Violence as a Strategic Choice: The Case of Militant Islamic Groups

Ibrahim A. Karawan
Director, Middle East Center
The University of Utah

It is important at the outset to make two sets of distinctions. The first distinction is between Islamic groups (which focus on individual redemption and social reform) and Islamist groups (which focus on gaining state power). The second distinction is between political Islamist groups (who use peaceful means to obtain power) and militant Islamist groups or MIGs (who strive to seize state power through violent means). Much has been written since September 11th about threats posed by militant Islamist groups (MIGs) like al-Qaeda. CIA Director Tenet described them before the Senate Intelligence Committee in February 2001 as representing the ìmost immediate threat to U.S. national security.î

Like other groups that rely on violence, MIGs do not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants, the military and the civilians, or the few who may be guilty and the many who are decidedly innocent. Creating a climate of fear and uncertainty to paralyze their opponents through violent means has become a key strategic objective for them.

Like other violent groups, MIGs justify their actions under the category of the "absence of alternatives." They insist that those in positions of power and dominance in nation-states and the international system as a whole, will never respond to peaceful marches, legal petitions, political practices, humanitarian appeals, or eloquent statements. Those in positions of power and dominance will have to be eradicated through a combative insurrectional approach. For them, the main feature of the setting in which their "struggle" is launched is not exactly the abundance of available options but the absence of alternatives to violence as a strategy.

Any strategy of confronting the MIGs requires understanding their mindset, their defining characteristics, and the logic of strategic action pursued by them. The fact that they claim to act in the name of religion does not mean that analysts of their actions should look for clues in religious texts. Such a search for the so-called essence of Islam is nothing but an exercise in futility. "Islamic arguments" may be used to justify and to critique some diametrically opposed positions. Islam has generated over many centuries a vast body of texts, scholarship, and judgments through which rival actors can search and find support for contradictory positions on war and peace as well as violence and co-existence. Militant groups use parts from the Qur'an to legitimize their actions in their societies. However, their conclusions and positions were considered to be misguided and distorted by many Islamic thinkers.

Rather than looking at certain religious texts for explanations of militant actions, one should examine the strategic beliefs and choices of militant leaders regarding notions of time, reliance on small numbers, modalities of recruitment, funding sources, fronts of action, and provoking their adversaries to overreact to violence in ways that may produce quagmire. It is important to recall that the MIGs are highly centralized and personalized. Understanding the mindset or the operational code of the few at the top of their pyramids of power can have significant explanatory and possibly predictive power with regard to their strategies. Let me look briefly here at six arguments before making few predictions.

First: The Logic of Shrinking Time
Even though the MIGs share with the political Islamists the objective of gaining power and building Islamic regimes, they use violent means in ways that reflect their own sense of the urgency of direct confrontational action. They have a particular sense of time (to be found in the statements of Sayyid Qutb, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, among others) that sees Islam as facing a cluster of grave dangers from within and from without, cultural, political and economic marginalization, identity distortion, as well as subservience to the West.

According to these militant perspectives, if such trends continue, the menace they pose to Islamic beliefs and values will become enormous and the repercussions can be catastrophic. It is similar to the image of five minutes to midnight, an image that requires not an incremental action, but uncompromising Rage for God. From such a perspective, the option of doing nothing is similar to working within existing systems of domination: a non-starter. Even if militant actions did not produce the intended results, its success in creating a climate of fear and unpredictability is desirable according to their strategists.

This is a distinct militant perspective and not an Islamist one in general. Political Islamists like the Muslim Brothers, for instance, have a different assessment of the time dimension as it relates to their strategic choices. In fact, they believe that time has worked in their own favor and that Islamist reliance on violence is both unwarranted and counter productive. Nasser in Egypt, Bourgiba in Tunisia, Atatourk in Turkey, and the Shah of Iran, the Muslim Brothers have argued, tried to weaken the social and political influence of the Islamic movements and ideas in their societies, but they failed drastically.

However, the leaders of the MIGs insist that the key criteria of success for them is not to see more bearded young men going to newly built mosques, or to see more women wearing veils in public places, or to have six or seven of every ten books published in this Arab country or the other deal with Islamic topics. For them, the real and central task is to seize state power and establish Islamic systems because without that the passing of time will pose grave threats to the Islamic beliefs and interests. This is why they believe in what is known as hatmiyat al-muwajahah or inevitability of confrontation according to a member of the Jihad group and former colonel in the Egyptian Military Intelligence, Abboud al-Zumur. Combative action is unavoidable as far as the MIGs are concerned. Compromising strategies such as working within the existing systems or competing with non-Islamist forces through elections are both delusional and deviationist.

Second: The Logic of Small Numbers
Most of the MIGs are composed of a small number of cadres relative to the military and security institutions they have to confront. Clearly, one has to take into consideration that while the cadres that implement their strategy of violence are a tiny minority, others are involved in the process in the areas of planning, funding, intelligence, and training, among the activities necessary for the functioning of these groups. Even with taking that into account, memoirs of militant leaders and estimates by security agencies agree that their numbers have been small. In most cases, these groups were not willing to trust much more potential recruits whom they might have suspected as possible infiltrators working for the enemy, the state security.

Militant groups find in their small numbers an evidence of the ideological correctness of their central cause as a "believing minority" or a "Quranic generation of a new type" in the image of the early Muslims during the foundation period of Islam. This vanguard, as described by Sayyed Qutb, who ended up as a leading ideologue of Islamic militancy, has to be composed of the select few who know what nobody else knows. It is a dedicated vanguard that directs the struggle not according to what the masses may want at a given moment in time, but in pursuit of what they ought to have wanted, but did not. Such vanguard is a minority that can be trusted to be the true Muslims who act as fighters at a critical stage when strong loyalty is more important than large numbers.

Small numbers are not only ideologically correct, but they also provide certain strategic and tactical advantages. They can hide in a sea of millions and tens of millions. It may be difficult for state authorities to strike at these small numbers with a high degree of precision and when they do miss, they can pay a heavy political price. Small numbers of militant cadres and their handlers can inflict heavy human and economic losses, as the events of September 11 and the cases of Algeria and Egypt had demonstrated already.

Third: The Logic of Recruitment
Most of the leaders of the MIGs have been recipients of modern, not religious, education. Salih Sariyah has received a PhD degree in educational science; Ayman al-Zawahiri is an MD; Magdi al-Safti of ìThose Who Have Been Saved From Hellî was an MD too. Osama bin Laden studied civil engineering and public administration; Mohamed Atta, who played an important role in the 9/11 operation, had studied computer sciences. Very few philosophy, sociology, or political science majors managed to join the MIGs or to be among their top leaders!

Their familiarity with the modern sciences and their ideological commitment give them a sense of not being that intimidated by the West. For them the package of the West is divisible, not indivisible. They can deal with Western science and excel in it and at the same time reject Western value systems in their entirety. Recent recruitment of members seems to value those with scientific background, use computers, and know foreign languages. This is necessary to do research on the Internet or know which airport has a low security record. They are sent to their ultimate targets after some exposure to similar environments, such as sending some cadres with no known record of involvement in violence to European countries first before forwarding them to the United States in the case of 9/11 operation.

MIGs are centered around one individual at the top of the hierarchy but with separate ìone-man think tanksî who report directly to the leader to maximize operational secrecy, practically with no significant institutionalization of decision making. Those leaders are often upper-middle-class types who engage in these activities because they want to, not because they have to do it from a socio-economic vantage point. Special operations like 9/11 have their arrangements outside the regular organizational structure.

The mechanisms of member recruitment are kinship, friendship and worship, plus regional and tribal affiliations. They are marked by the politicization of religiosity over a period of time. The operational principle of the MIGs is that they are looking for a select few. Obviously, one does not apply to join these MIGs, but when one arrives, he is approached and tested more than once before joining the group. There is recruitment of individuals and co-optation of whole groups. It started with the war in Afghanistan when militant groups from Egypt and Algeria were ìleasedî by Bin Laden. His group provided the funding and the zeal. The leaders of the Egyptian MIGs provided the strategic thinking and the training. The outcome was a cartel of sorts. Each side had what the other lacked. As the Saudi state hires experts in development, the MIGs hire experts in violence to plan attacks and fight way beyond the borders of their country.

Fourth: The Logic of the Privatization of Funding
At the beginning of the Islamist resurgence, particularly after the oil boom, militant groups relied on state funding from one Muslim country or another. They learned quickly that it was a risky enterprise to depend on such aid. More prudent from their perspective was to rely on remittances from their members and sympathizers working in the oil-producing countries in the Middle East. Remittances were not subjected to restrictions. The amount of resources involved was huge. If those sending money sent back only 10% of their incomes, the revenues generated would have been significant in funding Jihad, buying weapons, supporting families of imprisoned members, and so on.

Donations for the Muslim fighters in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kashmir, or Palestine in response to a wave of publicity and agitation about the religious duty to give in order to end the suffering of innocent Muslims in one of these places, can produce good results in terms of revenues. Of course, there is no way to verify that the money would not be used for other purposes. This constant state of fundraising has been going on in supermarkets, sports clubs, banks and business institutions. It is important to remember that contributing or tabarauí is one of the ways of deleting sins in preparation for the Day of Judgment. Another possible way is fasting. For many, financial contribution to Islamic charity organizations is often seen as easier than the alternative!

Fifth: The Logic of Shifting Fronts
The MIGs move from national to international contexts based on expediency or an assessment of the strategic situation they face. Let me cite an example from the Middle East. During the period of 1979-1982, the hopes of the leaders of the MIGs got high as the acts of Islamist militancy escalated in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria. Other cases of militancy have materialized in Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, and Algeria over the following two decades. However, the dominos expected to fall into the hands of the MIGs did not fall. The states targeted by their campaigns proved to be more resilient, more cunning, and more repressive than many anticipated. The regimes expected to collapse "in the short run" are still with us, and if they happen to disintegrate, there is no reason to conclude the MIGs will be their inheritors. Militant roads to power through assassination, military coups, and insurrection had a vast record of failures in achieving their objectives.

When the MIGs found their paths to power to be blocked, they began to develop alternative strategies. Some sought to reach ceasefires with their regimes in order to deal with their political and organizational losses and internal divisions (e.g., the Islamic group). Others have fled their home countries and switched from the domestic level to the global level or from the national to the international domains (e.g. the Jihad group).

The attacks by the MIGs against American targets starting in 1996 reflect that shift which culminated in attacks on major symbols of American economic and military power in New York and Washington DC. The groups behind these attacks hoped to return to their home countries with two messages. To their masses, they had this message: "Why are you afraid of America? America is basically a paper tiger!" To the regimes in their home countries that had a high level of dependence on the U.S., they had this message: "If America could not protect its most secure military institutions from our long arm, why should you or anyone else think that it would protect you?" In short, they were asserting through a series of dramatic deeds that they really have a global reach powerful enough to strike at their enemies everywhere.

Sixth: The Logic of Cumulative Provocation
The last component of the calculations of the MIGs is ìthe logic of cumulative provocation." The leaders of the MIGs tell us and tell their followers that their primary objective is to shake what they deem to be the state's basic foundation, namely its hybah or the sense of awe and invincibility it engenders among the masses. This hybah is to be undone by demonstrating the state's failure to protect its leaders and key institutions.

In response, states are not expected to simply do nothing. Doing nothing under such conditions can amount to committing political suicide. MIGs aim to provoke the state to strike back so massively and so indiscriminately that the societal resentment of emergency laws, mass searches and mass arrests, restrictions on movement, and heavy repression could weaken the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of its society and/or the credibility of its policies on the international level. They hoped this would have happened in the case of September 11. Imagine if in response to these events, the U.S. authorities were so provoked to intern tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Muslims living in the U.S. and the repercussions of such televised acts in the Muslim world.

A Look Ahead
I am convinced things will get tougher before they get any better regarding the threats posed by the cartel of MIGs I have discussed thus far. The signs are increasing. The attacks in the Philippines, Pakistan, and Indonesia are sorts of ìpropaganda by the deed.î The messages from al-Qaeda and its affiliates are clear: ìWe were not destroyed;î ìAll the asymmetry of power between the U.S. and us had not been translated into victory by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies;î and ìWhen the weak does not get obliterated it has not lost; when the strong does not prevail it did not win.î Add to that the chilling statement by Osama Zawahiri, the real brain of al-Qaeda cartel, warning against a looming wave of violent attacks.

The leadership of al-Qaeda must be concerned about the internal cohesion of its MIGs. When its members on the loose hear about more fellow members being arrested as a result of information derived from interrogations of captured cadres, their morale and self-confidence can only decline. Some operations with wide publicity may be perceived as morale boosters and as contributors to internal cohesion. The possibility of waves of attacks against U.S. corporate interests appears credible. Those interests are scattered everywhere all over the globe and are way less protected than American embassies or military installations. The impact of such strikes can be quite heavy because of the high interdependence in the economic sphere. Such attacks may be falsely linked to opposition by other actors to globalization as a manifestation of the ìAmericanizationî of the world.

I would add that al-Qaeda may escalate such violent operations to coincide with two rather likely regional developments or scenarios:

1. An American military campaign against Iraq with expected high human casualties among Iraqi civilians and military. This could get things heated in the ìArab and the Islamic streets.î Under this condition, calls for revenge against the U.S. could mount. By striking against U.S. targets, al-Qaeda will be saying that we, and not secular forces, are the ones who can exact revenge. It will also be saying that its organization is still effective. The fact that they do not care about the Iraqi secular regime in the slightest is beside the point. The timing will be useful. It will also show that moderate Islamist groups cannot compete for support in that context.
2. Serious deterioration of the Palestinian-Israeli situation that leads to even greater confrontation between Prime Minister Sharon and Chairman Arafat, protracted Israeli occupation of the Palestinian cities, and more televised violence. That can provide another appropriate time and setting for militant action against not only Israel, but also the United States as Israelís primary supporter.

In these cases, the MIGs are likely to claim responsibility to get credit given that they do not have a territorial base as was the case during their days in Afghanistan. The six ìstrategic logicsî addressed here do not imply that the MIGs are necessarily prudent or that they will succeed. Their cadres are not always terribly bright as shown by the case of that one who, after the first World Trade Center explosion went back to get a $400.00 Ryder car deposit which led to his groupís arrest! They failed in toppling regimes in their home countries via assassinations, military coups, and insurrections. Many of their divisions remain strong and they suffered from a tendency to engage in overextension in terms of the relationship between the desired ends and available means. At times, their "rage for Godî to remake reality in their ideological image has ended up creating additional enemies, triggering more restrictions on their mobility, financial transactions, recruitment and training and also unleashing greater repression.

However, downplaying the dangers the MIGs can pose under the pretext that they represent a tiny minority of the Muslim population is no longer justified. This argument is weak and September 11 should have been enough to demonstrate that when it comes to terrorism, small can be lethal. The events of September 11th make a strong case for the importance of understanding the key strategic beliefs of the leaders of MIGs that can give them programmatic guides for violent action.