Posted on 03/26/2005 11:50:08 AM PST by quidnunc
In light of this issue's report on the Idarat al-Tawahhush and its view on the secondary importance of Afghanistan in al-Qaeda's global struggle, a further window into al-Qaeda's strategic thinking is provided by a Jordanian analyst Bassam al-Baddarin. Writing on March 11 for the Arabic language daily al-Quds al-Arabi, his article ‘Al-Qaeda has drawn up working strategy lasting until 2020,' puts together from the assorted writings of al-Qaeda's ‘strategic brain' Muhammad Makkawi, what appears to be a coherent long-term strategy. It seeks to explain the series of events since September 11 2001, the events in Afghanistan and Iraq, and potentially beyond.
The subject of al-Baddarin's study, Muhammad Ibrahim Makkawi, is better known as Sayf al-Adel. He was a colonel in Egyptian Special Forces before joining with the mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet invasion. At the 1998 foundation of World Islamic Front against Crusaders and Jews (the full, official title for al-Qaeda), Sayf al-Adel was granted a pivotal role in military training, and subsequently headed the military wing, succeeding Abu Hafs al-Masri to become number three in al-Qaeda after Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. In 2003, Iran at one point offered to extradite Sayf al-Adel, whom it claimed to have under arrest, in exchange for Mujahideen-e Khalq Organization leaders, but Washington rejected the offer.
The theory:
Al-Baddarin identifies from Sayf al-Adel's writings a core thesis explaining events — a regional war against the Americans. It aims at opening the jihadist triangle of terror, beginning with Afghanistan, passing though Iran and southern Iraq, and ending with southern Turkey, southern Lebanon and Syria. The first, achieved, step in this strategy was to regionalize the struggle with the United States. …
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at jamestown.org ...
An interesting new publication to hit the web gives insight into the thinking of an al-Qaeda strategist on the next stages of the struggle. Posted on the al-Ikhlas jihadi forum [http://ekhlas.com/forum] the work is entitled Idarat al-Tawahhush, "The Management of Barbarism," further defined as "the phase of transition to the Islamic state." Due to the strategic importance of the document, Terrorism Focus has undertaken an in-depth examination of the Arabic text.
Published by the Center of Islamic Studies and Research (an al-Qaeda affiliate), the 113-page work ‘Management of Barbarism' aims to map out the progressive stages of establishing an Islamic state, from early beginnings in defined areas in the Arabian Peninsula, or Nigeria, Jordan, the Maghreb, Pakistan or Yemen, and its subsequent global expansion. The author is Abu Bakr Naji, a name familiar from his contributions to the Sawt al-Jihad online magazine (which are republished at the end of this book).
By "Management of Barbarism" the author refers to the period just after the collapse of a superpower, the period of "savage chaos". It appears pointedly to be a method of not repeating the experience of Afghanistan prior to the rule of the Taliban, and of improving controls over the periods experienced, for instance, in Somalia after the fall of Siad Barre.
After ample prolegomena on Middle East history and the causes of the rise and fall of superpowers, the book substantially falls into five broad themes:
1) Definition of ‘Management of Barbarism'
2) The Path of Empowerment
3) The Most Important Principles and Policies
4) The Most Pressing Difficulties and Obstacles
5) Conclusion – demonstrating jihad as the ideal solution
The ‘Path of Empowerment' theme constitutes the strategy of the mujahideen. In this the author further sub-divides into three distinct phases:
1) The Disruption and Exhaustion phase
2) The Management of Barbarism phase
3) The Empowerment phase
In the first "Disruption and Exhaustion" phase, the mujahideen are to a) exhaust the enemy's forces by stretching them through dispersal of targets and b) "attract the youth through exemplary targeting such as occurred at Bali, Al-Muhayya and Djerba."
-snip-
(Stephen Ulph in The Jamestown Foundation, March 18, 2005)
To Read This Article Click Here
Yeah, yeah, sure, I'm sure they did that on purpose. It was their plan all along, I'm telling you!
Nukes. Nukes will solve it all. ISLAM will take the whole world into Hell with themselves.
Ping
Umm, does the strategy take into account Muslims in Iraq kickin' their butt? How about Lebanon wanting to be free? Iran putting the boot to the mullahs? Syria crumbling without it's "empire." Egypt, Jordan moving to democracy?
No?
I love it when a totalitarian plan falls apart.
Yep. It was the plan all along to lure US into their region and fight. Like the boxer whose plan it was to hurl his face, eyeball first , into a flying fist.
Well at least their admitting how long it will take us to wipe the last table-cloth wearing, fan-belt afixed head gear strutting one of them.
1 Thanks for posting this.
2 "Al-Qaeda's Strategy Until 2020"
Aren't they making a big assumtion?
Al Qaeda who?
Besides, the Mayan Calendar says the world ends in 2012, so plan accordingly. ;)
Agree. BUT (and isn't there always a but) This thing could fall apart just as fast as it's come together. We've been on a roll since 9-11, and pretty much had our way, I don't expect the radicalss to take it lying down. At some point they going to strike back hard. Maybe not here, but somewhere a lot of people are going to die because of these...people(?).
This is like the Nazi strategy for world domination. You see, losing WW2 was all part of the grand master plan so that the U.S. and Britain could let their guard down. Hitler faked his death. He had himself cryogenically frozen and stored in some underground freezer under some museum in Paris. Yeah, that's the ticket. With precise instructions to be unfrozen at some pre-determined future date. I'd tell you more but I'm sworn to secrecy. Yeah, that's the ticket! And if you don't believe me, just ask my wife, Morgan Fairchild.
Yes, lots of things could go wrong, but we've avoided the main threat thus far: Losing our will to protect the people long enough for the seeds of freedom to sprout and take hold.
And yes, terrorists will be a problem for some time to come.
But if we read Bush's major policy statements since 9/11, we can see that he is calling upon the only forces stronger than this threat: truth and freedom and inalienable rights written on every human's heart.
This is a flowery way to say that we do not have to police and micromanage the globe in order to stop terrorism. Liberty is a more potent force than the totalitarianism of the radical Islamicists.
"In 2003, Iran at one point offered to extradite Sayf al-Adel, whom it claimed to have under arrest, in exchange for Mujahideen-e Khalq Organization leaders, but Washington rejected the offer."
The only real reason the story ran is that sentence, which is just Bush-bashing.
The plans didn't allow for organized and systematic resistance...
The plans didn't allow for losing the control of the backwater in Central Asia from which to coordinate the global attacks, including Kashmir, Pakistan, western China, Chechnya...
The plans didn't allow for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and had to create an ad hoc strategy for dealing with this eventuality...
The plans didn't allow for the loss of Lebanon as a base of operations, which is exactly what is going to happen...
The plans didn't allow for the overthrow of the mullahcracy of Iran and the despotate in Syria, which is exactly what is going to happen...
The plans didn't allow for the gradual starvation of terrorist efforts due to the squeeze on financial support...
The plans didn't consider what is going to happen when bin Laden, Zarqawi, and the other criminals hang by their necks 'til they're dead dead dead.
It's 2005 and they're talking about 2020? meh... Power of positive thinking, I guess.
bttt
Well I guess so after you get you ASSES handd to you in Afghnstan and then/currently in Iraq....idiots
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