Harmony and Disharmony:
Exploiting Al-Qa'ida's Organizational Vulnerabilities

back to report home

Al-Qa’ida: Back to the Future
The Vanguard and Muslim Brotherhood Operations in Syria

The lessons from the Syrian experience should be studied and analyzed by us and by others who choose to follow this path; it is of tremendous value to our brethren in other countries who choose to hoist the jihad banner. The Muslim arena is similar in all countries, the enemy is the same, the battle is the same, the circumstances of war may or may not be the same, Allah knows best, Allah guides our path and grants us success.

                                                                         — Abu Mus’ab Al-Suri[1]

      Harmony document AFGP-2002-600080 recounts al-Qa’ida’s “lessons learned” from the Syrian jihad. It articulates the organization’s failure to balance the need for operational security with financial efficiency and tactical control. The experiences of the Muslim Brotherhood and the al-Tali’a al-Muqatila[2] (The Fighting Vanguard) in Syria from 1976-1982 provide a textbook case of an organization that initially possessed little awareness of the agency problem that in retrospect likely doomed the effort from the start.

      This section begins with a brief history of the Muslim Brotherhood followed by specifics of the conflict in Syria. Next we address al-Qa’ida’s “lessons learned” in Syria as outlined in Harmony AFGP-2002-600080, which we believe is the work of Abu Mus’ab al-Suri (the nom de guerre of Mustafa Setmariam Nasar). In this document, he details a series of salient points that are meant to transmit the experience of what he terms the first generation mujahadeen (those who fought the global jihad in the time of the Syrian conflict) to the third generation mujahadeen (those who fight currently). Finally, we apply organizational and agency theory to understand these “lessons learned,” and compare the Syrian experience to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s current efforts in Iraq.

The History of the Muslim Brotherhood

      The history of the Muslim Brotherhood is replete with examples of preference divergence and factionalism. The Muslim brotherhood sprang from Muslims’ increasing disenchantment with Arab Nationalism and a perceived void in Political Islam after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the last caliphate. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Bannah, an Egyptian schoolteacher from a small town in the Nile Delta, as a small social club. Bannah sought to form an “Islamic System” that would gradually reform civic, social, family, and educational organizations, which he believed had been torn apart by Western secularism (non-religiosity) and materialism.[3] This movement originally did not advocate the overthrow of national governments and was in fact very supportive of the nationalist ideology that was popular at the time.

      The movement gained traction quickly among college students and young professionals. Anti-western sentiment began to increase dramatically in Egypt by the end of WWII largely because of British troop presence and increased exposure to Western ideas resulting from Egypt’s economic expansion. With the increased focus on the West, the group became increasingly radicalized and established a small militant wing known as the Secret Apparatus. Guerillas from this group reportedly fought against Israel in 1948.

      Although Bannah’s approach was measured, his goals were perceived as radical by the government. Fearing the Brotherhood was becoming a state within a state, the Egyptian government outlawed the organization and assassinated Bannah. The Brotherhood revived in 1950, and some of its members ran in elections by registering as independents. In 1952, army officers led by Gamal Abdel Nasser seized control of the Egyptian government and legalized the Brotherhood, only to ban it again in 1954. The Secret Apparatus retaliated by trying to assassinate Nasser, who responded by deporting or imprisoning and executing many fundamentalists.

      Nasser’s imprisonment of fundamentalists during the 1960s had the unintended result of further radicalizing the fundamentalists. The relationship between the Egyptian government and the Muslim Brotherhood continued to ebb and flow. Just before the Six Day War in 1967, Egyptian authorities attempted to recruit inmates for the jihad against Israel. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the notorious Abu Za’bal prison camp expressed unrelenting support for the jihad and resolved to fight. A small group of inmates refused, however. They were led by Sheikh ‘Ali Abduh Isma’il and believed that the state of Egypt was apostate and so were its supporters. The group was turned over to prison authorities and isolated from the rest of the prison community. Eventually, they were returned to the general population, but chose to keep to themselves and refused to associate with Muslim Brotherhood inmates. This was one of the first cleavages between the core membership of the Muslim Brotherhood and those who were becoming increasingly radicalized. This splinter group would eventually evolve into Takfir w’al Hijra, a group that more closely resembled a religious cult than a politically motivated terrorist group.

      The defeat of the Arab armies by Israel in 1967 marked the beginning of the end for pan-Arab nationalism. Many fundamentalists viewed the defeat as the ultimate failure of corrupt governments that had attempted to show strength in the struggle against Zionism. The Israeli victory in 1967 reordered the priorities of radical groups. Instead of focusing on retaliation against Israel, they began to turn inward towards Arab society, to fight the “jahiliyya within.” Jahiliyya refers to a state of ignorance—specifically, Arab culture prior to God’s Koranic revelations to Mohammed. The radicals attracted new recruits from those who were turning to terrorist organizations and schools for answers to the societal trauma caused by the Arab defeat. This was a significant departure from previous thinking. In May 1965, a month before his death, the famed Muslim Brotherhood leader Sayyid Qutb met with other leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood to discuss future tactics. He was opposed to large-scale terrorist operations that could weaken Egypt and carry out the work of the “Zionist threat.” The organization overruled him, however, and went ahead planning operations. Any of the residual feelings Qutb—and especially his followers—had with regards to violent tactics were resolved in Cairo’s military prisons. Prison guards would torture and berate the prisoners, likening them to the Jews and accusing them of being a greater threat to Arab society than Israel. Thus, the first generation of what Sivan calls the “New Radicals” was born.[4]

      The New Radicals movement was less a cohesive operational organization than it was a collection of ideologically similar national groups with no overall leadership. National decentralization of the groups also occurred, leading to the fragmentation of the New Radicals into many small groups and factions. The theological justification was based on 14th century theologian Ibn Taymiyya’s writings regarding the necessity of having many imams when there are many Islamic states. However, ideological differences and decentralization led to fights among (and even within) the new groups.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria

      It was during this same period that a parallel development involving one of these factions transpired in Syria. Similar to Egypt, Syria was experiencing a growing conflict between Islamic groups and a nationalist regime in the 1940s. Initially, this conflict was mainly non-violent, but after the Ba’ath party took power in 1963, the conflict between secular Ba’athists and the Muslim Brotherhood escalated. Beginning with the anti-Ba’athist sermons, events degenerated into riots and violence. The Muslim Brotherhood began operations to undermine the regime and increasingly radicalized sub-groups were formed. This is perhaps best exemplified by the creation of al-Tali’a al-Muqatila (The Fighting Vanguard), founded by Marwan Hadeed.[5]

      In this first phase of the struggle between the Syrian Government and the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical factions were fairly unified. The Muslim Brotherhood did not always anticipate the reaction of Damascus, however, and in the wake of repeated assassinations of Ba’ath party officials, President Amin al-Haffez ordered the Army into Hama for the first time, and went so far as to authorize air raids on the Sultan Mosque, a Muslim Brotherhood enclave. Decimated by these attacks, the Muslim Brotherhood was forced to temporarily cease militant activity.

      In the mid-1970s, they resumed operations against the Alawite controlled regime of Haffez al-Assad. Once again there was a failure to anticipate the threshold level of violence that could be inflicted on the government without drawing a crushing response. The Vanguard, allegedly without Muslim Brotherhood authorization, launched a series of deadly attacks, including one on the Syrian Artillery School in Aleppo that killed all the Ba’athist cadets as well as many Sunnis. The prominent Sheikh Mohammad al-Shami was killed in a related attack. In an attempt to distance themselves from the attack, the Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement denying involvement and denouncing the Vanguard.[6] This did not prevent the government from responding with devastating violence. The most visible and memorable event occurred at the culmination of the conflict when the Syrian government laid siege to Hama for a second time. By this time Hama was a city of 180,000 and a center of Sunni radicalism. In February, 1982 more than 4,000 Syrian troops engaged members of al-Tali’a al-Muqatila (The Fighting Vanguard) as well as other members and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in bloody house-to-house fighting. When all was said and done, an estimated 5,000 civilians and insurgents were killed, along with over 1,000 troops. The city was essentially leveled in the course of the assualt.[7]

The Lessons of the 1^st Generation: Failure to Manage Agency Problems

      As shown in the preceding chapter, terrorist organizations face fundamental tradeoffs between operational security on the one hand, and financial efficiency and tactical control on the other. Balancing these needs is a major leadership challenge for any successful terrorist network. In the case of the Vanguard and Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, the leadership failed to understand and compensate for these agency problems and preference divergences. The tradeoff between operational security and tactical control was not effectively managed as evidenced by the following lessons learned, described in Harmony document AFGP-2002-600080:

      Lack of secure communications. The movement usually used primitive, insecure communication methods. These included un-encoded messages sent by courier, regular face-to-face meetings, and unsecured phone lines. The movement had almost no wireless communication ability until the later stages of the conflict, even at the tactical level. With a lack of secure and reliable communication methods, maintaining even a minimal level of operational security required relinquishing a significant amount of tactical control. By employing more secure communications, terrorist leadership could have executed greater tactical control while still maintaining the same level of operational security. The document also notes the lack of a system for compartmentalizing information. By ensuring that all information is “need-to-know,” leadership could have maintained higher tactical control and operational security, because a captured foot soldier or informant would only know a small part of the overall operational picture.

      Ineffective military command structure. The Muslim Brotherhood and Vanguard lacked a centralized planning and strategy capability, and field commanders too often found themselves cut off from the headquarters. Although a certain level of autonomy is necessary for tactical success, this extreme situation resulted in well-intentioned commanders acting out of concert with headquarters’ intent as well as a lack of proper allocation of resources on the battlefield. Although part of this decentralization was due to the communication problems discussed above, the situation is very instructive. Although the terrorist leaders enjoyed a very high level of operational security, the accompanying loss of tactical control proved extremely detrimental to the war effort.

      The following examples from Harmony AFGP-2002-600080 illustrate how tradeoffs between operational security and efficient allocation and control of resources were not effectively managed in this case:

      Dependence on outside sources for support. The terrorist network did not adequately predict and prepare for the costs and expenses of a high intensity conflict. The movement became dependent on erratic sources of income from such unexpected places as the Iraqi regime. Operational security was subsequently reduced as the number of incoming funding lines increased as well as the influence that donors exerted on operational goals. Had the Vanguard and Muslim Brotherhood ensured that the organization possessed sufficient funding for a continuing conflict, they could have maintained a much higher level of operational security and control. Because it proved so difficult to maintain even a minimal level of financial efficiency due to constant fund solicitation, the operational security suffered dramatically as a result.

      Time in training camps inefficiently spent. The leadership “powered down” the training in camps and other locales to very low level leaders in the organization. By providing resources and then staying out of the management, operational security is maximized. However, the efficiency of the resource management, in this case those allocated for the training of recruits, suffers due to a lack of higher-level supervision. Criticisms of the training program include a lack of emphasis on physical fitness training, a lack of practical application of theoretical knowledge, a complete lack of training for vital subject areas, and an inexperienced cadre. This may have been avoided if the leadership sacrificed some operational security and ensured resources for training programs were better disbursed to meet organizational objectives.

      Failure to air a consistent public relations message. The terrorist leadership utterly failed to coherently communicate the vision and goals of the movement in order to win the support of the populace. Aside from a few ineffective communiqués, there was no organized public relations campaign, leading to a situation where lower level members were the primary mouthpiece of the movement. Operational security was maximized due to the isolation of the higher-level leadership. Predictably, however, the loss of message control ensured that the public relations of the movement was ineffective. Although the Muslim Brotherhood later tried to start a public relations campaign in exile, the propaganda-like nature ensured its failure.

The Lessons of the First Generation: Strategic Failure

      In addition to the agency problems and preference divergences discussed at length above, there are numerous reasons why movements, in particular insurgent/terrorist groups, experience schisms. One theory, posited by Bard O’Neil, suggests that there are seven main causes for disunity within insurgent/terrorist groups – social, political-cultural, personal, teleological, theoretical, strategic, and tactical.[8] The movement in Syria suffered from all of these to one degree or another, but the strategic problems assume a greater significance when examined through our framework.

      As highlighted in Harmony AFGP-2002-600080, the level of strategic planning was quite poor at the outset of the conflict. This problem only worsened as factionalism set in and the mujahadeen began taking heavy casualties. There are three strategic subcategories worth examining. The first is the mobilization strategy, the second is leadership strategy, and the last is political-ideological strategy.

      Mobilization. One example was the failure to mobilize rural areas and focus recruitment efforts solely on urban centers. The urban poor had long been dissatisfied with the Assad regime, and members of this segment of Syria’s society were considered the “low hanging fruit” in terms of recruitment. The failure to mobilize them is particularly interesting because there had been a similar failure in the 1940s when the radical anti-government clerics targeted their efforts almost exclusively at the urban poor. The president adroitly turned this strategy back on them by shutting down social welfare programs in these neighborhoods and declaring that if the people needed milk they should “go to the sheiks, let them give you milk.” When the sheiks could not supply these services, the disenfranchised poor turned against them very quickly.[9]

      There was a great deal of resentment in the outlying areas as well, but the mujahadeen failed to capitalize on this. Syria had long been a class-driven society, and the Ba’ath party’s ascendancy had significant class implications that extended to those within the Islamist movement.[10] The Ba’ath party gained power largely on promises of land redistribution and the restructuring of Syrian society to enfranchise the poor.[11] These promises were rarely realized, which opened the door for the kind of disillusionment that the mujahadeen could have capitalized on.

      The mujahadeen’s failure to expand the jihad to the countryside made targeting significantly easier for the regime. The Assad government used siege tactics to wear down the insurgency. Allepo, Damascus and Hama—all major urban centers—became the battlefields in this struggle. Because the movement was so heavily concentrated in the cities, the regime had a much easier time isolating the various wings and destroying them.

      It is critical for an insurgency to avoid isolation from a supportive population or containment.[12] Isolation in Syria was initially self-imposed through a poor recruitment strategy, which allowed the Syrian army to capitalize on their lack of broad public support. Had the mujahadeen employed a more diffuse recruitment strategy, they would have had a much more secure network for moving people, supplies and money into and out of cities as they fought. The decreased operational security through such a strategy would have been significantly outweighed by the increased tactical control and greatly benefited the movement in terms of the political impact of its activities.

      Leadership. Leadership defines strategy. Many successful insurgencies have had a key individual leader who drew support from charismatic appeal of one form or another. Personal valor, a dynamic personality, and other laudable traits can greatly bolster an insurgent movement, though it is hard to quantify the impact of such leadership. What is safe to say is that the loss of such leadership can have an equally negative impact. Even more disastrous are public fractures within the leadership that can be amplified within the movement as a whole.

      The movement in Syria suffered from both. From the beginning there were serious schisms between the field commanders and the international leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. Marwan Hadeed—who had participated in the jihad against the Syrian government in 1965—tried to bridge these gaps, which were both internal and external to Syria. Within Syria, there were fractures between the Vanguard and the Muslim Brotherhood, and within the Brotherhood itself there were regional fractures between the cells in Damascus, Allepo, and Hama. Several key leaders tried to forge more cohesive ties. Marwan Hadeed and Adnan Akla both had limited success, but were ultimately stymied—the latter by unilateral agreements between Iraq and the International Leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood and the former by his capture, torture and execution by the Assad regime. Adnan Akla was also eventually captured on the Syrian border. His persona had grown to such mythical proportions that when he was imprisoned, the Vanguard in Syria—now with all ties to the Muslim Brotherhood severed—could not recover.

      Political-ideological. Once the political-ideological schisms started, they were exacerbated by political failures on the part of the leadership. As the leaders with the clearest understanding of the political goals of the group were killed or captured, their replacements began to operate along increasingly disparate political agendas. Adnan Akla, leader of the Vanguard, at one point declared that all who followed the Muslim Brotherhood or supported the alliance they entered into with Iraqi Ba’athists were kufar (infidels or heretics), even as Adnan Sadduddin declared in an interview that the members of the Iraqi Ba’ath party were true Muslims. This mixed message was not only indicative of diametrically opposed political stances, but also evidence of a burgeoning ideological fracture, which was far more troubling for the long-term prospects of radicals in Syria than diverging political views.

      This growing factionalism was not unique to Syria. The various chapters of the International Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood all dealt with internal political divisions in their home nations. Adherence to a central political line began to waver. The Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, for example, ended up providing religious justification for the Hashemite kingdom’s legitimacy in exchange for concessions from the rulers.[13] Though some group members perceived these moves simply as the realpolitik of the Middle East, others—particularly the extreme elements—saw such actions as Faustian bargains which would ultimately corrupt the cause if left unchecked. This and other similar actions only exacerbated the divide growing within the Muslim Brotherhood.

      Another leadership problem facing the mujahadeen in Syria was that power and leadership were concentrated in the hands of a few, creating a considerable amount of cronyism that eventually eroded the quality of the leadership throughout the movement. Harmony AFGP-2002-600080 delves into this to some extent, though the author takes care not to besmirch the names of those who may have died in the jihad. This, too, harkens back to the isolation discussed in the strategy section of this report, and is a clear example of how reductions in control can lead to agency problems. The movement was simultaneously isolated and factionalized, and so leaders tended to circle the wagons. While this may not matter in a lower intensity environment where leader deaths or detentions are somewhat infrequent, it most likely will cause friction in a higher intensity environment such as that in Syria.

      The problems triggered by this strategic disunity are deeply intertwined with the tactical problems. In the jihadist insurgent movement there are often few degrees of separation between those controlling strategy and those executing tactics, especially relative to more traditional models such as the nation-state or state-sponsored terrorist groups. Thus in the case of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Vanguard in Syria, several tactical decisions had dire strategic consequences. One of these was the decision to assault the Syrian Artillery School in Allepo in 1979, a decision made entirely by the Vanguard and ultimately disavowed by the Muslim Brotherhood.[14]

The Third Generation: Applying Syria’s Lessons to Iraq

      The existence of a formal third generation of jihadists is debatable, but there is some evidence that they exist and are now fighting in Iraq. A recent study of the posted list of names on al-Qa’ida in Iraq websites shows that only about 5% of those slain in Iraq have previous mujahadeen experience and that their average age is 27.[15] In the recently discovered and declassified letter from Zawahiri to Zarqawi, there are several allusions to the generational nature of the jihad and the importance of handing over the fighting to this new generation.[16]

      This generation appears to have learned some of the lessons discussed in AFGP-2002-600080, while others seem to have been disregarded. The final portion of this case study focuses on three recurring problems mentioned in Harmony AFGP-2002-600080 that appear to be continuing problems for the insurgency in Iraq.

Ideological and Religious Indoctrination

      The author of Harmony AFGP-2002-600080 spends a good deal of time discussing the problems among the mujahadeen in Syria due to insufficient indoctrination. Clearly, al-Qa’ida learned from this and did not make this mistake in Afghanistan in the 1990s, as they incorporated indoctrination heavily into their training regimen. Since late 2001, however, groups have been highly constrained in their ability to conduct consolidated training. Agency problems arise when principals have a difficult time controlling their agents. In the Syria case, when the training of new mujahadeen became more decentralized and was delegated out of necessity, we observed a greater variance in the quality and intensity of the indoctrination of the new recruits. There is a positive correlation between the level of ideological indoctrination and the level of control a group exerts over its members. Thus we can expect increasing agency problems going forward as newly matriculated members are increasingly less ideologically grounded.

      It is very difficult to exert central control over a group like the Muslim Brotherhood except by sacrificing security. The best example of this is the use of various Salafi-Jihadist websites, which are frequently used as repositories for messages from radical clerics and ideologues. The websites are then accessed by operational cells, thereby ensuring some degree of homogeneity in the global jihadi message, even though the cell may be physically quite decentralized. Here we see an example of the security-efficiency tradeoff described earlier: In order to spread centrally approved “talking points” to the scattered operational cells, the messages must be posted in a fairly accessible place. This is an efficient but inherently insecure method. If the leadership were to make more use of encryption, for instance, they would clearly reduce their vulnerability but they would also exert less centralized message control given the expectation that fewer members would ultimately access these encrypted “talking points.”

Alliances of Necessity with Untrustworthy Arab Regimes

      The historical precedent set when the alliance with Iraqi Ba’athists greatly undermined the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, suggests that cooperation between jihadists and secular elements of the Iraqi insurgency will be temporary. There is certainly an alignment of short-term goals among the various components, but an insurgency—more so than any other form of warfare—is intrinsically political, and there is a high degree of dissonance between the political goals of the various groups in Iraq. Ba’athist nationalists have always held views considered heretical by al-Qa’ida. Furthermore, the Ba’athist component has goals which are more practical. Reasserting control by members loyal to the former regime, while unlikely to succeed given continued U.S. presence, is still far more achievable than restoring the caliphate, which is the ultimate goal of al- Qa’ida.[17]

      The difference in the probability of success provides an opportunity to fracture the insurgency. The Sunni component of the insurgency is primarily interested in local power. By designing a package of incentives that incrementally increases political power, it is possible that much of the causus belli could be drained away from this component of the insurgency over time. Because the long term goals of al- Qa’ida are so much broader, we can achieve a market separation within the insurgency. Additionally, any acceptance of these “carrots” by the Sunnis will be seen as a betrayal by the more ideologically motivated within the movement, just as the realpolitik decisions of the Muslim Brotherhood ultimately isolated the Vanguard in Syria. The targeting of Shiites is likely an attempt to provoke a backlash on Sunnis that will compel moderate groups to adopt Zarqawi’s more extreme positions.[18] Countering this will be a tremendous challenge. The coalition’s tenuous peace with the Shia militias makes managing their outrage appear almost impossible. Nevertheless, providing political insurgents access to the political  process, coupled with mitigating the security impact to them of political failure, while simultaneously urging Shia restraint in the face of Zarqawi’s provocations, seems the best policy option.

Command Structure

      As in the Syria case, there is a growing gulf between the central al-Qa’ida leadership and those engaged in close combat. Al-Qa’ida’s central authority has been heavily disrupted and been reduced largely to providing ideological leadership in the form of frequent messages. There is a palpable degree of discomfort with this detachment from the field commanders, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, when one reads documents like the recently declassified letter from al-Zawahiri.[19]  The undercurrent within this letter seems eerily similar to the situation described in Harmony AFGP-2002-600080, where the author describes the increasing tensions between the leadership within the country and the foreign leadership. Again, this can be examined using agency theory framework. The preferences of al-Qa’ida’s central leaders and Zarqawi, while always a source of tension, are diverging in new and important ways. This is evident in the shifting tactics and targeting of attacks and corroborated in the captured documents and correspondence. This preference divergence will almost certainly continue to grow, and the agency problems associated with this divergence have an increasingly deleterious impact on al-Qa’ida’s capability to centrally direct future operations.

      In fact, this may have already occurred. In October 2004, al-Qa’ida publicly released a letter from al-Tawhid wa’l Jihad (Tawhid refers to the Muslim declaration of monotheism) where Zarqawi offered a bayat or pledge of loyalty to Osama bin Laden and al-Qa’ida. The subsequent name change to al-Qa’ida in Iraq reflected this new arrangement. While this relationship caused concerns within the intelligence community, it is worth noting that, by al-Qa’ida’s own admission, this pledge of loyalty was the result of eight months of negotiations between Zarqawi and al-Qa’ida.[20] This bargaining process reflects the serious strategic and tactical differences which had to be reconciled between the two groups. Undoubtedly, compromises were made by both sides, but those compromises could easily become untenable in the light of the shifting tactical situation faced by al-Qa’ida in Iraq. The June 2005 letter from Zawahiri to Zarqawi suggests that even after the bayat there are still latent tensions that can be exploited.

      Critical examples are Zarqawi’s persistent attacks against Shiites. Although these attacks reflect a policy publicly articulated long before signing on with al Qa’ida, Zawahiri’s letter suggests that they are now a source of tension between the two. This separation between an operational commander and a senior leader is indicative of the kinds of agency problems that the author of Harmony AFGP-2002-600080 believes undermined the Muslim Brotherhood’s efforts in Syria.

Zarqawi: Building an Ideology of Isolation

      Although maintaining his loyalty to al-Qa’ida for the time being, Zarqawi’s recent public statements emphasize his unwillingness to follow orders from the center. In a lecture entitled,  It is Allah Whom ye Should More Justly Fear,  Zarqawi explains his disapproval of scholars advising mujahadeen from safety far from the jihad’s actual fighting.[21] Although Zarqawi defends his position in ideological terms, an unwillingness to take direction seems as much a personality trait as ideological decision. Nevertheless, Zarqawi’s argument has two components: he takes orders from God, not from men, no matter how wise; and calling for jihad is not nearly as important as taking action for jihad.

      There are two possible targets for Zarqawi’s vitriol in his Justly Fear lecture. The first is Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, Zarqawi’s spiritual mentor while he was imprisoned in Jordan. The two have waged a very public debate about the acceptability of suicide bombings and attacks on Shiite civilians over the past two years. Furthermore, the tension between Maqdisi the scholar versus Zarqawi the soldier has long defined their relationship. In prison, Maqdisi—by far the more renowned scholar—took a backseat to Zarqawi as he used impassioned speeches and promises of bold action to recruit supporters. The tension between the idealism of scholars and the practicality of soldiers may be an increasing dilemma for the modern radical Islamic movement.

      The second possible target is Ayman al-Zawihiri, Al Qaeda’s number two leader and author of the well publicized letter to Zarqawi criticizing his attacks on Shiite civilians. Zarqawi does not explicitly identify who he is targeting in Justly Fear, which is odd because he has shown no qualms about using Maqdisi’s name in past statements.

      Despite Zarqawi’s vagueness, it is likely that he is again targeting Maqdisi rather than Zawahiri. Zarqawi identifies scholars that avoid the hardships of jihad and live “in the land of infidels,” a characterization that fits Maqdisi much more than what is known about Zawahiri.

      Zarqawi’s critique is that scholars merely issue declarations and live far from the arena of jihad. This is important because the violent fundamentalist Islamic movement is largely tied together by ideologues able to disseminate their views using modern communications systems. Zarqawi, essentially, is arguing that this alone makes them ill-fit to be leaders of the radical militant movement. Only by sacrificing do they demonstrate their worthiness to lead the jihadist movement. Zarqawi makes his case quite explicitly:

Those who examine the situation of religious scholars and leaders will see that their status varies in the eyes of people according to the association between their words and their actions. People always respect the one who accompanies his words with deeds and the opposite is true…Action is more forceful than the verbose call itself.[22]

      The problem with scholars, Zarqawi argues, is that even the wisest among them are human, while the true mujahadeen should take direction only from God.

The members of the victorious group, although they respect the status and worth of religious scholars, do not know the truth through these scholars. They know men through the truth, since men are only a means to know the truth by stating its proof and basis. This is not because truth is known through them and therefore their words and deeds are followed. Following men, irrespective of their religious knowledge and performance, leads to the widest paths of falsehood and greatest causes of misguidance if they lack authority.[23]

      After explaining why scholars are misguided, Zarqawi begins to discuss his current situation.

Recently, some of our brotherly scholars, who were pioneers in the call for God’s way, fell into fault and made mistakes, caused by their distance from the arenas of jihad and by the fact that they are not actually involved in jihad. Thus, their lapses were greatly advertised, and the guided news media carried them everywhere. All that was aimed at causing disunity, dissension, keeping people away from jihad, and making them hate the mujahadeen.[24]

      Zarqawi argues that scholars should not simply be thinkers; they must have knowledge of both “the rule of God and the situation to which this opinion applies.”[25] Zarqawi rejects what he calls the term “theoretician of the Salafist Jihadist Trend,” which in essence are men like al-Maqdisi who have provided the intellectual foundation for jihad but failed to fight themselves. It is not clear that Zawahiri, who has been involved at the operational level of al Qa’ida, would fall into this category.

This term is actually an undesirable separation between words and deeds. Scholars were throughout the ages at the forefront of the bandwagon of jihad…the theoreticians of the jihadist current were the ones who carried the Book and sword in their hands and took the front line. They led the masses and abandoned the transient pleasures of life. They preferred the reward of eternal life. They abandoned their palaces and houses and chose to live in caves and mountains. They did so to protect their religion and couple their words with deeds. A scholar living in the land of infidels away from the arenas of jihad and the real situation of the mujahadeen should not issue fatwas to the people on issues the least that can be said about them is that they express an independent judgment that can be interpreted differently.[26]

     The destruction of al Qa’ida’s Afghanistan-based hierarchy drove the movement underground and initiated a metamorphosis into the loosely-linked, ideological-based network we see today. This transition makes the movement very difficult to track, but raises critical agency problems because of the absence of a typical command structure. Particularly for agents pressured by intense operational demands, as in Iraq, we are likely to see tension between central ideological thinkers and the operational leaders on the ground.

Zarqawi and al-Tali’a: Side by Side Comparison

      Zarqawi’s unwillingness to accept direction is not the only way that AFGP-2002-600080’s lessons provide perspective on Zarqawi’s organization. Zarqawi’s Al-Qa’ida in Mesopotamia most closely resembles the al-Tali’a in Syria. Both are extremist, even compared to their militant Islamic peers, and relatively small components of a multifaceted insurgency. Table 1 compares the mistakes AFGP-2002-600080 attributes to al-Tali’a and compares them to Zarqawi’s performance on similar issues.

Table 1: A Comparison of al-Tali’a in Syria and Zarqawi in Iraq

      Zarqawi’s most important improvement on al-Tali’a’s model is his media operation. Unlike al-Tali’a’, Zarqawi has effective media and ideological operations designed to both indoctrinate his followers for a drawn-out fight and to publicize his activities to domestic and international audiences. This will build a resilient movement and is critical for de-territorializing the Iraq conflict in order to attract non-Iraqis to the fight.

      Zarqawi also has a clear set of strategic and operational goals, necessities that al-Tali’a did not possess. But, like his al-Tali’a predecessors, Zarqawi’s ideological perspective is extraordinarily exclusionary. [28]  Zarqawi labels Shiites, Arab governments, and all those that cooperate with secular regimes as either ‘infidels’ or ‘apostates’ and vows to fight them.

      Furthermore, Zarqawi’s insistence on a purely ‘Islamic’ perspective may prevent him from successfully exploiting the unique political opportunities posed by an occupation in an ancient, proud, and tribal society. In other words, Zarqawi’s religious lens allows him to transform the war in Iraq into a struggle relevant to all Muslims, but it may limit his ability to successfully exploit the unique grievances of Iraqis. The author of AFGP-2002-600080 seems to believe that al-Tali’a’s dependence on foreign logistical support was a major handicap; in Iraq, Zarqawi can easily access the materials of guerilla warfare, but depends on a universalist ideology that may create a similar dynamic for him in Iraq.

      The primary limitation of Zarqawi’s ideology is that it limits his ability to develop strategic relationships with different insurgent organizations. In an effort to recreate the persecution and struggle of the prophet’s companions, Zarqawi recognizes and embraces the exclusionary nature of his ideology. His understanding of Islam is that it is in a continual struggle against numerically superior forces of infidels and apostates. Zarqawi likely sees widespread condemnation of his movement as a sign that his interpretation of Islam is correct.

      Nevertheless, this perspective is politically limiting. Although Harmony AFGP-2002-600080 points out the danger of accepting large numbers of low quality recruits into the ranks, Zarqawi’s insistence on Islamic ‘purity’ as he understands it is a major weakness. Harmony AFGP-2002-600080 quotes a Muslim Brotherhood cadre speaking about al-Tali’a leader Adnan Akla in a manner that could easily be used to describe Zarqawi: “I do not doubt Adnan Akla’s loyalty and integrity as a leader, nor do I doubt his courage, I also have no doubt that he lacks the wisdom to benefit from those two characteristics.”

      As Zarqawi attempts to expand his reach beyond Iraq,  his agency problems will likely increase. Within Iraq he has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to organize near simultaneous attacks in geographically separated areas. This tactical control is harder to exert over operatives working farther away. For example, the Amman hotel bombings last year should be considered strategic failures from Zarqawi’s perspective—although many were killed, the bomb was detonated in the middle of a wedding, which generated a predictable backlash against the attack and Zarqawi’s group generally in the Jordanian population. 

      Although it is possible that Zarqawi approved of targeting the wedding, it is equally possible, and perhaps more likely that the bomber detonated himself in the midst of the largest crowd without thinking through the strategic impact of his tactical decision. Zarqawi seems to have recognized the negative strategic impact and disavowed the bomb detonated amongst the wedding party.[29] This is indicative of the agency problems we have identified in Syria and will be increasingly common if Zarqawi continues to broaden his reach beyond Iraq. The need to delegate tactical control to subordinates increases as the theatre of operations expands, and that in turn increases the chance that tactical decisions made by subordinates will undermine Zarqawi’s strategic intent.   

continue
back to report home