Big Think

Paul Cruickshank: Al Qaeda was on the ropes in 2002, the year after the 9/11 attacks.  Two-thirds of its leadership was captured or killed.  Bin Laden was very depressed.  He felt that his organization was at an end.  He wrote a will in Tora Bora where he was very depressed, and they really saw a lot of setbacks during those years.  But then along came an event which really was very important for the Al Qaeda organization, and that was the U.S. March 2003 invasion of Iraq.  Now that’s created a lot of anger around the Muslim world.  It created a lot of anger in Diasporic Muslim communities in the West.  And Al Qaeda were able to … if you like, tap into that anger and use it as a recruiting tool to gain a lot more men and some women, unfortunately, for their jihad.  So the Iraq war not only was a recruiting tool, but it also energized people who were already jihadists around the world.  Jihadist groups saw what was going on in Iraq.  The saw the Al Qaeda fighters and the “success” they were having in Iraq during those years.  And they were able to look to that for inspiration; not just for inspiration, but also they were able to copy all the tactics that the jihadists used in Iraq.  And that ranges from suicide bombing attacks to the use of improvised explosive devices.  We’ve seen a large rise in suicide bombing attacks in the years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  And suicide bombing attacks are incredibly devastating.  They’re incredibly difficult to protect against.  So the Iraq war has really been a real shot in the arm for Al Qaeda around the world.  It rescued it from its demise in 2003.  Now a study I did at New York University I co-authored with Peter Bergin, we found that since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq there’s been a seven times increase in failed jihadist attacks around the world.  That’s attacks with groups which are either sympathetic to the ideology of Al Qaeda, or are affiliated with Al Qaeda in some way.  So you’ve seen this large rise in terrorism.  Even excluding Iraq, you’ve seen a three . . . three time rise in terrorism around the world, as people have really been energized by that conflict.  So the Iraq war has really helped Al Qaeda gain recruits.

Recorded on: Jan 14 2008