Much is written about how non-indigenous,
would-be Islamist fighters enter the battlefields
of Iraq and Afghanistan to join the mujahideen
fighting US-led coalitions in both countries. Do
they enter Afghanistan from Pakistan? Or Iran?
Perhaps Central Asia? What about Iraq? Which
border is the most porous? Does that dubious honor
belong to Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Iran?
These are, of course, important questions.
To know and close the entry points of these
aspiring mujahideen would slow the pace at which
foreign fighters could join the fray. It also
would make local insurgent field commanders unsure
about the dependability of the flow of replacement
fighters for their units, and thereby probably
limit their willingness to undertake operations
that are likely to
result
in sizable manpower loses.
A more basic
question, however, is seldom asked or debated.
While it is clear that closing points of entry
would give the US-led coalitions a better chance
to reduce the level of each insurgency, the more
important path to victory probably lies in
determining exactly from where these prospective
insurgents emanate.
There has been an
intense concentration in both the media and
academic literature on the role that
madrassas play in producing young men eager
to join the war against the West. Indeed, so
thoroughly has this been discussed and analyzed
that we are nearing the point where it will become
common wisdom that if Washington, London and their
allies can close down the madrassas, we
could halt the flow of reinforcements to the Iraqi
and Afghan mujahideen.
On the basis of at
least two factors, it would be wise to hold off on
enshrining as common wisdom the belief that
madrassas are the main producers of nascent
mujahideen. The first lies in some recent academic
work. Marc Sageman, in his excellent book
Understanding Terrorist Networks
(Philadelphia, 2004), and Robert Pape, in his
equally outstanding study Dying to Win (New
York, 2005), demonstrate that few of the
non-indigenous Islamist fighters the West is
encountering in the Iraq and Afghan insurgencies
are the products of madrassas.
Both
Sageman and Pape show that these fighters are,
more often than not, young men educated in areas
beyond the strictly religious studies that
dominate the madrassas' curriculum. Many
have studied sciences and engineering and hail
from stable, middle-class families. In short,
Sageman, Pape and a few other analysts have
concluded after extensive research and statistical
study that the largest number of foreign fighters
who travel to participate in the insurgencies in
Iraq and Afghanistan are not madrassa
graduates. The exception to this conclusion is
Pakistan, where it seems likely that
madrassas produce the majority of
Pakistanis who join the Afghan insurgency.
The second factor that argues against
accepting that madrassas are the main
source of the insurgencies' reinforcements
requires a bit of historical background. During
the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union
(1979-89), the Afghans played the overwhelming
role in defeating the Red Army. Non-indigenous
Muslims did, of course, travel to Afghanistan to
assist the Afghans. Their numbers grew as the war
wore on, and among the foreign fighters were Osama
bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Ibn Khattab, Mustafa
Hamza and many others who later helped to form
al-Qaeda and other like-minded organizations.
Others simply returned to their homes in Egypt,
Jordan and Saudi Arabia and began to attack their
national governments.
Where did the
non-indigenous Muslim fighters come from during
the Afghan jihad? Their travel to the battlefield
was certainly facilitated by the Muslim
Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations - and
some members of those groups, such as Sheikh
Abdullah Azzam and the Saudi Wael Julaidan, joined
the fight - as well as by some wealthy Muslim
individuals and Arab governments. It is well
known, for example, that the bin Laden family
business helped aspiring mujahideen travel to
Afghanistan and that Riyadh ordered Saudia, its
international airline, to offer reduced-fare
"jihad" tickets to young men on their way to
Afghanistan.
Many of these non-Afghan
Muslim mujahideen came out of the prisons of Arab
states. The West often forgets that Arab prisons
are built not only to house criminals but to
confine ideological opponents of the regime. Thus
the prisons are generally full to overflowing with
Islamic militants who, for example, oppose the
brutality of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's
regime or the al-Sauds' greed, corruption and
opulence in Saudi Arabia. Incarcerating these
militants helps the regimes maintain societal
control. Their detention, however, also has proved
to increase their Islamic militancy, because the
extremist inmates tend to congregate and to be
easy targets for instruction by jailed radical
Islamic scholars and clerics, both of which breed
a sense of fraternity.
Al-Qaeda deputy
leader Ayman al-Zawahiri emerged much more
militant after his incarceration and torture in
post-Anwar Sadat Egypt, as did Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi after his imprisonment in Jordan and
his instruction by the renowned Salafi scholar Abu
Muhammad al-Maqdisi.
Faced with a large
population of young, Islamic-extremist prisoners
during the Afghan jihad, governments across the
Arab world found a release valve for radical
religious pressures in their societies by freeing
ideological prisoners on the condition that they
would go to fight the atheist Soviets in
Afghanistan. Many such prisoners agreed and were
released by regimes that hoped they would go to
Afghanistan, kill some infidels and be killed in
the process.
Many of these fighters were
killed, but many were not and returned to bedevil
their respective governments to this day. Still,
for more than a decade, the Afghan jihad allowed
Arab governments to redirect domestic Islamist
activism outward toward the hapless Red Army.
Although the policy proved shortsighted, it
reduced domestic instability for most of the 1980s
and the first half of the 1990s.
Today, it
is hard to know for sure whether this trend is
repeating itself. Yet we do know three things for
certain: (a) every Arab government faces a
domestic Islamist movement that is broader and
more militant - though not always more violent -
than in the 1980s; (b) the insurgency in Iraq,
because the country is the former seat of the
caliphate and is in the Arab heartland, is an
attraction for Islamists far more powerful than
was Afghanistan; and (c) the flow of foreign
fighters into Iraq and, to a lesser extent,
Afghanistan seems to be more than sufficient to
allow a steady increase in the combat tempo of
each insurgency. Thus the situation seems ideal
for Arab governments to try a reprise of the
process that lessened domestic instability during
the Afghan jihad.
This circumstantial
argument that the current situation in Iraq is an
almost ideal opportunity for Arab regimes to
export their Islamic firebrands to kill members of
the US-led coalitions and be killed in turn is
augmented - if not validated - by the large
numbers of Islamic militants who have been
released by Arab governments since the invasion of
Iraq. The following are several pertinent examples
drawn from the period November 2003-March 2006:
November 2003: The government of Yemen
freed more than 1,500 inmates - including 92
suspected al-Qaeda members - in an amnesty to mark
the holy month of Ramadan [1].
January
2005: The Algerian government pardoned 5,065
prisoners to commemorate the feast of Eid al-Adha
[2].
September 2005: The new Mauritanian
military government ordered "a sweeping amnesty
for political crimes, freeing scores of prisoners,
including a band of coup plotters and alleged
Islamic extremists" [3].
November 2005:
Morocco released 164 Islamist prisoners to mark
the end of the holy month of Ramadan [4].
November 2005: Morocco released 5,000
prisoners in honor of the 50th anniversary of the
country's independence. The sentences of 5,000
other prisoners were reduced [5].
November-December 2005: Saudi Arabia
released 400 reformed Islamist prisoners [6].
February-March 2006: In February, Algeria
pardoned or reduced sentences for "3,000 convicted
or suspected terrorists" as part of a national
reconciliation plan [7]. In March, 2,000
additional prisoners were released [8].
February 2006: Tunisian President Zine
el-Abidine Ben Ali released 1,600 prisoners,
including Islamist radicals [9].
March
2006: Yemen released more than 600 Islamist
fighters who were imprisoned after a rebellion led
by a radical cleric named Hussein Badr Eddin
al-Huthi [10].
The justifications offered
by Arab governments for these releases vary. Some
claim they are to commemorate religious holidays
or political anniversaries; others claim they are
part of national-reconciliation plans. In some of
the official statements announcing prisoner
releases, Islamists are said to be excluded from
the prisoners freed; in others, they are
specifically included. In all cases, the releasing
governments are police states worried about
internal stability in the face of rising Islamist
militancy across the Islamic world, the
animosities of populations angered at Arab regimes
for assisting the US-led invasions of Iraq and
Afghanistan, and the powerful showings Islamist
parties have made in elections across the region.
While the motivation of Arab governments
in releasing large numbers of prisoners is
impossible to document definitively, it seems fair
to conclude that those governments are not
ignorant of the attraction that the US occupation
of Iraq and Afghanistan will exert on newly freed
Islamists, nor of the chance that it might take no
more than a slight incentive to dispatch some of
the former prisoners to the war zones.
It
may well be that the West is seeing but not
recognizing a reprise of the process that supplied
manpower to the Afghan mujahideen two decades ago.
Notes 1. "92 al-Qaeda
suspects freed in amnesty", Los Angeles Times,
November 17, 2003. 2. "Algeria pardons 5,065
prisoners to mark Muslim feast", Deepikaglobal,
January 18, 2005. 3. "Mauritania: Junta
declares general amnesty for political prisoners",
Reuters, September 5, 2005. 4. "One hundred and
sixty-four detainees belonging to the Salfia
Jiahdia group are pardoned," quote in Annahar
al-Maghribiyah, November 5, 2005. 5. "Morocco
pardons 10,000 to mark independence", Reuters,
November 17, 2005. 6. "Saudi Arabia: Almost 400
prisoners released", adnki.com, December 19,
2005. 7. "Algeria to pardon or reduce sentences
for 3,000 terrorists", Evening Echo, February
2006. 8. "Over 2,000 Algerians to be released
under reconciliation charter", Radio
Algiers/Channel 3, March 1, 2006. 9. "Ben Ali
frees 1,600 Tunisian prisoners", Middle East
online, February 27, 2006. 10. Yemen frees 627
Zaidi rebels, Middle East Online, March 3,
2006.
