May 3, 2011, 02.23am IST
NEW DELHI: The present day face of al-Qaida as a terror font that inspires and sustains violent jihad but with increasingly less direct involvement in plots planned and executed by a loose federation of allies will continue to be a global security challenge even after Osama bin Laden's death.
The threat is potent not only because al-Qaida's influence plays out through thousands of charities, financiers, sleeper cells and training camps run by jihadi fellow travellers, but its decentralised model promises to self-replicate for the foreseeable future. It is an ideological platform, open to all who share the cause.
For some time now, groups like Al Shabaab in Somalia and Al Qaida in Iraq have barely retained functional links with the mother organisation and al-Qaida seems to be a "free" franchise for all manner of jihadis in Europe, east Africa, West Asia, southeast and central Asia and north America.
With widely reported health problems, al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden ceded much operational work to his Egyptian No.2 Ayman Al Zawahiri, a veteran of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Though lacking Osama's austere charisma, Zawahiri is an ideologue and a flinty, deeply committed warrior.
The problem for Zawahiri, who's Islamic Jihad merged with Al Qaida in 1998, is that US pressure has eroded the outfit's capacity to plan and recoup losses with top operatives constantly under the shadow of drone attacks.
The Osama-Zawahiri partnership did endure and the 1998 merger is also significant as that year Osama called for global jihad against Christians and Jews and added Hindus to the list of "infidels" as well.
It was then, when he partnered Taliban in Afghanistan, that Osama's "stateless" terror flourished. In 1998, he masterminded bombings of two US embassies in east Africa with simple but meticulous planning. These attacks, along with the bombing of USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, carried Osama's imprimatur.
A reason why Lashkar-e-Taiba gained in recent years in operational vision and reach is the Pakistani establishment's support and official endorsement for leading the jihad against India in Kashmir. LeT, Pakistan army and ISI are joined at the hip and the terror group receives help openly in a manner denied to Al Qaida.
But proliferation of LeT or other groups like Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI) is only the latest turn in the Al Qaida journey that began with Osama's involvement in the Afghanistan jihad as a sort of "contractor" using his wealth to funnel fighters into camps he ran or supported.
As the Soviets left, Osama was invited to Sudan by Hasan Al Turabi in 1989 after the Saudi broke with the leadership of his home country over US presence in Kuwait. He strongly believed that the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia defiled the holy land of Islam. In Sudan, he virtually ran a state using official facilities to issue fake passports and visas, route arms and money and plan attacks from safe redoubts.
He had a shura council of advisors and distinct committees handling areas like military operations and fatwas. When Sudan asked him to leave in 1996 under American pressure, he declared US military and civilians fair targets. That was when he allied with the Taliban.
The Sudan interregnum saw him work on building links with Islamic fighters engaged in jihad in regions ranging from Philippines to Chechnya. He understood the need for patient planning and value of credible covers and western passports that pass muster at borders. His finance wing ran a global web of hawala transfers.
Post 9/11, bin Laden's seclusion saw commanders gaining more independence with affiliates like "al qaida in Iraq" more or less running their own show. But the outfit, despite reduced dispersal, is still deeply interested in plotting biological, radiological and nuclear attacks. It does not find it difficult to raise funds for specific operations.
