Jihadism has been an abject failure, but what does Western success look like? (original) (raw)
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Jihadism in the Arab World after 2011: Explaining Its Expansion
Middle East Policy, 2016
This has taken place despite serious efforts to prevent it from happening. Massive investments in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency by a U.S.-led international coalition, in cooperation with regional partners, have included the entire spectrum of instruments available in the state toolbox. This extensive and costly campaign notwithstanding, the past 15 years have witnessed a remarkable growth in jihadism as a rebel ideology, as a military guerrilla force and a global terrorist menace. At the time of writing, "the Islamic State" is losing territory in its heartland in Syria and Iraq and in its main regional province in Libya. However, the organization has proved capable of orchestrating an unprecedented campaign of international terrorist violence (outside Iraq and Syria), claiming more than 1,200 lives on five continents between September 2014 and July 2016. 3 As for the Middle East, a cursory look at key indicators of the strength of jihadism in the region over the past decade similarly confirms an ominous upward trend (see figures). Over the past few years, it has become brutally apparent that international efforts at combatting jihadism have been a colossal failure. 4 Instead of sapping the military strength of the global jihadi movement, undermining its ideological appeal, shrinking its recruitment base and drying up its sources of financing, Western and Arab counterterrorism efforts have done exactly the opposite. True, individual measures and tactical campaigns have scored short-term successes, such as the U.S. military surge campaign in Iraq in the late 2000s and deradicalization programs in Egypt in the 1990s and in Libya and Saudi Arabia in the 2000s. 5 These intermittent advances have been undone by later developments, however. The goal of reducing jihadism from a global strategic concern to a minor security nuisance has not been achieved. By and large, the counterterrorism campaign has been counterproductive. With the wisdom of hindsight, we cannot escape the conclusion that the combined effect of combating jihadism since 2001 with a primarily "kinetic" strategya common euphemism for lethal military force and coercionhas laid the groundwork for a jihadi recruitment bonanza. Despite repeated calls to shift the global counterterrorism focus towards soft power and greater reliance on law-enforcement methods, military means have remained dominant, though they operate at cross-purposes with efforts countering radicalization and violent extremism. 6 The post-2011 period has witnessed military interventionsin both small-and large-footprint manifestationsin Afghanistan,
A Bitter or a Better Harvest? The Metamorphosis of Jihadism Over Two Decades
ISPI Commentary, ISPI, 2021
Twenty years have passed since the 9/11 attacks-an event that had wideranging implications from di!erent perspectives: on policy-makers' decisions in domestic and foreign policy; on collective imaginary and on society; and, not last, on the very jihadi movement and its evolution.
A stream of commentators have been asserting that the tragedy of September 11 proves that I was utterly wrong to have said more than a decade ago that we had reached the end of history. It is, on the face of it, insulting to the memory of those who died to declare that this unprecedented attack did not rise to the level of a historical event. But the way in which I used the word history was different: it referred to the progress over the centuries toward modernity, characterised by institutions like democracy and capitalism. My observation, made in 1989 on the eve of the collapse of communism, was that this evolutionary process did seem to be bringing ever larger parts of the world toward modernity. And if we looked beyond liberal democracy and markets, there was nothing else towards which we could expect to evolve; hence the end of history. While there were retrograde areas that resisted that process, it was hard to find a viable alternative civilisation that people actually wanted to live in after the discrediting of socialism, monarchy, fascism and other types of authoritarianism. This view has been challenged by many people, and perhaps most articulately by Samuel Huntington. He argued that rather than progressing toward a single global system, the world remained mired in a "clash of civilisations" in which six or seven major cultural groups would co-exist without converging and constitute the new fracture lines of global conflict. Since the successful attack on the centre of global capitalism was evidently perpetrated by Islamic extremists unhappy with the very existence of western civilisation,
Global Jihadism after the Syria War
Perspectives on Terrorism, 2019
The period 2012-2018 is turning out to be an important transformative period for the global Jihadi movement, most importantly because of events in Syria but also resulting from Jihadists' ability to expand and take advantage of beneficial opportunity structures in other war theatres. The article identifies the most important trends of this period for the future evolution of Jihadism, namely the ideological evolution, Jihadism as a tangible political project, internal conflict, networks and training, the coming of a new generation of ideologues and technical evolution. Similar to previous transformative periods in Afghanistan and Iraq, the argument made here is that these six trends will have a long-lasting impact on the Jihadi movement and guide the behaviour of groups and individuals for years to come.
Islamic Terrorism: From Retrenchment to Ressentiment and Beyond
HW Kushner (Hg.), Essential Readings on …, 2003
Using a Weberian perspective informed by Critical Theory, this paper investigates the interaction of economic, cultural and political causes and potential outcomes of Islamic terrorism. Islam's decline vis-à-vis Christendom was constrained through three major internal moments: 1) limits to modernity, 2) religious conservativism, and 3) ressentiment of the West. Islamic societies responded proactively to the rise of the West through two strategies: 1) Westernization and 2) Islamic modernism, which have both been strongly resisted. In the 20 th century, due to the internal suppression of secular political movements among other factors, puritanical fundamentalisms such as Wahhabism arose. Fundamentalisms in various religions explain reality by blaming social problems on the departure from religious morality and promise redemption via a return to an idealized community. In face of decline, colonization, and economic stagnation, ressentiment of the West became widespread in Islam. Fundamentalisms interacting with ressentiment may turn militant, as in the case of Al Qaeda. A war on terrorism is not likely to end terrorism. To solve the problem of terrorism requires addressing its roots: internal constraints, dictatorships sponsored by the West and the underdevelopment that results form neoliberal globalization. We suggest terrorism will wane in the face of the evolution of modern Islamic public spheres that might challenge religious conservatism. In wake of 9/11, both moderate and radical religious movements are likely to remain a basis for mobilizing alternative identities to globalization.
New Century, Old Problems: The Global Insurgency Within Islam and the Nature of the War on Terror
2003
he steps outlined in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America seem to cover several aspects of national ower and the application of that power across the spectrum of international interaction, but it fails to clearly identify an enemy. n fact, nowhere in any of the literature addressing global terrorism does identification of the enemy proceed any further or with ny greater specificity than the mention of Al-Qaeda and other known terrorist organizations. But the fact remains the U.S. has een unable, or unwilling, to adequately describe the enemy or the nature of the war currently being waged. The time has come or the U.S. to face the reality that has long been festering throughout the Middle East but has been wished away for over 80 ears, a reality that has manifested itself in a global Islamic insurgency embodied and led by Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. If he U.S. fails to identify the war on terror as essentially a counterinsurgency effort, then geographic combatant commanders will ever be able to accurately assess the proper ways, means, and ends necessary to determine a calculus for victory, nor will they be ble to properly identify the enemy's center of gravity to assist them in that calculation.
The Challenge of the Islamic State
Abstract: The Islamic State, proclaimed on 29 June 2014, has tremendously shaken up the Middle East and the whole world forcing hostile and friendly states alike to close ranks and create a collective military platform to fight and contain this new danger before it spirals out of control. This analysis probes the threats and the challenges the Islamic State, which has conquered and currently controls vast swathes across the Iraq – Syria borders, poses to the West and its Middle Eastern allies and examines why the challenges warranted a military response spearheaded by the US. It argues that the Islamic State poses formidable ideational challenges to the West, beyond its military threats to the Middle Eastern states, that question the very base and organizing principles of Western political order and the West’s dominance over the Middle East, what is better dubbed ‘Eurocentrism’ –a concept that articulates and sustains Western claim to universalism. Unless coerced into submission or at least militarily weakened, the IS holds the potential to successfully challenge eurocentric ideas with its own version of Islamic universalism.