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'Al-Qaeda Jihad backfiring'
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group has failed miserably in its political aims, leaving behind a trail of freelance terror and chaos that is backfiring on the Muslim world, according to French expert Gilles Kepel. Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, his right-hand man and main strategist, originally hoped the spectacular September 11 attacks in New York and Washington would mobilise the masses in Muslim countries to bring Islamist rulers to power. But all they have succeeded in doing is creating imitators whose bloody attacks are undermining the jihadist cause by creating uncontrolled strife, said Kepel, head of ME Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. "Three years after September 11, the jihad has turned against those who launched it," he said in an interview. "They haven't succeeded in seizing power anywhere and the only state they controlled, the Taliban emirate (of Afghanistan), was destroyed," he said at the weekend as New York marked the third anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. "But they have created imitators and they have spread - and that's the most worrying," he said.The fact that Islamist attacks have become "increasingly horrible and monstrous" reflects what Kepel called a degradation of the jihad movement into a splintered campaign. "If the jihad is not victorious, the society in whose name it was called turns against it," he said. "This is called 'fitna,' it's a war within Islam." Kepel cited Palestinian suicide bombers, terror attacks in Saudi Arabia and the "Pandora's box of ethnic strife and hostility" in Iraq as examples of how Islamist violence has created tensions and instability among Muslims. Posted by: Fawad 2004-09-13 |
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