jim-
one of the blow-backs you were referring to:
This is what those running the war on terror fail to understand. The spate of attacks and threatened attacks last week owed less to "the return of al-Qaeda," as trumpeted by some headlines, and more to a broad-based Islamic militant movement that is growing in strength everywhere between Malaysia and Morocco. These are the people who are answering Mr. Zawahri's call to "make the ground burn under them." This is a mass movement as diverse as the countries from which its members come. In December of 2001, Osama bin Laden said his own survival was irrelevant because "the awakening has started." He was, tragically for all of us, right.
The franchising of al-Qaeda
The threat facing us is far bigger than one man or one organization, says JASON BURKE
By JASON BURKE, The Globe & Mail
UPDATED AT 12:12 PM EDT Friday, May. 23, 2003
The audiotape was scratchy and full of static, and the words were indistinct. But their meaning was clear. "Make the ground an inferno under their feet," said Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's closest associate.
His exhortation, on a tape passed to Al-Jazeera, grabbed headlines all over the world this week. But there was nothing very new about it. Such communiqués have been issued by Mr. bin Laden or people close to him at regular intervals since the first strikes on Afghanistan in October of 2001. They have all been addressed to those hundreds of millions of Muslims who have hitherto shunned al-Qaeda's hard-line agenda. They have all said more or less the same thing: Open your eyes to the oppression and the humiliation. Open your eyes to the violence being done to your society and culture and religion. It is time to act.
This has been Mr. Zawahri's message ever since he first became involved in Egyptian militancy in the late 1970s. Like any revolutionary political campaigner, his aim has been to rouse the masses from their apathy. He cannot conceive, of course, that it is the essential decency and tolerance of most of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims that limits the appeal of his fanatical, hate-filled world-view. Instead, he believes, the Muslim masses are deceived.
In a book published in late 2002, Mr. Zawahri acknowledged that there is a huge "gap in understanding between the jihad movement and the common people." He attributed this to "the media siege imposed on the message of the jihad movement as well as the campaign of deception mounted by the government media."
He is, rightly, often credited with being the brains behind the iconic Mr. bin Laden. Both men now know that the war they are fighting is primarily for the hearts and minds of the world's Muslims. The terrorist attacks that al-Qaeda have been responsible for are designed not to bring the West to its knees through physical or economic damage but to mobilize the masses by creating a situation so radicalized that no one can doubt the extremists' message. It now appears the men behind the attacks are getting closer to their goal. That means that, far from winning the war on terror, we are losing it.
One problem is that many of those charged with making us safe persist in believing that eliminating some kind of tight-knit group called al-Qaeda will end the threat of Islamic terrorism. This thinking is considerably less sophisticated than that of Mr. Zawahri. The threat facing us is far bigger than one man or one organization.
Al-Qaeda, conceived of as a traditional terrorist group with cadres and a capability everywhere, simply does not exist. It barely existed before the war in Afghanistan destroyed Mr. bin Laden's carefully constructed infrastructure there. It certainly does not exist now. Instead, al-Qaeda can only be understood as an ideology, an agenda and a way of seeing the world that is shared by an increasing number of predominantly young, male Muslims. This is the ideology that Mr. Zawahri is so keen to propagate.
Eliminating Mr. bin Laden and a few hundred senior activists will do nothing to counter this al-Qaeda. Indeed, military actions of the type we have seen in the past 18 months merely reinforce the extremists' message that a war of cosmic importance is under way and that it is the duty of Muslims to defend themselves, their society and their religion.
This is borne out by a close examination of recent attacks. Typically, it takes around three months for the details of who was behind any specific operation to emerge. At the moment, it looks like the attacks in Riyadh and Casablanca were the work of local militant groups who probably received some aid from experienced operators who can be described as "bin Laden associates."
To understand what is happening, we merely need to look beyond the headline attacks and examine the "background noise" of Islamic violence. In the week that Riyadh and Casablance were hit, 18 small bombs detonated virtually simultaneously at Shell petrol stations in Karachi. In Algeria, a militant group fought a gun battle with security forces trying to free a group of Western hostages. In Yemen, a court where a militant had been convicted a few weeks earlier was bombed. In Lebanon, police arrested nine men plotting an attack on the U.S. embassy. In Chechnya, militant groups pulled off two suicide bombings that killed scores of people.
To focus on al-Qaeda or "foreigners," as one Saudi prince has it, at the expense of investigating the local groups that provided the manpower for the operations seems to be perverse. After any attack, most analysts concentrate on the leaders rather than the volunteers who were so happy to join them. But without the co-operation of local sympathizers and the readiness of scores of local men to sacrifice themselves, Khaled Jehani, a militant with links to Mr. bin Laden and the prime suspect in the Riyadh attacks, would have been unable to do anything. Nor, without local support, would anything have happened in Pakistan, Yemen, Chechnya, Algeria or, it seems fair to surmise, Morocco. It is the local factors that are crucial, not the activities of an ill-defined entity dubbed al-Qaeda.
This is what those running the war on terror fail to understand. The spate of attacks and threatened attacks last week owed less to "the return of al-Qaeda," as trumpeted by some headlines, and more to a broad-based Islamic militant movement that is growing in strength everywhere between Malaysia and Morocco. These are the people who are answering Mr. Zawahri's call to "make the ground burn under them." This is a mass movement as diverse as the countries from which its members come. In December of 2001, Osama bin Laden said his own survival was irrelevant because "the awakening has started." He was, tragically for all of us, right.
Jason Burke is the chief reporter for The Observer of London. His book on al-Qaeda will be published this year.
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