Evolution, revolutions and attrition by the bomb and bullet have served to reshape al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda’s operating environment today is vastly different from when it launched the 9/11 terror attacks. Osama bin Laden was killed in May. Three Middle East dictatorships were removed this year – two by unarmed civil-resistance tactics and one by a Nato-assisted rebellion. Has militant jihadism failed, placing al-Qaeda’s survival in doubt?

Jihadism is a modern revolutionary ideology which holds that political violence is a theologically legitimate and tactically efficient way to effect socio-political change. Terrorism dominated the armed activities of many of the groups that subscribed to this world view.

But, while al-Qaeda maintained its ideology after 9/11, its organisation changed dramatically. From a centralised, hierarchical organisation, it became highly-decentralised, with regional branches as the dominant actors.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula emerged in late 2002 as a force in Saudi Arabia, orchestrating an attack in Riyadh in 2003. This was followed by al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2004, and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in 2007.

The franchise model had fully taken hold. Ten years after 9/11, however, these franchises are in check, rather than expansion.

Parallel to the franchise model, al-Qaeda also has adopted a “spider-web” approach in favour of trained operatives who form small cells to conduct specific attacks and then disband, as in the attacks on Madrid and London.

Then there is the “ideological front” model. The model works by describing the severe injustices and humiliation suffered by Muslims, and then letting sympathisers recruit themselves – like army major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 fellow soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, and Roshonara Choudhary, who stabbed the MP Stephen Timms in 2010.

While al-Qaeda has mutated, its ideology is constantly open to challenge. After 9/11, several movements, factions, leading jihadists, and individual militants were highly critical of al-Qaeda’s behaviour, and began to move towards non-violence, depriving it of support.

The combined effect of intelligence operations, transformations within jihadi ranks, and the Arab Spring has thwarted the power of “al-Qaeda central.” The franchises and rejigged ideology mean that some fragments will probably survive, because they are embedded within localities. But al-Qaeda as a global threat has been severely undermined.

l Omar Ashour is director of Middle East graduate studies at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Centre.