Al-Qaeda 2007
Debbie Hamilton at Right Truth on Dec 28 2006 at 5:12 am | Filed under: Feature Article, The War on Terror
As 2006 closes and 2007 begins, we all have a tendency evaluate the past year and look forward to changes in the new year. Looking at al-Qaeda, Strategic Forecast sees a ‘devolution’ of al-Qaeda’s operational model the pre-9/11 model. A shift ‘from al Qaeda “the group” to a broader global jihadist movement. This essentially was a shift from an al Qaeda operational model based on an “all-star team” of operatives that was selected, trained and dispatched by the central leadership to the target, to an operational model that encourages independent “grassroots” jihadists to conduct attacks, or to a model in which al Qaeda provides operational commanders who organize grassroots cells.’
If true, what does this mean for the global war on terror? Looking back, al-Qaeda’s attacks during 2006 are considered failures:
This shift has provided al Qaeda “the movement” broader geographic and operational reach than al Qaeda “the group.” This larger, dispersed group of actors, however, lacks the operational depth and expertise of the core group and its well-trained terrorist cadre. …
The major attacks in 2006 in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia; Dahab, Egypt; Dubba and Marib, Yemen; and Damascus, Syria, were all conducted by existing regional nodes and not the main al Qaeda organization. These attacks did show a broad geographic reach stretching across the Middle East but, except for the Dahab attack, they were essentially all failures.
Overall, 2006 was not a good year for the al Qaeda nodes in Saudi Arabia and the Sinai. It also was a dismal year for the Iraq affiliate, whose charismatic leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in June.
Looking forward to 2007, Strategic Forecast sees this trend continuing. They see al-Qaeda being used for publicity. They see terror attacks mostly on ’soft targets’ such as hotels, trains and subways. “… the number of attacks and the casualties they generated were down for 2006. In many cases, such as Damascus, Abqaiq and Yemen, the attacks resulted in the deaths of more attackers than victims, and the only attack to produce a sizable death toll was in Dahab, where 24 people died.’
Al-Qaeda is still ‘interested in striking financial targets, aircraft and chemical/petroleum plants’.
[Read More and Discuss With Debbie Hamilton at Right Truth]
al-Qaeda, jihadist, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Middle East, al-Zarqawi
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