Page 1 of 2 Jihad goes intercontinental
By Walid Phares
Since the deadly attacks in Mumbai last November, counter-terrorism experts
worldwide, particularly those based in democracies in the crosshairs, have been
drawing long-term conclusions as to the forthcoming type of operations which
may hit cities and interests on more than one continent.
Today, we are in the post-Mumbai era where the expectation of recidivism and
copycats is eerily high. Indeed, the jihadis who seized a few buildings in
India's financial center, wreaked havoc at several locations in the city and
killed nearly 220 people have brought to the attention of national security
analysts a concept for the future: Urban jihad.
I had predicted these scenarios of mayhem perpetrated by
determined terrorists in chapter 13 of my first post-September 11, 2001 book, Future
Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against the West, published in 2005.
My projection of al-Qaeda and other jihadi tactics was based on a patient and
thorough observation of their literature and actions for decades. By now, the
public realizes that such scenarios are not just possible but highly likely in
the future. In all countries where jihadi cells and forces have left bloody
traces over the past eight years, at least counter-terrorism agencies have been
put on notice: it can happen there as well.
But the Mumbai ghazwa (raid) reveals a more sinister shadow hovering
over the entire sub-continent, if not also Central Asia. Although a press
release was issued by the so-called "Indian Mujahideen", many traces were left
- almost on purpose - to show Pakistani involvement, or to be more precise, a
link to forces operating within Pakistan, one of them at least being
Lashkar-e-Toiba.
Other suppositions left investigators in the region with the suspicion that
elements within the intelligence service in Pakistan were involved, even if the
cabinet wasn't aware of it. This strong probability, if anything, gave rise to
much wider speculation since this attack took place in the midst of dramatic
regional and international developments.
In the United States, the Barack Obama administration is gearing up to redeploy
from Iraq and send additional divisions to Afghanistan where the Taliban forces
have been escalating their terror campaign. In a counter move, the jihadi web
inside Pakistan has been waging both terror and political offensives. In
Waziristan and the Swat Valley, just prior to the latest attempts to strike
deals with local warlords, Pakistani units were compelled to retreat.
A few weeks later, Islamabad authorized the provincial administrators to sign
the so-called Malakand agreement with the "Movement for the Implementation of
Mohammad's Sharia Law", headed by Sufi Mohammad, in which local Taliban would
enact religious laws instead of the national secular code.
Across Afghanistan, Pakistan and India it has become clear that the jihadis are
acting as an overarching regional force. In short, while Kabul, Islamabad and
New Delhi are consumed with domestic challenges such as ethnic and territorial
crises, the nebulous beginning with al-Qaeda and stretching to the local jihadi
groups across the land is acting ironically as one, though with many faces,
tongues and scenarios.
The jihadis have become continental, while the region's governments were forced
into tensions among each other and with their own societies. Hence, exploring
the regional strategies of the jihadis is now a must.
Pre-9/11 strategies
In the post-Cold War era, a web of jihadi organizations came together
throughout the Indian sub-continent from Kandahar to the Bay of Bengal. The
nebulous was as vast as the spread of Islamist movements that took root in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
The cobweb is extremely diverse and not entirely coordinated. In many cases,
striking competitions and splinters characterize its intra-Islamist politics.
But from political parties to student unions to jihadi guerrillas, the main
cement of the plethora has been a solidly grounded ideology, inspired by local
Deobandism and West Asian-generated Wahhabism and Salafism.
The "jihadi causes" reflect a variety of claims, from political and sharia to
ethnic territorial. However, all these platforms end in the necessity of
establishing local "emirates", which eventually are building blocks towards the
creation of the caliphate-to-come.
Inside Pakistan, the Islamists fight secularism, impose religious laws and
crave an all-out "Islamist" - not just "Islamic" - nation. From this country, a
number of jihadi groups have been waging a war on India for the secession of
Kashmir, but in order to establish a Taliban-like state. The Pakistan-based
"Kashmiri jihadis" have connected with their India-based counterparts who in
turn have bridges with jihadis operating across India through various networks,
including the Islamic Student Union and later the "Indian Mujahideen". The
"web" stretches east to Dhaka and south all the way to Malaysia and Indonesia.
Unfortunately, Western and non-Western scholarship in the field didn't
recognize the regional dimension of the jihadi threat on the sub-continent
before the 2001 strikes in America and the subsequent attacks in Europe and
beyond. Jihadism in South Asia has always been conventionally linked to local
claims and foreign policies, while in reality the movement has developed a
regional war room; even before the US intervention in Afghanistan, the jihadis
had been seeking transnational achievements.
The post-Soviet grand design of al-Qaeda was to incite the "national" jihadi
entities to act in concert with one another, even if their propaganda machines
would intoxicate their foes with different narratives. Based in Kabul since the
takeover by the Taliban in 1996, the initial plan was to grow stronger inside
Afghanistan, make it a "perfect emirate" model to follow and from there expand
in all directions. Evidently, the first space to penetrate was Pakistan,
starting with the northwestern regions.
In the book Future Jihad, I have argued that one of the long-range goals
of the 9/11 attacks was to provoke massive jihadi uprisings in many Muslim
countries, especially in Pakistan, with help from insiders and the armed
forces.
The pre-9/11 plan was to infiltrate Islamabad from Kabul and thereafter to
penetrate Kashmir and back a massive jihadi campaign inside India. The enormity
of developments was supposed to enflame Bangladesh as well. In short, the plan
was to "Talibanize" the region from Kabul to the Gulf, slicing many enclaves in
northern India with it. Obviously, plan A collapsed as US and North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) forces crumbled the Taliban regime and dispersed
al-Qaeda.
Post-Tora Bora
As Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar crossed into Waziristan at
the end of 2001, the jihadi strategy for the region shifted to Plan B. However,
the basic goal didn't change - to establish a series of emirates in the
sub-continent.
What changed were the launching pads and the priorities. Now that the epicenter
shifted to these valleys inside northwestern Pakistan, the strategic hierarchy
imposed a new agenda: First, the tribal areas had to become a no-go zone for
Pakistan's armed forces and a new Afghanistan-in-exile was to be established:
al-Qaeda's remnants in the centre, surrounded by a belt of Taliban, themselves
surrounded by an outer belt of fundamentalist tribes and movements. Former
Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf understood that sending the bulk
of his forces there meant an all-out civil war, hence he kept a status quo amid
Western frustration.
But the jihadi forces moved on the offensive inside Pakistan via bombings and
assassinations, including failed attempts against the former president and the
murder of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Not only the border areas were
falling to the insurgency, but segments of many cities fell under the expansion
of urban jihadization. The Red Mosque bloodshed was only an example of the
generalized push to seize more power. The minimal goal set by the cohorts of
the Islamist and jihadi forces was to immunize Waziristan and the surrounding
valleys from any incoming attacks while launching blitzkriegs from these areas
in two directions: a comeback of the Taliban inside Afghanistan and strikes
inside India.
To the west of Waziristan, the equation was reversed. Instead of a Taliban
regime in Kabul spilling over into Islamabad, the post-Tora Bora situation
witnessed the emergence of a quasi-Taliban regime inside Pakistan spilling back
to Afghanistan, hence the recrudescence of operations in the latter's
provinces. Eastbound from Waziristan, the nebulous tasted the Pakistan-based
jihadis to serve as strategic decoys.
Indeed, the best way to confuse the Pakistani military is to draw New Delhi
into a renewed conflict with its western neighbor. Shrewdly - via
Lashar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Kashmiri jihadis and in association with
India-based jihadis - many terror attacks were launched inside Indian
territories as of 2002, including strikes against the parliament, trains and
other targets. The inflaming of the India-Pakistan theatre was and remains a
key strategic design in the hands of the regional jihadis. This is why the
recent strikes in Mumbai were ordered.
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