There’s a discernible logic to what Iran is doing funding Mexican drug traffickers to bomb a US restaurant and kill the Saudi ambassador, and whoever else might be eating there. Three elements have come together in a dangerous cocktail of terrorism, international rivalry and criminality, and the threat is serious.
We should not assume that Al Qaeda is defeated. It still poses a threat to world peace, says Richard Whelan.
This article first appeared in the 3 May 2011 edition of The Irish Times and is reproduced here with their kind permission.
ANALYSIS: The death of the figurehead leader of al-Qaeda does not presage the end of the worldwide campaign of terror he inspired
OSAMA BIN Laden’s legacy is that the ideology of al-Qaeda will endure. Al-Qaeda is a group of like-minded people, not a global military structure directed from a notional centre. In fact, the “Arab spring” we are witnessing is a much greater threat to al-Qaeda than the loss of its figurehead, iconic though he may have been.
To understand the significance of bin Laden’s death, we need to take a few steps back.
The latest issue of Survival (April – May 2011), the bimonthly journal of The International Institute for Strategic Studies, has a cluster of interesting articles addressing this question. Continue reading
Al Qaeda’s “home-ground” is the Middle East, Gulf and North Africa, the location of the recent popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and now Syria. Despite all its terrorist activities and its endless propaganda, it has been effectively “missing in action” in all the popular uprisings in these countries over the last three months.
Why? Continue reading