a country either, but something like a tripartite entity. And so it goes, and so it evidently will go if the U.S., as





in 2015, drops another 23,000 bombs and thousands of additional munitions on the region -- or far more, as seems likely under the mission-creep pressure

of the war with the Islamic State.We can’t, of course, know just what countries will fail next. However, it’s safe to assume that, as long as the Obama strategy -- and the Hillary Clinton or Ted Cruz or Donald Trump or Marco Rubio one that may follow -- involves more (or much more) of the same, more (or much more) of the same is likely to happen. As a result, similar predictable headlines will appear, as countries dissolve in various ways and the Islamic State, groups like al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or newly founded terror outfits gain footholds amid the chaos. In that case, you only have to look into the recent past for headlines-to-come and adapt them slightly: “ISIS Is Building ‘Little Nests’ in [name of country here], U.S. Defense Secretary Warns,” “ISIS Is Gaining Ground in [name of country here], Competing with al-Qaeda,” “Islamic State Gained Strength in [name of country] by Co-opting Local Jihadists,“ and so on.Amid the grimly predictable, there are, of course, many unknowns. Above all, we have no idea what it means at this point in history to turn a region, city by city, country by country, into something like a vast failed state and then continue to bomb the rubble. How do we begin to imagine what could emerge from the ruins of such a failed region in such a world, from an arc of instability far vaster than anything we have contemplated since World War II? I wouldn’t want to predict the headlines that could someday emerge from that situation, but whatever surprises are in store for us, the mere prospect of such a future should make your blood run cold.Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War,

Cees: remember to know your enemy, Abu Mus'ab al-Suri, Strategy is the implementation of an operational plan (or plans) in the pursuit of specific goals. One voice worth considering is Abu Musab al Suri, who viewed the loss of a true Salafist state, Afghanistan, as the most significant setback for the movement. In response to this and the great strategic error in Iraq, he advocated a different interpretation of Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda was to act as a “call” or a “methodology” for global revolution. Groups should focus on failing states in the Islamic world. After a long period of conflict, Salafism could reassert itself as the center of a state’s identity. This would set the stage for open warfare waged against the modern world

Nov. 18, 2013 By Michael Hirsh, National Journal. "There are at least 25 failed states in the world, an unprecedented number," says Pascal Boniface, head of the Paris-based Institute for International and Strategic Relations. They stretch from Yemen and Somalia to Syria and Libya and Iraq. Ever since the death of Osama bin Laden, President Obama and his senior lieutenants have been telling war-weary Americans that the end of the nation's longest conflict is within sight. "Core al-Qaida is a shell of its former self," Obama said in a speech in May. "This war, like all wars, must end." That was the triumphal tone of last year's reelection campaign, too.The truth is much grimmer. Intelligence officials and terrorism experts today believe that the death of bin Laden and the decimation of the Qaida "core" in Pakistan only set the stage for a rebirth of al-Qaida as a global threat. Its tactics have morphed into something more insidious and increasingly dangerous as safe havens multiply in war-torn or failed states—at exactly the moment we are talking about curtailing the National Security Agency's monitoring capability.





Al-Qaeda and “Near Enemy” StrategyFRIDAY, JUNE 7, 2013 Pir-Mohammad Mollazehi, Expert on Indian Subcontinent

After the beginning of Arab Spring, the terrorist Al-Qaeda organization has undergone an important change in strategy. As a result of that change, Al-Qaeda has excluded the United States and other Western powers, which it previously considered as “far enemy,” from its new strategy. Instead, the group has focused on the “near enemy,” that is the Arab countries in the region. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the current leader of Al-Qaeda who ascended to his new position after the former leader of the group, Osama Bin Laden, was killed in an operation by the US Marines in Pakistani town of Abbottabad, has issued his important statement about jihad from the safety of his hide-out in Hindu Kush Mountains. In his statement, he has urged all the members and supporters of Al-Qaeda to use all their capacities and capabilities to help the people who oppose and fight against the ruling regimes in the Arab world and take sides with anti-government armed groups. To replace the “near enemy” for the “far enemy,” Ayman Al-Zawahiri has made recourse to a very simple argument.From the viewpoint of Ayman Al-Zawahiri, as long as the dictatorial regimes, which govern various countries in the Arab world, continue to bask in the support they receive from the United States and the European countries, they will never let go of power reins. On the other hand, he argues, the mercantilist Western powers will withdraw their support for any of their regional allies when and where they reach the conclusion – according to a simple cost-benefit calculation – that the cost of supporting their allies would be way higher than its benefits. That, Al-Zawahiri believes, is exactly the time that Al-Qaeda can get active and help the opposition forces to overthrow dictatorial regimes in the Arab world. It is quite another issue whether Al-Qaeda will make any effort afterwards to grasp the power. This is only a first step because after the overthrow of any dependent Arab state there would be more room for fostering radical Islamic ideas which are adhered to by Al-Qaeda.In reality, however, the foreign powers look to the Arab world exactly through the same argument that Al-Qaeda uses to approach these countries and, naturally, adjust their plans accordingly.This means that the Western world is also making the most of the power of arms and strong motivation, which characterizes Al-Qaeda, in its regional planning for the Middle East. By doing so, the West overthrows Arab states whose expiry dates have reached without allowing Al-Qaeda to snatch power once those dependent regimes are gone. In fact, the West sees Al-Qaeda as a means for achieving its ends. As a result, the





developments known as the Arab Spring are actually moving in a totally opposite direction than what Al-Qaeda leaders imagine. This has been true in

all Arab countries which have so far underwent major changes in their power structure. Most probably the same scenario will be applied to other Arab states which are going through similar conditions of change or will experience that change in future. That what happens in practice is quite a different issue and will depend on the existing conditions as well as the balance of power between specific political and social forces in every target country.The issue, however, which is of special importance is the reality that the military power and fighting capacities of Al-Qaeda, which has gained a lot of experience during the war in Afghanistan, can be used to good effect in the Middle East and also be exploited to impose changes on the existing power structure of various countries. However, Al-Qaeda will be never allowed to use force in order to secure its grasp on the ruling power. This experience has been already gained in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt and there is no reason why a similar situation should not be repeated in other Arab countries which have been swept by the wave of the Arab Spring. At present, Al-Qaeda has taken its forces into Syria and is fighting an uphill battle against the incumbent government of President Bashar Assad. Syria, however, is different from other Arab countries in that it is not an ally of the Western powers.

As a result, Al-Qaeda is not in a position to pursue its “near enemy” strategy within its past framework by toppling the ruling government in the country. On the opposite, even the change of the ruling power in Syria will not be an immediate and effective contribution to Al-Qaeda’s “far enemy” strategy which targets the United States and the European countries.

On the opposite, since Syria is part of the axis of resistance, which is currently trying to curb further influence of the West in the Arab world and is also a staunch enemy of Israel, the overthrow of its government will undermine part of the power and might of the Islamic world in the face of the consolidated front of non-Muslim enemies which are also the enemies of Al-Qaeda according to its “far enemy” strategy.

The story, however, does not end here. The Western world is pursuing its own special strategies with regard to Al-Qaeda. From the viewpoint of the West, Al-Qaeda should make a revision in its main strategy and its division of the world into two fronts; namely, the Islamic front as opposed to the infidel front. As a result, the West expects Al-Qaeda to change its ideological beliefs and change the focus of its war from the infidel front to within the Islamic front just in the same way that the group has already revised its strategic concerns by replacing the “near enemy” for the “far enemy” and giving priority to fighting Arab countries of the region. In more clear terms, Syria is now in a position which can be used as a good opportunity to ignite a war within the Islamic camp by fanning the flames of sectarian strife between Shias and Sunnis. Apart from that, if the civil war in Syria takes a sectarian turn, the entire region will become prone to further spread of sectarianism to other countries like Lebanon and Iraq, in which case, the sectarian forces will set their sights on higher goals.The Al-Nusra Front, which is affiliated to Al-Qaeda, is currently playing a prominent part in developments in Syria and its armed fighters are also playing an increasingly significant role. The group has already owned up to its affiliation to Al-Qaeda and is also linked with a similar ideological group in Iraq in order to form a bigger group known as Al-Rafedain of Iraq and the Levant. In this way, Al-Qaeda has entered a field from which it cannot easily withdraw. On the other hand, it is not allowed to gain power to the extent that would





enable it to take the place of the currently ruling regimes. A review of regional and international rivalries which have converged on Syria will easily

reveal that a new balance of power is taking shape in the region which will be ensued by more and larger-scale threats compared to threats which can be perceived right now. As ethnic and ideological beliefs gain more power in Syria and Iraq, they form a triangle after the military power of the two countries is added to them.That triangle will sooner or later adapt itself to ethnic and religious conditions in Syria and Iraq. In that case, separatism based on ethnic and religious grounds will be the sole solution to problems emanating from that situation, and other ways for finding a solution to those problems will be totally blocked. As a result, if the realities on the ground are not perceived correctly and parties involved in Syria crisis only think about the ephemeral benefits of grasping the power or maintaining their existing exclusive power, Al-Qaeda’s “near enemy” strategy is sure to have its consequences. As a result of those consequences, the aforesaid strategy will force the group to forget about the “far enemy” for a long time to come. On the other hand, the Arab world will become an arena for the power struggle of the Western world. Of course, that struggle will take place according to a new plan which will be much more complicated than the previous plans. As a result, before the full extent of the new Western plan is comprehended by regional countries, the entire region will once again find itself under domination of the West.




Documents

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 4-1-AQIM-12