Al Qaeda In Iraq
How to understand it. How to defeat it.
by Frederick W. Kagan
09/10/2007, Volume 012, Issue 48

Al Qaeda In Iraq is part of the global al Qaeda movement. AQI, as the U.S. military calls it, is around 90 percent Iraqi. Foreign fighters, however, predominate in the leadership and among the suicide bombers, of whom they comprise up to 90 percent, U.S. commanders say. The leader of AQI is Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian. His predecessor, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, was a Jordanian.

Because the members of AQI are overwhelmingly Iraqis--often thugs and misfits recruited or dragooned into the organization (along with some clerics and more educated leaders)--it is argued that AQI is not really part of the global al Qaeda movement. Therefore, it is said, the war in Iraq is not part of the global war on terror: The "real" al Qaeda--Osama bin Laden's band, off in its safe havens in the Pakistani tribal areas of Waziristan and Baluchistan--is the group to fight. Furthermore, argue critics of this persuasion, we should be doing this fighting through precise, intelligence-driven airstrikes or Special Forces attacks on key leaders, not the deployment of large conventional forces, which only stirs resentment in Muslim countries and creates more terrorists.

Over the past four years, the war in Iraq has provided abundant evidence to dispute these assertions.

AL QAEDA WORLDWIDE

Al Qaeda is an organization pursuing an ideology. Both the organization and the ideology must be defeated. Just as, in the Cold War, the contest between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its captive nations was the real-world manifestation of an ideological struggle, so today, the global war on terror is a real-world contest between the United States and its allies and al Qaeda and its enablers. We can hope to defeat the ideology only by defeating its champion, al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda's ideology is the lineal descendant of a school of thought articulated most compellingly by the Egyptian revolutionary Sayyid Qutb in the 1950s and 1960s, with an admixture of Wahhabism, Deobandi thought, or simple, mainstream Sunni chauvinism, depending on where and by what group it is propounded.

Qutb blended a radical interpretation of Muslim theology with the Marxism-Leninism and anticolonial fervor of the Egypt of his day to produce an Islamic revolutionary movement. He argued that the secularism and licentious (by his extreme standards) behavior of most Muslims was destroying the true faith and returning the Islamic world to the state of jahiliyyah, or ignorance of the word of God, which prevailed before Muhammad. The growing secularism of Muslim states particularly bothered him. According to his interpretation, God alone has the power to make laws and to judge. When men make laws and judge each other according to secular criteria, they are usurping God's prerogatives. All who obey such leaders, according to Qutb, are treating their leaders as gods and therefore are guilty of the worst sin--polytheism. Thus they are--and this is the key point--not true Muslims, but unbelievers, regardless of whether they otherwise obey Muslim law and practice.

This is the defining characteristic of al Qaeda's ideology, which is properly called "takfirism" (even though al Qaeda fighters do not use the term). The word "takfir" designates the process of declaring a person to be an unbeliever because of the way he practices his faith. Takfir violates the religious understanding of most of the world's Muslims, for the Koran prescribes only five requirements for a Muslim (acknowledgment of the oneness of God, prayer, charitable giving, the fast, and the pilgrimage to Mecca) and specifies that anyone who observes them is a Muslim. The takfiris insist that anyone who obeys a human government is a polytheist and therefore violates the first premise of Islam, the shahada (the assertion that "There is no god but God"), even though Muslims have lived in states with temporal rulers for most of their history. The chief reason al Qaeda has limited support in the Muslim world is that the global Muslim community overwhelmingly rejects the premise that anyone obeying a temporal ruler is ipso facto an unbeliever.

Today's takfiris carry Qutb's basic principles further. Some pious Muslims believe that human governments should support or enforce sharia law. This is why Saudi Arabia has no law but sharia. But to Osama bin Laden and his senior lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahiri, it is not enough for a state to rule according to sharia. To be legitimate in the eyes of these revolutionaries, a state must also work actively to spread "righteous rule" across the earth. This demand means that only states aligned with the takfiris and supporting the spread of takfirism--such as the Taliban when it was in power--are legitimate, whereas states aligned with unbelievers, like Saudi Arabia, are illegitimate even if they strictly enforce sharia law. Some takfiris, particularly in Iraq as we shall see, argue in addition that all Shia are polytheists, and therefore apostates, because they "worship" Ali and Hussein and their successor imams. This distorted view of Shiism reflects the continual movement of takfiri thought toward extremes.

These distinctions are no mere theoretical niceties. The Koran and Muslim tradition forbid Muslims from killing one another except in narrowly specified circumstances. They also restrict the conditions under which Muslims can kill non-Muslims. Takfiris, however, claim that the groups and individuals they condemn are not really Muslims but unbelievers who endanger the true faith. They therefore claim to be exercising the right to defend the faith, granted by the Koran and Muslim tradition, when they endorse the killing of these false Muslims and the Westerners who either seduce them into apostasy or support them in it. This is the primary theological justification for al Qaeda's terrorism.

Takfirism is a radical reinterpretation of Islam that discards over a thousand years of Islamic scholarship and cautious tradition in favor of a literal reading of the Koran and Hadith that allows any layman--such as Osama bin Laden, who has no clerical standing--to usurp the role of Islam's scholars and issue fatwas and exercise other such clerical prerogatives. Interestingly, "takfirism" is what the Muslim enemies of this movement call it. Iraqis, for example, commonly refer to the members of AQI as "takfiris." This term has a strong negative connotation, implying as it does the right of a small group to determine who is a Muslim and to kill those who do not practice their religion in a particular manner. (Iraqis also sometimes call the terrorists "khawaraj," a reference to the Kharajites of early Muslim history that is extremely derogatory, implying as it does that al Qaeda members are schismatics, well outside of the mainstream of Islam.)

While takfirism is the primary theological justification for the actions of al Qaeda, it is not the only important component of the terrorists' ideology. Western concepts are deeply embedded in the movement as well, primarily Leninism. Qutb was familiar with the concept of the Bolshevik party as the "vanguard of the proletariat"--the small group that understood the interests of the proletariat better than the workers themselves, that would seize power in their name, then would help them to achieve their own "class consciousness" while creating a society that was just and suitable for them. Qutb thought of his ideology in the same terms: He explicitly referred to his movement as a vanguard that would seize power in the name of the true faith and then reeducate Muslims who had gone astray.

Bin Laden underscored this aspect of the ideology in naming his organization "al Qaeda," which means "the base." Qutb and bin Laden envisaged a small revolutionary movement that would seize power in a Muslim state and then gradually work to expand its control to the entire Muslim world, while reeducating lapsed Muslims under its power. Al Qaeda's frequent references to reestablishing the caliphate are tied to this concept. The goal is to recapture the purity of the "Rashidun," the period when Muhammad and his immediate successors ruled. This was the last time the Muslim world was united and governed, as bin Laden sees it, according to the true precepts of Islam.

Leninism (along with the practical challenges faced by revolutionaries in a hostile world) has informed the organizational structure as well as the thinking of al Qaeda. The group is cellular and highly decentralized, as the Bolsheviks were supposed to be. It focuses on seizing power in weakened states, as Communist movements did in Russia and China, and on weakening stronger states to make them more susceptible to attack, as the Communist movement did around the world after its triumph in the Soviet Union. Al Qaeda's center of gravity is its ideology, which means that individual cells can pursue the common aim with little or no relationship to the center. It is nevertheless a linked movement, with leaders directing the flow of some resources and ordering or forbidding particular operations around the world.

These, then, are the key characteristics of al Qaeda: It is based on the principle of takfirism. It sees itself as a Muslim revolutionary vanguard. It aims to take power in weak states and to weaken strong states. It is cellular and decentralized, but with a networked global leadership that influences its activities without necessarily controlling them. How does Al Qaeda In Iraq fit into this scheme?

throughout the Muslim world, helped in their training and travel by al Qaeda facilitators, and, once in Iraq, controlled by AQI. Finally, as previously noted, the non-Iraqis who are its principal leaders were part of the global al Qaeda movement before coming to Iraq. There should be no question in anyone's mind that Al Qaeda In Iraq is a vital and central part of al Qaeda, that it interacts with the global movement, shares its aims and practices, and will assist it as much as it can to achieve their common goals.

AQI'S MODUS OPERANDI
AL QAEDA IN IRAQ

AQI is part of the global al Qaeda movement both ideologically and practically. Ideologically, it lies on the extreme end of the takfiri spectrum. It was initially called the "Movement of Monotheism (tawhid) and Jihad," referring to the takfiri principle that human government (and Shiism) are polytheist. From its inception, AQI has targeted mainly Iraqis; it has killed many times more Muslims than Americans. Its preferred weapon is the suicide car-bomb or truck-bomb aimed at places where large numbers of Iraqi civilians, especially Shia, congregate. When the movement began in 2003 it primarily targeted Shia. Zarqawi sought to provoke a Shia-Sunni civil war that he expected would mobilize the Sunni to full-scale jihad. He also delighted in killing Shia, whom he saw as intolerable "rejectionists," who had received the message of the Koran and rejected it. Even worse than ignorance of the word of God is deliberate apostasy. The duty to convert or kill apostates supersedes even the duty to wage war against the regular unbeliever--hence -Zarqawi's insistence that the Shia were more dangerous than the "Zionists and Crusaders."

Bin Laden's associate Zawahiri remonstrated with Zarqawi on this point in a series of exchanges that became public. He argued that Zarqawi erred in attacking Shia, who should rather be exhorted and enticed to join the larger movement he hoped to create. Zawahiri's arguments were more tactical and strategic than ideological. He has no objection to killing unfaithful Muslims, but he has been eager to focus the movement on what he calls the "far enemy," America and the West.

Zarqawi too pursued attacks on Western targets, of course. He was implicated in the 2002 murder of USAID official Lawrence Foley in Jordan, and in the bombing of the United Nations office in Baghdad on August 19, 2003. But Zarqawi concentrated on attacking Iraqi Shia. A blast at the end of August 2003, for example, killed 85 Shia in Najaf, including Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim (older brother of Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, the largest Shia party in the Council of Representatives), and a series of attacks on Shia mosques during the Ashura holiday in March 2004 killed over 180. He finally succeeded in provoking a significant Shia backlash with the destruction of the golden dome of the Shia al-Askariyah Mosque in Samarra in February 2006. Zarqawi was killed by coalition forces shortly thereafter, but his successors continued to attack Iraqi Shia, even as they began to attack Iraqi Sunnis. In this regard, AQI has always been even more extreme in its takfirism than the global al Qaeda movement, which has equivocated about the legitimacy of attacks on fellow Muslims and the tactical desirability of exacerbating the Sunni-Shia split.

Like bin Laden's al Qaeda, AQI sees itself as a vanguard and defines its aim as reestablishing the caliphate. Furthermore, like takfirist groups around the world, it has attempted to put its ideology into practice wherever it has been able to establish control. AQI attacks judges in Iraq because they usurp God's power to judge. It establishes sharia courts to enforce its interpretation of Muslim law and custom. It even formally declared the establishment of the "Islamic State of Iraq," whose capital it variously located in the major cities of Ramadi and Baquba and the small village of Balad Ruz in Diyala, among other places. It designates "emirs" (commanders) to perform various functions and exercise control. It behaves in every respect as al Qaeda and the Taliban did in Afghanistan; indeed, it is almost indistinguishable from those groups in these critical practices--and in its intention to reach beyond Iraq at every opportunity. Thus, in addition to the Foley assassination in 2002, AQI conducted a complex attack on hotels in Amman in November 2005 that killed 60.

But AQI is not simply a local franchise of the global al Qaeda concept. Its leaders participate in the development of the global ideology, as Zawahiri's exchanges with Zarqawi and al-Masri demonstrate. It sends aid to the global movement and asks for and receives aid from it. In particular, it receives an estimated 40 to 80 foreign fighters each month, who are recruited by al Qaeda leaders
AQI uses two primary methods to establish itself in Sunni populations in Iraq. When it finds Sunnis who feel existentially threatened by Shia militias or military forces, or who seek military aid in pursuing an insurgent agenda, it offers help from its zealous and highly trained leaders and fighters. In communities not eager for such help, or that resist AQI's efforts to impose its religious code, AQI uses violence to terrorize Sunnis into participation. Wherever it goes, it seduces the disenchanted young with the promise of participation in a larger movement.

In 2003, the hostility within Iraq's Sunni Arab community to the prospect of a Shia-dominated government sparked an insurgency, of which AQI quickly took advantage. The fanaticism of AQI fighters (who often warn Westerners that they love death more than we love life) recommended itself to Sunni Arabs who faced the daunting task of defeating both American military forces and Iraq's Shia majority. The convergence of AQI and the Sunni insurgency in the ensuing years allowed the takfiris to establish solid bases in Anbar Province and then in Baghdad, Sunni areas to the north and south, Diyala, Salah-ad-Din, and Ninewa. AQI bases in Falluja, Tal Afar, and Baquba included media centers, torture houses, sharia courts, and all the other niceties of AQI occupation that would be familiar to students of the Taliban in Afghanistan and takfiri groups elsewhere. Local thugs flocked to the banner, and those who resisted were brutally tortured and murdered. Imams in local mosques--radicalized in the 1990s by Saddam Hussein's "return to the faith" initiative (to shore up his highly secular government by wrapping it in the aura of Islam)--preached takfirism and resistance to the Americans.

The presence of large numbers of Iraqis in the movement has contributed to confusion about the relationship between AQI and al Qaeda. Apart from the radicalized clerics and some leaders, most of the Iraqis in the organization are misfits and ne'er-do-wells, younger sons without sense or intelligence who fall under the spell of violent leaders. The recruitment process in many areas is like that of any street-gang, where the leaders combine exhortation and promises with exemplary violence against those who obstinately refuse to join. In this regard, AQI is -subtly different from the al Qaeda movement that developed in Afghanistan. The takfiri elements of the mujahedeen who fought the Soviet invader in Afghanistan were highly diverse in origin. That war attracted anti-Soviet fighters from across the Muslim world. They did not fit easily into Afghanistan's xenophobic society, and so concentrated themselves in training camps removed from the population centers after the Soviet withdrawal and the rise of the Taliban. Americans saw these foreign fighters in their camps as the "real" al Qaeda, the one that attacked the United States in 2001.

But al Qaeda was only part of the story in Afghanistan. The Taliban forces that seized power in 1994 imposed a radical interpretation of Islam upon the population and attacked the symbols of other religions in a country that had traditionally tolerated different faiths and diverse practices. Like their AQI counterparts today, the Taliban tended to be ill-educated, violent, and radical. And they were just as necessary to sustaining al Qaeda in Afghanistan as the Iraqi foot soldiers of AQI have been to supporting that movement. Bin Laden provided essential support, both military and financial, to put the Taliban in power and keep it there. In return, the Taliban allowed him to operate with impunity and protected him from foreign intervention. The war began in 2001 when Taliban leader Mullah Omar refused to yield the al Qaeda members responsible for 9/11 even though the Taliban itself had not been involved in the attacks.

Afghanistan's extremist thugs and misfits, once in power, facilitated the foreign-led al Qaeda's training, planning, and preparation for attacks against Western targets around the world, including the attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, and 9/11. In return, al Qaeda's foreign fighters fiercely defended the Taliban regime when U.S. forces attacked in 2001, even forming up in conventional battle lines against America's Afghan allies supported by U.S. Special Forces and airpower. In Afghanistan the relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban was symbiotic, mutually dependent, and mutually reinforcing. It included a shared world view and a willingness to fight common enemies. There was a close bond between indigenous Afghan extremists and the internationalist takfiris. Al Qaeda in Iraq benefits from just such a bond.

Yet there is a difference between the two movements in this regard: Whereas in Afghanistan al Qaeda remained separate from Afghan society for the most part, interacting with it primarily through the Taliban, AQI directly incorporates Iraqis. Indeed, the foreign origins of AQI's leaders are a handicap, of which their names are a constant reminder: Zarqawi's nom de guerre identified him immediately as a Jordanian, and the "al-Masri" in Abu Ayyub al-Masri means "the Egyptian." The takfiris clumsily addressed this problem by announcing their "Islamic State of Iraq," which they presented as an umbrella movement Iraqi in nature but which was in fact a thin disguise for AQI, and by inventing a fictitious leader with a hyper-Iraqi, hyper-Sunni name, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

As for its local recruits, they undergo extensive training that is designed to brainwash them and prepare them to support and engage in vicious violence. One of the reasons some Iraqi Sunnis have turned against AQI has been this practice of making their sons into monsters. Many Iraqis have come to feel about AQI the way the parents of young gang members tend to feel about gangs.

These AQI recruits often remain local. Young Anbaris do not on the whole venture out of Anbar to attack Americans or Shia beyond their province; AQI recruits in Arab Jabour or Salah-ad-Din tend to stay near their homes, even if temporarily driven off by U.S. operations. The leaders, however, travel a great deal--Zarqawi went from Jordan to Germany to Afghanistan to Iraq, and within Iraq from Falluja to Baquba and beyond, and his subordinates and successors have covered many miles at home and abroad. The presence of AQI cells in each area facilitates this movement, as well as the movement of foreign fighters into and through Iraq and the movement of weapons, supplies, and intelligence. AQI facilitators provide safe houses and means of communication. Some build car bombs that are passed from cell to cell until they are mated with the foreign fighters who will detonate them, perhaps far from where they were built. Even though most members of AQI remain near their homes, the sum of all of the cells, plus the foreign leadership and foreign fighters, is a movement that can plan and conduct attacks rapidly across the country and around the region, and that can regenerate destroyed cells within weeks. The leaders themselves are hooked into the global al Qaeda movement.

You can not convince me, al quaida would be there if sadam was still in power. Serioulsy the Bush Administration fucked up hugely in Iraq. Not to mention lieing to the American people about the reasons for going to war.

Blind NEOCONs.
Even Blinder Democrats.

Common sense has left America in favor of party allegiances and self righteous crusades of conquest masked over a oil grab.

Yeah, but let's not diminish his REAL fuck up..walking away from bin Laden and AlQaeda 6 months after they attacked us...talk fuck up!!!

__________________

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.



When you want to know the truth, search all articles available on your topic. The truth lies somewhere between it all.

Wait a minute, I thought...Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Rice and Powell and Nixon and Reagan and Gingrich and Ashcroft and Gonzalez attacked us on 9/11? At least that's what I've been told.

Are you implying it was this bin Laden character and these Al Qaeda people?

CIA took a huge shit During clinton. Its integrity and competence is nil. Bush has not fixed these issues in anyway. The anaylisis was correct under old man bush and Reagen. Saddam was a stalinist..hel bent against any fundy anywhere especialy in his country.

__________________
Cussing out low class inbreds isnt uninteligent, its honest

Good typing is not inteligent its dexiteritous.

Everything you just said is total bullshit

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.


To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.