Where Liberty Dwells, there is my country

An interesting report from the Christian Science Monitor (Dec. 15) on a battle between the two major al Qaeda ideologists.  Clearly, there is trouble in the al Qaeda paradise:  numbers down, no effect attacks, no ability to sustain attacks, leadership and finances under enormous pressure, online presence diminishing.  And now an open schism.  Let’s hope that this leads to a civil war. A long, long civil war. Al Qaeda is losing. It is only too bad that both sides in this divide can’t lose.

Credit to the Bush administration and our allies in the War on Terror.

Christian Science Monitor
December 15, 2008

Rules Of War

Ideological Clash Of Two Jihadi Titans Shakes Al Qaeda

By Caryle Murphy, Correspondent

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA – A bitter, year-long feud that has shaken Al Qaeda’s
ideological pillars grew even sharper last month. A former associate of
Ayman al-Zawahiri accused him of working for Sudanese intelligence, wearing
“women’s garments” to flee Afghanistan, and spreading an incorrect Islamic
theory of jihad.

Mr. Zawahiri “is only good at fleeing, inciting, collecting donations, and
talking to the media,” wrote Sayyed Imam al-Sharif in his latest attack on
Al Qaeda’s No. 2.

Sayyed Imam, serving a life sentence in Egypt, is an esteemed theoretician
of jihad whose ideas helped shape Al Qaeda’s ideology. But now he’s decrying
its stock in trade ­ mass murder ­ in a clash that is an example of how some
once-fierce zealots of violent jihad are having second thoughts.

“It is really an argument about … what means are militarily effective and
Islamically legitimate,” says William McCants, a Washington area-based
analyst of militant Islamism. Imam, he adds, is saying that only “a
guerrilla war conducted against enemy soldiers” is permitted.

Imam’s prison writings were preceded by a series of books and commentaries
from imprisoned members of Islamic Group, a group that waged a guerrilla war
against the Egyptian government in the 1990s. Their so-called “revisions”
renounced violence and some put forward ideas on how to peacefully create an
Islamic society.

Terrorism experts disagree on the impact that Imam’s scathing critiques of
Zawahiri and Al Qaeda will have on the global jihadi movement, particularly
since he writes from prison where he is believed subject to influence from
Egyptian and US intelligence agencies.

But his writings have put Zawahiri on the defensive. And they come amid
other pressures, including the disabling of several Al Qaeda-linked online
forums ­ presumably by Western and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies ­
and an intensification of US military activity in Pakistan’s tribal areas,
where Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden are believed to be hiding.

“One shouldn’t overestimate the impact of this [ideological feud] in the
overall war on terror, but it is definitely going to divert some of
Zawahiri’s creative energy away from operations,” says Thomas Hegghammer, a
fellow in Harvard Kennedy School’s international security program.

“Zawahiri’s support among jihadis is still strong, but he is losing the
media battle to convince the public that Al Qaeda is winning,” adds Mr.
McCants, who monitors Al Qaeda Web activity at jihadica.com. “That, coupled
with the US Predators attacks in Pakistan, put him under tremendous
pressure.”

Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University and
author of “Inside Terrorism,” says he does not believe that Imam’s writings
are going to have a huge adverse impact on Al Qaeda’s hard-core followers.
If you are a hard-line militant, “are you going to listen to an elderly,
geriatric guy in an Egyptian prison?” Mr. Hoffman asks. “It’s not as if
Zawahiri himself changed his mind.”

Far more problematic for Al Qaeda, Hoffman says, is the sabotage of its
online forums, some of which have not been working since September. As the
principle means of communicating with followers and potential recruits,
their loss “has been a serious blow,” Hoffman says.

Imam, also known as Dr. Fadl, was a close ally of Zawahiri when Imam led
Egypt’s Islamic Jihad in the 1980s. His reputation as a top jihadi ideologue
rested on his books, particularly his 1994 “A Compendium for the Pursuit of
Divine Knowledge.”

But Imam and Zawahiri disagreed about many things and grew estranged. When
Imam stepped down as Islamic Jihad leader in 1993, Zawahiri took his place.
Though Al Qaeda cited Imam’s writings, he never joined the group.

In Nov. 2007, Imam released “Rationalizing Jihad in Egypt and the World,” a
book that refuted Al Qaeda’s terrorist tactics and ideology and was
especially critical of Zawahiri.

After months of heated debate among militants on jihadi online forums,
Zawahiri responded in March with a 200-page book called “Exoneration.” He
charged that Imam lacked credibility because he wrote from prison and was
supervised by US intelligence.

Last month, Imam’s reply to Zawahiri, a book titled “Denudation of the
Exoneration,” was serialized in Cairo’s Al Masri Al Youm newspaper. It also
was published at IslamOnline.net and in the Saudi-owned Al-Sharq al-Awsat
newspaper, according to McCants, who posted English summaries of the Masri
Al Youm installments on his site.

In the first, called “The Lies of Zawahiri,” Imam claims that Zawahiri told
him in 1993 that “he had to carry out 10 operations for the Sudanese in
Egypt and that he received $100,000 from them.”

Apparently aiming to play down Zawahiri’s importance inside Al Qaeda, Imam
asserts that “only three people knew of the 9/11 operation before it
happened: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Hafs al-Masri, and a third person ­
not Zawahiri.” The third person was only told 24 hours before the attack.

As for Al Qaeda’s idea of violent jihad, Imam calls it “a corrupt, wayward
school [of Islamic thinking] to justify excess in shedding blood.” In order
to sell it, the group launched “media propaganda to promote the corrupt idea
that America is the cause of all the ills afflicting Muslims.”

Imam’s latest attacks on Zawahiri are so vituperative that some analysts say
he has damaged his own credibility. “This is an embarrassment,” former
Islamic Jihad member Kamal Habib told Agence France-Presse in Cairo. “I
don’t think he realizes what this does to his image.”

McCants argues that Imam’s arguments will likely be most influential outside
Al Qaeda’s inner circle of die-hard jihadis. “We shouldn’t be assessing the
impact of Imam’s book on jihadis but rather on neutral pious, educated
Arabs, particularly high school and college-age youth, whom Imam considers
his primary audience,” McCants wrote on his website.

McCants also singles out Imam’s “vigorous rejection of the victimization”
theme in jihadist thinking.

“The cause of Muslims’ problems is Muslims themselves,” Imam writes. Noting
that Muslims are killing Sudanese in Darfur, Imam asks: “What was the reason
the US opened the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba for imprisoning Muslims? Bin
Laden’s stupidityŠ. Putting blame on others while not accepting it yourself
… is the school of Satan.”

Some analysts say Imam’s writings are not all that significant because he
does not reject jihad per se, only Al Qaeda’s tactics. But a total
abandonment of jihad would be tantamount to rejecting a Koranic concept
integral to Islam since its inception, leaving Imam with no credibility.

For centuries, jihad was embedded in the legal framework of Islamic law, or
sharia, making it pretty much the prerogative of an Islamic ruler, that is,
of the state. Sharia also imposed clear rules on jihad, prohibiting the
slaughter of innocent civilians, for example. It is this legal framework
that Al Qaeda has tossed aside in its glorification of jihad.

Perhaps Zawahiri’s strongest argument against Imam is that he is a prisoner.
Indeed, some passages in Imam’s latest book seem made-to-order for
intelligence agencies. For example, he writes, “Regardless of the legitimacy
of their presence, the American forces did not kill a single Muslim in Saudi
Arabia during their presence there after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.”

He does not mention Iraqi deaths caused by US forces during the war in Iraq.
Instead, he focuses on Al Qaeda in Iraq, which he said “killed far more
Iraqis than it killed Americans.”