Al-Qaeda is losing, but the West isn’t winning

Last July I met a man in Jordan who told me he was an al-Qaeda recruiter. "What do you want?" I asked him. "God willing that the whole world should be an Islamic state," he replied. "So can you foresee a day when you kill all non-Muslims?" I asked. He held my gaze. "God willing, yes."

Al-Qaeda has killed so many civilians that even its most ardent supporters are beginning to have doubts. The real damage has been done by the sectarian violence in Iraq. Morale amongst al-Qaeda fighters there is now so low that they are leaving the field of battle complaining that they are being asked to kill Shias not Americans.
      
Yet the West has failed to out-argue the organisation. While al-Qaeda is losing its battle for hearts and minds, so too is the United States.
 
The litany of complaints against America is familiar. The suffering of the Palestinian people, the double standard of insisting on democracy and supporting autocracy, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, water-boarding, and the gargantuan civilian death toll in Iraq, Afghanistan and increasingly Pakistan. With each deployment of US troops in Muslim lands, the Pentagon feeds al-Qaeda's narrative of victimisation by modern-day crusaders.

Nevertheless in May this year the CIA chief Michael Hayden claimed al-Qaeda had suffered "near strategic defeat".  And the British government in its March 2008 National Security Strategy said terrorism did not at present pose a "strategic threat".

Those confident statements were based on the Western progress in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The very considerable resources of the Saudi royal family have been used to target al-Qaeda. Having pulled off the remarkable achievement of forcing the Americans out of their Saudi bases in 2003, al-Qaeda has been on the slide there ever since.
 
In Iraq too, al-Qaeda is on the run. America has gained the upper hand by holding talks, reaching alliances and paying off tribal leaders. The techniques beloved of Britain's 19th-century imperialists have been re-learned and re-applied. As a result, according to internal al-Qaeda documents captured by the Americans this year, the organisation there now faces an "extraordinary crisis". A mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the government "created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight".
   
Al-Qaeda, then, has suffered serious setbacks. But even if it is currently down, its apparently impregnable sanctuary in the tribal areas of Pakistan means that it is certainly not out. The destruction of the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad is just the latest reminder of how potent a force al-Qaeda remains in Pakistan. For months now there have been suicide attacks in Pakistan's cities every three or four days.
 
Both John McCain and Barack Obama say they will deploy more American troops in Afghanistan. It's a high-risk strategy. The Iraqi surge may have worked, but Afghanistan is a very different place. Most Afghans have known nothing but war and it's increasingly clear they will resist troops they now see as foreign occupiers. Al-Qaeda may have done badly in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and its violence may have alienated some potential supporters, but it is still looking forward to the coming battles in Pakistan and Afghanistan with some confidence. Neither Nato nor the Pakistan army have yet found a convincing answer to the Taliban's advances on Kabul and even the Pakistani city of Peshawar.
 
Both sides agreed from the outset that 9/11 was the opening salvo in a conflict that would last for decades. The evidence so far is that when the West, or forces allied to it, use overwhelming force they can prevail militarily. But in doing so they feed Al-Qaeda's narrative and help the organisation survive. Al-Qaeda's civilian death toll may be unpopular in the Muslim world but the Western failure to win hearts and minds means the organisation is far from defunct.
Owen Bennett-Jones presents 'Is Al-Qaeda winning?’ on Radio 4, September 30 at 8pm ·