Change and continuation
Since 9/11, the global jihad has evolved into a broad-based social movement, albeit one defined by its violent edge. It is no longer confined to the closely-knit organisation of former mujahidin that trained in Afghan camps and responded, to a greater or lesser degree, to operational instructions provided by the al-Qaeda war council. The al-Qaeda of old has not been entirely superseded: rather, centralised targeting and operational support continues side by side with the emergence of autonomous, self-recruited cells of like-minded young men and women. The self-starters – that is, cells that coalesce spontaneously and plan local attacks either without reference to the established authorities of the global jihad, or at least without their active involvement or operational support – constitute the new wave of terrorists.
This transitional phase of the jihad was clearly evident in terrorist activity in Southeast Asia between 2000 and 2003. Another glimpse of it could be seen in the London bus and underground bombings of July 2005. The London conspirators, hailing from Leeds, were radicalised in Britain, came together spontaneously and independently, used bomb recipes that were available on the internet, and carried out the attacks on their own. At the same time, visits to Pakistan seem to have compounded their anger and helped turn them toward violence. The fact that al-Qaeda subsequently released a video of the ringleader and claimed credit for the attacks demonstrates that elements in Pakistan were in contact with at least one of the attackers, were aware of the conspiracy, and took steps to benefit from it in propaganda terms in the event that the attacks proved successful.
The CIA psychiatrist Marc Sageman has studied the profiles of hundreds of jihadists in custody. He has observed that bonds of friendship form the basis of self-started cells, and that the conspirators elect themselves for warfare without waiting to be recruited by strangers. This affords them a certain degree of operational security, but often at the cost of inadequate attention to tradecraft. As the follow-up London bombing attempts showed all too clearly, this can lead to failure and ultimately to swift arrest.
Ideology and technology
The formation of self-starting groups is facilitated by the interaction of a sense of social and economic exclusion with a simple but powerful ideology of resistance. The animating factor in this ideology is the assertion that all Muslims share a common identity, rooted in their religious faith, and that this heritage is under assault from God’s enemies. This worldview is essentially dualistic, with the forces of Good and Evil locked in a titanic battle for supremacy. Although Islamic eschatology insists that God is the inevitable victor in this contest, the forces of unbelief must nevertheless be actively countered and the faithful defended against the onslaught.
This potent explanation for the order of things is as pervasive as it is persuasive thanks, in part, to the internet. Like the new technologies of audiocassette and videotape that preceded it, the internet has considerable reach, especially in societies where computer penetration levels are high (as in western Europe, home to substantial Muslim communities). Even where penetration is low, as it is in the Middle East, especially outside large urban areas, the impact of web-borne propaganda is enhanced by photocopiers. The internet is the ideal format for presenting inflammatory images from Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya and other battlefields in a way that reinforces the notion of confrontation between an unremittingly hostile West and a defensive Islam that justifies violence and rallies recruits. The mosque, which has long been the platform for powerful social and political criticism, complements and compounds the effect of the internet on Muslim opinion.
The new media, however, are not simply vehicles for a seductive worldview. They serve as distributors of tactical guidance and technical knowledge on matters pertaining to target selection, weapons production, surveillance and counter-surveillance and propaganda. Muaskar al-Battar (The Camp of al-Battar, the name of Mohammed’s sword) and Sawt al-Jihad (The Voice of Jihad) are the chief examples of these outlets. There are many others, however, including some that are aimed at pre-teenage audiences and some that package jihadism in hip-hop and other music videos. Just as importantly, the internet has supplied a mode of communication that is highly resistant to interception and compromise. These qualities have enabled e-mail and other computer-related tools to unite the disparate self-starter groups that would otherwise be organising and attacking in complete isolation. The use of webmail has created an environment in which these groups can enjoy the best of both worlds: the security proffered by compartmentalised operation and the improved effectiveness that can flow from coordination with others.
Drivers of jihad
The conditions that spurred and sustained the jihad appear at this point to be quite durable. Apart from the globalisation of Muslim identity, whereby the grievances of co-religionists in local, unrelated circumstances become the cause of Muslims everywhere, socio-economic and demographic factors that underpin religious opposition in Europe, the Middle East and Asia are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Unemployment and the social dislocation engendered by rapid urbanisation – in which immigration to Europe from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia is but the final stage – and the solace offered by activists whose religious guidance meshes comfortably with violence will not end soon. If anything, it will increase.
Meanwhile, the fracturing of a clerical authority that might once have counselled and enforced a degree of quietism or moderation in the face of perceived oppression has removed an important barrier to radical interpretation of Islamic scripture. This development is rooted in modernisation, especially the combination of widespread literacy, the advent of printing, and now use of the internet. As such, the breakdown was unavoidable. The result has been that just as any schoolteacher can become his own bomb technician, an engineering student can become his own imam. Moderate Muslims, let alone Western governments, will find it very difficult to rein in this runaway trend in religious self-definition and self-guidance. The theological free-for-all is especially evident in the debate about the legitimacy of killing civilians, wherein some newer preachers emphasise the doctrine of proportionality as a key justification for inflicting mass casualties and others, including Osama bin Laden, argue that the idea of democracy leads ineluctably to a position of collective guilt, since the governments that are killing Muslims rule by consent of the people. Notions of honour that had held civilian killing in check and hadiths (traditional stories about Mohammed’s life) that frowned on collateral damage are no longer universally respected by believing Muslims.
The cult of martyrdom that has come to characterise the jihad is also likely to endure for some time. Suicide attacks are not the monopoly of Muslims, having been used effectively by other ethnic communities in unrelated conflicts, especially the Sri Lankan civil war. Among Muslims, suicide attacks have been practiced by Shiites as well as Sunnis. At this juncture, the cult envelops Sunnis of both genders, a variety of ages and, ultimately, motivations. At a personal level, these attacks are fuelled by guilt, a quest for expiation and thirst for retribution. These are powerful impulses, which are reinforced by the encouragement of jihadist leaders, who see such suicide attacks, accurately, as extremely lethal and relatively less likely to expose the identity of ringleaders.
A perverse form of market forces will also contribute to the persistence of violence. To the extent that emerging groups have to compete for resources and recruits, they will perceive a need to vie with one another in a bidding process that will inevitably intensify levels of violence. The objective of rivals will be to show the interested but as yet unaffiliated activists that their respective organisations have the largest impact on events. This dynamic accounts to some degree for the extravagant violence unleashed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq and by Abd al-Aziz al-Muqrin in Saudi Arabia.
The impact of Iraq
The war in Iraq has both intensified the jihad and eroded the ability of Western governments to fight back. Although there is no turnstile through which enlistees pass en route to the jihad, intelligence and law enforcement officials believe that recruitment to radical causes has increased since the invasion of March 2003. Court records tend to support this assessment, insofar as they show that recruiters rely successfully on their characterisation of the war in Iraq to persuade Muslims to join the fight, either in Iraq or where they live. US military officers now concede that foreign fighters dominate the insurgency in Iraq and that the role of disappointed former Ba’athists has receded. The predominance of jihadists has coincided with a high level of sustained violence. The monthly total of attacks in May 2005 reached 90, which matched the combined total of Palestinian suicide attacks on Israeli targets over the past 12 years. The level of commitment and organisation signified by these statistics is impressive. If it is transferred to other theatres, the cost to the targeted societies will be high, especially since jihadists who survive their tour of duty in Iraq to return home will probably be the more talented operatives, with experience of urban combat. Indeed, as inner cities become the new battlegrounds of the jihad, particularly in Europe and perhaps eventually in North America, veterans of the Iraqi jihad will be pivotal in organising and mobilising the new generation of militants.
The problems of response
Western officials concede that they have not developed a strategy to manage this long-term threat. The rapid evolution of the jihad into a global resistance movement has rendered the ‘kingpin strategy’ of the counter-narcotics wars, in which cartel leaders were pursued and killed by para-military forces, obsolete. This does not yet appear to be fully recognised. President George W. Bush declared on 29 September that America’s ‘strategy is clear in Iraq. We are hunting down high value targets like Azzam and Zarqawi’. That the violence in Iraq has escalated despite these assiduous manhunts underscores the diminishing relevance of this narrow approach.
A more coherent strategy would aim to isolate radicals by delegitimating their methods and answering the grievances they purport to remedy. Only by separating them from co-religionists who have not made up their minds about the appropriateness of a violent response is the momentum of the movement likely to be slowed. Of urgency here is the pursuit of diplomacy aimed at resolving the local conflicts that fuel the jihad, the use of economic incentives and influence to induce autocratic Middle Eastern regimes to more genuinely share power, and the better treatment of Muslim minorities around the world – particularly in Europe, where some Muslims remain economically and materially disadvantaged.
Although waves of terrorism have dissipated in the past as militants realise that their cause is futile, or because they have achieved their goals, the plausible prospect that jihadists will acquire and use a weapon of mass destruction before the movement fades demands a more coordinated effort, balancing long- and short-term measures, to hasten its demise and make better arrangements for homeland security and the control of fissile material in particular.
Remedies that seemed sufficient to analysts before the jihad metastasised, such as encouragement of gradual political and economic reform in the Middle East, are no longer as compelling – not least because the threat has emerged within established democracies with strong social and political institutions. At the same time, the displacement of a global jihadist agenda onto local conflicts, as has happened in Europe, Southeast Asia, Pakistan, Iraq and Chechnya, has widened and recast the pool of recruits to the jihad in way that complicates the work of law enforcement and intelligence officials, even as the evolution of militant Islam into an all-purpose language of protest has brought converts to the fold – individuals far less susceptible to identification and interdiction than typical Islamic militants. Finally, the religious language in which the argument between the West and alienated Muslims is expressed exemplifies the intramural nature of the sources of conflict. The West is not well-equipped to intervene in this debate because the language is unfamiliar and the West is not really a valid interlocutor. And as the language of American foreign policy takes on increasingly religious overtones of another kind, the conviction of many Muslims that they are participants in a clash of civilisations will be validated, and reconciliation that much harder to reach.
