25 years after 9/11: The slow decline of al-Qaeda

A quarter of a century after 19 assassins boarded planes to carry out their deadly mission on behalf of the terrorist network al-Qaeda, the Middle East region is different. Al-Qaeda and its competitors and successors from IS, the so-called Islamic State, have long passed their peak. Their idea of ​​wanting to change the region with militancy and an Islamic Stone Age ideology has failed.

It is important to remember that before al-Qaeda turned against the West, it fought the region's Arab regimes, which it branded un-Islamic, and their societies. Western navel-gazing tends to forget that by far most of the victims of militant Islamism were themselves Muslims in the region.

A quarter of a century after 9/11, it is clear that a large majority of people in the region reject Islamist militancy. With one exception: when it is directed against an occupying power that is perceived as illegitimate, be it the US occupation of Iraq or the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, Gaza or southern Lebanon.

But all other attempts to change the region by force have also failed. Even with the strongest army in the world, the USA has not managed to change the balance of power in Iraq in its favor in the long term. And in the war with Iran it is also becoming clear that the USA and Israel, as the strongest military powers in the region, are once again reaching their limits. Using force to force change has proven to be unsustainable. You can't win people's hearts that way anyway.

The “Arab Spring” of 2011, which gripped the region almost ten years after September 11, 2001, was the antithesis of al-Qaeda. The peaceful “Arabellion” was a mass movement for democracy and human rights. In Tahrir Square and elsewhere, people took to the barricades largely peacefully because they saw that the region's ossified autocratic systems did not solve any of their problems and only served their own pockets. At that time, the heart of a large part of the Arab world beat in Tahrir Square in Cairo.

The departure also failed because the various social trends – from secular, left-wing, liberal to conservative and Islamist – failed to find compromises. In Egypt, the military seized power again through repression and violence. It was supported by the rich Gulf states, for whom any Arab-democratic experiment is a thorn in the side because it also threatens their own autocratic rule.

But there is another reason for al-Qaeda's slow decline. Saudi Arabia – the country from which 15 of the 19 9/11 attackers came – has undergone significant social changes in the last 25 years. It is still an autocratic state in which Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, known as MBS for short, sets the course. But as part of his mission to modernize his country, he has ended the decades-long alliance between the Saudi royal family and the ultra-conservative Wahhabis.

The Wahhabis long determined the religious and social life of Saudi Arabia and provided the ideological superstructure. MBS has now greatly reduced its influence. Militant Sunni Islamism also lost an important ideological point of reference.

On the other hand, the conflict between Shiite militias and the West has intensified again due to the Israeli-American attack on Iran. This is remarkable because, despite the anti-American rhetoric and ideology of the Iranian regime, there have been nuances recently. Many Shiites in Iraq initially celebrated the overthrow of the Iraqi dictator Saddan Hussein, whom they hated, and initially cheered the US troops as liberators from his tyranny.

The longer the US occupation of Iraq dragged on, the more Shiite militias raised their arms against them. When the Sunni Islamist IS, which also viewed and threatened Shiites as “infidels,” took over large parts of Iraq and Syria, the USA became a partner again. The Shiite militias in Iraq provided a large part of the ground troops in the anti-IS alliance, which - with the active support of the US Air Force - took action against the militant Sunni IS jihadists.

It was a short-lived alliance of convenience. Today, in response to the US attack on Iran, the same Shiite militias are firing rockets at US bases in Iraq and its Gulf neighbors.

Something else has shifted in the region. The Palestine question also increasingly moved into the background for most Arab regimes. Some of them, including the United Arab Emirates and Morocco, normalized their relations with Israel six years ago. There wasn't much headwind for it at the time.

Today the Palestinian issue has returned with force to the agenda. Saudi Arabia, which Israel and the USA had hoped to be able to persuade next to sign the “Abraham Accords”, wants nothing more to do with it. And the Arab public watches with horror the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and the still daily Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

Militant organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, which are seen primarily as resistance movements in parts of the Arab world, were weakened by the Israeli wars in Gaza and Lebanon, but continue to exist. Neither wants to give up their weapons as long as Israel occupies large parts of the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

But Al-Qaeda & Co are history. This is probably the reason why they are now only perceived as a side note in the region.