Paul KeenanParis does not offer the outcome radicals wanted, writes Paul Keenan
Believe it or not, the ultimate defeat of fundamentalist Islam played out in France last week.
As terror was visited upon the streets of Paris and the authorities undertook the largest manhunt in French history, the clues to the endgame were being scattered about, waiting to be fully probed and analysed at some calmer time.
When the dust settles on the Paris attacks, and the analytical post mortems begin, observers, French and non-French, Muslim and non-Muslim, will spot these clues, contained in the words of the shooters and in the boot of their getaway car, and see in them the future demise of the radical groups today inspiring the violent works of the likes of brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi and supermarket gunman Amedi Coulibaly.
To understand this fully, it is necessary to realise that on the jihadist landscape right now, al Qaeda is not Islamic State (IS) and ne’er the twain shall meet.
While commentators covering the rapidly unfolding events in France from January 7 saw a terroristic enterprise between like-minded gunmen at the offices of Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket at Porte de Vincennes, a disconnect became apparent once the shooters gained access to media airwaves to lay claim to their actions.
From the Kouachi’s final redoubt in Dammartin-en-Goele, Cherif claimed his actions on behalf of the al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula grouping (AQAP, operating in Yemen), while Coulibaly stated his actions were sanctioned by IS.
This two-sided claim from the trio is important.
Though sharing the same seedbed of jihadist violence in a turbulent Middle East, both al Qaeda and IS have been at one another’s throats since at least late 2013 when the relative newcomer IS began to flex its muscles and worked towards undermining al Qaeda’s hegemony on jihad, claimed and held since the 9/11 attacks.
At the heart of the ongoing dispute are the twin issues of ideology and loyalty stemming from the two men credited with the formations of the two movements: Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Both steeped in the anti-Soviet conflict in Afghanistan, while bin Laden secured his own standing on 9/11, al Zarqawi made a name for himself later, travelling to Iraq to lead that country’s al Qaeda affiliate. He would later incur al Qaeda’s displeasure for his ultra-violent tactics, but not before he had developed his own allegiances with another umbrella grouping, the Mujahideen Shura Council.
It was this grouping, following the 2006 death of al Zarqawi, which announced the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), putting itself at odds with al Qaeda at once in its stated desire to tackle not just US troops and interests, but ‘heretical’ Shia Muslims and those whose ousting would purify Iraq and speed the oncoming of the caliphate. (The horrors subsequently visited upon the country’s Christian community speak for themselves in this.)
Fast forward through ISI’s stepping outside its (al Qaeda) designated bounds in Iraq to become involved in Syria (as ISIS), its attempt – in 2013 – to forcibly merge the al Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al Nusra, into its ranks (an action which led to serious in-fighting among rebel groups across 2013), and we arrive at 2014, the year in which al Qaeda stressed publicly that it had nothing to do with ISIS.
Such a disavowal and the year-long war of words to follow (with al Qaeda and al Nusra using their own magazines and social media to denounce the now named IS) have done little to stem the growth and appeal of IS among radicalised Muslims, some of whom launched high profile attacks that year – Belgium, Canada, Australia – and now in 2015 with the kosher supermarket in Paris.
In this, al Qaeda surely spies the risk of its own demise, with IS now only claiming to be the true vanguard of the caliphate and rejecting al Qaeda as ‘too soft’ in viewing all Muslims as sacred and seeking merely to attack America to force its withdrawal from Muslim affairs.
Shocking
In a move viewed as shocking for many jihadis, in December, IS appeared to question the credentials of Osama bin Laden himself as a figure of heroic virtue in the struggle.
In light of this, al Qaeda has for some time now required a ‘spectacular’ through which to stave off IS gains and to re-advertise itself to the global jihadist community. Its last such attack was in 2012, when Mohammed Merah went on a three-day killing spree in Toulouse, claiming seven lives and keeping al Qaeda in the headlines. (Ironically, the latest Paris attacks were made possible in part by French intelligence having to divert resources into IS-affiliated radicals returning from conflict zones in the Middle East.)
Into this milieu, then, stepped Cherif and Said Kouachi and Amedi Coulibaly. Three young and disaffected Muslims, finding their way not in any unified interpretation of their faith, but in clashing ideologies of violence. In a final twist to events in Paris, it was reported that when investigators opened the boot of the Kouachi brothers’ getaway car, they discovered a folded IS flag within.
At the end, it appears, the al Qaeda brothers could not even decide which ideology they would be martyred for, a damning illustration of the turbulence at the heart of radical Islam today.
Set this against the actions taken by two other Muslims in Paris: slain police officer Ahmed Merabet and supermarket hostage Lassana Bathily. The pair had never reportedly met, yet both worked towards a unified goal of thwarting the excesses of fundamentalism and saving lives once the shooting started.
Herein lies another clue as to the future for the radicals, even if Europe does indeed face more attacks.
Both Merabet and Bathily have been hailed for their actions, not only by the greater number of Muslims who reject poisoned ideologies, but by an international community of even greater numbers which found a unity in language against fundamentalists.
Je suis Charlie.