• These documents are not real. They are designed to sow discord among jihadis and create tension b/n al-Qaeda and the online jihadi forums.
• The documents are real and show normal disagreements between a commander and his subordinates. No big deal.
• We need to wait for Sahab (AQ’s media wing) to validate the documents.
• Even if the documents are false, most outside analysts agree they show the sincerity of AQ and its seriousness.
• Each of the documents contains an element of truth but the CTC has also mixed in falsehood, such as the bits about divisions between AQ leadership and the affiliates
• We need to see all of the Bin Laden documents to really know what’s going on. This is just a slice of the whole, intended to manipulate us.
• The documents were chosen very carefully. We should believe the nice parts and ignore the rest.
• We can actually benefit from the documents. There’s a lot of good advice for the jihadi movement in them. They cast Bin Laden in a good light.

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• Date: Unknown, From: Unknown, To: Unknown (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000009]
• Date: Unknown, From: Unknown, To: Unknown (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000017]
• Date: Unknown, From: Unknown (probably Bin Laden or `Atiyya), To: Nasir al-Wuhayshi (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000016]
• Date: 14 Sept 2006, From: Unknown, To: Bin Laden (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000018]
• Date: Between 24 Oct and 22 Nov 2006, From: `Atiyya, To: Jaysh al-Islam (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000008]
• Date: after Jan 2007, From: Unknown, To: `Atiyya (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000014]
• Date: 28 Mar 2007, From: Unknown (an Egyptian), To: Hafiz Sultan (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000011]
• Date: 11 June 2009, From: `Atiyya, To: Unknown (possibly Bin Laden) (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000012]
• Date: late May 2010, From: Bin Laden, To: `Atiyya (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000019]
• Date: 7 Aug 2010, From: Bin Laden, To: Mukhtar Abu al-Zubayr (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000005]
• Date: 27 Aug 2010, From: Bin Laden, To: `Atiyya (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000003]
• Date: 21 Oct 2010, From: Bin Laden, To: `Atiyya (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000015]
• Date: 3 Dec 2010, From: `Atiyya and Abu Yahya al-Libi, To: Hakimullah Mahsud (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000007]
• Date: Dec 2010, From: Unknown (possibly Zawahiri), To: Bin Laden (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000006]
• Date: Late Jan 2011, From: Adam Gadahn, To: Unknown (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000004]
• Date: 26 April 2011, From: Bin Laden, To: `Atiyya (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000010]
• Date: Unknown (probably 2011), From: Unknown, To: Unknown (Eng) (Ar) [SOCOM-2012-0000013]

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• A Brookings memo explaining why many of Egypt’s Salafis have embraced party politics after railing against it for decades
• An update to my Foreign Affairs piece
• An exploration of the implications of al-Qaeda holding territory in Yemen and Somalia
• A panel discussion on al-Qaeda’s status with Stephen Tankel and Mary Habeck

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Scepticism

When one thinks of Egypt and jihadis, the first person that comes to mind is probably Ayman al-Zawahiri. Al-Qaida’s leader has issued many a “letter of hope and good tidings to our people in Egypt” since the beginning of the Arab Spring and although that title may sound as if these epistles contain Christmas greetings to the country’s Coptic community, they offer nothing of the sort.

In part three of his series of letters to the Egyptian people, al-Zawahiri spends most of his time warning his countrymen about the supposedly evil intentions of the United States and their Arab henchmen (“the Arab Zionist rulers of injustice and betrayal”). The US, al-Zawahiri claims, conspires with the rulers of the Arab world to “wage war on Islam and its sharia”, expressed in banning the headscarf, spreading evil and besieging the people of Gaza. All of this happens, of course, under the guise of the “war on terrorism”, al-Zawahiri explains.

Such talk about strong ties between the US and Arab regimes sounds quite familiar, but al-Zawahiri needs it to make his point, which is that current events in Egypt are not going to give Egyptians what they really want: “These international powers and particularly the US”, al-Zawahiri writes, want to “change the old faces for new faces to deceive the people with some reforms and freedoms”. Such token gestures will give people the idea that things are changing but this will actually only serve “the interests of the world powers of arrogance and injustice”. Egypt, al-Zawahiri maintains, “will remain the basis of the Crusader attack and a founding partner in the American war on Islam”.

Al-Zawahiri thus offers nothing but the same old arguments. One could argue that his scepticism is somewhat understandable. Having grown up under the repressive regime of Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasir (Nasser), whose revolution was als0 hailed as a liberation of Egypt at the time, having seen several Egyptian dictators come and go and having suffered from brutal torture in prisons in his own country, one could forgive him from not immediately jumping up and down with glee at seeing the first signs of a revolt. Al-Zawahiri has seen it all before and has been disappointed too many times to believe it all.

Agenda

There may be some truth to the above. Reading the fourth part of his series of letters to the Egyptian people, however, should convince anyone that al-Zawahiri is not so much a sceptic, but rather someone with his own agenda aimed at claiming credit for overthrowing Mubarak. In this letter, he repeats the same stuff mentioned above and then claims that “your mujahidun brothers are with you fighting the same enemy and confronting America and its Western allies that have made [Egyptian President] Husni Mubarak rule over you”. America, he says, is now trying to reverse its previous policy of supporting dictators and currently wants to co-operate with the people. This policy change, he claims, “only came as a direct result of the blessed raids in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania”.

So apparently the Arab Spring came about as a direct result of 9/11 and the US is now on the people’s side. Yet doesn’t that last bit clash with his earlier statement that the US only cares about token reforms and “changing the old faces for new faces” while retaining its own interests? Yes it does, and al-Zawahiri is therefore quick to point out that this revised US policy is something that “is not enough and does not satisfy any noble and free Muslim”. In a seemingly reassuring way, he adds that “your mujahidun brothers [...] will continue to strike America and its partners and hurt them until they leave – with God’s permission – the lands of the Muslims and have had enough of supporting the tyrants in these countries”.

Al-Zawahiri pushes his own agenda a bit further by claiming that the problem with Egypt lies in the secularism of its state: “This was not the choice of the Egyptian people”, he states. “On the contrary, the Egyptian people have demanded and have repeated their demand numerous times to have the Islamic sharia as the source of laws and legislation so that Islam is the ruling system in Egypt.” This call for being ruled by Islamic law, al-Zawahiri claims, “is still and has been the demand of the overwhelming majority of the people of Egypt since the 1940s”.

Democracy

Al-Zawahiri’s reasoning is obviously meant to show that the US, by waging a “war on Islam” is going against the will of Egyptians but that he and al-Qaida are actually on the people’s side. In this sense, al-Zawahiri appears to be the real supporter of democracy. He quickly dispels this idea, however, since he explicitly rejects the “democracy that America wants for us, a special democracy for the Third World in general and the Islamic world in particular”. Such American-sponsored democracy, al-Zawahiri states, could be seen in Algeria, when that country cancelled elections in the early 1990s after they had been won by Islamists, or in Gaza, when the world refused to deal with Hamas after it had won elections there.

Al-Zawahiri does not just object to democracy because he associates it with injustice, however. He also claims it is an idol that is worshipped by its followers since they blindly follow what the majority wants, irrespective of what religion says. The majority thus becomes the object of worship instead of religion. As an alternative, the current Egyptian regime should leave and the country should be ruled by a pious, Islamic regime instead. The people will have the right to choose their leaders, al-Zawahiri claims, but obviously within the bounds of the sharia. The misery of the people should be ended, the West should be confronted and the oppression should be lifted “in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and every corner of the world of Islam”. Jihad should therefore be continued until this goal has been achieved.

Peaceful

Unlike al-Zawahiri, who basically extends his old ideas to the new situation created by the Arab Spring, the Syrian-British jihadi scholar Abu Basir al-Tartusi actually comes up with something new. As we saw in my previous two posts in this series (here and here), Abu Basir is much more nuanced and practical than the likes of al-Zawahiri in what he has to say about the Arab Spring and his advice to Egyptians is no exception.

In a response to questions about political participation by radical Islamists in Tunisia and Egypt, Abu Basir states that Muslim youngsters should ensure that any participation in Egyptian politics should be in accordance with the Qur’an and the Sunna as understood by the first three generations of Muslims (al-salaf al-salih). Establishing a political party is allowed, he says, but only if it does not fall into the trap of acting on behalf of party interests instead of those of the Muslim community as a whole. Such remarks may seem nothing special, but considering the widespread opposition to political participation among jihadis, such answers are quite remarkable.

Also worthy of note is Abu Basir’s advice to Egyptians to use peaceful methods, unlike al-Zawahiri who – as we have seen – actually calls for continued jihad. Abu Basir claims that the current circumstances in Egypt (and Tunisia) are dominated by freedom and tolerance and this calls for peaceful means, not violence. “As long as the conflict with others can be fought by words, communiqués and dialogue [...] we don’t have to resort to violence”. Abu Basir gives three reasons for this: firstly, he says, there is no need for violence; secondly, Muslims are the strongest in using words “because they posses the strongest arguments”; and thirdly, he claims, a kind approach is more likely to be accepted by others and yield results.

Humanist

Abu Basir is by no means satisfied with the situation as it is in Egypt right now, but he states that at least everyone can agree that it is better than under the tyrants. Muslims should therefore make use of the possibilities that have opened up for them, as long as it accords with Islamic law. Interestingly, Abu Basir explicitly allows political acts of an executive or bureaucratic type and also believes that things that serve the people and society as a whole are permitted. He draws the line, however, at participating in legislation, since coming up with your own laws instead of leaving this to God is, in effect, polytheism by violating God’s absolute unity in the legislative sphere.

This latter bit is familiar ground for jihadis, but Abu Basir’s explicit endorsement of participation in other branches of politics than the legislative branch is quite astonishing. Without changing his earlier views, he reconsiders his beliefs in light of new circumstances and condemns only those things that he believes really need to be condemned, thereby going quite far in accommodating those Muslims who want to participate in politics after the Arab Spring. Abu Basir ends his epistle by saying: “Know that Islam has come for the protection of man and saving him. Its goal is man.” Although this remark should be read in the context of the rest of his epistle, whose contents do not differ all that much from what al-Zawahiri believes, the phrasing itself is quite different and almost makes Abu Basir sound like a humanist alternative to al-Qaida’s leader. Not bad for a jihadi!

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• Which population along the spectrum is the focus of the program?
• Who is best suited to implement the program?
• What laws and human rights principles come into play?
• How do you know if you’re succeeding?

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Mary first states the facts that she believes most AQ experts agree on:

1. “al Qaeda is primarily the small “core” located somewhere in Afghanistan-Pakistan”
2. “the affiliates have an ambiguous relationship with this core and are generally focused on local concerns”
3. “the objective of the core is to attack the U.S. and its allies”
4. “because of our excellent counter-terrorism (CT) efforts, we have thwarted all such attempts on the U.S. since 9-11″

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• “Legitimizing Pragmatism: Hamas’ Framing Efforts from Militancy to Moderation and Back?” Terrorism and Political Violence, 22, no. 3 (2010): 358-378 (article on Hamas’ efforts to legitimize its changing policies vis-à-vis Israel over the years while staying true to their original rhetoric)
• “Protecting Jihad: The Sharia Council of the Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad,” Middle East Policy, 18, no. 2 (2011): 148-162 (explains the rise of the now well-known Shari’a Council of the Minbar al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad and puts it in context)
• “Reclaiming Scholarly Authority: Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi’s Critique of Jihadi Practices,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 34, no. 7 (2011): 523-539 (on al-Maqdisi’s supposed ideological revisionism and his criticism of other jihadis)
• “Al-Qa‘ida’s Editor: Abu Jandal al-Azdi’s Online Jihadi Activism,” Politics, Religion & Ideology, 12, no. 4 (2011): 355-369 (deals with the ideology of Abu Jandal al-Azdi, one of the chief ideologues of Saudi’s al-Qa’ida on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and shows that Saudi AQAP was more of an anti-Saudi organisation than has been known until now)
• “The Enduring Legacy of the Second Saudi State: Quietist and Radical Wahhabi Contestations of al-Wala’ wa-l-Bara,’” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 44, no. 1 (2012): 93-110 (on the continuing importance of the Saudi civil war in the 19th century to the development of al-wala’ wa-l-bara’ concept)
• “An Inquiry into Ignorance: A Jihadi-Salafi Debate on Jahl as an Obstacle to Takfir,” in Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort, Kees Versteegh & Joas Wagemakers (eds.), The Transmission and Dynamics of the Textual Sources of Islam: Essays in Honour of Harald Motzki (Leiden: Brill, 2011): 301-327 (on avoiding takfir on the grounds that someone is ignorant he or she is sinning)
• ‘Seceders’ and ‘Postponers An Analysis of the ‘Khawarij’ and ‘Murji’a’ Labels in Polemical Debates between Quietist and Jihadi-Salafis,” in Jeevan Deol & Zaheer Kazmi (eds.), Contextualising Jihadi Thought (London: Hurst & Co., 2012): 145-164 (deals with the frequent accusations by Jihadi-Salafis that quietist Salafis are “neo-Murji’a” and, vice versa, the accusation by quietist Salafis that Jihadi-Salafis are “neo-Khawarij”)

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There are pros and cons associated with intervening in each group. The three groups at the far right of the spectrum are the easiest to identify because they have either consistently voiced their support for a terrorist organization or taken action on its behalf. Although they are extremely difficult to dissuade, focusing on them risks less blow back from the broader communities of which they are a part. There is also less risk of straying into the policing of thought crimes.

Conversely, the two other groups, “vulnerable” and “radicalizing,” are theoretically easier to dissuade than the others but they are far, far harder to identify. Because they are harder to identify, focusing on them risks alienating the broader communities of which they are a part and can easily stray into the policing of thought crimes.

Countries will focus on different groups for non-coercive intervention depending on the nature of the terrorist threat they face and their perceptions of risk. In the United States, AQ supporters generate the most concern and the government’s CVE focus is on the vulnerable and radicalizing populations, whose size it hopes to shrink by building community resilience. U.S. government officials believe this approach is more holistic than law enforcement alone. By comparison, white hate groups generate far less concern and the CVE focus, if any, is on turning around their law-abiding and incarcerated supporters.

Based on the incredibly low numbers of AQ supporters in the United States (see Charlie Kurzman’s recent study), the United States should treat the problem of AQ support like it treats supporters of white hate groups. It should focus on turning around law-abiding and incarcerated supporters rather than reaching out to the broader communities of which they are a part. This approach may not suit law enforcement (which prefers to build cases), the administration (which wants to increase the resilience of US Muslims against al-Qaeda propaganda), civil libertarians (who worry about infringing on personal freedoms), or large swathes of the public (who are terrified of fifth columns). But it is commensurate with the threat; its success can be measured; it carries less risk of alienating communities from which terrorists arise; it undermines the narrative that these communities are potential threats; and it is far less threatening to civil liberties than the current approach.

All of that said, I am not sanguine about the possibility of turning around law-abiding or incarcerated supporters of terrorist groups. It is incredibly difficult, particularly given the intractable nature of larger political problems that drive some forms of terrorism. But if counter terrorism is to involve more than just locking people up, it should not stray too far from stopping bomb throwers into social engineering and thought policing. (As an experiment, read this excellent study of Zachary Chesser‘s radicalization and consider how the U.S. might have dealt with him differently.)

Recommending that the U.S. government should reorient its domestic CVE policy toward dissuading law-abiding and incarcerated AQ supporters does not mean that the government is the best suited to do it. Neither does it imply a certain way to go about it nor that this approach will work in every country. In my next (and final post), I’ll survey a range of CVE programs and explore who is best suited to carry them out and how effective they are.

Update: J.M. Berger kindly spiffed up and clarified my graphic.

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The United States and its allies devote considerable financial and human resources to countering violent extremism (CVE). Nevertheless the definition of CVE is unclear, ranging from fighting bad guys to creating good guys. This lack of precision makes it hard to design, execute, and evaluate CVE programs and makes it easy to slap the CVE label on all manner of initiatives, including many that seem to have little to do with stopping terrorism and might otherwise be cut by Congress. The lack of precision also inhibits thinking about whether the CVE enterprise is worthwhile and what should constitute it.

In the interest of clarifying the activities covered by CVE and encouraging debate on their relative merits, I propose the following definition: Reducing the number of terrorist group supporters through non-coercive means. (I might also propose a new label and acronym for this activity but “CVE” is so bland and prevalent that it’s not worth jettisoning.)

This definition has several things to recommend it:

1. It is broad enough to cover most of what people describe as CVE (or, in UK parlance, “Prevent”).
2. It is narrow enough to exclude insurgent organizations and gangs that don’t primarily attack civilians for larger political objectives (an activity usually called “terrorism”).
3. It suggests a metric: reducing the number of a terrorist group’s supporters. The focus is not on reducing support for ideas, which is difficult to judge, but rather support for specific organizations that embody those ideas and seek their realization, which is easier to document and more closely related to criminal behavior.
4. It excludes coercive kinds of “countering” activity that are better left to law enforcement and militaries (e.g. arresting, killing).
5. It acknowledges that there is a spectrum of support, ranging from lone wolves to bona fide members of a terrorist group. Moreover, support does not necessarily imply criminal behavior. The “supporter” label applies to anyone who expresses uncritical enthusiasm for a terrorist group’s program and actions.

To operationalize this definition of CVE, two questions must be answered. First, what terrorist groups deserve programmatic attention? Typically, they are those deemed to pose the greatest threat to a country. Second, what kinds of supporters deserve programmatic attention? Is it people vulnerable to becoming supporters? People who are becoming supporters? Law-abiding supporters? Criminal supporters? Incarcerated supporters?  Answers to these second set of questions vary from country to country, resulting from differing assumptions about who is amenable to positive change and how they are identified; unique laws, national security priorities, and political culture; and competing interests and missions of the country’s institutions. For the U.S. government, CVE programming focuses on people who are vulnerable to becoming supporters of al-Qaeda. (In a follow-up post I will explain why a narrower focus on law-abiding supporters might be more useful.)

There is at least one objection to the definition above: Its resulting programs would not cover terrorists like Anders Breivik or the Unabomber, who did not profess loyalty to, or common cause with, any terrorist group. But ideologically-independent and socially-reclusive lone wolves like these are extremely rare and extremely difficult to detect. If a CVE definition were crafted to cover them, it would be so broad as to be useless, which is the current state of play.

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Whatever the outcome may be, it seems obvious that, from a Palestinian point of view at least, the process of reconciliation is a good thing. One might think that this even applies to more radical Islamic groups in the Gaza Strip. Sure, these groups don’t exactly like Hamas and they probably hate the secular Fatah even more, but you might think that even they would agree that Palestinian infighting serves no purpose and that a united opposition against Israel is certainly better. Well, think again. In this post, I will look at a document called Palestinian National Reconciliation in the Balance of the Islamic Shari’a, prepared by the Shari’a Council of the Jama’at al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad – Bayt al-Maqdis, one of the radical groups in Gaza.

Qur’an and Sunna

While the authors of the document acknowledge that division and conflict is bad and reconciliation and unity is commendable in Islamic tradition, they state that it should happen on certain conditions. One of these is that any reconciliation should conform to the Qur’an and the Sunna (the example of the Prophet Muhammad). Citing verses (Arberry’s translation) Q. 4: 59 (“[...] If you should quarrel on anything, refer it to God and the Messenger [...]“), Q. 4: 65 (“But no, by thy Lord! they will not believe till they make thee the judge regarding the disagreement between them [...]“) and Q. 42: 10 (“And whatever you are at variance on, the judgment thereof belongs to God”), the authors state that the Qur’an itself calls on Muslims to appeal to God and the Prophet for mediation. Instead, the document claims, Fatah and Hamas base their reconciliation on “man-made law” (qanun wad’iyya) and future “polytheistic elections” (intikhabat shirkiyya), which shows that their efforts are born in sin.

Legislation

This issue of “man-made laws” and elections is taken a step further by the authors, who point to the desired results of the Palestinian reconciliation: forming a new parliament and a government that “judges according something else than what God has sent down”. Citing Q. 42: 21 (“Or have they associates who have laid down for them as religion that for which God gave not leave?”) and Q. 5: 50 (“Is it the judgment of pagandom then that they are seeking? Yet who is fairer in judgment than God, for a people having a sure faith?”), the authors equate such “un-Islamic” legislation with the yasiq, the Mongol system of legislation that combined Islamic, Mongol and other laws–a system Ibn Taymiyya condemned in his day. The authors, unsurprisingly, condemn such a system of laws as “clear unbelief”.

Another bone of contention related to legislation is the authors’ claim that the Palestinian reconciliation is based on international laws and treaties that have been drawn up by international organisations such as the United Nations and the Arab League. Since these are, in the authors’ view, “infidel” organisations themselves, they are not to be followed. Moreover, isn’t the United Nations the organisation that has adopted a string of resolutions “that have destroyed Palestine and have allowed crimes against the Muslims, their houses and their possessions”? The international and regional support this reconciliation enjoys, the document suggests, shows you that it’s utterly wrong.

Recognition

The final obstacle that the authors discern in the Palestinian reconcilliation is the implicit recognition of Israel that it entails. They point out that Muslim scholars agree that jihad is an individual duty (fard ‘ayn) if a non-Muslim enemy occupies as much as an inch of Muslim land. Nevertheless, the authors state, Fatah is not ashamed to proclaim openly that they accept and recognise Israel’s right to exist and its right to live in freedom and security on “the lands occupied in 1948″. This is bad enough to the authors, of course, but Fatah’s reconciliation with Hamas at least implies that the latter will go along with this. Didn’t Hamas’s Khalid Mish’al himself talk about cooperating with Fatah “to realise the shared national goal”, which he mentioned as being the founding of “a free Palestinian state and complete self-determination on the land of the [West] Bank and the [Gaza] Strip with Jerusalem as its capital without any settler”? The authors seem to assume that this is not only a shared goal between Fatah and Hamas but also the latter’s final goal. If it is, the author’s suggest, Hamas is openly violating its duty to wage jihad against Israel.

What is interesting in all of this is the important role legislation plays. Many of the arguments (no recourse to Islamic law in reconciliation, no government on this basis, reliance on international law, support from regimes and organisations that apply “man-made laws”) focus on this issue and only one argument points to Fatah’s more conciliatory stance towards Israel. Only as an afterthought do the authors add the alleged betrayal of Palestinian President ‘Abbas by supposedly encouraging Israel to wage war on Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009. This portrays the Jama’at al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad – Bayt al-Maqdis as pious and very concerned with doctrine, even to the point of apparently attaching more value to it than to political reconciliation. Whether this is going to be a very popular stance among Palestinians in general is highly doubtful.

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