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.
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Getty
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.
Qatada went in front of judges in Jordan on terror charges last year after a 10-year battle to remove him from the UK but was acquitted of all charges last summer.
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."
GettyISIS don't respect anyone
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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