http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10895474/ISIS-in-Iraq-Who-can-halt-the-jihadis-now.html Militant Islam has come a long way since it first raised its intimidating black flag around the turn of this century, thereby announcing the arrival of Osama bin Laden?s unique brand of terrorism. Back then, al-Qaeda?s supporters were seen as a rag-tag bunch of cave-dwelling Islamist fanatics who used their bases in some of the world?s more inhospitable regions to plot their campaign of violence against the West.
Whether operating in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, al-Qaeda?s dedicated band of ideologically driven extremists was always regarded as occupying the lunatic fringe of the Muslim world, and was avoided by more traditional followers of the Islamic faith.
The creation of an independent Islamic state based on the rule of Sharia law was a cardinal tenet of the al-Qaeda agenda, even though few in the Arab world ever believed bin Laden?s group could achieve that dream, particularly after it became the prime focus of America?s military might. Within months of the September 11 attacks in 2001, al-Qaeda?s infrastructure had been destroyed by the West?s initial military intervention in Afghanistan, with bin Laden and his followers forced to flee into exile.
It was a rout from which the organisation never really recovered. While the original al-Qaeda diehards continued with attempts to conduct terror attacks against Western targets, by the end of the last decade the group had become largely irrelevant to the wider Islamist cause, a predicament that deepened with bin Laden?s dramatic demise at his Abbottabad lair in 2011.
These days al-Qaeda?s isolation is so pronounced that Ayman Zawahiri, bin Laden?s Egyptian-born heir and al-Qaeda?s current leader, cuts a remote and impotent figure, reduced to issuing hand-written missives that are, for the most part, roundly ignored by the new generation of jihadis who have undertaken their own radical rebranding of bin Laden?s malign ideology.
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Indeed, the sudden emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the group now spreading terror throughout large tracts of Iraq, can be traced back to a bitter falling out earlier this year between its leaders and Zawahiri after he wrote to them complaining that the brutality of the tactics they regularly employed in the Syrian conflict ? public beheadings, crucifixions, floggings and stoning ? was threatening to damage the al-Qaeda brand.
This might sound a bit rich coming from someone who has no qualms about authorising suicide bombers to kill innocent civilians. But the rift culminated with Zawahiri denouncing the ISIS as a renegade band that waged war against fellow Muslims through its campaign of car bombings, mass killing and the widespread torture of its own citizens.
