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The ISIS Gap and Al Qaeda

With ISIS decimated, having lost the Caliphate Capital (Mosul), its Syrian center (Raqqa), and suffering devastating losses of troops in both countries, there is a room for a new group at the top. There is an old group ready to step up.

Al Qaeda (AQ) has always is ready to resume the title “World’s primary terrorist organization”. AQ has always held the long view of a slow process to victory: disrupt the standing order, maintain a central core from which to generate satellite affiliates across the globe, and never lose sight of the primary target, the U.S. The ISIS fantasy of world dominance proven only by assertion has failed. This means that AQ is again the primary target for international anti-terrorist forces.

The battle against AQ did not end when ISIS gained its fame and power, but it consumed a majority of U.S. forces in the fight. With ISIS rendered tactically weak the focus has shifted. Just recently Omar Khetab, al Qaeda’s No. 2 in the Indian subcontinent, and Mullah Shah Wali, commander of the Taliban’s special forces branch, were killed, along with scores of AQ fighters in Afghanistan.

It is possible that fighters and high-level leaders of ISIS will merge into AQ. ISIS affiliates may shift their allegiance also. Rumor has it that In response to attrition at the top due to American targeted assassinations, Zawahiri is grooming Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza bin Laden for a prominent place in the organization.

Support is still coming from Iran. Research indicates that cooperation between Iran and AQ has roots going back some 20 years. Many of the leadership have sheltered there along with their families. Hamza bin Laden lived in Iran at least long enough to be married there. Money has flowed through Iran to AQ.

Al Qaeda may regain its strength and grow again. It had only hundreds of fighters on 9/11 It has tens of thousands now. AQ has thrived on the instability of nation states, moving in when they are weakest. It grows when U.S. forces leave battlefields. It grows when propaganda opportunities arise, like news from Guantanamo, anti-Muslim actions like Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’, and news of U.S. forces committing perceived crimes against innocent Muslim populations. Trump’s recent declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital will only add to AQ’s perceived legitimacy.

Whether or not Al Qaeda becomes a major threat to the U.S. is not yet known. It lacks a leader with the charisma of Osama bin Laden. Its affiliates were fragmented by ISIS. U.S. anti-terrorist campaigns have become more technical and more effective. But its persistence is undeniable. There is a foundational ideology that still appeals to hundreds of thousands of supporters and that remains something to be reckoned with.

#Trump recruiting terrorists

Sending Blackwater to Afghanistan is like fucking for virginity. #Trump has no sense of history, failure, cover up. #Mercenaries are not the answer to anything but Taliban/ISIS/Qaeda recruiting. We already have over 6 thousand troops and 12 thousand contractors there. #Resist this attempt to escalate violence in the name of...what, Peace? a safer U.S.?

In the face of what we know about radicalization, this path is illogical. In the face of what we know about civilian casualties, this path is heartless.

Trump, Bannon, Islamophobia

The racist rhetoric of Trumpism is driving Muslims underground in fear. What better fertilizer for ISIS and Al Qaeda? “See? They are all against you. We are your only hope.”

Trump picked Steve Bannon, ex-chief of Breitbart News, as his chief strategist. Breitbart publishes inflammatory lies about Muslims like “a vast majority of U.S. mosques...are a part of a much larger jihadi network,” and “Muslims don’t report other Muslims”. Both are untrue. The Chief of Police of Dearborn MI, one of our largest Muslim communities, can tell of Muslims aiding authorities when suspicious activity is discovered. This cooperation comes at a price. Dearborn has expended energy and money to work intelligently and compassionately with the Muslim community. And it pays off.

Spreading fear within Muslim communities will have the opposite effect. It will make people fearful of contact with the police. It will radicalize. It will make it harder for law enforcement to maintain critical contact with the people they serve.

Learn about the diversity within Muslim communities. Learn the difference between Islamophobic rhetoric and the truth. Teach your children well.

November 18, 2016 by 121Contact

Iraq Shia militias: short run effective; long run disaster for unity.

Almost all gains against IS in Iraq have been led by Shia militias, and they have assumed command of retaken areas. However, because of the anti-Sunni brutality of the Shia militias many Iraqis see IS as best-of-the-worst answer to instability. This is a disaster for attempts to unify the country.

Something different happened in Ramadi. “The main shock troops were the elite units of the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (ICTS), a US-trained outfit answering directly to the prime minister.” [BBC]

The Ramadi model was IS-effective, but it physically destroyed Ramadi and displaced most of the population who suffered massive losses. Their return, however, is a sign that they don’t feel threatened by the non-Shia liberators. It gives the Sunni a sense of belonging, and encourages their tribal leaders to join the fight against IS. In 2006 the effectiveness of enlisting the tribal fighters in driving out most of Al-Qaeda was proven.  It can work again if the Sunni believe that victory will not install Shia as territorial controllers.

Can this be scaled up to take Mosul, a city 10 times larger than Ramadi? This will require commitments by the U.S. and Iraq’s central government to increase the recruitment and training of the ICTS, and a consistent resistance to using Shia militias in major operations. It seems the only sensible way to move forward.

#Iraq @bruce121Contact

Islamophobia: real. Physical threat level: low. Impact: High

In the U.S. there has been an uptick of anti-Islamic activity (including physical attacks), but there have been relatively few incidents.

Among our 319 million people there are a miniscule number carrying out attacks. Yes, yes, I know that automobiles are much more of a threat than terrorist attacks. There are many, however, who harbor mistrust, fear, and anger towards Muslims. Even so, over 60% of Americans are comfortable with having a Muslim President. This is a growing number, but the 40% who harbor anti-Islamic feelings is significant and damaging to all.

Countering the narratives of ISIS/Al Qaeda and the like is a good thing, but it avoids the deeper, more important facts of the case:

“radicalisation is a youth revolt against society, articulated on an Islamic religious narrative of jihad… These rebels without a cause find in jihad a “noble” and global cause, and are consequently instrumentalised by a radical organisation (Al Qaeda, ISIS), that has a strategic agenda.” [Dr. Olivier Roy]

Scientists have said it before and have been ignored. Scott Atran, among many others, has been talking about this for years. Radicalization a social problem of complexity beyond easy solutions, but it is not intractable. Its roots are in under-functioning societies/communities where the natural rebellious nature of youth is imperfectly channeled into less self-destructive behaviors.

A good start would be spending less for bombs. Spend more for compassionate, engaging education. Let children learn the truth about how our minds work and about how knee-jerk reactions defeat rational thought. Prejudice lives in all of us, even the most educated, but we don’t have to act on it. We can all learn to think about how we think, and move this world toward more peaceful tomorrows.

November 21, 2015 @bruce121Contact

9/11, and here they come again.

the U.S. created ISIS; Obama is a Muslim; the towers were brought down by the CIA; the X was caused by Y. Fears and doubts are quieted by simplistic explanations that have a bit of truth attached, are easy to understand, and avoid the complicated nature of reality.

There's no logic to it, and there's no proof offered. The words of those who actually studied the facts are dismissed as 'cover up'.

The self-styled experts are the loose once again, and they urge you to believe them instead of the carefully researched academic analyses.

Isn't that just the kind of thinking encouraged by Al Qaeda and ISIS? "Don't bother with the hard work of finding out the facts and untangling the complicated relationships. Just believe me instead. I'm an expert because I say so. I can quote other phony experts who agree with me, and heck, don't they quote me, too?"

Besides, it's so much easier than thinking for yourself.

August 16, 2015 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

 

ISIS threatens retaliation on U.S. Embassies

As if Obama didn’t have enough complications as he unnecessarily ponders “what to do about Iraq,” ISIS has just distributed a call to take revenge, should the U.S. intervene against ISIS in Iraq, by attacking embassies around the world. The video, uploaded to jihadi sites states, "…if an American aircraft flew in Iraqi skies to strike the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham ....all the embassies of America to become legit targets."

Why ‘unnecessarily’? That’s easy. We have to do nothing in Iraq because everything we touch in Iraq turns to shit.

June 21, 2014 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

140409 al-Qaeda in Iraq: the equal opportunity killers

Perhaps they are striving to brag about their inclusivity. The emergence of the Southern Iraq division of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) marks an expansion of operations. AQ can now be said to be attacking Shia and well as Sunna on a more equal footing. The only section of Iraq so far immune to most (though not all) AQ attacks is the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan.

It’s hardly acceptable any more to answer “I don’t know” to “Who was responsible for that bombing?” Even guessing that it was AQ stands a good chance of being correct. A recent (ISIL) publication detailed 7,681 attacks from November 2012 to November 2013. That almost doubles 2012 figures. And now they are bragging about the increasing number of foreign killers who died in suicide attacks, posting their pictures and listing their home countries.

And let’s not lose sight of the families and friends directly affected by these attacks. A level of dissociation in the general Iraqi populace allows media to show pictures of families picnicking in sunny parks. Behind the laughter is the deep fear and knowledge that precious life can end at any moment. It’s not Zen. It’s the constant paranoia of prolonged trauma.

We can only hope that our past failed endeavors to ‘free’ people and spread Democracy will influence foreign policy and rein in our militaristic approach to peace.  

April 9, 2014 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

Religion, Fundamentalism, and violence

                Strozier’s The Fundamentalist Mindset exposes the logic of apocalyptic violence. If salvation only comes after the inevitable end of time then it is logical to help it along by violence that hastens total destruction. It is doing god’s work.

Fundamentalism is old. Crenshaw, in 2000, wrote of American apocalyptic violence: Ruby Ridge, Waco: where New World Order is seen as the creation of the Antichrist. The religious and the secular come together in Christian Identity polemics…scary stuff.

Atomic bombs are new. The bomb is now part of the collective psyche and can be used to generate polarizing attitudes. Atomic bombs are also part of our modern arsenal and combined with the paranoia and rage inherent in the fundamentalist mindset constitutes a new level of danger. Less embedded are images of Armageddon built upon chemical and biological agents of death. This will change as technology renders them more accessible and effective.

The apocalyptic narrative provides historical context, dualistic thinking, and violent imagery. Paranoia and rage are justified and directed. Terrorism can easily grow from this soil. Totalism and paranoid psychology characterize the followers; paranoia is common in the leaders.

Terman’s paranoid gestalt posits a framework with which to view the fundamentalist mindset. He built on Harry Stack Sullivan’s view of paranoia, humiliation, and low self-esteem as central to the manifestation of the mindset. These ideas are reflected in the writings of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda tracts such as Inspire magazine, the inflammatory speeches of Hezbollah’s Hasan Nasrallah, and American neo-Nazi publications.

Of the characteristics of fundamentalist thought, the paranoid element is, perhaps, the most worrying. It generates a pattern of thought that easily transforms fear into anger and then violence. Scholarly research has revealed paranoia to be a common characteristic of adolescent mass shooters. 

Group dynamics magnify individual perceptions and lead easily to dehumanizing the ‘other’ on a global scale. Once attained, this insensitivity is a doorway to violence. Socialized images of the enemy as a race, religion, or political movement provide a focus for rage and a target for violence.

The fundamentalist mindset of the terrorists is mirrored in the societies under attack. Questions such as “What is there about Islam that makes for violence?” reveal a simplistic, fearful framing of a complex phenomenon. While only 320 million of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims live in the Middle East, the terrorism in and from that region generates the idea that Muslims, in general, are violent people. Muslims are lumped into a non-existent unity. The turmoil is assumed to be solely religious in nature. The desperate answer is seen in defensive, often preemptive violence.

We are wondering how we can generate more rational thought processes that accept the complexity of current violent movements so that we can bring about fuller understanding in the wider population (as well as the policy makers) and more efficacious solutions?

March 19, 2014 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

on Atran: Talking to the Enemy, part II

 Modern terrorism: it’s about friends, schoolmates, and hanging out. True. But there’s more: emergent sacred values, the ubiquity of the internet, the new globalism of everything are forming a uniquely modern soil for terrorist growth.

 The social agglomerations that build small-group action oriented entities like bowling leagues, drug gangs, and neighborhood watch groups are no longer localized. The internet can tie people together who have never met face-to-face. Hackers, environmental activists, civil society workers, and a game faddists are not the only groups using the web to build relationships. Terrorists are also within this space, and use it in the same way. The new internet enabled, globalized religions generate polarities we haven’t seen before. Cut loose from traditional moorings to Koran and Bible, Vedas and all similar trappings of the past, the emergent ‘faiths’ are based on sacred values that rely less on historical underpinnings and more on just-born and born-again visions.

 One the one hand we have the unifying discourses of environment, religion, and politics that see the world as one large mass and on the other we see the fragmentation of extremist political, religious, and secular ideas into action oriented splinters that operationally are independent, even when adhering to larger shared ideologies. Within this lies the foundation of modern extremism, terrorism, and the apocalyptic vision they carry. The ‘Cooperatists’ see the alternative to working together as an apocalyptic end time that can only be avoided by taking action now to avert certain disaster later. The ‘dissolutionists’ see the apocalypse as the goal and work to disintegrate and destroy existing structures in order to hasten the end.

 The tools of social science are beginning to open understanding of participants of modern terrorism and the paths they take to become part of the new apocalyptic movements. In depth interviews of terrorists, their families and friends, and the people in their local and global network March 12, 2014 s have revealed mechanisms that act outside of the clichéd notions of al-Qaeda recruitment. This may avail us of tools to help mitigate the danger they present. Boredom and lack of self-purpose seem to play a big role. With further analysis alternative paths may make themselves known to us so that we can intelligently support policies and programs that work toward more peaceful tomorrows.

 An important first step would be to admit that current policies are not effective, and in fact are backfiring in that they cause more terrorism than they prevent. A second step will be made when we actually base our understanding of terrorists on scientifically based information about them, and not on the misinformation that currently guides policy makers.

 The recent work of social scientists and their valuable field work should be incorporated at the highest levels of government to ensure a realistic approach to the problem.

 How can policy makers be moved to embrace the need for more field-based social research?

 March 12, 2014 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact