Osama bin Laden dead: Qaida's model of 'stateless terror' unlikely to vanish

Though lacking Osama’s austere charisma, Zawahiri is an ideologue and a flinty, deeply committed warrior.

By TNN | Updated: May 03, 2011, 11.38 AM IST

NEW DELHI: The present day face of al-Qaida as a terror font that inspires and sustains violent jihad but with increasingly less direct involvement in plots planned and executed by a loose federation of allies will continue to be a global security challenge even after Osama bin Laden’s death.

The threat is potent not only because al-Qaida’s influence plays out through thousands of charities, financiers , sleeper cells and training camps run by jihadi fellow travellers, but its decentralized model promises to self-replicate for the foreseeable future. It is an ideological platform, open to all who share the cause.

For some time now, groups like Al Shabaab in Somalia and al-Qaida in Iraq have barely retained functional links with the mother organisation and al-Qaida seems to be a “free” franchise for all manner of jihadis in Europe, east Africa, West Asia, southeast and central Asia and north America.

With widely reported health problems, al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden ceded much operational work to his Egyptian No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri , a veteran of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Though lacking Osama’s austere charisma, Zawahiri is an ideologue and a flinty, deeply committed warrior. The problem for Zawahiri , who’s Islamic Jihad merged with al-Qaida in 1998, is that US pressure has eroded the outfit’s capacity to plan and recoup losses with top operatives constantly under the shadow of drone attacks.

The Osama-Zawahiri partnership did endure and the 1998 merger is also significant as that year Osama called for global jihad against Christians and Jews and added Hindus to the list of “infidels” as well.

It was then, when he partnered Taliban in Afghanistan, that Osama’s “stateless” terror flourished. In 1998, he masterminded bombings of two US embassies in east Africa with simple but meticulous planning. These attacks, along with the bombing of USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, carried Osama’s imprimatur.

A reason why Lashkar-e-Taiba gained in recent years in operational vision and reach is the Pakistani establishment’s support and official endorsement for leading the jihad against India in Kashmir. LeT, Pakistan army and ISI are joined at the hip and the terror group receives help openly in a manner denied to al-Qaida .

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