The Redhunter

Outline of the Problem

A brief recap for new readers unfamiliar with the situation; Jihad means holy war against infidels, with the objective of reestablishing the Caliphate which lasted from the seventh century to 1923. The two branches of the Sunni Jihad are the Wahabists based in Saudi Arabia, and the Muslim Brotherhood, which started in Egypt but is a broad based movement with branches in many countries. On the Shi'ite side are the Khumeinists, based obviously in Iran but with branches in Syria and Lebanon(Hezbollah). Their objective is to establish a regional Imamate.

The method Jihad is about more than just using terrorism, which to them is a military action. They aim to undermine the West through a variety of means, including massive immigration, disinformation about their religion and goals, and spreading their culture through a sort of "creeping Sharia."

The Goal of the Jihad

One of Phares' most important points is that the essential goal of the Sunni Jihad is not to spread Sharia law internally in existing nations. Rather, they reject the current world order in it's entirety, and want in it's place a worldwide Caliphate. There is simply no room in their world for infidels in other than dhimmi status, let alone our current nation-state system complete with modern concepts of international law and everything that goes with it.

To them, there is no break from ancient or medieval times and today. They see what they are doing today as directly linked to and descended from the seventh century beginnings of the spread of Islam. They don't see themselves as starting anything new but as continuing an ancient battle against the infidels.

This rejection of the modern nation-state system and desire to reestablish the Caliphate is in fact the central difference between the Jihadist Muslims and those who accept the modern world.

As a step along the path of reestablishing the Calphiate, he objective of the Jihad is to force the United States to withdraw from the world politically, economically, and most important, militarily. In short, they wish to weaken our resolve and force us into isolationism. U.S. withdrawal will make it easier for the jihadists to bring down secular governments in the Muslim world.

The Confrontation

Since 9-11 many in the West have started to sense the danger of radical Islam, even if they don't fully understand it. In the Muslim world, most people see the danger and experience the oppression of the radicals full well, but do not understand why, because for all their talk of human rights Westerners do not try to help them.

9-11 also saw the start of the third War of Ideas. Our conflict with the Salafists and Khumeinists is not just on the battlefield of bombs and bullets; it is also in the intellectual world of books, newspapers and the Internet. The side that convinces the next generation that it's ideas are better is winning.

The key to winning the War on Terror is understanding the nature of the threat. If we miss it, we will lose because we will fail to resist. If we grasp it's essence, we stand a chance.

One of the biggest problems facing the West is that most of our own elites and intellectuals misunderstand the nature of the threat. As such, the public at large is misinformed.

Today we are at a crossroads; either the jihadists will undermine and destroy the democracies, or the democracies will defeat the jihadists.

The party that defines a conflict enjoys a huge advantage. Because this is in large extent a war of ideas, propaganda, or the message, is hugely important. The tactics of the jihadists reflect a saying in the Arab world; "They hit me and cried, beat me to court, and sued me." In other words, strike the other guy first, then cry that you're the real victim, and trumpet this in the media. Be the first to define the conflict and paint the other side as the aggressors.

Behind the Jihad

The Jihad requires money, and 90 percent of it comes from the oil revenues of the gulf states. As such, the whole "root causes" of terrorism line is completely manufactured. It is the wealthy elites who are pushing Jihad, not the poor and downtrodden. If these elites really cared about poor Arabs, they would spend their oil wealth on improving their lives, not on promoting the Jihad. Instead of insisting that the money they send to Gaza be spent on weapons, they ought to insist that it be spent on improving infrastructure and building an economy. Instead of providing an eduction that would help young people get practical jobs, , they send them to madrassas where they learn Jihad.

The Effects of Oil Money

The effect of oil money is something Phares calls Economic jihadi Imperialism, or EJI for short. It is, he says, a sort of economic imperialism which starts with a hard core Jihadist idiology and ends with attempting to use that money to influence the West. Rather than spend money improving the lot of their own people, these elites would rather spend it undermining Western liberal democracies.

One effect of oil money has been to prevent the West from coming to that aid of the oppressed peoples of the Middle East. When the Middle East Studies Departments at major Western universities are funded by Saudi Arabia, no one at them is going to criticize the human rights record of their benefactors.

The oil embargo of 1973 sent a huge shock through the West. We realized that our economies were dependent on a steady flow of petroleum, and that our Middle Eastern suppliers had the ability to do significant damage to us when they so choose. The consequence is that we did not wish to examine too closely, let alone criticize, the human rights records of Arab countries.

The problem we face is that as long as oil dollars go to funding jihadist movements, the world will be at risk. Phares identifies several strategies that we should use to break this link. Most involve obtaining oil from other, non-jihadist countries, investigating alternative energy sources, promoting liberalism in their lands, and insisting that they spend their money on humanitarian needs and not on Jihad. The latter can be done through regulation that would prevent companies that do business in the U.S. from, say, building luxury hotels in Muslim country X until said country A) gets out of the business of funding Jihad, and B) spends more of it's own money on the poor and oppressed in Muslim countries.

One of the primary objectives of the jihadi networks is to prevent the West from focusing on human rights abuses in Muslim countries. They do this by constantly attacking our foreign policies and alleged human rights problems and thus manage to keep us on the defensive. One of their tactics is to exploit Western guilt over our colonial days and use that to paralyze us into inaction on the human rights front.

Liberty or Sharia

We do not have the choice of sealing our borders and ignoring the Muslim world, or any other part of the world, for that matter. Ignoring the problem will not make it go away. Neither in this day and age can we say "that part of the world is none of our business." This might have worked two hundred years ago, but modern travel and economic ties ensure that what happens in other parts of the world will affect us. More, it is simply impossible to "seal the borders" against (legal) immigration and business travel, so Europe and the United States will be influenced by the Middle East whether we like it or not.

Further, the idea that if we just kill or arrest enough terrorists we can make the problem go away is wrongheaded also. There is a "root cause" of jihadi terrorism, but it is not either the economic poverty or "legacy of colonialism" that some imagine. Rather, it is political and religious oppression coupled with the control of propaganda organs by radicals that breeds the extremism that is the danger.

The solution, Phares says, is political and economic liberty for Muslims. As the historian Bernard Lewis said, "bring them freedom or they will destroy you." By "them" Lewis mean the Arab and Iranian victims of the jihadists. By "they" he meant the jihadists themselves. Stated another way, either we bring democracy to the them, or they will bring Jihad to us.

Seen through this lens the American invasion of Afghanistan and especially Iraq make perfect sense. The strategy was at once to bring the war directly into the enemy camp, to contain the terrorists, and plant the seeds of liberty and democracy.

Of all the strategies we adopt to win the war, at the top of the list must be the liberation of the peoples of the Middle East. We must state this forthrightly and purse this goal openly. It would be arrogant and indeed immoral of us to think that only Westerners (and a few select others like the Japanese) are deserving of liberty, when all peoples, including those of the Middle East, are just as deserving.

As mentioned earlier, the two arms of the Sunni Jihad are the Saudi-based Wahabists and the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood (although the latter has branches in many countries). Both, however, share the same goal of reestablishing the Caliphate. They aim to do this by first weakening the Western democracies and our will to intervene in the Middle East. Their greatest fear is that we will start to support domestic democracy movements which threaten existing regimes as well as the Jihad itself.

Russia

Russian foreign policy with regard to the Jihad has been ambiguous. On the one hand they seem to recognize the problem of terrorism and Muslim fundamentalism. On the other they sell weapons to Iran an Syria, two state sponsors of terrorism.

It is in the long-term interests of Russia to work vigorously to defeat Jihadism. Unfortunately, for the most part they are pursuing the short term goal of seeking financial gain by working with Iran. Oddly, they seem to recognize the problem to a greater extent than Europe or America, but are unable to use their intellectual knowledge to see past the short-term economic benefits. Phares believes that we can influence Russia to change their policies, and offers several suggestions.

The jihadists saw the collapse of the Soviet Union as divinely inspired as well as a message from God that He was on their side. It was for this reason that there was a split in the Jihad in the early 90s after a series of meetings in Khartoum, Sudan. The hotheads wanted immediate terrorist action against the United States and secular Arab regimes, while cooler heads argued for a long-term strategy of infiltration. Phares calls the hotheads "Combat Salafists" and the latter "Realist Salafists." They share the same ideology and goals and differ only on methodology. The hotheads went into al Qaeda and the rest, as they say, is history.

The United Nations and Alliances Among Nations

The United Nations is at best useless. Kofi Annan has said that the UN "stands neutral between and those fighting it." The UN criticizes democracies when it believes it sees them doing wrong, but largely ignores human rights abuses in Muslim countries. This must change if progress is to be made.

However, the end the U.S. cannot do it alone. We must use every tool at our disposal to recruit other nations to create a united front against the jihadists. As such, the solutions Phares proposes involve alliances outside of the UN structure.

Phares has several ideas for a diplomatic offensive against the jihadists. One is to hire and put into place a new generation of diplomats who are educated in the ways of our enemies. Second is for Congress to "set the guidelines for a new foreign policy based on suporting human rights, self-determination, pluralism, and democratization on the one hand and a confrontation with the regimes, movements, and ideologies that promote threats to international law, security, peace, and liberty on the other." Third is to use the first to to actively support democracy movements and combat the jihadists.

The Middle East as "Middle East"

Phares calls the Middle East and surrounding areas a "Middle Earth." Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman are constitutional monarchies. They are mostly at peace and are moving, albeit slowly, towards pluralistic societies. Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, and Mauritania are republics moving from authoritarianism to pluralism. Syria and Libya are ruled by nationalist socialist dictators. Saudi Arabia and Iran are Islamist theocracies. Iraq is a fragile democracy. Qatar is a constitutional monarchy but harbors an Islamist al Jazeera. Lebanon is a battlefield. Israel and Palestine are in conflict, with the latter divided between factions with varying ideologies.

In general the region is plagued with extremist ideologies and violent groups. What characterizes all of the countries is that after the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate all failed to liberalize and turned authoritarian to one degree or another. Almost all of the people are oppressed and persecuted, with civil liberties being almost nonexistent.

One often hears the term "the Arab street" with regard the the "righteous anger" that would "spontaneously" erupt in response to this or that action by the United States. In reality, the term was created by Jihadi propagandists with the express purpose of manipulating the West. Scenes of protesting militants are as often as not manufactured. It is, after all, just about impossible to know what the average Arab wants when he or she lives under a dictator.

The Vital Need for Democracy

Before 9/11 Western elites excused the lack of democracy in the Middle East because of our support for authoritarian governments. Western governments were criticized as being hypocritical; we wanted democracy for ourselves but denied it to others. After 9/11 these same people now oppose American attempts to spread democracy, especially in Iraq. The argument is now that we are "imposing" democracy on them and "interfering in their internal affairs."

Democratization will be opposed and moving toward liberty will not be easy. Both Western elites and Jihadist Muslims will create roadblocks.

But all people deserve freedom, and we must develop a more humane policy towards the people who live in these oppressive countries. Middle Easterners are no less deserving of liberty than Europeans, Americans, Asians, or Africans. More, these peoples have a natural right to learn about democracy and liberty.

Certainly we cannot "force democracy on other people," but this is a slogan, not a policy. But by the same token, freedom and liberty must be options before anyone can choose to adopt them. We can and must work to create the conditions where they can grow.

The War of Ideas

Information, or propaganda, is a large part of our fight against the jihadists. They try hard to get out their message, and we must be ready at all times to effectively counter their misinformation. We can start by exposing the lie that Jihad' does not mean "an internal spiritual journey" or "spiritual experience," but rather means conflict and war. Unfortunately, their deceptive messages are spread not only by Muslim jihadists, but by their apologists in the West as well.

The Salafists do not represent the majority of Muslims, and indeed there are many Muslim dissidents. The struggle between the jihadists and the reformers is in it's early stages. The forces of reaction currently favor the status quo.

We in the West must educate our citizens about the dangers of the Jihadist movement. We must confront not only the forces of Jihad, but their Western apologists as well. Finally, we must identify and support Muslim dissidents who are working for reform.

Vast numbers of Muslims live in poverty and are politically oppressed, yet oil money is used for Jihad rather than to relieve their suffering. Education, jobs, scientific advancement, infrastructure, everything is subordinated to the Jihad.

Terrorist Threats

Of the many domestic threats we face, one that Phares discusses that I have not seen elsewhere is that of "Urban Jihad." His study of various sources, including training manuals and other documents is that the Combat Salafists wish to establish "urban armies who, when the signal was given, attack and create widespread chaos. Their objective would be to turn our cities into Beirut in the 1970s/80s or Baghdad in 2006. We have already seen small-scale examples of this attempt with the Virginia "Paintball jihadists" and the Fort Dix cell in New Jersey, as well as at various training camps in places from Oregon to Florida.

Right now, domestic jihadists/terrorist cells must rely on militants who come into the United States legally or otherwise. The "breaking point," Phares speculates, will come when they are able to recruit enough militants from domestic sources, and can from there grow exponentially. At that point they may pull the trigger and launch the "Urban Jihad" scenario.

Europe

The existence and indeed expansion of Jihadism in Europe has been an embarrassment to European leaders. When Phares visited them in the 1980s and 90s they dismissed that such a thing could happen in their countries. After 9/11, and with the extremism of many Muslim leaders in Europe now undeniable, they are taking a second look at the situation and now admit that they too are vulnerable.

The objectives of the jihadists in Europe vary from one part of the continent to another. In the south their claims are mainly territorial, as they wish to reclaim "lost" lands such as the Spain and parts of what was Yugoslavia. In the rest of Europe the initial objective is a change in foreign policy, and following that the establishment of self-governing enclaves. They wish to neutralize and then convert Europe.

Both the Wahabists and Muslim Brotherhood are also spending tremendous resources in trying to spread Islam, not just through immigration into Europe (and to a lesser extent America) but by converting the natives.

Phares describes his travels though out Europe, and concludes that the younger generation "gets it" to a greater extent than older people, and that more people overall "get it" in eastern Europe than in the western part of the continent. The east-west dichotomy is probably do to the former's more recent experience with totalitarianism; they are able to recognize the approaching danger because they just experienced a form of it.

As in America, 9/11 and to a greater extent 3/11 and 7/7 "woke up" many ordinary people and security experts. But elites, particularly those who inhabit the Brussels bureaucracy, still speak the language of political correctness. To them, as with the newly installed Obama administration, words such as "Islamic terrorism," "War on Terror," and "War of Ideas," to say nothing of "Jihad," are completely banned.

The first thing Europeans need to do to defeat the jihadists, Phares says, it to properly describe and label the problem. The second step is to pass legislation that will "equate Jihad with racism because it "calls for a forcible sectoral division of existing democratic societies, and identifies Salafi and Khumeini Jihadism with terrorism on the ground that it calls for violence against segnmemts of these societies."

9-11 And Beyond

The American reaction to 9/11 was unexpected. As Phares explains in Future Jihad, bin Laden thought that the United States would

1) Lash out incoherently, killing tremendous amounts of civilian Muslims
2) Descend into domestic chaos
3) Be paralyzed into inaction

That numbers one and two are somewhat contradictory tells us more about the mindset of the Combat Salafists than anything else.

However, the United States executed a precise strike into Afghanistan which deprived al Qaeda and the Taliban of a base country from which to conduct operations. As such, they have shifted priorities to contain and ultimately reverse U.S. interventions in the Middle East.

While the West was debating our reasons for invading Iraq, the jihadists knew perfectly well what the threat was; the establishment of a democracy within "their" realm. They knew that a successful democracy venture would lead to the overthrow of dictatorial Arab regimes (through slow evolution if not immediate revolution) whether they be secular or theocratic. Thus, the battle for Tehran and Damascus was and is taking place inside Iraq.

Middle East Roots

The Arab League was formed in 1945 and adopted surprisingly democratic goals. It failed to achieve them for the following reasons

1) They put Pan-Arabism ahead of democracy
2) They adopted a frankly racist attitude towards non-Arabs, freezing Kurds, Berbers, Copts, Assyrians and other minorities out of any steps toward progress
3) They focused on destroying Israel, which spawned extremism in and of itself
4) They allowed Jihadism to spread freely

Understanding these will allow us not to make these same mistakes again.

Despite the importance of Europe and the United States, the war against Jihadism will be won or lost in the Greater Middle East. Two factors will determine who wins; one, whether the Western democracies have the willpower to stay the course, and two adopt a strategy of liberation and promoting democracy. Their are numerous battlefields, and sometimes the fighting is military and sometimes in the realm of ideas, but it all depends on whether the Western democracies will stay the course and adopt the appropriate policies.

Other Battlefields

The conflict is a global one, and the most important battleground in the Pacific region is in the Philippines. The separatist movement on the large southern island of Mindanao was not originally Islamist, but was transformed into one by the efforts of Salafi-Wahabists from Saudi Arabia and Libya.

In Central and South America, the key nation is Venezuela. Hugo Chavez has allied his nation with the Khumeinists of Iran. The worrysome part is that this is not just the result of Chavez, but is the culmination of years of Venezuelan ties to radical movements.

State of the Confrontation

Phares ends his book with a summary of the state of the conflict. Following are his main points:

1) We are in a war, not a series of isolated terrorist incidents
2) It is a war with a known entity
3) The enemy, whether Salafist, Wahabi, Takfiri, or Khumeinist, has actively declared war on us.
4) The jihadists are ahead
5) It will be a long war, more along the lines of the Cold War than World War II

Critics will say that the people of the Middle Est "are not ready for democracy." The truth, Phares says, is that they would like to move in this direction but have been prevented from doing so by our own policies of supporting the status quo. Radicalism is something that has grown worse in recent decades, so if we had supported the existing democracy movements when the Middle East came out of colonialism we could already have a relatively free region.

In contrast to obsessing about "finding bin Laden," which Phares likens to "looking for Waldo," we need to understand that we are fighting a movement, not a person or single organization. The emphasis on personalities, while understandable, can only impede progress, because it causes us to focus on the storyteller, not the story. Likewise, Saddam was not the problem in Iraq, Ba'athism was, and Ahmadinejad not the problem in Iran, Khumeinism is.

My Take

Phares hits a home run with this book. It is well written, and does not require specialized background information to read. Light-years from a rant, his prose is calm and dispassionate. The chapters are well organized he lays out his argument in a logical fashion that makes his argument easy to follow.

I am in agreement with Phares in his overall view of the world situation. We are not fighting a limited terrorist network but a war against a global Jihad. It is a restart of the old on-again/off-again war between the Caliphate of old and the West that lasted a millennia. It is a war, not a police action. We have been seriously negligent in pursuing a human rights agenda. Leaving millions to live under tyranny and oppression is counterproductive.

Our war on Jihad is more like the Cold War than any other recent conflict. It will require at least decades to fight, and will run both hot and cold. Actual fighting will be more of what the military calls "low intensity" than World War II style "high intensity." Much of the conflict will be in the realm of ideas and as such will take place in the media. At the center of gravity is the West's ability to recognize and identify the problem, and willpower to stick it out in the face of opposition at home and abroad.

One of the primary things that separates this book from Future Jihad and The War of Ideas is that in this one he offers many concrete proposals to fight the war. The first two books were mostly proscriptive, this one mostly prescriptive.

What most impresses me is Phares' commitment to human rights and insistence that people deserve to live in a pluralistic society. His is the opposite of realpolitik and the m"it's none of our business" isolationism that is found on both the right and left.

We are simply not going to be able to switch to alternative sources of energy as a means to stop buying Middle Eastern oil anytime soon. At best we can slow down the pace, but even so I rather doubt we can do enough to seriously put a financial damper on revenues. As such, we are better off working to influence where and how Muslim regimes spend their money. We need to get them to spend their money to help their own people, and liberalize their societies. How we should go about this can be debated, but the necessity of the goal seems clear.

All of Phares' recommendations should be acted up. Unfortunately few will be. We have an administration in the United States with it's head firmly in the sand regarding this problem. President Obama is pandering to the Europeans' worst instincts. The Jihadists will have at least four years to advance their agenda unencumbered. Let's hope that they do not get much farther during this time before we can turn things around at home.