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Global Insurgency Strategy and the
Salafi Jihad Movement
Richard H. Shultz
INSS Occasional Paper 66
April 2008
USAF Institute for National Security Studies USAF Academy, Colorado
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The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Air Force, the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the US Government. The paper is approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. Richard H. Shultz, Jr. holds copyright to this paper; it is published with his permission.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Richard H. Shultz, Jr, PhD, is Director of the International Security Studies Program and Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
Comments pertaining to this paper are invited; please forward to:
Director, USAF Institute for National Security Studies HQ USAFA/DFES 2354 Fairchild Drive, Suite 5L27 USAF Academy, CO 80840 phone: 7193332717 fax: 7193332716 email: [email protected]
Visit the Institute for National Security Studies home page at
http://www.usafa.af.mil/df/inss
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword vii
A New Type of War? 1
Insurgency: Concepts and Frameworks 3 Defining Insurgency 5 Types of Insurgency 7 Distinctions Between Insurgency and Terrorism 13 Insurgency and HighRisk Social Movements 15
The Role of Ideology 17 Ideology and Organization 19
Revolutionary Insurgency and Its Transnational Evolution 20 Background 23 Core Elements of Strategy 26 The Incipient Stage and the Revolutionary Insurgent Trinity 27 Phase I—Mobilization 28 Phase II—Integration 29 Phase III—Maintenance 29 The Case of the Viet Cong 29
The Protracted War Stage 34 The Role of External Assistance and Influence 35 The Transnational Evolution of NationalLevel Insurgency 38
Requirements for a Global Salafi Insurgency 42
A Global Salafi Jihad Insurgency: Myth or Reality? 47 Emergence of Salafi Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood 54
The Origins of Salafi Jihad Ideology 59 The SovietAfghan War 64 After Afghanistan: Deciding on the Next Area of Operations 69
Afghanistan Again: The Foundations for Global Insurgency 75
Global Insurgency in the Aftermath of 9/11? 87 Virtual Sanctuary 89
1) Propagating the Salafi Ideology of Jihad 91 2) Inspiring and Mobilizing the Ummah to
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Join the Jihad 93 3) Psychological Warfare to Demoralize Enemies 96 4) Networking the Global Salafi Jihad Insurgency 99 5) Operational Information Sharing—Manuals and Handbooks 101
6) Operational Information Sharing—Training Videos and Courses 104
7) Collection Targeting 106 Sanctuaries in Ungoverned Territory 107 The Iraqi Central Front 111 Fostering the Global Salafi Jihad Movement 113
Notes 120
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FOREWORD
We are pleased to publish this sixtysixth volume in the Occasional Paper series of the United States Air Force Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). While this research was not sponsored by INSS, it is both compatible with our efforts and objectives, and it is published here to support the education of national security professionals across the government.
Dick Shultz led the preparation of an earlier INSS Occasional Paper, Armed Groups: A TierOne Security Priority (with Douglas Farah and Itamara Lochard), where he defined, characterized, and differentiated insurgents, terrorists, militias, and organized criminal groups. In this current paper, he focuses on terrorists and insurgents, differentiates and characterizes these two categories in more explicit detail, and conducts a detailed conceptual and historical analysis of insurgency and its current manifestation on a global scale by the Salafi Jihad movement. This is important work, laying out the case that as terrorism and insurgency differ, recognizing that the current “long war” is actually being fought by the other side as an insurgency must lead us to amend and adapt our strategy to one of global counterinsurgency, beyond a global war on terrorism alone.
Dick Shultz is using these papers as texts in his program to “educate the educators” of military officers, intelligence analysts, and other members of the government national security bureaucracy. We at INSS support that effort, and we are pleased to present this Occasional Paper to further that cause.
About the Institute
INSS is primarily sponsored by the Strategic Plans and Policy Division, Headquarters US Air Force (HQ USAF/A5XP), and the Dean of the Faculty, USAF Academy. Other sponsors and partners include the Secretary of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment (OSD/NA); the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Advanced Systems and Concepts Office (DTRA/ASCO); the Air Force Information Warfare Center (AFIWC); The Army Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO); the Army Environmental Policy Institute (AEPI); the United States Northern Command/North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORTHCOM/NORAD); and the United States Military Academy Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). The mission of the Institute is “to promote national security research for the Department of Defense within the military academic community, to foster the development of strategic perspective within the United States Armed Forces, and to support national security discourse through outreach and education.” Its research focuses on the areas of greatest interest to our sponsors:
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strategic security and controlling and combating weapons of mass destruction; homeland defense, combating terrorism, and asymmetrical warfare; regional and emerging national security issues; and air, space, and cyber issues and planning.
INSS coordinates and focuses outside thinking in various disciplines and across the military services to develop new ideas for defense policy making. To that end, the Institute develops topics, selects researchers from within the military academic community, and administers sponsored research. It reaches out to and partners with education and research organizations across and beyond the military academic community to bring broad focus to issues of national security interest. And it hosts workshops and facilitates the dissemination of information to a wide range of private and government organizations. In these ways, INSS facilitates valuable, costeffective research to meet the needs of our sponsors. We appreciate your continued interest in INSS and our research products.
JAMES M. SMITH Director
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GLOBAL INSURGENCY STRATEGY AND THE SALAFI JIHAD MOVEMENT
Richard H. Shultz
A NEW TYPE OF WAR?
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attack on strategic
targets inside the United States by al Qaeda, scholars, analysts, and
policy specialists began to interpret and frame those events within the
larger context of war. But was it war? And if it was, what kind of war
was it? Al Qaeda was not a state but a nonstate actor. Many labeled al
Qaeda a transnational terrorist organization. Could such a nonstate
armed group go to war with a major state actor? What kind of war
could it carry out? There were no easily decipherable answers to these
questions, for al Qaeda did not reflect or emulate the conduct of war as
it was known and practiced in the past.
Within a short period of time the US government began to describe
the post9/11 conflict environment—one in which America found itself
engaged in a fight against unconventional and asymmetrical enemies
who could pose major, even strategic, security threats—as a global war
on terrorism. This generated a great deal of discussion and differences
of opinion. Was this an accurate portrayal of the post9/11 security
environment or did such a characterization lack strategic clarity?
By the summer of 2005 senior Bush administration officials
expressed serious doubts about this terminology and recast how they
described the fight against al Qaeda, its affiliates, and other terrorist
groups. Illustrative of this was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. At
news conferences and in public addresses he began to speak of a global
struggle against violent extremism—“the long war”—rather than a
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global war on terrorism. Other senior military leaders, to include the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, followed suit.
But this begged the question, how should we understand those
conducting “the long war?” Who are they and what kind of battle are
they fighting? What are their objectives and what kind of strategy and
tactics do they employ in this fight to achieve them? One possible
answer that has been suggested is that the United States and its allies
are now confronted by a global Salafi Jihad insurgency.
Those taking this position argue that a more precise description of
the post9/11 conflict against the Salafi Jihad movement, which will be
discussed in detail later, would be to frame it as a global insurgency;
one that challenges the Westerndominated state system. Within this
context, al Qaeda and loosely associated groups and movements are
said to comprise an evolving form of networked nonstate actors who
operate locally, regionally, and globally. If this is the case—that a
global insurgency is under way—then the implications for how to
counter it are significant and will require important changes in US
policy and strategy.
But how do we know that a global Salafi Jihad insurgency is
underway? To determine whether this is the case, this study poses the
following core research questions:
• Is a diverse confederation of armed groups, linked together by a common ideology (or narrative) and strengthened by new power enhancers, conducting a global insurgency against the United States and its allies?
• Is this global insurgency being carried out by a radical Salafi Jihad movement (and its al Qaeda vanguard) and does it have as its goals a) to foster regime change locally in apostate Muslim states and b) international system transformation globally?
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• Is the strategy adopted by the Salafi Jihad movement a hybrid or an adaptation of the insurgency strategy that revolutionary movements employed against states during the latter half of the 20 th century? If so, what does it have in common with them and how does it differ?
To answer these core research questions, a series of corollary issues
will first be examined as a prelude to conceptualizing a set of
requirements or model of a hypothetical global insurgency.
These requirements will then be tested against existing open source
information on the actions, activities, and operations of the Salafi Jihad
movement and its al Qaeda vanguard. The objective will be to
determine whether preliminary evidence supports the proposition that
those actions, activities, and operations, when seen through the lens of
the proposed requirements, can be described, at minimum, as a global
insurgency in its incipient stage of development. While these findings
can only serve as preliminary indicators, the study will provide the
basis for further analysis.
INSURGENCY: CONCEPTS AND FRAMEWORKS
The starting point for conceptualizing a hypothetical model or set
of requirements for a global insurgency is a review of the following
concepts and frameworks: 1) definitions and classifications of
insurgency; 2) distinctions between insurgency and terrorism; and 3)
relationship between insurgency and social movements. Below are the
summary points from this review, followed by the text from which they
are deduced.
Summary Points
• Four types of nonstate armed groups—insurgents, terrorists, militias, criminal organizations—today pose major threats (to include strategic ones) to nationstates including the United States.
• Important differences exist among these armed groups, particularly between insurgent movements and terrorist organizations.
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An appreciation of those differences is essential to combat each of these types of armed groups.
• Strategies employed by insurgent groups, both organizationally and operationally, are more multifaceted and diverse than those of its armed group counterparts.
• Insurgencies are protracted forms of unconventional warfare that seek to accomplish their goals and objectives through the employment of irregular military forces and illegal political organizations.
• The instruments of violence and influence employed by insurgents range from guerrilla operations, terrorism, and sabotage to political mobilization, political action, psychological operations and intelligence activities.
• Insurgencies are struggles for power and legitimacy. Insurgents seek to destroy the power and legitimacy of the government they are challenging, while enhancing the power and legitimacy of their movement.
• There is no one type of insurgency. A useful way to categorize them is based on their aspirations or objectives. Of the seven insurgent variations identified, the goals of revolutionary and millenarian insurgent movements are the most farreaching. Each envisions a major transformation of the political and social system. The former seeks to advance to an idealized future, the latter to return to a golden past.
• An important lens through which to understand the nature of revolutionary and millenarian insurgencies is social movement theory. Indeed, these two forms of insurgency have several characters in common with high risk social movements.
• Social movements represent groups on the margins of state and society that seek to reform or transform the political system. To do so they develop complex political strategies, given their political marginality.
• The more farreaching the change sought by a social movement, the more multifaceted the tasks the movement’s organization has to accomplish. The same is true of revolutionary and millenarian insurgencies.
• To accomplish farreaching change, radical social movements engage in highrisk activism. Like revolutionary and millenarian insurgencies, this necessitates development of a mass base of dedicated supporters who must be motivated to take action.
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• For highrisk social movements, ideology performs a number of vital functions. To build a mass base, ideology plays a central role in the recruitment process that attracts new members; shapes the loyalty of these new members to retain them; and serves as a tool for waging the struggle.
• Highrisk social movement ideology constitutes a series of frames that must come to resonate with the target audience. It is through the movement’s organization that it comes to do so. Ideology and organization are symbiotically connected to one another.
Defining Insurgency
Insurgency is a strategy of unconventional and asymmetric warfare
executed by one of four different types of nonstate armed groups that
today pose complicated analytic and significant operational challenges
to those states that are confronted by them. Over the last two decades
each of these armed groups, who carry out their activities both within
and across state boundaries, have increasingly threatened state
supremacy. In doing so, they present nontraditional challenges to the
intelligence and security services of governments that are unlike the
conventional ones posed by states.
Armed groups can be divided into a fourpart typology—
insurgents, terrorists, militias, and organized crime. 1 While it is the case
that these nonstate actors have several characteristics in common, 2
they also have important differences that distinguish one from the
other. It is important for governments to understand why and how
insurgents, terrorists, militias, and criminal organizations vary
conceptually from one another and to categorize and respond to them as
such. Failure to do so can result in serious policy and combat
misfortune.
Insurgency, from an organizational and operational perspective, is
the most intricate of the four types of activities carried out by armed
groups. As will be discussed, this can be seen when insurgent
movements are juxtaposed with terrorist organizations. It is likewise
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the case when they are put side by side with militias and criminal
groups. Insurgents can attack the state with an array of political and
paramilitary instruments because of how they organize and operate.
Numerous authors have proposed definitions of insurgency as can
be observed in the literature on political violence. Bard O’Neill, author
of Insurgency and Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare, is
one of the most frequently cited. He describes insurgents as armed
groups that “consciously use political resources and violence to
destroy, reformulate, or sustain the basis of legitimacy of one or more
aspects of politics [within a state].” 3 Variations of O’Neill’s definition
abound. 4
Consider the statement put forward in the CIA’s mid1980s Guide
to the Analysis of Insurgency—“Insurgency is a protracted political
military activity directed toward completely or partially controlling the
resources of a country through the use of irregular military forces and
illegal political organizations.” 5 In doing so, insurgents seek to weaken
and/or destroy the power and legitimacy of a ruling government. They
also simultaneously aim at increasing their own power and legitimacy.
To this end, an insurgent movement, depending on its goals and
strategy, will draw on and employ a range of operational instruments
including guerrilla warfare, terrorism, and sabotage, as well as political
mobilization, political action, intelligence/counterintelligence activities,
and propaganda/psychological warfare.
Insurgents can adopt different organizational forms ranging from
those based on political and paramilitary dimensions to more narrowly
structured conspiratorial ones. The classic or revolutionary insurgent
model from the Cold War era was designed to recruit, indoctrinate, and
mobilize supporters to establish an alternative political authority to the
existing government, while employing intelligence and military means
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to attack and weaken that government through escalating violence. A
conspiratorial variation, by way of contrast, focuses more exclusively
on using violence to undermine the will of a government or occupying
power to sustain losses and stay in the fight. It pays much less attention
to controlling a particular territory, mass mobilization or building a
parallel political apparatus.
Also affecting the approach taken by insurgents is the area or
terrain where they carry out their activities. They can take place in an
urban and/or rural environment, as well as transnationally. Each of
these locations will have an impact on how the insurgents approach
each of the characteristics or elements of this strategy.
On the basis of the above considerations, the following are the
essential characteristics of insurgency as it will be approached in this
study:
• Insurgency is a protracted political and military set of activities directed toward partially or completely gaining control over the territory of a country.
• Insurgents seek to accomplish these objectives through the use of irregular military forces and illegal political organizations.
• Insurgents employ instruments ranging from guerrilla operations, terrorism, and sabotage to political mobilization, political action, psychological operations and intelligence/counterintelligence activities.
• Each of these instruments is designed to weaken and/or destroy the power and legitimacy of a ruling government, while at the same time increasing the power and legitimacy of the insurgent group.
Types of Insurgencies
There was little agreement among specialists during the Cold War
over how to categorize different types of insurgency. And this remained
true in its aftermath in the 1990s. Various experts were animated by
different aspects of this type of armed group. Consequently, they
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created idiosyncratic orderings or typologies of insurgency. Some
focused on the organizational and operational dimensions of insurgent
movements to classify them. Others concentrated on their aspirations.
The following examples are illustrative of these two approaches.
The aforecited Guide to the Analysis of Insurgency sets out four
broad variations of insurgency in its typology—politically organized,
Organizational Structure
Strategy Vulnerabilities Other Characteristics
Politically organized Extensive, complex political structure developed before military operations are initiated.
Shadow government created to undermine authority of existing regime; political consolidation precedes military consolidation of contested areas.
Vulnerable to concentrated effort aimed at neutralizing the infrastructure and establishing administrative control in contested areas.
Protracted warfare; tendency towards excessive revolutionary zeal.
Militarily organized Small, decentralized structure of armed insurgents serving as a catalyst for mobilizing opposition against an existing regime.
Insurgent groups hope to form focus for disaffected population; destruction of regime legitimacy by military action; military consolidation precedes political consolidation of contested
Vulnerable to aggressive military action during early stages of rebellion because of undeveloped political structure, relatively vulnerable logistics and communications networks among local populations.
Hope to demoralize regime and attain power without extensive conventional warfare.
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areas. Traditionally organized Existing tribal or religious organizational structure.
No unique strategy common to all; will adopt strategy of one of the other types.
Limited capacity for absorbing economic and military punishment; leadership conflicts are common; leaders often lack sufficient motivation, experience as insurgents, and political discipline.
Recruitment on basis of ethnic exclusivity.
Urban insurgency Cellular structure in urban environment.
Threaten regime legitimacy through urban disruption.
Restricted to small area and must hide within population; attrition resulting from military/police pressure and the psychological stress of clandestinity.
Often in support of wider insurgency waged in rural areas.
militarily organized, traditionally organized, and urban organized.
Below is a brief synopsis of what each entails: 6
As can be seen, in this categorization there are two key or defining
variables, the organizational structure and operational strategy
employed to achieve intermediate and longterm insurgent objectives.
Other characteristics receive consideration in the text accompanying
this delineation—ideology, motivation, leadership, cadre background—
but organizational structure and operational strategy are the key
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variables used to differentiate the political, military, traditional, and
urban variations. A similar approach can be seen in Christopher
Clapham’s categorization of insurgencies in Africa in the 1990s. 7
Bard O’Neill, on the other had, concentrates on insurgent
aspirations. In Insurgency and Terrorism he identifies several types of
insurgency movements. For each, their principle goal or objective is the
central variables. He notes that by doing so “important distinctions
emerge.” Moreover, “If we fail to see the fundamental differences with
respect to goals, we make a major mistake because…differentiating
among goals has not only academic value but some very vital practical
implications for those involved in [countering] insurgents.” 8 For
instance, this would be true in terms of whether an insurgent movement
or elements within it are open to negotiation and political compromise.
Based on aspirations, O’Neill singles out seven types of insurgent
movements—anarchist, egalitarian, traditionalist, pluralist,
secessionist, reformist, and preservationist. Each of these prototypes
focuses their activities and operations principally at the national or
nation state level. However, at least in the case of two of them, the
insurgents may see their movement as part of a larger international one
based on a transnational ideology.
The first type—anarchist—has far reaching but unrealistic goals.
They seek to “eliminate all institutionalized political arrangements
because they view the superordinatesubordinate authority relationships
associated with them as unnecessary and illegitimate.” 9 To accomplish
these goals, anarchist cells tend to rely on what has been called
“propaganda of the deed”—violent strikes against the authority figures
of the regime. While prevalent at the turn of the 20 th century, in the
aftermath of WWII examples of this variant are scant.
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The same is not the case for egalitarian or what more accurately
should be termed revolutionary insurgent movements. In this approach,
the insurgents seek to impose a new political and social order on the
state based on a value system that calls for distributional equality. To
do so, the insurgent leadership creates a centrally controlled apparatus
or organization that mobilizes the people to radically transform the
social structure within the existing political community. 10
In the aftermath of WWII a number of communist revolutionary
movements in different parts of the developing world adopted this
approach. Perhaps the most illustrative example of these Cold War
revolutionary insurgencies was that in Vietnam. It was able, in
succession, to force first the French and then the United States to
negotiate their withdrawal from the conflict. And as will be discussed
later, the National Liberation Front or Viet Cong (VC), which the
United States fought, established a highly developed version of this
insurgent organization. While focused on seizing power at the local or
nationstate level, nevertheless, the Vietnamese and other likeminded
insurgencies saw themselves as part of a larger communist international
movement. 11
A traditional insurgency also has as its goal fundamental change of
the political and social order. However, what such movements plan to
replace the existing system with is one that seeks to return to and
restore a regime that existed in either the recent or distant past. In the
case of the latter, the ancien régime is rooted in ancestral ties and
religion. O’Neill refers to this subtype as reactionary. A more
analytically precise and objective characterization is to describe them
as Millenarian.
Millenarian movements are ones in which religious, social, and
political groupings envision a coming major transformation of society
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and a return to an idealized past. Such movements typically claim that
the current regime and its rulers are irreparably corrupted, unjust, and
otherwise irredeemable. Moreover, such movements often believe in a
supernatural power and predetermined victory through the intervention
of God or other metaphysical forces.
Millenarian movements, generally, see the world through
Manichaean lenses—a holy war between the forces of good and evil.
And they are transnational in scope as well. Revolutionary and
millenarian insurgent movements have much in common with respect
to a dogmatic commitment to an ideology based on a perception of that
ideology as reflecting absolute truth.
PostWWII millenarianism is most often identified with certain
conceptions of radical Islamism. In the 1950s, the Muslim
Brotherhood, founded by Hassan alBanna in 1928 as a religious,
political, and social/revolutionary movement, was the most active. The
global Salafi Jihad movement is its foremost offspring today.
The final insurgent variant which seeks a revolutionary
transformation of the political system—Pluralist—is the only one that
is not authoritarian in orientation. Their goal “is to establish a system in
which the values of individual freedom, liberty, and compromise are
emphasized and in which political structures are differentiated and
autonomous.” O’Neill notes that “While the history of Western
civilization is marked by a number of such uprisings [armed
insurgencies] in recent times there have been few of any…we could
classify as pluralist.” 12 While this is true of armed movements, there
are a number of examples of movements employing nonviolent
strategies that have the same pluralist political objectives. 13
The fifth type of insurgency—Secessionist—seeks to break away
from the state to which it is formally a part and establish an
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independent political community. In the latter half of the 20 th century,
secessionist insurgent movements burgeoned. But there was no
uniformity in the type of political system they sought to establish.
Some opted for a system that reflected their ethnic and religious
traditions, while others planned for more modern forms of government.
None are transnational, seeing themselves as part of a larger or global
movement.
The final two types of insurgency—Reformist and
Preservationist—are less ambitious in terms of their aspirations. The
former seeks a more equitable distribution of the political and
economic goods of the system, not a radical reordering of it. The later
seeks even less. It seeks to maintain the status quo, because of the
relative advantages it derives from it.
Distinctions Between Insurgency and Terrorism
Scrutiny reveals important differences between insurgent
movements and terrorist organizations. Understanding these
dissimilarities is not only an academic’s prerogative. Such an
appreciation is essential for those governments faced with having to
combat each of these types of armed groups. Terrorism and those
armed groups whose operational activities are limited to this form of
political violence have been defined in a myriad of ways. Moreover,
beginning in the 1960s “terrorism” came to be used pejoratively to
discredit and delegitimize various types of armed groups.
The moniker terrorist was employed by governments for
propaganda and political warfare purposes against insurgent or
resistance movements. The objective in doing so was to debase the
reputation of the movement, render its cause illegitimate, and portray
its methods as outside the laws of war. The US characterization of the
Viet Cong in the 1960s is illustrative. However, for the Viet Cong,
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while terrorism was employed, it was done so as one tactic within a
more complex politicalmilitary strategy. 14
In the 1970s, a number of armed groups did emerge that narrowed
their operational approach to a reliance on terrorist tactics. Examples
included the BaaderMeinhof Gang (the Red Army Faction), the Italian
Red Brigades, and Japanese Red Army. They had little or no apparent
desire (or capacity) to establish a mass social movement. Rather, these
terrorist groups were comprised of small cells of alienated individuals
embedded within national societies. The following are their key
characteristics:
• Terrorist groups seek the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through the threat and/or use of the most proscribed kind of violence for political purposes.
• The act is designed to have a farreaching psychological effect beyond the immediate target of the attack. The objective is to instill fear in and intimidate a much wider audience.
• The targets of terrorist groups increasingly are non combatants, and large numbers of them, who under international norms have the status of protected individuals and groups.
Based on these characteristics, it is observable how terrorist groups
differ from insurgent movements. For instance, important distinctions
exist with respect to tactics and targeting. As noted above, it is the case
that insurgent use of violence can include terrorism as we have defined
it. But they also rely on guerrilla warfare tactics defined here as
irregular small unit attacks against the state’s military and security
forces to harass, exhaust, and force them to overextend their resources.
In conjunction with violence, insurgents also use a number of
political tactics to reallocate power within the country. They may do so,
as noted above, for revolutionary objectives—to overthrow and replace
the existing social order. Or they may have far less grandiose
aspirations—overthrow an established government without a followon
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social revolutionary agenda, establish an autonomous national territory,
cause the withdrawal of an occupying power, or extract political
concessions that are unattainable through less violent means.
These differences are captured graphically in the diagram below.
Here we can see that there is some overlap between terrorism and
insurgency, but there are also large areas where they do not intersect.
Insurgency and HighRisk Social Movements
An additional lens through which to understand the nature of
revolutionary and millenarian insurgency strategy is social movement
theory. Indeed, these two forms of insurgency share several
characteristics with social movements. It is particularly relevant with
respect to the relationship between the organizational characteristics of
such insurgencies and their worldview, ideology, and programs. And
by using this lens we see how the terrorist moniker can conceal more
than it reveals about armed groups.
Social movements often take the form of largescale groupings of
individuals and/or organizations focused on achieving some degree of
political or social change. Broadly defined, a social movement is
comprised of an element or grouping of the population within a state—
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a collectivity—that challenges the dominant institutional order and
proposes an alternative structural arrangement.
Social movements represent groups that are on the margins of state
and society. Outside the boundaries of institutional power they seek to
change the system, often in fundamental ways. Given its position on the
margins of state and society a social movement has to develop a
sophisticated strategy to achieve its objectives.
Social movements come in a number of different forms.
Sociologists distinguish between reform and radical variations. The
former includes a trade union seeking to increase workers rights or a
green movement advocating new ecological laws. Radical variations
include the American Civil Rights Movement which demanded full
civil rights and equality under the law for all Americans or the Polish
Solidarity (Solidarność) movement which called for the transformation
of the communist system into a democratic one.
Social movements are also distinguished by their method of
operations. Some employ peaceful means; others engage in highrisk,
highcost activism. The later often involves armed violence and
underground organizations. 15 Revolutionary and millenarian
insurgencies are illustrative.
Why do individuals join highrisk movements and once they do so
how are they retained? Social scientists have focused on those factors
that facilitate participation in collective action. Answers are sought to
the following questions: One, what explains how an individual initially
becomes interested in a social movement? What leads him to be willing
to expose himself to a new way of thinking? Two, once exposed, how
does the movement convince him that it is a legitimate alternative and
persuade him to accept its worldview? Three, how is he convinced to
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engage in highrisk activity. Four, how does the movement retain him
to continue to do so?
Highrisk social movements have to establish structured
organizations with consciously conceived goals and programs for
achieving those goals. They adopt characteristics of a formal
organization (even when they are clandestine). However, they differ
from other organizations in that they exist explicitly for bringing about
major or systemic change. And the more farreaching that proposed
change, the more complex the tasks a social movement organization
has to accomplish. This is especially true for social movements that
take the form of revolutionary and millenarian insurgencies.
The Role of Ideology. A key element of a highrisk social
movement is the role played by ideology in shaping its purpose,
programs, and operations. Ideological appeals are central to their
existence, to recruitment strategies that attract new members, to a
member’s loyalty and retention, and as tools for waging the fight.
Ideology—“[A]n emotionladen system of ideas, beliefs, myths,
and values”—binds a movement together. An important feature of
ideology is its appeal to emotion and its eliciting of an affective
response. And the “myths and values of ideology are communicated
through symbols” that “capture large expanses of meaning and
communicate that meaning.” 16 Within this context, the ideology of
highrisk movements performs the following activities:
• It provides a comprehensive critique of the existing social and political order as immoral and inhuman, and instills in individuals a powerful sense of moral outrage. Such ideologies paint a situation in black and white terms. There are no grays.
• It provides an idealized and superior alternative order as a substitute for the status quo and a set of values that will serve as the basis for a new idealized society or for the return to an earlier golden age.
Shultz—Global Insurgency Strategy
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• It serves to mobilize individuals to join the movement and gives those who become members a sense of unity, solidarity, cohesion, and sense of purpose.
• It identifies the plans and programs by which the movement intends to reach its objectives, relating specific patterns of action to the realization of its vision and values.
It is through these activities that a movement’s ideological appeal
results in successful recruitment. Ideology builds a series of frames that
describe the social and political problems requiring immediate and
drastic action and provides a road map for redressing them. Ideology
includes a diagnostic frame that describes the problem, detailing the
grave injustice that has transpired. A prescriptive frame that asserts
what must be done to rectify it, proposing a new idealized system that
will replace the depraved one. And a motivational/mobilization frame
spells out the steps to be taken—the strategy to be followed—to bring
to fruition the prescriptive frame. 17
Revolutionary and millenarian ideologies not only provide an
individual with new beliefs but a new identity and reality. The process
amounts to a conversion. The recruit comes to see the social and
political order as highly unjust, adopts a new holistic worldview to
replace it, and receives a plausible strategy for changing it. Below, an
examination of one of the most successful postWWII revolutionary
insurgency movements reveals that this is, to a major extent, a labor
intensive process that involves education and indoctrination.
Mobilization, integration, and retention constitute a process for
reconstructing identity and reality. The recruit is converted to the cause
and integrated into a social network of believers. Highrisk social
movements that adopt insurgency strategies mobilize individuals into
groups that struggle and fight together—go to war—to bring about
social and political change.
Shultz—Global Insurgency Strategy
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Ideology and Organization. The ideology of highrisk social
movements comprises a series of frames that must come to resonate
with the target audience. It is through the movement’s organization that
this is achieved. Ideology and organization are symbiotically
connected. As illustrated below, organization is the mechanism through
which the ideological frames are mediated with the target audience.
The interaction between ideological commitment and organizational
structure can be seen particularly with respect to membership,
leadership, and institutionalization.
As a highrisk movement becomes embodied in a more elaborate
and structured organizational apparatus, the processes of mobilization,
integration, and retention likewise become more formalized. The lines
between hardcore members and those who sympathize and/or passively
support the movement are sharpened. Boundaries are drawn and
reinforced. Signs or symbols are established to demarcate members
from nonmembers. This can take many forms such as special ways in
which members greet and address one another.
In highrisk social movements membership becomes fully
socialized into an insular and ideologicallybased network where the
demands associated with participation are unbending. The members’
place in the organization and the activities he is expected to engage in
become the center of his existence. The internal strength of such a
movement is the result of intense organizational work through which a
mass base of support is created out of indoctrination efforts directed by
a leadership that considers one of its most important tasks the
translation of ideology into action. Once institutionalized, highrisk
social movements (to include revolutionary insurgencies) become
professionalized. The organization is able to outlive its charismatic
founder(s) and become routinized.
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REVOLUTIONARY INSURGENCY AND ITS TRANSNATIONAL EVOLUTION
Throughout the postWWII era the developing world was the scene
of extensive conflict, instability, and internal warfare. The pressures
and challenges underlying that violence were the result of the de
colonialization process, crises of state legitimacy, redistribution of
power, sectarian disputes, and secessionist pressures. In all of these
conflicts states were pitted against nonstate armed groups, the latter of
which employed different irregular warfare strategies.
Of those different types of politicalmilitary strife, the most
comprehensive was that carried out by national liberation movements
employing revolutionary insurgency strategy. Due to this complexity,
they were often misconstrued in terms of their ideology, narrative, and
operational activities. This section reviews the core elements of that
strategy, its different stages, the role of external assistance and the
operational evolution of revolutionary insurgent strategy on to the
transnational stage beginning in the latter 1970s. Below are the
summary points from that review, followed by the text from which they
have been drawn.
Summary Points
• Of the different types of politicalmilitary conflict in the developing world following WWII, the most complex was that conducted by national liberation movements employing revolutionary insurgency strategy.
• Revolutionary insurgent strategy combined unconventional paramilitary tactics with political and psychological operations to establish a competing ideological structure and war fighting organization. Its immediate goal was regime change, which serves as prelude for political and social transformation of the state.
• Successful revolutionary insurgencies employed grand strategies that implemented an integrated operational plan of action based on the following elements: ideology, leadership, mass base, logistics, organizational apparatus, political, psychological, guerrilla warfare, paramilitary tactics, and external assistance.
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• While each element is necessary for sustaining a revolutionary insurgency, the interrelated elements of leadership, ideology and organization lie at its core. They constitute the remarkable trinity of revolutionary insurgency strategy.
• Leadership is indispensable. Leaders of postWWII revolutionary insurgencies performed key fundamental tasks, most importantly devising an effective ideology and organization.
• To mobilize followers a successful revolutionary insurgency required an appealing ideology that played the central role in attracting new members; shaping their loyalty to retain them; and served as a vital tool for waging the political fight for legitimacy.
• Successful revolutionary insurgencies instituted organizational infrastructures that were extensive and functionally multifaceted to 1) broaden political appeal, influence, and control; and 2) create a war fighting capability sustained through a robust command, logistical, and financial system.
• The incipient stage of revolutionary insurgencies focused on building a mass base of supporters. This was the first step in establishing an organizational infrastructure capable of conducting protracted revolutionary warfare.
• Recruiting a mass base to staff an insurgent organization was difficult. Traditional societies were not receptive to such activities. The revolutionary leadership had to shift traditional loyalties and induce people to become risk takers. They had to accept new roles, integrate into new social patterns, follow new authority, and tolerate the stresses inherent in protracted warfare.
• To do so, leadership, ideology, and organization established a process to draw and bind people to the revolutionary insurgent movement. That process inculcated the movement’s ideology and narrative into those recruited. The process consisted of three tasks— mobilization, integration, and maintenance.
• Mobilization began the process of convincing individuals to break with existing social and cultural context and accept a new one set out in ideology and narrative. The first stage ended with acceptance of membership. It consisted mainly of persuasion through ideological and nationalistic appeals, the promise of rewards, selfsatisfaction, revenge, and advancement. These methods could be accompanied by more coercive ones.
• In the second stage—integration—the recruit was socialized into the insurgent movement, brought into conformity with its goals, convinced to make a major commitment, and came to be synchronized
Shultz—Global Insurgency Strategy
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with and controlled by the organization. New recruits did not have this level of commitment when they joined. Achieving it necessitated a careful socialization and indoctrination course of action.
• The final stage—maintenance or retention—focused the highly stressful nature of protracted war and the challenge of keeping members in the fight. Maintaining compliance with the leadership’s authority, staying loyal to and identifying with the movement’s ideology and narrative, and sustaining institutional bonds required careful tending.
• The Viet Cong approach to the mobilization, integration, and maintenance illustrates how nationallevel revolutionary insurgent movements developed a mass base of support during the incipient stage. The process was a localized, individualized, handson, faceto face, and labor intensive exercise.
• Following the incipient stage, revolutionary insurgencies entered into long periods of protracted irregular warfare. Insurgents fought long wars that demanded establishing and staffing warfighting organizations that could sustain political, psychological, guerrilla warfare, and other paramilitary operations over lengthy time periods against stronger opponents. Often protracted irregular warfare proceeded through several stages.
• Because revolutionary insurgencies were radical social movements, political operations were vital for fighting the state. Through parallel hierarchies or shadow government these activities took different forms to include incorporating various social groupings to broaden the insurgent apparatus and institutionalize its mass bases.
• Political operations included two other critical activities: 1) addressing the material and social inequalities that were important causes of the insurgency. Parallel hierarchies provided social services; and 2) establishing the means of producing or acquiring warfighting capabilities.
• Other key operational activities employed by revolutionary insurgents to execute protracted irregular warfare included 1) propaganda, political warfare, and psychological operations to propagate their narrative internally and internationally through information campaigns; 2) intelligence and counterintelligence; and 3) paramilitary operations (terrorism, guerrilla warfare, sabotage, and mobile conventional tactics).
• Finally, revolutionary insurgent movements during the Cold War sought and received external support mainly from the Soviet Union. They did so because of the power of the regimes they were fighting. But they also saw themselves as part of a global ideological and
Shultz—Global Insurgency Strategy
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revolutionary struggle. Still, these were first and foremost national level insurgencies.
• In the latter 1970s certain national level groups challenging state authority through insurgency warfare began to extend the battlefield to the transnational level out of operational necessity. In the forefront of this evolution of insurgency strategy was the PLO. They introduced two important operational innovations 1) they extended their area of operations to attack targets in other regions, primarily Europe; and 2) through these operations the PLO successfully exploited propaganda of the deed to propagate its message transnationally to mobilize much wider support for its cause.
• These PLO operational innovations with respect to the conduct of insurgency were emulated by other armed groups during the 1980s. Moreover, as will be described in a later section, these innovations also had an important impact on how al Qaeda planned and conducted global operations in the 1990s and beyond.
Background
PostWWII revolutionary insurgencies generally were based on
variations of Marxism and nationalism. However, within the context of
the Cold War and the EastWest struggle, the former was often seen as
of greater consequence than the latter and as linking these national
level conflicts to a global movement. Because the ideology of national
liberation movements employing revolutionary insurgency strategy
tended to be a variation of Marxism, they were frequently seen as
appendages of a Sovietled international communist movement. While
the USSR did provide assistance to several of these insurgencies, by no
means was it the general staff that directed a global revolutionary
insurgency against the West.
To be sure, world revolution—international system change—was
the original goal of the Communist International or Comintern.
Founded in Moscow in 1919, it was established by Lenin to lay claim
to the leadership and direction of the world revolutionary movement.
And it did provide some assistance to local communist insurgency
movements. Lenin saw the Comintern as the general staff of a world
Shultz—Global Insurgency Strategy
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revolution which would overthrow the international capitalist order.
However, because of deep internal divisions and lack of capabilities it
never came close to achieving that lofty goal during its existence. 18 The
Comintern was officially dissolved on May 15, 1943, by Stalin. 19
During the Cold War the Soviet Union reestablished a policy of
supporting national liberation movements, most notably under
Brezhnev. This began in the latter 1960s with major assistance to the
North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. In the early 1970s, Middle Eastern
and African movements likewise received paramilitary aid. By the
decades’ end it was extended to Latin America. 20 Several of these
movements came to power. But Moscow’s assistance was not the
principle reason they were able to do so.
While it is beyond the scope of this study to go into the details of
why and how this took place, two issues are important to highlight.
First, Soviet policy appears to have been driven more by the
superpower confrontation, international balance of power, and
expansionism than by a commitment to communist internationalism
and world revolution. Of course, it was framed in terms of the latter,
but the consensus among specialists is the former was the central
imperative. 21
Second, insurgent movements that received assistance and came to
power at the end of the day enacted policies that reflected their national
interest rather than communist internationalism. They were not spokes
in the wheel of world revolution. Consequently, it would be a mistake
to see the revolutionary wars of the postWWII era and their outcomes
as part of a global communist insurgency.
The insurgency strategy that postWWII revolutionary movements
employed was frequently misconstrued, and equated with guerrilla
warfare tactics and terrorism. While these tactics were part of this
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25
variation of insurgency, they were not the essence of it. Revolutionary
insurgent strategy combined unconventional paramilitary tactics—
guerrilla warfare and terrorism—with political and psychological
operations to establish a competing ideological structure and war
fighting organization. Its immediate goal, regime change, served as
prelude to a more definitive objective—political and social
transformation of the state.
This variation of insurgency, whose roots lie in the Chinese
Communist movement of the 1930s, required a grand strategy to be
successful. In essence, an operational plan of action that included the
following elements: ideology, leadership, mass base, logistics,
organizational apparatus, political, psychological and paramilitary
tactics, and external linkages/assistance.
While each was necessary for mounting and sustaining protracted
warfare, the closely interrelated elements of leadership, ideology, and
organization lie at the core of postWWII revolutionary insurgent
strategy. They played a vital role in each phase of conflict. And they
were particularly crucial in the incipient or initial period of activity. It
is in this embryonic moment that leaders must emerge and shape an
ideology and narrative that responds to both real domestic grievances—
corruption, repression, unemployment, poverty, insufficient social
services, and disrespect for traditional norms—as well as to the desire
for a better and more secure way of life. Likewise, in the incipient stage
the foundation for the insurgent’s organizational infrastructure is laid.
These three elements—leadership, ideology, and organization—
are crucial to the implementation of an operational plan of action that
seeks first and foremost to woo the population over to the side of the
insurgency movement. The population is the vital element for insurgent
success. They have to win the population over to its side.
Shultz—Global Insurgency Strategy
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Core Elements of Strategy
Effective leadership was a key aspect of successful postWWII
revolutionary insurgent movements. Leaders performed certain vital
tasks. These included establishing ideology and organization. Without
effective leadership that was able to do so, ideology and organization
were likely to be ineffectual.
Without a relevant ideology and narrative, mobilization of the
necessary followers to join the insurgent movement will not occur.
Lacking an appealing ideology, mass mobilization will not get off the
ground. For highrisk social movements like these postWWII
revolutionary insurgencies, ideology played a key role in establishing
support for the movement, its leaders, objectives, and actions. Effective
leadership and ideology maximized appeal to the population, the vital
element—key ingredient—for success.
While leadership and ideology were necessary, alone they were not
sufficient for mobilization of a mass base to take place. A key enabling
component was an organizational infrastructure that facilitated cross
cutting social and political structures that extend down to the local
level. This broadened a movement’s appeal, influence and control. And
that organization also created a warfighting capability.
In On War, Clausewitz refers to the symbiotic relationship among
three elements of what he coined the remarkable trinity: the military,
the government, and the people. He proposed that a central task of the
strategist was to develop and maintain a balance between them. It was
essential to success in war. We would propose that the remarkable
trinity for revolutionary insurgency movements, the sine qua non for
success is an effective interrelationship between leadership, ideology,
and organization.
Shultz—Global Insurgency Strategy
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The Incipient Stage and the Revolutionary Insurgent Trinity
To implement a revolutionary insurgent strategy, the leadership of
nascent movements during the Cold War required a capacity to recruit
the necessary personnel from within the population. Without it they
were unable to execute the operational activities pertinent to each of the
functional elements of their strategy.
The contemporary history of revolutionary insurgencies reveals
that they succeed when supported by a sufficient part of the population.
Therefore, in the incipient stage, leaders had to be able to recruit
supporters—build a base—for the movement. This was the first step in
establishing an organizational infrastructure capable of conducting
protracted revolutionary warfare.
In the incipient stage, leaders established the means to bring
individuals from various societal groupings into the movement to staff
the insurgent organization and execute operational activities. But this is
difficult to accomplish. Why? Traditional societies—the location where
postWWII revolutionary insurgencies took place—were not receptive
to such activities. This meant overcoming local predispositions that did
not lend themselves to risk taking and recruitment. Traditional culture
revolved around village life, local social patterns, and loyalties that
were not easily altered.
To recruit members, traditional loyalties had to be broadened to
induce people to become risk takers. Unless they were willing to accept
new roles, integrate into new social patterns, follow new authority, and
tolerate the stresses inherent in protracted warfare, insurgent
organizations could not establish a base from within the population and
did not maintain themselves for long. The revolutionary organization
had to create enduring bonds based on the adoption of ideology and
narrative.
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How did they bring this about? Leadership, ideology, and
organization established a process able to draw and bind people to the
insurgent movement. That process provided those recruited with social
psychological compensation for highrisk taking. It created motivation.
Ideology and narrative were inculcated through this process. The rank
and file that constituted the base of successful insurgencies did not
automatically accept ideology and narrative. It was only through the
process described below that they came to commit to it.
This process consists of three tasks—mobilization, integration, and
maintenance (or retention). Each is briefly defined below, followed by
a case study highlighting how the National Liberation Front or Viet
Cong employed these methods to build a revolutionary insurgent
organization. Arguably, in the postWWII period they proved to be
among the most proficient at it. And, as will be underscored, it was a
handson, facetoface, labor intensive exercise.
Phase I—Mobilization. Mobilization (or recruitment) was the
starting point where an individual had to be convinced to break with the
existing social and cultural context and accept a new one set out in
ideology and narrative. Joining the movement typically was not a single
act but a progression that began with the individual’s exposure to the
movement generally by someone who was already an established
member.
The end of the first stage was acceptance of membership in the
movement. Mobilization or recruitment consisted of various kinds of
activities that sought to persuade through ideological and nationalistic
appeals, the promise of rewards and status, selfsatisfaction, revenge,
and advancement. These methods could also include more coercive
ones such as group pressure, threats, and forced induction.
Shultz—Global Insurgency Strategy
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Phase II—Integration. In the second stage—integration—the
recruit was socialized into the insurgent organization. Through
integration the individual was brought into conformity with the
insurgency’s goals and convinced to make a serious commitment to
their achievement.
Through integration methods an individual came to be in harmony
with and controlled by the organization. Achieving it necessitated a
careful socialization and indoctrination course of action. Through these
techniques new members learned to take orders and follow the
guidance they were given. The recruit was embedded in the
organization and agreed to perform those tasks that were assigned.
Phase III—Maintenance. The final stage involved maintenance
or retention. Given the highly stressful and dangerous nature of
protracted war, keeping members in the fight required attention.
Maintaining compliance with the leadership’s authority, staying loyal
to and identifying with the movement’s ideology and narrative, and
sustaining institutional bonds required careful tending.
Building and retaining a base of supporters through the process of
mobilization, integration, and maintenance afforded postWWII
revolutionary insurgent movements the opportunity to develop the
means to conduct protracted irregular warfare. They were now able to
move beyond the incipient stage to 1) engage in both underground
political, social, and informational operations; and 2) activate armed
elements to carry out paramilitary operations to include guerrilla
warfare, sabotage, and terrorism.
The Case of the Viet Cong. The Vietnamese National Liberation
Front (NLF) or Viet Cong (VC) followed the mobilization, integration,
and maintenance process during its incipient stage. Douglas Pike, in his
study Viet Cong: Organization and Techniques of the National
Shultz—Global Insurgency Strategy
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Liberation Front of South Vietnam noted: “When I first approached the
subject of the National Liberation Front, I was struck by the enormous
amount of time, energy, manpower, and money it spent on
communication activities. It seemed obsessed with explaining itself.”
The net effect, wrote Pike, was that they “brought to the villages of
South Vietnam significant social change” and did so “largely by means
of the communication process.” 22 Through it they exposed traditional
villagers to new ideas, new methods, and new social structures.
According to Pike, “The goal [during the period] was control of the
population and through that control, the organization of the people into
a weapon against the government,” and later against the United
States. 23 To do so, the VC had to change attitudes, create an alternative
belief system, and establish a new socialization pattern.
What follows is a brief description of how they employed the
mobilization, integration, and maintenance process. Execution of it
was extensive, localized, and personalized. It focused on the individual
who was introduced to the NLF through a variety of means and
eventually recruited. And once recruited the indoctrination and training
work began in order to turn the individual into a committed member.
As Pike intimates above, the process was labor intensive and utilized
“indoctrination efforts, shared social myths, and leaderled relations.” 24
Mobilization was the first step in creating a mystique that served as the
foundation of a new identity for the individual.
Mobilization began with an initial exposure to VC recruitment and
culminated with acceptance or refusal of membership. The approach
taken was based on detailed personal dossiers of individuals in a
village. VC agents looked for those vulnerabilities that would make a
potential recruit susceptible to one of its messages. Success came
Shultz—Global Insurgency Strategy
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through an understanding of the individual and the circumstances
surrounding his life.
Based on that understanding of the individual one or more of the
following approaches could be used by a recruiter to persuade him to
consider joining—social pressure (friends or family who were already
members would be used to bring pressure); emotional appeals (the
target was young and could be convinced through proselytizing,
convincing him that he could achieve honor and glory); personal
susceptibility (the target was dissatisfied with his circumstances and
with village life); personal rewards (the target sought social
advancement and prestige); injustices experienced (the target and his
family or friends had been abused by the government); nationalist
sentiments (the target was patriotic); and ideological attraction (the
Front’s narrative was persuasive and its idealistic goals convincing).
In sum, the NLF was an active agent that sought out recruits. While
it would use coercion when necessary to gain access to villagers, once
access was gained, positive forms of persuasion were most often
employed to convince them to join. A variety of organizational
activities were directed towards creating a setting conducive to
mobilization. These activities varied from area to area and individual to
individual.
The recruit was placed into a setting where through intensive
indoctrination and training he would come to be embedded into the
revolutionary movement and prepared for a new role and a new
identity. This was the second phase of the process—integration of the
individual into the NLF. The goal was to instill into the individual
those norms and values that would bind him to the organization. He
was to come to believe the ideology and narrative, become committed
to political and social change, and adopt a prescribed code of behavior.
Shultz—Global Insurgency Strategy
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Commitment was measured in terms of obedience to the organization
and allegiance to its cause. The integrated recruit was willing to
sacrifice himself for the cause of the movement, and submit to the
leadership and unity of its organization.
The VC paid a great deal of attention to turning the newly recruited
into a committed cadre. They expended considerable resources to
imbue—socialize and indoctrinate—its members. At the end of the day,
the new recruit had a new identity that was very different from that of
the peasant in the Vietnamese village. Paul Berman sums up this
transformation as follows: “Rather than acceptance of nature, there is
mastery over fate; rather than denial of emotion, there is hate,
enthusiasm, and zealotry; rather than political apathy, there is
politicization; rather than selfinterest, there is selfsacrifice; rather than
devotion to the family, there is commitment to the revolutionary
organization.” 25
Retaining the individual in the revolutionary insurgent organization
was the third step in the process. Here also the NLF committed
considerable resources and effort. It had to because it was in a long
protracted war with a superpower. Mobilizing and integrating was not
sufficient. The revolutionary organization had to take active steps to
maintain itself. 26 This included an aggressive use of information and
propaganda to convince the rankandfile that they would prevail.
Recall what Pike said about the inordinate amount of time and effort
that went into the Front’s use of information and communication.
Additionally, a range of more proactive techniques were used to
help members cope with the stresses of fighting. These included
individual and group moralebuilding programs to reinforce the
messages fostered in information and propaganda. Rewards were
likewise used. For those fighting these includes promotions,
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commendations, and medals. Material privileges and other forms of
gratification also fortified commitment.
Maintenance also took place through raising the costs of dissension
and leaving. The NLF did so through constant surveillance of its
members, and the use of sanctions and punishments if warranted. The
latter ranged from reprimands and reeducation for desertion to
execution for traitorous behavior.
In sum, the Viet Cong approach to the mobilization, integration,
and maintenance process illustrates how a revolutionary insurgent
movement developed a mass base of support during its incipient stage.
It was a localized, individualized, handson, facetoface, and labor
intensive exercise. Through mobilization and extensive efforts at
integration they produced the personnel that staffed a complex political
and military organization, one capable of protracted warfare. Their
mobilization and integration efforts, according to several assessments,
were quite effective. 27 Maintenance of that organization in the period
after the incipient stage proved much more challenging for the NLF. 28
Can such a process be replicated at the international level to make
possible a global insurgency? What methods would have to be
substituted for the localized, individualized, handson, facetoface
ones employed by the VC and other postWWII revolutionary insurgent
organizations? As we will discuss later in this paper, during the latter
1970s an evolution in the nationallevel insurgency model began to
take place. Nationallevel movements began to go transnational. This
was the first step in an evolutionary process that, as we shall see, will
be greatly affected by globalization and the information revolution of
the 1990s.
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The Protracted Warfare Stage
Following the incipient stage, nationallevel insurgencies entered
long periods of protracted irregular warfare. This proved to be highly
demanding. Insurgent organizations fought long wars that could
proceed through several stages. These were first formally
conceptualized by Mao Tse Tung, based on the Chinese Communist
experience. 29 While Mao provided a set of guidelines for prosecuting a
protracted war, in the field there proved to be no one formula. A
number of variations took place in practice. Comparative analysis bares
this out. 30
Because revolutionary insurgencies were also social movements,
political operations were a vital part of strategy for fighting these long
wars. These took a number of different forms. They included
incorporating various social groupings—religious, occupational,
women, writers, farmers, youth—into the insurgent infrastructure. That
allowed a revolutionary organization to broaden its apparatus and
institutionalize its base of supporters. In doing so, insurgent leaders
were able to involve different segments of the population in the
movement through a variety of local political and social activities.
Political operations also included providing social services in areas
where the insurgents had a major presence. Finally, political operations
involved raising funds and managing financial structures, as well as
establishing logistical networks for procurement of war fighting and
other supplies from external sources.
A second set of operational activities can be grouped under the
rubric of propaganda and psychological operations. These were wars
for legitimacy, and successful insurgencies put a great deal of time and
effort into propagating their narrative internally through newspapers,
pamphlets, radio broadcasts, rallies, meetings, and oneonone sessions.
Shultz—Global Insurgency Strategy
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In many instances they likewise carried out these information
campaigns externally through friendly governments, international
organizations where they were given forums, and front organizations.
Intelligence operations were a third important component of the
war fighting capabilities of revolutionary insurgencies during the
protracted war stage. Within the insurgent apparatus special divisions
were established for both intelligence and counterintelligence.
Finally, the use of violence manifested itself in different kinds of
paramilitary operations. This included the use of terrorism, as it was
defined earlier. PostWWII insurgents utilized it to different degrees.
However, the primary way of fighting was guerrilla warfare operations
directed against the military and police forces of the regime. The
objective was to harass and undermine their willingness to fight. Only
when the balance of forces begins to shift were larger and more quasi
conventional units introduced to fight positional battles and defend
those areas where they established sanctuary.
The Role of External Assistance and Influence
Revolutionary insurgent movements during the Cold War sought
and received external support mainly from the Soviet Union and its
surrogates. The reason they sought this aid, in the first place, had to do
with the practical realities of the conflict. To offset the superior power
of the states they were confronting, even insurgent movements that had
established a mass base and organizational infrastructure capable of
executing the operations described in the previous section required
additional resources to accomplish their objectives. External help was
even more critical for those insurgencies that had not reached this
degree of effectiveness.
Given that the ideological basis for revolutionary insurgencies at
that time was Marxism, they sought outside assistance of various kinds
Shultz—Global Insurgency Strategy
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from the major communist power. Why did the USSR come to provide
it, particularly in the latter 1960s? As was noted earlier, there was
considerable debate at the time over how to interpret the motives
underlying external assistance. We would concur with O’Neill that it
principally had to do with the postWWII superpower confrontation.
“The greatest impetus to external support for such insurgent
movements… [was] the continuous rivalry between the major
communist powers and the West since the late 1940s.” 31
Soviet external support took two basic forms. First, political
instruments to include propaganda, the use of front organizations, and
political action inside international organizations were utilized to
champion the cause and objectives of revolutionary insurgent
movements on the world stage. The goal was to build support for the
just cause of insurgents, while delegitimizing the incumbent regime
(and the United States if it was backing it) they were fighting. 32
Second, paramilitary assistance was also provided to improve the
fighting proficiency of the insurgent forces against their police and
military counterparts. The principle kinds of help included the transfer
of weapons, training insurgent members, and providing advisory
support (mainly through surrogates). The Soviet Union not only
provided paramilitary assistance on its own, but also called on its East
European and Cuban allies to do the same.
In providing this assistance, the USSR asserted that it was its duty
to materially assist local revolutionary insurgent movements that were
ideologically simpatico with the cause of world revolution. In other
words, these local movements were said to be part of a world
movement that aimed at international system change.
This begs the question did the sum total of postWWII national
level revolutionary insurgencies amount to a global insurgency under
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the direction of the Soviet Union? To be sure, they all rhetorically
asserted they adhered to the same ideology that called for regime
change locally and international system transformation globally. And
the USSR asserted it was supporting nationallevel revolutionary
insurgencies on that basis. Thus, local insurgencies were framed as part
of a global struggle between competing ideological systems. These
nationallevel insurgencies were characterized by themselves and by
the USSR as members of a worldwide revolutionary movement that
was at war with the West. But was this really the case?
For many revolutionary insurgencies the ideology and narrative
that they founded their movements on included, often more
importantly, nationalism and national identity frames, as well as
contextual issues related to local political and social conditions. In
other words, while we cannot discount the fact that they themselves
framed their struggle within the context of the EastWest global
ideological confrontation, their immediate political objective—
overthrow of the regime they were at war with—was of paramount
importance. Therefore, national and contextual issues were of
preeminent importance in framing ideology and narrative. And once in
power, they did not take direction from the USSR or commit significant
resources to conducting a global fight.
Likewise, with respect to the Soviet Union, the decision to more
actively promote wars of national liberation through political and
paramilitary assistance in the latter 1960s does not appear to have been
based on the goal of establishing an existential or ideal international
end state through a global insurgency strategy. Rather, it was more
about the balance of power and Soviet expansionism. Moreover,
Moscow saw the United States as vulnerable in the aftermath of
Vietnam, unwilling to use force or assist regimes threatened by
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revolution. Therefore, the USSR was more willing to project power and
influence into what it termed the national liberation zone of the
developing world. By the mid 1980s, it found the costs of maintaining
this policy increasingly prohibitive. 33
The Transnational Evolution of NationalLevel Insurgency
In the latter 1970s certain national level groups and movements
challenging state authority through unconventional warfare began to
extend the battlefield to the transnational level. They did so mostly out
of operational necessity. The counterinsurgency measures of the states
they were fighting had become increasingly effective, preventing the
establishment of a clandestine infrastructure or shadow government in
the area of conflict. Because of these developments, the chances of
successfully gaining control of territory within the state and inflicting
real defeats on government security forces were remote. Therefore, to
continue the fight a new variation or approach to insurgency was
required.
Among the first armed groups to extend the battlefield
transnationally were Palestinian ones fighting against Israel. This
transpired over the period from the late 1940s to the middle of the
1970s. Recall that during the ArabIsraeli war of 1948 many Palestinian
Arabs left their homes for neighboring countries, fleeing voluntarily or
being forced to leave by Israeli forces. This was the beginning of the
Palestinian Diaspora communities that exist today.
Located in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt, it was from these
refugee communities that new armed political groups began to emerge.
Their leaders asserted that if the Palestinians were to retake their
homeland, they would have to take responsibility for doing so. The
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was established in 1964 for
this purpose. Under the general direction of Yasser Arafat, the PLO
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served as an umbrella organization for several constituent groups.
These included AlFatah, Force 17, Hawari Group, PLF, and PFLP.
Each had its own fedayeen or commando assault units that carried out
crossborder strikes against Israeli territory from those contiguous
states where the Palestinians had relocated. These guerrilla warfare
and terrorist operations intensified in the aftermath of the 1967 war.
Israel not only defeated the armies of its Arab neighbors in six days
but also seized control of the West Bank and Gaza. As a result, the
exodus of Palestinians that had begun in 1948 increased dramatically
especially to the near sanctuaries of Jordan and Lebanon.
Consequently, infiltration attacks across the borders of these states
against fortified Kibbutz’s, military targets, and public facilities
escalated. And Jordan and other Arab states provided increased support
for these operations as an alternative means to conventional interstate
warfare to recover lost territory and advance other goals.
Israel countered by developing a robust border defense system. It
included removal of Palestinian villages, smallunit patrolling, rapid
reaction operations to include hot pursuit of infiltrators seeking to flee
back to their sanctuaries, and airartillery attacks against those
sanctuaries and the military forces of the regimes that provided the safe
haven. In the case of the latter, Israel’s objective was to raise the costs
to those providing support for fedayeen operations. This was certainly
true for how it dealt with Jordan. In 1968 Israel began launching air and
artillery barrages against Jordanian army positions. These reprisals
resulted in considerable military casualties.
For Jordan, these attacks by Israel on its army were only part of the
price for backing fedayeen operations. A second cost was the
emergence of the PLO as a hostile “state within a state” inside the
kingdom. In 1969 this led to several hundred violent clashes between
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the Palestinian forces and Jordanian security forces. Acts of violence
against Jordanian security forces included kidnappings and ritualistic
murders. By February 1970 fighting was taking place between
Jordanian security forces and the Palestinian groups in the streets of
Amman, resulting in about 300 deaths. This escalated through the
summer months to include several assassination attempts against King
Hussein. The rest of the year saw intense fighting that resulted in
thousands of deaths. By the summer of 1971 the PLO was driven out of
Jordan, and had to reestablish itself in Lebanon.
Having lost its bases in Jordan and increasingly constrained in
attacking cross border from Lebanon due to Israeli counterinsurgency
tactics, the PLO turned to transnational operations to extend the
battlefield beyond the local region. PLO operatives began traveling
from the Middle East to Europe in order to carry out attacks. And those
operations increasingly began to target civilians. The foremost early
example of this was the attack by the PLO’s Black September
Organization on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.
While the operation actually failed to achieve its immediate objective,
it nevertheless was a major success in terms of capturing the
imagination of the Palestinian Diaspora. And in its aftermath thousands
of Palestinians rushed to join the PLO. Other operations ensued in the
1970s including skyjackings, hostage taking, letter bombs, and
assassinations in various parts of Europe.
These attacks were part of a new approach which, according to
John Mackinlay and Alison AlBaddawy, reflected “an important
connecting factor. Each act, usually in its final stages, became highly
visible and often by design encouraged reporters, press photographers,
and television and film coverage. The attacks were irresistible as news
stories because they were so visually sensational but also because they
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were carried out with such desperate conviction.” Because of the media
coverage of these transnational operations the PLO leadership was able
to reach several “important audiences: large numbers of their own
nationals in foreign countries, Arab states, the Muslim community
worldwide and Western states, some which preferred not to think about
Palestine.” 34
With the effectiveness of Israeli counterinsurgency tactics, the PLO
had to find a way other than localized guerrilla warfare to reach these
audiences. It did so through international terrorism—attacks mainly
against what international law designates as protected categories of
people that are off limits in war. But to understand these attacks solely
on those terms misconstrues the propaganda and political mobilization
features of the operations.
Mackinlay and AlBaddawy describe their significance and how
they transformed the conduct of insurgency, introducing a new
variation of this form of warfare. The PLO grasped that “[W]e are
living in an era of violent activism that accepts that we are animated by
the propaganda of the deed, rather than the military value of the deed
itself.” The PLO adapted its campaign to this reality and “succeeded in
getting themselves and the Palestinian issue onto the global agenda.”
The result was that these operations came to be “widely supported,
clandestinely by Arab states and overtly by radicalized Muslim
communities.” These were not “the acts of politically isolated
extremists.” 35 Rather, they were key elements of a new Palestinian
strategy, one that through transnational terrorist operations successfully
exploited propaganda of the deed to propagate its message and
mobilize support for its cause.
In sum, the PLO introduced two important operational innovations
during this period with respect to the conduct of insurgency that not
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only served as an inspiration for other armed groups during the 1980s
but, as we shall describe later, also had an important impact on how al
Qaeda conducted global operations in the 1990s. First, they extended
their area of operations to strike at US targets across the globe. Second,
the objective of those operations became “propaganda of the deed,
rather than the military value of the deed itself.” Attacks were planned
and executed for their visibility and propaganda value. In the 1990s the
media became the propagator of al Qaeda’s message. And by the end of
the decade it was doing the propagating of its activities and ideology
not only through the media but by way of its own Internet news shows
and online publications.
REQUIREMENTS FOR A GLOBAL SALAFI JIHADIST INSURGENCY
Is the Salafi Islamist Jihad movement executing protracted global
insurgency warfare? Are they utilizing a global version of the national
level revolutionary insurgent strategy and/or its transnational adaptation
as described in the previous section? To answer these questions it is
first necessary to identify the requirements or conditions of a global
insurgency. Five primary requirements are proposed. They are deduced
from 1) the strategy employed by nationallevel revolutionary insurgent
movements during the latter half of the 20 th century, 2) how insurgent
groups beginning in the latter 1970s extended that battlefield
transnationally and through terrorism exploited propaganda of the deed,
and 3) the key distinguishing characteristics of the Salafi Jihad
movement. Below are the main summary points from the review,
followed by the account from which they are taken.
Summary Points
• For the Salafi Islamist Jihad movement to execute a global version of the nationallevel revolutionary insurgent strategy it would have to meet five requirements or conditions.
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• First requirement—Conceptualize an ideology that performs the same functions as those adopted by highrisk social movements. This entails developing a series of frames to: 1) describe the social and political problems requiring immediate and drastic action; 2) propose a new idealized system to replace the depraved one that resonated with the population; and 3) identify steps to bring this to fruition.
• Second requirement—An innovative leadership that can conceptualize that ideology and establish an embryonic organization capable of operationalizing it to begin to attract and recruit a critical mass of supporters. In the incipient phase of insurgency these are first order tasks.
• Third requirement—Establish an infrastructure capable of fighting a protracted global insurgency. To do so, a process is needed to draw and bind individuals to the movement. That process inculcates the movement’s ideology and narrative into those attracted to it. To do so, new facilitators or enablers—globalization, information systems, and networked organizations—have to be substituted for this normally localized, facetoface approach.
• Fourth requirement—As the incipient stage proceeds, a global insurgency (as with its nationallevel revolutionary insurgency counterpart) enters a period of protracted or “long war.” In doing so, it has to set out for itself 1) where it intends to fight (the area of operations or AO) and 2) how it intends to do so (the organizational infrastructure and war fighting tactics they intend to use).
• Fifth requirement To execute a global insurgency the Salafi Jihadists would have to employ an array of political, psychological, and paramilitary methods within their areas of operations that target both “near” and “far” enemies.
The Salafi Jihad movement, in the first place, should be understood
as a millenarian movement. It seeks a major transformation of the
existing political status quo and a return to an idealized past. The Salafi
Jihadists charge that current regimes and rulers who dominate the
Ummah (community of believers) are irreparably corrupt, unjust, and
repressive. They label them infidels and apostates.
Second, like medieval millenarians the Salafi Jihadists believe in a
supernatural power and predetermined victory through the intervention
of God. 36 They see the world through Manichaean lenses—holy war
between the forces of good and evil.
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Third, the Salafi Jihadists are transnational actors. Their plan of
action calls for holy war to 1) expel the United States from Iraq, the
Arabian Peninsula, and Middle East; 2) eliminate the state of Israel; 3)
overthrow apostate governments in the Muslim world; and 4) re
establish the Caliphate, the historic community of Islam which
expanded beyond the Arabian Peninsula following the death of the
prophet Mohammed and came to encompass in the seventh century
both Iran and Egypt and by the eighth century North Africa, the Iberian
Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), India, and Indonesia.
Given these far reaching goals, the first requirement that the Salafi
Jihadists would have to satisfy to be in a position to initiate a global
insurgency is to conceptualize an ideology that successfully performs
the same functions as those adopted by high risk social movements.
Recall that this entailed developing a series of frames that 1) described
the social and political problems requiring immediate and drastic
action; 2) proposed a new idealized system to replace the depraved one
that resonated with the population; and 3) identified steps to bring this
to fruition that appeared achievable.
Also recollect that conceptualizing an effective ideology was a
considerable challenge for nationallevel revolutionary insurgencies
because their ideology had to attract and sustain a mass base of support
from within societies that were traditional, insular, and diverse. That
challenge is magnified for the Salafi Jihadist movement given its global
area of operation. What was demanding to establish at the national
level, it would seem reasonable to suggest, is even tougher to
accomplish at the transnational level.
The second requirement is an innovative leadership that can create
this ideology and establish an embryonic organization capable of
operationalizing it to begin to attract and recruit a critical mass of
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supporters. Successful revolutionary insurgencies in their incipient
phase (and later protracted warfare stages) were commanded by leaders
who performed these firstorder tasks of devising an effective ideology
and establishing an embryonic organization.
These core elements, in the incipient stage of revolutionary
insurgencies, concentrated on recruiting a mass base of supporters. This
was the initial step in establishing an organizational infrastructure that
would become capable of fighting protracted revolutionary warfare.
This is the third requirement for a global insurgency movement.
To do so, nationallevel insurgencies established a process to draw
and bind individuals to the revolutionary insurgent movement. That
process sought to inculcate the movement’s ideology and narrative into
those recruited. The process, as outlined above, consisted of three
tasks—mobilization, integration, and maintenance. It was carried out,
for the most part, within the boundaries of the state the revolutionary
movement was challenging.
The Viet Cong case study illustrated the extent to which carrying
out this process was localized, individualized, handson, labor
intensive, and facetoface. Can a global insurgency movement
replicate the mobilization, integration, and maintenance process at the
transnational level? Has the Salafi Jihad movement been able to do so?
Are there new facilitators or enablers such as globalization, information
systems, and networked organizations that can be substituted for this
localized, facetoface approach?
As the incipient stage proceeded, nationallevel revolutionary
insurgent movements entered the period of protracted warfare. These
were long wars. And the area of operations (AO), as defined by the
insurgents, was first and foremost within the boundaries of the nation
state. That was where the insurgent’s main enemy was located and it
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was where they built and employed their guerrilla warfighting
organization. To be sure, there could be international targets as well.
This was especially the case where an outside power was involved in
an internal war. However, the instruments used by the insurgents on
these distant battlefields were most often those for political warfare.
This began to change, as was described in the previous section, in
the later 1970s. At that time the PLO extended the battlefield out of
necessity to the transnational level and narrowed its paramilitary tactics
to propaganda of the deed through terrorist operations.
How would a global insurgency during the protracted warfare stage
define its area of operations, the composition of its war fighting
organization, and the type of violence it would employ? Doing so is the
fourth requirement for a global insurgency movement. It has to set out
1) where it intends to fight—the geographical space—and 2) how it
intends to do so—the warfighting organization and type of operations
they intend to employ. To what extent have the Salafi Jihad movement
and its al Qaeda vanguard done so?
To fight long wars, revolutionary insurgent movements established
and staffed warfighting organizations that employed political and
paramilitary instruments over lengthy time periods. These instruments
were part of a strategy. As was noted earlier, their warfighting
apparatus employed these methods primarily within the boundaries of
the nationstate. That was their AO until groups starting with the PLO
extended the AO to the transnational level. To execute a global
insurgency the Salafi Jihadists would have to carry out similar political,
psychological, guerilla warfare, and other paramilitary operations
within its areas of operations that target both “near” and “far” enemies.
This is the fifth requirement for a global insurgency movement.
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A GLOBAL SALAFI JIHAD INSURGENCY: MYTH OR REALITY?
Has the global Salafi Jihad movement that emerged since the early
1980s devised and initiated a global insurgency strategy? To determine
whether this is the case, the actions, activities, and operations of the
Salafi Jihad movement and its al Qaeda leadership are examined
through the lens of the five requirements of a global insurgency
identified above. Are they consistent with those five requirements, and
if so to what extent? Is the Salafi Jihad insurgency in the incipient stage
or has it progressed further? Has it developed a doctrine and
capabilities to carry out globally a “long Jihad?”
To answer these questions the stages through which the Salafi
Jihad movement evolved are examined, employing a chronological
narrative format. The narrative can be divided into the following six
phases: 1) Emergence of Salafi Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood;
2) Conceptualization of Salafi Jihad Ideology; 3) The SovietAfghan
War; 4) After Afghanistan: Deciding on the Next Area of Operations;
5) Afghanistan Again: The Foundations for Global Insurgency; and 6)
Global Insurgency in the Aftermath of 9/11.
Below are the key findings for each of the six stages through which
the global Salafi Jihad movement evolved. On the eve of 9/11, it can be
argued it was in the early incipient stage of a global insurgency. Next,
the findings describe how al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists have
attempted to reorganize through four strategic adaptations to recover
from its 2001 setback and continue to facilitate a global millenarian
insurgency. Following the summary of the findings is the narrative
from which they are drawn.
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Summary Points
• Has the global Salafi Jihad movement that emerged in the early 1980s been able to fight its “near” and “far” enemies through a global insurgency strategy? This study proposes three conclusions.
First, as 9/11 approached, a global Salafi millenarian insurgency was in its embryonic stage, carrying out guerrilla warfare and other paramilitary operations against both “near” and “far” enemies.
Second, Operation Enduring Freedom was a strategic setback for that global insurgency. It now faced the challenge of adapting to recover what it lost. Over the last several years al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists have sought to do so through four strategic adaptations.
Third. How successful they have been and the extent to which they are able to fight the “long Jihad” requires more research and an innovative analytic effort that was beyond the scope of this study.
• These judgments are deduced from an analysis of the six phases that constitute the evolution of the Global Salafi Jihad Movement. What follows are the key findings for each of those phases.
I. Revival of Salafi Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi Jihadism
• Salafi Jihadists are part of a 20 th century Salafi Islamic revival. The latter is one of Islam’s most puritanical forms.
• The Salafis seek to return Islam to its roots by imitating the life and times of the Prophet and his immediate successors. They draw their understanding of Islam from a literal interpretation of the Qur'an and the Hadith.
• They reject all subsequent Islamic reinterpretations and innovations as Jahiliyya, a state of moral ignorance.
• The Salafi revival argued that the Muslim community—the Ummah—had fallen into Jahiliyya. To save them, it was necessary to reeducate the Ummah in the original practices of true Islam.
• This Salafi revival became political through the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928. The Brotherhood was to serve as a vanguard party for political change and social justice. As it grew, Jihad entered its political lexicon, calling for armed struggle to liberate Muslim lands from colonial occupation and later from apostate Muslim regimes.
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II. The Origins of the Salafi Jihad Movement
• In the 1950s, Salafi Jihad ideology began to take shape. Its key theorist was Sayyid Qutb. He believed nearly all of Islam was in Jahiliyya, having been polluted by Western decadence, materialism, and faithlessness.
• Islamic law and religious values were being subverted by apostate Muslim regimes. He called for Jihad to overthrow them. Qutb coupled a puritanical interpretation of Islam with a violent political ideology of revolt.
• Qutb saw the crisis in Muslim states within the context of a global ideological battle with the nonMuslim world, in particular Western civilization. The West was pushing the Muslim world into Jahiliyya. He painted an extremely dehumanizing picture of the West as soulless, immoral and depraved.
• Qutb proposed a transnational ideology to mobilize the Ummah for Jihad against near enemies (apostate Muslim regimes) and for a global fight against the West. To lead the struggle he called for creation of a Muslim vanguard.
• The first requirement to initiate a global Salafi Jihadist insurgency is conceptualizing a universal ideology that 1) describes the depraved condition requiring Jihad, 2) proposes an idealized system to replace it, and 3) identifies steps to be taken to bring it to fruition, Qutb provided this doctrinal foundation.
III. The SovietAfghan War
• The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan gave a fledging Salafi Jihad movement a sacred cause to mobilize beyond the national level to liberate a part of the Ummah from a foreign infidel invader.
• Those who came from the Muslim world to resist aggression against dar alIslam (the house of Islam) became the first generation of transnational Jihadists. Their victory was empowering and inspiring for themselves and others.
• In Afghanistan the elements of leadership, ideology, and organization for mounting a guerrilla insurgency materialized. Leaders espoused an ideology that brought together Qutb’s Muslim vanguard to lead the Ummah.
• The key leader was Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. He implemented Qutb’s ideas. The Soviet invasion was infidel aggression against dar alIslam. He issued a fatwa calling Muslims to fight a Jihad through guerrilla warfare to expel them. Major religious figures agreed.
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• Azzam established an infrastructure for volunteers from around the Muslim World. Afghanistan became a training ground to breed a global resistance of tens of thousands of militant Jihadis who became skilled in guerrilla and other paramilitary tactics.
• These “Afghan Arabs” became the vanguard—an international brigade—for carrying out global Jihad. Afghanistan was the beginning—the starting point—for a global Salafi Jihadist insurgency. A core cadre now existed for it.
IV. After Afghanistan: Deciding on the Next Area of Operations
• Following the war the “Afghan Arabs” debated where next to fight for the Islamic cause. Where was the next area of operations and who was the enemy? These questions formed the basis of a strategic reassessment.
• One group proposed liberating other Muslim lands occupied by infidels (e.g., Bosnia). That was the new AO.
• Others proposed returning to their home countries to overthrow apostate Muslim regimes. Among “Afghan Arabs” it was championed by the Egyptian contingent.
• Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait added another dimension to the debate. The Saudis allowed the US military to deploy to the Kingdom. Bin Laden labeled that treason. It allowed Islam’s most holy territory to be occupied by infidels.
• Exiled to Sudan, bin laden and al Qaeda concluded in late 1994 that the new AO and target should center on the United States. If Salafi Jihadists were to realize their global goals, America had to be defeated.
• By the mid1990s, a new targeting doctrine for global insurgency was set. To implement it al Qaeda had to establish an organization that could employ political, psychological, guerrilla warfare, and other paramilitary techniques to fight a “long Jihad.” It was attempting to do so in Sudan when forced to leave.
V. Afghanistan Again: The Foundations for Global Insurgency
• Afghanistan gave al Qaeda an opportunity to build a transnational organization. Tens of thousands of Salafioriented Muslim’s were trained and indoctrinated. They constituted the second generation of international holy warriors.
• During the latter 1990s the foundation was established by al Qaeda for initiating a global Salafi Jihad insurgency that reflected the five requirements identified in this study.
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• Doctrine was revised to emphasize a global war fighting mission that targeted the United States—the “far enemy.”
• Beyond doctrine, al Qaeda’s organization grew in size and complexity, allowing it to plan and execute terrorist attacks against US targets across the globe, while nationallevel affiliates fought guerrilla wars at home.
• In Afghanistan, al Qaeda established itself as the vanguard of the global Jihad through a network of linkages with a score of national level Islamist groups, many employing guerrilla violence against their governments.
• Radical Islamist groups appeared to function through nine regional theatres of operations. And al Qaeda emerged as their vanguard, seeking to inspire and integrate them into a transnational Salafi Jihad movement.
• Several enablers, most importantly the Afghan sanctuary, enhanced al Qaeda’s capacity to draw national level groups into a broader Jihad network that on the eve of 9/11 reached the incipient stage of a global millenarian insurgency.
VI. Global Insurgency in the Aftermath of 9/11?
• Following 9/11, al Qaeda’s Afghan infrastructure was destroyed, a strategic setback for the Salafi Jihad vanguard and the embryonic global insurgency it was facilitating. It now faced the challenge of adapting to recover.
• Since then al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists have sought to do so through four strategic adaptations 1) employing the Internet to establish a virtual sanctuary, 2) making use of ungoverned territory, 3) exploiting the Iraq conflict, and 4) maintaining national level Jihad activities through the nine regional theatres.
• This study focused on establishing a virtual sanctuary on the Internet. Utilizing ungoverned areas and exploiting Iraq conflict received briefer attention. Particulars on the nine regional theaters were beyond the study’s scope.
• The extent to which al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists have been able to successfully implement these four strategic adaptations to fight a “long Jihad” requires a level of research beyond this study.
Virtual Sanctuary
• Al Qaeda and associated Jihad groups have sought to replicate on the Internet those facilities and capabilities lost in Afghanistan in
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2001. In the following seven ways the Internet has been utilized as a substitute sanctuary:
1) Propagating the Salafi Jihad ideology. This is the first requirement to initiate a global insurgency. Through Webbased activities the Salafi Jihadists execute this function globally. They disseminate ideological frames and messages to instill in the Ummah a powerful sense of moral outrage and commitment to holy war.
2) Inspiring and mobilizing the Ummah to join the Jihad. It is one thing to agree to ideological messages, another to be inspired to action. Al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists use a plethora of Internet methods to achieve this end. One key way they do so is by celebrating the achievements and sacrifices of those on the front lines of the global fight.
3) Psychological warfare to demoralize enemies. The flip side of inspiring the Ummah to join the fight is to demoralize near and far enemies to convince them to give up the fight. The insurgency in Iraq is illustrative. A number of Internet tactics are employed to demoralize the Americans, Iraqis, and foreigners working in Iraq.
4) Networking the global Salafi Jihad insurgency. Loss of the Afghan sanctuary led to the use of the internet for training and operational activities, to include organizing virtual cells. For each, secure communications were needed. New methods have been employed to protect these activities from disruptive US intelligence tactics.
5) Operational Information Sharing—Manuals and Handbooks. Al Qaeda and associates have established an online library of manuals and handbooks for irregular warfare. These range from doctrinal guides to instructions on how to carry out a particular tactic or employ a specific weapon. Receiving the widest attention is the Improvised Explosive Device.
6) Operational Information Sharing—Training Videos and Courses. New Internet techniques since 9/11 have been adopted by the Salafi Jihadists for online training programs. Over the last three years professionally produced training videos have been generated. A global program in the art of terrorism (GPAT) now exists.
7) Collection Targeting. The Internet provides Salafi operational units with data on targets. Through Webbased data mining they built folders/files on a range of targets from government facilities to nuclear power plants.
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Ungoverned Territory
• Beyond this virtual sanctuary, al Qaeda appears to have attempted to carry out in largely lawless tribal areas of the AfghanPakistan border activities it executed during 19962001 in Afghanistan.
• The extent to which it has been able to do so is unclear. Jihadis are traveling to the area to join the fight much like their predecessors did in the 1980s and 1990s. But a detailed picture remains elusive, at least in open sources.
• The AfghanPakistan border is not the only ungoverned territory in which al Qaeda and/or regional Jihadi groups have developed a presence. The Algerianbased Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) has moved into the Sahel region of Africa to establish bases.
The Iraq Front
• Al Qaeda and other the Salafi Jihad groups see Iraq within the context of a “long Jihad.” It is the main front, the forward edge of the global battle, on which to engage the far enemy—the United States. They hope to inflict a defeat of strategic consequences on it.
• The Salafi Jihadists also believe Iraq affords them a vital opportunity to spawn a third generation of skilled holy warriors who after they leave Iraq can fight in their native lands or elsewhere. In the first decades of the 21 st century these “Iraqi Arabs” can serve the same purpose the “Afghan Arabs” did at the close of the 20 th century.
• Iraq has become an integral part of how al Qaeda and Salafi Jihadists have sought to adapt following the strategic set back in Afghanistan to continue to foster a global insurgency.
Fostering the Global Salafi Jihad Movement
• Al Qaeda’s fourth adaptation focused on reestablishing its role as vanguard of the global Salafi Jihad movement, a role that was set back as a result of Operation Enduring Freedom.
• Developing a detailed mosaic of what is now referred to as al Qaeda and Associated Movements (AQAM) was beyond the scope of this paper. Only the broad contours of AQAM are highlighted and key questions that remain to be addressed identified.
• As late as 2005, US officials were still struggling to understand the relationship between al Qaeda and its affiliates, and the extent to which those linkages had been reestablished.
• In 2006, key US national security documents began to use the term Al Qaeda and Associated Movements (AQAM) to refer to this
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rejuvenated relationship. US Central Command’s posture statement for fighting the war in 2006 was illustrative.
• An important way al Qaeda sought to reestablish linkages with local Salafi Jihad groups is through its virtual sanctuary. Recent analysis of this activity depicts it as “very structured.…A handful of primary source Jihadist Web sites disseminate official communiqués, doctrinal treaties, strategy and operational documents through a far reaching network of other Web sites, message boards, egroups, blogs, and instant messaging services.”
• This network is “at once decentralized but rigidly hierarchical.” Web sites at the center of the network comprise al Qaeda and groups closely associated with it. Since 2006, their webbased activities have been coordinated and distributed through a new virtual entity—the Al Fajr Center—to secondary and tertiary Web sites that comprise the network.
• A key followon question about this fourth adaptation in need of attention is who comprises the local affiliated groups of AQAM and on what basis do they view themselves as a part of AQAM? One recent study has sought to identify four criteria for membership in AQAM.
• More attention needs to be focused on this adaptation in order to develop a detailed mosaic of and its Associated Movements (AQAM).
Emergence of Salafi Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood
The Salafi Jihadists are an outgrowth of, but not synonymous with,
a much larger 20 th century movement of Salafi Islam. The term Salafi is
commonly used to describe perhaps the most doctrinaire or
fundamentalist form of Islamic thought. Like other major religions,
Islam has a number of different variants. The Salafi movement consists
of Sunni Muslims drawn mainly (but not exclusively) from the Hanbali
School, and the Wahhabi element of it. Of the four Sunni theological
schools that include the Hanafi, Maliki, and Shafii, the Hanbali are
considered the most stringent in terms of their conservative approach to
the practice of Islam.
The Salafi movement is comprised of many of the most puritanical
groups in the Muslim world. The different parts of the movement are
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all united by a common religious creed. The concept of tawhid or the
unity of God is the central element of the Salafi creed. It includes those
concepts that Salafis consider necessary to be accepted as a “true
Muslim.”
To safeguard tawhid, Salafi’s believe in strictly following the rules
and guidance found in the Qur’an and the Sunna (the path followed by
the Prophet when he was alive). They seek to return Islam to its roots
by imitating the life and times of the Prophet and that of the first three
generations of Muslims—the companions or Sahabah of the Prophet,
their immediate followers the Tabi’in, and the followers of the Tabi'in.
The Salafis draw their understanding of Islam from a literal
interpretation of the Qur'an and the Sunna. The latter consists of the
deeds, sayings and actions of Muhammad during the twentythree years
of his ministry, as recalled by those who knew him. The essence of
Salafism is summarized by Quintan Wiktorowicz as follows:
To protect tawhid, Salafis argue that Muslims must strictly follow the Qur’an and hold fast to the purity of the Prophet Muhammad’s model. The latter source of religious guidance plays a particularly central role in the Salafi creed. As the Muslim exemplar, he embodied the perfection of tawhid in action and must be emulated in every detail. Salafis also follow the guidance of the Prophet’s companions (the salaf), because they learned about Islam directly from the messenger of God and are thus best able to provide an accurate portrayal of the prophetic model (the term “Salafi” signifies followers of the prophetic model as understood by the companions). 37
The Salafi approach rejects all subsequent Islamic cultural
practices, reinterpretations, extrapolation, and innovations that
transpired since the time of the Prophet. Illustrative of this opposition
are the teachings of Muhammad Ibn Abd al Wahhab. It is beyond the
scope of this paper to examine the roots of the Wahhab movement
(members call themselves Muwahhidun) which began over 200 years
ago in Arabia. 38 Suffice it to note, however, that at that time he
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preached against such customary practices as breeches of Islamic laws
and labeled them Jahiliyya, the same term used to describe the
ignorance of Arabians before the Prophet. 39 They were unbelievers, had
fallen into a state of moral ignorance, and should be put to death.
Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab’s most important convert was
Muhammad ibn Saud, head of one of the most powerful tribes on the
Arabian Peninsula. This association converted political loyalty into a
religious obligation. 40 Since then Saud rule has to varying degrees
enforced compliance with the Wahhabi interpretations of Islamic
values on Saudi Arabia.
It is important to note that many Salafi Islamists who adhere to this
strict interpretation of Islam are peaceful. While they believe in the
rules and guidance found in the Qur’an and that the imitation of the
behavior of the Prophet and his closest companions should be the basis
for social order, they do not assign death sentences to all those who do
not accept their beliefs. Rather, they believe the best way of
implementing the Salafi creed is through propagation of the faith and
religious education, not violence. These Salafist groups believe God’s
word should be spread by da’wa, nonviolent proselytizing.
In the first half of the twentieth century a Salafi revival began. 41
Those involved in it argued that the Muslim community—the
Ummah—had fallen prey to deviations from original Islamic teachings.
Indeed, they were now living in a state of Jahiliyya. If they were to be
saved from this catastrophic crisis, it was necessary to reeducate the
Ummah in the original practices of the Prophet and his early followers
and reestablish true Islam to its decisive role in political and social life.
Thus, what the Salafi revival sought to accomplish, first and foremost,
was reembedding true Islam into the hearts of Muslims and for them to
turn those beliefs into a living reality. They would do so by
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acknowledging only the sovereignty of God and his sacred law (Sharia)
in all spheres of life. This would liberate them from human rulers and
their laws, values, and traditions.
This Salafi revival, in part, took the form of political parties.
Among the most notable of these was the Muslim Brotherhood,
founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan alBanna (19061949). 42 When al
Banna moved to Cairo in the early 1920s to attend teacher training
school, he became deeply disturbed by the effects of Westernization
and the concomitant rise of secularism, the breakdown of traditional
values, and the decline of Islam as the foundation of political and social
behavior. He eventually came to advocate the creation of a Muslim
state in Egypt based on Qur'anic law. The Brotherhood was to serve as
a vanguard party for bringing about this political change.
However, in its early years, the Brotherhood resembled more of a
social welfare society championing the cause of disenfranchised
peoples through educational and charitable work. During the 1930s, the
Brotherhood propagated an Islamic doctrine that emphasized social
justice and closing the gap between Egyptian classes. It also sought to
bring about an Islamic renewal and asserted that Islam should not be
confined to private life. Rather, it should serve as the foundation for a
thorough reform of the Egyptian political, economic, and social system.
The Brotherhood’s conception of politics and nationalism was Islamic.
It became politically active, identifying with the Egyptian national
movement. In the 1930s the outcome of this was an energetic campaign
against colonialism in Egypt and other Islamic countries.
As the Brotherhood grew in the years leading up to World War II,
the term Jihad began to enter its political lexicon in two ways. One, as
an inner effort that Muslims needed to make in order to free themselves
and to improve the wellbeing of the Islamic community. Two, within
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the context of a need for armed struggle to liberate Muslim lands from
colonial occupation. There was disagreement over the use of force
within the Brotherhood. Many of its leaders publicly remained
committed to a nonviolent approach. However, there were elements,
particularly among younger members, who pushed hard for the
establishment of a secret or clandestine armed wing that could employ
sabotage, assassination, and other irregular warfare tactics. AlBanna
finally agreed.
The Brotherhood continued to grow rapidly in the 1940s reaching
an estimated million members. After WWII it played an important part
in the national movement, aligning itself with secular groups and
factions. And its clandestine armed units carried out terrorist attacks.
The organization became increasing popular and came to be seen as a
serious threat by Egyptian ruling elites. As a result, alBanna was
assassinated in 1949.
The Brotherhood supported the military coup that overthrew the
monarchy in 1952, having formed a close relationship with the Free
Officers Movement in the period leading up to their seizure of power.
Many members of the Brotherhood expected Nasser, once in power, to
form an Islamic government based on their interpretations of Islam. But
soon the Brotherhood found itself at odds with the policies of the junta.
It became increasingly clear that the Islamic tenets of the Brotherhood
were largely incompatible with the secular ideology of Gamal 'Abd al
Nasser. In 1954, there was an attempt to kill him. As a result, the
Brotherhood was declared illegal. A wave of repression ensued with the
imprisonment and torture of thousands of its members.
This repression, in conjunction with domestic policies that were
seen as the antithesis of true Islam, led to the charge of Jahiliyya by
members of the Brotherhood and the call to wage Jihad against the
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Egyptian government. The new Egyptian leaders were considered
apostates because they were ruling by some set of principles or system
other than those based on Sharia.
It should be noted that there was and remains disagreement among
various Salafi factions as to whether they can declare incumbent
Muslim rulers apostates (a process known as takfir). According to
Wiktorowicz, debate over this issue represents one of the “most
prominent sources of fissure within the Salafi community and
exemplifies the impact of contextual interpretation on factionalization.
Although the factions share a set of criteria for declaring someone an
apostate, rooted in the Salafi creed, they differ over whether these
criteria have actually been met with regards to rulers in the Muslim
world.” 43
The Origins of Salafi Jihad Ideology
In the 1950s an ideology of Salafi Jihadism began to take shape. As
it evolved over the next half century it came to reflect the
characteristics and role that ideology played in the revolutionary
insurgencies of the period following WWII. Indeed, there are important
parallels between them.
The key early theorist, who articulated an adaptation of the
traditional Salafi call, as highlighted above, was Sayyid Qutb, a
member of Egypt’s Muslin Brotherhood. 44 His influence on what has
become the global Salafi Jihad movement was crucial. While in prison
between 1954 and 1964 as part of Nasser’s crackdown on the
Brotherhood, Qutb produced important works which have come to be
seen as doctrinal treaties for Salafi Jihadism. These included a long
commentary on the Qur’an—In the Shade of the Qur’an (Fi zilal al
Qur'an)—and a more actionoriented manifesto for Jihad—Milestones (
Ma'alim filTariq). These works capture Qutb’s radical and anti
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establishment views. They are based on his interpretation of the Qur'an
and Islamic history, assessment of the social and political ills of Egypt,
and an evaluation of the polluting impact of Western decadence,
materialism, and faithlessness on the culture of Islam. In 1964, having
been released from prison, Qutb published these works. He was
subsequently rearrested, accused of plotting to overthrow the state,
found guilty, and on 29 August 1966, executed by hanging.
Qutb came to believe that nearly all of Islam was in dire decline,
devolving into a state of ignorance equivalent to that which
characterized the era of preIslamic Arabia. He drew this conclusion, in
part, from the work of Mawlana abu alAla Maududi, who founded the
Islamic Society of India in 1941. 45 Maududi first proposed that a new
Jahiliyya had taken root in the Muslim world during the 1920s. He
called for the establishment of a Muslim state ruled under Sharia law as
a prescription for it. Maududi advocated a religious cleansing of all
Muslim societies. He asserted that they had been infected by Western
ideas and practices. For example, he argued that the type of
governments the West foisted on the Muslim world took power out of
God’s hands and put it in those of man. This violated the Qur’an which
recognized only the party of God and the party of Satan.
Qutb likewise applied the concept of Jahiliyya to Muslim states
and to Egypt in particular. In Qutb's view, Islamic law and religious
values were being ignored by these postcolonial apostate regimes,
leaving their Muslim societies in a state of debased ignorance. These
regimes were, in Qutb’s view, nonIslamic and therefore illegitimate.
All societies ruled by such governments were likewise not Islamic, and
Muslims living in them were religiously obligated to oppose the ruling
elites and to reject their political authority. This resulted in his call for
them to carry out Jihad to overthrow such hedonistic regimes. In doing
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so, Qutb coupled a fundamentalist interpretation of the Qur'an with a
radical and violent political ideology for armed revolution.
As noted earlier, here we can see in Qutb’s thought how Salafi
Jihadists differ from the larger Salafi community. Unlike the latter,
Qutb and the Salafi Jihadists who followed in his footsteps moved the
use of force—holy war—to such a position of importance that it was
equated as equal to the five pillars of Islam. Once a regime was
characterized as takfir and its leaders labeled infidels (kufi), then armed
violence was a legitimate way of dealing with it.
Qutb’s writings laid the foundation for this in the 1950s. Rulers
such as Nasser, through their approach to governance and rule, revealed
a conscious disbelief in Islam. And Nasser’s persistence in doing so, in
spite of warnings from scholars, was clear evidence about what he
believed and did not believe. His actions were unIslamic. That he
persisted in behaving in this manner demonstrated that he believed it
was a better way than Islam. Therefore, he was an apostate and a
legitimate target for warfare.
Like revolutionary insurgents, Qutb’s called for the overthrow of
antiIslamic Muslim governments through insurrection as the prelude
for radical change of the entire social and political system. Thus, Qutb's
understanding of Islam was inextricably linked to his political and
social prescriptions. Islam was a complete social system, and therefore
it set the requirements for government that it should take the form of an
Islamic theocracy. He deduced these requirements from his reading of
the Qur'an, including its insight into morality, justice, and governance.
More broadly, Qutb saw the crisis in Egypt and other Muslim
states within the context of a global ideological confrontation with the
nonMuslim world, in particular Western civilization. The West was
pushing the Muslim world into Jahiliyya. He painted an extremely de
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humanizing picture of the West, characterizing it as soulless, greedy,
arrogant, barbarous, immoral, and depraved. Western civilization
fostered idolatry, the most heinous of sins. The infusion of Western
ways into the Muslim world had to be reversed, said Qutb, with all the
might the Islamists could muster. He saw this confrontation in more
than political terms; it was a cosmic struggle between those who
worshiped idols and those who worshiped God. It was a Manichaean
battle in which two independent realms, one representing good the
other evil, were pitted against one another.
Qutb provided the foundations of a transnational ideology to
mobilize the Ummah for Jihad against both near enemies—e.g., the
Egyptian regime—and for the global fight against the West. And as the
above suggests, he saw the two as inextricably connected. To carry out
this struggle Qutb proposed the creation of a Muslim vanguard
organization in Milestones. His concept was consistent with how 20 th
century revolutionary thinkers, beginning with Lenin, defined the role
of a vanguard party in revolution. Mao assigned the same role to the
vanguard party for leading what he called People’s War, which we
referred to above as revolutionary guerrilla insurgency. For Qutb, the
Muslim vanguard was an elite organization comprised of educated and
motivated individuals who were to lead the masses “on the path,
marching through the vast ocean of Jahiliyya which has encompassed
the entire world.” This was a call to Islamic militancy and armed
revolutionary struggle as the means for seizing political power from the
state. 46
Along with Mawdudi and alBanna, Qutb is seen as one of the
most influential theorists of radical political Islamism. His thinking
influenced the writings and manifestos of those who shaped the Salafi
Jihad movement following the SovietAfghan war of the 1980s. This is
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true of Qutb’s conservative interpretation of Islamic principles as found
In the Shade of the Qur’an, his idea of making Jihad a personal and
permanent duty to defeat Jahiliyya and foster political and societal
change, and his notion of a transnational Ummah and the inevitability
of global ideological conflict between "Islam and the West." Fawaz
summarizes Qutb’s impact as follows:
More than anyone else, Sayyid Qutb…inspired generations of Jihadis…to wage perpetual Jihad to abolish injustice on earth, to bring people to the worship of God alone, and to bring them out of the servitude to others into the servants of the Lord…. [J]ihad for Qutb was a permanent revolution against internal and external enemies who usurped God’s sovereignty. 47
The impact of Qutb’s doctrinal concepts greatly influenced the
leaders of subsequent Jihad groups in Egypt, most importantly
Mohammed Abd alSalam Faraj and Ayman alZawahiri. The former
was the ideological and operational leader in the 1970s of what came to
be widely known as Jama'at alJihad (the Egyptian Islamic Jihad). Faraj
called for holy war, recruited followers, and created an underground
organization that carried out the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981.
This attack was personally sanctioned by Faraj. The Egyptian security
forces reacted swiftly against alJihad's campaign of terror, and Faraj
himself was executed in April 1982.
Faraj was a “religious nationalist,” writes Gerges, who asserted that
“fighting the near enemy must take priority over that of the far
enemy…. Jihad’s first priority [according to Faraj] must be to replace
infidel rulers with a comprehensive Islamic system.” 48 Ayman al
Zawahiri, a second important disciple of Qutb’s, concurred with Faraj’s
focus on Jihad against the Egyptian regime, the near enemy. However,
Zawahiri’s position will change in the vortex of the AfghanSoviet war
and its aftermath.
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If the first requirement the Salafi Jihadists had to satisfy to initiate
a global insurgency was to construct a universal ideology that 1)
described the depraved social and political conditions requiring Jihad,
2) proposed a new idealized system to replace this depraved one, and 3)
identified steps to be taken to bring it to fruition, Qutb provided the
doctrinal foundation for it. His interpretation of Jihad and its role in
fostering political and societal change against near enemies like the
secular and corrupt regime in Egypt under Nasser, his notion of a
transnational Ummah, and the inevitability of ideological conflict
between "Islam and the West" all can be found in the global Salafi
Jihad movement that emerged after the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan.
However, before we examine those ideological and operational
developments, it is important to highlight how the events in
Afghanistan in the 1980s provided the context for the amplification of
Salafi Jihadism and the recruitment of its first generation of fighters.
The SovietAfghan War
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan gave the fledging Salafi Jihad
movement the sacred cause it needed to mobilize beyond the national
level. There was now an opportunity to establish a leadership for the
worldwide Ummah, and in Afghanistan to help liberate a part of that
Ummah from a foreign infidel invader. The battle in Afghanistan was
portrayed as one between Muslims and kufars or infidels. Those who
came from across the Muslim world to defend the Afghans and resist
aggression against dar alIslam (the house of Islam) became the first
generation of transnational Jihadists. And their selfproclaimed victory
in Afghanistan—the defeat of a superpower—was empowering and
inspiring for them. It caused many in this vanguard to think and act
globally, taking their Islamist revolution onto the world stage.
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However, the events unfolding in Afghanistan in the 1980s were
only an opportunity. The emergence of Qutb’s vanguard party was not
a given. As noted earlier, to mount and sustain revolutionary insurgent
warfare necessitates the closely interrelated elements of leadership,
ideology, and organization. Each plays a vital role in each phase of
protracted conflict. And this is particularly the case in the initial period
of activity. In this embryonic moment leaders must emerge and adopt
an actionoriented ideology that responds to both practical grievances
and to a desire for an idealized and utopian future. If this was true for
postWWII revolutionary insurgency, it was likewise the case for a
radical Islamist messianic one. Such leaders must bring together what
Qutb identified as the Muslim vanguard, an elite group comprised of
highly educated and motivated individuals who were to lead the
Ummah in armed insurrection.
The central figure to play that role during the AfghanSoviet war
was Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, also known as Shaikh Azzam. Born in
1941 in the province of Jenin on the West Bank of the Jordan River in
the territory then administered under the British Mandate of Palestine,
he attended Damascus University and earned a degree in Sharia law in
1966. After the 1967 war and Israel’s military occupation of the West
Bank, Azzam joined the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood and took part
in guerrilla warfare operations against Israel. It was here that he first
learned about these irregular and asymmetric tactics for fighting more
powerful enemies. However, he soon became disillusioned with those
Palestinians leading the armed resistance for ideological reasons. In
particular, he opposed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and
its chief, Yasser Arafat, rejecting their secular and Marxist orientation.
Azzam opted out and continued his Islamic studies at Cairo’s Al
Azhar University where he earned a Master’s degree in 1970, and his
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Ph.D. in Islamic Jurisprudence in 1973. During this time in Egypt, he
met many Muslim Brotherhood followers of Qutb, including Ayman al
Zawahiri. Moreover, Azzam came to adopt Qutb’s ideas including the
belief in an inevitable global clash between the Islamic and nonIslamic
worlds. Not able to teach in Jordan because Palestinian militants were
not welcome—King Hussein had expelled the PLO during what
became known as Black September—he moved to Saudi Arabia and a
position at King Abdul Aziz University. Osama bin Laden was enrolled
as a student and it was there that Sheikh Azzam first met him.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was, for Azzam, a kufar or
infidel aggression against dar alIslam. He immediately issued a
fatwa—Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation after
Faith—which called all Muslims to fight a holy war to expel the
invaders from the house of Islam. 49 Major religious figures such as the
Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abd alAziz Bin Bazz, concurred.
Subsequently, at the peak of the Afghan Jihad, Azzam published Join
the Caravan which became one of the principal inspirations for
drawing thousands of Muslims to fight in Afghanistan. 50 Thus, in the
1980s Azzam emerged as the inspirational ideologist and a central
figure in what were the initial steps in the development of the militant
Islamist resistance movement. Azzam had charisma, and his words
drew many to the fight.
But Azzam’s role was more than that of inspirational ideologist. He
also knew how to organize and lead. After relocating to Pakistan in
1980 he established Maktab alKhadamat (Services Office) to organize
a support infrastructure in Peshawar to house those who came to be
known as “Afghan Arabs”—Jihad volunteers from around the Muslim
world. In the mid1980s bin Laden provided financial assistance to
expand that effort. The infrastructure established by Azzam included
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camps for training in guerrilla and paramilitary tactics to prepare
international recruits to fight on an unconventional and asymmetric
battlefield. According to Greges, Azzam created “a military college to
provide volunteers with methodical military training and to prepare
senior officers to lead Jihadist operations anywhere.” By doing so, the
AlFaruq Military College fostered the “emergence of new professional
Jihadist cadres.” 51
To recruit fighters and raise money for the cause Azzam traveled
through the Muslim world, as well as to Europe and the United States.
His goal was to awaken the Ummah to its duty in Afghanistan. And his
charisma, prose, and politicoreligious proselytizing drew many. He
played a key role in establishing networks for financing, recruiting, and
training radical Muslims to fight the Jihad in Afghanistan. But Azzam
saw Afghanistan, according to Roy, as more than the defense of the
Ummah there. It was also to serve “as a training ground to breed the
vanguard that would spark an overall resistance against the
encroachment of the infidels on the Ummah…. Jihad in Afghanistan
was aimed at setting up the vanguard of the Ummah.” 52
Roy notes that “Tens of thousands of militants went to Afghanistan
through these Islamic networks for training and Jihad.” 53 They
responded to the call and passed through the paramilitary training
infrastructure established by Azzam, and later by bin Laden. According
to Marc Sageman, they came “from all over: core Arab countries such
as Saudi Arabia and Egypt; Magreb Arab countries like Algeria and
Morocco; Southeast Asia countries such as the Philippines and
Indonesia; and the Muslim immigrant [or diaspora] communities of the
United States and Europe.” 54
Those who went to Afghanistan established bonds of solidarity
among themselves that went beyond that conflict. They became a
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potential vanguard—an international brigade—for carrying out global
Jihad. Sageman writes that, “the global Salafi Jihad evolved through a
process of radicalization consisting of gradual selfselection…and
recognition of the single common target of the Jihad.” And Roy adds
that “the volunteers in Afghanistan experienced a concrete
internationalization based on personal contacts, the brotherhood of
comrades in arms, friendships and affinities. They learned to know
other people and other languages.” In Afghanistan, they found “a new
community and brotherhood with which to identify.” 55
They also became skilled in guerrilla warfare tactics, having
learned that art from the indigenous Afghan Mujahideen who, in eight
years of protracted and bloody irregular warfare in a mountainous and
rugged land, wore down the mighty Soviet Army. In their book,
Afghan Guerrilla Warfare: In the Words of the Mujahideen Fighters,
Grau and Jalali chronicle the daytoday guerrilla tactics perfected by
Afghan warriors during the conflict. It was these irregular warfare
methods that enabled the riflewielding Mujahideen to defeat a fully
armored Superpower. 56 This was an important lesson that the
international Jihadists experienced up close.
Nothing captured the daytoday tactical battle better than the
Mujahideen’s innovative use of ambush and hitandrun tactics in
mountainous terrain. It was classic guerrilla warfare, and it worked.
During the eightyear war the Mujahideen response to the presence of
the Red Army in Afghanistan was to utilize these traditional tribal
warfare tactics to inflict casualties, cut supply and communication
lines, and erode the Soviet will to occupy Afghanistan. Between 1985
and 1987 alone the Mujahideen conducted over 10,000 ambushes. They
usually attacked at night or in the fading light, utilizing denial and
deception tactics and employing mines, machine guns, grenade
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launchers, and sniper fire to take full advantage of the cover offered by
Afghanistan’s rocky terrain. In the end, it was the nature of the Afghan
tribal and clan social structure and its traditional irregular methods of
warfare that allowed a guerilla force to render the Soviets constantly
vulnerable and eventually caused their withdrawal. 57
In sum, Afghanistan was the beginning, the starting point for a
global Salafi Jihadist insurgency. When that war came to an end, a core
cadre of international Jihad warriors existed for it. In the aftermath of
Afghanistan they emerged equipped not only with the requisite
ideological and organizational framework, but the guerrilla and
irregular warfare methods for conducting asymmetrical fights against
superior enemies. However, where they would fight next was unclear
as the last units of the Red Army rolled across the Friendship Bridge on
the AfghanUzbekistan border on February 15, 1989.
For Azzam and his followers, the victory in Afghanistan was not
the end but only the beginning. A journal article published in 1987 by
Azzam made this clear. In “AlQaeda alSulbah” or “The Solid Base,”
he envisioned a Muslim vanguard organization that would overthrow
apostate regimes in the Middle East and establish Islamic rule. The
concept for this was drawn from Qutb, who was Azzam’s spiritual
guide. This vanguard would direct the energies of the Afghan
mujahidin into fighting on behalf of oppressed Muslims. He viewed
Jihad as a religious obligation in defense of Islam and Muslims against
a defined enemy, whether local unIslamic rulers or occupying outside
infidels. 58
After Afghanistan: Deciding on the Next Area of Operations?
During the incipient stage, nationallevel revolutionary insurgent
movements have to consider strategic decisions about where to carry
out the armed struggle within the boundaries of the nation state. In
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other words, the area or areas of operations (AO) had to be determined.
For postWWII revolutionary insurgents the main enemy was located
within the nationstate. That was where the insurgent vanguard had to
build and employ their war fighting organization.
In the aftermath of the SovietAfghan war many of the Afghan
Arabs—Azzam’s Jihad vanguard—were faced with the issue of
whether, and if so where, to next fight for the Islamic cause. Where
would that AO be? And who was the next enemy? In 1989, these
questions were at the core of what amounted to a strategic re
assessment.
Before he was assassinated in November 1989, Azzam proposed
that the Jihadis who had helped oust the Soviet Union from
Afghanistan use the same fighting methods to do so in other parts of
dar alIslam (the house of Islam) occupied by infidels—e.g., Kashmir,
Somalia, and Bosnia. They should help liberate those areas as well.
And Afghan vets sought to do so in the 1990s. For example, the
declaration of BosniaHerzegovina independence in October 1991
opened up a new ethnic and religious conflict in the heart of Europe.
Besieged on two fronts and seemingly abandoned by the West, the
Bosnian regime, with its Muslim majority, accepted help from
wherever they could get it. Thus, they welcomed Arab veterans of the
Afghan war. However, attempts by these Jihadis to Islamicize the
Bosnian population and use of excessive violence appears to have not
been openly welcomed. 59
Other Jihad veterans advocated returning to their home countries to
overthrow what came to be called the "near enemy." These were
characterized as distorted Muslim regimes whose repressive, corrupt,
and secular nature prevented the creation of a true Islamic community
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and way of life. The priority for these Jihadi nationalists was to restore
Islam at home. That was the next AO.
This was controversial because it advocated fighting and killing
other Muslims. Among Afghan Arab veterans it appears to have been
championed by the Egyptian contingent. And they attempted in the
1990s—unsuccessfully—to fight it out with the Mubarak regime. In
doing so, they employed guerrilla warfare and terrorism tactics to
achieve their objectives. However, they were no match for Egyptian
government forces that killed or arrested so many of their commanders
and key operatives that the Jihad camp eventually split under the
pressure. One faction, the Egyptian Islamic Group, initiated a unilateral
ceasefire. The leadership of the other faction, Egyptian Islamic Jihad,
fled the country. 60
The Algerians were the other national contingent that followed
their participation in the AfghanSoviet war with fullscale irregular
warfare against their home government. And the violence carried out
by the Egyptians paled in comparison with that employed by the Armed
Islamic Group and its successor, the Salafist Group for Dawah and
Combat. However, in the end the Algerian security forces contained the
threat through a brutal counterterrorism campaign. 61
Finally, yet other Afghan Arabs stayed behind in Afghanistan and
Peshawar and continued to contemplate how and where to extend the
Jihad to new areas of operations. As this was taking place, Iraq invaded
and occupied Kuwait, adding a new dimension to the debate over the
future AO for the Jihadists.
The possibility of further Iraqi expansion from Kuwait into Saudi
Arabia created a crisis of monumental proportion for the House of
Saud. In the face of a massive Iraqi military presence, Saudi Arabia's
own forces were hopelessly outnumbered. In the midst of this
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predicament, bin Laden offered to protect Saudi Arabia from the Iraqi
army by deploying 100,000 Mujahideen to the Kingdom. If Saddam
chose to invade, he assured King Fahd, they would be repulsed by the
Mujahideen using the same protracted guerrilla and irregular warfare
tactics that had been employed to oust the Red Army from Afghanistan.
After thinking it over the Saudi Monarch decided to refuse bin Laden's
offer. A protracted eightyear guerrilla war like that fought in
Afghanistan was hardly an attractive option. Instead, he opted to allow
the United States and allied forces to deploy on his territory and use it
as a landbridge to drive the Iraqi army from Kuwait.
Bin Laden considered this a “heretical” act. He charged that the
presence of infidel troops in the "land of the two mosques" (Mecca and
Medina) was sacrilegious and desecrated sacred soil. It was also
confirmation of what Qutb and other Salafi theorists had asserted about
the coming global confrontation between the Muslim world and the
West. Not only was the West driving the Muslim world into Jahiliyya,
it now occupied its most holy territory. After publicly castigating the
Saudi government for allowing this to happen, bin Laden was forced
into exile in Sudan and his Saudi citizenship was revoked.
Paradoxically, it was in the aftermath of this setback that the
organization bin Laden helped found in Afghanistan began to emerge
as a transnationally focused organization with linkages to Jihadi groups
in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Jordan,
Lebanon, Iraq, Morocco, Somalia, and Eritrea, among other places,
several of which were fighting protracted insurgencies. Al Qaeda
forged ties with many of these militant Islamist groups.
While in Sudan, al Qaeda backed these nationalfocused Jihadists
with training, arms, and funding. To do so, it established weapons
caches and training camps where the guerrilla and irregular warfare
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methods honed in Afghanistan were taught. Al Qaeda also maintained
its training camps in Afghanistan for the same purpose. Sudanese
intelligence officers aided al Qaeda by providing false passports and
shipping documents. At that time, the operational role of al Qaeda was
principally to provide support through funds, training, and weapons for
nationallevel attacks by Jihadist groups it was aligned with. However,
as we will highlight below, the first attacks on US targets also occurred
during the Sudan period, and others were planned.
As al Qaeda’s presence in Sudan grew, its leaders engaged in
discussions over the area of operations and which enemies should be
targeted. With respect to the latter, these deliberations revolved around
what has been coined the “near and far enemies.” Up to this point the
targeting focus, as noted above, had been twofold: 1) liberating
occupied Muslim territory from infidel forces (e.g., Afghanistan), and
2) attacking and overthrowing local Muslim governments that were
apostate regimes. By late 1994 a third target and new AO was under
consideration—the “far enemy.”
If the definitive objective of the Salafi Jihadist movement was to be
realized— international system transformation with the re
establishment of the Caliphate, the historic community of Islam—then
the main impediment to that aspiration had to be targeted and defeated.
Sageman explains that those who championed this new targeting
doctrine argued “the main danger for the worldwide Islamist movement
was the United States, which was seen as moving in on Muslim lands
such as the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa. It was the ‘head of the
snake’ that had to be killed…. [T]he priority had to be switched from
the “near enemy” to the “far enemy.” 62 By the mid1990s bin Laden
and his top collaborators, including Ayman alZawahiri, adopted this
important change.
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Moreover, it appears that before this was formally espoused and
later recorded by bin Laden in fatwas issued in the latter 1990s,
operations were carried out by al Qaeda against US targets. In 1993
there is some evidence that trainers were sent to Somalia. As learned
since 9/11, bin Laden saw US involvement there as an extension of its
presence in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that grew out of the
1991 war to expel Iraq from Kuwait. He believed that Washington was
following an imperial policy of taking over parts of the Muslim world.
Consequently, in 1993 one of bin Laden’s top lieutenants,
Muhammad Atef, traveled to Somalia to determine how al Qaeda might
attack US forces stationed there. He arranged to assist Aidid’s militia.
Subsequently, one of al Qaeda’s commanders and a small number of
Mujahideen, veteran Islamic Holy Warriors who had fought in
Afghanistan, were dispatched to provide military assistance and
training. The training included tactics learned in the Afghan War for
fighting against heavily armed helicopters. Aidid’s gunners were taught
the most effective way to shoot down a helicopter was to use rocket
propelled grenades (RPGs) rigged with timing devices to take off the
tail rotor of the Black Hawk, its most vulnerable part. 63
The outcome is chronicled in Black Hawk Down, Mark Bowden’s
account of that battle. 64 In a strict military sense, the Task Force Ranger
raid was successful. The Aidid lieutenants that had been targeted were
captured. But the human costs of the operation were high: nineteen
Americans dead and missing, seventeen from Task Force Ranger, and
eightyfour wounded. One Malaysian was also killed and seven were
wounded, along with two wounded Pakistanis. Many hundreds of
Somalis were killed and wounded.
Also during the Sudan period, at least one of the two attacks in
Saudi Arabia in the mid1990s may have been the result of this new
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targeting policy. Those who carried out the bombing of the National
Guard training center in Riyadh confessed to having been trained by al
Qaeda in its Afghan camps and were inspired by bin Laden. At least
that is what the Saudi’s have reported before they were executed.
Finally, during this period building the infrastructure necessary to
attack major US targets in East Africa was initiated. Senior members of
al Qaeda were dispatched to Kenya.
In sum, by the mid1990s the targeting doctrine to support a global
insurgency was in place to support a strategy which had as its dual
objectives to foster a) regime changes locally and b) international
system transformation globally. To accomplish these goals both “near
enemies” and the “far enemy” had to be attacked. However, to do so al
Qaeda had to establish and staff warfighting organizations that could
employ an array of political, psychological, guerrilla warfare, and other
paramilitary techniques to fight a “long Jihad.”
In Sudan, it appears that al Qaeda was attempting to establish those
capabilities when it was forced to leave. In 1996, bin Laden was asked
to depart the country after the US pressured the Sudanese government
to expel him, citing possible connections to the 1994 attempted
assassination of Egyptian President Mubarak while in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia. Bin Laden and 200 of his key subordinates left in late 1996,
returning to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan Again: The Foundations for Global Insurgency
Returning to Afghanistan proved fortuitous for al Qaeda. It was
given an opportunity to accelerate building a transnational warfighting
organization it had begun to form in Sudan. Now allied with the
Taliban, who had a belief system similar to that of bin Laden and al
Qaeda, Afghanistan provided an ideal base to do so. It turned into an
everexpanding infrastructure and safe haven, far from American
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political influence and military power. According to the 9/11
Commission Report, “The Taliban seemed to open the door to all who
wanted to come to Afghanistan to train in the [al Qaeda] camps. The
alliance with the Taliban provided al Qaeda a sanctuary in which to
instruct and indoctrinate new fighters and terrorists, import weapons,
forge ties with other Jihad groups and leaders [globally], and plot and
staff terrorist schemes.” 65
Between 1996 and the attacks on September 11, 2001, Salafi
oriented Muslims from around the world traveled to Afghanistan to
receive irregular warfare training and indoctrination in these facilities.
How many did so is hard to determine. Estimates vary widely. The 9/11
Commission Report noted that “U.S. intelligence estimates put the total
number of fighters who underwent instruction in bin Ladensupported
camps in Afghanistan from 1996 through 9/11 at 10,000 to 20,000.” 66
Others propose much higher numbers. For example, according to
German police testimony in the 2006 retrial of Mounir alMotassadek,
a Moroccan accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, over 70,000
received paramilitary training and religious instruction in alQaeda’s
camps in Afghanistan. 67 Whatever the number, a considerable corps of
secondgeneration holy warriors traveled to Afghanistan from some
fifty or more countries.
An assessment of developments in Afghanistan between 1996 and
the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States suggest that the
foundation was being established by al Qaeda for initiating a global
Salafi Jihad insurgency that reflected the requirements identified earlier
in this study. Al Qaeda’s expanding infrastructure in Afghanistan
allowed it to undertake several activities that tracked with these
requirements.
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First of all, during this period bin Laden revised al Qaeda’s
ideology and doctrine to emphasize a global mission for the Salafi
Jihad movement. He did so by focusing on the United States—the far
enemy—and the dangers America posed for the very survival of the
Muslim world. This recasting of doctrine can be seen most succinctly
in his 1998 fatwa, entitled, "Declaration of the World Islamic Front for
Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders." The United States was
attempting to destroy Islam, and Muslims were in a cataclysmic battle
with the West. America’s occupation of Saudi Arabia had had a
humiliating and debilitating impact on the Ummah. According to bin
Laden, "Since God laid down the Arabian Peninsula, created its desert,
and surrounded it with its seas, no calamity has ever befallen it like
these Crusader hosts that have spread in it like locusts, crowing its soil,
eating its fruits, and destroying its verdure." 68
And it was not just Saudi Arabia that was endangered. The United
States, by orchestrating UN sanctions against Iraq, was annihilating
Muslims there as well. Bin Laden asserted that Washington did not rest
after the "slaughter" of the Gulf War but instead sought the
"dismemberment and the destruction...of what remains of this
people.” 69 In interviews during the late 1990s, he also included the
plight of Muslims in Kashmir, East Timor, Sudan, Somalia, Chechnya,
and elsewhere in this messianic vision of a war of survival for Islam
against the West led by the United States.
Through an assessment of bin Laden’s fatwas, other written
statements, and interviews during this second period in Afghanistan, it
is evident that he revised al Qaeda’s ideology and doctrine for a global
Salafi Jihad against the United States. Thus, in the 1998 fatwa, after
specifying the American crime of occupation of the holy places, the
war it was waging through sanctions against the Iraqi people, and
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America’s support of Jewish aggression in Palestine, bin Laden
asserted that the United States had declared war on God. Therefore, it
was the duty of every Muslim to “kill the Americans and plunder their
money wherever and whenever they find it." The fatwa charged that to
kill Americans, both civil and military, is an individual duty for every
Muslim who is able, in any country where this is possible, “until the
US “departs from all the lands of Islam.” 70
Civilians are off limits under the international laws of war. But for
bin Laden all Americans were in one way or another complicit with the
policies of their government and therefore legitimate targets. It was a
millenarian outlook that saw the world through Manichaean lenses—a
holy war between the forces of good and evil that eschewed the
distinctions of international law. Recall that millenarian movements are
ones in which religious, social, and political groupings envision a
coming major transformation of society and return to an idealized past.
Such movements typically claim that the current regime and its rulers
are irreparably corrupted, unjust, and otherwise irredeemable. They
have to be completely vanquished.
In sum, bin Laden asserted that since Muslims everywhere in the
world were suffering at the hands of the United States, the Ummah
must wage holy war against their real enemy, and not only act to rid
itself of unpopular and apostate regimes backed by the Americans. It
was the duty of the Muslim community to protect their faith. Bin Laden
declared that the United States was vulnerable and could be defeated in
war by mujahideen in the same way the USSR suffered a humiliating
defeat at their hands.
Beyond doctrine, important organizational developments took
place during the latter 1990s as well. Al Qaeda as an organization grew
in size and complexity. This was due, in part, to the fact it was able to
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select and add personnel from the thousands of individuals that flowed
through its training camps. It had a very large pool from which to
screen and evaluate candidates from its training program for
membership in its core organization. Also facilitating this
organizational evolution was the secure sanctuary that al Qaeda
enjoyed in Afghanistan.
Al Qaeda was able during the latter 1990s to expand its
hierarchical apparatus and formalize its structure, with bin Laden, the
emirgeneral, at the top, followed by other al Qaeda leaders. 71 Below
bin Laden a shura majlis or consultative council was established, with
four committees reporting to it. A military committee recruited fighters
and ran the training camps in which they were instructed in the
guerrilla and irregular warfare methods learned in Afghanistan in the
1980s. Indeed, in his 1996 “Declaration of War against the Americans
Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” bin Laden singled out
the importance of these techniques for fighting conventionally superior
enemies. He stated: “[I]t must be obvious to you that, due to the
imbalance of power between our armed forces and the enemy forces, a
suitable means of fighting must be adopted, i.e., using fast moving,
light forces that work under complete secrecy. In other words, to
initiate a guerrilla war, where the sons of the nation, and not the
military forces, take part in it.” 72
The military committee also planned and launched global strikes
against the United States. Finally, it oversaw other clandestine
functions including a special office for procuring, forging, or altering
identity documents such as passports and visas.
A finance committee established a global financial network to raise
the resources necessary to sustain al Qaeda’s expanding apparatus and
activities. Its financial network was based on redundancy. Al Qaeda
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secured its money through the Western banking system, the Islamic
banking system, and the traditional hawala system. This network was
linked to a number of money sources to include Muslim charitable
organizations, which al Qaeda infiltrated and used to collect and mask
the funds it needed. These included the International Islamic Relief
Organization (IIRO), the Benevolence International Foundation, the al
Haramian Islamic Foundation, Blessed Relief Foundation, and the
Rabita Trust. These organizations have branches worldwide and engage
in activities related to religious, educational, social, and humanitarian
programs. But they also knowingly or unknowingly assisted in
financing alQaeda. Wealthy individuals, particularly in the Arabian
Gulf states, likewise were a source of funds, as were al Qaedarun
businesses.
Justifying its actions by issuing rulings on Shari’a law was the
responsibility of the religious/legal committee. It also had a role in
indoctrinating those many thousand Muslims who went to Afghanistan
to be trained for holy war. Finally, a media committee disseminated
information in support of al Qaeda’s political and military goals and
activities. In the latter 1990s, al Qaeda began using the Internet to
publicize those goals and activities, to disseminate information, to
inspire and recruit, and to gather and share information. However, this
was only in its embryonic stage at this point. As we shall see later, the
use of the Internet burgeoned after 9/11 for al Qaeda and the Salafi
Jihad movement.
This growth of al Qaeda’s organization in Afghanistan allowed it
to go operational in a way it could not during its Sudan phase. It now
was able to plan several terrorist operations to strike at the United
States across the global landscape and had the capacity to direct and
deploy clandestine units to execute those operations. And they had
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three major successes as a result. These included 1) the attacks on US
embassies in Nairobi and DaresSalaam, in August 1998; 2) the
suicide attack on the USS Cole in Aden, in October 2000; and 3) the
strikes against the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11,
2001. Additionally, as is now known, al Qaeda had planned and
deployed personnel to carry out other attacks as well. However, for
various reasons these were not successful.
From its Afghanistan sanctuary, al Qaeda at this point in time also
sought to establish itself more broadly as a headquarters and vanguard
for the global Salafi Jihad movement. Recall that the 1998 fatwa
instituted a World Islamic Front for Jihad. The purpose of the Front
was to create a transnational organization with a worldwide presence
and linkage with nationallevel radical Islamist affiliates in numerous
countries. Its ultimate goals were fourfold: 1) to unite the Ummah; 2) to
overthrow all corrupt and apostate Muslim governments; 3) to drive
Western influence from those countries; and 4) to abolish state
boundaries and establish the Caliphate.
To this end, during the 19962001 phase of development, a global
network of linkages was established by al Qaeda’s World Front with a
score of nationallevel militant Salafi and other radical Islamist groups
around the world, many of whom were employing unconventional and
asymmetric violence against their home governments. The World Front
emerged as an umbrella organization that sought to tie these like
minded, nationallevel parties and smaller cellular units together for a
common purpose, as described in the fourfold objectives noted above.
These affiliates and their links to al Qaeda were first delineated in a
comprehensive way by Rohan Gunaratna. In Inside Al Qaeda: A Global
Network of Terror, he identified ones in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,
Yemen, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the
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Palestinian territories, Algeria, Libya, Eritrea, Somalia, Bosnia,
Chechnya, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Germany, Britain, and
the United States. 73
An examination of nationallevel groups suggests that while they
have differences that are shaped by the local context in which they
operate and fight, they appear to adhere to the same general
ideological/religious principles and Salafi Jihadist orientation. And
while they have local objectives to include overthrowing apostate
governments and expulsion of outside forces, they see their fight within
a larger context and subscribe to the broader goal of a global Islamic
reordering of the international system so that it is no longer US
dominated.
A number of specialists have suggested different frameworks for
delineating the global Salafi Jihad movement that emerged during this
19962001 period. One of the more conceptual and analytic
assessments was put forward by David Kilcullen. He proposes that a
worldwide militant Islamist movement appears to function through
“regional theatres of operation rather than as a monolithic bloc.”
Islamist groups within these different theatres follow “general
ideological or strategic approaches that conform to the pronouncements
of al Qa’eda, and share a common tactical style and operational
lexicon.” However, Kilcullen contends that there is “no clear evidence
that al Qaeda directly controls or directs Jihadists in each theatre….
[R]ather than being a single monolithic organization, the [emerging]
global Jihad movement appears to be a more complex phenomenon.” 74
Within this context, al Qaeda was said to “resemble the Communist
International (Comintern) of the 20th century—a holding company and
clearinghouse for world revolution.” 75 In other words, al Qaeda was
more of a vanguard that sought to inspire and integrate these national
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level groups and their local grievances into a broader transnational
Salafi Jihad ideology and to link these disparate groups together
through its Afghan sanctuary, emerging global communications,
finances, and technology.
Nine regional theatres are identified by Kilcullen. In three—the
Americas, Western Europe, and Australia/New Zealand—Salafi Jihad
groups had engaged primarily in “subversion, fundraising and
organizational development.” However, during the latter 1990s, a few
terrorist operations were attempted in these regions through al Qaeda’s
forward deployed clandestine operational units. And since 9/11, other
local cells have also executed operations or been uncovered in the
process of preparing to do so, as will be discussed later.
The remaining six regional theaters all experienced, according to
Kilcullen, varying degrees of armed violence in which local radical
Islamist and Salafi Jihadist armed groups employed the same common
methods of guerrilla and irregular warfare tactics against local regimes.
Al Qaeda could also be active in these theatres. The following,
summarized from Kilcullen’s assessment, highlights these
developments, which both predate and postdate 9/11:
• The Greater Middle East to include Turkey, the Levant, Israel/Palestine, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula is the most active theatre. During the1990s, and following 9/11, ongoing insurgent violence by local Islamist armed groups has taken place in Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Turkey, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine. This included bombings, suicide attacks, kidnappings, and raids. Al Qaeda also established regional affiliates in several parts of the region. However, much of the insurgent and terrorist action in theatre is not directed, controlled, or carried out by al Qaeda.
• The Maghreb states, to include Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Morocco, and Tunisia, all have experienced terrorist and insurgent violence carried out by radical Islamist armed groups. Al Qaeda also has a presence in several states in the theatre.
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• East Africa experienced al Qaeda terrorism in 1998 with the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Kenya suffered a subsequent attack in Mombassa in 2002. There is likely ongoing al Qaeda presence in Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia. The East Africa and Middle East theatres overlap, with connections between Yemen, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa.
• South and Central Asia has long been a theatre of radical Islamist violence. Afghanistan was al Qaeda’s sanctuary until 9/11. And remnants of it remain hold up along the Pakistan border. Both Pakistan and India have experienced Islamist insurgency and terrorism. The insurgency in Kashmir has Islamist elements, and the area is a base for al Qaeda affiliates. The Central Asian republics of the FSU have seen Islamist lowlevel insurgency.
• Southeast Asia has radical Islamist insurgencies in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, and lowerlevel activity in Singapore and Malaysia. The main group in theatre is Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which operates across the region, maintains links to al Qaeda, cooperates with local movements, and has links into other theatres.
• The Caucasus region has seen separatist insurgencies turn increasingly Islamist with these elements allied to al Qaeda. This clearly has been the case in Chechnya. It has become a launching pad for radical Islamist attacks into Russia since the late 1990s. These have included suicide bombings.
What common themes and factors drew al Qaeda and these local
groups together? How did local groups come to see their situation
within the context of al Qaeda’s global construct? What role did al
Qaeda’s ideology and activities from its Afghan base play in
facilitating these developments?
Perhaps the key overarching theme that drew local groups to
identify with al Qaeda’s global message was the proposition that Islam
was in crisis. Of course, this theme is a central tenet of al Qaeda’s
SalafiJihadist ideology and, as noted earlier, was first promulgated by
Qutb. The crisis is characterized as one affecting the entire Ummah.
Thus, Muslims living in Arab and Muslim countries who feel a strong
sense of alienation because they believe that their government does not
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truly represent Islam and is failing politically and economically,
perceive their local situation not as unique but part of a larger
phenomenon. Thus, radical Islamist groups fighting against these
conditions at the local level see their struggle in a global context.
Adding to this crisis of Islam, and playing a major part in it
according to al Qaeda’s ideology, was Western and particularly
American aggression and domination. The dimensions of this included
US and other Western occupation of Muslim lands either directly or
through Israel; collaboration with despotic, apostate, and puppet
regimes such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia; appropriating
Muslim resources; and the ultimate goal of hegemony over the Middle
East politically, economically, and culturally.
Further facilitating the spread of SalafiJihadist doctrine and the
rise of al Qaeda, which likewise contributed to the identification of
local groups with a global movement, was what one specialist describes
as the reach of “Wahhabism—a puritan form of Islam virtually
synonymous with Salafism—to as many countries as possible”
beginning in the 1970s. “Over the next three decades, the kingdom
would muster some $70 billion in overseas aid, over two thirds of
which was destined for ‘Islamic activities’ such as the building of
mosques, religious learning institutions, or Wahhabi religious centers.”
What this resulted in was a “diffusion of individuals, institutions, and
financial assets” that helped to radicalize young Muslims and promote
Jihad in their countries against apostate regimes. 76
In sum, al Qaeda’s ideology constituted a comprehensive narrative
with which local Jihad groups could find common ground. In addition,
there were several other enablers that permitted al Qaeda to draw
nationallevel armed groups into a broader global Salafi Jihad network
that, as September 11, 2001 approached, can be characterized as an
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embryonic global millenarian insurgency. And different elements of
that network were executing operations against both near and far
enemies, employing the range of guerrilla and other irregular warfare
tactics.
We have already identified the most important of these other
enablers—al Qaeda’s sanctuary in Afghanistan. Through that safe
haven, al Qaeda was able to expand and add to its first generation of
Jihadists—those who fought the Soviet Union—a second generation
that was trained by al Qaeda during 19962001. Both generations came
from the nine regions identified above. Many were already members of
nationallevel Islamist organizations. Through these individuals,
relationships were established that linked the al Qaeda vanguard and its
World Front to nationallevel movements. A network of acquaintance,
friendships, and mutual obligations developed that stretched worldwide
between and among these groups and the al Qaeda vanguard. Similarly,
within these theatres, groups came to cooperate and develop bonds of
shared experience and mutual obligation. Common experiences and
histories cemented relationships between the various members of the
global Jihad network.
Three additional enablers also enhanced its potential to draw
nationallevel groups into a broader Salafi Jihad network that can be
characterized as in the incipient stage of a global millenarian
insurgency on a global level on the eve of 9/11. They included
globalization, information age technologies, and a networkbased
approach to organization. Each augmented al Qaeda’s capacity to do
so.
Globalization eroded the traditional boundaries that separated and
secured the nationstate. It allows people, goods, information, ideas,
values, and organizations to move easily across international space
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without heeding state borders. Modern transportation and
communications systems, in conjunction with the postCold War
breakdown of political and economic barriers around the world,
accelerated the globalization process.
Information age technologies are central to globalization. These are
the networks through which communications takes place on a
worldwide basis. Cellular and satellite phones allow contact between
the most remote and the most accessible locations of the globe.
Computers and the Internet are the other pillars of the information
revolution.
To take advantage of globalization and informationage
technologies, al Qaeda adopted a new organizational approach that was
less hierarchical and more networked to link groups in the nine theatres
together. In doing so, they followed the lead of the international
business community, which was in the forefront of such change. Small
and large corporations developed virtual or networked organizations
that were able to adapt to the information age and globalization.
Globalization, informationage technology, and a networkbased
approach to organization, in conjunction with the aforementioned
enabler of a secure sanctuary, contributed in important ways to the
appearance at the end of the 20 th century of a global millenarian
insurgency, in its incipient stage of development, that was carrying out
guerrilla warfare and other paramilitary operations against both “near”
and “far” enemies.
Global Insurgency in the Aftermath of 9/11?
In the aftermath of 9/11 the United States went to war with al
Qaeda and the Taliban. By December 7 th the Taliban regime had been
overthrown and al Qaeda’s infrastructure in Afghanistan largely
disrupted. The loss of that sanctuary was a major setback—a strategic
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defeat—for the vanguard of the Salafi Jihad Movement and the
embryonic global insurgency it was facilitating from that Afghan base.
It now faced the challenge of having to adapt and innovate to recover
what it had lost. Could it find new ways to replicate what had been
established in Afghanistan in 19962001? This was the challenge al
Qaeda and its Salafi affiliates faced. Could they reinvent themselves in
the aftermath of Operation Enduring Freedom and continue to carry out
the global insurgency they had initiated?
The remainder of this study seeks to identify how over the last five
years al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists have attempted to reorganize to
continue to execute a global fight. They appear to have done so through
four strategic adaptations. The degree to which they have been able to
accomplish each of these strategic adaptations and, as a result, the
extent to which they are able to fight the “long Jihad”—a protracted
irregular war on several fronts—cannot be answered by this study. That
requires much further research that was beyond this study. Here we will
focus on describing what each of these strategic adaptations entails.
• One, the al Qaeda vanguard and its affiliates have employed the Internet to establish in cyberspace a virtual sanctuary from which to carry out many of the activities they had initiated from their Afghan base in 19962001. These activities include propagating the Salafi Jihad ideology to the Ummah; recruiting, inspiring, and training Jihadis; providing operational information and materials; networking dispersed elements of the Salafi Jihad movement; irregular warfare training; and planning and executing operations.
• Two, al Qaeda and its affiliates have attempted to utilize ungoverned territory in the tribal areas of the AfghanPakistan border (and elsewhere in other regions) as physical sanctuaries to carry out some of the same activities.
• Three, they have exploited the conflict in Iraq utilizing it as a major recruiting and training ground to help prepare a third generation of Salafi Jihadis. Iraq not only serves as a new front to engage the United States directly, but it also affords an opportunity
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to develop a new cadre of skilled fighters who can gain the kind of experience that after Iraq will allow them to more effectively fight in their native lands or elsewhere. In other words, in the first decades of the 21 st century these “Iraqi Arabs” may serve the same purpose the “Afghan Arabs” did at the close of the 20 th century.
• Four, al Qaeda has continued to encourage and promote the global Salafi Jihad movement that, as Kilcullen contends, appears to function at the local level within nine regional areas. In these locations, activities carried out by groups and cells that see themselves as a part of this movement continued to take place since 9/11, with some regions to include Europe experiencing major terrorist strikes.
Below, the focus will mainly be on the first adaptation. How has
the al Qaeda vanguard and its affiliates employed the Internet? To what
extent do they seek to establish in cyberspace a virtual sanctuary from
which to carry out many of the activities that had taken place on the
ground during 19962001 in the Afghan base? The three remaining
strategic adaptations—utilizing ungoverned territory, exploiting the
conflict in Iraq, and continuing the fights against near or national level
enemies by local armed groups—will receive briefer attention.
Virtual Sanctuary. Since 9/11, growing attention has been paid
in both the news media and more scholarly publications to how al
Qaeda and other associated Salafi Jihad groups have made use of the
Internet. For example, Steve Coll and Susan Glasser suggested in the
Washington Post that “al Qaeda has become the first guerrilla
movement in history to migrate from physical space to cyberspace.
With laptops and DVDs, in secret hideouts and at neighborhood
Internet cafes, young codewriting Jihadists have sought to replicate
the…facilities they lost in Afghanistan with countless new locations on
the Internet.” 77
Gabriel Weimann, in a 2004 study, provided the following insights
into the expanding use of the Internet by Jihad groups. “In 1998,
around half of the thirty organizations designated [by the United States]
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as Foreign Terrorist Organizations … maintained Websites; by 2000,
virtually all terrorist groups had established their presence on the
Internet. Our scan of the Internet in 20032004 revealed hundreds of
Websites serving terrorists and their supporters.” He goes on to add:
“Terrorism on the Internet…is a very dynamic phenomenon: Websites
suddenly emerge, frequently modify their formats, and then swiftly
disappear—or seem to disappear by changing their online address but
retain much the same content.” 78 Since 2004, what Weimann described
has continued to burgeon.
Weimann and other specialists have conceptualized frameworks for
categorizing the different ways in which the Internet has been utilized,
describing the functions these activities hope to serve. Extrapolating
from these studies and based on extensive data mining of a primary
source database compiled by the SITE Institute, one can observe these
attempts to replicate in cyberspace many of the activities that took
place on the ground in Afghanistan in 19962001. 79 Here we divide
those activities into the following seven categories:
• Propagating the Salafi Ideology of Jihad. • Inspiring and Mobilizing the Ummah to Join the Jihad. • Psychological Warfare to Demoralize Enemies. • Networking the global Salafi Jihad Insurgency. • Operational Information Sharing—Manuals and Handbooks. • Operational Information Sharing—Training Videos and
Courses. • Collection for Targeting.
If effective, these virtual activities will provide al Qaeda and its
associated movements (AQAM) with the capacity to reach likeminded
individuals and groups in various regions of the world who are willing
to join the cause and take action. Through AQAM Web sites these
individuals and groups will have the opportunity to attain the
operational skills and capacity to execute violent strikes locally and on
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an independent basis. This is a new form of power projection no radical
movement has had in the past.
What follows is a description of each category and how they fit
together. It is based on an assessment of examples of the ways in which
al Qaeda and associated Salafi Jihad groups have carried out each
activity on their Internet Web sites. However, before doing so, it is also
important to briefly note the role and contribution that Satellite
television plays in this process. For Muslim populations in the Arab
world and elsewhere satellite channels such as AlJazeera and Al
Arabiya are often the first way in which they are engaged with the
issues and themes, described below, that are found on the Web sites of
al Qaeda and associated Jihad groups. In other words, there is a
synergy—albeit an unintended one—between them. Indeed, it may well
be that AlJazeera and AlArabiya, among others, are the precipitants—
provide an awaking—that takes the individual to the Internet for further
information. Here is what they will find.
1) Propagating the Salafi Ideology of Jihad. Recall that the first
requirement the Salafi Jihadists have to satisfy to be in a position to
initiate a global insurgency is to transmit a transnational ideology to
target audiences. They have to be able to successfully perform the same
functions on the Internet as those carried out by nationallevel
revolutionary movements. Through a large number of different Web
based activities to include sophisticated media fronts, news shows, and
online magazines they seek to execute these functions across the
globe. By doing so, they are able to disseminate a series of ideological
frames and messages that describe in global and local terms the social
and political conditions requiring immediate and drastic Jihad action.
Salafi ideology offers a comprehensive critique of the existing local
and global social/political situation as immoral and inhuman and seeks
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to instill in the Ummah a powerful sense of moral outrage and
commitment to holy war.
The Global Islamic Media Front, one of the main voices of al
Qaeda on the Web, is illustrative. This site, formerly known as Alneda,
is heavily focused on ideological type information. They not only post
all of the doctrinal speeches and statements of bin Laden and Zawahiri,
among others, but also provide analysis of these items for the Ummah.
An example—“Reading and Analysis of the Hero Tapes of Usama bin
Laden, Ayman alZawahiri, and Abu Musab al Zarqawi”—was posted
on May 1, 2006, and subsequently distributed across several other Jihad
forums.
Another example that focuses, at least in part, on the broader
ideological themes found in Salafi Jihad doctrine is the Voice of the
Caliphate, a weekly news program issued by the Global Islamic Media
Front. First appearing in 2005, it ties theory and practice together by
providing examples of how the global holy war is being carried out by
different elements of the Ummah.
Electronic Internet magazines serve a similar function. A recent
example is The Echo of Jihad, a 45page periodical that began
appearing in 2006. Its April edition features discussion of the
importance of Jihad, the relative importance of Islamic scholars versus
Mujahideen leaders like bin Laden, and recent operations by
Mujahideen in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and
elsewhere. A second example Ja’ami (which means mosque) is
produced by the Media Office of the Islamic Front of the Iraqi
Resistance.
Finally, in this category of ideological and doctrinal materials one
must include broad strategy documents such as al Qaeda’s sevenstage
plan for the next twenty years. Since it was first posted, this “strategy”
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document has been given a prominent and permanent status atop many
of the most frequently visited Jihadist forums on the Internet. Western
experts tend to characterize it as very naïve. They do so for the
following reasons. First, there is no way the scenario depicted in the
plan can be followed step by step. It is simply unworkable. Second, the
idea that alQaeda could establish a caliphate in the Islamic world is
absurd. The 20year plan has nothing to do with reality. It is far out of
reach.
However, these materials are not aimed at convincing Western
experts. They are directed at those many members of the Ummah who
read these materials at Jihadi forums on the Internet. What impact do
they have on them? Do they envision a coming major transformation of
society and return to an idealized past? And if they agree with it, are
they ready, as one threepart series run by the Global Islamic Media
Front asks, to “Gear Up” and prepare to join the Jihad?
2) Inspiring and Mobilizing the Ummah to Join the Jihad. It is
one thing to nod in agreement with broad ideological statements.
However, as the previous review of how revolutionary insurgent
movement’s inspired and recruited cadre explained, next comes the
hard work. The same is true here. But the Viet Cong did their inspiring
and mobilizing facetoface.
Al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists seek to substitute a plethora of
Internet methods to achieve the same end. Here we will examine one
important way they do so by celebrating the achievements and
sacrifices of those on the front lines of the global fight.
Consider the biographies of martyrs which are posted on the Web
with a high degree of regularity. Al Qaeda in Iraq, for example,
publishes on a periodic basis a document titled “From the Biographies
of Prominent Martyrs.” The eighth issue of it, dated January 2006, tells
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the story of the “Knights Group” of three Mujahideen. In great detail
the reader learns why and how each joined the Jihad and traveled to
Iraq to fight. An account of their courageous demise follows. The three
were pinned down in a house they were using as a base. The author
glorifies their deaths, noting the unwillingness of each to try to escape
or surrender. And one of the Jihad fighters, referred to as the lion Abu
Umar, is said to have “carried in his hands a mortar shell that he had
prepared for this situation.” He surprised the Americans attacking the
house, “pulled the ring out, throwing four of the criminals to hell, while
he went up to Paradise.”
This is but one example. Many others are contained in the SITE
Institute database. And they only maintain a sample of them. There are
also other formats for these biographies such as the videoed “last will
and testament” of suicide bombers. One example is the “Will of the
Martyr, Abu alZobeir alMohajir,” with video footage of his operation
in Karmat alFallujah in July 2005. It depicts a celebration in which he
enthusiastically describes the operation he is about to carry out and why
he intends to do so: “Allah ordered us to make Jihad…to defend his
religion. I urge all young Muslim men to follow us in Jihad and give
their lives for the sake of Allah’s religion.” He is then shown being
embraced by his comrades, before the film cuts to the scene of his
suicide car bombing—a “crusaders checkpoint” east of Fallujah. Again,
this is one of many examples found at Jihad Web sites.
Other means employed to inspire and mobilize are videos of the
preparation for and successful conduct of operations against US forces
in Afghanistan and Iraq. These appear on a daily basis on Jihadi forums
and Web sites. One example, issued by the Global Islamic Media Front
on January 22, 2006, is a 28minute video titled: “Jihad Academy,”
which is described as but a “single day for those who struggle in
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Allah's cause.” It highlights a number of attacks executed by Iraqi
insurgent groups to include al Qaeda in Iraq, the Mujahideen Army,
and the Islamic Army in Iraq. The attacks are shown in the dawn hours
and in the dark of night. They include sniper operations, detonation of
improvised explosive devices against a variety of targets, and rocket
and mortar fire.
There also are many publications posted on these Web sites that
fall into the category of inspiring, motivating, and mobilizing the
Ummah to join the fight. These guides are advocacy and motivational
pieces. The extent to which the message is being received and acted
upon remains to be determined.
Paralleling these are other videos with Jihadi field commanders
who provide the same kind of inspirational message. Of course, the
most prominent was Abu Musab alZarqawi. An example, titled “A
Message to the People,” was issued by the Mujahideen Shura Council,
which claims to be composed of six insurgency groups in Iraq. 80 In this
34minute video, Zarqawi was seen planning operations in a war room,
meeting with local leaders of alAnbar province, leading Mujahideen in
training exercises and on the battlefield. In another part of the film
Zarqawi was seen firing an automatic weapon, and stating: “America
will go out of Iraq, humiliated, defeated.”
Finally, scores of items on these Web sites go the next step and
include guides describing how to prepare for and then join the fight in
Iraq and elsewhere. One example, "This is the Road to Iraq," provides
instructions for prospective Jihadis intent on entering the war. The first
half concentrates on mental and physical preparation for Jihad, while
the second half furnishes guidance for successfully entering Iraq and
cultivating contacts with an insurgent group.
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In addition to celebrating the achievements and sacrifices of those
on the front lines of the global fight, there are other ways, and the
Salafi Jihadists employ the Internet to inspire and mobilize the Ummah
to join the fight. They use the same Web sites, for example, to recount
the suffering and carnage they assert is being inflicted on Muslims by
the United States and other Western powers, Israel, and apostate
regimes in Islamic countries.
3) Psychological Warfare to Demoralize Enemies. The flip side of
inspiring and mobilizing the Ummah to join the Salafi Jihad movement
and fight is the demoralizing of the near and far enemies of that
movement, convincing them to give up the fight. Here we will use the
insurgency in Iraq, the central front in the global Jihad, as illustrative.
A number of Internetbased tactics are employed by the Salafi
insurgent groups to demoralize their enemies in Iraq. Of these, the most
terrifying and intimidating have been the beheadings. This tactic has
been used against both Iraqis and foreigners working in Iraq. The
message to each group is unambiguous. The nightmare video of those
captured being decapitated by their captors is anything but a random act
of terrorism—it is carefully designed for specific audiences.
With respect to members of the Iraqi government, and those
contemplating joining it, the threat of beheading was explicitly made
through numerous Internetposted warnings. For example, on April 20,
2006 the Shari’a Commission of the Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq
issued the threat of “the sword and slaughter to he who joins the police
and the army.” The Council stated that all Muslims who join the Iraqi
security forces to serve those who “worship the devils, those who
disbelieve and fight in the cause of Taghut [Satan],” shall be considered
“converters who fight against Allah.” What awaits them?—“sharp
swords!” And in a similar message posted in December 2005, insurgent
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groups in Iraq were encouraged to “start cutting throats in the Islamic
way…. Slaughter three every day to show them that you do not hesitate
in implementing Allah’s orders.” To Western eyes this is immoral and
savage behavior. But for Salafi Jihadists it is characterized as religious
duty. The blood dripping sword has a powerful Salafi meaning.
In addition to the beheading videos, the insurgents in Iraq also post
a large number of videos and reports of other kinds of executions.
These include putting captives to death by firing squad, as well as
pulling police out of vehicles, off of street corners, and so on to gun
them down on the spot.
Members of the leadership in Iraq are often singled out by name.
For example, in November 2005 an al Qaeda affiliated Jihad forum
posted the photographs of the “Twenty Most Wanted People in the land
of the Two Rivers.” Various assassinations of senior level officials
since 2003 have demonstrated such threats are often backed up. The
“devil” Grand Ayatollah Ali alSistani was designated as number one—
the most wanted. The text concluded—“We ask Allah that the
Mujahideen will be able to remove their heads.”
With respect to the United States, the most frequent tactic
employed is the previously mentioned daily reports on all the Jihad
forums and Web sites of alleged successful operations carried out
against American forces in Iraq. Those that stand out among a large
number reviewed are the “Top Ten” videos of insurgent attacks that
began to appear in 2005. Released both by the Global Islamic Media
Front and a group calling itself the “Muslim Lions,” they are widely
distributed across Jihad forums today. Each includes ten attacks
perpetrated by groups such as Ansar alSunnah Army, Islamic Army in
Iraq, and al Qaeda in Iraq. They are impressive productions. These
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attacks also frequently appear the day after they occur in various
Western print and electronic news outlets.
Reports of attacks on the United States are not confined to Iraq.
The message from these Web sites is that America is under assault in
all the places it has entered in the Muslim world. Next to Iraq,
operations against US forces in Afghanistan receive the greatest
attention. And individual spectacular strikes like that on the US
Consulate in Jeddah by al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia are featured widely.
Taken in total the psychological warfare message is clear—the United
States is exposed and vulnerable to effective and continuous
Mujahideen attacks across the Muslim world.
Finally, the leaders of the global Jihad use the Internet to mock
failed US attempts to capture or kill them. One example that received
wide attention (to include being broadcast on alJazeera) was a speech
by Zawahiri following the January 2006 air strike on the village of
Damadola in Peshawar. Al Qaeda’s number two was supposed to be
hiding. He taunted President Bush—the “Butcher of Washington”—
asserting “that his death will only come at the time of Allah’s decree,
and until that time, he remains amid the Muslim masses, rejoicing in
their support, their attention, their generosity, their protection and their
participation in Jihad until we conquer you with the help and power of
Allah.”
The above items all aimed at influencing and undermining one of
America’s centers of gravity—the US home front. It is not unlike what
the Viet Cong successfully targeted over thirty years ago. Then as now
the objective is to follow Clausewitz’s advice. Attack the enemy’s
center of gravity—his strategic pressure points—and you will weaken
his capacity to fight war.
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4) Networking the Global Salafi Jihad Insurgency. In the latter
1990s, al Qaeda's use of the Internet concentrated on the first category
of this framework—propagating the Salafi ideology of Jihad to incite
and unify the Ummah for a common purpose. Since 9/11, al Qaeda and
associated members of the Salafi Jihad movement (a number of which
are fighting at the national level) have broadened there use of the Web
to include, as highlighted above, the second and third categories—
inspiring and mobilizing the Ummah to join the Jihad and
psychological warfare to demoralize enemies.
However, the loss of the Afghan sanctuary resulted in a further
expansion. It now includes the use of the Internet for tactical purposes,
such as training, and for operational objectives, to include how to
organize virtual cells.
Each of these functions requires secure communications to avoid
the disruptive tactics that US intelligence has been able to employ
against certain kinds of Jihadi Internet activity—e.g., closing down
fixed Web sites. Thus, al Qaeda and other groups began to employ new
methods to include protected bulletin boards, free upload services by
Internet providers, and the creation of proxy servers, among others. Up
todate instruction on how to employ these techniques is likewise made
available. Consider the following examples.
The first has to do with how to use thirdparty hosting services.
This technique exploits these servers, paid for primarily by advertising
agencies, to transmit operationallyrelated information and secret
communications. These servers, available across the Internet, provide
relatively anonymous hosting that a visitor can easily manipulate. 81 A
second way of transmitting operationallyrelated information and secret
communications is through posted messages on discussion boards at
passwordprotected forums. And a third technique entails creating and
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employing Internet proxy servers. Guides and manuals on how to
utilize each of these methods are available at the Global Islamic Media
Front site, among others.
These methods can be used to circulate a wide range of materials
like training videos, operational manuals, and guides for producing
weapons such as improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Along with
other virtual techniques they can also be exploited by operational cells
to secretly communicate and organize.
One way of communicating secretly, reported by Coll and Glasser,
is through public email services such as Hotmail. Here is how it
works: An operative opens an account on Hotmail, “writes a message
in draft form, saves it as a draft, and then transmits the email account
name and password during chatter on a relatively secure message
board.” Another operative “opens the email account and reads the
draft—since no email message was sent, there was a reduced risk of
interception.” This process has been characterized as a dead drop in
cyberspace. 82
Virtual methods such as these and others also provide the means to
establish operational cells in cyberspace. Discussion of how to do so
began to appear on different al Qaeda affiliated Web sites in 2004,
according to sources collected by the SITE Institute. These items go
into the details of how to do so, suggesting that once formed, members
can both exchange “work plans, strategies, and educational materials”
and eventually “meet in reality and execute operations in the field.”
An example of this kind of cell was reported in the spring of 2004.
On March 29 th , “Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers burst into the
Ottawa home of Mohammed Khawaja, a 24yearold computer
programmer…arresting him for alleged complicity in what Canadian
and British authorities described as a transatlantic plot to bomb targets
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in London and Canada.” Khawaja, who “met his British counterparts
online came to the attention of authorities when he traveled to Britain
and walked into a surveillance operation being conducted by British
Police.” He had gone there to “meet with his online acquaintances.
During the meeting he told them how to detonate bombs using cell
phones.” He had learned to do so from the Internet. 83
The plot involved seven men from four countries (United States,
United Kingdom, Canada, and Pakistan) who through the Internet
formed a virtual cell. During the time the cell was developing and
moving towards taking action there appears to have been training
provided to a member of it in Pakistan. Whether an al Qaeda linkage
was established to provide posttraining guidance or direction is unclear
from open sources. When arrested the cell was in the process of going
operational. This was the kind of cell—mainly homegrown members
who met both locally and in cyberspace—is most feared in Europe. As
we shall see later, through these new Webbased methods al Qaeda and
other Salafi Jihad groups seek to provide the means by which
prospective holy warriors at the local level can find likeminded
associates and receive the knowledge and training via the Internet that
is necessary to join the fight. The head of Britain’s domestic
intelligence service (MI5) stated publicly in November 2006 that she
“knew of 30 [such] conspiracies” and that “future attacks could be
chemical, biological or even involve some kind of nuclear device.” 84
5) Operational Information Sharing—Manuals and Handbooks
Al Qaeda has established an extensive online compilation of
operational manuals and handbooks for irregular warfare. These range
from documents not unlike the doctrinal manuals of conventional
military forces to more narrowly focused instructional guides on how to
carry out a particular tactic or produce and employ a specific weapon.
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The number of these items is now quite large. Here we will only
highlight a few examples.
Broader military and intelligence materials provide the means
whereby training can begin in virtually any location, simply by going
online. We now know that al Qaeda was producing such manuals well
before 9/11 because of what was found on computers and disks left
behind in Afghanistan. Perhaps the best known of these items is what
in the West came to be referred to as "The Encyclopedia of Jihad." An
al Qaeda production of thousand of pages, it is a guide for how to
establish an underground organization. The manual has circulated
across the Internet.
Perhaps the most well known and widely circulated doctrinal
manual is a 1600 page document titled “The Call for a Global Islamic
Resistance.” It was written by Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a Syrian
native who fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In the
manual he highlights how small and independent groups of Mujahideen
can conduct operations against the West. In the aftermath of 9/11,
Nasar called for a “third generation” of Salafi Jihadists to plan and
execute operations on their own but as part of the broader movement
and in solidarity with al Qaeda’s ideology. He is said to have spent time
in Europe attempting to do so. In some cases members of these cells
made contact with al Qaeda, and receive training and operational
support. Those who carried out the July 2005 bombings in London are
an example. 85
Beyond these broader manuals, a plethora of more narrowly
focused handbooks and guides are also readily available. Perhaps the
tactic/specific weapon receiving the widest attention on Jihadi Web
addresses since 2003 is the IED. Many of these reports are based on
lessons being drawn from Iraq. Often these reports and handbooks
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include diagrams and other visual depictions such as one distributed to
a passwordprotected al Qaeda affiliated forum in December 2005. The
author illustrates the construction of a charge, the distance that it is
placed from its target, and the amount of explosive to be used to
achieve a desired result against different kinds of targets. There is even
a discussion of physical principles such as blast waves.
This is but one example of the serious attention that is being given
to IEDs. And it should not be surprising in light of the effectiveness of
the weapon in Iraq, and the efforts the Pentagon has undertaken to find
an answer to it. Indeed, the Jihadi’s are busy learning about DOD
efforts at counter measures. Consider a report posted in April 2006 to a
passwordprotected Jihadist forum discussing a study produced by the
US think tank CSIS on innovations in the use of IEDs in Iraq and the
US response to these new insurgent tactics. The author discusses the
findings in the study and announces it will be translated into Arabic. He
then chides the authors stating that they should not be surprised at the
innovativeness of the Mujahideen in responding to new US tactics.
After all, he points out, “they have Allah on their side and you have
nobody on yours.”
Earlier in 2006, a similar item focused on the US Army’s plan to
deploy the Joint IED Neutralizer in Iraq as a means to reduce the risk
posed by roadside improvised explosive devices. The author highlights
the specifications of the Neutralizer, where it “seems less reinforced,”
and discusses a series of methods that the Mujahideen can use to defeat
it.
Beyond IEDs, there are handbooks and related materials on many
other kinds of weapons. These range from how to build a biological
weapon and dirty bombs to information warfare tactics to how to
service an AK47.
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6) Operational Information Sharing—Training Videos and
Courses. It should not be surprising that new Internet developments in
information management since 9/11 are quickly being adopted and
adapted by the Salafi Jihadists. A case in point is the use of videos and
slideshows as the basis for online training programs. Over the last three
years professionally produced training videos have been generated by
al Qaeda to replicate on the Web what it had been able to provide
prospective holy warriors on the ground in Afghanistan in the latter
1990s. The SITE Institute has compiled a large quantity of these
materials in its database.
Recent examples include training courses produced by Labik, an al
Qaeda media organization operating in Afghanistan. In March 2006, it
issued and posted a series of films of Mujahideen training for combat
and practicing tactical operations to include conducting raids on
houses, blowing up a bridge, attacking a target with rocketpropelled
grenades, and taking hostages, among other actions.
Other video productions concentrate on how to execute a specific
tactic or employ a particular weapon. An example is booby trapping. In
this presentation the trainee learns that this technique for attacking an
enemy can be implemented in many ways which require different
levels of expertise and equipment. It also explains how many of these
techniques were developed by “infidel states” such as England, Russia,
Germany, Italy, and the United States. The narrator suggests to the
viewer that these techniques should be studied. This particular
instructional exercise, which appeared in an al Qaeda forum in 2005,
concentrates on four specific types of booby trapping. Similar video
presentations can be found for almost every irregular warfare tactic and
on each of the weapons employed in this form of combat. These
include how to operate against US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan,
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how to infiltrate into those countries, and how to fight in different rural
and urban environments in each location.
These developments have led the Israeli specialist Reuven Paz to
propose that this vast and wideranging body of instructional/training
videos and slideshows posted on the Web over the last few years by
Jihad groups constitutes nothing short of an Internetbased “Open
University for Jihad.” Paz asserts that the Salafi Jihad movement has
turned the Internet into a cyber university for recruiting, indoctrinating,
and training future generations of holy warriors from the Arab and
Muslim world. 86
Al Qaeda’s Global Islamic Media Front sees eyetoeye with Paz’s
assessment. Indeed, they made this claim before Paz. In a 2005 article
titled “Al Qaeda University for Jihad Subjects,” the Front described
these activities as constituting a global institution in cyberspace,
providing instruction and training in psychological, electronic, and
physical warfare for the Mujahideen of tomorrow. The bottom line—
budding holy warriors now have the means available to begin to
undertake an irregular warfare training program in cyberspace,
complete with discussion boards and chat rooms.
In conjunction with the previous functions of the virtual sanctuary,
the use of new information management tools highlighted in this
section facilitate the development of homegrown cells discussed earlier.
These cells can emerge in any location and on their own and develop
the means to prepare for and carry out operations. There are now
examples of this homegrown pattern that have taken place since 9/11.
As noted above, in some cases the local cell has made contact with and
received assistance from al Qaeda, while in other instances this was not
the case. The attack on the London subway, the train bombings in
Madrid, the series of suicide operations in Casablanca, and the actions
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of the Hofstad group in the Netherlands, to name the most prominent
cases, reflect both these homegrown variations.
7) Collection Targeting. Finally, the Internet provides Salafi
operational units with a significant amount of data about potential
targets, particularly ones in the West. The extent to which they have
mined the Web for this kind of information was first uncovered on al
Qaeda computers left behind in Afghanistan. Based on open sources
readily available on the Internet, al Qaeda had built target folders/files
prior to 9/11 on public utilities, transportation systems, government
buildings, airports, major harbors, and nuclear power plants. They also
collected US government and private sector studies of the
vulnerabilities of these and other facilities to different types of terrorist
operations.
Additionally, they have access to overhead imagery and related
structural information of many potential targets. This allows them to
not only access the target in terms of its most vulnerable points, but to
observe security measures that have been taken to protect it.
According to Dan Verton, a specialist in cyberterrorism, since 9/11
"al Qaeda cells now operate with the assistance of large databases
containing details of potential targets in the U.S. They use the Internet
to collect intelligence on those targets, especially critical economic
nodes, and modern software enables them to study structural
weaknesses in facilities as well as predict the cascading failure effect of
attacking certain systems." 87
Since 9/11 the US government has undertaken measures to protect
such information, particularly where it concerns critical facilities and
infrastructure. Information that used to be publicly available is now
secured. However, in this game of cat and mouse the Jihadis are
teaching one another how to penetrate secure Web sites. For example,
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recently the Global Islamic Media Front began circulating a 74page
guide on how to identify the vulnerabilities of and penetrate—hack—
into them. The guide highlights software that can be used to do so.
Sanctuaries in Ungoverned Territory. Beyond this virtual
sanctuary, to what extent has al Qaeda also been able to carry out in
ungoverned and largely lawless tribal areas of the AfghanPakistan
border (and possibly in other regions of the world as well) those
activities that it accomplished during 19962001 in Afghanistan? Has it
established a physical sanctuary in the border region that contributes to
its ability to continue to foster global insurgency activities? Though it
began out of dire necessity, it now appears that al Qaeda’s relocation to
the ungoverned tribal areas of North Waziristan has evolved in this
way.
It has been difficult for US security agencies to ascertain exactly
what has taken place in Waziristan. Only now are the opportunities
provided to al Qaeda in these lawless and ungoverned areas being
understood. Until recently, the extent to which such territories could be
utilized by armed groups to establish secure sanctuaries was not
seriously contemplated.
For US intelligence, these areas well constitute yet another “new
frontier,” an important front in the “long war.” It will need to develop a
clear picture of what al Qaeda and other armed groups of concern are
able to achieve in various ungoverned territories. But this is not easily
accomplished according to a former intelligence officer from a nonUS
service who had attempted to do so against a terrorist group operating
out of ungoverned territory in Africa. The objective, he explained, was
to acquire ongoing intelligence of how the terrorist group we were
fighting against elsewhere used that ungoverned territory. His service
had a very difficult time trying to do so.
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The tribal area along the AfghanPakistan border is illustrative. It
exists within a larger Central Asian territory that encompasses parts of
several states and is distinguished by rugged terrain, poor accessibility,
low population density, and little government presence. This creates
safe havens for terrorists, insurgents, militias, and criminal groups. And
local governments on their own lack the economic, military,
intelligence, and police power to do anything about it.
In early 2002, elements of the Taliban and al Qaeda retreated into
the AfghanPakistan frontier. And bin Laden was believed to have
taken refuge in the mountains of this territory. During 2003, reports
began to warn that al Qaeda and Taliban forces were regrouping in this
area and forming an alliance with the radical Islamist party Hizbi
Islami. Since then they have fought a protracted war against the United
States, NATO, and local government forces. It is beyond the scope of
this paper to chronicle that fight. However, there now seems to be no
question that al Qaeda maintains a robust fighting force and growing
infrastructure in the area.
But the specific details of how al Qaeda reestablished fighting
units in this ungoverned space and the kind of infrastructure for training
and related activities it rebuilt has been difficult to discern for US
intelligence. To be sure, Jihadis were known to be traveling to the area
to join the fight much like their predecessors did in the 1980s and
1990s. But a clear picture of what transpired since 2002 has been
elusive.
Only in early 2007 did a clearer picture emerge about the extent to
which al Qaeda is now exploiting this new sanctuary to continue to
foster a global insurgency. According to “American officials…there
was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman
alZawahri, had been steadily building a [training and] operations hub
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in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan…. Recent
intelligence showed that the compounds functioned under a loose
command structure and were operated by groups of Arab, Pakistani and
Afghan militants allied with.” 88
While training camps have “yet to reach the size and level of
sophistication of the al Qaeda camps established in Afghanistan under
Taliban rule,” nevertheless they are now assessed by US intelligence as
much more advanced that had been previously thought. 89 Moreover, the
emergence of this safe haven in North Waziristan and the surrounding
area “has helped senior [al Qaeda] operatives communicate more
effectively with the outside world via courier and the Internet.” 90
According to Bruce Hoffman:
AlQaeda…has regrouped and reorganized from the setbacks meted out by the United States, its allies and partners shortly after 9/11…and is marshalling its forces to continue the war that Osama bin Laden declared against America 10 years ago with his then mostly ignored fatwa. In this respect, alQaeda is functioning exactly as its founders envisioned it: as both an inspiration and an organization, simultaneously summoning a broad universe of likeminded extremists to violence while still providing guidance and assistance for more spectacular types of terrorist operations. 91
The AfghanPakistan border is not the only ungoverned territory
out of which al Qaeda and/or its regional affiliates have developed a
presence. A case in point is the Algerianbased Group for Preaching
and Combat (GSPC). An adherent to Salafi Jihadist branch of
Islamism, the GSPC launched a ruthless insurgent campaign in Algeria
in the 1990s, targeting the government, the military, and civilians.
Along with the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), it killed tens of thousands
of innocent Algerians. 92
Members of the GSPC leadership have issued public statements
declaring their support and connections with al Qaeda and other Salafi
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Jihadist organizations. They have also said they intend to attack US and
European targets as part of the global holy war. An alleged member of
the GSPC was accused of involvement in the attack on the USS Cole.
Other GSPC operatives have been implicated in attempted terrorist
operations in other parts of the world. European intelligence services
estimate that this Salafi affiliate has several hundred operatives
deployed outside of Algeria. Some are fighting in Iraq.
The GSPC has also moved into the Sahel region of Africa to
establish base areas. Large parts of that territory, which cut across Mali,
Chad, Niger, and Mauritania, are ungoverned. Of these four states, the
GSPC appears to have the largest presence in the northern part of Mali.
However, like al Qaeda’s presence in the tribal areas of the Afghan
Pakistan border, open source information on the activities being
undertaken by the GSPC in the Sahel are sparse. What is known is that
they are taking advantage of this remote area to establish a presence.
They appear to be able to move freely, smuggle contraband, recruit
from among the impoverished indigenous population with a large youth
cohort, and establish secure bases for various activities. But the extent
to which they are able to do so is not known. Neither is how this fits
into the larger Salafi Jihad.
To summarize, a vacuum is burgeoning within the territory of
fragile and failing states. This expanse of lawless and ungoverned
space, estimated to include remote parts of more than 20 countries, is
beyond the authority of local governments. It creates potential safe
havens in which armed groups can establish secure bases for self
protection, training, planning, and launching. The extent and degree to
which al Qaeda and other Salafi Jihadists are taking advantage of it is
in need of extensive investigation.
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The Iraqi Central Front. Al Qaeda and many of the associated
groups that comprise the Salafi Jihad movement have come to see the
conflict in Iraq within the context of the “long Jihad.” Consequently,
they seek to exploit the insurgency there for two principal reasons.
First, they have anointed Iraq the main front, the forward edge of
the global battle on which to engage the far enemy—the United States.
They believe that by forcing the United States to give up the fight in
Iraq they will inflict a defeat of enormous strategic consequences on it.
Second, the Salafi Jihadists also believe Iraq affords them a vital
opportunity to spawn a new corps of skilled fighters who can gain the
kind of experience that after they leave Iraq can be put to good use
fighting in their native lands or elsewhere. In other words, in the first
decades of the 21 st century these “Iraqi Arabs” can serve the same
purpose the “Afghan Arabs” did at the close of the 20 th century. 93
Evidence of this has been found in the ruins of the air strike that killed
Zarqawi on June 7, 2006. According to The New York Times, “At the
time of his death…[he] was still trying to transform his organization
from one focused on the Iraqi insurgency into a global operation
capable of striking far beyond Iraq's borders.” According to Jordanian
security officials, Zarqawi’s “recruiting efforts…were threefold: He
sought volunteers to fight in Iraq and others to become suicide bombers
there, but he also recruited about 300 who went to Iraq for terrorist
training and sent them back to their home countries, where they await
orders to carry out strikes.” Others believe that beyond their home
countries, some of these trainees are also in Western countries. 94
Statements by bin Laden, Zawahiri, Zarqawi, and other leaders of
al Qaeda have made clear that they view Iraq within this twofold
context. Likewise, it is the message that is repeatedly conveyed on their
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Web sites. Iraq provides a unique and historic opportunity to fight and
defeat the main enemy of the global Jihad movement.
Iraq has eclipsed other fronts to include Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Yemen in terms of centrality to the global
Jihad. It dominates Salafi Web sites, and is being used to rouse radical
Salafi passions, inspire Arab and Muslim youth, and animate the
Ummah to see Iraq through the lens of the “long Jihad.” Thus, they are
told the Mujahideen are fighting a pivotal battle in Iraq to expel the
United States from the region. Iraq is part of a long protracted war—a
“long Jihad”—against the West that seeks to overthrow all apostate
regimes, liberate all occupied lands, and reestablish the Caliphate.
Since the US intervention in 2003, these themes have been
employed as part of a major effort to inspire members of the Ummah
from across the Muslim world to travel to Iraq and join the fight.
Moreover, it is now apparent that there are networks for expediting this
process both in the Middle East and beyond. To be sure, the majority of
“Iraqi Arabs” come from the region. And of these, Saudi Arabia and
Yemen appear to be at the head of the list. But foreign fighters in Iraq
are also drawn from other parts of the Gulf, as well as from Syria,
Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Sudan. Beyond the region Mujahideen
have come from Britain, France, and elsewhere in Europe.
Within Iraq these foreign fighters are part of several Salafi Jihadist
groups that have joined together under the umbrella of al Qaeda in the
Land of the Two Rivers and established the operational capabilities to
emerge as a major component of the insurgency. There is no need to go
into the details here of the impact they have had on the fight in Iraq. It
is substantial. And, as noted above, it will produce a third generation of
Jihadi fighters, young Muslims transformed into ideologically
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convinced and well trained through practice holy warriors—the latest
iteration of Qutb’s vanguard.
In sum, the bottom line is that Iraq has become an integral part of
how al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists have sought to adapt and re
organize following the strategic setback in Afghanistan to continue to
facilitate a global millenarian insurgency.
Fostering the Global Salafi Jihad Movement. Finally, al
Qaeda’s fourth adaptation appears to have focused on reestablishing its
selfassigned role as vanguard of the Salafi Jihad movement, a role that
was set back as a result of Operation Enduring Freedom. How has al
Qaeda sought to do so? Of the four adaptations examined, this was the
most nebulous and at first blush difficult to discern. Moreover,
developing a detailed mosaic of what is now referred to as al Qaeda and
Associated Movements (AQAM) was beyond the scope of this paper.
To be sure, the construct of such a mosaic is needed, and below we will
identify two efforts that address elements of it. Here we can only
highlight the broader contours of AQAM and identify key questions
that remain to be addressed.
Recall Hoffman’s portrayal of al Qaeda “as both an inspiration and
an organization.” With respect to the former, al Qaeda’s founders saw
as one of the central missions of their organization the realization of the
vanguard party concept advocated by Qutb. And so, to that end they
sought to “summon a broad universe of likeminded extremists” to
become part of a global Jihad movement. 95 In the 1990s, in
Afghanistan, al Qaeda was able to begin to carry out this mission by
establishing a network of linkages with a score of nationallevel
Islamist groups, who were employing guerrilla violence and terrorism
against their governments. Many authors to include Hoffman have
chronicled these pre9/11 developments.
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Al Qaeda from its Afghan sanctuary provided nationallevel Jihad
organizations with financial assistance, training, weapons, and spiritual
guidance. In return, these entities were to see themselves as part of al
Qaeda’s global struggle. Recipients included radical Islamist armed
groups from Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Chechnya,
Kashmir, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Bosnia, among a number of
other places.
The capacity of al Qaeda to continue to play this vanguard role and
to maintain connections with the groups that comprised this network of
associations was set back considerably with the loss of its Afghan
sanctuary. What has al Qaeda done to adapt in order to reestablish
linkages with its old Salafi Jihad affiliates and add new ones? What are
the constituent parts of AQAM? How do local Jihad groups view their
place in AQAM and relationship to al Qaeda? How many local
affiliates exist? These questions highlight what needs to be discovered
about al Qaeda’s post9/11 efforts to reestablish a network of linkages
with nationallevel Islamist groups.
As late as 2005, four years after 9/11, US officials were still
struggling to understand the relationship between al Qaeda and its
affiliates, and the extent to which those linkages had been
reestablished. In 2006, key US national security documents began to
use the term and al Qaeda Associated Movements (AQAM) to refer to
this rejuvenated relationship. US Central Command’s (CENTCOM)
posture statement for fighting the war in 2006 is illustrative. It assessed
al Qaeda through the “near enemy—far enemy” lens. AQAM was
described as a global movement having a strong presence in the
CENTCOM region through several local Salafi Jihad affiliates. 96
These affiliates were described as fighting against local apostate
regimes (who are partners of the US)—“near enemies”—in the
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CENTCOM area. According to the posture statement, the relationship
between al Qaeda and local Jihad groups since 9/11 has been facilitated
by the Internet.
This enemy is linked by modern communications, expertly using the virtual world for indoctrination and proselytizing. The Internet empowers these extremists in a way that would have been impossible a decade ago. It enables them to have global reach…. And this safe haven of websites and the Internet is proliferating rapidly, spreading al Qaeda’s ideology well beyond its birthplace in the Middle East. 97
To be sure, an important way al Qaeda has sought to reestablish
linkages with local Salafi Jihad groups is through its virtual sanctuary.
Indeed, as was described earlier, al Qaeda uses the Internet to propagate
its Salafi Jihad ideology to instill in the Ummah a powerful sense of
moral outrage and commitment to holy war. Through a large number of
different Webbased activities al Qaeda seeks to propagate its message
to individuals and groups across the globe. In doing so, they
disseminate a series of ideological frames and messages that describe in
global and local terms the social and political conditions requiring
immediate and drastic Jihad action.
That this is taking place is evident. Through this virtual sanctuary
al Qaeda seeks to reestablish its vanguard role and attempts to inspire
and encourage a global movement of radicalized Muslim groups to
fight locally against “near enemies,” while seeing themselves as a part
of a larger global struggle against the United States, the “far enemy.”
But how organized are these efforts and who do they reach? A
recent study by Rita Katz and Josh Devon of the SITE Institute
describes this Internet activity as “very structured…. A handful of
primary source Jihadist Web sites distribute the media [activities] of the
leaders of alQaeda and other Jihadist groups. Through this small
number of specific, password protected online forums, the leading
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Jihadist groups, like alQaeda, post their communiqués and
propaganda. By keeping primary source Jihadist Web sites
small…[they] can provide a transparent mechanism to authenticate
communiqués.” 98
Although these primary Web sites are relatively few in number,
Katz and Devon note that members of them disseminate official
communiqués, doctrinal treatises, strategic and operational documents,
special messages, and other materials through a much broader and far
reaching network of other Web sites, message boards, egroups, blogs,
and instant messaging services available through the Internet. Here is
one way they say this process functions:
Once an official message from a Jihadist group is posted to a primary source message forum, members of the primary message forum will then disseminate that posting to other secondary message boards. From these secondary message boards, other peripheral individuals will then disseminate the information onto other message boards. 99
Katz and Devon propose the following network graphic to illustrate
how this virtual capability seeks to be “at once decentralized but rigidly
hierarchical:”
The primary Web sites at the center of the network graphic are
comprised of al Qaeda and organizations that appear closely associated
with it to include insurgent groups in Iraq, the Taliban and other groups
in Afghanistan, the Islamic Maghreb (formerly the GSPC), the Libyan
Islamic Fighting Group, Saudi Jihadist groups, and others. Since
January 2006, report Katz and Devon, the webbased activities of these
AQAM elements have been coordinated and distributed through a new
virtual entity—the AlFajr Center—to the secondary and tertiary Web
sites noted on the above graphic. What this portends is that individuals
and groups across the globe may now easily acquire the kinds of
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information identified in each of the seven categories of the virtual
sanctuary described earlier.
Dissemination of Primary Source Jihad Data 100
In sum, the activities carried out by the AlFajr Center provide the
potential for “fostering a unified, global Jihadist community.”
Moreover, it can assist al Qaeda and key associates “coordinate, share
information, and consolidate their power to continue to lead the
[global] Jihadist movement,” which is one of al Qaeda’s original and
enduring missions. 101
If this is a key way al Qaeda has sought to reestablish its self
assigned role as vanguard of the global Salafi Jihad movement, then the
followon question is how do we know who comprises the local
affiliates of AQAM and on what basis do they view themselves as a
part of AQAM? One recent study has sought to identify criteria for
membership in AQAM. The author, Assaf Moghadam, proposes that to
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be a member of AQAM a Salafi Jihad entity must be a Sunni Islamic
group and meet one of the following four criteria. 102
First, a group can be considered part of AQAM if “Al Qaeda is
reflected in the group’s name” and its members adhere to al Qaeda’s
agenda. 103 In this category he includes al Qaeda in Iraq, which prior to
September 2004 was known as Jama'at alTawhid walJihad. Founded
by Abu Musab alZarqawi, in October 2004 he declared the allegiance
of the group to bin Laden and al Qaeda’s strategy. This was followed
by a change in the name of group. A more recent example of the first
criteria can be found in North Africa. The Algerian Salafist Group for
Preaching and Combat, known by its French initials GSPC, announced
at the end of 2006 it was switching its name to Al Qaeda of the Islamic
Maghreb. Long associated with al Qaeda it was chosen by bin Laden to
forge links and coordinate the activities of likeminded groups in
Morocco, Nigeria, Mauritania, Tunisia and elsewhere. 104 Thus, the
name change.
Second, a group may be considered part of AQAM if, according to
Moghadam, there is evidence it has “internalized the worldview of Al
Qaeda and global Jihad.” Several organizations fall into this category
including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU); Jaishe
Muhammad (JeM) and LashkareJhangvi (LeJ), both whose base of
operations is Pakistan; Indonesia’ Jemaah Islamiyya (JI); and the
Moroccan group Assirat al Moustaquim (Direct Path). These groups
and several others similar to them meet this second criteria established
by Moghadam. 105
A third criteria is that a “group is devoted to and actively practices
violence to overthrow an existing Islamic regime or regimes with the
aim to create a transnational Caliphate in its stead.” 106 Here also,
several groups fit into this category including Ansar al Islam, a “radical
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Islamist group of Iraqi Kurds and Arabs who have vowed to establish
an independent Islamic state in Iraq.” Established in December 2001, it
has had a close affiliation with alQaeda and was aligned with Abu
Musab alZarqawi, when he led al Qaeda in Iraq. 107 Also in this
category is a second Iraqi group, Ansar al Sunnah Army, as well as the
Army of the Levant, Jamatul Mujahedin Bangladesh (JMB) and Hizb
utTahrir alIslami, a radical Islamic political movement that seeks to
implement pure Salafi Jihad doctrine and create an Islamic caliphate in
Central Asia. 108
Finally, a group may be considered an al Qaeda affiliate and part of
AQAM if it “has engaged in the practice of takfir.” In other words, it
has labeled a Muslim regime or its leaders as apostates because they
demonstrate disbelief. Recall the discussion of Qutb and how he came
to charge that Nasser was guilty of conscious belief that there was a
better way to rule than that based on Islam. Therefore, he was an
apostate ruler and a legitimate target for Jihad. Several of the groups
associated with the previous criteria likewise fit into this category.
They label the local regimes they are fighting in the same terms that
Qutb used to discredit Nasser. This has been true, for example, of the
Algerian GSPC, and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) from which it
split in 1998 over a disagreement on whether civilians constitute
legitimate targets.
In sum, this final section has sought to highlight the broader
contours of how al Qaeda has attempted since 9/11 to reestablish its
selfassigned role as vanguard of the Salafi Jihad movement. As noted
above, more attention needs to be focused on this adaptation in order to
gain a deeper understanding of what has transpired in order to develop
a detailed mosaic of Al Qaeda and its Associated Movements (AQAM).
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GLOBAL INSURGENCY STRATEGY AND THE SALAFI JIHAD MOVEMENT
Richard H. Shultz
A NEW TYPE OF WAR?
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attack on strategic
targets inside the United States by al Qaeda, scholars, analysts, and
policy specialists began to interpret and frame those events within the
larger context of war. But was it war? And if it was, what kind of war
was it? Al Qaeda was not a state but a nonstate actor. Many labeled al
Qaeda a transnational terrorist organization. Could such a nonstate
armed group go to war with a major state actor? What kind of war
could it carry out? There were no easily decipherable answers to these
questions, for al Qaeda did not reflect or emulate the conduct of war as
it was known and practiced in the past.
Within a short period of time the US government began to describe
the post9/11 conflict environment—one in which America found itself
engaged in a fight against unconventional and asymmetrical enemies
who could pose major, even strategic, security threats—as a global war
on terrorism. This generated a great deal of discussion and differences
of opinion. Was this an accurate portrayal of the post9/11 security
environment or did such a characterization lack strategic clarity?
By the summer of 2005 senior Bush administration officials
expressed serious doubts about this terminology and recast how they
described the fight against al Qaeda, its affiliates, and other terrorist
groups. Illustrative of this was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. At
news conferences and in public addresses he began to speak of a global
struggle against violent extremism—“the long war”—rather than a
global war on terrorism. Other senior military leaders, to include the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, followed suit.
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But this begged the question, how should we understand those
conducting “the long war?” Who are they and what kind of battle are
they fighting? What are their objectives and what kind of strategy and
tactics do they employ in this fight to achieve them? One possible
answer that has been suggested is that the United States and its allies
are now confronted by a global Salafi Jihad insurgency.
Those taking this position argue that a more precise description of
the post9/11 conflict against the Salafi Jihad movement, which will be
discussed in detail later, would be to frame it as a global insurgency;
one that challenges the Westerndominated state system. Within this
context, al Qaeda and loosely associated groups and movements are
said to comprise an evolving form of networked nonstate actors who
operate locally, regionally, and globally. If this is the case—that a
global insurgency is under way—then the implications for how to
counter it are significant and will require important changes in US
policy and strategy.
But how do we know that a global Salafi Jihad insurgency is
underway? To determine whether this is the case, this study poses the
following core research questions:
• Is a diverse confederation of armed groups, linked together by a common ideology (or narrative) and strengthened by new power enhancers, conducting a global insurgency against the United States and its allies?
• Is this global insurgency being carried out by a radical Salafi Jihad movement (and its al Qaeda vanguard) and does it have as its goals a) to foster regime change locally in apostate Muslim states and b) international system transformation globally?
• Is the strategy adopted by the Salafi Jihad movement a hybrid or an adaptation of the insurgency strategy that revolutionary movements employed against states during the
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latter half of the 20 th century? If so, what does it have in common with them and how does it differ?
To answer these core research questions, a series of corollary issues
will first be examined as a prelude to conceptualizing a set of
requirements or model of a hypothetical global insurgency.
These requirements will then be tested against existing open source
information on the actions, activities, and operations of the Salafi Jihad
movement and its al Qaeda vanguard. The objective will be to
determine whether preliminary evidence supports the proposition that
those actions, activities, and operations, when seen through the lens of
the proposed requirements, can be described, at minimum, as a global
insurgency in its incipient stage of development. While these findings
can only serve as preliminary indicators, the study will provide the
basis for further analysis.
INSURGENCY: CONCEPTS AND FRAMEWORKS
The starting point for conceptualizing a hypothetical model or set
of requirements for a global insurgency is a review of the following
concepts and frameworks: 1) definitions and classifications of
insurgency; 2) distinctions between insurgency and terrorism; and 3)
relationship between insurgency and social movements. Below are the
summary points from this review, followed by the text from which they
are deduced.
Summary Points
• Four types of nonstate armed groups—insurgents, terrorists, militias, criminal organizations—today pose major threats (to include strategic ones) to nationstates including the United States.
• Important differences exist among these armed groups, particularly between insurgent movements and terrorist organizations. An appreciation of those differences is essential to combat each of these types of armed groups.
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• Strategies employed by insurgent groups, both organizationally and operationally, are more multifaceted and diverse than those of its armed group counterparts.
• Insurgencies are protracted forms of unconventional warfare that seek to accomplish their goals and objectives through the employment of irregular military forces and illegal political organizations.
• The instruments of violence and influence employed by insurgents range from guerrilla operations, terrorism, and sabotage to political mobilization, political action, psychological operations and intelligence activities.
• Insurgencies are struggles for power and legitimacy. Insurgents seek to destroy the power and legitimacy of the government they are challenging, while enhancing the power and legitimacy of their movement.
• There is no one type of insurgency. A useful way to categorize them is based on their aspirations or objectives. Of the seven insurgent variations identified, the goals of revolutionary and millenarian insurgent movements are the most farreaching. Each envisions a major transformation of the political and social system. The former seeks to advance to an idealized future, the latter to return to a golden past.
• An important lens through which to understand the nature of revolutionary and millenarian insurgencies is social movement theory. Indeed, these two forms of insurgency have several characters in common with high risk social movements.
• Social movements represent groups on the margins of state and society that seek to reform or transform the political system. To do so they develop complex political strategies, given their political marginality.
• The more farreaching the change sought by a social movement, the more multifaceted the tasks the movement’s organization has to accomplish. The same is true of revolutionary and millenarian insurgencies.
• To accomplish farreaching change, radical social movements engage in highrisk activism. Like revolutionary and millenarian insurgencies, this necessitates development of a mass base of dedicated supporters who must be motivated to take action.
• For highrisk social movements, ideology performs a number of vital functions. To build a mass base, ideology plays a central role in the recruitment process that attracts new members; shapes the loyalty
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of these new members to retain them; and serves as a tool for waging the struggle.
• Highrisk social movement ideology constitutes a series of frames that must come to resonate with the target audience. It is through the movement’s organization that it comes to do so. Ideology and organization are symbiotically connected to one another.
Defining Insurgency
Insurgency is a strategy of unconventional and asymmetric warfare
executed by one of four different types of nonstate armed groups that
today pose complicated analytic and significant operational challenges
to those states that are confronted by them. Over the last two decades
each of these armed groups, who carry out their activities both within
and across state boundaries, have increasingly threatened state
supremacy. In doing so, they present nontraditional challenges to the
intelligence and security services of governments that are unlike the
conventional ones posed by states.
Armed groups can be divided into a fourpart typology—
insurgents, terrorists, militias, and organized crime. 109 While it is the
case that these nonstate actors have several characteristics in
common, 110 they also have important differences that distinguish one
from the other. It is important for governments to understand why and
how insurgents, terrorists, militias, and criminal organizations vary
conceptually from one another and to categorize and respond to them as
such. Failure to do so can result in serious policy and combat
misfortune.
Insurgency, from an organizational and operational perspective, is
the most intricate of the four types of activities carried out by armed
groups. As will be discussed, this can be seen when insurgent
movements are juxtaposed with terrorist organizations. It is likewise
the case when they are put side by side with militias and criminal
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groups. Insurgents can attack the state with an array of political and
paramilitary instruments because of how they organize and operate.
Numerous authors have proposed definitions of insurgency as can
be observed in the literature on political violence. Bard O’Neill, author
of Insurgency and Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare, is
one of the most frequently cited. He describes insurgents as armed
groups that “consciously use political resources and violence to
destroy, reformulate, or sustain the basis of legitimacy of one or more
aspects of politics [within a state].” 111 Variations of O’Neill’s definition
abound. 112
Consider the statement put forward in the CIA’s mid1980s Guide
to the Analysis of Insurgency—“Insurgency is a protracted political
military activity directed toward completely or partially controlling the
resources of a country through the use of irregular military forces and
illegal political organizations.” 113 In doing so, insurgents seek to
weaken and/or destroy the power and legitimacy of a ruling
government. They also simultaneously aim at increasing their own
power and legitimacy.
To this end, an insurgent movement, depending on its goals and
strategy, will draw on and employ a range of operational instruments
including guerrilla warfare, terrorism, and sabotage, as well as political
mobilization, political action, intelligence/counterintelligence activities,
and propaganda/psychological warfare.
Insurgents can adopt different organizational forms ranging from
those based on political and paramilitary dimensions to more narrowly
structured conspiratorial ones. The classic or revolutionary insurgent
model from the Cold War era was designed to recruit, indoctrinate, and
mobilize supporters to establish an alternative political authority to the
existing government, while employing intelligence and military means
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to attack and weaken that government through escalating violence. A
conspiratorial variation, by way of contrast, focuses more exclusively
on using violence to undermine the will of a government or occupying
power to sustain losses and stay in the fight. It pays much less attention
to controlling a particular territory, mass mobilization or building a
parallel political apparatus.
Also affecting the approach taken by insurgents is the area or
terrain where they carry out their activities. They can take place in an
urban and/or rural environment, as well as transnationally. Each of
these locations will have an impact on how the insurgents approach
each of the characteristics or elements of this strategy.
On the basis of the above considerations, the following are the
essential characteristics of insurgency as it will be approached in this
study:
• Insurgency is a protracted political and military set of activities directed toward partially or completely gaining control over the territory of a country.
• Insurgents seek to accomplish these objectives through the use of irregular military forces and illegal political organizations.
• Insurgents employ instruments ranging from guerrilla operations, terrorism, and sabotage to political mobilization, political action, psychological operations and intelligence/counterintelligence activities.
• Each of these instruments is designed to weaken and/or destroy the power and legitimacy of a ruling government, while at the same time increasing the power and legitimacy of the insurgent group.
Types of Insurgencies
There was little agreement among specialists during the Cold War
over how to categorize different types of insurgency. And this remained
true in its aftermath in the 1990s. Various experts were animated by
different aspects of this type of armed group. Consequently, they
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created idiosyncratic orderings or typologies of insurgency. Some
focused on the organizational and operational dimensions of insurgent
movements to classify them. Others concentrated on their aspirations.
The following examples are illustrative of these two approaches.
The aforecited Guide to the Analysis of Insurgency sets out four
broad variations of insurgency in its typology—politically organized,
Organizational Structure
Strategy Vulnerabilities Other Characteristics
Politically organized Extensive, complex political structure developed before military operations are initiated.
Shadow government created to undermine authority of existing regime; political consolidation precedes military consolidation of contested areas.
Vulnerable to concentrated effort aimed at neutralizing the infrastructure and establishing administrative control in contested areas.
Protracted warfare; tendency towards excessive revolutionary zeal.
Militarily organized Small, decentralized structure of armed insurgents serving as a catalyst for mobilizing opposition against an existing regime.
Insurgent groups hope to form focus for disaffected population; destruction of regime legitimacy by military action; military consolidation precedes political consolidation of contested
Vulnerable to aggressive military action during early stages of rebellion because of undeveloped political structure, relatively vulnerable logistics and communications networks among local populations.
Hope to demoralize regime and attain power without extensive conventional warfare.
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areas. Traditionally organized Existing tribal or religious organizational structure.
No unique strategy common to all; will adopt strategy of one of the other types.
Limited capacity for absorbing economic and military punishment; leadership conflicts are common; leaders often lack sufficient motivation, experience as insurgents, and political discipline.
Recruitment on basis of ethnic exclusivity.
Urban insurgency Cellular structure in urban environment.
Threaten regime legitimacy through urban disruption.
Restricted to small area and must hide within population; attrition resulting from military/police pressure and the psychological stress of clandestinity.
Often in support of wider insurgency waged in rural areas.
militarily organized, traditionally organized, and urban organized.
Below is a brief synopsis of what each entails: 114
As can be seen, in this categorization there are two key or defining
variables, the organizational structure and operational strategy
employed to achieve intermediate and longterm insurgent objectives.
Other characteristics receive consideration in the text accompanying
this delineation—ideology, motivation, leadership, cadre background—
but organizational structure and operational strategy are the key
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variables used to differentiate the political, military, traditional, and
urban variations. A similar approach can be seen in Christopher
Clapham’s categorization of insurgencies in Africa in the 1990s. 115
Bard O’Neill, on the other had, concentrates on insurgent
aspirations. In Insurgency and Terrorism he identifies several types of
insurgency movements. For each, their principle goal or objective is the
central variables. He notes that by doing so “important distinctions
emerge.” Moreover, “If we fail to see the fundamental differences with
respect to goals, we make a major mistake because…differentiating
among goals has not only academic value but some very vital practical
implications for those involved in [countering] insurgents.” 116 For
instance, this would be true in terms of whether an insurgent movement
or elements within it are open to negotiation and political compromise.
Based on aspirations, O’Neill singles out seven types of insurgent
movements—anarchist, egalitarian, traditionalist, pluralist,
secessionist, reformist, and preservationist. Each of these prototypes
focuses their activities and operations principally at the national or
nation state level. However, at least in the case of two of them, the
insurgents may see their movement as part of a larger international one
based on a transnational ideology.
The first type—anarchist—has far reaching but unrealistic goals.
They seek to “eliminate all institutionalized political arrangements
because they view the superordinatesubordinate authority relationships
associated with them as unnecessary and illegitimate.” 117 To
accomplish these goals, anarchist cells tend to rely on what has been
called “propaganda of the deed”—violent strikes against the authority
figures of the regime. While prevalent at the turn of the 20 th century, in
the aftermath of WWII examples of this variant are scant.
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The same is not the case for egalitarian or what more accurately
should be termed revolutionary insurgent movements. In this approach,
the insurgents seek to impose a new political and social order on the
state based on a value system that calls for distributional equality. To
do so, the insurgent leadership creates a centrally controlled apparatus
or organization that mobilizes the people to radically transform the
social structure within the existing political community. 118
In the aftermath of WWII a number of communist revolutionary
movements in different parts of the developing world adopted this
approach. Perhaps the most illustrative example of these Cold War
revolutionary insurgencies was that in Vietnam. It was able, in
succession, to force first the French and then the United States to
negotiate their withdrawal from the conflict. And as will be discussed
later, the National Liberation Front or Viet Cong (VC), which the
United States fought, established a highly developed version of this
insurgent organization. While focused on seizing power at the local or
nationstate level, nevertheless, the Vietnamese and other likeminded
insurgencies saw themselves as part of a larger communist international
movement. 119
A traditional insurgency also has as its goal fundamental change of
the political and social order. However, what such movements plan to
replace the existing system with is one that seeks to return to and
restore a regime that existed in either the recent or distant past. In the
case of the latter, the ancien régime is rooted in ancestral ties and
religion. O’Neill refers to this subtype as reactionary. A more
analytically precise and objective characterization is to describe them
as Millenarian.
Millenarian movements are ones in which religious, social, and
political groupings envision a coming major transformation of society
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and a return to an idealized past. Such movements typically claim that
the current regime and its rulers are irreparably corrupted, unjust, and
otherwise irredeemable. Moreover, such movements often believe in a
supernatural power and predetermined victory through the intervention
of God or other metaphysical forces.
Millenarian movements, generally, see the world through
Manichaean lenses—a holy war between the forces of good and evil.
And they are transnational in scope as well. Revolutionary and
millenarian insurgent movements have much in common with respect
to a dogmatic commitment to an ideology based on a perception of that
ideology as reflecting absolute truth.
PostWWII millenarianism is most often identified with certain
conceptions of radical Islamism. In the 1950s, the Muslim
Brotherhood, founded by Hassan alBanna in 1928 as a religious,
political, and social/revolutionary movement, was the most active. The
global Salafi Jihad movement is its foremost offspring today.
The final insurgent variant which seeks a revolutionary
transformation of the political system—Pluralist—is the only one that
is not authoritarian in orientation. Their goal “is to establish a system in
which the values of individual freedom, liberty, and compromise are
emphasized and in which political structures are differentiated and
autonomous.” O’Neill notes that “While the history of Western
civilization is marked by a number of such uprisings [armed
insurgencies] in recent times there have been few of any…we could
classify as pluralist.” 120 While this is true of armed movements, there
are a number of examples of movements employing nonviolent
strategies that have the same pluralist political objectives. 121
The fifth type of insurgency—Secessionist—seeks to break away
from the state to which it is formally a part and establish an
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independent political community. In the latter half of the 20 th century,
secessionist insurgent movements burgeoned. But there was no
uniformity in the type of political system they sought to establish.
Some opted for a system that reflected their ethnic and religious
traditions, while others planned for more modern forms of government.
None are transnational, seeing themselves as part of a larger or global
movement.
The final two types of insurgency—Reformist and
Preservationist—are less ambitious in terms of their aspirations. The
former seeks a more equitable distribution of the political and
economic goods of the system, not a radical reordering of it. The later
seeks even less. It seeks to maintain the status quo, because of the
relative advantages it derives from it.
Distinctions Between Insurgency and Terrorism
Scrutiny reveals important differences between insurgent
movements and terrorist organizations. Understanding these
dissimilarities is not only an academic’s prerogative. Such an
appreciation is essential for those governments faced with having to
combat each of these types of armed groups. Terrorism and those
armed groups whose operational activities are limited to this form of
political violence have been defined in a myriad of ways. Moreover,
beginning in the 1960s “terrorism” came to be used pejoratively to
discredit and delegitimize various types of armed groups.
The moniker terrorist was employed by governments for
propaganda and political warfare purposes against insurgent or
resistance movements. The objective in doing so was to debase the
reputation of the movement, render its cause illegitimate, and portray
its methods as outside the laws of war. The US characterization of the
Viet Cong in the 1960s is illustrative. However, for the Viet Cong,
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while terrorism was employed, it was done so as one tactic within a
more complex politicalmilitary strategy. 122
In the 1970s, a number of armed groups did emerge that narrowed
their operational approach to a reliance on terrorist tactics. Examples
included the BaaderMeinhof Gang (the Red Army Faction), the Italian
Red Brigades, and Japanese Red Army. They had little or no apparent
desire (or capacity) to establish a mass social movement. Rather, these
terrorist groups were comprised of small cells of alienated individuals
embedded within national societies. The following are their key
characteristics:
• Terrorist groups seek the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through the threat and/or use of the most proscribed kind of violence for political purposes.
• The act is designed to have a farreaching psychological effect beyond the immediate target of the attack. The objective is to instill fear in and intimidate a much wider audience.
• The targets of terrorist groups increasingly are non combatants, and large numbers of them, who under international norms have the status of protected individuals and groups.
Based on these characteristics, it is observable how terrorist groups
differ from insurgent movements. For instance, important distinctions
exist with respect to tactics and targeting. As noted above, it is the case
that insurgent use of violence can include terrorism as we have defined
it. But they also rely on guerrilla warfare tactics defined here as
irregular small unit attacks against the state’s military and security
forces to harass, exhaust, and force them to overextend their resources.
In conjunction with violence, insurgents also use a number of
political tactics to reallocate power within the country. They may do so,
as noted above, for revolutionary objectives—to overthrow and replace
the existing social order. Or they may have far less grandiose
aspirations—overthrow an established government without a followon
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social revolutionary agenda, establish an autonomous national territory,
cause the withdrawal of an occupying power, or extract political
concessions that are unattainable through less violent means.
These differences are captured graphically in the diagram below.
Here we can see that there is some overlap between terrorism and
insurgency, but there are also large areas where they do not intersect.
Insurgency and HighRisk Social Movements
An additional lens through which to understand the nature of
revolutionary and millenarian insurgency strategy is social movement
theory. Indeed, these two forms of insurgency share several
characteristics with social movements. It is particularly relevant with
respect to the relationship between the organizational characteristics of
such insurgencies and their worldview, ideology, and programs. And
by using this lens we see how the terrorist moniker can conceal more
than it reveals about armed groups.
Social movements often take the form of largescale groupings of
individuals and/or organizations focused on achieving some degree of
political or social change. Broadly defined, a social movement is
comprised of an element or grouping of the population within a state—
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a collectivity—that challenges the dominant institutional order and
proposes an alternative structural arrangement.
Social movements represent groups that are on the margins of state
and society. Outside the boundaries of institutional power they seek to
change the system, often in fundamental ways. Given its position on the
margins of state and society a social movement has to develop a
sophisticated strategy to achieve its objectives.
Social movements come in a number of different forms.
Sociologists distinguish between reform and radical variations. The
former includes a trade union seeking to increase workers rights or a
green movement advocating new ecological laws. Radical variations
include the American Civil Rights Movement which demanded full
civil rights and equality under the law for all Americans or the Polish
Solidarity (Solidarność) movement which called for the transformation
of the communist system into a democratic one.
Social movements are also distinguished by their method of
operations. Some employ peaceful means; others engage in highrisk,
highcost activism. The later often involves armed violence and
underground organizations. 123 Revolutionary and millenarian
insurgencies are illustrative.
Why do individuals join highrisk movements and once they do so
how are they retained? Social scientists have focused on those factors
that facilitate participation in collective action. Answers are sought to
the following questions: One, what explains how an individual initially
becomes interested in a social movement? What leads him to be willing
to expose himself to a new way of thinking? Two, once exposed, how
does the movement convince him that it is a legitimate alternative and
persuade him to accept its worldview? Three, how is he convinced to
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engage in highrisk activity. Four, how does the movement retain him
to continue to do so?
Highrisk social movements have to establish structured
organizations with consciously conceived goals and programs for
achieving those goals. They adopt characteristics of a formal
organization (even when they are clandestine). However, they differ
from other organizations in that they exist explicitly for bringing about
major or systemic change. And the more farreaching that proposed
change, the more complex the tasks a social movement organization
has to accomplish. This is especially true for social movements that
take the form of revolutionary and millenarian insurgencies.
The Role of Ideology. A key element of a highrisk social
movement is the role played by ideology in shaping its purpose,
programs, and operations. Ideological appeals are central to their
existence, to recruitment strategies that attract new members, to a
member’s loyalty and retention, and as tools for waging the fight.
Ideology—“[A]n emotionladen system of ideas, beliefs, myths,
and values”—binds a movement together. An important feature of
ideology is its appeal to emotion and its eliciting of an affective
response. And the “myths and values of ideology are communicated
through symbols” that “capture large expanses of meaning and
communicate that meaning.” 124 Within this context, the ideology of
highrisk movements performs the following activities:
• It provides a comprehensive critique of the existing social and political order as immoral and inhuman, and instills in individuals a powerful sense of moral outrage. Such ideologies paint a situation in black and white terms. There are no grays.
• It provides an idealized and superior alternative order as a substitute for the status quo and a set of values that will serve as the basis for a new idealized society or for the return to an earlier golden age.
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• It serves to mobilize individuals to join the movement and gives those who become members a sense of unity, solidarity, cohesion, and sense of purpose.
• It identifies the plans and programs by which the movement intends to reach its objectives, relating specific patterns of action to the realization of its vision and values.
It is through these activities that a movement’s ideological appeal
results in successful recruitment. Ideology builds a series of frames that
describe the social and political problems requiring immediate and
drastic action and provides a road map for redressing them. Ideology
includes a diagnostic frame that describes the problem, detailing the
grave injustice that has transpired. A prescriptive frame that asserts
what must be done to rectify it, proposing a new idealized system that
will replace the depraved one. And a motivational/mobilization frame
spells out the steps to be taken—the strategy to be followed—to bring
to fruition the prescriptive frame. 125
Revolutionary and millenarian ideologies not only provide an
individual with new beliefs but a new identity and reality. The process
amounts to a conversion. The recruit comes to see the social and
political order as highly unjust, adopts a new holistic worldview to
replace it, and receives a plausible strategy for changing it. Below, an
examination of one of the most successful postWWII revolutionary
insurgency movements reveals that this is, to a major extent, a labor
intensive process that involves education and indoctrination.
Mobilization, integration, and retention constitute a process for
reconstructing identity and reality. The recruit is converted to the cause
and integrated into a social network of believers. Highrisk social
movements that adopt insurgency strategies mobilize individuals into
groups that struggle and fight together—go to war—to bring about
social and political change.
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Ideology and Organization. The ideology of highrisk social
movements comprises a series of frames that must come to resonate
with the target audience. It is through the movement’s organization that
this is achieved. Ideology and organization are symbiotically
connected. As illustrated below, organization is the mechanism through
which the ideological frames are mediated with the target audience.
The interaction between ideological commitment and organizational
structure can be seen particularly with respect to membership,
leadership, and institutionalization.
As a highrisk movement becomes embodied in a more elaborate
and structured organizational apparatus, the processes of mobilization,
integration, and retention likewise become more formalized. The lines
between hardcore members and those who sympathize and/or passively
support the movement are sharpened. Boundaries are drawn and
reinforced. Signs or symbols are established to demarcate members
from nonmembers. This can take many forms such as special ways in
which members greet and address one another.
In highrisk social movements membership becomes fully
socialized into an insular and ideologicallybased network where the
demands associated with participation are unbending. The members’
place in the organization and the activities he is expected to engage in
become the center of his existence. The internal strength of such a
movement is the result of intense organizational work through which a
mass base of support is created out of indoctrination efforts directed by
a leadership that considers one of its most important tasks the
translation of ideology into action. Once institutionalized, highrisk
social movements (to include revolutionary insurgencies) become
professionalized. The organization is able to outlive its charismatic
founder(s) and become routinized.
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REVOLUTIONARY INSURGENCY AND ITS TRANSNATIONAL EVOLUTION
Throughout the postWWII era the developing world was the scene
of extensive conflict, instability, and internal warfare. The pressures
and challenges underlying that violence were the result of the de
colonialization process, crises of state legitimacy, redistribution of
power, sectarian disputes, and secessionist pressures. In all of these
conflicts states were pitted against nonstate armed groups, the latter of
which employed different irregular warfare strategies.
Of those different types of politicalmilitary strife, the most
comprehensive was that carried out by national liberation movements
employing revolutionary insurgency strategy. Due to this complexity,
they were often misconstrued in terms of their ideology, narrative, and
operational activities. This section reviews the core elements of that
strategy, its different stages, the role of external assistance and the
operational evolution of revolutionary insurgent strategy on to the
transnational stage beginning in the latter 1970s. Below are the
summary points from that review, followed by the text from which they
have been drawn.
Summary Points
• Of the different types of politicalmilitary conflict in the developing world following WWII, the most complex was that conducted by national liberation movements employing revolutionary insurgency strategy.
• Revolutionary insurgent strategy combined unconventional paramilitary tactics with political and psychological operations to establish a competing ideological structure and war fighting organization. Its immediate goal was regime change, which serves as prelude for political and social transformation of the state.
• Successful revolutionary insurgencies employed grand strategies that implemented an integrated operational plan of action based on the following elements: ideology, leadership, mass base, logistics, organizational apparatus, political, psychological, guerrilla warfare, paramilitary tactics, and external assistance.
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• While each element is necessary for sustaining a revolutionary insurgency, the interrelated elements of leadership, ideology and organization lie at its core. They constitute the remarkable trinity of revolutionary insurgency strategy.
• Leadership is indispensable. Leaders of postWWII revolutionary insurgencies performed key fundamental tasks, most importantly devising an effective ideology and organization.
• To mobilize followers a successful revolutionary insurgency required an appealing ideology that played the central role in attracting new members; shaping their loyalty to retain them; and served as a vital tool for waging the political fight for legitimacy.
• Successful revolutionary insurgencies instituted organizational infrastructures that were extensive and functionally multifaceted to 1) broaden political appeal, influence, and control; and 2) create a war fighting capability sustained through a robust command, logistical, and financial system.
• The incipient stage of revolutionary insurgencies focused on building a mass base of supporters. This was the first step in establishing an organizational infrastructure capable of conducting protracted revolutionary warfare.
• Recruiting a mass base to staff an insurgent organization was difficult. Traditional societies were not receptive to such activities. The revolutionary leadership had to shift traditional loyalties and induce people to become risk takers. They had to accept new roles, integrate into new social patterns, follow new authority, and tolerate the stresses inherent in protracted warfare.
• To do so, leadership, ideology, and organization established a process to draw and bind people to the revolutionary insurgent movement. That process inculcated the movement’s ideology and narrative into those recruited. The process consisted of three tasks— mobilization, integration, and maintenance.
• Mobilization began the process of convincing individuals to break with existing social and cultural context and accept a new one set out in ideology and narrative. The first stage ended with acceptance of membership. It consisted mainly of persuasion through ideological and nationalistic appeals, the promise of rewards, selfsatisfaction, revenge, and advancement. These methods could be accompanied by more coercive ones.
• In the second stage—integration—the recruit was socialized into the insurgent movement, brought into conformity with its goals, convinced to make a major commitment, and came to be synchronized
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with and controlled by the organization. New recruits did not have this level of commitment when they joined. Achieving it necessitated a careful socialization and indoctrination course of action.
• The final stage—maintenance or retention—focused the highly stressful nature of protracted war and the challenge of keeping members in the fight. Maintaining compliance with the leadership’s authority, staying loyal to and identifying with the movement’s ideology and narrative, and sustaining institutional bonds required careful tending.
• The Viet Cong approach to the mobilization, integration, and maintenance illustrates how nationallevel revolutionary insurgent movements developed a mass base of support during the incipient stage. The process was a localized, individualized, handson, faceto face, and labor intensive exercise.
• Following the incipient stage, revolutionary insurgencies entered into long periods of protracted irregular warfare. Insurgents fought long wars that demanded establishing and staffing warfighting organizations that could sustain political, psychological, guerrilla warfare, and other paramilitary operations over lengthy time periods against stronger opponents. Often protracted irregular warfare proceeded through several stages.
• Because revolutionary insurgencies were radical social movements, political operations were vital for fighting the state. Through parallel hierarchies or shadow government these activities took different forms to include incorporating various social groupings to broaden the insurgent apparatus and institutionalize its mass bases.
• Political operations included two other critical activities: 1) addressing the material and social inequalities that were important causes of the insurgency. Parallel hierarchies provided social services; and 2) establishing the means of producing or acquiring warfighting capabilities.
• Other key operational activities employed by revolutionary insurgents to execute protracted irregular warfare included 1) propaganda, political warfare, and psychological operations to propagate their narrative internally and internationally through information campaigns; 2) intelligence and counterintelligence; and 3) paramilitary operations (terrorism, guerrilla warfare, sabotage, and mobile conventional tactics).
• Finally, revolutionary insurgent movements during the Cold War sought and received external support mainly from the Soviet Union. They did so because of the power of the regimes they were fighting. But they also saw themselves as part of a global ideological and
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revolutionary struggle. Still, these were first and foremost national level insurgencies.
• In the latter 1970s certain national level groups challenging state authority through insurgency warfare began to extend the battlefield to the transnational level out of operational necessity. In the forefront of this evolution of insurgency strategy was the PLO. They introduced two important operational innovations 1) they extended their area of operations to attack targets in other regions, primarily Europe; and 2) through these operations the PLO successfully exploited propaganda of the deed to propagate its message transnationally to mobilize much wider support for its cause.
• These PLO operational innovations with respect to the conduct of insurgency were emulated by other armed groups during the 1980s. Moreover, as will be described in a later section, these innovations also had an important impact on how al Qaeda planned and conducted global operations in the 1990s and beyond.
Background
PostWWII revolutionary insurgencies generally were based on
variations of Marxism and nationalism. However, within the context of
the Cold War and the EastWest struggle, the former was often seen as
of greater consequence than the latter and as linking these national
level conflicts to a global movement. Because the ideology of national
liberation movements employing revolutionary insurgency strategy
tended to be a variation of Marxism, they were frequently seen as
appendages of a Sovietled international communist movement. While
the USSR did provide assistance to several of these insurgencies, by no
means was it the general staff that directed a global revolutionary
insurgency against the West.
To be sure, world revolution—international system change—was
the original goal of the Communist International or Comintern.
Founded in Moscow in 1919, it was established by Lenin to lay claim
to the leadership and direction of the world revolutionary movement.
And it did provide some assistance to local communist insurgency
movements. Lenin saw the Comintern as the general staff of a world
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revolution which would overthrow the international capitalist order.
However, because of deep internal divisions and lack of capabilities it
never came close to achieving that lofty goal during its existence. 126
The Comintern was officially dissolved on May 15, 1943, by Stalin. 127
During the Cold War the Soviet Union reestablished a policy of
supporting national liberation movements, most notably under
Brezhnev. This began in the latter 1960s with major assistance to the
North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. In the early 1970s, Middle Eastern
and African movements likewise received paramilitary aid. By the
decades’ end it was extended to Latin America. 128 Several of these
movements came to power. But Moscow’s assistance was not the
principle reason they were able to do so.
While it is beyond the scope of this study to go into the details of
why and how this took place, two issues are important to highlight.
First, Soviet policy appears to have been driven more by the
superpower confrontation, international balance of power, and
expansionism than by a commitment to communist internationalism
and world revolution. Of course, it was framed in terms of the latter,
but the consensus among specialists is the former was the central
imperative. 129
Second, insurgent movements that received assistance and came to
power at the end of the day enacted policies that reflected their national
interest rather than communist internationalism. They were not spokes
in the wheel of world revolution. Consequently, it would be a mistake
to see the revolutionary wars of the postWWII era and their outcomes
as part of a global communist insurgency.
The insurgency strategy that postWWII revolutionary movements
employed was frequently misconstrued, and equated with guerrilla
warfare tactics and terrorism. While these tactics were part of this
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variation of insurgency, they were not the essence of it. Revolutionary
insurgent strategy combined unconventional paramilitary tactics—
guerrilla warfare and terrorism—with political and psychological
operations to establish a competing ideological structure and war
fighting organization. Its immediate goal, regime change, served as
prelude to a more definitive objective—political and social
transformation of the state.
This variation of insurgency, whose roots lie in the Chinese
Communist movement of the 1930s, required a grand strategy to be
successful. In essence, an operational plan of action that included the
following elements: ideology, leadership, mass base, logistics,
organizational apparatus, political, psychological and paramilitary
tactics, and external linkages/assistance.
While each was necessary for mounting and sustaining protracted
warfare, the closely interrelated elements of leadership, ideology, and
organization lie at the core of postWWII revolutionary insurgent
strategy. They played a vital role in each phase of conflict. And they
were particularly crucial in the incipient or initial period of activity. It
is in this embryonic moment that leaders must emerge and shape an
ideology and narrative that responds to both real domestic grievances—
corruption, repression, unemployment, poverty, insufficient social
services, and disrespect for traditional norms—as well as to the desire
for a better and more secure way of life. Likewise, in the incipient stage
the foundation for the insurgent’s organizational infrastructure is laid.
These three elements—leadership, ideology, and organization—
are crucial to the implementation of an operational plan of action that
seeks first and foremost to woo the population over to the side of the
insurgency movement. The population is the vital element for insurgent
success. They have to win the population over to its side.
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Core Elements of Strategy
Effective leadership was a key aspect of successful postWWII
revolutionary insurgent movements. Leaders performed certain vital
tasks. These included establishing ideology and organization. Without
effective leadership that was able to do so, ideology and organization
were likely to be ineffectual.
Without a relevant ideology and narrative, mobilization of the
necessary followers to join the insurgent movement will not occur.
Lacking an appealing ideology, mass mobilization will not get off the
ground. For highrisk social movements like these postWWII
revolutionary insurgencies, ideology played a key role in establishing
support for the movement, its leaders, objectives, and actions. Effective
leadership and ideology maximized appeal to the population, the vital
element—key ingredient—for success.
While leadership and ideology were necessary, alone they were not
sufficient for mobilization of a mass base to take place. A key enabling
component was an organizational infrastructure that facilitated cross
cutting social and political structures that extend down to the local
level. This broadened a movement’s appeal, influence and control. And
that organization also created a warfighting capability.
In On War, Clausewitz refers to the symbiotic relationship among
three elements of what he coined the remarkable trinity: the military,
the government, and the people. He proposed that a central task of the
strategist was to develop and maintain a balance between them. It was
essential to success in war. We would propose that the remarkable
trinity for revolutionary insurgency movements, the sine qua non for
success is an effective interrelationship between leadership, ideology,
and organization.
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The Incipient Stage and the Revolutionary Insurgent Trinity
To implement a revolutionary insurgent strategy, the leadership of
nascent movements during the Cold War required a capacity to recruit
the necessary personnel from within the population. Without it they
were unable to execute the operational activities pertinent to each of the
functional elements of their strategy.
The contemporary history of revolutionary insurgencies reveals
that they succeed when supported by a sufficient part of the population.
Therefore, in the incipient stage, leaders had to be able to recruit
supporters—build a base—for the movement. This was the first step in
establishing an organizational infrastructure capable of conducting
protracted revolutionary warfare.
In the incipient stage, leaders established the means to bring
individuals from various societal groupings into the movement to staff
the insurgent organization and execute operational activities. But this is
difficult to accomplish. Why? Traditional societies—the location where
postWWII revolutionary insurgencies took place—were not receptive
to such activities. This meant overcoming local predispositions that did
not lend themselves to risk taking and recruitment. Traditional culture
revolved around village life, local social patterns, and loyalties that
were not easily altered.
To recruit members, traditional loyalties had to be broadened to
induce people to become risk takers. Unless they were willing to accept
new roles, integrate into new social patterns, follow new authority, and
tolerate the stresses inherent in protracted warfare, insurgent
organizations could not establish a base from within the population and
did not maintain themselves for long. The revolutionary organization
had to create enduring bonds based on the adoption of ideology and
narrative.
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How did they bring this about? Leadership, ideology, and
organization established a process able to draw and bind people to the
insurgent movement. That process provided those recruited with social
psychological compensation for highrisk taking. It created motivation.
Ideology and narrative were inculcated through this process. The rank
and file that constituted the base of successful insurgencies did not
automatically accept ideology and narrative. It was only through the
process described below that they came to commit to it.
This process consists of three tasks—mobilization, integration, and
maintenance (or retention). Each is briefly defined below, followed by
a case study highlighting how the National Liberation Front or Viet
Cong employed these methods to build a revolutionary insurgent
organization. Arguably, in the postWWII period they proved to be
among the most proficient at it. And, as will be underscored, it was a
handson, facetoface, labor intensive exercise.
Phase I—Mobilization. Mobilization (or recruitment) was the
starting point where an individual had to be convinced to break with the
existing social and cultural context and accept a new one set out in
ideology and narrative. Joining the movement typically was not a single
act but a progression that began with the individual’s exposure to the
movement generally by someone who was already an established
member.
The end of the first stage was acceptance of membership in the
movement. Mobilization or recruitment consisted of various kinds of
activities that sought to persuade through ideological and nationalistic
appeals, the promise of rewards and status, selfsatisfaction, revenge,
and advancement. These methods could also include more coercive
ones such as group pressure, threats, and forced induction.
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Phase II—Integration. In the second stage—integration—the
recruit was socialized into the insurgent organization. Through
integration the individual was brought into conformity with the
insurgency’s goals and convinced to make a serious commitment to
their achievement.
Through integration methods an individual came to be in harmony
with and controlled by the organization. Achieving it necessitated a
careful socialization and indoctrination course of action. Through these
techniques new members learned to take orders and follow the
guidance they were given. The recruit was embedded in the
organization and agreed to perform those tasks that were assigned.
Phase III—Maintenance. The final stage involved maintenance
or retention. Given the highly stressful and dangerous nature of
protracted war, keeping members in the fight required attention.
Maintaining compliance with the leadership’s authority, staying loyal
to and identifying with the movement’s ideology and narrative, and
sustaining institutional bonds required careful tending.
Building and retaining a base of supporters through the process of
mobilization, integration, and maintenance afforded postWWII
revolutionary insurgent movements the opportunity to develop the
means to conduct protracted irregular warfare. They were now able to
move beyond the incipient stage to 1) engage in both underground
political, social, and informational operations; and 2) activate armed
elements to carry out paramilitary operations to include guerrilla
warfare, sabotage, and terrorism.
The Case of the Viet Cong. The Vietnamese National Liberation
Front (NLF) or Viet Cong (VC) followed the mobilization, integration,
and maintenance process during its incipient stage. Douglas Pike, in his
study Viet Cong: Organization and Techniques of the National
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Liberation Front of South Vietnam noted: “When I first approached the
subject of the National Liberation Front, I was struck by the enormous
amount of time, energy, manpower, and money it spent on
communication activities. It seemed obsessed with explaining itself.”
The net effect, wrote Pike, was that they “brought to the villages of
South Vietnam significant social change” and did so “largely by means
of the communication process.” 130 Through it they exposed traditional
villagers to new ideas, new methods, and new social structures.
According to Pike, “The goal [during the period] was control of the
population and through that control, the organization of the people into
a weapon against the government,” and later against the United
States. 131 To do so, the VC had to change attitudes, create an
alternative belief system, and establish a new socialization pattern.
What follows is a brief description of how they employed the
mobilization, integration, and maintenance process. Execution of it
was extensive, localized, and personalized. It focused on the individual
who was introduced to the NLF through a variety of means and
eventually recruited. And once recruited the indoctrination and training
work began in order to turn the individual into a committed member.
As Pike intimates above, the process was labor intensive and utilized
“indoctrination efforts, shared social myths, and leaderled
relations.” 132 Mobilization was the first step in creating a mystique that
served as the foundation of a new identity for the individual.
Mobilization began with an initial exposure to VC recruitment and
culminated with acceptance or refusal of membership. The approach
taken was based on detailed personal dossiers of individuals in a
village. VC agents looked for those vulnerabilities that would make a
potential recruit susceptible to one of its messages. Success came
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through an understanding of the individual and the circumstances
surrounding his life.
Based on that understanding of the individual one or more of the
following approaches could be used by a recruiter to persuade him to
consider joining—social pressure (friends or family who were already
members would be used to bring pressure); emotional appeals (the
target was young and could be convinced through proselytizing,
convincing him that he could achieve honor and glory); personal
susceptibility (the target was dissatisfied with his circumstances and
with village life); personal rewards (the target sought social
advancement and prestige); injustices experienced (the target and his
family or friends had been abused by the government); nationalist
sentiments (the target was patriotic); and ideological attraction (the
Front’s narrative was persuasive and its idealistic goals convincing).
In sum, the NLF was an active agent that sought out recruits. While
it would use coercion when necessary to gain access to villagers, once
access was gained, positive forms of persuasion were most often
employed to convince them to join. A variety of organizational
activities were directed towards creating a setting conducive to
mobilization. These activities varied from area to area and individual to
individual.
The recruit was placed into a setting where through intensive
indoctrination and training he would come to be embedded into the
revolutionary movement and prepared for a new role and a new
identity. This was the second phase of the process—integration of the
individual into the NLF. The goal was to instill into the individual
those norms and values that would bind him to the organization. He
was to come to believe the ideology and narrative, become committed
to political and social change, and adopt a prescribed code of behavior.
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Commitment was measured in terms of obedience to the organization
and allegiance to its cause. The integrated recruit was willing to
sacrifice himself for the cause of the movement, and submit to the
leadership and unity of its organization.
The VC paid a great deal of attention to turning the newly recruited
into a committed cadre. They expended considerable resources to
imbue—socialize and indoctrinate—its members. At the end of the day,
the new recruit had a new identity that was very different from that of
the peasant in the Vietnamese village. Paul Berman sums up this
transformation as follows: “Rather than acceptance of nature, there is
mastery over fate; rather than denial of emotion, there is hate,
enthusiasm, and zealotry; rather than political apathy, there is
politicization; rather than selfinterest, there is selfsacrifice; rather than
devotion to the family, there is commitment to the revolutionary
organization.” 133
Retaining the individual in the revolutionary insurgent organization
was the third step in the process. Here also the NLF committed
considerable resources and effort. It had to because it was in a long
protracted war with a superpower. Mobilizing and integrating was not
sufficient. The revolutionary organization had to take active steps to
maintain itself. 134 This included an aggressive use of information and
propaganda to convince the rankandfile that they would prevail.
Recall what Pike said about the inordinate amount of time and effort
that went into the Front’s use of information and communication.
Additionally, a range of more proactive techniques were used to
help members cope with the stresses of fighting. These included
individual and group moralebuilding programs to reinforce the
messages fostered in information and propaganda. Rewards were
likewise used. For those fighting these includes promotions,
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commendations, and medals. Material privileges and other forms of
gratification also fortified commitment.
Maintenance also took place through raising the costs of dissension
and leaving. The NLF did so through constant surveillance of its
members, and the use of sanctions and punishments if warranted. The
latter ranged from reprimands and reeducation for desertion to
execution for traitorous behavior.
In sum, the Viet Cong approach to the mobilization, integration,
and maintenance process illustrates how a revolutionary insurgent
movement developed a mass base of support during its incipient stage.
It was a localized, individualized, handson, facetoface, and labor
intensive exercise. Through mobilization and extensive efforts at
integration they produced the personnel that staffed a complex political
and military organization, one capable of protracted warfare. Their
mobilization and integration efforts, according to several assessments,
were quite effective. 135 Maintenance of that organization in the period
after the incipient stage proved much more challenging for the NLF. 136
Can such a process be replicated at the international level to make
possible a global insurgency? What methods would have to be
substituted for the localized, individualized, handson, facetoface
ones employed by the VC and other postWWII revolutionary insurgent
organizations? As we will discuss later in this paper, during the latter
1970s an evolution in the nationallevel insurgency model began to
take place. Nationallevel movements began to go transnational. This
was the first step in an evolutionary process that, as we shall see, will
be greatly affected by globalization and the information revolution of
the 1990s.
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The Protracted Warfare Stage
Following the incipient stage, nationallevel insurgencies entered
long periods of protracted irregular warfare. This proved to be highly
demanding. Insurgent organizations fought long wars that could
proceed through several stages. These were first formally
conceptualized by Mao Tse Tung, based on the Chinese Communist
experience. 137 While Mao provided a set of guidelines for prosecuting a
protracted war, in the field there proved to be no one formula. A
number of variations took place in practice. Comparative analysis bares
this out. 138
Because revolutionary insurgencies were also social movements,
political operations were a vital part of strategy for fighting these long
wars. These took a number of different forms. They included
incorporating various social groupings—religious, occupational,
women, writers, farmers, youth—into the insurgent infrastructure. That
allowed a revolutionary organization to broaden its apparatus and
institutionalize its base of supporters. In doing so, insurgent leaders
were able to involve different segments of the population in the
movement through a variety of local political and social activities.
Political operations also included providing social services in areas
where the insurgents had a major presence. Finally, political operations
involved raising funds and managing financial structures, as well as
establishing logistical networks for procurement of war fighting and
other supplies from external sources.
A second set of operational activities can be grouped under the
rubric of propaganda and psychological operations. These were wars
for legitimacy, and successful insurgencies put a great deal of time and
effort into propagating their narrative internally through newspapers,
pamphlets, radio broadcasts, rallies, meetings, and oneonone sessions.
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In many instances they likewise carried out these information
campaigns externally through friendly governments, international
organizations where they were given forums, and front organizations.
Intelligence operations were a third important component of the
war fighting capabilities of revolutionary insurgencies during the
protracted war stage. Within the insurgent apparatus special divisions
were established for both intelligence and counterintelligence.
Finally, the use of violence manifested itself in different kinds of
paramilitary operations. This included the use of terrorism, as it was
defined earlier. PostWWII insurgents utilized it to different degrees.
However, the primary way of fighting was guerrilla warfare operations
directed against the military and police forces of the regime. The
objective was to harass and undermine their willingness to fight. Only
when the balance of forces begins to shift were larger and more quasi
conventional units introduced to fight positional battles and defend
those areas where they established sanctuary.
The Role of External Assistance and Influence
Revolutionary insurgent movements during the Cold War sought
and received external support mainly from the Soviet Union and its
surrogates. The reason they sought this aid, in the first place, had to do
with the practical realities of the conflict. To offset the superior power
of the states they were confronting, even insurgent movements that had
established a mass base and organizational infrastructure capable of
executing the operations described in the previous section required
additional resources to accomplish their objectives. External help was
even more critical for those insurgencies that had not reached this
degree of effectiveness.
Given that the ideological basis for revolutionary insurgencies at
that time was Marxism, they sought outside assistance of various kinds
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from the major communist power. Why did the USSR come to provide
it, particularly in the latter 1960s? As was noted earlier, there was
considerable debate at the time over how to interpret the motives
underlying external assistance. We would concur with O’Neill that it
principally had to do with the postWWII superpower confrontation.
“The greatest impetus to external support for such insurgent
movements… [was] the continuous rivalry between the major
communist powers and the West since the late 1940s.” 139
Soviet external support took two basic forms. First, political
instruments to include propaganda, the use of front organizations, and
political action inside international organizations were utilized to
champion the cause and objectives of revolutionary insurgent
movements on the world stage. The goal was to build support for the
just cause of insurgents, while delegitimizing the incumbent regime
(and the United States if it was backing it) they were fighting. 140
Second, paramilitary assistance was also provided to improve the
fighting proficiency of the insurgent forces against their police and
military counterparts. The principle kinds of help included the transfer
of weapons, training insurgent members, and providing advisory
support (mainly through surrogates). The Soviet Union not only
provided paramilitary assistance on its own, but also called on its East
European and Cuban allies to do the same.
In providing this assistance, the USSR asserted that it was its duty
to materially assist local revolutionary insurgent movements that were
ideologically simpatico with the cause of world revolution. In other
words, these local movements were said to be part of a world
movement that aimed at international system change.
This begs the question did the sum total of postWWII national
level revolutionary insurgencies amount to a global insurgency under
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the direction of the Soviet Union? To be sure, they all rhetorically
asserted they adhered to the same ideology that called for regime
change locally and international system transformation globally. And
the USSR asserted it was supporting nationallevel revolutionary
insurgencies on that basis. Thus, local insurgencies were framed as part
of a global struggle between competing ideological systems. These
nationallevel insurgencies were characterized by themselves and by
the USSR as members of a worldwide revolutionary movement that
was at war with the West. But was this really the case?
For many revolutionary insurgencies the ideology and narrative
that they founded their movements on included, often more
importantly, nationalism and national identity frames, as well as
contextual issues related to local political and social conditions. In
other words, while we cannot discount the fact that they themselves
framed their struggle within the context of the EastWest global
ideological confrontation, their immediate political objective—
overthrow of the regime they were at war with—was of paramount
importance. Therefore, national and contextual issues were of
preeminent importance in framing ideology and narrative. And once in
power, they did not take direction from the USSR or commit significant
resources to conducting a global fight.
Likewise, with respect to the Soviet Union, the decision to more
actively promote wars of national liberation through political and
paramilitary assistance in the latter 1960s does not appear to have been
based on the goal of establishing an existential or ideal international
end state through a global insurgency strategy. Rather, it was more
about the balance of power and Soviet expansionism. Moreover,
Moscow saw the United States as vulnerable in the aftermath of
Vietnam, unwilling to use force or assist regimes threatened by
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revolution. Therefore, the USSR was more willing to project power and
influence into what it termed the national liberation zone of the
developing world. By the mid 1980s, it found the costs of maintaining
this policy increasingly prohibitive. 141
The Transnational Evolution of NationalLevel Insurgency
In the latter 1970s certain national level groups and movements
challenging state authority through unconventional warfare began to
extend the battlefield to the transnational level. They did so mostly out
of operational necessity. The counterinsurgency measures of the states
they were fighting had become increasingly effective, preventing the
establishment of a clandestine infrastructure or shadow government in
the area of conflict. Because of these developments, the chances of
successfully gaining control of territory within the state and inflicting
real defeats on government security forces were remote. Therefore, to
continue the fight a new variation or approach to insurgency was
required.
Among the first armed groups to extend the battlefield
transnationally were Palestinian ones fighting against Israel. This
transpired over the period from the late 1940s to the middle of the
1970s. Recall that during the ArabIsraeli war of 1948 many Palestinian
Arabs left their homes for neighboring countries, fleeing voluntarily or
being forced to leave by Israeli forces. This was the beginning of the
Palestinian Diaspora communities that exist today.
Located in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt, it was from these
refugee communities that new armed political groups began to emerge.
Their leaders asserted that if the Palestinians were to retake their
homeland, they would have to take responsibility for doing so. The
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was established in 1964 for
this purpose. Under the general direction of Yasser Arafat, the PLO
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served as an umbrella organization for several constituent groups.
These included AlFatah, Force 17, Hawari Group, PLF, and PFLP.
Each had its own fedayeen or commando assault units that carried out
crossborder strikes against Israeli territory from those contiguous
states where the Palestinians had relocated. These guerrilla warfare
and terrorist operations intensified in the aftermath of the 1967 war.
Israel not only defeated the armies of its Arab neighbors in six days
but also seized control of the West Bank and Gaza. As a result, the
exodus of Palestinians that had begun in 1948 increased dramatically
especially to the near sanctuaries of Jordan and Lebanon.
Consequently, infiltration attacks across the borders of these states
against fortified Kibbutz’s, military targets, and public facilities
escalated. And Jordan and other Arab states provided increased support
for these operations as an alternative means to conventional interstate
warfare to recover lost territory and advance other goals.
Israel countered by developing a robust border defense system. It
included removal of Palestinian villages, smallunit patrolling, rapid
reaction operations to include hot pursuit of infiltrators seeking to flee
back to their sanctuaries, and airartillery attacks against those
sanctuaries and the military forces of the regimes that provided the safe
haven. In the case of the latter, Israel’s objective was to raise the costs
to those providing support for fedayeen operations. This was certainly
true for how it dealt with Jordan. In 1968 Israel began launching air and
artillery barrages against Jordanian army positions. These reprisals
resulted in considerable military casualties.
For Jordan, these attacks by Israel on its army were only part of the
price for backing fedayeen operations. A second cost was the
emergence of the PLO as a hostile “state within a state” inside the
kingdom. In 1969 this led to several hundred violent clashes between
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the Palestinian forces and Jordanian security forces. Acts of violence
against Jordanian security forces included kidnappings and ritualistic
murders. By February 1970 fighting was taking place between
Jordanian security forces and the Palestinian groups in the streets of
Amman, resulting in about 300 deaths. This escalated through the
summer months to include several assassination attempts against King
Hussein. The rest of the year saw intense fighting that resulted in
thousands of deaths. By the summer of 1971 the PLO was driven out of
Jordan, and had to reestablish itself in Lebanon.
Having lost its bases in Jordan and increasingly constrained in
attacking cross border from Lebanon due to Israeli counterinsurgency
tactics, the PLO turned to transnational operations to extend the
battlefield beyond the local region. PLO operatives began traveling
from the Middle East to Europe in order to carry out attacks. And those
operations increasingly began to target civilians. The foremost early
example of this was the attack by the PLO’s Black September
Organization on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.
While the operation actually failed to achieve its immediate objective,
it nevertheless was a major success in terms of capturing the
imagination of the Palestinian Diaspora. And in its aftermath thousands
of Palestinians rushed to join the PLO. Other operations ensued in the
1970s including skyjackings, hostage taking, letter bombs, and
assassinations in various parts of Europe.
These attacks were part of a new approach which, according to
John Mackinlay and Alison AlBaddawy, reflected “an important
connecting factor. Each act, usually in its final stages, became highly
visible and often by design encouraged reporters, press photographers,
and television and film coverage. The attacks were irresistible as news
stories because they were so visually sensational but also because they
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were carried out with such desperate conviction.” Because of the media
coverage of these transnational operations the PLO leadership was able
to reach several “important audiences: large numbers of their own
nationals in foreign countries, Arab states, the Muslim community
worldwide and Western states, some which preferred not to think about
Palestine.” 142
With the effectiveness of Israeli counterinsurgency tactics, the PLO
had to find a way other than localized guerrilla warfare to reach these
audiences. It did so through international terrorism—attacks mainly
against what international law designates as protected categories of
people that are off limits in war. But to understand these attacks solely
on those terms misconstrues the propaganda and political mobilization
features of the operations.
Mackinlay and AlBaddawy describe their significance and how
they transformed the conduct of insurgency, introducing a new
variation of this form of warfare. The PLO grasped that “[W]e are
living in an era of violent activism that accepts that we are animated by
the propaganda of the deed, rather than the military value of the deed
itself.” The PLO adapted its campaign to this reality and “succeeded in
getting themselves and the Palestinian issue onto the global agenda.”
The result was that these operations came to be “widely supported,
clandestinely by Arab states and overtly by radicalized Muslim
communities.” These were not “the acts of politically isolated
extremists.” 143 Rather, they were key elements of a new Palestinian
strategy, one that through transnational terrorist operations successfully
exploited propaganda of the deed to propagate its message and
mobilize support for its cause.
In sum, the PLO introduced two important operational innovations
during this period with respect to the conduct of insurgency that not
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only served as an inspiration for other armed groups during the 1980s
but, as we shall describe later, also had an important impact on how al
Qaeda conducted global operations in the 1990s. First, they extended
their area of operations to strike at US targets across the globe. Second,
the objective of those operations became “propaganda of the deed,
rather than the military value of the deed itself.” Attacks were planned
and executed for their visibility and propaganda value. In the 1990s the
media became the propagator of al Qaeda’s message. And by the end of
the decade it was doing the propagating of its activities and ideology
not only through the media but by way of its own Internet news shows
and online publications.
REQUIREMENTS FOR A GLOBAL SALAFI JIHADIST INSURGENCY
Is the Salafi Islamist Jihad movement executing protracted global
insurgency warfare? Are they utilizing a global version of the national
level revolutionary insurgent strategy and/or its transnational adaptation
as described in the previous section? To answer these questions it is
first necessary to identify the requirements or conditions of a global
insurgency. Five primary requirements are proposed. They are deduced
from 1) the strategy employed by nationallevel revolutionary insurgent
movements during the latter half of the 20 th century, 2) how insurgent
groups beginning in the latter 1970s extended that battlefield
transnationally and through terrorism exploited propaganda of the deed,
and 3) the key distinguishing characteristics of the Salafi Jihad
movement. Below are the main summary points from the review,
followed by the account from which they are taken.
Summary Points
• For the Salafi Islamist Jihad movement to execute a global version of the nationallevel revolutionary insurgent strategy it would have to meet five requirements or conditions.
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• First requirement—Conceptualize an ideology that performs the same functions as those adopted by highrisk social movements. This entails developing a series of frames to: 1) describe the social and political problems requiring immediate and drastic action; 2) propose a new idealized system to replace the depraved one that resonated with the population; and 3) identify steps to bring this to fruition.
• Second requirement—An innovative leadership that can conceptualize that ideology and establish an embryonic organization capable of operationalizing it to begin to attract and recruit a critical mass of supporters. In the incipient phase of insurgency these are first order tasks.
• Third requirement—Establish an infrastructure capable of fighting a protracted global insurgency. To do so, a process is needed to draw and bind individuals to the movement. That process inculcates the movement’s ideology and narrative into those attracted to it. To do so, new facilitators or enablers—globalization, information systems, and networked organizations—have to be substituted for this normally localized, facetoface approach.
• Fourth requirement—As the incipient stage proceeds, a global insurgency (as with its nationallevel revolutionary insurgency counterpart) enters a period of protracted or “long war.” In doing so, it has to set out for itself 1) where it intends to fight (the area of operations or AO) and 2) how it intends to do so (the organizational infrastructure and war fighting tactics they intend to use).
• Fifth requirement To execute a global insurgency the Salafi Jihadists would have to employ an array of political, psychological, and paramilitary methods within their areas of operations that target both “near” and “far” enemies.
The Salafi Jihad movement, in the first place, should be understood
as a millenarian movement. It seeks a major transformation of the
existing political status quo and a return to an idealized past. The Salafi
Jihadists charge that current regimes and rulers who dominate the
Ummah (community of believers) are irreparably corrupt, unjust, and
repressive. They label them infidels and apostates.
Second, like medieval millenarians the Salafi Jihadists believe in a
supernatural power and predetermined victory through the intervention
of God. 144 They see the world through Manichaean lenses—holy war
between the forces of good and evil.
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Third, the Salafi Jihadists are transnational actors. Their plan of
action calls for holy war to 1) expel the United States from Iraq, the
Arabian Peninsula, and Middle East; 2) eliminate the state of Israel; 3)
overthrow apostate governments in the Muslim world; and 4) re
establish the Caliphate, the historic community of Islam which
expanded beyond the Arabian Peninsula following the death of the
prophet Mohammed and came to encompass in the seventh century
both Iran and Egypt and by the eighth century North Africa, the Iberian
Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), India, and Indonesia.
Given these far reaching goals, the first requirement that the Salafi
Jihadists would have to satisfy to be in a position to initiate a global
insurgency is to conceptualize an ideology that successfully performs
the same functions as those adopted by high risk social movements.
Recall that this entailed developing a series of frames that 1) described
the social and political problems requiring immediate and drastic
action; 2) proposed a new idealized system to replace the depraved one
that resonated with the population; and 3) identified steps to bring this
to fruition that appeared achievable.
Also recollect that conceptualizing an effective ideology was a
considerable challenge for nationallevel revolutionary insurgencies
because their ideology had to attract and sustain a mass base of support
from within societies that were traditional, insular, and diverse. That
challenge is magnified for the Salafi Jihadist movement given its global
area of operation. What was demanding to establish at the national
level, it would seem reasonable to suggest, is even tougher to
accomplish at the transnational level.
The second requirement is an innovative leadership that can create
this ideology and establish an embryonic organization capable of
operationalizing it to begin to attract and recruit a critical mass of
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supporters. Successful revolutionary insurgencies in their incipient
phase (and later protracted warfare stages) were commanded by leaders
who performed these firstorder tasks of devising an effective ideology
and establishing an embryonic organization.
These core elements, in the incipient stage of revolutionary
insurgencies, concentrated on recruiting a mass base of supporters. This
was the initial step in establishing an organizational infrastructure that
would become capable of fighting protracted revolutionary warfare.
This is the third requirement for a global insurgency movement.
To do so, nationallevel insurgencies established a process to draw
and bind individuals to the revolutionary insurgent movement. That
process sought to inculcate the movement’s ideology and narrative into
those recruited. The process, as outlined above, consisted of three
tasks—mobilization, integration, and maintenance. It was carried out,
for the most part, within the boundaries of the state the revolutionary
movement was challenging.
The Viet Cong case study illustrated the extent to which carrying
out this process was localized, individualized, handson, labor
intensive, and facetoface. Can a global insurgency movement
replicate the mobilization, integration, and maintenance process at the
transnational level? Has the Salafi Jihad movement been able to do so?
Are there new facilitators or enablers such as globalization, information
systems, and networked organizations that can be substituted for this
localized, facetoface approach?
As the incipient stage proceeded, nationallevel revolutionary
insurgent movements entered the period of protracted warfare. These
were long wars. And the area of operations (AO), as defined by the
insurgents, was first and foremost within the boundaries of the nation
state. That was where the insurgent’s main enemy was located and it
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was where they built and employed their guerrilla warfighting
organization. To be sure, there could be international targets as well.
This was especially the case where an outside power was involved in
an internal war. However, the instruments used by the insurgents on
these distant battlefields were most often those for political warfare.
This began to change, as was described in the previous section, in
the later 1970s. At that time the PLO extended the battlefield out of
necessity to the transnational level and narrowed its paramilitary tactics
to propaganda of the deed through terrorist operations.
How would a global insurgency during the protracted warfare stage
define its area of operations, the composition of its war fighting
organization, and the type of violence it would employ? Doing so is the
fourth requirement for a global insurgency movement. It has to set out
1) where it intends to fight—the geographical space—and 2) how it
intends to do so—the warfighting organization and type of operations
they intend to employ. To what extent have the Salafi Jihad movement
and its al Qaeda vanguard done so?
To fight long wars, revolutionary insurgent movements established
and staffed warfighting organizations that employed political and
paramilitary instruments over lengthy time periods. These instruments
were part of a strategy. As was noted earlier, their warfighting
apparatus employed these methods primarily within the boundaries of
the nationstate. That was their AO until groups starting with the PLO
extended the AO to the transnational level. To execute a global
insurgency the Salafi Jihadists would have to carry out similar political,
psychological, guerilla warfare, and other paramilitary operations
within its areas of operations that target both “near” and “far” enemies.
This is the fifth requirement for a global insurgency movement.
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A GLOBAL SALAFI JIHAD INSURGENCY: MYTH OR REALITY?
Has the global Salafi Jihad movement that emerged since the early
1980s devised and initiated a global insurgency strategy? To determine
whether this is the case, the actions, activities, and operations of the
Salafi Jihad movement and its al Qaeda leadership are examined
through the lens of the five requirements of a global insurgency
identified above. Are they consistent with those five requirements, and
if so to what extent? Is the Salafi Jihad insurgency in the incipient stage
or has it progressed further? Has it developed a doctrine and
capabilities to carry out globally a “long Jihad?”
To answer these questions the stages through which the Salafi
Jihad movement evolved are examined, employing a chronological
narrative format. The narrative can be divided into the following six
phases: 1) Emergence of Salafi Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood;
2) Conceptualization of Salafi Jihad Ideology; 3) The SovietAfghan
War; 4) After Afghanistan: Deciding on the Next Area of Operations;
5) Afghanistan Again: The Foundations for Global Insurgency; and 6)
Global Insurgency in the Aftermath of 9/11.
Below are the key findings for each of the six stages through which
the global Salafi Jihad movement evolved. On the eve of 9/11, it can be
argued it was in the early incipient stage of a global insurgency. Next,
the findings describe how al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists have
attempted to reorganize through four strategic adaptations to recover
from its 2001 setback and continue to facilitate a global millenarian
insurgency. Following the summary of the findings is the narrative
from which they are drawn.
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Summary Points
• Has the global Salafi Jihad movement that emerged in the early 1980s been able to fight its “near” and “far” enemies through a global insurgency strategy? This study proposes three conclusions.
First, as 9/11 approached, a global Salafi millenarian insurgency was in its embryonic stage, carrying out guerrilla warfare and other paramilitary operations against both “near” and “far” enemies.
Second, Operation Enduring Freedom was a strategic setback for that global insurgency. It now faced the challenge of adapting to recover what it lost. Over the last several years al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists have sought to do so through four strategic adaptations.
Third. How successful they have been and the extent to which they are able to fight the “long Jihad” requires more research and an innovative analytic effort that was beyond the scope of this study.
• These judgments are deduced from an analysis of the six phases that constitute the evolution of the Global Salafi Jihad Movement. What follows are the key findings for each of those phases.
I. Revival of Salafi Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi Jihadism
• Salafi Jihadists are part of a 20 th century Salafi Islamic revival. The latter is one of Islam’s most puritanical forms.
• The Salafis seek to return Islam to its roots by imitating the life and times of the Prophet and his immediate successors. They draw their understanding of Islam from a literal interpretation of the Qur'an and the Hadith.
• They reject all subsequent Islamic reinterpretations and innovations as Jahiliyya, a state of moral ignorance.
• The Salafi revival argued that the Muslim community—the Ummah—had fallen into Jahiliyya. To save them, it was necessary to reeducate the Ummah in the original practices of true Islam.
• This Salafi revival became political through the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928. The Brotherhood was to serve as a vanguard party for political change and social justice. As it grew, Jihad entered its political lexicon, calling for armed struggle to liberate Muslim lands from colonial occupation and later from apostate Muslim regimes.
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II. The Origins of the Salafi Jihad Movement
• In the 1950s, Salafi Jihad ideology began to take shape. Its key theorist was Sayyid Qutb. He believed nearly all of Islam was in Jahiliyya, having been polluted by Western decadence, materialism, and faithlessness.
• Islamic law and religious values were being subverted by apostate Muslim regimes. He called for Jihad to overthrow them. Qutb coupled a puritanical interpretation of Islam with a violent political ideology of revolt.
• Qutb saw the crisis in Muslim states within the context of a global ideological battle with the nonMuslim world, in particular Western civilization. The West was pushing the Muslim world into Jahiliyya. He painted an extremely dehumanizing picture of the West as soulless, immoral and depraved.
• Qutb proposed a transnational ideology to mobilize the Ummah for Jihad against near enemies (apostate Muslim regimes) and for a global fight against the West. To lead the struggle he called for creation of a Muslim vanguard.
• The first requirement to initiate a global Salafi Jihadist insurgency is conceptualizing a universal ideology that 1) describes the depraved condition requiring Jihad, 2) proposes an idealized system to replace it, and 3) identifies steps to be taken to bring it to fruition, Qutb provided this doctrinal foundation.
III. The SovietAfghan War
• The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan gave a fledging Salafi Jihad movement a sacred cause to mobilize beyond the national level to liberate a part of the Ummah from a foreign infidel invader.
• Those who came from the Muslim world to resist aggression against dar alIslam (the house of Islam) became the first generation of transnational Jihadists. Their victory was empowering and inspiring for themselves and others.
• In Afghanistan the elements of leadership, ideology, and organization for mounting a guerrilla insurgency materialized. Leaders espoused an ideology that brought together Qutb’s Muslim vanguard to lead the Ummah.
• The key leader was Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. He implemented Qutb’s ideas. The Soviet invasion was infidel aggression against dar alIslam. He issued a fatwa calling Muslims to fight a Jihad through guerrilla warfare to expel them. Major religious figures agreed.
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• Azzam established an infrastructure for volunteers from around the Muslim World. Afghanistan became a training ground to breed a global resistance of tens of thousands of militant Jihadis who became skilled in guerrilla and other paramilitary tactics.
• These “Afghan Arabs” became the vanguard—an international brigade—for carrying out global Jihad. Afghanistan was the beginning—the starting point—for a global Salafi Jihadist insurgency. A core cadre now existed for it.
IV. After Afghanistan: Deciding on the Next Area of Operations
• Following the war the “Afghan Arabs” debated where next to fight for the Islamic cause. Where was the next area of operations and who was the enemy? These questions formed the basis of a strategic reassessment.
• One group proposed liberating other Muslim lands occupied by infidels (e.g., Bosnia). That was the new AO.
• Others proposed returning to their home countries to overthrow apostate Muslim regimes. Among “Afghan Arabs” it was championed by the Egyptian contingent.
• Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait added another dimension to the debate. The Saudis allowed the US military to deploy to the Kingdom. Bin Laden labeled that treason. It allowed Islam’s most holy territory to be occupied by infidels.
• Exiled to Sudan, bin laden and al Qaeda concluded in late 1994 that the new AO and target should center on the United States. If Salafi Jihadists were to realize their global goals, America had to be defeated.
• By the mid1990s, a new targeting doctrine for global insurgency was set. To implement it al Qaeda had to establish an organization that could employ political, psychological, guerrilla warfare, and other paramilitary techniques to fight a “long Jihad.” It was attempting to do so in Sudan when forced to leave.
V. Afghanistan Again: The Foundations for Global Insurgency
• Afghanistan gave al Qaeda an opportunity to build a transnational organization. Tens of thousands of Salafioriented Muslim’s were trained and indoctrinated. They constituted the second generation of international holy warriors.
• During the latter 1990s the foundation was established by al Qaeda for initiating a global Salafi Jihad insurgency that reflected the five requirements identified in this study.
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• Doctrine was revised to emphasize a global war fighting mission that targeted the United States—the “far enemy.”
• Beyond doctrine, al Qaeda’s organization grew in size and complexity, allowing it to plan and execute terrorist attacks against US targets across the globe, while nationallevel affiliates fought guerrilla wars at home.
• In Afghanistan, al Qaeda established itself as the vanguard of the global Jihad through a network of linkages with a score of national level Islamist groups, many employing guerrilla violence against their governments.
• Radical Islamist groups appeared to function through nine regional theatres of operations. And al Qaeda emerged as their vanguard, seeking to inspire and integrate them into a transnational Salafi Jihad movement.
• Several enablers, most importantly the Afghan sanctuary, enhanced al Qaeda’s capacity to draw national level groups into a broader Jihad network that on the eve of 9/11 reached the incipient stage of a global millenarian insurgency.
VI. Global Insurgency in the Aftermath of 9/11?
• Following 9/11, al Qaeda’s Afghan infrastructure was destroyed, a strategic setback for the Salafi Jihad vanguard and the embryonic global insurgency it was facilitating. It now faced the challenge of adapting to recover.
• Since then al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists have sought to do so through four strategic adaptations 1) employing the Internet to establish a virtual sanctuary, 2) making use of ungoverned territory, 3) exploiting the Iraq conflict, and 4) maintaining national level Jihad activities through the nine regional theatres.
• This study focused on establishing a virtual sanctuary on the Internet. Utilizing ungoverned areas and exploiting Iraq conflict received briefer attention. Particulars on the nine regional theaters were beyond the study’s scope.
• The extent to which al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists have been able to successfully implement these four strategic adaptations to fight a “long Jihad” requires a level of research beyond this study.
Virtual Sanctuary
• Al Qaeda and associated Jihad groups have sought to replicate on the Internet those facilities and capabilities lost in Afghanistan in
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2001. In the following seven ways the Internet has been utilized as a substitute sanctuary:
1) Propagating the Salafi Jihad ideology. This is the first requirement to initiate a global insurgency. Through Webbased activities the Salafi Jihadists execute this function globally. They disseminate ideological frames and messages to instill in the Ummah a powerful sense of moral outrage and commitment to holy war.
2) Inspiring and mobilizing the Ummah to join the Jihad. It is one thing to agree to ideological messages, another to be inspired to action. Al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists use a plethora of Internet methods to achieve this end. One key way they do so is by celebrating the achievements and sacrifices of those on the front lines of the global fight.
3) Psychological warfare to demoralize enemies. The flip side of inspiring the Ummah to join the fight is to demoralize near and far enemies to convince them to give up the fight. The insurgency in Iraq is illustrative. A number of Internet tactics are employed to demoralize the Americans, Iraqis, and foreigners working in Iraq.
4) Networking the global Salafi Jihad insurgency. Loss of the Afghan sanctuary led to the use of the internet for training and operational activities, to include organizing virtual cells. For each, secure communications were needed. New methods have been employed to protect these activities from disruptive US intelligence tactics.
5) Operational Information Sharing—Manuals and Handbooks. Al Qaeda and associates have established an online library of manuals and handbooks for irregular warfare. These range from doctrinal guides to instructions on how to carry out a particular tactic or employ a specific weapon. Receiving the widest attention is the Improvised Explosive Device.
6) Operational Information Sharing—Training Videos and Courses. New Internet techniques since 9/11 have been adopted by the Salafi Jihadists for online training programs. Over the last three years professionally produced training videos have been generated. A global program in the art of terrorism (GPAT) now exists.
7) Collection Targeting. The Internet provides Salafi operational units with data on targets. Through Webbased data mining they built folders/files on a range of targets from government facilities to nuclear power plants.
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Ungoverned Territory
• Beyond this virtual sanctuary, al Qaeda appears to have attempted to carry out in largely lawless tribal areas of the AfghanPakistan border activities it executed during 19962001 in Afghanistan.
• The extent to which it has been able to do so is unclear. Jihadis are traveling to the area to join the fight much like their predecessors did in the 1980s and 1990s. But a detailed picture remains elusive, at least in open sources.
• The AfghanPakistan border is not the only ungoverned territory in which al Qaeda and/or regional Jihadi groups have developed a presence. The Algerianbased Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) has moved into the Sahel region of Africa to establish bases.
The Iraq Front
• Al Qaeda and other the Salafi Jihad groups see Iraq within the context of a “long Jihad.” It is the main front, the forward edge of the global battle, on which to engage the far enemy—the United States. They hope to inflict a defeat of strategic consequences on it.
• The Salafi Jihadists also believe Iraq affords them a vital opportunity to spawn a third generation of skilled holy warriors who after they leave Iraq can fight in their native lands or elsewhere. In the first decades of the 21 st century these “Iraqi Arabs” can serve the same purpose the “Afghan Arabs” did at the close of the 20 th century.
• Iraq has become an integral part of how al Qaeda and Salafi Jihadists have sought to adapt following the strategic set back in Afghanistan to continue to foster a global insurgency.
Fostering the Global Salafi Jihad Movement
• Al Qaeda’s fourth adaptation focused on reestablishing its role as vanguard of the global Salafi Jihad movement, a role that was set back as a result of Operation Enduring Freedom.
• Developing a detailed mosaic of what is now referred to as al Qaeda and Associated Movements (AQAM) was beyond the scope of this paper. Only the broad contours of AQAM are highlighted and key questions that remain to be addressed identified.
• As late as 2005, US officials were still struggling to understand the relationship between al Qaeda and its affiliates, and the extent to which those linkages had been reestablished.
• In 2006, key US national security documents began to use the term Al Qaeda and Associated Movements (AQAM) to refer to this
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rejuvenated relationship. US Central Command’s posture statement for fighting the war in 2006 was illustrative.
• An important way al Qaeda sought to reestablish linkages with local Salafi Jihad groups is through its virtual sanctuary. Recent analysis of this activity depicts it as “very structured.…A handful of primary source Jihadist Web sites disseminate official communiqués, doctrinal treaties, strategy and operational documents through a far reaching network of other Web sites, message boards, egroups, blogs, and instant messaging services.”
• This network is “at once decentralized but rigidly hierarchical.” Web sites at the center of the network comprise al Qaeda and groups closely associated with it. Since 2006, their webbased activities have been coordinated and distributed through a new virtual entity—the Al Fajr Center—to secondary and tertiary Web sites that comprise the network.
• A key followon question about this fourth adaptation in need of attention is who comprises the local affiliated groups of AQAM and on what basis do they view themselves as a part of AQAM? One recent study has sought to identify four criteria for membership in AQAM.
• More attention needs to be focused on this adaptation in order to develop a detailed mosaic of and its Associated Movements (AQAM).
Emergence of Salafi Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood
The Salafi Jihadists are an outgrowth of, but not synonymous with,
a much larger 20 th century movement of Salafi Islam. The term Salafi is
commonly used to describe perhaps the most doctrinaire or
fundamentalist form of Islamic thought. Like other major religions,
Islam has a number of different variants. The Salafi movement consists
of Sunni Muslims drawn mainly (but not exclusively) from the Hanbali
School, and the Wahhabi element of it. Of the four Sunni theological
schools that include the Hanafi, Maliki, and Shafii, the Hanbali are
considered the most stringent in terms of their conservative approach to
the practice of Islam.
The Salafi movement is comprised of many of the most puritanical
groups in the Muslim world. The different parts of the movement are
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all united by a common religious creed. The concept of tawhid or the
unity of God is the central element of the Salafi creed. It includes those
concepts that Salafis consider necessary to be accepted as a “true
Muslim.”
To safeguard tawhid, Salafi’s believe in strictly following the rules
and guidance found in the Qur’an and the Sunna (the path followed by
the Prophet when he was alive). They seek to return Islam to its roots
by imitating the life and times of the Prophet and that of the first three
generations of Muslims—the companions or Sahabah of the Prophet,
their immediate followers the Tabi’in, and the followers of the Tabi'in.
The Salafis draw their understanding of Islam from a literal
interpretation of the Qur'an and the Sunna. The latter consists of the
deeds, sayings and actions of Muhammad during the twentythree years
of his ministry, as recalled by those who knew him. The essence of
Salafism is summarized by Quintan Wiktorowicz as follows:
To protect tawhid, Salafis argue that Muslims must strictly follow the Qur’an and hold fast to the purity of the Prophet Muhammad’s model. The latter source of religious guidance plays a particularly central role in the Salafi creed. As the Muslim exemplar, he embodied the perfection of tawhid in action and must be emulated in every detail. Salafis also follow the guidance of the Prophet’s companions (the salaf), because they learned about Islam directly from the messenger of God and are thus best able to provide an accurate portrayal of the prophetic model (the term “Salafi” signifies followers of the prophetic model as understood by the companions). 145
The Salafi approach rejects all subsequent Islamic cultural
practices, reinterpretations, extrapolation, and innovations that
transpired since the time of the Prophet. Illustrative of this opposition
are the teachings of Muhammad Ibn Abd al Wahhab. It is beyond the
scope of this paper to examine the roots of the Wahhab movement
(members call themselves Muwahhidun) which began over 200 years
ago in Arabia. 146 Suffice it to note, however, that at that time he
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preached against such customary practices as breeches of Islamic laws
and labeled them Jahiliyya, the same term used to describe the
ignorance of Arabians before the Prophet. 147 They were unbelievers,
had fallen into a state of moral ignorance, and should be put to death.
Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab’s most important convert was
Muhammad ibn Saud, head of one of the most powerful tribes on the
Arabian Peninsula. This association converted political loyalty into a
religious obligation. 148 Since then Saud rule has to varying degrees
enforced compliance with the Wahhabi interpretations of Islamic
values on Saudi Arabia.
It is important to note that many Salafi Islamists who adhere to this
strict interpretation of Islam are peaceful. While they believe in the
rules and guidance found in the Qur’an and that the imitation of the
behavior of the Prophet and his closest companions should be the basis
for social order, they do not assign death sentences to all those who do
not accept their beliefs. Rather, they believe the best way of
implementing the Salafi creed is through propagation of the faith and
religious education, not violence. These Salafist groups believe God’s
word should be spread by da’wa, nonviolent proselytizing.
In the first half of the twentieth century a Salafi revival began. 149
Those involved in it argued that the Muslim community—the
Ummah—had fallen prey to deviations from original Islamic teachings.
Indeed, they were now living in a state of Jahiliyya. If they were to be
saved from this catastrophic crisis, it was necessary to reeducate the
Ummah in the original practices of the Prophet and his early followers
and reestablish true Islam to its decisive role in political and social life.
Thus, what the Salafi revival sought to accomplish, first and foremost,
was reembedding true Islam into the hearts of Muslims and for them to
turn those beliefs into a living reality. They would do so by
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acknowledging only the sovereignty of God and his sacred law (Sharia)
in all spheres of life. This would liberate them from human rulers and
their laws, values, and traditions.
This Salafi revival, in part, took the form of political parties.
Among the most notable of these was the Muslim Brotherhood,
founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan alBanna (19061949). 150 When
alBanna moved to Cairo in the early 1920s to attend teacher training
school, he became deeply disturbed by the effects of Westernization
and the concomitant rise of secularism, the breakdown of traditional
values, and the decline of Islam as the foundation of political and social
behavior. He eventually came to advocate the creation of a Muslim
state in Egypt based on Qur'anic law. The Brotherhood was to serve as
a vanguard party for bringing about this political change.
However, in its early years, the Brotherhood resembled more of a
social welfare society championing the cause of disenfranchised
peoples through educational and charitable work. During the 1930s, the
Brotherhood propagated an Islamic doctrine that emphasized social
justice and closing the gap between Egyptian classes. It also sought to
bring about an Islamic renewal and asserted that Islam should not be
confined to private life. Rather, it should serve as the foundation for a
thorough reform of the Egyptian political, economic, and social system.
The Brotherhood’s conception of politics and nationalism was Islamic.
It became politically active, identifying with the Egyptian national
movement. In the 1930s the outcome of this was an energetic campaign
against colonialism in Egypt and other Islamic countries.
As the Brotherhood grew in the years leading up to World War II,
the term Jihad began to enter its political lexicon in two ways. One, as
an inner effort that Muslims needed to make in order to free themselves
and to improve the wellbeing of the Islamic community. Two, within
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the context of a need for armed struggle to liberate Muslim lands from
colonial occupation. There was disagreement over the use of force
within the Brotherhood. Many of its leaders publicly remained
committed to a nonviolent approach. However, there were elements,
particularly among younger members, who pushed hard for the
establishment of a secret or clandestine armed wing that could employ
sabotage, assassination, and other irregular warfare tactics. AlBanna
finally agreed.
The Brotherhood continued to grow rapidly in the 1940s reaching
an estimated million members. After WWII it played an important part
in the national movement, aligning itself with secular groups and
factions. And its clandestine armed units carried out terrorist attacks.
The organization became increasing popular and came to be seen as a
serious threat by Egyptian ruling elites. As a result, alBanna was
assassinated in 1949.
The Brotherhood supported the military coup that overthrew the
monarchy in 1952, having formed a close relationship with the Free
Officers Movement in the period leading up to their seizure of power.
Many members of the Brotherhood expected Nasser, once in power, to
form an Islamic government based on their interpretations of Islam. But
soon the Brotherhood found itself at odds with the policies of the junta.
It became increasingly clear that the Islamic tenets of the Brotherhood
were largely incompatible with the secular ideology of Gamal 'Abd al
Nasser. In 1954, there was an attempt to kill him. As a result, the
Brotherhood was declared illegal. A wave of repression ensued with the
imprisonment and torture of thousands of its members.
This repression, in conjunction with domestic policies that were
seen as the antithesis of true Islam, led to the charge of Jahiliyya by
members of the Brotherhood and the call to wage Jihad against the
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Egyptian government. The new Egyptian leaders were considered
apostates because they were ruling by some set of principles or system
other than those based on Sharia.
It should be noted that there was and remains disagreement among
various Salafi factions as to whether they can declare incumbent
Muslim rulers apostates (a process known as takfir). According to
Wiktorowicz, debate over this issue represents one of the “most
prominent sources of fissure within the Salafi community and
exemplifies the impact of contextual interpretation on factionalization.
Although the factions share a set of criteria for declaring someone an
apostate, rooted in the Salafi creed, they differ over whether these
criteria have actually been met with regards to rulers in the Muslim
world.” 151
The Origins of Salafi Jihad Ideology
In the 1950s an ideology of Salafi Jihadism began to take shape. As
it evolved over the next half century it came to reflect the
characteristics and role that ideology played in the revolutionary
insurgencies of the period following WWII. Indeed, there are important
parallels between them.
The key early theorist, who articulated an adaptation of the
traditional Salafi call, as highlighted above, was Sayyid Qutb, a
member of Egypt’s Muslin Brotherhood. 152 His influence on what has
become the global Salafi Jihad movement was crucial. While in prison
between 1954 and 1964 as part of Nasser’s crackdown on the
Brotherhood, Qutb produced important works which have come to be
seen as doctrinal treaties for Salafi Jihadism. These included a long
commentary on the Qur’an—In the Shade of the Qur’an (Fi zilal al
Qur'an)—and a more actionoriented manifesto for Jihad—Milestones (
Ma'alim filTariq). These works capture Qutb’s radical and anti
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establishment views. They are based on his interpretation of the Qur'an
and Islamic history, assessment of the social and political ills of Egypt,
and an evaluation of the polluting impact of Western decadence,
materialism, and faithlessness on the culture of Islam. In 1964, having
been released from prison, Qutb published these works. He was
subsequently rearrested, accused of plotting to overthrow the state,
found guilty, and on 29 August 1966, executed by hanging.
Qutb came to believe that nearly all of Islam was in dire decline,
devolving into a state of ignorance equivalent to that which
characterized the era of preIslamic Arabia. He drew this conclusion, in
part, from the work of Mawlana abu alAla Maududi, who founded the
Islamic Society of India in 1941. 153 Maududi first proposed that a new
Jahiliyya had taken root in the Muslim world during the 1920s. He
called for the establishment of a Muslim state ruled under Sharia law as
a prescription for it. Maududi advocated a religious cleansing of all
Muslim societies. He asserted that they had been infected by Western
ideas and practices. For example, he argued that the type of
governments the West foisted on the Muslim world took power out of
God’s hands and put it in those of man. This violated the Qur’an which
recognized only the party of God and the party of Satan.
Qutb likewise applied the concept of Jahiliyya to Muslim states
and to Egypt in particular. In Qutb's view, Islamic law and religious
values were being ignored by these postcolonial apostate regimes,
leaving their Muslim societies in a state of debased ignorance. These
regimes were, in Qutb’s view, nonIslamic and therefore illegitimate.
All societies ruled by such governments were likewise not Islamic, and
Muslims living in them were religiously obligated to oppose the ruling
elites and to reject their political authority. This resulted in his call for
them to carry out Jihad to overthrow such hedonistic regimes. In doing
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so, Qutb coupled a fundamentalist interpretation of the Qur'an with a
radical and violent political ideology for armed revolution.
As noted earlier, here we can see in Qutb’s thought how Salafi
Jihadists differ from the larger Salafi community. Unlike the latter,
Qutb and the Salafi Jihadists who followed in his footsteps moved the
use of force—holy war—to such a position of importance that it was
equated as equal to the five pillars of Islam. Once a regime was
characterized as takfir and its leaders labeled infidels (kufi), then armed
violence was a legitimate way of dealing with it.
Qutb’s writings laid the foundation for this in the 1950s. Rulers
such as Nasser, through their approach to governance and rule, revealed
a conscious disbelief in Islam. And Nasser’s persistence in doing so, in
spite of warnings from scholars, was clear evidence about what he
believed and did not believe. His actions were unIslamic. That he
persisted in behaving in this manner demonstrated that he believed it
was a better way than Islam. Therefore, he was an apostate and a
legitimate target for warfare.
Like revolutionary insurgents, Qutb’s called for the overthrow of
antiIslamic Muslim governments through insurrection as the prelude
for radical change of the entire social and political system. Thus, Qutb's
understanding of Islam was inextricably linked to his political and
social prescriptions. Islam was a complete social system, and therefore
it set the requirements for government that it should take the form of an
Islamic theocracy. He deduced these requirements from his reading of
the Qur'an, including its insight into morality, justice, and governance.
More broadly, Qutb saw the crisis in Egypt and other Muslim
states within the context of a global ideological confrontation with the
nonMuslim world, in particular Western civilization. The West was
pushing the Muslim world into Jahiliyya. He painted an extremely de
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humanizing picture of the West, characterizing it as soulless, greedy,
arrogant, barbarous, immoral, and depraved. Western civilization
fostered idolatry, the most heinous of sins. The infusion of Western
ways into the Muslim world had to be reversed, said Qutb, with all the
might the Islamists could muster. He saw this confrontation in more
than political terms; it was a cosmic struggle between those who
worshiped idols and those who worshiped God. It was a Manichaean
battle in which two independent realms, one representing good the
other evil, were pitted against one another.
Qutb provided the foundations of a transnational ideology to
mobilize the Ummah for Jihad against both near enemies—e.g., the
Egyptian regime—and for the global fight against the West. And as the
above suggests, he saw the two as inextricably connected. To carry out
this struggle Qutb proposed the creation of a Muslim vanguard
organization in Milestones. His concept was consistent with how 20 th
century revolutionary thinkers, beginning with Lenin, defined the role
of a vanguard party in revolution. Mao assigned the same role to the
vanguard party for leading what he called People’s War, which we
referred to above as revolutionary guerrilla insurgency. For Qutb, the
Muslim vanguard was an elite organization comprised of educated and
motivated individuals who were to lead the masses “on the path,
marching through the vast ocean of Jahiliyya which has encompassed
the entire world.” This was a call to Islamic militancy and armed
revolutionary struggle as the means for seizing political power from the
state. 154
Along with Mawdudi and alBanna, Qutb is seen as one of the
most influential theorists of radical political Islamism. His thinking
influenced the writings and manifestos of those who shaped the Salafi
Jihad movement following the SovietAfghan war of the 1980s. This is
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true of Qutb’s conservative interpretation of Islamic principles as found
In the Shade of the Qur’an, his idea of making Jihad a personal and
permanent duty to defeat Jahiliyya and foster political and societal
change, and his notion of a transnational Ummah and the inevitability
of global ideological conflict between "Islam and the West." Fawaz
summarizes Qutb’s impact as follows:
More than anyone else, Sayyid Qutb…inspired generations of Jihadis…to wage perpetual Jihad to abolish injustice on earth, to bring people to the worship of God alone, and to bring them out of the servitude to others into the servants of the Lord…. [J]ihad for Qutb was a permanent revolution against internal and external enemies who usurped God’s sovereignty. 155
The impact of Qutb’s doctrinal concepts greatly influenced the
leaders of subsequent Jihad groups in Egypt, most importantly
Mohammed Abd alSalam Faraj and Ayman alZawahiri. The former
was the ideological and operational leader in the 1970s of what came to
be widely known as Jama'at alJihad (the Egyptian Islamic Jihad). Faraj
called for holy war, recruited followers, and created an underground
organization that carried out the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981.
This attack was personally sanctioned by Faraj. The Egyptian security
forces reacted swiftly against alJihad's campaign of terror, and Faraj
himself was executed in April 1982.
Faraj was a “religious nationalist,” writes Gerges, who asserted that
“fighting the near enemy must take priority over that of the far
enemy…. Jihad’s first priority [according to Faraj] must be to replace
infidel rulers with a comprehensive Islamic system.” 156 Ayman al
Zawahiri, a second important disciple of Qutb’s, concurred with Faraj’s
focus on Jihad against the Egyptian regime, the near enemy. However,
Zawahiri’s position will change in the vortex of the AfghanSoviet war
and its aftermath.
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If the first requirement the Salafi Jihadists had to satisfy to initiate
a global insurgency was to construct a universal ideology that 1)
described the depraved social and political conditions requiring Jihad,
2) proposed a new idealized system to replace this depraved one, and 3)
identified steps to be taken to bring it to fruition, Qutb provided the
doctrinal foundation for it. His interpretation of Jihad and its role in
fostering political and societal change against near enemies like the
secular and corrupt regime in Egypt under Nasser, his notion of a
transnational Ummah, and the inevitability of ideological conflict
between "Islam and the West" all can be found in the global Salafi
Jihad movement that emerged after the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan.
However, before we examine those ideological and operational
developments, it is important to highlight how the events in
Afghanistan in the 1980s provided the context for the amplification of
Salafi Jihadism and the recruitment of its first generation of fighters.
The SovietAfghan War
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan gave the fledging Salafi Jihad
movement the sacred cause it needed to mobilize beyond the national
level. There was now an opportunity to establish a leadership for the
worldwide Ummah, and in Afghanistan to help liberate a part of that
Ummah from a foreign infidel invader. The battle in Afghanistan was
portrayed as one between Muslims and kufars or infidels. Those who
came from across the Muslim world to defend the Afghans and resist
aggression against dar alIslam (the house of Islam) became the first
generation of transnational Jihadists. And their selfproclaimed victory
in Afghanistan—the defeat of a superpower—was empowering and
inspiring for them. It caused many in this vanguard to think and act
globally, taking their Islamist revolution onto the world stage.
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However, the events unfolding in Afghanistan in the 1980s were
only an opportunity. The emergence of Qutb’s vanguard party was not
a given. As noted earlier, to mount and sustain revolutionary insurgent
warfare necessitates the closely interrelated elements of leadership,
ideology, and organization. Each plays a vital role in each phase of
protracted conflict. And this is particularly the case in the initial period
of activity. In this embryonic moment leaders must emerge and adopt
an actionoriented ideology that responds to both practical grievances
and to a desire for an idealized and utopian future. If this was true for
postWWII revolutionary insurgency, it was likewise the case for a
radical Islamist messianic one. Such leaders must bring together what
Qutb identified as the Muslim vanguard, an elite group comprised of
highly educated and motivated individuals who were to lead the
Ummah in armed insurrection.
The central figure to play that role during the AfghanSoviet war
was Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, also known as Shaikh Azzam. Born in
1941 in the province of Jenin on the West Bank of the Jordan River in
the territory then administered under the British Mandate of Palestine,
he attended Damascus University and earned a degree in Sharia law in
1966. After the 1967 war and Israel’s military occupation of the West
Bank, Azzam joined the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood and took part
in guerrilla warfare operations against Israel. It was here that he first
learned about these irregular and asymmetric tactics for fighting more
powerful enemies. However, he soon became disillusioned with those
Palestinians leading the armed resistance for ideological reasons. In
particular, he opposed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and
its chief, Yasser Arafat, rejecting their secular and Marxist orientation.
Azzam opted out and continued his Islamic studies at Cairo’s Al
Azhar University where he earned a Master’s degree in 1970, and his
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Ph.D. in Islamic Jurisprudence in 1973. During this time in Egypt, he
met many Muslim Brotherhood followers of Qutb, including Ayman al
Zawahiri. Moreover, Azzam came to adopt Qutb’s ideas including the
belief in an inevitable global clash between the Islamic and nonIslamic
worlds. Not able to teach in Jordan because Palestinian militants were
not welcome—King Hussein had expelled the PLO during what
became known as Black September—he moved to Saudi Arabia and a
position at King Abdul Aziz University. Osama bin Laden was enrolled
as a student and it was there that Sheikh Azzam first met him.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was, for Azzam, a kufar or
infidel aggression against dar alIslam. He immediately issued a
fatwa—Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation after
Faith—which called all Muslims to fight a holy war to expel the
invaders from the house of Islam. 157 Major religious figures such as the
Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abd alAziz Bin Bazz, concurred.
Subsequently, at the peak of the Afghan Jihad, Azzam published Join
the Caravan which became one of the principal inspirations for
drawing thousands of Muslims to fight in Afghanistan. 158 Thus, in the
1980s Azzam emerged as the inspirational ideologist and a central
figure in what were the initial steps in the development of the militant
Islamist resistance movement. Azzam had charisma, and his words
drew many to the fight.
But Azzam’s role was more than that of inspirational ideologist. He
also knew how to organize and lead. After relocating to Pakistan in
1980 he established Maktab alKhadamat (Services Office) to organize
a support infrastructure in Peshawar to house those who came to be
known as “Afghan Arabs”—Jihad volunteers from around the Muslim
world. In the mid1980s bin Laden provided financial assistance to
expand that effort. The infrastructure established by Azzam included
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camps for training in guerrilla and paramilitary tactics to prepare
international recruits to fight on an unconventional and asymmetric
battlefield. According to Greges, Azzam created “a military college to
provide volunteers with methodical military training and to prepare
senior officers to lead Jihadist operations anywhere.” By doing so, the
AlFaruq Military College fostered the “emergence of new professional
Jihadist cadres.” 159
To recruit fighters and raise money for the cause Azzam traveled
through the Muslim world, as well as to Europe and the United States.
His goal was to awaken the Ummah to its duty in Afghanistan. And his
charisma, prose, and politicoreligious proselytizing drew many. He
played a key role in establishing networks for financing, recruiting, and
training radical Muslims to fight the Jihad in Afghanistan. But Azzam
saw Afghanistan, according to Roy, as more than the defense of the
Ummah there. It was also to serve “as a training ground to breed the
vanguard that would spark an overall resistance against the
encroachment of the infidels on the Ummah…. Jihad in Afghanistan
was aimed at setting up the vanguard of the Ummah.” 160
Roy notes that “Tens of thousands of militants went to Afghanistan
through these Islamic networks for training and Jihad.” 161 They
responded to the call and passed through the paramilitary training
infrastructure established by Azzam, and later by bin Laden. According
to Marc Sageman, they came “from all over: core Arab countries such
as Saudi Arabia and Egypt; Magreb Arab countries like Algeria and
Morocco; Southeast Asia countries such as the Philippines and
Indonesia; and the Muslim immigrant [or diaspora] communities of the
United States and Europe.” 162
Those who went to Afghanistan established bonds of solidarity
among themselves that went beyond that conflict. They became a
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potential vanguard—an international brigade—for carrying out global
Jihad. Sageman writes that, “the global Salafi Jihad evolved through a
process of radicalization consisting of gradual selfselection…and
recognition of the single common target of the Jihad.” And Roy adds
that “the volunteers in Afghanistan experienced a concrete
internationalization based on personal contacts, the brotherhood of
comrades in arms, friendships and affinities. They learned to know
other people and other languages.” In Afghanistan, they found “a new
community and brotherhood with which to identify.” 163
They also became skilled in guerrilla warfare tactics, having
learned that art from the indigenous Afghan Mujahideen who, in eight
years of protracted and bloody irregular warfare in a mountainous and
rugged land, wore down the mighty Soviet Army. In their book,
Afghan Guerrilla Warfare: In the Words of the Mujahideen Fighters,
Grau and Jalali chronicle the daytoday guerrilla tactics perfected by
Afghan warriors during the conflict. It was these irregular warfare
methods that enabled the riflewielding Mujahideen to defeat a fully
armored Superpower. 164 This was an important lesson that the
international Jihadists experienced up close.
Nothing captured the daytoday tactical battle better than the
Mujahideen’s innovative use of ambush and hitandrun tactics in
mountainous terrain. It was classic guerrilla warfare, and it worked.
During the eightyear war the Mujahideen response to the presence of
the Red Army in Afghanistan was to utilize these traditional tribal
warfare tactics to inflict casualties, cut supply and communication
lines, and erode the Soviet will to occupy Afghanistan. Between 1985
and 1987 alone the Mujahideen conducted over 10,000 ambushes. They
usually attacked at night or in the fading light, utilizing denial and
deception tactics and employing mines, machine guns, grenade
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launchers, and sniper fire to take full advantage of the cover offered by
Afghanistan’s rocky terrain. In the end, it was the nature of the Afghan
tribal and clan social structure and its traditional irregular methods of
warfare that allowed a guerilla force to render the Soviets constantly
vulnerable and eventually caused their withdrawal. 165
In sum, Afghanistan was the beginning, the starting point for a
global Salafi Jihadist insurgency. When that war came to an end, a core
cadre of international Jihad warriors existed for it. In the aftermath of
Afghanistan they emerged equipped not only with the requisite
ideological and organizational framework, but the guerrilla and
irregular warfare methods for conducting asymmetrical fights against
superior enemies. However, where they would fight next was unclear
as the last units of the Red Army rolled across the Friendship Bridge on
the AfghanUzbekistan border on February 15, 1989.
For Azzam and his followers, the victory in Afghanistan was not
the end but only the beginning. A journal article published in 1987 by
Azzam made this clear. In “AlQaeda alSulbah” or “The Solid Base,”
he envisioned a Muslim vanguard organization that would overthrow
apostate regimes in the Middle East and establish Islamic rule. The
concept for this was drawn from Qutb, who was Azzam’s spiritual
guide. This vanguard would direct the energies of the Afghan
mujahidin into fighting on behalf of oppressed Muslims. He viewed
Jihad as a religious obligation in defense of Islam and Muslims against
a defined enemy, whether local unIslamic rulers or occupying outside
infidels. 166
After Afghanistan: Deciding on the Next Area of Operations?
During the incipient stage, nationallevel revolutionary insurgent
movements have to consider strategic decisions about where to carry
out the armed struggle within the boundaries of the nation state. In
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other words, the area or areas of operations (AO) had to be determined.
For postWWII revolutionary insurgents the main enemy was located
within the nationstate. That was where the insurgent vanguard had to
build and employ their war fighting organization.
In the aftermath of the SovietAfghan war many of the Afghan
Arabs—Azzam’s Jihad vanguard—were faced with the issue of
whether, and if so where, to next fight for the Islamic cause. Where
would that AO be? And who was the next enemy? In 1989, these
questions were at the core of what amounted to a strategic re
assessment.
Before he was assassinated in November 1989, Azzam proposed
that the Jihadis who had helped oust the Soviet Union from
Afghanistan use the same fighting methods to do so in other parts of
dar alIslam (the house of Islam) occupied by infidels—e.g., Kashmir,
Somalia, and Bosnia. They should help liberate those areas as well.
And Afghan vets sought to do so in the 1990s. For example, the
declaration of BosniaHerzegovina independence in October 1991
opened up a new ethnic and religious conflict in the heart of Europe.
Besieged on two fronts and seemingly abandoned by the West, the
Bosnian regime, with its Muslim majority, accepted help from
wherever they could get it. Thus, they welcomed Arab veterans of the
Afghan war. However, attempts by these Jihadis to Islamicize the
Bosnian population and use of excessive violence appears to have not
been openly welcomed. 167
Other Jihad veterans advocated returning to their home countries to
overthrow what came to be called the "near enemy." These were
characterized as distorted Muslim regimes whose repressive, corrupt,
and secular nature prevented the creation of a true Islamic community
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and way of life. The priority for these Jihadi nationalists was to restore
Islam at home. That was the next AO.
This was controversial because it advocated fighting and killing
other Muslims. Among Afghan Arab veterans it appears to have been
championed by the Egyptian contingent. And they attempted in the
1990s—unsuccessfully—to fight it out with the Mubarak regime. In
doing so, they employed guerrilla warfare and terrorism tactics to
achieve their objectives. However, they were no match for Egyptian
government forces that killed or arrested so many of their commanders
and key operatives that the Jihad camp eventually split under the
pressure. One faction, the Egyptian Islamic Group, initiated a unilateral
ceasefire. The leadership of the other faction, Egyptian Islamic Jihad,
fled the country. 168
The Algerians were the other national contingent that followed
their participation in the AfghanSoviet war with fullscale irregular
warfare against their home government. And the violence carried out
by the Egyptians paled in comparison with that employed by the Armed
Islamic Group and its successor, the Salafist Group for Dawah and
Combat. However, in the end the Algerian security forces contained the
threat through a brutal counterterrorism campaign. 169
Finally, yet other Afghan Arabs stayed behind in Afghanistan and
Peshawar and continued to contemplate how and where to extend the
Jihad to new areas of operations. As this was taking place, Iraq invaded
and occupied Kuwait, adding a new dimension to the debate over the
future AO for the Jihadists.
The possibility of further Iraqi expansion from Kuwait into Saudi
Arabia created a crisis of monumental proportion for the House of
Saud. In the face of a massive Iraqi military presence, Saudi Arabia's
own forces were hopelessly outnumbered. In the midst of this
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predicament, bin Laden offered to protect Saudi Arabia from the Iraqi
army by deploying 100,000 Mujahideen to the Kingdom. If Saddam
chose to invade, he assured King Fahd, they would be repulsed by the
Mujahideen using the same protracted guerrilla and irregular warfare
tactics that had been employed to oust the Red Army from Afghanistan.
After thinking it over the Saudi Monarch decided to refuse bin Laden's
offer. A protracted eightyear guerrilla war like that fought in
Afghanistan was hardly an attractive option. Instead, he opted to allow
the United States and allied forces to deploy on his territory and use it
as a landbridge to drive the Iraqi army from Kuwait.
Bin Laden considered this a “heretical” act. He charged that the
presence of infidel troops in the "land of the two mosques" (Mecca and
Medina) was sacrilegious and desecrated sacred soil. It was also
confirmation of what Qutb and other Salafi theorists had asserted about
the coming global confrontation between the Muslim world and the
West. Not only was the West driving the Muslim world into Jahiliyya,
it now occupied its most holy territory. After publicly castigating the
Saudi government for allowing this to happen, bin Laden was forced
into exile in Sudan and his Saudi citizenship was revoked.
Paradoxically, it was in the aftermath of this setback that the
organization bin Laden helped found in Afghanistan began to emerge
as a transnationally focused organization with linkages to Jihadi groups
in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Jordan,
Lebanon, Iraq, Morocco, Somalia, and Eritrea, among other places,
several of which were fighting protracted insurgencies. Al Qaeda
forged ties with many of these militant Islamist groups.
While in Sudan, al Qaeda backed these nationalfocused Jihadists
with training, arms, and funding. To do so, it established weapons
caches and training camps where the guerrilla and irregular warfare
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methods honed in Afghanistan were taught. Al Qaeda also maintained
its training camps in Afghanistan for the same purpose. Sudanese
intelligence officers aided al Qaeda by providing false passports and
shipping documents. At that time, the operational role of al Qaeda was
principally to provide support through funds, training, and weapons for
nationallevel attacks by Jihadist groups it was aligned with. However,
as we will highlight below, the first attacks on US targets also occurred
during the Sudan period, and others were planned.
As al Qaeda’s presence in Sudan grew, its leaders engaged in
discussions over the area of operations and which enemies should be
targeted. With respect to the latter, these deliberations revolved around
what has been coined the “near and far enemies.” Up to this point the
targeting focus, as noted above, had been twofold: 1) liberating
occupied Muslim territory from infidel forces (e.g., Afghanistan), and
2) attacking and overthrowing local Muslim governments that were
apostate regimes. By late 1994 a third target and new AO was under
consideration—the “far enemy.”
If the definitive objective of the Salafi Jihadist movement was to be
realized— international system transformation with the re
establishment of the Caliphate, the historic community of Islam—then
the main impediment to that aspiration had to be targeted and defeated.
Sageman explains that those who championed this new targeting
doctrine argued “the main danger for the worldwide Islamist movement
was the United States, which was seen as moving in on Muslim lands
such as the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa. It was the ‘head of the
snake’ that had to be killed…. [T]he priority had to be switched from
the “near enemy” to the “far enemy.” 170 By the mid1990s bin Laden
and his top collaborators, including Ayman alZawahiri, adopted this
important change.
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Moreover, it appears that before this was formally espoused and
later recorded by bin Laden in fatwas issued in the latter 1990s,
operations were carried out by al Qaeda against US targets. In 1993
there is some evidence that trainers were sent to Somalia. As learned
since 9/11, bin Laden saw US involvement there as an extension of its
presence in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that grew out of the
1991 war to expel Iraq from Kuwait. He believed that Washington was
following an imperial policy of taking over parts of the Muslim world.
Consequently, in 1993 one of bin Laden’s top lieutenants,
Muhammad Atef, traveled to Somalia to determine how al Qaeda might
attack US forces stationed there. He arranged to assist Aidid’s militia.
Subsequently, one of al Qaeda’s commanders and a small number of
Mujahideen, veteran Islamic Holy Warriors who had fought in
Afghanistan, were dispatched to provide military assistance and
training. The training included tactics learned in the Afghan War for
fighting against heavily armed helicopters. Aidid’s gunners were taught
the most effective way to shoot down a helicopter was to use rocket
propelled grenades (RPGs) rigged with timing devices to take off the
tail rotor of the Black Hawk, its most vulnerable part. 171
The outcome is chronicled in Black Hawk Down, Mark Bowden’s
account of that battle. 172 In a strict military sense, the Task Force
Ranger raid was successful. The Aidid lieutenants that had been
targeted were captured. But the human costs of the operation were
high: nineteen Americans dead and missing, seventeen from Task
Force Ranger, and eightyfour wounded. One Malaysian was also killed
and seven were wounded, along with two wounded Pakistanis. Many
hundreds of Somalis were killed and wounded.
Also during the Sudan period, at least one of the two attacks in
Saudi Arabia in the mid1990s may have been the result of this new
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targeting policy. Those who carried out the bombing of the National
Guard training center in Riyadh confessed to having been trained by al
Qaeda in its Afghan camps and were inspired by bin Laden. At least
that is what the Saudi’s have reported before they were executed.
Finally, during this period building the infrastructure necessary to
attack major US targets in East Africa was initiated. Senior members of
al Qaeda were dispatched to Kenya.
In sum, by the mid1990s the targeting doctrine to support a global
insurgency was in place to support a strategy which had as its dual
objectives to foster a) regime changes locally and b) international
system transformation globally. To accomplish these goals both “near
enemies” and the “far enemy” had to be attacked. However, to do so al
Qaeda had to establish and staff warfighting organizations that could
employ an array of political, psychological, guerrilla warfare, and other
paramilitary techniques to fight a “long Jihad.”
In Sudan, it appears that al Qaeda was attempting to establish those
capabilities when it was forced to leave. In 1996, bin Laden was asked
to depart the country after the US pressured the Sudanese government
to expel him, citing possible connections to the 1994 attempted
assassination of Egyptian President Mubarak while in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia. Bin Laden and 200 of his key subordinates left in late 1996,
returning to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan Again: The Foundations for Global Insurgency
Returning to Afghanistan proved fortuitous for al Qaeda. It was
given an opportunity to accelerate building a transnational warfighting
organization it had begun to form in Sudan. Now allied with the
Taliban, who had a belief system similar to that of bin Laden and al
Qaeda, Afghanistan provided an ideal base to do so. It turned into an
everexpanding infrastructure and safe haven, far from American
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political influence and military power. According to the 9/11
Commission Report, “The Taliban seemed to open the door to all who
wanted to come to Afghanistan to train in the [al Qaeda] camps. The
alliance with the Taliban provided al Qaeda a sanctuary in which to
instruct and indoctrinate new fighters and terrorists, import weapons,
forge ties with other Jihad groups and leaders [globally], and plot and
staff terrorist schemes.” 173
Between 1996 and the attacks on September 11, 2001, Salafi
oriented Muslims from around the world traveled to Afghanistan to
receive irregular warfare training and indoctrination in these facilities.
How many did so is hard to determine. Estimates vary widely. The 9/11
Commission Report noted that “U.S. intelligence estimates put the total
number of fighters who underwent instruction in bin Ladensupported
camps in Afghanistan from 1996 through 9/11 at 10,000 to 20,000.” 174
Others propose much higher numbers. For example, according to
German police testimony in the 2006 retrial of Mounir alMotassadek,
a Moroccan accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, over 70,000
received paramilitary training and religious instruction in alQaeda’s
camps in Afghanistan. 175 Whatever the number, a considerable corps of
secondgeneration holy warriors traveled to Afghanistan from some
fifty or more countries.
An assessment of developments in Afghanistan between 1996 and
the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States suggest that the
foundation was being established by al Qaeda for initiating a global
Salafi Jihad insurgency that reflected the requirements identified earlier
in this study. Al Qaeda’s expanding infrastructure in Afghanistan
allowed it to undertake several activities that tracked with these
requirements.
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First of all, during this period bin Laden revised al Qaeda’s
ideology and doctrine to emphasize a global mission for the Salafi
Jihad movement. He did so by focusing on the United States—the far
enemy—and the dangers America posed for the very survival of the
Muslim world. This recasting of doctrine can be seen most succinctly
in his 1998 fatwa, entitled, "Declaration of the World Islamic Front for
Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders." The United States was
attempting to destroy Islam, and Muslims were in a cataclysmic battle
with the West. America’s occupation of Saudi Arabia had had a
humiliating and debilitating impact on the Ummah. According to bin
Laden, "Since God laid down the Arabian Peninsula, created its desert,
and surrounded it with its seas, no calamity has ever befallen it like
these Crusader hosts that have spread in it like locusts, crowing its soil,
eating its fruits, and destroying its verdure." 176
And it was not just Saudi Arabia that was endangered. The United
States, by orchestrating UN sanctions against Iraq, was annihilating
Muslims there as well. Bin Laden asserted that Washington did not rest
after the "slaughter" of the Gulf War but instead sought the
"dismemberment and the destruction...of what remains of this
people.” 177 In interviews during the late 1990s, he also included the
plight of Muslims in Kashmir, East Timor, Sudan, Somalia, Chechnya,
and elsewhere in this messianic vision of a war of survival for Islam
against the West led by the United States.
Through an assessment of bin Laden’s fatwas, other written
statements, and interviews during this second period in Afghanistan, it
is evident that he revised al Qaeda’s ideology and doctrine for a global
Salafi Jihad against the United States. Thus, in the 1998 fatwa, after
specifying the American crime of occupation of the holy places, the
war it was waging through sanctions against the Iraqi people, and
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America’s support of Jewish aggression in Palestine, bin Laden
asserted that the United States had declared war on God. Therefore, it
was the duty of every Muslim to “kill the Americans and plunder their
money wherever and whenever they find it." The fatwa charged that to
kill Americans, both civil and military, is an individual duty for every
Muslim who is able, in any country where this is possible, “until the
US “departs from all the lands of Islam.” 178
Civilians are off limits under the international laws of war. But for
bin Laden all Americans were in one way or another complicit with the
policies of their government and therefore legitimate targets. It was a
millenarian outlook that saw the world through Manichaean lenses—a
holy war between the forces of good and evil that eschewed the
distinctions of international law. Recall that millenarian movements are
ones in which religious, social, and political groupings envision a
coming major transformation of society and return to an idealized past.
Such movements typically claim that the current regime and its rulers
are irreparably corrupted, unjust, and otherwise irredeemable. They
have to be completely vanquished.
In sum, bin Laden asserted that since Muslims everywhere in the
world were suffering at the hands of the United States, the Ummah
must wage holy war against their real enemy, and not only act to rid
itself of unpopular and apostate regimes backed by the Americans. It
was the duty of the Muslim community to protect their faith. Bin Laden
declared that the United States was vulnerable and could be defeated in
war by mujahideen in the same way the USSR suffered a humiliating
defeat at their hands.
Beyond doctrine, important organizational developments took
place during the latter 1990s as well. Al Qaeda as an organization grew
in size and complexity. This was due, in part, to the fact it was able to
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select and add personnel from the thousands of individuals that flowed
through its training camps. It had a very large pool from which to
screen and evaluate candidates from its training program for
membership in its core organization. Also facilitating this
organizational evolution was the secure sanctuary that al Qaeda
enjoyed in Afghanistan.
Al Qaeda was able during the latter 1990s to expand its
hierarchical apparatus and formalize its structure, with bin Laden, the
emirgeneral, at the top, followed by other al Qaeda leaders. 179 Below
bin Laden a shura majlis or consultative council was established, with
four committees reporting to it. A military committee recruited fighters
and ran the training camps in which they were instructed in the
guerrilla and irregular warfare methods learned in Afghanistan in the
1980s. Indeed, in his 1996 “Declaration of War against the Americans
Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” bin Laden singled out
the importance of these techniques for fighting conventionally superior
enemies. He stated: “[I]t must be obvious to you that, due to the
imbalance of power between our armed forces and the enemy forces, a
suitable means of fighting must be adopted, i.e., using fast moving,
light forces that work under complete secrecy. In other words, to
initiate a guerrilla war, where the sons of the nation, and not the
military forces, take part in it.” 180
The military committee also planned and launched global strikes
against the United States. Finally, it oversaw other clandestine
functions including a special office for procuring, forging, or altering
identity documents such as passports and visas.
A finance committee established a global financial network to raise
the resources necessary to sustain al Qaeda’s expanding apparatus and
activities. Its financial network was based on redundancy. Al Qaeda
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secured its money through the Western banking system, the Islamic
banking system, and the traditional hawala system. This network was
linked to a number of money sources to include Muslim charitable
organizations, which al Qaeda infiltrated and used to collect and mask
the funds it needed. These included the International Islamic Relief
Organization (IIRO), the Benevolence International Foundation, the al
Haramian Islamic Foundation, Blessed Relief Foundation, and the
Rabita Trust. These organizations have branches worldwide and engage
in activities related to religious, educational, social, and humanitarian
programs. But they also knowingly or unknowingly assisted in
financing alQaeda. Wealthy individuals, particularly in the Arabian
Gulf states, likewise were a source of funds, as were al Qaedarun
businesses.
Justifying its actions by issuing rulings on Shari’a law was the
responsibility of the religious/legal committee. It also had a role in
indoctrinating those many thousand Muslims who went to Afghanistan
to be trained for holy war. Finally, a media committee disseminated
information in support of al Qaeda’s political and military goals and
activities. In the latter 1990s, al Qaeda began using the Internet to
publicize those goals and activities, to disseminate information, to
inspire and recruit, and to gather and share information. However, this
was only in its embryonic stage at this point. As we shall see later, the
use of the Internet burgeoned after 9/11 for al Qaeda and the Salafi
Jihad movement.
This growth of al Qaeda’s organization in Afghanistan allowed it
to go operational in a way it could not during its Sudan phase. It now
was able to plan several terrorist operations to strike at the United
States across the global landscape and had the capacity to direct and
deploy clandestine units to execute those operations. And they had
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three major successes as a result. These included 1) the attacks on US
embassies in Nairobi and DaresSalaam, in August 1998; 2) the
suicide attack on the USS Cole in Aden, in October 2000; and 3) the
strikes against the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11,
2001. Additionally, as is now known, al Qaeda had planned and
deployed personnel to carry out other attacks as well. However, for
various reasons these were not successful.
From its Afghanistan sanctuary, al Qaeda at this point in time also
sought to establish itself more broadly as a headquarters and vanguard
for the global Salafi Jihad movement. Recall that the 1998 fatwa
instituted a World Islamic Front for Jihad. The purpose of the Front
was to create a transnational organization with a worldwide presence
and linkage with nationallevel radical Islamist affiliates in numerous
countries. Its ultimate goals were fourfold: 1) to unite the Ummah; 2) to
overthrow all corrupt and apostate Muslim governments; 3) to drive
Western influence from those countries; and 4) to abolish state
boundaries and establish the Caliphate.
To this end, during the 19962001 phase of development, a global
network of linkages was established by al Qaeda’s World Front with a
score of nationallevel militant Salafi and other radical Islamist groups
around the world, many of whom were employing unconventional and
asymmetric violence against their home governments. The World Front
emerged as an umbrella organization that sought to tie these like
minded, nationallevel parties and smaller cellular units together for a
common purpose, as described in the fourfold objectives noted above.
These affiliates and their links to al Qaeda were first delineated in a
comprehensive way by Rohan Gunaratna. In Inside Al Qaeda: A Global
Network of Terror, he identified ones in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,
Yemen, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the
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Palestinian territories, Algeria, Libya, Eritrea, Somalia, Bosnia,
Chechnya, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Germany, Britain, and
the United States. 181
An examination of nationallevel groups suggests that while they
have differences that are shaped by the local context in which they
operate and fight, they appear to adhere to the same general
ideological/religious principles and Salafi Jihadist orientation. And
while they have local objectives to include overthrowing apostate
governments and expulsion of outside forces, they see their fight within
a larger context and subscribe to the broader goal of a global Islamic
reordering of the international system so that it is no longer US
dominated.
A number of specialists have suggested different frameworks for
delineating the global Salafi Jihad movement that emerged during this
19962001 period. One of the more conceptual and analytic
assessments was put forward by David Kilcullen. He proposes that a
worldwide militant Islamist movement appears to function through
“regional theatres of operation rather than as a monolithic bloc.”
Islamist groups within these different theatres follow “general
ideological or strategic approaches that conform to the pronouncements
of al Qa’eda, and share a common tactical style and operational
lexicon.” However, Kilcullen contends that there is “no clear evidence
that al Qaeda directly controls or directs Jihadists in each theatre….
[R]ather than being a single monolithic organization, the [emerging]
global Jihad movement appears to be a more complex phenomenon.” 182
Within this context, al Qaeda was said to “resemble the Communist
International (Comintern) of the 20th century—a holding company and
clearinghouse for world revolution.” 183 In other words, al Qaeda was
more of a vanguard that sought to inspire and integrate these national
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level groups and their local grievances into a broader transnational
Salafi Jihad ideology and to link these disparate groups together
through its Afghan sanctuary, emerging global communications,
finances, and technology.
Nine regional theatres are identified by Kilcullen. In three—the
Americas, Western Europe, and Australia/New Zealand—Salafi Jihad
groups had engaged primarily in “subversion, fundraising and
organizational development.” However, during the latter 1990s, a few
terrorist operations were attempted in these regions through al Qaeda’s
forward deployed clandestine operational units. And since 9/11, other
local cells have also executed operations or been uncovered in the
process of preparing to do so, as will be discussed later.
The remaining six regional theaters all experienced, according to
Kilcullen, varying degrees of armed violence in which local radical
Islamist and Salafi Jihadist armed groups employed the same common
methods of guerrilla and irregular warfare tactics against local regimes.
Al Qaeda could also be active in these theatres. The following,
summarized from Kilcullen’s assessment, highlights these
developments, which both predate and postdate 9/11:
• The Greater Middle East to include Turkey, the Levant, Israel/Palestine, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula is the most active theatre. During the1990s, and following 9/11, ongoing insurgent violence by local Islamist armed groups has taken place in Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Turkey, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine. This included bombings, suicide attacks, kidnappings, and raids. Al Qaeda also established regional affiliates in several parts of the region. However, much of the insurgent and terrorist action in theatre is not directed, controlled, or carried out by al Qaeda.
• The Maghreb states, to include Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Morocco, and Tunisia, all have experienced terrorist and insurgent violence carried out by radical Islamist armed groups. Al Qaeda also has a presence in several states in the theatre.
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• East Africa experienced al Qaeda terrorism in 1998 with the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Kenya suffered a subsequent attack in Mombassa in 2002. There is likely ongoing al Qaeda presence in Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia. The East Africa and Middle East theatres overlap, with connections between Yemen, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa.
• South and Central Asia has long been a theatre of radical Islamist violence. Afghanistan was al Qaeda’s sanctuary until 9/11. And remnants of it remain hold up along the Pakistan border. Both Pakistan and India have experienced Islamist insurgency and terrorism. The insurgency in Kashmir has Islamist elements, and the area is a base for al Qaeda affiliates. The Central Asian republics of the FSU have seen Islamist lowlevel insurgency.
• Southeast Asia has radical Islamist insurgencies in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, and lowerlevel activity in Singapore and Malaysia. The main group in theatre is Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which operates across the region, maintains links to al Qaeda, cooperates with local movements, and has links into other theatres.
• The Caucasus region has seen separatist insurgencies turn increasingly Islamist with these elements allied to al Qaeda. This clearly has been the case in Chechnya. It has become a launching pad for radical Islamist attacks into Russia since the late 1990s. These have included suicide bombings.
What common themes and factors drew al Qaeda and these local
groups together? How did local groups come to see their situation
within the context of al Qaeda’s global construct? What role did al
Qaeda’s ideology and activities from its Afghan base play in
facilitating these developments?
Perhaps the key overarching theme that drew local groups to
identify with al Qaeda’s global message was the proposition that Islam
was in crisis. Of course, this theme is a central tenet of al Qaeda’s
SalafiJihadist ideology and, as noted earlier, was first promulgated by
Qutb. The crisis is characterized as one affecting the entire Ummah.
Thus, Muslims living in Arab and Muslim countries who feel a strong
sense of alienation because they believe that their government does not
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truly represent Islam and is failing politically and economically,
perceive their local situation not as unique but part of a larger
phenomenon. Thus, radical Islamist groups fighting against these
conditions at the local level see their struggle in a global context.
Adding to this crisis of Islam, and playing a major part in it
according to al Qaeda’s ideology, was Western and particularly
American aggression and domination. The dimensions of this included
US and other Western occupation of Muslim lands either directly or
through Israel; collaboration with despotic, apostate, and puppet
regimes such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia; appropriating
Muslim resources; and the ultimate goal of hegemony over the Middle
East politically, economically, and culturally.
Further facilitating the spread of SalafiJihadist doctrine and the
rise of al Qaeda, which likewise contributed to the identification of
local groups with a global movement, was what one specialist describes
as the reach of “Wahhabism—a puritan form of Islam virtually
synonymous with Salafism—to as many countries as possible”
beginning in the 1970s. “Over the next three decades, the kingdom
would muster some $70 billion in overseas aid, over two thirds of
which was destined for ‘Islamic activities’ such as the building of
mosques, religious learning institutions, or Wahhabi religious centers.”
What this resulted in was a “diffusion of individuals, institutions, and
financial assets” that helped to radicalize young Muslims and promote
Jihad in their countries against apostate regimes. 184
In sum, al Qaeda’s ideology constituted a comprehensive narrative
with which local Jihad groups could find common ground. In addition,
there were several other enablers that permitted al Qaeda to draw
nationallevel armed groups into a broader global Salafi Jihad network
that, as September 11, 2001 approached, can be characterized as an
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embryonic global millenarian insurgency. And different elements of
that network were executing operations against both near and far
enemies, employing the range of guerrilla and other irregular warfare
tactics.
We have already identified the most important of these other
enablers—al Qaeda’s sanctuary in Afghanistan. Through that safe
haven, al Qaeda was able to expand and add to its first generation of
Jihadists—those who fought the Soviet Union—a second generation
that was trained by al Qaeda during 19962001. Both generations came
from the nine regions identified above. Many were already members of
nationallevel Islamist organizations. Through these individuals,
relationships were established that linked the al Qaeda vanguard and its
World Front to nationallevel movements. A network of acquaintance,
friendships, and mutual obligations developed that stretched worldwide
between and among these groups and the al Qaeda vanguard. Similarly,
within these theatres, groups came to cooperate and develop bonds of
shared experience and mutual obligation. Common experiences and
histories cemented relationships between the various members of the
global Jihad network.
Three additional enablers also enhanced its potential to draw
nationallevel groups into a broader Salafi Jihad network that can be
characterized as in the incipient stage of a global millenarian
insurgency on a global level on the eve of 9/11. They included
globalization, information age technologies, and a networkbased
approach to organization. Each augmented al Qaeda’s capacity to do
so.
Globalization eroded the traditional boundaries that separated and
secured the nationstate. It allows people, goods, information, ideas,
values, and organizations to move easily across international space
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without heeding state borders. Modern transportation and
communications systems, in conjunction with the postCold War
breakdown of political and economic barriers around the world,
accelerated the globalization process.
Information age technologies are central to globalization. These are
the networks through which communications takes place on a
worldwide basis. Cellular and satellite phones allow contact between
the most remote and the most accessible locations of the globe.
Computers and the Internet are the other pillars of the information
revolution.
To take advantage of globalization and informationage
technologies, al Qaeda adopted a new organizational approach that was
less hierarchical and more networked to link groups in the nine theatres
together. In doing so, they followed the lead of the international
business community, which was in the forefront of such change. Small
and large corporations developed virtual or networked organizations
that were able to adapt to the information age and globalization.
Globalization, informationage technology, and a networkbased
approach to organization, in conjunction with the aforementioned
enabler of a secure sanctuary, contributed in important ways to the
appearance at the end of the 20 th century of a global millenarian
insurgency, in its incipient stage of development, that was carrying out
guerrilla warfare and other paramilitary operations against both “near”
and “far” enemies.
Global Insurgency in the Aftermath of 9/11?
In the aftermath of 9/11 the United States went to war with al
Qaeda and the Taliban. By December 7 th the Taliban regime had been
overthrown and al Qaeda’s infrastructure in Afghanistan largely
disrupted. The loss of that sanctuary was a major setback—a strategic
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defeat—for the vanguard of the Salafi Jihad Movement and the
embryonic global insurgency it was facilitating from that Afghan base.
It now faced the challenge of having to adapt and innovate to recover
what it had lost. Could it find new ways to replicate what had been
established in Afghanistan in 19962001? This was the challenge al
Qaeda and its Salafi affiliates faced. Could they reinvent themselves in
the aftermath of Operation Enduring Freedom and continue to carry out
the global insurgency they had initiated?
The remainder of this study seeks to identify how over the last five
years al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists have attempted to reorganize to
continue to execute a global fight. They appear to have done so through
four strategic adaptations. The degree to which they have been able to
accomplish each of these strategic adaptations and, as a result, the
extent to which they are able to fight the “long Jihad”—a protracted
irregular war on several fronts—cannot be answered by this study. That
requires much further research that was beyond this study. Here we will
focus on describing what each of these strategic adaptations entails.
• One, the al Qaeda vanguard and its affiliates have employed the Internet to establish in cyberspace a virtual sanctuary from which to carry out many of the activities they had initiated from their Afghan base in 19962001. These activities include propagating the Salafi Jihad ideology to the Ummah; recruiting, inspiring, and training Jihadis; providing operational information and materials; networking dispersed elements of the Salafi Jihad movement; irregular warfare training; and planning and executing operations.
• Two, al Qaeda and its affiliates have attempted to utilize ungoverned territory in the tribal areas of the AfghanPakistan border (and elsewhere in other regions) as physical sanctuaries to carry out some of the same activities.
• Three, they have exploited the conflict in Iraq utilizing it as a major recruiting and training ground to help prepare a third generation of Salafi Jihadis. Iraq not only serves as a new front to engage the United States directly, but it also affords an opportunity
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to develop a new cadre of skilled fighters who can gain the kind of experience that after Iraq will allow them to more effectively fight in their native lands or elsewhere. In other words, in the first decades of the 21 st century these “Iraqi Arabs” may serve the same purpose the “Afghan Arabs” did at the close of the 20 th century.
• Four, al Qaeda has continued to encourage and promote the global Salafi Jihad movement that, as Kilcullen contends, appears to function at the local level within nine regional areas. In these locations, activities carried out by groups and cells that see themselves as a part of this movement continued to take place since 9/11, with some regions to include Europe experiencing major terrorist strikes.
Below, the focus will mainly be on the first adaptation. How has
the al Qaeda vanguard and its affiliates employed the Internet? To what
extent do they seek to establish in cyberspace a virtual sanctuary from
which to carry out many of the activities that had taken place on the
ground during 19962001 in the Afghan base? The three remaining
strategic adaptations—utilizing ungoverned territory, exploiting the
conflict in Iraq, and continuing the fights against near or national level
enemies by local armed groups—will receive briefer attention.
Virtual Sanctuary. Since 9/11, growing attention has been paid
in both the news media and more scholarly publications to how al
Qaeda and other associated Salafi Jihad groups have made use of the
Internet. For example, Steve Coll and Susan Glasser suggested in the
Washington Post that “al Qaeda has become the first guerrilla
movement in history to migrate from physical space to cyberspace.
With laptops and DVDs, in secret hideouts and at neighborhood
Internet cafes, young codewriting Jihadists have sought to replicate
the…facilities they lost in Afghanistan with countless new locations on
the Internet.” 185
Gabriel Weimann, in a 2004 study, provided the following insights
into the expanding use of the Internet by Jihad groups. “In 1998,
around half of the thirty organizations designated [by the United States]
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as Foreign Terrorist Organizations … maintained Websites; by 2000,
virtually all terrorist groups had established their presence on the
Internet. Our scan of the Internet in 20032004 revealed hundreds of
Websites serving terrorists and their supporters.” He goes on to add:
“Terrorism on the Internet…is a very dynamic phenomenon: Websites
suddenly emerge, frequently modify their formats, and then swiftly
disappear—or seem to disappear by changing their online address but
retain much the same content.” 186 Since 2004, what Weimann
described has continued to burgeon.
Weimann and other specialists have conceptualized frameworks for
categorizing the different ways in which the Internet has been utilized,
describing the functions these activities hope to serve. Extrapolating
from these studies and based on extensive data mining of a primary
source database compiled by the SITE Institute, one can observe these
attempts to replicate in cyberspace many of the activities that took
place on the ground in Afghanistan in 19962001. 187 Here we divide
those activities into the following seven categories:
• Propagating the Salafi Ideology of Jihad. • Inspiring and Mobilizing the Ummah to Join the Jihad. • Psychological Warfare to Demoralize Enemies. • Networking the global Salafi Jihad Insurgency. • Operational Information Sharing—Manuals and Handbooks. • Operational Information Sharing—Training Videos and
Courses. • Collection for Targeting.
If effective, these virtual activities will provide al Qaeda and its
associated movements (AQAM) with the capacity to reach likeminded
individuals and groups in various regions of the world who are willing
to join the cause and take action. Through AQAM Web sites these
individuals and groups will have the opportunity to attain the
operational skills and capacity to execute violent strikes locally and on
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an independent basis. This is a new form of power projection no radical
movement has had in the past.
What follows is a description of each category and how they fit
together. It is based on an assessment of examples of the ways in which
al Qaeda and associated Salafi Jihad groups have carried out each
activity on their Internet Web sites. However, before doing so, it is also
important to briefly note the role and contribution that Satellite
television plays in this process. For Muslim populations in the Arab
world and elsewhere satellite channels such as AlJazeera and Al
Arabiya are often the first way in which they are engaged with the
issues and themes, described below, that are found on the Web sites of
al Qaeda and associated Jihad groups. In other words, there is a
synergy—albeit an unintended one—between them. Indeed, it may well
be that AlJazeera and AlArabiya, among others, are the precipitants—
provide an awaking—that takes the individual to the Internet for further
information. Here is what they will find.
1) Propagating the Salafi Ideology of Jihad. Recall that the first
requirement the Salafi Jihadists have to satisfy to be in a position to
initiate a global insurgency is to transmit a transnational ideology to
target audiences. They have to be able to successfully perform the same
functions on the Internet as those carried out by nationallevel
revolutionary movements. Through a large number of different Web
based activities to include sophisticated media fronts, news shows, and
online magazines they seek to execute these functions across the
globe. By doing so, they are able to disseminate a series of ideological
frames and messages that describe in global and local terms the social
and political conditions requiring immediate and drastic Jihad action.
Salafi ideology offers a comprehensive critique of the existing local
and global social/political situation as immoral and inhuman and seeks
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to instill in the Ummah a powerful sense of moral outrage and
commitment to holy war.
The Global Islamic Media Front, one of the main voices of al
Qaeda on the Web, is illustrative. This site, formerly known as Alneda,
is heavily focused on ideological type information. They not only post
all of the doctrinal speeches and statements of bin Laden and Zawahiri,
among others, but also provide analysis of these items for the Ummah.
An example—“Reading and Analysis of the Hero Tapes of Usama bin
Laden, Ayman alZawahiri, and Abu Musab al Zarqawi”—was posted
on May 1, 2006, and subsequently distributed across several other Jihad
forums.
Another example that focuses, at least in part, on the broader
ideological themes found in Salafi Jihad doctrine is the Voice of the
Caliphate, a weekly news program issued by the Global Islamic Media
Front. First appearing in 2005, it ties theory and practice together by
providing examples of how the global holy war is being carried out by
different elements of the Ummah.
Electronic Internet magazines serve a similar function. A recent
example is The Echo of Jihad, a 45page periodical that began
appearing in 2006. Its April edition features discussion of the
importance of Jihad, the relative importance of Islamic scholars versus
Mujahideen leaders like bin Laden, and recent operations by
Mujahideen in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and
elsewhere. A second example Ja’ami (which means mosque) is
produced by the Media Office of the Islamic Front of the Iraqi
Resistance.
Finally, in this category of ideological and doctrinal materials one
must include broad strategy documents such as al Qaeda’s sevenstage
plan for the next twenty years. Since it was first posted, this “strategy”
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document has been given a prominent and permanent status atop many
of the most frequently visited Jihadist forums on the Internet. Western
experts tend to characterize it as very naïve. They do so for the
following reasons. First, there is no way the scenario depicted in the
plan can be followed step by step. It is simply unworkable. Second, the
idea that alQaeda could establish a caliphate in the Islamic world is
absurd. The 20year plan has nothing to do with reality. It is far out of
reach.
However, these materials are not aimed at convincing Western
experts. They are directed at those many members of the Ummah who
read these materials at Jihadi forums on the Internet. What impact do
they have on them? Do they envision a coming major transformation of
society and return to an idealized past? And if they agree with it, are
they ready, as one threepart series run by the Global Islamic Media
Front asks, to “Gear Up” and prepare to join the Jihad?
2) Inspiring and Mobilizing the Ummah to Join the Jihad. It is
one thing to nod in agreement with broad ideological statements.
However, as the previous review of how revolutionary insurgent
movement’s inspired and recruited cadre explained, next comes the
hard work. The same is true here. But the Viet Cong did their inspiring
and mobilizing facetoface.
Al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists seek to substitute a plethora of
Internet methods to achieve the same end. Here we will examine one
important way they do so by celebrating the achievements and
sacrifices of those on the front lines of the global fight.
Consider the biographies of martyrs which are posted on the Web
with a high degree of regularity. Al Qaeda in Iraq, for example,
publishes on a periodic basis a document titled “From the Biographies
of Prominent Martyrs.” The eighth issue of it, dated January 2006, tells
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the story of the “Knights Group” of three Mujahideen. In great detail
the reader learns why and how each joined the Jihad and traveled to
Iraq to fight. An account of their courageous demise follows. The three
were pinned down in a house they were using as a base. The author
glorifies their deaths, noting the unwillingness of each to try to escape
or surrender. And one of the Jihad fighters, referred to as the lion Abu
Umar, is said to have “carried in his hands a mortar shell that he had
prepared for this situation.” He surprised the Americans attacking the
house, “pulled the ring out, throwing four of the criminals to hell, while
he went up to Paradise.”
This is but one example. Many others are contained in the SITE
Institute database. And they only maintain a sample of them. There are
also other formats for these biographies such as the videoed “last will
and testament” of suicide bombers. One example is the “Will of the
Martyr, Abu alZobeir alMohajir,” with video footage of his operation
in Karmat alFallujah in July 2005. It depicts a celebration in which he
enthusiastically describes the operation he is about to carry out and why
he intends to do so: “Allah ordered us to make Jihad…to defend his
religion. I urge all young Muslim men to follow us in Jihad and give
their lives for the sake of Allah’s religion.” He is then shown being
embraced by his comrades, before the film cuts to the scene of his
suicide car bombing—a “crusaders checkpoint” east of Fallujah. Again,
this is one of many examples found at Jihad Web sites.
Other means employed to inspire and mobilize are videos of the
preparation for and successful conduct of operations against US forces
in Afghanistan and Iraq. These appear on a daily basis on Jihadi forums
and Web sites. One example, issued by the Global Islamic Media Front
on January 22, 2006, is a 28minute video titled: “Jihad Academy,”
which is described as but a “single day for those who struggle in
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Allah's cause.” It highlights a number of attacks executed by Iraqi
insurgent groups to include al Qaeda in Iraq, the Mujahideen Army,
and the Islamic Army in Iraq. The attacks are shown in the dawn hours
and in the dark of night. They include sniper operations, detonation of
improvised explosive devices against a variety of targets, and rocket
and mortar fire.
There also are many publications posted on these Web sites that
fall into the category of inspiring, motivating, and mobilizing the
Ummah to join the fight. These guides are advocacy and motivational
pieces. The extent to which the message is being received and acted
upon remains to be determined.
Paralleling these are other videos with Jihadi field commanders
who provide the same kind of inspirational message. Of course, the
most prominent was Abu Musab alZarqawi. An example, titled “A
Message to the People,” was issued by the Mujahideen Shura Council,
which claims to be composed of six insurgency groups in Iraq. 188 In
this 34minute video, Zarqawi was seen planning operations in a war
room, meeting with local leaders of alAnbar province, leading
Mujahideen in training exercises and on the battlefield. In another part
of the film Zarqawi was seen firing an automatic weapon, and stating:
“America will go out of Iraq, humiliated, defeated.”
Finally, scores of items on these Web sites go the next step and
include guides describing how to prepare for and then join the fight in
Iraq and elsewhere. One example, "This is the Road to Iraq," provides
instructions for prospective Jihadis intent on entering the war. The first
half concentrates on mental and physical preparation for Jihad, while
the second half furnishes guidance for successfully entering Iraq and
cultivating contacts with an insurgent group.
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In addition to celebrating the achievements and sacrifices of those
on the front lines of the global fight, there are other ways, and the
Salafi Jihadists employ the Internet to inspire and mobilize the Ummah
to join the fight. They use the same Web sites, for example, to recount
the suffering and carnage they assert is being inflicted on Muslims by
the United States and other Western powers, Israel, and apostate
regimes in Islamic countries.
3) Psychological Warfare to Demoralize Enemies. The flip side of
inspiring and mobilizing the Ummah to join the Salafi Jihad movement
and fight is the demoralizing of the near and far enemies of that
movement, convincing them to give up the fight. Here we will use the
insurgency in Iraq, the central front in the global Jihad, as illustrative.
A number of Internetbased tactics are employed by the Salafi
insurgent groups to demoralize their enemies in Iraq. Of these, the most
terrifying and intimidating have been the beheadings. This tactic has
been used against both Iraqis and foreigners working in Iraq. The
message to each group is unambiguous. The nightmare video of those
captured being decapitated by their captors is anything but a random act
of terrorism—it is carefully designed for specific audiences.
With respect to members of the Iraqi government, and those
contemplating joining it, the threat of beheading was explicitly made
through numerous Internetposted warnings. For example, on April 20,
2006 the Shari’a Commission of the Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq
issued the threat of “the sword and slaughter to he who joins the police
and the army.” The Council stated that all Muslims who join the Iraqi
security forces to serve those who “worship the devils, those who
disbelieve and fight in the cause of Taghut [Satan],” shall be considered
“converters who fight against Allah.” What awaits them?—“sharp
swords!” And in a similar message posted in December 2005, insurgent
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groups in Iraq were encouraged to “start cutting throats in the Islamic
way…. Slaughter three every day to show them that you do not hesitate
in implementing Allah’s orders.” To Western eyes this is immoral and
savage behavior. But for Salafi Jihadists it is characterized as religious
duty. The blood dripping sword has a powerful Salafi meaning.
In addition to the beheading videos, the insurgents in Iraq also post
a large number of videos and reports of other kinds of executions.
These include putting captives to death by firing squad, as well as
pulling police out of vehicles, off of street corners, and so on to gun
them down on the spot.
Members of the leadership in Iraq are often singled out by name.
For example, in November 2005 an al Qaeda affiliated Jihad forum
posted the photographs of the “Twenty Most Wanted People in the land
of the Two Rivers.” Various assassinations of senior level officials
since 2003 have demonstrated such threats are often backed up. The
“devil” Grand Ayatollah Ali alSistani was designated as number one—
the most wanted. The text concluded—“We ask Allah that the
Mujahideen will be able to remove their heads.”
With respect to the United States, the most frequent tactic
employed is the previously mentioned daily reports on all the Jihad
forums and Web sites of alleged successful operations carried out
against American forces in Iraq. Those that stand out among a large
number reviewed are the “Top Ten” videos of insurgent attacks that
began to appear in 2005. Released both by the Global Islamic Media
Front and a group calling itself the “Muslim Lions,” they are widely
distributed across Jihad forums today. Each includes ten attacks
perpetrated by groups such as Ansar alSunnah Army, Islamic Army in
Iraq, and al Qaeda in Iraq. They are impressive productions. These
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attacks also frequently appear the day after they occur in various
Western print and electronic news outlets.
Reports of attacks on the United States are not confined to Iraq.
The message from these Web sites is that America is under assault in
all the places it has entered in the Muslim world. Next to Iraq,
operations against US forces in Afghanistan receive the greatest
attention. And individual spectacular strikes like that on the US
Consulate in Jeddah by al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia are featured widely.
Taken in total the psychological warfare message is clear—the United
States is exposed and vulnerable to effective and continuous
Mujahideen attacks across the Muslim world.
Finally, the leaders of the global Jihad use the Internet to mock
failed US attempts to capture or kill them. One example that received
wide attention (to include being broadcast on alJazeera) was a speech
by Zawahiri following the January 2006 air strike on the village of
Damadola in Peshawar. Al Qaeda’s number two was supposed to be
hiding. He taunted President Bush—the “Butcher of Washington”—
asserting “that his death will only come at the time of Allah’s decree,
and until that time, he remains amid the Muslim masses, rejoicing in
their support, their attention, their generosity, their protection and their
participation in Jihad until we conquer you with the help and power of
Allah.”
The above items all aimed at influencing and undermining one of
America’s centers of gravity—the US home front. It is not unlike what
the Viet Cong successfully targeted over thirty years ago. Then as now
the objective is to follow Clausewitz’s advice. Attack the enemy’s
center of gravity—his strategic pressure points—and you will weaken
his capacity to fight war.
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4) Networking the Global Salafi Jihad Insurgency. In the latter
1990s, al Qaeda's use of the Internet concentrated on the first category
of this framework—propagating the Salafi ideology of Jihad to incite
and unify the Ummah for a common purpose. Since 9/11, al Qaeda and
associated members of the Salafi Jihad movement (a number of which
are fighting at the national level) have broadened there use of the Web
to include, as highlighted above, the second and third categories—
inspiring and mobilizing the Ummah to join the Jihad and
psychological warfare to demoralize enemies.
However, the loss of the Afghan sanctuary resulted in a further
expansion. It now includes the use of the Internet for tactical purposes,
such as training, and for operational objectives, to include how to
organize virtual cells.
Each of these functions requires secure communications to avoid
the disruptive tactics that US intelligence has been able to employ
against certain kinds of Jihadi Internet activity—e.g., closing down
fixed Web sites. Thus, al Qaeda and other groups began to employ new
methods to include protected bulletin boards, free upload services by
Internet providers, and the creation of proxy servers, among others. Up
todate instruction on how to employ these techniques is likewise made
available. Consider the following examples.
The first has to do with how to use thirdparty hosting services.
This technique exploits these servers, paid for primarily by advertising
agencies, to transmit operationallyrelated information and secret
communications. These servers, available across the Internet, provide
relatively anonymous hosting that a visitor can easily manipulate. 189 A
second way of transmitting operationallyrelated information and secret
communications is through posted messages on discussion boards at
passwordprotected forums. And a third technique entails creating and
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employing Internet proxy servers. Guides and manuals on how to
utilize each of these methods are available at the Global Islamic Media
Front site, among others.
These methods can be used to circulate a wide range of materials
like training videos, operational manuals, and guides for producing
weapons such as improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Along with
other virtual techniques they can also be exploited by operational cells
to secretly communicate and organize.
One way of communicating secretly, reported by Coll and Glasser,
is through public email services such as Hotmail. Here is how it
works: An operative opens an account on Hotmail, “writes a message
in draft form, saves it as a draft, and then transmits the email account
name and password during chatter on a relatively secure message
board.” Another operative “opens the email account and reads the
draft—since no email message was sent, there was a reduced risk of
interception.” This process has been characterized as a dead drop in
cyberspace. 190
Virtual methods such as these and others also provide the means to
establish operational cells in cyberspace. Discussion of how to do so
began to appear on different al Qaeda affiliated Web sites in 2004,
according to sources collected by the SITE Institute. These items go
into the details of how to do so, suggesting that once formed, members
can both exchange “work plans, strategies, and educational materials”
and eventually “meet in reality and execute operations in the field.”
An example of this kind of cell was reported in the spring of 2004.
On March 29 th , “Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers burst into the
Ottawa home of Mohammed Khawaja, a 24yearold computer
programmer…arresting him for alleged complicity in what Canadian
and British authorities described as a transatlantic plot to bomb targets
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in London and Canada.” Khawaja, who “met his British counterparts
online came to the attention of authorities when he traveled to Britain
and walked into a surveillance operation being conducted by British
Police.” He had gone there to “meet with his online acquaintances.
During the meeting he told them how to detonate bombs using cell
phones.” He had learned to do so from the Internet. 191
The plot involved seven men from four countries (United States,
United Kingdom, Canada, and Pakistan) who through the Internet
formed a virtual cell. During the time the cell was developing and
moving towards taking action there appears to have been training
provided to a member of it in Pakistan. Whether an al Qaeda linkage
was established to provide posttraining guidance or direction is unclear
from open sources. When arrested the cell was in the process of going
operational. This was the kind of cell—mainly homegrown members
who met both locally and in cyberspace—is most feared in Europe. As
we shall see later, through these new Webbased methods al Qaeda and
other Salafi Jihad groups seek to provide the means by which
prospective holy warriors at the local level can find likeminded
associates and receive the knowledge and training via the Internet that
is necessary to join the fight. The head of Britain’s domestic
intelligence service (MI5) stated publicly in November 2006 that she
“knew of 30 [such] conspiracies” and that “future attacks could be
chemical, biological or even involve some kind of nuclear device.” 192
5) Operational Information Sharing—Manuals and Handbooks
Al Qaeda has established an extensive online compilation of
operational manuals and handbooks for irregular warfare. These range
from documents not unlike the doctrinal manuals of conventional
military forces to more narrowly focused instructional guides on how to
carry out a particular tactic or produce and employ a specific weapon.
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The number of these items is now quite large. Here we will only
highlight a few examples.
Broader military and intelligence materials provide the means
whereby training can begin in virtually any location, simply by going
online. We now know that al Qaeda was producing such manuals well
before 9/11 because of what was found on computers and disks left
behind in Afghanistan. Perhaps the best known of these items is what
in the West came to be referred to as "The Encyclopedia of Jihad." An
al Qaeda production of thousand of pages, it is a guide for how to
establish an underground organization. The manual has circulated
across the Internet.
Perhaps the most well known and widely circulated doctrinal
manual is a 1600 page document titled “The Call for a Global Islamic
Resistance.” It was written by Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a Syrian
native who fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In the
manual he highlights how small and independent groups of Mujahideen
can conduct operations against the West. In the aftermath of 9/11,
Nasar called for a “third generation” of Salafi Jihadists to plan and
execute operations on their own but as part of the broader movement
and in solidarity with al Qaeda’s ideology. He is said to have spent time
in Europe attempting to do so. In some cases members of these cells
made contact with al Qaeda, and receive training and operational
support. Those who carried out the July 2005 bombings in London are
an example. 193
Beyond these broader manuals, a plethora of more narrowly
focused handbooks and guides are also readily available. Perhaps the
tactic/specific weapon receiving the widest attention on Jihadi Web
addresses since 2003 is the IED. Many of these reports are based on
lessons being drawn from Iraq. Often these reports and handbooks
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include diagrams and other visual depictions such as one distributed to
a passwordprotected al Qaeda affiliated forum in December 2005. The
author illustrates the construction of a charge, the distance that it is
placed from its target, and the amount of explosive to be used to
achieve a desired result against different kinds of targets. There is even
a discussion of physical principles such as blast waves.
This is but one example of the serious attention that is being given
to IEDs. And it should not be surprising in light of the effectiveness of
the weapon in Iraq, and the efforts the Pentagon has undertaken to find
an answer to it. Indeed, the Jihadi’s are busy learning about DOD
efforts at counter measures. Consider a report posted in April 2006 to a
passwordprotected Jihadist forum discussing a study produced by the
US think tank CSIS on innovations in the use of IEDs in Iraq and the
US response to these new insurgent tactics. The author discusses the
findings in the study and announces it will be translated into Arabic. He
then chides the authors stating that they should not be surprised at the
innovativeness of the Mujahideen in responding to new US tactics.
After all, he points out, “they have Allah on their side and you have
nobody on yours.”
Earlier in 2006, a similar item focused on the US Army’s plan to
deploy the Joint IED Neutralizer in Iraq as a means to reduce the risk
posed by roadside improvised explosive devices. The author highlights
the specifications of the Neutralizer, where it “seems less reinforced,”
and discusses a series of methods that the Mujahideen can use to defeat
it.
Beyond IEDs, there are handbooks and related materials on many
other kinds of weapons. These range from how to build a biological
weapon and dirty bombs to information warfare tactics to how to
service an AK47.
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6) Operational Information Sharing—Training Videos and
Courses. It should not be surprising that new Internet developments in
information management since 9/11 are quickly being adopted and
adapted by the Salafi Jihadists. A case in point is the use of videos and
slideshows as the basis for online training programs. Over the last three
years professionally produced training videos have been generated by
al Qaeda to replicate on the Web what it had been able to provide
prospective holy warriors on the ground in Afghanistan in the latter
1990s. The SITE Institute has compiled a large quantity of these
materials in its database.
Recent examples include training courses produced by Labik, an al
Qaeda media organization operating in Afghanistan. In March 2006, it
issued and posted a series of films of Mujahideen training for combat
and practicing tactical operations to include conducting raids on
houses, blowing up a bridge, attacking a target with rocketpropelled
grenades, and taking hostages, among other actions.
Other video productions concentrate on how to execute a specific
tactic or employ a particular weapon. An example is booby trapping. In
this presentation the trainee learns that this technique for attacking an
enemy can be implemented in many ways which require different
levels of expertise and equipment. It also explains how many of these
techniques were developed by “infidel states” such as England, Russia,
Germany, Italy, and the United States. The narrator suggests to the
viewer that these techniques should be studied. This particular
instructional exercise, which appeared in an al Qaeda forum in 2005,
concentrates on four specific types of booby trapping. Similar video
presentations can be found for almost every irregular warfare tactic and
on each of the weapons employed in this form of combat. These
include how to operate against US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan,
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how to infiltrate into those countries, and how to fight in different rural
and urban environments in each location.
These developments have led the Israeli specialist Reuven Paz to
propose that this vast and wideranging body of instructional/training
videos and slideshows posted on the Web over the last few years by
Jihad groups constitutes nothing short of an Internetbased “Open
University for Jihad.” Paz asserts that the Salafi Jihad movement has
turned the Internet into a cyber university for recruiting, indoctrinating,
and training future generations of holy warriors from the Arab and
Muslim world. 194
Al Qaeda’s Global Islamic Media Front sees eyetoeye with Paz’s
assessment. Indeed, they made this claim before Paz. In a 2005 article
titled “Al Qaeda University for Jihad Subjects,” the Front described
these activities as constituting a global institution in cyberspace,
providing instruction and training in psychological, electronic, and
physical warfare for the Mujahideen of tomorrow. The bottom line—
budding holy warriors now have the means available to begin to
undertake an irregular warfare training program in cyberspace,
complete with discussion boards and chat rooms.
In conjunction with the previous functions of the virtual sanctuary,
the use of new information management tools highlighted in this
section facilitate the development of homegrown cells discussed earlier.
These cells can emerge in any location and on their own and develop
the means to prepare for and carry out operations. There are now
examples of this homegrown pattern that have taken place since 9/11.
As noted above, in some cases the local cell has made contact with and
received assistance from al Qaeda, while in other instances this was not
the case. The attack on the London subway, the train bombings in
Madrid, the series of suicide operations in Casablanca, and the actions
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of the Hofstad group in the Netherlands, to name the most prominent
cases, reflect both these homegrown variations.
7) Collection Targeting. Finally, the Internet provides Salafi
operational units with a significant amount of data about potential
targets, particularly ones in the West. The extent to which they have
mined the Web for this kind of information was first uncovered on al
Qaeda computers left behind in Afghanistan. Based on open sources
readily available on the Internet, al Qaeda had built target folders/files
prior to 9/11 on public utilities, transportation systems, government
buildings, airports, major harbors, and nuclear power plants. They also
collected US government and private sector studies of the
vulnerabilities of these and other facilities to different types of terrorist
operations.
Additionally, they have access to overhead imagery and related
structural information of many potential targets. This allows them to
not only access the target in terms of its most vulnerable points, but to
observe security measures that have been taken to protect it.
According to Dan Verton, a specialist in cyberterrorism, since 9/11
"al Qaeda cells now operate with the assistance of large databases
containing details of potential targets in the U.S. They use the Internet
to collect intelligence on those targets, especially critical economic
nodes, and modern software enables them to study structural
weaknesses in facilities as well as predict the cascading failure effect of
attacking certain systems." 195
Since 9/11 the US government has undertaken measures to protect
such information, particularly where it concerns critical facilities and
infrastructure. Information that used to be publicly available is now
secured. However, in this game of cat and mouse the Jihadis are
teaching one another how to penetrate secure Web sites. For example,
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recently the Global Islamic Media Front began circulating a 74page
guide on how to identify the vulnerabilities of and penetrate—hack—
into them. The guide highlights software that can be used to do so.
Sanctuaries in Ungoverned Territory. Beyond this virtual
sanctuary, to what extent has al Qaeda also been able to carry out in
ungoverned and largely lawless tribal areas of the AfghanPakistan
border (and possibly in other regions of the world as well) those
activities that it accomplished during 19962001 in Afghanistan? Has it
established a physical sanctuary in the border region that contributes to
its ability to continue to foster global insurgency activities? Though it
began out of dire necessity, it now appears that al Qaeda’s relocation to
the ungoverned tribal areas of North Waziristan has evolved in this
way.
It has been difficult for US security agencies to ascertain exactly
what has taken place in Waziristan. Only now are the opportunities
provided to al Qaeda in these lawless and ungoverned areas being
understood. Until recently, the extent to which such territories could be
utilized by armed groups to establish secure sanctuaries was not
seriously contemplated.
For US intelligence, these areas well constitute yet another “new
frontier,” an important front in the “long war.” It will need to develop a
clear picture of what al Qaeda and other armed groups of concern are
able to achieve in various ungoverned territories. But this is not easily
accomplished according to a former intelligence officer from a nonUS
service who had attempted to do so against a terrorist group operating
out of ungoverned territory in Africa. The objective, he explained, was
to acquire ongoing intelligence of how the terrorist group we were
fighting against elsewhere used that ungoverned territory. His service
had a very difficult time trying to do so.
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The tribal area along the AfghanPakistan border is illustrative. It
exists within a larger Central Asian territory that encompasses parts of
several states and is distinguished by rugged terrain, poor accessibility,
low population density, and little government presence. This creates
safe havens for terrorists, insurgents, militias, and criminal groups. And
local governments on their own lack the economic, military,
intelligence, and police power to do anything about it.
In early 2002, elements of the Taliban and al Qaeda retreated into
the AfghanPakistan frontier. And bin Laden was believed to have
taken refuge in the mountains of this territory. During 2003, reports
began to warn that al Qaeda and Taliban forces were regrouping in this
area and forming an alliance with the radical Islamist party Hizbi
Islami. Since then they have fought a protracted war against the United
States, NATO, and local government forces. It is beyond the scope of
this paper to chronicle that fight. However, there now seems to be no
question that al Qaeda maintains a robust fighting force and growing
infrastructure in the area.
But the specific details of how al Qaeda reestablished fighting
units in this ungoverned space and the kind of infrastructure for training
and related activities it rebuilt has been difficult to discern for US
intelligence. To be sure, Jihadis were known to be traveling to the area
to join the fight much like their predecessors did in the 1980s and
1990s. But a clear picture of what transpired since 2002 has been
elusive.
Only in early 2007 did a clearer picture emerge about the extent to
which al Qaeda is now exploiting this new sanctuary to continue to
foster a global insurgency. According to “American officials…there
was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman
alZawahri, had been steadily building a [training and] operations hub
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in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan…. Recent
intelligence showed that the compounds functioned under a loose
command structure and were operated by groups of Arab, Pakistani and
Afghan militants allied with.” 196
While training camps have “yet to reach the size and level of
sophistication of the al Qaeda camps established in Afghanistan under
Taliban rule,” nevertheless they are now assessed by US intelligence as
much more advanced that had been previously thought. 197 Moreover,
the emergence of this safe haven in North Waziristan and the
surrounding area “has helped senior [al Qaeda] operatives
communicate more effectively with the outside world via courier and
the Internet.” 198 According to Bruce Hoffman:
AlQaeda…has regrouped and reorganized from the setbacks meted out by the United States, its allies and partners shortly after 9/11…and is marshalling its forces to continue the war that Osama bin Laden declared against America 10 years ago with his then mostly ignored fatwa. In this respect, alQaeda is functioning exactly as its founders envisioned it: as both an inspiration and an organization, simultaneously summoning a broad universe of likeminded extremists to violence while still providing guidance and assistance for more spectacular types of terrorist operations. 199
The AfghanPakistan border is not the only ungoverned territory
out of which al Qaeda and/or its regional affiliates have developed a
presence. A case in point is the Algerianbased Group for Preaching
and Combat (GSPC). An adherent to Salafi Jihadist branch of
Islamism, the GSPC launched a ruthless insurgent campaign in Algeria
in the 1990s, targeting the government, the military, and civilians.
Along with the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), it killed tens of thousands
of innocent Algerians. 200
Members of the GSPC leadership have issued public statements
declaring their support and connections with al Qaeda and other Salafi
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Jihadist organizations. They have also said they intend to attack US and
European targets as part of the global holy war. An alleged member of
the GSPC was accused of involvement in the attack on the USS Cole.
Other GSPC operatives have been implicated in attempted terrorist
operations in other parts of the world. European intelligence services
estimate that this Salafi affiliate has several hundred operatives
deployed outside of Algeria. Some are fighting in Iraq.
The GSPC has also moved into the Sahel region of Africa to
establish base areas. Large parts of that territory, which cut across Mali,
Chad, Niger, and Mauritania, are ungoverned. Of these four states, the
GSPC appears to have the largest presence in the northern part of Mali.
However, like al Qaeda’s presence in the tribal areas of the Afghan
Pakistan border, open source information on the activities being
undertaken by the GSPC in the Sahel are sparse. What is known is that
they are taking advantage of this remote area to establish a presence.
They appear to be able to move freely, smuggle contraband, recruit
from among the impoverished indigenous population with a large youth
cohort, and establish secure bases for various activities. But the extent
to which they are able to do so is not known. Neither is how this fits
into the larger Salafi Jihad.
To summarize, a vacuum is burgeoning within the territory of
fragile and failing states. This expanse of lawless and ungoverned
space, estimated to include remote parts of more than 20 countries, is
beyond the authority of local governments. It creates potential safe
havens in which armed groups can establish secure bases for self
protection, training, planning, and launching. The extent and degree to
which al Qaeda and other Salafi Jihadists are taking advantage of it is
in need of extensive investigation.
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The Iraqi Central Front. Al Qaeda and many of the associated
groups that comprise the Salafi Jihad movement have come to see the
conflict in Iraq within the context of the “long Jihad.” Consequently,
they seek to exploit the insurgency there for two principal reasons.
First, they have anointed Iraq the main front, the forward edge of
the global battle on which to engage the far enemy—the United States.
They believe that by forcing the United States to give up the fight in
Iraq they will inflict a defeat of enormous strategic consequences on it.
Second, the Salafi Jihadists also believe Iraq affords them a vital
opportunity to spawn a new corps of skilled fighters who can gain the
kind of experience that after they leave Iraq can be put to good use
fighting in their native lands or elsewhere. In other words, in the first
decades of the 21 st century these “Iraqi Arabs” can serve the same
purpose the “Afghan Arabs” did at the close of the 20 th century. 201
Evidence of this has been found in the ruins of the air strike that killed
Zarqawi on June 7, 2006. According to The New York Times, “At the
time of his death…[he] was still trying to transform his organization
from one focused on the Iraqi insurgency into a global operation
capable of striking far beyond Iraq's borders.” According to Jordanian
security officials, Zarqawi’s “recruiting efforts…were threefold: He
sought volunteers to fight in Iraq and others to become suicide bombers
there, but he also recruited about 300 who went to Iraq for terrorist
training and sent them back to their home countries, where they await
orders to carry out strikes.” Others believe that beyond their home
countries, some of these trainees are also in Western countries. 202
Statements by bin Laden, Zawahiri, Zarqawi, and other leaders of
al Qaeda have made clear that they view Iraq within this twofold
context. Likewise, it is the message that is repeatedly conveyed on their
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Web sites. Iraq provides a unique and historic opportunity to fight and
defeat the main enemy of the global Jihad movement.
Iraq has eclipsed other fronts to include Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Yemen in terms of centrality to the global
Jihad. It dominates Salafi Web sites, and is being used to rouse radical
Salafi passions, inspire Arab and Muslim youth, and animate the
Ummah to see Iraq through the lens of the “long Jihad.” Thus, they are
told the Mujahideen are fighting a pivotal battle in Iraq to expel the
United States from the region. Iraq is part of a long protracted war—a
“long Jihad”—against the West that seeks to overthrow all apostate
regimes, liberate all occupied lands, and reestablish the Caliphate.
Since the US intervention in 2003, these themes have been
employed as part of a major effort to inspire members of the Ummah
from across the Muslim world to travel to Iraq and join the fight.
Moreover, it is now apparent that there are networks for expediting this
process both in the Middle East and beyond. To be sure, the majority of
“Iraqi Arabs” come from the region. And of these, Saudi Arabia and
Yemen appear to be at the head of the list. But foreign fighters in Iraq
are also drawn from other parts of the Gulf, as well as from Syria,
Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Sudan. Beyond the region Mujahideen
have come from Britain, France, and elsewhere in Europe.
Within Iraq these foreign fighters are part of several Salafi Jihadist
groups that have joined together under the umbrella of al Qaeda in the
Land of the Two Rivers and established the operational capabilities to
emerge as a major component of the insurgency. There is no need to go
into the details here of the impact they have had on the fight in Iraq. It
is substantial. And, as noted above, it will produce a third generation of
Jihadi fighters, young Muslims transformed into ideologically
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convinced and well trained through practice holy warriors—the latest
iteration of Qutb’s vanguard.
In sum, the bottom line is that Iraq has become an integral part of
how al Qaeda and the Salafi Jihadists have sought to adapt and re
organize following the strategic setback in Afghanistan to continue to
facilitate a global millenarian insurgency.
Fostering the Global Salafi Jihad Movement. Finally, al
Qaeda’s fourth adaptation appears to have focused on reestablishing its
selfassigned role as vanguard of the Salafi Jihad movement, a role that
was set back as a result of Operation Enduring Freedom. How has al
Qaeda sought to do so? Of the four adaptations examined, this was the
most nebulous and at first blush difficult to discern. Moreover,
developing a detailed mosaic of what is now referred to as al Qaeda and
Associated Movements (AQAM) was beyond the scope of this paper.
To be sure, the construct of such a mosaic is needed, and below we will
identify two efforts that address elements of it. Here we can only
highlight the broader contours of AQAM and identify key questions
that remain to be addressed.
Recall Hoffman’s portrayal of al Qaeda “as both an inspiration and
an organization.” With respect to the former, al Qaeda’s founders saw
as one of the central missions of their organization the realization of the
vanguard party concept advocated by Qutb. And so, to that end they
sought to “summon a broad universe of likeminded extremists” to
become part of a global Jihad movement. 203 In the 1990s, in
Afghanistan, al Qaeda was able to begin to carry out this mission by
establishing a network of linkages with a score of nationallevel
Islamist groups, who were employing guerrilla violence and terrorism
against their governments. Many authors to include Hoffman have
chronicled these pre9/11 developments.
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Al Qaeda from its Afghan sanctuary provided nationallevel Jihad
organizations with financial assistance, training, weapons, and spiritual
guidance. In return, these entities were to see themselves as part of al
Qaeda’s global struggle. Recipients included radical Islamist armed
groups from Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Chechnya,
Kashmir, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Bosnia, among a number of
other places.
The capacity of al Qaeda to continue to play this vanguard role and
to maintain connections with the groups that comprised this network of
associations was set back considerably with the loss of its Afghan
sanctuary. What has al Qaeda done to adapt in order to reestablish
linkages with its old Salafi Jihad affiliates and add new ones? What are
the constituent parts of AQAM? How do local Jihad groups view their
place in AQAM and relationship to al Qaeda? How many local
affiliates exist? These questions highlight what needs to be discovered
about al Qaeda’s post9/11 efforts to reestablish a network of linkages
with nationallevel Islamist groups.
As late as 2005, four years after 9/11, US officials were still
struggling to understand the relationship between al Qaeda and its
affiliates, and the extent to which those linkages had been
reestablished. In 2006, key US national security documents began to
use the term and al Qaeda Associated Movements (AQAM) to refer to
this rejuvenated relationship. US Central Command’s (CENTCOM)
posture statement for fighting the war in 2006 is illustrative. It assessed
al Qaeda through the “near enemy—far enemy” lens. AQAM was
described as a global movement having a strong presence in the
CENTCOM region through several local Salafi Jihad affiliates. 204
These affiliates were described as fighting against local apostate
regimes (who are partners of the US)—“near enemies”—in the
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CENTCOM area. According to the posture statement, the relationship
between al Qaeda and local Jihad groups since 9/11 has been facilitated
by the Internet.
This enemy is linked by modern communications, expertly using the virtual world for indoctrination and proselytizing. The Internet empowers these extremists in a way that would have been impossible a decade ago. It enables them to have global reach…. And this safe haven of websites and the Internet is proliferating rapidly, spreading al Qaeda’s ideology well beyond its birthplace in the Middle East. 205
To be sure, an important way al Qaeda has sought to reestablish
linkages with local Salafi Jihad groups is through its virtual sanctuary.
Indeed, as was described earlier, al Qaeda uses the Internet to propagate
its Salafi Jihad ideology to instill in the Ummah a powerful sense of
moral outrage and commitment to holy war. Through a large number of
different Webbased activities al Qaeda seeks to propagate its message
to individuals and groups across the globe. In doing so, they
disseminate a series of ideological frames and messages that describe in
global and local terms the social and political conditions requiring
immediate and drastic Jihad action.
That this is taking place is evident. Through this virtual sanctuary
al Qaeda seeks to reestablish its vanguard role and attempts to inspire
and encourage a global movement of radicalized Muslim groups to
fight locally against “near enemies,” while seeing themselves as a part
of a larger global struggle against the United States, the “far enemy.”
But how organized are these efforts and who do they reach? A
recent study by Rita Katz and Josh Devon of the SITE Institute
describes this Internet activity as “very structured…. A handful of
primary source Jihadist Web sites distribute the media [activities] of the
leaders of alQaeda and other Jihadist groups. Through this small
number of specific, password protected online forums, the leading
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Jihadist groups, like alQaeda, post their communiqués and
propaganda. By keeping primary source Jihadist Web sites
small…[they] can provide a transparent mechanism to authenticate
communiqués.” 206
Although these primary Web sites are relatively few in number,
Katz and Devon note that members of them disseminate official
communiqués, doctrinal treatises, strategic and operational documents,
special messages, and other materials through a much broader and far
reaching network of other Web sites, message boards, egroups, blogs,
and instant messaging services available through the Internet. Here is
one way they say this process functions:
Once an official message from a Jihadist group is posted to a primary source message forum, members of the primary message forum will then disseminate that posting to other secondary message boards. From these secondary message boards, other peripheral individuals will then disseminate the information onto other message boards. 207
Katz and Devon propose the following network graphic to illustrate
how this virtual capability seeks to be “at once decentralized but rigidly
hierarchical:”
The primary Web sites at the center of the network graphic are
comprised of al Qaeda and organizations that appear closely associated
with it to include insurgent groups in Iraq, the Taliban and other groups
in Afghanistan, the Islamic Maghreb (formerly the GSPC), the Libyan
Islamic Fighting Group, Saudi Jihadist groups, and others. Since
January 2006, report Katz and Devon, the webbased activities of these
AQAM elements have been coordinated and distributed through a new
virtual entity—the AlFajr Center—to the secondary and tertiary Web
sites noted on the above graphic. What this portends is that individuals
and groups across the globe may now easily acquire the kinds of
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information identified in each of the seven categories of the virtual
sanctuary described earlier.
Dissemination of Primary Source Jihad Data 208
In sum, the activities carried out by the AlFajr Center provide the
potential for “fostering a unified, global Jihadist community.”
Moreover, it can assist al Qaeda and key associates “coordinate, share
information, and consolidate their power to continue to lead the
[global] Jihadist movement,” which is one of al Qaeda’s original and
enduring missions. 209
If this is a key way al Qaeda has sought to reestablish its self
assigned role as vanguard of the global Salafi Jihad movement, then the
followon question is how do we know who comprises the local
affiliates of AQAM and on what basis do they view themselves as a
part of AQAM? One recent study has sought to identify criteria for
membership in AQAM. The author, Assaf Moghadam, proposes that to
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be a member of AQAM a Salafi Jihad entity must be a Sunni Islamic
group and meet one of the following four criteria. 210
First, a group can be considered part of AQAM if “Al Qaeda is
reflected in the group’s name” and its members adhere to al Qaeda’s
agenda. 211 In this category he includes al Qaeda in Iraq, which prior to
September 2004 was known as Jama'at alTawhid walJihad. Founded
by Abu Musab alZarqawi, in October 2004 he declared the allegiance
of the group to bin Laden and al Qaeda’s strategy. This was followed
by a change in the name of group. A more recent example of the first
criteria can be found in North Africa. The Algerian Salafist Group for
Preaching and Combat, known by its French initials GSPC, announced
at the end of 2006 it was switching its name to Al Qaeda of the Islamic
Maghreb. Long associated with al Qaeda it was chosen by bin Laden to
forge links and coordinate the activities of likeminded groups in
Morocco, Nigeria, Mauritania, Tunisia and elsewhere. 212 Thus, the
name change.
Second, a group may be considered part of AQAM if, according to
Moghadam, there is evidence it has “internalized the worldview of Al
Qaeda and global Jihad.” Several organizations fall into this category
including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU); Jaishe
Muhammad (JeM) and LashkareJhangvi (LeJ), both whose base of
operations is Pakistan; Indonesia’ Jemaah Islamiyya (JI); and the
Moroccan group Assirat al Moustaquim (Direct Path). These groups
and several others similar to them meet this second criteria established
by Moghadam. 213
A third criteria is that a “group is devoted to and actively practices
violence to overthrow an existing Islamic regime or regimes with the
aim to create a transnational Caliphate in its stead.” 214 Here also,
several groups fit into this category including Ansar al Islam, a “radical
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Islamist group of Iraqi Kurds and Arabs who have vowed to establish
an independent Islamic state in Iraq.” Established in December 2001, it
has had a close affiliation with alQaeda and was aligned with Abu
Musab alZarqawi, when he led al Qaeda in Iraq. 215 Also in this
category is a second Iraqi group, Ansar al Sunnah Army, as well as the
Army of the Levant, Jamatul Mujahedin Bangladesh (JMB) and Hizb
utTahrir alIslami, a radical Islamic political movement that seeks to
implement pure Salafi Jihad doctrine and create an Islamic caliphate in
Central Asia. 216
Finally, a group may be considered an al Qaeda affiliate and part of
AQAM if it “has engaged in the practice of takfir.” In other words, it
has labeled a Muslim regime or its leaders as apostates because they
demonstrate disbelief. Recall the discussion of Qutb and how he came
to charge that Nasser was guilty of conscious belief that there was a
better way to rule than that based on Islam. Therefore, he was an
apostate ruler and a legitimate target for Jihad. Several of the groups
associated with the previous criteria likewise fit into this category.
They label the local regimes they are fighting in the same terms that
Qutb used to discredit Nasser. This has been true, for example, of the
Algerian GSPC, and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) from which it
split in 1998 over a disagreement on whether civilians constitute
legitimate targets.
In sum, this final section has sought to highlight the broader
contours of how al Qaeda has attempted since 9/11 to reestablish its
selfassigned role as vanguard of the Salafi Jihad movement. As noted
above, more attention needs to be focused on this adaptation in order to
gain a deeper understanding of what has transpired in order to develop
a detailed mosaic of Al Qaeda and its Associated Movements (AQAM).
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NOTES 1 Richard H. Shultz, Douglas Farah, and Itamara V. Lochard, Armed Groups: A TierOne Security Priority (Colorado Springs, CO: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, USAF Academy, Colorado, 2004). 2 While there are important and complex differences among and between armed groups, they nevertheless share common defining characteristics. These include: One, armed groups challenge the authority, power and legitimacy of states, seeking to either undermine or coopt them. Two, in doing so, they do not adhere to and will seek to manipulate the rule of law and democratic principles. Three, the leaders and followers of armed groups believe in the use of violence to achieve political, religious, economic, and personal aims. Four, these groups use violence in unconventional, asymmetric, and indiscriminate ways. Five, they operate within and across state boundaries, across geographical regions and, sometimes, globally. Six, armed groups usually are clandestine organizations, although they may maintain overt political fronts. Their clandestine infrastructure includes “intelligence” and “counterintelligence” capabilities. Seven, armed groups all have factional and external rivalries that affect their cooperation, interaction, and effectiveness. 3 Bard O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare, New York: Brassey’s 1990), 13. 4 See John J. McCuen, The Art of Counter Revolutionary Warfare, (Harrisburg: Stackpole Books, 1965); Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, (New York: Basic Books, 2002); C. E. Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice: A Tactical Textbook for Imperial Soldiers, (London: Lionel Leventhal, 1990); T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, (New York: Anchor Books, 1926); Thomas Marks, Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam, (London: Frank Cass, 1996); Nathan Leites and Charles Wolf, Rebellion and Authority: An Analytical Essay on Insurgent Conflicts, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1970); Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Vietnam and Malaya, (New York: Praeger, 1966); John MacKinlay, Globalisation and Insurgency, (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2002); and Michael Fowler, Amateur Soldiers, Global Wars: Insurgency and Modern Conflict, (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2005). 5 Central Intelligence Agency, Analysis of Insurgency, (undated), 2. 6 Ibid., 5. 7 Christopher Clapham, African Guerrillas, (Oxford: James Curry, 1998), 68.
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8 O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism, 17. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 18. 11 William J. Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, (New York: Westview, 1981); Ho Chi Minh, (New York: Hypersion, 2000); Stanley Karnow, Vietnam : A History, (New York: Viking, 1983); Spencer C. Tucker, ed., Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War : A Political, Social, and Military History, 3 volumes (Santa Barbara, CA: ABCCILO, 1998). 12 O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare, 19. 13 Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000). 14 Richard Shultz, “The Limits of Terrorism in Insurgency Warfare: The Case of the Viet Cong,” Polity (Fall 1978). 15 Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 16 Mostafa Rejai, The Strategy of Political Revolution, (Garden City, NY, Anchor Press, 1973), 36. 17 For the use of this approach to assess radical Islamism see Quintan Wiktorowicz, Radical Islam Rising, (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). 18 Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997). 19 It is asserted that Stalin did so because he wanted his World War II allies to believe that the USSR was no longer pursuing a policy of trying to foment revolution. See Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography, (London: Macmillan, 2004), pp 444445. 20 Richard Shultz, The Soviet Union and Revolutionary Warfare, (Stanford, CA: The Hover Institution Press, 1988). 21 For a review of these arguments see Ibid. 22 Douglas Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, (Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press, 1966), ix. Also see Tang Truong Nhu, A Viet Cong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath, (New York: Vintage Books, 1985); Carlyle A. Thayer, War by Other Means: National
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Liberation and Revolution in VietNam, 1954–60, (Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 1989). 23 Pike, Viet Cong, 374. 24 Ibid, 377. 25 Paul Berman, Revolutionary Organization: Institution Building Within the People’s Liberation Armed Forces, (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1974), 87. 26 Ibid., ch. 9. 27 See for example, William Darryl Henderson, Why the Vietcong Fought : A Study of Motivation and Control in a Modern Army in Combat, Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1970). 28 Berman, Revolutionary Organization, ch. 10. 29 Mao, Tsetung. Selected Works, 5 volumes (New York, International Publishers, 1954). Also see Samuel B. Griffith, ed, Mao Tsetung on Guerrilla Warfare, (New York, Praeger, 1961). 30 Thomas Greene, Comparative Revolutionary Movements, 3 rd ed. (Englewood, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990). 31 O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism, 112. 32 Ibid., ch. 2. 33 Ibid, 201203. 34 John Mackinlay and Alison AlBaddawy, Rethinking Counter Insurgency, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, forthcoming 2007), 2021. 35 Ibid. 23. 36 Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, revised and expanded (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) ; Steven O'Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric, (1994); Jon R. Stone (ed.), Expecting Armageddon, (London: Routledge, 2000); and Catherine Wessinger (ed.), Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000). 37 Quintan Wiktorowicz, “Anatomy of the Salafi Movement,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, (MayJune 2006), 209. 38 Hamid Algar, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay (Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 2002); Natana J. DelongBas, Wahhabi Islam : From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad, (Oxford: Oxford University
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Press, 2004); and Gilles Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West, (London, Belknap Press, 2004) and Jihad: The Trial of Political Islam, (London, I. B. Tauris, 2004). 39 The teaching of ulWahhab was founded on that of Ibn Taimiyya (1263 1328), who was a member of the school of Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Ibn Taimiyya claimed the power of a mujtahid (one who can give independent decisions). These decisions were based on the Koran he understood in a literal sense. He rejected all innovations such as the visiting of the sacred shrines and the invocation of the saints as idolatry. 40 According to al Wahhab, a Muslim must present an oath of allegiance to a Muslim ruler during his lifetime to ensure his redemption after death. The ruler was owed unquestioned allegiance from as long as he leads in conformity to the laws of God. The purpose of the Muslim community is to become the living embodiment of God's laws, and it is the duty of the ruler to ensure that people know God's laws and live by them. 41 John L. Esposito, Islam : The Straight Path, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Unholy War : Terror in the Name of Islam, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); The Oxford History of Islam, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Karen Armstrong, Islam : A Short History, (New York: Random House, 2000); Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet, (New York: HarperCollins, 1991); Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islam : Religion, History, and Civilization, (New York: HarperCollins, 2002). 42 Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969); Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and Pharaoh, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003); Ziad AbuAmr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994). 43 Wiktorowicz, “Anatomy of the Salafi Movement,” 228. Also see Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: the Search for a New Ummah, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). 44 Gilles Kepel Muslim Extremism in Egypt, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Paul Berman, “The Philosopher of Islamic Terror ,” New York Times Magazine, (March 23, 2003); Berman, Terror and Liberalism, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003); Barry Rubin, Islamic Fundamentalism In Egyptian Politics, (New York: Palgrave, 2003). 45 Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama'ati Islami of Pakistan, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994) and Mawdudi & The Making of Islamic Revivalism, (Oxford University Press, 1996).
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46 Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, (Damascus, Syria: Dar alIlm), Introduction. 47 Fawaz Greges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 8. 48 Ibid, 911. 49 Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, “Defence Of The Muslim Lands:The First Obligation After Iman.” www.religioscope.com/info/doc/Jihad/ azzam_defence_1_table.htm. 50 Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, Join the Caravan, (London: Azzam Publications, 2001). 51 Greges, The Far Enemy, 134. 52 Roy, Globalized Islam, 296. 53 Ibid, 297. 54 Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 36. 55 Roy, Globalized Islam, 300. 56 Lester W. Grau and Ali A. Jalali, Afghan Guerrilla Warfare: In the Words of the Mujahideen Fighters, (Minneapolis: MBI Publishing Company, 2001). 57 Richard Shultz and Andrea Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat, (New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming August 2006), ch. 6. 58 Rohan Gunaratna, “Al Qaeda’s Ideology,” Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, (May 2005), http://www.futureofmuslimworld.com/ research/pubID.34/pub_detail.asp. 59 Evan Kohlmann, AQaeda’s Jihad in Europe: The AfghanBosnian Network, (New York: BerBerg, 2004). 60 Greges, The Far Enemy, ch. 45. 61 Luis Martinez, The Algerian Civil War 19901998, (London: Hurst, 1998); Hugh Roberts, The Battlefield: Algeria 19882002, Studies in a Broken Polity, (London: Verso, 2003); and Martin Stone, The Agony of Algeria, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). 62 Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, 44. 63 Shultz and Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat, ch. 4.
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64 Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down, (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999). 65 The 9/11 Commission Report, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004), 66. 66 Ibid, 67. 67 “AlQaeda camps trained 70,000,” BBC News, (January 4, 2005). http://news.bbc.co.uk. 68 “Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders,” accessed at http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/ 980223fatwa.htm. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid. 71 Key figures include the Egyptianborn Ayman alZawahiri, the ideologist, and disciple of Palestinian scholarguerrilla organizer Abdullah Azzam, who recruited thousands of Muslims to fight in Afghanistan. Zawahiri was founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which opposes the Egyptian Government through violent means. He helped forge the coalition of alJihad, al Qaeda, two Pakistani groups and another from Bangladesh in February 1998 to wage war on the United States Mohammed Atef, the military commander, was also born in Egypt. He headed al Qaeda's military committee and had primary responsibility for supervising training camps in Afghanistan and planning global operations. Among his first was attacks on US troops by providing training to Somali tribes fighting them in 1993. Abu Zubaydah, the operations chief, was born in Saudi Arabia. Following the East African embassy bombings he appears to have replaced Atef as the primary contact for recruits and as the organizer of overseas operations. 72 “Declaration Of War Against The Americans Occupying The Land Of The Two Holy Places,” accessed at http://www.meij.or.jp/new/ Osama%20bin%20Laden/Jihad1.htm. 73 Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: A Global Network of Terror, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). Also see Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks; Roy, Globalized Islam; and Greges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global. 74 David Kilcullen, “Countering Global Insurgency: A Strategy for the War on Terrorism,” 4. Accessed at www.smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil/search/ Articles/CounteringGlobalInsurgency.pdf. 75 Ibid, 15
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76 Assaf Moghadam, The Globalization Of MartyrdomAl Qaeda, Salafi Jihadism, And The Diffusion Of Suicide Attacks, (The Fletcher School, Tufts University: Draft dissertation, January 2007), 118119. 77 Steve Coll and Susan Glasser, “Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base of Operations,” Washington Post, (August 7, 2005), A1. 78 Gabriel Weimann, “How Modern Terrorism Uses the Internet,” United States Institute of Peace Special Report 116, (March 2004), 2. 79 Through continuous and intensive examination of extremist Web sites, the SITE Institute has developed an extensive database of materials on how various Jihad groups make use of the Internet. This database was employed as the primary source for this part of the study. The SITE Institute can be accessed at http://www.siteinstitute.org. 80 AlQaeda in Iraq, Victorious Army Group, Ansar alTawhid Brigades, Islamic Jihad Brigades, the Strangers Brigades, and the Horrors Brigades. 81 There appears to be at least two ways to find out which third party sites are being used to distribute information and communications. One is through Jihadi Internet forums which provide links to index pages. These pages contain a list of sources from which the information can be deduced and downloaded. 82 Coll and Glasser, “Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base of Operations.” 83 Ibid. 84 “Dark Days, Difficult Times,” The Economist, (November 18, 2006), p. 55. 85 Craig Whitlock, “Architect of the New War on the West,” Washington Post, (May 23, 2006), 1. 86 Reuven Paz, “Reading Their Lips: The Credibility of Jihadi Websites in Arabic as a Source for Information,” www.eprism.org. 87 Weimann, “How Modern Terrorism Uses the Internet,” 7. 88 “Al Qaeda Chiefs Are Seen to Regain Power, The New York Times, (February 19, 2007), 1. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Bruce Hoffman, “What Went Wrong? New Looks At The Bin Laden Network And The Panel That Tried To Explain Its Most Vicious Attack,” Washington Post, (August 27, 2006), BW6.
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92 Alexis Brooks, A New Counterterrorism Strategy, (Unpublished Masters Thesis, Fletcher School, Tufts University, 2006), 2432. 93 This term is borrowed from Gerges, The Far Enemy. 94 Michael Slackman And Scott Shane, “Terrorists Trained by Zarqawi Were Sent Abroad, Jordan Says,” The New York Times, (June 11, 2006), 1, 16. 95 Bruce Hoffman, “What Went Wrong? New Looks At The Bin Laden Network And The Panel That Tried To Explain Its Most Vicious Attack,” BW6. 96 Statement of General John Abizaid, 2006 Posture of United States Central Command (March 14, 2006), 8. www.centcom.mil/sites/uscentcom1/Shared%20Documents/PostureStatem ent2006.htm. 97 Ibid, 910, 47. 98 Rita Katz and Josh Devon, “The Online Jihadist Threat,” Testimony before the House Armed Services Committee Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee US House of Representative, (February 14, 2007), 4. www.armedservices.house.gov/pdfs/ TUTC021407/Katz_Testimony021407.pdf. 99 Ibid, 5. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid, 7. 102 Moghadam, The Globalization Of MartyrdomAl Qaeda, Salafi Jihadism, And The Diffusion Of Suicide Attacks. See Ch 4 and Appendix A. 103 Ibid, 101. 104 Craig Smith, “North Africa Feared as Staging Ground for Terror,” The New York Times (February 20, 2007), 1. 105 Moghadam, The Globalization Of MartyrdomAl Qaeda, Salafi Jihadism, And The Diffusion Of Suicide Attacks, 102 and Appendix A. 106 Ibid, 102. 107 Ibid, 368. 108 Ibid, 370.
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NOTES 109 Richard H. Shultz, Douglas Farah, and Itamara V. Lochard, Armed Groups: A TierOne Security Priority (Colorado Springs, CO: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, USAF Academy, Colorado, 2004). 110 While there are important and complex differences among and between armed groups, they nevertheless share common defining characteristics. These include: One, armed groups challenge the authority, power and legitimacy of states, seeking to either undermine or coopt them. Two, in doing so, they do not adhere to and will seek to manipulate the rule of law and democratic principles. Three, the leaders and followers of armed groups believe in the use of violence to achieve political, religious, economic, and personal aims. Four, these groups use violence in unconventional, asymmetric, and indiscriminate ways. Five, they operate within and across state boundaries, across geographical regions and, sometimes, globally. Six, armed groups usually are clandestine organizations, although they may maintain overt political fronts. Their clandestine infrastructure includes “intelligence” and “counterintelligence” capabilities. Seven, armed groups all have factional and external rivalries that affect their cooperation, interaction, and effectiveness. 111 Bard O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare, New York: Brassey’s 1990), 13. 112 See John J. McCuen, The Art of Counter Revolutionary Warfare, (Harrisburg: Stackpole Books, 1965); Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, (New York: Basic Books, 2002); C. E. Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice: A Tactical Textbook for Imperial Soldiers, (London: Lionel Leventhal, 1990); T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, (New York: Anchor Books, 1926); Thomas Marks, Maoist Insurgency Since Vietnam, (London: Frank Cass, 1996); Nathan Leites and Charles Wolf, Rebellion and
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Authority: An Analytical Essay on Insurgent Conflicts, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1970); Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Vietnam and Malaya, (New York: Praeger, 1966); John MacKinlay, Globalisation and Insurgency, (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2002); and Michael Fowler, Amateur Soldiers, Global Wars: Insurgency and Modern Conflict, (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2005). 113 Central Intelligence Agency, Analysis of Insurgency, (undated), 2. 114 Ibid., 5. 115 Christopher Clapham, African Guerrillas, (Oxford: James Curry, 1998), 68. 116 O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism, 17. 117 Ibid. 118 Ibid. 18. 11 William J. Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, (New York: Westview, 1981); Ho Chi Minh, (New York: Hypersion, 2000); Stanley Karnow, Vietnam : A History, (New York: Viking, 1983); Spencer C. Tucker, ed., Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War : A Political, Social, and Military History, 3 volumes (Santa Barbara, CA: ABCCILO, 1998). 12 O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare, 19. 121 Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000). 122 Richard Shultz, “The Limits of Terrorism in Insurgency Warfare: The Case of the Viet Cong,” Polity (Fall 1978). 123 Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 124 Mostafa Rejai, The Strategy of Political Revolution, (Garden City, NY, Anchor Press, 1973), 36. 125 For the use of this approach to assess radical Islamism see Quintan Wiktorowicz, Radical Islam Rising, (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). 126 Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997). 127 It is asserted that Stalin did so because he wanted his World War II allies to believe that the USSR was no longer pursuing a policy of trying to
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foment revolution. See Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography, (London: Macmillan, 2004), pp 444445. 128 Richard Shultz, The Soviet Union and Revolutionary Warfare, (Stanford, CA: The Hover Institution Press, 1988). 129 For a review of these arguments see Ibid. 130 Douglas Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, (Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press, 1966), ix. Also see Tang Truong Nhu, A Viet Cong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath, (New York: Vintage Books, 1985); Carlyle A. Thayer, War by Other Means: National Liberation and Revolution in VietNam, 1954–60, (Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 1989). 131 Pike, Viet Cong, 374. 132 Ibid, 377. 133 Paul Berman, Revolutionary Organization: Institution Building Within the People’s Liberation Armed Forces, (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1974), 87. 134 Ibid., ch. 9. 135 See for example, William Darryl Henderson, Why the Vietcong Fought : A Study of Motivation and Control in a Modern Army in Combat, Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1970). 136 Berman, Revolutionary Organization, ch. 10. 137 Mao, Tsetung. Selected Works, 5 volumes (New York, International Publishers, 1954). Also see Samuel B. Griffith, ed, Mao Tsetung on Guerrilla Warfare, (New York, Praeger, 1961). 138 Thomas Greene, Comparative Revolutionary Movements, 3 rd ed. (Englewood, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990). 139 O’Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism, 112. 140 Ibid., ch. 2. 141 Ibid, 201203. 142 John Mackinlay and Alison AlBaddawy, Rethinking Counter Insurgency, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, forthcoming 2007), 2021. 143 Ibid. 23. 144 Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, revised and
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expanded (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) ; Steven O'Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric, (1994); Jon R. Stone (ed.), Expecting Armageddon, (London: Routledge, 2000); and Catherine Wessinger (ed.), Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases, (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000). 145 Quintan Wiktorowicz, “Anatomy of the Salafi Movement,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, (MayJune 2006), 209. 146 Hamid Algar, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay (Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 2002); Natana J. DelongBas, Wahhabi Islam : From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Gilles Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West, (London, Belknap Press, 2004) and Jihad: The Trial of Political Islam, (London, I. B. Tauris, 2004). 147 The teaching of ulWahhab was founded on that of Ibn Taimiyya (1263 1328), who was a member of the school of Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Ibn Taimiyya claimed the power of a mujtahid (one who can give independent decisions). These decisions were based on the Koran he understood in a literal sense. He rejected all innovations such as the visiting of the sacred shrines and the invocation of the saints as idolatry. 148 According to al Wahhab, a Muslim must present an oath of allegiance to a Muslim ruler during his lifetime to ensure his redemption after death. The ruler was owed unquestioned allegiance from as long as he leads in conformity to the laws of God. The purpose of the Muslim community is to become the living embodiment of God's laws, and it is the duty of the ruler to ensure that people know God's laws and live by them. 149 John L. Esposito, Islam : The Straight Path, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Unholy War : Terror in the Name of Islam, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); The Oxford History of Islam, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Karen Armstrong, Islam : A Short History, (New York: Random House, 2000); Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet, (New York: HarperCollins, 1991); Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islam : Religion, History, and Civilization, (New York: HarperCollins, 2002). 150 Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969); Gilles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and Pharaoh, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003); Ziad AbuAmr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994). 151 Wiktorowicz, “Anatomy of the Salafi Movement,” 228. Also see Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: the Search for a New Ummah, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
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152 Gilles Kepel Muslim Extremism in Egypt, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Paul Berman, “The Philosopher of Islamic Terror ,” New York Times Magazine, (March 23, 2003); Berman, Terror and Liberalism, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003); Barry Rubin, Islamic Fundamentalism In Egyptian Politics, (New York: Palgrave, 2003). 153 Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama'ati Islami of Pakistan, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994) and Mawdudi & The Making of Islamic Revivalism, (Oxford University Press, 1996). 154 Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, (Damascus, Syria: Dar alIlm), Introduction. 155 Fawaz Greges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 8. 156 Ibid, 911. 157 Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, “Defence Of The Muslim Lands:The First Obligation After Iman.” www.religioscope.com/info/doc/Jihad/ azzam_defence_1_table.htm. 158 Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, Join the Caravan, (London: Azzam Publications, 2001). 159 Greges, The Far Enemy, 134. 160 Roy, Globalized Islam, 296. 161 Ibid, 297. 162 Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 36. 163 Roy, Globalized Islam, 300. 164 Lester W. Grau and Ali A. Jalali, Afghan Guerrilla Warfare: In the Words of the Mujahideen Fighters, (Minneapolis: MBI Publishing Company, 2001). 165 Richard Shultz and Andrea Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat, (New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming August 2006), ch. 6. 166 Rohan Gunaratna, “Al Qaeda’s Ideology,” Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, (May 2005), http://www.futureofmuslimworld.com/ research/pubID.34/pub_detail.asp. 167 Evan Kohlmann, AQaeda’s Jihad in Europe: The AfghanBosnian Network, (New York: BerBerg, 2004).
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168 Greges, The Far Enemy, ch. 45. 169 Luis Martinez, The Algerian Civil War 19901998, (London: Hurst, 1998); Hugh Roberts, The Battlefield: Algeria 19882002, Studies in a Broken Polity, (London: Verso, 2003); and Martin Stone, The Agony of Algeria, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). 170 Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, 44. 171 Shultz and Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat, ch. 4. 172 Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down, (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999). 173 The 9/11 Commission Report, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004), 66. 174 Ibid, 67. 175 “AlQaeda camps trained 70,000,” BBC News, (January 4, 2005). http://news.bbc.co.uk. 176 “Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders,” accessed at http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/ 980223fatwa.htm. 177 Ibid. 178 Ibid. 179 Key figures include the Egyptianborn Ayman alZawahiri, the ideologist, and disciple of Palestinian scholarguerrilla organizer Abdullah Azzam, who recruited thousands of Muslims to fight in Afghanistan. Zawahiri was founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which opposes the Egyptian Government through violent means. He helped forge the coalition of alJihad, al Qaeda, two Pakistani groups and another from Bangladesh in February 1998 to wage war on the United States Mohammed Atef, the military commander, was also born in Egypt. He headed al Qaeda's military committee and had primary responsibility for supervising training camps in Afghanistan and planning global operations. Among his first was attacks on US troops by providing training to Somali tribes fighting them in 1993. Abu Zubaydah, the operations chief, was born in Saudi Arabia. Following the East African embassy bombings he appears to have replaced Atef as the primary contact for recruits and as the organizer of overseas operations. 180 “Declaration Of War Against The Americans Occupying The Land Of The Two Holy Places,” accessed at http://www.meij.or.jp/new/ Osama%20bin%20Laden/Jihad1.htm.
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181 Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: A Global Network of Terror, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). Also see Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks; Roy, Globalized Islam; and Greges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global. 182 David Kilcullen, “Countering Global Insurgency: A Strategy for the War on Terrorism,” 4. Accessed at www.smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil/search/ Articles/CounteringGlobalInsurgency.pdf. 183 Ibid, 15 184 Assaf Moghadam, The Globalization Of MartyrdomAl Qaeda, Salafi Jihadism, And The Diffusion Of Suicide Attacks, (The Fletcher School, Tufts University: Draft dissertation, January 2007), 118119. 185 Steve Coll and Susan Glasser, “Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base of Operations,” Washington Post, (August 7, 2005), A1. 186 Gabriel Weimann, “How Modern Terrorism Uses the Internet,” United States Institute of Peace Special Report 116, (March 2004), 2. 187 Through continuous and intensive examination of extremist Web sites, the SITE Institute has developed an extensive database of materials on how various Jihad groups make use of the Internet. This database was employed as the primary source for this part of the study. The SITE Institute can be accessed at http://www.siteinstitute.org. 188 AlQaeda in Iraq, Victorious Army Group, Ansar alTawhid Brigades, Islamic Jihad Brigades, the Strangers Brigades, and the Horrors Brigades. 189 There appears to be at least two ways to find out which third party sites are being used to distribute information and communications. One is through Jihadi Internet forums which provide links to index pages. These pages contain a list of sources from which the information can be deduced and downloaded. 190 Coll and Glasser, “Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base of Operations.” 191 Ibid. 192 “Dark Days, Difficult Times,” The Economist, (November 18, 2006), p. 55. 193 Craig Whitlock, “Architect of the New War on the West,” Washington Post, (May 23, 2006), 1. 194 Reuven Paz, “Reading Their Lips: The Credibility of Jihadi Websites in Arabic as a Source for Information,” www.eprism.org. 195 Weimann, “How Modern Terrorism Uses the Internet,” 7.
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196 “Al Qaeda Chiefs Are Seen to Regain Power, The New York Times, (February 19, 2007), 1. 197 Ibid. 198 Ibid. 199 Bruce Hoffman, “What Went Wrong? New Looks At The Bin Laden Network And The Panel That Tried To Explain Its Most Vicious Attack,” Washington Post, (August 27, 2006), BW6. 200 Alexis Brooks, A New Counterterrorism Strategy, (Unpublished Masters Thesis, Fletcher School, Tufts University, 2006), 2432. 201 This term is borrowed from Gerges, The Far Enemy. 202 Michael Slackman And Scott Shane, “Terrorists Trained by Zarqawi Were Sent Abroad, Jordan Says,” The New York Times, (June 11, 2006), 1, 16. 203 Bruce Hoffman, “What Went Wrong? New Looks At The Bin Laden Network And The Panel That Tried To Explain Its Most Vicious Attack,” BW6. 204 Statement of General John Abizaid, 2006 Posture of United States Central Command (March 14, 2006), 8. www.centcom.mil/sites/uscentcom1/Shared%20Documents/PostureStatem ent2006.htm. 205 Ibid, 910, 47. 206 Rita Katz and Josh Devon, “The Online Jihadist Threat,” Testimony before the House Armed Services Committee Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee US House of Representative, (February 14, 2007), 4. www.armedservices.house.gov/pdfs/ TUTC021407/Katz_Testimony021407.pdf. 207 Ibid, 5. 208 Ibid. 209 Ibid, 7. 210 Moghadam, The Globalization Of MartyrdomAl Qaeda, Salafi Jihadism, And The Diffusion Of Suicide Attacks. See Ch 4 and Appendix A. 211 Ibid, 101. 212 Craig Smith, “North Africa Feared as Staging Ground for Terror,” The New York Times (February 20, 2007), 1.
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213 Moghadam, The Globalization Of MartyrdomAl Qaeda, Salafi Jihadism, And The Diffusion Of Suicide Attacks, 102 and Appendix A. 214 Ibid, 102. 215 Ibid, 368. 216 Ibid, 370.
