Little al-Qaedas Loom Large

The Obama administration’s warning about a possible al-Qaeda plot against American interests in the Middle East has triggered a volley of criticism back home. For those who always suspected that President Obama was somehow soft in fighting the war on terrorism, this was vindication. The Weekly Standard, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorialists all piled on, saying the President had claimed that al-Qaeda had been devastated and that the tide of war was receding, but this terrorism warning proved him wrong.

In part, the Administration has only itself to blame. The State Department issued a global travel alert for the entire month of August and explained that an attack could come anywhere. Congressmen who were briefed by Administration officials explained that although al-Qaeda’s targets were cities in the Arab world and Africa, there could also be attacks in Europe or North America. (If it is a global travel alert, then it isn’t really a travel alert but rather an existence alert.) So, what exactly were Westerners supposed to do for the month of August?

The Administration did the right thing in sharing its intelligence with foreign governments, alerting U.S. embassies and consulates and expanding its counterterrorism activities to disrupt any and all plots. But its public announcement had all the hallmarks of the old color-coded alerts of the Bush era–threatening enough to make people anxious yet vague enough to give them little to do about it.

On the broader question of the state of al-Qaeda, there’s room for debate. Al-Qaeda Central, the organization based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is battered and broke. But the idea of al-Qaeda remains vibrant in other places–notably places where the government is extremely weak and cannot actually control territory. Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups are not flourishing in hotbeds of Islamic radicalism like Saudi Arabia. They thrive instead in Yemen, Somalia, Mali and northern Nigeria. Some of these groups have real ties to al-Qaeda and share its goals. Others, like the ones in Africa, look like local warlords using the label to burnish their brand.

So what kind of strategy should the U.S. pursue against these small groups in weak states? There are three possible paths. The first would be a full-bore counterinsurgency strategy, the kind that General David Petraeus executed in Iraq and (to a lesser degree) in Afghanistan. But does anyone think that sending thousands of U.S. troops into these countries is a smart idea? Does anyone think keeping more troops in Afghanistan would make terrorists in Mali tremble? As Michael Hayden, CIA director under George W. Bush, has pointed out, there is a delicate balance between doing too little in these countries and doing so much that you exaggerate the importance of local thugs, Americanize local grievances and create a global threat that didn’t really exist.

The second strategy would be counterterrorism–using drones, missiles, Special Forces and other kinetic tools to disrupt al-Qaeda-affiliated groups. By anyone’s measure, the Obama Administration has been aggressive on this front. Obama has used more drones in each year than Bush did in his presidency. In fact, many experts believe that Obama’s counterterrorism strategy has been too aggressive. Gregory Johnsen, author of a detailed account of the U.S. war in Yemen, argues that drones have been overused in that country, triggering considerable backlash. He points out that drones have worked better in Afghanistan and Pakistan because the people killed were often foreigners–Arab militants–rather than locals with deep ties in their communities.

The third possible approach to the new threat of terrorism is to try to get local governments to fight the terrorists. But the places where al-Qaeda affiliates have sprung up–like Somalia and Yemen–are, almost by definition, ungovernable. At the moment, only the U.S. has the technology, missiles and troops to disrupt terrorist plots being hatched in those countries. Yet the best policy in the long run would be to shift the struggle over to locals, who can most effectively win a long war against militants in territory they know better than any outsiders. It also shifts the struggle over to Muslims, who can most effectively battle al-Qaeda in the realm of ideas. The U.S. can help by building up the legitimacy and capacity of these governments in various ways, encouraging reform and providing aid and technical know-how. Of course, this is the softest of the three strategies and would probably draw the most fire from Obama’s critics were he to pursue it more fully.

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