David Kilcullen on Insurgencies and Ideological Movements

Militiaman in Najaf, Iraq (2004)

Photo by Joao Silva

(Image from The New York Times)

Janine di Giovanni has a good review of David Kilcullen's book, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One.

Why should we care? Because:

David Kilcullen is a former officer in the Australian Army, a strategist . . . a scholar, . . . . an expert on counterinsurgency, . . . and one of the few brave souls who had the ear of people in the Bush White House and advised against the invasion of Iraq.

But also because:

[Concerning] Iraq and Afghanistan, . . . he still sees [them] as "winnable" with a long-term commitment.

Giovanni tells us that Kilcullen has read the French military expert on counterinsurgency, David Galula, who learned from France's colonial wars in North Africa as well as his diplomatic service in East Asia, where he observed the rise of communism. "Galula's thesis," according to Giovanni, "is that one aim of war is to support the local population rather than control the territory."

For those of us who have been paying attention in Iraq, this aim will sound familiar, for it has been the essence of General David Petraeus's strategy there. And little wonder, for:

Kilcullen went on to advise Condoleezza Rice and helped Gen. David Petraeus implement the 2007 surge -- which, up to a point, he believes has been successful, largely because of his friend Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

I read a book by David Galula several years ago, about a year after 9/11, but I guess that I should look at him again. According to Giovanni, Kilcullen read Galula when he was doing his doctoral work in political anthropology and learned from Galula to go directly to the primary sources (a bit more 'primary' than my own doctoral work on the Gnostics):

Part of Kilcullen's academic research involved living and working alongside villagers in West Java, trying to absorb the culture of Dar'ul Islam, a guerrilla movement hatched in the late 1940s (and later identified by some as an Indonesian clone and ally of Al Qaeda).

What Kilcullen wanted to do was to observe the movement the way the locals did -- not from the "official version I could find in books." So he lived in villages and conversed with his curious neighbors about blue jeans and the Internet, until they trusted him enough to share ­information.

"You should talk to old Mrs. N, her husband was an imam who worked with the movement," was the kind of lead Kilcullen would get after a time. And with patience and cunning, he built up the knowledge he needed.

From what he gleaned, he learned to distinguish between local wars (with their 'accidental' guerrillas) and the larger-scale ideological movements (with their true-believing militants) to which they get linked up:

[The latter] is the larger international movement: the Long War, as the Pentagon calls it, against Al Qaeda. The [former] . . . , though largely ignored, is equally crucial: the uprisings of local networks and fighters. These are small insurgencies seeking autonomy that align themselves intentionally (or sometimes not) with the larger movement.

How does that alignment get established? Here's how:

Discussing the tribal areas of Pakistan, Kilcullen shows how Al Qaeda moved in by taking over communities -- establishing bonds by marrying local women, operating businesses, eventually recruiting the villagers as fighters.

I recall that Al Qaeda in Iraq attempted this with the large tribes in the eastern, Anbar Province, but it didn't work. The tribes didn't want to marry off their women to the outsiders, and Al Qaeda responded with a brutality that alienated the locals, resulting in the phenomenon called "Anbar Awakening." I wonder why the intermarriage strategy has worked in Pakistan. Anyway, once such links are established, the next phase begins:

Al Qaeda establishes its presence in a remote area of conflict, then penetrates the population the same way influenza infects a weakened immune system. Contagion occurs when the safe haven is used to spread violence. When outside forces intervene, disrupting the safe haven, the local population aligns with Al Qaeda. The terrorists' effort is meant to be long lasting, and it's highly effective.

The terrorists use their haven -- now reinforced if the outside forces fail -- to spread their influence by disrupting neighboring areas and then coming in to establish order, the process outlined in Abu Bakr Naji's Management of Savagery and commented upon in previous blog entries of mine, such as this one, but which sometimes fails to work (much to certain people's annoyance). How can we ensure that it fails much more often? Giovanni summarizes Kilcullen's solution:

Counterinsurgency, he says, "demands the continuous presence of security ­forces"; "local alliances and partnerships with community leaders; creation of self-­defending populations"; and "operation of small-unit ground forces in tandem with local security forces."

In short, a long-term commitment. Is the world up to that? The Islamists may be.

Omer Ibn Hajaj Pays a Little Visit

Tower of London Bridge

From some internet lounge, he gazes out...

(Image from Wikipedia)

Back on July 18, 2006, I posted an entry on Abu Bakr Naji's 'textbook' for jihad, the title of which has been rendered in English as The Management of Savagery.

Naji's text has been called "Al Qaeda's Playbook" -- a sports metaphor, I take it, making an analogy especially to the football strategies sketched out in the 'playbooks' that coaches put together.

Terrorism as sport? Perhaps a 'sport of nature'? A debased nature, I mean.

But back to the topic. My blog entry on Naji was merely a summary of his text, or part of it (for I couldn't find time to finish reading the entire, very long tome), along with some speculations of mine on what to expect if the playbook's strategies are put into operation. Here were my concluding speculations:

I've been assuming that this jihadist process will be undertaken in areas of what used to be called the Third World, but how might local application work in Europe itself, where demographic trends project large Muslim populations by mid-century? Expect Islamists to press for autonomy in Muslim dominated areas, to demand the right to apply Sharia in their own communities, to put pressure on non-Muslims to move out of Muslim areas, and to use intimidation to destabilize neighboring areas. Expect Islamists also to use radical versions of multiculturalism and local elections for political office as legitimate channels in pushing their agenda.

I think that we see some of this happening in Europe already, and the current riots in the Val-d'Oise department of France might have some connection, but that link remains unclear to me for now. Sometimes rioting 'youth' are just rioting youth.

Perhaps it's all beyond me anyway, or so says an Islamist from an "Internet Lounge" in London on his "first assignment" (according to information provided with the IP Address, which I've saved), who posted this comment:

however some tries, it will always be almost impossible to get a handle on the islamist and where are they really comming from.

Little knowldge of the cultural/historical and social context of the middle eastern political and religious discourse would always be the greatest block for any western mind when struggling with the modern islamic global resistence movement.

my sincere adivce give up lads and try your hands on something else more simple.

This Islamist signed himself as Omer Ibn Hajaj, which doubtless has some meaning that escapes me -- precisely as Ibn Hajaj expected, I presume, since he has me pegged as lacking "the cultural/historical and social context" necessary for understanding what he calls "the modern islamic global resistence movement."

Yeah, what do I know?

I do know that a certain Abu Omar Ben Hajaj of Morocco or Spain wrote in 1073 on agriculture and the proper fertilization of soil for planting sugar cane, as Felix A. Mathews tells us in "Northwest Africa and Timbuctoo" (Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York (1881), page 208). And a certain Amr Ibn Hajaj is mentioned -- in Imam Mohammad Jawad Chirri's Imam Hussein leader of the martyrs (page 13) -- as leading a battle against Imam Hussein, but that would refer to an Ibn Hajaj fighting against a so-called 'rightly guided caliph', which seems an unlikely nom de guerre for our Omer Ibn Hajaj to take upon himself.

So Omer Ibn Hajaj is right, it seems, about my ignorance. In my brief reply, I wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion, Omer Ibn Hajaj. Perhaps I'll try my hand at something simpler, like subatomic physics.

Except that physics is also beyond my ken ... but I sometimes report on that as well (though not for a good long while now).

So, I'll keep on 'striving' in my own spiritual 'struggle' to understand Islamism and its jihad.

Failure of Open Source Warfare?

Islamic State of Iraq

Mismanaged Savagery?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Over at the Belmont Club, Richard Fernandez, who calls himself "Wretchard," makes a useful observation about the critical weakness of a "networked insurgency" like that of Iraq:

Much has been written about the supposed invincibility of the networked insurgency and less about its single most glaring weakness. Movements loosely held together only by a "shared narrative" and decentralized command structures are vulnerable, like most historical religions in their expansionary phase to schism and bitter infighting. After all, why should Osama Bin Laden's version of the Jihad be any better than anyone else's? Once prophecy becomes the basis of political discourse before long there will be a prophet on every street corner.

Wretchard makes this point in connection with his analysis on the failure of the insurgency calling itself "Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn," but better known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Wretchard is thinking of analysts such as Jamais Cascio, who earlier this year wrote an article, "The End of Conventional War" (May 6, 2007), for the online site Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. According to Cascio:

Few would dispute that the American military is, far and away, the most powerful conventional armed force on the planet, even as depleted as it is by the Iraq war. At the same time, few would dispute that this military force is, and by all signs will continue to be, insufficient to quell the insurgency in Iraq.

Cascio explains:

The reasons for this obsolescence are clear: conventional military forces appear to be unable to defeat a networked insurgency, which combines the information age's distributed communication and rapid learning with the traditional guerilla's invisibility (by being indistinguishable from the populace) and low support needs. It's not just the American experience in Iraq (and, not as widely discussed, Afghanistan) that tells us this; Israel's latest war in Lebanon leads us to the same conclusion, and even the Soviet Union's experience in Afghanistan and America's war in Vietnam underline this same point. Insurgencies have always been hard to defeat with conventional forces, but the "open source warfare" model, where tactics can be learned, tested and communicated both formally and informally across a distributed network of guerillas, poses an effectively impossible challenge for conventional militaries.

Based on this analysis, one would never have expected the defeat of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, but that seems to be what has happened. That defeat did not occur through the US military's 'conventional' tactics but due to a combination of factors, including Al-Qaeda's 'mismanagement of savagery', Iraq's tribal politics, and the US military's technological advantage. Al-Qaeda, being led by outsiders, was never "indistinguishable from the populace," and as it alienated that same populace by its brutality, the Iraqi tribes drew on their most powerful resource, namely, group loyalty, to isolate the insurgents, who then had to face the American military's technological superiority.

What this means, I think, is that networked insurgencies will not work very well as a means of attaining power unless they are truly supported by a populace. Al-Qaeda failed in Iraq because its rigid Islamist ideology was never shared by the Iraqis, who rejected the fundamentalist Islam that Al-Qaeda tried to impose. So much for Abu Bakr Naji's "strategy for seizing territory (through fomenting chaos, i.e., 'savagery'), establishing Islamic law (Sharia), and using that base to expand the realm of Islam (Dar al-Islam) yet further."

What Wretchard calls the "glaring weakness" of a "networked insurgency" -- its vulnerability "to schism and bitter infighting" -- also applies to "open source" warfare generally, but this would appear to be a weakness mainly for networked groups attempting to take and hold territory.

Would the tendency toward schism be a weakness if the aim of networked Islamist terrorists is not primarily to take territory but to make terror?

Al Qaeda reads my blog!

Slytherin House Crest

"You knew I was a snake

when you took me in!"

(Image from Wikipedia)

Some folks say that blogging is bad for your health. Ted Olsen, writing for Christianity Today in an article ominously titled "The Death of Blogs" (9/25/2007), quotes Michael Parsons on the rigors of blogging:

"Good bloggers work like dogs," says Michael Parsons, editor of the tech site CNet.co.uk. "You can't expect readers to show up unless you show up. And the Internet never closes.... Every successful blogger I've come across is the same. Eat, sleep, and drink the work. No time out; no holidays."

As Olsen notes, "That's not a recipe for healthy living, especially if you're working a day job that's not paying you to blog."

Blogging about Islamists probably isn't a recipe for healthy living either, no matter what one's day job might be.

Recently, I posted an entry on "Islamists: Mismanagement of Savagery?" in which I noted Michael Totten's report that Al Qaeda's savagery in Iraq's large western, Anbar Province had turned the insurgent tribes there against Islamists and into cooperation with the American military.

This morning, I found the following comment by a certain 'Donald':

Very funny ! ! How could someone well educated like you still bleive U.S.A media ! ! Al Qaeda or ABU NAJI never said People couldn't shave or smoke. never did action for that. The most of what you said are from G Bush media witch is made for stupid American People.

My friend 'Donald' linked his name to "Jihad Watch," in irony (I suppose) since that site is antijihadist. Anyway, I replied:

'Donald', I don't know what a "G Bush media witch" is, but your entire comment sounds rather 'occult' and therefore hard to understand. Anyway, I was reading Michael Totten, not George Bush.

Not smoke or shave? The smoking ban was news to me in Totten's report, but the shaving ban wherever Islamists come to power is well-known.

Now, I don't know that my friend 'Donald' is really Al Qaeda, but he certainly sounds like an Islamist sympathizer. He's not an American, nor is he a native speaker of English despite the fact that he's based in the U.K. (and I have his IP address). He reached my site through a Google search for "Abu Bakr Naji," author of The Management of Savagery, an Al Qaeda blueprint for ruling over areas conquered through military jihad, and he spent 24 minutes (and one second, but who's counting?) reading my blog, even troubling himself to take five page views. That shows dedication and a desire to judge my blog on its merits rather than an impulse to react in outraged indignation.

Fifty points for Slytherin!

However, given the low quality of my friend's comment -- the conspiratorial worldview, the immature name-calling, the ungrounded claims -- I must, regrettably, deduct 60 points, thereby resulting in a 10-point loss for Slytherin.

Sorry about that, 'Mouthboy'...

Islamists: Mismanagement of Savagery?

Anbar Province

Al Qaeda's Mismanagement of Savagery?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Some readers may recall my post of July 18, 2006, in which I discuss Abu Bakr Naji's plan for seizing territory and establishing Islamic law as a means of establishing the Caliphate.

In that post, I used a translation by William McCants (Fellow with the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point) of Naji's text, The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which The Umma Will Pass.

Allow me to restate what Naji has written:

[The condition of a region of savagery] is more nebulous than chaos, in view of its corresponding historical precedents and the modern world and in light of wealth, greed, various forces, and human nature, and its form which we will discuss in this study. Before its submission to the administration [i.e., the management of savagery], the region of savagery will be in a situation resembling the situation of Afghanistan before the control of the Taliban, a region submitting to the law of the jungle in its primitive form, whose good people and even the wise among the evildoers yearn for someone to manage this savagery. (page 27)

This Hobbesian state is something that the Islamists themselves first bring about, after which -- as a sort of 'manufactured heroism' -- they provide order:

As for a detailed definition, it differs according to the goals and nature of the individuals in the administration. If we picture its initial form, we find that it consists of the management of peoples' needs with regard to the provision of food and medical treatment, preservation of security and justice among the people who live in the regions of savagery, securing the boarders [sic: "borders"] by means of groups that deter anyone who tries to assault the regions of savagery, as well as setting up defensive fortifications.

(The stage of) managing the people's needs with regard to food and medical treatment may advance to (the stage of) being responsible for offering services like education and so forth. And the preservation of security and securing the borders may advance to working to expand of the region of savagery. (page 26)

On of the things that one does to manage the savagery is:

- Establishing Sharia justice among the people who live in the regions of savagery (page 27)

How well does this 'manufactured heroism' work in practice? Not so well, apparently, as shown through this report by Michael Totten about Al Qaeda's experience in Iraq's Anbar Province:

Al Qaeda was initially welcomed by many Iraqis in Ramadi because they said they were there to fight the Americans. The spirit of resistance against foreign occupiers was strong. But the Iraqis got a lot more in the bargain than simply resistance....

"Market Street [the main street downtown] was completely controlled by Al Qaeda," [Marine] Lieutenant [Jonathan] Welch said. "They rolled down the streets, pointed guns at people, and said we are in charge. They had crazy requirements for the locals. They weren't allowed to cut their hair. Girls were banned from going to school. They couldn't shave or smoke. One guy defiantly lit a cigarette and they shot him four times"....

After Al Qaeda took over Ramadi, the local government was replaced with terrorists who only cared about fighting Americans and violently suppressing Iraqis. Al Qaeda was in charge, but it wouldn't be accurate to say they were the new government. None of the basic city government services functioned. There was no electricity, no running water, no telephone service, and no garbage collection. Every single local business closed down. The city could not have been any more broken....

In October of last year the tribal leaders in the province, including some who previously were against the Americans, formed a movement to reject the savagery Al Qaeda had brought to their region. Some of them were supremely unhappy with the American presence since fighting exploded in the province’s second largest city of Fallujah, but Al Qaeda proved to be even more sinister from their point of view. Al Qaeda did not come as advertised. They were militarily incapable of expelling the American Army and Marines. And they were worse oppressors than even Saddam Hussein. The leaders of Anbar Province saw little choice but to openly declare them enemies and do whatever it took to expunge them. They called their new movement Sahawa al Anbar, or the Anbar Awakening.

The struggle against Al Qaeda in Anbar is far from over, but what Totten's report shows is that the Islamist assumption about manufacturing their own heroism through establishing the savagery from which they then rescue people will not work.

People aren't as stupid as Islamist intellectuals like Abu Bakr Naji seem to think.

Paul Berman on Tariq Ramadan: Part 9

Yusuf al-Qaradawi

A Voice of Moderation?

(Image from BBC News)

Let's return from our detour to the main road, Paul Berman's investigation of Tariq Ramadan, where we'll discover that Yusuf al-Qaradawi has hitched a ride.

Berman begins a new section -- numbered 7 -- of his long essay by praising Ramadan's apparently sincere disavowal of violence:

It is true and it is wonderful that Ramadan has, on quite a few occasions, condemned any sort of terrorist violence. Better still, these condemnations seem consistent with Ramadan's larger program for the Muslim community in Europe, which ought to require many things, but nothing even remotely resembling a violent campaign. Anyway, the entire shape of Ramadan's career so far -- the energy he has expended on projecting his own ideas and personality onto the public stage in Western Europe and beyond, instead of conserving his time and strength for strictly Muslim audiences -- would make no sense at all, if the ultimate purpose was to mold his followers into some sort of force, capable of opening a violent breach in society. ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," page 41)

If Ramadan is an Islamist intellectual, then he is not of the sort that we find in Abu Musab al-Suri or Abu Bakr Naji, both of whom are theoreticians of terror.

But given Ramadan's genealogy, both familial and intellectual, perhaps we'd do well to inquire a bit more closely into what Ramadan thinks about violence in the cause of Islam. Here, again, Berman leads the way:

Still, sometimes it is useful to inquire a little more closely into what anyone means by violence or terrorism. Bomb attacks on random crowds in the mass-transit systems of Madrid or London obviously count as terrorist acts. But what about bomb attacks on random bus-riders in Israel? ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," page 42)

Berman notes that in the introduction to Islam, the West, and the Challenges of Modernity, Tariq Ramadan writes of his father Said Ramadan's rejection of violence, a principle consistent with Hassan al-Banna's rejection of violence. However, as Tariq Ramadan himself writes:

The only exception was Palestine. On this, the message of al-Banna was clear. Armed resistance was incumbent so that the plans of the terrorists of Irgun and of all Zionist colonizers would be faced up to. He had learnt from Hassan al-Banna, as he said it one day: "to put one's forehead on the ground." The real meaning of prayer being giving strength, in humility, to the meaning of an entire life. ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," page 42)

On this point, Berman draws an apt observation:

So there is an exception. It is violence against Zionists -- against the plans of all Zionists and not just the Zionist extreme right wing, the Irgun (who were in fact terrorists, just as al-Banna says). But the peculiar note in that passage emanates from a single word, "incumbent" -- a word suggesting that anti-Zionist violence is obligatory. A duty, not just a tactic. Moreover, a duty linked with prayer, forehead on the ground. A duty that gives meaning to an entire life. A religious duty. ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," pages 42-43)

As Berman explains, this sort of "ideological dogma that has led so many Palestinians to look on violence as a principle" (page 43) has prevented them from seeing violence as a mere tactic and thereby rendered them incapable of compromise.

On this point, our hitchhiking passenger Yusuf al-Qaradawi has an opinion. Berman explains:

There is something else in that word "incumbent," together with the forehead bowed in prayer. Tactics speak to a given circumstance, but religious duties address the universe. The notion of a religiously mandated violence, an obligatory violence, therefore opens a door, and it is hard to see what could prevent ever wilder yet equally pious obligations from ultimately pushing their way through the open space. Qutb's contribution to the notion of religious violence consisted largely of determining that Muslim "hypocrites," quite as much as Zionists or any other outright enemy of Islam, merited a violent resistance. This notion opened the door to mass killings of Muslims, in the name of Islam. And there is the example of Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, by all accounts one of the great scholars of Sunni Islam, a man with a long and illustrious history in the Muslim Brotherhood who went on, after his emigration to Europe, to help found the European Council for Fatwa and Research -- all this, even apart from his other career, thanks to Al-Jazeera television, as the world's most visible expert on Islamic jurisprudence. It was Sheik al-Qaradawi who directed the funeral prayer at Said Ramadan's funeral in Cairo in 1995 -- as Tariq Ramadan proudly reports in The Roots of the Muslim Revival.

And yet Qaradawi is also the person who, in 2003, issued the most famous of the fatwas authorizing suicide terrorism by Palestinians. He issued the gruesome fatwa permitting women to commit suicide terrorism while, at the same time, giving women terrorists a dispensation from the normal obligation to conceal their hair under a hijab -- a bizarre touch on Qaradawi's part, underlining the ritualistic nature of these acts, and yet entirely in keeping with the sort of erudite matter that Qaradawi normally concerns himself with: say, whether women must keep to themselves when they are menstruating (a point that he rejects, on authority) or whether they may have intercourse with their husbands during that time (they may not, though other kinds of physical pleasure are permitted).

Among the religious authorities who stand behind the vogue for ritualized suicide terrorism in the Arab and Muslim world in the last few years, Qaradawi, drawing on his jurisprudential learning, does appear to be in the first rank -- which is not an argument for downplaying the historic role of Hassan al-Banna long ago. On the contrary, the elderly Qaradawi himself has invoked, in one of his sermons, the memory of al-Banna orating on the agreeable nature of death in the cause of God. As for Tariq Ramadan, he reveres Qaradawi above all other present-day Islamic scholars, and in one book after another he has left no room for doubt about his fealty. If anyone in the world offers a model of modern enlightened Islam, Ramadan plainly judges Qaradawi to be that person. Ramadan has contributed prefaces to two collections of Qaradawi's fatwas in their French editions, not to mention other books written by people with one or another sort of connection to the terrorist vogue -- these editions published by the Tawhid house in Lyon, which is Ramadan's publisher as well. ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," pages 43-44)

This is the same Qaradawi who "favours female genital mutilation, wife-beating, the execution of homosexuals in Islamic states, the destruction of the Jewish people, the use of suicide bombs against innocent civilians and the blaming of rape victims who do not dress with sufficient modesty," as Peter Tatchell has noted in "An embrace that shames London" (New Statesman, January 24, 2005). But perhaps he has expressed these views in a soft-spoken, moderate, nonviolent manner.

One might also wish to ask Tariq Ramadan -- along with the far weightier Qaradawi -- why Israel constitutes an exception. Let me hazard a guess. The exception derives from the fact that Israel occupies Muslim land, territory that once was part of the domain of Islam, ruled by shariah, solidly Islamic.

But that is also true of Spain, as the Spanish have of late been reminded by Islamist manifestos that no longer mention the Spanish troops in Iraq, for these have been withdrawn, but which recall the lost glory of Islamic Spain and vow to fight the Spanish 'colonizers' by all means necessary, including terror.

Exceptions have such a dreadful way of becoming the norm.

Abu Bakr Naji's Management of Savagery

Solitary Fireman Standing Amidst Rubble and Smoke

Ground Zero of Destroyed World Trade Center

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm currently reading a translation by William McCants (Fellow with the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point) of The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which The Umma Will Pass, by Abu Bakr Naji.

Naji is another one of those jihadist intellectuals like al-Suri, but he has a strategy for seizing territory (through fomenting chaos, i.e., "savagery"), establishing Islamic law (Sharia), and using that base to expand the realm of Islam (Dar al-Islam) yet further. He regularly contributed articles to the online magazine Sawt al-Jihad (The Voice of Jihad), which used to be published by the al-Qaeda Organization in the Arabian Peninsula until its publication ceased in October 2004.

Naji's book on managing savagery has garnered much attention since becoming available online, both in its original Arabic and in the English translation by McCants, as the following three online summaries indicate.

Stephen Ulph, in the online journal Terrorism Focus,Volume 2, Issue 6 (March 17, 2005), hosted by the website The Jamestown Foundation, offers a different translation of Naji's main title: The Management of Barbarism (Idarat al-Tawahhush), and he also offers a summary of the book's strategy, based (I presume) on his own reading of the Arabic original:

Published by the Center of Islamic Studies and Research (an al-Qaeda affiliate), the 113-page work 'Management of Barbarism' aims to map out the progressive stages of establishing an Islamic state, from early beginnings in defined areas in the Arabian Peninsula, or Nigeria, Jordan, the Maghreb [i.e., North Africa], Pakistan or Yemen, and its subsequent global expansion. The author is Abu Bakr Naji, a name familiar from his contributions to the Sawt al-Jihad [i.e., The Voice of Jihad] online magazine.

Naji's strategy -- as I noted -- is to begin by fomenting chaos, which he prefers to call "savagery" or "barbarism" (cf. Arabic Tawahhush). The pseudonymous blogger Quay Fortuna, at Armageddon Cocktail Hour (a blog name reminiscent of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe), summarizes Naji's conception of this first stage:

Naji's advocacy of causing chaos in weaker states in Africa [aims] to provide a foundation for world domination -- a scenario played out in Somalia, for example. By creating civil war, Naji aims to destabilize regions and then have jihadists enter and provide security for desperate peoples -- in essence, by employing a manufactured heroism strategy.

Fortuna nails it with his expression "manufactured heroism strategy": Islamists foment chaos, then emerge as heros bringing stability. They then reconstruct society on an Islamic basis. See also Bruce Tefft's March 8, 2005 report, "Al-Qa'ida Book on Managing Savagery," at Isralert.

On 2 March [2005], "Irhabi3," a new member in Al-Ikhlas forum, [an online Islamist site that takes its name from a Qur'anic sura on monotheism (sura 112),] posted a link to a new book "Managing Savagery -- The Most Crucial Period to Be Faced by the Nation," by Abu-Bakr Naji. The 113-page book was published by the al-Qa'ida-affiliated Center for Islamic Studies and Research. In the book, Naji presented an elaborate plan for the recreation of an Islamic Nation, starting in limited areas, and spreading worldwide. He called for scattered small attacks against "enemy interests" to cause security disarray, seizure of power by the mujahidin, and establishment of the Islamic nation.

These three summaries cohere with my reading of the book thus far. Let's see what Abu Bakr Naji himself has to say. On page 26 of the translation by McCants, we find Naji's definition of "the management of savagery":

As for a detailed definition, it differs according to the goals and nature of the individuals in the administration. If we picture its initial form, we find that it consists of the management of peoples' needs with regard to the provision of food and medical treatment, preservation of security and justice among the people who live in the regions of savagery, securing the boarders [sic: "borders"] by means of groups that deter anyone who tries to assault the regions of savagery, as well as setting up defensive fortifications.

(The stage of) managing the people's needs with regard to food and medical treatment may advance to (the stage of) being responsible for offering services like education and so forth. And the preservation of security and securing the borders may advance to working to expand of the region of savagery.

Naji will break this down into a list in a moment, but first, we should note his conception of "savagery," found on page page 27 of the translation:

[The condition of a region of savagery] is more nebulous than chaos, in view of its corresponding historical precedents and the modern world and in light of wealth, greed, various forces, and human nature, and its form which we will discuss in this study. Before its submission to the administration [i.e., the management of savagery], the region of savagery will be in a situation resembling the situation of Afghanistan before the control of the Taliban, a region submitting to the law of the jungle in its primitive form, whose good people and even the wise among the evildoers yearn for someone to manage this savagery.

Naji implies that "savagery" is a Hobbesian state where life is so "nasty, brutish, and short" that people will willingly submit to the security offered by Islam's absolutist rule. Next -- and also on page 27 -- Naji lists the ideal form for meeting the requirements for managing savagery:

- Spreading internal security

- Providing food and medical treatment

- Securing the region of savagery from the invasions of enemies

- Establishing Sharia justice among the people who live in the regions of savagery

- Raising the level of belief and combat efficiency during the training of the youth of the region of savagery and establishing a fighting society at all levels and among all
individuals by making them aware of its importance....

- Working for the spread of Sharia science (putting the most important aspects before those of lesser importance) and worldly science (putting the most important aspects before those of lesser importance).

- Dissemination of spies and seeking to complete the construction of a minimal intelligence agency.

- Uniting the hearts of the world's people by means of money and uniting the world through Sharia governance and (compliance with) rules which are publicly observed, at least by those in the administration.

- Deterring the hypocrites with proof and other means and forcing them to repress and conceal their hypocrisy, to hide their discouraged opinions, and to comply with those in authority until their evil is put in check.

- Progressing until it is possible to expand and attack the enemies in order to repel them, plunder their money, and place them in a constant state of apprehension and (make them) desire reconciliation.

- Establishing coalitions with those with whom coalitions are permitted, those who have not given complete allegiance to the administration.

Thus does Naji set forth his strategy for seizing territory, establishing Islamic law, and using that Islamic base to expand the realm of Islam still further. How might this expansion take place? See John B. Dwyer, in "Know Your Terrorist Enemy" (February 22nd, 2006), who reviews the translation by McCants for The American Thinker and provides a possible scenario:

The plan: conduct "vexation and exhaustion" operations such as bombing tourist sites and oil facilities. This will create a security vacuum as regime forces concentrate at those places, which will then be exploited by terrorist cadres moving into unprotected regions or cities to take over day-to-day administrative duties .... Once established, these cadres will network with each other and "move towards a caliphate [i.e., an Islamic empire]."

We currently observe this sort of disruption occurring in a number of areas throughout the world where Islamic insurgencies are taking place (e.g., Mindanao, southern Thailand, Kashmir, and Chechnya). While insurgencies have local conditions, such as the one in Chechnya, where the Chechen people have long had nationalist aspirations against Russian domination, we see that Salafist Islam (i.e., the puritanical Wahabi version of Islam that we find in Saudi Arabia) exploits the local conditions in its efforts to globalize Muslim insurgencies.

But just as local conditions vary, so will local applications. As Trefft notes, Naji himself "discusses the subject ... [merely] in general, and only goes into details when absolutely necessary ... [otherwise leaving] the minute details ... to the experts and to the actual leaders in the field."

I've been assuming that this jihadist process will be undertaken in areas of what used to be called the Third World, but how might local application work in Europe itself, where demographic trends project large Muslim populations by mid-century? Expect Islamists to press for autonomy in Muslim dominated areas, to demand the right to apply Sharia in their own communities, to put pressure on non-Muslims to move out of Muslim areas, and to use intimidation to destabilize neighboring areas. Expect Islamists also to use radical versions of multiculturalism and local elections for political office as legitimate channels in pushing their agenda.

Will the Islamists find success? Perhaps not, but even if not, their failure won't come from lack of striving.