By Alexander Perepechko

Published on February 7, 2016

From Organized Crime to Low Intensity Conflict? (continued)

To a significant extent, low intensity conflict in the United States and the Middle East is defined by social demographic, geopolitical, and geostrategic parameters of state and non-state actors. In this research essay I will discuss some of them.

According to the Pew Research Center, only 37% of Muslim Americans were born in the United States; 35% were born in the Middle East, North Africa, or Pakistan. 19% of Muslims in America are not U.S. citizens (Income Distribution, 2009; Muslim Americans, 2011). The Muslim American population is much younger, on average, than the non-Muslim population. More than three-quarters of Muslim Americans are either first-generation immigrants (63%) or second-generation Americans (15%), with one or both parents born outside of the country. 55% of the first generation immigrants are from the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan. Muslim Americans – particularly those born in the United States – are more likely than Americans as a whole to have only high school education. Among the 12 largest religious groups, Muslims have a relatively small middle class; only two religious groups – Jehovah’s Witness and historically Black Protestant churches – have a middle class smaller than Muslims. Moreover, after the economic crisis of 2008, the income pattern represents something of a decline for Muslim Americans. 29% of Muslims are underemployed. Underemployment is particularly prevalent among younger Muslim adults: 37% of those under 30 are underemployed. Muslims are underrepresented in the military. Only about 0.16% of the active-duty and reserve members in the U.S. military self-identify as Muslims (Khan & Martinez, 2015).

These numbers are worrisome. The high percentage of marginalized youth (unemployed with low levels of education), high proportion of first-generation immigrants and second-generation Americans in the Muslim population, and high share of immigrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan suggest that radicalization of Muslims in the United States is among the possible scenarios. Yet this process is not as straightforward as some clichés offered by some analysts and media.

In the West, Islamization (or re-Islamization) of the population of Arabic (and other) origin is not the equivalent of political radicalization (see Roy, 2015a: 36-37, 78-79). Social and cultural re-Islamization (wearing of the Islamic headscarf, the growing number of mosques, multiplication of clerics, increase in the number of religious TV channels) is beyond the control of militant Islamists. Religious integrism (or fundamentalism) is not about identity protest or traditional culture. This fundamentalism is a consequence of the crisis of culture and represents a search for a “pure” religion. Therefore we deal not with an identity-related communitarianism but with a faith community that feels rejected by the dominant secular culture. Paradoxically, social and cultural Islamization often de-politicizes Islam. Indeed, individualistic, dynamic Muslim youth undergoes Islamization in a world of fast food and feminine fashion!

True, the Muslim population in the United States has grown quickly (figure 19) and is undergoing Islamization. But at the national level, Muslims have neither national representation nor an influential political party. A dense set of Muslim religious schools is not present. Muslims participate in national politics through the American political system (e.g., Democratic and Republican parties). There is no powerful Muslim lobby in America: the Council on American-Islamic Relations is not a very influential organization.

 

Figure 19. Muslims in the United States: Change in Adherents, 2000-2010 (Source: 2010 U.S. Religion Census, 2012).

 Certainly in the Muslim quarters of large western cities the underground economy can be an issue and the rate of crime can be higher than in surrounding areas. It is especially true for America with its culture of violence and over-the-counter gun sales. These quarters engender certain forms of communitarianism at the local level which often combine residential neighborhoods, small shops, cafés, halal food places, teahouses, and sport clubs. In combination with the Internet and other advanced, affordable telecommunications and with the contemporary youth culture of videogames, this local communitarianism creates a fertile ground for small social networks of friends (Roy, 2015b). There is no doubt that many representatives of the Muslim underemployed and second generation Muslim youth spend a lot of time in this milieu.

Like parasites, Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) take advantage of the frustration and resentment in these troubled milieux and try to radicalize their dwellers in an anti-western, anti-American direction. The mechanism of this radicalization is quite simple. To penetrate these milieux, al-Qaeda forms an alliance with local Salafist structures (Mücke, 2015; Roy, 2015b; Wiebke, 2015) as well as local criminal groups. Rigid and simple to understand, the Salafi version of Islam is attractive to unsettled persons of any ethnicity and race because it offers a utopian heroic religious narrative of Jihad. Enchanted by death, young suicidal nihilists see in acts of violence self-realization as an answer to frustration and resentment against a post-heroic West. It is not surprising that most persons who join terror activities had previous contact with Salafists.

Observers (e.g., Pipes, 2008) estimate that 10-15% of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam. Scholars at RAND (see Jones, 2014: 26-28) suggest that the number of Salafi-jihadist groups in 2013 marked a 58% increase from 2010. The number of Salafi jihadists between 2010 and 2013 also more than doubled. The Salafi-jihadist movement, including al-Qaeda, has become increasingly decentralized and its number of attacks has increased. The highest threat likely comes from al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula, which retains the capability and desire to target the U.S. homeland. Core al-Qaeda in Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and North Africa (Jones, 2014: 40-41) also presents a threat to the U.S. homeland. A small number of inspired individuals, like the Tsarnaev brothers, who perpetrated the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, also poses a threat.

Furthermore, Salafists dominate Internet sites that identify with the strategic agenda of radical Islamists. These sites provide ideological justification, technical information, and guidance on destructive tactics for self-generating terrorist cells in the western countries (see Lieberman, 2008). The growth in social media and the terrorist use of chat rooms, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networking websites has facilitated radicalization of the troubled milieux and violent segments among the Muslim population in the United States.

 Al-Qaeda acts, communicates, recruits, and operates globally. Really, this terrorist organization is a filius nullius of the globalization of Islam and the intermingling of Islam with the West. Al-Qaeda is composed of uprooted international jihadists – small in number and mobile – not anchored in any society. This terrorist organization never expressed itself as a local social and political movement (Roy, 2015a: 20, 32-33, 49-50, 87). Osama bin Laden founded a deterritorialized organization that is not a big deal per se. The luck of bin Laden was that American political elites could not understand his strategy in a timely way. This allowed al-Qaeda to survive ground campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq carried on by the conventional military forces of the American superpower.

George W. Bush Jr. made three grave political errors: 1) he failed to understand the enemy’s strategy in a timely way, 2) he did not designate the real enemy, and 3) he could not find an antidote against the real enemy’s strategy. The regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the regime of the Taliban (religious salafists) in Afghanistan were legitimate territorial actors on the international scene. These state actors were opposed to the West but they were not “terrorist states” and could have negotiated. Al-Qaeda was (and is) a non-state deterritorialized actor – a terrorist organization without any social base; the only objective of these terrorists was (and is) a confrontation with the West.

Since President Bush did not understand the deterritorialized dimension of al-Qaeda (Roy, 2015a: 46, 51), his administration decided to reduce potential sanctuaries of terrorists by controlling territory using troops on the ground (interventions in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003). Year after year, American lives and material resources were wasted in a territorial strategy of engagement (see Jones, 2014: 52), when U.S. forces were directly involved in targeting anything and anybody but the al-Qaeda terrorists. This strategy was in vain. It took time and hundreds of thousands of soldiers to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. But by the time these soldiers arrived and deployed, al-Qaeda had already left.

The Obama administration first switched to the strategy of forward partnering: U.S. forces stopped directly targeting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, Americans started building the capacity of local governments in the Middle East. Later on, Americans moved to the offshore balancing strategy, which requires the use off-shore air, naval, and ground forces but precludes direct engagement with terrorists (see Jones, 2014: 52). The combination of airstrikes, drones, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, and special forces seems to have become the proper response to the deterritorialized nature of al-Qaeda. In addition, politicians prefer to fight this cleaner war, war that is politically a lot easier to get away with. The further removed we are from the victims, the more likely we are to act harshly because distance creates indifference…

After the death of its charismatic leader, the scale and scope of al-Qaeda operations reduced significantly. A new stage of radical Islamist warfare against the West is known today under the name of ISIS (or Islamic State (IS), or Daesh in Arabic). The task of ISIS is to reterritorialize combat by creating an “Islamic caliphate.” At the same time, Daesh retains the international dimension of war against the West and for this purpose absorbed small cells remaining from al-Qaeda in Europe and the United States (Roy, 2015a: 21-23).

The strategy of reterritorialization is based on 5 premises. Firstly, the “Sunni state” of Saddam Hussein and its institutional infrastructure were destroyed by the United States and Americans earned the hatred of the population. Indeed, Machiavelli (1999: 9) warned us that “no matter how powerful one’s armies, in order to enter a country one needs the goodwill of the inhabitants.” Regrettably, George W. Bush Jr. was a C student and had not read Machiavelli. Secondly, the local Sunni population in the north-west of Iraq and east of Syria is at war with Baghdad, controlled by Shia, and with Damascus, ruled by Alaouites. Thirdly, a low intensity conflict between Sunnis and Kurds has gone on for decades. Fourthly, the Sunni population in these areas does not consider the Turks (who are not Arabs) to be friends. And fifthly, IS leaders hope that the Iraqi and Syrian states will collapse.

Indeed the last premise might allow Daesh to win, at least in the short term. So, before declaring that “Assad must go,” western leaders should recall what happened to the Iraqi state after Hussein was removed. It is more easy to destroy a nation-state and create chaos than to build a nation-state and impose order.

The ISIS strategy has 3 flaws: 2 local and 1 global.

Firstly, the local, non-Sunni populations – Shia, Kurd, Christian, Yazidi, and to some degree Turkish – in the areas of Daesh operations are enemies of the caliphate.

Secondly, the authority of local Sunni leaders in areas controlled by IS has been challenged. Consequently, tensions between Islamist warlords and local notables are growing and eventually will lead to open conflict. It is even more important that, like al-Qaeda in the West needs an alliance with local Salafist structures and criminal groups, ISIS in the Middle East needs an alliance with local Sunni leaders and the underground world. International radical Islamists in the zone of the caliphate are not anchored in local societies.

Thirdly, Americans learned from past wars and modified the strategy of offshore balancing. Unlike in the Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) wars, the US has not committed ground troops in the war against ISIS. Regional state and non-state actors fight terrorists – though reluctantly (Mehta, 2016) – on the ground, and America and its western allies stay in the second line (airstrikes, drones, intelligence, special forces). This strategy of deflection (see Layne, 2007: 160) allows western forces a) to avoid casualties in an unnecessary war on behalf of client states in the Middle East, b) to delegate to these states the primary responsibility for their own future, c) to localize the war, and hopefully d) to reduce the vulnerability of the American homeland to Islamic terrorism.

Let us sum up the low-intensity conflict (LIC) between the United States and Middle East considering the strategies described above.

We have here an LIC between two “conflictual civilizations” in the era of globalization. This LIC is between the deterritorialized (sometimes more, sometimes less) non-state actors of the rising Islamic civilization and the declining territorialized western nation-states. Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and their associates are radical, militant mutants of the globalization of Islam. In the U.S. politicians identify the enemy and generals deploy a strategy and lead the forces. In the Islamic world, the strategy of the insurgency and terrorism is claimed to be prescribed by the Quran and is shaped by radical Islamist leaders. The logic of the classic trinitarian strategy of the western nation-state and the logic of terror of radical Islamism are non-linear. But the characteristics of this non-linearity for the state-owned, regular army, on the one side, and for terrorists, on the other side, are asymmetric (figure 19).

The national strategy of the American state is territorial and involves 4 elements of national power (see Jablonsky, 2010: 9). The Department of Defense describes these elements as political, economic, psychological, and military (Figure 19). The linchpin in this horizontal design is the state-owned military instrument of power at the national strategic level. There is no component of faith in this hierarchically organized state machine. In a post-sacrificial time – when westerners are no longer willing to die in war – nothing is sacred any more in western culture: no place, no being, no object. Americans live in a desacralized world and this is not without consequences (Oughourlan, 2012: 15, 18). The Quranic concept of total (grand) strategy considers dislocation of the enemy’s faith as one of the key components of Jihad. In late modern America certain left liberal, leftist, and postmodernist forces spend time, vigor, money, and talent to put down Christianity – in doing so, these forces knowingly or unknowingly provide grist for the radical Islamists’ mill.

 

Figure 19. Two different grand strategies (Source: Generated by the author based on Jablonsky, 2010, Malik, 1992, and Modestov, 2003).

The Islamic vision of total (grand) strategy is outlined by Pakistani brigadier Malik (1992) in his seminal book The Quranic Concept of War. Islam does not subscribe to the concept of the territorial state. In accordance with the Quran, faith – the central spiritual principle of the integration of human beings – is supra-territorial, supra-national, supra-racial, and supra-linguistic. In Islamic international law, conduct in the international arena is about regulations between Muslims and non-Muslims. Viewed from this approach, other nations and nation-states are neither sovereign, nor equal.

Malik (1992: 143) elucidates the roles of Jihad, total strategy, and military strategy in the Islamic world: “”Jihad,” the Quranic concept of total strategy, demands the preparation and application of total national power and military instrument is one of its elements. As a component of the total strategy, the military strategy aims at striking terror into the hearts of the enemy from the preparatory stage of war while providing effective safeguards against being terror-stricken by the enemy. Under ideal conditions, Jihad can produce a direct decision and force its will upon the enemy. Where that does not happen, military strategy should take over and aim at producing the decision from the preparation stage. Should that chance be missed, terror should be struck into the enemy during the actual fighting. At all stages […] military strategy operates as an integral part of the total strategy and not independent of it; then and then alone can it attain its designed objective.”

The Quranic concept of grand strategy can be seen as a French roulette (figure 19). Faith operates like the turret (center) of the wheel and everything else depends on the strength of this faith. Political, economic, social, psychological, military, and moral and spiritual dimensions of Jihad are like sectors of the internal ring (of the roulette wheel) of the Muslim world, or Ummah. The grand strategy is like a ball on the roulette. To attain policy aims, which come from faith (the turret), the grand strategy (the ball) can move quickly: the ball may be in the political and economic sectors of Ummah (the wheel layout) but can roll to a slot in the external, non-Muslim world (the outer ring of the roulette) at any moment. If nothing else works, military strategy becomes the last resort to attain the overall mission of Islamic civilization. In this situation, total strategy takes the form of military strategy. Military strategy (where the ball has moved) may now be used in the Muslim world but can hit a slot in the external, non-Muslim front in a moment…

I will continue in my next post.

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