The desperation of al Qaeda

Richard Spencer:

To try to blow up an airliner by sewing explosives into your underpants might seem more a ruse of desperation, something out of Blackadder, than anything from the standard terrorist training manual.

That is a very different view from how it is being presented to us, of course: as a new and dangerous tactic in a war in which no means of attacking the enemies of Islam goes unexplored.

It may be hard to contain a smile, but the frightening truth that emerges from the Christmas Day attack on Flight 253 is that both standpoints are equally true. Shuffled from country to country, targeted by drones, electronic eavesdropping and ever more vigilant and intrusive security procedures in the world's major cities, al-Qaeda and its associates are both desperate and inventive.

Long before Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab boarded his plane in Lagos it was clear that al-Qaeda had torn up the standard training manuals. Since the day of its most stunning victory in 2001, its methods have become more, not less, extraordinary.

Most recently there was the attempted assassination in August of the Saudi Arabian prince who oversees that country's anti-terror programme. Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, whose father is interior minister and Saudi Arabia's third-ranking royal behind the king and the crown prince, is an imaginative tactician. He has been uncompromising in his determination to deal with al-Qaeda in recent years, but broad-minded enough to use rehabilitation as his favoured method.

He was therefore receptive when he took an unexpected telephone call in August from a terrorist named Abdullah Hassan al-Asiri, a man who ranked high on his list of wanted al-Qaeda suspects.

Al-Asiri had fled to Yemen, but said that he wanted to give himself up – and, as a mark of his esteem for Prince Mohammed, to do so in person. The prince, remarkably, agreed and a time was fixed, but as al-Asiri approached he detonated an explosive device, blowing himself to pieces and injuring the prince.

Al-Asiri, it was later discovered, had managed to breach the intensive security with which the prince surrounds himself by hiding the explosive in his rectum. Airports around the world are now considering whether their own security procedures – and their scanning devices – can deal with this new form of attack. The only consolation, for those shuddering at the potentially invasive security implications, is al-Asiri's lack of success. The blast was shielded by his body to such a degree that only the prince's hand was injured.

It is natural, when the world's security agencies compare these two not dissimilar attacks, that their focus will be upon Yemen, where both were apparently plotted. In some ways, the country is the spiritual home of al-Qaeda – it is the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, whose father was born in the valley of Hadramawt, still a base today for al-Qaeda activity.

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There is little doubt that the US presence in Yemen is already strong and that it is going to become more visible. In any case, the Detroit attack should be seen as part of a continuing battle between al-Qaeda in Yemen and America. This is a fight that includes the attack on the USS Cole in Aden in 2000, when 17 crewmen were killed; the suicide car-bombing of the US embassy in the capital Sana'a last year and the two major incidents in the last fortnight.

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There is much more.

Al Qaeda tries to survive in chaos it creates. That is what it is trying to do in Yemen as it has done in Somalia and other countries or tribal regions. Yemen has the same kind of tribal societies that Afghanistan and Pakistan have. These primitive associations have their own codes and beefs with other tribes making it easier for al Qaeda to play in the margins and offer itself as the solution to the chaos it creates.