During the recent Israeli military operation and subsequent efforts to reach a durable ceasefire, Egypt demonstrated that it has two principal interests related to Gaza: first, avoiding taking on responsibility for the one and a half million Palestinians living there; and second, transferring control of Gaza back to the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmud Abbas to the extent possible. These interests spring from long-standing Egyptian support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as from concerns about stability inside Egypt itself.

There are at least two ways in which Egypt might be forced to take on responsibility for many, or all, Gazan Palestinians—and Egyptian President Husni Mubarak will try to avoid either one of them. First, there is the possibility that, due to a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, tens or hundreds of thousands of Palestinians could flood across the border into Sinai and stay on a semi-permanent basis. Egypt would then have to house them in refugee camps, creating a large and most likely restive refugee population in Sinai. This is not an idle fear; hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crossed the border illegally in January 2008 after Hamas militants bulldozed the fence to protest the closed border. President Mubarak thought it politically unwise to use lethal force against the unarmed Palestinians, and it took him nearly two weeks to persuade them to leave and then to regain control of Egypt’s international border. Egypt has since constructed a sturdier barrier—but it could still be breached.

Egypt will also resist suggestions that it should once again administer or occupy Gaza as it did between 1948 and 1967. Although the Israeli government has not adopted this idea as policy, the notion that Egypt and Jordan might take on much greater responsibility for Gaza and the West Bank respectively to secure their national interests has gained currency as prospects for the near-term creation of an independent Palestinian state have receded. Mubarak has addressed this prospect directly, warning in a December 30, 2008, speech that Egypt would resist attempts by Israel “to shirk its responsibility for Gaza and to over-task Egypt with its consequences.”

Realizing that governing hundreds of thousands of Gazans either in Sinai or Gaza itself would be a thankless task, President Mubarak also has reason to be concerned about the implications for his own country’s stability. Sinai is already a troubled area, populated largely by Bedouin with little loyalty to the Egyptian state, in which terrorists have carried out several large-scale attacks in recent years. The introduction of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians—perhaps including many militants from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad—would undoubtedly increase tensions.

Although many Egyptians have called on their government to extend greater diplomatic and humanitarian support to Gaza, actual Egyptian rule there (or a large Palestinian refugee presence in Egypt) would inflame anti-government sentiment. Egypt is already at a sensitive political juncture, facing widespread popular unhappiness with government performance and a likely presidential succession in the next few years. Protests against the government, mostly expressing local grievances related to the economy or human rights, have become a daily phenomenon. Since the 2000 outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising, a tradition has also developed of protests that begin by criticizing Israeli or U.S. actions but quickly turn to target Mubarak and demand an end to his rule of nearly three decades. Egypt’s principal opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, supports Hamas fervently and often organizes such protests, either on its own or in conjunction with other opposition groups. While such protests currently do not threaten internal stability, that picture could change if Egypt were to take on significant responsibility for Gazans, a move many Egyptians would see as serving the interests of Israel more than those of the Palestinians.

The second principle motivating President Mubarak’s diplomatic efforts is the desire to restore the Palestinian Authority to a role in Gaza to the extent possible. Egypt takes a realist approach to Hamas; it would prefer that Hamas not rule Gaza but acknowledges that it is impossible to ignore the group. One constant in recent mediation efforts has been Egypt’s insistence on enforcing the terms of the 2005 Rafah agreement, which treats the Palestinian Authority as the responsible party on the Gaza side of the border. Egypt has also pressed Hamas to agree to resume reconciliation talks with Fatah (broken off in November 2008) under the supervision of Egyptian General Intelligence Director Omar Sulayman. Egypt would rather play the principal mediating role between Hamas and Fatah than allow another Arab country to do so, in order to preserve some influence over the terms of Palestinian reconciliation.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit and other officials have repeatedly denied that significant arms have entered Gaza via the Sinai (claiming they have instead entered Gaza by sea), but in any case Egyptian officials are undoubtedly aware that there is now a spotlight on the arms smuggling issue. With the recent implementation of technical assistance from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (a $23 million program funded out of annual U.S. military assistance to Egypt) to detect tunneling and underground movements, Egypt should be able to improve significantly its performance in preventing arms trafficking into Gaza. The restoration of normal commerce in food and other essential goods through Rafah would also relieve pressure for smuggling, though not eliminate it altogether. Egypt has consistently resisted the idea of deploying international forces along its side of the border. There already are international troops in the Sinai under the guise of the Multinational Force and Observers as provided by the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, and Egypt will try to avoid what it sees as further infringements on its sovereignty.

The aftermath of the Gaza crisis affords some opportunities for the United States and Egypt to strengthen ties, which have been strained in recent years due to disagreements over U.S. actions in the Middle East as well as human and civil rights violations in Egypt. Egyptian goals in the region are generally consonant with U.S. goals, and this is true regarding Gaza. One difference is that Egypt is working explicitly for reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, which the United States considers a terrorist organization. Even so, Egypt’s unspoken agenda in mediating between the two groups has always been to promote a greater role for Fatah in any unity government and the smallest role for Hamas that the traffic will bear. In addition, Egypt is playing a leading role in attempts to shore up Arab support for the Palestinian Liberation Organization headed by Abbas as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

In the short term, U.S.–Egyptian cooperation on Gaza and other regional issues can help to restore bilateral ties. Over the longer term, however, it will be necessary for the two countries to reach an understanding on progress on human and civil rights in Egypt in order for the partnership to flourish.

Michele Dunne submitted this testimony to the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on February 12.

What’s the meaning of the offer last week by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantánamo detainees to plead guilty to the charge that they coordinated the attacks of 9/11 that murdered nearly 3,000 Americans?

That meaning is revealed by the fact that they withdrew their offer as soon as they learned that procedural problems—and probably the timetable of the presidential transition—could interfere with their immediate executions.

The plea offer—and its withdrawal—should help us understand what drives Mohammed and his colleagues. And it should help the Obama administration understand what to do about the Guantánamo detainees.

What drives Mohammed and his co-defendants, now that they’re in captivity, is what drove Al Qaeda when it flew planes into the World Trade Center: the effort to achieve a spectacular show of martyrdom. But who is their primary audience now that they’re in Guantánamo?

Clearly, that audience is not made up of Westerners. To be sure, were these detainees to make impassioned speeches before their executions proclaiming their joy in dying in response to the victimization of Muslims, a few in the West might admire their dedication to their cause. For most in America and Europe, though, that dedication would be outweighed by the mass murders for which they claimed responsibility.

More likely, the detainees’ offer to plead guilty was aimed at a Muslim audience. It was aimed, first of all, at an audience of hard-core Al Qaeda members, for whom the achievement of a death-wish would be seen as a commitment to martyrdom that they should emulate. And it was aimed at the rest of the Muslim world in the hope that it would highlight the Al Qaeda’s grievances and enlist recruits to the Islamist jihad against the Western oppressors.

In pursuing this strategy, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants were trying to use Guantánamo, as the World Trade Center was used, as a symbol of the hated America—an America that could be damaged by turning American power against itself. In the case of the World Trade Center, American power consisted of prominent buildings that symbolized the financial might of a corrupt America, which were destroyed spectacularly by flying Western-made planes into them. In the case of Guantánamo, American power consists of detention facilities that symbolize the legal system of a corrupt America, which would be destroyed by forcing that system to turn its inmates into martyrs.

And in pursuing this strategy, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was following Al Qaeda’s playbook to the letter. He was using whatever stage is available to publicize his cause, to demonstrate his commitment, and to provide a big show. His hope was that the show would be spread virally on television, in newspapers and on the Internet to an audience of believers and potential believers in the Muslim world, bucking up the convictions of the believers and recruiting, to the believing camp, many more.

So what is to be done?

Clearly, what’s needed in response to terrorists is the legal pursuit of legal means in the service of legal ends. The plans of the incoming Obama administration, which seem to include the transfer of inmates to U.S. prisons, may eliminate the Guantánamo stigma from America’s legal response to the terrorism aimed at it.

But what’s needed no less is a careful consideration of the consequences, for Al Qaeda and its sympathizers, of executions that would be interpreted as glorious outcomes of glorious martyrdom operations. The Bush administration has sought the death penalty for convicted mass-murdering terrorists. It would be the better part of wisdom for an Obama administration to favor, instead, life in prison.

From Assaf Moghadam

The Globalization of Martyrdom is the product of a more than decade-long, intensive interest I have taken in studying suicide terrorism.

In this book, I argue that two distinct patterns of suicide terrorism have evolved. The vast majority of studies on suicide terrorism to date have focused on the traditional pattern of “localized” suicide attacks carried out by such groups as Hezbollah, the LTTE (”Tamil Tigers”), Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Fatah, and the PKK—the groups responsible for the bulk of suicide attacks during the 1980s and 1990s. Although these groups continue to be fervent enemies of Israel, Sri Lanka, and Turkey, and most continue to plot violent attacks against their foes, most suicide attacks today are perpetrated by other groups, targeting different countries. Especially since 9/11, suicide missions by Al Qaeda, its affiliates, and other Salafi-Jihadist groups have risen exponentially, far outnumbering the attacks conducted by the previously dominant groups. They also target far more countries than have other groups before, and their attacks are more deadly. For these reasons, suicide attacks by Al Qaeda and its associated movements are the new epicenter of this deadly phenomenon and form a new pattern of “globalized” suicide attacks.

I argue that existing explanations of suicide attacks, most notably the notions that suicide terrorism are the result of foreign occupation or organizational outbidding, fail to account for the global proliferation of this tactic. I believe that the reason for the spread of suicide attacks instead lies in the evolution of Al Qaeda into a global terrorist actor and in the growing appeal of its guiding ideology, the Salafi Jihad. The Globalization of Martyrdom describes in detail how both Al Qaeda and Salafi-Jihadist ideology place utmost importance on the two core elements of the globalization of suicide attacks: the element of suicide operations, and the globalization of terrorist activity.

As I write in the opening passages of the book, my interest in this particularly sinister tactic began in the mid-1990s, when I witnessed the devastating consequences of one of the first early campaigns of suicide terrorism as a college student in Jerusalem. My early fascination with this tactic led me to write my masters’ thesis on Palestinian suicide terrorism, and later a doctoral dissertation examining the global proliferation of this modus operandi. Based on my dissertation, The Globalization of Martyrdom provides a history of suicide missions and their precursors from the biblical Samson to the murder of Benazhir Bhutto; a description of the importance of suicide attacks for Al Qaeda and other Salafi-Jihadist groups; and detailed case studies of suicide attacks in modern theaters ranging from Afghanistan, Algeria, Chechnya, and Iraq to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and half a dozen other countries. My findings are based in part on an analysis of a dataset of nearly 1,300 suicide attacks between 1981 and April 2007. (I recently updated that data set to 1,857 suicide attacks which I analyze in an article forthcoming in International Security.)

The Globalization of Martyrdom highlights the importance of ideology—an issue neglected in nearly all existing studies of suicide attacks. Examining the wills, farewell videos, and other reports about suicide attackers, I found that many of the suicide bombers echo Salafi-Jihadist doctrines. They adopt the general worldview offered by this ideology; the same diagnosis about the reasons for Islam’s relative decline; the belief that Islam is attacked by an evil coalition; and the argument that their personal participation in martyrdom operations is the ultimate proof of their religious devotion. They have internalized Al Qaeda’s and its Salafi-Jihadist allies’ broad conception of the enemy as being composed not only of Westerners in general, Christians, and Jews, but also of those Muslims whose beliefs and practices do not meet the standards set by Salafi-Jihadists. They also buy into the Salafi-Jihadist belief that martyrdom is the ultimate form of waging jihad.

In my conclusion, I suggest that while a strategy to counter suicide terrorism clearly consists of several important components, challenging Salafi-Jihadist ideology is among the more important and overlooked elements. It is incumbent particularly upon Muslims to challenge a threat that places them at even higher risk than it places Western countries, since it is an indisputable fact that Salafi-Jihadist terrorism kills Muslims in far greater numbers than it kills Westerners. The Salafi Jihad suffers from a fundamental contradiction: on the one hand, it claims to act for the benefit of Islam; but on the other hand, Muslims suffer the consequences of Salafi-Jihadist ideology and terrorism more than any other group. Muslims should expose this fundamental hypocrisy as often and as forcefully as possible.

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The Islamic Republic has been pursuing a nuclear program for the better part of two decades. Concerns over Iranian intentions were among the reasons cited by Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, for example, when he inaugurated Germany’s “critical dialogue” in 1992. Subsequent years have been littered with failed diplomatic initiatives, most notably: Reagan’s controversial outreach in 1983; critical dialogue; a broader European critical engagement; Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s apology; and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s offer to sit down with Iran if it suspended enrichment for the duration of talks, and her subsequent decision to reverse course and sign onto a generous incentive package. The constant throughout all of these initiatives has been continuation of Tehran’s nuclear program. Whether under ‘pragmatist’ president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, ‘reformist’ president Mohammad Khatami, or ‘principalist’ (Persian: usulgarayan) president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, there have been differences of rhetoric, but remarkable continuity of Iran’s nuclear investments.

The clock is running down, though. President Obama will need to make decisions which Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Bush deferred. After all, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has confirmed that the Islamic Republic has now installed 4,000 centrifuges in its overt enrichment plant. According to Senators Dan Coats and Chuck Robb’s task force on U.S. Policy toward Iranian Nuclear Development (for which I served as drafter), with just 6,000 P-1 centrifuges, fuel-grade 4.8 percent enriched uranium feed, and tails enrichment of 2.26 percent, the Islamic Republic could produce 20 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium in 16 days; i.e., in the period between IAEA inspections. That is not to say that Iran can produce a bomb in less than three weeks, but producing a crude-bomb’s worth of 93.1 percent highly enriched uranium is the most difficult process in an indigenous bomb program.

Early in his administration, Obama will have to determine whether the United States can live with a nuclear weapons-capable Islamic Republic. If he decides the answer is no and if diplomatic and economic coercion fails to persuade Iran’s leaders to back away from their program, this would then mean commitment to a 1998 Operation Desert Fox-type operation. Any kinetic action against Iran would bring short-term gain at tremendous long-term cost: Iranians are nationalistic and would rally around the flag. While the Islamic Republic does not need nuclear arms for its defense, any military action against the Iran’s nuclear program would justify Tehran’s arguments in world opinion as the regime rebuilt.

Regardless, Obama’s policy positions and voting record suggest that he would never order any strike. This leaves both containment and deterrence as U.S. strategies. The problem here, though, is that across the political spectrum, U.S. officials speak of both strategies in rhetorical terms without acknowledging what they require. In this essay for the American Enterprise Institute’s Middle Eastern Outlook series, I explore what would be necessary to deter or contain a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran, and the consequences of speaking of either strategy without laying the groundwork for them.

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From Gilles Kepel

Beyond Terror and Martyrdom is the English-language revised and updated version of Terreur et Martyre: Relever le défi de civilisation, which came out in French in the spring of 2008. That book is the third part of a trilogy that began with Jihad (French 2000, English 2001) and continued with Fitna (2004, English as The War for Muslim Minds)—all three published in English by Harvard University Press. The trilogy is an attempt to decipher the present state of the Middle East in its relation to the globalized world, through the lenses of its Islamist movements. Jihad dealt with a broader historical perspective, tracing the beginnings of radical Islamist ideology back to the mid-1960s with the seminal works of Sayyid Qutb, and questioning the rise and shortcomings of Islamist movements up to 2000. The latter two books dealt with a much shorter span: 2001 to 2004 for Fitna; the period from 2004 to the present for Beyond Terror and Martyrdom. (Click here for more on the trilogy, and other books mentioned below.)

When 9/11 occurred, Jihad was widely mocked: if, as the author had explained, radical Islamist movements had failed politically, how were they able to organize an attack of the magnitude of the ghazwatayn mubarakatayn (”two blessed raids”) on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon? He surely had underestimated the “Islamist peril,” probably for politically correct reasons, and was no longer worthy of any academic standing. Some demanded that he be fired from his university job—but (hamdullah) the poor guy had tenure. This was not easy to swallow, and I tried to respond with a short and ironical travelogue, Chronique d’une guerre d’Orient (English as Bad Moon Rising, Saqi, UK, both 2002).

But none other than Ayman al-Zawahiri finally came to my rescue, with his Fursan taht rayat an-nabi (”Knights under the Prophet’s Banner”), where the number-one ideologue of Al Qaeda explained that 9/11 was but an attempt to reverse the failure of the 1990s, when Islamist radicals couldn’t mobilize the masses. Attacking the “faraway enemy” was the true means to show that the United States was a giant with feet of clay. The masses, too afraid to respond to the call of the Islamist radicals in Algeria, Egypt, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, etc. would now stop being afraid and mobilize against their “apostate” regimes.

But 9/11 paved the way instead to the American-led “War on Terror” and the invasion of Iraq. Bin Laden & Co. saw it as their golden opportunity for a global jihad-win-all against impious invaders of the abode of Islam, something they were sure would re-enact, on Arab land, the Afghan jihad of the 1980s against the Red Army. (That had proved in retrospect to have been the cradle of Salafi-Jihadism, the ideological construct that led to Al Qaeda. The first book in my trilogy was entitled Jihad as a tribute to the central place of the Afghan “jihad” in the shaping of Islamist movements post-1980s.)

Beyond Terror and Martyrdom focuses on two main issues: first, the rise of “martyrdom” (or suicide) operations, which I believe actually led to the political suicide of Sunni Islamist radicalism, ripe with betrayals such as the so-called Sahwa (”awakening”) movement in Iraq and disputes on whether the shedding of “Muslim blood” was a major political failure; and second, the renewal of Shi’a radicalism in Iran under Ahmadinejad, who made the best possible use of the U.S. quagmire in Iraq.

Now I believe Zawahiri & Co. are not faring well, and I devote a long chapter in the book to an in-depth analysis of his cyber-proclamations; while in Iran, the radical rhetoric of Ahmadinejad, who had promised to put “oil money” on every Iranian dinner table, fell short of its populist promise. Just as Barack Obama’s victory is a typical “post-Bush” phenomenon, which doesn’t relate only to the sorry state of the economy but has to do with the cardinal sin at the core of the Gitmo-centred “GWOT,” I expect we’ll see in 2009 a “post-Ahmadinejad” political phenomenon in Iran—provided the West makes an offer to the new Iranian post-Islamist (though staunchly nationalist) elites, to reintegrate the Gulf security system.

Last, but by no means least, Beyond Terror and Martyrdom deals at length with issues of Muslims in Europe, which had been of particular interest to me since I published Les Banlieues de l’Islam (”The peripheries of Islam,” in 1987, no English translation). To cut a long story short, successful politics of integration are contrasted to failed politics of multi-culturalism—a taste of French schadenfreude and Fox News-bashing… which you may imagine I did relish!

Writing this book involved a lot of suffering—I believed wrongly that aging would make writing easier; well, quite the contrary—but reading it in English, in Pascale Ghazaleh’s great translation, is a pleasure! I wish I could write in English like that—though in the multipolar world, might there be some room left for obsolete dialects such as French or Arabic? I hope you’ll enjoy reading it too, and please send me your reactions, negative, critical or positive, here. I promise I’ll answer the relevant ones! A bientôt sur le web!

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Terrorism watchers repeatedly warned that Al Qaeda might strike in the days leading up to election day yet, thankfully, we have reached November 4 without incident. Al Qaeda’s logic for striking seems straightforward. An attack would dominate media coverage at a time when world (not just U.S.) attention is focused on the U.S. election. In a tight race, a terrorist attack might even tip the balance, enabling Osama bin Laden to claim that American politics dances to his tune. Experts point to Spain’s elections in March 2003, when a terrorist attack (and the Aznar government’s bungled handling of it) led to a surprise socialist victory, which in turn led to a government that withdrew troops from Iraq, as Al Qaeda had sought. Democratic electoral strategists in particular feared that an Al Qaeda attack might play to Senator McCain’s perceived strength among voters in national security affairs and that Bin Laden would want to bolster McCain in the belief that he was more likely to entangle the United States militarily in the Muslim world.

Yet with the clarity of hindsight, we know that Al Qaeda did not strike. (Though, before we relax too much, several experts warned that the transition after an election is also a time of higher risk.) This is not because bin Laden lacks interest in an attack. As he knows, attacks on U.S. soil would be popular among his key constituents and would help him recruit and raise money. In addition, he genuinely believes that the United States is evil and deserves punishment.

I don’t know why Al Qaeda did not strike, but there are several plausible explanations:

• Bin Laden has other fish to fry. Although Americans understandably focus on the threat Al Qaeda poses to the United States, from Bin Laden’s point of view we are only one concern of many—even if we still are a favorite target of his rhetoric. Al Qaeda’s primary day-to-day focus now is on events in Pakistan, where the organization is based, and Afghanistan, where it is helping support the massive insurgency that is battling the U.S.-backed Karzai government. As if this were not enough, Al Qaeda has ambitions in Iraq, the Maghreb, and Central Asia as well as against Israel. These theaters are important to Al Qaeda leaders, and many in the organization would prioritize them over attacks in the United States. Even if the United States remains the primary focus of the leaders of the Al Qaeda core, expanding operations in several of these theaters gives Al Qaeda opportunities to strike at America outside the U.S. homeland. Iraq and Afghanistan allows it to showcase one of its preferred methods: support for insurgents.
• Al Qaeda’s operational capacity is limited. Al Qaeda has reestablished a base in tribal parts of Pakistan, and its operational capacity is growing when compared to the organization’s dark days in 2002. Yet while Pakistan is an excellent haven, in many respects it is a tougher one than the Taliban’s Afghanistan. From Pakistan Al Qaeda can still plot attacks, and its propaganda is prodigious. However, its leaders must also spend much of their time battling or bribing government forces, hiding from U.S. Predator strikes, or otherwise focusing on their daily survival.
• U.S. government efforts at home are paying off. The Department of Homeland Security is much-maligned, but at least it is trying to stop jihadists from entering the country. And trying counts. The FBI has made numerous arrests on terrorism charges (often, we find out later, on quite thin grounds), suggesting that it is aggressive in going after any potential jihadist threat at home.
• Aggressive intelligence efforts abroad keep us safer at home. More important than strictly domestic efforts, U.S. intelligence is working with its counterparts around the world to disrupt the organization, making it harder for Al Qaeda to do sustained operations. Remember, the 9/11 attack involved not only the United States and Afghanistan, but also Germany, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and other countries. Such a global plot would be far more difficult to orchestrate today. Senior leaders would be more likely to be killed, and junior operatives would be more likely to be arrested.
• Al Qaeda wants to outdo 9/11. Bin Laden does not think small, and he consistently seeks terrorism “spectaculars” against the United States (for example, the plot to bomb transatlantic flights from the United Kingdom, which was foiled in the summer of 2006). A spectacular attack might inflict mass casualties like 9/11, or it might involve a lower casualty but novel method, such as chemical weapons. This ambition may dissuade Bin Laden from a low-level strike before the election, as he wants to save his powder for a time when he can inflict the maximum damage.
• There is no “Al Qaeda of the United States.” Even if the United States were not more aggressive at home and abroad, Al Qaeda’s ability to operate in the United States is limited. In contrast to Britain, Egypt, France, Saudi Arabia, Spain and many other countries, the United States does not have a significant domestic jihadist network within its borders. Government prosecution efforts reveal that many arrested plotters were incompetent dreamers who had little or no ties to the Al Qaeda core, in contrast to their counterparts in Europe and the Arab world. Infiltrators Bin Laden sends to the United States would find it hard to gain local assistance as they prepare for an attack. The few radicalized American Muslims might still attack in Al Qaeda’s name, but the likelihood is far lower than in many other countries, and the skill level of the attackers would probably be limited, making a 9/11-scale operation particularly unlikely, which (as noted above) is probably one of Bin Laden’s goals for operations in the United States.

Taken together (and these must be, as several of these explanations overlap), these are plausible reasons for why Al Qaeda did not strike the United States despite the publicity that would surround an attack near the election.

Making it safely past election day suggests two somewhat contradictory lessons. First, Al Qaeda does not always, or even often, strike according to our calendar. There are regular predictions about attacks during elections, New Year’s Day, the Super Bowl, and other events that concentrate the media. I suspect that, someday, one of these predictions will eventually turn out to be right. That means we should prepare for strikes, but at the same time there is no need to panic before each celebration. Second, several of the above explanations depend on aggressive U.S. efforts at home and abroad and at least one (operational capacity) is turning in Al Qaeda’s favor with the development of a haven in Pakistan. So success depends in part on remaining aggressive, not just congratulating ourselves on making it past another milestone.

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Earlier this week, U.S. helicopters killed a high-value Al Qaeda target in Syria. While the attack shocked some observers, the presence of Al Qaeda operatives on Syrian soil has surprised few. According to CENTCOM, since 2003 Syria has been the leading point of entry of insurgents—Al Qaeda and others—into Iraq. Damascus allowed these insurgents to establish training bases and facilitated their movement across Syrian territory, not only to Iraq, but to Lebanon and Jordan as well.

Predictably, Damascus condemned the strike as unprovoked U.S. aggression. One might have thought, given the Asad regime’s documented ties with Al Qaeda, Baghdad would have had less of a problem with the U.S. cross-border raid. Yet Iraq—like North Korea and many Arab states—roundly condemned the operation.

In the days following the strike, there have been large government-sanctioned demonstrations in Syria protesting the U.S. military action. No doubt, popular outrage over the loss of innocent civilians is genuine. Seemingly lost on the protesters, however, was the fact that the target was Al Qaeda—which was widely believed to have been behind an early October car bomb that killed 17 in Damascus. Of course, this oversight is understandable: the Syrian government-controlled print media neglected to mention the Al Qaeda connection to the strike.

The Asad regime’s response to the attack stands in stark contrast to its reaction to the September 2007 Israeli strike on Syria’s nuclear weapons facility in Al Kibar. Relatively speaking, Israel’s audacious raid hardly elicited a protest. Indeed, although Syria accused Washington as having been “party to the execution” of the Israeli attack, unlike this week, the United States did not have to close the embassy, nor did the Asad regime respond by shuttering the American School and cultural center in Damascus.

Many analysts both in the region and in Washington are saying that the strike was politically motivated, with some even speculating it was authorized by the few remaining “hawks” in the administration intent on rolling back the seemingly inevitable march toward U.S. diplomatic re-engagement with Syria. Given the Bush administration’s long-standing policy of hot pursuit, however, this line of thinking seems rather conspiratorial. More likely, the decision to cross the border was made by commanders on the ground eager to take advantage of actionable intelligence on a high-value target.

In the short term, the strike may derail eleventh-hour Bush administration efforts to engage the Asad regime, but it is unlikely to have any lasting impact should either President Obama or McCain determine to initiate dialogue with Damascus. The U.S. strike will also have no bearing—as some have argued—on whether Damascus will ultimately split from Tehran. Even the most ardent advocates for U.S. diplomatic re-engagement with Syria no longer believe this type of strategic reorientation is possible.

What’s more, there is very little evidence to suggest a correlation between Washington’s posture and Syrian behavior. Syrian behavior is not necessarily any more appealing—either domestically or in regard to its neighbors—when Washington takes a conciliatory tack.

Just compare events of this week to what happened in April 2007, shortly after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to Damascus for a cordial meeting with President Asad. The similarities in the headlines are uncanny. Days after the U.S. airstrike, the Asad regime sentenced twelve Syrian liberals to two and a half years in prison for signing the Damascus Declaration—including Riad Seif, who suffers from advanced prostate cancer. In 2007, judging from the pictures of Asad and Pelosi strolling and shopping in Suq al-Hamadiyeh, conciliation was in the air. Yet days after Pelosi’s departure, Asad sentenced six leading dissidents to harsh jail terms of three to twelve years.

Nearly five years after the invasion of Iraq, the fact that high-value, high-profile Al Qaeda figures continue to operate on the Syrian side of the border—even after Damascus dispatched an ambassador to Baghdad—should be instructive. If the past thirty years are any guide, regardless of what Washington does, Damascus will likely remain a problem. Whether Obama or McCain comes to the White House in January, it would be advisable for the next administration to diminish expectations of what diplomatic engagement with Damascus can achieve.

From Bruce Riedel

When I retired from the CIA two years ago, I began researching the statements and writings of the senior Al Qaeda leadership. I found that the picture that emerged from their own words was often very different from the imagery of Al Qaeda conveyed to most Americans, even by experts. Many experts after the 9/11 attacks, for example, argued that Al Qaeda’s primary goal was to evict American troops from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. If so, then the terrorists won their war five years ago when the Bush administration withdrew U.S. combat forces from the Kingdom. Of course, this was not the fundamental issue motivating Al Qaeda but a useful tactical rallying cry in a much larger game to evict the United States and its allies from the Muslim world as a whole, overthrow pro-Western regime and destroy Israel. Al Qaeda’s own words had been clear on this from the start.

The Search for Al Qaeda takes the reader into the minds of the leaders of the world’s first global terrorist organization and the perpetrators of the largest mass murder in American history. It uses the words of Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, Mullah Omar and Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi to understand their ideology and the narrative of history that they think justifies their action. By examining their words and their life stories, it exposes the strategy they are pursuing, including its strengths and weaknesses.

Unlike other books on Al Qaeda, the focus is more on what has happened since 9/11 rather than on the road to September 11, 2001. Since 9/11, Al Qaeda’s leadership has written and spoken often about their plans for that day and their plans for the days since. This book looks at that literature in depth and decodes it for those who are not experts in Islamic history and thinking.

The picture that emerges is chilling but realistic. Al Qaeda’s vulnerabilities are highlighted so that an effective grand strategy to defeat the terrorists can be developed: a strategy that seeks to bring together all elements of American leadership—diplomacy, vision, intelligence operations and military force—to defeat this enemy. The central role of our Muslim allies in this battle is explored and a strategy for gaining their assistance is laid out. The critical importance of addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict and stabilizing Pakistan is explained. My hope is that this book will in its own way help both Americans and Muslims understand better how Al Qaeda thinks and thus how to deal with it.

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In many ways, Michael Scheuer is the paradigmatic case of an otherwise knowledgeable and experienced Western adult who takes Al Qaeda’s word at face value. According to his book, Imperial Hubris, his credentials and thus authority to speak about Al Qaeda and its goals are impressive: “For the past seventeen years, my career has focused exclusively on terrorism, Islamic insurgencies, militant Islam… I have earned my keep and am able to speak with some authority and confidence about Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, [and] the dangers they pose and symbolize for the Unites States…”

The remainder of his book makes several fine points, articulating well—arguably even better than bin Laden—the grievances that Al Qaeda and the Muslim world have vis-à-vis specific U.S. policies. However, the book’s fundamental thesis is bin Laden’s own: Al Qaeda’s terrorism is simply a reaction to U.S. foreign policy. Writes Scheuer emphatically: “Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. None of the reasons have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy, but everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world.”

He then proceeds to quote and accept, rather naively, several of bin Laden’s messages to the West, such as: “Therefore, I am telling you [Americans], with Allah as my witness, whether America escalates or de-escalates the conflict, we will reply to it in kind….” Bin Laden, of course, often begins every message directed at the West by saying “reciprocal treatment is part of justice”—i.e., “leave us alone, we leave you alone.”

Scheuer takes it one step further by concluding that Al Qaeda’s war revolves around “love”:

Bin Laden and most militant Islamists, therefore, can be said to be motivated by their love for Allah and their hatred for a few, specific, U.S. policies and actions they believe are damaging—and threatening to destroy—the things they love. Theirs is a war against a specific target, and for specific, limited purposes. While they will use whatever weapon comes to hand—including weapons of mass destruction—their goal is not to wipe out our secular democracy, but to deter us by military means from attacking the things they love. Bin Laden et al are not eternal warriors.

Thereafter, bin Laden is likened to heroes like Robin Hood or (of all people) Saint Francis of Assisi—a friar known for his benevolence towards animals. Surprisingly, Scheuer overlooks the theological underpinnings—offensive jihad, enforcement of “dhimmitude,” and enmity for non-Muslims—that dominate Al Qaeda’s worldview (and which are delineated over and over in The Al Qaeda Reader). These hostile doctrines, innate to Al-Qaeda’s worldview, clearly demonstrate that, contrary to Scheuer’s assessment, Al Qaeda and their kind do—indeed must—hate the United States for more than a “few, specific policies,” and that their war transcends “specific, limited purposes,” and thus that they are “eternal warriors.”

Here is bin Laden himself explaining the “true” nature of the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, such as Americans, AKA, “infidels”:

As to the relationship between Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High’s Word: “We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us—till you believe in Allah alone” [Qur’an 60:4]. So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility from the heart. And this fierce hostility—that is, battle—ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed [i.e., a dhimmi], or if Muslims are at that point in time weak and incapable [in which case, bin Laden later clarifies, they should dissemble (taqiyya) before the infidels by, say, insisting the conflict is about “foreign policy,” nothing more]. But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the heart, this is great apostasy!… Such, then, is the basis and foundation of the relationship between the infidel and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred—directed from the Muslim to the infidel—is the foundation of our religion.

Note that, contrary to Scheuer’s assurances, at no time does bin Laden indicate that U.S. foreign policy is behind such animus; it is entirely a theological argument—transcending time, space, and circumstance. In his attack against “moderate” Muslims, bin Laden rhetorically asks and answers the pivotal question:

Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually? Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: either willing submission; or payment of the jizya [tribute], through physical though not spiritual submission to the authority of Islam; or the sword—for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live.

How do these quotes accord with Scheuer’s statement that “None of the reasons [for Al Qaeda’s antipathy] have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy”? (My emphases.)

Nor is this worldview “peculiar” to bin Laden. Here’s his “second,” Ayman Zawahiri:

Jihad in the path of Allah is greater than any individual or organization. It is a struggle between Truth and Falsehood, until Allah Almighty inherits the earth and those who live in it. Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden—may Allah protect them from all evil—are merely two soldiers of Islam in the journey of Jihad, while the struggle between Truth and Falsehood transcends time.

That Al Qaeda’s messages to the West are being understood uncritically and taken at face value by the public is one thing; that a former CIA veteran whose expertise revolves around Islam buys into this calculated sophistry is quite another. Since, as Muhammad said, “war is deceit,” Scheuer and other analysts of like mind would do well to consider that perhaps when Al Qaeda sends a communiqué to the West, it is not necessarily sincere but meant solely to elicit a particular response; such as, that Al Qaeda’s war is predicated on a “few, specific, U.S. policies and actions.” This is tailor-made to accord with the West’s preconceived notions of “justice,” “equality,” “poverty causes violence,“ and especially “guilt,” and is intended to demoralize Americans from, for instance, supporting “the war on terror” which obviously directly affects Al Qaeda.

Here’s Osama, one more time, relying on an anecdote from Muslim history indicating what all non-Muslims can expect—even after they make concessions to Islam:

When the king of the Copts of Egypt tried improving relations with the Prophet by dignifying his messenger and sending him back on a beast of burden laden with clothing, and a slave-girl, did such niceties prevent the Companions from raiding the Coptic realms, forcefully placing them under Islamic rule?

The answer is no. As both Islamic theology commands and history attests, “concessions” or “niceties” are never enough: submission to Islam is the price for peace. Mr. Scheuer can be certain, then, that no matter how many political concessions the United States makes to the Islamic world, so-called “Salafists” like bin Laden—that is, Muslims who follow the letter of the law (sharia)—will continue the jihad “till all chaos ceases and religion is all for Allah” (Qur’an 8:38). Instead of thinking of them as Robin Hoods and Francis of Assisis, or simply idealistic, wayward children, it’s best to start seeing them as they see themselves: mujahidin—warriors of Allah out to make Islam supreme, as there have been for some 1,400 years.

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The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point just released a study on the foreign fighters streaming into Iraq. The new study, Bombers, Bank Accounts, and Bleedout: al-Qa’ida’s Road in and Out of Iraq, edited by my colleague Brian Fishman, expands on an analysis of Al Qaeda in Iraq’s personnel records conducted by the CTC in December 2007. Chapters are written by Brian Fishman and Joseph Felter, Peter Bergen, Jacob Shapiro, and Vahid Brown.

Bombers, Bank Accounts, and Bleedout not only expands on the analysis of the Sinjar Records conducted in the first report but also introduces a host of new data. It contains statistics on the exact number and nationality of foreign fighters held by the United States at Camp Bucca in Iraq; contracts signed by AQI’s foreign suicide bombers; contracts signed by AQI fighters entering and leaving Iraq; accounting sheets signed by various fighters that indicate funding sources and expenditures; several narratives describing AQI’s network in Syria, personnel problems, and ties to Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon; weapons reports, and other documents. These documents can be downloaded from the CTC’s website.

Some of the report’s major findings are that foreign fighters were an important source of funds for Al Qaeda in Iraq, and that Saudi fighters contributed far more money than any other nationality. The report concludes that “bleedout” of fighters from Iraq is occurring, but in relatively small numbers. Nonetheless, these individual fighters will likely be well-trained and very dangerous. The primary threat from these fighters is to Arab states, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and possibly Somalia. A chapter devoted to smuggling finds that smuggling of all kinds takes place across the Syrian-Iraqi border, and is linked to rampant corruption in both countries.