Aniruddha Bahal 2005
"The 9-11 tragedy was perpetrated by al Qaida, the vanguard of a
violent Muslim revivalist social movement, which I call the Global
Salafi Jihad¦. The movement has its roots in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It is the
violent culmination of Muslims' attempts to come to terms with their fallen
glory. Western cultural, social and technical achievements have
eclipsed past Muslim grandeur and now challenge core Islamic beliefs.
Over the past three centuries, revivalist Islamic movements have tried
to answer this challenge. One of their answers is to return to pure
and authentic Islam, as practiced by the Prophet and his companions.
To them, "Islam is the answer" and only a recreation of the practices
of the devout ancestors, salaf in Arabic, will bring glory and
prominence back to Muslims. Salafists advocate a strict interpretation
of the Quran and they view with skepticism any later innovation, for
it might be a heretical corruption of the original
message."--------Marc Sageman author of Understanding Terror Networks
and adjunct professor of psychology at Penn's Solomon Asch Center for
Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict testifying to the National Commission
on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
Since the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan there has been a gradual
growth of the Salafists around the globe. They are everywhere
enthralling the masses with strains of Islam that are a tempting
alternative to the dismal picture of development in their societies.
They promise correcting the current bafflement of the people by taking
a route to an ancient form of Islam practiced by the Prophet and the
first two generations succeeding him. The Salafis hold the view that
the further we move from the time of Prophet Mohammed the more impure
Islam has become due to the clever innovations in religious matters.
The Salafis diffuse the landscape in a wide arc from Europe to Algeria
to Indonesia preaching hatred for the west, specially the US, and
giving calls for arms besides attracting the ire of government forces
even in the Islamic states. A few examples:
* Hamed al-Ali, a Salafist preacher in Kuwait calls Osama Bin Laden's
recent tape telecast just before the US election as a timely reminder
of the choice Muslims face. Says he, "Just as Mr Bush says that people
must be for or against his war on terror, Muslims must be for the
jihad or for the "Zionist-crusader enemies of Islam."
* Algerian security sources mounted an air and ground military
operation against a stronghold of the Salafist Brigade for Combat and
Call in the Babour mountains in eastern Algeria. The sources said the
mountain stronghold contains the Salafist leadership. The Algerian
military has been pounding Salafist positions since Sept. 12. So far,
more than 180 Islamic insurgents have been reported killed in the
Satif province in the largest Algerian counter-insurgency operation
ever.
* Dyab Abou Jahjah , the Salafi leader of the Dutch-Belgian Arab
European League (AEL) has come out in support of killing Dutch troops
serving in Iraq. In an interview with Flemish newspaper Het Laatste
Nieuws, he says: "I consider every death of an American, British or
Dutch soldier as a victory." There are currently 1,376 Dutch soldiers
serving on peacekeeping duties in southern Iraq and two have been
killed since the mission started in the summer of 2003. The troops are
scheduled to return home in March 2005.
*A new radical Islamic organization called the Jam'iya al-Salafiya
al-Mujahida has recently joined the opposition forces active against
American forces in Iraq. It has many points in common with the
Al-Qaeda headed by Bin Laden. It rejects any and every ideology not
based on Islam including democratic parties, nationalist parties
(Ahzab Wataniya) including Arab nationalists (Qawmiya), communists,
Baathists, and socialists. All are viewed as "deviations from Islam".
Al-Salafiya also opposes any Islamic parties that cooperate with
regimes that are based on the infidel "religion" of democracy, and
considers participation in parliamentary elections as forbidden.
The above is just a sprinkling. In fact, the Salafi movement's
initial indignation was directed against the Islamic regimes
themselves for being insufficiently Islamic. Lead by the Egyptian
Salafists, Qutb and Faraj their fury is against some Muslim states
for refusing to impose Sharia, the strict Quranic law and true
Islamic way of life. The leaders of these states, according to the
Salafis, deserve death and their regimes deserve a violent overthrow
because their repressive nature obstructs the Salafi way. The main
concern is to reinstate Islam at home, the "close foe," before
defeating the "distant opponent," US-Israel. Subsequently, as this
strategy became somewhat controversial as it meant taking on "Muslim
Brothers" it evolved into another, the foremost exponent of which
became Osma Bin-Laden. Says Sageman: "First proclaimed by Osama bin
Laden in his 1996 fatwa.It reverses the previous strategy. Now the
priority is fighting the "far enemy," the West and specifically the
U.S. and Israel, before turning against the "near enemy," which
survive only because of Western support. This strategy has evolved
from ending the U.S.'s "occupation" of the Holy Land to engaging it
anywhere, as best articulated by Ayman al Zawahiri . The goal is to
establish a Muslim state, reinstate the fallen Caliphate and regain
its lost glory. As the United States would never allow this to happen,
the global jihad must defeat this country."
The Global Salafist ideology, of course, incubated in the conservative
Saudi Arabian atmosphere and piggy-backed abroad on Saudi oil money,
which no government institution was monitoring. Says Dr. Anthony
Cordesman, military analyst for ABC and a Professor of National
Security Studies at Georgetown, quotes a US diplomat in a report
(Saudi Arabia: Opposition, Islamic Extremism, And Terrorism paper) in
GulfWire, "The rulers of Saudi Arabia today do not face major
political challenges from domestic progressives, human rights
advocates, or democratic reformers—nor from the local versions of
socialists, Marxists, ethnic or liberal political groupings that
inhabit other Arab landscapes. Saudi ruling challenges come, instead,
from an Islamic environment that the rulers themselves have created,
shaped, and maintained. It is a remarkable Saudi phenomenon that a
regime unrivalled across the Islamic world in its conservatism
presides over a body politic that for the most part is even more
conservative."
A study conducted by Sageman on 130 members of the Global Salafi
Jihad is more instructive. Says Sageman: "They are a heterogeneous
group. Three large patterns emerged: about 60% come from core Arab
countries, mostly Saudi Arabia and Egypt; 30% from Maghreb Arab
countries and 10% from Indonesia. In terms of socio-economic status,
two thirds came from solid upper or middle class backgrounds. Most of
the rest came from the "excluded" Maghreb immigrants, or second
generation in France, as well as Western Christian converts. They came
from caring intact families. The Indonesians were uniformly religious
as children, 60% of the Core Arab children were, but almost none of
the Maghreb Arab children. As a group, the terrorists were relatively
well educated with over 60% having some college education. Only the
Indonesian group was almost exclusively educated in religious schools.
Most had good occupational training and only a quarter were considered
unskilled with few prospects before them. Three quarters were married
and the majority had children. I detected no mental illness in this
group or any common psychological predisposition for terror."
But, interestingly, a common mindset in the Salafi brigade is an
anti-Shia feeling most recently illustrated by the exchange of
prisoners between Israel and the Hezbollah on January 29, 2004. The
consequent triumphant imagery of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah,
created much resentment in parts of the Arab world, particularly in
West Bank and Gaza. The sternest vocal attacks against Hezbollah's
deal, however, emanated amidst Saudi Jihadi-SALAFI elements. The
Lebanese Shiite group has never been popular among the Salafi
preachers of Global Jihad, given their fundamental hatred towards
Shiaism.
The current conflict of interests in Iraq between the Shia majority
and the Sunni minority has provided an extra edge to the enmity.
Since the establishment of the Coalition Provisional Authority and the
installation of the Allawi government in Iraq, Salafi web sites and
forums on the Internet have stepped up their attacks against the
Shias. There are also severe criticisms of Iran on their websites
alongwith growing attempts by Saudi Salafi scholars and laymen to
link the Shiites to Jews, both in history, and in present times.
It should be recalled that in the last two decades, with the flowering
of extreme strains of Islam there emerged an unhealthy competition
between Iran and Saudi Arabia as to which state was `more' Islamic.
The beef between the Salafis and the Shias also colors the Salafi
leadership as personified by groups headed by Zarqawi and Bin
Laden.While both men follow the strict code of Salafi Islam, which
considers Shias as the spoilers, Bin Laden prides himself on being a
figure above the `fray' so to speak and has made strategic alliances
with Shia groups, meeting several times with Shia militants. Zarqawi,
by contrast, favours butchering Shias, calling them "the most evil of
mankind . . . the lurking snake, the crafty and malicious scorpion,
the spying enemy, and the penetrating venom". Zarqawi's terror group
is, in fact, the prime suspect for the multiple bombings near the
Shia religious shrine in Karbala and also in Baghdad which killed 143
worshippers in March, 2004.
Another resource to be tapped with discretion is Iran. Says Mahan
Abedin, editor of Terrorism Monitor, and who is currently researching
a book on Iranian intelligence services: "The terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001 did not come as a surprise to the Iranian
intelligence community, primarily because they had been engaged in
their own covert war against the Taliban and its international
Islamist allies for many years. Indeed, under different political
circumstances, Iranian intelligence could have provided valuable help
to the U.S. in the war against Salafi Islamist terrorism.
Iran's Ministry of Intelligence & National Security (VEVAK) and the
intelligence directorate of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
(IRGC) arguably have a better understanding of Wahhabi/Salafi
terrorist networks and their institutional and ideological roots in
Saudi Arabia than most other major intelligence organizations. They
have gained such knowledge through the penetration of Wahhabi
missionary/terror groups in Pakistan, which has been a priority for
Iranian intelligence over the past 20 years. This priority stems not
only from Iran's self-perceived responsibility to protect Pakistan's
Shi'a community, but more importantly from a desire to pre-empt
Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi subversion amongst Iran's tiny Sunni
minority."
Abedin goes on to add that even before the emergence of the Taliban,
the VEVAK, the Iranian intelligence agency, designated Salafi/Wahhabi
terrorism as the primary threat to Iranian national security in 1994
and, contrary to unsubstantiated reports in Arab and western media,
has never had any friendly contacts with the al-Qaeda.
Experts also put much hope by the Algerian example where the initial
allurement of the people with the Islamists weakened after the
accesses of the Salafis. And that this could happen in Iraq as well,
eventually. Says Kepel: "The example of Algeria in the 1990s is
relevant here. Until 1996, militant Armed Islamic Group (GIA) or
Islamic Salvation Front (FIS)movements controlled large parts of
Algeria, and the regime seemed doomed; then, for disputed reasons –
military security operations, infiltration activities and other
provocations, the internal dynamics of the GIA – the Islamists
suddenly seemed to have alienated the bulk of the Algerian population.
They even lost support among those who had previously voted for them.
Today in Iraq, there are daily images of hostages being beheaded as
traitors, of corpses of policemen in the rivers – a spectacle of
horror designed to convince that jihad is on the rise and that the US
will never prevail. Yet jihadi Islamism in Iraq can draw on only the
17% of the population who are Sunni Arabs. The Iraqi Kurds and Shi'a
are beyond their reach."
On a more operational level, military strategists are in favour of a
more pro-active policy than has been forthcoming so far. Says General
Abizaid, the second highest ranking US military officer in Iraq: "The
key is to treating people who contribute money to the Salafist
movement no differently than people who carry out beheadings. The
truth of the matter is we have to be bold in our discussion and we
need to make liable the people who are financially contributing to
this organisation as the criminals they are."
