Daniel Byman’s prepared testimony before the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence of the House Committee on Homeland Security on terrorism in Africa and the threat it poses to the United States.
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Topics Business & Workforce Cities & Communities Climate & Energy Defense & Security Education Global Economy & Development Health Care International Affairs Society & Culture Technology & Information U.S. Economy U.S. Government & Politics Regions Africa Asia & the Pacific Eurasia Europe Latin America & the Caribbean Middle East & North Africa North America Search Home War in Israel and Gaza U.S. Economy U.S. Government & Politics Technology & Information Race in Public Policy Experts Events Research Programs About Us Research & Commentary Newsletters Careers For Media Search Home Comparing Al Qaeda and ISIS: Different goals, different targets Sections Sections Downloads Downloads Terrorism in Africa: The Imminent Threat to the United States See More Share Share Search Sections Sections Downloads Downloads Terrorism in Africa: The Imminent Threat to the United States See More Share Share Subscribe to the Center for Middle East Policy Newsletter Sign Up Commentary Testimony Comparing Al Qaeda and ISIS: Different goals, different targets Daniel L. Byman Daniel L. Byman Director and Professor, Security Studies Program - Georgetown University, Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy @dbyman April 29, 2015 23 min read Print Sections Downloads Terrorism in Africa: The Imminent Threat to the United States See More Print Follow the authors @dbyman See More More On Center Center for Middle East Policy Prepared testimony before the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence of the House Committee on Homeland Security. Chairman King, Ranking Member Higgins, distinguished members of the subcommittee, and subcommittee staff, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. The Islamic State’s influence and model are spreading. Even in many Muslim countries where the Islamic State does not have a strong presence, its rise is radicalizing their populations, fomenting sectarianism, and making a troubled region worse.1 The Islamic State’s successes in Syria and Iraq alarmed many observers in Washington and prompted the Obama administration to overcome its longstanding hesitation to become more militarily involved in Iraq and Syria. But there is one person for whom the Islamic State’s rise is even more frightening: Ayman al-Zawahiri. Although the Al Qaeda leader might be expected to rejoice at the emergence of a strong jihadist group that delights in beheading Americans (among other horrors), in reality the Islamic State’s rise risks Al Qaeda’s demise. When Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi rejected Al Qaeda’s authority and later declared a caliphate, he split the always-fractious jihadist movement. The two are now competing for more than the leadership of the jihadist movement: they are competing for its soul. Who will emerge triumphant is not clear. However, the implications of one side’s victory or of continuing division are profound for the Muslim world and for the United States, shaping the likely targets of the jihadist movement, its ability to achieve its goals, and the overall stability of the Middle East. The United States can exploit this split, both to decrease the threat and to weaken the movement as a whole. My testimony today will focus on comparing Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. I argue that Al Qaeda and its affiliates remain a threat to the U.S. homeland, while the Islamic State’s danger is more to the stability of the Middle East and U.S. interests overseas. Much of their rivalry involves a competition for affiliates, with both trying to spread their model and in Al Qaeda’s case to ensure its operational relevance. For now the Islamic State’s focus is primarily on Iraq and Syria and to a lesser degree on other states in the Muslim world, particularly Libya. In the United States and in Europe it may inspire “lone wolves,” but it is not directing its resources to attack in these areas, and security services are prepared for the threat. Al Qaeda is weaker and less dynamic than the Islamic State, but the former remains more focused on attacking the United States and its Western allies. My testimony is organized into four sections. I first offer some general background on the origins of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. I then discuss the threat profiles for each group, assessing both their strategies and tactics. The third section looks at the struggle to win over affiliate groups in the Muslim world. I conclude my testimony by discussing the policy implications and recommendations for the United States. The Diverse Origins of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State Al Qaeda emerged out of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. As the Soviets prepared to withdraw, Osama Bin Laden and a few of his close associates—high on their perceived victory over the mighty Soviet Union—decided to capitalize on the network they had built to take jihad global. Bin Laden’s vision was to create a vanguard of elite fighters who could lead the global jihad project and bring together the hundreds of small jihadist groups struggling, often feebly, against their own regimes under a single umbrella. By the mid-1990s, he wanted to reorient the movement as a whole, focusing it on what he saw as the bigger enemy underwriting all these corrupt local regimes: the United States. For local jihadists, pledging allegiance to Bin Laden and adopting the Al Qaeda brand meant obtaining access to a wide range of assets: money, weapons, logistical support, expertise, and, of course, training—Al Qaeda training camps were the Ivy Leagues of jihadist education. The 1998 attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa, and of course 9/11, made Al Qaeda’s brand a household name. The attacks demonstrated the power, capabilities, reach, and sheer audacity of the organization. But although the 9/11 attacks electrified the global jihadist movement and raised Al Qaeda’s profile on the global stage, the U.S. counterterrorism response that followed was devastating to both Al Qaeda and the broader movement it purported to lead. Over the next decade, the U.S. relentlessly pursued Al Qaeda, targeting its leadership, disrupting its finances, destroying its training camps, infiltrating its communications networks, and ultimately crippling its ability to function. It remained a symbol of the global jihadist movement, but its inability to successfully launch another major attack against the United States meant that symbol was becoming less powerful. The death of the charismatic Bin Laden and the ascension of the much less compelling Ayman al-Zawahiri to the top leadership position further diminished the power of the Al Qaeda brand. The Islamic State began as an Iraqi organization, and this legacy shapes the movement today. Jihadist groups proliferated in Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion, and many eventually coalesced around Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian jihadist who spent time in Afghanistan in the 1990s and again in 2001. Though Bin Laden gave Zarqawi seed money to start his organization, Zarqawi at first refused to swear loyalty to and join Al Qaeda, as he shared only some of Bin Laden’s goals and wanted to remain independent. After months of negotiations, however, Zarqawi pledged his loyalty, and in 2004 his group took on the name “Al Qaeda in Iraq” to signify this connection. Bin Laden got an affiliate in the most important theater of jihad at a time when the Al Qaeda core was on the ropes, and Zarqawi got Al Qaeda’s prestige and contacts to bolster his legitimacy. Yet even in its early days the group bickered with the Al Qaeda leadership. Zawahiri and Bin Laden pushed for a focus on U.S. targets while Zarqawi (and those who took his place after his death in 2006 from a U.S. air strike) emphasized sectarian war and attacks on Sunni Muslims deemed apostates, such as those who collaborated with the Shi’a-led regime. Zarqawi and his followers also acted with incredible brutality, making their name with gruesome beheading videos—a tactic that its successor organizations would also use to shock and generate publicity. Zarqawi also kept his focus on Iraq and its immediate environs. Despite the fears of U.S. and European security officials, Iraq did not prove an Afghanistan-like incubator for attacks on the U.S. homeland and the West. Al Qaeda in Iraq’s indiscriminate violence—including against its fellow Sunnis—eventually led to a backlash from the Sunni tribes that, when combined with the 2006 U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq, hit the group hard. For Al Qaeda, this was a broader disaster, with the Iraqi group’s setbacks and abuses tarnishing the overall jihadist cause. Indeed, in private, Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn recommended to Bin Laden that Al Qaeda publicly “sever its ties” with Al Qaeda in Iraq because of the group’s sectarian violence. When the Syria conflict broke out in 2011 and electrified the Muslim world, Zawahiri urged Iraqi jihadists to take part in the conflict, and Baghdadi—who had taken over leadership of the Iraqi group in 2010—initially sent small numbers of fighters into Syria to build an organization. Syria was in chaos, and the Iraqi jihadists established secure bases of operations there, raising money and winning new recruits to their cause. Their ambitions grew along with their organization, expanding to include Syria as well as Iraq. Iraqi jihadists, by 2013 calling themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL) to reflect their new, broader orientation, also faced less pressure in Iraq with the departure of U.S. forces at the end of 2011. In Syria, the group took over swaths of territory, benefiting as the Syrian regime focused on more moderate groups while the Syrian opposition as a whole remained fractious. At the same time, Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki put in place a series of disastrous policies to bolster support among his Shi’a base, systematically excluding Iraqi Sunnis from power. Thus Baghdadi’s organization steadily shored up popular support, regained its legitimacy in Iraq, built a base in Syria, and replenished its ranks. Although the Syria conflict revived the Iraqi jihadist movement, it also eventually led it to split with the Al Qaeda leadership. Zawahiri encouraged the Iraqi affiliate to move into Syria, but he also wanted to establish a separate group under separate command, with Syrians in the lead to give it a local face. Zawahiri probably also wanted a separate group given his past doubts on AQI’s loyalty and wisdom. Jabhat al-Nusra was thus created as the Syrian spinoff. But whereas Zawahiri saw this as a positive development, Baghdadi and other Iraqi leaders feared the group had simply gone native and become too independent, focusing too much on Syria and ignoring Iraq and the original leadership. In an attempt to rein it in and reestablish Iraqi authority over the group, Baghdadi declared Jabhat al-Nusra part of his organization. Nusra leaders balked, pledging a direct oath to Zawahiri as a way of retaining its independence. Zawahiri found this lack of unity frustrating and in late 2013 ordered Baghdadi to accept this decision and focus on Iraq. Baghdadi refused, and declared Jabhat al-Nusra subordinate to him: a move that sparked a broader clash in which thoughts of fighters from both groups died. In February of 2014, Zawahiri publicly disavowed Baghdadi’s group, formally ending their affiliation. In June 2014, Baghdadi’s forces shocked just about everyone when they swept across Iraq, capturing not only large parts of Iraq’s remote areas but also major cities like Mosul and Tikrit, important resources like hydroelectric dams and oil refineries, and several strategic border crossings with Syria. Within a month, the group—now calling itself the Islamic State—would officially declare the establishment of a caliphate in the territory under its control, naming Baghdadi the caliph and “leader for Muslims everywhere.”2 Almost overnight, Baghdadi went from being an annoying thorn in Zawahiri’s side to a serious challenger to his authority and a threat to his organization’s position as the vanguard of the global jihadist movement. Thousands more foreign fighters, inspired by the stunning success of the Islamic State and the bold declaration of a caliphate, flocked to Syria and Iraq to join the fight. Differing Threat Profiles The dispute between the Islamic State and Al Qaeda is more than just a fight for power within the jihadist movement. The two organizations differ on the main enemies, strategies, tactics, and other fundamental concerns. As a result, the threat they pose to the United States differs as well. Although the ultimate goal of Al Qaeda is to overthrow the corrupt “apostate” regimes in the Middle East and replace them with “true” Islamic governments, Al Qaeda’s primary enemy is the United States, which it sees as the root cause of the Middle East’s problems. By targeting the United States, Al Qaeda believes it will eventually induce the United States to end support for these Muslim state regimes and withdraw from the region altogether, thus leaving the regimes vulnerable to attack from within. Al Qaeda considers Shi’a Muslims to be apostates but sees their killing to be too extreme, a waste of resources, and detrimental to the broader jihadist project. Yet Zawahiri cannot openly oppose sectarianism: it is too popular, and with the sectarian slaughter in the Syrian civil war, too many in the Muslim world find it compelling. The Islamic State does not follow Al Qaeda’s “far enemy” strategy, preferring instead the “near enemy” strategy, albeit on a regional level. As such, the primary target of the Islamic State has not been the United States, but rather “apostate” regimes in the Arab world—namely, the Asad regime in Syria and the Abadi regime in Iraq. Like his predecessors, Baghdadi favors purifying the Islamic community first by attacking Shi’a and other religious minorities as well as rival jihadist groups. The Islamic State’s long list of enemies includes the Iraqi Shi’a, the Lebanese Hizballah, the Yazidis (a Kurdish ethno-religious minority located predominantly in Iraq), and rival opposition groups in Syria (including Jabhat al-Nusra, the official Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria). Ostensibly in response to intervention by the United States and others in the conflict, Western civilians in the region (including journalists and humanitarian aid workers) have also become targets—though the Islamic State saw them as hostile before the U.S. intervention. And now that American military advisers are on the ground in Iraq supporting the Iraqi military, the U.S. military has ostensibly become a primary target for the Islamic State, but the lack of troops within range diminishes this danger. Al Qaeda has long used a mix of strategies to achieve its objectives. To fight the United States, Al Qaeda plots terrorism spectaculars to electrify the Muslim world (and get it to follow Al Qaeda’s banner) and to convince the United States to retreat from the Muslim world: the model is based on the U.S. withdrawals from Lebanon after Hizballah bombed the Marine barracks and U.S. embassy there and the “Blackhawk Down” incident in Somalia. In addition, Al Qaeda supports insurgents in the Islamic world to fight against U.S.-backed regimes (and U.S. forces in places like Afghanistan, where it hopes to replicate the Soviet experience). Finally, Al Qaeda issues a swarm of propaganda to convince Muslims that jihad is their obligation and to convince jihadists to adopt Al Qaeda’s goals over their local ones. The Islamic State embraces some of these goals, but even where there is agreement in principle, its approach is quite different. The Islamic State’s strategy is to control territory, steadily consolidating and expanding its position. Part of this is ideological: it wants to create a government where Muslims can live under Islamic law (or the Islamic State’s twisted version of it). Part of this is inspirational: by creating an Islamic state, it electrifies many Muslims who then embrace the group. And part of it is basic strategy: by controlling territory it can build an army, and by using its army it can control more territory. The two groups’ preferred tactics reflect these strategic differences. Al Qaeda has long favored large-scale, dramatic attacks against strategic or symbolic targets: The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 are the most prominent, but the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack on U.S.S. Cole in the port of Aden in 2000, and plots like the 2005 attempt to down over 10 transatlantic flights all show an emphasis on the spectacular. At the same time, Al Qaeda has backed an array of lesser terrorist attacks on Western, Jewish, and other enemy targets; trained insurgents; and otherwise tried to build guerrilla armies. Yet although Al Qaeda has repeatedly called for attacks against Westerners, and especially Amer… truncated (14,489 more characters in archive)