Authors: Jason Burke
The situation is far worse than when bin Laden began to come to prominence. This legitimizing discourse, the critical element that converts an angry young man into a human bomb, is now everywhere. You will hear it in a mosque, on the internet, from your friends, in a newspaper. You do not have to travel to Afghanistan to complete the radicalizing process, you can do it in your front room, in an Islamic centre, in a park. British secret services have arrested 16-year-olds leaving school exams for whom 11 September is a childhood memory. The spread of suicide bombings to places such as Kashmir, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan where, only a few years ago, such tactics would have been alien and incomprehensible shows how pervasive the jihadi Salafist ‘al-Qaeda-ist’ worldview and the style of activism it inspires
has now become. For an increasing number of people it explains everything. It works.
In the West we often ask ‘What do they want?’ The question itself implies a number of things: our own willingness to understand legitimate grievances as well as a hope that, by addressing them, a resolution of the current situation can be found. Both are laudable aims.
The question also implies a ‘they’. This book has been largely devoted to showing why this may be a mistake. Modern Islamic militancy is a diverse and complex phenomenon. The values and ideas, the ‘wants’, of militants are very varied. There is no single ‘they’.
Algerian bombers have motives that are very different from Chechens. The Uzbeks who blew themselves up in March 2004 in Tashkent in an unprecedented wave of violence are not acting for the same reasons that inspired a dozen Turks to attack British-linked targets in Istanbul five months previously. Ramzi Yousef, who tried to destroy the World Trade Center in 1993, was driven more by an egotistical lust for notoriety than religious fervour. Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 11 September hijackers who succeeded where Yousef failed, acted because he felt, with absolute certainty, that he had no other option but to wage a violent jihad. One of the men who organized the bombing of a nightclub in Bali in October 2002, Imam Samudra, said that he had been disgusted by the ‘dirty adulterous behaviour of the [whites]’ he saw there. Another said he was angered by the US-led war in Afghanistan. The Madrid bombers chose not to kill themselves in their attacks, unlike previous militants more closely linked to the al-Qaeda hardcore who see the deaths of bombers as an integral part of the message sent by attacks. Recent strikes by Islamic militants in Iraq, whether by suicide bombers or not, are different again. So were those in London in 2005.
To understand this seemingly endless variety we have first to redraft our question. ‘What do they want?’ implies a very Western concept of acting to achieve specific goals. Instead we should be asking ‘Why do they feel that they have to act in the way that they do?’ The answer is that all the militants are acting because, from their twisted standpoint, they believe they have no choice.
All the militants explain their own personal, local experiences by
reference to one greater truth – that Islam is under attack. In every statement they make one can see this mix of the general and the specific. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, a Saudi and an Egyptian respectively, blame the problems of their native countries on the
kufr
powers who back the local regimes. Imam Samudra, the Bali bomber, saw the nightclubs of Bali from which as a local he was banned, as part of a cultural assault mounted by the West against the Islamic world. In Kashmir, locals speak of their repression as part of a global campaign against Muslims. In Chechnya, they see the war with Russia as a manifestation of the same push to eliminate Islam. In March 2004 a threat from a previously unknown militant group promised violence in France and listed the banning of the veil from schools in that country alongside continuing American support for Israel, the war in Iraq and the killing of civilians in Afghanistan as evidence that the West had never abandoned the project of the Crusades. The ousting of Saddam Hussein is widely seen throughout the Islamic world as a strategic move to secure oil – Allah’s gift to the Muslims – and protect Israel. This perception that a belligerent West is set on the humiliation, division and eventual conquest of the Islamic world is as much a root cause of Muslim violence as relative poverty or government repression. The militants believe they are fighting a last-ditch battle for the survival of their society, culture, religion and way of life. They also believe, as we in the West believe too, that self-defence can justify tactics that might be frowned on in other circumstances.
But from where does this perception spring? Why do they blame us? For good reasons and bad. It is true that the history of Western intervention in the Islamic world over the last three centuries has not been happy. It is also true, as centuries of anti-semitism have shown, that humans naturally seek to blame ‘the other’. However, there is a more existential, more irrational reason for seeing the West as an aggressor. The militants need to find an explanation for the parlous state of their own countries. If Islam is the perfect social system, their logic runs, then something else must be to blame for the second-rate status, economically, militarily, politically, of the umma. The most obvious answer is that the fault lies with the West and with those Muslims who fail to practice their religion with sufficient discipline
and devotion. The bombs are designed to restore the pride of Muslims worldwide, to shame and inspire ‘faithless’ Muslims into greater observance and, by weakening the ‘Crusaders’ and their local allies and proxies, to hasten the eventual return to the golden age of a thousand years ago when the lands of Islam were the world’s leading power.
The apparently cosmic nature of the aims of the militants make them very difficult to counter. Dialogue with hardcore radicals is virtually impossible. So the only way we will ensure a future without fear and uncertainty is by halting the spread of the militants’ twisted worldview and stemming the production of new radical volunteers. We need to strip away the legitimacy that allows the militants to operate. We need to understand why their warped vision is so attractive to so many and then work to counter its evident power. Propaganda works when it fits with people’s sense of what is true. Bin Laden’s campaign to convince the world’s Muslims that his cause is true is successful so often because there is so much resentment and anger already extant. The reasons that motivated thousands of volunteers to travel to Afghanistan still exist even if the training camps are now defunct. In 1258, the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols provoked a wave of rigorous conservative reformism epitomized by Ibn Taimiya, the hardline jurist so often quoted by bin Laden. He bemoaned the weakness and lassitude of the umma and called on Muslims to rise up in defence of their religion, culture and society. Many answered his call then. Many are likely to answer that of his latter-day counterparts.
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At the beginning of this book I outlined the various meanings of al-Qaeda. It could mean, I said, a vanguard, a base or a maxim, precept, rule or methodology. In the fifteen years since the end of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan modern Islamic militancy has run through three phases, each of which corresponds to one of those meanings. In the first phase, from around 1989 to around 1996, hundreds of activists who had been involved in the war against the Soviets or were fighting local struggles against regimes in the Middle East worked, often independently, at radicalizing and mobilizing those who had hitherto shunned extremism. These activists saw themselves as ‘the vanguard’ – ‘al-Qaeda al’sulbah’ – and saw their role as enlightening and then
leading the masses into war and into a just society. Their preferred propaganda weapon was spectacular violence. From 1996–2001 much of this ‘vanguard’ came together in Afghanistan, where an unprecedented terrorist infrastructure was available. Though many remained independent, a large number became associated with bin Laden, who by the autumn of 1998 had the highest profile of all the alumni of the war against the Soviets. Using that profile, and helped by historical circumstances that pushed the Taliban closer to the foreign Jihadis, bin Laden was able to create something that approximated ‘the base’, the second understanding of al-Qaeda that I mentioned in my first chapter. Then came 11 September and the subsequent campaign which destroyed that ‘base’. The second phase came to an end. We are now in the third phase, where al-Qaeda, neither a vanguard or a base, is instead accurately characterized by the third translation I outlined: the methodology, the maxim, the precept, the rule, the way of seeing the world. You are a member of ‘al-Qaeda’ if you say you are.
Our societies are open societies. Armouring ourselves may seem useful in the short term, comforting in the midterm, but is, in the long term, impossible. We need to think again about our approach. We need to remember that every time force is used it provides more evidence of a ‘clash of civilizations’ and a ‘cosmic struggle’ and thus aids the militants’ in their effort to radicalize and mobilize. By strengthening the warped vision of the world that is becoming so prevalent, every use of force is another small victory for bin Laden.
Of course the ‘War on Terror’ should have a military component. It is easy to underestimate the sheer efficacy of military power in achieving specific, immediate goals. Hardened militants cannot be rehabilitated and need to be made to cease their activities, through the courts or in other ways.
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But if we are to win the battle against terrorism our strategies must be made broader and more sophisticated. We must eliminate our enemies without creating new ones. Military power must be only one tool among many, and a tool that is only rarely, and reluctantly, used. Currently, military power is the default, the weapon of choice. In fact, the greatest weapon available in the war on terrorism is the courage, decency, humour and integrity of the vast proportion of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. It is this that is restricting the
spread of ‘al-Qaeda’ and its warped worldview, not the activities of counter-terrorist experts or the military strategists. It is this, that, as Islamic terrorism grows more and more fragmented, we need most. Without it we are lost. There is indeed a battle between the West and men like bin Laden. But it is not a battle for global supremacy. It is a battle for hearts and minds. And it is a battle we, and our allies in the Muslim world, are losing.
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I have tried to explain the nature of modern Islamic terrorism and examine some of its root causes. All are the result of historical processes, none are inevitable, and all can be acted on by well-judged, properly executed policies. The causes of terrorism must be addressed; moderate Muslim leaders must be engaged and supported; it must be recognized that genuinely authentic and appropriate governments in the Islamic world will include a strong representation of Islamists; the spread of hardline strands of Islam at the expense of tolerant, pluralistic strains must be rolled back; repressive governments must be made to reform; a huge campaign must be launched to convince the Muslim world that the West is not a belligerent foe but a partner in mutual prosperity; every policy in every sphere must be weighed carefully and its adverse impact on the youthful populations of the Islamic world considered. Long-term success in the War on Terror will depend on successfully countering the growing sympathy for the militants. An important first step will be a single, substantial paradigmatic shift in the way the threat facing us all is currently understood and addressed. The threat is not from one man or one organization.
All terrorist violence, ‘Islamic’ or otherwise, is unjustifiable, unforgivable, cowardly and contemptible. But just because we condemn does not mean we should not strive to comprehend. We need to keep asking ‘why?’.
Notes
Introduction: The Shadow of Terror
1
. Interviews with Saudi intelligence officers, Peshawar, October 2001; with senior former Taliban, Peshawar, June 2002.
2
. Interviews with eyewitnesses in Jalalabad, November 2001; with Mullah Jan Mohammed, Maulvi Abdul Qabir’s private secretary, Peshawar, June 2002.
1: What is al-Qaeda?
1
. The French scholar Olivier Roy points out that the fundamental unit of the Afghanistan resistance movement was, in varying local dialects, the
komite, qarargah
(‘the base’ in Panjshiri), the
markaz
(an Arabic-derived word meaning ‘the centre’ among the Pashtun), etc. Olivier Roy,
Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan
, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 160. In 2002, Arabic-language newspapers referred to the base at Bagram where the British and American soldiers hunting bin Laden and the Taliban were based as ‘al-Qaeda Bagram’.
2
. Quoted in Rohan Gunaratna,
Inside al-Qaeda
, Hurst, 2002, p. 3.
3
. Several militants who had been active between 1985 and 1995 explained Azzam’s concept of ‘al-Qaeda’ to me. They found it amusing that the word had been so misconstrued in the West (interviews with militants in Pakistan (June 2002) and London (December 2002)). Saudi Arabian intelligence sources say that the root of the ‘al-Qaeda’ name can be traced back to 1988, when, a year before leaving Afghanistan, bin Laden set up a database to record the identities and the movements of the volunteers who came through the guesthouses in Peshawar. They say his primary motivation was to be able to answer the queries of families whose relatives had gone missing. In Arabic such a database could be called ‘al-Qaeda’, using ‘base’ as in the English word ‘data-base’ (interview with Saudi intelligence source in Pakistan (September 2001)).