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Blogfriend and an expert on comparative religious studies, Charles Cameron has graciously offered a paper on comprehending the worldview of radical Islamist terrorists, which I have posted below in it’s entirety. Cameron is formerly the Principal Researcher for the Center for Millenial Studies and is currently writing a book on religious and apocalyptic violence:

A Difficulty in Translation

By Charles Cameron                                                                                                                                                                                       

It is not easy to get behind the veil that a natural hatred for those who attack and maim us draws across our ability to see OBL clearly, nor to understand what kinds of influence might lean some undecided Muslims, perhaps already prone to dislike American influence in world affairs, to move closer to a mindset that’s amenable to jihad.

Yet this in turn is something we have great need of, as Thomas Hegghammer made clear in an article on Jihadi Studies: the obstacles to understanding radical Islam and the opportunities to know it better, published in the Times Literary Supplement on April 2.

Hegghammer asks, rhetorically, “More than six years after 9/11, the study of jihadism is still in its infancy. Why has it taken so long to develop?” and answers himself, “the most important reason is no doubt that the emotional outrage at al-Qaeda’s violence has prevented us from seeing clearly.”

Understanding how the jihadist mindset works is not easily accomplished at a visceral level, without calling on some of our own most treasured memories and associations — as Michael Scheuer, ex-chief of the bin Laden desk at CIA, did in his book, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America, Revised Edition:

The decision of bin Laden and his colleagues, I believe, deserves no less thoughtful consideration than that of the American revolutionaries we revere as heroes. Unfortunately, the West today hears the statements of bin Laden and his colleagues with precisely the same sort of ear with which the British Crown listened to the Americans … This is not to say bin Laden and his al Qaeda colleagues were correct or deserve sympathy; as I said, America will have to use military force to confront, battle, and defeat bin Laden, al Qaeda, and their allies. It is to say, however, that bin Laden has been a worthy enemy … and that those in the United States should to able to have some appreciation for his movement by reflecting on the origins of their own country.

That’s an astonishing “move” — linking bin Laden associatively with the heroes of the American Revolution — but it has the merit, if we will allow it, of helping us view bin Laden through other eyes than those of our own instinctual response to attack. I would like to attempt a similar maneuver here, correlating bon Laden’s visit to the Tora Bora caves with Martin Luther King’s final speech given some 40 years ago on April 3, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. In making this linkage, I feel it necessary to express my strong appreciation for Martin Luther King’s life, which in some respects played a similar role to that of my own mentor, Trevor Huddleston.

I quote King in this context because an insight into his self-identified following in the footsteps of Moses may be transferable into an understanding of bin Laden’s stay in the Tora Bora caves, viewed as an act of piety through pious Muslim eyes. King said

We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

King is consciously aligning himself here with Moses, presenting his own story as the story of Moses receiving the commandments of God, descending from the mountain, and dying within sight of the promised land. It is a powerful rhetorical device, and one whose power we can easily understand when Dr King uses it.

It is also a rhetorical device used, mutatis mutandis, by Osama bin Laden — and our understanding of Martin Luther King’s use of it may allows us to glimpse its force when drawn on within an Islamic context by bin Laden — in words, but even more in deeds. In a post recently at  hipbone out loud, I wrote

… this level of insight then allows us to see al-Qaida to some extent as pious Muslims may see it. For though the means bin Laden uses may be critiqued from an Islamic and even a strict Wahhabi point of view – as the recent publication of  a devastating book length attack by one of al-Q’s earliest major theological supporters, Sheikh Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif, shows – it is still the case that his actions can have different resonance when “read” through Islamic eyes.

When bin Laden, at the lowest point of his jihadist efforts, leaves the Yemen for Afghanistan and betakes himself to the Tora Bora caves, he will inevitably remind some Muslims of the Prophet himself, who at the lowest point of his prophetic vocation left Mecca for Medina and sought sanctuary in a cave — where by the grace of his God, a spider’s web covered the entrance in such a way that his enemies could not see him.

Our natural tendency in the west is to see Tora Bora in terms of military topography, as a highly defensible, almost impregnable warren of caves deep within some of the world’s most difficult mountain territory. What we miss may be precisely what Muslim piety will in some cases see — that bin Laden’s retreat there is symbolically aligned with the “sunna” or life of the Prophet, and thus with the life of Islam itself — in much the same way that Christians, in the words of Thomas a Kempis, may practice “the Imitation of Christ”.

Gratitude where gratitude is due: Lawrence Wright makes this very point eloquently in his book, The Looming Tower. But Wright is rare in the attention he pays to religious markers of this sort, and I am also grateful that we have such scholars as Scott Atran and Michael Vlahos to inform us. Wright’s broader point about bin Laden’s “imitation” of Mohammed fits in with Vlahos’ observations as to the coalescing of contemporary jihadist narratives with those of the sunna, the life of Mohammed and his companions, in his  Terror’s Mask: Insurgency within Islam:

Hat tip to Insurgency Research Group.

Der Spegel interviews Ernst Uhrla , head of Germany’s BND intelligence agency on radical European Islamists.

Yesterday, The SWJ Blog ( and blogfriends on Twitter, one of whom characterized it as “weak”) aleted me to a futurist slide by General Barry McCaffrey with his predictions of potential national security events faced by the United States in the near term. I’m certain this was in the context of a much larger presentation, given to a specific group with stated policy concerns; unfortunately, those particulars are unknown to me:

My commentary:

First of all, one notes the number of “safe” predictions in the sense that none of these represent even the likeliest of outliers much less scenarios representing true, statistical rarity, “Gray Swans”. There’s a certain probalistic logic to doing so – the status quo more often than not in any given scenario will continue uninterrupted except by minor adjustments. On at least half of this list, given the breadth and/or vagueness, I’m certain that McCaffrey will be able in five years to say that he was more right then wrong. Unfortunately, the narrow number of domains from which he is extrapolating – nothing on cutting edge tech, applied science, the environment, macrodemographics, religious fundamentalism or interesting “intersectional” possibilities – leaves  policy makers with a vision that may be more susceptible to a Black Swan event than before by reinforcing previously held expectations.

Sidebar: I’d love to see Art Hutchinson, Tom Barnett, John Robb , Michael Tanji and the gents at Kent’s Imperative also critique the slide.

Now, in fairness, to the good General, a few of his bullet points are more interesting than others. I think McCaffrey’s called a hard landing for Cuba correctly unless Raul Castro has a secret admiration for Deng Xiaoping and the comprehension of economics to execute a Deng-like transition. It will be difficult for Cuba to really open up without the economic logic of the American market and favorable asylum policies for Cubans immediately kicking in as it did for the East Germans when the other Soviet bloc states ceased cooperating with Honecker’s repressive policies. With Chavez too, I think General McCaffrey is correct given that there is a little remarked friction between Venezuela the oil producer and America the refiner of Venezuelan oil ( refining capacity is itself a choke point along with oil production nor is all crude created equal; some is more expensive to refine than others). Finally, the temptation for al Qaida to “send a message” to the new administration and create downstream political effects may prove well-nigh overwhelming; it may even override their present policy of waiting until to pull off a catastropic level act of terror.

How do you see it ? Comments, questions, rants are all welcome.

Michael Tanji points to this report by RAND to explain why the IC isn’t demonstrating any.

Part of the problem, I will hazard is a guess, is legacy security and pesonnel policies. “Deep understanding” of cultural-political variables of foreign societies requires a mix of academic historical, linguistic and social science expertise coupled with extensive “in-country” experience. Ideally, in the same analyst but failing that at least within the same analytical team. Aside from the collector-analyst division which could stand some erasure, many of the most useful sort of moldable, raw, talent – children of native speakers and Americans with extensive experience living overseas – have a difficult time getting through the clearance process.

Then, once these folks are in, cultivation of a strategic perspective – which includes synthesis, intuition and imagination and a long time horizon alongside analysis – have to become a priority over narrow analytical-reductionism and a “presentist” mindset. We have guys who do the latter already, they’re called journalists and the best of them do it very well. The IC should be playing at another level.

Blogfriend Matt Armstrong was recently featured at the USC Center for Public Diplomacy where he had a very thorough and well-considered op-ed on Information Operations and New Media. Pretty much everything Matt had to say were things the USG should be doing in attempting to craft some kind of coherent narrative of it’s national objectives, policies and values:

SYNCHRONIZING INFORMATION: THE IMPORTANCE OF NEW MEDIA IN CONFLICT

Insurgents and terrorists increasingly leverage New Media to shape perceptions around the globe to be attractive to some and intimidating to others. New Media collapses traditional concepts of time and space as information moves around the world in an instant. Unlike traditional media, search engines and the web in general, enable information, factual or not, to be quickly and easily accessed long after it was created.The result is a shift in the purpose of physical engagement to increasingly incorporate the information effect of words and deeds. Thus, the purpose of improvised explosive devices, for example, is not to kill or maim Americans but to replay images of David sticking it to Goliath.

The U.S. military is actively and aggressively revising its role in shaping its own narrative in cyberspace, but this is falling short. While the U.S. is finally coming to grips with the centrality of information and perceptions, it remains confused as to how to use information effectively. American responses seem to stem from the belief that the message and the messenger we are countering are the same without regard for the target audience, intent, or how the message fits into a larger narrative, which perhaps mirrors our own perception of information as propaganda. ….A famous dead Prussian once said that war is a continuation of politics by other means, but the reality today is that war is not part of political intercourse with foes but an orchestrated, if loosely, effort to gain strategic influence over friends, foes, and neutrals. YouTube, blogs, SMS and traditional media, make every GI Joe and Jihadi a communicator, public diplomat, and persuader. Our adversaries understand and exploit this reality. Writing to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2005, Ayman al-Zawahiri stated that “we are in a battle, and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media [sic].”The U.S. military as reluctant heir to the information throne in an online world has several inherent challenges. First, operating in the environment of New Media requires awareness and agility inconsistent with the current organizational culture of the military. For example, in Iraq the military broke through the bureaucratic red-tape and started posting videos on YouTube. However, this small “victory” was incomplete: the group that uploaded to YouTube was still not permitted to view YouTube. In effect, they were posting information they were not authorized to see.”

Those quotes were snippets. Matt’s post is rich in detail and really requires being read in full.

I have tilted at the IO windmill a few times in the past. It’s a subject that is both easy as wel as difficult to analyze. Easy, because the USG has yet to initiate and/or master the fundamentals of good IO as Matt’s post makes clear ( there are genuine IO experts in the USG, perhaps even a large number of them, but the bureaucracies are not institutionally optimized to conduct IO with consistency or coordination) but difficult because the level of genuine sophistication and effective nuance in strategic communication remains so far off. Even if that level of “play” was achieved by our civil service and soldiers, any  IO campaign could be undone in an instant by some clumsy action or statement from a political appointee or elected official concerned primarily with fellating some domestic special interest group. 

Matt’s focus on “synchronicity” is apt. It will be a herculean task needing laser beam focus to get all of the USG players on the same message most of the time; even then some dissension and debate being showcased is itself a vital advertisement of the attractive nature of a liberal, open society and a sharp contrast with the dismally intolerant and brutally ignorant alternative our Islamist enemies have to offer. In pursuing that, I’d like to offer a few suggestions:

Credibility is the COIN of the Realm:

Matt touched on this but I want to give this principle added weight. For all our official, overt, communication by any spokesman representing the United States, the best long term strategy is a reputation of credibility. It may hurt to concede errors or enemy successes in the short run but having the global audience grdugingly concede that “the Americans speak the truth” adds momentum of every word, every idea and every action we undertake. It will not bring us love because oftentimes, our pursuing national interests will come at the expense of others but truth-telling will yield something more valuable, respect. No one cares to be treated as if they were a fool and most of the transparently self-serving gibberish official spokesmen offer up pays dividends only in contempt being added to the anger foreigners already feel at some of our policies.  Credibility is to the war of ideas what COIN is to guerilla warfare and it is a valuable and exceedingly rare quality because once your credibility is lost, it is lost.

Without Attention Being Paid All Our efforts Are Useless:

Credibility is not enough. Key messages or memes also have to be interesting. If people are not psychologically engaged in the presentation then they are not hearing it, much less reaching the points of comprehension, sympathy or agreement. American popular culture and commercial advertising is nothing short of an unrelenting global juggernaut that is eroding traditional mores of every society with which it comes into contact, yet our official proclamations remain starkly uninteresting even to most Americans so why should a Yemeni teen-ager or Afghan farmer tune in to what we are selling ? As long as our attempts at capturing attention remain at the level of dull mediocrity we can expect to fail.

Influence is a Long Term Investment:

The 1980’s saw a march toward capitalism and democracy in part because we were reaping the harvest of decades of student visas, cultural and scientific exchanges and consistent public diplomacy outreach. From Mongolia to Czechoslovakia Chile there were reformers taking power who were ” Chicago Boys” who had imbibed free markets at the feet of Nobel laureates. The National Endowment for Democracy, the USIA, VOA, Radio Free Europe and NGO’s like the AFL-CIO whose efforts and programs abroad were robust and self-confident. American society was permitted by the USG to sell itself. These things cost pennies on the dollar compared to having to  use hard power options and they lower our transaction costs when sanctions or military intervention is the order of the day.

Deception is Best Left to the Clandestine Operators :

HUMINT based strategic influence efforts, black propaganda and disinformation and various arts of deception will be better left to covert programs, plausibly deniable third parties and used sparingly and with subtlety. The increasingly “radically transparent” world ensures that too many sophisticated eyes with all sorts of agendas will be analyzing our official spokesmen 24/7. The best will can hope to accomplish is effectively framing our public message to be truthful and compelling. Any meme that is verifiably false, if we believe we must put it out into the global media environment, cannot have a return address.

IO is a secondary area of operations for the United States.  Good IO programs cannot remediate incompetent statecraft or poor military leadership or put a “happy face” on obvious disasters but poor or absent IO capabilities can fritter away the capital that successful diplomacy or military action can accrue when our enemies accusations go unanswered. 

Crossposted at Chicago Boyz