SPECIAL FEATURE

A NOTED IRREGULAR WARFARE EXPERT REVEALS THE TERRORIST ORGANIZATION’S WAY OF WAR AND THE STRATEGY OF JIHAD . BY S EBASTIAN G ORKA

SEPTEMBER 2011 marked the 10th anniversary of America’s longest ever war, the war against al- S E G A M

Qaeda and its affiliates. Four months earlier, on May 2 , 2011 , the founder and head of al-Qaeda, Osama bin I Y T T E G / E Laden , was killed in by members of U.S. Seal Team VI. The war is far from over ; but given these two I R E U G I V E historical markers, we should pause to examine the way of war that brought us September 11 , 2001 (9/11), D E U Q I N O R E

and the strategy behind the deadliest terrorist organization in the modern history of irregular warfare . V

44 * ARMCHAIR GENERAL * MAY 2012 December 22, 2009. A new recruit from Lashkar-e-Taiba Islamist militant group waits to shoot during a training exercise somewhere in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. Members of Lashkar- e-Taiba are among the best trained and most hardened fighters battling against NATO forces in the region.

MAY 2012 * ARMCHAIR GENERAL * 45 The CIA initiated its largest ever covert mission, providing

TOP ROW, FAR LEFT: Abdullah Azzam, a Pales - tinian ideologue and mentor to , heavily recruited young Muslims from around the world to take up arms against the Soviet Union following its invasion of . LEFT: Osama bin Laden, re - cruited and mentored by Abdullah Azzam, used his wealth and influence to aid the Mu - jahedeen in their struggle against the Rus - sians during the Soviet War in Afghanistan. It was through this activity that he laid the groundwork for his al -Qaeda terrorist organi - zation. BOTTOM ROW, FAR LEFT: Ayman al -Zawahri, along with Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden, was an influential figure during the Soviet War in Afghanistan. He later helped transform the MAK into al -Qaeda, and initially served as its deputy. Following the death of bin Laden in 2011 , Zawahri became the head of the terrorist organization. LEFT: Sayyid Qutb was a leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1960s. His book Milestones has become the field manual for jihadists around the world.

Cairo’s Al-Azhar, Azzam traveled the world convincing audiences of young Muslims that the war against the Russians was their war too. In fact, he wrote a 70 -page fatwa (a S E V

religious opinion concerning Islamic law), I H C R

endorsed by several leading clerics, which A L A R

clearly stated that holy war in the name of E N E G R

Allah was now a fard ayn – an individual I A H C

obligation – for all Muslims, rich or poor, M R A ,

ORIGINS OF AL-QAEDA S Arab or non-Arab , and that the believer needed no one’s permission to E V I H C

979 was a momentous year geopolitically with great consequences self-mobilize and deploy as a warrior of God. To facilitate this inter - R A L A

for relations between the democratic nations of the West and the national mobilization of jihadists, Azzam created the Maktab al-Khi - R E N E

1 G Arab and Muslim world. 1979 witnessed the establishment of a damat (MAK), the Afghan Services Bureau , in 1984. MAK would later R I A H theocratic dictatorship in Iran, as the writ of the mullahs replaced the become al-Qaeda. C M R A :

sovereign monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In Saudi Ara - The Afghan Services Bureau recruited Muslim fighters from around W R O M

bia , a group of armed Muslim extremists set siege to the Grand the world, but especially the Middle East, including Egypt, , O T T O B

Mosque in Mecca in an attempt to “cleanse” the holiest sites in Islam Yemen and . Once recruited , they would receive basic : S E G from the influence of what they saw as the apostate regime of the training in guerrilla warfare tactics and then be deployed into A M I Y T T

House of Saud. Lastly, the USSR invaded Afghanistan in order to make Afghanistan against Soviet forces as the “Arab Mujahedeen. ” By the E G / N

the Muslim nation a satrapy of the Kremlin. 1989 end of the war , unclassified U.S. Central Intelligence Agency N C , S E

Moscow’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan had consequences that rip - (CIA ) and Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND, Germany’s CIA ) reports G A M I Y

pled well beyond the bipolar standoff between the Warsaw Pact and placed the number of MAK fighters at 50,000. T T E G /

NATO. Since the USSR was a godless, Western nation using force One of Azzam’s main achievements was to place his call to arms S W E N

against a Muslim country, the effect was to trigger an international call into a context that went beyond the religious war argument that at - Y R O T for jihad, or holy war, whereby Muslims from other nations would tracted his primary audience. Coming as the Soviet invasion did so S E R U T

fight to protect their co-religionists in Afghanistan. close to the inauguration of a new , more hawkish American president, A E F / M

Among the most successful responses to the invasion was the work Ronald Reagan, and at the height of the , Azzam understood A A I A of Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian ideologue who became the mentor to the need to also portray his holy war as a war of freedom-loving guer - R L A : W

a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden. Holding a PhD in Islamic ju - rillas against the forces of a despotic Kremlin , which also just happened O R P O risprudence from the most influential university in the Muslim world, to threaten the West. Additionally, he was canny enough to build a T

46 * ARMCHAIR GENERAL * MAY 2012 arms and assistance to the Mujahedeen .

February 10, 1988. A Mujahedeen fighter leads a supply-laden mule to a remote rebel base in the Safed Koh Mountains in Afghanistan.

coalition with Saudi actors who wanted to spread their version of Islam States to provide Stinger surface-to-air missile to the guerrillas. Most beyond the Arabian Peninsula. To do so, Azzam recruited Osama bin importantly, managed to convince Washington that given its Laden, son of Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest building magnate, Mohammad comparative expertise in the region and the ISI’s sources in bin Laden, a close friend of the Saudi king. Afghanistan, Pakistan should be the middleman providing American Also essential to the eventual success of the coalition of anti-Soviet and Saudi assets to the Mujahedeen. This handing over of operational forces was the involvement of Pakistan’s military, especially its Inter - responsibilities would have its own geopolitical consequences after services Intelligence Agency (ISI). Having a very great interest in the re - 9/11. What is important to note is that Azzam and bin Laden were part gion, especially in making sure that India’s influence should not expand of the much smaller Arab Mujahedeen force and were never in direct into Central Asia, ISI would place itself in the middle of the evolving contact with U.S. government assets or part of the much larger covert geostrategic situation just as the saw an opportunity to operation. weaken the USSR and also became involved. The resulting confluence and its misunderstanding – often its willful distortion – have led to in - JIHAD: numerable conspiracy theories and products of disinformation. THE OFFICIAL STRATEGY S E

G The fact is that the United States decided it was important to assist ow, in the 11 th year of what was formerly known as the Global A M I Y

T the Afghans in their resistance to the Kremlin’s military aggression. (GWOT), there is increasing misunderstanding T E G

/ N Saudi Arabia, for its own reasons, agreed, and a deal was cut whereby of the nature of the enemy we face and his way of war. This is a N O S I A I the CIA initiated its largest ever covert mission, providing arms and serious problem, for as Sun Tzu reminds us, in war one must not only L / G R

E assistance to the Mujahedeen as the Saudis would match , dollar for know the enemy , but also know and attack his strategy . On our side of B S L E

K dollar , all U.S. funding. Weapons were initially procured primarily from this conflict, the GWOT term was eventually replaced by the Long War, C I N T

R China until the Soviet forces’ Hind Mi-24 helicopter fleet became the and under the current administration, by Overseas Contingency Op - E B O

R center of gravity of USSR combat operations, prompting the United erations (OCO). For the enemy, there has also been a shift in empha -

MAY 2012 * ARMCHAIR GENERAL * 47 The only remaining superpower is the United States – which,

48 * ARMCHAIR GENERAL * MAY 2012 too, must be destroyed.

sis, but in a far more subtle and dangerous fashion. It has evolved from a mostly kinetic approach to irregular warfare – as typified by the 9/11 attacks – to a more indirect and nonkinetic approach, as evinced dur - ing the 2011 Middle East upheavals collectively termed the “Arab Spring.” Nevertheless, the overarching context remains that of Global Jihad, and as such we need to understand this alien concept.

SEMINAL STRATEGISTS OF HOLY WAR ust as one studies Clausewitz, Machiavelli, Mahan, Liddell Hart Jand Colin Gray to understand the modern way of Western war, there are key writers and thinkers with whom those who wish to defeat our current foe must acquaint themselves intimately. One of those already noted is bin Laden’s former mentor, Abdullah Azzam. However, in order to understand the strategy of the Global Jihadi movement, one must also read the writings of Sayyid Qutb; Ayman al- Zawahri, the new head of al-Qaeda; and lastly , the works of Brigadier S.K. Malik. Qutb, a minor Egyptian government official, is responsible for writ - ing the most influential modern text on jihad. His 19 64 book, Mile - stones (sometimes translated as Signposts Along the Way ), has become the field manual for jihadists everywhere and remains a core doctrinal text for the Muslim Brotherhood. Written after Qutb visited America on an exchange program, the book de - August 7, 1998. Rescuers work scribes the reasons why the Muslim to help survivors amid the world has lost its pre -eminent position devastation caused by a bomb in the world and how the godless, infi - explosion in al -Qaeda ’s first del nation of the United States must be major international attack , destroyed in order to rid the world near the U.S. embassy and a of j hil yah (the pagan ignorance o f bank in Nairobi, Kenya. The at - Allah ), similar to that which Muham - tack killed at least 60 people, mad found around Mecca when he including eight Americans, founded Islam. In this purification of and injured more than 1,000 . the world and the reinstatement of Is - lamic greatness through the re -estab - lishment of the theocratic empire that was Caliphate, the most powerful weapon is holy war, or jihad. Most significantly, Qutb was explicit in his belief that Islam is not to be understood as just a religion, but instead as a “revolutionary party” with a mission to mobilize the masses and capture global power. It is no accident that given this understanding, Milestones lifts heavily and frequently from other ideological constructs that promoted revo - lution, especially fascism and communism, which is why Qutb (and later bin Laden) frequently used Marxist terminology such as the “van - guard.” Qutb was eventually arrested by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser regime for his central role in the Muslim Brotherhood movement and executed in 1966. However , his ideas on jihad and religious war live on and his book is available not only all over the Middle East but also in Muslim “cultural centers” across the United States. Ayman al-Zawahri, who now heads al-Qaeda after bin Laden’s death, also contributed to the jihadi canon. An Egyptian medical doc - tor born of a very prominent Cairo family, Zawahri was also a mem -

S ber of the Muslim Brotherhood, but would later become one of the E G A M

I leaders of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Also arrested by the Egyptian au - Y T T

E thorities for his extreme beliefs , Zawahri eventually ended up in Pak - G / P F

A istan during the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, where he used his

MAY 2012 * ARMCHAIR GENERAL * 49 Political warfare has been rediscovered by organizations ve

surgical skills treating wounded Mujahedeen. Zawahri eventually met BEYOND IDEOLOGY: Osama bin Laden. After Abdullah Azzam’s assassination in 1989, bin WAGING IRREGULAR WAR AGAINST Laden’s puritanical Wahhabi ideology melded with Zawahri’s Muslim AMERICA AND THE WEST Brotherhood influenced ideology and the MAK transformed into al- l-Qaeda truly is a transcendentally motivated threat group, Qaeda with bin Laden at the helm and Zawahri as his deputy. Adriven by the ideas of religious empire and eternal glory de - In preparation for the reaction to and increased attention the 9/11 scribed in the works of Azzam, Qutb, Zawahri and Malik. At the attacks would bring , Zawahri penned an autobiographical treatise pub - same time , it employs recognized principles of irregular warfare such lished two months after the attacks. Knights Under the Prophet’s Ban - as and insurgency. As a result , we can also dissect it from the ner (or Warriors Under the Flag of Muhammad ) echoes the themes of point of view of unconventional strategy, doctrine and operations. both Qutb and Azzam that Islam must rejuvenate itself with an assault As Dr. Thomas A. Marks, an authority on insurgency, has accurately on all that is un-Islamic and that this revival to greatness will come described , there are two schools of insurgent thought. One is that as - through each believer taking up the sword of jihad. More specifically, cribed to Argentinean revolutionary Ernesto “Che ”Guevara and labeled Zawahri uses the example of the Mujahedeen victory in Afghanistan to focoist . Here , the enemy state is targeted by the insurgent leader through illustrate that Islam’s holy warriors are capable of defeating a super - a catalytic dynamic whereby he inspires the people to rise and follow power. With the USSR’s collapse in 1991, the only him in his challenge to the oppressive regime remaining superpower is the United States – which , through his own deeds and example. Mao Zedong, too , must be destroyed. on the other hand, developed the “people’s war ” However, the ideological and strategic thinker school of insurgency, a far more sophisticated ap - of greatest significance to Global Jihad is the one of proach. Here , the insurgent group grows through its whom most observers – and even intelligence ana - assiduous application of both violent and nonvio - lysts – have never heard. In 1979, just as the Iranian lent means, a “mass base” of support , and at the revolution was unfolding in Tehran, Mecca and same time builds a “counterstate,” or shadow gov - Kabul, an astonishing book was published in Pak - ernment , with which to eventually challenge the ex - istan by Brigadier S.K. Malik titled The Quranic isting state head-on and replace it after an all-out Concept of War . The book is remarkable not only in “war of position.” Of the two schools , Mao’s proved its direct connection to the later events of 9/11 and more successful : Che died a failure in 1967 at the age its justification of such heinous acts but also in the of 39 ; Mao conquered China in 1949 and ruled it category-negating nature of its content. For The until his death from old age in 1976 . Quranic Concept of War is unlike any strategic tome Examining the operational evolution of al- in the canon of Western military thought . Qaeda through these two lenses reveals a fascinating In the book, the former general officer destroys conversion developing over time. Despite the fact central tenets of the Clausewitzian theory of war. that 9/11 appears to have taken the United States’ As we have taught since the earth-shattering cam - national security elite by surprise, we can now eas - paigns of Napoleon, war is an instrument of the na - ily map how the MAK became al-Qaeda after tion-state, a violent tool to be used in the The Quranic Concept of War by Brigadier Azzam was assassinated and bin Laden took over. furtherance of the national interest when all other S.K. Malik has heavily influenced the With the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 by Saddam tools fail. This is what Clausewitz meant when he Global Jihad movement since the book’s Hussein’s Iraqi army, bin Laden approached his fa - made his famous observation that war is merely the publication in 1979. ther’s friend, the king of Saudi Arabia, to offer the “continuation of politics with an admixture of dif - services of his fighters in protecting Islam’s holiest ferent means.” Yet Malik reverses centuries of understanding of warfare sites. However, the monarch rejected the offer and instead called upon with his book by stating that war has nothing to do with the nation- the infidel West – led by the United States – to protect the kingdom state – which is in any case a heretical construct of the infidel West – and the two holy sites, Mecca and Medina. This is the point at which or with serving the nation. Instead , war is understood by Malik to serve bin Laden went from being a guerrilla jihadist to being a terrorist ji - only one purpose: the realization of Allah’s sovereignty here on Earth. hadist. Within months , he began to rail openly against the House of Secondly, again in a denial of Western strategic thought, Malik Saud (until he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship), and within two states that the idea of multiple centers of gravity in war is also falla - years , New York City suffered the first World Trade Center attack cious, as is any insistence that the concept of center of gravity actually (1993). Osama bin Laden had thus singlehandedly redefined modern refers to physical targets. In war, according to Malik, there is only one jihad to mean the wanton attack of civilians on foreign soil, changing center of gravity: the soul of your enemy. it from what it had been in the 1980s, guerrilla warfare against the Lastly – and of particular relevance to groups like al-Qaeda – since USSR’s occupational forces in Afghanistan . the only target that matters in war is the faith system of the infidel, the After the failure of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing came al-

most effective weapon in war is terror. Lest anyone think this was the Qaeda’s international campaign of terror: the 1994 Bojinka plot in the S K O O

work of some radical , disenchanted fringe officer, it must be noted that ; the 1998 attacks on several U.S. embassies in East Africa; B N A Y A

The Quranic Concept of War has a foreword by General M. Zia-ul-Haq, the 2000 attack on USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen; and finally, the L A M I

chief of the army staff and , 1977-88, president of Pakistan. attacks of September 11, 2001. H

50 * ARMCHAIR GENERAL * MAY 2012 ry similar to and influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Despite the full-scale response by the may be in ascendance. That is how Hamas United States that featured special forces and and Hezbollah became so powerful, less by paramilitary direct action assets deployed to direct kinetic attack but more by building Afghanistan , and then the invasion of both schools and clinics, the support structures of that country and later , al-Qaeda was not the counterstate which Mao saw as indis - deterred. Just two months after 9/11 came pensible to victory using the indirect ap - the infamous “shoe bomber ” plot. The fol - proach. As the “Arab Spring ” turns from the lowing year , al-Qaeda executed the Bali, In - rejection of authoritarian and dictatorial donesia, bombings; then the 2004 Madrid, regimes to the establishment of new politi - Spain, and Khobar Towers, Saudi Arabia, cal structures that favor puritanical interpre - attacks; the 2005 “7/7” mass-transit attacks tations of Islamic law instead of the norms in London, Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt and of pluralist and liberal democracies, we may Amman, Jordan; the Christmas Day 2009 at - conclude that while violent jihad may be tempted attack on Northwest flight 253 ; and passé for some, political warfare has been re - the 2010 cargo plane plot . discovered by organizations very similar to Although several of these attacks and influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. (Madrid, London, Bali and Amman) killed and wounded hundreds of civilians, al-Qaeda BEYOND BIN LADEN was not able to outdo the lethality of its orig - As Sun Tzu wrote, tactics without strat - inal 9/11 mass-casualty attacks. As a result, egy is merely the noise before defeat. As we apparently in recognition of the efficacy of enter the second decade of our war against certain screening measures the United States Global Jihad, we would do well to reassess had put in place since 9/11, al-Qaeda over our national obsession with the overtly ki - time shifted its operational focus. Instead of netic aspects of war and the tactical levels recruiting foreigners to attempt to penetrate of conflict. The Abbottabad special forces the post-9/11 security measures, al-Qaeda – operation that targeted and killed bin especially through the efforts of U.S. national Laden will no doubt be taught in military and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader , academies from West Point to Beijing for Anwar al-Awlaki – recruited operatives al - decades to come as the quintessential ex - ready in the United States and holding U.S. ample of how to conduct a special opera - citizenship who could strike right in the heart tion in a nonpermissive environment. of the enemy. The two most infamous exam - Osama bin Laden is dead, but have we won ? ples are Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square Being the best at the tactical and opera - bomber, and Major Nidal Hasan, the U.S. tional level does not necessarily result in Army officer who at Fort Hood carried out A crowd cheers and chants in excitement near to Ground strategic success. If other U.S. citizens choose the most successful al-Qaeda attack on Zero after hearing that Osama bin Laden is dead. Bin Laden the path of jihad over loyalty to the U.S. Con - American soil since 9/11. planned the September 11, 2001, attacks and was hunted stitution, if the nations of the Middle East Key to this new approach was a system - by American forces in the years afterward. He was killed in fall to the “Hamas Syndrome ” of religious atic radicalization system whereby talent 2011 during a raid in Abbottabad, near Pakistan’s capital , fundamentalism via democratic election, not spotters identify potential operatives (often Islamabad . even a return to the vaunted isolationism of in mosques), assist in their absorption into the past will make America safe. the ideological world of the jihadi, facilitate their “weaponization ,” and Yet the news is not all bad. There was a war that ended successfully finally religiously sanction their deployment as suicide terrorists. not too long ago that was also far more ideological than it was kinetic At the same time, with the “hardening” of the United States as a po - – the Cold War. We must relearn the lessons of that conflict and apply tential target of direct terrorist attack, we have seen on extremist web - them today, but without the stultifying effect of political correctness sites and in the jihadi chat rooms an evolution of the strategy of jihad. that led , for example , to the official U.S. Department of Defense in - It is clear that practitioners such as bin Laden had a very focoist, or vestigation of the Fort Hood shooting completely ignoring the role of Guevarist , understanding of unconventional warfare. The 9/11 attacks religion in motivating Major Hasan. We need to understand what the were obviously meant to be a global trigger for the ummah (Muslim enemy fights for , not just how he fights . * Sebastian Gorka , PhD, teaches irregular warfare to U.S. Special Forces, law N world ) to rise up and follow bin Laden’s lead. Fortunately for the O T N I

L United States, bin Laden did not realize that insurgency is far more enforcement agencies and America’s allies. He is the contributing co-editor of “To - C L L A complicated an activity than Che ever dreamt. ward a Grand Strategy Against Terrorism” (McGraw Hill , 2011) and is Military D N A R

. However, the broader jihadi community is a learning organism. We Affairs Fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracy. The views expressed T G S

E have seen in the intervening years a very vigorous debate develop within in this article are solely his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the De - N I R A

M the Islamic fundamentalist community, such that the followers of Mao partment of Defense or any other government agency.

MAY 2012 * ARMCHAIR GENERAL * 51