The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda

The central arguments in Fawaz Gerges’ book The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda are straightforward. First, he contests the ‘artificial’ elevation of the threat posed by the militant organization founded by the late Usama bin Laden, writing that Al-Qaeda has never been able to attract support from the vast majority of the Muslims or even Muslim militants. Second, Gerges asserts that popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria, collectively referred to most frequently as the ‘Arab Spring’ are a death blow to Al-Qaeda’s narrative. In an article published on May 13 in The Daily Beast he reiterated this claim, despite mounting evidence of an increased jihadi presence in Syria and a shift in Al-Qaeda’s strategy in response to the Arab Spring.1 The uprisings, he writes, are ‘post-Islamist’ because the Islamist activists, such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, have decided to participate in the so-called post-revolutionary democratic politics.

The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda raises important questions about the central focus of the U.S. government and the governments of numerous other countries on Al-Qaeda, which Gerges defines broadly as the original organization founded by Bin Laden, known commonly in the literature as Al-Qaeda Central (AQC), and its regional affiliates, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) and Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers, and Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahidin (Al-Shabab). His argument that Al-Qaeda should be contextualized as an international threat rather than being exaggerated, as has happened in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, is convincing, though not new. Other scholars and analysts previously made similar arguments that Al-Qaeda’s capabilities and the threat they pose should not be overestimated. Gerges also joins previous scholars in pointing out the Arab-centric nature of the original Al-Qaeda’s membership and focus, which he refers to as a time of [asabiyyah or ‘tribal’ or ‘nationalist’ solidarity hidden by the ‘fig leaf’ of a transnational jihadi rhetoric.