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I want to take another look at al Qaeda’s objectives and strategy, or more accurately, what its members see as the desired end state of their campaign and how they want to make it come about.
Almost two years ago I wrote a long essay, with sequels, observing that while Osama bin Laden has strategic goals, he never had a strategic plan. His goals are evident from his own declarations and are -
1. Expel America’s armed forces from Saudi Arabia, emplace Islamist regimes and sociopolitical order in there are expel all non-Muslims of any sort,
2. Emplace Islamism in the other countries of the Persian Gulf,
3. Then reclaim Islamic rule of all lands that were ever under Islamic control and emplace Islamism there,
4. Convert the rest of the world to Islamism.
Convinced that America was a “weak horse” which would not go to war in the face of its fury, bin Laden guided al Qaeda in an escalating series of terrorist attacks against American targets during the 1990s which evoked little response from America. Then came 9/11 and America’s energetic strikes directed first against Taliban- and al Qaeda-controlled Afghanistan, then against terrorism- and al Qaeda-supporter Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.
From October 2001 until perhaps the last quarter of 2004, al Qaeda reeled from these blows, suffering as well from anti-terrorist purges in Saudi Arabia and the closure of many of its economic systems that existed before 9/11. Hence, I observed in September 2003,
I see no evidence that bin Laden has ever had any plan except violence itself, committing it where he could, when he could. He commits violence against Western targets with no vision apparent beyond the violence. He has no idea of how to constitute a true nation state. He is a man whose vision extends no further than more fighting, which is to say, he has no vision at all.
Even leaving bin Laden himself out of the overall analysis and referring to al Qaeda in general this analysis can still be seen to apply in major ways. Observed MichaelWilliams in referring to a NYT article last May,
the NYT has discovered that the islamofacist terrorists have no plan in Iraq, or really anywhere else in the world. They’ve got no coherent agenda, no plan to achieve that non-agenda, no leaders, no political presence, and no hope of victory. At least from our perspective.
Then, citing the article itself:
Counter-insurgency experts are baffled, wondering if the world is seeing the birth of a new kind of insurgency; if, as in China in the 1930’s or Vietnam in the 1940’s, it is taking insurgents a few years to organize themselves; or if, as some suspect, there is a simpler explanation.
“Instead of saying, ‘What’s the logic here, we don’t see it,’ you could speculate, there is no logic here,” said Anthony James Joes, a professor of political science at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and the author of several books on the history of guerrilla warfare. The attacks now look like “wanton violence,” he continued. “And there’s a name for these guys: Losers.”
“The insurgents are doing everything wrong now,” he said. “Or, anyway, I don’t understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.”
Now, after politically-charged bombings in Madrid and London, I am starting to believe that the rudiments of a strategic plan can be discerned. These bombings are weak manifestations of al Qaeda’s strategic plan to emerge victorious.
It’s no Einsteinian insight to say that the Madrid bombings and the London bombings were intended to push Spain and Britain out of military engagement in Iraq. That much is obvious, and in Spain’s case it succeeded.
So here is the first point I’ll explore in a subsequent post: in al Qaeda’s mind bombings against Europe have a different political intention than another attack against the United States would have, and are intended only to accelerate achieving al Qaeda’s goals rather than bring achieving them about.
Related to this point is that we have to understand al Qaeda’s strategy differently than we’ve been thinking about it (me included). I made a key error in my 2003 post: it was true then and mostly true now that al Qaeda has no military strategy worthy of the name, but it is not therefore true that it has no strategy at all.
Before they are terrorists, “insurgents,” urban guerrillas or anything else, al Qaeda’s members, no matter how loose their membership is, are eschatological, religious absolutists . Their strategy - and I think it fits the definition thereof - is first and foremost religious. Unfortunately, violence is really the central tenet of their religion, that without which Islamism would not be what it is. Far from being a “religion of peace,” their brand if Islam is a religion of war, of death, of violence and oppression.
More later, but the seeds of this line of thought may be found here.
Comments policy
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July 12th, 2005 at 9:32 pm
Osama has a plan for world government called Sharia; he doesn’t need to worry about details, the Caliph will handle things. Local morals police will always be needed, of course, but from clan up to caliph, Moslems have a govenment system.
July 12th, 2005 at 11:38 pm
1. Expel America’s armed forces from Saudi Arabia, emplace Islamist regimes and sociopolitical order in there are expel all non-Muslims of any sort,
2. Emplace Islamism in the other countries of the Persian Gulf,
3. Then reclaim Islamic rule of all lands that were ever under Islamic control and emplace Islamism there,
4. Convert the rest of the world to Islamism.
That sounds like a plan to me. How is it not a plan?
July 13th, 2005 at 7:10 am
TO: Donald Sensing
RE: Too Bad….
….the comments were lost. Or are they still around? Somewhere?
I think I disagreed with you there. And that disagreement was along eschatological lines. Something to do with their hoping/praying for an act of their god to bring about a situation where they can gain the upper-hand, achieve the initiative. All this activity going on now is just to get their team ‘motivated’.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
July 13th, 2005 at 8:30 am
Bob, merely expressing the desired end state is not a plan. I might say,
“I want to buy a new car,” but that’s not a plan to shop and pay for it.
An actual strategic plan - in the usual sense of the word - is a delineation
of specific, time-phased, interrelated and conceptually integrated actions
that logically lead to the acjievement of the strategic goals.
Churck, sorry, no. One of the basic tenets of Islam, to say nothing of Islamism,
is that Allah does not save by direct, miraculous intervention. I believe there is even a Quran citation to that effect.
I wrote about this before - click here.
July 13th, 2005 at 8:51 am
I think I see where this is going, Rev. Sensing.
Clearly bin Laden embarked on his jihad with no clear post-war occupation plan to make the infidels enjoy his rule.
I look forward to the al Qaeda report on this.
July 13th, 2005 at 9:02 am
I think this is a very interesting and relevant topic. I’ve long believed that the materialist perspective that dominates Western intellectual life tends to blind us to the practical effects of eschatology, be it the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Third Reich, or the Global Caliphate. Those practical effects include the framing of what believers consider to be rational, which may be radically different from what we might consider rational based on our own beliefs.
Philosophical materialism, as it’s emerged from the Enlightenment, has its own eschatology, in that true believers have faith that it will ultimately triumph over all superstition (i.e., religion). There is, it seems to me, an unselfconsciousness evident in this, where materialists’ anti-religious sensibility blinds them to the religious nature of their own beliefs and its follow-on effects.
Of course, Christian eschatology has practical effects, too, but Christians generally understand that Christianity is eschatological, even if they don’t know the term.
July 13th, 2005 at 9:14 am
The Mahdi redux. Happens every now and then in Arabia. Have to stop them the same way every time. The big question is whether we have the will to end it the only way it can be ended.
July 13th, 2005 at 9:20 am
TO: Donald Sensing
RE: Divine Intervention
“….Allah does not save by direct, miraculous intervention…” — Donald Sensing
I don’t think we’re talking about anyone being ’saved’ here. At least I’m not. I’m talking about people being killed. A good number of them.
I also recall reading reports of their clerics in their friday messages calling upon their god to ‘rebuke’, ‘reproach’, ‘destroy’, whathaveyou the infidels, i.e., you and me. I wish I had a citation readily available. But I’ll keep an eye open for such a report in the future. Something for reference the next time this comes up.
Here’s what I do have….
This from a Fox News item I captured on 10/21/2001. No url, unfortunately.
Looks like they are invoking their god’s action to destroy US to me. Whatever tools he may choose is up to him, be they men with planes, boys with bombs, large blocks of ice falling out of the sky, whathaveyou. The former are less likely to succeed than the latter. However, the possiblity of the latter is rather small, but it is not impossible. Comets are not know as stars of ill omen for naught. WItness Shoemaker-Levi. And, as I think I said back in 2003, such an event would look, for all the world to the Muslims, like an act of their god.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
July 13th, 2005 at 9:59 am
No Einstein here, but I’m still not convinced that the London bombings were an attempt to get Britain out of Iraq – the timing is wrong. I’m more inclined to look at the upcoming trial of Hamza al-Masri and the post 9/11 crackdown on Britain’s radical Islamic community. More here: http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-07-12T154824Z_01_SCH256691_RTRUKOC_0_SECURITY-BRITAIN-LONDONISTAN.xml
July 13th, 2005 at 10:04 am
One possible reason for a terror campaign in Europe: a climate of fear, of Al Qaeda activity, that intimidates and silences “moderates”, keeps up recruitment of radicals, places deniable Islamist but-not-al-qaeda-really-honest groups in a position to make deamands on or dominate a community and its host society.
Similar patterns (allowing for different Islam specific factors) have been seen by other terror groups; e.g. IRA in UK, ETA in Spain.
Also, to prevent any chance of assimilation of the Muslim diaspora in Europe, a much larger population than its American equivalent, by firing up mutual fears and hatreds. An accomodationist Islam in Europe would be dagger aimed at the heart of Islamist khalifal ambition, just as a stable democra
tic Iraq would be.
July 13th, 2005 at 10:49 am
TO: PD Shaw
RE: I’m Inclined…
“I’m more inclined to look at the upcoming trial of Hamza al-Masri…” — PD Shaw
…to agree.
The trial had begun two days before. And, athough there may have been an interesting juxtaposition of possible reasons for the attack, G8 conference, etc., I think the trial was chief amongst them. Time may tell, now that the police think they know the perps and can investigate more thoroughly.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
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