Death Knell for al-Qaeda

Death Knell for al-Qaeda

The death knell of the al-Qaeda of Osama bid Laden is gonging in Mali. France is bombing al-Qaeda into oblivion. This is likely the last time you’ll ever hear of the al-Qaeda that blew up the Twin Towers.

The battle today is fierce. There is absolutely no question that this is Afghanistan 2003 in Mali. And I’m convinced that France will win.

Revolutionary guerrillas are never bombed out of existence, whether they’re Mao’s Red Brigade or al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. Guerrillas who survive extermination surface elsewhere, in other revolutions and later wars as many of the old al-Qaeda are Taliban today in Afghanistan.

But al-Qaeda as an organized terrorist force will be no longer and I don’t think anything near as powerful will reemerge in this political epoch. The Taliban, for instance, in either Afghanistan or Pakistan has little power outside its own turf, and that’s what differentiates them from al-Qaeda.

In addition to nine-eleven, al-Qaeda organized a number of global attacks, including the horrible subway massacre of London, the U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa, a Philippine Airlines bombing plot, the Bali massacre, the World Trade Center bombing, tourist hotel bombings on the Kenyan coast, the attempted Manchester airport raid, the shoe bomber, the UPS package bomber, and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, and this lengthy list doesn’t even include the successful attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The reach of al-Qaeda has never been seen before al-Qaeda. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been as effective revolutionary movements, just that none except al-Qaeda were truly global. That’s the difference, and I think that global reach of a single terrorist organization will end when the Mali war ends.

What happened in Mali was long expected. The country sits on the bottom of the Sahara Desert, and a huge portion of its north is little more than sand. But for centuries this sand has been ruled by the Tuaregs, a tribe of powerful horseman and cattle traders who controlled the lucrative desert routes that connected North Africa and Europe with the countries on the Atlantic Ocean.

The Tuaregs had never truly succumbed to modern government oversight. And their revolutionary nature, matured in the 21st century with leaders who were schooled in the west and armed by enormous weaponry left from the overthrow of Ghadafi, took over northern Mali more than 9 months ago.

The area is the size of France, and Tuaregs demanded an independent country. It would be nonsense, by the way. As camel thieves and rogue marauders to desert oases, the Tuaregs will never develop on their own. They need development just like peoples everywhere, and nobody in the world – including China or Russia – was going to recognize a country composed of desert tents.

This was the feeling of the very moderate Mali government, a government that was heralded by democratic giants the world over. Even in this blog, written in March by Conor Godrey, there was a sense that the Tuareg “rebellion” would be negotiated down to helping them better than they had been by the Mali government.

But what happened was that al-Qaeda was looking for a new home. I’ve written before about the putsch against al-Qaeda organized by the U.S. and the west.

We pushed them from Afghanistan to Yemen to Somali to the jungles of central Africa, and ultimately into Mali.

We pushed them with local militaries, like the Kenyans, and unbelievably advanced technologies like drones.

Guerilla terrorists flee before making a last stand. Their ideology demands little honor of the sort traditional battles value. When defeated, they run to make a stand another day, and they run to places where they have an opportunity of control. For example, the desert.

So the Tuaregs were usurped by al-Qaeda. There was a period in March and April when several groups negotiated among each other and agreed on an uncomfortable assembly of Islamic law and order. But it didn’t last, really. The land of the Tuaregs, which literally for centuries was ruled by their desert mavericks, was now in the hands of al-Qaeda.

And the Mali government response was weak. So weak that even as the world was calling for serious military intervention, the Mali government balked. Finally its own soldiers mutinied, the weak government collapsed and there was no formal opponent to the new Islamic soldiers ruling its north.

The Security Council, unanimous across its many different state ideologies, authorized military action. The most progressive nearly communist governments and institutions also recognized the need for military action.

This is because Mali is the heart of West Africa. If al-Qaeda establishes a toehold here, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and even Morocco may be threatened.

But France felt waiting until the UN got its act together would be too long. Friday, they started bombing.

Britain has provided air craft for transport. The U.S. has provided transport, intelligence, and undoubtedly, drones.

The Afghan war was bungled by an inept American administration. France is not inept. Since Afghanistan and with lessons learned from it, the western world has been stealthy until now. It is no longer.

The only explanation is that this will be the last and decisive battle against al-Qaeda.

5 thoughts on “Death Knell for al-Qaeda

  1. Very interesting observations, Jim. I hope you are right about al Qaeda. The lamestream news media ignores what’s going on in Mali, except for an occasional story on NPR. Guess that goes, too, for all of Africa, save events in those countries in the far north and far south.

  2. A couple of things. We have to be careful about giving these islamists too much of a true jihadist agenda. This group – or groups – of islamists are not really the great islamist ideologues they are made out to be. Their roots are not really Al Qaeda elements that the US has pushed out to the fringes of the Sahara. Rather they are drugs smugglers and contrabandists and kidnappers for ransom – Islam does not really condone these things!! – who have been bigged up into “Al Qaeda” by the west. Yes now, after months of inertia by the international community, they have amassed others from outside, but the big boys all have strong Algerian links. The US and France have had a military presence in Mali for years supposedly to help the Malian military with “counter terrorism” and in that time AQMI has grown from a few bandits camped up in the remote mountains of the north east of Mali to the force it is today. The Malian military were so unprepared for counter terrorsim that they forgot to arm the closest garrison to AQMI’s camp – Aguelhoc – and the massacre that consequently occurred there caused the coup d’etat in Bamako. So whatever the US’s AFRICOM strategy was re AQMI, the result of their monitoring is what we have today.

    At last someone is doing something.

    You are right that this strong attack by France could completely wipe out the islamist issue. It is foreign to Mali and west Africa anyway, there is nothing in the community that supports extremist ideology.

    I think the French have stepped on the US toes here. The US/UN seemed happy to leave Mali to really become another Afghanistan before they were going to act.

    I find myself in the very strange position of supporting the French military position in a west African state! Let’s hope they and the international community can well manage the peace which will hopefully come soon to Mali.
    I blog on the Mali situation at http://www.fromhere2timbuktu.com/blog

  3. I am less optimistic that this will result in an end to Al Queda or Al Queda-like terrorism. The major problem facing the United States as well as other western countries is the ability to fight an asymmetric war. The enemy is hard to defeat because they are indigenous to the area. If battles are going badly, they have little problem waiting it out. Western powers are not committed or able to stay for the long hall. With the cost of such operations being so high in the face of the current economic situation as well as a political climate that questions both the monetary as well as human costs incurred in a foreign war which is perceived to have little impact, wrongly or rightly, on home citizen’s life other than to reduce the funds for taking care of problems near and dear to home. Governments in the third world have to a great deal not dealt well with their citizens resulting in a marked divergence in development of upper and lower classes not to mention a middle class.
    There seems to be no answer to solving the problem. America has have a foreign policy of practicality which has allowed us to support many corrupt governments throughout the world while at the same time expressing a desire for democratic reforms. Why did we support the Egyptians so long? We support Tito as an opponent of the USSR. We supported Saddam Hussein when needed.
    As long as there governments that taking advantage of a country’s natural resources and disenfranchise its citizens with terrorist rule there will be both an opposition seeking to rectify their poor governance and an opportunistic force looking to insert itself to promote their agenda which might be quite nefarious.
    Unfortunately, we can not make the world in our image. The great colonial powers in the 19th century tried to first convert the world to love their god and when that did not work raped the countries which is to a great extent how we got to where we are today. I am sure the great military excursions into Asia and Africa were looked upon in the same way as we look upon “helping” Afganistan and Mali as well as many more such as the Phillipines, Cuba and CHina in earlier decades. I frequently wonder what we are accomplishing and what we are paying. Are we fighting a rushing tide. A study recently published showed the Muslim population is now only second to the christians but more importantly the median age in the Muslim world is the youngish for all organized religions. Muslims are not a national constituency. Their doctrine is a worldwide Muslim expression. They see themselves firstly as a Muslim and secondly as a citizen of a country. With increasing radicalization, they become a world force. They know they can wait it out and eventually succeed. Bomb all you want but the answer rests somewhere else. An enemy with a stakehold is more likely to defend his stakehold. Governments have to change and the western democracies can help but not with continued war. Unfortunately, many people sleep in the bed they made for themselves.

  4. Interesting segment on The News Hour last night about Mali. The government which was at first fully democratic became involve in many corrupt activities and was itself or its members involved in the very drug trade that has financed the Islamists. It was also mentioned that the Tauregs were now aligning themselves with government forces due to the overwhelming cruelty of the radical Islamist. Does not look like any good options are available with the current government in the face of its set of moral and ethical values. Again, how long and why should the world prop up such governments?

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