#196      28 min 02 sec

Written in the sand: al-Qaeda and its prospects in the new Middle East

JACKY ANGUS 
Hello I'm Jacky Angus. Thanks for joining us. Since both 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, anxieties about security and Islamist insurgency have escalated worldwide. More recently, the Arab uprising of 2011/2012 highlight the need to better understand the underlying religio-politics of groups like al-Qaeda.  For example, how is al-Qaeda coping with the recent uprisings in the Middle East?

Dr Norman Cigar of the Marine Corps University in Virginia is currently visiting Australia to attend a conference on the Middle East at the University of Melbourne.  As a fluent Arabic speaker with extensive experience in defence intelligence, Dr Cigar has long been involved in analysing Islamist propaganda. This can be useful in assessing al-Qaeda's potential for penetration into specific countries. Sometimes manuals written by al-Qaeda power brokers for their own operatives emerge.  And this may provide critical information about al-Qaeda in general.

In today's episode of Up Close, I will be exploring this last option. How the interpretation of one al-Qaeda manual can provide clues on how al-Qaeda is operating in the long term. Well, good afternoon to you and welcome to Australia, Dr Cigar.

NORMAN CIGAR
Good afternoon Jacky. Please, do call me Norman.

JACKY ANGUS
Thank you. Can we begin with your translation, the first into English, I believe, of Abdel Aziz Al-Muqrin's Practical Course for Guerrilla Warfare, which you regard as very important in providing some insight into insurgency, I think mostly in Arabia, would that be right?

NORMAN CIGAR
Yes. It is a manual – a doctrinal manual – essentially on how to wage an insurgency guerrilla warfare. My interest – I had been teaching Marine Corps officers at the Command and Staff College and we of course read many military theorists from past centuries, and modern ones. Since this is the main challenge that they would have been facing the beginning of 2001, I wanted them to be able to read first-hand what their potential enemy, their potential adversary wrote and how their thinking was shaped to wrestle with the ideas, the concepts directly, rather than through a second-hand source. That's why I really wanted to translate this into English and make it available for the mainstream military going through an education

JACKY ANGUS
Well if we can put it in the context of 2011 and 2012 uprisings in the Middle East, how useful has what you've analysed been in now looking at al-Qaeda's adaptation to what's going on. 

NORMAN CIGAR
Well in many ways, in those areas where they think there will be disturbances, but also instability and the potential for an insurgency such as Syria, it helps to have a blueprint, an organisational schema that people can use to organise and to wage what may be a protracted war and insurgency, and particular in Syria they've offered the ideas, many of which are drawn from Mao Tse-tung and from other theorists of the past and of the recent past that have been successful in overthrowing regimes or in opposing invaders. 

Certainly to have something that one can fit in one's pocket and pull out and think, ‘what are the questions to ask in formulating plans and strategies?’ is really something very useful. We have seen them suggesting many of these ideas that one finds in this manual to the Syrian insurgence – how to be effective against a regime.

JACKY ANGUS
Can I ask a more specific question? Who was this guy, Al-Muqrin? I know he's no longer alive, but is his thinking still prevalent in al-Qaeda do you think?

NORMAN CIGAR
In a way, he crystallised ideas that were shared by military thinkers among al-Qaeda. They read Western thinkers, they read Asian thinkers. They read Soviet military doctrine. They read American military doctrine. And they synthesised what they found useful based on their own needs and experiences. He was a Saudi thinker, activist. He eventually became head of the branch of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. He had considerable field experience,  had fought in Algeria, in Bosnia, in Chechnya. 

So, he brought both the theory and the practice together in this manual. As al-Qaeda became its insurgency in Saudi Arabia against the government, they felt they needed something to educate officers – their own officers, their own planners. It's a book that doesn't provide many answers, but it asks the right questions. It forces the planner or the commander to think through a problem and that's the greatest utility. That's the ideal manual. It doesn't provide answers, but it provides the questions.

JACKY ANGUS
It sounds very operational. Does that mean that the thinking is very much along ideological lines, it doesn't take account of explanation of uprisings and the sort of socioeconomic factors that might have driven some of these recent revolts? How pragmatic is it? How worldly is it?

NORMAN CIGAR
Very, in the sense that the final objectives may be ideologically driven to have an Islamic state, to have a unified Islamic state, Islamic law, but those are objectives that are in the future. To get there you need more practical steps. It's a very practical, realpolitik consideration of how to mount operations, how to plan. Again, that's why they’ve read these other practical military thinkers. They are there, they had to solve a problem. To solve that problem, they have to be practical and really avoid putting ideological blinders on their own military thinkers.

JACKY ANGUS
Okay, so if we compared it with say, what was found with the body of Sadat when he was assassinated in 1981, that particular document that was found and was translated was very much an ideological kind of diatribe in favour of jihad and against the Jahiliyyah. It was a sort of ideological thing rather than an operational manual. Does that mean that al-Qaeda has moved beyond that stage and is looking very much, as you suggest, at strategies and incursion and penetration?

NORMAN CIGAR
Very much so. There is a place for ideological tracts. But there is also a need to implement this in the real world – the ideas in the real world. For that you do need plans and doctrine and manuals that will work. They are very realistic. They fought in Afghanistan. They saw what would work. It's a matter of survival and of success. They realise what the problem is. The way they go about solving it is very methodical and very practical.

JACKY ANGUS
Can you give me some examples – when you say methodical and practical, has it got battle plans and strategies?

NORMAN CIGAR
Very much. They approach it in very much the way Mao Tse-tung did. They look at an insurgency in three phases. What to do in each phase beginning at a very low level, both militarily and politically and eventually mobilising, organising, weakening the opponent, the adversary. Eventually moving into a higher phase where larger operations can be waged, where safe areas can be organised. Eventually the final phase would be the decisive phase where you would have a conventional military force to face your adversary, and that you would be on his equal. 

It's the weapon of the weak. This is the only choice they have to start out, but it's a way to build towards equality with your adversary in a phased process, very much as Mao did in China. They're not reluctant to accept models from any source, whatever. They're not limited to any Islamic – they don't read the Quran in order to wage battle they don't read medieval Islamic military thinkers. They're very much oriented on being practical, in order to get to ideological end states, yes.

JACKY ANGUS
And to get to the shariah state?

NORMAN CIGAR
To a state – an Islamic state where the Islamic law, the shariah is dominate, where the ruler would be a caliph, where you would have a united Islamic state. But that's way in the future and the steps are very practical.

JACKY ANGUS
Now, I get that they’re practical – now that was a while ago when that was written, that manual. I know you've done other work. In general terms, do you think that al-Qaeda is adapting increasingly to today's world, that's 2012. I mean are they able to form new coalitions with emerging power brokers that may not be on their wavelength in terms of Islam? How's that happening? Has it changed since this manual was published online?

NORMAN CIGAR
Well they've made many mistakes and they realise that. But they're an organisation that's willing to adapt, they're flexible, they're willing to learn, to draw lessons from failure as well as success and to find better ways of achieving the objectives which don't change. But the strategies to get there do get modified and certainly now they've had to adapt to a new situation, as we all have. That the Middle East today is not the Middle East of a year or two ago. It is continuing to change, that that they have to move very rapidly in order to keep pace with the change. They realise that that means either change or becoming irrelevant. 

JACKY ANGUS
With the emergence of Iran as a player in the Middle East in the last 12 months or so, how has this affected their strategic planning, because obviously as Sunni people they don't welcome the arrival of Shia interference or even the propagation of Shia ideology. Have they responded to that openly or not so much?

NORMAN CIGAR
Yeah, and I think it goes for Iran as well, that a country's policy is based both on ideology, but also realpolitik. It's a blend. Even the Iranians, even though they're an Islamic state, are willing to make deals that will further their own long-term ends. That's why we have seen Iran releasing many, many al-Qaeda leaders whom they had arrested in 2001. Why? Because the assumption is once these people get out, they will do things against the United States, which is the overwhelming enemy, the main enemy. Anything that these people can do that might hurt us, might be negative, but overall they will probably hurt the US even more.

So they're willing to make those – and al-Qaeda's willing to make some of those same assessments and deals that they have a flexible policy as well. 

JACKY ANGUS
So we might say, the enemy my friend is my friend or something like that, would that be the case that given recent developments again, if we put it in the context of 2012, that al-Qaeda is also coming to terms with the possibility of potentially having an ally in Iran, increasingly an ally in Iran, against Israel?

NORMAN CIGAR
That's true. But it's also a competitor at the same time. This is al-Qaeda's warhorse in many ways, that it has opposed Israeli policy. It's an issue that resonates with the Arab public in particular, whatever their political leanings. I think that they would like to be seen as the leader of resistance against Israeli policy. They would rather not have Iran steal their thunder from that perspective or anybody else. Right now, Iran seems to be the only – at least verbally, al-Qaeda does not think that Iran will really confront Israel. I think that this is mostly the use of bluster.

JACKY ANGUS
It's a long-term vision really isn't it? 

NORMAN CIGAR
Yeah.

JACKY ANGUS
I'm Jacky Angus on Up Close, coming to you from the University of Melbourne, Australia. I'm talking to Dr Norman Cigar, about al-Qaeda. 
Thinking a little bit ahead, if not long term, given these uprisings, particularly in say Egypt and Tunisia, where there's probably the best chance of liberalism emerging, at least in theory if not in practice. Does that mean that if it's a more liberal, political domain, that al-Qaeda will somehow find its way in and be able more to penetrate it? At least to generally influenced people in an Islamist direction?

NORMAN CIGAR
It's hard to tell, al-Qaeda looks at it as a cost benefit assessment. They see the pluses and they see minuses, Jacky. They're afraid that a democratic or even an Islamic movement will take hold, be established, and that would pre-empt al-Qaeda having much influence at all. An Islamic rival, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, would take away much of their thunder in a way. On the other hand, in a more open society they have a chance to mount an outreach program. Their ideas can come out in the media, in person, and it's in the realm of ideas I think that they feel strongest. They're very pessimistic that any real transition to democracy will be successful – that these new systems will be able to provide the jobs, the economic supports, the housing and all those other expectations that the public in Tunisia and in Egypt have developed. And that these systems will fail. And in the long run, that, for al-Qaeda, that may be a plus, because the very strong obstacles of President Mubarak or President Ben Ali in Tunisia have been removed. That had been a great barrier to their own penetration. They believe that over time their situation will improve. 

JACKY ANGUS
How do they operate will groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan? I mean is there a sort of plan for penetration? Do you think they'll go in there without admitting who they are and somehow moving into that da'wah mode of the religious outreach in terms of morality and the whole thrust of the old Muslim Brotherhood? I mean how they would actually do it.

NORMAN CIGAR
What they've suggested to their followers such as they are and they're fairly limited in countries like Egypt, is to push – keep pushing the system in a more Islamic direction. Laws on morality. laws on the minorities, religious minorities. Perhaps greater friction with Israel to freeze the Camp David agreements. But certainly they see the Muslim Brotherhood as a rival. When they tried a few years ago, to be active in Gaza, they were crushed by Hamas, which is after all, an extension, in many ways of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt – it's a branch – because they were seen as rivals. No rival wants to relinquish control certainly to another group. So the Muslim Brotherhood presents a threat in one way, but again, the best way is to keep pushing the ideas in the market place of ideas forcing pressure – public pressure – in that direction.

JACKY ANGUS
With a religious agenda?

NORMAN CIGAR
That's right.

JACKY ANGUS
So you're making it sound like their persistence is their strongest virtue. Does that mean that you see it going on indefinitely or do you think that they're going to just peter out as a mobilising group to get somewhere, rather than just a sort of da'wah influence?

NORMAN CIGAR
Well, Jacky, I think these types of groups end in probably one of three ways. One is eradication –  they're simply wiped out, like the Red Brigades in Italy. They're no longer there. Another is integration, into the system such as the IRA or even the FMLN in El Salvador, where they're brought into the mainstream political system. I don't think either of these models will work with al-Qaeda. One, we're not going to put them into the mainstream. Two, we're not going to eradicate them because they reflect, in many ways, issues that are enduring in the Middle East. The Arab-Israeli issue, but other political issues as well – resentment towards Western influence, and on and on. 

I think what will happen is there's a third model and that is managing to bring down the threat of al-Qaeda to a level we can “live with”, where they don't represent a threat to any state’s existence or to its security, but nevertheless are still present in some form. And as long as the issues that feed or support movements like al-Qaeda are not resolved or addressed at least, where the Arab Israeli issue, presence of governments that are repressive, some of those types of issues, then there's still scope for some type of al-Qaeda presence. It's not going to go away unless those longer-term issues are addressed.

JACKY ANGUS
Okay, you're making it sound like a very adaptable organisation and in some ways diffuse in their aims. Now this is a very different image from perhaps what we have in the press, of them being pretty hard-line and targeting areas that they get in. You imply that it's going to fade out, but surely they're going to have at some stage some sort of resurgence and maybe another fiery leader who comes in and says, now we can't compromise with the Jahiliyyah. It's got to be a jihad. 

NORMAN CIGAR
You're right, Jacky. The core is not going to compromise but they have to depend on a much broader base of support for their recruitment, finance, their intelligence, all of that. What you want to do is address these issues that will melt away the potential base of support and isolate those in the nucleus, those hard-line elements who won't be able to compromise, who will never give up. In that way to make them less effective, isolate them. Make them less able to reach in wider elements of society, even if they don't go away, their impact will be much reduced.

JACKY ANGUS
You're a teacher - I mean you obviously help instruct soldiers in the West to deal with these things, to face this kind of ideology. Can you tell me a bit more about how you reckon in the next few years Western Military intelligence is going to have to adapt to al-Qaeda, which it does sound very much as if it's adapting? 

NORMAN CIGAR
It is and Jacky, what we teach our military is to solve problems. To recognise the problem, first of all. I think one has to familiarise and sensitise planners, commanders, to not make any situation worse. That it is something that is a long-term process. It's not an event, and it's not simply a military solution. The military provides the shield, provides the time and the security behind which then the political, economic and the social change – which is the real sword – can have an effect, to change society. That all the military can do is provide that time and security, because it is not a military solution, ultimately – it is political and social and economic.

JACKY ANGUS
I'm Jacky Angus and I'm talking to Dr Norman Cigar about al-Qaeda’s doctrine for insurgency and al-Qaeda generally. Well can we go back to the doctrine of insurgency that I know that's your speciality? Where is the hard-line element in al-Qaeda today in 2012, that still thinks in terms of the importance of insurgency in vulnerable states. Iraq would be a good example.

NORMAN CIGAR
I think their position and the position of most people in al-Qaeda is that change will only come about through force. That peaceful movements are either temporary or will be unsuccessful. Their model is Libya, perhaps, or Syria. In order to really change society, uproot the old system, that can only be done through force. In order to deal the West or Israel, that that is the only language that those adversaries ,as they see them, will understand. That power rules the world. That's what they inculcate in their education system and see this as war.

JACKY ANGUS
So I reckon that Islamic socialism would be regarded with suspicion?

NORMAN CIGAR
Anything that's really tainted by what they see as secularism or Western ideas, is seen as alien and as obstructing, really, the implementation of what they call true Islam. Yes. 

JACKY ANGUS
Nonetheless, since the end justifies the means, presumably they're quite prepared to accept the means at some stage, even if it is sort of semi-liberal authoritarian in the Middle Eastern way.
 NORMAN CIGAR
They're flexible. Right now, their guidance from the centre to their operatives to cooperate in a – well I wouldn't call it a popular front with other elements – they realise that they're not strong enough to go on their own. They have to cooperate with other elements, at least temporarily. But to influence those elements along a certain path, to push them in a certain direction, and eventually to become much stronger and be able to be the dominant partner or eventually the dominant player. But right now they're very realistic.

JACKY ANGUS
We're talking about al-Qaeda. It's obviously not a monolith. There's obviously variations. Can you tell me a bit more about that – its structure? And are some groups – some representatives of al-Qaeda – pretty much autonomous?

NORMAN CIGAR
Yeah, there is a central guiding element and they try to provide the ideology, the central guidance and try to control affiliates or local groups and of course the degree of control varies from one country to another. The way they try to control is by education and appointments of certain people. In other words, if you educate somebody in your schools or training programs, then you understand how they think and they understand how you think – you've shaped them. Also, by their being able to appoint individuals. They know which individuals they can trust, which individuals they can rely on and they've tried that method of control. However, in waging a global war, they're willing to not control completely. They're willing to provide the guidance and trusting subordinates to carry out as they best see fit. It doesn't always work. But what the centre provides is ideas, guidance, the media – a very highly developed media – and you can only do that, really, if you have the personnel and the expertise. So you have to rely on a centre usually for that. They provide also funding. They can provide the focus, one theatre to another. Right now, the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has essentially provided guidance for operatives in Iraq to go to Syria and urged them to go there and help overthrow the Assad regime. We have seen operatives moving from Iraq to Syria, also money from Iraq to Syria. It's a way to focus – that the centre can focus – where the effort will be.

JACKY ANGUS
Well Norman, how does al-Qaeda disseminate its information and its tactical updates from the headquarters to the periphery?

NORMAN CIGAR
Well, two ways. One, are the privileged communications to other leaders and those are done, usually, by couriers, by trusted individuals. But more generally, to get out to the average rank and file and to put out general doctrine that's done on the internet. They are very sophisticated. They have beautiful graphics. Most of the graphics are done by women, because they can participate in the jihad without leaving their homes, by doing the computer work. It's on a par of any graphics that I've seen anywhere.

JACKY ANGUS
Well it sounds successful. But, another area too, which is of concern is the question of violence and really jihad has to be violent doesn't it, to be a real jihad?

NORMAN CIGAR
For them it is. Jihad for this group equals – in all terms, really – war. They're willing to envisage significant loses, sacrifices, martyrs. When they were fighting in Iraq when they started they said even if we lose half our fighters, if we're successful it will be well worth it. Now, in the situation which has emerged in Syria, we have the leader of al-Qaeda urging, saying there is no other way except the use of force. He said, you are going to take heavy losses, but remember, he said, freedom has a red door. In other words, you won't get there unless you shed blood, willing to lose your own blood and you'll have to shed your enemies' blood.

JACKY ANGUS
Thank you very much Norman. That was most interesting.

NORMAN CIGAR
Thank you Jacky.

JACKY ANGUSThat was Dr Norman Cigar of the Marine Corps University in Virginia and we were talking about al-Qaeda. Relevant links, a full transcript and more information on this episode can be found at our website at upclose.unimelb.edu.au. Up Close is a production of the University of Melbourne, Australia. Our producers for this episode were Kelvin Param and Eric van Bemmel, with audio engineering by Gavin Nebauer. Up Close is created by Eric van Bemmel and Kelvin Param. I'm Jacky Angus, until next time, good bye.