THE 4GW ANTI-STATE
“al Qaidastan” Rising
Fourth Generation Warfare, according to it’s leading theorists, is designed to challenge the legitimacy of the state. It’s “kinetic” attacks are really a form of ju-jitsu designed to strike the enemy society at the mental and moral levels and thereby cripple the state apparatus through which modern nation-states govern themselves.
Repeated successful mitary forays by 4GW entities, perhaps in alliance with local ethnic and criminal organizations, can create a “TAZ” or temporary autonomous zone, outside the rule of law. “Temporary” is a useful descriptor because, frequently, police, paramilitary or Army units are able to “re-take” the TAZ from 4GW control because these decentralized forces melt away, go underground or shift to a less direct form of conflict such as system disruption or the use of IED type munitions.
However, there are now enough examples of recent vintage to tentatively answer the question of what happens when a TAZ under the domination of a 4GW group slides toward permanency? Al Qaida, is now doing so for the second time in it’s history, as detailed by Pramit Pal Chaudhuri:
On September 6 the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan marked the first anniversary of its de facto recognition. On that day last year, the Taliban used the name when it signed a ceasefire agreement with the Pakistani government. The ceasefire is in tatters, but the terror trail of the recent plots in Germany and Denmark indicates that the Emirate is doing fine.
The Emirate’s writ is spreading among the mountainous areas that make up the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that run along the Pakistan-Afghan border. Going by trends, the Emirate is more than just a safe haven: It is on a nightmare path of nation-building. Osama bin Laden will be its sultan; Mullah Omar its spiritual leader; heroin and smuggling its economic drivers; and terrorism its primary export. “Al Qaeda is building a mini-state, an enclave, in the FATA,” says Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al Qaeda.
Besides the heartland of South and North Waziristan, “al Qaedastan” also encompasses a belt of tribal land going up to Mohmand and Bajaur areas. Its sphere of violent influence, says a former member of the Afghan National Security Council, includes bordering Afghan provinces like Loya Paktia and, increasingly, Nangarhar…
…The malik, a local chief who helped keep the peace since the British Raj, and represented an older secular Pashtun nationalism, has been marginalized. The mullah now holds sway. “The Durrani tribal maliki that once dominated these areas is being physically eradicated,” says Michael Shaikh of the International Crisis Group.
Some argue this is nothing more than Durrani nobility being replaced by an upstart subtribe, the Ghilzai. But the spread of Islamicism is blurring tribal distinctions. “Today’s Taliban are fighting for an extremist ideology, not for Ghilzai supremacy,” says an Afghan official. An example of how this ideology is taking root is how it has ended the centuries-old feuds between the Waziri and Mehsud subtribes.
The “al Qaedaization” of the Taliban can be seen in their use of suicide bombing, human shields and bloodier kidnappings, practices abhorrent in traditional Pashtun culture. The Afghan government has no doubt this represents foreign tutelage. Says the Afghan ambassador to the U.S., Said Tayeb Jawad: “Al Qaeda is the commander, the Taliban the foot soldier. Al Qaeda provides strategic guidance“
William Lind, during the Israeli-Hezbollah War, suggested that after having attained a critical mass of legitimacy through sustained political-military success, 4GW organizations faced a choice of “To Be or Not To Be, a State“. Lind argued that statehood was equivalent with vulnerable “targetability” and that Westphalian-era mummery was something that 4GW forces could best do without.
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