New Delhi, Sep 12 (IANS) : Al Qaeda is moving back towards a centralised, personality-driven leadership structure, moving away from its earlier decentralised regional model as it seeks to regain operational space from the Islamic State, intelligence officials said.
Al Qaeda came under intense pressure from the United States and other Western countries following the 9/11 attacks. The outfit was already significantly weakened, but suffered a major setback after its founder, Osama bin Laden, was killed by US forces in Pakistan in 2011.
After bin Laden’s death, his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, sought to move the outfit away from its earlier personality-driven leadership model. Under his leadership, Al Qaeda increasingly adopted a regional structure, with affiliated groups operating across Africa, Arab countries and the Indian subcontinent, including Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).
Each of these regions was governed by different leaders whose job was just to run operations. This strategy is, however, set to change, and Al Qaeda realises that it needs to move back to the personality-driven strategy rather than having different leaders running the outfit in the various regions.
An official said that Al Qaeda is desperate to make a comeback.
“It realises that it has lost plenty of space to the Islamic State. Al Qaeda is also moving towards the Islamic State style whereby propaganda and radicalisation would be the primary driving factors,” the official said.
In terms of operations, Al Qaeda would use much less manpower and focus on carrying out terror attacks using drones, the official said.
To ensure that Al Qaeda goes back to its personality-driven model, the outfit’s media wing, Al Shahab, released a video of Hamza Bin Laden, the designated heir of Osama Bin Laden.
An Intelligence Bureau official said that this is a strategic move by the group.
“If the footage is recent, then it can be presumed that Al Qaeda had claimed that Hamza had been killed only to protect him from a US strike. Further, the footage was also released on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks,” the official added.
Another official said that this move by the terror outfit is clearly to increase recruitment and ensure that the ideology is spread far and wide.
Hamza carries the Bin Laden name, and this resonates much more with potential recruits.
“The Bin Laden name is also important for the outfit since it would help spread its propaganda. It wants to draw away the potential and existing recruits of the Islamic State,” the official added.
Osama Bin Laden was a cult figure in the group, and with his name came scores of recruits from all across the world. Officials say that the name is a big draw in many parts of India too.
For Al-Qaeda, its AQIS is the biggest focus, compared with Al Qaeda in the Arab Province or African Province.
The video footage that was released featuring Hamza Bin Laden boasts about the naval strike in Karachi that was carried out by the AQIS.
The AQIS, which was launched in 2014, was for specific operations in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
The big game that the AQIS sought to play was to first establish itself in the sub-continent, with the larger agenda being against India. The outfit has been vocal about the Kashmir issue and has sought to undertake attacks several times in India. However, it realised that its operations in the sub-continent are not taking off since there is no prominent face that is leading it.
Counter-terrorism experts say that Al Qaeda is likely to return to its old model.
“It would be personality-driven and will be a single unit and not province- or region-based,” the experts say.
With this change in strategy, one could expect a battle between the Islamic State and Al Qaeda in India.
Al Qaeda has some presence in parts of northern India. However, a few years back, prior to the rise of the Islamic State, it had a very strong presence in South India. It ran its operations under the name of the Base Movement from Kerala. However, the organisation slowly faded out, and currently it exists only on paper.
This change, which the outfit is trying to effect, would become a big headache for the Indian security agencies, which are already battling the very rapid spread of radicalisation by the Islamic State.
With Al Qaeda now attempting a revival, the Indian agencies would be fighting two different outfits which would carry out the same agenda, an official said.
