The world after Daesh

Shaimaa Hefzi

When a terrorist organization breathes its last, other organizations emerge to take its stead. The new masters of the terrorism scene can be related to the organizations that had just died. They can also be totally unrelated.

This was the case when al-Qaeda underwent a noticeable weakness. Al-Qaeda’s demise opened the door for the emergence of Daesh.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq. He unified al-Qaeda with al-Nusra Front of Syria under what came to be known as Daesh. The new organization came to substitute al-Qaeda, according to terrorism expert Colin P. Clarke.

He asked in an article he contributed to the National Interest magazine about the conditions that allow new terrorist organizations to substitute old ones. He especially focused on the case of Daesh and asked questions about the world after the demise of this organization.

“Can the Daesh affiliate in Libya substitute the mother organization?” Clarke asked.

He said Daesh affiliates will be able to carry out the job of the mother organization with this mother organization breathing its last.

Clarke noted that the presence of many Daesh affiliates in the world meant that no other organization will compete with or replace it in the future.

He said many factors could fuel the rise of a new Islamic State offshoot, including the relative weakness of the security forces in the area where the terrorists are operating.

“So it difficult to discern which affiliate could become the next major threat,” Clarke said. “Additionally, measuring the threat will require an intimate understanding of an affiliates’ capabilities, the degree to which safe haven and sanctuary are available, and the relative ease with which the group can replenish its resources.”

He said the emergence of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula provides a blueprint for how the next dominant Islamic State faction could rise up.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, he said, came about nearly a decade after core al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, was driven from Afghanistan and forced to endure years of an aggressive and relentless counterterrorism campaign waged by the United States.

He added that the organization was formed following a merger of al-Qaeda’s Saudi and Yemeni networks in 2009.

“Several years later, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Nasir al-Wuhayshi was elevated to general manager of al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula used member ties to core al-Qaeda leadership as a recruiting tool to persuade jihadists to join its ranks,”. Clarke said in his article.

He noted that of al-Qaeda’s roughly half-dozen affiliates, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula emerged to become the group most determined to strike the West.

When core al Qaeda went years without being able to pull off a spectacular attack against the West, Clarke said, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula managed several “near misses” against U.S. airlines, including the notorious underwear bomber plot in 2009 and another plot against cargo planes with explosive-laden printer cartridges onboard in 2010.