Thursday, June 11, 2015

Al-Qaeda fear of Islamic State after hate preacher Qatada reveals group ripped apart

Al-Qaeda fear of Islamic State after hate preacher Qatada reveals group ripped apart

EVEN al-Qaeda is fearful of Islamic State after two of Bin Laden's top men revealed their group has been ripped apart by the opposing jihadi group.


Bin Laden next to ISIS flagGetty
Al-Qaeda, formally led by the late Bin Laden, was the world's number one threat - now ISIS is
Hate preacher Abu Qatada and al-Qaeda's most influential scholar Muhammad al Maqdisi, said leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is clinging on to the group through loyalty appeals.

Recruits and money in the Middle East have rapidly declined as the terror group, previously led by the much-feared Bin Laden, has lost territory and prestige to ISIS which grew out of a smaller faction of al-Qaeda.

The US has been left struggling to catch up with shifts in the global jihadi movement as the two groups continue to fight each other, intelligence insiders have revealed.

Maqdisi, a close friend of Zawahiri, told the Guardian: "He operates solely based on the allegiance.
"There is no organisational structure. There are only communication channels and loyalty."

Jordanian preacher Qatada - well-known in the UK for his eventual deportation in 2013 - also said Zawahiri is "isolated" and that ISIS has been winning the war, on both the ground and through propaganda, against al-Qaeda.


He has now became a strong critic of ISIS and called the extremists a "cancer" growing within the jihadi movement's fold after their two-year attack on al-Qaeda.
He said: "ISIS don't respect anyone."
Abu Qatada side profileGetty
Hate preacher Abu Qatada is now leading criticism against ISIS
ISIS don't respect anyone
Abu Qatada
ISIS was excluded from al-Qaeda in 2014 after commands from Zawahiri were disobeyed and started a war with its fellow jihadis in Syria - which has now spread across Europe, Asia and into the Mediterranean.

ISIS only declared the establishment of its 'Islamic State' a year ago but has built a terrifying global network of branches and supporters stretching from Afghanistan to west Africa.

Leaders of ISIS have described al-Qaeda as a "drowned entity" and said no other jihadi group would be tolerated in territory they have snatched.

Last week reports said 10 Taliban members were beheaded by ISIS members, to which al-Qaeda yesterday vowed to retaliate as they claimed one of the beheaded was a leader.

Derek Harvey, a former intelligence analyst, criticised the intelligence community for being slow to register the decline of al-Qaeda and rise of ISIS.

He said: "There's such a cadre of people so closely tied to the al-Qaeda brand within the intelligence community that I think they don't see what else is going on outside the organisation."

He added the US has been looking at the split between the two groups, with "the overwhelming majority of senior intelligence officials looking at this", but they consider the fight between ISIS and al-Qaeda as simply a "squabble within".



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