Times Online

LONDON, July 5 (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden would not have approved.                                                                                  Spinoff groups from al Qaeda have become increasingly engrossed in insurgencies in Africa and the Middle East, inflicting death and mayhem on local communities. But this emphasis on the pursuit of the enemy nearby has cast doubt on their commitment, in practice, to bin Laden's war on the “far enemy” - the West and the United States in particular.
More than a year after U.S. forces killed bin Laden, some groups such as the Yemeni-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) undoubtedly remain a menace to the West.
Turmoil in Syria, Somalia and parts of Libya, Mali, Iraq and Nigeria has also allowed Islamist militias to recruit, train, arm and organise. And yet their targets have been overwhelmingly close at hand, rather than in Europe or the United States.
“Al Qaeda has become a useful label for any group that essentially pursues local aims but wishes to exaggerate its reach and sophistication,” said Richard Barrett, Coordinator of the Al-Qaida-Taliban Monitoring Team at the United Nations.
“Al Qaeda has lost much of its reputation as the vanguard of a global cause, and as the activities of its affiliates result in more and more death and destruction for local communities, this process will accelerate,” he told Reuters.
Boasting newly-acquired weapons, kidnap ransom funds, territorial gains in remote regions and a coterie of radicalised Western volunteers, many groups appear to have the wherewithal for viable plots within Western borders, Western officials say.
AQAP, formed in 2009 when militants driven out of Saudi Arabia joined the Yemeni al Qaeda, is under particularly close watch internationally because of its failed but audacious bombing attempts against U.S. targets. It claimed responsibility for an attempt to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner on Christmas Day that year, and for a plot to send two air freight packages containing bombs to the United States in 2010. Western officials say they disrupted an AQAP plot to bomb another airliner this year and suspect it is only a question of time before the group tries again, as it has threatened to do.
Yet swathes of al Qaeda's multi-ethnic armed following appear to be more interested in subjecting local communities to harsh forms of Islamic rule after eliminating any opposition.
CENTRALLY-DIRECTED MENACE NO MORE
Today, al Qaeda is no longer the centrally-directed, hierarchical network of plotters that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001 under bin Laden's leadership. Nevertheless it has determined offshoots apart from AQAP. In north Africa and the Sahara, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been responsible for kidnappings and murders of Westerners as well as Africans, while Islamists in Mali are systematically destroying the cultural treasures of Timbuktu.
In Somalia, al Shabaab has battled African Union forces and staged attacks on neighbouring Kenya, while in Nigeria Boko Haram has targetted local Christians as well as the government and United Nations. Grassroots conflicts disrupt trade and transport links, opening opportunities for international plots and giving militant novices paramilitary training. Nevertheless, bin Laden regarded local insurgency as a dangerous distraction from al Qaeda's defining goal of attacking inside American territory.
Some wonder if bin Laden's views have been politely ignored.
London-based Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih told Reuters the offshoots shared common methods and strategy, but “there is not one organisation. There are independent structures here and there in terms of military and operational tactics”.
Others suggest a fundamental localism is at work.
“The global jihadist genie has not been put entirely back in the bottle, but militancy is returning to its roots in local-level campaigns driven by local factors,” said Stephen Tankel, an assistant professor at American University and non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“You no longer have one driving focus behind al Qaeda after the death of bin Laden,” a leading Western counter-terrorism official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. “The overall threat is marginally less.”.
“Instead there's a lot more chaos and more militant capability linked to regional politics and crises.” What communication there is between the affiliates and al Qaeda's core has become less effective. Senior leaders in Pakistan cannot follow local conflicts in detail and therefore find it difficult to direct or influence events, Barrett said.
Peter Neumann, Professor of Security Studies at the Department of War Studies at King's College in London, said understanding the increasing variety of militant groups and their local conflicts was vital to fashioning a more nuanced counter-terrorism response. “If you call everything al Qaeda, you'll end up with a backlash, and negative outcomes. We need to disaggregate this threat,” he told Reuters.