Sept. 11, 2001, was “The Day the World Modified.” The two,977 deaths by the hands of al-Qaeda terrorists led to huge coverage modifications and dominated U.S. politics for years afterward. The US went to warfare in Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, and the assaults contributed to the U.S. resolution to invade Iraq in 2003. America started an array of aggressive counterterrorism packages, together with the usage of armed drones to kill suspected terrorists, indefinite detention on the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and even torture. At dwelling, the U.S. authorities detained many American Muslims on flimsy pretexts and applied controversial packages associated to surveillance.
Over 20 years later, the effectiveness of those measures, and the risk al-Qaeda poses, stay hotly debated. Main terrorism consultants like Bruce Hoffman have warned that al-Qaeda stays sturdy, patiently ready for alternatives to strike whereas strengthening its international attain. Different main analysts are skeptical. Barak Mendelsohn and Colin Clarke contend that “al-Qaeda the group has failed.” In her 2022 risk testimony, Director of Nationwide Intelligence Avril Haines struck a center floor, warning that al-Qaeda nonetheless aspires “to conduct assaults in america” whereas additionally noting that its exterior assault capabilities are “degraded.” With the al-Qaeda risk maybe within the rearview mirror, President Biden withdrew troops from Afghanistan in 2021 to finish the so-called “without end wars” that sprang up within the aftermath of the 9/11 assaults.
This text presents a debate on the al-Qaeda risk right this moment, drawing on an extended article we wrote for Research in Battle & Terrorism. Nonetheless, relatively than a typical debate the place every creator makes a case for one aspect of the argument in separate essays, this text provides a back-and-forth on key arguments in the identical essay so as to higher have interaction the arguments. Asfandyar Mir argues that al-Qaeda stays a big risk, whereas Daniel Byman is extra skeptical. We every current our arguments after which spotlight the place we agree and disagree. We conclude by detailing the coverage implications of our arguments.
Why Al-Qaeda Is a Important and Enduring Downside: Asfandyar Mir
Al-Qaeda right this moment is led by long-time jihadist Ayman al-Zawahiri, who took the helm after U.S. particular operations forces killed Usama bin Laden in 2011. The core itself, largely based mostly in distant elements of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas and Iran, most likely has a number of hundred core members. Much more reside in its affiliate organizations, resembling al-Qaeda within the Arabian Peninsula, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and al-Qaeda within the Islamic Maghreb, amongst others. The group additionally has ties to a spread of different jihadist organizations and has sought to encourage unaffiliated Muslims world wide to strike america and in any other case perform the group’s goals.
Regardless of being essentially the most hunted group on the earth, al-Qaeda is ready to threaten the U.S. homeland, its broader safety pursuits, and regional stability in Africa, the Center East, and South Asia. To grasp this risk requires cautious consideration to the group’s political trajectory in mild of the constraints going through it.
Al-Qaeda stays dedicated in its political ambition of preventing america whereas concurrently embedding itself in key regional contexts. The enduring give attention to America, particularly of the core group led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, is a crucial indicator of the risk, as al-Qaeda has confronted intense stress to alter path. Dropping the main target towards america and rebranding to focus squarely on state-building in choose areas or towards new geopolitical powers, like China, might have blunted the wide-ranging worldwide consensus towards al-Qaeda and eased U.S. counterterrorism pressures. But al-Qaeda caught with the expensive selection of sustaining an anti-American platform whereas calibrating the native, regional, and transnational focus of various elements of the general community. With such changes, the group minimized focusing on pressures whereas retaining its historic anti-American raison d’etre.
Al-Qaeda has additionally managed to remain remarkably cohesive regardless of poaching stress from the rival Islamic State group, the absence of common path from core leaders, competing regional realities of associates, and multinational efforts to divide the group. With the rise of ISIL and the defection of Jabhat al Nusra in Syria in 2016, it was broadly assumed that Zawahiri and his prime lieutenants had misplaced management of the worldwide community on account of sluggish communications, and that the al-Qaeda model was unattractive for some, and even radioactive for different jihadi constituencies. But Zawahiri, regardless of his sclerotic type, managed to retain the loyalty of key prime elites based mostly in Iran and the Afghanistan-Pakistan area. He additionally succeeded in stopping associates from breaking away from al-Qaeda’s orbit — even after quite a few makes an attempt by the Islamic State to woo a few of them. Considerably, over the past 5 years, a number of associates consolidated politically whereas additionally rising funds, recruiting extra fighters, and growing permissive protected havens.
One such main affiliate is al-Qaeda within the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) in South Asia. This affiliate has stored Zawahiri — who reportedly stays within the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, and has a $25 million bounty on his head — alive. Critically, it helped the Afghan Taliban’s insurgency towards the U.S. army and the deposed Afghan authorities. Now, AQIS is supporting the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s increasing marketing campaign of violence in Pakistan whereas growing its personal marketing campaign towards India — actively supported by Zawahiri’s provocations.
In Somalia, al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab is extra politically cohesive and centered on hanging U.S. pursuits within the area and past than it was a decade in the past. It controls substantial territory and is al-Qaeda’s richest and most deadly affiliate. In an indication of al-Shabaab’s rising hazard, the Biden administration is redeploying troops to struggle it. Within the Sahel, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin has embedded itself in native communities by way of coalition-building and widespread help — threatening the steadiness of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and littoral West Africa. Regardless of the civil warfare and lack of territory in Yemen, al-Qaeda within the Arabian Peninsula stays a constant risk because it continues to put together operations focusing on the West. In Syria, after a collection of setbacks, al-Qaeda retains an necessary (even when constrained) presence within the type of Hurras-ud-Din. Different associates, like al-Qaeda within the Islamic Maghreb and Nigeria-based Jamaat Ansar al Muslimeen fi Bilad al Sudan, additionally reaffirm their allegiance to al-Qaeda.
Some analysts and policymakers, together with my co-author, acknowledge the damaging trajectory of al-Qaeda’s associates however assume that their rising capabilities are an area downside the place the associates are based mostly — and due to this fact the U.S. authorities can stay detached to them. Prior to now, nonetheless, the native capabilities of al-Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen have expanded into regional and transnational threats: When al-Qaeda within the Arabian Peninsula, for instance, was shaped in January 2009, it was thought of an area risk. Nevertheless it plotted assaults towards america in late 2009 and 2010. The excellence between which capabilities threaten U.S. pursuits and which of them don’t just isn’t at all times clear or, equally necessary, predictable.
Along with associates, al-Qaeda’s core has key relationships with Iran and the Taliban in Afghanistan, which place it to evade worldwide counterterrorism efforts and generate functionality. For instance, al-Qaeda is ready to leverage Iranian territory to guard its central management, who handle the affiliate community whereas funneling sources to completely different nodes of the group. Regardless of immense stress to take action, the Taliban haven’t damaged from al-Qaeda. As an alternative, members of al-Qaeda’s core and al-Qaeda’s Indian subcontinent affiliate stay in Afghanistan, effectively positioned to pursue a gentle buildup for deniable operations. Moreover, Iranian help can synergize al-Qaeda’s Afghanistan presence and increase its general functionality, regardless of the boundaries positioned on the group by each the Taliban and Tehran.
Al-Qaeda has main alternatives within the years forward. It is ready to boast a “win” from the elimination of a U.S.-allied regime and the U.S. army’s defeat in Afghanistan in addition to rising affect in East and West Africa, all of which place it to construct native and transnational operations capabilities in a number of theaters. American counterterrorism — the issue that has most constrained al-Qaeda — is weakening within the areas the place each the core and associates are current on account of diminishing sources, that are being redirected to answer intensifying strategic competitors with China and Russia. Al-Qaeda can also be attentive to America’s home political polarization — and may mount assaults to take advantage of divisions.
Al-Qaeda Is Much less Harmful Than within the Previous: Daniel Byman
The low variety of assaults on america and its key allies is one purpose to be skeptical of the al-Qaeda risk. The core didn’t perform a single profitable assault on america or Europe within the 2010s — and the final main plot in america by the core was Najibullah Zazi’s disrupted plan to bomb the New York subway. Though al-Qaeda within the Arabian Peninsula carried out the 2019 capturing assault at Naval Air Station Pensacola, nearly all of al-Qaeda associates haven’t attacked the U.S. homeland or Europe. Certainly, al-Qaeda within the Arabian Peninsula itself has been weakened within the final 5 years by way of drone strikes, U.A.E. army intervention, and the rising civil warfare in Yemen.
One other is that al-Qaeda has not succeeded by a few of its personal metrics. Al-Qaeda has failed to alter the regimes of Muslim-majority nations carefully allied with america. One in every of al-Qaeda’s ambitions — and one which Zawahiri himself lengthy pursued with single-minded devotion earlier than taking the helm of al-Qaeda — is to overthrow supposedly apostate regimes in Muslim-majority nations and set up Islamic governments of their locations. The group sees itself as a vanguard supporting Muslim insurgencies by way of coaching, funding, and provoking different teams. But in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden’s dwelling, the al-Saud dynasty stays entrenched, and the regime led by Mohammad bin Salman is implementing reforms to make the nation extra secular. In Egypt, the place Zawahiri shaped his first jihadist cell as a teen, the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship was changed by the dictatorship of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, an much more secular dictator. Certainly, in 2011, when the Arab world exploded with democratic power, al-Qaeda associates have been notably absent as main gamers initially.
My co-author is appropriate that al-Qaeda’s allies have grown stronger in Yemen, elements of sub-Saharan Africa, and different areas. Traditionally, nonetheless, these are areas of restricted curiosity to america. Counterterrorism help and army coaching are nonetheless applicable, however these don’t must be coverage priorities.
One other al-Qaeda purpose is the elimination of america and different so-called infidel army forces from Muslim-majority nations. Lately, america has deployed roughly 40,000-60,000 troops to the higher Center East, with a presence not solely in pre-9/11 allies like Jordan and Saudi Arabia but additionally in further nations like Iraq and Syria. This quantity is up from just below 30,000 earlier than the 9/11 assaults.
A part of the explanation for al-Qaeda’s issues are its many organizational weaknesses, together with monetary issues, management disruptions, restricted command and management, infighting, and the dearth of a geographical haven. Efficient counterterrorism exacerbates these weaknesses. Key devices embody drone strikes; army operations; coaching of allied army forces; in depth intelligence assortment and sharing; cooperation with allied safety companies to disrupt cells globally; higher border safety; and disrupting terrorist financing. Al-Qaeda has misplaced chief after chief since 9/11 — “extreme losses,” based on the U.S. intelligence neighborhood — and U.S. counterterrorism strikes have sowed confusion and exacerbated rivalries. And to keep away from drone strikes and different assaults, the group’s leaders have restricted their communications with the remainder of the motion, whereas fearing spies of their midst.
With out path from the highest, associates have more and more centered on native and regional considerations, altering the character of the risk they pose to U.S. pursuits. Al-Qaeda just isn’t prioritizing america in observe, regardless of the rhetoric of figures like Zawahiri. For associates and allies, the day-to-day vicissitudes of residing and preventing in civil warfare zones, and the fixed stress from rival teams and the federal government, result in selections in favor of the native battlefield over the wants of exterior operations, about which few native audiences care.
As well as, they’re much less in a position to plot elaborate high-casualty assaults on the West. An operation like 9/11, which concerned years of planning, operatives working in a number of nations, a haven in Afghanistan wherein to plan, prepare, and recruit, and different benefits — and depended upon the attackers receiving little scrutiny after they arrived in america — is way tougher to execute right this moment.
Certainly, al-Qaeda’s capability to cease infighting in Iraq and Syria and management the jihadist motion there proved the most important public blow to al-Qaeda and nearly led to the core group’s undoing by creating its greatest rival: ISIL. Tens of 1000’s of international fighters from no less than 110 nations flocked to hitch ISIL, not al-Qaeda, in Iraq and Syria. And in america and Europe, it was often ISIL that exerted a pull on potential international fighters and impressed attackers. ISIL additionally produced rival associates and rejected necessary elements of al-Qaeda’s ideology. The propaganda warfare between the 2 is bitter and diminishes them each. Each compete for recruits and fundraising, and so they and their associates usually struggle.
Al-Qaeda right this moment lacks a haven akin to what it loved within the Taliban’s Afghanistan earlier than 9/11. Within the Nineteen Nineties, al-Qaeda was in a position to prepare 1000’s of fighters in Afghanistan, elevating their talent ranges, giving them a typical trigger, and directing them after they returned to their dwelling nations. Though al-Qaeda has a presence in lots of nations, it can not run the industrial-scale coaching camps it ran prior to now.
As my co-author factors out, there are two attainable exceptions to this: Afghanistan and Iran. In Afghanistan, the Taliban — and its on-and-off Pakistani ally — have incentives to forestall the group from launching main worldwide terrorist assaults towards america, Europe, and plenty of key allies, though additional restricted assaults in South Asia are extra probably. As well as, america has some remaining (even when decreased) counterterrorism capability within the area that can nonetheless hinder al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The connection between Iran and al-Qaeda is troubled. There may be appreciable mistrust, and al-Qaeda members have complained they’re “captive … within the enemy state of Iran.” Counterterrorism operations are nonetheless carried out in Iran, such because the 2020 killing of Abu Muhammad al-Masri, a prime al-Qaeda official residing in Iran, reportedly by Israeli property working on the behest of america. Moreover, ties to Iran — a Shiite energy loathed by many spiritual Sunnis — are unpopular and taint al-Qaeda by affiliation.
Along with having been diminished by efficient counterterrorism, jihadists have additionally struggled to determine a foothold in Muslim communities. Risa Brooks has discovered that the American Muslim neighborhood self-polices, rooting out radicals in its midst, and cooperates recurrently with the FBI. Compounding this downside, lots of the would-be terrorists within the Western world are usually not the brightest bulbs within the chandelier. The checklist of their errors is lengthy and at occasions comical.
How Coverage Ought to Replicate the Risk
Counterterrorism and the battle towards al-Qaeda is not the primary coverage precedence it was within the years after 9/11. Nonetheless, a succession of presidents have maintained excessive ranges of spending and continued lots of the homeland safety, intelligence, and army packages that sprang up within the wake of the assaults.
Though we find yourself with completely different risk assessments, we agree on many points of the hazard. We share the view that American counterterrorism is a main constraint on al-Qaeda’s capability to assault america. We additionally consider that al-Qaeda doesn’t should be a powerful group to undertake or promote deadly assaults. Succesful teams can usually behave strategically and conduct cautious, restricted assaults, whereas weak teams can perform bloody ones, particularly in america, the place there’s easy accessibility to assault weapons. Though we disagree on the diploma of operational freedom the group enjoys in its Iranian haven and on the danger of terrorism emanating from the Taliban’s Afghanistan, we concur that these are necessary sanctuaries for al-Qaeda and a big problem for U.S. counterterrorism.
But our disagreements have important coverage implications. Byman’s evaluation means that the tempo and scope of counterterrorism stress could be decreased, although a lot of the low-cost, day-to-day efforts like intelligence cooperation and army coaching ought to proceed. Eternally wars can finish or, no less than, be diminished. Extra broadly, although different Salafi-jihadi threats like ISIL endure, a extra restricted risk by al-Qaeda implies the significance of counterterrorism within the hierarchy of U.S. international coverage priorities can fall. Any loss of life of an harmless is simply too many, but when the group is much less in a position to launch main worldwide terrorist assaults on america and its key allies, then different coverage considerations ought to come to the fore.
Mir’s studying means that counterterrorism wants to stay amongst America’s major-national safety priorities to handle al-Qaeda and comparable threats. America is weak to the second-order results of al-Qaeda’s terrorist exercise, resembling heightened polarization, divisiveness, and anti-immigrant sentiment. The U.S. authorities, by itself in addition to along side regional allies, must also preserve sturdy monitoring and focusing on capabilities throughout Afghanistan, Yemen, the Sahel, Somalia, and Syria. Lastly, dramatically scaling again the U.S. authorities’s personal counterterrorism sources, as implied by the Biden administration’s Nationwide Protection Technique, and decreasing investments in bilateral and multilateral counterterrorism efforts on account of strategic competitors with China and Russia could be a mistake: They’re important to stopping terrorist provocations and remaining centered on strategic competitors within the long-run.
Daniel Byman is a professor at Georgetown College and a senior fellow on the Brookings Establishment. Asfandyar Mir is a senior knowledgeable on the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Picture: Al Kataib through the Belfer Middle
