Al-Qaeda rebounding as a threat: Experts

WASHINGTON: Al-Qaeda is on the rise again in the shadow of Daesh in Syria, 16 years after the terrorists shocked the US in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, according to experts.

They said that Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), the group that last month seized control of the northern Syrian city of Idlib, is simply a “rebranding” of Al-Qaeda that is positioning itself as more moderate than the Islamic State in hopes of a resurgence.

“ISIS (Daesh) may be today’s preeminent terrorist threat, but Al-Qaeda in Syria is worrisome. It is Al-Qaeda’s largest global affiliate at this point,” said former White House counterterrorism director Joshua Geltzer.

Speaking on the current terror threat against the US at the New America think tank, Geltzer and other experts said they expect HTS to take center stage among terrorists as Daesh loses ground on the battlefield in Syria and Iraq.

HTS is simply a cosmetic namechange for Al-Qaeda, they said. In consolidating control of much of Idlib province, it has eliminated or absorbed rival groups, and is modernizing its propaganda on the web-savvy model of Daesh.

“The organization itself seems to have more lives than a cat,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Gartenstein-Ross was speaking with Geltzer at the launch of a report on the current terrorist threat published by the New America think tank.