Center for a New American Security

As some of you may know, I spent several days last week chained to a chair at my local coffee shop producing a chapter for a new e-book Random House is publishing on what the death of Osama bin Laden means for the War on Terror. My chapter, “How Al Qaeda Lost the Arabs,” is the first chapter in the collection after Jon Meacham ('87)'s introduction, and you can buy it for your iPad, Nook, or Kindle.* I was honored to have been asked to contribute a chapter to this volume on account of the other, much-more-distinguished-than-me contributors: James Baker, Bing West, Karen Hughes, Evan Thomas, Dan Markey and Richard Haass.

Writing a book chapter in two days is difficult, to say the least, and my chapter reflects the speed with which it was written. It also reflects the challenge of describing complicated events and phenomena in less than 5,000 words. So for those of you who are going to buy the book -- and at $1.99, you all better buy the damn book -- I am writing this short readers' guide to my chapter. Some of what follows will only make sense if you actually buy and read the chapter.

1. You will note that my chapter has more end notes than any other chapter in the book. Indeed, my chapter has more end notes than all of the other chapters in the book combined. In part this is due to the fact that I'm trying to describe some pretty complex phenomena, and thankfully, quite a few scholars and journalists have gone before me. So I basically pulled all the relevant books I could find off my shelves at home and in my office and did my best with what was available. (Which was quite a lot, happily.) All of the secondary sources I cited were in English, though often written by Arab scholars, while about half of the newspaper articles I cited or from which I quoted were in English with the other half in Arabic. If you read this blog or anything else I write, you'll note that I usually try to write for a general audience while at the same time nodding toward serious scholars and their work in my notes. Part of this is to keep my own work honest, while part of this is intended to direct the reader to more serious scholarly work that I think supports my own work but which does a better job of explaining what, again, are phenomena to which a 5,000-word essay cannot do justice.

2. I horrified Will McCants and Afshan Ostovar -- unlike me, two serious scholars of Islamic history -- last week as I described over dinner the way in which I had managed to reduce roughly a century and a half of Arab intellectual history into less than a single page of text. (And, on a dare, into less than 140 characters.) Obviously, Albert Hourani did a better job in 400 pages than I did in 500 words. Later, I reference the explosion of European capital and the development of non-monarchical systems of government in the 19th century while nodding my head toward Eric Hobsbawm's three volumes on a historical period I summarize in <cough> a paragraph.

3. In the same way, I make a reference to those like Ibn Taymiyya who relied on fiqh as their basis for political thought but didn't really mention the alternatives, which Tarif Khalidi gets into in one of the last chapters his Classical Arab Islam.** The first few chapters of Hourani are also good for this.

4. I do not really have the time to describe all the ways in which the public discourse in the Arabic-speaking world has been transformed over the past two decades. I do not mention, for example, Twitter, Facebook or even cell phones. But the overall point is the same: what had previously been whispered speech or transgressive jokes told in taxis or in coffee shops was now out there in public, challenging regimes as never before.

5. I make a reference, in my essay, to Muslim-Christian unity in Egypt. Ahem. So apparently that time has now passed! In all seriousness, I have been as horrified as anyone by the scenes from the past few days in Cairo. Sectarianism in Egypt is real, as are Salafists hell-bent on stirring up trouble. But since I make a reference to what I see as a still-unresolved conflict between the heirs of Muhamed 'Abduh, I do not think the broader point I am making here is rendered false by events. 

6. In short, I hope you enjoy my essay and think you will, but read it with an understanding of the author's time constraints and an appreciation for the fact that I at least make an attempt to acknowledge the broad, deep body of scholarly literature out there.

*Although the book is already available for both the iPad and the Nook, for some reason it going on sale through Amazon the day after tomorrow. You can pre-order it here, though, and buy it everywhere else here Oh, look, you can buy it now on Amazon.

**Tarif Khalidi was one of my professors at the American University of Beirut, and he caught me reading Classical Arab Islam one afternoon in 2005. He immediately started flipping through it, wincing at all the things in it he now disagreed with, and signed the book, "To Exum, from the author who no longer believes it." I'm pretty sure his last chapter on political thought escaped his winces, but if not, I apologize.

There was a good article in the Independent today about the situation in Yemen. Keeping in mind the recent discussion on this blog about what to do, two paragraphs particularly stood out.

"But, in an office guarded by soldiers with AK-47s and crowded with lieutenants and allies including a uniformed army brigadier, he added: "There are no new troops, no new army." The governor said he lacked helicopters needed to pursue militants if there was an incident outside the capital.

Mr al-Misri went out of his way to stress that "social development" help from the international community was urgently needed for his country, the poorest in the Arab world. Airstrikes and military force were not the "solution", he added. "We need more help to get the tribes to kick them [al-Qai'da] out. The government does not have the resources to do that."

Abu Muqawama and Richard Fountaine rode into this argument early on in their On the Knife Edge policy brief arguing for a "whole of government" approach while Marc Lynch has said that we should we careful of expensive and potentially pointless blundering (yes, it's fun linking to the Tehran Times re-print of his piece).

Steve Tatham and Andrew Mackay support a point David Kilcullen makes when addressing these Yemen-style conflicts we are bound to see more of in the future:

"‘(W)e typically design physical operations first, then craft supporting information operations to explain our actions. This is the reverse of al-Qaida’s approach. For all our professionalism, compared to the enemy’s, our public information is an afterthought. In military terms, for al-Qaida the “main effort” is information; for us, information is a ‘supporting effort'."

In Londonstani's opinion, this really hits the nail on the head and is absolutely relevent to Yemen. Al Qaeda chose to establish themselves in Yemen. The success or failure of the underwear bomber was probably not judged to be as important as the spotlight it will cast on a country with multiple problems which play into the hands of AQ strategists. In the international game of Judo playing out over multiple timezones, AQ is  making the West use its force against itself again and again.

Londonstani has a little experience of Yemen, and remembers it as being very similar to Pakistan and Afghanistan's Pashtun territories in many ways. The danger is that AQ will be able to do what it has done in Pakistan. It has failed to make the population rise up in its support but it has succeeded in allowing the Western world to make itself so deeply unpopular that in the longer term the outlook of AQ is changing the ideological structure of the society.

Reading Tatham and Mackay and relating their arguments back to Pakistan, Londonstani is increasingly convinced that the answer will come from information and influence and building that into aid and diplomacy. If Washington and London can convince Yemenis (and others) that AQ "isn't probably right" and its allies and domestic supporters aren't the only people who can provide justice, peace and security that would be a good start. It can't be about "tricking the natives with plastic beads" but effectively communicating your intentions and achievements. It sounds easy, but even that start is pretty far off.

UPDATE: Also, take a very good look at al Qaeda's own "comprehensive approach"

"Only a fraction of pledged Western aid has been disbursed because of serious corruption and capacity problems in Yemen's government, with the result that per capita development aid is significantly below that of some poor African countries...

...Saying the jobless toll in Abyan is 50 per cent, compared with an estimated national average of 40 per cent, in a country where 45 per cent live on less than $2 a day, he describes how al-Qa'ida adherents insert themselves into local tribes, often nomads who do not see TV and know little of the movement's existence. First, he asserts, a member who belongs to the particular tribe will introduce others who will bring financial and practical help – like the digging of water wells – to the local community.

"Say the government is paying someone $50, they will pay $100. At the same time al-Qa'ida Islamic "scholars" will "collect" some of the tribe's young people, jobless and naturally religious, to begin "training", while also providing them with occasional financial help. Mr al-Misri says he cannot tell how many adherents it has but adds: "they are growing because the environment in Abyan helps the groups to grow because of the economic and employment problems."

Nearly two years ago, Londonstani wrote his first post for this blog. It was based around an interview Londonstani conducted near one of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon with a young al-Qaeda fighter returning from Iraq. The camp itself looked like a transiting station. Londonstani saw young Arab fighters buying military clothing, handing out ammunition, testing weapons and picking up documents. During the conversation about al-Qaeda's strategic rationale when it came to deploying WMD, the fighter mentioned that al-Qaeda was re-deploying its fighters.

"When Haider first entered Iraq through Syria, there had been about 2,000 foreign fighters like himself inside the country. Now they were leaving and only about 150 remained. Most of the foreign fighters inside Iraq had always been Saudis and Yemenis, a few other nationalities, such as Turks were also present, he said. The Saudis and Turks were mainly going to Afghanistan and the Yemenis to Yemen or Somalia, where al-Qaeda was keen to establish a presence."

As the fighting picked up in Afghanistan, Londonstani often thought back to the fighter's off-hand comment about the Saudis and Turks. His off hand reference to Somalia made some sense, but Londonstani often wondered what the Yemen thing had been about. The Christmas Day airline bomb attempt snapped the months' old conversation into focus.

Now we know that al-Qaeda is operating from Yemen, a number of commentators have said the loosely controlled, troubled country is an ideal stomping ground for Osama Bin Laden's followers. In Londonstani's opinion, the retroactive attention shouldn't be limited to Yemen as a country. It's also worth looking at Western policy in countries where extremism is growing.

Yesterday, the U.S. announced a doubling of counter terrorism aid to Yemen. London has said it will work with Washington to provide counter terrorism assistance to Sanaa. But like in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the problem will not be solved by military means alone. Yemen suffers "crushing poverty" to quote the president and the state hardly functions and where it does it has a reputation for corruption mismanagement and brutality. There is also a Shia/Sunni conflict going on. All in all, it really is an AQ haven waiting to happen. But countering this situation with an immediate military response plays straight into AQ's hands.

US Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counter Terrorism John Brennan says AQ probably has "several hundred members". Yet, concentrating on a military response is likely to increase that in weeks. Al Jazeera English reports:

"Al-Shabab, the leading anti-government armed group in Somalia, said on Friday that it was ready to send reinforcement to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula should the US carry out retaliatory strikes, and urged other Muslims to follow suit."

A military element has its place, but by looking like they are ready to support a government with questionable competence at a moment's notice, London and Washington again fit themselves neatly into the unofficial AQ public relations playbook. Presently, the strongest message AQ has states that Western powers pull the strings of dictatorships across the Muslim world that line their own pockets while serving foreign domination. The message works because none of these governments have proved very good at governing. When efforts to address the governance issue (like the Kerry Lugar bill) in Pakistan finally do appear, they are enacted too late to counter the perception. In the case of Pakistan, they are seen as another plank of the same policy.

It's not realistic to aim to be able to "fix" every country that AQ lands in. But proving the group's point is not the answer either.

British politicians are fond of telling the public that fighting in Afghanistan prevents bombs going off at home. Considering that more than half the population wants the army out of Afghanistan, and there's an election coming, it's not a surprise that the people hoping to keep their jobs (who are the same people who decided to the send the troops there in the first place) like to stress the most obvious, stark justification. "The army stays in Afghanistan so you don't blown up on your way to work".

"Well, yeah.. ok," Londonstani's often thought; "but is this one of those situations where politicians and spin doctors decide that the public needs the most face-slap basic message to understand its own self interest?"

There's a bigger picture problem with getting out of Afghanistan too early and today the head of the army, Sir David Richards made it very clear:

"Failure would have a catalytic effect on militant Islam around the world and in the region because the message would be that al-Qaeda and the Taliban have defeated the US and the British and Nato, the most powerful alliance in the world. So why wouldn't that have an intoxicating effect on militants everywhere? The geo-strategic implications would be immense."

What does that mean exactly? Imagine extremists operating in a place far away from Afghanistan are struggling to convince their local audience that austerity and rejection will end corruption, increase justice and restore their pride. A place like, say, Nigeria. In the vast majority of instances, these groups are shunned not because of the intervention of others but because of their own excesses and unpopular practices.

What happens when the Taliban succeeds in making good al Qaeda's vow to defeat the remaining world superpower as they destroyed the Soviets (according to their own image projection)? A realistic projection resulting from the steriod injection of kudos such as outcome would produce will likely include a strengthening of groups in places like Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Indonesia, Pakistan as well as the emergence of groups in all sorts of unexpected places (like inner city London).

Result? Decades of small wars all over the globe, increased civilians deaths (in Western and Muslim countries) and therefore continued escalation, higher defence costs and disruption to global trade etc. So if you think Afghanistan is bad...

Eli Lake was asking me the other day whether or not we had been defeating al-Qaeda these past eight years. I replied that I thought we had not been "beating" al-Qaeda, per se, but that we had made fewer mistakes than al-Qaeda has. Our strategic blunders (going to war in Iraq; diverting resources from Afghanistan) were less signficant than theirs (killing more Afghan and Arab Muslims than Americans and other Westerners). I sense that al-Qaeda's "brand" has really suffered internationally, while America's is in recovery (thanks in part, at least, to the election of Obama*). As it turns out, al-Qaeda is apparently now having trouble raising recruits:

Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida is under heavy pressure in its strongholds in Pakistan's remote tribal areas and is finding it difficult to attract recruits or carry out spectacular operations in western countries, according to government and independent experts monitoring the organisation.

 

Speaking to the Guardian in advance of tomorrow'seighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, western counter-terrorism officials and specialists in the Muslim world said the organisation faced a crisis that was severely affecting its ability to find, inspire and train willing fighters.

 

Its activity is increasingly dispersed to "affiliates" or "franchises" in Yemen and North Africa, but the links of local or regional jihadi groups to the centre are tenuous; they enjoy little popular support and successes have been limited.

(In the interest of intellectual honestly, I have to say this article also highlighted the success of drone strikes on terror networks.)

*If you're a Republican and reading this, I am not endorsing Obama and his policies but merely highlighting the obvious: President Bush was not very popular in the Arabic-speaking and greater Islamic worlds. Obama is not wildly popular, but he is certainly much better liked than his predecessor.

Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung have the A1 above-the-fold article in the Post today on how the Obama team is considering what the appropriate response to the problems in the Horn of Africa should be.

The administration has not shied away from missile attacks, launched from unmanned aircraft, in Pakistan, targeting what U.S. intelligence says are top members of al-Qaeda. Evidence against al-Shabab in Somalia is far murkier and the argument in favor of a strike is based on the potential threat the group poses to American interests.

"There is increasing concern about what terrorists operating in Somalia might do," a U.S. counterterrorism official said. According to other senior officials, the camps have graduated hundreds of fighters.

The FBI and intelligence officials have said that at least 20 young Somali American men have left this country for Somalia in recent years to train and fight with al-Shabab against the Somali government and occupying Ethiopian military forces. In February, a naturalized American -- 27-year-old Shirwa Ahmed of Minneapolis -- killed himself and many others in a suicide bombing in Somalia.

The U.S., Canadian and European fighters at the al-Shabab training camps are, for now, being used primarily as cannon fodder in Somalia's chaotic internal wars, Philip Mudd, the No. 2 official at the FBI's National Security Branch, told Congress last month. "We do not have a credible body of reporting right now to lead us to believe that these American recruits are being trained and instructed to come back to the United States for terrorist acts," he said. "Yet, obviously, we remain concerned about that and watchful for it."

Some officials have said that those trained at the camps could leave Somalia, making their way through countries such as Yemen, where al-Qaeda has a stronger presence. But officials said there has been little movement outside Somalia.

Does it not strike anyone else that what we're doing in the Horn of Africa looks a lot like what we were doing in Afghanistan before 9/11?

Here is the problem into which the Obama team has backed itself. By saying -- in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- that we're not going to allow the terrorists to maintain safe havens from which they can plot and train to carry out attacks, the Obama team now has to explain why we're not pursuing the same kind of whole-of-government approach toward bringing effective governance to the Horn of Africa. And the flip side to that question is even more devastating: if we're not doing it in Somalia, why are we wasting our time and money doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan? This, to me, is the biggest problem I see in the Obama plan for Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's not that we are establishing some terrible precedent, really, but rather that you can point to places on the map where similar problems to the ones in the Pashtun tribal belt present themselves and are not being addressed -- or even discussed -- in the same way. Why have we been seeking to manage the piracy problem off the Horn of Africa -- and the terror problem within the Horn of Africa -- yet are pursuing far more ambitious means and ends in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Depending on the perspective from which you ask this question, you could either get drawn into a strong argument for taking population-centric counter-insurgency operations to all kinds of new places on the globe or be drawn into an even stronger argument for a new(ish) kind of realist argument about terror and how we address it. I'm not sure I like being caught between imperialism and off-shore balancing, though. Surely there is a middle way?

As we are much into reading lists on this site, Londonstani thought he'd contribute a list of what the other side recommends you read.

In his March 14 statement, Osama Bin Laden talked about launching jihad to liberate Palestine and all the usual stuff. But he also set forth the books that scholars and preachers should use to "correct" the "thought and life" of the umma.

So, thanks to the Quilliam Foundation, here's a list of bedside books recommended by the most searched for man on earth. (this has still got to be true, right?)

"‘Concepts Which Must Be Corrected’ and ‘Are We Muslims?’ by Muhammad Qutb. Muhammad Qutb is the editor and publisher of the writings of his brother, Sayyid Qutb, which inspired al-Qaeda and other violent Islamists. In the 1960s Muhammad Qutb fled Egypt and settled in Saudi Arabia where he created a synthesis between the Muslim Brotherhood’s modernist political Islamism and the Saudi government’s rigid, reactionary theology known as Wahhabism. This mixture created modern jihadism. Bin Laden regularly attended Muhammad Qutb’s lectures at university in Jeddah.

"Bin Laden also recommended a commentary on Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s Kitab al-Tawhid, the founding textbook of Wahhabism. He cites the commentary by Abd al-Wahhab’s grandson, ‘Victory of the Glorious’ by Abd al-Rahman bin Hasan Al Shaykh, describing this as a “very important book which talks about Tawhid [monotheism] and warns against Shirk [polytheism], including the Shirk of graves and the Shirk of palaces.”"

Those interested in the development of takfiri ideology will find nothing new here. It's not like Osama just recommended the top choice on Richard and Judy's book club (like Oprah's book club but less self-help), but these are the basic fundamentals of takfiri thought.

Of course, there's a little history here. Quilliam is making the case that any salafis by definition are extremists, and therefore are part of the problem and should not be given money to do de-radicalisation work. This insistance on conformity of thought and not just action, brings up a range of problems which in Londonstani's mind revolve around the following:
1 - If the homophobic but anti-violent salafis are prevented from taking part in deradicalisation work, are the cuddly sufis going to find the credibility to fill the gap?
2 - Could work on anti-semiticsim, homophobia etc be separated and done under a social cohesion banner, with de-radicalisation done in parallel?
3 - Will the identification of "extremist thought" become politicised, with different British Muslim groups trying to tar each other (like in Afghanistan when neighbours tell ISAF their neighbours are Taliban). Or will government (now or in the future) be tempted to tailor the definition of "moderate" to fit foreign policy aims? (ie. 2003 - if you think Iraq doesn't have WMD, you are clearly an extremist).

Government is set to announce a new approach over this whole issue, watch this space.

UPDATE: Londonstani has been told that the book Quilliam recommends in turn is very good (if a heavy academic-y read). The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, by Khaled Abou El-Fadl

James Brandon of our* very own Quilliam Foundation has an article out in the Sentinel arguing that the self-starting terror attacks launched out of the UK weren't actually all that self-starting.

As the press release sent out by the Quilliam Foundation says: "Brandon’s research shows that, while the leaders of terrorist plots such as the 7-7 and 21-7 bomb plots were mostly radicalised in the UK, they acquired their key bomb-making skills directly from al-Qaeda members in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region."

The bit that caught Londonstani's eye (because it seems to contradict what he found in six months of intensive meet and greets) was that: "evidence suggests that al-Qaeda continues to operate through a traditional hierarchical structure based on face-to-face contact – and that it may even still be able to directly recruit British Muslims at street-level in the UK."

But then the body of the article doesn't seem to substantiate that particular press release claim.

Most of the article seems culled from old press reports. And it fills Londonstani with dread when he sees academic type papers (supposedly serious) quoting as sources newspapers like the Independent, The Telegraph and The Mail (broke and don't really even try to pretend to be serious).

* By "our" the author is referring to the organisation's Britishness. And is not implying that Abu Muqawma owns the Quilliam Foundation, in any sense of the word. Promise.

Some important weekend reading courtesy of the NYT.

Nicholas Schmidle's portrait of violent extremism in the maghreb pretty much nails it as far as Londonstani is concerned. The six-page article is worth reading if you want to put a personality to the image of a young jihadi, and get a taste of where the "al Qaeda business model" might be going.

Schmidle has pieced together the back story to one young fighter, Sidi Ould Sidna, a young Mauritanian, charged with killing four French tourists in the town of Aleg.

"'Sidi wasn’t a thief, because thieves rob you and run,' one childhood friend told me. 'Sidi took your watch or your T-shirt right in front of you.' By his midteens, Sidna was smoking hashish, drinking wine and hanging out with an older crowd. He liked to dance and earned the nickname Lambada. Besides robbing people, he also stole cars. Friends and law-enforcement authorities claim that he was involved in multiple rapes."

Nearing 20, young Sidi decided to give the straight and narrow a try and enrolled in an "Islamic seminary", where he acquired a taste for Jihadist propaganda.

'"'Why Zarqawi?' I asked the friend who took Sidna to the mahadra. 'What made his sermons appealing?'"

"'Everyone in the Muslim world wants to see American tanks blown up and their troops killed,' he said. 'But bin Laden and Zarqawi were the only ones actually doing it. Sidna admired them for that.'"

You'd think that the ability to recruit from amongst the criminal underclass would be a great asset if you were Osama Bin Laden. But it's actually one of his greatest headaches. Reading Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet, it's clear that the Holy Grail is a popular Muslim uprising against Western control. The key word for them is "popular". They see themselves as a catalyst to achieving this goal. What Ayman al Zawahiri, and other ideologues before him, like Abdullah Azzam, have repeatedly cautioned against is the "bloodlust" of the Algerian type that has lost them the popular support they crave.

It's like a self destruct mechanism built into the takfeeri Jihadi life cycle. To tap into the rich vein of anger and frustration across the Muslim world that would like to see "American tanks blown up and their troops killed", you have to militarily take on the Americans. When you start making gains, you are yourself attacked - which damages your control mechanisms - and your access to funds and recruits is choked off. You've now created a counterculture of death and destruction; and who's turned on by this? Criminals looking for a sanctified outlet for the kind of thing they like to do anyway. So now you are stuck with a talent pool of also rans. And when you get really unlucky, this bunch of miscreants - to borrow a cool word - alienate the very people you are trying to whip up.

Schmidle argues that this inherent weakness comes part and parcel of Osama bin Laden's business model; the franchise.

Now, Londonstani agrees that al Qaeda seems to find itself at a bit of an impasse. But that doesn't mean everyone can happily relax. If anything, al Qaeda has proved its resilience and adaptability. It has also shown that it can prosper by allowing itself to run with events instead of obsessing about controlling them. So, yes, the organisation has hit a bit of a brick wall with its present strategy, but that doesn't mean it can't change that pretty quickly.

After all, what's happening in Pakistan seems to have little command and control direction from al Qaeda, but the US invasion of Afghanistan did trigger a chain of events that now threatens the Pakistani government. There's the risk that Somalia and Yemen could head in a similar direction. Admittedly, this wasn't top of al Qaeda's wish list, but it'll probably do; for now.

The grown ups over at the Small Wars Journal put up the latest from Tom Ricks' Inbox.  He notes: