The Evolution of Al Qaeda

Source: Staff reports. The Washington Post.

War On Error -- J.M. Berger, Foreign Policy

We're fighting al Qaeda like a terrorist group. They're fighting us as an army.

One of the most active fronts in the war on terror is Washington, D.C., where skirmishes over our understanding of al Qaeda have grown increasingly frequent and bloody.

Although this battle has raged for years, recent events have raised the stakes. From the president of the United States on down, analysts, scholars, and pundits have been confounded by the evolution of al Qaeda from a single, central group based in Afghanistan into a hydra with heads in (at minimum) Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Mali, Somalia, and most importantly, Syria.

The debate has grown ever more acrimonious since the maybe-or-maybe-not al Qaeda attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, but it reached new and unprecedented heights this weekend when al Qaeda Central (AQC) issued a statement to fire one of its affiliates, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), formerly known as al Qaeda in Iraq.

The terse, unequivocal statement came after months of bloody infighting among jihadi groups in Syria, and it makes it clear that defining al Qaeda isn't just an "inside the beltway" problem. Not even al Qaeda has a firm grasp on the question.

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My Comment: The article is behind a free "pay-wall" .... but it provides an excellent analysis on how much Al Qaeda has evolved over the years. From the world's number one terror organization to an organization that now tries to hold territory and establish some form of governance.