Al-Qaida aims strategy at Islamic State
Older terror group building ties with regional factions
CAIRO — When al-Qaida overran the Yemeni port city of Mukalla last month, the group’s commanders immediately struck a deal to share power with the area’s tribesmen. No jihadi banners were raised. Al-Qaida even issued a statement denying rumors that it had banned music at parties or men wearing shorts.
A local tribal council now administers the city.
The approach was a stark contrast to al-Qaida’s rival, the Islamic State group, notorious for its savagery. And that was precisely the point.
In a competition with the Islamic State group for recruits and domination across the Middle East, alQaida has sought to distinguish itself from its rival’s extreme violence. It is building alliances with local players, even old enemies, to seize new territory. Its leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, has told his followers to avoid Islamic State-style brutalities against civilians.
The strategy has paid off, winning new gains for alQaida. In Yemen, it stands to emerge as the real winner as Saudi Arabia leads an Arab air campaign targeting the terror network’s rival, the Iranian-backed Shiite rebels known as Houthis who have taken over much of the country.
Al-Qaida “is the future Trojan horse,” warned a senior Yemeni military intelligence officer, Ali Sharif. When the war is over and leaves a security vacuum, he said, “the role of al-Qaida will come. … They will fill it and take control.”
For nearly two decades, al-Qaida was unchallenged as the world’s most prominent terrorist organization. But the Islamic State has stormed forward to rival it.
Beyond its heartland in Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State eclipsed al-Qaida in Libya, where Islamic State’s strongest external branch controls several cities. Militants in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Nigeria’s fearsome Boko Haram — all once linked to al-Qaida — have also pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Perhaps more important, the group has a dynamism and fervor that has seemed to fade for al-Qaida. The Islamic State declaration of a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria inspired thousands of foreign fighters to join it and earned it pledges of allegiance by individual militants around the region. The group’s notorious brutalities — everything from beheadings to enslavement of women from religious minorities — are seen by its supporters as proof of its purity.
In Afghanistan, where the Taliban, a top al-Qaida ally, has long dominated, young militants frustrated with the lack of progress in a nearly 14-year insurgency see a winner in the Islamic State. In February, former Taliban commanders in Zabul province “exchanged their white Taliban flag for the black flag” of the Islamic State and were behind the abduction of 31 Shiites, according to Afghanistan’s senior Shiite leader, hammad Mohaqiq.
Around the Middle East, prominent jihadi clerics have split, lining up with one side or the other.
Al-Qaida backers gloated when Iraqi troops and Shiite militiamen retook the Iraqi city of Tikrit from the Islamic State last month. “After all the blood spilled over the delusion of the caliphate, have you finally realized that declaring a nation and emirates only hurts Muslims and jihad?” asked one, with the Twitter handle Jabal al-Aiza.
Islamic State supporters
Mo- accused al-Qaida of with enemies of against the caliphate.
By building such partnerships, al-Qaida is essentially betting that the Islamic State will burn itself out and be weakened by bearing the brunt of the Arab and Western military backlash against its caliphate.
In Syria, al-Qaida’s Nusra Front is the most powerful fighting force outside the territories held by the Islamic State. Last month, it worked with other rebel factions, including ones backed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, to capture the northwestern city of Idlib and territory in the south — the biggest victories in several years over President Bashar Assad.
In Yemen, al-Qaida has been boosted by the fight against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who overran the capital, Sanaa, and much of the north and are fighting to take the south after driving the president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, out of the country.
Al-Qaida “has emerged as the only real fighting force countering the Houthis,” said Adaki Oren, an analyst with the Long War Journal, which monitors militant groups.
Its influence among local fighters worries some Yemenis.
“Sleeper cells of al-Qaida are now awakening, thanks to Houthis,” said a southern activist, Adnan Agam. siding Islam