http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050502-092415-6971r
Analysis: Other extremists pick up al-Qaida ideology
By Anwar Iqbal
UPI South Asian Affairs Analyst
Published May 2, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The State Department's terrorism report for this year
points to a disturbing pattern in the war against terror: al-Qaida
exporting its ideology to other extremist groups.
The report, released this week, also warns that freelance
operators are increasingly becoming a major threat, although al-Qaida
continues to be the driving force behind terrorism.
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These freelance operators are divided into two groups: those who
draw inspiration from al-Qaida and those who have had affiliations
with Osama bin Laden's terror network.
The disintegration of al-Qaida began in December 2001, when the
United States defeated Afghanistan's Taliban regime, depriving the
network of its command centers and training camps.
Bin Laden, who had arrived in Afghanistan before the Taliban
captured Kabul in 1996, was initially disliked by the Taliban because
of his links to the former Mujahedin forces. The Taliban blamed the
Mujahedin for the disunity and internal fighting that beset
Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
But bin Laden's petro dollars that he had inherited from his
father and his puritanical Islamic beliefs helped the Saudi dissident
in cultivating the Taliban. And by 1998, when al-Qaida struck U.S.
embassies in East Africa, killing 224 people, bin Laden's terror
network had not only established a close working relationship with the
Taliban but had also earned their patronage for recruiting and
training terrorists from all over the world.
For recruitment, al-Qaida went to trouble spots, regions where
Muslims were fighting for secession from non-Muslim central
governments, such as the Kashmir in India and the southern islands in
the Philippines. Recruits were also sought from Muslim nations ruled
by unpopular, despotic rulers.
A major recruiting ground for al-Qaida was Central Asia, where
former Soviet republics are still mostly run by the rulers of the
communist era. In some cases, these rulers have even arranged for
their children to take over after their retirements.
Central Asian rulers seldom show any respect for human rights and
are not averse to using coercive means to perpetuate their control.
Central Asia was also directly affected by the war in neighboring
Afghanistan. Many Central Asian soldiers had served in Afghanistan
during the Soviet occupation, 1979-89, and had seen the Afghans rising
against the Russian occupiers, using Islam as a rallying cry.
The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan also encouraged Central
Asia's Muslim majority to turn to their religion for inspiration
against their Russian occupiers and later their own communist rulers.
The situation helped al-Qaida recruit a large number of Central
Asians, some of whom are still believed to have maintained their
association with bin Laden.
The rallying cry in this fight was Islam, but not the humanistic
Sufi version of Islam that the Central Asians were used to. This was
the Islam of bin Laden and the Taliban. The central theme of their
ideology was the use of violence against whoever was seen as an
oppressor and an abuser of power.
Besides obvious non-Muslim targets, such as the United States and
Israel, al-Qaida's list of enemies also included almost all current
Muslim rulers, because they did not contribute to their ideology of
waging war to establish an international Islamic state. Thus, even
Saddam Hussein was on this list. So were the rulers of the Islamic
Iran. Saddam was considered a foe because he championed Arab
nationalism as opposed to al-Qaida's pan-Islamism. The Iranians were
considered dangerous because they were Shia, a Muslim minority sect
seen as heretical by al-Qaida and the Taliban.
In Muslim Pakistan, al-Qaida and the Taliban trained extremist
among the Sunnis, Islam's majority sect. These groups were trained
especially for targeted killings and are blamed for assassinating
hundreds of Shiite intellectuals, physicians and lawyers. The al-Qaida
and Taliban ideology also excluded women from the mainstream. During
the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, women were not allowed to work
outside their homes, were prevented from going to schools and were not
permitted to consult male physicians in a country where women doctors
could be counted on fingers.
This ideology drew its inspiration from certain tribal codes still
practiced in parts of Afghanistan and the bordering areas of
Afghanistan. Although it is rejected by an overwhelming number of
Muslims, the Taliban and al-Qaida presented it as true Islam.
Al-Qaida used Afghanistan as the launching ground for its
outrageous ideas. After the collapse of the Taliban regime, al-Qaida
also began to lose its controlling position within the network of
terror it had created.
Running for life and in total disarray, neither the Taliban nor
al-Qaida leaders were able to provide a central leadership and
day-to-day guidance to hundreds of operatives spread across the world.
They were also unable to get new recruits.
But the ideology al-Qaida had carefully crafted did not allow this
network to die a natural death. Instead, al-Qaida operatives and their
sympathizers split from the central network and established dozens of
splinter groups that do not need day-to-day guidance from the
headquarters and draw inspiration from this ideology.
That's why the State Department report acknowledged that despite
its defeat, al-Qaida remained "the primary terrorist threat to the
United States in 2004, intent on attacking the U.S. homeland as well
as U.S. interests abroad."
The annual State Department report warned that the battle against
international terrorism remains formidable despite security measures
in the United States, military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and
deepening international counterterrorism cooperation.
"Over the long run, the spread of democracy and economic and
social reforms, sustained and encouraged by the United States and
others, should promote political, economic and social conditions
inhospitable to terrorist exploitation," the report said. "For now,
however, the tasks confronting the United States and its partners in
the struggle against terrorism remain formidable."
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