Subbing in as a guest blogger today at MediaShack, Acewiththeface, aka Adrian from Politics and Soccer. Can Al-Qaeda be deterred?:
The prevailing belief in the Security Community is that AQ can’t be deterred because they’re irrational terrorists who want to die, and nothing will ever stop an army of zombie lemmings from marching off a cliff/blowing themselves up. This idea has led most people to abandon any hope of applying deterrence to fighting terrorists.
Traditional deterrence is based on the assumption of a rational actor – that only rational actors can be deterred, because all policy is made by rational states who have full command over their instruments of power. As Chirol notes, deterrence has never required rational actors – in fact it is a dangerous myth. Deterrence just requires fear (the root of the word ‘deterrence’ is terror), whether its fear of nuclear war or fear of uncertain consequences.
Instead, the problem of applying deterrence to Al Qaeda is that we are already doing everything we can to destroy Al Qaeda. Deterrence requires negotiation and a willingness to coexist given specific conditions, like the US and USSR agreed to coexist within specific red lines. However, there are no conditions in which the US will agree to allow Al Qaeda to exist.
That being said, can deterrence still be applied to Al Qaeda? I think yes, in several ways:
The easiest way is to deter states from supporting terrorists. We have no problem coexisting with states like Libya and Syria if they agree to stop supporting terrorism, so this presents no problems.
Deterring financiers from sending money to Al Qaeda is also fairly simple, since we have no problem coexisting with rich Saudis unless they send money to AQ (or they are in the royal family, a potential difficulty). This might be working, since AQ is running out of money.
The US should also deter terrorist leaders from launching attacks by convincing them they will fail, the same way you would deter any other military tactic (”playing defense”, as Giuliani would dismiss it). This can be very effective because terrorist groups typically dislike operational risk (risk-friendly terrorist groups don’t survive very long). The risk is that this will simply deflect terrorism to softer targets. When bin Ladin realized that Egypt was too tough a target to take down, he shifted his target to the US. Deterring AQ from attacking the US could just increase attacks on more vulnerable targets, like Western Europe.
I think most important is to deter individuals from joining terrorist groups in the first place. You could deter people from joining terrorist groups by devaluing the social, economic, cultural and religious benefits of joining a terrorist group – that group’s “club goods”. You can also do this by propaganda that emphasizes the nastier aspects of terrorism, like using mental patients for suicide bombings bombings. This isn’t really traditional deterrence, but is more like altering the cost/benefit calculations of potential terrorists.
Filed under: Guest Posts, Understanding Al-Qaeda | Tagged: Al-Qaeda, deterrence
Great post Adrian. I just wanted to correct a few things you asserted above.
Deterring financiers from sending money to Al Qaeda is also fairly simple, since we have no problem coexisting with rich Saudis unless they send money to AQ (or they are in the royal family, a potential difficulty). This might be working, since AQ is running out of money.
I disagree with this contention. al Qaeda has been very adept at using hawala to transfer money for operations.
See here, here, and here. This without mentioning the amount of money the Taliban is garnering from the Afghan trade in Opium, part of which likely makes its way to al Qaeda proper.
I haven’t finished looking through the CTC, but a quick search did not reveal any info on AQ financing through hawala.
Also, When bin Ladin realized that Egypt was too tough a target to take down, he shifted his target to the US. Deterring AQ from attacking the US could just increase attacks on more vulnerable targets, like Western Europe.
Osama bin Laden did not realize that it was too tough to target Egypt, this was actually knowledge that was passed to him via Ayman Az Zawahiri. What both realized (Osama with respect to Saudi Arabia) was not that it was too difficult to these regimes, but rather that, from their point of view, they would not be able to take down these apostate governments, unless they first forced the US to withdraw from the region. Their strategy of attacking the US, was not so much because it was easier to fight, but rather because they believed that 1) attacking the infidel empire that supported the autocrats in the region would bring Muslims tired of tyranny to their side 2) the US over reaction to any massive attacks would incite Muslims to fight the infidel army 3) The US was a paper tiger (Vietnam syndrome) and once hit, it would withdraw from the region, allowing AQ and other Islamists to take the regimes in the region down.
I think most important is to deter individuals from joining terrorist groups in the first place. You could deter people from joining terrorist groups by devaluing the social, economic, cultural and religious benefits of joining a terrorist group – that group’s “club goods”.
Here you are correct. I argued late last year (see here also) for undermining the appeal of Al Qaeda and Islamist Terrorist groups by ridiculing it and exposing its inconsistencies and vagaries through the use of comedy, and the media. This proposal is closely tied to Barnett’s theory of increasing connectivity from the Core to globalization’s gap.
As for deterring terrorism, the larger question before looking at specific tactics is what it is that the terrorist group seeks to accomplish through the use of the tactic itself. That is, is al Qaeda, seeking specific aims, using specific grievances as a means of gaining support? If so, how can we address said grievances as a part of a strategy to undermine its case without at the same time having it appear that terrorism as a tool worked in getting us to change our policies?
The thing about hawala financing is that nobody really knows whether AQ is able to use it or not, you would need covert humint sources in place to get that information. And based on my understanding of hawala even if AQ had access to a hawala network it would still be difficult to transfer large sums of money. So while they have other sources of money, shutting down a flood of money from Saudi Arabia will of course hurt them.
As for the near vs. far enemy question, regardless of the rhetoric, I think it was a question of “do we want to keep dying trying to take down Mubarak, or take on the probably easier target of the US?” If it was for the reasons they give in their rhetoric, why wouldn’t they have skipped attacking Egypt in the first place and just attacked the US, when their membership was larger and before so many failed plots against Egypt?
I also question how effective the Hawala network is. Im not saying it isnt. Im just a bit skeptical and tend to agree with Adrians point. Hawala might work in Afghanistan but otherwise its not so effective. For example, try moving 10k in cash into Charles De Gaulle if your an Arab. Your going to face extra heavy scutiny.
nykrindc,
I dont think the shift to Global Jihad was that well-thought out. By the mid to late 1990s Egyptian militants had absoltuely gotten their asses kicked. In fact Zawahiri had called off armed operations in Egypt by 1995. They had absolutely no capability to combat the Mubarak regime by the late 90s. Robin Wright in THe Looming Tower suggests that IJ was down to 40 people. Zawahiri and C. turned to Bin Laden because Egyptian Islamic Jihad, operating from a postion of major weakness faced a choice in the late 1990s: quit or link their movement to AQ. At that point in 1998, many members of Jihad, including Zawahiri’s brother Muhamed, told AZ to go F%*@ himself before they would join AQ. And now in 2007, the overwhelming majority of Jihad members have totally given up Jihad and endorse Sayyid Imam’s ideological revisions…. My point is that it is not as if BL and AZ sat down and thought up some special intellectual theory about attacking the “Far Enemy” and Global Jihad. They simply had no other options after the beatdown they got at the hands of the government by the mid to late 1990s.
[...] to Check out AcewiththeFace’s Guest Post on Detering Al-Qaeda. Scroll down or read it Here . A few interesting comments have been [...]
Adrian said:
And based on my understanding of hawala even if AQ had access to a hawala network it would still be difficult to transfer large sums of money.
Grandmasta Splash said:
For example, try moving 10k in cash into Charles De Gaulle if your an Arab. Your going to face extra heavy scutiny.
See that’s the thing with Hawala, hawalers don’t have to transfer or courier money in the traditional sense. Rather, one hawaler in point A (note by point I mean are of operation for the hawaler), will take an order to give money to a person in point B. Rather than transfer or courier the money from A to B, he simply calls another hawaler and asks him to disburse the amount from his own account. The way, they pay each other back is when a person in point B wants to transfer money to point A. The point B hawaler doesn’t transfer money to point A, but simply calls the point A hawaler and cashes in his debt. Hence, no money actually crosses national boundaries. As such, though you are right to say that the Saudi gov’s crackdown on using aid organizations and other such above ground banking institutions will hurt al Qaeda, the hawala system remains very much an option to transfer money to and from. Also remember, hawala networks have existed for centuries, and due to repeated transactions have trust in each other that the money owed will be repaid at some point. They also have vast resources and millions are sent through them each year. Al Qaeda would only need to send, at most a few thousands.
You are also correct in noting that we do not know the extent to which AQ uses the hawala system. However, we’ve heard before that AQ was running out of money, and even that AQI was financing it. Still AQ continues to endure, as will their financing, until we are able to defeat it once and for all.
Adrian said: As for the near vs. far enemy question, regardless of the rhetoric, I think it was a question of “do we want to keep dying trying to take down Mubarak, or take on the probably easier target of the US?”
Grandmasta Splash said: My point is that it is not as if BL and AZ sat down and thought up some special intellectual theory about attacking the “Far Enemy” and Global Jihad.
And now in 2007, the overwhelming majority of Jihad members have totally given up Jihad and endorse Sayyid Imam’s ideological revisions
Here, again I disagree. Michael Scheuer, Peter Bergen and others argue that the movement targeted the US, more out of a belief that unless they dealt with us first, they would not be able to take down the regimes in the region. They saw the US as the facilitator of the status quo, hence any change to the status quo would have to begin by taking the US out first. This thinking is evident in OBL, in how he perceived the US as being the guarantor of the security of the Saudi crown.
As for Az Zawahiri, it is true that his branch of the IJ was in dire straits and that was part of the reason why he moved to Afghanistan. But in his defeat in Egypt, he focused on the reason behind it. For him it became clear, that US support for the Egyptian dictatorship allowed it to endure. It’s the essence of why they moved to aggressively attack the US. The added value of that, as I noted, was also that in attacking the infidel they also believe they would be able to incite the Arab masses to their side.
The split between Islamists on these grounds has been pretty well documented. Some believed, that in order to defeat the regimes, they had to continue the insurgency within the state, others have pursued these aims through the calling of electoral reforms to elect Islamists to power, and lastly are those like Zawahiri and OBL who believed that in order to defeat the dictatorships, they first needed to defeat their major supporter and patron.
As for ideology, you guys have to remember that Zawahiri didn’t just meet bin Laden and on the spot decide to join al Qaeda, rather, he befriended bin Laden and over time his influence increased to the point where OBL eventually distanced himself from Abdullah Azzam, who in turn was killed, it is suspected, by members of Zawahiri’s IJ. This is why initially many terrorism specialists believed that Zawahiri was in fact the brains behind al Qaeda, because his world view was adopted so thoroughly.
You ask why didn’t they just switch from attacking Egypt to attacking the US when their numbers were bigger. The reason is complex, but in a nutshell had to do with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the network of foreign mujaheeden who went to fight them there. They fought Egypt all throughout the 1950’2 up until the 1980’s. When many of the foreign jihadists returned to their home countries, they not only returned with added skill sets but also with connections to the larger mujahedeen networks. Having defeated one empire, and seeing the government in Kabul fall thereafter, showed them a way to take their own governments’ down, go after the protector of the status quo, the far enemy and then deal with the dictators. During the time right after many returned to their home countries, they were decimated by their state’s security apparatus, and many were exiled, Zawahiri among them. In Afghanistan, having a mujahedeen network that spanned MENA, and Southeast Asia, those who had bought into Zawahiri’s and Bin Laden’s vision decided to unite to target the head of the snake, the center of the empire.
NYkrindc,
Thanks for taking the time to write these quality responses.
The central points of Lawrence Wrights, “The Looming Tower,” and especially Fawad Gerges’s “Why Jihad Went Global,” was that Zawahiri made the shift because he had no other choice. His group was beaten and had no other options. He can portray his shift however he wants, but Al-Jihad was not capable of fighting in Egypt since 1995. Gerges’s book in particulur provides a very strong academic case for this arguement.
Your right Scheuer and Bergen make a different arguement, however I think Gerges and Wright have a greater grasp of the overall political/historical/cultural context of the Middle East/Egypt, verses just a grasp of terrorism and Al-Qaeda. Scheuer’s research consists of reading Al-Qaeda speeches in English, he has never done any field research, versus Gerges’s whose books rely extensively on his fieldwork done in Arabic. Bergen is better, but is not a scholar of the Middle East and does not do the same level of fieldwork, nor does he know Arabic. Wright has extensively lived in and studied the region, and the list of people he interviewed in the back of “The Looming Tower” is amazing. For these reasons, I think their arguement is authoratative, though we can agree to disagree.
I don’t think the point you made here and mine are mutually exclusive. For one, like I acknowledged earlier, Az Zawahiri and his group could no longer fight in Egypt because the Egyptian government had been able to neutralize it effectively. That is why he moved to Afghanistan. So yes, I think Gerges and Wright make a valid point here. However, the argument within the Islamist movement, between the Islamic nationalists and and those like Zawahri and Bin Laden who could no longer effectively fight with their countries, Egypt and Saud Arabia respectively, did exist.
That said, and what I disagree in the characterization of the original post is that their inability to overthrow the leadership within their own countries is the reason why they targeted the US. Indeed, although their options were limited, these two al Qaeda leaders, and many of their brethren do in fact believe that the US is the key to defeating the apostates in the region. Theirs was a strategic shift, based not only on their circumstances (Wright’s and Gerges’ point) but also because they arrived at the conclusion that they would not be able to defeat the apostates without first getting rid of their biggest patron; the US (Berger’s and Scheuer’s point).
[...] Face -Yes We Can ( Deter [...]
[...] : (See his previous guest post and his blog ) has some more to contribute on the Hoffmann-Sagemen [...]
[...] another guest appearance today at MediaShack is Adrian. Read his previous post on Al-Qaeda_ and Deterance and check out his blog [...]
[...] stellar posts at MediaShack such as this CT in the South_Sahara and another which looks at whether deterrence can work with Al-Qaeda. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Internet as a Propaganda [...]