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Regional groups resisting strategic control from Al Qaeda leadership


"BARRETT: Well, there's no doubt that the leadership would like it to be a properly networked organization, accepting strategic direction from themselves. But, in fact, the local groups have rather broken away from the sort of overall Al Qaeda strategy, which you remember Osama bin Laden tried to establish in the 1990s when he formed Al Qaeda...

...groups in Yemen here are very much strengthened recently because Saudi Arabia has been so successful in driving Al Qaida's supporters out of the country, and they've crossed over into Yemen. Many of them have joined up. And we saw in January of last year how the Al Qaida in Yemen joined in a sort of announcing video with the Al Qaida in Saudi Arabia to make this rather more effective organization.

But their interests are still, in my opinion, rather regional. Their main objectives are to hit targets in Saudi Arabia, to hit targets in Yemen, particularly, I would say, in Saudi Arabia. But the leadership in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area is trying to persuade them to do more, to attack Western targets, and so on, and hence you see this attempt on the 25th of December."

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