A
recently released Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
provided document affords some remarkably critical and
militant Islamic perspectives on the "war on terror".
Highlighting the unique nature of the document's
perspective, it addresses an analysis of al-Qaeda's
efforts by al-Jama'ah al-Islamiyah, a faction which is
designated by the US State Department as a terrorist
organization. The fact of the document's release by the
CIA speaks volumes about its interest.
Providing
an equally surprising parallel, in December the US
Defense Department's Strategic Studies Institute
released a report describing the objectives of the Bush
administration's war efforts as "politically, fiscally
and militarily unsustainable". Al-Jama'ah observed
essentially the same of al-Qaeda. And according to the
CIA translation, al-Jama'ah argues that al-Qaeda
"entangled the Muslim nation in a conflict that was
beyond its power to wage".
Al-Jama'ah is Egypt's
largest Salafist group on the US terror list, allegedly
complicit in the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade
Center, as well as numerous acts of violence within
Egypt. Their goal has been stated as the removal of
secular government and restoration of an Islamist state.
The group's spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman,
was convicted for his alleged Trade Center bombing role
by a US court.
The militant Egyptian Salafist
groups are reportedly Islam's oldest, tracing their
roots to the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood in
1928, five years after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
The encroachment of Western secularism spawned the
Brotherhood, but al-Jama'ah's activity dates from the
1970s.
Islamic Jihad, Egypt's other major
Salafist group on the terror list, was reportedly
responsible for the assassination of the late Egyptian
president Anwar Sadat. Ayman al-Zawahiri, now allegedly
Osama bin Laden's second in command, was reportedly one
of Islamic Jihad's two leaders. Al-Qaeda itself is
sometimes referred to as a militant Salafist group.
The CIA's original document appeared as an
Arabic-language review of a book by al-Jama'ah's
leadership, their work entitled: "The Strategy and
Bombings of al-Qaeda". It was published by the
influential and Saudi-owned London daily, al-Sharq
al-Awsat.
Footnoting this, al-Sharq al-Awsat is
known for publishing material that coincides with Saudi
perspectives. And Salafist is a term which many of the
Wahhabi denomination of Sunni Islam use to describe
themselves, Wahhabism being the strict branch of Islam
most often associated with Saudi Arabia.
But in
1997, al-Jama'ah's leadership reportedly began an
initiative to end violence. Their present writings
intimate that a policy of confrontation fed anti-Islamic
currents within the US, shifting America away from a
policy of Islamic accommodation when it suited US
objectives.
"The official religion of the United
States is its interests," note the authors. They also
see the US pursuing an opportunity for "hegemony on the
world, global sovereignty, and decisive victory over all
rivals".
Their text is noteworthy for its
illustration of perceptions within the militant segment
of the Islamic community. Al-Jama'ah doesn't take
exception to al-Qaeda's motivations, but does to their
methods and strategy, al Qaeda's giving "preference to
the logic of defiance over the principle of
calculations".
The authors blame anti-US
violence (including the Trade Center bombing) for
casting Islam as "the green peril". They portray a shift
in US perception as transpiring during the period when
America was attempting to define its "new enemy"
following the Cold War.
Particularly singled out
as evidence of this American development are the works
of Francis Fukuyama The End of History and Samuel
Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations). However,
the authors pointed out that even during this period,
the US sought an accommodation with the Taliban,
demonstrating "the supremacy of the US self-serving
logic on US strategy". But concurrently the authors saw
an al-Qaeda policy of confrontation lead to the
foregoing of unique opportunities that may never recur.
According to the text, because of US
geostrategic (oil and gas) interests, the Taliban were
offered "US$3 billion as a free grant and $300 million
annually in return for leasing the pipeline transporting
natural gas from the Caspian" to Pakistan. This was in
reference to the trans-Afghan pipeline the US had long
desired.
Al-Jama'ah cites Islamic history to
make the point that mutually advantageous accommodation
is not sacrilegious.
The authors note that
instead of the assets and stability the proposed
pipeline revenue held for both Afghanistan and Pakistan,
there have instead been substantive setbacks for the
global Islamic community. The siege al-Qaeda is under,
as well as the increased pressures on those who are
fighting traditional struggles of liberation, were seen
as but one part of a much broader fallout. Particular
note is given to the extreme nature of September 11, and
the West's reaction to it.
The texts describe
al-Qaeda's perspective as a uniquely Afghan one.
Notably, it was the US which had cultivated the
philosophy of uncompromising jihad as a tool against the
Soviets in Afghanistan during the Cold War. In those
days the people who are today's al-Qaeda were then
integral parts of America's anti-Soviet engine in
Afghanistan.
Through US urging, even mosques
throughout global Islam were encouraged to call for
volunteers in the anti-Soviet, Afghan jihad. Egypt is
reported to have provided facilities for their training.
But while these jihadis may have switched enemies, their
unbending methodology remained the same.
Al-Jama'ah intimated that while al-Qaeda's late
1990s creation of the Islamic World Front to Combat
Christians, Jews and Americans may have been pure in
ideology and motive, it represented an unrealistic
overreach which succeeded only in "enraging and
antagonizing the enemy". The authors see a key result of
this in US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice's
later promise to "liberate the Muslim world". The
perceived threat this represents to the "values and
traditions of the Muslim culture" is highlighted as very
significant.
Alternately, strong concerns are
raised that Islam must avoid the "trap of clash of
civilizations", instead pursuing a policy of
"interaction". Simultaneously advocated is "maintaining
the Muslim identity and defending and struggling against
any attack on the principles of Sharia [Islamic law] and
the supreme interests of our faith, homelands, and
nation".
The interpretation of Rice's remarks
provides a reflection on the position voiced by Italian
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on September 26, 2001.
At the time Berlusconi voiced that he foresaw the West
as "bound to occidentalize and conquer new people".
While al-Jama'ah argues that a Western religious crusade
exists "only in the imagination of those who make such a
claim", they condemn al-Qaeda's strategy for inciting
"Christian currents that are hostile to Islam".
The authors see al-Qaeda's strategy as
influencing concerns of the US fundamentalist Christian
right, precipitating an alliance with elements of the
Jewish right, culminating in Israel's advantage and what
they perceive as a campaign couched as "backing
persecuted minorities in the world". The reality they
perceive though is a US strategy of intervention "under
the pretext of defending democracy and the human rights
... and combating terrorism". They pointedly add that
the thrust of this is to "impose US hegemony on the
whole world".
As the idea of the Bush
administration potentially seeking to enfranchise
Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia's minority Shi'ites has
been recently floated, it's noteworthy to recall that
Saudi Shi'ites are concentrated in the segment of the
country where the oil fields are.
Evaluating the
benefits al-Qaeda received via its widely spread front
of hostilities, al-Jama'ah notes that while the Soviets
were militarily and socially exhausted in Afghanistan,
the breadth of America's global presence already
provided sufficient, less provocative opportunities for
this. They also argue that America's overriding interest
is oil, and that unlike in Vietnam or Somalia, the US is
prepared to accept substantive casualties to assure its
"oil hegemony".
Translating out the thrust of
the text's criticism, flexibility is much of its
essence. Al-Jama'ah accuses al-Qaeda and others within
the Islamic militant community of failing to go beyond a
path "of force only", adding that "rigid reliance on one
single strategy does not bring the flexibility that is
needed to attain the aspired goals".
A failure
in determining the requisite priorities for successful
confrontation is subsequently emphasized. According to
al-Jama'ah, "Al-Qaeda built its strategy without a sound
arrangement of the priorities and without taking into
consideration the limitations of its capabilities."
Providing more than a slight sense of paradox,
the US Defense Department's Strategic Studies Institute
report observed the same problem with the Bush
administration.
Striking a tone similar to
al-Jama'ah's criticism of al-Qaeda's World Front, a
report entitled "Bounding The Global War On Terrorism"
faulted the Bush administration for subordinating
"strategic clarity to the moral clarity". In so doing,
the administration is said to have placed the United
States on a "course of open-ended and gratuitous
conflict with states and nonstate entities that pose no
serious threat".
Paralleling the faulting of
al-Qaeda's goals, the Strategic Studies report found
that the majority of the "war on terror's" "declared
objectives", objectives repeatedly articulated by the
administration as the basis for the war's prosecution,
"are unrealistic and condemn the United States to a
hopeless quest".
Notably, a 1999 Pentagon report
prepared for the highest levels of the US defense
community had warned: "The danger ahead lies not only in
the adverse international trends that are unfolding, but
also in the risk that the US government may not
understand them."
Ritt Goldstein is an
American investigative political journalist based in
Stockholm. His work has appeared in broadsheets such as
Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, Spain's El Mundo and
Denmark's Politiken, as well as with the Inter Press
Service (IPS), a global news agency.
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