Chief’s killing comes as terror group gains ground in Africa

It was one of Ayman alZawahiri’s last victories. Just over a week before the al-Qaida leader was killed in Kabul by missiles fired from a US drone, militants from the organisation’s biggest affiliate in sub-Saharan Africa attacked the most important military base in Mali. The tactics of the attack were familiar – suicide bombers blowing a gap in defences to allow gunmen to reach stunned defenders – but the operation marked an escalation.

In more than a decade of insurgent warfare in Mali, al-Qaida had never struck any target of such significance nor so close to the capital, Bamako. The attack on the base in Kati underlined the tenacity of the organisation in Africa and elsewhere despite decades of intense pressure from a US-led counter-terrorist campaign and fierce rivalry from a breakaway faction that became the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (Isis or IS).

“The international context is favourable to al-Qaida, which intends to be recognised again as the leader of global jihad,” a UN report compiled from intelligence supplied by members states said in July.

The attack in Mali last month was a vindication of Zawahiri’s 2011 decision to abandon the strategy of spectacular strikes against the west that had been favoured by his predecessor, Osama bin Laden. Instead, he directed regional commanders to seek gains locally.

Where IS relied on fear and coercion to cow local populations, al-Qaida sought to appear as moderate in comparison.

Al-Qaida has suffered major setbacks – almost eliminated in Syria and Iraq and unable to compete with IS in some theatres, such as Nigeria and Egypt’s Sinai desert. But in Africa particularly Zawahiri’s strategy has paid off. Deep problems caused by competition for resources due to climate change, political instability, massive displacement of population and the recent withdrawal of French troops from Mali offer al-Qaida opportunities for further expansion, analysts say.

Al-Qaida’s affiliate in Mali, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), has been quick to exploit the presence of the Wagner group, a Russian private military company with links to the Kremlin.

The attack on the Kati base was a response to governmental collaboration with the Wagner group, JNIM said.

Gen Stephen J Townsend, commander of the US Africa Command, told reporters that JNIM was “on the march towards the south … and starting operations now in the … border regions of the coastal states. This is of great concern, I think, for the world that’s watching,” he said.

In north Africa, al-Qaida still has a presence but has been largely squeezed out of Libya and Tunisia.

Its affiliate in Yemen has long been considered by western security experts a potential threat. Outside Africa, the biggest gains have been made in Afghanistan.

“The Taliban victory has very predictably strengthened al-Qaida’s hand,” said Daveed GartensteinRoss, CEO of the US-based threat analysis firm Valens Global.

Al-Qaida has built deep relationships with key factions of the Taliban who, though divided, appear prepared to offer the group a haven on certain conditions. The house Zawahiri was living in with his family when he was killed was owned by an aide of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Afghan interior minister. Other prominent al-Qaida veterans are in Iran, where they fled in 2002 but are still active.

A challenge for the group is that many obvious heirs to al-Zawahiri have been killed, said Katherine Zimmerman, fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

These include younger leadership candidates such as Hamza bin Laden, the founder’s son, who died in a drone strike in Pakistan between 2017 and 2019. Al-Qaida’s No 2 was killed in what is believed to be a Mossad operation in Tehran in 2020.

An important factor that may help al-Qaida is that the US and its allies are now focused elsewhere.

“What would be the strategic distraction from our new China focus?” said Zimmerman. “Everyone says a major terror attack, but I’m not convinced … that it would do it.”

A challenge for the group is that many obvious heirs to alZawahiri have been killed