tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/al-qaeda-in-the-arabian-peninsula-25381/articlesAl-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – The Conversation2018-06-17T22:49:50Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/982962018-06-17T22:49:50Z2018-06-17T22:49:50ZYemen: Understanding the conflict<p>The military conflict now escalating in Yemen threatens the lives <a href="http://thehill.com/opinion/international/392123-quarter-million-lives-at-risk-in-latest-battle-for-yemen">of more than 250,000 people in the port city Hodeidah</a> while 8 million more people across Yemen <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/world/middleeast/yemen-al-hudaydah-assault-saudi-coalition.html">already risk starvation</a>. The country is also facing the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/oct/12/yemen-cholera-outbreak-worst-in-history-1-million-cases-by-end-of-year">“worst cholera outbreak in modern history.”</a> </p>
<p>I am a scholar who has studied Yemen and worked as an Arabian Peninsula foreign affairs analyst for the State Department between 2011 and 2016.</p>
<p>Here is what is happening in Yemen, now in the fourth year of a civil war.</p>
<h2>Origins of the conflict</h2>
<p>Yemen lies on the southeastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, buffered by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden and bordered by Saudi Arabia and Oman. About 29 million people call Yemen home, and they are <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14704852">the poorest in the Middle East</a>. Portions of the nation have a history of British and Ottoman colonial rule, <a href="https://history.state.gov/countries/yemen">it was divided into two separate countries</a> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/10/world/meast/yemen-fast-facts/index.html">two civil wars</a> – on top of the current one – have been waged since the early 1960s.</p>
<p>To understand the current conflict, which began in January 2014, it’s necessary to know something about the Huthis.</p>
<p>The Huthis are a Zaydi Shiite political movement. Zaydi Shiite Muslims are around <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ym.html">a quarter of Yemen’s population</a>. Zaydis led much of Yemen until the 1962 overthrow of the Yemeni ruler. The government <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/who-are-yemen-houthis/390111/">has since repressed</a> their home region economically and culturally. More recently, the government has charged that the Zaydis <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2016/10/the_yemen_conflict_is_not_just_a_proxy_war.html">are proxies for Iran</a> and an existential threat.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223410/original/file-20180615-85854-1x6deoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223410/original/file-20180615-85854-1x6deoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223410/original/file-20180615-85854-1x6deoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223410/original/file-20180615-85854-1x6deoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223410/original/file-20180615-85854-1x6deoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223410/original/file-20180615-85854-1x6deoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223410/original/file-20180615-85854-1x6deoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Yemen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">U.S. Department of State</span></span>
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<p>As a result of the popular uprisings unleashed by the Arab Spring, an internationally backed transition <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/world/middleeast/yemen-votes-to-remove-ali-abdullah-saleh.html">removed Yemen’s autocratic President Ali Abdullah Saleh</a> in 2011. The transition consisted of what was called a “National Dialogue,” inclusive of all parties, that would provide recommendations for reforms, elections and the eventual writing of a new constitution. The Huthis initially participated, but became disillusioned. </p>
<p>So in 2014, disappointed that the transition had forced out Yemen’s president but failed to enact meaningful change, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14704951">Huthi rebels began moving southward</a> from their northern Yemen stronghold of Saada. </p>
<p>They <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14704951">captured the capital of Sanaa</a> in September 2014. This wasn’t the first Huthi-government clash. Between 2004 and 2010, there were six rounds of fighting, the last of which briefly <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/13/AR2009111304246.html">saw Saudi intervention</a>.</p>
<p>The Huthis, allied for convenience with former President Saleh, quickly overran the capital and moved as far south as Aden in spring 2015. Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Manour Hadi <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/timeline-of-yemens-war-as-coalition-attacks-hodeida/2018/06/14/bd5cb95c-6f99-11e8-b4d8-eaf78d4c544c_story.html?utm_term=.70aac3e665a1">fled to Riyadh</a>. </p>
<h2>Outside forces intervene</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-iran-houthis/exclusive-iran-steps-up-support-for-houthis-in-yemens-war-sources-idUSKBN16S22R">Iran has provided aid</a> to the Huthis for some time and has increased its equipping and training of the group since 2011. </p>
<p>The Saudis, viewing the Huthis as an Iranian proxy and fearful of an Iranian stronghold on its southern border, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29319423">began an allied campaign</a> against the group in March 2015. A coalition formed by the Saudis includes major United Arab Emirates participation and <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/23/in-yemen-a-saudi-war-fought-with-u-s-help/">American intelligence, refueling and munitions</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/world/middleeast/28yemen.html">Washington’s main interest</a> in Yemen stems from its goal of halting terrorism. Yemen is home to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), so Washington seeks stability there in order to counter the AQAP threat. </p>
<p>After pushing the Huthis out of Aden in 2015, the war stalled. Former President Saleh’s attempt to switch to the Saudi side ended in his late 2017 <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/04/middleeast/yemen-former-president-ali-abdullah-saleh-killed-intl/index.html">killing by the Huthis</a>. The international community has voiced anger at <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/world/middleeast/saudi-yemen-bombings.html">continued Saudi bombing of civilian</a> targets, leading to a failed bipartisan <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/us/politics/senate-yemen-military-support.html">U.S. Senate attempt</a> in 2018 to halt American military support. </p>
<p>Corruption, high unemployment, water shortages and a high reliance on imported food had made Yemen an impoverished country even before the war. The war and subsequent Saudi blockade have only made things worse, crippling infrastructure and disrupting many <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/world/middleeast/yemen-al-hudaydah-assault-saudi-coalition.html">basic services</a>. The lack of sanitation services and clean water led to a recent cholera outbreak, with over a million infected and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/12/21/one-million-people-have-caught-cholera-in-yemen-you-should-be-outraged/?utm_term=.1888e08ace8d">more than 2,000 deaths</a>. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, south Yemen, where some groups <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security/southern-yemen-leader-sees-independence-referendum-parliament-body-idUSKBN1CJ06V">seek southern independence</a>, is a jumbled political mess. U.N. peace efforts seeking a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/06/07/world/middleeast/07reuters-un-yemen-exclusive.html">government return and Huthi disarmament</a> have so far not succeeded and fighting has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/16/yemen-war-death-toll-has-reached-10000-un-says">killed over 10,000 civilians</a>. </p>
<p>Yemeni government forces, with support from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, recently began an assault on Hodeidah, the Red Sea port city, which the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemen-hodeidah-battle-saudi-arabia-aid-civilians-a8396336.html">Iranian-backed Huthi movement controls</a>. The assault marks an important point in the over four-year old civil war. Hodeidah, a city of 400,000, is the only entry point for international aid due to a Saudi-imposed blockade. </p>
<p>Things may get worse. The war has created a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/world/middleeast/yemen-al-hudaydah-assault-saudi-coalition.html">major humanitarian disaster</a> with no foreseeable end.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly McFarland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Yemen’s civil war is a stew of local and foreign interests, from Washington, Saudi Arabia to Iran. And the latest battle may cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, if not millions.Kelly McFarland, Director of programs and research, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/766342017-06-27T15:46:44Z2017-06-27T15:46:44ZChildren are being used as easy weapons of propaganda by terrorist organisations<p>To involve children in terrorism is an unthinkable prospect. And yet they have become not only targets of violence, but are being used to promote radicalised causes too.</p>
<p>This is not just about European or American children being victims of attacks by the so-called Islamic State (IS). Young people who are victims of Western military attacks are being used as pawns in the fight against terrorism too. </p>
<p>Just look at US president Donald Trump’s disastrous first military operation. The January 29 raid on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/29/al-qaida-suspects-yemen-killed-raid-us-commandos">the village of al-Ghayil in Yemen</a> saw 25 civilians killed, including nine children. While the White House has insisted that <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/03/23/reporters-uncritically-repeat-trump-administration-claims-on-laptop-ban/">it obtained</a> “valuable information” from the operation – which was intended to gather intelligence on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) – <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/yemen-seal-raid-yielded-no-significant-intelligence-say-officials-n726451">no evidence has been produced</a> in support of this claim. </p>
<p>In addition, any evaluation of an operation’s success must also consider its secondary effects. In particular, how they supply groups like AQAP and IS with ammunition for their propaganda machines.</p>
<h2>Tools of war</h2>
<p>Propaganda is a huge part of how organisations like AQAP and IS motivate those looking to support them. AQAP in particular relies on social media and its online magazine, Inspire, to encourage readers to launch attacks. Children are used as tools of propaganda – the killing of children by Western bombings is repeatedly used to promote its cause. In its very first issue three explicit photographs of dead children were printed, and this method continued up to and including the most recent issue in November 2016. </p>
<p>The sole purpose of these disturbing images is to stir anger and frustration among both existing and potential sympathisers, in order to justify attacks on the West. </p>
<p>Just as AQAP publishes Inspire, IS produces two magazines, Dabiq and Rumiyah that are also distributed online and in multiple languages. Unlike AQAP, however, IS has started to move away from portrayals of children as victims of Western warfare, and now shows children as perpetrators of violence. So much so that the primary portrayal of children is now <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-islamic-state-group-has-weaponized-children-78217?sa=google&sq=isis+children&sr=2">as “child soldiers”</a>, with only occasional images of child “victims”. </p>
<p>But why this change in emphasis? There are at least two reasons, the first of which is psychological warfare. To fight, punish and even kill children involved in terrorism is at odds with the importance the West places on the protection of children from harm and exploitation. How could soldiers possibly fight back against young innocents? By promoting the idea to readers of the magazine, it encourages them to get their children involved in the cause, and help build a regiment of child soldiers that the world will not want to fight back against.</p>
<p>It is also a method of state-building. The use of child soldiers both in the magazine and in real life conveys that this is a cause every family member is prepared to fight for; that IS supporters are in this for the long-haul; and that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-islamic-state-recruits-and-coerces-children-64285?sa=google&sq=islamic+state+children&sr=2">creation of soldiers from a young age</a> will lead to the strongest and most brutal generation of fighters ever created. </p>
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<p>There is one common cause to both AQAP and IS’s tactics: showing their children are, whether intended or not, completely enmeshed in the battle with the West, and are consequently being severely injured or killed. </p>
<p>The worrying question now is how much terrorist propaganda has convinced would-be terrorists that attacks on children in the West are a “justified” retaliation for the deaths of their own children. While there have been no explicit instructions in the propaganda magazines to attack children, the bodies of injured and vulnerable children which fill the pages of Inspire and Dabiq implicitly implore readers to take action.</p>
<p>The recent terror attack at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester Arena is one that we believe <a href="http://www.21global.ucsb.edu/global-e/june-2017/children-targets-manchester-arena-attack-context-terrorist-propaganda">deliberately targeted children</a> to mirror what is happening to children in IS and al-Qaeda territory.</p>
<p>The attacker’s sister has also claimed that the intentions of the bombing were likely motivated by AQAP and IS propaganda. She <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/manchester-bomber-fought-in-libya-1495662073">told the Wall Street Journal</a>: “I think he saw children – Muslim children – dying everywhere, and wanted revenge.”</p>
<h2>Propaganda machine</h2>
<p>Stopping this kind of propaganda will be no easy task: publishing online magazines on different file sharing sites and other platforms is difficult to contain. </p>
<p>The US government has identified <a href="http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PBAAE503.pdf">messaging and counter-messaging</a> as one of three priority areas in its 2016 strategic plan to tackle violent extremism. Meanwhile, the UK has its (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/oct/19/uks-prevent-counter-radicalisation-policy-badly-flawed">widely lambasted</a>) Prevent strategy aimed at countering violent extremism – a scheme which, it was recently announced could be expanded to give children as young as four <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/02/10/children-young-four-taught-extremism-part-plans-toughen-prevent/">anti-radicalisation lessons</a>.</p>
<p>But extremist groups know the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-propaganda-atomic-bomb-survival-strategy-iraq-syria-islamic-state-icsr-report-amaq-rumiyah-al-a7579511.html">power of their propaganda</a>, so it is essential that these counter-messages are carefully tailored because each group tells a different story. </p>
<p>These counter-messages will lack credibility, however, if there is still ample material showing <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/trumps-yemen-raid-killed-nine-children-what-went-wrong-554611">children are being killed</a> as a result of Western foreign policy. Countering extremist messages cannot be done in isolation: it is not enough to silence the propaganda if the evidence is still there that children are being killed by the West.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76634/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This article was written with Sean Looney, Research Assistant at Vox-Pol, Dublin City University. The research used to write this piece was focused on analysing images of children in different terrorist organisation’s magazines. </span></em></p>Child victims are used to justify the cause, while young soldiers further it.Amy-Louise Watkin, PhD Researcher, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/752362017-03-29T12:45:49Z2017-03-29T12:45:49ZHow and why vehicle ramming became the attack of choice for terrorists<p>The recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-if-the-london-attack-wasnt-an-act-of-terrorism-75232">car-and-knife attack in London</a> was just the latest in a string of high-profile incidents where assailants have used vehicles as deadly weapons. This type of attack has over the past few years become a feature of violent terrorism in the West and elsewhere – so where did it come from, and how did it become such a common method?</p>
<p>The most famous forbears of the vehicle-ramming attack were the 1981 bombing of the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/1981/1216/121619.html">Iraqi embassy in Beirut</a> and the 1983 attacks on the <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/13/world/meast/beirut-marine-barracks-bombing-fast-facts/">US marine barracks</a> and <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/13/world/meast/beirut-marine-barracks-bombing-fast-facts/">embassy in Beirut</a> – widely held to be the first examples of modern suicide bombing. In the 1983 attacks, explosive-laden vehicles were not only used to deliver improvised explosive devices (IEDs) but also to breach the perimeters around their targets. </p>
<p>In the years since, attackers have used vehicles to breach security perimeters to detonate IEDs both on land (the 2007 <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6257194.stm">Glasgow Airport attack</a>) and at sea (the 2000 <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/18/world/meast/uss-cole-bombing-fast-facts/">USS Cole bombing</a>). But the use of vehicle-ramming as a terroristic technique in itself, rather than as a means of delivering explosives, is a relatively recent innovation. </p>
<p>Its roots can be traced to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and especially the summer of 2008, when vehicles were three times used to deliberately strike pedestrians. The first two attacks involved <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/2445336/Copycat-bulldozer-attack-in-Jerusalem.html">bulldozers</a>, while the third used a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/sep/24/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast">car</a>. By 2016, vehicle-ramming attacks in Israel had become the <a href="http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Terrorism/Palestinian/Pages/Wave-of-terror-October-2015.aspx">second deadliest</a> form of attack carried out by Palestinians against Israelis, behind only stabbing.</p>
<p>It is not hard to see why. Vehicle-ramming attacks are comparatively easy to plan and carry out without detection. The weapon involved is perfectly legal to own and operate but can be devastating; that much was made plain by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/nice-attack-reminds-france-the-state-cant-keep-you-safe-100-of-the-time-62558">2016 truck attack in Nice</a>, which killed 86 people and injured hundreds. </p>
<p>For years, vehicle-ramming attacks were largely confined to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But in 2010, the method got a major promotional boost when it was outlined in the second issue of Inspire Magazine, an English-language online publication <a href="https://publicintelligence.net/does-anyone-take-these-al-qaeda-magazines-seriously/">purporting to emanate</a> from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). </p>
<h2>Spreading the word</h2>
<p>With slick production values and graphics, Inspire mixed ideologically driven material with pragmatic instructional content in an effort to foster a do-it-yourself approach to terrorism. It attempted to motivate potential attackers in the West while suggesting methods of attack that did not demand much in the way of skill.</p>
<p>In a 2010 article entitled <a href="https://www.wired.com/2010/10/al-qaeda-mag-urges-shooting-up-d-c-eateries/">The Ultimate Mowing Machine</a>, Inspire provided readers with basic instructions on how to select targets and which type of vehicle to use. It emphasised that the perpetrators would probably die in such an attack, and that they should therefore leave behind notes explaining their motivations. The article also proposed continuing the attack using firearms or melee weapons once the vehicle was immobilised. </p>
<p>This is the sort of attack that has cropped up in the West in the years since. In 2013, British army soldier <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-duty-of-care-that-should-keep-our-armed-forces-safe-but-didnt-14645">Lee Rigby</a> was run over by a car before being stabbed to death in southeast London. In 2014, one Canadian solider was killed and another injured after being <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/martin-couture-rouleau-hit-and-run-driver-arrested-by-rcmp-in-july-1.2807078">deliberately struck by a car</a> driven by Martin Couture-Rouleau, who had previously expressed a desire to travel to Iraq to fight with Islamic State. He was shot and killed as he charged at a police officer with a knife – an attack which the 13th volume of Inspire magazine hailed as “exemplary”. </p>
<p>Then came the Nice attack in summer 2016, a smaller car-and-knife attack at <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/28/us/ohio-state-university-active-shooter/">Ohio State University</a>, the attack on a <a href="https://theconversation.com/berlin-attack-security-intelligence-has-limits-in-preventing-truck-borne-terror-70643">Berlin Christmas Market</a>, and most recently, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/westminster-attack-the-questions-security-professionals-will-be-asking-75083">incident in Westminster</a>. </p>
<p>The proliferation of vehicle-ramming incidents matches the strategic vision of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/an-al-qaeda-martyrs-enduring-pitch.html">Anwar al-Awlaki</a>, a popular American-born cleric affiliated with AQAP. While he was killed in a drone strike in 2011, Al-Awlaki’s sermons – widely distributed on YouTube – fundamentally shifted al-Qaeda’s strategy away from organised jihad and towards do-it-yourself terrorism. </p>
<p>Although its authenticity has been <a href="https://publicintelligence.net/does-anyone-take-these-al-qaeda-magazines-seriously/">questioned</a>, Inspire played a major part. It did not just disseminate know-how; it convinced its readers that the technique is “legitimate”. For a new terroristic technique to spread, potential perpetrators have to be convinced that it is just and right – and this is what Inspire achieved.</p>
<h2>DIY terrorism</h2>
<p>Islamic State, too, has promoted vehicle-ramming. In 2014, IS spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/abu-muhammad-al-adnani-the-voice-of-isis-is-dead">stated</a>: “If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car.” </p>
<p>Similarly, in late 2014, IS media group al-Hayat released a eight-minute video in which French jihadi Abu Salman al-Faranci <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/20/french-isis-fighters-filmed-burning-passports-calling-for-terror">instructs his audience</a>: “Terrorise them and do not allow them to sleep due to fear and horror.” He then <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-01-07/did-this-islamic-state-video-inspire-the-paris-attacks">goes on</a> to extol vehicle-ramming as an appropriate substitute for travelling to Iraq and Syria to fight: “There are weapons and cars available and targets ready to be hit … Kill them and spit in their faces and run over them with your cars.” </p>
<p>IS also <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/12/berlin-attack-truck-isis/511364/">praised</a> vehicle-ramming attacks in the third edition of its English-language Rumiyah magazine, published in 2016, encouraging the use of trucks to carry out attacks because “very few actually comprehend the deadly and destructive capability of the motor vehicle and its capacity of reaping large numbers of casualties if used in a premeditated manner”, also instructing its sympathisers to steal such vehicles if needed. </p>
<p>Vehicle-ramming attacks perfectly meet the criteria for a successful terrorist technique – undemanding of skill, legitimate among their perpetrators, and highly effective. Moreover as Israel’s experience shows, they are also contagious: much like <a href="https://www.wired.com/2013/06/love-and-terror-in-the-golden-age-of-hijacking/">airliner hijackings</a> in the 1960s and 1970s, the spectacle of successful attacks emboldens and inspires numerous other individuals looking for a method that fits their abilities and resources. </p>
<p>So <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-if-the-london-attack-wasnt-an-act-of-terrorism-75232">whether or not</a> the attack on Westminster really was an act of terrorism, the shockingly blunt and effective methodology it used is likely to be seen again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75236/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yannick Veilleux-Lepage receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund. He is also a junior research affiliate of the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society.</span></em></p>Al-Qaeda and Islamic State have both encouraged would-be terrorists to use cars and trucks as weapons.Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, PhD Candidate, Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/554372016-03-02T19:05:50Z2016-03-02T19:05:50ZOut of the ashes of Afghanistan and Iraq: the rise and rise of Islamic State<p><em>Since announcing its arrival as a global force in June 2014 with the declaration of a caliphate on territory captured in Iraq and Syria, the jihadist group Islamic State has shocked the world with its brutality.</em></p>
<p><em>Its seemingly sudden prominence has led to much speculation about the group’s origins: how do we account for forces and events that paved the way for the emergence of Islamic State? In the final article of <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">our series examining this question</a>, Greg Barton shows the role recent Western intervention in the Middle East played in the group’s inexorable rise.</em></p>
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<p>Despite precious little certainty in the “what ifs” of history, it’s clear the rise of Islamic State (IS) wouldn’t have been possible without the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. Without these Western interventions, al-Qaeda would never have gained the foothold it did, and IS would not have emerged to take charge of northern Iraq.</p>
<p>Whether or not the Arab Spring, and the consequent civil war in Syria, would still have occurred is much less clear. </p>
<p>But even if war hadn’t broken out in Syria, it’s unlikely an al-Qaeda spin-off such as IS would have become such a decisive actor without launching an insurgency in Iraq. For an opportunistic infection to take hold so comprehensively, as IS clearly has, requires a severely weakened body politic and a profoundly compromised immune system. </p>
<p>Such were the conditions in Goodluck Jonathan’s Nigeria from 2010 to 2015 and in conflict-riven Somalia after the fall of the Barre regime in 1991. And it was so in Afghanistan for the four decades after conflict broke out in 1978 and in Pakistan after General Zia-ul-Haq declared martial law in 1977. </p>
<p>Sadly, but even more clearly, such are the circumstances in Iraq and Syria today. And that’s the reason <a href="http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Global-Terrorism-Index-2015.pdf">around 80% of all deaths due to terrorist attacks</a> in recent years have occurred in five of the six countries discussed here, where such conditions still prevail.</p>
<h2>An unique opportunity</h2>
<p>The myth of modern international terrorist movements, and particularly of al-Qaeda and its outgrowths such as IS (which really is a third-generation al-Qaeda movement), is that they’re inherently potent and have a natural power of attraction. </p>
<p>The reality is that while modern terrorist groups can and do operate all around the globe to the point where no country can consider itself completely safe, they can only build a base when local issues attract on-the-ground support. </p>
<p>Consider al-Qaeda, which is in the business of global struggle. It wants to unite a transnational <em>ummah</em> to take on far-off enemies. But it has only ever really enjoyed substantial success when it has happened across conducive local circumstances. </p>
<p>The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s provided an opportunity uniquely suited to the rise of al-Qaeda and associated movements. It provided plausible justification for a defensive jihad – a just war – that garnered broad international support and allowed the group to coalesce in 1989 out of the Arab fighters who had rallied to support the Afghans in their fight against the Soviets. </p>
<p>Further opportunities emerged in the Northern Caucasus, where local ethno-national grievances were eventually transformed into the basis for a more global struggle. </p>
<p>The declaration of independence by Chechnya in 1991 led to all-out war with the Soviet military between 1994 and 1996, when tens of thousands were killed. After a short, uneasy peace, a decade-long second civil war started in 1999 following the invasion of neighbouring Dagestan by the International Islamic Brigade. </p>
<p>The second civil war began with an intense campaign to seize control of the Chechen capital, Grozny. But it became dominated by years of fighting jihadi and other insurgents in the Caucasus mountains and dealing with related terrorist attacks in Russia. </p>
<p>In Nigeria and Somalia, Boko Haram and al-Shabaab now share many of the key attributes of al-Qaeda, with whom they have forged nascent links. But they too emerged primarily because of the failure of governance and the persistence of deep-seated local grievances.</p>
<p>Even in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda struggled to transform itself into a convincing champion of local interests in the 1990s. After becoming increasingly isolated following the September 11 attacks on the US, it failed to gain support from the Afghan Taliban for its global struggle.</p>
<p>But something new happened in Iraq beginning in 2003. The Jordanian street thug <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/07/the-short-violent-life-of-abu-musab-al-zarqawi/304983/">Musab al-Zarqawi</a> correctly intuited that the impending Western invasion and occupation of Iraq would provide the perfect conditions for the emergence of insurgencies. </p>
<p>Al-Zarqawi positioned himself in Iraq ahead of the invasion and deftly rode a wave of anger and despair to initiate and grow an insurgency that in time came to dominate the broken nation. </p>
<p>Initially, al-Zarqawi was only one of many insurgent leaders intent on destabilising Iraq. But, in October 2004, after years of uneasy relations with the al-Qaeda leader during two tours in Afghanistan, he finally yielded to Osama bin Laden’s request that he swear on oath of loyalty (<em>bayat</em>) to him. And so al-Zarqawi’s notorious network of insurgents became known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). </p>
<h2>From the ashes</h2>
<p>Iraq’s de-Ba'athification process of May 2003 to June 2004, during which senior technocrats and military officers linked to the Ba'ath party (the vehicle of the Saddam Hussein regime) were removed from office, set the stage for many to join counter-occupation insurgent groups – including AQI.</p>
<p>Without the sacking of a large portion of Iraq’s military and security leaders, its technocrats and productive middle-class professionals, it’s not clear whether this group would have come to dominate so comprehensively. These alienated Sunni professionals gave AQI, as well as IS, much of its core military and strategic competency.</p>
<p>But even with the windfall opportunity presented to al-Zarqawi by the wilful frustration of Sunni interests by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouri_al-Maliki">Nouri al-Maliki’s</a> Shia-dominated government from 2006 to 2014, which deprived them of any immediate hope for the future and confidence in protecting their families and communities, AQI was almost totally destroyed after the Sunni awakening began in 2006. </p>
<p>The Sunni awakening forces, or “Sons of Iraq”, began with tribal leaders in Anbar province forming an alliance with the US military. For almost three years, tens of thousands of Sunni tribesmen were paid directly to fight AQI, but the Maliki government refused to incorporate them into the regular Iraqi Security Force. And, after October 2008 – when the US military handed over management of these forces – he refused to support them.</p>
<p>The death of al-Zarqawi in June 2006 contributed to the profound weakening of the strongest of all post-invasion insurgent groups. AQI’s force strength was reduced to several hundred fighters and it lost the capacity to dominate the insurgency.</p>
<p>Then, in 2010 and 2011, circumstances combined to blow oxygen onto the smouldering coals. </p>
<p>In 2010, the greatly underestimated Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a local Iraqi cleric with serious religious scholarly credentials, took charge of AQI and began working to a sophisticated long-term plan.</p>
<p>Elements of the strategy went by the name “breaking the walls”. In the 12 months to July 2013, this entailed the movement literally breaking down the prison walls in compounds around Baghdad that held hundreds of hardcore al-Qaeda fighters. </p>
<p>Islamic State, as the group now called itself, also benefited from the inflow of former Iraqi intelligence officers and senior military leaders. This had begun with de-Ba'athification in 2003 and continued after the collapse of the Sunni awakening and the increasingly overt sectarianism of the Maliki government. </p>
<p>Together, they developed tactics based on vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices and the strategic use of suicide bombers. These were deployed not in the passionate but often undirected fashion of al-Qaeda but much more like smart bombs in the hands of a modern army. </p>
<p>And the US military withdrawal from Iraq in late 2011, well telegraphed ahead of time, provided an excellent opportunity for the struggling insurgency to rebuild. As did the outbreak of civil war in Syria.</p>
<h2>A helping hand</h2>
<p>Al-Baghdadi initially dispatched his trusted Syrian lieutenant, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, to form a separate organisation in Syria: the al-Nusra front. </p>
<p>Jabhat al-Nusra quickly established itself in northern Syria. But when al-Julani refused to fold his organisation in under his command, al-Baghdadi rebranded AQI (or Islamic State in Iraq) Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham/the Levant (ISIS/ISIL).</p>
<p>Then, a series of events turned IS from an insurgency employing terrorist methods to becoming a nascent rogue state. These included: the occupation of Raqqa on the Syrian Euphrates in December 2013; the taking of Ramadi a month later; consolidation of IS control throughout Iraq’s western Anbar province; and, finally, a sudden surge down the river Tigris in June 2014 that took Mosul and most of the towns and cities along the river north of Baghdad within less than a week.</p>
<p>IS’s declaration of the caliphate on June 29, 2014, was a watershed moment, which is only now being properly understood. </p>
<p>In its ground operations, including the governing of aggrieved Sunni communities, IS moved well beyond being simply a terrorist movement. It came to function as a rogue state ruling over around 5 million people in the northern cities of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and defending its territory through conventional military means.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/113520/original/image-20160302-25918-q1pucr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">In 2010, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took charge of AQI and began working to a sophisticated long-term plan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Furqan Media</span></span>
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<p>At the same time, it skilfully exploited the internet and social media in ways the old al-Qaeda could not do – and that its second-generation offshoot, al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), had only partially achieved. </p>
<p>This allowed IS to draw in tens of thousands of foreign fighters. Most came from the Middle East and Northern Africa, but as many as 5,000 came from Europe, with thousands more from the Caucasus and Asia. </p>
<p>Unlike the case in Afghanistan in the 1980s, these foreign fighters have played a key role in providing sufficient strength to take and hold territory while also building a global network of support.</p>
<p>But without the perfect-storm conditions of post-invasion insurgency, this most potent expression of al-Qaedaism yet would never have risen to dominate both the region and the world in the way that it does. </p>
<p>Even in its wildest dreams, al-Qaeda could never have imagined that Western miscalculations post-9/11 could have led to such foolhardy engagements – not just in Afghanistan but also in Iraq. </p>
<p>Were it not for these miscalculations, 9/11 might well have precipitated the decline of al-Qaeda. Instead, with our help, it spawned a global jihadi movement with a territorial base far more powerful than al-Qaeda ever had.</p>
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<p><em>This is the final article in our series on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/understanding-islamic-state">historical roots of Islamic State</a>. <a href="http://bit.ly/UnderstandingIS">Download our special report</a> collating the whole the series.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55437/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Greg Barton is co-director of the Australian Intervention Support Hub, a CVE capacity-building initiative supported by the Australian government and based at the ANU and Deakin University. He previously led an ARC Linkage grant project researching radicalisation and disengagement from violent extremism. He is currently a research professor at the Alfred Deakin Institute.</span></em></p>The final article of our series on the historical roots of Islamic State examines the role recent Western intervention in the Middle East played in the group’s inexorable rise.Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation; Co-Director, Australian Intervention Support Hub, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.