Was al-Qaeda a winner or loser from the Arab uprisings?

There’s a marked difference between al-Qaeda and ISIS/IS
Al-Qaeda also opposes the division of the Islamic world into individual nation states which, they claim, is a trick perpetrated by the Crusader-Zionist conspiracy to keep the Islamic world weak and divided. For al-Qaeda, state boundaries are to be ignored, if not eliminated. That is why al-Qaeda affiliates are not named after states but rather after regions: al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (North Africa); al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (actually, fi bilad ar-rafidin — in the land of the two rivers — usually mistranslated as al-Qaeda in Iraq). al-Qaeda has never made clear what will happen after the nation state is eliminated from the Islamic world except for scattered and vague references to a restored caliphate whose definition shifts from al-Qaeda spokesman to al-Qaeda spokesman. Nevertheless, these two points are the foundation for the al-Qaeda philosophy.

But now al-Qaeda’s ideological cohesion has dissipated. Local groups modeling themselves on al-Qaeda and calling themselves “Ansar al-Sharias” have emerged in the wake of the Arab uprisings of 2010-11 in various countries. Emulating al-Qaeda’s tactics but picking and choosing from its philosophy, they have taken on local coloration, have forsaken global jihad in favor of fighting their own weak post-“Arab Spring” governments (the “near enemy”), and name themselves after the states in which they operate — Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia, Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, etc. In other words, they ignore the two central tenets of al-Qaeda’s ideology.

Nowhere is the rift between al-Qaeda and its offshoots more evident than in Syria. Not only did ISIS/IS defy al-Qaeda central by refusing to leave the struggle in Syria to a rival group, Jabhat al-Nusra, as Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda central ordered it to, its leader put himself above al-Zawahiri by declaring himself caliph; that is, the supreme leader of the Muslim world. ISIS/IS also promotes the doctrine of takfir — the practice of declaring self-professed Muslims apostates, thus authorizing “true Muslims” to kill them. Hence, the sectarian bloodbaths unleashed by ISIS/IS, which al-Qaeda central finds counterproductive and has roundly condemned.

And even Jabhat al-Nusra, an official al-Qaeda affiliate, abandoned central elements of al-Qaeda’s belief system by asserting its struggle is in Syria alone and its aim is to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It has set aside the Islamic punishments and restrictions on personal behavior and religious practice that made ISIS/IS unpopular in the territories it “liberates,” and has even fought pitched turf wars with ISIS/IS.

What, then, is al-Qaeda’s current state? If one looks at al-Qaeda not as an entity but as a tendency within a broader jihadi movement, it might be argued that the groups that operate as al-Qaeda affiliates, wannabes, and copycats have profited from the Arab uprisings in terms of expanding their operations and digging in, although in the process many have jettisoned many of the central tenets of the original cohort. This might be evolution, but it is just as likely to mark the deterioration or even the dissolution of the al-Qaeda wing of the jihadi movement.

James L. Gelvin is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at University of California, Los Angeles. This story is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivatives).