Last month an Arabic satellite TV channel broadcast a chilling video of a group of Iraqi teenagers called the “Youths of Heaven” — their faces masked and brandishing Kalashnikov rifles, chanting “Allahu Akbar” and vowing to blow themselves up with “crusaders and apostates.”
The film of these aspiring suicide bombers, all said to be under 16, was produced by al-Furqan, the media arm of the Islamic State of Iraq, aka al-Qaeda. But such material is rare these days, with film coming out of Iraq looking suspiciously like posed training sessions with little of the live action of ambushes that has been the staple fare of jihadi Web sites.
Two weeks ago, CIA Director Michael Hayden made waves when he said in an interview that al-Qaeda has suffered “near-strategic defeat” in Iraq. To many observers it was a surprisingly upbeat view just a year after gloomy assessments of the dangers that Osama bin Laden still posed. In fact, few security sources — including key counterterrorism officials canvassed by the Guardian — and independent experts disagree, though the US military is more circumspect.
Nor does anyone dispute the key fact that al-Qaeda has also lost three senior commanders in its refuge in the Pakistani tribal areas even if its “core leadership” of bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri and a couple of dozen other Egyptians and Libyans remains at large.
Evidence of al-Qaeda’s problems in Iraq is weighty and convincing. It has been badly hit by the fightback from the US-backed Sunni “Sons of Iraq” and the US troop “surge.” Western intelligence agencies estimate that the number of foreign fighters is down to single figures each month.
Iraq watchers point to financial strain caused by the arrests of al-Qaeda sympathizers in Saudi Arabia, mafia-like disputes over alcohol licenses and difficulties recruiting the right caliber of people.
Last month, a sympathetic Web site carried a study showing a 94 percent drop in operations over a year. The Islamic State of Iraq claimed 334 operations in November 2006, but just 25 a year later. Attacks fell from 292 in May last year to 16 by the middle of last month.
Dia Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on radical Islamists, says recent al-Qaeda propaganda footage from Iraq is old and cannot mask the crisis it is facing.
“They have not got new things to say about Iraq though they are trying to give the impression that they are still alive. The material isn’t convincing,” Rashwan said.
Former MI6 head Nigel Inkster, now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, agrees.
“Al-Qaeda is starting to prepare their people for strategic failure in Iraq,” he said.
Al-Qaeda is also perceived as being “on the back foot” because of attacks by Muslim clerics on its takfiri ideology and revulsion at the killing of innocent Muslims. Participants in Zawahri’s recent “open dialogue” on Islamist Web sites compared al-Qaeda’s performance unfavorably with the successes of Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Influential Saudi clerics have helped undercut al-Qaeda’s theological arguments. How far such rarified debates affect radicalized Muslim youth in Bradford or Madrid is a different question.
European security sources say there is no evidence al-Qaeda is losing its influence among target or vulnerable groups.
“They have lost top people, but this will not degrade in the long term their overall capabilities,” a British counterterror official said.
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