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THE ROVING EYE
The US's
gift to al-Qaeda
By Pepe
Escobar
Al-Qaeda and all the other
components of the Salafi-jihadi (or Islamist)
front are on the verge of scoring a major double
blow. Unlike September 11, now their fight not
only is being recognized by top Islamic scholars
as legitimate, but they have also managed to
capitalize on major blunders in the "war on
terror" to strengthen the anti-imperialist,
anti-US impulse among global, moderate Muslims.
How did that happen?
At the time of
September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden and his deputy
Ayman al-Zawahiri made two crucial mistakes.
First, because of their isolation, they didn't
notice that most Afghans had had enough of the
Taliban. The Pashtun did not support the Taliban
because they would be the vanguard of a worldwide
jihad against the US (it was never the Taliban's
intention), rather, the Pashtuns gave their
support over more mundane topics, such as
maintaining law and order and keeping Pashtun
supremacy.
Second, bin Laden and
al-Zawahiri overestimated the reaction of the Arab
street. They didn't understand that the average
Arab living in the Middle East - or in Western
Europe - may indeed express a lot of grievances
toward US foreign policy, but this did not
translate into solid, political mobilization. If
it ever happened, political activity would be set
off by events in Palestine and Iraq - Arab, and
not Islamic, problems. Thus, sensationally
plunging Boeings-turned-into-missiles into the
heart of the American power elite did not show the
Promised Land to the alienated masses.
The
"war on terror" - the American response to
al-Qaeda - was a meaningless metaphor in the first
place because al-Qaeda essentially poses a
security problem. It is not a strategic threat. At
least it was not until its recent mutation - after
Guantanamo, the invasion of Iraq and the Abu
Ghraib scandal.
Jihad or not jihad
The new geopolitical configuration
represents a tremendous victory for al-Qaeda and
the Islamist camp. Especially because they are not
Salafis. Salafism was conceived by Jalaluddin
al-Afghani in the late 19th century as a reform
movement capable of equipping Islam to fight
Western colonialism. But to put it bluntly,
al-Afghani had very little in common with Mullah
Omar, the Taliban emir, he was a political
activist, not a theologian.
The Salafis
were the embryo of the Muslim Brotherhood and the
contemporary Islamists, al-Qaeda among them.
Al-Afghani is considered a "founding father". But
if Salafism was originally an instrument to fight
Western domination, it soon ceased to be a global
political project to modernize the Muslim world.
Salafism today is an ultra-conservative program to
purify Islam from cultural influences - Muslim as
well as Western.
That's where Salafis
intersect with the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia.
Wahhabis, the Taliban and the Hizbut Tehrir are
Salafis. Al-Qaeda, the Algerian Armed Islamic
Group, the Jaish-e-Muhammad and Sipha-e-Sahaba in
Pakistan - the constellation usually described as
"Islamist" - go one step further: they are
Salafi-jihadis, considering jihad to be a
personal, religious duty of every Muslim.
For Salafis there's essentially nothing to
be learned from the West. "Moderate" Salafis at
least concede that non-belligerent infidels - ie
most of the world's population - should be well
treated. The main difference between Salafis and
Salafi-jihadist is that Salafis totally reject the
concept of Islamic ideology, as well as any
Western conceptual category (political parties,
constitution, revolution, social justice). This
means that Salafis don't even recognize political
struggle as a means to establishing an Islamic
state. For them, the soul of each individual
Muslim takes precedence over politics: this is a
consequence of the fact that Western ("infidel")
domination happened because of the loss of true
Islamic faith. Salafi-jihadis for their part are
much more politicized - even though their
political agenda is fuzzy at best.
Sayyid
Qutb - the Egyptian intellectual mentor of
al-Zawahiri, killed by the Nasser government in
1966 - almost managed to bridge the gap between
Salafis and Salafi-jihadis. As Adam Curtis
masterfully demonstrated in his three-part BBC
documentary, The Power of Nightmares -
which had its world premiere as a feature film
this past weekend at the Cannes Film Festival -
Qutb is to al-Qaeda what Leo Strauss is to the
American neo-conservatives. Qutb encouraged
political action, but at the same time had a
profoundly pessimistic view of the modern world,
combined with venomous contempt of all things
Western - the reason for his appeal among Salafis.
The crucial "jihad or not jihad" dilemma
is a political decision. It's impossible to accuse
Salafis - like the neo-conservatives do - of
defending a theology of violence per se. When an
Islamic religious leader favors jihad, it's always
a political decision, even though it's always
framed as religious dictum. In 2001, both the
highly-respected Sheik Yousef al-Qardawi - host of
an extremely popular show on al-Jazeera - and the
new grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz ibn
Muhammad al-Sheikh, issued fatwas (decrees)
condemning September 11 as un-Islamic, clearly at
odds with al-Qaeda's interpretation of jihad. On
the other hand it's possible to find many
mainstream Salafis who are opposed to Qutb - for
religious reasons - but favor jihad and al-Qaeda
(as a legitimate means of defending Islam against
the West).
The revolutionary
vanguard
The main challenge for the
Salafi-jihadist (or Islamists) has always been how
to "convert" modernized, well-educated Muslims -
from the wealthy Kuwaiti, Saudi, Jordanian middle
classes to the dilapidated suburbs of London and
Marseilles - to what is essentially a political
struggle.
So it's important to re-examine
the role of Abdullah Azzam, the Muslim Brotherhood
Palestinian carrying a Jordanian passport who
founded the Maktab al-Khidamat (the Office of
Services) in Peshawar in the early 1980s - the
embryo of what would become known as al-Qaeda.
Crucially, Azzam was neither a Salafi nor
a Wahhabi. He thought at the time that the only
winning jihad strategy was to fight for the
liberation of the entire Islamic ummah
(community). The anti-Soviet Afghan jihad was at
hand (the 1980s) and it would be the perfect
model. Afghanistan for Azzam was essentially a
training ground for the revolutionary vanguard
which would lead the ummah in a war of
resistance against the West. Azzam was never
interested in creating an Islamic state in
Afghanistan. Also crucially, he never targeted
civilians, and never even thought of conducting a
terrorist bombing. Al-Qaeda's harsher and more
lethal tactics had nothing to do with Azzam: the
transformation was operated by Osama and
al-Zawahiri - blessed by their powerful Saudi and
Pakistani sponsors/protectors.
After
al-Qaeda lost its Afghan sanctuary, it adapted
extremely fast. It's fair to say that now in many
ways it is reverting to some of Azzam's
conceptualization. It stopped behaving as a sect
(it never had a political branch, a student branch
or a press office, apart from the sporadic bin
Laden or al-Zawahiri videos). It abandoned any
pretence of finding a new training ground: the
actual "Talibanistan" in the Pakistani Northwest
Frontier Province might be a candidate - but it's
infested with Pakistani troops and US
intelligence.
Mounting American and
European Islamophobia, and in many cases
successful police action, made it extremely hard
for the Salafi-jihadist to touch Muslims living in
the West: they subsist in almost total isolation
and alienation. The answer was franchising - but
importantly the spreading of the Salafi-jihadist
ideological message. Experts at a clandestine
European Union terrorist monitoring cell in
Brussels tell Asia Times Online that they fear
extreme left movements in many European Union
countries may be getting closer and closer to the
Islamists. The war in Iraq has already led
Salafi-jihadists to forge a close relationship
with former Ba'athists.
The enemy
within
When bin Laden and al-Zawahiri
called for a worldwide jihad they failed.
Movements of national liberation in Islam - like
in Palestine and Chechnya - were the biggest
losers. All over Islam there was heated discussion
over al-Qaeda's strategy - if there was any.
Should everyone revert to purveying dawah
(propaganda, political proselytism) instead of
jihad?
But now Islamic scholars from
Morocco to Malaysia are finally legitimizing
al-Qaeda as a Muqadamul Jaish - a revolutionary
vanguard. This Western concept was unheard of in
Islam - well, at least until the
symbolically-charged spring of 2003, when Baghdad
was "liberated" by President George W Bush's
Christian armies.
As much as al-Qaeda is a
Western concoction - once again, the concept of
revolutionary vanguard simply does not exist in
Islam - its internationalism is now merging with
the only other global protest movement: the
anti-globalization, anti-American imperialism
brigade. Al-Qaeda and the Islamist front
nevertheless still face a daunting task: if they
want more Western allies, they have to abdicate
from their Islamic platform. And if they want more
allies in the Muslim world, they have to be much
less radical. Even though al-Qaeda is configured
as an heir to the extreme left and pro-Third World
radical movements of the 1970s, al-Qaeda's latest
success is undoubtedly in the Muslim world.
Al-Qaeda's only strategic goal is trapping
the US, but Washington helped al-Qaeda by trapping
itself in Iraq, and in still another, dangerous
form of hubris, Bush's Greater Middle East.
Al-Qaeda's dream of mobilizing the ummah by
way of jihad may have taken a backseat role, but
who needs it when you have reports of Korans
flushed down the toilet? The Newsweek controversy
reveals to the fullest extent how al-Qaeda may be
reaching its goal of politicizing the masses
through other means. No wonder the White House,
Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice all reacted furiously -
blaming the (media) messenger to obscure the
evident message (Islamophobia).
Al-Qaeda
now also benefits from counter-propaganda. For
example, this past weekend, al-Qaeda in the Land
of the Two Rivers - supposed to be the
denomination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group (if
he is not just a cipher) - accused the Pentagon of
fabricating the sectarian violence in Iraq. The
document lists "dirty methods [the Americans] use
for targeting jihad", like "attacking homes with
mortar rounds to later put the blame on the
mujahideen for such mindless attacks", or "setting
up IEDs [improvised explosive devices] on the side
of the road near a school or a hospital and then
the American savior comes in shining armor to
dismantle the device, witnessed by the people in
the area as a hero risking himself for Muslims".
As for the non-stop car bombings, the
document says that "some [Americans] conceal a
bomb in the trunk of a car while they search it in
a check point and then detonate it at a distance
in the right place and time, or they target
certain cars by helicopter gunships so it would
look like there was a person [bomber] who
detonated a car bomb".
Whether any of
these claims are verifiable or true is beside the
point. The point is that they are written and
widely broadcast in Arabic, and they stick.
Muslims, especially in the Sunni Arab world, but
also all over Islam, tend to believe them in
increasing numbers, considering the moral swamp
the US put itself in after Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib
and the virtual leveling of Fallujah.
So
if al-Qaeda is winning Muslim hearts and minds,
the Bush administration has only itself to blame.
Considering all the "clash of civilizations"
rhetoric and a "war on terror" bound to last
indefinitely, as Vice President Dick Cheney
himself said on the record, it may have been the
original intent anyway.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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