As Islamic State reels, al-Qaida returns with another bin Laden

Oct. 2 (UPI) -- As the Americans and more recently the Rus­sians worked to crush the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, they also have had to face an older, and seemingly wiser, enemy: a resur­gent al-Qaida, which has exploit­ed the critical reverses suffered by its savage progeny over the last 18 months to stage a comeback.

Adding to the déjà vu, al-Qaida's advances in Syria may prove to be a launching pad for Osama bin Laden's favorite son, Hamza, be­lieved to be in his late 20s, to take command of the organization as it claws its way back into leadership of the global jihad.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies noted that al-Qaida "seems to have more lives than a cat... It has skilfully played itself off ISIS to portray the organization as being the 'mod­erate jihadists,' people who you might not like but you can do busi­ness with."

If the younger bin Laden does come out on top, it will have "po­tentially deadly consequences for the West and the rest of the world," said Ali Soufan, a Lebanese-Amer­ican veteran of the jihadist wars who has hunted down many of al-Qaida's hard men.

Since Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces in a raid on his Pakistani hideaway in May 2011, al-Qaida has been led by his longtime deputy, veteran Egyp­tian jihadist Ayman al-Zawahiri, an organizer who lacks the cha­risma of his warrior predecessor and who, as an Egyptian, is seen by many of al-Qaida's Gulf Arab stal­warts as an interloper.

"Many factors suggest that Hamza could be a highly effective leader," Soufan observed.

"His family pedigree, not to mention his dynastic marriage to the daughter of an al-Qaida char­ter member [Abu Mohammed al- Masri], automatically entitles him to respect from every jihadi who follows bin Laden's ideology...

"His longstanding jihadi fer­vor and obvious charisma and his closeness to al-Qaida's most senior operatives" bolster his lead­ership qualities, Soufan, a former FBI special agent, noted.

"It remains to be seen how, ex­actly, the organization will make use of him, but it is clear that his star is on the rise," Soufan wrote in a September analysis published by the U.S. Combating Terrorism Cen­tre.

"That should worry policy-mak­ers in the West as well as in the Muslim world."

Hamza bin Laden has never fought on the front lines in the ji­hadist wars, although he repeat­edly begged his father to let him do so. Letters found in Osama bin Laden's hideout after he was killed indicate that he was grooming Hamza, who preaches violent ji­had, as his successor.

Little was heard from Hamza until May 2015 when Zawahiri re­leased a series of audio messages by the younger bin Laden, calling for attacks on the United States, Europe and a new enemy, Russia, which is keeping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power.

"We must be proud of our en­mity of America and Russia, for they are the pharaohs of this age," Hamza declared.

This suggests that Zawahiri, whose own standing with al-Qai­da's rank-and-file has steadily fall­en, is promoting Hamza to consoli­date the campaign to re-establish al-Qaida's primacy in the jihadist sphere.

However, some analysts say that Hamza may become little more than a figurehead, with military veterans, such as strategist Saif al-Adel, a former special forces colonel in the Egyptian Army, and other battle-hardened senior al-Qaida operatives infiltrated into Syria by Zawahiri since 2013, call­ing the shots. They would include al-Qaida's Syrian chief, Moham­med al-Jolani, who has overseen the group's dramatic resurgence in the country while it has made significant gains elsewhere in the Middle East, in Africa and the In­dian subcontinent aided by the Taliban.

War-torn Syria has become the organization's primary operational focus where, analysts say, it plans to declare an Islamic emirate to replace IS's seemingly doomed caliphate.

Adel, 57, was described by one Western intelligence official as "one of the most capable and dan­gerous extremists active today."

He has a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head and has been on the Americans' most-wanted list since the August 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the jihadists' first real assault on the United States. He has been a pivotal figure in al-Qaida since it was formed.

Hamza bin Laden's focus on Rus­sia follows the rise of a new rebel alliance in Syria dominated by al- Qaida's Syrian wing, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which is centered on the strategic northeastern prov­ince of Idlib, now largely held by the jihadists.

In September, Russian and Syr­ian warplanes blunted an offensive in northeastern Syria by HTS, a signal that the expanding jihadist group has become a serious threat.

Col.-Gen. Sergei Rudskoi, spokesman for Russia's General Staff, boasted that an estimated 850 jihadists were killed and 11 tanks destroyed during 24 hours of combat.

The figures have not been in­dependently confirmed but, if ac­curate, they would mark a serious setback for HTS amid its growing resurgence as al-Qaida's main ji­hadist rival, IS, faces a crippling military defeat.

For months, exploiting IS's re­verses, al-Qaida has been building up its military power in northern Syria as well as re-establishing its influence in other parts of the Mus­lim world, as far afield as Afghani­stan, Pakistan, Indonesia and even India.

In Yemen, al-Qaida in the Arab Peninsula, one of the movement's most dangerous affiliates, has "emerged arguably as the big­gest winners of the failed political transition and the civil war that followed," said the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

In July, HTS, with a fighting force of 30,000, consolidated its grip on Idlib, which borders Turkey and has a population estimated at 2 million.

The following month, "the group moved one step further in its he­gemonic project when it publicized its intention to establish a 'civil administration' for northern Syria," said Hassan Hassan of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington.

On Aug. 22, it asked Idlib's ci­vilian council to step aside as the group takes control of governance in the city.

HTS, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, al-Qaida's army in Syria, has absorbed or eliminated most of its rivals in Idlib and controls a long sector of the northwestern border with Turkey.

It has done this through consul­tations, sometimes by brute force. Smaller groups often go along out of perceived military - not ideo­logical - necessity.

Brett McGurk, the key U.S. trou­ble-shooter against the jihadist on­slaught in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria under three U.S. presidents, said he's "very concerned about Idlib," where "al-Qaida is working hard to take the reins of power."

U.S. intelligence has long insisted that al-Qaida central, its leadership hiding from U.S. airstrikes in the Pa­kistani badlands, has infiltrated the veteran operatives, which it calls the Khorasan Group, into Syria to mastermind terror attacks in West­ern Europe and the United States.

To achieve this, al-Qaida, in whatever manifestation it oper­ates, must first topple the Assad regime, which is kept in power by Russian and Iranian forces.

Gartenstein-Ross observed that the sharp intensification of ten­sions between Shias and Sunnis, due in part to IS's ferocious cam­paign against Shias, gave al-Qai­da's rebranding effort a major boost by allowing the group "an opportu­nity to present itself as a bulwark against Iranian influence in places like Syria and Yemen."

"If Western policy-makers con­tinue on their current course... al-Qaida will continue to advance along its path toward an emirate," said Charles Lister, a Gulf-based analyst who has spent years study­ing the jihadist factions, often face-to-face.

"Only by empowering local groups opposed to its transnational jihadi agenda can we avoid gifting northwestern Syria to al-Qaida on a silver platter," he wrote in a May 4, 2016, assessment.

This article originally appeared at The Arab Weekly.