6. January 2012 by Michael Silverman.

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. (President Barack Obama, Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009)

I am reminded daily that the 2012 presidential election is about jobs and the economy. But, the fact is that whosoever wins that race will become commander and chief and will have more impact on US foreign policy than any other person.

The Obama administration disdains the term “War on Terror” and that is good. On its surface that change in syntax appeared to recognize that the struggle in the Muslim World is not about defeating terrorism, but rather it is a war about the future regimes in Muslim majority nations. The quote above left me hoping that US policy would finally support those who wanted modern democracies in the Middle-East. Thirty months have passed since President Obama promised a “new beginning between the United States and Muslims” and I thought it would be appropriate to assess where we stood with regard to “mutual interests and mutual trusts” and the “principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

Iraq

I’ll start the discussion with the Muslim-majority nations in which we are most “involved”: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The President recently touted our final withdrawal from Iraq as an unqualified victory. Although I certainly agree that our actions there led to victory (thanks to the “surge” and the population-centric counterinsurgency tactics that accompanied it), I think that our inability to negotiate an extension of the current Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) is a diplomatic failure. Worse than the failure is the fact that embassy records reportedly indicate that neither President Obama nor Vice-President Biden personally spoke to Prime Minister Maliki or President Talibani about the agreement; probably not the level of “mutual trust” that the Iraqi regime was looking to receive on the matter. All things considered, I would grade the administration’s efforts in Iraq as a solid C+.

Afghanistan

In September 2009, the administration made much of the debate about the way forward in Afghanistan—counter-terrorism or counterinsurgency and ultimately decided to embrace counterinsurgency…Then they stepped-up drone strikes against “Taliban” and “al Qaeda” targets, increased “night raids” within Afghanistan to kill or capture insurgents and generally fought what looks like a counter-terror campaign with some lip-service to counterinsurgency. The result has been improvement in security in the places where U.S. forces “surged”, but a very slow increase in the size and capability of Afghan forces. The Afghan local police program, for example, still flounders with total numbers under 10,000 against a 30,000 man goal and a recent report by Human Rights Watch indicates the program is causing more support for the Taliban in many places. I see no indications of widespread rejection of Taliban insurgents among the Afghan population. Although military leaders in Afghanistan talk about the progress made, nearly all of them use the words of General David Petraeus describing it as “reversible” or “fragile”. Meanwhile, the so-called “surge” troops are leaving Afghanistan and it seems unlikely the security situation will continue to improve with fewer US boots-on-the-ground. Meanwhile our actions in Afghanistan continue to alienate Karzai (who we chose to support even though his re-election was one of the most corrupt in recent memory) and the popularity of his regime doesn’t seem to be improving. Without major support from Pakistan, it looks doubtful that we will turn the tide in Afghanistan the way we did in Iraq. Overall, I’d grade the administration’s efforts in Afghanistan as a D.

Pakistan

Our relationship with Pakistan has always been complicated, but as late as 2008 the Pakistani Army was a relatively reliable US ally and we could leverage our military aid (third only to Israel and Egypt) to illicit action from Pakistan. However, the so-called counter-terror campaign has strained the relationship to the breaking point. Under the Bush administration the reported number of drone attacks into Pakistani territory was small, with the high-water mark being about 33 attacks in 2008. Under this administration the attacks increased rapidly since 2009 to over 100 attacks last year. The Pakistani population views these attacks as violations of their sovereignty and acts of war. Amid growing tensions over the high number of drone strikes came the opportunity to kill Osama bin laden. Although it was a boon for Americans, the bin Laden raid caused more friction with the Pakistani population. The latest blow to our relationship was last month’s airstrikes (not a single bomb fratricide accident, but a sustained hour long attack) that reportedly killed two-dozen Pakistani soldiers at long occupied border positions. We have lost Pakistan as an ally— certainly this relationship gets an F.

Iran

After having completely ignored a golden opportunity in 2009 to support a movement that might have destabilized the Iranian regime, this relationship has taken a turn for the worse. Iran seems to have lost any fear that they once had for the U.S. as indicated by their recently uncovered plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. while he was on our soil. Iran continues their pursuit of nuclear weapons and appears to be much closer than they were in January 2009– another F.

The Arab Spring

Our cowardly “no-boots-on-the-ground” approach in Libya and our complete lack of support in Egypt gave us minimal influence with both transitional governments. Libya is unstable, at best and Egypt’s first election has led to a victory for the Islamist parties. What may have been two struggling liberal democracies now looks like two more illiberal ones. Obama continues to largely ignore the uprising in Syria that threatens to destabilize a huge swath of the region and we continue to support the oppressive regime in Yemen further fueling Yemen’s al Qaeda insurgency. Although the jury is still out, The Arab Spring looks like a D.

Altogether, it looks as though the US relationship with the “Muslim World” is no better than is was in 2008 and that President Obama has missed real opportunities to show support for burgeoning democracy movements in the Muslim world. The “new beginning” looks like a failure in comparison to the “Freedom Agenda” of the Bush years.

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8. November 2011 by Michael Silverman.

For the last 8 years the Iraq War has been a political brickbat with which both Democrats and Republicans have beaten each other over the head. The latest developments appear to continue that practice. The Obama administration touts the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq as an unqualified victory, while the field of Republican presidential candidates wrings their hands over the looming chaos and failure that is inevitably coming. I find neither view sincere nor useful to the American people.

In his October 21, 2011 address, President Obama said, “In Iraq, we’ve succeeded in our strategy to end the war.” That statement is true. The last published National Security Strategy (May 2010) makes it clear that ending the war was our strategy—with no stated concrete objectives or goals about the future of Iraq and nothing more than mealy-mouthed mumbles about securing our gains there. However, it is also clear that, as recently as last month, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was actively pursuing an agreement that would allow for up to 4,000 U.S. servicemen to remain in Iraq in an advisory and training role, with an unspecified number staying on as a “counter-terrorist force.” Should we now assume that Panetta’s object was not really important? Although we have the largest diplomatic mission in history in Iraq, this administration couldn’t negotiate an agreement acceptable to both sides. The cause of that failure could be Iraqi intransigence, but one might reasonably argue that the agreement was not as important as the political value in keeping a campaign promise, namely to end the Iraq War. Based on the history of U.S. politicians vis-à-vis Iraq, the latter explanation seems more likely.

On the other side of the political spectrum are the Republican presidential candidates who generally shock me with their vintage 1930’s isolationist views. Now, simply to score political points, most of the field (Ron Paul’s ultra-isolationism notwithstanding) decries the withdrawal as an abandonment of Iraq and an open door to Iranian influence. If their general position otherwise is that we are engaged in too many foreign entanglements, their protestations also seem blatantly political.

From my foxhole, I’d like to remove the political barbs and take a cold look at this development. First, there is no doubt that Iraq would be more secure from both internal and external threats with U.S. troops in residence. Although Iraqi ground forces are as capable as those of many of our Middle Eastern allies and more capable than some, their air force is in its infancy and not ready for major operations. They are not prepared to defend their nation against military incursions by either Turkey or Iran. And the instability in Syria is a real threat to Iraq. Iraqis do not have the technical intelligence systems that we employ, nor is their human intelligence system ready to manage the huge amounts of reporting that they will gain as we depart. The administration would answer, I suppose, that we will not abandon Iraq, militarily. We will leave a substantial reaction force (at least an Army brigade combat team) in Kuwait that could respond to emergencies in Iraq. We will be prepared to provide intelligence, air support and naval support to Iraq as needed. We will continue to provide training (through the State Department) to Iraqi police and internal security forces and we will have some trainers on the ground as part of foreign military sales programs (these trainers normally have diplomatic immunity). But the trainers and advisors on the ground will be considered “non-combatants” and will serve little purpose during open hostilities, and the reaction force could prove really problematic. We need to be very wary of thinking that a force-in-waiting in Kuwait will be a panacea for potential blow-ups in the future. Launching a force from Kuwait to “assist” in a real emergency in Iraq will likely be viewed by most Iraqis as a renewed invasion—and could fan the flames on the now quietly smoldering insurgencies.

Second, there can be no doubt that leaving troops in Iraq subject to Iraqi criminal law is completely unacceptable. If we truly negotiated in good faith with the Iraqi government and they would not agree to a modified status of forces agreement granting U.S. jurisdiction over our forces, then that is an absolute deal breaker. Like it or not, if we have troops in Iraq, they will eventually wrongfully kill an Iraqi citizen and we cannot allow a foreign nation to mete out their justice to our soldiers. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is the head of a democratic government and, therefore, is subject to the will of his parliament and, ultimately the people of Iraq. He is under great pressure to remove foreign troops from his soil. But I can think of no time in recent history that such an agreement couldn’t be negotiated. With persistence and the right angle, surely Maliki would agree.

Lastly, the idea that our withdrawal will somehow abandon our gains and lead to chaos is wildly overstated. Iraqis, though not yet completely unified, are very patriotic and the vast majority will not accept interference from Iran (or, for that matter, from Sunni neighbors) in their domestic affairs. The population has rejected the poisonous ideas of al Qaeda and other takfiri (Muslim extremist) terrorists. Without the U.S. to bash, the Sadrists will be largely disarmed, and the remaining insurgencies (al Qaeda in Iraq and Sunni nationalists) will be hard-pressed to recruit new members. Iraq has adopted and will continue to live by one of the most liberal (that is, Thomas Jefferson, not Nancy Pelosi), democratic constitutions in the region, a constitution that recognizes, universal human rights (including for women), freedom of religion, and universal suffrage. The remainder of our allies in the region would do well to follow suit.

So, we have won a victory in Iraq, but with little thanks to the current administration which now embraces it as their own—it is really only theirs to lose. The victory was secured by the Surge and the tactics that accompanied it. President Obama would do well to send his negotiators back to the table to figure out how to keep a real presence in Iraq (make-up a phony name for the force that will allow the so-called complete withdrawal to stand.) The Republican field should tone down their rhetoric about abandonment and failure and deal with current realities.

Finally, Iraq ’s future is in the hands of the Iraqi government and its security forces, and that’s where it belongs, but they certainly need our continued diplomatic and military support. It is unrealistic to think that Iraq is ready to fend off potential aggression from Iran or Turkey without a commitment of U.S. assistance—they are not ready for that. So, let’s not be quite so ready to wash our hands of the matter of Iraq after so many years of struggle and sacrifice.

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13. July 2011 by Michael Silverman.

If you want to know if we are winning or losing in Afghanistan, watch the content and tone of the news stories coming from the U.S. and NATO military this summer. The military public affairs apparatus in Afghanistan knows how to shape the message coming from the war zone and has great power to do so. If things are really improving in Afghanistan and the military is on message, this summer will be full of stories about the improving security situation in former insurgent strongholds, economic improvement, growing trust of the Karzai Regime by local Afghans and Afghan civilians denouncing both al Qaeda and the Taliban. That is what victory looks like in counterinsurgency. If Afghanistan is still mired in violence and mistrust of both the Karzai Government and coalition forces, expect to see more bellicose stories about killing and capturing insurgents and repelling attacks against coalition forces. That’s what losing looks like in a counterinsurgency.

The model for this kind of “information campaign” is the one launched in summer 2007 from Iraq. That summer started with the same hand-wringing debates that we currently see where the central questions were: “Is it time to leave Iraq?”  “Are we winning or losing?” and “Should we declare victory and leave?”  The answer to those questions came from Iraqi voices as much as from Americans. That summer, leaders on the ground in Iraq (including me) brought reporters to the newly safe areas in Ramadi, Baghdad, Fallujah, and other former hotspots and walked them through the streets where they saw and heard for themselves, from Iraqis, reports about the improved security situation, the resurgence of commerce and widespread condemnation of al Qaeda’s bastardization of Islam and brutality. Those same reporters then met with sheiks (usually from the Awakening Movement), Iraqi policemen, soldiers and Sons of Iraq volunteers at some sheik’s meeting hall. There they enjoyed a spirited discussion (always centered on the improvements of the past months and the bright future of Iraq) and a traditional Bedouin meal while they sat comfortably in a pastoral setting with no helmets, body armor, or fears of insurgent attacks. Simultaneously, our Iraqi partners engaged the Arab language media where they spoke daily about the evils of al Qaeda, The Mahdi Army, and any outside influence (usually Iran) that sought to fracture Iraqi unity.

I do not mean to imply that these media engagements were insincere or untrue; they were not. But, they were very carefully managed. And, the message gained momentum all summer. The outcome changed the perception of much of the world about what was going on in Iraq. The domestic calls for rapid withdrawal subsided greatly, the Arab language media changed how they wrote and spoke about U.S. forces (we were rarely called occupiers or Crusaders after that summer on the legitimate Arab language outlets), and the political wind was gone from the sails of those who wanted to paint “Bush’s War” as an abject failure. Not only was the military campaign successful that summer, but the information campaign reflected it honestly.

Perhaps we have not seen these positive stories from Afghanistan as much as we might because the media (and their consumers) are truly war weary. Perhaps it is because the death of Osama bin Laden has overcome the coverage. But, maybe those stories will be forthcoming this summer. As the “fighting season” hits full swing this month, the news from Afghanistan will tell us a good deal about our real progress. We should watch and make judgments accordingly in the fall.

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15. February 2011 by Michael Silverman.

Hosni Mubarak has resigned; paving the way for some type of liberal democracy in the land that once served as the seat for the Fatimid Caliphs and later, under Saladin, the Ayyubid Sultanate that recaptured Jerusalem.  In more recent history, Egypt is the birthplace of the Islamist movement with the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, the Global Takfiri Movement[1] with the founding of Egyptian Islamic Jihad in 1980, and the birthplace of al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al Zawahiri. Today many still see it as the seat of Political Islam.  But the political upheaval hasn’t ended there.  Iraq, the home of the Abassid Caliphate of Islam’s “Golden Age”, once home to the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein and nearly lost to the Global Takfiri Movement in 2006 now has a liberal (albeit grossly imperfect) democracy; Jordan is in the process of liberal reforms; Tunisia has a new liberal democratic government and, even the mighty House of Saud is probably quite less smug about its rule than it was 3 weeks ago.

Who cares about the political machinations of the Arab World?  Well, you should. The Long War is not about keeping America safe—terror attacks against us are merely a symptom of the larger ill.  It is about, rather, the political future of the Muslim World.   The rhetoric of al Qaeda, especially that rhetoric produced for the consumption of their rank-and-file, is clear: the goal of the movement is to overthrow what they consider to be apostate regimes in the Muslim World (nearly every regime from North Africa to the Philippines) and replace them with a unified government that rules all Muslims—a new caliphate[2] based on their perverted view of Sharia that decries democracy and universal human rights as incompatible with Islam. In fact, when Osama bin Laden declared war on the West, it nearly split the global movement down the middle. 

Near and Far Enemies

When the Islamist movement was born in Egypt it focused exclusively on defeating and removing the regime in Egypt.  Simultaneously, other Muslims began to “grow their own” local movements that also sought to overthrow local regimes. This movement floundered through the mid-twentieth century occasionally gaining traction only to be crushed by local authoritarian regimes.  However, in 1979, one of these local movements was successful—the Iranian Revolution, starting in 1978 and culminating in 1979, was not originally an Islamist revolution, but a loose coalition of liberal democrats, Marxists and Islamists with a unifying goal of removing the regime of Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran.  However, in the chaos that accompanied the Shah’s exile, the powerful Islamists under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized the mechanism of state and established the Islamic Republic of Iran—arguably the first Islamic theocracy in the 20^th Century. The reality of the Islamic Revolution of Iran spurred-on several other Islamist groups.  Simultaneous with the Iranian Revolution, another group gained real advantage, the Islamist movement in Afghanistan (known locally as the Mujahidin[3] or Holy Warriors) that sought the removal of the Marxist-Leninist, Soviet puppet regime of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.  As the group gained power the Soviet Union increased its aid (overt and covert) to the Marxist regime, ultimately leading to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. The Soviet invasion caused a new dynamic to emerge in the Islamist movement—a new enemy. Islamists began to refer to the “apostate regimes” of the Muslim World as the near enemy (al adou al qareeb) and non-Muslims who interfered in Muslim lands as the far enemy (al adou al baeed).  Originally, the debate over which enemy was more critical was moot as Islamist militants from all over the Muslim World began to flock to Afghanistan to “defend” the Mujahidin against Soviet aggression. So, for ten years the focus of the Islamist movement was clearly on overthrowing the secular regime in Afghanistan; and in 1989, defeated and embarrassed, the Soviet Army withdrew from Afghanistan. Unified as they have never been since, the various movements of political Islam defeated a superpower. It seemed in 1989 that the movement was gaining real momentum as the “Arab Mujahidin”, those Arabic speaking volunteers from all over North Africa and the Arab Peninsula and Gulf States, who fought in Afghanistan began going home as heroes like none seen since Saladin’s army.  The Regimes of the Muslim world generally reacted coolly, at best, to the returning heroes, but didn’t dare draw their ire. But in one place the Mujahidin were received somewhat more warmly—Saudi Arabia.  There the spokesman for the returning Mujahidin was Sheik Osama bin Laden whose father Muhammad bin Laden had a lifelong and very close relationship with the Royal Family. Because of his father’s legacy, Osama was humored or ignored when he preached about his desire to establish a new caliphate based on strict Salafist/Wahabist interpretations of Sharia.  Osama bin Laden subscribed to a certain sub-set of Islamist beliefs called pan-Islamism, the belief that all Muslims should live under one government, so not only did he believe that any government that ruled a mostly Muslim nation that he and his fellow takfiris deemed secular or apostate should be overthrown and replaced with a strict Sharia-based theocracy, but that those theocracies should all answer to one ruler, the caliph.  As he returned home from Afghanistan, bin laden formed an organization whose stated goal was to reestablish the caliphate; the organization would later be called al Qaeda.

With the Soviet threat gone the Islamist and pan-Islamist movements seemed to turn away from the far enemy and focused on plotting against the near enemy—at least, for a couple years. Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and threats against Saudi Arabia seemed like a great opportunity for the movement to generate ire against the secular regime in Iraq. So, the day that Saddam’s forces moved into Kuwait City, Osama bin Laden offered King Fahd a force of 10,000 Mujahidin to defend the Kingdom from Saddam. On the same day, however, President George H. Bush offered King Fahd the 82^nd Airborne Division, airpower, and a commitment not to allow Iraqi forces into the Kingdom.  King Fahd’s decision changed the course of history for the next generation.  He chose Western (largely Christian) forces to defend his Kingdom, a kingdom that includes the two holiest sites in Islam—Mecca and Medina.

That decision caused bin Laden to classify the Saudi regime as apostates who must be overthrown and he began to preach for the violent overthrow of the House of Saud.  For anyone else, this talk would have meant death; but Osama, again receiving special treatment because of his deceased father, was instead exiled from his homeland and wound-up in Sudan. Bin Laden started to view the West, specifically the United States as the largest impediment to creating the new caliphate. In Sudan, Osama issued the first of a series of fatwas or religious decrees that declared war on the United States. These fatwas caused a major rift in the Islamist and pan-Islamist movements. While many in the movements adamantly focused on the near enemy, bin Laden and his organization insisted that only after removing Western powers that he termed “crusaders” and “Zionists” from the region could any headway be made.  In 1993, bin Laden’s followers launched two attacks that set them on a collision course with the U.S. The first attack was the bombing of the World Trade Center by al Qaeda affiliated terrorists in February, 1993.  The second attack, perpetrated by a surrogate, the forces of Somali warlord Muhammad Farrah Aidid was known as the Battle of Mogadishu in May, 1993.  These two attacks began to draw American focus on Osama and his al Qaeda organization, but it wasn’t until after he attacked a joint Saudi-U.S. headquarters (OPM-SANG HQs) in Riyadh in 1995 that the Clinton administration reacted strongly, ultimately attempting to assassinate bin laden and forcing Sudan to exile him. Upon being exiled, again, Osama found refuge in a place where he was still viewed as a hero…Afghanistan.  From there and with the support of the Taliban regime, he finally wrested control of much of the militant, pan-Islamist movement from those who sought to fight the near enemy and brought war to the region with his attacks against the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, his attack against the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 and finally the 9/11 attacks.

Largely because of Osama bin Laden’s choice to focus on the far enemy, and the allocation of major resources to that end, the Islamist and pan-Islamist movements have had little effort and less success bringing about the downfall of the near enemy.  The regimes most hated by militant Islam: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Indonesia and several others; have survived intact largely because the wealth, cadres, and efforts of would-be revolutionaries have been focused on fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and attacking Westerners at home. More importantly, while the Islamists lost focus on the near enemy a new enemy emerged— enlightened young Arabs who now embrace liberal democracy.

The Medium Enemy

I contend that there is a new enemy of radical Islamists and it is the most dangerous enemy to bin laden and his ilk, yet.  If the near enemy was the so-called apostate regimes of the Muslim World and the far enemy was the U.S and her allies who prevented the fall of the those regimes by providing substantial diplomatic and military support to them, then the medium enemy is the young, literate, connected, largely middle-class activists who risked life and limb to protest in the streets of Cairo, Tunis, Amman, and Sana trying to bring true liberal reform to their homelands.  Tomorrow those same young Muslims could be on the streets of Tehran, Riyadh, and Damascus and I don’t think they will rest until they receive what Westerners demanded centuries ago—universal rights granted not from a government, but from their creator… they want the Enlightenment to finally reach Islam.  While the near enemy fought pan-Islamism and takfirism with prisons and secret police, and the far enemy fought with assassination, rendition, and invasion; the medium enemy fights with the most powerful weapon yet… an idea that has liberated most of the world!

The Next Phase

There is little doubt that the revolts of the last month will have a net-positive effect on the regimes of the Muslim World.  They will take notice and even the most stridently repressive regimes will make concessions or they will fail.  But, the revolutionaries and the states are not the only combatants involved in this struggle.  Al Qaeda and their affiliated organizations will not sit still while freedom and democracy take hold in the Muslim World.  This new enemy, the medium enemy will be the new target of the Global Takfiri Movement.

The Long War is still not about us.  It is about the political future of the Muslim World and the next campaign of this war is about to begin.

Next time: What is al Qaeda’s next move?

[1] The Global Takfiri Movement is the collective group of violent Muslim extremists, of which al Qaeda is the most widely known, that believe that all Muslims must be ruled by a single Muslim ruler (the Caliph—literally the “successor” to Muhammad) and that any Muslim who doesn’t subscribe to their twisted version of sharia is an apostate.  Takfir is the Arabic word for apostacy or the act of renouncing Islam.  The term takfiri is applied to those in this movement by other Muslims as a pejorative; first because these Muslims accuse others Muslims of apostasy which in mainstream Islam is something that only God may judge.  Second, mainstream Muslims generally see the violence against innocent victims practiced by these thugs as outside the bounds of Islam.

[2] For more on this see my earlier blog articles: “Questioning What We Know: A Journey Through the Long War” and “Al Qaeda Eyes Saudi Arabia As Seat of New Caliphate.”

[3] Mujahid (plural Hujahidin) translates literally as warrior in a Holy War, or Jihad.  It is a term that, for Muslims, grants immediate legitimacy to a person and should never be used to describe terrorists and takfiris.  I use it here because it has come to be accepted, in the West, as the name of the movement that defeated the Soviet aggression in Afghanistan.

Posted in Revolutions in the Muslim World, al Qaeda, counterinsurgency | 1 Comment »

5. February 2011 by Michael Silverman.

There is a new, constitutional government in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak will not run for re-election in Egypt (and may not last the weekend), President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen also says he will not run for re-election (though he has lied about that before.)  Jordan’s King Abdullah II dismissed his prime minister and ordered Dr. Marouf al Bakhit, the former prime minister, Jordanian ambassador to Israel and national security chief (widely considered a religious and political moderate) to form a new one.  Where will the next domino fall?  Syria? Saudi Arabia?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that this rash of revolutions is as real as those that swept Europe in 1848 (See “You Say You Want a Revolution”, 1 FEB 2011) or those associated with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and 1990.    

Many pundits in the U.S. wring their hands and proclaim that “The Muslim Brotherhood” or al Qaeda-like terrorists will take over, but there are no signs that they’re right.  Many believe this merely because they have been conditioned by the ideas of uninformed, but otherwise well-meaning American zealots, like Glenn Beck and  Laura Ingram who see the Long War (some call it the War on Terror) as a crusade—a war from which either Islam or Christianity will emerge intact, but not both.  These folks wrongly see our struggle as us (the Judeo-Christian World) against them (the Muslim World).  There are also zealots in the Muslim world who think of the Long War in those terms. This belief has partly been perpetuated by the dictators of the Muslim World. For years the tyrants of the Middle-East and Arab North Africa have used the power of Islamism[1] and the specter of pan-Islamism[2] to prop themselves up. They have held western powers at bay by selling a myth that if they fall, just like in Iran in 1979, they will be replaced by al Qaeda or other pan-Islamist terror regimes that would threaten the existence of Israel and bring all-out war to seize the new caliphate. For whatever reason, whether it is simple prejudice or belief in the for-Western-consumption rhetoric of Hosni Mubarak and his ilk many pundits in the U.S. are perpetuating the myth that we need to fear the outcome of these uprisings.  It seems from my vantage point that these uprisings are not to be feared.  They look to be motivated by the same thing the European revolutions of 1848 and the momentous revolutions of 1989-1990.  These people want freedom and they want it because they see that it is possible. There were other sparks: food prices are on the rise in the Middle-East and unemployment is very high.  Being unemployed and hungry can really cause people to rapidly reassess their political situation and this certainly was the case here as well. But, the people of the region have watched from a distance for 50 years as freedom grew around the world. They watched as best they could before the internet and satellite TV, but for the last decade they have seen it up close.  The protesters who took to the streets in Tunisia, Cairo, Amman and Sana have all seen satellite TV.  They have watched al Arabia and al Jazeera as they described the world.  They love Baywatch. They have ventured onto the internet and explored all the content there, Wikipedia, Facebook, “blue content”, you name it.  They’ve chatted with people from every country and played online poker in virtual rooms with Americans, Brits and everyone else.  The regimes of the Muslim world can no longer isolate their people from freedom.  Lastly, but perhaps most importantly these people have watched Iraq.  Although it is flawed and was born through intense pain; Iraq is now a bona fide democracy and the region has watched as Iraqis chose their own futures in three elections and became jealous.  

If it was just democracy these movements sought, we could have problems. Democracy is not necessarily incompatible with organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Islamist organization that would love to impose its strict interpretation of Sharia on Egypt, that has spawned some of the most despicable members of the takfiri movement including Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri, the second-in-command and spiritual leader of al Qaeda is not opposed to taking over Egypt through democratic elections, much like Hamas did in the Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah (properly Hiz’B Allah) in Lebanon. In 1997 Fareed Zakaria wrote an article entitled “The Rise Of Illiberal Democracy” where he argued that the world was becoming more democratic, but not more liberal.  He identified a wave of democracy that spawned nations that were still repressive and authoritarian. The prime example is Iran.  Iran’s government is democratic—that is elected by the people– and the nation has universal suffrage.  Other than the supreme leader, who is appointed for life (by an elected body called the Assembly of Experts who are elected and can remove the supreme leader for cause,) every officeholder in the executive and legislative branches are elected. However, as we all know, Iran is not a liberal democracy, but rather one of the most repressive regimes in the world.  The concept of universal human rights doesn’t exist there. In fact, Iran has one of the worst records in the world for both sexual and involuntary servitude (slavery) human trafficking.  But, it’s not just democracy that these protesters want.  Its liberalism they want; not Liberalism like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, classic liberalism meaning an increase in individual freedoms and that is totally incompatible with the tenets of the Muslim brotherhood or al Qaeda.  Next time I’ll explain why individual rights are not acceptable to extremist Muslim groups and why these revolutions may be the beginning of the end of the Long War.

[1] Islamism is the political movement that seeks to integrate Sharia law into all aspects of Muslim life.  The movement is generally ultra-conservative and anti-Western, but it is not, necessarily takfiri or militant.

[2] Pan-Islamism is the political movement that seeks to unite all Muslims under a single Islamic state, often called the caliphate.  Pan-Islamism is generally associated with the global takfiri movement and al Qaeda.

Posted in Revolutions in the Muslim World, Takfirism | 2 Comments »

1. February 2011 by Michael Silverman.

The popular uprising in Tunisia that overthrew President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was a revolution, and the simultaneous referendum in Sudan, the results of which will almost certainly separate Sudan into two nations—in the north an Arab-speaking Muslim nation and in the south a Christian and animist nation that will closely resemble its Sub-Saharan neighbors—can also be seen as a revolution. Clearly, the success of these revolutions in Tunisia and Sudan spawned the popular demonstrations in Yemen and what looks like it may become a revolution in Egypt and now the unrest is spreading to Jordan—in today’s world news travels at the speed of light. Although it is not yet clear how those movements will fair, it’s clear we can expect to see similar discontent in other countries in the Muslim world—perhaps Syria, Iran and maybe even Saudi Arabia.

Glenn Beck says that this is all the work of The Muslim Brotherhood and that a new caliphate—Muslim Kingdom that will unify the entire Muslim World—is going to be the outcome unless we fight against these movements.  I’m sure he’s wrong.  These revolutions are about human rights and, if they can overcome tyrants, they will bring parts of the Muslim World into the league of democratic nations.

This is not the first time the world has seen such a rash of revolutions; in 1848 revolution swept across Europe like wildfire.  The 1848 revolutions, like today’s were not spawned by one group or movement, nor did they seek the same outcomes, but all of them were liberal (in the classic sense- meaning they sought to increase liberty.) They ranged from communist movements that sought to nationalize all property to constitutional movements that sought to secure life, liberty, and property rights for all through establishing universal suffrage and representative governments.  The revolutions grew legs because they united disparate groups: middleclass city dwellers, university students, peasants, communists, and nationalist, all of whom were suffering from a period of economic depression and increased food prices throughout Europe. 

In February 1848 violence erupted in Paris after a planned demonstration was banned by King Louis Phillipe, who, shortly thereafter, abdicated his throne after losing the support of his national guard. After the French success, revolutions spread quickly through modern-day Yugoslavia, Hungary, Germany and Italy. By May revolutions had touched most of Europe from Ireland to Moldavia and from Denmark to Sicily.  Never before had such widespread unrest affected so many sovereigns and states. The movements spread because communications were better than ever before.  Railroads were beginning to crisscross Europe; telegraph was transmitting news blurbs at the speed of light and modern printing techniques allowed newspapers to grow their circulation exponentially reaching the newly literate middle-class in many European cities.  All this meant that the affairs of one European nation became known rapidly to her neighbors.

What was the lasting legacy of these revolutions in 1848?  Well, the answer to that depends largely on who one asks, but what is indisputable is that these revolutions, by and large, failed.  By 1852 most of the revolutionary regimes had been replaced, and brutally so, by reactionary, mostly monarchist, regimes. However, looking back 160 years I say that these revolutions, although unsuccessful, were the last nail in the coffin of absolute monarchy in Western culture; the divine right of kings—the political link between kings and the church that was the foundation of medieval political power– was on the verge of giving way to the universal rights of mankind—the new idea that God gave rights to all men; life liberty and property– the central idea of the 18^th century Enlightenment; the central idea upon which the United States was founded.

So, what is the nexus between all that and what’s happening today?  Well, while the west was embracing the new, liberal ideas of the enlightenment, the Arab world was looking backward in response to a different movement—Wahabism. Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahab Bani Tamim was a Muslim scholar born in 1703.  The world into which Wahab was born was one that found the fortunes of Muslims and Arabs on the decline.  To understand this, we need to back-up several centuries.  In 1000 A.D., as the west was at the height of the “Dark Ages”, the center for trade, science, technology, mathematics and philosophical thought was Baghdad, the seat of power of the Abbasid Caliphate. The Golden Age of the Caliphate saw incredible amounts of innovation and the Caliph (the Muslim king) controlled nearly all trade from Europe to Asia by controlling key segments of both the Silk Road and the Spice Road.  The caliphate stretched from the Iberian Peninsula (Modern-day Spain and Portugal) across North Africa and the entire Arab Peninsula through Modern-day Turkey and Iran to India. But, from the 13^th-16^th centuries the caliphate fell apart and while it decayed Europe became powerful. “In fourteen-hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue”; we all learned that, but many of us don’t understand why.  The Iberians (Spaniards and Portuguese) also concluded a campaign in 1492, they defeated the last Muslims held area on the Iberian Peninsula—they kicked the Caliph out of Europe.  They so hated the Muslims that they wanted to wrest economic power from them.  We all know Columbus was looking for a new route to the orient, but did you know that he wanted to do so to allow Europeans to cut Muslims out of the Europe to Asia trade—with maritime routes to the orient Europeans would no longer have to pay taxes to Muslims to move goods from East Asia to Europe.  By 1700 the power of the caliphs and the influence of Muslims was waning.  Abdul Wahab spent his time analyzing why Arabs and Muslims had lost their greatness.  His answer was that they had abandoned the original faith of the Prophet Muhammad and that in order to regain their power, they must look backward and embrace the ideas of “original Islam”—they must make themselves into 7^th century societies.

While Europe was looking forward to the “modern” idea of universal rights of man, the Muslim World looked backward and missed the boat on the 1848 revolutions and the hundred years of human rights that followed.

I believe that what we see now is the Muslim World, long exposed to the concepts of life, liberty, and property that guide most Western nations, coming to grips with modern beliefs about universal rights. Next time I’ll write about why this scares some people and whether it really should.

Posted in Revolutions in the Muslim World | 1 Comment »

17. July 2010 by Michael Silverman.

How would the balance of power change if al Qaeda possessed one-fifth of the world’s oil reserves?  The battle lines are forming for an insurgency that hopes to replace the Saudi King with an al Qaeda-backed regent who would operate a an Arab, Taliban-like regime and adopt the title of Caliph.  And with that title comes control of the world’s largest exporter of oil—Saudi Arabia. 

Robert F. Worth’s “Is Yemen the Next Afghanistan”, in the July 6^th New York Times is an excellent piece of reportage and provides valuable insights into the building insurgency in Yemen.  However, Mr. Worth fails to acknowledge why Yemen is a much more serious mid-term problem than Afghanistan and how the growing numbers of insurgents in Somalia relates to the increased al Qaeda presence in Yemen.  Controlling Saudi Arabia is al Qaeda’s most significant mid-term goal and it is the stated purpose of al Qaeda on the Arab Peninsula, the new AQ organization formed in 2009 and headquartered in Yemen. 

Al Qaeda’s ultimate goal is to establish a new Muslim Caliphate like the Umayyad Caliphate (The second caliphate that extended the reach of Islam from the Iberian Peninsula to Indonesia) based on a bastardized view of  Salafist Islam that spurns democracy, human rights, and freedom of religion (concepts that are acceptable to “mainstream” Islam.)  In order for a new caliph (whoever he may be) to be perceived as “legitimate”, he must be seen as the successor to The Prophet Muhammed.  To do so, it is imperative that the new caliph rules Mecca and Medina, making him “The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques”—the title reserved for the King of Saudi Arabia.  How then does al Qaeda hope to achieve this goal?  The answer is simple—overthrow the House of Saud.   

The concept of al Qaeda overthrowing the House of Saud sounds far-fetched; but we have too often underestimated the ability of al Qaeda and have a habit of ignoring their rhetoric, even when it tells us exactly what they intend to do.  Could it be that they are truly preparing to launch an insurgency in Saudi Arabia?  We have seen indications that al Qaeda has left most of the fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Taliban.  Although American officials still think AQ leaders reside in the “tribal areas of Pakistan”, no one can deny that al Qaeda has developed new leaders of significance in Yemen. 

Why Yemen?  Intuitively, one cannot conduct sustained attacks against the Saudi Regime from Afghanistan or Pakistan- the two areas we Americans currently view as the epicenter of the War on Terror.  Some would argue that al Qaeda conducted the 9/11 attacks against the U.S. from Afghanistan and that is certainly further away.  While that is true, the objective of the 9/11 attack and any attacks against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) vary wildly.  The 9/11 attack was designed to strike fear in Americans and force an isolationist foreign policy to take hold in the U.S.  This type of attack would be useless against the Saudis.  What al Qaeda needs is a full-scale insurgency designed to either overthrow the regime or to persuade the regime to join al Qaeda and become the base of the new Caliphate.  No matter how post-modern, asymmetric, fourth-generation and global warfare has become it remains true that one must control terrain from which to launch these sustained attacks.  In counterinsurgency speak we call these terrain support zones and safe havens and they should allow movement into the insurgent’s attack zones– Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Khobar, and even Mecca and Medina.  Al Qaeda worked hard to establish those support zones from 2004 thru 2007 in al Anbar Province, Iraq- Saudi Arabia’s Northern neighbor.  Al Anbar would have provided a wide-open frontier into the KSA and given al Qaeda plenty of room for recruiting, training, and toughening of their cadres to conduct such an attack. Iraq became the key battlefield in the War on Terror not just because of U.S. missteps in handling the war in Iraq early on, but because al Qaeda wanted badly to establish a new base from which they could launch an assault on the KSA.  (Intercepted correspondence between Abu Musab al Zarqawi and Ayman al Zawahiri said as much.)  Because of the Sunni Awakening Movement and the change in U.S. policy from war of attrition to a true counterinsurgency, al Qaeda lost Iraq.  Now they are working to establish safe haven in the neighbor to the south—Yemen.

On July 9, 2010, AP Reporter Jason Straziuso reported in “Kenya: Iraq, Afghan, Pakistan Fighters in Somalia” that “Veteran insurgents from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have relocated to the chaotic country of Somalia in large enough numbers to spark worry inside the international community, Kenya’s foreign minister said Thursday.”  This movement of seasoned fighters to join the Somali al Qaeda affiliate al Shabab (or the young men of the Mujahidin) could be an ominous sign.  Somalia is a mere 90 miles from Yemen via the Gulf of Aden and on a good day my 16 foot fishing boat could make it across the relatively calm waters.  With safe havens in Yemen (albeit very remote) and new recruits coming into Somalia, al Qaeda may be leaving the fight in Afghanistan to the Taliban while shifting their attention to the real goal—launching an insurgency against the House of Saud. 

U.S. foreign policy in the War on Terror has been, predictably, focused on keeping our homeland and our interests abroad from being attacked by “terrorists”.  For that reason, the Obama administration has turned-to on Afghanistan and tried to avoid any references to “nation-building” while quietly giving support to the Yemeni regime and stepping-up our commitment in the Horn-of-Africa.  No matter what happens in Afghanistan, it will not be the last front in this war and the failed and failing states of Yemen and Somalia show that if we truly want to win this war we have more nation-building yet to come… and it could be that the next big fight is in Saudi Arabia.

Posted in al Qaeda, Global Jihad, Takfirism, counterinsurgency | 1 Comment »

29. June 2010 by Michael Silverman.

Obama was right to fire McChrystal!  I’m no fan of President Obama—I didn’t vote for him and probably won’t vote to reelect him if he runs—but, I will defend his actions as Commander-In-Chief in this case.  The climate described in the Rolling Stone Magazine article, Runaway General, is more appropriate to a fraternity full of immature college boys than it is to any military unit; much less the headquarters of a four-star general. 

McChrystal doesn’t deny his statements, nor has he refuted the overall climate amongst his closest advisors.  If this reporting is correct, not only is the climate in his command sophomoric and arrogant, it is down-right insubordinate and several of these actions could be punishable under Article 88, UCMJ—Contempt Towards Officials, which reads, in part, “(A)ny commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”

            If Americans want indignation then they should focus it against McChrystal who apparently chose childish self-indulgence over duty to Nation, unit and Soldiers.  At a time when our alliances are strained in Afghanistan and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan struggles to extend its powers outside of the capitol, McChrystal chose to move our private (albeit widely suspected) disagreements over policy and strategy into the public discourse.  I suspect that will have very real consequences.  McChrystal’s actions and those of his staff have served-up a propaganda victory to both the Taliban and al Qaeda!

            In counterinsurgency, message is just as important as actions.  While General McChrystal stressed disciplined messaging to his subordinates, even down to the lowest level, he failed to employ the same discipline at the highest level.  Now, General Petraeus will be forced to go behind this mess in order to get the message—and the troops– straight again.  I predict that down at the battalion and company level, where the tough work of counterinsurgency is done, we’ll see a rift in the ranks with many young soldiers and officers embracing the cavalier and arrogant views of McChrystal.  The general’s actions will confuse many young warriors who will now struggle with their loyalty to their cashiered hero and the oath they swore to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States…”  

            It is not too late for McChystal to rise above this incident.  I hope he will see fit to send a strong message to the soldiers, for whom I know he has the highest regard.  His message should be as blunt and common as his faux pas were, “I screwed-up and I was wrong.  Please don’t follow the example that I have given you in the last 24 hours.”

            General, the ball is in your court.

Posted in counterinsurgency, Afghanistan | 2 Comments »

11. February 2010 by Michael Silverman.

Why Does al Qaeda Hate Us?

          Everyone recognizes that we are at war with al Qaeda.  But what is al Qaeda and how did we wind up locked in conflict with them?  Why do they hate us?  Why did they attack us?  Many Americans believe that we are at war with al Qaeda over our treatment of our Arab allies or our disregard for their rights.  They contend that oil and greed drove us into this war.  Others contend that al Qaeda seeks to destroy Christianity and us with it.  Osama Bin Laden’s latest statement says that we are at war over, among other things, climate change and the environment!  Perhaps bin Laden is a great steward of the environment, but I am absolutely sure that that is not why we were attacked.  Is this war religious or is it about the politics of power?  This essay will briefly describe who al Qaeda is and why we are at war.

In order to fully appreciate who we are fighting one must first appreciate the nature of al Qaeda, then understand al Qaeda’s role in a much larger movement.  Let’s start with the name “al Qaeda” itself.  Usually, the term is not translated because it is a proper noun; however it has a few literal translations.  Often translated as “the network” it’s more accurate translation is the foundation because foundation has the same multiple meanings in English that “al Qaeda” has in Arabic.  Al Qaeda is the foundation in the sense that it is the base, the solid structure upon which things above are built.  That analogy describes exactly how its “members” feel about their twisted version of Sharia (the law handed down by the prophet Mohammed).  Only upon Sharia can anything good be built, according to their thought; and anything added or subtracted from Sharia makes the society built on it wrong (more specifically evil.)   Foundation also means the base idea upon which a philosophy, theory or way of thinking is built.  That meaning is fairly self-evident.  Lastly, a foundation is an institution or charitable organization, particularly one that provides funds.  Al Qaeda is all of the above to the Global Takfiri Movement.  It provides direction and guidance, raises and distributes funds, and interprets and judges ideas, regimes, and people.  Al Qaeda has the power, money and desire to direct the actions of myriad groups of like-thinking takfiris.  What al Qaeda isn’t is a fixed, formal and stringently structured organization.  It doesn’t have a membership committee, directory, who’s who, or official website that lists each member for all to see.  Contrary to the beliefs of some Americans, there is no al Qaeda Headquarters with the flag planted in the front yard and Osama bin Laden’s office on the seventh floor.  Al Qaeda is an opportunistic organization that changes its alliances and membership based on the current state of a particular movement or organization.  They have no written constitution or bylaws, only bogus fatwas (religious edicts.)  However, one can glean a good deal of intelligence about al Qaeda by reading and listening to their rhetoric.  Their rhetoric is clear and should have, in fact, given us considerably more warning about what was coming than it apparently did. (For more about these fatwas I strongly recommend The Al Qaeda Reader, by Raymond Ibrahim.)

The organization that became al Qaeda was born in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation.  During the Afghan-Soviet War there were two groups who claimed the “mantle” of the Mujahidin. (Mujahidin is the Arabic word for those who fight Jihad—holy war.  It is a powerful word; more powerful than the word patriot in our culture.  We need to be careful how we use it! I never call our enemies Mujahidin or their war a Jihad- both terms grant them legitimacy they do not deserve.  I will use it to describe the combatants in the Afghan-Soviet War because it is accepted convention.)  The Mujahidin in Afghanistan were subdivided into Afghan Mujahidin and those the Afghan’s referred to as “the Arab Mujahidin”.  The Arab Mujahidin were men from all over the Muslim world who generally embraced the central concept of Islamism- the idea that Islam is not merely a religion, but a political way of life and that all Muslims should live under Sharia law, preferably in a single unified state like the caliphate of old.  They believed that concepts like democracy, republicanism, socialism and communism were all evil, man-made concepts that detracted from what they considered “God’s Law.”  The Arab Mujahidin fought to oust the Soviet puppet regime (remember that atheism was a tenet of Soviet-style Marxism) from Afghanistan in order to allow an Islamic regime to rule.  They also saw the opportunity to defeat a superpower and demonstrate their might to the remainder of the Muslim World.  During the Afghan-Soviet War one of the Arabs who gained a good bit of notoriety was the son of one of the wealthiest men in Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden.  Osama brought a great deal of money to the effort and that gave him power in the movement.  He was charismatic, ruthless and ideological and he developed a very strong following among the “Gulf Arabs” in the movement.  After the Soviet defeat Osama bin Laden brought many of his followers to his home in Saudi Arabia where he began to call his organization al Qaeda.  Bin Laden began to court the Saudi Royal family and attempted to sway them to his movement.  Specifically, he wanted to see Saudi Arabia, the homeland of the Prophet Muhammed and the site of the two most holy cities in Islam as the centerpiece of the new global caliphate. 

In 1991 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia, bin Laden urged King Fahad not to bring foreign forces into the Holy Land to defend Saudi Arabia, but rather to accept his fighters, the “Arab Mujahadin” to protect The Kingdom.  Fahad, however, had a longstanding relationship with the West and saw the danger posed by the “Arab Mujahidin”.  Fahad did bring in Westerners, by the hundreds of thousands causing bin Laden to issue several Fatwas (a religious decree, ruling or order) against the foreign troops and the Saudi Royal Family eventually earning him a fairly gracious exile.  Only his family’s wealth and power stopped the House of Saud from taking his head and those of his rebellious followers. 

Exiled from his familial home in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden chose to move his fledgling organization to Sudan so as to remain close to the region he ultimately hoped to control.  His new goal: the violent overthrow of the “apostate” regime in Saudi Arabia, and his biggest obstacle to victory, the Western allies of The Kingdom.  Bin Laden became obsessed with America.  While living in exile in Sudan in 1993 bin Laden issued a Fatwa condemning American participation in the efforts to stem the brutal civil war in the largely Islamic nation of Somalia and calling for America to remove her forces from the region completely or face attacks.  In fact, there are significant allegations that Al Qaeda trainers participated in the attack against U.S. forces in Mogadishu in October 1993 leading to the downing of two Blackhawk helicopters and the death of 17 U.S. servicemen.  Earlier that year a takfiri terror cell in New Jersey; whose leader, Ramzi Yousef, had spent time training and honing his “skills” in Afghanistan at a training camp run by bin Laden’s al Qaeda, attempted to bring-down the twin towers of the World Trade Center by exploding a truck bomb in the underground parking garage.  The attack killed six and wounded over 1,000.  Fortunately, the cell had grossly miscalculated the effect their bomb would have and the U.S. narrowly averted a disaster.   Over the next several years there were more Fatwas and more attacks.  By 1995 the Fatwas had become specific.  The Fatwas called for Western forces (often described as Zionists and/or Crusaders) to leave the Islamic Holy Land and called for “true” Muslims to rise-up in Jihad against both the foreign forces and the government of Saudi Arabia.  The stated goal of Al Qaeda was then and is now the “liberation” of the Holy land and establishment of a new Islamic Caliphate stretching from Spain through the Horn of Africa and the Middle-East and ultimately ending in the southwest Pacific thereby unifying all Muslims under one nation.  In 1995 an Al Qaeda truck bomb exploded in front of the headquarters of the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG).  The building also housed the U.S. advisors to the SANG.  The explosion killed five Americans and two Indian Nationals.  The Saudi authorities soon arrested, tried and executed four terrorists responsible for the attack.  Three of the four had previously been involved with takfiris in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.   

Bin Laden continued his rhetoric against the U.S. and her allies and in 1996 his utterances caused enough pressure on the Sudanese Government that they forced him to leave.  He once again returned to Afghanistan where his movement began.  In 1996 the nearly decade long civil strife in Afghanistan ended when the Taliban Regime finally consolidated their power.  The Taliban (literally translated as the “students”) represented a full generation of Afghanis raised during the Jihad against the Soviet occupation.  The Taliban was the realization of the first political regime associated with al Qaeda.  Bin Laden had also successfully merged many takfiri groups under the banner of his Al Qaeda organization, including the large and powerful Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, led by Dr. Aiyman Zawahiri.  Zawahiri became the most vocal and prominent figure in the worldwide takfiri intellectual movement and the second-in-command and chief propagandist for Al Qaeda.  Bin Laden finally had what he strove for, a secure nation-base, a safe haven from which he could train, toughen, and export his religious zealots to begin a true war ultimately aimed at the removal of all western powers from the Muslim world and a unification of all Muslims under one caliphate.  Bin Laden saw the opportunity to seize the initiative and launched a full-scale assault against American interests in the Middle-east, North Africa, and the southwest pacific. 

          In 1998 a round of attacks planned, resourced and organized by Al Qaeda were executed against U.S. targets.  The first of these attacks were against American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.  The response from the Clinton administration was feeble and encouraged Bin laden to continued his attacks.  Next, in October 2000 was a suicide attack in the port of Aden, Yemen against the Warship USS Cole causing the deaths of 17 American Sailors.   This time, there was no U.S. retaliation and bin Laden looked for an even bigger attack, one on the American homeland.  The attacks of September 11, 2001 were the attacks that finally awakened a sleeping beast.  U.S. Intelligence quickly linked the attacks to Osama bin laden and al Qaeda.

          The 9/11 attacks were not about oil; nor were they about U.S. Imperialism.  Al Qaeda did not attack us over our “disrespect for the Arab culture”, and they certainly didn’t attack to prevent climate change.  They attacked the U.S. because we support stability in the regime.  They see us, with our desire for stability, peace and free and open markets, as the first hurdle in their path to destroy the more “moderate” regimes of the Muslim world and they will continue to attack us as long as we have allies there.

Posted in al Qaeda, Global Jihad, Takfirism, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

21. January 2010 by Michael Silverman.

Al Qaeda is evil and the Long War that we are currently waging against them is more than a confrontation provoked by the 9/11 attacks, it’s a battle for our very way of life.  This is not a “War on Terror” and cannot be focused simply on keeping us safe from terrorist attacks. If one understands al Qaeda’s goals, they will realize that this war is not about America, but about the nations of the “Muslim World.”  In fact The United States cannot win this war.  Our enemies can only be destroyed by other Muslims, yet Americans often blame our Muslim allies for our circumstances and confuse our allies and our enemies in this war.  We are not at war with only one group, rather we are battling various groups who are unified by an idea.  If we kill the top 20 leaders of al Qaeda tomorrow, even if we destroy al Qaeda completely, this war won’t end.  We will still be embroiled in conflict with a non-state actor, a borderless nationless, movement whose actions challenge our current paradigm of war and blur the line between criminal activity and acts of war.

  I intend to prove to you that everything I said above is true.  The paragraph above does much more, however, than frame the thesis for my upcoming series of blogs.  It pushes hot buttons that charge the topic with emotions, explodes the myth of al Qaeda and strips back the veneer that hides some really ugly conundrums of our day.   There is near unanimity for the sentiment that al Qaeda is evil, after all they intentionally kill innocent men, women, and children in their attacks.  But past their heinous acts, is their purpose itself evil?  What is it they want?  The term “our way of life” can bring with it heavy baggage; it is often double-speak for Christianity.  When the two terms, “evil” and “our way of life”, are used together, people become nervous; some hear “crusade.”  But, this is not a Crusade.  This threat is not a threat to Christianity but a threat to the political values we hold most dear: universal human rights, democracy, self-determination, freedom of religion and economic freedom.  The Long War is not about religion, but rather politics- that is, social relations involving authority or power.  The goal of our enemy is not the destruction of Christianity but the overthrow of any government in a majority Muslim nation that doesn’t govern strictly by the takfiri view of Sharia.  We must come to the defense of the “moderate” regimes of the region and they are our best allies.  Nations like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, The Philippines, UAE and even those less stable like Yemen and Syria and perhaps even a reformed Iran (the political upheaval we see there now could grow into an all-out revolution) must be brought into an alliance against this threat.  Truly, we are fighting for their right to govern their nations as they see fit and only they can win.  If al Qaeda ceased their terror attacks against us tomorrow and we could remain safe within our shores we still couldn’t stop fighting unless we were willing to cede to them control of over one fifth of the world’s population.  Neither is the Long War simply a war against al Qaeda.  Al Qaeda is but one organization, albeit the vanguard organization of a larger movement that I call the Global Takfiri Movement.  Lastly, this war confounds us because we cling to an 18^th century view of nation states, borders and alliances.  We need deeper understanding of the threat, a total commitment from all our allies, recognition that only a reformist movement in Islam can truly defeat takfiris and a new paradigm that fits the current state of the world that recognizes the complexities of non-state actors, global movements, modern communications and lawless areas of failed or failing states.

Over the next several weeks, I intend to focus this blog on background information designed to inform, opine and spark debate.  I hope to give those familiar with the subject some new information that they may not have considered and I hope to provide those less familiar with the topic enough background to get them past the talking points commonly used to politicize the issue.  My goal is simple; I want to make you, the reader, think about the Long War in a new way.  Whether you agree with me or vehemently disagree, I have met my objective if you assessed and questioned what you think you know.  So read, think and please comment.  

Posted in Global Jihad, Takfirism, counterinsurgency, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »