The far-flung jihadist movement, much like the United States-led world economy it seeks to disrupt, is undergoing a rapid globalisation, evolving into a nebulous and loosely knit network more dangerous than what remains of al-Qaeda, international security experts say.
Driven from his sanctuary in Afghanistan and relentlessly hunted throughout the world, Osama bin Laden and the organisation he founded has seen its “control and command capabilities diminished — his group is very weak,” comments Rohan Gunaratna, a widely respected expert on al-Qaeda.
“The singular threat posed by al-Qaeda will be surpassed by a larger threat posed by the global jihad movement, a conglomerate of four dozen or so ideologically linked groups that will wage both local and global jihad campaigns,” Gunaratna says.
The lethal Madrid bombings that claimed 191 lives in March 2004, the London attacks last summer in which 56 were killed, and the assassination of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam — all of these and other lesser attacks were committed by local Islamist cells with tenuous or non-existent ties with al-Qaeda, according to experts.
That is the problem, says Bruce Hoffman, an international terrorism expert at the US-based Rand Corporation.
“We’re not talking about identifiable movements or organisations, but a much more amorphous constellation of like-minded radicals and fanatics,” he says.
“They inspire and motivate one another but it is not a spider-like network of jihadi groups,” making it almost impossible to trace links between them, he adds.
Hoffman agrees that al-Qaeda — while still a potent terrorist threat — is no longer the main threat, in part because it remains a more “traditional” organisation.
“The bigger threat is from the independent entities that have no direct or previous connection with al-Qaeda or any other terrorist group, but who take their inspiration from them and seek to further the same cause without being a part of al-Qaeda,” Hoffman says.
Attacks such as those in Madrid, London and Amsterdam are sufficient to sustain the movement, he suggests.
Far removed from Western systems of organisation, the links between individuals or groups are often based on family or clan ties, or shared childhood or prison experiences.
This gives rise to the paradox of networks that are informal and loosely structured, on the one hand, but nearly impossible to penetrate, on the other.
“Some groups have deep linkage, others minor linkages. Some were established a long time ago, others recently,” says Gunaratna. “But they are more dangerous as a movement, and have a much wider reach.”
Francois Heisbourg, an analyst at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, sees the emergence of “world Islamist terrorism”.
“Gathering intelligence is made all the more difficult because we are dealing with a kind of nebula within which there are no organic links,” he says. “There are no threads to follow after a cell has been dismantled.”
“Groups such as this would have a hard time pulling off an operation on the scale of September 11 [2001], but they still remain very dangerous,” he adds.
Even if no one is willing to exclude the possibility of another large-scale attack — with or without the use of chemical, biological or radioactive materials — the kind of “amateurs” that blew up subways and buses in London are a nightmare for national security forces all over the world.
Hoffman also gravitates toward astronomy-based metaphors in measuring the threat.
“Now we have to deal with a vast constellation of people who are invisible until they surface to strike,” he says. “They keep Bin Laden’s cause alive without him having to do anything more than send out a videotape every once in a while.” — AFP