A Decade later….What remains of Al-Qaeda?

London, Asharq Al-Awsat- Today marks the 10th anniversary of the tragic attacks that claimed the lives of thousands of victims, among them hundreds of Muslims working in the World Trade Center.

The 9/11 attacks were the beginning of major changes, both inside the United States itself and in its relations with the Arab and Muslim world.  Following these attacks, former President George W. Bush’s administration raised the banner of the “war on terror” and launched a large-scale military campaign in Afghanistan to crush the Taliban regime and another campaign in Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime.  There are still American forces in these two countries and Washington continues to shoulder heavy military and financial burdens because of these two wars.

Following the attacks, the US administration carried out a large review of the security and intelligence services’ performance with the aim of preventing a repetition of these attacks.  Travel and immigration measures from several Arab and Muslim countries were also tightened from which some Arab students and immigrants in the United States suffered forcing some of them to move their studies to European or Asian universities.

Then US President Barack Obama succeeded in coming to power in early 2009 and sought to improve his countries’ relations with the Muslim world.  He delivered a famous speech in Cairo in which he asserted that the war on terror did not mean war on Islam.  The US forces succeeded in killing Al-Qaeda organization leader Osama Bin Laden in the Pakistani city of Abbottbad some months ago, which was considered an important blow to the organization.  The US administration also succeeded in preventing a repetition of large-scale attacks on the country since the 9/11 ones.

Now and 10 years since these attacks, what are the results of the war on terror?

Has the world become safer after the US administration launched the war on terror?  Are the results of this war commensurate with its huge financial and human costs?  Did the US administration have an option other than launching the war on terror?  For, example, were there political or economic options that would have made the United States safer?

But it can be said that the assassination of the 9/11 attacks’ mastermind last May was the final word for an intensive hunt yet the legacy of these 10 years remains on several fronts for extremism despite the statements and assertions of the new US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that Al-Qaeda’s influence has receded much and stressing that the organization is now weaker but still poses a danger to US security.  Speaking to correspondents after visiting the memorial and museum established in memory of the 9/11 victims, he said:  “These attacks were tragic but we drew much inspiration from them”, adding that they brought the country around a single commitment, namely, that this terror “will not be repeated.”  He added “we have achieved big success against Al-Qaeda and its leaders since the 9/11 attacks” and pointed out that three of its four senior leaders were killed and several lower rank leaders were either killed or detained”, adding that this “destroyed to a large extent (Al-Qaeda’s) leadership and its ability to plan attacks like the 9/11 ones.”

From Madrid to Mumbai, from London to Bali, and from Pakistan to Kenya, only very few and limited spots in the world escaped the terrorist attacks during this decade.

It is true that the “Arab spring” which blossomed in 2011 provided a glitter of optimism at the end of the decade with these floundering steps toward reform but the results are not certain.

The bold hijacking of the four American planes from their American airports and turning them into lethal missiles on that sunny September day awakened the American military giant from the post-Vietnam war slumber.  Historians compared this attack to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, which was the last attack on an American territory and it too awakened the giant from his slumber.

Yet despite the radical changes in the world security’s balances of power and the alliances that were concluded, that decade barely saw the emergence of a new dawn in the world’s history like it did after the World War II.  It was just another chapter in the age of globalization that started with the end of the Cold War, according to James Lindsay, the analyst at the Foreign Relations Council in Washington.

The figure of the 3,000 victims who lost their lived on that sunny day in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania appears miniscule when compared to conflicts like those in Rwanda, the Balkans, and Iraq where 110,000 civilians have died since the US invasion in 2003.

Some believed the reaction after the attack was very violent:  The overthrow of Taliban from power in Afghanistan in the search for Bin Laden and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.  The two wars destroyed any sympathy the international community had for the United States which led the international coalition in the war in Afghanistan and persuaded the world, by the decision of George Bush, to invade Iraq in 2003 on the basis of a false certainty that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The two countries are facing a large measure of doubts after the Western forces’ withdrawal from them.  With the start of the gradual withdrawal of the international support force (ISAF) from Afghanistan this summer and the scheduled withdrawal of the last American forces from Iraq at the end of this year, there are still massive questions about the future of the two fragile new governments, which were formed with aspirations for democracy, waiting for answers.

On his part, Egyptian Islamist Hani al-Sibai, director of the London-based Al-Maqrizi Studies Center, tells Asharq Al-Awsat:  “What is left of (Al-Qaeda) following the killing of Bin Laden and also several organization leaders by the missile strikes from drone in the tribal belt is the (ideological unity) despite the absence of an organic connection between those who believe in the organization’s ideas in various countries and places and also even though they are not from the first generation of second cadre?  Yes, Bin Laden was killed but the organization’s elements and those believing in his ideas are still in Yemen, Iraq, Indonesia, and Malaysia and Bin Laden is for them (the martyr of the idea).”

Al-Sibai adds:  “Leaders were arrested, others are jailed in Guantanamo, and other leaders are under house arrest in Iran like Saif-al-Adl, the organization’s military commander, but the organization is present in Khorasan and the tribal belt and its leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is still alive.  The organization is now (mercurial), adapts to its environment, and benefits from the US administration’s mistakes.  It is like a “carpet floating over water.”  The Egyptian Islamist went on to say that the US administration’s preoccupation with hunting down the organization’s elements gave the opportunity for the appearance of the “Arab spring.”  Even the “CIA” was taken by surprise by it and did not predict it.”  He added:  “Al-Qaeda organization was weakened 10 years after the attack on it, the strikes, and the loss of its leader but it can still plan attacks or be a source of inspiration for them.  The groups moving in its orbit in Yemen and the African coast are still dangerous and capable of mobilization.”

He explains:  “Bin Laden’s liquidation after 10 years of the chase weakened the organization centrally but placed it in a defensive position as a result of the attacks that targeted its Pakistani strongholds with American drones armed with missiles, killing hundreds in its ranks.”

At the same time, Pakistan emerged as the new battlefield against terror as a new round with Al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists at the Afghan-Pakistani borders.  The relationship that brought Washington and Islamabad together in this war and the post-9/11 developments became threadbare.  The American drones’ attacks on Pakistani territories quite often angered Islamabad but the Bin Laden assassination operation in Abbottabad was the straw which broke the camel’s back.

US President Barack Obama reiterated several times that the United States was not at war with Islam but with the “terrorist groups” which attacked the country and were still conspiring to harm it.  He stressed that Al-Qaeda and its allies trying to kill the Americans were the enemies of his country and pointed out that “the majority of those killed by Al-Qaeda on the ground were Muslims.”

Yemen was another center that attracted Washington’s attention.  It is the birthplace of the armed American-born Anwar al-Awlaki whose name was associated with the group that hijacked the September planes and is the motivator of the suspected officer in the shootings at Fort Hood military base in Texas and even the Nigerian youth Omar Farouq who retired the Detroit bombing with his underclothes.

Obama approved in April 2010 the killing of Imam Al-Awlaki within the framework of the efforts to curb the growing Al-Qaeda threat in the Arabian Peninsula which is now coming intermittent attacks by American drones where Al-Qaeda is sowing the seeds of troubles in Yemen.

While officials and experts welcomed the killing of Bin Laden by an American elite force in May and anticipated the beginning of the end of the network he had set up in the late 1980s, others believed that nothing was resolved and that the organization still posed a danger even though its influence had diminished.  At the end of June, Michael Leiter, who managed the National Counterterrorism Center until June, said “(Al-Qaeda’s) nucleus is now under control” and asserted that “they are now weaker than they were before.”

The new US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said “the strategic defeat of Al-Qaeda) is within grasp.”  Several experts pointed out that Ayman al-Zawahiri succeeded Bin Laden at the head of the network and made many statements and calls for “jihad” on the internet but he does not have his predecessor’s charisma or halo.

As the decade comes to an end, Washington feels confident it has stopped the terrorist plans against its territories but the US invasion of two Muslim countries increased the level of hostility to it all over the Islamic world.  The alleged use of torture, the rendition of those suspected of involvement in terrorist operation, and the Guantanamo camp where 170 suspects are still suffering without trial have evoked the European allies’ criticisms and condemnation of Washington’s abandonment of the torch of defending human rights.