Author Topic: Al Qaeda 'To Disintegrate' in 2 Years - UK Adviser  (Read 92 times)

Thirteen

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Al Qaeda 'To Disintegrate' in 2 Years - UK Adviser
« on: November 10, 2004, 06:49:32 PM »
LONDON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda will begin to disintegrate within two years as its various factions start to squabble and militants return to their local roots, a senior British parliamentary adviser predicted on Wednesday.

Professor Michael Clarke, a specialist adviser to lawmakers on the House of Commons defense committee, said the consequence would be that the security services would be able to win the "war on terror" as the group's structure fell apart.


"I think (cracks) are going to start to appear in the next 12 months to two years," he told Reuters at a security conference in London.


"It's going to start to fragment and split up," he said.


Clarke said he envisaged the network breaking down into smaller, disparate cells which would be more easily infiltrated and dealt with, bringing an end to the group's ability to carry out major attacks along the lines of the Sept. 11 attacks


"Terrorism will go back to being about more local issues. It will be reduced to a level which people can live with," he said.


Al Qaeda's pyramid structure -- with Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and about 30 associates at its head spreading out to a loose franchise of affiliated networks -- would begin to prove a major weakness when it was once a strength, he said.


Groups associated with al Qaeda across the world, such as those in southeast Asia, would start to pursue their local agendas, he added.


Clarke pointed to Iraq (news - web sites), where Baathist supporters of deposed president Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) were fighting alongside foreign Jihadists linked to al Qaeda although the groups had nothing in common.


Ultimately the Baathists would go their own way and pyramid would be weakened.


Clarke noted that even association with bin Laden's network had proved damaging to the cause of other militants such as Chechen separatists.


Clarke, director of the International Policy Institute at London's King's College, said this would be fueled further as the "glamour" surrounding bin Laden started to wear off and political in-fighting took hold.


"Whenever you get a general movement, people will vie for prominence and that's what I think is the next stage," he said.


He said a major failing of al Qaeda was its complete misunderstanding of western society and the belief it could terrorize governments into achieving their aims.


"They are not going to frighten Western society out of policies, they are not going to bring down the House of Saud, their first real objective, by terrorism," he said.


"They can cause great inconvenience but they can't damage them in the way they think they can."