Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Daniel Byman

While it is far too early to say that the United States and its allies have permanently “crippled” Al Qaeda in Iraq (as claimed by some U.S. officials), clearly the terrorist organization has suffered grievous blows in the last year. Indeed, U.S. officials are so pleased they hope to use the “Anbar model” in Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as elsewhere in Iraq. Beyond its benefits for Iraqi stability, what does this success mean?

For many years, politicians and pundits (including me) have devoted painful attention to the ramifications of failure in Iraq for the future of Al Qaeda and the broader salafi-jihadist movement. The prognostications have ranged from pessimistic to calamitous, with predictions that Iraq will be “the new Afghanistan” commonplace. Attention has not yet focused, however, on how the decline of Al Qaeda in Iraq could affect the future of the salafi-jihadist movement in the greater Middle East and throughout the world. To be clear, any judgment is speculative at this point: Al Qaeda in Iraq is not dead, and the situation in Iraq is in such flux that today’s certainties could seem laughable tomorrow.

As I’ve written elsewhere, the U.S. decision to invade and occupy Iraq was a lifeline for Al Qaeda, which had been battered since losing its haven in Afghanistan and suffering from a global manhunt after the 9/11 attacks. The popularity of the Iraq resistance led Al Qaeda’s popularity to soar among young angry Muslims around the world. Al Qaeda is now back in Afghanistan and is stronger than ever in Pakistan.

Yet today Al Qaeda in Iraq—though not the Al Qaeda core—is on the run. Sunni tribes and “concerned local citizens” groups are killing or arresting many of its cadre and transforming parts of Iraq from sanctuaries to hunting grounds. In addition to improving the chances for a semi-stable Iraq, these blows have tremendous implications for the future of the organization outside Iraq. At the very least, Iraq will be a less useful base for salafi-jihadists to plot attacks in neighboring countries such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which they have done for several years now. Iraq will also be less of a draw and training ground for young radicals from the Middle East and Europe, who have flocked to Iraq since the 2003 invasion to fight the United States. Would-be fighters may come to see Iraq as a place where local Sunnis will pursue them mercilessly rather than as the center of the anti-U.S. struggle.

Less tangible but perhaps most important, Iraq might come to symbolize the organization’s lack of appeal and gross mistakes rather than triumph against the “crusaders.” The salafi-jihadists’ credibility has suffered. Since 2003, Al Qaeda has made Iraq the center of its propaganda, and for years has encouraged its supporters and taunted America with each report of a U.S. setback. Recent statements from Zawahiri and bin Laden suggest the leaders recognize the missteps Al Qaeda in Iraq has made and how much this has cost the organization. This will have long-term consequences for recruitment and the movement’s constant competition with rivals within the radical Islamist community. Indeed, the debate about “who lost Iraq” could eventually be harsher in salafi-jihadist circles than in the United States. In addition, the Iraq struggle was moving the organization’s fighters more and more against the Shi’a, but Al Qaeda in Iraq’s defeat came at the hands of Sunnis, suggesting that the “enemy within” may again consume the movement.

Yet the genie cannot go completely back into the bottle, for the Iraq struggle has fundamentally changed the salafi-jihadist movement. Fighters who went to Iraq learned a new set of capabilities that are now dispersed to the far corners of the earth. Techniques like checkpoint evasion, urban warfare, and particularly the use of sophisticated IEDs and suicide bombing all are now part of the arsenal of salafi-jihadists elsewhere. Salafi-jihadists are now exceptionally skilled info-warriors, able to create and disseminate sophisticated propaganda in the blink of an eye. Salafi-jihadist military successes also shattered the sense of U.S. invulnerability created after Washington quickly ousted the Taliban. Recent U.S. gains offset this slightly, but we will never be ten feet tall in salafi-jihadist eyes. Finally, the sectarian conflict in Iraq has energized many salafi-jihadists against the Shi’a, a focus that may diminish but will not go away.

Success also has its dark side. Although Bush administration officials were widely criticized for claiming “we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here,” clearly Iraq did divert many radicals who would seek to fight elsewhere. (The fallacy of the administration’s argument was not diversion per se but rather ignoring that outrage over the invasion inspired many young Muslims to take up arms, thus increasing the overall pool.) Some of these individuals may stay home and foment trouble, raising the risk of greater regional instability. Such unrest is particularly likely in Saudi Arabia, for which the Iraq conflict was a safety valve where many angry salafi-jihadists went to shoot Americans instead of staying home and plotting against the Al Saud.

More important, many of the foreign fighters in Iraq will go home, and even small numbers of fighters may radicalize and change the orientation of existing local groups, as happened with Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon. Finally, Al Qaeda in Iraq could again revive: U.S. and Iraqi successes against it are real, but the organization is tenacious and U.S. successes are fragile.