{"id":13895,"date":"2018-09-05T01:26:12","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T01:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13895"},"modified":"2018-09-05T01:26:12","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T01:26:12","slug":"al-qaeda-trying-to-regain-primacy-as-daesh-loses-ground-nato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=13895","title":{"rendered":"Al Qaeda trying to regain primacy as Daesh loses ground -NATO"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1366756\/middle-east\" readability=\"65\">\n<p>\nJERUSALEM: Al Qaeda is trying to regain its primacy over international militancy as Daesh loses ground, a senior NATO official said on Tuesday, seeing a potentially increased risk to the West from the groups\u2019 rivalry.<br \/>But Arndt von Loringhoven, the alliance\u2019s assistant secretary general for intelligence and security, said Daesh retained some personnel strength despite its combat losses, including fresh recruits among women and children.<br \/>\u201cDaesh-Daesh weakening has provided Al-Qaeda with an opportunity to attempt to regain its former status,\u201d Von Loringhoven told a security conference hosted by Israel\u2019s IDC Herzliya college.<br \/>\u201cWhile ISIL-Daesh has occupied the world\u2019s attention for the last four-five year, Al-Qaeda has been quietly rebuilding its global networks and capabilities,\u201d he said, citing activity in Kashmir, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.<br \/>\u201cRather like ISIL-Daesh, Al-Qaeda\u2019s strategic aim is to regain leadership of like-minded militants and extremists. The competition for legitimacy, affiliates and recruits among the two major global extremist groups potentially increases the terrorism threat to NATO and our partners.\u201d<br \/>Al Qaeda carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, prompting US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. US forces killed Al-Qaeda\u2019s leader, Osama bin Laden, in a Pakistani hideout in 2011. Soon after, Daesh, which is guided by a similarly extremist form of Sunni Islam, arose.<br \/>Daesh\u2019s fiefdoms in Syria and Iraq have been largely dismantled in recent years by offensives launched by Damascus and Baghdad with the backing of various foreign coalitions.<br \/>Von Loringhoven said NATO estimated that Daesh\u2019s peak strength of around 39,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq had been halved to between 18,000 and 20,000, most of them dispersed around the two countries and \u201cgone underground.\u201d<br \/>\u201cA very worrisome trend is the group\u2019s concerted effort to use propaganda to radicalize women and minors, who have emerged as a new target for recruitment relatively recently,\u201d he said.<br \/>\u201cThis trend may have led to increased involvement of women and minors in the planning and execution of a number of attacks, including in NATO countries,\u201d he said.<br \/>Citing the arrest in June of a Tunisian man suspected of planning a ricin attack Germany, von Loringhoven said militants could increasingly try to turn to homemade chemical or biological arms or attacks using commercially available drones.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JERUSALEM: Al Qaeda is trying to regain its primacy over international militancy as Daesh loses ground, a senior NATO official said on Tuesday, seeing a potentially increased risk to the West from the groups\u2019 rivalry.But Arndt von Loringhoven, the alliance\u2019s assistant secretary general for intelligence and security, said Daesh retained some personnel strength despite its&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":13896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}