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Terrorism: Al-Qaeda faces decline, says global expert
(AKI) - Al-Qaeda's battle against the US has been a failure and the organisation is in decline, according to a leading international terrorism expert.Gilles Kepel, French author and academic, says al-Qaeda has been seriously weakened in Iraq and has been unable to attract widespread support in the Muslim world. "Al Qaeda? It is in decline," Kepel said in an interview published in the Italian daily, Il Sole 24 Ore . "It has not been able to mobilise the masses and create a consensus inside the Muslim world." Kepel, who speaks Arab fluently, is the author of The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West and several other books. Head of Middle East studies at Sciences Po in Paris, he has just published a new book, Terror and Martyrs, in which he argues both the US and al-Qaeda have both lost the war on terror. But he singles out al-Qaeda. "Al-Qaeda's base has now shrunk significantly," he said. "Inside Islamic movements, also the radical movements, there is a very critical process underway with respect to the Jihadi strategy." He recognised there were divisions among Sunni Muslims and in Iraq he said there was a power struggle between the Shia supporters of radical cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, backed by Iran, and the Shia prime minister Nuri al-Maliki. But Kepel's views were challenged on Friday by Bob Ayers, a terrorism expert from the London-based think-tank Chatham House. "I am disturbed by anyone who says that al-Qaeda is weakened," Ayers told Adnkronos International (AKI). "That presupposes that al-Qaeda was a tightly-run, vertically integrated organisation." Ayers, an associate fellow at Chatham House's international security programme, said al-Qaeda should be seen as a kind of philosophical or spiritual movement, rather than an operational element. Ayers also disputed Kepel's claim that al-Qaeda had been weakened in Iraq. "I am puzzled by anyone who says al-Qaeda has been substantially weakened in Iraq, given what is happening in Iraq every day," Ayers said. Kepel also said that al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri often described as number two to Osama bin Laden was experiencing a "crisis". "No-one recognises his right to speak in the name of Islam," said Kepel. "Zawahiri is in crisis". But Ayers also disputed this perception of the al-Qaeda leader. "This is wishful thinking," Ayers told AKI. "He's sufficiently strong to get all the international media to repeat his words." Posted by: Fred 2008-04-05 |
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