Al-Qaeda – Winning the War of Deception?

30 December 2009
Exclusive to Gulf News
Two hundred and eighty nine innocent people on board Northwest Airlines flight 253 were lucky to escape with their lives when Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab failed to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear on Christmas Day.

Nevertheless, the failed suicide bombing over Detroit achieved some of its purpose: it breached the most rigorous and sophisticated security measures in history, brought the spectre of terror back to the 'homeland' and dominated the front pages of newspapers the world over for several days ensuring maximum publicity for al-Qaeda – an organisation many had started to consider defeated, on the run or no longer relevant.

It is just such complacency which has allowed the organisation to evolve, regroup and expand, as well as enabling them to wrong foot intelligence and security services at the crucial moment.

While Britain and the US deploy more troops in Afghanistan and fret about Pakistan (with good reason) al-Qaeda has quietly shifted its focus to the horn of Africa. The organisation employed the same strategy after 2006 when many of its fighters and leaders relocated to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border from Iraq, the US 'Awakening' campaign and subsequent 'surge' having made their position in that country untenable for a while.

But this is not a simple 'cat-and-mouse' game because al-Qaeda lays the foundations for its return, having established a logistical infrastructure, alliances and a support network, wherever it has been active. This was evident in its ability to return to Afghanistan, where it was all but destroyed in 2001, and its more recent re-appearance in Iraq, where it has been responsible for several devastating attacks within the Green Zone.

Crucially, the same is true of Yemen, al-Qaeda's current – and potentially most challenging - safe-haven where flight 253 bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was apparently trained and provided with PETN explosives.

Some commentators forget that Yemen's most famous son is Osama bin Laden himself. When I met the al-Qaeda leader in 1996 he spoke longingly of his homeland and many of its people support – even revere – him. In Yemen, anti-Western feeling and hatred for the US is at its most virulent and the country has long been one of the main exporters of jihadi fighters.

Indeed, al-Qaeda's first ever attack took place in Yemen, when it bombed Aden's Movenpick and Gold Mohur hotels on 29 December 1992, targeting US troops in transit to Somalia. Throughout the 1990s, al-Qaeda had a significant – and tolerated - presence in Yemen, enabling the organisation to carry out attacks in other parts of East Africa and culminating in the 2000 suicide-bombing of the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in which 17 US sailors lost their lives.

Following 9/11, Yemen's President Saleh bowed to US pressure and agreed to tackle the al-Qaeda presence in his country. Scores of suspects were arrested and US drones were permitted to carry out raids on al-Qaeda strongholds (one of which killed the organisation's regional leader, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, in May 2002) – a move which made Saleh deeply unpopular at home.

In 2003 al-Qaeda shifted its focus to the burgeoning insurgency in Iraq and by 2004, both President Saleh and the US administration considered Yemen's 'al-Qaeda problem' over. This misplaced optimism, combined with other, unrelated, internal security problems, has now come back to haunt them.

In June 2004, Shi'a Houthi tribes in north Yemen began an ongoing, full-scale insurgency which has escalated dramatically since Saudi Arabia intervened militarily in November this year, perhaps fearing that unrest might spread to its own Shi'a minority over the border.

Adding to the pressure on the already stretched Yemeni security forces, a secessionist movement in the south sprung up in 2007.

This chaotic security situation has left large areas of the country under the control of tribesmen, often sympathetic to al-Qaeda, and the increasing likelihood of a 'failed state' scenario. Add to this the spectacular Sana'a jailbreak, in February 2006, of 23 al-Qaeda operatives, followed almost immediately by a spate of attacks on oil and gas installations, and it is easy to see why the organisation has been able to re-emerge in Yemen with ease.

In January this year, Yemeni and Saudi branches of the organisation merged to form Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The group is lead by Nasir Wuhaishi, 33, who comes from a wealthy Yemeni family and is close to al-Qaeda's core leadership: he was one of Osama bin Laden's assistants in Afghanistan in the late 1990s and his recent appointment was endorsed on-line by Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri. In addition, AQAP is said to be one of the best funded groups, highlighting its significance within the organisation's project.

Yemen is strategically and logistically important to al-Qaeda. It neighbours Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, and 3 million barrels a day are transported along its coastline. With Somalia – also an al-Qaeda stronghold and failed state – on the opposite shores of the Gulf of Aden, the two countries dominate access to the Red Sea and the Suez canal.

Yemen is also awash with arms – an estimated 60 million weapons in a country of 20 million people – and AQAP training camps can carry on their business undisturbed in its more remote regions.

As recent events have shown, AQAP presents a significant threat to its neighbours as well as the west: in August 2009, Abdullah Hassan al Asiri attempted to assassinate Saudi Arabian security chief, Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, by detonating PETN explosives concealed inside his body; November 5 saw Major Nidal Hassan turn his gun on fellow US soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas, killing 13, allegedly with the encouragement of al-Qaeda linked Imam Anwar al-Awlaki who relocated from the US to Yemen in 2002; on 25 December 2009 Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab failed in the mission he had allegedly been in training for in Yemen since October.

In October 2009, AQAP's on-line journal, Sada Al-Malahim, carried an article by Al-Wahishi entitled 'War Is Deception'. In it he emphasized that unpredictability, the surprise element, is one of al-Qaeda's greatest weapons. This extends to the type of person al-Qaeda is able to recruit for suicide missions – London university-educated 23 year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was the polite, well-spoken son of a wealthy Nigerian banker.

When George W. Bush promised to 'smoke out' al-Qaeda in 2001 he at least knew their address – the caves of Tora Bora, Afghanistan – but still, ultimately, failed. How much harder is President Obama's job, nine years on, with a nomadic, shape-shifting enemy of no fixed abode.