Austin Bay is off to Iraq again.
Ho Chi Saddam Trail? Nope./Iraq in the War on Terror
As I suggested Sunday, reflecting on John Burns’ coverage of Syrian-backed Saddam-Zarqawi infilitration routes, Balkan smuggling rings are a more appropriate comparison than “Ho Chi Minh Trail.” But the NY Times has to impose its Vietnam template. Burns’ report still provided a lot of useful detail.
Now the Washington Post has published an article on a Syrian smuggler . It provides a different perspective on the infiltration network– and I think it also illustrates that the Ho Chi Minh trail comparison was inappropriate.
The article is written and reported by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, with Aleppo, Syria as the dateline:
When the Americans led the invasion of Iraq, the men of Abu Ibrahim’s family gathered in the courtyard of their shared home in the far north of Syria. Ten slips of paper were folded into a plastic bag, and they drew lots. The five who opened a paper marked with ink would go to Iraq and fight. The other five would stay behind.
Abu Ibrahim drew a blank. But remaining in Syria did not mean staying clear of the war. For more than two years, by his own detailed account, the slightly built, shabbily dressed 32-year-old father of four has worked diligently to shuttle other young Arab men into Iraq, stocking the insurgency that has killed hundreds of U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis.
The stream of fighters – most of them Syrians, but lately many of them Saudis, favored for the cash they bring – has sustained and replenished the hardest core of the Iraq insurgency, and supplied many of its suicide bombers. Drawn from a number of Arab countries and nurtured by a militant interpretation of Islam, they insist they are fighting for their vision of their faith. This may put them beyond the reach of political efforts to make Iraq’s Sunni Arabs stakeholders in the country’s nascent government.
The article elaborates:
Syria’s role in sustaining and organizing the insurgency has shifted over time. In the first days of the war, fighters swarmed into Iraq aboard buses that Syrian border guards waved through open gates, witnesses recalled. But late in 2004, after intense pressure on Damascus from the Bush administration, Syrian domestic intelligence services swept up scores of insurgent facilitators. Many, including Abu Ibrahim, were quietly released a few days later.
In the months since, the smugglers have worked in the shadows. In a series of interviews carried out in alleyways, a courtyard, a public square and a mosque, Abu Ibrahim was being visibly followed by plainclothes agents of the security service, Amn Dawla. In December, the service confiscated his passport and national identity card. His new ID was a bit of cardboard he presented each month to his minders; the entries for April and May were checked.
Few other details of Abu Ibrahim’s account could be verified independently. But the structure of the human smuggling organization he described was consistent with the assessments of U.S. and Iraqi officials who closely study Syria’s role in the insurgency. Other specifics jibed with personal histories provided by foreign fighters interviewed in the Iraqi city of Fallujah on the eve of a U.S. offensive in November.
Those interviews also echoed earlier accounts of Iraqi insurgents, including descriptions of the role of a Syrian cleric known as Abu Qaqaa in promoting a holy war, or jihad, against the West. Since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, the notion of jihad has “had a galvanizing impact on the imagination and reflexes” of many young Muslim men, especially those with the means and resources to travel, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group, based in Brussels.
This insight about Abu Ibrahim could be a separate article, titled “From Sufi to Salafist":
His father was a Sufi Muslim, devoted to a tolerant, mystical tradition of Islam. But Abu Ibrahim said he was born a rebel, gravitating early in life to the other end of the spectrum of Islamic belief.
Salafism, or “following the pious forefathers,” is a fundamentalist, sometimes militant strain of the faith grounded in turning back the clock to the time of the prophet Muhammad.
The reason for his “conversion” isn’t given–the usual suspects will blame America, but if there’s a “probable cause” it’s Syria’s Assad clan. That’s the bitter game –and linkage– between tyrant and terrorist.
Abu Ibrahim met a group of Islamic militants, then went to Saudi Arabia and worked for seven years in Riyadh.
Abu Ibrahim is an “imperial restorationist” – a term I explored in November 2001. [I’ll add a quote from this particular column at the end of this discussion.]
But let’s continue with the Washington Post article and Abu Ibrahim’s war path:
At a private Saudi production company that specialized in radical Islamic propaganda, he said, he learned video editing and digital photography. The work channeled the rage of young Arab men incensed by the situation in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, angered by U.S. foreign policy and chafing under the repression of secular Arab rulers.
Their goal, he said, is restoration of the Islamic caliphate, the system that governed Muslims before the rise of nation states. Abu Ibrahim said he regarded Afghanistan during the Taliban rule as one of the few true Islamic governments since the time of Muhammad.
“The Koran is a constitution, a law to govern the world,” he said.
For those who think Iraq or Gitmo radicalized Abu Ibrahim, consider what he did after 9/11:
Two weeks after the attacks in New York and at the Pentagon, the group felt bold enough to celebrate in public in Aleppo with a “festival,” as it was called, featuring video of hand-to-hand combat and training montages of guerrillas leaping from high walls.
Afterward, Abu Qaqaa was arrested by the Syrian authorities, but he was released within hours. By 2002 the anti-American festivals were running twice weekly, often wrapped around weddings or other social gatherings. Organizers called themselves The Strangers of Sham, using the ancient name for the eastern Mediterranean region known as the Levant, and began freely distributing the CDs of the cleric’s sermons.
This report also adds a twist to the Al Jazeera-Al Qaeda claim that in late 2003 the US bombed an innocent Muslim wedding party near the Syrian border.
Abu Ibrahim admits another incident touted as a US mistake –an attack on a bus near the Syrian border– was in fact an Al Qaeda infiltration and supply operation:
“Once the Americans bombed a bus crossing to Syria. We made a big fuss and said it was full of merchants,” Abu Ibrahim said. “But actually, they were fighters.”
So US and coalition intel got it right (at least once).
Here’s another item addressing the infiltration operation:
Weapons were positioned. In the vast desert that forms the border with Iraq, passages through the dunes long used to smuggle goods now were employed to funnel fighters.
“We had specific meeting places for Iraqi smugglers,” Abu Ibrahim said. “They wouldn’t do the trip if we had fewer than 15 fighters. We would drive across the border and then into villages on the Iraqi side. And from there the Iraqi contacts would take the mujaheddin to training camps.”
And this about the effects of Saudi money and volunteers:
“Our brothers in Iraq are asking for Saudis,” he said last month. “The Saudis go with enough money to support themselves and their Iraqi brothers. A week ago, we sent a Saudi to the jihad. He went with 100,000 Saudi riyals,” or about $27,000. “There was celebration amongst his brothers there!”
This is a long article and well worth the read. Abu Ibrahim exhibits a lot of bravado, but take two steps back and there’s a case to be made this Al Qaeda fanatic has been suckered and frustrated.
The global war he so desired is being waged on his home turf, not in Manhattan, not in Los Angeles. Change has been brought to his world.
He also sees traitors (read the article for the full context of the following quote):
Abu Ibrahim said he now views the cleric (Al Qaqaa) with suspicion, suggesting that he is helping Syrian authorities track jihadi “rat lines,” as U.S. commanders refer to the smuggling chains. The same suspicion was voiced last autumn by a Yemeni fighter interviewed in Fallujah.
In January 2003 I suggested that Iraq would be a “fatal attraction” for Al Qaeda.
Here’s the main idea:
The massive American build-up around Iraq serves as a baited trap that Al Qaeda cannot ignore. Failure to react to the pending American attack would demonstrate Al Qaeda’s impotence. For the sake of their own reputation (as well as any notion of divine sanction), Al Qaeda’s cadres must show CNN and Al Jazeera they are still capable of dramatic endeavor.
This ain’t theory. Al Qaeda’s leaders and fighters know it, and the rats are coming out of their alleys.
Attacking Iraq “flipped” Al Qaeda’s strategy:
Strategy is always about applying one’s own strength to an opponent’s weakness. Al Qaeda’s historical pattern is to wait patiently, for years if necessary, and carefully prepare a terror operation until it’s certain of success. Prior to 9-11, with little pressure on its hidden network (succored by the Taliban, Wahhabi petro-dollars and, yes, Iraq), Al Qaeda could take its time to spring a vicious surprise attack – surprise and visionary viciousness being its strengths and the gist of its “asymmetric” challenge to America’s “symmetric” power. “Fear us, America,” was the message, “because Al Qaeda chooses the time and place of battle, and when we do you are defenseless.”
9-11’s strategic ambush sought to force America to fight on Al Qaeda’s terms, to suck the United States into a no-win Afghan war, to bait the United States into launching a “crusade against Islam.” Osama bin Laden believed he possessed an edge in ideological appeal, “faith based” strength against what he perceived as U.S. decadence. U.S. failure in Afghanistan would ignite a global “clash of civilizations” pitting all Muslims against America.
Bin Laden’s strategy flopped, for a slew of reasons. Chief among them, American liberty remains an ideologically powerful idea. The United States also pulled an “asymmetric” military move of sorts, using Green Beret-guided Afghan allies and hi-tech airpower to topple the Taliban.
Since the loss of its Afghan base, Al Qaeda has experienced extraordinary pressure. Time to plan is squeezed. The United States has used diplomacy, police work, better intel and military presence to exert the pressure.
Al Qaeda has attempted to adapt, with talk of a sleeper cell strategy while aggressively attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The Bush Administration “suggested” this case but shied away from making it the center of its public diplomacy. In retrospect that was a political mistake. “The rats” are attracted to Iraq, and the US and coalition are building an Iraqi Army that will fight them. The US strategy has brought the War on Terror home to the Middle East– the politically dysfunctional Middle East where Assads, Zarqawi, Saddam, and radical Wahhabs mix. Abu Ibrahim is waging jihad of sorts, but not on his terms.
Here’s the material form the November 29, 2001 column on Al Qaeda’s goals. It’s Abu Ibrahim:
In soundbite format, the strategic collision between Bin Laden-type extremists and America may well be one of “imperial restorationist” versus “liberating reform.”
Bin Laden has complained of the terrible “80 years” of Muslim indignation and suffering since the end of the Islamic caliphate. Turkey’s reforming general and political genius, Kemal Ataturk, must rate a special place in any Hell designed by Bin Laden. Ataturk, as part of a program to replace Ottoman political structures and modernize Turkey, ended the caliphate in 1924.
In the angry babble of his psyche, Bin Laden just knows that should not have happened. History, going wrong for Islamic expansionists at least since the 16th century, really failed when the caliphate went poof.
In Bin Laden’s future, the caliphate is restored. The decadent modern world fades as American power dies, though techy bits of modernity are OK, such as videophones and nuclear weapons. Global rule of Bin Laden-interpreted Islamic law follows.
Don’t snicker. Violent “imperial restorationists” have an ugly track record. Benito Mussolini and his Italian Fascists dreamed of restoring the Roman Empire. The obvious choice for caesar was Benito. Who but Bin Laden serves as caliph? Add that title to Osama’s “end state.” It underlines the autocratic and despotic motives that lie behind the schemes of various religious absolutists, ethnic zealots, ultra-nationalists and eco-crazies around the world who reject the moderation and compromise that participation in the global system requires. Remember, violent eco-crazies battle for the “restoration of nature” – a green empire."
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