From Arab Spring to Islamist Winter

Al Qaeda, that led the Mali hotel siege, was strengthened by the collapse of Muammar Gadaffi’s Libya in 2011.

POLITICS

 |  4-minute read |   21-11-2015

SANDEEP UNNITHAN

 @sandeepunnithan

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The attacks by an al Qaeda affiliate at the Radisson Blu luxury hotel in Africa exactly a week after the Paris terror attack could signal a curious rivalry between jihadist groups opposed to the West. Al Qaeda, the original fount of global jihad, signalling the upstart Islamic State which carried out the lethal Paris strikes, that it was still relevant.

Al Qaeda in West Africa, also known as al Mourabitoun is believed to be behind the nine-hour siege in Bamako which killed 27 persons. Al Mourabitoun has origins similar to that of the nefarious IS. Both originated in western-led interventions in Asia and Africa and were strengthened by the so-called Arab Spring. The Islamic State sprang out of the US-led coalition's destruction of Saddam Hussain's Iraq in 2003 when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi used disenchanted elements of Saddam's Baathist state-generals, spies and soldiers - and vast weapons caches to create his Sunni Arab "Caliphate" in July 2014.

Al Qaeda in Africa is also rooted in another equally disastrous western intervention - the overthrow of Muammar Gadaffi in 2011. The Libyan civil war was part of a so-called "Arab Spring" which began with civil unrest in Tunisia in 2010 and spread through Arab League countries. It turned into an Islamist Winter post 2012 when civil-war wracked countries like Syria became sanctuaries for terrorist groups like the IS and al Qaeda.

France under President Chirac wisely stayed away from the 2003 US-led intervention in Iraq. Under President Nicolas Sarkozy, France played an active role in the multi-national coalition force that bombed Libya in 2011, albeit under a UN Security Council mandate. I witnessed the consequences of this intervention firsthand over 2000km south of Libya's capital Tripoli in Chad last December. I was part of a small Indian press delegation witnessing France's intervention in Francophone Africa. Amidst the high-pitched roars of Rafale fighter jets, military officials briefed us on their war against a host of islamist groups reinvigorated by the collapse of Gadaffi's Libya.

Jihadist fires have simmered in Africa for decades. In 2005, the Algerian Salafi group for Call and Combat (GSPC) pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and renamed itself the al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Al-Mourabitoun, headed by a veteran jihadist fighter Mokhtar Belmokhtar, broke away from AQIM sometime in 2013. Just how these groups had revived to threaten fragile African countries, the UN Security Council committee grimly noted in a 2013 report:

"In the past 12 months, the proliferation of weapons from Libya has continued at a worrying rate and has spread into new territory: West Africa, the Levant and, potentially, even the Horn of Africa," it said. "Illicit flows from the country are fuelling existing conflicts in Africa and the Levant and enriching the arsenals of a range of non-state actors, including terrorist groups."

Flush with arms and ammunition from Libyan arsenals, jihadist groups captured vast swathes of north-eastern Mali in 2012 prompting French military intervention. Last January four Rafale jets flew 9.5 hours nonstop from their base in Saint-Dizier in southern France, topping up their planes five times, to bomb Jihadist forces as they encircled the town of Gao in Mali. This intervention was later succeeded by an ongoing Operation Barkhane (sand dune)- spread across Niger, Mali, Chad, Burkino Faso and Mauritania-the "G5" countries that make up the Sahelian belt, an area 10 times the size of France. More than 3,000 French military personnel backed by Rafale fighter jets, helicopter gunships and drones form the vanguard of a coalition fighting jihadi groups in the Sahel.

Libya, with its multiple armed conflicts, warlords and multiple militias continues to pose a challenge for them. In October 2014, an Islamic State affiliate took control of the eastern Libyan city of Derna, marking Libya's transition to Islamist Winter.

"Southern Libya is a large haven for terrorist armed groups who use it to rest, train, recruit and finance," a French military commander in N'Djamena rued. Intelligence-led military operation have intercepted hundreds of tons of weapon caches, most of it from Libyan arsenals, riding on Africa's old smuggling networks.

In August this year, Mokhtar Belmokhtar was named the head of al Qaeda in Western Africa, indicating why it may be too early to pronounce the demise of al Qaeda.

The core of al Qaeda's leadership headed by Ayman Al Zawahiri since the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden may have weakened and hiding in the Af-Pak region. But its affiliates like AQIM, al Muhajiroun, the al Nusra front in Syria and al Qaeda in Yemen continue to pose serious security challenges for the world. The Arab Spring was a short-lived phenomenon.

The Islamist Winter is likely to endure.