Al-Qaeda’s Learning Curve: the Fall of
the Roman Empire
Former FBI agent Ali Soufan says its goal is to
unite ‘the savage regions’ like the barbarians who took down Rome
Former FBI special
agent and counter-terror expert Ali Soufan says the
Taliban’s shocking conquest of Kabul is giving heart to Muslim militants the
world over that they can bring down the remaining U.S.-backed autocratic
regimes in the region and eventually take back Jerusalem.
The Taliban’s
terrorist partner Al Qaeda likens the triumph in Afghanistan to the
victory of the barbarian tribes that ate away at far flung Roman provinces
until they were able to advance on the capital, which fell like a rotten plum
in 410 AD. (The Eastern
Roman Empire lasted another thousand years.)
Sack
of Rome by the Visigoths
From Yemen to
Lebanon to the Palestinian territories of Israel, to Tehran and across North
Africa, both Sunni and Iran-backed Shiite Muslim militants are congratulating
the Taliban and celebrating its victory “over what they call the American
occupation” of Afghanistan, Soufan said during a SpyTalk podcast interview that
aired Tuesday evening.
“The
lesson to everyone is that anyone who depends on the Americans should [know]
that America is going to leave…” said Soufan, author of two landmark books on
the subject, Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of
bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State and The Black Banners: The Inside Story of
9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda.
“That's a narrative
that has been going on for awhile from Iran and Iraq, [with] groups like
Hashd al-Sha’bi [the Popular Mobilization Units] and Hezbollah in
Lebanon, talking about what they call the axis of ‘access of resistance.’
But now we're also hearing it from the Taliban and a lot of the other Sunni
extremist organizations,” Soufan said.
“There
are three parts to Al Qaeda’s grand plan,” he explained. “It’s called the
management of savagery, the management of what Rome called the savage regions,
which basically got together and ultimately destroyed the Roman Empire.”
Weakening the international order was “ushered in by 9/11,” the Sept. 11, 2001
airborne-terror attacks on the Word Trade Center and Pentagon. Phase two is
moving into power vacuums in places like Libya and Egypt, he said, after the
fall of Muammar Al-Gadaffi and Hosni Mubarak, respectively, where Al Qaeda
seeks to “create alliances with tribes and different opposition groups in these
areas until they depend on [them] a lot.”
“And
after they depend on you a lot, you establish a state, then eventually you
connect all these states together to establish the caliphate,” he added. “ISIS
went from phase one to phase three. It immediately wanted to establish the
caliphate. Al-Qaeda continued to operate in phase two. Now you have to look at
the victory of the Taliban as part of phase two, right? So now the capital of
this caliphate is Afghanistan. And they believe they will be victorious when
[they take] Jerusalem
The
militants have good reason to be optimistic, and not just because of the swift
capitulation of the U.S.-backed regime in Kabul, he added.
Before 9/11, the
U.S. had embassies in Libya, Yemen, Syria. All gone now. What remains of the
American embassy in Kabul is operating out of temporary quarters at Hamid
Karzai International Airport, surrounded by the Taliban.
The Taliban victory
is “way bigger than Kabul,” said Soufan, who was born in Beirut, came to
America for his education and joined the FBI in 1997. “This is way bigger than,
frankly, Saigon. This is a great geopolitical shift in the world.
Hear the entire
25-minute interview here, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Taliban flag emblazoned with the Shahada
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