The Conflicts of Evil Intent

"[Al-Qaeda was conceived as "a vehicle to promote a global jihadi revolution. And I think it's still going on. It's changed, of course, but I think Al-Qaeda was always as much an idea as an organization. And what we see is that the idea, unfortunately, still has considerable resiliency."
"I would say that it's proven to be a tremendous success. It's outlived its founder and leader, and that in and of itself is proof of its viability and vitality. At the end of 2013, it's a thriving enterprise..
"We may wish to declare it over, but they see it as an ongoing struggle that just evolves and mutates into different forms."
Professor Bruce Hoffman, director, Centre for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown University

"The purpose of targeting America is to exhaust her and bleed her to death, so that it meets the fate of the former Soviet Union and collapses under its own weight as a result of its military, human and financial losses. Consequently, its grip on our lands will weaken and its allies will begin to fall, one after another."
Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda chief

Osama bin Laden, of the wealthy Saudi Arabian, Yemen-derived, wealthy construction family responded to the call to jihad, travelling to Pakistan to be trained and armed by the CIA in league with the Pakistani military, as mujahideen to fight against the Soviets in their invasion of Afghanistan. After making common cause with the Afghan Taliban, planning a successful atrocity against the United States, and driven from Afghanistan back into Pakistan, he finally met his fate at his Abbottabad compound.

But the fanatical Islamist terror group he inspired, headed and directed had long since broken off into various groups, loyal to the Al-Qaeda purpose and itinerary, a terrorism-inspired campaign to spread fear in the West and bring recruits into the jihadists' sphere of influence to do duty to Islam's spirit of conquest. When Al-Qaeda launched itself in 1988 it was comprised of fifteen faithful.

That base grew to represent jihadi militias around the world; in the Middle East, east Asia and North Africa. It has inspired militantly vicious jihadists in Europe and North America.

It sends its virulently violent tentacles everywhere that young Muslim men, furious over the self-serving and -inspired legend of the West scorning Islam and in conflict with its messages and dedicating itself to a global war to destroy Islam. Al-Qaeda used its power to motivate the faithful to the defence of the Prophet Mohammad and his message, straight from the mouth of God,  to inspire them to become recruits in this Islamophobic war degrading to their faith.

Self-identified and -appointed soldiers of Allah have taken up useful conflicts of a local nature as opportune grounds for them to spread the word of jihad in sacrifice to the political ideology of Islamism. Their goal is to achieve power through inspiring fear, and committing mass violence, and to identify themselves as followers of the Al-Qaeda principles of martyrdom and conquest.

"In the words of a high-ranking British intelligence official, 'Al-Qaeda has split like a piece of mercury into different groups in different countries'", wrote Professor Martin Rudner at Carleton University in a paper published in the journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.

Now, in Syria, Al-Qaeda-inspired and -allied Sunni Islam terror groups have found themselves re-purposed, to confront and to counter atrocity by atrocity against Shia Islam Hezbollah and the Shia Alawite Baathist government of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, for the conquest of Syria, for the opportunity to transform the country into a bastion of Islamist, Shia-administered control.

Syria could then serve as a base through which the triumphant Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant could continue to launch their devastating atrocities to command fear and surrender further afield.

It seems a match made in Islamist damnation; the ferocious war-hardened Al-Qaeda militias confronting the vicious conflict-dedicated Hezbollah and the hidden-but-present Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps stationed in Syria to aid and abet the tyrannical mass slaughterer Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to retake the country and continue to fashion it into a mirror-image of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Which of the two will conquer the other is the subject of much conjecture, one that time will reveal in the wake of the butchery that accompanies it and that will be prolonged long after the conclusion of the confrontation will have resulted. In either event, regardless of which way victory plans to weigh in, the barbarity that brought both competing Islamist armies of jihad to the world's horrified attention, will not go gently into any dark night.

Afghanistan and Pakistan represent two additional theatres, aside from Somalia, Algeria, Tunisia, Iraq and Iran where Islam has produced a generalized psychopathy calling upon the most dreadful of horrifying human attributes to appear, front and centre. Ample operating ground for Al-Qaeda to continue its liberating terrorism there, alongside a resurgent Taliban.