AQ / ISIL / A - EP 4

Following changes on the ground and a growing sense that the core purposes of the Al-Qaida and associates regime had become divergent (constraining AQ and persuading the Taliban to cease fire and join peace talks with the government), the regime was separated into two parts. UNSCR 1988 (17 June 2011) focused on measures to induce moderate elements of the Taliban to enter negotiations with the Afghan government, while UNSCR 1989 (also 17 June 2011) was set up as a continuation of the 1267 regime against AQ.

The 1267 regime was institutionally improved in this episode with the strengthening of the Ombudsperson mechanism in UNSCR 1989, which made the Ombudsperson’s decisions final, unless overturned by a consensus in the Committee or a unanimous vote in the Council. This move, which brought the regime’s procedures closer to an independent and binding review process, increased the legitimacy of the regime in the eyes of different member-states. However, the European Court of Justice, which ruled in favor of Mr. Kadi (who claimed that the freezing of his assets under the 1267 sanctions regime was unlawful) in July 2013, judged these changes insufficient and legal challenges to due process continued.

During this episode, Al-Qaida continued its long transition towards having a weaker institutional core and a greater focus on regional and local “franchised” activities. The combination of targeted financial sanctions, military intervention, and continuous drone attacks in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border largely disconnected Al-Qaida’s senior leadership from its ground operators and new recruits.

Al-Qaida’s regional affiliates, such as Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), increased their prominence with local and regional terrorist attacks and (often temporary) control of territories in countries like Somalia, Yemen, and Mali. During 2013, most of the additions to the 1267/1989 list came from the Sahel region and Syria. As the Monitoring Team argued in 2012, however, while these affiliates continue to proclaim an affiliation with Al-Qaida “they pursue local goals and are bound together more by a shared name and occasional expressions of mutual support than by any common strategy or operational cooperation,” which means that while the core Al-Qaida threat persisted it was less capable of mounting attacks on a global scale. The August 2013 Monitoring Team report concluded that “Al-Qaida’s core had seen no revival of its fortunes over the past six months” and that it had shown “little capability to unify or lead al-Qaida affiliates,” some of whom “have been pushed back by military operations in Mali and Somalia.”

Yet, during this episode, a number of other Al-Qaida-related local and regional threats emerged. A transformation in the landscape of global terrorism took place around the emergence of what is now known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The group was established as Tawhid al Jihad (JTJ) in the late 1990s that became prominent in the Iraq insurgency (led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) following the US invasion in 2003. Following a merger with various local insurgent groups (creating the Mujahideen Shura Council) and with the death of al-Zarqawi, in October 2006 the group declared an Islamic State in Iraq. Having benefited from the Syrian civil war, the group expanded into the country in 2013 through the Al-Nusrah Front (ANF) and added “Levant” to its name. Since then, several jihadist groups worldwide have pledged allegiance to ISIL, and in June 2014 the organization declared itself a worldwide caliphate under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and claimed religious, political and military authority over all Muslims. ISIL was listed by the 1267 Committee as Al-Qaida in Iraq (which was originally listed on 18 October 2004) and the Al-Nusrah front (which had split from ISIL) in May 2014. Both groups were composed of local and foreign fighters, many of whom have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq under the banner of Al-Qaida. However, Al-Qaida itself announced it had cut all ties with ISIL in February 2014.

By the end of this episode, this collective of jihadist organizations, especially ISIL, controlled significant portions of the Iraqi and Syrian territories. They were able to finance themselves through local means, including illicit proceeds from the occupation of territory (including smuggling, extortion and theft), ransom, fees for services, and donations. Throughout the process, the group gained control of much of the oil infrastructure in the two countries and led to a major humanitarian crisis that, by the end of this episode, created over 4 million refugees.

As they gained prominence, these groups became a focus of the work of the Security Council and, as a result, of the 1267/1989 committee. In UNSCR 2170 (15 August 2014), the Council explicitly named ISIL and ANF as a source of instability, terrorist acts causing the death of civilians, the destruction of property and of cultural and religious sites, and reiterated that, as groups associated with Al-Qaida as splinter or derivate groups, they fit within the scope of the 1267 mandate. This episode marked, therefore, a period of transition in the Committee from a focus on the core of Al-Qaida in Afghanistan to what has been termed by the Monitoring Team the “global Al-Qaida movement,” a broader and loser definition of targets that placed the organization’s splinter groups at the core of the regime.

Mandatory

Continuation of ongoing asset freeze, arms imports embargo, and travel ban sanctions measures on Al-Qaida and associates (the Taliban-related sanctions were separated into their own sanction regime).