Marc Sageman
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Marc Sageman
Containing the Leaderless Jihad
Marc Sageman
In the past six years, the transnational Islamist terrorist threat confronting the West has dramatically changed, but Western governments are still fighting a war against the old al Qaeda. Now it is crucial to recalibrate Western strategy to effectively neutralize this threat.
The principal goal of any campaign to fight terrorists is homeland security - protection of the population. A strategy to reach this goal must rest on an empirical understanding of the enemy's behavior. This enemy is a relatively small group of mostly young people, who aspire or belong to a violent social movement that uses violence against civilians for political ends in the name of their version of Islam. The overwhelming majority of traditional Muslim scholars have clearly condemned this version as deviant, but the politics of sensational journalism have selectively given voice to the minuscule number of mostly self-appointed imams, who support this use of violence. Muslims understand the difference between Islam and the claims of the terrorists, and point to the biased Western reporting as just another instance of this “war against Islam.” This increases the pool of young Muslims upset at the West.
These terrorists are basically young people seeking thrills and a sense of significance and belonging in their lives, like all terrorists worldwide in the past 130 years. They believe that they are special, part of a small vanguard trying to build a better world in the name of a cause. These terrorists want to build a utopia modeled on the community around the Prophet, which they believe to be the only just and fair community that ever existed on earth. They are willing to sacrifice themselves for this cause in the name of God. Contrary to popular belief, radicalization into terrorism is not the product of poverty or other so-called “root causes.” Their mobilization into this violent social movement is based on friendship and kinship. Lately, the vast majority of arrested terrorists in the West - Europe, North America and Australia - are part of the Muslim diaspora, expatriates and second or third generation immigrants. They are radicalized in the West, and not in the Middle East.
The strategy to fight these terrorists must be based on an understanding of their radicalization, which breeds new participants in this terrorist wave against the West. The logic is to decrease the number of newcomers into the violent social movement and increase the number of those leaving it, either through internal factors, arrests or deaths. If the number of those leaving greatly exceeds those entering, this terrorist movement will fade away. The speed of its demise will depend on the numbers flowing in and out of the social movement. The word “radicalization” itself is a source of confusion, as some people use it to describe the mere acquisition of extremist views. As I use it, “radicalization” means the process of transformation of ordinary people into fanatics who use violence for political means, as it is the violence which is the real concern and not what people think. This process of radicalization consists of four prongs: a sense of moral outrage; a specific interpretation of the world; resonance with personal experiences; and mobilization through networks. These four factors are not stages in a process, nor do they occur sequentially. They are simply four recurrent phases in this process. As mentioned earlier, this process is driven by young Muslims chasing dreams of glory by fighting for justice and fairness as they view it. They are enthusiastic volunteers, trying to impress their friends with their heroism and sacrifice. Suicide bombers, or shahids as they call themselves, have become the rock stars of young Muslim militants.
One of the major themes expressed by Islamist radicals conveys a sense of moral outrage, a reaction to perceived major moral violations, like killings, rapes or unfair local police actions. Before 2003, the major source of such outrage was the killings of Muslims in Afghanistan in the 1980s; Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq and Kashmir in the 1990s; and the second Palestinian intifada at the turn of the century. Since 2003, it is all about Iraq. Although the war in Iraq did not cause this social movement - after all, 9/11 occurred before the invasion of Iraq -, it has now become the focal point for global moral outrage in Muslims all over the world. In all my talks with Muslims, Iraq along with the humiliations of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo is monopolizing the theme of any conversation about Islam and the West. On a more local level, Muslims are concerned about the actions of the local representatives of their respective governments, especially local law enforcement agencies. If some of these activities appear anti-Muslim, they feel that they are victims of a larger conspiracy, bridging local and global moral violations against them.
To fuel radicalization, this sense of moral outrage must be interpreted in a certain way: these global and local moral violations are part of a unified Western global strategy, namely a “war against Islam.” Having said this, it is important to realize that this worldview is deliberately vague and that there has been far too much focus on ideology in trying to understand radicalization. The new terrorists are not Islamic scholars. The defendants at terrorist trials in the West were far from being Islamic scholars or even intellectuals who decide what to do after careful deliberation. The explanation for their behavior is not found in how they think, but rather in how they feel. They dream about becoming heroes in this “war against Islam,” modeling themselves on the seventh century Muslim warriors that conquered half the world and the mujahedin who defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Many hope to emulate their predecessors by now fighting in Iraq against coalition forces. Their interpretation, that the West is involved in a “war against Islam”, is just a sound bite and has little depth to it. People bombing Western cities and volunteering for Iraq are not interested in theological debates but in living out their heroic fantasies.
The “war against Islam” interpretation is embedded within cultural traditions that differ from country to country. How well this interpretation matches up with respective cultural beliefs is one of the major differences between Europe and the United States. In Europe, national myths are based on an eternal essence common to all citizens, such as Frenchness, Englishness, or Germanness. In the United States and other countries built on waves of immigration, the national myth is that of a “melting pot.” The myth of a national essence excludes non-European Muslim immigrants, while that of a melting pot facilitates their inclusion into the host society. The notion of the American Dream, the land of opportunity, also partially protects the United States. Whether it is true or not, the important point is that people believe it. A recent poll found that 71% of Muslim Americans believe in the American Dream. This is not the case in Europe, where Muslims complain about discrimination in the labor market. In the United States, the belief that this is a “war against Islam” is not consistent with the inclusiveness of the melting pot and the equal opportunity of the American Dream. This makes homegrown terrorism within the United States less likely than in Europe.
The “war against Islam” interpretation sticks more to Muslim Europeans than Americans because it resonates with their everyday personal experience. This notion of resonance encompasses the social, economic, political and religious factors that constitute their everyday life experiences. This set of factors is what is traditionally referred to as the “root causes” of terrorism. First, from a historical perspective, we are dealing with very different communities. The United States was able to cherry pick immigrants and allowed Muslim engineers, physicians, university professors and businessmen to immigrate. The result is that the Muslim American community is solidly middle class, with a higher average family income than the rest of the population. This is not true of Europe, which imported unskilled labor to reconstruct the continent that had been devastated by World War II. So, on a socio-economic scale, we are dealing with very different populations: mostly middle class in the United States and an unskilled labor pool in Europe. In terms of the labor market, Muslim Americans believe that they enjoy equal opportunity. Muslim Europeans know they are facing discrimination, as the male Muslim unemployment rate is much higher than its host counterpart. Welfare policy also distinguishes Europe from the United States, and allows Europe to tolerate a higher unemployment rate. Many Muslim Europeans, because they are unemployed, are on the welfare payroll. Some do not feel the urgency to get a job and a few spend their idle moments talking about jihad. Ironically, European states, through welfare payments, contribute to the funding of inexpensive terrorist operations. But probably the most devastating effect of the lack of meaningful employment is boredom from idleness. Here, the thrill of participating in clandestine operations may prove almost irresistible to some.
The factors described above influence some young Muslims to become angry, and vent their frustration. What transforms a very small number of them to become terrorists is mobilization by networks. Until a few years ago, these networks were face-to-face groups. They included local gangs of young immigrants, members of student associations and study groups at some radical mosques. These cliques of friends became radicalized together. The group acted as an echo chamber, which amplified their grievances, intensified the members' bonds to each other, bred local values rejecting those of their host society and facilitated a gradual separation from it. These natural group dynamics resulted in a spiral of mutual encouragement and escalation, transforming a very few young Muslims into dedicated terrorists, willing to follow the model of their heroes and sacrifice themselves for comrades and the cause. Their turn to violence and the terrorist movement was a collective decision, rather than an individual one. Over the past two or three years, face-to-face radicalization is being replaced by online radicalization. It is the interactivity of the group that changes people's beliefs, and such interaction is found in Islamist extremist forums on the Internet. The same support and validation that young people used to derive from their offline peer groups are now found in these forums, which promote the image of terrorist heroes, link them to the virtual social movement, give them guidance and instruct them in tactics. These forums, virtual marketplaces for extremist ideas, have become the virtual “invisible hand” organizing terrorist activities worldwide. The true leader of this violent social movement is the collective discourse on half a dozen influential forums. They are transforming the terrorist movement, attracting ever younger members and now women, who can participate in the discussions.
The Atlantic divide in cultural, social and economic factors explains the greater likelihood of formation of homegrown terrorist networks in Europe than the United States. The main reason for the absence of a second 9/11 type of attack in the United States is the relative absence of such homegrown networks here. The threat to the U.S. homeland still comes from Europe.
The nature of the terrorist threat has evolved over time. The first wave of Muslims who joined this terrorist social movement consisted of some “Afghan Arabs,” the companions at arms of Osama bin Laden, who had come to Pakistan to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. They were in general well educated, from solid middle class backgrounds and joined al Qaeda around the age of 30. They still form the al Qaeda Central leadership, but there are at most a few dozen left, hiding in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. The second wave consisted of elite expatriates from the Middle East, who had come to the West to pursue their education, became radicalized in the West and traveled to Afghanistan around the age of 25 for training in the 1990s. They were incorporated into al Qaeda Central, and there are at most about a hundred left, again in the FATA. The third wave is completely different from its predecessors. It consists mostly of terrorist wannabes, who, angered by the allied invasion of Iraq, aspire to join the social movement, but can't link up to al Qaeda Central, which had to go into hiding after the allied invasion of Afghanistan post-9/11. These newcomers are generally poorly educated, homegrown, and join the movement around the age of 20. They form fluid informal networks that are self-financed and self-trained. A very small number of them succeed in connecting with al Qaeda Central or fellow travelers like the remnants of Lashkar e-Toyba or Jaish e-Mohammed, either through family connections (mostly British Pakistani Muslims) or through chance (mostly Northern Europeans). Others seek out the glory of fighting in Iraq and connect with fluid networks of smugglers linked to al Qaeda in Iraq. But these constitute a small minority of this violent social movement. The threat to the West has evolved in a Darwinian way in response to its post 9/11 habitat. The ongoing process of radicalization now takes place in a very hostile physical but tolerant virtual environment and results in a scattered, decentralized social structure - a “leaderless jihad.” It lacks formal command and control but the Internet gives it a semblance of unity and guidance.
This dynamic suggests that the threat to the West, far from being an inevitable “clash of civilization” or a “long war,” is actually self limiting. At present, al Qaeda Central cannot impose discipline on the third wave wannabes mostly because it does not know who they are. Without this command and control, each disconnected network acts according to its own understanding and capability, but the collective actions do not amount to any unified long term goal or strategy. These separate groups cannot coalesce into a physical political party, which would become a vulnerable target for Western military or law enforcement power. Without the possibility of a physical presence or ability to negotiate with its enemies, the social movement is condemned to stay a leaderless jihad, an aspiration, but not a physical reality. Al Qaeda has not been able to rally any state for protection against Western pursuit. Without a viable and effective sanctuary, it cannot fully regroup and consolidate into a physical power able to capture some territory in order to establish its utopia.
There has been talk of al Qaeda resurgence, but the truth is that the al Qaeda hard core members of the first and second waves are dwindling in numbers and are not being replaced. The few members of the third wave who succeed in making contact with al Qaeda Central in the FATA are turned around to conduct operations in their respective countries and are not incorporated into al Qaeda Central. The survival of this social movement relies on the continued inflow of new members, which in turn depends on why young Muslims might be attracted to this violent social movement. Here, again, the appeal of the al Qaeda social movement is limited. Its appeal thrives only at the abstract fantasy level. The few times its aspiration was translated into reality - the Taliban in Afghanistan, part of Algeria during the civil war and more recently in Anbar Province of Iraq - were particularly repulsive to most Muslims and alienated its former supporters. A Taliban like government, whose only role is to ensure that its subject follow its interpretations of the law, is not an attractive reality. Furthermore, as each generation tries to define itself in contrast to its predecessor, what appeals to the present generation of young Muslims might not appeal to their successors. A major source of the present appeal is the sense of moral outrage caused by the allied invasion of Iraq. As the Western footprint there will fade, so will its appeal. And finally, new hotheads in the movement will always push the envelope to make a name for themselves and cause ever escalating atrocities. The magnitude of these horrors will turn off potential supporters.
Almost seven years after September 11, 2001, the United States strategy to counter this terrorist threat continues to be frozen by the horrors of that tragedy and relies more on wishful thinking than on a deep understanding of the enemy. The pursuit of “high value targets” who were directly involved in the operation was an appropriate first step to bring the perpetrators to justice. It succeeded in degrading the capability of al Qaeda Central. However, this strategy is not viable against this third-wave leaderless jihad, which has become the present threat to the West. On the ideological front, the strategy promotes a political vision of democracy and freedom as an antidote to terrorism, which resonates with American audiences but is seen as an exercise in cynicism for Muslim populations, who know all about their respective governments' rigged elections and denial of freedom, often with implicit United States complicity. But even this ideological fight is undermined by U.S. electoral politics, where each side is trying to convince the electorate that it is tougher on terrorism than its political opponent. This has degenerated into a frenzy of sound bites, fought on national news channels fueled by photogenic commentators worried about their share of the viewing audience. This mindless simplification of “you are with us, or you are against us,” essentially echoes the arguments of our enemies that the United States is engaged in a “war against Islam,” which unites the Muslim world in opposition to U.S. international policy. Ironically, the best propaganda tool for the enemy may be the American media, where sensationalism trumps substance.
If national security is the true aim of this fight and the threat is self-limiting, then the logical strategy is one of containment while waiting for the threat to disappear for internal reasons. The key is to accelerate and not to slow down or stop this process of internal decay. Nothing should be done that will make the threat grow to include almost all Muslims; such an escalation might then indeed become an existential threat to West. Containment must neutralize the main drivers of the radicalization process: fantasy, fashion and thrills - “jihadi cool”. Terrorist acts must be stripped of glory and reduced to common criminality. There is nothing more glorious than to go against uniformed members of the only remaining superpower. The fight against these terrorists must be demilitarized and turned over to collaborative law enforcement. It is also important not to give too much importance to the terrorists who are arrested or killed. The temptation to hold press conferences to publicize another “major victory” in the war on terror must be resisted for they elevate the status of these criminals to that of heroes. Low key arrests and prosecution should degrade the status of the terrorists. The military role should be limited to sanctuary denial, either directly or through allied forces, because sanctuaries have the potential to transform local terrorist activities into transnational coordinated plots.
Containment is not a passive strategy. Its success will depend on U.S. technical capabilities to detect terrorist activities worldwide and the construction of strong international alliances against these specific terrorists to disrupt and eliminate international plots. It must also interrupt the radicalization process and prevent potential members from joining this movement.
In terms of confronting the sense of moral outrage on a global level, the U.S. footprint in Iraq must be reduced as soon as possible. There has been a lot of confusion about al Qaeda and Iraq. The two issues are separate. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan because al Qaeda was there, but al Qaeda came to Iraq after the allied invasion because the U.S. was there. The argument that the “terrorists will follow us home” has so far been without foundation. In contrast to Afghanistan, where wannabe terrorists learned their trade and returned home, the foreign volunteers come to Iraq to die. The “bleed out” from Iraq will be a problem for adjacent Muslim countries, but probably not for far away Western countries. On a more local level, law enforcement authorities must be viewed as protective rather than hostile to the Muslim community. In a sense, this is what happened in many European countries, where white policemen patrol immigrant neighborhoods. To be seen as part of the community, the makeup of police forces must reflect that of the community by recruiting young Muslims, who would ensure an ongoing everyday relationship with young people in the community. It is not enough to hold regular meetings with community leaders, whom the younger generation does not respect. To regain the trust of the Muslim community, local police actions must be explained. This has become a problem in Britain because of the legal ban on reporting on criminal cases in litigation. However, the opposite - making exaggerated claims of threat for short term political benefits - will also alienate the Muslim community. So far, Muslim Americans have shown themselves to be very patriotic, but this has not been well recognized either by the press or by our government. It is important to trust them to continue in this path and not to alienate them.
In terms of countering the terrorist interpretation, the West needs to convince Muslims that its counterterrorism efforts are not part of a war on Islam. Western leaders' statements hostile to Islam and the use of a belligerent vocabulary have not helped. The war metaphor needlessly elevates the status of the terrorists to that of a “worthy” opponent, and may inspire glory seeking young people to join the fight. Without a clear definition of who the enemy is, a segment of the population might feel targeted. Many Muslims around the world suspect that the American use of the term terrorist is a code word for Muslim and believe the “war on terror” is really a “war against Islam.” The widely disseminated rants of Islamophobic bigots reinforce their fears. Even most Muslim Americans do not believe that the U.S. led “global war on terrorism” is a sincere effort to reduce terrorism. To regain the confidence of the Muslim community, actions speak louder than words. State officials should carefully define who the terrorists are and actively challenge those who question the loyalty of Western Muslims. Since most Muslims in the West are part of the diaspora, Western governments should educate their constituencies about the benefits of immigration for greater acceptance. Stories of successful immigrants should celebrate an international version of the American Dream and become role models for young Muslims, who may come to view Western success as “cool.” The “war of ideas” or the search for a “counter-narrative” as presently conceived by the U.S. government is generally misguided: terrorists are not intellectuals. They do what they do because of fantasies and fashion, rather than well thought-out positions derived from any scripture. The “war of ideas” should be replaced by the inspiration of new dreams and hopes for young Muslims. We should learn our lessons from our own experience with the Civil Rights movement, when Reverend Martin Luther King inspired a generation with his speech “I Have a Dream!”
In terms of resonance with people's daily experiences, United States is doing much better than Europe and can show its Western allies ways of mitigating soft social and economic discrimination in local immigrant communities. Discrimination against Muslims at airports and with law enforcement should be eliminated. Muslims should also be encouraged to enter into the realm of politics and show that they can peacefully influence their environment. Domestic policies to level the social, economic and political playing fields differ from country to country and tactical recommendations must be country specific.
In terms of mobilization through networks, it is of course imperative to disrupt and when possible destroy existing terrorist networks. Terrorists must be eliminated or brought to justice. This is a police rather than a military mission, which must rely on international allies aided by U.S. technical means and proper training. Prosecution of terrorists must be carried out with complete transparency and fairness. This is very much a battle for young Muslims' hearts and minds: any appearance of persecution and discrimination for short term tactical gains will be a strategic defeat in this battlefield. The point is to regain the international moral high ground, which served the U.S. so well during the Cold War. This international alliance with local police must be carefully monitored because local tyrants would like to eliminate any internal opposition in the name of the “war on terror.” The U.S. must be very careful in its choice of alliances so as not to be inadvertently dragged in local persecution of legitimate dissent against tyranny. With the advent of the Internet, there has been a gradual shift from offline to online networks, centered on Internet forums, where young Muslims share their dreams, hopes and grievances. This is an internal Muslim discussion. However, the U.S. might encourage participation of voices that reject violence and challenge the emerging calls to violence. Celebration of terrorist actions must shift to a focus on the victims of these horrors and reflection on the devastation they bring. Young people must learn that terrorism is about death and destruction, not about virtual self-glorification. It is necessary to reframe this whole debate about terrorism, from imagined glory to very real horror. The voices of the victims and their relatives must be heard over the cacophony of bragging and pretending that go on in the chat-rooms.
Western Muslim communities are relatively young, having mostly immigrated in the last half century. Their younger generations are searching for their identity and trying to define their role within Western society. It is important for the West to welcome them, help them integrate better within its fabric, continue to promote its core universal values of justice and fairness, and fight its own internal elements that try to single out and antagonize what has now become an integral part of the West.
Marc Sageman is a forensic psychiatrist and sociologist, and former CIA case officer. He is a consultant for various government agencies and the author of Understanding Terror Networks and Leaderless Jihad.