My Lessons in Five Years
Like most people who cover terrorism issues, I have had a steep learning curve since 9-11. I, like many, was forced to go from knowing almost nothing to trying to make sense of the new world and the new (to me, but not to the smarter ones) threat. Here are some of the main lessons I have learned:
1) The wahhabis and other radical Islamists of both Sunni and Shi’ite beliefs have a long-terms strategy for dealing with us (U.S., Israel, Europe-the Big Satans), as well as the each other (Little Satans-apostate regimes, and the other sects of Islam).
2) One of the traditional backbones of these plans has been the international Muslim Brotherhood, whose leaders provide vision, money, strategic thinking and tactical advise to the Islamist groups across the board. The role and nature of the Ikwan is still rarely understood in intelligence, diplomatic and law enforcement circles. The role is to establish a Muslim caliphate by whatever means necessary.
3) After an initial shock, things tend to go back to the way they were. In the U.S., this has meant an unhealthy return to a lack of intelligence sharing, a creation of larger and less responsive bureaucracies, a return to dealing with “moderate” Muslim groups often tied to the Ikwan who we do not know or properly identify, and a continued inability to understand and develop a strategy for dealing with stateless areas and non-state actors. The concept of networks and how to attack them, while part of academic debates for several years, is only now being revisited by DOD and the DNI.
4) Tactical alliances that seem highly improbable, often occur: Shi’ite-Sunni financial dealings in diamonds, weapons and training; alliances of Islamists with criminal organizations such a that of Dawood Ibrahim and Viktor Bout; alliances between Islamic financial centers and Western banks. Because these trends were not seen before they tend to be dismissed as impossible or unimportant.
5) Our dislike of reading and the inability to take seriously what our enemy says, from the days of al Qaeda’s founding in Afghanistan, through Bosnia to the present, is a crippling weakness. The enemy-holy warriors doing what they believe Allah has called them to do-write extensively and explicitly about what they want to do and how they will do it. They are not crazy, marginal figures who can be defined as we (the West) wish they would be defined. They define themselves for us, yet we often want to pretend they cannot even get that right. Except for a few notable exceptions (the West Point project on reading and translating al Qaeda and radical Islamist works) this work of reading and understanding is largely left to academics and think tanks, and the lessons seldom filter up the policy chain.
commenting closed for this article
Islamists Have 20-Year Plan: Do We? Al Qaeda's Changing Strategy and Warnings of Attacks
We don’t hear anything from the real fighters in this war, on the news or anywhere else. I listened to Ollie North, last night after the “Path to 9/11”, and the “experts” he interviews were Fox News REPORTERS. The rest of the time they interview academics, who live in the clouds, or retired spooks, who haven’t had the inside scoop for years, sometimes many years.
I listen to what the government officials and soldiers have to say. The chances that I am getting the total story from journalists are zero. No one with an ounce of self-respect talks to reporters.
— Wally Lind Sep 11, 13:04 #
Peter Bergen is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Taliban and binLaden. He says the Taliban are resurrgent in Afghanistan because of the bumper crop of heroin this year. Um, didn’t we talk about dirty banks and drug money last month? Hello?
I’m beginning to turn into one of those conspiracy nutcases I see on TV all the time. Or maybe we really don’t want to stop them after all.
— vachon Sep 11, 14:55 #
Reply to Wally:
I am not American, and don’t know the details about the situation in US, but I believe that US armed forces had bad experience with the press in the Vietnam war.
That’s why they are keeping quiet today, as much as possible.
DG
— Drazen Gemic, Zagreb, Croatia Sep 13, 12:12 #
Doug,
What is the source of your information?
How do you come up with all these stories?
What gives you confidence about terrorist/political/criminal connections among entities you talk about so freely?
Your dedicated reader
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