How al Qaeda Works - What the Organization's Subsidiaries Say about Its Strength
![handle is hein.journals/fora90 and id is 340 raw text is: How al Qaeda Works
What the Organization's Subsidiaries
Say About Its Strength
Leah Farrall
DESPITE NEARLY a decade of war, al Qaeda is stronger today than
when it carried out the 9/11 attacks. Before 2001, its history was
checkered with mostly failed attempts to fulfill its most enduring
goal: the unification of other militant Islamist groups under its
strategic leadership. However, since fleeing Afghanistan to Pakistan's
tribal areas in late 2001, al Qaeda has founded a regional branch in
the Arabian Peninsula and acquired franchises in Iraq and the
Maghreb. Today, it has more members, greater geographic reach,
and a level of ideological sophistication and influence it lacked ten
years ago.
Still, most accounts of the progress of the war against al Qaeda
contend that the organization is on the decline, pointing to its degraded
capacity to carry out terrorist operations and depleted senior leader-
ship as evidence that the group is at its weakest since 9/11. But such
accounts treat the central al Qaeda organization separately from its
subsidiaries and overlook its success in expanding its power and
influence through them. These groups should not be ignored. All have
attacked Western interests in their regions of operation. Al Qaeda
in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has also long targeted the United
LEAH FARRALL is a former Senior Counterterrorism Intelligence
Analyst with the Australian Federal Police and the author of the blog All
Things Counter Terrorism.
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How al Qaeda Works - What the Organization's Subsidiaries Say about Its Strength
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