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Al Qaeda killing more Muslims than ‘infidels’

* New America Foundation says Al Qaeda losing public support in Muslim countries
* Christine Fair of Rand says Pakistan more insecure today than before it received $11bn in US assistance

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: Al Qaeda is killing more Muslims than what it calls ‘infidels’, something that is going to be a ‘game changer’ for the terrorist group, according to Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation.

He was speaking at a one-day conference on Al Qaeda organised by the Foundation and the New York University Centre for Law and Security. Al Qaeda, Bergen said is losing public support in Muslim countries and one thing is certain: will never become Hezbollah or Hamas. Al Qaeda, he added, has ‘no Plan B’. It attacked a far enemy, the United States, to get a near enemy, an Arab regime. Al Qaeda was now trying to become a mass movement riding on the back of the Taliban. It was also using the Internet to spread its message as it had been squeezed out of the training camps it used to run. However, the Internet alone was not enough. He said there was very little likelihood of an Al Qaeda attack on the US in the next five to eight years since it had no cells on American soil. Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University said Al Qaeda has regained its foothold in the FATA area, and it has learnt from its mistakes and was working through the Pakistani Taliban, while Frances Townsend, a former White House adviser, was of the view that Al Qaeda is trying to destabilise the new Pakistani government. She said the American dilemma is, How far do you push Pakistan in the war against terrorism. In America’s view, Pakistan has alternated between ‘good days’, when it took effective action against terrorists, and others when it did not. Steve Coll, head of the New America Foundation, said Pakistan in the past had used jihadi fighters in Kashmir but that has created a pathway for Al Qaeda’s emergence. As for the NWFP agency areas, he added, the traditional tribal system had been scrambled by 20 years by radicalisation and religious zealotry and become ineffective.

Lawrence Wright of New Yorker magazine pointed out that Al Qaeda has staged more terrorist attacks in the Islamic world than in the West. He said if Al Qaeda is losing the war of ideas, then it will have to be examined what the ‘war on terror’ really means. He said all that Al Qaeda can now promise is failure. Al Qaeda is still dangerous though, he warned, and it has been rejuvenated in FATA, but it has suffered moral deterioration since it derives a good proportion of its funds from drugs and kidnappings, activities associated with Mafia-like organisations. Wright said it is a propitious moment for the US to redefine its relationship with Islam. It should also cut its ‘visible presence’ in Iraq, while in Afghanistan, it should try to drive a wedge between Al Qaeda and the Taliban. King Abudllah of Saudi Arabia, he added, is already making efforts to bring that about. Al Qaeda, he stressed, needs to be isolated. He suggested that an earnest effort should be made to address standing Muslim grievances, such as Palestine and Kashmir, which are a potent source of disaffection but the US has done nothing to resolve those problems. He said the US needs better public diplomacy in the world of Islam and it needs to become culturally sensitive to Islam and Muslims. He noted that the US has made little effort to reach out to moderate Muslims. He said US embassies in Muslim countries are like prisons and those who work there have little contact with the people who live in those countries. He also called for the closure of Guantanamo. “The United States should not be at war with Islam,” Wright said. “We have made a terrible job of defining America to the Muslim world,” he added.

Eliza Griswold, also of the New America Foundation, said most of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims, it should be remembered, live outside Arab countries. No religion is monolithic and neither is Islam. It is the context that is important. All extremist networks are rooted in their soil and culture. She found the anti-terrorism efforts being made in South Asia to be showing promising signs. There are many splits and schisms in terrorism across the Muslim world, she stressed, and they should be taken advantage of. Seth Jones of the Rand Corporation told the conference that the link between Al Qaeda and Mullah Omar is much stronger today than it was in the 1990s. He said efforts must be made to cause splits among terrorist groups and exploit the splits that already exist, of which there is an abundance.

Christine Fair, also of Rand, said Pakistan has long been a base of terrorist groups and stressed that the country is more insecure today than before it received an injection of $11 billion in US assistance. She said terrorist groups have overlapping membership. Many of them are purely sectarian. She also disclosed that many students killed when the Lal Masjid in Islamabad was stormed came from Swat, something that might be borne in mind in the context of the present violence in that part of Pakistan. She pointed out that most Pakistanis see the US as a greater threat than Al Qaeda, so Washington’s challenge lies in changing that perception and getting Pakistan truly into the fight against extremism. She also pointed out that General (r) Pervez Musharraf sold the Pakistan army to Washington as a modernising force. She said Washington’s ‘transactional’ relationship with the Pakistan Army should change and in its place a real working relationship should be established. At the same time, the US must work for the strengthening of democracy and help Pakistan rebuild its institutions. Fair said Pakistan’s bid to negotiate peace deals with radical groups in FATA failed because it amounted to a ratification of the defeat that the army had suffered at the hands of those it was now trying to make peace with. She also stressed that Pakistan will always be of greater importance to the US than Afghanistan. She ruled out fears that Pakistan’s nuclear assets could be taken over by radicals.

Nir Rosen of the New York University’s Centre on Law and Security said that Muslims want to be left alone because foreign presence on their soil is not acceptable to them. He said the West must make an honest effort to undo the injustices that the Muslims continue to suffer. Thomas Hegghammer of Harvard University, who spoke about Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, said that the kingdom had disappeared from Al Qaeda’s ‘dialogue’ because the latter’s history in that country was one of failure. The Al Qaeda plan of taking control of the kingdom was no more than ‘wishful thinking’. He called the ideology of Al Qaeda ‘malleable’. The terrorist group also suffered a strategic defeat in Iraq. He called Gulf countries the ‘soft belly’ of the Arab world and feared that the next Al Qaeda attack may be aimed at Abu Dhabi or Dubai.

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