{"id":3330,"date":"2010-02-09T05:30:23","date_gmt":"2010-02-09T05:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3330"},"modified":"2010-02-09T05:30:23","modified_gmt":"2010-02-09T05:30:23","slug":"the-al-masri-dialogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3330","title":{"rendered":"The al-Masri Dialogue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Cameron<\/strong>, in his latest guest post here, penned a beautiful essay <\/a>regarding the ongoing exchanges between Australian counter-terrorism scholar Leah Farrall<\/strong> <\/a>and Abu Walid al-Masri<\/a><\/strong>, an adviser to the Taliban<\/strong> <\/a>and an experienced\u00a0strategist <\/a>of Islamist insurgency. Farrall has<\/a> translated<\/a> and<\/a> posted<\/a> this<\/a> dialogue on her blog, All Things Counter Terrorism<\/a><\/strong>, which has received much attention, commentary and criticism in the blogosphere and on private listservs\u00a0and quasi-official bulletin boards.<\/p>\n

Generally, I leave this sort of subject to Charles, since he has the academic expertise to drill down to a granular level of Islamic theology and Islamist ideology, but al-Masri is an intriguing figure and his public conversation with Farrall is a novelty worth investigating. It would be hard to imagine during the Cold War,\u00a0an open\u00a0media debate between a Western CI official and a Soviet spymaster still engaged in espionage in the field\u00a0( Kim Philby<\/a><\/strong> <\/a>hurled public jermiads it is true, but that was in retirement in\u00a0Moscow and only after\u00a0his long-suffering KGB<\/strong> handlers had managed to get his severe\u00a0alcoholism under control). In that spirit, I want to offer a few observations.<\/p>\n

While there is artifice present, as al-Masri is consciously\u00a0speaking to a multiplicity of audiences in his remarks, the idea that we should therefore dismiss the dialogue with Farrall, as some suggest,\u00a0is an error. There is also posturing in purely intra-Islamist-debates on which we eavesdrop and, frankly, within our own arguments inside government and out. We learn from what people do and do not do, from what they say and what is left unsaid. Being able to speak to multiple audiences is a constraint, as well as an advantage, as it shapes the parameters of the premises to be\u00a0employed and the extent to which the underlying\u00a0logic can be permissably extrapolated. To quote a Zen saying, if you wish to fence in a bull, give him a large meadow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The constraints, if correctly discerned, are illuminating and are analytically useful in constructing our own tactical responses and message strategy (assuming someone can convince the State Department bureaucracy that IO and public diplomacy are important and\u00a0persuade Congressional leaders to fund such activities with more than pocket change). They are also useful in helping to understand the worldview and governing paradigms of our opponents in more complex and nuanced manner than reflexively saying “they hate our freedoms”. Well, many jihadi types do in fact, viscerally\u00a0hate our freedoms or deny that democracy is a legitimate form of government in an abstract sense, much the same way they casually disparage Hindus as “cow worshippers” or Thais as “crazy Buddhists”; however those loose attitudes and spasms of hostility\u00a0are not akin to operational principles or strategic doctrines.<\/p>\n

For that, we have to dig deeper into the politico-religious motivations of\u00a0violent Islamists\u00a0and listen closely to what our enemies are saying – particularly when they are making an effort to speak to us directly, as al-Masri is doing, his\u00a0determination to score\u00a0propaganda points in his little elicitation dance with Farrall\u00a0notwithstanding. Americans are not very good at listening and our elites are deeply<\/em><\/strong> uncomfortable with the entire subject of religion, tending to view pious expressions of Christianity with contempt and Islam as a completely\u00a0taboo subject. There\u00a0is a strong\u00a0preference in government and academia for\u00a0analytical models of terrorism or insurgency that dwell on DIME spectrum variables because these fit in the personal comfort zones and the educational, social\u00a0and professional experiences of the American elite. This would be a perfect approach\u00a0if al Qaida’s<\/strong> leadership were composed of\u00a0Ivy League alumni and Fortune 500 CEOs.<\/p>\n

Economics and military force are always factors in geopolitical conflict, the war of terror included, but until Islamist extremists\u00a0oblige us by becoming secular Marxist revolutionaries waving little red books, it would behoove us to look with greater\u00a0scrutiny at the curiously\u00a0reified\u00a0religious ideology with which they justify or eschew courses of action to themselves. Our own strategies might be more focused and effective if the operators across our intelligence, military, diplomatic and law enforcement agencies had something approaching a shared understanding of violent Islamism and\u00a0if they could communicate this understanding along with the benefit of their experience and current intelligence to help political leaders shape American policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles Cameron, in his latest guest post here, penned a beautiful essay regarding the ongoing exchanges between Australian counter-terrorism scholar Leah Farrall and Abu Walid al-Masri, an adviser to the Taliban and an experienced\u00a0strategist of Islamist insurgency. Farrall has translated and posted this dialogue on her blog, All Things Counter Terrorism, which has received much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[360,262,216,527,205,46,498,459,321,526,20,126,471,586,475,483,425,239,78,199,336,460,499,210,43,270,372,520,562,187,66,473,436,472,533,558,127,530,31,211,523,13,312,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century","category-4gw","category-academia","category-afghanistan","category-al-qaida","category-analytic","category-arab-world","category-bin-laden","category-blogosphere","category-charles-cameron","category-coin","category-counterinsurgency","category-cultural-intelligence","category-dime","category-disinformation","category-extremists","category-government","category-ic","category-ideas","category-insurgency","category-intellectuals","category-io","category-islamic-world","category-islamist","category-mideast","category-national-security","category-non-state-actors","category-osint","category-perception","category-politics","category-primary-loyalties","category-propaganda","category-psychology","category-public-diplomacy","category-religion","category-social-science","category-strategy","category-strategy-and-war","category-synthesis","category-terrorism","category-theology","category-theory","category-tribes","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}