Wake Up, World! We are Fighting Two Wars Against Al Qaida

More Muslim militant attacks in India? Must mean that Kashmir is still an unresolved issue.

As long as Indian troops are patrolling lands where Muslim insurgents exist and elicit government responses that ostracize the Muslim public and moderates, there will continue to be attacks from terrorist/insurgent groups on Indian soil. Period.

Local Muslim insurgent groups are being trained, armed and supported by Al Qaida, similar to how they were from 2003-2006 in Iraq. Exporting Jihad to fight various causes allows Al Qaida to recruit and spread their insurgency around the world.

This has everything to do with our "War on Terrorism," which we should actually rename "War on Al Qaida." In order to defeat our enemy, we must first understand them.

Al Qaida's mission is to return Muslim lands back to a regional Caliphate who rules through Sharia Law. This is their end state. In order to do this, they've taken on the "far-enemy," the United States and the rest of the West, who through attrition they believe will withdraw support for oppressive local Muslim regimes, or their "near-enemy," so that they can overthrow the governments and install the Caliphate.

Michael Scheuer, in his book Imperial Hubris, details Osama bin Laden's list of 6 anti-Muslim American policies that Al Qaida uses to recruit and fill their ranks. They are:

1) US support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israeli's thrall
2) US and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula
3) US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan
4) US support for Russia, India and China against their Muslim militants
5) US pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low
6) US support for apostate, corrupt and tyrannical Muslim governments

The fact is that most people don't understand that we aren't just fighting one war against Al Qaida, we are fighting two, distinctly different wars. They are:

1) To kill or capture key Al Qaida leaders and members of their existing terrorist cells
2) To stop the Al Qaida Social Movement, which mainly exists within greater Muslim society who see Osama bin Laden as a folk hero, exists online in jihadist websites and continues to fill the ranks of Al Qaida actual

For the past seven years, we have all been fighting the first war with little to no regard for the second war, which is infinitely more dangerous. The danger of not winning the first war is exactly what you saw today with the Mumbai attacks, 9/11, 3/11, London Bombings, etc. At most, the danger is the death of anywhere from 50-3,000 casualties each attack. None of these attacks actually threaten the existence of any nation.

However, lose the second war and you risk alienating and pissing off hundreds of millions of moderate Muslims throughout the entire world. Now instead of having a few thousand potential attackers, you have certain parts of the globe that are no-go zones and have a potential clash of civilizations, as Samuel Huntington calls it.

We must be smart. We must work with local law enforcement and intelligence to kill or capture key terrorist leaders. We must take a look at each of the six anti-Muslim policies and see which ones actually are essential to our Homeland Security, which we must remember is the ultimate goal, and end the ones that we deem are not.

In order to defeat Al Qaida and the global Salafi Jihadist insurgency, which has its hands in Kashmir, we must know our enemy and work intelligently to defeat them.

This takes us back to the issue of Kashmir. Solve this problem, appease local Muslim groups in Kashmir with the help of the Pakistani government, and you will find a similar situation to the Anbar Province in Iraq where local insurgents, who ideally want to put down their weapons and take care of their families and live in peace, actually turn against their Al Qaida supporters.

We must make joining the jihad unnecessary, but in order to do that we must bring in our local Muslim populations, support political reforms in Muslim countries, and make joining the Jihad extremely uncool for unemployed local youths in Muslim countries and ostracized Muslim youth in Western countries.

Most importantly, we must never take our eye off both of our wars with Al Qaida. For, we will never win one in lieu of the other.

Comments

[jhNY]

So far these wars which you promote have caused the deaths of up to a million innocent people in Iraq, and several thousand in Afghanistan. State-sponsored terrorism, as for example the aforementioned wars, is manifestly more efficient at killing and refugee-making than the doings of a very few desperate marginalised extremists. There are pictures of tortured Muslims all over the internets, which will be recruitment fodder for terrorists for years, and that's because we tortured Moslems and took pictures. This entire tactic of shotgun versus noisy, bothersome mosquito has cost the US trillions of dollars, mostly borrowed from our best pals, the (formerly? kinda?) communist Chinese. And despite all our ham-fisted effort, we are no safer, just broker. Stop advocating war for what should have always been a matter of international law. It doesn't work, it hasn't worked and it will not work tomorrow.

[Alonso Quijano]

I used to believe that "moderate muslims" had a role to play. More recently, I have begun to ask myself, where are those "moderate muslims" in stopping "honor killings"? They are either absent or woefully ineffective. If they are absent or woefully ineffective in protecting their own women against such barbarism, how can they be expected to stand up against barbarism or terrorism against foreigners of a different religion?

Bear in mind that the "honor killings" are not closely linked to political control, neither is a fight against honor killings directly threatening to any government.

And can "moderate muslims" have a moderating effect on quotes from the Qur'an, where Allah commands war against the infidel?

Dream on -- IMHO "moderate muslims" are no friends of tolerance in any form . . .

[Infokronea]

Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but there are actually worse things out there than al Qaeda. What we have here is a state (or a third party on a par with a state) acting in a characteristic pseudo-terrorist-group fashion. Do states/powerful third parties use terrorist groups? Sure. (Abu Nidal, for example.) But the signature of this event is not that of an actual terrorist entity, but a state/third party. As for the possible purpose, the obvious answer would be that this event was designed to trigger a war between Pakistan and India. But it could just as easily be something else. The trick here is to avoid jumping to the conclusions this brutal piece of public theatre was designed to illicit, be patient, and let the pros do their jobs. Otherwise, guess what? They win.

[richardvjohnson]

Brilliant post, Sean, and with only one exception thoughtful and intelligent comments. It makes most of what's been said in the blogosphere and MSM since Wednesday night seem overblown and irrelevant. The problem is truly global (Thailand and the Phillipines have insurgencies, Indonesia has had terrorism) and yet confined to one small slice of Islam. Hezbollah may or may not be considered terrorist, but all jihadist groups are Sunni fundamentalists with intellectual roots in Egypt and financial roots in Saudi Arabia. In Iraq and Pakistan Shia mosques have been bombing targets. To Al Qaeda, heretics are even worse than infidels.
Economic development and education wouldn't be a panacea - most of the 9/11 plotters were middle class and educated and some had lived in the West. Empowering women would help, in India and Africa and Orthodox Israel as well as in Dar-al-Islam.

[steamboat]

yeah, yeah, yeah ! Blame everybody but the muslim nut-jobs.........They blow-up buddhist monuments, its why were those monuments there. They kill ba'hai in Iran, its why are these ba'hai not muslim. They kill christians in E. Timor, its why aren't those christians muslim. They blow-up synagogues in Tunisia its why were those synagogues there. Everything is everybodies fault but the muslim nutjobs. Well, I'm NOT buying that. They are the bad guys--period!

[Sean Gilfillan - Huffpost Blogger]

What? Are you replying to the right post, steamboat? This isn't talking about blame. This post is talking about methods to kill Al Qaida leaders and end terrorism. We can blame ourselves for bad tactics, but obviously no one's blaming anyone but the terrorists for the attacks. The post is discussing how to end attacks like these and exposing mistakes we've made in trying to put an end to them and stop Al Qaida.

[TomViscelli]

(part 2, sorry, long comment)

To quickly stem one criticism, this approach is not hubristic. Since the end of the Cold War, emerging governments have moved to the left and the right and upside down according to their own local needs all without upsetting international order. Offering up the American system as a model is not the same as forcing it upon others.

I understand your approach to labels, but calling it a war on al Qaeda is misleading and can lead to poor application of resources. To meet a standard that would speak right to the heart of our argument within moderate Muslim circles, it may be more accurate to fight a war against the takfiris.

[Sean Gilfillan - Huffpost Blogger]

Al Qaida is part of a bigger Global Salafi Jihad but you are right that we should narrow it down. The problem is we need to define our enemy and labeling them Takfiris or Salafi Jihadists would be confusing to most people. You'd be declaring war on an ideology and not an actual group with physical, economic and global ties. We can defeat Al Qaida HQ. That is one war. We can also stop the Global Salafi Jihad or the flow of Takfiris, which is an entirely different war with different resources.

[Infokronea]

I agree with you. "Calling it a war on al Qaeda is misleading and can lead to poor application of resources" is 100% right on. But don't blame this young man for getting it wrong. It isn't his fault. The problem comes from my generation, not his. Until we can properly cross the great divide between "this is above your pay-grade" and what is passing for an education in terrorism in the system, the greatest resource this country has, individuals like this young man, are going to be short-sheeted by folks from my generation for reasons we'd like to blame on the Cold War atmosphere we evolved in, but probably has more to do with the fact that we're all control freaks. On behalf of the lot of us, my apologies.

[TomViscelli]

Sean, thought provoking as usual, thanks.

Here's another way to look at the situation, which doesn't repudiate what you're saying, but might tie in a few other useful ideas and give a more holistic way to develop future programs and actions.

Just as during the Cold War, we are facing off against an ideological enemy. Sometimes the faceoffs will be political, sometimes economic, and sometimes violent. Given the daily distractions in those spheres, we can't lose sight of the fact that the ideas that underpin the politics, the economics, the warfare are simply at odds with our own ideas.

Given the common root, I also approach the two paths you laid out as being two branches of a tree, rather than separate struggles. After all, war is politics by any other means. Again, as during the Cold War, the two other major branches where we need to focus are our own economic strength and ideological consistency. We can't be tempted to become a police state out of paranoia nor can we allow our economy to crumble. In order to win a war of ideas, we have to be able to effectively show your "social movement" radicals that not only are their ideas corrupt, but that we actually offer something better. Call it the American Dream if you can stomach the term, and then ask former Warsaw Pact citizens how important Radio Free Europe was to them. It's painfully obvious that we're not doing this well right now.

[Sean Gilfillan - Huffpost Blogger]

True, Tom. We can't afford to change how we operate because of fear. I believe a huge push to involve Muslim moderate role models, like Sports athletes, famous musicians, actors and imams should be taking place in Western countries to their Muslim minorities. Also, the Muslim countries need to develop these role models and do some serious political and economic reform. Living in a country where the elite or royals are eating well while you are living off camel spiders can't help the situation and makes the appeal of Sharia Law (which stands for equality for all men and freedom from a societal hierarchy...at least that's what Salafists pitch it as) even more powerful to the average, unemployed, pissed off Muslim youth.

[protagonia]

Will we see a quicker draw-down of troops projected in Iraq, now?

And only to be redeployed to their next Hell?

[pakmn74]

There cannot be any peace without solving the Palestinian and the Kashmir issue. These problems were bequeathed to the world by the British and have been exacerbated by the US. Both these countries have used force to achieve their objectives around the world. Force has never solved any problems on a long term basis and violence only results in violent reactions. You would think that the world would have learned by now that there cannot be peace without justice. .

[Sean Gilfillan - Huffpost Blogger]

You are correct, Pakmn74. These are issues that are used to recruit young Muslims to the jihad and viewed by the majority of moderate Muslims as unfair. We need to solve these issues asap, but it will take some very big concessions from both Israel and India, both of which I'm not sure are ready to do so.

[steamboat]

Sean, remember how much Israel was willing to concede at the Camp David talks in 2000? The deal that President Clinton got for the Palestinians. What happened, Sean? Who said NO to the deal? Hint: It wasn't Israel...........................Be honest, these nut-jobs want all of us to be muslim or else. Hey, what did the buddhists ever do to Palestine or Kashmir? Didn't stop the terrorists from blowing up their monuments, did it? Those non-muslims in southern Sudan they kill and make slaves, what did they ever do to Palestine? Or those christians in E. Timor?

[CaptD]

Good luck to all the Indian "Police"; they have a tough job ahead of them!

Make the World proud of you, be professional seeking the truth and get to the bottom of these attacks against your Country (and the World's freedom).

I'm glad you have some captives to question, hopefully they will be able to shed some light into the who and why of this!

You and all the people in India (NO MATTER WHAT RELIGION), affected by these terrorists, are in our prayers.

[Bitsko]

Only TWO wars? What about Ethiopia and Somalia? I guess being in Africa they don't matter?

[Sean Gilfillan - Huffpost Blogger]

They are both part of the two bigger global wars I outlined above. Those two wars are not just concentrated in the Middle East, but part of a global Salafi Jihad being waged all over the world. One war is to root out Al Qaida leaders and cells all over the world, including in Somalia and Ethiopia, and also stop the Al Qaida Social Movement, which definitely has some roots in Africa. Especially since the Global Salafi Jihad was born in Egypt through Sayyid Qutb's writings and spread by Egyptian ex-pats like Al Zawahiri.

[vote-obama]

the problem in the world is extremism on all sides. muslim extremist, christian extremist, jewish extremist, liberal and conservative extremist. if we get rid of the extremist a lot of today's problems will be wiped out overnight. please everybody listen to robert kennedy's "the mindless menace of violence".

condolences and hope for a better future to the good people of india.

[Bitsko]

And atheist extremism, as in communist China. As an atheist myself, they aren't making me look good.

[nyquist27]

the government is China make be professedly anti-religious, but it is hardly a major motivation behind their oppressive policies.

[steamboat]

Athiests like Stalin didn't make you look good either.

[farzana]

Extremism is there among a number of faith traditions but the islamist version has outdone the others in militancy and barbarism. I am a secular Muslim who condemns the Mumbai blasts in no uncertain terms.
In order to combat this scourge, the ideology of jihad has to challenged by moderate Muslims across the world. Moderates need to distance themsleves from the doctrine of jihad. Quranic prescriptions on jhad have to be viewed as contextual, with no applicability in modern times.

[Sean Gilfillan - Huffpost Blogger]

I think you are on to something here, farzana. In a 20 page paper outlining how we can defeat Al Qaida's Social Movement, I talked about the need to recruit successful moderate Muslims via the Muslim Entertainment Industry, Business Enterprises, and Educational fields and make them role models for the Muslim youth. The fact is that Osama bin Laden, even if they don't agree with his policies, is revered in the Muslim world for his courage. This is a man that turned down the life of a multi-millionaire to go off and fight the Global Jihad. Most people in the Muslim world would not agree with his tactics, but they would admire him, similar to how some people admire Che or other "freedom fighters". The fact is that we need moderate Muslims, both in Muslim countries and in countries with Muslim minorities, to become role models and expose the Jihad for what it is....the glorification for life under the Taliban. Show young Muslims the atrocities committed by Al Qaida and what life was like under the Taliban and you will quickly see them turn away from it. Obviously this is just one step we need to take to solve this humongous and complex problem, along with pushing for political reform in Muslim countries and assimilation and opportunities for 2nd generation Muslims in Western countries, but it is definitely a step we have to take.

[davism97]

Someone should've sent this article to W back in 2003 before he decided to invade and destroy a peaceful country that had nothing to do with terrorism. Come to think of it does that make W a terrorist too?

[Mugzi]

Sounds like it...why can't we all just respect all races and their religious beliefs. That doesn't mean I want to be converted to other religions, just respected.

[HybridTea]

You forget that India was attacked by Pakistan supported terrorists long before there was an Al-Qaeda. Granted that this is related to the Kashmir issue but it is related even more to Pakistan being unable to have a stable democracy and economic development and instead choosing to deflect the issue by pointing its people to Kashmir.

A foe greater than Al-Qaeda started in 1917 in Russia and collapsed in 70 years later. Al-Qaeda will also fade away in time.

[scotsense]

Perhaps when people wake up and realise there is no such thing as al - queda then hopefully it will fade away as quickly as it was invented. Stop calling bands of idiots organised and they will realise that by not empowering them they are nothing

[DCato]

Exactly right.

[Sean Gilfillan - Huffpost Blogger]

Right, scotsense. The entire point of spectacular attacks is to gain attention to a cause. All urban insurgencies need to thrive by eliciting harsh government responses in order to turn the population against the government.

Al Qaida definitely does exist though. It has various committees and a HQ as well as any number of active/inactive terrorist cells that exist throughout the world. Members of the Al Qaida Social Movement are quick to act when they see or witness anti-Muslim policies enacted on fellow Muslims. These people might not be professionals or members of Al Qaida Central, but they are definitely members of the larger social movement.

[Sean Gilfillan - Huffpost Blogger]

Al Qaida will definitely fade away as soon as we help it die out. By contributing to its recruiting efforts, we are not helping. America is the only thing keeping Al Qaida going by feeding into Al Qaida Social Movement's "anti-Muslim" policies. As soon as we downgrade our involvement and put this back onto the local law enforcement level and withdraw our military, we will begin to see it die out.

[jhNY]

The only thing keeping Al Quaida going is the fervency of its adherents. The only thing driving this fervency is religion and hopelessness. Of the two drivers, which do you think will more likely die out during a global depression? Hint: neither.

[notb observer]

The missing piece of the puzzle continues to be modernized and westernized Muslims, who have not taken a very vocal and organized stand against their extremist cousins.
There will never be much success in trying to have Western representatives or their Arab surrogates trying to inject themselves into this mess. This is a Muslim problem that must be resolved by the Muslims themselves, first and foremost by ramping up education and job opportunities to allow potential jihadis to join the mainstream. Second, there needs to be a decisive religious education campaign, or a second awakening, aimed at informing the gullible and uneducated masses that the Muslim faith is not much different than Christianity and Judaism, and that anyone attempting to subvert the messages of peace of any religion are infidels, blasphemers and heretics. The table needs to be turned on those who would use religion to achieve any political or social aims through violence or intolerance.
The Muslims controlled much of Europe during the Dark Ages, and did so with tolerance and fairness. We should never forget that ! It was through their scientific discoveries, building upon the work of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans that we managed to emerge from darkness into the Renaissance.

[RoXXanne]

How can they take a stand if they are killed off by their own government as soon as they open their mouth? The only thing they can do is to flee their own country and live in exile in some foreign land, where their education means close to nothing...

[farzana]

You are absolutely right that this is a Muslim problem that has to be resolved by Muslims. Unfortunately most of my co-religionists have adopted a cavalier attitude about these happenings, asserting they shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of a few. If they were to denounce terror, it would amount to acknowledging collective guilt. I find this view to be utterly misguided. While no one is accusing all Muslims of terrorism, their collective guilt lies in not raising a voice against it.
I wish Muslims would recognize the folly of thier inaction.
As a secular Muslim heading a secular Muslim organization in Canada called the Muslim Canadian Congress, we have tried to reclaim the faith from the fanatics but there needs to be a grassroots movement against terrorism acorss the world to send a mesage to extremists that their murderous agenda is not supported by Muslims.