Embassy lockdown proves Al Qaeda is growing
The US's decision to evacuate its embassy in the Yemen, shutter down nearly two dozen other diplomatic posts across West Asia and Africa, and issue a month-long worldwide travel alert, in response to a terror threat from Al Qaeda, has hollowed out the Obama Administration's claims of having put the terrorist group on the backfoot. If Al Qaeda is still in a position where it can mount so significant an attack that as many as 19 missions have had to be closed — a total of 22 were shut on Sunday, seven have since been reopened, but four posts in Africa have been added to the list — for an entire week, then it does not take a security analyst to tell you that the group is neither on the retreat nor has it been defeated, as President Barack Obama would like the world to believe. In his speech at the National Defense University just about three months ago, Mr Obama had claimed that Al Qaeda was “on the path to defeat”, that the future of terrorism involved more “localised threats” that would not “rise to the level we saw on the eve of 9/11” and would, therefore, be dealt with “smartly and proportionately”. Finally, he concluded, it was time to repeal the 2001 ‘Authorization to Use Military Force Against Terrorists' that had opened the US war on terror more than a decade ago. His assessments were based on the assumption that Osama bin laden’s death and the killing of several other high ranking Al Qaeda leaders in drone strikes had dealt a body blow to the organisation. He was wrong. Osama bin laden's death was at best a symbolic victory for the US and its allies in the war on terror, while Al Qaeda's ability to replace senior leaders and raise new franchises (such as the one in Yemen and more recently in Syria) meant that the group's operational effectiveness was never really compromised — a fact that has become amply clear in this lockdown of diplomatic postings.
While the exact nature of the threat remains unclear, we do know that it was based on intercepted electronic communication between Al Qaeda top bosses. Specifically, the group's Pakistan-based chief Ayman al-Zawahri is believed to have ordered Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the leader of the terrorist group's franchise in Yemen, to carry out an attack as early as this past Sunday. Coordinated operational planning at this level is supposedly rare, which is reportedly what sparked the security alert, according to US officials. Be that as it may, it comes as no surprise that it is Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen, known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is at the crux of the matter. AQAP has emerged as one of the most lethal arms of terror network and has repeatedly sought to attack Western targets.
This unusual closure of so many diplomatic missions in the Muslim world is a shot in the arm for Al Qaeda but the US Government cannot be faulted for doing all that it takes to protect its citizens — especially given the heavy price it paid in Benghazi last year for ignoring intelligence on possible terror attacks. After all, the threat perception this time was strong enough for even the Governments of Britain, France, Germany and Canada to shut down their posts in the region. Yet, shutdowns such as these cannot become the norm. The only way to respond to a terror threat is to obliterate it.