Don’t call it a comeback. Al Qaeda, the group responsible for the worst terrorist attack in United States history, never really left. Instead, while news media coverage inordinately focused on the Islamic State, al Qaeda re-tooled and re-established itself for a new age.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of al Qaida’s death were greatly exaggerated. Anticipatory obituaries appeared after the death of al Qaida founder Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. Then-President Barack Obama, for instance, said on Sept. 10, 2011 that al Qaeda was “on a path to defeat.” Similarly, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said in July 2011 that the U.S. was “within reach of strategically defeating al Qaeda.”
The rise of the Islamic State — an al Qaeda branch itself until an official split in 2014 cemented a long-standing rivalry — received considerable attention from reporters, pundits, and policymakers, as well as the public they influence.
But as terror analysts Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Bridget Moreng pointed out in an April 2015 op-ed, “The Islamic State’s offensive through Iraq and Syria last year has dominated the headlines, but the jihadist group that has won the most territory in the Arab world over the past six months is Al Qaeda.”
The two analysts cited the Islamic State’s comparatively greater emphasis on media and more highly-developed media capabilities as part of the reason. This difference however, has worked to al Qaeda’s benefit.
The terror group, led since 2011 by bin Laden-successor Ayman al-Zawahiri, has employed a less flashy strategy that stands in contrast to its competitor’s use of gruesome, and accordingly well-publicized, atrocities. Nor has al Qaeda, for the most part, attempted to hold and govern wide swaths of territory. The Islamic State’s decision to do so and to declare a caliphate under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi resulted in its split from al Qaeda.
By adopting a more covert approach, al Qaeda has been able to expand while flying under the radar as the West and its Arab government allies have focused on the Islamic State. Ironically, al Qaeda has taken a page from the counterinsurgency strategy employed as part of the “surge” in Iraq to defeat it. By embedding with local populations, selling itself as less of a threat than the Islamic State, and relinquishing the scorched-earth tactics it had once employed as al Qaeda in Iraq, Zawihiri has led his organization to steady gains.
Indeed, as Gartenstein-Ross and fellow analyst Nathaniel Barr noted in an important August 2016 Hudson Institute report, “How Al-Qaeda Survived the Islamic State Challenge,” al Qaeda has quietly, and yet relatively rapidly, gained ground in conflict zones across the Middle East and North Africa.
The path towards this approach, the Hudson report noted, began with al Qaeda in Iraq’s defeat in the surge. Seeking to recover, bin Laden proposed a “new phase” to “reclaim…the trust of a large segment of those who lost their trust in the jihadis” in a May 2010 letter to a top al Qaeda operative.
Zawahiri expanded upon this strategy, releasing a “General Guidelines for Jihad” in September 2013 that, among other things, called for a strategy likely to be familiar to U.S. counterinsurgency specialists. Al Qaeda operatives, it said, must be “creating awareness within the masses, inciting them, and exerting efforts to mobilize them so that they can revolt against their rulers.” Further, the guidelines cautioned that al Qaeda should “avoid entering into an armed clash” with Arab regimes unless “forced to do so.”
Al Qaeda’s decision to avoid, if possible, attacking Arab governments, reflects its desire to adopt a more covert approach, avoiding headlines and the attention that comes with them. However, it also shows a terror group adjusting to the post-2011 Arab Spring atmosphere, which gave the group a “new lease on life,” as Georgetown professor Daniel Byman noted in his 2015 book on al-Qaida and the Islamic State.
Al Qaeda’s changes have paid off for it. The territory from which it operates has significantly grown. According to an October 2016 interview with Gartenstein-Ross, it is “greater than it has ever been,” with affiliates worldwide having exploited U.S. retrenchment, upheaval in the Arab world, and weak states in Africa and the Middle East.
In a July 2016 leaked audio statement mocking the U.S., Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza proclaimed that although in 2001 the group was besieged in Afghanistan, it now had operatives in “Afghanistan and they have reached Sham [Syria], Palestine, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Somalia, the Indian subcontinent, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Mali, and Central Africa.”
On Jan. 7, 2017 Hamza was placed on a U.S. Specially Designated Global Terrorist list by executive order.
The media and policymakers might do well to remember an adage from a successful wartime commander of another era, Ulysses S. Grant, who said, “In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten; then he who continues the attack wins.”
Similarly, if we imagine that al Qaeda has been beaten while it continues to attack, it may surprise us again.
Sean Durns is a research analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.
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