Terrorism

11. September: Al-Qaeda in a new guise

For the world is Osama bin Laden the face of terrorism was, for US, the public enemy number one. Until he was killed, the IS gained strength, and the terror organization had to invent.

Osama bin Laden turned to after the terrorist attacks of 9. September with a speech to the West

They still exist, the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda once under the leadership of Top Terrorist Osama bin Laden. Even if it has been pushed in recent years by the so-called “Islamic state” (IS) to Off. But how strong is the organization that triggered in 2001, America’s “fight against terrorism” is, today? She has five years after the death of Osama bin Laden changed?

The rise and fall of Al-Qaeda

Osama bin Laden is the beginning, the leader of Al-Qaeda (“the base”). He it is who gives the terrorist organization the names and fighters in Afghanistan financed. At the end of the 1980s, appears for the first Time on the scene – during the war against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Back then, Arab fighters to rush to their brethren in the Hindu Kush. But what long a loose combination of jihadists, Osama bin Laden and the number two – Ayman al-Zawahiri in 1997 to Al-Qaeda, which puts the world in fear and terror. Al-Qaeda built training camps and Bin Laden’s fight against the Western influence in the Islamic world is the fight of all the violent jihadists.

The terrorist group is taking shape, organized. “Al-Qaeda always had a strong bureaucratic and hierarchical character,” says Guido Steinberg, terrorism expert of the science and politics Foundation in Berlin (SWP). Attacks were made at the behest of the Central. And almost four years later, Bin Laden, the world shows its strength: On 11. September 2001, it comes to the worst terrorist attacks on the United States. In a video message, a Top Terrorist Bin Laden’s position: “With the permission of God, America will take the end of the middle. And I ask God to these young people as a Martyr. These young people have performed a very great action. You have made us Muslims proud and America a lesson it will not forget.”

He is the man at the head of the terrorist network Ayman al Zawahri

However, the retaliation follows promptly and thus the lesson for the terrorists: The United States intervene in the same year in Afghanistan, and to say Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the fight. Bin Laden and his men are in retreat in the North of Pakistan. The militias lose their strongholds in Parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Bin Laden went into hiding and then left it largely to his Deputy, Zawahiri, ideological calls to the increasingly independent and decentralized jihadists-spread groups”, says Günter Meyer from the centre for research on the Arab world in Mainz. Bin Laden still has influence on the various Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups. But Al-Qaeda is reflected in their outer structure. Also Inside you begins to crumble – for the time being at least.

The hierarchy is crumbling

“Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” begins after the US invasion in 2003, increasingly, to act on his own authority. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had previously fought for many years in Afghanistan, takes over, with his followers, the role of the brutal sister organization. “With their bombings, it is decisive for the escalation of violence,” said middle East expert Meyer. Bin Laden agreed to in the beginning of the founding of the “Al-Qaeda in Iraq”, so he distanced himself, as well as Sunni insurgents soon of the violent orgies against the Shiite civilian population. Because of the fight of Al-Qaeda under Bin Laden was to the West, the USA.

Zarqawi, by contrast, was a renowned Shia-hater. “However, Bin Laden and Zawahri have protested again and again,” says Guido Steinberg of SWP. Zawahri wrote in a 2005 letter to Zarqawi, in which he tried to move him to a change of Strategy. “The letter had no effect. This shows that the Iraqi Al-Qaeda was now almost completely independent,” adds Steinberg. Al-Qaeda in Iraq overtook the Al-Qaeda Central. In 2006, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is killed by a US attack. The group is not weakened, but will disappear from the so-called “Islamic state shows later”, the distancing from Al-Qaeda, and to the blood of her enemies.

15 years ago, the terrorist attacks on September 11. September deaths of nearly 3000 people

Osama bin Laden is killed

Also, Al-Qaeda suffered a new defeat: On 2. May 2011 to kill the USA Osama bin Laden in his hideout in Pakistan. US President Barack Obama announced the good news on the television. Bin Laden was not able to prevail in the past couple of years, when he gave, for example, instructions in the direction of Yemen “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” says terrorism expert Steinberg. “But he had influence. This is a key leadership element is thus lost. In addition, Osama bin Laden was a highly charismatic leader who had his followers an almost religious position, although he has never claimed religious authority for themselves.” His successor, Zawahiri did not make it in the years afterwards, to excite the young jihadist followers. “This is one of the reasons why Al-Qaeda has lost in the last few years, the young foreign fighters from all Parts of the world and from Europe and other Western countries to the ‘Islamic state’,” says Steinberg. As then, the IS 2014 to declare a Caliphate, device Al-Qaeda again in great distress.

Local terrorist groups strengthen

However, the terrorist group adapts to the Situation and relies on a long-term strategy. Zawahri makes his people from afar clear that you have to kill – rather than indiscriminately civilians, so how does the IS – the fight should be by the people themselves want to fight fight. “And Zawahiri declared in a Letter that he can not give more than strategic targets, and that for all the detailed instructions to someone on site.” He knows that he can’t fill Osama bin Laden’s role and reinforced the focus on the local groups.

And so it happens – the Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups remain on the existing ideology of the faithful, but the approach is different: The respective Al-Qaeda groups follow the ideology of Al-Qaeda Central, under their local leaders, which were strengthened by Sawahiris announcement. “There is a very pragmatic approach is chosen in order to achieve political goals. This is Islamism, in contrast to Salafism.” Because it was not safe to be purposeful, to fight the whole world and to kill all of the enemies as possible to the public is cruel. “The result is that the IS needs to fight against a world of enemies”, says Guido Steinberg. Because everyone agrees, including Al-Qaeda, that the IS needs to disappear.

It is this – in the long-term strategy of Al-Qaeda, which makes the organization so dangerous, you can survive. Because where she is, she anchored “good in people”. Although there is no rigid hierarchy, but the local leaders are not less dangerous than the Al-Qaeda Central. In Syria, in Yemen, in the Sahel and in Bangladesh, the various Al-Qaeda fighting groups against Western influence. The only difference is that you do not control the populations – on the contrary, you are looking for your support. And this kind of Terror is to be fought much harder.