Western security services are on high alert against the Islamic State threat. The thousands of foreign fighters under its banner are post a risk of greater regional instability at the very least, and U.
Many of these individuals will have had little or no contact with the Islamic State as an organization, but they find its ideology and methods appealing and will act on their own. Ironically, some of these individuals may have preferred to go to Iraq and Syria, but Western disruption efforts make it easier for them to attack at home.
The United States and its allies should try to exploit the fight between the Islamic State and Al Qaeda and, ideally, diminish them both. Efforts to stop foreign fighters should stress this infighting. Playing up its atrocities, especially against other Sunni Muslims, will steadily discredit the group. Military efforts matter tremendously beyond the immediate theater of operations. For Al Qaeda, the constant drone campaign has diminished the core in Pakistan and made it harder for it to exercise control over the broader movement.
Zawahiri himself is an important target, as he is the last major figure of the original generation of Al Qaeda with a global profile, and he will not be easily replaced. For the Islamic State, defeat on the ground will do more to diminish its appeal than any propaganda measure. If it fails at this mission by losing territory, its luster will diminish. The threat to U.
Al Qaeda, its affiliates, and local jihadist groups have long put them in their crosshairs, and the Islamic State is likely to do the same. The overall level of risk remains roughly similar, but their manner of death if captured is likely to be more gruesome at the hands of the Islamic State.
Because of the appeal and strength of both Al Qaeda affiliates and the Islamic State, programs to gather intelligence and develop the strength of local regimes and at times substate groups when the regime is weak or hostile as in the case of Syria are vital.
These must be properly resourced and bureaucratically prioritized. At times U. Particularly important is identifying potential areas of expansion for jihadist groups and working with allies to exert control, nipping problems in the bud. Nigeria, Libya, and Yemen are only a few countries where the problems steadily grew worse but attracted only limited U. Because the quality of government matters as well as the amount of control a government exerts, the United States should also encourage political reform in such countries.
Some degree of continued infighting between Al Qaeda and the Islamic State is the most likely outcome. As such, the United States should prepare to confront a divided adversary. The case of Peter Kassig was especially controversial, as it seems Kassig may have actually personally provided emergency medical care to Abu Omar Aqidi, the Jabhat al-Nusra leader who called on the Islamic State to release Kassig, as well as several other jihadists, and because Kassig had converted to Islam during his time working in Syria.
Related Books. Thornton ; Introduction by Cheng Li. Jordan and America By Bruce Riedel. December - US forces land in Somalia , spearheading a UN-authorized humanitarian plan to bring in famine relief supplies.
Part of their challenge is disarming the various warlords who control the country. Prosecutors charge that bin Laden threw himself into the midst of this conflict, sending some of his followers to Somalia to train the warlords to fight the US troops.
Six Muslim radicals, who US officials suspect have links to bin Laden, are eventually convicted for the bombing. Although bin Laden is named as a possible unindicted co-conspirator, investigators do not recover conclusive evidence that the al Qaeda leader orchestrated the attack.
October - Eighteen US servicemen, part of a humanitarian mission to Somalia, die in an ambush perpetrated by militants who reportedly trained with al Qaeda. His family disowns him. He moves with his children and wives to Afghanistan, where he receives harbor from the Taliban. The United States indicts bin Laden on charges of training the people involved in the attack that killed 18 US servicemen in Somalia. It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose on us agents to rule us.
February - According to court documents, bin Laden orders the militarization of the East African cell of al Qaeda, a move that culminates in the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, , eight years to the day after US troops landed in the Saudi kingdom. May 29, - Bin Laden issues a statement entitled "The Nuclear Bomb of Islam," under the banner of the "International Islamic Front for Fighting the Jews and Crusaders," in which he states that "it is the duty of Muslims to prepare as much force as possible to terrorize the enemies of God.
November - Is indicted by the United States on counts of murder for the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. He claims he was trained in urban warfare and explosives at an Afghanistan camp run by bin Laden. May 29, - Four of bin Laden's alleged supporters are convicted of the bombings of the US embassies in Africa. December 25, - The Pakistan Observer publishes details of bin Laden's alleged funeral.
On the front page, the newspaper reports that an unnamed Taliban leader said bin Laden "had a peaceful natural death in mid-December in the vicinity" of the Tora Bora mountains. Instead, each side has its own separate tally.
But a sober assessment of the last 20 years suggests that the United States lost the broader war. But Americans have paid an exorbitant price for the two-decade campaign in strategic, economic, and moral terms. Austria-Hungary used the attack as a pretext for war against Serbia, triggering a cataclysmic conflict, World War I, in which four empires collapsed—the Russian, German, Ottoman, and Austria-Hungarian.
Recounting the costs is numbing: over 7, Americans killed, tens of thousands of soldiers seriously wounded, trillions of dollars expended, and over , civilian deaths in Iraq alone. ISIS is an even more ruthless and capable adversary.
If we consider the United States on defense, the success of the homeland-security complex in making Americans safer is highly debatable. A trillion dollars has poured into counter-terrorism programs, but to what end?
There have been some genuine payoffs. But as Steven Brill described in The Atlantic , the spigot of homeland security expenditure also produced a carnival of waste, endless turf wars between bloated federal agencies—and, in many cases, remarkably little additional security. Tens of billions of dollars were poured into programs like FirstNet, a telecommunications system for first responders, which may never be built. But Brill notes that more air marshals have been arrested themselves for example, for drunk driving , than have carried out arrests in airports or onboard a plane.
In , undercover tests found that airport screeners across the country failed to detect explosives and weapons about 95 percent of the time. Another core U. If that happens, the United States will be at war with the entire Muslim world, and very likely, will be facing decisive failure. Bin Laden never succeeded in rallying Muslims into a single internationalist bloc. Bush visited the Islamic Center in Washington D. The winners were Iran and China. Tehran subsequently became one of the most influential players in Iraqi politics.
Over the next decade, the United States relentlessly pursued Al Qaeda, targeting its leadership, disrupting its finances, destroying its training camps, infiltrating its communications networks and ultimately crippling its ability to function. The death of the charismatic bin Laden and the ascension of the much less compelling Ayman al-Zawahiri to the top leadership position further diminished the power of the Al Qaeda brand.
The Islamic State began as an Iraqi organization, and this legacy shapes the movement today. Jihadist groups proliferated in Iraq after the U. After months of negotiations, however, Zarqawi pledged his loyalty, and in his group took on the name Al Qaeda in Iraq AQI to signify this connection.
Yet even in its early days the group bickered with the Al Qaeda leadership. Zawahiri and bin Laden pushed for a focus on U. In public, Zawahiri and bin Laden continued to embrace their Iraqi affiliate. By Michael E. When the Syrian conflict broke out in , Zawahiri among others urged Iraqi jihadists to take part in the conflict, and Baghdadi—who had taken over leadership of the Iraqi group in —initially sent small numbers of fighters into Syria to build an organization.
Syria was in chaos, and the Iraqi jihadists established secure bases of operations there, raising money and winning new recruits to their cause. Their ambitions grew along with their organization, expanding to include Syria as well as Iraq. These Iraqi jihadists, by calling themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to reflect their new, broader orientation, also faced less pressure in Iraq with the departure of U.
In Syria, the group carved out more and more territory, benefiting as the Syrian regime focused on more moderate groups. At the same time, Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki put in place a series of disastrous policies to win favor among his Shia base, systematically excluding Iraqi Sunnis from power.
Zawahiri encouraged the Iraqi affiliate to move into Syria, but he also wanted to establish a separate group under separate command, with Syrians in the lead to give it a local face. Jabhat al-Nusra was thus created as the Syrian spin-off. But whereas Zawahiri saw this as a positive development, Baghdadi and other Iraqi leaders feared the group had simply gone native and become too independent, focusing too much on Syria and ignoring Iraq and the original leadership.
In an attempt to rein it in—and to reestablish his authority over the group—Baghdadi declared Jabhat al-Nusra part of his organization. Baghdadi refused and once again declared Jabhat al-Nusra subordinate to him, a move that sparked a broader clash in which perhaps four thousand fighters from both groups died. Daniel L. Williams Research Assistant. A number of jihadist groups—and even some members of official Al Qaeda affiliates—publicly expressed support for Baghdadi and the Islamic State, though they did not abandon Al Qaeda completely.
Small factions in Libya have declared their allegiance to the Islamic State, carrying out attacks in its name. Zawahiri and the other remaining members of the Al Qaeda core are no longer at the forefront of the global jihad; instead, the group that Zawahiri disowned out of concern it would damage the global jihadist project is now vying to lead it.
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