Al-Qaida: spent force or spark for future generations of Islamic militants?

Jason Burke, Guardian correspondent whose book The 9/11 Wars comes out this month, writes in today's edition about the dangers of complacency vis à vis al-Qaida:

It is the biggest terrorism trial ever staged in Saudi Arabia. In the dock are nearly 100 men and women accused of attacks in the country. The testimony describes bloody assaults on compounds full of expatriates and bombings of government buildings. The accused will almost certainly be found guilty and many will be executed.

But in many respects this feels like a court case from another era. The current trial relates to episodes from 2003 and 2004, which might just turn out to be the heyday of the Islamist terrorism phenomenon known as al-Qaida.

"In the last two or three years al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia is dying," said Dr Abdul Rahman al-Hadlaq, senior adviser to the ministry of the interior in Riyadh. The most recent terrorist incident in the kingdom was several months ago: a checkpoint shooting involving a militant returned from Guantánamo Bay.

Osama bin Laden's death impacted on al-Qaida's power and influence around the world, but it was already waning, say security experts.

Around the world, the assessments of most counter-terrorist officials about the health of violent Islamic extremism in the areas they watch are close to that of al-Hadlaq. So far, this year has seen less terrorist violence associated with al-Qaida than any other since the millennium, arguably the late 1990s. Despite the obvious significance of the date, "there have been no credible … threats against the United States yet ahead of the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks," the US homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, recently told reporters.

In Afghanistan, US and other western intelligence officials told the Guardian there were only around 100 al-Qaida fighters and of those only "a handful" posed an international threat. There is a residual presence in parts of north Africa but not one that menaces Europe, according to France's top counter-terrorist judge.

In Iraq, al-Qaida is a shadow of its former self and resurgent groups in Yemen and Somalia, only tenuously linked to the senior leadership based in Pakistan, cannot make up for the organisation's loss of capacity elsewhere, analysts say. "The CT [counter terrorist] specialists are worried but neither Yemen nor east Africa are a strategic threat," said one western security official. Islamic extremists have been marginal to the events of the Arab spring, many point out. And of course Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaida and its leader, is now dead, killed in an American special forces raid on a compound in Pakistan in May.

"Al-Qaida has been hollowed out," said a British security source. "Of the 10 top people we were most interested in a few years ago, only one is still alive. Maybe we will look back at the first decade of this century as an aberration when a small number of people threatened a superpower."

Yet after many years of officials and politicians stressing the threats posed by al-Qaida – often represented as a global terror network with the ability to launch devastating strikes almost at will – this declaration of victory seems rather sudden. So what is the true picture?

Life for militants

In late June last year a German jihadi volunteer called Rami Makanesi was detained by Pakistani intelligence services at a checkpoint on the edge of the semi-autonomous tribal zones near the border with Afghanistan. Under interrogation Makanesi, from Frankfurt, was to provide the most detailed recent account of life for al-Qaida militants in their Pakistani stronghold. Analysts have long spoken of al-Qaida as divided into three parts: central or senior leadership, affiliates or networked groups and the ideology. What was clear from Makanesi's testimony, obtained by the Guardian, is that "al-Qaida central" has been under pressure for some time.

The overweight former heavy drug user described a world of splintered factions in constant fear of their communications being intercepted by spies. Training was rushed, carried out indoors or in villages for fear of attacks by the unmanned drones which killed around 25 of his associates. Makanesi's own freelance attempts to travel to Afghanistan to fight were unsuccessful. He had to buy his own gun and pay his own rent, confirming reports that al-Qaida is short of funds.

Makanesi's description, intelligence officials said, matched their understanding of al-Qaida's existence in the tribal zones. A small number of key leaders – around a dozen are believed by analysts to have attended a meeting to ratify the succession of Ayman al-Zawahiri as head of the group – spend as much time avoiding missile strikes and betrayal as plotting operations.

According to US officials, material seized from the compound where Bin Laden was killed in May suggests that the attacks in London in 2005 and the thwarted "airlines plot" of 2006 were the last over which he had close control of operational details. From that date on, apparently, his role was restricted to broad strategic direction. In the second half of the last decade al-Qaida turned into an umbrella term for a range of militant groups. This network of affiliates has also suffered in recent years.

By 2006, when their leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed, the al-Qaida affiliate in Iraq was in deep trouble. In recent years, al-Qaida offshoots from Morocco to the Philippines, some formally linked to the group, others simply inspired by it, have been eliminated or put under enormous pressure.

That pressure is continuing, says Philip Mudd, a senior intelligence adviser at the FBI until 2010. "The Europeans are still pretty serious, the Saudis have done well," he said. "The Indonesians have done better than many thought they would." One of the newest affiliates – al-Qaida in the Maghreb – has proved incapable of confronting even local security forces in Algeria let alone projecting a broader threat. According to Mudd, the "operational and ideological momentum" which lay with the militants in the middle years of the last decade now lies with those fighting them.

Falling support for al-Qaida

Peter Bergen, the American author and al-Qaida expert, points to the series of polls showing the degree to which support for Bin Laden, the group and their methodology, always far from unanimous, was falling rapidly in key countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia and elsewhere even before the events of this year in the Arab world. "Al-Qaida's leaders, footsoldiers, ideas were all totally absent from the Arab spring," he said. "When al-Zawahiri issued a statement on what was going on, it was totally ignored." Bergen said.

In Bin Laden's native Saudi Arabia, officials pointed out that support fell away rapidly after the first wave of terrorist attacks in the kingdom in 2003. In Afghanistan, relations between the Taliban, committed largely to local goals, and international militants with a global agenda remain tense and complex.

In Europe too militants have become increasingly marginalised. Once there were scores of young Britons seeking training or combat experience alongside the Taliban each year. Now there are no more than a dozen or so, UK security sources claim. Officials at MI5 say their new tactic of early "interdiction" of any threat works well enough for things to look "boring".

"We will have al-Qaida and al-Qaida-related violence for some time to come," said Nigel Inkster, former deputy director of MI6. "But the tide has turned. Bin Laden's ideas of setting the Muslim world ablaze and sparking a global insurgency have been and gone."

However, some warn against the new confidence of security officials and politicians. "There is a narrative of victory that does not make for good analysis," said Leah Jewell, who tracked Islamic militancy for the Australian police. Mudd, meanwhile, is concerned that overly optimistic assessments could lead to a lack of focus. "The guy is on the floor and we need to kick him in the face," he said. "This is a long campaign."

Others suggest there is a risk of the same analytic failure that has crippled attempts to deal with the problem of Islamic militancy since 2001: the reduction of a broad phenomenon with roots in political, religious, social and cultural factors in the Islamic world to the activity of a person or group.

Bin Laden's project was to unite and focus the disparate strands of radical Islamic militancy. In this he was partially and temporarily successful. But the last decade has seen a steady move away from the highly organised, carefully planned strikes involving dozens of attackers towards chaotic, fragmented and diverse violent activism. The European Union's criminal intelligence agency estimates that less than a third of those arrested for Islamist terrorism in 2010 in Europe were linked to a specific group.

Michael Leiter, director of the US National Counter-terrorism Centre, described the numerous plots in America last year as "unrelated operationally but … indicative of a collective subculture and a common cause that rallies independent extremists to want to attack the homeland". In India, recent attacks are believed to be the work of "homegrown" militants without external links. One incident earlier this year – the bombing of a cafe in Marrakech, Morocco – was disowned by al-Qaida itself. An autonomous group of militants claiming allegiance to the organisation appears responsible.

Counter-terrorism strategies now largely reflect this new reality, even if the language used by officials and politicians in public sometimes does not. These days western intelligence services favour analysis of networks over building pictures of traditional hierarchies, while "profiling" based on generalisations has been replaced by a "granular" approach. One element emerging from research by several services has been the importance of family ties in the process of radicalisation around the world.

Concern about jihadi families

Evidence of the ease with which groups of close relatives appear to have been drawn into violent militancy from the ongoing trials in Saudi Arabia has shocked local officials. Such ties have also been identified by US intelligence analysts in Iraq. In the UK, security officials are concerned about "jihadi families", particularly the potential of the children of militants to turn to violence. In Algeria last month, the 23-year-old son of a former senior Islamist was killed by security forces as he drove a car laden with explosives. Suspects arrested in Britain in the last year have been in their late teens. For them the 9/11 attacks are little more than a childhood memory.

There are concerns too about the threat from militants imprisoned after 2001 and now due for release. "Very few appear very repentant," said Inkster.

More than 20 years after the foundation of al-Qaida it appears the group is fading from the world scene. "With hindsight 9/11 looks like the climax of something, not the beginning," said Bergen. But much of the destructive energy harnessed by the group remains, experts say, simply without the focus that Bin Laden and his associates provided. There are too many variables to make any certain predictions but over coming years a new focus could emerge. This could be the result of anarchy in a particular region, state support, the rise of a new charismatic leader or as a consequence of overreaction by western powers to a successful terrorist strike that many officials say is "inevitable".

Noman Benotman, an analyst and former senior Libyan militant who knew Bin Laden, is concerned that expectations raised by the Arab spring will not be met, creating a fertile ground for extremism. What happens in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan will also be important. So will be the evolution of groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba in Pakistan.

The radicalisation and polarisation that came from the wars of the last decade are further factors, along with the complicated roots of contemporary Islamic militancy. "I hope I am wrong but I don't think all of this is finished," Benotman said.