Realignment in the Middle East?

Marc Lynch describes the expansion of the Gulf Cooperation Council:

The Gulf Cooperation Council surprised virtually everyone yesterday by announcing that it would begin membership talks with Jordan and Morocco.  While actual membership is likely a long way off, the announcement signals a new alliance in the region which conspicuously omits Egyp, along with more obvious candidates for GCC membership such as Yemen and Iraq.  This expanded GCC would of course no longer really be an organization of states in the Gulf. Nor would it be a club for small, rich oil producing states. Instead, it seems to be evolving into a club for Sunni Arab monarchs — the institutional home of the counter-revolution, directed against not only Iran but also against the forces for change in the region.  Where the United States fits in that new conception remains distinctly unclear….

The two things which Jordan and Morocco do have in common with the GCC states, of course, are a Sunni monarchy and a pro-Western alignment. The creation of a Sunni King’s club would bring the region back even more viscerally than before into the classical Arab Cold War of the 1950s and 1960, when conservative monarchies faced off against pan-Arabist republics.  Neither Jordan nor Morocco really faces the same sectarian Sunni-Shi’a issues as do most of the Gulf states, however, despite King Abdullah of Jordan’s “Shi’a Crescent” ramblings of the mid-2000s and his enthusiasm to be part of any pro-U.S. and anti-Iranian alliance available.  Iran simply doesn’t loom as large for Morocco as it does for, say, Bahrain or Saudi Arabia.  The real point here would seem to be a promise of GCC, or more specifically Saudi, assistance to those non-Gulf monarchies in order to prevent them from going too far in meeting popular demands for reform.  Such a Sunni King’s Club would be a counter-revolutionary institution, one which would work directly against hopes for change in the Arab world.

Lynch isn’t sure whether it represents a major alignment or not, but it’s interesting to consider this in light of both the anti-Israel and anti-US resistance bloc (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas), Shia influence in Iraq, and the recent revolutions.

Marc Lynch: Arab public opinion hasn’t shifted

Responding to ideas like those expressed by Leon Wieseltier, Marc Lynch writes that we shouldn’t pretend that U.S. and Israeli policy are less important to average Arabs:

That has real consequences for U.S. policy towards Israel, towards Iran, and across the region.  We should not fool ourselves into believing the common refrain that these revolts are not about the United States.   Foreign policy is not the driver or the main slogan of the protests, but the foreign policy of these regimes is an organic part of the wider critique of their incompetence and failure.  The al-Jazeera narrative criticizing the Arab order has always equated domestic repression with a foreign policy subordinated to the U.S. and Israel.   The empowered Arab public really does care about Palestinians, even if their leaders didn’t much, and is far less enthusiastic about confronting Iran.   If Obama tries to align the U.S. with these other aspirations but avoids Palestine or other foreign policy issues, he will fall on deaf ears.  But while I’m skeptical of a grand new peace initiative right now in such turbulent conditions, it’s worth pointing out that the current upheavals strongly suggest that the Israeli-Palestinian status quo, which seems so comfortable for many involved, is just as unsustainable as the status quo of Arab authoritarian regimes.

The divided jihadist movement

Thomas Hegghammer of Jihadica and Marc Lynch both point to a new report from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point called Self‐Inflicted Wounds: Debates and Divisions within al‐Qa’ida and its Periphery as a major new study on international jihadism. I don’t have time to read all 200 pages at this point, but the executive summary was interesting:

The internal jihadi divisions examined in this report include tactical disagreements over takfir (excommunication of Muslims) and the killing of Muslims; strategic disagreements over whether the jihadi struggle should focus on the near enemy (i.e., nominally Muslim regimes) or the far enemy (the United States and its Western allies); friction between jihadi pragmatists and jihadi doctrinarians; rifts between al‐Qa’ida Central and local affiliates; as well as the sometimes tense relations between Arab and non‐Arab members of the jihadi movement. The competition between the jihadis and their Muslim counterparts  scrutinizes the jihadis’ relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and the Shi’a community.

The phrase “jihadis and their Muslim counterparts” confused me, but I think that it is drawing a contrast between international jihadis like al‐Qa’ida and its allies and local Islamist groups (like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah) that have a regional focus (Egypt for the Egpytian Muslim Brotherhood, Israel/Palestinian territories for Hamas, Israel/Lebanon for Hezbollah). One illustration of the difference would be during the summer of 2009 when Hamas attacked a Gaza-based group called Jund Ansar Allah.  This group had criticized Hamas for not being interested in the international jihad.

The study reports three major findings:

• Overall, it hurts the movement to have these divisions, but because of al‐Qa’ida’s resilience it can actually increase the dangers that it poses (presumably by empowering divisions and splinter groups).
• It also hurts al‐Qa’ida to compete with Islamist groups, but it can also burnish its credentials with extremists as al‐Qa’ida assumes the role of “recalcitrant underdog.”
• “A third broad finding is that jihadi divisions matter in different ways. Quarrels over tactics and strategy tend to be more damaging to jihadis than dissent over goals and views of the enemy. Disagreements over tactics—and especially ongoing protests at al‐Qa’ida’s killing of Muslims—have greater potential to shove al‐Qa’ida further toward the margins of the Islamic community than to split jihadi organizations. Ongoing leadership debates over strategic questions, on the other hand, can pose direct threats to the group itself, but do not necessarily marginalize al‐Qa’ida further from the mainstream. In practical terms, certain tactics tend to be more controversial for jihadis than lack of consensus on broader questions as goals and objectives because tactical adaptations have direct practical consequences visible on the ground.”

US strategy in the 21st century

When I first saw that the cover on The Weekly Standard was bemoaning Obama’s “big squeeze” on military spending, claiming that he was “underfund[ing] the military,” my first reaction was a sneer: the administration has sent more troops to Afghanistan, and we still have the biggest defense budget by far (increasing in Obama’s first budget, I believe).  It’s my understanding that our military spending makes up over 40% of the world’s military spending (a few links).

But I should know by now that my first reactions to an opinion shouldn’t be a sneer; it’s neither gracious nor wise.  The article by Gary Schmitt and Thomas Donnelly is actually a pretty well-reasoned argument for continuing the US effort to shape the world stage and argues that defense spending is not really the political and fiscal threat that is often charged.  “Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and service on the debt” cost us three times as much.  They downplay Eisenhower’s warnings, echoed by current defense secretary Robert Gates, of a “military-industrial complex.”  I still think that those warning are wise, but they provide some good counterarguments.

Marc Lynch on America’s relationship with the Muslim world

Lynch’s verdict is that Obama has framed the relationship better than the previous administration did for most of its tenure, which has helped to further marginalize al-Qaeda, but also that the framing will have to have actual results to remain effective:

First, the good news.  I think that Obama’s initial approach has been outstanding, reframing America’s relationship with the Muslim world around a broader lens than terrorism.  His personal public diplomacy has achieved its initial goal:  a fresh start, a new conceptual frame, and a serious engagement based on “mutual respect and mutual interests.”   His approach resolutely undermines al-Qaeda’s efforts to impose a binary “West vs Islam” clash of civilizations narrative, and very effectively disaggregates the problem and marginalizes al-Qaeda. He also has taken seriously the political grievances which make the al-Qaeda narrative attractive to average Arabs and Muslims who don’t share its radical ideology– pledging withdrawal from Iraq, promising to close Guantanamo, engaging on the Israeli-Palestinian front.

And this has paid off in the real world.  As I’ve argued several times recently, al-Qaeda is more marginal than it has been since 9/11 (at least in the Arab world — this may be different in South Asia or Europe, where I pay less close attention). It has simply lost its ability to present itself as the avatar of generic resistance.  Al-Qaeda thrives on, indeed requires, a polarized environment in which its radical strategy represents one side of an all-consuming clash of civilizations.  Much of the Bush administration’s approach to the “GWOT” gave it just what it needed;  it got better towards the end of his second term, and Obama has built upon and greatly accelerated the progress.

It’s worth remembering that mostly, they did it to themselves (with some help from their adversaries, of course).  They haven’t carried out the big attacks on the U.S., thankfully.  What their affiliates could do were local “soft target” attacks in Arab countries which killed Muslims and deeply alienated mainstream Arabs who might have thrilled to attacks on U.S. troops occupying Iraq.  It now faces an almost universally hostile Arab mass media and a daunting gallery of enemies — not just America’s allied governments but also the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, and more.  Internal critiques of its tactics are everywhere, and magnified by this hostile Arab media, while the movement itself grew more doctrinally pure. Its videos get little traction and have little impact on Arab public debate.  Its like-minded movements have failed to gain a foothold in Gaza and Lebanon, and it continues to suffer the effects of their strategy in Iraq.  And at the ideological level, Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s declaration of its ideology as a mad declaration of war on the whole world has resonated.

This strong beginning and reoriented conceptual framework is a big part of my continuing “A-” grade for his overall foreign policy performance.

But there’s less good news as well.  Al-Qaeda is resilient and adaptive, and even if its ideology is unpopular it still offers a potent and compelling narrative.  Bin Laden’s address last month was far better crafted and resonated more widely than most recent AQ productions. The ideology has spread far enough and has matured enough that it may no longer need AQ Central for direction.  It may have failed to gain a foothold in Lebanon or Gaza, but the fact that those who share its ideology tried shows that the mobilized base is still out there searching. Yemen’s descent into multiple wars has created broken space within which the previously struggling al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula could reconstitute.  The general spirit of resistance (muqawima) is strong and growing at the popular level — and, as more moderate Islamist competitors struggle with regime repression and democratic doors close, openings might be found to siphon off recruits, funds, or support.

And Obama’s window is closing.  Arab audiences see Guantanamo still open (including in an endlessly repeating al-Jazeera promo), US troops escalating in Afghanistan, Gaza still blockaded, and no settlement freeze or peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.  They have seen little follow-up on the ground on the Cairo address (regardless of what’s been cooking secretly in Washington).  A narrative is clearly hardening that Obama has not delivered on his promises, and that he hasn’t really changed American policies despite his personal appeal.  U.S. officials may complain that this is unfair, that it’s only been four months since Cairo, that they are preparing a lot of programs… but the world isn’t fair.  This window isn’t closed yet, but it’s closing fast and opinions appear to be hardening.   I don’t think that the risk here is that al-Qaeda will take advantage of it, given its weakened state — in fact, Secretary Gates made an uncharacteristic mistake when he lapsed back to the Bush-era argument that we had to win in Afghanistan because otherwise al-Qaeda would capitalize.  It’s more that the mobilized Arab and Muslim publics which Obama hoped to win over will be lost.

He also poses ten questions about how the goal of “combating violent extremism” should be accomplished.

Islamism and democracy

Marc Lynch writes that many “moderate Islamist” parties in the Arab world have been willing to participate in free elections.  Using Jordan and Egpyt as examples, he explains that the authorities have not been content to let the elections play out.  (I posted a description of Arab regimes’ election hijinks here).  This has begun to alienate the moderate Islamists from the political systems:

As the door to democracy is slammed in their faces, how have the Islamist groups that embraced participation responded? In some ways, they have passed the test with flying colours. They have remained committed to democratic participation even in the face of massive electoral fraud and harsh campaigns of repression. Their leaders have affirmed their democratic ideals, and have often spoken out to reiterate their ideological and strategic commitment to democracy. Indeed, they have often emerged as the leading advocates for public freedoms and democratic reform. And there is as yet little sign of any such organisation turning to violence as an alternative.

But in other ways, the toll of repression is beginning to show. Doubts about the value of democratic participation inside these movements are growing. Splits in the top ranks have roiled movements in Jordan and Egypt, among others. In many of the cases, a Brotherhood leadership which prefers a moderate, accommodationist approach to the regime has struggled to find a way to respond to the escalating pressures of repression and the closing down of the paths towards democratic participation. In Egypt, frustration over extended detentions of the most moderate leaders have tarnished the coin of those calling for political participation, with a rising trend calling for a retreat from politics and a renewed focus upon social activism and religious work. In Jordan, the influence of those seeking to abandon worthless domestic politics and to focus instead on supporting Hamas has grown. Critics of the Brotherhood have pointed to these recent struggles as evidence that Islamists cannot be trusted with democracy. But this profoundly misreads the current trends. These crises in fact reflect a delayed response to the blocked promise of democratic participation. The Islamist debate today is not about the legitimacy of democracy – it is about how to respond to frustrated efforts to play the democratic game.

Marc Lynch on confronting Islamic radicalism

Marc Lynch sees a different, smarter approach at work in the Obama administration.  Rather than the Bush approach of choosing (and unwittingly delegitimizing) moderate Muslim allies, the Obama administration has chosen to allow the debates to take their course.  Lynch comments:

The Obama administration understands this dynamic extremely well. As the Cairo speech showed, he has designed America’s outreach to the Muslim world around deflating the extremists through indirect action and a reorientation towards common interests.  Instead of building up al-Qaeda and its affiliated movements with an exaggerated focus on “violent extremism”, he isolates and marginalizes them by switching the conversation to other things about which ordinary Muslims and Arabs care far more.

While there hasn’t been as much public follow-up to the Cairo speech yet as many of us had hoped, the internal work that they’ve been doing is beginning to pay dividends.  The new $150 million Arab technology fund announced the other day (to little American notice) is only one of a whole range of programs which will likely be rolled out in the coming months.  This approach has already dramatically and impressively undermined the appeal and relevance of al-Qaeda in the Arab world– an important achievement all the more noteworthy for the administration’s not making a big deal of it.

Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders argue about the scope of jihad

Marc Lynch links to Jihadica, which tracks Sunni jihadist thought.  Apparently, Taliban leaders have portrayed their movement in terms of Afghan nationalism and better relations with neighboring states, drawing criticisms from al-Qaeda leaders who want global jihad.

Lynch quotes Jihadica’s Vahid Brown: “Mullah Omar’s Afghan Taliban and al-Qa’ida’s senior leaders have been issuing some very mixed messages of late, and the online jihadi community is in an uproar, with some calling these developments “the beginning of the end of relations” between the two movements.”

Lynch has some musings on what this could mean, including a comparison to Iraq:

How representative are these forums in the Afghan case? I don’t know.  But Brown’s post reminds me of the online furor over the Islamic State of Iraq which foreshadowed the dramatic split in the Iraqi insurgency in which key insurgency factions flipped to the U.S. side and formed the backbone of the Awakenings/ Sons of Iraq.  Back then, in the fall of 2006 through early 2007 we saw growing discord on the forums between al-Qaeda in Iraq’s umbrella group the Islamic State of Iraq and key insurgency factions.  Some of the discord focused on local complaints (ISI attacks on moderate imams), but a lot focused on this tension between the nationalist goals of the Iraqi insurgency factions (which mainly wanted to drive American forces out of Iraq) and the universalist goals of AQI (which mainly wanted to use Iraq as the base for global jihad).

Those tensions on the forums proved to be a crucial leading indicator of real splits on the ground which energized the “Awakenings” movement.   Like I said, I have no idea whether a similar eruption of such arguments on the forums today will have the same significance.  I’m generally leery of comparisons from Iraq to Afghanistan, and in particular the relationship between the forums and the factions may well be different in this context.    But Brown’s post should be food for thought.

Lynch also mentions some articles that have talked about the potential merger of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.  I’m hoping to read those soon.

Abu Mansoor al-Amriki’s reaction to Obama’s speech

Joel at A Living Text posted an American al-Qaeda fighter’s response to Obama’s June speech to Muslims.  Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, as Joel notes, is based in Somalia.

I listened to the whole response (about 27 minutes in three YouTube videos) and there were a few things that stood out to me about it:

• Al-Qaeda is supposed to be quite proficient in using the internet in promoting its cause.  Before watching this video, I had only heard about this, and I found it interesting to see an actual example of this.
• Not surprisingly, al-Amriki was not impressed with Obama’s speech.  In fact, he claimed that his fellow mujahideen (those who practice jihad) had brought the United States to the point of apology.  I don’t actually think that this is an indictment of Obama’s speech, although that many will disagree with me on this.  He wasn’t trying to persuade al-Qaeda but rather the mainstream of the Muslim world, which seems to share al-Qaeda’s stated complaints about American policy but not its methods.  Those complaints are probably of varying merit and I will probably try to discuss them another time.  In my very early efforts to inform myself about Muslim perceptions I have found the work of Marc Lynch helpful.  You can find some of my reactions to his work here.
• He accused Obama of distorting the Quran’s teachings and now trying to wage a softer, cultural war on Islam that would actually be more dangerous.  He argued that preivous policy paralleled the failed Crusades, while Obama’s policy paralleled the later Westernization and colonization of the Muslim world.
• Al-Amriki criticized American allies like Israel (no surprise), King Abdullah of Jordan, and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.  Leaders like Abdullah and Mubarak (and the Saudi royal family) are often hated by al-Qaeda because of their relationship with the United States.  Mubarak, and perhaps the others, also represses Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.
• Al-Amriki called the September 11 attacks “blessed” and said that they were not aimed at civilians but at the financial and political centers of the American empire that oppresses Muslims.  Old news, I know, but I think it was the first defense I had heard by a Muslim supporter of the attacks.  It was also interesting that he did not defend the killing of unbelievers outright, which is what some Wahhabists have done.  Perhaps he does not share that belief, or perhaps he is accomodating the beliefs of Muslims who don’t share that interpretation of jihad.
• Toward the end of the speech, he repeated al-Qaeda’s demands for a full American disengagement from Muslim lands.  Earlier in the speech, he lauded Islam’s history of religious tolerance that existed even as Muslims were conquering their neighbors and developing Sharia law.  So I guess that means that Americans should disengage from the region and then await the inevitable conquest by the coming Islamic state.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this won’t appeal to many people.

An Islamist scholar defines jihad

Marc Lynch writes that a new book from Yusuf al-Qaradawi, whom Lynch calls “probably the single most influential living Sunni Islamist figure,” has come out recently.  Lynch considers Qaradawi to be a good indicator of broad opinion in the Arab world.  Here is Lynch’s summary, which I think that he is gleaning from a seven-part summary in an Egpytian newspaper rather than reading the whole book (I could be wrong though):

Fiqh al-Jihad stakes out the centrist (wasatiyya) ground where Qaradawi has always comfortably resided (he has authored dozens of books about wasatiyya concept). He rejects two trends: those who seek to eliminate jihad completely from the Muslim world, stripping it of its power and its ability to resist (which is how he sees the project of much of so-called moderate Islam or secularists); and those who apply it indiscriminately in a mad campaign of killing of all with whom they disagree (like al-Qaeda). Straw men, yes. But very effectively allowing Qaradawi to distinguish between al Qaeda’s excesses and the legitimacy of resistance to occupation and to Israel.

Qaradawi also offers an intriguing broadening of the concept of jihad, away from violence to the realm of ideas, media, and communication — which he calls the “jihad of the age.” The weapons of this jihad should be TV, the internet, email and the like rather than guns. Persuading Muslims of the message of Islam and the importance of this jihad in the path of God should be the first priority, he argues: “the jihad of the age, a great jihad, and a long jihad.”  He also goes into great detail about the different forms of jihad, the need for pragmatism, and the diverse nature of possible relations between Muslims and non-Muslims.

“Centrist” probably isn’t word I’d use to describe this philosophy, although I think that Lynch means it in terms of going between the positions on the far sides of the debate within Islam.  I know that Lynch’s summary can sound approving, but I don’t think it’s meant that way; he’s trying to make people aware of what he sees as an important development and he’s fascinated with the subject that he studies for a career.  Anyway, if Lynch is right in describing Qaradawi’s influence, what’s your reaction to this summary?