LONDON – Revolts in Egypt and Tunisia have struck a blow against Al Qaeda’s call to violence as a means of overthrowing autocratic governments, showing “people power” to be a more effective weapon. The adaptable militant group, with strong roots in Egypt, will work hard to exploit any sense of disappointment if the eventual outcome of the uprising there does not deliver better lives for the Arab world’s most populous country, analysts say.
But for now the group has no easy answer to the evidence presented by the world’s television screens – that ordinary men and women are doing more to weaken the 30-year-old rule of President Hosni Mubarak than years of attacks by armed groups. Nor is there much comfort here for Western strategists who have argued that the West must prop up Arab autocrats or see the region taken over by violent anti-Western Islamist radicals.
“It’s a huge defeat for Al Qaeda in a country of central importance to its image. It has wounded their credibility with potential supporters,” said Noman Benotman, a former organiser for an Al Qaeda-aligned group in neighbouring Libya. “These demonstrations by ordinary people show the bankruptcy of Al Qaeda’s ideology,” said Peter Knoope, Director of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague.
He said the December suicide of Tunisian stallholder Mohamed Bouazizi — a protest against the lack of economic opportunity that helped trigger Tunisia’s revolt — proved more powerful than Al Qaeda’s call for attacks on Western-backed Arab rulers. “The mobilisation of the masses was brought about by the authentic suicide of someone who was desperate,” he said.
Al Qaeda’s regional arm, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, issued a statement praising the Tunisian uprising and calling on youths to join its Algerian bases for training. But many al Qaeda sympathisers have been waiting to hear from the leadership, Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, who are believed to be based in Pakistan.
So far, there has been silence. That is a “not very impressive” delay by the group’s ideological chiefs, according to Anna Murison, an expert on Islamist armed groups at London’s Exclusive Analysis. She said a recent web posting by pro-Al Qaeda Mauritanian cleric Abu al-Mandhar al-Shanqiti might give a flavour of what Al Qaeda’s core leadership would say.
“If there are any mujahideen (holy warriors) in Egypt, it is the best form of jihad to participate in this blessed revolution,” she quoted the message as saying. Shanqiti added he would “not see any problem” if protesters also engaged in suicide attacks, Murison said. “The argument is likely to be that the masses have finally woken up to what al Qaeda has been saying for the past 20 years,” she said, but added that such opportunistic rhetoric was unlikely to play well with the crowds in central Cairo.
Al Qaeda has deep roots in Egypt, through al-Zawahri, who led a failed campaign in the mid-1990s to set up a purist Islamic state in Egypt, and through many key operatives. These include Mohamed Atta, a hijacker-pilot of the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide attacks on the United States, and Saif al-Adel, a former military commander of Al Qaeda recently freed from house arrest in Iran and now believed to be in Pakistan.
Despite the ideological setback, the uprisings may present Al Qaeda with some temporary tactical openings, analysts say. Political flux and an atmosphere of freer expression may provide the group with valuable openings over the next few months to rebuild long-absent networks, said Benotman.
