A leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for last week’s deadly terrorist attack by brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
AQAP, as the Islamic extremist group is known, is Yemen’s al-Qaeda affiliate.
The group is also bitter rivals with the Islamic State, the terrorist group known as ISIS or ISIL that controls large swaths of Iraq and Syria.
In an interview with The Daily Signal, James Phillips, an expert on the Middle East for The Heritage Foundation, explains what we know about AQAP and its ambitions.
The Daily Signal: Do you think the AQAP claim of responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack is credible?
Phillips: The Kouachi brothers, who perpetrated the atrocity, went out of their way to inform bystanders that they launched the terrorist attack on behalf of AQAP. Yemeni authorities maintain that both brothers visited Yemen for three months beginning in April 2011.
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The brothers clearly were inspired by AQAP, but it remains unclear how closely they actually cooperated with that terrorist organization.
Although an AQAP spokesman claimed that his organization “chose the target, laid the plan, financed the operation”, some terrorism experts suspect that this may have been an after-the-fact attempt to enhance the notoriety of the group by exaggerating its role in the attacks.
Q: Some analysts say the Charlie Hebdo attacks represents an evolution in AQAP tactics, where a looser command structure means that would-be attackers may be trained by AQAP, but free to carry out specific operations on their own. What are your thoughts on that theory?
A: If the Kouachi brothers were bona fide members of AQAP, then they certainly took their time in preparing for the attacks, lying low to escape the scrutiny of French authorities for almost four years.
But if so, it is very curious why one of their associates, Amedy Coulibaly, who perpetrated the attack that claimed the lives of four people in a Jewish grocery store, claimed that he acted in the name of ISIS, a rival terrorist group that has broken with the al-Qaeda network.
My guess is that the Kouachi brothers were not full-fledged AQAP operatives, but were inspired by AQAP to take action on their own and that Coulibaly separately decided to launch his own terrorist operation on an ad hoc basis.
Q: Would a looser AQAP command structure make it easier or harder for surveillance to “catch” attacks before they happen?
A: The less tightly a sleeper cell is tied to its parent organization, the more difficult it probably would be to disrupt its plots, assuming it maintains strict operational security.
“Lone wolf” attacks by self-radicalized militants in the West would be even harder to stop, but generally would not be as dangerous as attacks launched by teams of trained terrorists.
Q: The attacker of the Kosher grocery store, Amedy Coulibaly, said he was an ISIS supporter. What is the relationship between ISIS and AQAP? How are their goals similar or different?
A: Although they share the same ultimate goal, the establishment of a global caliphate (Islamic state) to be ruled under a harsh brand of sharia (Islamic law), they clash over the best strategy for establishing such a state, the tactics that should be used to support that strategy and who should lead the global jihad (holy war) to build the caliphate.
Unidentified al-Qaeda militants appear behind bars during a sentencing hearing at the state security appeal court in Sana’a, Yemen facing charges of allegedly belonging to the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). (Photo: Yahya Arhab/Newscom)
ISIS claims that it already has established the foundation of the caliphate and that all Islamist extremist organizations should recognize its leadership. AQAP rejects this claim and remains loyal to the older generation of al-Qaeda leaders, who favor a more gradual approach to establishing a global caliphate.
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Both increasingly are competing for recruits, funding and leadership of the global Islamist revolution. The good news is that this power struggle may weaken both of them.
The bad news is that their rivalry may spark a competition to launch terrorist attacks against Western targets.
Q: American-born cleric and former AQAP leader Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. The Kouachi brothers have said they were inspired by Awlaki. Why is he still such an inspiration to jihadists?
A: Awlaki remains a beacon for western Islamist militants because of his personal charisma, extensive online video lectures and ability to speak fluent English.
Awlaki also incited Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, and a self-radicalized Pakistani man who botched an attempt to detonate a car bomb in New York’s Times Square in May 2010.
Q: How was AQAP created? Where is it based and where are its terrorist ambitions most focused?
A: AQAP was created in a 2009 merger of the Saudi and Yemeni branches of al-Qaeda. The Saudi branch had been crushed inside the kingdom and took refuge in Yemen, Osama bin Laden’s ancestral homeland. AQAP has sought overthrow the Yemeni government and attack Western targets in the region.
But it also has sought to target the U.S. homeland through Awlaki’s incitement and through sophisticated bombs such as the one the so-called “underwear bomber” sought to use to explode an airliner over Detroit on Christmas day in 2009.
Q: Does AQAP serve al-Qaeda’s core group in Pakistan, or does it operate as its own entity?
A: AQAP remains loyal to the al-Qaeda core group. Its leader, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, was a personal aide to Osama bin Laden and was named by bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri as al-Qaeda’s “general manager” in 2013.
Q: How would you characterize the threat of AQAP to the West (and the U.S.) as compared to ISIS?
A: AQAP probably poses the greatest short term threat to the U.S. homeland, by virtue of the sophisticated bombs constructed by Ibrahim al-Asiri, an accomplished bomb maker responsible for the foiled “underwear bomber,” the failed plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief in 2009, plots to destroy planes over U.S. cities with bombs hidden in printer cartridges in 2010, and a foiled 2012 plot to bomb airliners with an improved version of the “underwear bomb” that did not contain metal parts, making it harder to detect.
AQAP reportedly has contributed its bomb making skills to al-Qaeda’s Khorasan group, which seeks to recruit western militants who have joined the fighting in Syria for attacks inside Western countries.
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ISIS right now primarily poses a regional threat but is likely to pose a growing international threat if it is able to consolidate its base of power in Syria and Iraq.
Q: What is the U.S. doing to defeat AQAP?
A: The U.S. has launched a limited campaign of airstrikes, drone strikes and commando raids by special operations forces to combat AQAP in Yemen
It also has trained and equipped Yemeni counter terrorism forces and provided economic support to the beleaguered Yemeni government, which has been undermined by factional clashes, tribal rebellions and the surging Houthi rebellion.
But these efforts have failed to stem the growing power of AQAP.