Making al-Qa’ida legible: Counter-terrorism and the reproduction of terrorism
| Author | Sarah G. Phillips |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066119837335 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066119837335
European Journal of
International Relations
2019, Vol. 25(4) 1132 –1156
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066119837335
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Making al-Qa’ida legible:
Counter-terrorism and the
reproduction of terrorism
Sarah G. Phillips
University of Sydney, Australia
Abstract
Why did America’s counter-terrorism strategy in Yemen fail to contain al-Qa’ida
in the Arabian Peninsula in the years prior to the Yemeni government’s collapse in
2015? Moreover, why did the US administration think that its strategy was successful?
This article draws from field research in Yemen and a diverse array of other Yemeni
sources to argue that the answer lies in the fact that there are two broad, but ultimately
irreconcilable, ontologies of what al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula ‘really is’: one
legible, organisationally rational and thus governable; and one not entirely so. I argue
that by targeting tangible elements of al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (such as its
leaders, sources of revenue and bases) in partnership with the Yemeni state security
apparatus, the strategy strengthened the group’s less coherent aspects. As a result,
Western counter-terrorism practices target a stripped-down, synoptic version of the
group while missing, even empowering, the shadowy appendage of state or hegemonic
power that animates popular Yemeni discourses. This article is concerned with what
al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula looks like when we prioritise Yemeni observations
about how it emerged and is reproduced. I argue that seeing al-Qa’ida as at least partly
illegible removes counter-terrorism’s obvious targets, making it more suited to quelling
anxieties than actually preventing terrorism.
Keywords
Counter-terrorism, critical terrorism studies, discourse, ontology, post-colonialism,
War on Terror
Corresponding author:
Sarah G. Phillips, Department of Government and International Relations, Social Sciences Building (A02),
University of Sydney, Australia.
Email: sarah.phillips@sydney.edu.au
837335EJT0010.1177/1354066119837335European Journal of International RelationsPhillips
research-article2019
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Introduction
In 2010, the US recognised Yemen’s al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as
al-Qa’ida’s most lethal franchise. Five years later, the Obama administration declared
that America’s counter-terrorism strategy in Yemen — an approach characterised as
airstrikes against AQAP’s leadership combined with support for the state’s security
apparatus — had been so effective that it provided a model for combating hostile
extremist groups elsewhere (Bruce and Karl, 2015). Indeed, many of AQAP’s top lead-
ers were killed in the 104 airstrikes1 that the US conducted between December 2009
and March 2015.2 Yemen was also the largest recipient of American funding for the
counter-terrorism operations of foreign militaries between 2006 and 2014
(Congressional Research Service, 2015: 27).
Yet, despite the administration’s declaration, AQAP grew substantially throughout
this period. It directed three, possibly four, attempts to take down airliners, as well as the
publication of manuals allegedly used by the Boston Marathon bombers (in 2013) and,
purportedly, the Charlie Hebdo assailants in Paris (in 2015). Within Yemen, AQAP
claimed responsibility for a far more devastating array of attacks and exercised a
(debated) degree of territorial control in Abyan (2011–2012) and Mukalla (2015–2016).
The State Department estimated that AQAP’s membership increased from ‘several hun-
dred’ in 2010 to ‘a few thousand’ the following year, and was around 4000 in 2015 when
the Yemeni government collapsed and the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC’s) military
intervention began (ICG, 2017: 4, 9).
This article asks two questions about the growth of AQAP in the years prior to the
Yemeni government’s collapse. First, why did America’s counter-terrorism strategy fail
to contain AQAP despite killing so many of its most effective leaders and providing
unprecedented support for the state’s counter-terrorism apparatus? Second, and more
importantly, why did the administration think that its strategy was successful? I show
that these questions are indivisible: the strategy was reasonably successful against the
version of AQAP that the administration thought it was fighting. However, that was a
pared-down, synoptic version of AQAP with limited resemblance to the less legible
entity that animates Yemeni understandings of the group. I argue that the answer to both
questions lies in the fact that there are two broad, but ultimately irreconcilable, ontolo-
gies of what AQAP ‘really is’, and that the US counter-terrorism strategy (or any strat-
egy based on the pre-emption and deterrence of possible future events) can only access
one of them. More contentiously, I argue that in accessing a legible version by targeting
AQAP’s tangible elements, the strategy strengthened the group’s less coherent aspects.
Drawing from a combination of fieldwork and other Yemeni sources about the ‘real’
nature of AQAP, this article provides a detailed case study of terrorism and counter-
terrorism reproducing one another.
A brief summary of these two ontologies is necessary at the outset. I will argue that to
counter-terrorism practitioners, and the scholars whose work these practitioners draw
from, the al-Qa’ida franchise is, first and foremost, a legible and organisationally rational
entity.3 It is knowable, and thus broadly pre-emptible, through systematic inquiry into its
interacting parts: its structures, agents, ideologies and sources of revenue. Once identi-
fied, these parts can be methodically targeted to the detriment of its overall capability.
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