Al-Qaida and the War on Terror .... after Iraq (A Global & Generational Conflict)

The article continues .......

"Since the demise of the Taliban regime and al-Qa'ida "solid base" in Afghanistan three phases can be distinguished in the operational activity of the organization and its affiliates and supporters in the Muslim world: (1) After the demise in Afghanistan, the strategy of destabilizing Muslim countries by attacks against soft targets; (2) after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, concentration on the Iraqi arena against the US army and the coalition forces with the hope of a victory on the 1980s Afghanistan model; (3) since the fall of 2004, an extension of the fighting to most of the Middle East, an increased effort in Europe, but the appearance of the first strategic splits in its ranks.

Al-Qa'ida is Weakened after the Demise in Afghanistan The goal of the World Islamic Front (WIF) for the Struggle Against Jews and Crusaders proclaimed by bin Ladin on February 22, 1998 was to form an international alliance of Sunni Islamist organizations, groups, and Muslim clerics sharing a common religious/political ideology and a global strategy of Holy War (jihad). It was replaced in the spring of 2002 by a new name, or perhaps framework-Qa'idat al-Jihad (The Jihad Base)-and WIF virtually disappeared.[4]

After the war in Afghanistan and until the Madrid bombings in March 2004, in spite of bin Ladin, al-Zawahiri, and other al-Qa'ida spokes persons' repeated threats to hit devastatingly at the heart of the United States and the Western world, all successful terrorist attacks have targeted Muslim countries (and Muslim communities such as Mombassa, Kenya). Local or regional groups affiliated with al-Qa'ida were primarily responsible for these operations. They include the Salafi factions in Tunisia and Morocco; Yemeni Islamists; or the Indonesian Jemaa Islamiyya (in fact a group led from Indonesia by Abu Bakr Bashir but with Malaysian, Philippine, and Singaporean branches striving to form a new regional Islamic state).[5] It seems that only the suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia in May 2003 were directly related to al-Qa'ida militants.[6] Interestingly, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, the economies of all these countries or communities (Djerba, Bali, Casablanca, Istanbul, Mombassa) are heavily dependent on tourism.

The campaign by al-Qa'ida terrorists and associates against Arab and Muslim regimes may be explained by a shift in the ideological and strategic thinking of those Islamists who now occupy the vacuum left by bin Ladin and his deputy. The targeting of the tourist infrastructures calls to mind the strategy of the Egyptian jihadist groups in the mid-1990s. One might speculate that this strategy results from the growing influence of al-Zawahiri, bin Ladin's deputy.[7] Yet this is also the result of the decline in al-Qa'ida's operational capabilities following the quick demise in Afghanistan, the unremitting campaign of harassment against its leaders, and the capture or elimination of many of its central commanders.[8]

On February 11, 2003, just before the US-led war in Iraq, bin Ladin distributed two audiocassettes. One addressed the Iraqi people while the other (at 53 minutes his longest to date) was directed to Arab governments and clerics. The main focus of his speech was not the United States, but rather the Arab governments and the Islamic clerics that supported them and gave them legitimacy. The conflict with these Arab governments was presented as eternal and insolvable.[9]

Focus on the Iraqi Arena Bin Ladin's February 2003 message to the Iraqi people sought to encourage their morale and guide them as to how they should face and defeat the incoming American invasion of their country. In an attempt to convince the Iraqis that the United States was not invincible, bin Ladin explained how he and his followers, numbering only about 300, had frustrated the American action against them at Tora Bora in Afghanistan. He stressed the importance of the Iraqi people fighting united against the Americans, irrespective of whether they were Arabs or non-Arabs (Kurds), Sunnis, or Shi'a.[10] Religious scholars from the Islamic Research Academy at Egypt's al-Azhar university also declared on March 10, 2003 that a US attack on Iraq would require Arabs and Muslims to wage a jihad in Iraq's defense against "a new crusade that targets its land, honor, creed, and homeland."[11]

At the height of the war, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan declared that Saddam Hussein's government was ready to meet the overwhelming military superiority of the United States by resorting to widespread suicide attacks against Americans and British troops "and all who support them," both inside Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world. At a news conference on March 29, 2003 he claimed that the Iraqi soldier who killed four Americans in a suicide attack outside the holy city of Najaf was the first in a wave of Iraqis and other Arab volunteers ready to become "martyrs." Arabs outside Iraq, he said, should help "turn every country in the world into a battlefield." [12]

Upon the fall of Baghdad, al-Nida, al-Qa'ida's website posted a series of articles which stated that guerilla warfare was the most powerful weapon Muslims had, the best method to continue the conflict with the "Crusader Enemy." It mentioned that it was with guerilla warfare the Americans were defeated in Vietnam and the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan, "the method that expelled the direct Crusader colonialism from most of the Muslim lands, with Algeria the most well known."[13]

Despite American warnings Damascus permitted the passage of thousands volunteers, many of them Syrians, wishing to join the Iraqis in their war against the Americans. It started with a few dozen volunteers, mostly from the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. This went on until a missile from an American plane hit one of the buses of volunteers in Iraq, killing five passengers. [14]

Thus, the scenario for the insurgency and terrorist campaign in Iraq was built already in the weeks and possibly the months before the war, involving an "objective" coalition of ex-Ba'thists and army and intelligence officers, Iraqi Sunni Islamists delivered from Saddam's yoke, Muslim volunteers from Arab and European countries, and with the tacit support of Syria and probably Iran.

Due to some major American strategic errors and in spite of the swift and stunning US military campaign in Iraq, this scenario developed into "a continuum of violence and uncertainty": the lack of a quick Iraqi political alternative to the Saddam regime (contrary to what happened in Afghanistan), the disbanding of the regular army and police forces, and the lack of a clear planning for the immediate aftermath of the war.[15] In the words of a known American military analyst, "the US chose a strategy whose post-conflict goals were unrealistic and impossible to achieve, and only planned for the war it wanted to fight and not for the "peace" that was certain to follow."[16] ..........................The March 11, 2004 attack on the trains in the Atocha station in Madrid was the first successful operation in Europe by an al-Qa'ida affiliated group. It was followed by the July 7 and 23, 2005 series of four suicide bombings in the London underground, the second one a failed operation. The March 2004 terrorist bombings in Madrid have been attributed to an al-Qa'ida-inspired group of North Africans. UK authorities suspect the four young British nationals who carried out the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks on London had ties to al-Qa'ida as well.

These attacks were presented as retaliation for the participation of Spanish and British troops in the US-led coalition in Iraq. The Madrid attack executed just three days before elections in that country indeed brought down the Aznar government and imposed a socialist government that decided to withdraw its troops from Iraq. However, the arrest of some 130 Islamist activists preparing new major attacks in Spain after the March 2004 bombings and the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq prove that the war is only a good pretext.[68] The goals of the Islamists are much larger and they are not willing to compromise. And the Islamists have no intentions of stopping after one victory, and most likely not stop before the liberation of Andalusia from Spanish "occupation."

Since the war in Iraq, attacks and threats have also targeted the "minor" US allies in the framework of the international coalition: Poland and Norway, South Korea, Italy, and Denmark. Moreover, police operations in Germany, Italy, Ireland, and the UK have led to the arrest of terror suspects and the dismantling of an Islamic network centered in Italy that recruited fighters for the insurgency in Iraq. This network, possibly involving Ansar al-Islam in Italy and al-Tawhid in the UK and Germany, also had a foothold in Norway, France, Spain, and the Netherlands.......

The words of a famous moderate Muslim leader of a moderate Muslim country, Abdurrahman Wahid, former president of Indonesia, speak for themselves:

An effective counterstrategy must be based upon a realistic assessment of our own strengths and weaknesses in the face of religious extremism and terror. Disunity, of course, has proved fatal to countless human societies faced with a similar existential threat. A lack of seriousness in confronting the imminent danger is likewise often fatal. Those who seek to promote a peaceful and tolerant understanding of Islam must overcome the paralyzing effects of inertia, and harness a number of actual or potential strengths, which can play a key role in neutralizing fundamentalist ideology. These strengths not only are assets in the struggle with religious extremism, but in their mirror form they point to the weakness at the heart of fundamentalist ideology...

Our war is with radical Islam, and terrorism is merely the tactic they use. I've heard some pretty convincing arguments that you cannot win a war, when you don't acknowledge who the enemy is, and merely declare war on the tactic, rather then the progenitor of the tactic.

Yes, but aren't we fighting the war the same way. The use of "War on Terror" is more PR. It would not be politically correct to say "War on radical Islam" since that might offend more Muslims.

>"It would not be politically correct to say "War on radical Islam" since that might offend more Muslims."

-LOL, Yes we must always be sensitive to muslims *delicate* sensibilities, musn't we? ;^)

I agree that the Muslim world is still living in the 15th century. However, offending our many allies in the Muslim world does us no good.

I don't agree.
-Ibn Warraq, author of "Why I Am Not A Muslim", writes:

"Muslims do not need patronizing liberals to meet them halfway; Muslims need to write an honest biography of the prophet that does not shun the truth, least of all cover it up with the dishonest subterfuge of condescending western scholars" -Ibn Warraq author of; "Why I Am Not A Muslim", "Studies on Muhammad", "Rise of Islam", and "Leaving Islam"

BTW, have you ever read anything by Iranian Amir Taheri?

Amir Taheri: "Islam Is Incompatible With Democracy"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1138942/posts

Here are some of his quotes:

"Muslims can build a democratic society provided they treat Islam as a matter of personal, private belief and not as a political ideology that seeks to monopolize the pubic space and regulate every aspect of individual and community life."
- Amir Taheri

"We should not allow the everything-is-equal-to-everything-else fashion of postmodernist multiculturalism and political correctness to prevent us from acknowledging differences and, yes, incompatibilities, in the name of a soggy consensus. - Amir Taheri

If we are all the same how can we have a dialogue of civilizations, unless we elevate cultural schizophrenia into an existential imperative?" - Amir Taheri

Taheri is always a great read. He is correct in identifying that the culture of the Muslim world is very different from our own. Bernard Lewis, a Mideast Scholar has written some great books about Islam. His belief is that the Muslim world (most of it) never went through the enlightenment, industrial revolution and the great social and political changes of the last few centuries.

My point was that the "War on Terror" was really a war on Islamic Radicalism. To declare war on Islam in any form would fall right in to the hands of Bin Laden and the terrorists.

The percentage of Muslims that want to destroy Western Civilization is fairly small, but since there are over a billion Muslims, numerically there are large numbers of them. In most Mideastern countries, Islam is more than a religion, it is a huge part of the lives of the people. To openly attack Islam is not good strategy.

I agree that the silent majority of Muslims needs to stand up and reject the terrorists. This has happened in Iraq, but not so much in other countries. It needs to happen because the struggle in the Mideast is largely between Muslims. They need to defeat their own extremists.

I lived in Saudi Arabia for 5 years and read much about Islam and the history of the Mideast. Islam is a more complicated religion than Judaism and Christianity because it was spread largely through conquest. It has an elements that are more aggressive than other religions. Also, because that part of the world never went through the Enlightenment, separation of religion and state are not commonly accepted theories. Countries like Morocco and Turkey have moved closer to Western notions of separation, but Islam is still a force to consider in politics there.

bump^ good post.
thanks for your comments.