Libyan test for refocused
al-Qaeda By Syed Saleem Shahzad
ISLAMABAD - The Libyan political upheaval
that is rapidly turning into a civil war has
unambiguously split Libyan society between the
west of the country and the pro-Muammar Gaddafi
bloc, and the "rebels" to the east centered around
Benghazi and beyond.
The root of the
unrest is intrinsically liberal and secular - as
it was in Egypt and Tunisia - leaving very little
ground on which Islamic political forces can
operate.
During these turbulent times in
the Arab world, al-Qaeda has been only a
spectator; however, it is poised to pounce on any
opportunity that might arise to allow it to become
a part of the action in Libya.
In a way,
this places al-Qaeda in the same position as Western
countries, some of which are
positioning to actively intervene in Libya, even
if it is at the least by enforcing a no-fly zone
to protect the rebels from Gaddafi's fighter
planes and bombers.
Al-Qaeda's most
powerful Libyan cluster, al-Jamaa al-Muqatilah
(Libyan Islamic Fighting Group), is apprehensive
of being marginalized, according to members of the
Libyan militant camp in Pakistan's North
Waziristan tribal area.
They believe that
al-Qaeda needs to kick in to give an ideological
mooring to the armed opposition and to prevent the
situation from falling into the hands of
pro-Western agitators, especially with Western
capitals looking for an arrangement to prop up
liberal and secular forces, even through direct
military intervention.
Most of al-Jamaa
al-Muqatilah's members come from the Benghazi area
and the group has provided some of the best
commanders among al-Qaeda's contingents in
Afghanistan. These include Abu Laith al-Libi,
killed in a drone attack in 2008, who led a failed
coup against Gaddafi in 1994. It was after the
coup attempt that Libi headed for Afghanistan,
where he led several high-profile operations,
including the attack on Bagram base outside the
capital Kabul in 2007 during then-United States
vice president Dick Cheney's visit.
Asia
Times Online contacts in the militant camps say
that current al-Qaeda ideologue and military
strategist Abu Yahya al-Libi is now trying to
mobilize of al-Qaeda's cadre in Libya to quickly
jump onto the unrest bandwagon. Libi, who comes
from Benghazi and who has authored many books,
played a significant role in al-Qaeda's
mobilization in Yemen and Somalia while living in
Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas.
Libi escaped from the US detention
facility at Bagram in 2005 and was recently
elevated as one of al-Qaeda's main leaders and he
now often chairs shura (council) meetings
to make important decisions in the absence of
Osama bin Laden and his deputy Dr Ayman
al-Zawahiri.
Al-Qaeda's agitation over
playing an active role in Libya goes against an
earlier decision to stay in the background when
the unrest broke out in North Africa and beyond
early this year. Al-Qaeda resolved to simply work
alongside Islamic forces to strengthen the
position of Islamic movements against liberal and
secular forces. With all-out civil war imminent in
Libya, though, al-Qaeda does not want to become
sidelined.
Crucially, though, although
al-Qaeda will try to play an active role in Libya,
it will be in conjunction with Islamic parties to
prop up the masses - and it will not incorporate
the terror operations that have characterized
al-Qaeda's operations over the past years, notably
in Iraq.
This marks a fundamental shift in
al-Qaeda's philosophy that began last year when
one of its ideologues, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, wrote
a thesis Twenty Guidelines for Jihad that
was published on a pro-al-Qaeda website. (See Broadside
fired at al-Qaeda leaders Asia Times Online,
December 10, 2010.) Ghaith questioned al-Qaeda's
go-it-alone policy, criticized the September 11,
2001, attacks on the US as well as the decision to
sever ties with international Islamic movements.
This, argued Ghaith, had led to a complete
disconnect with Muslim societies.
This
discourse reached a climax when Saif al-Adil (or
Saiful Adil) wrote an article for the same website
in January in which he called for al-Qaeda to
support Islamic political parties in the Arab
world and urged Muslim scholars to refrain from
criticizing them. The two ideologues pointed to an
urgent need for al-Qaeda to tap into the
mainstream of the Muslim world by drawing opinion
from its varied societies, intelligentsia and
Islamic movements.
Al-Qaeda down the
evolutionary road Academics across the
Muslim world were unable to justify the September
11 attacks as they were mainly directed against
civilians and went against the basic norms for
launching a battle against any usurper anti-Muslim
force. Yet al-Qaeda claimed they were the only way
to organize a backlash in the Muslim world against
Western hegemony in the lopsided global politics
following the end of the Cold War in the early
1990s. Further, many Muslim regimes were allied
with the American camp.
Following the
US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 and
then of Iraq in 2003, al-Qaeda's focus remained to
strengthen polarization in Muslim-majority states
to bring them all to a single point of revolt
against Western influence and Western-supported
regimes in the Muslim world.
Al-Qaeda went
so aggressively in pursuit of this that it turned
against its ideological parent - the Muslim
Brotherhood - as well as against partner
organizations like Hamas in Gaza and the Pakistani
militant groups Jamaat-e-Islami and
Lashkar-e-Taiba when they refused to support
al-Qaeda-led struggles for revolts in Muslim
states.
Several international events
during al-Qaeda's engagement with world powers in
Afghanistan and Iraq, including the global
recession and food riots in Egypt in 2008, fired
the imagination of some al-Qaeda leaders. They
believed al-Qaeda's military operations had
reached a level at which the Americans were being
squeezed through loss of resources in the war
theaters of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and
Somalia. Thus, the American ability to maneuver
through injecting money into Muslim-majority
states was limited.
Economic hard times
and political polarization were the natural
outcome, however, al-Qaeda's limited structure was
unable to manipulate the situation, besides, the
circumstances warranted serious political moves to
prop up the masses rather than terror operations.
Therefore, after Iran released several
senior al-Qaeda leaders early last year and they
went to Afghanistan, they initiated top-level
debate through Twenty Guidelines for Jihad.
Finally, al-Qaeda's leaders reconciled to
a new direction and in recent weeks Zawahiri - who
previously had justified each and every terror
attack against civilians - came out with a
statement that essentially marks a major paradigm
shift in al-Qaeda's policies and indicates the
beginning of its mainstreaming into Muslim world
politics.
"There are certain operations
attributed, rightly or falsely, to the mujahideen,
in which Muslims are attacked in their mosques,
market places or gatherings. Me and my brothers in
al-Qaeda distance ourselves from such operations
and condemn them," Zawahri said in an audio
recording. Zawahiri claimed in the same message
that he was speaking on the directive of Bin
Laden.
"I urge the mujahideen to consider
the rulings of sharia [Islamic law] and the
interests of Muslims before undertaking any jihad
operation," he said. Al-Qaeda members should
refrain from indiscriminate attacks on "Muslim or
non-Muslims", Zawahri added.
Al-Qaeda
will, however, intensify the battle alongside the
Taliban in Afghanistan to make it as difficult as
possible for the Americans to go ahead with their
phased withdrawal, which is due to begin this
July.
At the same time, al-Qaeda's cadre
in the Middle East and beyond will devote
themselves to mainstream Islamic parties until the
process of khuruj (revolt) completes its
full cycle for ultimate change, which means
Islamic revolution and the revival of the global
caliphate, according to al-Qaeda and other
Islamists.
Al-Qaeda is now reconnecting
with Islamic parties, and Libya could be a staring
point of bigger things to come.
Syed
Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan
Bureau Chief and author of upcoming book
Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban, beyond 9/11
published by Pluto Press, UK. He can be reached
at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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