zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — one bead from NASA for the glass bead game as rosary ]
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photo credit: Norman Kuring, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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Consider her sacred, treat her with care.

[ by Charles Cameron — some recent game references with seriously playful intent ]
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Jihadists and RAND agree. As Omar Hammami puts it:

I believe that these kuffar, despite being from amongst the most misguided of creation, have actually put their finger on something that is extremely beneficial for us to ponder. This important idea that I am referring to here is found in the beginning of the long quote I just read to you all … The authors of this RAND research stated that the ideology of al-Qaida is in reality its center of gravity…

On the US side of things, DangerRoom tells us a report recently requested by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs considers the battle of minds to be pretty important, too:

Ten years of war have given the U.S. military more than its share of frustrations. According to an internal Pentagon study, two of them were as fundamental as they were related: Troops had terrible intelligence about Iraq and Afghanistan, and they told their own stories just as badly.

Those are some preliminary conclusions from an ongoing Pentagon study into the lessons of a decade of combat, authorized by Gen. Martin Dempsey, the multi-tour Iraq veteran and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The study doesn’t single out any sensor or spy platform for criticism. Instead, it finds that U.S. troops didn’t understand the basic realities of society, culture and power structures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and couldn’t explain what they were doing to skeptical populations.

“We were slow to recognize the importance of information and the battle for the narrative in
achieving objectives at all levels,” according to a May 23 draft of the study, which InsideDefense
obtained, “[and] we were often ineffective in applying and aligning the narrative to goals and
desired end states.”

Okay?

Ideology, thought, aqueedah, narrative, mind, mind, mind. That’s — what can I say — a hugely influential consideration regarding whether the war is won or lost…

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So when GEN Robert Crone visited Small Wars Journal ahead of the Unified Quest Army Future Game, I posted a comment quoting Hammami as saying “the war of narratives has become even more important than the war of navies, napalms, and knives” and posed my question:

how will words and narratives – not so much in terms of propaganda and deception but as recruitment lit, as moral suasion, as scripture, and as poetry and song — figure into your game?

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How did that go, guys?

I know public relations figured into the game, one of the reports I’ve seen tells me that:

Though the wargame addressed issues ranging from cyberwar to terrorism, from interagency coordination to public relations, central to the scenario was the challenge of deploying US forces to countries where they have not operated before.

But that’s about it — the rest seem to be all about things like seabasing — “putting an entire Army Stryker brigade afloat on ships and then landing them at minor harbors” — and AirSea Battle — “the Air Force and Navy concept for projecting US power overseas in the face of increasingly sophisticated defenses”…

Materiel, not morale…

And besides, this goes far deeper than PR, doesn’t it?

The respective “force multiplying” impacts of martyrdoms and rumors of martyrdoms, of sacrileges and rumors of sacrileges, of bombed out weddings, poetry, ahadith — such things are difficult to assess, aren’t they? And as Klaus Klostermeier observed, “Theology at 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade seems after all, different from theology at 70 degrees Fahrenheit…” — even the weather can make the difference between a few stragglers and an enraged crowd…

So. Take a look at those guys around the table (above).

In game terms: have the game designers figured out an impact ratio for bullets to beliefs yet?

[ by Charles Cameron — Hammami, Awlaki, RAND, Marisa Urgo and a theology of risk ]
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Omar Hammami, also known as Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, is a young American from Alabama who joined Al-Shabaab in Somalia around 2007. Blogfriend JM Berger of Intelwire recently commented:

Omar Hammami would like you to think he’s the next Anwar Awlaki.

Among the reasons Berger gives: Hammami, like al-Awlaki, seems to like quoting RAND analyses of jihadist thinking. Case in point: in his most recent video, Hammami quotes the RAND report, Beyond al-Qaeda: Part 1, The Global Jihadist Movement MG-429.

I want to take a look at what Hammami chooses to quote, what he has to say about it, and what conclusions we may derive.
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Hammami quotes RAND:

Hammami goes directly to the Conclusion: New Approaches to Combating the Global Jihadist Movement, which begins on page 159, and zeroes straight in:

From the analysis in this report, it is clear that ideology is the center of gravity of the global jihadist phenomenon.

Hammami’s primary concern is with this idea, which he specifically couples with the “decapitation” of those who can propagate the ideology — bin Laden and al-Awlaki are his examples here. Having made this point, and spoken briefly about the connection between global and local jihads, he continues with his RAND quotation, again focusing on the centrality of ideology:

The war on terror at its most fundamental level goes to the war of ideas. The goal is to deny extremists the high ground of Islamic politico-religious discourse, which has been adroitly exploited by al-Qaeda to further the appeal of its own radical and absolutist rhetoric.

He goes on to quote:

Although it is inherently difficult for outsiders to attack an ideology, the ideological approach has weaknesses that are susceptible to exploitation.

And again — I’ve skipped some more detail — he quotes:

Some analysts also note that the jihadist movement is sensitive to religious ideology to the point of vulnerability. Combatants are replaceable, but theologically trained sheikhs are not. Decapitation strategies should be expanded from operational leaders to ideologues. These ideologues are often asked to provide sanction for terrorist operations and are therefore a key part of terrorists’ decision making process. Preventing al-Qaeda’s ideological mentors from continuing to provide theological justification for terrorism could expedite the movement’s ideological deterioration.

Okay, those are the parts of the RAND analysis that Hammami wants to emphasize, and to sum up, he’s concerned with the centrality of the AQ “ideology” (RAND’s term) and with the “theologically trained sheikhs” who are its irreplaceable transmitters.
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Hammami comments:

Hammami’s own comments deserve some notice, too — he clearly thinks the RAND authors are onto some key points, and his endorsement adds to the credibility of the RAND analysis.

He says:

I believe that these kuffar, despite being from amongst the most misguided of creation, have actually put their finger on something that is extremely beneficial for us to ponder. This important idea that I am referring to here is found in the beginning of the long quote I just read to you all … The authors of this RAND research stated that the ideology of al-Qaida is in reality its center of gravity…

He goes on to say:

Now from my perspective, I’d like to say that irrespective of what these kuffar have to say, from my own personal deductions, I believe that this conclusion is absolutely correct. … Let me just restate that conclusion in my own words, to make things clear. As Muslims, I think it’s pretty much a no-brainer that the most important element which brings about the cohesion and thereby the strength of our entire Muslim ummah is no other than our aqeeda and our manhaj, i.e. our methodology for how we propose to bring about productive changes. Now, I’m fairly certain after using these native terms from our religion, that no-one will disagree with the fore-stated conclusion…

And from there he goes on to discuss the significance of Islam as he sees it:

The pinnacle of our religion is not merely to establish the individual rights of Islam within the sphere of our personal, everyday lives, but rather, worshiping Allah is much bigger than that. The reality of worship actually extends to all ways in which we please Allah (swt) and make his word uppermost in this earth. The true pinnacle of our religion is to establish tawhid in the earth and to eradicate shirk — and this must be done collectively, as an ummah.

This aim, he concludes, can only be achieved under the leadership of a renewed Caliphate,
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Worship:

All this — the preaching and practice of jihad — is an act of worship.
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What counts?

It was apparently a namesake of mine, William Bruce Cameron, whose 1963 book Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking included a quote now frequently attributed to Albert Einstein:

It would be nice if all of the data which sociologists require could be enumerated because then we could run them through IBM machines and draw charts as the economists do. However, not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

Einstein is usually credited with the second sentence there, but it’s a pleasure to read the context in which the quote in question was originally uttered.

It is, for instance, easier to count guns, or even “all military-age males in a strike zone“, than it is to account for zeal, religious and otherwise. As a result, we devote far more intellectual firepower (think about that metaphor for a moment) to tracking people and materiel than we do to tracking ideas and passions. And when we do try to think about ideas, we often leave out the passions that empower them.

Which is why I’m grateful for the notion that Al-Qaida has an “ideology”, but don’t think it quite cuts it.

An ideology is propositional. It refers to a system of ideas, but says nothing about the fervor with which those ideas are held and acted upon. Specifically, it doesn’t address worship.

Which is where I think Marisa Urgo gets things right.
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Marisa gets it right:

Marisa Urgo gets it right, I’d suggest, when she says:

there’s a gap in our understanding that simply can’t be described using the discourse of psychological dysfunction or earthly geopolitical ends.

That quote is from a recent post in which Marisa is commenting on Ayman al-Zawahiri‘s Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet (2d ed).

And that — in a nutshell — is why Hammami “translated” from RAND’s use of the word “ideology” to the “native terms” of his religion, aqeeda and our manhaj. That’s why he mentioned worship.

For Hammami, as for al-Zawahiri, jihad is sacramental. It is an act of worship.

In his book The Qur’anic Concept of War, the Pakistani Brigadier SK Malik writes, with emphasis:

In war, our main objective is the opponent’s heart or soul, our main weapon of offence against this objective is the strength of our own souls…

I’d like to take that one step further.

We speak of our own troops being “in harm’s way” in war — and this is no less true of those who are targeted by drone strikes. War is a risky business for all concerned. But how much risk are jihadists taking — and how much risk do they perceive themselves to be taking?

Al-Zawahiri and bin Laden, Omar Hammami and other jihadists take risks, but they calculate their risk-taking in terms of the soul — and in this way their risk-assessment notably diverges from our assessment of their risk. We in the West tend to take the Napoleonic position that “God is on the side of the big battalions” — but the jihadists prefer to believe that invisible, which is also to say, unaccountable, help may be at hand, in line with Qur’an 8.9:

When ye sought help of your Lord and He answered you (saying): I will help you with a thousand of the angels, rank on rank.

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A theology of risk:

Back to Marisa, who raises an interesting point in this regard: She suggests, specifically with respect to Zawahiri, but with application to all those for whom jihad is a sacramental act, that the jihadists are essentially calculating according to a theology of risk:

What may be at work here is what some theologians call a personal theology of risk. It’s an idea common enough in Christian traditions; however, I’m uncertain of its presence in Islam. It would be interesting to find out if such an idea exists, because few, if any, analyst have attempted to interpret al-Qaeda’s decision-making as a function of theologically-informed risk. And yet given his life choices, theologically-informed risk-taking makes more sense than any realpolitik explanation for Zawahiri’s decision-making.

If Zawahiri has a theology of risk, it would require bold moves at the worst times, constantly pushing the envelope in order to see for a moment (without worldly obstructions) God’ will. It’s the very essence of counter-intuitive, because, to put it bluntly, God’s wisdom is not man’s, and a person guided by a theology of risk will take seemingly irrational risks at incredibly inopportune times in order to seek out that personal knowledge of Godly wisdom.

For “a person guided by a theology of risk” in Islam, in fact, the only risk is a lack of trust in God. As al-Awlaki notes, for many westernized Muslims, “the concept of Jihad is one in where it is ‘dangerous’ to practice. Their trust in Allah is not there…”

For he who entrusts himself to God in jihad, there are only two outcomes, frequently described as such: martyrdom — or victory.

From the jihadist’s point of view, it’s a win-win situation.

The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind by Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer 

I received a review copy of The Hunt for KSM from  Hachette Book Group and was pleased to see that the authors, Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer, are investigative journalists, one of whom, Meyer, has extensive experience reporting on terrorism, while McDermott is also the author of the 9-11 highjackers book, Perfect Soldiers. So, I was looking forward to reading this book. My observations:

• In the matter of style, McDermott and Meyer have opted to craft a novel-like narrative of their research, which makes The Hunt for KSM a genuine page-turner. While counterterrorism wonks used to a steady diet of white papers may become impatient with the format, they already know a great deal about operational methods of Islamist terror groups and the general public, who are apt to be engaged by the story, do not. While enjoying the yarn about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the villain behind 9-11 and his downfall, the general reader picks up a great deal of important information.
• McDermott and Meyer deserve kudos for their fair and balanced handling of Pakistan – and I say this as a severe critic of the Pakistanis. While pulling no punches about the perfidy of Pakistan’s elite, the ties of the ISI and their religious extremist parties to terrorist groups including al Qaida, they give credit where credit is due to Pakistanis who made the difference in assisting the United States and it’s investigators in tracking down KSM and his AQ associates . “Colonel Tariq” of the ISI, in particular stands out as a courageous and sympathetic figure.
• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed emerges in the story as a master adversary, part Bond villain, part sinister clown, who confounded the efforts of the FBI and the CIA for years with his prodigious ability to organize and orchestrate geographically diverse terrorist networks, fundraising, logistical support, bombings and murder like a one-man KGB while remaining as elusive as a ghost. His abilities, daring, good fortune and defiant resilience in captivity are impressive enough in McDermott and Meyer’s telling that they unfortunately tend to overshadow the fact that KSM is an enthusiastic mass-murderer. A facet that comes out to it’s true ghastly extent only in their description of KSM personally beheading kidnapped reporter Daniel Pearl.
• The bureaucratic bungling and stubborn infighting of the FBI and CIA, with assistance from the DoD and Bush administration on particularly stupid decisions related to the interrogation and reliance upon torture while excluding AQ experts and experienced KSM case investigators from talking to KSM, makes for a profoundly depressing read. It contrasts poorly with the dedication and sacrifice demonstrated by law enforcement agents Frank Pellegrino, Matt Besheer, Jennifer Keenan and those who aided them.

The Hunt for KSM closes with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as he is at the present time, on trial at Guantanamo Bay, a story with a climax but not yet an epilogue.

Well written, concise yet dramatic, The Hunt for KSM is warmly recommended.

[ by Charles Cameron — bin Laden on oath breaking, translation issues, failure of secular viewpoint to comprehend importance of Islam to jihadists, mild countering violent extremism issues, etc etc ]

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This para from bin Laden writing as “Your brother, Zamray” to “Shaykh Mahmud, may God protect him” (ie Abu Abd al-Rahman Atiyyat Allah) on 21 October 2010 looks to me like an astounding windfall:

Perhaps you monitored the trial of brother Faysal Shahzad. In it he was asked about the oath that he took when he got American citizenship. And he responded by saying that he lied. You should know that it is not permissible in Islam to betray trust and break a covenant. Perhaps the brother was not aware of this. Please ask the brothers in Taliban Pakistan to explain this point to their members. In one of the pictures, brother Faysal Shahzad was with commander Mahsud; please find out if Mahsud knows that getting the American citizenship requires talking an oath to not harm America. This is a very important matter because we do not want al-Mujahidn to be accused of breaking a covenant.

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This raises a whole number of issues for me. But first, let’s read another translation:

You have perhaps followed the media trial of brother Faisal Shahzad, may God release him, during which the brother was asked to explain his attack [against the United States] in view of having taken an oath [not to harm it] when he was awarded his American citizenship. He responded that he lied [when he took the oath]. It does not escape you [Shaykh `Atiyya] that [Shahzad’s lie] amounts to betrayal (ghadr) and does not fall under permissible lying to [evade] the enemy [during times of war]…please request from our Pakistani Taliban brothers to redress this matter…also draw their attention to the fact that brother Faisal Shahzad appeared in a photograph alongside Commander Mahsud. I would like to verify whether Mahsud knew that when a person acquires an American citizenship, this involves taking an oath, swearing not to harm America. If he is unaware of this matter, he should be informed of it. Unless this matter is addressed, its negative consequences are known to you. [We must therefore act swiftly] to remove the suspicion that jihadis violate their oath and engage in
ghadr.

That one is almost half as long again as the first, at 182 vs 122 words — and even with the bracketed words removed, runs to 156.

Both versions come from West Point’s CTC, the first from page 7 of SOCOM-2012-0000015 [link to single letter] in the folder of documents released [link opens .zip file], and the second, longer version from p. 36 of CTC’s accompanying report titled Letters from Abbottabad: Bin Ladin Sidelined? [link opens .pdf]

It seems to me that the second is far more informative than the first — essentially the first is a stepped down, pop version of the second, more easily reader-digested. All of which makes me wish I had ten additional years orthogonal to the time-stream in which to immerse myself in Arabic, but no dice.

Here’s the explanation, from page 10, footnote 3 of the CTC commentary:

The quality of the English translation provided to the CTC is not adequate throughout. When the translation was deemed inadequate, quotations cited in this report have either been amended or translated anew by Nelly Lahoud.

which leaves me wondering what a Nelly Lahoud translation of the entire batch would look like? — indeed, very much wishing I could read it — and who depends on the pop versions for their understanding of documents such as these? — myself all too often sadly included.

When in any case, as AP’s Matt Apuzzo tweeted (h/t Daveed G-R):

Drawing conclusions about Al Qaeda from these docs is like letting your ex-girlfriend go thru all your emails and choose 17 to release.

No complaints about the CTC from me, incidentally — their entire Harmony Program is nonpareil.

Okay, onward to the content (& contextual) issues.

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The first has to do with the significance of religion to bin Laden, Al-Qaida, and the jihadist current more generally.

Leah Farrall gets succinctly to two readings that can be taken from this paragraph by western analysts:

It is very clear [that bin Laden was] trying to control acts of violence that fall outside of what he views as morally acceptable, but also that are counterproductive to Al Qaeda’s strategic agenda

There’s a public relations issue here for bin Ladin, in other words — but there’s also a moral issue from the standpoint of Islamic theology. Theology — not just any old ideology borrowed from Marx or whoever, but theology<, the logos pertaining to theos, and thus in Islamic terms transmitted and revealed Word of God, “an Arabic Qur’an that you might understand” (Q 12.2).

Note that the CTC analysis, unlike Leah’s, is focused entirely on the secular, PR side of things and fails to address the religious. Immediately before quoting the paragraph in question (the second version above) in their commentary, the authors write:

Bin Ladin was following Shahzad’s trial in the news and was disappointed by his performance, which he thought distorted the image of jihadis.

Immediately following it, we find:

This is not the only instance that Bin Ladin worried about jihadis violating their oaths. The letter addressed to Abu Basir in which he is asked to focus on operations inside the United States (instead of Yemen) alerted him to focus on Yemenis “who hold either visas or U.S. citizenships to carry out operations inside America as long as they did not take an oath not to harm America.” Underlying Bin Ladin’s thinking is a distinction between a visa (ishara), acquired citizenship — which involves taking an oath (`ahd) — and citizenship by birth — which does not entail taking an oath. From an Islamic law perspective, it is not lawful to violate one’s oath (naqd al-`ahd or naqd al-mithaq).

Bin Ladin wanted to promote the image that jihadis are disciplined and conform to Islamic Law. Faisal Shahzad’s boasting that he lied during his oath not to harm the United States, therefore, is antithetical to the image of jihadis that Bin Ladin wanted the world to see.

Bin Laden wants “to promote the image that jihadis are disciplined and conform to Islamic Law” — but doesn’t he also perhaps want them to “conform to Islamic Law” for the sake of Allah, who commanded that law, and in whose path they are fighting?

What is the Caliphate, if it makes Islamic law the law of the Islamic world, or of the world entire, and obedience to that law is a matter purely of appearances?

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The second issue that this paragraph beings up for me is that of taqiyya or religiously sanctioned dissembling.

Shariah: The Threat to America (An Exercise in Competitive Analysis—Report of Team ‘B’ II) [link to .pdf], which I take to be the closest thing yet to an indepth, scholarly presentation of the Boykin-Gaffney-Woolsey-Yerushalmi view of Islam, makes a big deal of taqiyya, the Islamic doctrine that permits dissembling under certain circumstances, quoting the Qur’an (3:28):

Let not the believers take the disbelievers as friends instead of the believers, and whoever does that, will never be helped by Allah in any way, unless you indeed fear a danger from them. And Allah warns you against Himself, and to Allah is the final return.

and commenting:

it is imperative that those whose duty it is to protect the United States. from shariah grasp the centrality of taqiyya in the arsenal of its adherents. This is critical because the consequences of taqiyya extend to real world issues related, for example, to Muslim overtures for interfaith dialogue, peace and mutual tolerance – all of which must be viewed in the light of Islamic doctrine on lying.

Bin Laden, in his letter to Mahmud / ‘Atiyya, is not writing to a an audience of non-Muslims to deceive them, he is writing to a comrade in faith and in arms. And he clearly does not believe that either taqiyya or the necessities of war (which often involves deceit) give jihadists the option to lie under oath — even for purposes of jihad, even within the enemy camp. Taqiyya, in bin Laden’s mind, appears to be a far more restricted doctrine than Gaffney and cohort take it for…

As Juan Cole puts it, taqiyya is “not a license to just lie about anything at all, or to commit perfidy. It is just a permission to avoid dying uselessly because of sectarian prejudice.” Corrie ten Boom lying to the Gestapo to protect the Jews hiding in her house might be a somewhat similar situation — as an analogy worth considering, though, not an equation.

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Then there’s the question of oaths. CTC not surprisingly is interested in exactly what oaths, pledges, promises or words of honor exactly are covered by this sort of restriction, noting:

Bin Ladin may also have had in mind the debate between Ayman al-Zawahiri and his former mentor, Dr. Fadl. The latter reneged on his jihadi views and among the accusations he made was that the 9/11 hijackers violated the terms of their visa, interpreting it as a form of aman (safe passage) from an Islamic law of war perspective. Thus, from Bin Ladin’s perspective, it is only when a Muslim takes an oath that he must be bound by it; a visa and citizenship by birth do not qualify as an oath.

It’s an intriguing question. Murad Batal Shishani @muradbatal tweeted yesterday:

#OBL against using ppl 2 attack US if they paid oath of allegiances 2 it. (what would some “experts” & “intel” say if u said that earlier?)

And what, I wonder, would Anwar al-Awlaki have said to Nidal Hasan if he’d read that particular paragraph?

Thinking about Nidal Hasan puts me in mind of at least two oaths that Hasan, an officer and a physician, presumably took — the US Army Oath of Commissioned Officers, which interestingly enough contains the phrasing:

I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion … So help me God

— and the Hippocratic Oath required of all physicians.

What would their status be, I wonder? And would al-Balawi, the Jordanian physician and triple agent, have taken the Hippocratic Oath?

Come to that, would the Pledge of Allegiance bind those who — “under God” and with their hands on their hearts — recite it to refrain from attacking the United Sates?

I don’t know, but these are questions whose answers have significance in terms of what can and cannot be considered permitted or even obligatory within Islam — which is surely why both bin Laden and Dr. Fadl take the time to address the issue of visas. Such things are important to them.

They are what I’d call “mild” or “light touch” CVE issues — meaning issues to be aware of, not challenges to be shouted from rooftops or forced down anyone’s throat.

And I too would appreciate some answers, pointers, appropriate corrections, clarifications and further insight…