Soccer Dad

A new terror strategy?

Douglas Farah recommends the article Architect of New War on the West about al Qaeda theorist Mustafa Setmariam Nasar. Nasar according to the article has developed a new terror strategy.

Counterterrorism officials and analysts see Nasar's theories in action in major terrorist attacks in Casablanca in 2003, Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. In each case, the perpetrators organized themselves into local, self-sustaining cells that acted on their own but also likely accepted guidance from visiting emissaries of the global movement.

Nasar's masterwork, a 1,600-page volume titled "The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance," has been circulating on Web sites for 18 months. The treatise, written under the pen name Abu Musab al-Suri, draws heavily on lessons from past conflicts.

Nasar, 47, outlines a strategy for a truly global conflict on as many fronts as possible and in the form of resistance by small cells or individuals, rather than traditional guerrilla warfare. To avoid penetration and defeat by security services, he says, organizational links should be kept to an absolute minimum.

What I found interesting is that this strategy may not be all that new. According to an article on YNet (via IMRA via IRIS Blog) this sounds an awful lot like the strategy of one Yasser Arafat according to MK and former spook Rafael Eitan

“During one of the Palestinian conferences I was able to infiltrate, Yasser Arafat reiterated what he had said his entire life: ‘We will build a Palestinian system of many separate military units; only in this way will we be able to defeat the Jews and expel them to the sea’,” he said.

“Arafat realized his vision and built separate units that were added to the PLO’s military wings. This structure still exists in today’s Palestinian Authority; Hamas won’t change it, and neither will Fatah. I don’t see anyone who can change it.”

So here's one more instance that shows that Israel's fight against Islamic terrorism the same as the West's. And while he was referring to Hamas and not Fatat, Jonathan Rauch made this important point 3 years ago

There is at present no peace process in the Middle East, just a forlorn plan for one, fluttering in the wind. Hamas, more than any other single factor, is responsible for that. Like Al Qaeda, Hamas is a radical Islamist organization that swears it will not rest until it has brought Muslim territory under Islamic rule. For Al Qaeda, the territory at issue is the whole of the Arab world, plus the Spanish peninsula and other parts of Europe, plus ideally North America; for Hamas, the relevant territory is all of Palestine, meaning all of today's Israel plus the occupied territories. The theaters are different, but the battles—America's against Al Qaeda, Israel's against Hamas—are of a piece.

But it's not just Al Qaeda and Hamas. Fatah too is a terror group. And yet Fatah and Hamas are treated as noble if misunderstood. A recent Baltimore Sun editorial mischaracterized the nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict like this

But support for terrorism and the destruction of Israel undercuts the PA's legitimate right to vigorously protest the occupation.

Actually it is the claim of national rights that has put a patina of respectability on the terror of Hamas and Fatah.

In strategy, and tactics Al-Qaeda has learned from Palestinian terror. The failure to acknowledge this is what the late Michael Kelly referred to in When Innocents are the Enemy

If it is morally acceptable to murder, in the name of a necessary blow for freedom, a woman on a Tel Aviv street, or to blow up a disco full of teenagers, or to bomb a family restaurant -- then it must be morally acceptable to drive two jetliners into a place where 50,000 people work. In moral logic, what is the difference? If the murder of innocent people is for whatever reason excusable, it is excusable; if it is legitimate, it is legitimate. If acceptable on a small scale, so too on a grand.

Yes the failure to acknowledge the evil of Palestinian terror fully no doubt played a role in encouraging Bin Laden. And yet even the Bush administration - that rightfully went after Bin Laden and the Taliban - tolerated the strengthening of Hamas by forcing Israel to allow it to participate politically. And the Bush administration similarly applauded the withdrawal from Gaza that has allowed Al Qaeda to infiltrate and pose a threat, not just to Israel, but to Egypt too. If the West is to win the war on terror, it must treat all terrorism alike. And allow (or encourage, if necessary) its allies to do the same.

Other bloggers discussing Mustafa Setmariam Nasar: Dread Pundit Bluto, Lawhawk, IraqPundit.

Technorati tags: Terrorism, Al Qaeda, War on Terror.

Posted by SoccerDad at May 25, 2006 8:07 AM