Brian M Downing
Twenty years ago, only specialists had heard of al Qaeda. Since then, it has grown in numbers, inspired rivals, aligned with separatists, and spread into Nigeria, the Maghreb, Sinai, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, East Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia. Both AQ and ISIL have havens in Afghanistan, despite nineteen years of American military operations and developmental programs.
Islamist militancy draws from a large male cohort in the Islamic world. Men see few opportunities, loathe their rulers, and seek glory and honor in jihad. Jihadism will be around for decades but the danger to us might have eased because of its proliferation and changing priorities since 2001.
Primacy of American targets
AQ developed as a network of veterans of the 1980s war in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden asserted control by killing rivals and searched for new campaigns. The US was supporting faithless rulers across the Middle East and basing troops up and down the Persian Gulf.
Bin Laden saw Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 as an opportunity to gather the hosts and wear down the Iraqi army, as they had the Russians. The Saudi monarchy was unimpressed and relied instead on American and allied troops, some of which were stationed in the Kingdom. This was sacrilege to bin Laden and he determined to strike American targets, including a ship near Aden, embassies, the World Trade Center in 1993, and most devastatingly the World Trade Center again and the Pentagon in 2001.
Regional destabilization
The 2003 US invasion of Iraq provided a new cause. The demobilization of the Iraqi army angered the troops, causing some of them to join AQ or teach them tactical and bomb-making skills. More importantly, the breakdown of Baghdad’s authority left large portions of western Iraq lawless and open to AQ.
The political vacuum also led to Shia-Sunni hatreds that have made Iraq violent and at times ungovernable. AQ and ISIL groups despise the Shia as heretics and see sectarian warfare as leading to a conflagration out of which a new order will arise.
The Arab Spring showed the weakness of many if not most regional governments, even the ones with sizable repressive capacity. Governments in Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, and Egypt fell. The Assad regime almost did but managed to stay in power only with the help of Iran and Russia. All four countries have lost control over appreciable parts of their territory and AQ and ISIL have taken positions there.
Proliferation of goals
The US is still an enemy and target, but jihadis are busily seizing territory and fighting regional governments. AQ and ISIL have their territory in the Levant and do not want the ignominy of reverting to underground networks fearful of knocks at the door. They are securing base camps and redoubts across the Islamic world by intertwining with tribes hostile to their governments, as in Egypt and Yemen, and by setting up operations in lawless areas, as in parts of Afghanistan and Central Asia. Jihadis can conduct operations from safe havens and coalesce scores of sanctuaries into a new state.
Not long ago ISIL boasted of erasing the Sykes-Picot lines and building a new caliphate. It exploited oil resources, taxed a cowed public, ran schools, and meted out its brand of justice. ISIL lost almost all its turf as US-backed forces retook Mosul and Reqqa. But ISIL also blames Russia and Iran for its losses and yearns to exact revenge from positions in Afghanistan. (Some evidence points to Saudi support for such vengeance.)
Historians and analysts see China on the rise in the Islamic world. So do jihadis. Beijing is the largest consumer of Middle Eastern oil but it also constructs pipelines, port facilities, petrochemical plants, highways, and railroads. Chinese goods are becoming more prominent in marketplaces, often replacing cottage industries and artisans.
China provides more and more arms to government security apparatuses. Chinese engineers, technicians, and workers are a common sight and they have the same haughtiness once ascribed to Americans. Baloch insurgents have been targeting Chinese personnel for years now. China’s mistreatment of Uighur and other Muslim groups in Xinjiang is setting the stage for an anti-Chinese movement across Central Asia.
Beijing should bear in mind that its rush to replace the US in the world may well put it atop jihadi target lists.
© 2020 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to Susan Ganosellis.