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Architect of Global Jihad by Brynjar Lia

Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of al Qaida Strategist Abu Mus’ab al-Suri is Brynjar Lia’s definitive biography of the shadowy terror theorist, Islamist intellectual and sometime jihadi, Mustafa bin Abd al Qadir Sitt Maryam.

Sitt Maryam, who went by al-Suri in jihadi circles, was a red haired, fair-skinned Syrian renegade from the Muslim Brotherhood who was trained in military tactics and explosives in Saddam Hussein’s terrorist camps, passing on his skills to fellow “Arab Afghans” during and after the Soviet War. Attracted to secular military theory, guerrilla warfare tactics and strategy rather than theological disputes, hating the West but despising Salafist radicals, Lia’s Abu al-Suri is an isolated and anomalous figure in “the jihadi current” of the 1990’s and post-9/11 era.

“A born critic” with a grim and unsmiling demeanor who entangled himself in acrimonious personal feuds with leading jihadis, including Osama bin Laden, al-Suri failed to win many adherents to his insightful “system not organization” (nizam la tanzim) theory of jihad until his arrest caused his writings, especially his magnum opus The Global Islamic Resistance Call to go viral in the Islamist darknet.

A true intellectual, widely read in western literature and military writings, al-Suri crafted a stategy of jhad that adapted arguments of 4GW, “leaderless resistance” and classical Maoist insurgency to suit Islamist purposes and conditions while rejecting secret, hierarchical, organizations and al-Qaida’s “Tora Bora mentality” as historical failures. Self-radicalization and “sudden jihad syndrome” among alienated Western Muslims was the stuff from which al-Suri hoped to build a massively decentralized, open source, self-sustaining campaign of terrorism.

A hundred and forty some pages of text in Architect of Global Jihad are devoted exclusively to excerpts from al-Suri’s 1,600 page treatise on terrorism operations and strategy. He was a serious and determined opponent of Western civilization’s core values, despite having enjoyed long stretches of reasonably comfortable Western exile in Spain and “Londonistan” to such a degree that al-Suri was in no particular hurry to rejoin the jihad and even acquired the unenviable (and inaccurate) reputation of only being a “pen jihadi”.

Musab al-Suri, who is likely dead at the hands of Baathist jailers, is best described as an Islamist parallel to Vladimir Lenin before the Bolshevik Revolution. The similarities are striking, the irascible temperment, formidible intelligence, the frustrating politics of exiled revolutionary communities, the ideological marginalization both men endured as radicals in a community of already extreme activists and the embrace of terrorism (tactically in Lenin’s case, strategically in al-Suri’s). al-Suri and Lenin, despite wide ideological differences, as revolutionaries represent the psychological type Eric Hoffer termed “true believers” – pitiless, absolutely committed, intellectually rigid on matters of principle but tactically flexible and creative in terms of method.

Such men are dangerous, to themselves as well as to society.

Strong recommendation:

ADDENDUM:

Related posts on or including Abu Musab al-Suri

Lexington Green – Abu Musab al-Suri: Theorist of Modern Jihad and The Networked Jihad: Parasitic on Developed World Technology, Information, Ideas

Charles Cameron –A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad: Deciphering Abu Musab al-Suri’s Islamic Jihad Manifesto

John Robb – SURI: nizam, la Tanzim (system, not organization) – Global Guerrillas

The Jamestown Foundation –The Jamestown Foundation: Al-Suri’s Adaptation of Fourth … , The Jamestown Foundation: Al-Suri’s Doctrines for Decentralized … and The Jamestown Foundation: Abu Mus’ab al-Suri and the Third …

Jihadica –Abu Mus`ab Suri: Architect of Global Jihad Neglected? and Training for the Lone Jihadi

The Hoover Institution – The Terror Fringe

 Kudos to Dan Trombly of Fear, Honor and Interest. Why?

First, for drawing attention to the debate between Dan Drezner and Anne-Marie Slaughter over, hmm, “Real-world Realism” in American foreign policy:

Dan Drezner – Meet the new foreign policy frontier…. same as the old foreign policy frontier

….Well, this is… this is… I’m sorry, I got lost among the ridiculously tall strawmen populating these paragraphs.   I’ll go out on a limb and posit that not even Henry Kissinger thinks of the world the way Slaughter describes it.  Just a quick glance at, say, Hillary Clinton’s recent speech in Hong Kong suggests that actual great power foreign policies bear no resemblance whatsoever to that description of “traditional foreign policy.” 

Slaughter knows this very well, given that she was Clinton’s first director of policy planning.  She also knows this because much of her writing in international relations is about the ways in which traditional governments are becoming more networked and adaptive to emergent foreign policy concerns.  

Rebuttal time…..

Anne-Marie Slaughter– The Debate Is On! A Response to Dan Drezner

….I’ll take that bet. I think it’s exactly how Henry Kissinger still thinks of the world. Indeed, he has just published a book on China — of course, because from the traditional realist perspective China is by far the most important foreign policy issue in the 20th century, as it is the only possible military and economic competitor to the United States. Hence, as realists/traditionalists never tire of repeating, the U.S.-China relationship is the most important global relationship of the 21st century: what matters most is ensuring that as both nations pursue their power-based interests they do not collide catastrophically. Never mind that an avian flu virus that is both fatal and aerosol-borne arising anywhere in Asia could do far more damage to global security and the economy than China ever could — just see the forthcoming movie Contagion.

The second reason for giving Mr. Trombly props is that his excellent post in response to the above was a lot more interesting and substantive than their pleasantly jocular and Friedmanesque exchange:

Old School realism and the problem of society

….Waltz cares about states because states, in the time periods he examines, are the primary bearers of power. Power, not the state, is likely the more long-standing differentiation between the liberal/idealist and realist schools of international affairs. Realists generally care more about who has power, and particularly coercive power, because in the realist view, it is the power to control – not to collaborate, connect, or convince – which is the final arbiter and source of other forms of  socio-political-economic behavior.

For most of the history of thinkers identified with realism, the state did not exist, nor did the conception of the state as a unitary actor. Thucydides, long identified as one of the fathers of Western realism, was not a Waltzian structural realist in the slightest. As most early realists did, he cited the origins of political behavior in irrational and rational drives, which originate in the hearts and minds of men. There were no states in Thucydides’s day, but city-states, empires, and various other forms of political organization which did not survive to the present day. Thus one had to be quite conscious not just of particular parties and factions, but even individuals, who, in a polis such as Athens could completely upturn the designs of the Athenian state. In his description of the varying governments and systems of organization at play, Thuycdides actually shows a keen awareness of how regime types and the social composition can influence international politics, but only insofar as it involves the exercise of power. The exchange of goods, culture, and ideas matters far less to him. Slaughter does offhand mention that an Avian flu could kill far more than a war and be more likely. Interestingly enough, the plague of Athens does play an important role in Thucydides’s history

….This pessimism about the dangers of those lacking political virtue, or restraint of their passions, from acquiring power colors, in one way or another, much of the subsequent 2,500 years of realist thought. Ultimately, the interactions and aims of the various interest groups that Slaughter describes, and Drezner dismissed, are not necessarily prescriptively ignored but the subjects of active disdain, fear, and scorn

Much to like in this fairly lengthy post, which  I recommend you read in full.

Now for my two cents.

First, as a factual matter, it would not be hard to establish that Dr. Slaughter is correct and Dr. Drezner is not that Henry Kissinger does think like that. He most certainly did while he was in power, as is amply recorded in the National Archives, Kissinger’s memoirs and secondary works by historians and biographers who made Kissinger their subject. To all appearances, Brent Scowcroft, Kissinger’s protege thinks the same way, as did Kissinger’s master, Richard Nixon, whose private remarks regarding the unimportance of ephemeral actors to geopolitics were brutal. The UN, for example, Nixon dismissed as a place for “just gassing around” and Nixon was happy to use the UN (and George Bush the Elder) as unwitting props in his China Opening.

Policy makers do not think like IR academics do, even when they are IR academics like Dr. Slaughter or Dr. Kissinger. They don’t have the time or luxury of remove from events. The cool, detached, analytical, Harvard intellectual who wrote Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy became the emotive, egoistic, domineering, slightly hysterical, bureaucratic operator and diplomatic tactician as National Security Adviser. I suspect a six days a week, sixteen hour days of crisis management culture as Policy Planning Director at State likewise tempered Slaughter’s time for theorizing speculations.

That said, there is some room present for Dr. Drezner’s skepticism and Mr. Trombly’s “active disdain, fear and scorn”of non-state actors (which I think is a spot on gestalt of the Metternich-worshipping Henry the K).

The state as an organization of coercion and defense is unrivaled in human history by any other political form except the tribe. The state is fine-tuned to be a beast of prey and open challeges to the state, in all it’s panolpy of might, without a long preparatory period of eroding it’s legitimacy and attriting it’s will to power, seldom turn out well unless the challenger is another state. Non-state actors who challenge state authority tend to survive and thrive initially only by being elusive, deceptive, adaptive, faster and by inflicting moral defeats until they accumulate enough armed power to co-opt, thwart, deter or topple the state by force. This requires the challenger engaging the state in such a way that it habitually reacts with excessive restraint punctuated by poorly directed outbursts of morally discrediting excessive violence ( see Boyd’s OODA Loop)

When non-state actor challengers gain sufficient political momentum and break into a full-fledged armed insurgency, a dangerous tipping point has been reached because insurgencies are generally very difficult, expensive and bloody to put down, often representing a much larger pool of passive political discontent. The advantage begins to turn to the challenger because the mere existence of the insurgency is itself an indictment of the state’s competence, authority and legitimacy. Some states never manage to regain the initiative, slipping into state failure and co-existing with the insurgency for decades or being ignominously defeated.

We live in an era of state decline, or at least an era of erosion of the state’s willingness to use force in self-defense with the unconstrained savagery of a William Tecumseh Sherman or a Curtis LeMay. While overall, the zeitgeist favors the non-state actor, challenging the state a much harder trick when it is ruled by a charismatic sociopath, an authoritarian lunatic or when the machinery of security is organized on the basis of extreme and homicidal paranoia. Very little political “room” exists in such circumstances for non-state actors of any size to emerge because the state has used terror to atomize society and dissolve natural bonds of social trust; dissidents, if they are to be effective, often must rely upon external support and patronage.

This is not to say that the power Dr. Slaughter commends, to “collaborate and connect” is unimportant. Far from it, as it represents a very formidible long term threat to the omnipotence of states by permitting a highly networked and wealthy global civil society to self-organize to check their power. At the inception though, “collaboration and connection” is very fragile and vulnerable to state interdiction. Representing oneself as a political challenge to the state before power is acquired to any significant degree is unwise; if empowering civil society in tyrannies through “collaboration and connection” is the goal of the USG, it ought to be done under the radar with plausible pretexts and without an obvious affiliation to American sponsorship.

That would only be…..realistic.

Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba by Stephen Tankel

I returned from Texas yesterday to find on my doorstep, a review copy of Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba by Carnegie scholar Stephen Tankel.  Mirv Irvine of CNAS describes it thusly:

…one of the definitive accounts of Lashkar’s rise as well as the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and his book should be the go-to-guide for those looking to understand Pakistan’s reliance on proxies against India and its attached baggage

Moreover, my co-blogger and expert on esoteric religious militancy, Charles Cameron has already expressed book envy of this review copy and covets it. Heh. With such strong endorsements, I am moving it to the top of the pile for immediate reading.

From SWJ Blog:

Where we have been. According to US counterinsurgency doctrine, our soldiers and marines were expected to be “nation-builders.” Afghanistan, however, was the wrong war for that strategy of democratic nation building – for three reasons.

First, a foreign power cannot build a democratic nation, while having no control over that nation’s authoritarian leaders. In 2002, the US and the UN handed full sovereignty to Afghan leaders who proved to be venal and selfish. We conceded all leverage over Afghan leadership. That was a fatal mistake.

Second, a duplicitous Pakistan has maintained a 1500-mile long sanctuary. The recent decision to give Pakistan money only on a transactional basis – do this if you want to be paid – is commendable. It will influence behavior, because Pakistani officials cannot maintain their comfortable life styles without American money.

Third, our benign counterinsurgency strategy did not win the commitment of the people. In Iraq, the Sunni tribes did eventually reject the insurgency. In Afghanistan, the Pashtun tribes have not done so. Most Pashtun villagers survive by being chameleons; they expect the Taliban to return.

By giving away $18 billion over ten years, we created a culture of entitlement. Afghans from President Karzai down to village elders came to expect that we would fight for them and give them money. The US military alone undertook 16,000 economic projects, as if its mission was that of a giant Peace Corps. This money resulted in no change in the war; however, it did weaken the willingness of Afghans to rely upon themselves. When you give something for nothing, you receive nothing in return…

Read the rest here:

Sharp analysis on America’s homegrown jihadists by J.M. Berger in The Atlantic:

Why U.S. Terrorists Reject the Al Qaeda Playbook

…So the idea of a cadre of terrorists who can act on their own initiative is, to terrorist leaders, very appealing. The problem is that these new recruits aren’t quite with the program, in ways large and small.

One element of the individual jihad that most homegrown terrorists can’t seem to master is the part where you keep your mouth shut. It’s been a recurring theme, highlighted explicitly by American Al Qaeda member Adam Gadahn and in recent issues of Al Qaeda’s English-language magazine, Inspire:

We have witnessed that operations done by lone individuals has proven to be much more successful. So what can we learn from this? Group operations have a greater tendency of failing than lone operations due to the idea (of the operation) escaping the mind and tongue to other individuals. Even if those individuals are trustworthy in your eyes, there is still that 1% chance that someone from the intelligence agencies are listening in and paying attention to your groups’ actions or that the person you are talking to might be working for the enemy or that he might be pressured at a later period to give information to them. With lone operations however, as long as you keep it to yourself, nobody in the world would know what you’re thinking and planning.

….The problem with individual jihad is, ironically, its individuality. Although loose lips are probably the most operationally significant manifestation of this failure to conform, it works on the ideological level as well.  

For instance, Al Qaeda’s leaders and its most visible propagandists have repeatedly drummed their justifications for killing American civilians. From an operational standpoint, civilian targets are easier to hit, but Al Qaeda also estimates that they make for more effective theater, driving home the point that no Americans are safe from the terror network’s reach for as long as its list of grievances remains unsatisfied.

….Yet cognitive dissonance still creeps in. American terrorists inspired by Awlaki have chosen to aim their fire far more discriminately….

Read the rest here.

Berger is the author of Jihad Joe, reviewed here by Charles Cameron.