...get ready. I may even be unmasked.
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(Dis)Loyal readers: I have taken a position that does not allow me much opportunity to blog, so I apologize for my long and unexplained absence.  But on to the matter at hand.

There is no shortage of commentary about the “Ground Zero Mosque,” which is neither at Ground Zero nor exactly just a mosque, so I will keep this short and try to contribute an original perspective. I am not going to address what I think about the morality, wisdom, and legality of the decision to build this center in close proximity to the site of the World Trade Center. We have all had enough of that. I only focus on the strategic angle.

To be clear at the outset, I do not think the Cordoba Initiative is Islamist-inclined. However, as a friend of mine, who is good at assessing these things, recently noted in an email to me:

My own view…is that the Cordoba guys are not Islamists. At least not in a meaningful way. Certainly, Islamists will seize it and do the whole, "Look at those American crusaders persecuting us Muslims.”

A small example from the Wall Street Journal:

 

Islamic radicals are seizing on protests against a planned Islamic community center near Manhattan's Ground Zero and anti-Muslim rhetoric elsewhere as a propaganda opportunity and are stepping up anti-U.S. chatter and threats on their websites.

 

One jihadist site vowed to conduct suicide bombings in Florida to avenge a threatened Koran burning, while others predicted an increase in terrorist recruits as a result of such actions.

"By Allah, the wars are heated and you Americans are the ones who…enflamed it," says one such posting. "By Allah you will be the first to taste its flames."

As I have maintained before on this blog, the Islamist movement represents a late modern global insurgency of sorts. A standard tactic and technique of insurgency is to provoke the counter-insurgent into reacting disproportionately in such a way that helps to mobilize the insurgent’s constituency against the counter-insurgent.  

The “Irgun Strategy” is one term that has been ascribed to this technique, as the Jewish terrorist organization of the same name designed its attacks during the Mandate Period to provoke the British into implementing repressive measures against the entire Jewish population. But the Irgun were not the first to invent it, nor were they the last to use it. The Taliban continue to use it to great effect in Afghanistan by firing upon Coalition Forces from civilian homes, hoping to draw artillery fire or air strikes on civilians for a propaganda coup. This was the logic behind General Stanley McChrystal’s mandate to avoid air strikes under these circumstances. And it is no small irony that Israel has faced enemies that have used the “Irgun Strategy” – Hizballah, Hamas, and their fedayeen predecessors (although the Israeli defense establishment has not shifted their strategy and operations accordingly...a topic for another post).

The uproar (there are some particularly grotesque examples from Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, but I think they are just trying to keep up with their constituencies) over the Cordoba Initiative Mosque and Cultural Center is the latest and most spectacular demonstration that we fail to understand the Islamist Movement’s Irgun Strategy.

Western Islamist groups consistently engage in provocative behaviour designed to draw out the worst elements of the Western polities and thus simplify an element of mobilization that social movement scholars refer to as boundary activation – activities that contribute toward the increasing saliency of inter-group differences, whether they are economic, social, religious, racial, ethnic, or otherwise. Boundary activation draws out the “us vs. them” dynamic that often relies on a narrative of exclusion or discrimination that feeds a sense of vicitimization.

This creates and solidifies in-group cohesion and loyalty and strengthens out-group hatred and distrust. In this case, Islamist activists will be able to use this episode to argue – this time, with some credible evidence – that Muslims cannot ever be truly part of America and cannot enjoy the same rights as other Americans. The narrative continues that America leads the West in a war against Islam, in which Israel is a proxy (or America is a proxy of Israel, depending on which version you prefer).  This all creates what some have called an oppositional consciousness among many Muslim youth with interactive exposure to narrative of Islamist activists. This is an empowering mental state that prepares members of a group to act to undermine, reform, or overthrow an incumbent system. In other words, it is a mental state that prepares members of a group for insurgency.

Long story short: the vitriol over the Cordoba Initiative makes it easier for the bad guys to recruit worldwide.

Thus we see figures like Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and the grotesque Pamela Geller willingly serving as propaganda tools for the Islamist movement and serving the Islamist strategy.  So I turn their obscene fear-mongering and disingenuous flag-waving back at them (only slightly tongue-in-cheek):

Ms. Palin and Dr. Gingrich – stop helping al Qaeda.

As I mentioned at the beginning, whether or not the Cordoba Initiative project is an intentional provocation is another matter. There has been much written about the group and I won’t repeat it here. While Imam Rauf has said some offensive things, the evidence that he and his organization are Islamist-inclined is thin. Regardless, it serves the larger Islamist strategy and shows Western Islamist groups the power of creating such a divisive fuss during an American election year. This makes further provocations inevitable. Let us hope we will react with more sense next time.

A more clever response would have been to warmly welcome the Cordoba Initiative to New York, but politely and firmly request that they sign on to an international campaign to stop the persecution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Pakistan and elsewhere or to co-sponsor the construction of a Christian church and a synagogue in a Muslim country (Saudi Arabia would be asking too much – it would be bombed by someone anyway). Or perhaps just to build Christian and Jewish prayer rooms in the Cordoba Initiative Mosque and Cultural Center. Even if they were to say “no thank you,” that would still be a strategic win for the United States, if done right.

 

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I am taking a break from my series on Countering Violent Extremism (parts one, two, three, four, and five). I’ll get back to that next week.

Perhaps the most flawed area of study when it comes to modern Islamist terrorism is Islamist ideology. Nowhere is this more obvious than the literature and discourse on al-Qaeda’s understanding of jihad. It seems that everywhere I look, I see people claiming al-Qaeda’s jihad is not offensive; rather, it is defensive.  Time to bring some clarity to the issue (see my post on this from August).

Perhaps not surprisingly, this is where many academics get it wrong and practitioners get it right. I once attended a lecture where a respected academic provided an overview of al-Qaeda’s ideology for his audience, explaining that they believed in defensive – not offensive – jihad. I thought he had misspoken and raised my hand for a clarification, asking him if he said al-Qaeda sought to wage a defensive jihad rather than an offensive one. He confirmed his words as such and then pre-emptively berated us, waving a copy of a volume of Osama Bin Laden’s messages to the world, ‘To understand al-Qaeda, you simply must read what they say and write!’

My immediate thought was: ‘I couldn’t agree more, but have you done this?’

Then just today I was reading an otherwise excellent and thought-provoking article in the recent issue of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism by Alia Brahimi of LSE, ‘Crushed in the Shadows: Why Al Qaeda Will Lose the War of Ideas.’

Dr. Brahimi explains al-Qaeda’s jihad is defensive, citing statements by Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri where they explain they are fighting America because America is attacking the Muslims. In the words of Zawahiri right after the 2004 US presidential election, ‘We only care about purifying our country of the aggressors and resisting anyone who attacks us.’

(This raises the question of how al-Qaeda defines an aggressor and being attacked, but I don’t have the room to address this here. Luckily, Brahimi does briefly address that in her paper, so read it).

Indeed, in a 1997 interview with Peter Arnett, Bin Laden calls his jihad ‘defensive’ and explains it is meant to drive U.S. forces from the Arabian Peninsula and ‘desist from aggressive intervention against Muslims throughout the whole world.’

The volume that prints that interview (and that the academic waved in our faces), Bruce Lawrence’s Messages to the World, explains in a footnote: ‘Bin Laden always describes his jihad as “defensive.”’

So am I wrong?

Herein lays the root of confusion. Bin Laden, Zawahiri, and other AQ leaders certainly do frame their jihad in defensive terms in many of their public communiqués, but these ‘messages to the world’ must be understood in the context of their purpose. They are propaganda pieces. In this sense, I am not entirely fair to Brahimi as she writes Bin Laden ‘presents’ his jihad as defensive – and true, he often does present it that way when messaging to certain audiences. But a clarification must be made.

Let’s take Bin Laden’s statement before the 2004 presidential election, for example. It has widely been observed that the content and timing of the release was meant to influence the American voting public.  In words similar to Zawahiri, he said:

Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked.

Rather than viewing this as an expression of ideology, Bin Laden was ‘framing’ the situation for the American people, painting his terrorist network as a threat only as long as the Americans attack the Muslim world (I previously addressed framing in this post on Fort Hood and Anwar al-Awlaki and will address it again in a post to follow this one). You can argue whether the release was meant to help Kerry or Bush (probably Bush, just b/c the very appearance of Osama at that moment may have made the more hawkish candidate seem like a better protector), but the concept holds.

This is not to say that Al Qaeda is disinterested in driving the ‘Zionist-Crusader forces’ from Muslim lands – they most certainly are – but looking to media interviews or propaganda pieces broadcasted either to the West or the Muslim ‘street’ they seek to mobilize is not the most effective way to understand and take accurate measure of their ideology.

Other sources reveal a more accurate picture. These include the longer ‘think pieces’ and books penned by al-Qaeda targeted at smaller audiences rather than propaganda and ‘influence pieces’ that are designed to ‘frame’ issues for current/potential recruits as well as opponents.

For example, in a letter Bin Laden wrote to Saudi intellectuals in the wake of 9/11 (which you can find in The Al Qaeda Reader), he argued:

[O]ur talks with the infidel West and our conflict with them ultimately revolve around one issue – one that demands our total support, with power and determination, with one voice – and it is: Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually? Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: either willing submission; or payment of the jizya, through physical though not spiritual, submission to the authority of Islam; or the sword – for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live. The matter is summed up for every person alive: Either submit, or live under the suzerainty of Islam, or die.

Bin Laden’s purpose in writing this letter was to refute a letter these intellectuals had written to the U.S. that he saw as ‘full of humility, entreaties, and prostration.’ He condemns their letter for ‘reputiad[ing] Offensive Jihad.’

He insists,

Offensive Jihad is an established and basic tenet of this religion. It is a religious duty rejected only by the most deluded. So how can they call off this religious obligation [Offensive Jihad], while imploring the West to understandings and talks ‘under the umbrella of justice, morality, and rights’?

It is fascinating how he condemns the quoted values of the letter he criticizes even though al Qaeda propaganda attempts to appeal to those same values when he ‘explains’ to the West and the Rest why al-Qaeda is at war. Could it be that AQ propaganda might not be an accurate representation of AQ ideology?

Coming up next, ideological justification for offensive jihad from a prominent jihadist ideologue.

In the meantime, your homework: read Milestones by Sayyid Qutb [pdf] and see what he has to say about offensive vs. defensive jihad. If your job is even remotely concerned with Islamist terrorism and you haven’t read this short volume yet, please remedy this immediately.

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I apologize for taking so long to continue this series (see parts one, two, three, and four). I have been travelling. Still am actually. I'd like to start in on Prevent in the UK. There are some significant misconceptions about Prevent in Washington (particularly about its implementation and the 'changes' in CONTEST II) that I worry may hinder informed policy analysis and formulation. In this post, I just explain the basics of Prevent and briefly mention some of its flaws. The sins of Prevent will be explained in more detail in following posts.

Prevent is one of the four 'P's' of CONTEST, the UK's counterterrorism strategy. It seeks 'to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremism.' According to the revised CONTEST strategy released last year:

To reduce the risk from terrorism – our aim – we need not only to stop attacks but also to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremism. The Government introduced its revised Prevent strategy in October 2007. The strategy is based on a better understanding of the causes of radicalisation (the process by which people become terrorists or lend support to violent extremism), to each of which it aims to provide a coherent response.

Thus, Prevent seeks to challenge violent extremism ideology and support 'mainstream' voices, disrupt those who promote violent extremism, support vulnerable individuals, increase community resilience, and address grievances exploited by "ideologues." It does so by allocating funds to local authorities who in turn fund community initiatives that are meant to interface with Muslim, er, I'm sorry, 'vulnerable' youth and prevent them from becoming violent extremists. This is known as PVE, or preventing violent extremism and is the aspect of Prevent that Daniel Benjamin and other US government officials like Arif Alikhan, Assistant Secretary for Policy Development for the Department of Homeland Security (more on that later), seem to be taking a liking to

The police also receive Prevent funds. The Channel program, as part of Prevent, identifies those who are vulnerable to being recruited by those who seek to launch attacks in the UK and seeks to channel them in a different direction.

Now to some flaws (in this context, I recommend Lorenzo Vidino's Foreign Policy piece, 'Toward a Radical Solution'):

(1)    Wrong partners: A significant number of the community groups being funded by local authorities and the Home Office happen to be Sawha-type Salafis (see page 53 of this book) or are oriented toward the Muslim Brotherhood. The reasoning behind this seems to be that these groups are the only ones with the Islamic credibility and 'street cred' to convince radicalizing/radicalized youth from becoming violent in the UK. Further, they seek to channel people into 'political activism' (usually Brotherhood-style) that serves as a sort of 'safety valve' for anger and disaffection.

This is problematic to say the least. If, as I have stated in earlier posts that grievance is far less important than grievance interpretation in driving people toward action, it is folly to fund groups who foster the same grievances and promote such similar narratives to that of al Qaeda. It is also misguided to finance those who are openly supportive of jihad against British and American personnel (not just military personnel) in Afghanistan and Iraq.

(2)    PVE is not well-suited to the British Muslim population. The dominant religious interpretation and practice among those receiving Prevent funding are Brotherhood, Jama'at, and Salafi oriented. These are all hard-line interpretations of Islam, but the plurality of British Muslims come from a Sufi background. While these are all within the Sunni sect, Brotherhood/Jama'at/Salafi Islam are all in direct conflict with Sufism (despite the fact that Hasan Al Banna himself was a Sufi).

(3)    There are no clear metrics for measuring success.

(4)    PVE is a security program with a social orientation. It should be a social program with a security orientation.

(5)    It is essentially a social re-engineering effort and there has been no serious discussion about whether social re-engineering is something the modern liberal state should be engaging in.

(6)    The idea of local councils being empowered toward differential application of Prevent based on varying local environments is a good one, but a lack of oversight from the center has led to differential interpretations of what Prevent is trying to do.

(7)    The idea of preventing extremists from becoming violent extremists (rather than trying to prevent them from becoming extremists in the first place) is cynical to say the least. The idea that the most effective way the British can prevent terrorism is to cede their Muslim youth to conditionally non-violent extremism (not entirely non-violent, as they support violence there rather than here) is intellectually bankrupt and reflects ignorance about the natures of (a) movement participation, (b) the Islamist movement, and (c) Islamist ideologies.

(8)    Lastly, Prevent is in direct conflict with social cohesion. Empowering hard-line social actors within the Muslim community who do not support gender equality, homosexual rights, free speech, etc can only deepen divisions in society and create new ones.  The societal consequences of this are already beginning to emerge and will only worsen over time.

 

More on all this in following posts.

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Thanks for staying with me as I am unfolding my argument (Parts One, Two, and Three). This is the fourth post in a series about the coming Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) policy in the US.  I launched into this because I am worried about some fundamental misunderstandings I have seen about radicalization and movement participation. I am also concerned that US policymakers aren't as aware of the flaws of the UK's Preventing Violent Extremism strategy as they should be (next post is on the "sins" of Prevent).

As I have argued in previous posts, the frustration-aggression and grievance obsessed models that policymakers and others are applying are woefully incomplete lenses through which to understand why people participate in movements and are driven to action.

In this post, I point to collective identity as the foundation of what has come to be called radicalization.  Islamist movements from al-Qaeda to the Muslim Brotherhood work hard to foster a sense of collective identity among Muslims worldwide. This identity is not simply "I am a Muslim" – 1.57 billion people hold that identity. It goes beyond that, tying into a network of shared meaning. I call it an ummah-oriented Muslim activist identity.  It involves membership in the ummah, which becomes the most salient source of identity and loyalty. Islam (or an interpretation of it) becomes the highest source of legitimacy for thoughts and actions from the mundane to the profound. It is an activist identity that fosters affective bonds between all members of the ummah and encourages a compulsion to some sort of organized action (some good, some bad, some neither – but let's try to keep moral judgments out of this as long as we can) on its behalf – whether that be donating to an Islamic charity for earthquake victims in Kashmir, protesting outside of an Israeli embassy, funnelling supplies to the mujahideen, or strapping explosives to your crotch and boarding a plane bound for Detroit.

This is not to imply that collective identity is inherently threatening. It is a social phenomenon that every person on the planet experiences in one way or another. Patriotism (otherwise known as nationalism) is a potent example of collective identity.

Collective identity is a necessary foundation for mobilizing people to action – for any cause.  Unlike grievance, alienation, relative deprivation, etc a great deal of social science research has unambiguously found that that collective identity is an explanatory variable or an "intervening causal mechanism."

Thus, when shaping policy on counter-radicalization, it would be wise to avoid designing and funding programs that encourage and foster an ummah-oriented Muslim activist identity among Muslim-American youth.  This mistake has been made in a big way by our British friends and it is one of the cardinal sins of Prevent.

Beyond that, grasping the concept of collective identity will allow policymakers, practitioners, and other stakeholders to better understand (1) why and how people are hostile towards out-groups, (2) what shapes peoples' interpretations of justice and injustice, (3) why some people are more willing to engage in collective action or individual action on behalf of a collective, and more.

Collective identity can be defined as

[A]n individual's cognitive, moral, and emotional connection with a broader community, category, practice, or institution.  It is a perception of a shared status or relation, which may be imagined rather than experienced directly, and it is distinct from personal identities, although it may form part of a personal identity.  

More simply, it is a sense of "we-ness" with distinct boundaries. It is not just what "we" are; it is what "we" are not. Collective identity mediates the relationship between the society and the world, and the individual and society. It is at the crux of the relationship between objective and subjective realities. We have numerous collective identities simultaneously – but one collective identity is usually more salient than the others, focusing one’s attention on issues that impact the group one believes he/she is a part of, often at the expense of individual concerns.

All social movements seek to enlarge the sense of collective identity for mobilization. Studies have found that out-group hatred and discrimination is not difficult to activate or generate "even absent direct conflict and prior hostility." Such is the power of collective identity. Thus, generating a collective identity among a constituency is the important task facing social movements. Collective identity also serves five psychological functions for the individual: belonging, distinctiveness, respect, understanding/meaning, and agency. These functions help explain why grievances are seen as such and through what prism or scripts they are understood. Identity often precedes grievance. This explains in part, for example, why a British-Pakistani teenager from Leeds feels tied to Palestinian suffering.

Gamson explains that collective identity "is central in understanding people's willingness to invest emotionally in the fate of some emergent collective entity and take personal risks on its behalf." He continues:

It has the consequences for how people understand the sociocultural system they are attempting to change and which strategies and organizational forms they will see as appropriate. Groups that have achieved a successful integration of personal and collective identity will have an easier time doing what it takes to launch many kinds of collective action.

Melluci argues: "The propensity of an individual to become involved in collective action is thus tied to the differential capacity to define an identity."

Collective identity helps overcome the free rider dilemma, as "high levels of group identification increase the costs of defection and the benefits of cooperation." Drawing on Melluci's concept of "networks of shared meaning," Wiktorowicz explains:

[R]adical Islamic activists promote a set of values and identities that challenge dominant cultural codes. In doing so, they seek to create a common community of "true believers" tied together through a shared interpretation of Islam typically characterized by high levels of tension with common religious understandings. Activist proselytizing thus focuses on teaching Muslims (and even non-Muslims) about the deviance of mainstream interpretations while offering the movement's own understanding as definitive. The resulting network of shared meaning is the basis of a common identity that frequently involves commands to risky activism in the name of God.

This is a very broad overview of a huge body of literature and I am at a 1,000 words so my conclusion is abrupt. As such, I had to pass over some things, but I think I made the case that collective identity is a – if not the – foundation for any process leading to collective action or action on behalf of a collective.

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As a break from my series on the upcoming Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) policy in the United States (parts one, two, and three), I interviewed Charles Burnard of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Charles is a Research Analyst with RUSI Qatar's Middle East and North Africa program (full bio at bottom). I spoke with Charles about Yemen in the wake of the Christmas Day Plot in an effort to put things in a broader perspective than we are getting in the ongoing media coverage.

Charles, what do you think the broader impact of the Christmas Day Plot will be on Yemen?

I would not be surprised to see an increase in support and popularity for AQAP, both locally and abroad. The movement has very effectively harnessed local grievances such as poverty and government corruption, as well as external issues such as the Yemenis held in Guantanamo, to feed its narrative. In this sense, even though the Christmas plot failed, it will be construed as a victory for AQAP and a demonstration of this movement’s ability to severely disrupt Western security and transport infrastructure.  
 
It will be also be interesting to see how the Yemeni Central Government reacts to the promise of increased support and cooperation from the US and the UK. In the past it has been willing to collaborate with Western governments after significant attacks, only to loosen its grip once the furor has died down. Recent statements by Yemeni officials do not sound promising - Yemen's Foreign Minister Abubakr Qirbi recently stated in local newspapers that although he welcomed intelligence-sharing initiatives with the West, he is not committed to joint counter-terrorism operations. This may, however, simply be a case of preserving the domestic image of independence from the West.

How do you think recent events will shape US and Western involvement in Yemen?

We hear a lot of talk about conferences, special ops support, intelligence support, so on and so forth.
As you just alluded to, the US has already promised to double its 2009 financial aid figure of $70m and promised increased military support. Gordon Brown has promised a £100m commitment as well as increased intelligence support. I think it is important to ask whether simply proving more money and military aid is the most effective means of addressing Yemen's insecurity. Channeling additional funds to a government plagued by corruption (and often concerned more with its own survival than the prosperity of its citizens) strikes me as an ineffective approach.  

There has been much talk in the media of Yemen as the 'next-Afghanistan' or the next front in the War on Terror. These are convenient taglines, but they oversimplify a very complex situation. The worst thing Western states could do at this point is increase their military presence in the country beyond special operations and advisors (or adopt these taglines) and, thankfully, I get the sense that there is recognition of this fact. The central government walks a very fine line. On the one hand, it needs external support to address this challenge and on the other, it needs to maintain an image of independence from the West to be credible.        
 
With all the focus on al Qaeda, it feels like other issues are getting lost. Do you think the issue of AQAP and the recent Christmas Day Plot has overshadowed other, perhaps more significant, issues in Yemen?

Without a doubt. Yemen has been plagued by a whole host of political and economic issues which, if you’ve been following recent coverage of Yemen, I’m sure you’ve head all about: conflicts in the north and south, dwindling water and oil resources, rampant poverty and human rights violations. Recent talk of counter-terrorism has been at the expense of these issues. Just recently, the next chapter in Saleh's quest to suppress uncooperative elements of the media played out when a group of citizens were machine-gunned in front of al Ayyam newspaper HQ in Aden. Outside of local and regional media, this event received almost no coverage.   
The recent frenzy surrounding Abdumutallab's exploits has become part of the all-too-familiar reactionary approach to counter-terrorism strategy. While terrorism in Yemen clearly has the greatest capacity to affect Western security, it simply cannot be isolated from the other issues I've just mentioned. Broader security concerns drive AQAP’s narrative. We need to move away from knee-jerk reactions and adopt a smarter, more nuanced understanding of local issues and how these issues interact with terrorism.  

Bringing it back to the UK, do you have high hopes for the upcoming international conference in London on Yemen, to be held parallel with one on Afghanistan?

I am relieved to finally see Yemen on the agenda, but am equally concerned about the Western approach. Simply pumping additional financial support and military aid into the country will prove to be an ineffective strategy -  before any effective counter-terrorism and security initiatives take place, the Yemeni Central Government needs to function in a responsible and transparent fashion, and the economic and political infrastructure of the country needs to be developed. There is no quick fix – we cannot decapitate the organization (as we did in 2002) and expect [it] to vanish. AQAP today is more complex than ever and thoroughly rooted in Yemeni society.
 
Scheduling the Yemen conference in parallel with one of Afghanistan, one would hope that governments will discuss and heed the lessons learned from the latter. This is not to suggest that Yemen is analogous to Afghanistan, far from it, rather it is a call to understand that an effective approach to counter-terrorism rests on understanding local complexities and recognizing that terrorism cannot be separated from wider security concerns.     




Charles  Burnard is a Research Analyst with RUSI Qatar's Middle East and North Africa program. He has an MA in Intelligence and International Security from King's College London and a BA in International Relations from the Australian National University. Prior to moving to London, Charles held positions in the Australian Government, the Australian Embassy in Washington DC and several think tanks. His research interests include Middle Eastern security, salafi-jihadi terrorism, radicalisation and Australian foreign policy.

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Part Two

In my last post I addressed the focus on marginalization, alienation, and relative deprivation in the discourse about radicalization and counter-radicalization, as seen in Daniel Benjamin's speech last month on CT policy. I pointed out that these are discredited and/or insufficient explanations for why violent radicalization – and indeed movement participation as a whole – occurs. As I noted, we find that individual terrorists do not experience higher levels of relative deprivation, but that they often come from communities or even countries that are relatively deprived.  This, however, should not come as a surprise as most places and communities have less than other countries and communities.

Thus, saying that violent extremism emerges from relatively deprived communities is not much more analytically useful than observing that violent extremism emerges from communities where they breathe oxygen. Both are everywhere. Not to mention the fact that violent extremism also emerges from communities that are not relatively deprived (but not communities where they don't breathe oxygen…so far, at least).

This brings me to another quote from Daniel Benjamin's speech:

There is no denying that when children have no hope for an education, when young people have no hope for a job and feel disconnected from the modern world, when governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, when people despair and are aggrieved, they become more susceptible to extremist ideologies.

Benjamin's speech reflects the assumption that grievances represent root causes and that it thus is possible to identify grievances, structural strain and dysfunction which have ‘alienated’ individuals from society, driving them to look for different providers of belonging, satisfaction, and meaning which can lead them to violent Islamism. The implication is that, if the right grievances and system imbalances can be identified, we can tackle the 'roots' of terrorism by changing policies or implementing programs aimed at resolving them. As a result, individuals will feel less alienated and extremism melts away.

The trouble with this logic is grievances are ubiquitous, but collective extremist ideologies aren't. Grievances do not lead to ubiquitous terrorism. They don't lead to ubiquitous violence. They don't even lead to ubiquitous collective action of a milder sort, like protests and boycotts.

As Trotsky said, 'In reality the mere existence of privations is not enough to cause an insurrection; if it were, the masses would be always in revolt.'  Most of the poorest countries in the world, where basic needs are not provided (except for a select elite), and jobs are few and far between have produced little or no terrorism, despite the presence of deprivation – both absolute and relative – political disenfranchisement, and other things to be aggrieved about.

Along these lines, Wiktorowicz decries 'overly simplistic formulation of an inexorable linkage between structural strain and movement contention.'

He continues:

Systems are not inherently balanced or static, but rather consistently dynamic as they experience the pressures and strains of societal changes, events, and interactions. More importantly, structural strain and the discontent it produces (the alleged catalyst for contentious action) are ubiquitous in all societies...yet do not always elicit a movement....Movements are not merely psychological coping mechanisms.

So if strain, deprivation, grievance and discontent are everywhere on every country and in every ethno-religious community, how do we account for violent Islamism? How do we account for the majority of people that do not become involved in it? Why do some 'aggrieved' people choose terrorism over crime or charity or political involvement? The answer is: we need to look elsewhere or bad policy will result.  

Bert Klandermans, professor of applied social psychology at Free University (Amsterdam), argues that grievance interpretation is at the core of the social construction of contention and 'interpretations, rather than reality itself, guide political actions…'

But we don't want to get ahead of ourselves.  We first must address collective identity, or that sense of 'we-ness' that makes the interpretations meaningful and relevant to the individual and group. This is the most crucial and under-appreciated element of 'radicalization' – violent or otherwise. Crucial because without it, the rest doesn't happen.

Stay tuned...


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This post is the second in a series, following on my post about the developing policy of Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) that was announced by Daniel Benjamin of the State Department.  

Before I set off on this very wonky and technical post (I'm sorry, but it's necessary), I'd like to make it clear that CVE isn't just a foreign policy initiative. This will be domestic as well.  From what I have pieced together, high level DHS officials are working on developing domestic CVE as well. I think FP also sees the writing on the wall.

Also, I apologize for not citing something at every turn here, but this is a blog post, not an essay, and I just don't have the time. As always, feel free to challenge me on any of this.

I also want to make it clear that I am not trying to beat up on Daniel Benjamin – a guy who was onto al Qaeda and mass casualty terrorism before most. His speech has presented an opportunity for public debate about a major policy formulation and I think we’d be fools not to take advantage of it.  

The flaws I point out are not unique to the speech. They are symptomatic of a larger affliction: the discourse on violent extremism and movement participation remains haunted by bad social science. Disproven ideas have managed to hang on because (a) they seem intuitive and (b) much (though not all) of the work that has been done on studying radicalization since 9/11 is poor and ignores major advances in sociology and social psychology – a point I will return to later in the series.

Benjamin said in his speech, 'We know that violent extremism flourishes where there is marginalization, alienation, and perceived–-or real–-relative deprivation.'

Really? Do we?

Relative deprivation is a contestable and woefully incomplete explanation for violent extremism and especially terrorism. And as far as alienation and marginalization, this is almost a return to the Hoffer school of movement participation – a model that has long been disproven. Many of these flawed explanations for political violence and movement participation can be broadly traced to various strains and breakdown theories as well as the related frustration-aggression model.

The frustration-aggression model posits a linear casual link between (you guessed it) frustration (or, interference with goal-directed behavior) and aggression (in order to remove the source/cause of frustration, see John Dollard, Frustration and Aggression, 1939).

Eric Hoffer popularized a version of this model in his 1951 book, The True Believer. He wrote about participants in Communist and Nazi parties, painting them as atomized, alienated, and dysfunctional souls with a need to believe in something – it didn't matter what – and a compulsion to subsume themselves in a collective geared toward the realization of drastic goals. [Insertion: I feel like I should mention that Hoffer's ideas share a great deal with mass society theory, which was pioneered 8 years later by Kornhauser, but that could just be that both were heavily influenced by Durkheim. Any professional sociologists out there should feel free to chime in to clarify]. Even though the central premises of this book were discredited decades ago, they still have an uncanny hold on the discourse about participation in radical movements. Hoffer's Wikipedia entry says The True Believer remains 'an insightful classic today.' Let's just hope the average Free Radicals reader isn’t the sort that trusts Wikipedia.

However, movement participants – including violent Islamists - are usually not alienated and dysfunctional. Action as part of a movement does not emerge from an accumulated number of atomized individuals. Movement participants are, in fact, well-embedded in their societies and social networks, which is, incidentally, the means through which they become involved in violent extremism, (this doesn’t just apply to violent Islamism, by the way).  If they were atomized, they wouldn’t join movements.  This is just one of the intersections where Hoffer took a wrong turn, and it feels like we are still along for the ride.

The idea of relative deprivation emerged from the frustration-aggression school of thought in the 1960s, largely thanks to James Davies, James Geschwender, and Ted Gurr. Relative deprivation is when social actors perceive themselves as deprived when compared (or relative) to others.  As Buechler explains:

In this case, the strain is most evident on the social-psychological level of how people assess their current situation against various reference groups or past or anticipated future situations. Whenever they find a benchmark that implies they could or should be better off than they are, a condition of relative deprivation exists and this psychological strain triggers participation in collective behavior.

As David Ronfeldt observes,

[A]t an everyday-language level, 'deprivation' retains a strong hold on the public mind, including among policy analysts and practitioners, as a seemingly sensible way to understand why societies that produce suffering and frustration also produce political violence and sometimes terrorism.

But, as Ronfeldt and many others have pointed out, just because it seems sensible, doesn’t mean it is correct.

While many studies have not discounted the idea that relative deprivation may be an indirect contributing factor, it should not be given the explanatory weight that it has in the contemporary discourse.  For example, we find that relative deprivation is not common among individual terrorists, but they often come from communities or even countries that are relatively deprived.  This, however, should not come as a surprise as most places and communities have less than other countries and communities.  

More in the next post…

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I suppose I knew it was inevitable, but it looks as if Britain's Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) strategy is coming to America, as...Countering Violent Extremism (CVE). Prevent is one of the 4 P's (the others being Pursue, Prepare, and Protect) of CONTEST, the UK counterterrorism strategy. Prevent is a national effort that draws heavily on local governments and funds community organizations. It is designed to:

•    challenge violent extremist ideology and support 'mainstream' voices
•    disrupt those who promote violent extremism and support the institutions where they are active
•    support individuals who are being targeted and recruited to the cause of violent extremism
•    increase the resilience of communities to violent extremism
•    address the grievances that ideologues are exploiting

And, it is very controversial.

I now quote Daniel Benjamin, the head of the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department, at length. He gave a speech last month on CT policy in the Obama Administration. I know this post is about a month late, but I thought it best to wait until after the holidays.

Benjamin's speech is signaling a major domestic and foreign policy development – partially in reaction to a year full of Islamist terrorist plots. Benjamin is an old National Security Council hand from the Clinton years and one of the first people to start seriously talking about al Qaeda and mass casualty terrorism in government before 9/11. Now, as Benjamin explained in his speech:

We are also addressing the local drivers of radicalization that still lead large numbers of people to adopt al-Qaida's ideology, and as I said earlier, we understand the dangers of radicalization, and we are working both to undermine the al-Qaida narrative and to ameliorate the conditions that make it attractive. We know that violent extremism flourishes where there is marginalization, alienation, and perceived–-or real–-relative deprivation. In recognition of this, my first step has been to build a unit focusing on what we in the government call "Countering Violent Extremism" in my office to focus on local communities most prone to radicalization. There is a broad understanding across the government that we have not done nearly enough to address underlying conditions for at-risk populations–-and we have also not done enough to improve the ability of moderates to voice their views and strengthen opposition to violence.

Adopting a tailored-approach to countering violent extremism does not mean we can neglect broader structural problems. There is no denying that when children have no hope for an education, when young people have no hope for a job and feel disconnected from the modern world, when governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, when people despair and are aggrieved, they become more susceptible to extremist ideologies. But a tailored-approach to CVE requires identifying which of these problems are driving radicalization and are amenable to change with the help of local governments and leaders who understand the problems best.

Over time, the measures and the methods I have described above will reduce terrorists' capacity to harm us and our partners. No element can be neglected if we are to succeed since they reinforce one another. Global engagement builds coalitions based on mutual interests and mutual respect. And these coalitions, in turn, help us partner with individual nations to enhance their capacity to counter extremism. This, finally, enables us to work with them to develop tailored-approaches to preventing extremists from becoming violent extremists.

The influence of the British experience is evident: Focusing on 'local communities most prone to radicalization.' Local governments and leaders will be vital to the effort.  And, most significantly, the last sentence in the excerpt indicates the strategy will be focused on keeping extremists from becoming violent extremists, rather than keeping them from becoming extremists in the first place – a major hallmark (some might call it a flaw) of Prevent. And c'mon: PVE and CVE?

Stay tuned for a series of posts on radicalization and counter-radicalization. I'll be...

•    Challenging some of the assumptions in Benjamin’s remarks that are also pervasive in the discourse on the subject (namely about marginalization, alienation, and deprivation – relative or otherwise);
•    Addressing the crucial and overlooked role of collective identity;
•    Discussing the problems with Prevent in the UK and its applicability to the US;
•    Observing how US-based ‘non-violent’ Islamists have seen the writing on the wall and are positioning themselves to co-opt any US counter-radicalization programs;
•    And tying it together with some other thoughts and observations.


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Al Qaeda’s haven in Yemen and the alleged failure of US homeland security procedures are two issues that are receiving a lot of scrutiny right in the wake of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed Christmas Day plot. I will address the former in this post.

As Peter Neumann noted in an ‘instant analysis’ on the heels of the attack, Abdulmutallab was thought to have received his training, explosives, and instructions from al Qaeda in Yemen. As Vahid Brown reported on Jihadica, the media wing of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has claimed responsibility (side note: Brown has a fascinating post from a few days before Christmas, ‘A Mujahid’s Bookbag’ that everyone should read). According to a translation provided by the NEFA Foundation, AQAP claims:

The heroic mujahid, martyrdom-seeking brother Omar al-Farooq waged a unique operation on-board of an American aircraft that took off from the Dutch city of Amsterdam, heading towards the American city of Detroit, during their [Christians] celebration of the Christmas holidays on Friday December 25th, 2009, by which he infiltrated all the advanced, new machines and technologies and the security boundaries in the world’s airports. Heroically and straightforwardly, fearless of death, dependent on Allah, by his great act he broke the American and international intelligence legend, and he showed their fragility and rubbed their noses in the mud, and he made all of what they spent on security development techniques a [new] heartbreak for them.

Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, was in touch with the American-born extremist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who resides in Yemen. According to an interview al-Awlaki gave a couple days ago, he provided Hasan with religious sanction for the attack. As Peter wrote in his analysis, Yemen launched strikes (with some sort of US assistance) days ago within its own borders against AQAP targets.  30 people were killed, including two top leaders and possibly al-Awlaki. AQ men vowed revenge at a gathering of thousands the next day where a representative for the group stated:  ‘[Y]ou should understand that we do not want to fight Yemeni soldiers. There is no problem between us and the soldiers. The problem is between us and America, but victory is coming soon.’

These strikes against AQAP followed another set of strikes a week before that saw cruise missiles launched at AQAP training camps in Yemen, killing 34 al Qaeda fighters. Accompanying ground raids captured 17 more al Qaeda members.

AQAP claims that Abdulmutallab’s failed bombing was a response to these cruise missile attacks. They stated:

Unification in doctrine and Islamic brotherhood are the reasons that pushed this wealthy young man, from Nigerian origins—the mujahiden brother Omar al-Farooq—directly respond to the unjust American aggression over the Arabian Peninsula, and, grace to Allah, that was through direct coordination with the mujahideen in the Arabian Peninsula after the monstrous raids using cluster bombs and cruise missiles that were launched from the American warships occupying the Gulf of Aden, targeting the proud tribes of Yemen in Abin, Arhab, and lastly in Shabwa, and they killed tens of Muslim women and children, and they also killed entire families. These operations were waged through a Yemeni, American and Saudi collaboration, including a number of neighboring countries.

Abdulmutallab was almost certainly trained and provided with explosives well before these strikes in Yemen took place, which makes AQAP’s claim that this was a response ring a little hollow, but it is possible that the timing of Abdulmutallab’s fateful trip to Detroit was influenced by the strikes. That is one of many questions we hope will be answered.

Just yesterday, Yemeni authorities arrested 29 al Qaeda members who were supposedly planning attacks on government targets and the British embassy.

For more on AQAP, see here and here. For an interesting short piece on al Qaeda in West Africa, see here.

Rep. Jane Harman may have exaggerated a bit when she said that ‘Yemen is the new FATA, or it will be,’ but either way, Yemen’s problems have clearly become the world’s. The CIA and Special Forces teams have already been in Yemen for about a year, working against AQAP and training Yemen’s military and Interior Ministry personnel.

Putting these highly trained men on the ground in Yemen comes at no small cost to the US taxpayer.  Some have screamed bloody murder over the idea of American ‘boots on the ground’ in Yemen, but fairly recent history shows that as terrorist safe havens develop, waiting too long may only increase that necessity along with the number of boots we’ll need.


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Check out Lorenzo Vidino's new paper for the Real Instituto Elcano, The Homegrown Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland (pdf). Here is the summary of this very timely piece:

The wave of arrests and thwarted plots recently seen in the US has severely undermined the long-held assumption that American Muslims, unlike their European counterparts, are virtually immune to radicalisation. In reality, as argued in this ARI, evidence also existed before the autumn of 2009, highlighting how radicalisation affected some small segments of the American Muslim population exactly like it affects some fringe pockets of the Muslim population of each European country. After putting forth this argument, this paper analyses the five concurring reasons traditionally used to explain the divergence between the levels of radicalisation in Europe and the US: better economic conditions, lack of urban ghettoes, lower presence of recruiting networks, different demographics and a more inclusive sense of citizenship. While all these characteristics still hold true, they no longer represent a guarantee, as other factors such as perception of discrimination and frustration at US foreign policies could lead to radicalisation. Finally, the paper looks at the post-9/11 evolution of the homegrown terrorist threat to the US homeland and examines possible future scenarios.

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Al Qaeda has been described as a being a part of a global Islamist insurgency. It is helpful to view the minaret ban with that in mind. It is thus unfortunate that the measure banning minarets in Switzerland has passed with 57% of the vote.

Insurgent/terrorist groups seek to provoke repression (violent or non-violent) of a constituency. For example, let’s use...I dunno, banning minarets as an example of repression. That constituency is then further alienated from the government/host society and support for the insurgent group increases.  

Writing about more traditional insurgencies, Bard O’Neill explains:

[T]he insurgents try to provoke arbitrary and indiscriminate government reprisals against the population, calculating that this will increase resentment and win the insurrectionary forces more support. The success of such an insurgent ploy is affected by the nature of the government response and by the social groups involved.

This was the infamous Irgun Strategy. This is why Hizballah and Hamas fire rockets from residential areas and schools. This is why the Taliban fire on ISAF troops from populated hamlets. The Viet Cong did the same thing. Al Qaeda uses the same dynamic in a much more psychological way. They have made many believe that the threat emanates from Muslim communities in the hopes that the West will turn on their Muslims with repression of some sort.

Now the Swiss have banned minarets and Islamists there and elsewhere will certainly capitalize on this.

This is one of the key means used by al Qaeda to draw in recruits and supporters – particularly in the West.  Leah Farrall has a decent piece on this over at All Things Counterterrorism:

To my mind the most telling thing is that this is yet another example of people failing to realise that terrorism’s efficacy stems from its ability to manufacture difference.  This is the true impact of terrorism. It doesn’t come from the immediate death and destruction caused by a terrorist act no matter how hideous and how truly awful it is for its victims.  The true power of terrorism  comes from reactions to terrorist violence by those watching.
…
These types of reactions start of [sic] vicious cycles of discrimination, feed alienation and only end up supporting and more importantly legitimizing the terrorist and extremist meta narrative of a clash of civilizations.

The banning of minarets in Switzerland – a country with only four minarets – feeds into one of the uglier Islamist propaganda pieces and makes a mockery of the practice of religious freedom, which is guaranteed by the Swiss Constitution. Al Qaeda and some other Islamist groups promote the narrative that the West is engaged in a War on Islam and that we are a bunch of lousy Zionist-Crusaders who hate Muslims simply because they are Muslims.  

They do not need to be right to successfully promote this narrative and foster false grievances, but it certainly helps them out when they can point to the reality of a Western country proscribing the religious practices of Muslims.

One of the authors of the bill claims that the minaret ‘is a political symbol against integration; a symbol more of segregation, and first of all, a symbol to try to introduce Sharia law parallel to Swiss rights.’  While there are various Islamist movements actively pursuing both grassroots and top-down strategies to institute aspects of Islamic law in the West, minarets on mosques have nothing to do with this. The ban will only serve as further hindrance to integration and strengthen the influence of the Islamist narrative, accomplishing the exact opposite of what it was intended for.

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I disagree with David Kilcullen on several matters, but I agree 100% with what he said recently at Georgetown, as reported by Bellum. Some highlights:

•    We've suffered from only incrementally increasing the number of troops over the years. The Taliban has proven itself capable of absorbing the impact from an additional 10-30 thousand troops. We need to either "overmatch" them with a substantially larger deployment  or not send any at all (or possibly draw down).
•    Whenever we send more troops, violence will spike almost by definition.
…
•    There is "not much point" to negotiating with the Taliban right now. This is because the Taliban believe they are winning and so have no reason to bargain. Our goal should be to fight first and hard, to convince them that they should talk.
…
•    Successful counterinsurgencies take 15-20 years. Unsuccessful ones take 9-11 years.

It is refreshing to have a president that is deliberative and doesn't just follow his 'gut', but this is getting a little ridiculous. It is decision time.

Mr. Gates said a central focus in Mr. Obama's deliberations was "how do we signal resolve, and at the same time signal to the Afghans, as well as the American people, that this is not an open-ended commitment?"

The latest clues about the president's thinking, as provided by Mr. Gates, came a day after it was disclosed that the United States ambassador to Afghanistan, who once served as the top American military commander there, has expressed in writing his reservations about deploying additional troops to the country.

The position of the ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general, puts him in stark opposition to the current American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who has asked for 40,000 more troops.

General Eikenberry sent his reservations to Washington in a cable last week, three senior American officials said on Wednesday. In that same period, President Obama and his national security advisers have begun examining an option that would send relatively few troops to Afghanistan, about 10,000 to 15,000, with most designated as trainers for the Afghan security forces.

This low-end option was one of four alternatives under consideration by Mr. Obama and his war council at a meeting in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday afternoon. The other three options call for troop levels of around 20,000, 30,000 and 40,000, the three officials said.

    ...

A central focus of Mr. Obama's questions, officials said, was how long it would take to see results and be able to withdraw.

"He wants to know where the off-ramps are," one official said.

The president pushed for revisions in the options to clarify how — and when — American troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government. He raised questions, officials said, about the exit strategy for American troops and sought to make clear that the commitment by the Untied [sic] States would not be open-ended.

I am all for an exit strategy, but President Obama should understand that there is a whole spectrum between a timetabled exit strategy and an open ended commitment. The nature of fighting insurgencies is more art than science. Conditions on the ground are constantly changing and strategy needs to be constantly reassessed in concert with policymakers.  The outcome of these deliberations should be setting the best course – not a decision to pick up and leave if this isn't turned around within x number of years (x is likely to be 2 years or less, if we are to believe the leaks coming out of the White House and DoD).

As Kilcullen reminds us: that is not how these things we call insurgencies work.

I will also add these questions for you all to chew on:

Does the United States have a moral obligation to defeat the Taliban? Do we owe anything to the Afghan people, especially in the south and east of the country, who would have to live under continued Taliban governance if the so-called Biden strategy (minimal counterterrorism/special ops effort) is followed?

Speak up in the comments.

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The shooting at Fort Hood has pushed some ideas kicking around in my head to the surface – namely the relationship between ideology and grievance.  (Long post, I apologize)

From what we know now (much more will be revealed in the coming days, weeks, and months – but contrary to what some are saying, this isn't a reason to abstain from analysis) Major Nidal Malik Hasan had been vocal about the presence of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For example, Col Terry Lee, a colleague of Hasan's, claims that at a conference 6 months ago, Hasan said that the US shouldn't be 'over there' and that Muslims should 'stand up and fight against the aggressors'. Col Lee also reported that in the aftermath of the summer shooting at a Little Rock recruiting station, Hasan was happy about the attack and said that it was a sign that the US should leave Iraq and Afghanistan. Hasan was also very upset about the way the Little Rock shooter was treated and allegedly said that Muslims should blow themselves up in Time Square. He wrote a comment on a website that seemed to justify suicide attacks.  Someone else reported that he 'heard Hasan equate the war on terrorism to a war on Islam'. And yet another person 'had previously argued with Hasan when he said that he felt the "war on terror" was really a war against Islam, expressed anti-Jewish sentiments and defended suicide bombings'.

What we see here is the interplay between ideology and grievances, with framing processes mediating between the two. Ideology on its own is not a motivating factor, but once grievances and experiences resonate with ideology, you have something potentially dangerous on your hands (ICSR's Peter Neumann nudged me in this direction).  How is that resonance achieved?

Frames are 'schemata of interpretation' that allow people 'to locate, perceive, identify, and label' experiences and events. According to social movement theorists Benford and Snow, collective action frames are 'action-oriented' legitimating frames that seek to 'mobilize potential adherents and constituents, to garner bystander support, and to demobilize antagonists'.

Collective action frames are strategically produced in a process of interaction between movement leaders, supporters, and participants as well as the opposition, neutral actors, and the media. Frames are not the same as ideology, but they often draw heavily on ideology.

Collective action frames have three core tasks: diagnostic (what is wrong and who is to blame?); prognostic (what do we do?); and motivational (why should we participate?).

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their impact on Muslims there clearly had an effect on Hasan. He spoke about it with his colleagues, even when he knew his opinions were unpopular. These were important issues for him. He felt a strong tie to Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan – people he had never met – which shows powerful affective ties to an imagined community through the concept of the ummah.

Ideology helped make sense of this for him. It both fostered the 'in-group' love for fellow members of the ummah and provided a script for understanding and action, through frames, which are disseminated by Islamist activists, scholars, and terrorists through various forms of media. These frames are ubiquitous, due to modern telecomm (a search of his computer found that he visited 'radical' websites), and simple to grasp.

They helped him to diagnose, by explaining what was wrong (the US is occupying Muslim land and killing Muslims) and who was to blame (the US and US service members); make a prognosis, by explaining what was to be done (Muslims should attack American targets to deter the US); and motivate his own participation in action (this is justified according to Islam, which states that non-Muslim occupying powers must be resisted).

And the jihadist movement has now incorporated Hasan's actions into its own framing. Anwar al-Awlaki (pdf), a pro-AQ cleric, has praised Hasan's actions. Note the (color-coded) diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing in Awlaki's blog post:

Nidal Hassan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people. This is a contradiction that many Muslims brush aside and just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Any decent Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a US soldier. The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam. Its army is directly invading two Muslim countries and indirectly occupying the rest through its stooges….[T]he only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the US army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal….The fact that fighting against the US army is an Islamic duty today cannot be disputed. No scholar with a grain of Islamic knowledge can defy the clear cut proofs that Muslims today have the right -rather the duty- to fight against American tyranny. Nidal has killed soldiers who were about to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in order to kill Muslims.

Awlaki was an imam at the Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, VA when two of the 9/11 hijackers attended that mosque. Awlaki supposedly knew the hijackers well and served as a sort of spiritual guide to them. During the same period, Hasan held his mother's funeral at Dar al Hijrah.

While Hasan reportedly had great respect for Awlaki's teachings, this doesn't mean there is any real connection between Awlaki and Hasan or between the hijackers and Hasan – both possibilities are doubtful. But it is interesting to see that Awlaki seems to have framed both Hasan's worldview before the attack as well as the attack itself for the rest of the world.

 

UPDATE: I just saw this (thanks to a friend). Apparently, Hasan was trying to make contact with Al Qaeda.

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Thirteen people were killed and 31 wounded when Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist, opened fire at Fort Hood in Texas.

Some good coverage from the Telegraph:

The major is a psychiatrist who had been treating soldiers returning from Iraq for post-traumatic stress and alcohol and drug abuse problems.

"He was making outlandish comments condemning our foreign policy and claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans," Col Lee told Fox News.

"He said Muslims should stand up and fight the aggressor and that we should not be in the war in the first place." He said that Maj Hasan said he was "happy" when a US soldier was killed in an attack on a military recruitment centre in Arkansas in June. An American convert to Islam was accused of the shootings.

Col Lee alleged that other officers had told him that Maj Hasan had said "maybe people should strap bombs on themselves and go to Time Square" in New York.

He claimed he was aware that the major had been subject to "name calling" during heated arguments with other officers.

Federal law enforcement officials have said Maj Hasan had come to their attention at least six months ago because of internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats.

The officials said the postings appeared to have been made by Maj Hasan but they were still trying to confirm that he was the author.

Maj Hasan's cousin Nader Husan said he was happy working for the military but did dread deployment to Iraq.

Another good article on Hasan from MSNBC.  It is beyond me why this extremist was still allowed to be an officer in the US Army and had access to firearms.

I hope there will be two investigations: One into Hasan himself, his process of radicalization, and his ties and another into how the Army handled Hasan once it came out he held these beliefs. I would hope names will be named (in both) and people will be fired or dishonourably discharged for not seeing the danger in someone who advocated attacks on American soldiers.

My heart goes out to the victims, their families, friends, and brothers/sisters-in-arms.

Please feel free to post your thoughts and link to other articles on this as more information goes out.

 

 

UPDATE: See footage of Hasan on the morning of the attack, provided by CNN.  We also see a conflicting portrait of Hasan emerging:

Staff Sgt. Marc Molano, based at Fort Knox, Kentucky, told CNN Hasan treated him for post-traumatic stress disorder earlier this year at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

"Dr. Hasan provided me with nothing but the best care," Molano said. "He was a very well-mannered, polite psychiatrist, and it's just a shock to know that Dr. Hasan could have done this. It's still kind of hard to believe."

Molano described him as "far and away one of the best psychiatrists I ever dealt with."

A soldier who served two tours in Iraq and is awaiting medical retirement for chronic PTSD and severe mental disorders called Hasan "a soldier's soldier who cared about our mental health."

"Hasan hears nothing but these horror stories from soldiers who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan," the soldier said. "Just hearing it I'm pretty sure would have a profound effect."

Mindy B. Mechanic, an associate professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, said listening to horror stories can have an impact, but such as extreme one is unlikely.

The impact on therapists who work with traumatized individuals is known as vicarious traumatization or compassion fatigue, Mechanic said.

"But they don't go out on shooting sprees," she said. "They might get depressed or have some emotional fallout from it, but to go on a shooting spree is not part of what happens to people from having to deal with trauma survivors all the time."

 

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There is a fantastic 5-part series in the New York Times by David Rhode about his experience being held captive by a Taliban commander of the Haqqani Network for seven months (so far they have published parts one, two and three).

Rhode offers a gripping story with some important observations. I am going to highlight a few of those observations here, but please read the articles for yourselves.

From part one:

Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of "Al Qaeda lite," a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan.

Living side by side with the Haqqanis' followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.

I had written about the ties between Pakistan’s intelligence services and the Taliban while covering the region for The New York Times. I knew Pakistan turned a blind eye to many of their activities. But I was astonished by what I encountered firsthand: a Taliban mini-state that flourished openly and with impunity.

The Taliban government that had supposedly been eliminated by the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was alive and thriving.

The Taliban are an interesting case study in how a group with local and regional goals can take on a global agenda through a mix of conflict and exposure to other Islamist networks.

Another scene from part two:

For the next several nights, a stream of Haqqani commanders overflowing with hatred for the United States and Israel visited us, unleashing blistering critiques that would continue throughout our captivity.

Some of their comments were factual. They said large numbers of civilians had been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories in aerial bombings. Muslim prisoners had been physically abused and sexually humiliated in Iraq. Scores of men had been detained in Cuba and Afghanistan for up to seven years without charges.

To Americans, these episodes were aberrations. To my captors, they were proof that the United States was a hypocritical and duplicitous power that flouted international law.

...

Other accusations were paranoid and delusional. Seven years after 9/11, they continued to insist that the attacks were hatched by American and Israeli intelligence agencies to create a pretext for the United States to enslave the Muslim world. They said the United States was forcibly converting vast numbers of Muslims to Christianity. American and NATO soldiers, they believed, were making Afghan women work as prostitutes on military bases.

According to Rhodes, the Beatles might be the key to winning their hearts and minds. He recounts that his Taliban guards would ask him to sing Western songs:

The Beatles song "She Loves You," which popped into my head soon after I received my wife's letter from the Red Cross, was the most popular.

For reasons that baffled me, the guards relished singing it with me. I began by singing its first verse. My three Taliban guards, along with Tahir and Asad, then joined me in the chorus.

“She loves you — yeah, yeah, yeah,” we sang, with Kalashnikovs lying on the floor around us.

Must read.

Also, there is another story you should read (on a different part of the world) from The Guardian:

For the first time since Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections nearly four years ago, the group is trying to Islamise Gazan society. In public, Hamas leaders say they are merely encouraging a social moral code, and insist they are not trying to imitate the religious police who operate in some other rigid Islamic countries. But to many it feels like a new wave of enforcement in what is already a devoutly Muslim society.

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As you may have heard, WorldNetDaily (WND), a far-right 'news' website at the forefront of such causes as the 'birther' movement and the vapid and vitriolic insanity surrounding the debate on health care just came out with this scoop:

As revealed in a new book detailing the operation and its findings, the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, is not the beneficent Muslim civil-rights group it claims to be. Indisputable evidence now shows CAIR and other "mainstream" Islamic groups are acting as fronts for a well-funded conspiracy of the Muslim Brotherhood – the parent of al-Qaida and Hamas – to infiltrate and destroy the American system.

The article continues:

'Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America,' a WND Books publication by counter-terrorism investigator P. David Gaubatz and "Infiltration" author Paul Sperry, documents CAIR's ultimate purpose to transform the United States into an Islamic nation under the authority of the Quran.

Apparently, a young man pretended to be a convert to Islam - even growing a beard – got a job at CAIR, stole or copied some documents, and his dad, Dave Gaubatz wrote a book (published by WND, naturally) about his experience with Paul Sperry, author of Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington. As you can see from the WND quote, this new book has an even catchier and more sensationalist title.

Gaubatz’s name hit the news in 2007 when he claimed that Saddam did actually have WMD (not to be confused with WND). Gaubatz is the 'director of intelligence and counter-terrorism studies' at something called the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE). SANE’s mission statement, no longer posted, can now be found here. If you can tell me what it means, please comment and explain it to me, because I don't understand it. To me, it sounds vaguely like Nietzsche on LSD or Italian fascist political theory from the 1920s (also on LSD, of course). A taste:

National Existence is political order experienced by men of the nation as a Rise to Being. Its opposite is a replacement of political order experienced by men, women, children and slaves as a Fall from Being. This Redirection in the experience of the Terms of Being (Self, Society, G-d and World) results in the collapse of Self into Society and all into World. The goal, wittingly or otherwise: a World State.   

As readers of this blog may have picked up, I am no fan of CAIR.  There has been evidence in the public domain for years now about CAIR’s origins as a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. It was originally launched to manipulate the discourse about the Oslo Accords and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the early 1990s on behalf of Hamas.

The most persuasive evidence was released for the terrorism financing trails against the Dallas-based charity, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which was found to have funnelled millions to Hamas over the years. CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in both trials (the first ended in a mistrial, the second in a guilty verdict). The exhibits in the case – including internal Muslim Brotherhood documents and financial records – can be found on the website of the federal district court, northern district of Texas (Some of the more interesting exhibits are here, here, and here – English translations at back of documents). Prosecutors described CAIR as part of 'the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.'

While claiming to be a civil rights organization, CAIR is anything but. CAIR and other Islamist civil society groups like the Muslim American Society try to appropriate the methods and discourse pioneered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and many other prominent activists (who represent the best of American ideals), but these groups do so disingenuously and in support of an Islamist agenda which runs contrary to the values promoted and lived by Dr. King.

So, if I believe all this, why do I have a problem with WND's book? It's pretty simple. WND represents the worst of web journalism: they are conspiratorial, fringe, and lack credibility. Their reporting is offensive, divorced from facts and ethics, and often promotes an exclusionary and even racist point-of-view (Some highlights here, here, here, and here...oh and here).   There is no reason to think this book on CAIR will be any different. In fact, I would be shocked if it was. 

As I commented to a friend the other day, I don't know who pisses me off more: WND or CAIR.

Rep. Sue Myrick wrote the forward to the book. I have long respected Rep. Myrick, but I worry she has made the wrong decision by hitching herself to this wagon.

When the wackos of WND take on an issue, the credibility of the entire cause is damaged. It is hard enough when most of CAIR's critics are already on the right. It makes it much easier for CAIR's spin doctors to claim their opponents and critics are racists, bigots, and liars. CAIR's favourite weapon in their arsenal is the 'Islamophobia' smear. Anyone they don't like promotes 'Islamophobia'. And they have been joined by liberal blogs, such as the Washington Independent, who are rightfully turned off by WND's campaigns.

 It usually isn't true, but in the case of WND, it is. And that makes it much harder for the rest of us who prefer to stick to the facts and shy away from sensationalism. And so, we find that WND is actually hurting the cause they now try to champion.

To WND:

Please stop.

Very Sincerely,

Amm Sam


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Dalia Mogahed, President Obama's advisor on Muslim affairs, recently appeared on a London TV discussion show hosted by Ibtihal Bsis – an official from Hizb ut Tahrir. Hizb ut Tahrir is a global Islamist movement that calls for the overthrow of un-Islamic governments worldwide and revival of the Caliphate.

The Telegraph reports:

During the 45-minute discussion, on the Islam Channel programme Muslimah Dilemma earlier this week, the two members of the group made repeated attacks on secular "man-made law" and the West's "lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism".

They called for Sharia Law to be "the source of legislation" and said that women should not be "permitted to hold a position of leadership in government".

Miss Mogahed made no challenge to these demands and said that "promiscuity" and the "breakdown of traditional values" were what Muslims admired least about the West.

She said: "I think the reason so many women support Sharia is because they have a very different understanding of sharia than the common perception in Western media.

"The majority of women around the world associate gender justice, or justice for women, with sharia compliance.

"The portrayal of Sharia has been oversimplified in many cases."

This story about the interview also graces Hizb ut Tahrir's website.  Dr. Mogahed, a member of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is also the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and wrote a book with John Esposito, a well known scholar and apologist for Islamism.

The White House needs to send an unambiguous message that it is not acceptable for its advisors to appear on television with enemies of the United States and empower their message.

Dr. Mogahed missed a great opportunity to challenge Hizb ut Tahrir and engage in an informed debate with them about Islam, values, and the place of the United States in the world. Clearly she did not feel inclined to do so. This is a simple issue – hopefully one that will be resolved soon.

 I am not surprised to see Dr. Mogahed promoting Sharia. I believe in freedom of speech and she should be able to say whatever she wants (no matter how distasteful and dishonest), but not as a representative of the President of the United States.

Fire Dalia Mogahed.

 

UPDATE: The television segment can be viewed here

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Three separate terrorist plots have been interrupted in the US. Unfortunately, I don't have time to get into any analysis or commentary, but here is some good coverage:


Terror Suspect Is Charged With Plot to Use Bombs, NYT

Terrorism Suspect Planned Peroxide Bombs, Officials Say, WP

Tower bomb plot in series of US terror cases, Times

Illinois man charged in plot to bomb federal offices, Reuters

Men accused of unrelated bomb plots in Ill., Texas, AP


For some interesting snooping (thank you to a friend who wishes to remain anonymous for this idea), plug the name of the suspect in the IL plot, Michael Finton, into Facebook. He only has a few friends and is a fan of Khalid Yasin, a radical figure with an interesting website, who once claimed that the AIDS virus was created at a US military base with cooperation from four other governments.

Post comments here if you find anything else interesting.

Also, see this excellent contribution to the debate about Afghanistan in WSJ.

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This is somewhat consistent with past findings that Iranians like America, but not the American government. It is interesting, still, that the average Iranian seems immune to 'Obama fever'. Check it out. Full report here.

 

A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of Iranians finds that six in 10 favor restoration of diplomatic relations between their country and the United States, a stance that is directly at odds with the position the Iranian government has held for three decades. A similar number favor direct talks.

However, Iranians do not appear to share the international infatuation with Barack Obama. Only 16 percent say that have confidence in him to do the right thing in world affairs. This is lower than any of the 20 countries polled by WPO on this question in the spring. Despite his recent speech in Cairo, where Obama stressed that he respects Islam, only a quarter of Iranians are convinced he does. And three in four (77%) continue to have an unfavorable view of the United States government.

Even though only 16% have at least some confidence that Obama will do the right thing regarding world affairs, this is up from 6% who felt this way about President Bush. 51% have a favorable view of the American people.

25% refuse to say how they voted in Iran's recent tumultuous elections. 81% believe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be the legitimate president of Iran. 71% believe they are free or somewhat free to express controversial opinions, but 58% believe the government has the right to censor media reports that could be destabilizing. 26% trust the Iranian government to 'do the right thing' some of the time and 54% trust the government to do so most of the time.

Should we take these findings about the internal Iranian political situation with a grain of salt, considering the fear respondents may have of the Iranian security services?

More interesting findings. Support for attacks on American forces is high, but not as widely held as many would have guessed:

Regarding attacks on US troops in Afghanistan, 26% express approval (16% strongly) while 49% are opposed and 18% have mixed feelings. Support for attacks on troops based in Persian Gulf states is slightly higher, with 32% approving (21% strongly); 41% disapprove, and 13% express mixed feelings.

Also:

A substantial number of Iranians favor the United Stated and Iran working together to fight the Taliban, the Sunni Muslim insurgent group in Afghanistan that has long been anathema to Shiite-majority Iran. Asked specifically about the option of 'Iran cooperating with the US to combat the Taliban operating in Afghanistan near Iran's border,' 43% are in favor and 41% opposed. A fairly high number—12%--say they do not know how they feel.

 

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I wonder if the CIA's former bin Laden-hunter Michael Scheuer is angrier:

a)    that an excerpt from his latest book is also the latest in English-language propaganda for al Qaeda in the special 9/11 issue of Jihad Recollections [h/t Jarret Brachman];
b)    or, that the same issue says his archenemy, the late John O'Neill (former FBI Counterterrorism Chief), was Osama bin Laden's 'greatest rival' and the guy who 'had the potential of uncovering al-Qa'idah's international army' (table of contents and page 20).  

I am going with 'b' (he is probably is happy about 'a'), considering the well-known rivalry between Scheuer and O'Neill.  Lawrence Wright explains in his Pulitzer Prize winning book on al-Qaeda and 9/11:

They were the two men most responsible for putting a stop to bin Laden and a-Qaeda, and yet they disliked each other intensely – an emotion that reflected the ingrained antagonism of the organizations they represented.

September 11, 2001 was O'Neill's first day as head of security of the World Trade Center. He was last seen heading back into the south tower after the planes had hit.

Scheuer had this to say about O'Neill at a 2007 congressional hearing (p. 31):

Mr. DELAHUNT. And John O'Neill...you had this to say about him: 'Mr. O'Neill was interested only in furthering his career in disguising the rank incompetence of senior FBI leaders.'

Mr. SCHEUER. Yes, sir. I think I also said that the only good thing that happened to America on 11 September was that the building fell on him, sir.

According to CQ's Jeff Stein, after Scheuer said that, 'the room for once fell silent.'

Stay classy, Mr. Scheuer.

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I have nothing especially profound to say on this anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Whatever you may think of him, I encourage you to go back and watch the John Stewart's moving opening of the first Daily Show episode after the attacks.

Something else to keep in mind:

On the eighth anniversary of the attacks of 9/11, we still have not properly identified who we are fighting.  We have no coherent strategy and our policymakers have not sought to understand the ideology of those who openly call for our destruction.

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According to Now Lebanon via Muslim World News (MWN), (h/t Alexander Hitchens) representatives from Hamas, Hizb-ut Tahrir, and the Muslim Brotherhood met in Beirut to conspire against US plans for Arab-Israeli peace. Hitchens provides a translation of the MWN report at his Standpoint blog:

Leaders of Islamist movements from Palestine and Lebanon, such as al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya [the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood], Hizbullah, Hamas and Hizb-ut-Tahrir are reported to have met in order to discuss the current situation in the region, focusing on the attempts for reconciliation and President Obama's upcoming plan to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Islamist leaders who attended the meeting are reported to have agreed that 'the new American plan aspires to liquidate the Palestinian problem, and poses one of the most dangerous American plans in the region. Therefore it needs to be opposed in all possible forms, in particular by increasing acts of resistance [muqawama] and opposing Israeli efforts towards a  normalisation of their relations with Arab countries as well as American involvement in such initiatives.'

The report goes on to inform us that these Islamist parties will be organizing two meetings: one to plot against the leadership of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and the other to 'encourage the choice of resistance against American plans in the region'.

This isn't the first time the Brotherhood and Hamas have sought to serve as spoilers (see this 2007 NEFA Foundation report). President Obama has invested a lot of political capital into his outreach to the Muslim world, which may include Islamists, but what happens when we discover yet again that the Brotherhood, Hamas, and friends are not interested in a two-state solution? And not interested in anything short of the establishment of Islamic governments, except as an interim measure?

I am convinced that any peace deal would need to include Hamas in some way, and much noise has been made over Hamas' supposed willingness to accept a peace deal at the 1967 borders. Yet this meeting in Beirut indicates that Hamas remains intent on sabotaging a peace deal. Hamas does speak in two voices, but their actions are less ambiguous.

The lesson? We should not put so much stock in the public statements of Islamist leaders – their 'private' actions must be considered as well.

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I was at the movies recently and saw a trailer for the Baader Meinhof Complex, a German film about the infamous Red Army Faction (RAF) directed by Uli Edel based on the book of the same name by Stefan Aust.

The trailer surprised me, and I'll tell you why.

I happened to see the movie last fall when I was on a trip in Europe. It tells the story of the RAF from formation to imprisonment. They murdered police officers, shot and bombed judges and state officials, bombed a newspaper office, bombed the US Army barracks in Frankfurt and much more. They were most active in the 1970s, but did not officially disband until 1998.

The film does not portray them as heroes or freedom fighters. It shows a group of misguided, angry, rebellious and somewhat sadistic young people (even Jean-Paul Sartre thought Baader was an 'asshole'). The son of one RAF victim even praised the film for showing the group as 'a merciless, ruthless gang of murderers.' Christopher Hitchens comments that the film 'interrogates and ultimately indicts (and convicts) the West German terrorists rather than the state and society which they sought to overthrow.' It is a great film and I recommend it...

BUT, we have this US trailer, which leads in:
    

Germany 1967. The children of the Nazi generation have grown up in the ruin their parents created. They vowed fascism would never rule their country again.

We see clips of action, police brutally pursuing protesters, a young woman (RAF member) being shot by police, one clip where a hot shirtless Irmgard Möller announces that 'screwing and shooting are the same'.

We hear Möller speak of 'resistance' and 'historical responsibility.' We are asked: 'Rebels? Radicals? Criminals? Heroes? Martyrs? Murderers? Victims? Villains? Icons?'

As if the historical record is far too ambiguous to know…and all with The Who's 'My Generation' in the background.

Dark music comes in to inform us the West German security officials are the real villains. The fleeing RAF terrorists are innocent. The narrator explains, 'In the fight for freedom, they lost themselves to the cause and ignited a revolution around the world.' Lost themselves to the cause? What does that even mean? Ignited a revolution? Where?

Is this bizarre to anyone else?

I found the UK version of the trailer. Heavy music, riots, crime sprees, a female RAF member killing someone, hijackings, BOOOOM:

A group of radicals were ready to change the world. Revolutionaries. Criminals. Murderers. A true story. Europe's most notorious terrorists.

Heavy-handed, sure. But perhaps better acquainted with the reality of the film. The German trailer too is much different from the American.
 
For some reason, Hollywood (behind the marketing of this film, not its creation) seems incapable of marketing anything about revolutionaries without romanticizing them (for instance, Che, a film about a 'heroic' butcher, dead-beat dad, and failed/'romantic' revolutionary). Fortunately, the Baader Meinhof Complex doesn't play along with their dreams.

Do Hollywood studio execs and marketing wizards have fonder memories of the New Left and the late 60's and early 70's (or what they can remember of it) than the Germans do? Probably. While the times they were a'changin' in the US, the German experience was much more traumatic.

RAF violence traumatized a people dealing with demons of WWII past and divided by the Cold War. For an excellent account, check out Bringing the War Home by Jeremy Varon.

Also, if you've ever wondered about the role of minotaurs in our terrorist detainee program, this is hilarious, from the Onion, h/t Abu Muqawama.

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GWOT, SAVE, GWOT + Long War, Overseas Contingency Operation Now What?

John Brennan, the assistant to the President for homeland security and counterterrorism, gave an important speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in DC to, as Brennan put it,

…outline the President’s efforts to safeguard the American people from the transnational challenge that poses one of the greatest threats to our national security—the scourge of violent extremists who would use terrorism to slaughter Americans abroad and at home.

This post discusses who the enemy is. Part 2 will examine the White House’s view that this is not a ‘global war’. Part 3 will take a hard look at President Obama’s decision not to use the word ‘jihadist’ to describe the enemy. After three posts that criticize this new approach, part 4 will lay out what I did like about Brennan’s speech – and there are quite a few things I liked.

Brennan’s speech was ripe with details, but this post will focus on the heart of the matter – how the US will define the ‘enemy’. As Brennan correctly explained, ‘How you define a problem shapes how you address it’. He continued:

As many have noted, the President does not describe this as a ‘war on terrorism’. That is because ‘terrorism’ is but a tactic – a means to an end, which in al Qaeda’s case is global domination by an Islamic caliphate. Confusing ends and means is dangerous, because by focusing on the tactic, we risk floundering among the terrorist trees while missing the growth of the extremist forest. And ultimately, confusing ends and means is self-defeating, because you can never fully defeat a tactic like terrorism any more than you can defeat the tactic of war itself.

As someone who has spent a lot of time and energy pointing out our government’s failure to understand this basic point, I was thrilled to hear Brennan say this (except for that part where he calls war a ‘tactic’).

Unfortunately, these wise words do not translate into a full understanding of the threat environment. Right after recognizing that terrorism is a means to an end, Brennan explained we are still just focusing on terrorism. Instead of including an understanding of ideas and broader movements in our policy process, Brennan assures us we are just fighting al Qaeda and its allies.  
I celebrate the end of our use of ‘War on Terror’ and I understand the Obama administration rightly feels the need to distance itself from the rhetoric of Bush and friends, but this new approach has a ‘disconnect’ between its logic and the resulting policy.

We see this disconnect again during the Q&A, when Brennan uses ‘terrorism’ as the yardstick to assess groups like Hamas and Hizballah rather than their goals.

If terrorism is a means to an end (‘global domination by an Islamic caliphate’), shouldn’t we be looking at other Islamist movements that advocate the same thing and use different means that may also threaten the security and interests of the US? I am thinking about movements like Hizb ut Tahrir and even the Muslim Brotherhood, whose motto is:

Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope

These are groups that are largely ‘political’, especially the Brotherhood, but they certainly support violence against Americans in Iraq and elsewhere, not to mention suicide bombings against Israelis. The head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Mohammad Mahdi Akef, has called Osama bin Laden a ‘mujahid’ and said, ‘When he [bin Laden] fights the occupier then he is a mujahid, and when he attacks civilians, this is rejected’ (Al Sharq al Awsat, 25 May 2008 via BBC Monitoring - Admittedly, the Brotherhood is not a monolith and Akef came under fire from some in the Brotherhood for this comment, but the movement widely conforms to basic precepts regarding imperative of Islamic governance that are strikingly similar to the ‘end goal’ of al Qaeda…to be continued in another post).

Does this mean we should be waging a war against the Muslim Brotherhood? Probably not, but it does mean we should recognize the existing state of confrontation and formulate policy accordingly. Does it mean that we shouldn’t talk to the Brotherhood or even groups like Hamas? I actually agree with President Obama that we shouldn’t be afraid to talk to anybody, but there is a fine line between dialogue and empowerment and if we pursue the former with these groups, we must also avoid the latter.

 

Photo credit: http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/images/femabriefing_PS-0523.jpg

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According to AP, the Obama Administration is looking to build a joint DOJ-DOD facility in the US to house and try Gitmo detainees:

Several senior U.S. officials said the administration is eyeing a soon-to-be-shuttered state maximum security prison in Michigan and the military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as possible locations for a heavily guarded site to hold the 229 suspected al-Qaida, Taliban and foreign fighters now jailed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

The White House has made no official comment, but the House Republicans disapprove. Rep. John Boehner's (R-OH) spokeswoman called it an 'ill-conceived plan' because it would bring terrorists into the US. 

I posted on this issue before here. I agree that this new plan is ill-conceived, but for a different reason. To move them all to one location to be housed and tried would just create another symbol and another Islamist recruiting tool.  The detainees need to be moved to a number of supermax facilities that may need to be expanded and hardened, but are already in operation. Leavenworth and the prison in Michigan (Ionia?) may be among these, but it would be ill-advised to just pick one.

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Seven men have been charged with conspiring to provide currency, training, transportation and personnel to terrorists overseas; planning to murder, kidnap, maim and injure persons abroad; and with various firearms offenses. According to the indictment, the cell members were willing to martyr themselves. 

The details of the case have been reported on in detail. The plot centers around Daniel Patrick Boyd (AKA 'Saifullah' or Sword of God), a Muslim convert and veteran mujahid of the Soviet-Afghan War. Allegedly, over the past 3 years he recruited this group of men, which included two of his sons.

What bothers me is this quote from AG Eric Holder (courtesy Reuters): 'The constant scream of threats, the kind of things you have to be aware about, the whole notion of radicalization is something that didn't loom as large a few months ago ... as it does now.'

There is this notion in the popular discourse in the US that radicalization is a new problem for America – that it is something that had been confined to the Islamic world and Europe up until recently. But radicalization in the US has been a constant for years.

This current cell has a number of similarities with the so-called Virginia Paintball Jihad network, a group of Muslim-Americans (including some US military veterans), who convened under the spiritual leadership of Virginia imam Ali al-Timimi after 9/11 and agreed to join with the Taliban abroad to fight the impending American invasion.

There have been numerous plots since, some involving Muslim-Americans seeking to launch attacks abroad and others at home: the Lackawanna Six, Lodi, Omar Ahmed Abu Ali, Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh, the JFK plot, the Fort Dix plot, I could go on…

I understand this NC plot, the Bronx plot, and al Shabbab recruiting in Minnesota have made an impression on Mr. Holder, but how is this something that did not loom as large a few months ago?

This plot fits right in with a pattern we have seen for nearly a decade and I am disappointed our Attorney General is not familiar with what the FBI and Justice Department were up to before his appointment.

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A great piece by Clive Thompson in NYT Magazine over the weekend: Open Source Spying. It tells the story of the intelligence community struggling Web 2.0 technologies, namely blogs and wikis, as a way of adapting to our fast-paced, information-saturated threat environment.

Then on Sept. 12, 2001, analysts showed up at their desks and faced a radically altered job. Islamist terrorists, as 9/11 proved, behaved utterly unlike the Soviet Union. They were rapid-moving, transnational and cellular.
…
But analysts were saddled with technology that was designed in the cold war. They now at least had computers, and intelligence arrived as electronic messages instead of paper memos. But their computers still communicated almost exclusively with people inside their agencies.
…
If analysts and agents were encouraged to post personal blogs and wikis on Intelink — linking to their favorite analyst reports or the news bulletins they considered important — then mob intelligence would take over.

Very much worth a read. Thompson's take on the divisions within the IC on this new way of doing things is excellent:

The Spying 2.0 vision has thus created a curious culture battle in intelligence circles. Many of the officials at the very top, like Fingar, Meyerrose and their colleagues at the office of the director of national intelligence, are intrigued by the potential of a freewheeling, smart-mobbing intelligence community. The newest, youngest analysts are in favor of it, too. The resistance comes from the "iron majors" — career officers who occupy the enormous middle bureaucracy of the spy agencies. They might find the idea of an empowered grass roots to be foolhardy; they might also worry that it threatens their turf.

He also points to an important question: In a business where an analyst's advancement up the chain is decided by his analytical output, how can an analyst's effectiveness and contributions be appropriately measured and rewarded in a wiki-world?

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The George Washington University National Security Archive has posted a series of reports on interviews and conversations between Saddam Hussein and his FBI interrogator. The declassification of these records was originally reported in the NY Daily News. James Gordon Meek had already released some of the reports and has an interesting four-part series on Saddam's interrogation at the Mouth of the Potomac.

I've been going through them and they make an interesting read. He jumps between lies, delusions, often defending and boasting about his monstrous rule. He even makes a few accurate observations: 'HUSSEIN stated that the United States used the 9/11 attack as a justification to attack Iraq'. Well, duh. For a great window into the mind of one of the most monstrous dictators of our time, take a look.

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I picked up a copy of War 2.0: Irregular Warfare in the Information Age by Thomas Rid and Marc Hecker. Just as the Internet transitioned from Web 1.0 – where info flowed top-down from producers to users – into Web 2.0 – info is now inherently social and user-generated – so has conflict.

War 1.0 is strictly military. The political is separate and the media is to be distracted, censored, and/or locked out as much as possible. War 1.0 is all about internally-driven controlled info, increasingly sophisticated weapons technology, manoeuvre, decisive force, and decisive victory orchestrated from top to bottom on a well defined field of battle.

War 2.0 is a political and social animal phenomenon enmeshed in cultures and inextricable from the population. Enemies hide among the people and are generated by those base elements that make up a society –religion, kinship, etc. It is defined by bottom-up initiatives and decentralization.

In War 2.0, the environment is saturated with information that is generated from all corners and bursts past controls toward external consumption all over the field of battle - which is, in a very real sense, everywhere. War 2.0 demolishes the division of labour between military affairs and political affairs.

The book explains how the phenomenon of War 2.0 has affected the US, British, and Israeli militaries as well as Hizballah, the Taliban, and al Qaeda.  

There are lots of big ideas here, but I am just going to look at a small sliver – perhaps their most controversial conclusion, which is about AQ. Chris Anderson of Wired came up with something called the 'Long Tail' to explain the emerging business model of the future where companies like Amazon can make huge profits selling a small amount of a wide variety of products thanks to efficient distribution, marketing, and manufacturing.

These companies do business at the long flat end of the tail (seen here), while more traditional companies sell fewer products at higher volumes.

Applying this concept to terrorism, insurgency, and population they argue that a terrorist-driven insurgency strategy like AQ’s does not require popular support to sustain itself due to the Internet and new media bringing together small numbers of highly-motivated people from around the world.  As they put it on page 219, this means

...the critical mass of people necessary to pass the threshold to an enduring terrorist movement has shrunk. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on feasibility.

More traditional insurgencies on the higher end of the curve still rely on popular support. The effects of this, however, are not all that great. Rid and Hecker note that just because the threshold for a sustainable insurgent campaign has been brought low by new media, this does not mean the threshold for a successful insurgent campaign to take political power is any lower. That still requires popular support and the fact that al Qaeda does not have incentive to garner popular support to endure means the movement is doomed to fail:

...Web-enhanced organizational setups boost terrorism but bridle insurgency. The new media, in conjunction with ideology, change political extremism into precisely the opposite of 'population-centric'.

This creates a division between the flat end of the curve and the rest – between terrorism and insurgency. This is very very interesting, but I am skeptical. The use of new media may not be so deterministic – insurgents are active users of tech (rather than passive victims) that make strategic choices outside of how to use media.

 

Just because al Qaeda uses new media so heavily, does that mean it has been forced into avoiding population-centric strategy? I’d argue that ideology and other considerations factored into this as well.

This was my only significant disagreement. This book is excellent. And if you are in London, I’m told that ICSR and Tim Stevens (of this very blog) are hosting Thomas Rid this Thursday the 25th in a seminar called  Insurgency, Terrorism, and Popular Support: How Useful are Historical Analogies? If you go, ask him (politely and briefly of course) about his Long Tail argument for me. I’ll be listening on the podcast.

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There has been some interesting commentary on the different reactions to the so-called 'Twitter Revolution' in Iran in the US from both Republicans and Democrats.

President Obama is staying low key on this. He is 'deeply troubled' by the violence in Iran.  On Meet the Press, Vice President Biden was cautiously skeptical of the results and expressed concern over suppression of speech. He said the White House is 'going to withhold comment until we have a, you know, a thorough review of the whole process and how they react in the aftermath'.

Ok then. A piece in Politico surveys the GOP response. Senators McCain, Graham, and Cornyn are upset with Obama's decision. Senators Lugar, Martinez, and Alexander are not. McCain wants to back the anti-Ahmadinejad crowd. So does Rep Mike Pence.

The Wall Street Journal, not surprisingly, denounced Obama's approach and praised French President Sarkozy's forceful critique of the election. The editorial closes with a biting allusion to the infamous Hillary Clinton primary ad:

The Iranian rebellion, though too soon to call a revolution, is turning out to be that 3 a.m. phone call for Mr. Obama. As a French President shows up the American on moral clarity, Hillary Clinton's point about his inexperience and instincts in a crisis is turning out to be prescient.

Ouch.

Is Obama making the right call or is he blowing it? There is something to be said for standing up for the rights of others around the world. It is an inherent part of the American ideal. Michael Leeden of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies takes this approach, saying:

If America stands for anything it stands for freedom. We should have supported the Iranian people a long time ago. The current silence from the White House is shameful.

However, for the White House, the central question seems to be this: Would a forceful denunciation of the election and praise for Mousavi's supporters help?

They seem to think it wouldn't. In fact, it might even be the kiss of death. Obama said on CNBC, 'The easiest way for reactionary forces inside Iran to crush reformers is to say it's the U.S. that is encouraging those reformers'.

Robert Kagan, in a provocatively titled piece in the Washington Post, 'Siding With the Iranian Regime', argues that Obama has other reasons. Namely, the current upheaval complicates Obama's original plans for rapprochement with the Islamic Republic. This means the president is 'objectively on the side of the government’s efforts to return to normalcy as soon as possible'. It's not that Obama the Realist wanted Ahmadinejad to win, the neo-con intellectual argues, 'but once Mousavi lost, however fairly or unfairly, Obama objectively had no use for him or his followers' as antagonizing the regime is the last thing he wants to do. But Kagan says this approach is doomed to fail.

Matt Duss at Think Progress, in a frosty open letter to Kagan, sees this rhetoric in the same vein as tarring those who were against the Iraq War as pro-Saddam.  Slate's Dickerson places Obama's choice in the context of future negotiations over the nuclear question. As he puts it, 'the president needs to save his meddling for a bigger problem'.

Are we having fun yet?

Mir Hossein Mousavi, isn't exactly pro-American. Mousavi is for Iran's nuclear program and has been consistently supportive of Hizballah. It follows that at least some of his supporters in the streets and fence-sitters might be turned off by any blatant support from the American government.

Regardless, It would be well worth your time to watch this video by Iranian Artists in Exile, (h/t Washington Independent – read their analysis of the video).

I'm willing to bet that Mousavi, who is calling for another election, is hoping that Obama stays the low-key course.

What do you think?

 

UPDATE: Check out these links

With Turmoil in Tehran, Obama’s Policy in Flux – The Cable Key quote?: 'Obama is dedicated to diplomacy in a manner that is almost ideological,' one Iran hand in touch with the administration said. Obama has a longer term vision, he continued. 'He wants to do some stuff in the Middle East over the next eight years. He may not be able to achieve half of them unless he gets this huge piece of the puzzle [Iran] right.'

Five Ways Obama Could Promote Freedom in Iran – WSJ from Dan Senor and Christian Whiton (formerly of the Bush Administration). They had some experience in trying to 'promote freedom' in Iraq and N. Korea respectively.

Obama Sideline Strategy May Signal Shift in US Democracy Policy – Washington Independent

Should the CIA Meddle in Iran Now? - SpyTalk

Is Bob Kagan Wrong? – The Compass, RCW

A short guide to Iran’s security forces from the Guardian

 

 

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Hello readers. I am Amm Sam and I am happy to be blogging for ICSR.  I look forward to reading and responding to your comments.

With the House Republican leader warning us that and transfer and trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani is 'the first step in the Democrats’ plan to import terrorists into America', my first post seems like a good place to wade into the Gitmo mess...

 A recent USA Today/Gallup Poll revealed that a large majority of Americans are opposed to closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center. 65% of Americans are against closing Gitmo, with 32% in favor of it. 74% are opposed to detainees being moved to prisons in their states, with only 23% for it. This is a big change from a January 2009 Gallup Poll that found only 45% opposed to closing the camp, with 35% in favour of it, with 20% undecided. What changed?

There has been a massively successful NIMBY campaign focused on scaring the living daylights out of the American people. If we close Gitmo, the terrorists may go free! If we move them to prisons in the US, why of course they could escape and wreak havoc in our cities and towns! 

Not only that, but they’ll radicalize other prisoners! Fred Kaplan has dismantled this better than I ever could, so I’ll just refer you to him. I’ll add that Gitmo is a walk in the park compared to life in the supermax prisons the detainees would be moved to, if that makes anyone feel better.

If the goal of the US government is to provide for the safety and security of its citizens, Gitmo’s Camp X-Ray is counterproductive.  As with most debates on national security, thinking 'tough' has trumped thinking strategically. While some of us don’t care about the 'plight' of our guests at Gitmo, many more do – right or wrong – and this is a war where perception trumps all.

The center of gravity in an insurgency is the political will or acquiescence of the relevant population. If we are fighting a global insurgency (not an 'Overseas Contingency Operation' – an odd label to be addressed in a later post), the 'ground' for which we fight is arguably the will of populations globally – Muslims but also non-Muslims; foreigners and our own citizenry.

Al Qaeda recognized long before our political leaders that this conflict will be won or lost through...well, I’ll just let Ayman al-Zawahiri say it:

…more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. And that we are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of our Umma.

 Keeping the worst of the worst locked up in Gitmo may be what they deserve, and it incapacitates them, but Gitmo has become a symbol of 'American oppression' in the Muslim world and a bonanza for Islamist propaganda and recruiting. As SecDef Gates said, 'the name itself is a condemnation'.

Closing Gitmo and accepting it as a mistake won’t turn diehard enemies into friends, but it will deny AQ a potent recruiting tool. The bottom line is we are less safe as long as Gitmo is open. This is a lonely position - according to the new Gallup poll, only 18% of America agrees with me and twice that believes the opposite.

Why not move them elsewhere? And not just to Hardin, Montana, but to Fort Leavenworth and a few different supermax facilities to avoid the birth of a single new symbol. Put those you can on trial. Send some to Europe if we can (negotiations are progressing), repatriate the rest, and have the CIA track them. 

The fact that some former guests of Camp X-Ray have made it back to the battlefield and have killed demonstrates a serious threat indeed, but it does not change the calculus. What is worse, a few guys making it back to the fight or hundreds and thousands more radicalized to violence in the name of a prison camp that can be closed? If they make it back to the jihad (as 14% have, but this figure has been questioned), shoot to kill.

Suggestions that those who seek to shut down Gitmo (Gates and Gen. Petraeus among them) are sticking up for terrorists are dishonest. Still the 'tough' persist because if you act tough enough on terrorism, I suppose that is a good enough substitute for strategy.

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