Redstate

By Charles Bird Posted in War — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

One of The Onion's funnier pieces was written fifteen days after September 11th, titled US Vows to Defeat Whoever We're at War With:

"America's enemy, be it Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, a multinational coalition of terrorist organizations, any of a rogue's gallery of violent Islamic fringe groups, or an entirely different, non-Islamic aggressor we've never even heard of... be warned," Bush said during an 11-minute speech from the Oval Office. "The United States is preparing to strike, directly and decisively, against you, whoever you are, just as soon as we have a rough idea of your identity and a reasonably decent estimate as to where your base is located."

Added Bush: "That is, assuming you have a base.

We've come a long way since those early weeks, and we have a ways to go.  A piece in the US Army War College magazine Parameters, titled The Origins of al Qaeda's Ideology:  Implications for US Strategy, adds some clarity to al Qaeda and the dogma that fuels their movement (hat tip to colleague jadedmara):

In contemporary Western discussions of the Muslim world, it is common to hear calls for a "reformation in Islam" as an antidote to al Qaeda. These calls often betray a misunderstanding of both Sunni Islam and of the early modern debate between Catholics and Protestants. In fact, a Sunni “reformation” has been under way for more than a century, and it works against Western security interests. The Catholic-Protestant struggle in Europe weakened traditional religious authorities’ control over the definition of doctrine, emphasized scripture over tradition, idealized an allegedly uncorrupted primitive religious community, and simplified theology and rites. The Salafist movement in the Sunni Muslim world has been pursuing these same reforms for a century.

More important, the contemporary pundits' calls for "a reformation in Islam" carry with them an implication that the traditional Sunni clerical elite is the ideological basis for al Qaeda, and that weakening the traditional clerical establishment’s hold on the minds of pious Sunnis would promote stability. In fact, the opposite is clearly the case in most of the Sunni world. The mutual condemnations that the establishment and Salafist camps have exchanged over the past century, not to mention the blood shed by both sides, make this clear.

Even in Saudi Arabia, which is exceptional because the religious establishment there is itself Salafist, there is a split between a pro-establishment Salafist camp and the revolutionary Salafists. The Saudi regime and its establishment Salafist allies have asserted themselves against revolutionary Salafist tendencies repeatedly since the 1920s, and are belatedly doing so again now.

The revolutionary Salafists are outsiders. Their movement, from its origins a century ago until today, has been at odds with the Sunni establishment. By tracing the movement’s ideological development over the past century, it becomes clear why al Qaeda’s leaders have chosen their present strategy: the experience of their movement drives them to view their opponents within Sunni Islam—“the near enemy”—as a more important target than non-Muslims—“the far enemy.”

There are Sunnis (the traditionalists), and then are Sunnis (the neo-Salafis).  Author Christopher Henzel traces the history of the "revolutionary Salafists" from medieval Sunni scholar Taqi ad-Din Ahmed ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and beyond:

The guerilla war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 was the incubator for the contemporary stage in the development of revolutionary Salafist doctrine and strategy. Many Arab volunteers in Afghanistan coalesced around revolutionary Salafists who remained outsiders to the Sunni clerical establishment, even as some of the Arab regimes, and the United States, funded them. Many Arabs in Afghanistan came under the influence of the Egyptian physician Ayman al-Zawahiri, a prolific writer whom many found persuasive, but who, like all the revolutionary Salafists, was condemned by the Al-Azhar clerical establishment.

Henzel believes that al-Zawahiri's writings provide the best insights into the al Qaeda movement and its strategy:

In his 2001 book Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, Zawahiri identifies and prioritizes the goals of what he calls the “the revolutionary fundamentalist movement”: first, achievement of ideological coherence and organization, then struggle against the existing regimes of the Muslim world, followed by the establishment of a “genuinely” Muslim state “at the heart of Arab world.” Zawahiri views the current stage of the jihad as one of worldwide, revolutionary struggle, to be waged by means of violence, political action, and propaganda against the secular Muslim regimes and secularized Muslim elites. Zawahiri argues that because the terrain in the key Arab countries is not suitable for guerilla war, Islamists need to conduct political action among the masses, combined with an urban terrorist campaign against the secular regimes, supplemented with attacks on “the external enemy”—i.e., the United States and Israel—as a means of propaganda that will strengthen the jihad’s popular support.

Zawahiri wants his Salafist readers to keep in mind that the Arab establishments are the real targets, even if “confining the battle to the domestic enemy . . . will not be feasible in this stage of the battle.” Highly visible attacks against external enemies, and the inevitable retaliation, Zawahiri explains, will rally ordinary Muslims to the radicals’ cause, strengthening the main struggle, the one against the current regimes of the Muslim world. As Zawahiri writes in Knights:

The jihad movement must . . . make room for the Muslim nation to participate with it in the jihad for the sake of empowerment. The Muslim nation will not participate with [the jihad movement] unless the slogans of the mujahidin are understood by the masses. . . . The one slogan that has been well understood by the nation and to which it has been responding for the past 50 years is the call for jihad against Israel. In addition to this slogan, the [Muslim] nation in [the 1990s] is geared against the US presence. [The Muslim nation] has responded favorably to the call for the jihad against the Americans. . . . [T]he jihad movement moved to the center of the leadership of the [Muslim] nation when it adopted the slogan of liberating the nation from its external enemies. . . . [Striking at the United States would force the Americans to] personally wage the battle against the Muslims, which means that the battle will turn into a clear-cut jihad against infidels.

This passage shows that the revolutionary Salafists do not expect to actually defeat America or its allies (whatever al Qaeda propaganda may claim). Instead, spectacular terrorist attacks are a means toward the end of changing the character of the conflict, changing it from a campaign waged by a small faction of extremists against the regimes of Muslim world, into “a clear-cut jihad against infidels,” which would, the Salafists hope, attract wide support among the Muslim masses.

Zawahiri views the current phase of the jihad as a revolutionary war, and the ideological component of the struggle is thus very important. Like Mao and the North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap, Zawahiri considers political and propaganda action to be just as important at some stages as military efforts are. “The jihad must dedicate one of its wings to work with the masses, preach, provide services. . . . [T]he people will not love us unless they feel that we love them, care about them, and are ready to defend them.” This last point—convincing the people that the revolutionary Salafists are “ready to defend them”—again illustrates how Zawahiri sees high-profile terrorist strikes against the external enemy as a means of making propaganda for the Muslim masses. He calls on his followers, at this stage of the struggle, to “launch a battle for orienting the [Muslim] nation” by striking at the United States and Israel. Thus, al Qaeda’s immediate goal is not to destroy Israel or even drive the United States out of the Middle East; rather, it is to “orient the nation.”

Obviously, the movement has failed to take root in the Muslim world.  The point Henzel makes is that the neo-Salafis, or "Salafist revolutionaries", are the true outsiders in the Sunni world.  In light of this, what is a United States to do?

The American invasion of Afghanistan failed to bring about this mobilization. However, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, combined with US support of Israel’s policies in the occupied territories, may at last be triggering the radicalization of the masses and middle classes of the Arab world that al Qaeda has hoped for.

Sunni Islam’s most active reformers over the past century have been its outsiders, the Salafists. It is the insiders of Sunni Islam who are America’s natural allies. Western advocates of “reformation” understandably want to see the existing secular, Westernized classes in Muslim countries gain the upper hand. But these politically weak classes are small elites viewed with suspicion by both the masses and the regimes. Any American effort to strengthen these elites must be a project for several decades, to be carried out quietly and with the greatest caution. The United States would gain little if more among the Muslim masses came to regard Muslim liberals as agents of the global hegemon, bent on depriving Islam of its capacity to resist a Western culture that most view as morally depraved.

The United States should instead exploit its ties to the existing regimes of the Sunni world in order to combat jointly the revolutionary Salafists. The US struggle against al Qaeda and similar groups will be chiefly a matter of intelligence and police work, with perhaps a role for special forces working with local partners in ungoverned areas. Only the existing Muslim regimes, in coordination with American investigators and spies, can defeat the cells of al Qaeda and similar groups moving among the Sunni world’s masses. The United States needs to support and to engage with these undemocratic regimes even more closely if US security services are to be granted the liaison relationships with local authorities that are essential to the real war against terrorism. Washington should set aside, for now, its ambitions for democratic revolution in the region, at least until the Salafist revolution is contained.

Similarly, the United States must avoid positioning itself as the foe of the traditional Sunni clerical establishments, or provoking some of them into sympathy with their erstwhile foes, the revolutionary Salafists. If mainstream Sunnis come to view the United States as bent on a campaign to weaken or remake traditional Muslim culture, then more and more mainstream Sunni believers will conclude that the revolutionary Salafists they once reviled were right all along. At that point the world really would see the clash of civilizations sought by both al Qaeda and some US pundits.

Is there a contradiction between "the United States needs to support and to engage with these undemocratic regimes even more closely" and what I wrote yesterday?  Yes and no.  The fundamental point is that we must stay engaged with governments we don't care much about (read Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, etc.).  Does it mean that we must accept their behavior and put the push for freedom in the back of the line?  No.  We can and must do both, but it will take more Condoleeza Rice and less Donald Rumsfeld for us to succeed at it.

Changing subjects a bit (but still sticking to the "who our adversaries really are" theme), Peter Bergen and Swati Pandey wrote a helpful piece in the New York Times called the Madrassa Myth.  Some key excerpts:

Of the 75 terrorists we investigated, only nine had attended madrassas, and all of those played a role in one attack - the Bali bombing. Even in this instance, however, five college-educated "masterminds" - including two university lecturers - helped to shape the Bali plot.

Like the view that poverty drives terrorism - a notion that countless studies have debunked - the idea that madrassas are incubating the next generation of terrorists offers the soothing illusion that desperate, ignorant automatons are attacking us rather than college graduates, as is often the case. In fact, two of the terrorists in our study had doctorates from Western universities, and two others were working toward their Ph.D.

A World Bank-financed study that was published in April raises further doubts about the influence of madrassas in Pakistan, the country where the schools were thought to be the most influential and the most virulently anti-American. Contrary to the numbers cited in the report of the 9/11 commission, and to a blizzard of newspaper reports that 10 percent of Pakistani students study in madrassas, the study's authors found that fewer than 1 percent do so. If correct, this estimate would suggest that there are far more American children being home-schooled than Pakistani boys attending madrassas.

The authors contend that madrassas are "not a threat to the United States", and they have a point.  My only question is how many of that 1% in Pakistani madrassas graduate to groups such as al Qaeda, Hizb ut-Tahrir and so forth.  Nevertheless, it seems to me that the larger threat are those secular Muslims who "get religion" at Saudi-funded mosques and schools in the United States and Europe, as noted here and here.

(also at Obsidian Wings)