Ali throws light on al-Qaeda’s evolution in Arab states

PARIS – Chairman of the Center for Middle East Studies in Paris Abdul Rahim Ali said Monday that cracks started to appear within al-Qaeda soon after the US bombed Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, in 2001.

This was when, Ali said, al-Qaeda’s leaders turned tail. He added at a lecture at the French parliament that some of the fleeing al-Qaeda senior members headed to Tora Bora Mountains in Afghanistan to join al-Qaeda’s leader Osama bin Laden.

Some of the fleeing members, he added, headed to Iran and then to northern Iraq where Ansar al-Islam group was in control.

He said at the end of 2002, some of those who ended up in northern Iraq arrived in Iraqi capital Baghdad and joined Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Zarqawi, Ali said, formed al-Tawhid wal-Jihad organization to escape the American troops which were chasing him at the time.

He referred to a plan for the creation of branches of the same organization in a number of other Arab countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Maghreb.

“An organization carrying the same name appeared in Sinai,” Ali said. “Terrorist organizations in the Arab Peninsula and the Arab Maghreb then turned themselves into franchises of al-Qaeda.”

He said al-Tawhid wal-Jihad organization in Sinai called itself al-Qaeda.