Global Issues: Terrorism ~ Is Al Qaeda on the run?

Useful article in the Telegraph entitled ‘Is Al Qaeda on the run?’ - US experts now believe that they have fatally wounded the global terrorist organisation. Useful for considering the issue of how significant is the threat of terrorism to global security. A brief exerpt is:

‘“Basically, we are winning dramatically,” says Marc Sageman, a terrorism specialist and researcher. “You have an organisation which is a shadow of its former self. We have got to the point where the real danger is from lone wolves who decide by themselves to turn violent.” But those lone wolves can, of course, kill. Nidal Hasan, a Muslim US army psychiatrist, shot dead 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas on the pretext of disgust with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.’

The article also focuses on the activities and potential threat of othe rterrorist organisation such as AQAP: US intelligence agencies have identified the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as the greatest threat to Western interests. It has shown the sort of creativity that has often left our finest spooks and detectives a step behind. The plot to detonate bombs in printer cartridges – which made it through transit in London – in US cargo planes almost worked.

The radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a dual Yemeni and US citizen, has pioneered using the English language as a new medium to reach the diaspora of potential terrorists. Through his online sermons and magazine Inspire, “he is trying to make terrorism cool”, according to an authoritative Washington source working in counter-terrorism.

“AQAP’s menace derives in part from the fact that it hatches its plots relatively quickly, making them harder to track. “It has a much shorter decision-making cycle than the traditional al-Qaeda leadership, and Awlaki isn’t the same kind of perfectionist freak as bin Laden,” says the source. As Yemen begins to unravel, Awlaki and his cohorts could benefit from friendly tribes seeking to wrest control of swathes of the country from the unpopular government in Sana’a. That could provide the sort of sanctuary that bin Laden enjoyed first in Sudan and later in Afghanistan, before the 2001 US invasion put him to flight.

“There will be losers in the Arab Spring who will be fodder for terrorists, and uncertainty is an environment terrorists thrive in,” says Bruce Hoffman, an expert at Georgetown University steeped in al-Qaeda and a self-confessed pessimist.”