Exploiting al Qaeda's weaknesses

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen
• Videos

By

In February 2004, Iraqi and coalition intelligence intercepted a message to al Qaeda's "senior leaders." Written by al Qaeda's Iraqi commander, the now-deceased Abu Musab Zarqawi, the letter outlined al Qaeda's last ditch "surge" plan for defeating democracy in Iraq and avoiding what it saw as a looming, devastating defeat for its totalitarian theology.

Zarqawi's letter lamented al Qaeda's "failure to enlist support" in Iraq and "to scare the Americans into leaving." After Iraqis run their own government, Zarqawi wrote, "the sons of this land will be the authority. ... This is the democracy. We will have no pretexts."

Fearing a U.S. and Iraqi strategic victory (creating a democracy defending itself against terrorists), Zarqawi saw but one strategic option: exploit Iraq's Shia-Sunni religious divide by slaughtering Iraqi Shia civilians. The Shia would respond to al Qaeda's terror attacks by igniting a "sectarian war." He believed the religious war would "rally the Sunni Arabs" to al Qaeda. This war against Shi'ites, he wrote, "must start soon -- at 'zero hour' -- before the Americans hand over sovereignty to the Iraqis."

The February 2006 attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra brought Iraq to the precipice of Zarqawi's sectarian war, but even that failed to produce the apocalyptic schism al Qaeda desired. Credit Iraq's people and its new government with not buckling in 2006, as Shia-Sunni strife escalated.

This week, Reuters reported an Iraqi government claim that Zarqawi's successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, had died in a battle with "Sunni Arab insurgent groups over al Qaeda's indiscriminate killing of civilians and its imposition of an austere brand of Islam in the areas where it holds sway." At the moment, that report remains unconfirmed. However, for the last 24 months, conflict between al Qaeda and Iraqi Sunnis has become more open and deadly.

The coalition and the Iraqi government have tried to exploit divisions within the terrorist groups. Al Qaeda's method of exploitation is mass murder of civilians. The Iraqi government employs incorporative politics.

This is tactical and operational exploitation, and though its successes are incremental, they are still successes. However, defeating al Qaeda's totalitarian ideology requires a strategic approach, as well. At the moment, the poisoned minds in Washington won't admit it, but the democracy project in Iraq is part of that strategic approach. Zarqawi understood that democracy robs the terrorists of their breeding grounds.

Al Qaeda presents an ideological challenge. Understanding al Qaeda's origins is essential to understanding its appeal and how to defeat it.

Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Looming Tower" provides the most readable narrative history on the origins of al Qaeda, especially his discussion of Egypt's Sayid Qutb, the modern father of jihadist violence. When I reviewed the book last year, I wrote: "Al Qaeda's dark genius ... has been to connect the Muslim world's angry, humiliated and isolated young men with a utopian fantasy preaching the virtue of violence. That utopian fantasy seeks to explain and then redress roughly 800 years of Muslim decline."

How to defeat the ideology, with its fantasy narrative? Recently, Dale Eikmeier published an essay in the U.S. Army War College's Parameters Magazine. The essay, titled "Qutbism: An Ideology of Islamic Fascism," suggests "five lines of operation" for attacking Qutbism, which he calls al Qaeda's "ideological center of gravity."

First: Attack the message -- an ideological offensive by moderate Muslims. Mr. Eikmeier says Yemeni Judge Hamoud al-Hitar has a particularly effective theological counter to Qutbism.

Second: Attack the Messenger -- "Many of Qutbism's proponents are individuals with questionable religious credentials."

Third and fourth: Attack Islamofascism's supporting institutions, and support mainstream Islamic institutions -- mirror images. Attack al Qaeda's educational, financial and informational structures. Support those of Muslim moderates.

Fifth: Inoculation. Mr. Eikmeier says this requires education regarding the Qutbists' "anti-human rights and religiously intolerant agenda." Mr. Eikmeier says the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the U.S. Bill of Rights are the alternatives.

Which takes us back to democracy, doesn't it?

Austin Bay is a nationally syndicated columnist.