Despite being behind what remains the largest attack in Europe, Al Qaeda is outside the imagination of jihadists
MADRID, 10 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The 11-M attacks in Madrid remain, 20 years later, the largest terrorist massacre perpetrated in Europe, but the organization that carried them out, Al Qaeda, is no longer the reference model for the jihadists in Spain who currently have a state Islamic to its only source of inspiration.
This is clear from the analysis carried out by the Elcano Royal Institute comparing the cases of those arrested for jihadism in Spain between 2012 and 2019 and those who have been arrested from 2020 to 2023 and consulted by Europa Press.
The emergence of the Islamic State as a split from Al Qaeda in 2014 and the rapid conquest of territories in both Iraq and Syria caused a change in the international jihadist scene, at a time when the region was already an important focus of attention due to the civil war in Syria and was attracting numerous foreign fighters.
When this conflict began in 2011, according to Carola García Calvo, an Elcano expert and one of the authors of the study, there were some individuals in Spain who mobilized in favor of the Al Nusra Front, then an affiliate of Al Qaeda in Syria, but “when “the Islamic State emerges, declares the caliphate and calls for mobilization in its favor, they transfer their loyalties to this organization due to the expectations of success it offered at that time.”
Then, that loyalty brought together nine out of ten of the jihadists in Spain, but as of 2020, the Islamic State became “the hegemonic group” and Al Qaeda disappeared completely.
In the previous period, between 2012 and 2019, the group founded by Usama bin Laden was the reference for 10.3% of the jihadists detained in Spain, while 24% had the Nusra Front (which in In 2016 it broke with Al Qaeda and in 2017 it was renamed Hayat Tahrir al Sham after merging with other groups) and 6.9% had their attention focused on Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
Now, as García-Calvo highlights, “Al Qaeda and all its affiliates have disappeared from the imagination of the jihadists in Spain”, although this does not mean that it could be again in the future if there is “a change of context or the organization itself carries out a strategic reorientation”.
He also draws attention to the fact that although the epicenter of global jihadism has shifted in recent years towards Africa, with the Sahel as the main focus and where the affiliates of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are particularly strong, “it is not appreciated that the jihadists of our country pay attention to the mobilization slogans dictated by these groups.”
Those who are involved in this type of activities maintain “flexible or fluid loyalties, that is, they are not static but dynamic and can change depending on the contexts or the mobilization and recruitment strategies of the organizations at any given time” , he warns.
In this sense, it draws attention to the fact that it is common for individuals involved in jihadism in Spain to access and disseminate propaganda from organizations that present diverse and even antagonistic ideological nuances without finding this incoherent.
Although the disappearance of the ‘caliphate’ and the military defeat of the Islamic State in 2019 has not made Al Qaeda regain the loyalty of the jihadists in Spain, “their loyalties do not seem to be conditioned by the existing competition” between both groups for the leadership of the global jihadist movement, what’s more, the detainees are not aware in detail of this fight for hegemony between the two organizations.
According to the Elcano expert, “the popularity of the Islamic State in Spain responds to a greater extent to the perception that the grassroots militant has as a more dynamic organization and better connected to their immediate reality than the orthodox Al Qaeda.” In her opinion, “the propaganda and the bold and professional use that the Islamic State has demonstrated in the dissemination of content and in the design of content adapted to a European and therefore also Spanish audience” has been fundamental.
However, the fact that the Islamic State is the source of inspiration for those detained for jihadism in Spain does not mean that they belong to the group, but rather that the majority are involved in cells, groups and networks (CGR) that operate inspired by this organization.
In the last decade, 69 CGRs have operated in Spain in which 182 jihadists were involved, 11.7% women. Starting in 2020, there has been a significant increase in individuals who are involved in cells inspired only by jihadist ideology but without any link to a reference organization.
Thus, 47.4% of jihadists involved until 2023 did so in inspired cells, 30 points more than in the previous period, while cells related to a terrorist group house 36.8% of those detained for jihadism, compared to 79.9% of those registered in the period around the war in Syria.
The only cell integrated into the central command of the Islamic State since 2020 corresponds to the one made up of three Britons without roots in Spain who were arrested when they were trying to return after having fought in Syria.
