Al-Qa’eda has begun to harness the Arab revolts
Since the movement was launched by the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor, I have been a sceptic about this Arab Spring and its promise of delivering economic prosperity for all. When it comes to democratic institutions and the rule of law, the Middle East has been locked in a permafrost of repression since most of its states first proclaimed their independence. Which is why no one should be surprised that for all the commitment and sacrifices made by pro-democracy demonstrators in such disparate states such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, their chances of achieving their goals are fading by the day.
Take Yemen, a country that is already riven with half a dozen civil wars. It is more likely to experience another bout of brutal infighting than undergo radical political reform in the wake of President Abdullah Ali Saleh’s flight to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment. In Bahrain, the intervention of the Saudi military has effectively crushed the opposition movement, while in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad is using his own forces to achieve a similar effect.
Libyan rebels now enjoy Nato’s full support in their efforts to overthrow Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. But we are still none the wiser about what type of government they intend to establish.
And what about Tunisia and Egypt, which initiated the uprising by overthrowing their long-serving presidents, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak? In Tunis there have been violent street protests after the interim government warned that Islamist parties could win elections planned for July, thereby squashing the democratic aspirations of January’s secular protestors. In Egypt, meanwhile, elections are due in September, but the conduct of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which runs the interim government set up after Mr Mubarak’s removal from office, has hardly inspired confidence among the protestors that these will result in a truly democratic government. Mounting frustration at the lack of political progress has resulted in increased sectarian and religious tensions, the most violent example of which were the recent attacks on Egyptian Christians carried out by Islamist extremists.
And the failure of pro-democracy campaigners is playing into the hands of Islamist extremists who seek an entirely different agenda. The Islamists have one thing in common with the democrats: they want the ‘tyrants’ of the Middle East toppled. But that is the extent of their shared ambition. The Islamist dream is to replace the current generation of autocrats with conservative Islamic regimes administered under Sharia law, rather than secular, liberal-minded administrations.
We now know, thanks to the material discovered at Osama bin Laden’s lair in Pakistan, that far from being left behind by the Arab Spring, the al-Qa’eda leader was actively seeking to influence its outcome. When, in the audio recording he made the week before his death, he called for more rulers to go, he was not advocating their replacement by western-style democracy. He wanted the type of radical, uncompromising Islamic rule that has characterised the Taleban in Afghanistan and Hamas in Gaza. Bin Laden may no longer be in a position to usurp the Arab Spring, but there are plenty of other al-Qa’eda activists who are, such as Saif al-Adel, the former Egyptian special forces officer who has taken temporary control of the terror movement.
Take the attacks on five churches in Cairo last month. An Egyptian priest who witnessed the violence reported that the attackers had chanted Islamist slogans previously heard from al-Qa’eda supporters, such as, ‘With our souls and blood we sacrifice ourselves.’
Western intelligence officials remain concerned about al-Qa’eda’s attempts to infiltrate the anti-Gaddafi rebels in Libya. The US military well remembers that during the Iraq insurgency, it was Libya that provided the greatest share of Jihadist fighters. Most of them came from the eastern province, now the centre of the anti-Gaddafi revolt. The fear is that the longer the rebels take to get rid of Gaddafi, the more that Islamist-supported militias will be able to develop their own political organisation.
In Yemen, where al-Qa’eda has already established a highly effective terror network, al-Qa’eda fighters did not even wait for their president’s departure to seize control of the southern city of Zinjibar, which is now under their control. The security situation in Yemen has deteriorated to the point where William Hague has advised all remaining British citizens to leave on the first available flight or boat. The situation in Syria, meanwhile, is much more confused following this week’s attack on Syrian security officers in the town of Jisr al-Shughour, in the north-west of the country, in which 120 Syrian police offers are said to have been killed. The region is reputed to be a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned organisation whose aim is to re-establish the Caliphate in Damascus.
The Assad regime has successfully repressed the Brotherhood since its notorious assault on Hama in 1982, in which thousands of Islamist activists were reported to have been killed. In recent weeks, though, President Assad has increasingly blamed the anti-government protests on the Brotherhood, in a somewhat transparent attempt to deflect attention away from his own shortcomings. The Brotherhood has been blamed for the Jisr al-Shughour ambush, even though it was more likely to have been a mutiny by disaffected security officials.
But that does not mean the Brotherhood’s involvement in the Syrian unrest is benign. Assad is not alone in thinking that, if his regime was overthrown by a popular uprising, it is more likely to be replaced by Islamist militants than the secular activists who are currently leading the charge against the discredited Ba’athists.
Let us not forget that the 1979 Iranian revolution began as a secular revolt against the Shah and ended with the establishment of a rabidly anti-western Islamic government. Al-Qa’eda may have been slow to react to the recent turbulence in the Middle East, but who is to say the Arab Spring will not end in similar fashion?
It is a possibility that should certainly alarm all those western leaders, such as Mr Hague, who enthusiastically expressed their support for the protests. I, for one, fail to see how the replacement of a single Middle Eastern autocracy by Islamist fanatics can in any way be deemed to be in our interests.