The nature of the terrorist threat is evolving, says an Australian adviser to the US Government. He explains his theories to national security editor Patrick Walters
AS Washington struggles to find a way out of Iraq, a young Australian ex-army officer is helping the US chart a new course in the global war on Islamist terror.
In his role as chief strategist for the State Department's counter-terrorism chief Hank Crumpton, David Kilcullen has exerted considerable influence on the direction of America's effort in fighting al-Qa'ida and its affiliates around the globe.
''He has made a big difference to us in terms of the intellectual capital he has brought with him and intellectual capital that he has generated, when we look at terrorism and how we conceptualise our strategy,'' Crumpton tells Inquirer.
Kilcullen, 40, brings an unusual combination of skills to his role as an Australian serving as a senior counter-terrorism adviser inside the US bureaucracy.
A counter-insurgency expert, Kilcullen combines academic expertise in political anthropology (he has a PhD from the University of NSW) with military experience in Indonesia, East Timor and the Middle East, including a stint helping train Indonesia's Kopassus special forces.
Fluent in Indonesian, he wrote his doctorate on Darul Islam, the post-1945 Muslim insurgency movement in Indonesia crushed by the Suharto government.
Living in kampungs in West Java in the early 1990s had a profound effect on the way Kilcullen views the global phenomenon of radical Islam confronting the US and its allies. Now he is leading a team of experts in Washington writing a new counter-insurgency doctrine for the US Government.
During the past year he has travelled to far-flung theatres in the war on terror, from Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa to Indonesia and Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province.
In his recent writings Kilcullen argues the case for a new paradigm to deal with what he terms a ''globalised insurgency'' encompassing Iraq, Afghanistan and other regional conflicts.
The US and its allies must adapt the best classical counter-insurgency techniques at the local level, combined with a much more sophisticated global information campaign, to defeat al-Qa'ida and its affiliates.
''Today's insurgencies differ significantly -- at the level of policy, strategy, operational art and tactical technique -- from those of earlier eras,'' he writes in the latest issue of Survival, the quarterly journal of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The most important new phenomenon is the globalisation effect: the rise of a worldwide audience, giving Muslim insurgents near-instantaneous means of publicising their cause, he says.
''Globalised internet communication also enables moral, financial and personal support, creating a strategic hinterland or 'virtual sanctuary' for insurgents,'' Kilcullen writes.
In Iraq, where the US continues to battle a dangerous Sunni-led insurgency as well as al-Qa'ida, Kilcullen's work has already influenced the US army's counter-insurgency strategy and tactics.
Earlier this year he wrote a 10-page primer for US army commanders heading to Iraq. Called Twenty-Eight Articles, the guide for young officers in the field sets out the principles of counter-insurgency warfare.
''Know your turf,'' is Kilcullen's primary command. ''Know the people, the topography, economy, history, religion, and culture,'' he exhorts. ''Know every village, road, field, population group, tribal leader and ancient grievance. Your task is to become the world expert on your district.''
Kilcullen's treatise has now become part of the US army's standard manual for troops deploying to Iraq, who must prosecute counter-insurgency warfare.
Kilcullen argues that in this new type of warfare, secret intelligence gleaned from satellites is less crucial to success than detailed knowledge of local conditions that can only begained by being present on the ground.
As the US struggles to gain the initiative in Iraq, it is a view shared by some top US government counter-terrorism officials.
''I question the type of forces we have there,'' one senior official tells Inquirer. ''We need to rely more on local institutions, local infrastructure. We need to look more at some very local solutions at the tribal level. We carry such a heavy footprint when we go.''
Kilcullen, who has been in Iraq twice this year helping refine US counter-insurgency doctrine, tells Inquirer that the US-led invasion of Iraq was a strategically transformative event.
''Instead of having a concentrated threat in Afghanistan, what we have got now is a dispersed threat of lots of hidden cells in 60 different countries, all doing their own thing.''
Kilcullen contends that the al-Qa'ida organisation that existed in 2001 has been ''comprehensively smashed''.
''But what's left of that group is very agile and adaptive. It has changed itself fundamentally into an armed propaganda organisation.''
The US and its allies have yet to catch up with this evolution of Osama bin Laden's organisation, in terms of their strategy and tactics to fight the global propaganda battle, hesays.
He draws some analogies with the West's experience in the Cold War. Then the US and its allies were engaged in a protracted confrontation with an incompatible political ideology. ''Ultimately the Cold War was won because most people in the Eastern bloc didn't want to be communists any more. They found our way of life more attractive than their ownsociety.
''We are probably going to win when the majority of people in the Muslim world don't want to support Osama bin Laden as much as they want to be part of the mainstream of the global community.''
Kilcullen emphasises that it is wrong to think about immigrant Muslim populations as a threat to Western societies, including Australia. They are not a danger in themselves but an at-risk minority that has to be protected from enemy subversion.
He says the Howard Government has done well in engaging the Muslim community in Australia, but the threat from al-Qa'ida and its affiliates remains.
''The capability of the Islamists is severely damaged by what we have done through co-operation in our region. But the intent remains very strong. Australia is safer since 9/11, but stillunsafe.''
During the past year Kilcullen has been to nearly every theatre of the US-led war on terror, studying closely how things are going at the sharp end. He says an important lesson is that the struggle against radical Islam should be seen, to a large extent, through an ethnic rather than a religious model.
''I have lost confidence in the power of Islamic theology to explain much of what's going on,'' he says. ''You are much better looking at social and cultural factors. Ethnic identity is important.''
As far as Iraq is concerned, Kilcullen is adamant that the coalition cannot afford to lose the war. ''Leaving an al-Qa'ida safe haven behind in Iraq is not an acceptable result. If you think it's bad now, it would be much worse if we were to leave.''
He is more optimistic about Afghanistan, where the coalition is battling an overwhelmingly Pashtun-based insurgency.
''We are going the best of anywhere in the war on terrorism in terms of our ability to just do counter-insurgency warfare.
''It's also the toughest enemy we face anywhere in the war on terrorism. We face a very tough enemy.''
The key he says is to keep the initiative and constantly adapt to evolving conditions on theground.
Five years on from 9/11, senior US officials say the big downside is the steady radicalisation of Islamic communities across the world that has occurred since 2001. ''It really is a new era of conflict. It truly is a global battle space now,'' one official notes.
Kilcullen argues the US now faces a ''confederated enemy''.
''The enemy has hit on a form of warfare that renders irrelevant a lot of our conventional strengths. They have moved warfare into a different era. We are fighting a holding action while we think it up.
''If you think about the early al-Qa'ida attacks, they were expeditionary terrorism. They formed a group in country A and then secretly moved to country B.
''Since 9/11 we have shut down their training camps and improved our border security. So now they have adopted what I call a guerilla approach where they [organise] the team close to the target.
''I still feel like we are all working through what is this war we are fighting. Counter-insurgency is a good fit for what we are doing, but it's not the perfect fit.''
