“Osama’s Dream”
from Limes 1/2004
By Lucio Caracciolo
HOW DO ISLAMIC TERRORISTS REASON? WHAT ARE THEIR GEOPOLITICAL OBJECTIVES?
How do they think they will achieve these objectives? To understand the warriors of global jihad one must first eliminate a dual misunderstanding: al-Qa‘ida and Osama bin Laden.
These are the magic words used to identify the enemy in the mental short-hand of the western media, and hardly by them alone. A simplification both terrifying and reassuring, it provides a trademark and a name for an otherwise invisible target. This is exorcism, not analysis.
Let us instead attempt, to the extent that this is possible, to understand the minds of those who have declared war on us.
It was bin Laden himself who removed the aura of myth surrounding al-Qa‘ida. Talking to al-Jazeera correspondent Taysee Alluni on October 21, 2001 from Kabul, the sheik explained that "Things are not as the West sees them, believing there is an organization with a specific name, al-Qa‘ida. This is a very old name. It was not our intention that it should be used in this manner. Abu ‘Ubaida al-Banshiri's brother set up a base [in Afghanistan, ed.] for training the young to fight the perverse, arrogant, brutal, terrorist Soviet empire… It was that training camp that was called “the base” [al-Qa‘ida in Arabic, ed.]." Broadly speaking, at the time, the "base" was the Taliban's Afghanistan, a refuge and a safe reference point for the jihadist International.
However, the al-Qa´ida brand name has at least one other origin and one other meaning: that of a "foundation"--a company for promoting the holy war that Osama bin Laden's brotherhood had already started to exploit around the mid Eighties to support the mujahadeen infiltrating Afghanistan from Pakistan to fight the Soviets. Whether a base or foundation, al-Qa´ida never assumed a pyramidal shape. Osama is neither the inventor nor the leader of the jihadist movement but has instead been its brilliant entrepreneur to the extent of having created an enterprise based on his image.
The jihadist movement is structured horizontally like a network, aspiring to absorb the entire Islamic community (umma islamiyya) in an increasingly homogeneous and synchronized whole. It produces a geostrategy tailored for the entire Muslim world, corresponding to the greatest historical expansion of Islamic influence and spread above all through the great trade routes — from the Atlantic Ocean to the South China Sea, from Nigeria to Xinjiang (Western China), from Southern Russia to Zanzibar. There are no states, only territories to be conquered and converted to the shari‘a (Islamic Law). Plans for a great reunified dar al-islam (territory of Islam) are founded on various fundamental geostrategic elements and regional caliphates (confederations), governed according to the most rigid interpretation of the shari‘a.
The call is to the Islam of the origins; its ultimate triumph guaranteed by its purity.
It is up to the young Muslim generations to redeem a faith corrupted over the centuries. Current Islamic radicalism drew from the lessons and customs of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, whose highest ideologist was Sayyid al-Qutb (1906-1966).
The movement started in 1929 at Isma‘ilia on the initiative of Hassan al-Bannà (1906-1949), who expressed extremely clear ideas: "The Koran is our constitution and the prophet is our leader". Al-Bannà organized an embryonic fundamentalist network from Pakistan to North Africa, thus determining the basis for the ongoing clash between militant fundamentalism and the nationalist regimes governing those states with a Muslim majority.
Jihadist doctrinal references have their roots even further back in the history of Islam. They draw from the source of Ahmad b. Hanbal (780-855), founder of the most rigorous of Sunnite juridical schools, and they refer above all to Ahmad b. Taymiyya (1263-1328).
His theology would be revised within the context of the Bedouin communities of the Arab Peninsula by Muhammad bi ‘Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792) born in Naad--still today a fundamentalist stronghold in Saudi Arabia, a country officially following his doctrine (wahhabism).
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 would catalyze the jihadist response. For the dar al-islam was threatened by the hoards of Muscovite atheists. Initially, however, the cause involving the defense of their Afghan brothers did not manage to mobilize the umma's extraordinary energies. The Pakistanis, considering Afghanistan an integral part of their territory and able to rely on the militant breeding ground of hundreds of Koranic schools and universities, were an exception. However, a framework for organizing and guiding the fervor of these aspiring Pakistani jihadists was still lacking. Among those who dedicated themselves to filling this void was the Palestinian ‘Abdallah Yusuf ‘Azzam (1941-1989). ‘Azzam taught at the al-Azhar University in Cairo, and later in Saudi Arabia, while actively supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. He feared and disdained the narrow-minded nationalist interpretation of those directing the Palestinian cause. In 1979, ‘Azzam moved to Pakistan to support his Afghan brothers in their battle, becoming an important figure for them. In his analysis, the obligation for an Afghan jihad effectively created a system of concentric circles around the Islamic territory to be freed. Muslims were called upon to fight due to their proximity to Afghanistan, mobilizing the closest forces first, then if necessary, progressively releasing the energies of the entire umma--a geopolitical outlook arising from the belief that "establishing the Muslim community in a territory is as vital need as water and air." With this objective in mind, ‘Azzam inspired a fatwà by the leading mujahadeen Rasul Sayyaf, who became a reference figure for the Saudi regime and its young emissary, Osama bin Laden, active in Afghanistan ever since the beginning of the war of liberation.
From a jihadist perspective, understanding between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia was strengthened in the Afghan war theater. While Pakistan was more interested in conquering strategic depth--in this instance, control over Afghanistan as the hinterland of its security system against India--Riyadh nourished resistance against the Soviet invader with its petrodollars. Washington blessed this "holy alliance" destined to undermine the Soviet empire's Central-Asian periphery.
During the Eighties, the growing flow of volunteers and means from the Middle East required a great deal more than the "service office for the mujahadeen" managed by ‘Azzam in Peshawar. This was where Osama bin Laden entered the scene, proving his entrepreneurial capability in the field. It was he who organized the transnational human capital of jihad volunteers, setting up a complete wartime circuit, from recruitment to transport to Afghanistan, from arms to training and logistics. With financial support from Saudi charities and his relations with the Pakistani secret services (ISI), who managed a number of training camps, Osama multiplied the effectiveness of the network ruled by ad ‘Azzam.
It was precisely within the collective of Muslim Brotherhood active in Afghanistan that the clash concerning the jihad's geopolitical priorities developed. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian pediatrician today considered the real brain behind jihadism, challenged the idea of concentric circles and preached a vision of the holy war that was not limited to conflict with the external enemies of dar al-islam, but that simultaneously intended to overturn corrupt and apostate regimes belonging to the Muslim world. According to ‘Azzam, this meant a dispersal of forces and certain defeat; it would be better to concentrate on the creation of an Afghan-Pakistani caliphate ruled by the shari‘a, to operate as a center of radiation towards the Arab Peninsula. Only by starting from a solid territorial basis, fertilized by the applyication of the most authentic Islam, would it be possible to confront the great external powers. The theological-strategic confrontation remains today at the center of the jihadist debate. The dispute between ‘Azzam and al-Zawahiri came to an end on November 24th 1989, when the car driven by the Palestinian sheik was blown up in Peshawar. Russian secret services were duly blamed. A number of people suspect that the real instigator was al-Zawahiri, now able to establish himself as the sole inspiration for the brotherhood gathered around Osama bin Laden.
The Soviet's withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, a premonitory sign of the empire's self-dissolution, was celebrated as a triumph by Osama and his affiliates. Having liquidated one superpower it was now possible to envisage defeating the other. There could now be a full scale battle against the enemies of Islam, near and far.
The Afghan civil war that followed the retreat of Moscow's troops led to the Taliban victory in 1996. On October 26th 1997 the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was born, led by the mullah Omar. The idea of a Central-Asian caliphate projected towards Kashmir, towards the former southern provinces of the Soviet empire and Eastern Turkistan (highly Islamicized Chinese Xinjiang) had become more realistic.
But the fall of the USSR had changed the nature of the game between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and indeed, the USA as well; Washington wanted to end the game to dedicate time to new geostrategic and economic programs in central Asia, while Riyadh continued its wahhabist proselytizing in the region to protect its oil interests, and Islamabad strengthened its alliance with the Afghan mujahadeen to ensure its essential area of geostrategic influence and enlarge its lucrative drug-trafficking circuits. Osama bin Laden joined this mobile triangle.
Thanks to the network linking his land of origin in the Hadramawt, to Pakistani Baluchistan and the funds owned by the charities maneuvered by his brotherhood, he established a privileged understanding with mullah Omar's regime.
Afghanistan therefore became a base for jihadist geostrategies. Kabul's fundamentalist experiment even produced a singular understanding between Shiites and Sunnites.
Teheran had more than one card to play within the neighboring Afghan emirate.
The Shiite ayatollahs cultivated the principle of the Islamic revolution's exportability and that of support for endangered brother Muslims. For them, Afghanistan was an important pawn in the clash with the American "Great Satan". Within this scenario there was also an agreement between Teheran and Khartoum, where another Muslim Brother and theoretician of widespread jihad, Hassan al-Turabi, dreamt of a caliphate centered on Sudan, extending from Nigeria to Egypt.
The Gulf War that in 1991 led to the installation of American bases in Saudi Arabia, in the "Land of the two Holy Places", seemed to confirm al-Zawahiri's ideas.
Arab regimes proved to be irreparably colluded with the infidels, to whom they were selling their oil riches below cost prices as well as opening-up the Arab Peninsula.
The Saudi government formally disowned Osama bin Laden. The sheik, however, maintained contact with important representatives of the Saudi Kingdom's religious, political, and financial elite. While al-Zawahiri was delayed in Afghanistan to follow the training of jihadist volunteers — now mainly Asian, Moroccan, and Algerian — bin Laden moved to Khartoum.
From here he planned three new jihadist penetration policies for East and sub-Saharan Africa, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. Between 1992 and 1996, when the sheik left Sudan to return to Afghanistan, the transnational network of militant Islam had grown broader and stronger. Thanks to al-Turabi's influence, Khartoum became an important player for the jihadist International. A movement inter pares — at least on paper. The ability to draw on the human resources as well as logistic and financial organizations belonging to the bin Laden's corporation no doubt helped keep it united. A network of jihadist couriers led by al-Zawahiri spread the common ideal among the "shareholders", members of associated cells. The range of action was outlined in Khartoum: the dar al-islam understood in the broadest — and vaguest — possible way (in fact, it was not mapped so as not to restrict the jihad's field of action).
The homeland of Islam included most of East and sub-Saharan Africa, wherever the Muslim vanguards had penetrated. Hence Somalia, plunged into chaos after the expulsion of the dictator Siad Barre (January 27, 1991), became a land of experimentation for bin Laden's International. Hundreds of Arab mujahadeen, especially Yemenites, entered Somalia to provoke the disastrous American intervention. The humiliation inflicted on the USA in the Horn of Africa kindled in the jihadists triumphal fantasies similar to those caused by the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan, to the extent of leading them to dare the unthinkable: an attack on the heart of America (the first attack on the World Trade Center, February 26th 1993).
The fragmented Somali territory in the meantime became a black hole, an ideal hinterland for trafficking, training and terrorist operations in East Africa.
The second theatre was the Balkans. Between 1992 and 1995 war raged in Bosnia, an important region for Islamic geopolitics for at least three reasons: Bosnia was inhabited by a Muslim community that was not remotely fundamentalist, but easy to radicalize thanks to the conflict with Croatian and Serb Christians; the country was situated at the gates of Central Europe; and finally, crossed by the Balkan drug routes running from the Afghan opium fields to the European markets, it was an asset for the jihadist enterprise. Thanks to cover provided by charitable Islamic organizations coordinated by bin Laden and supported by the CIA — which backed the Bosnian Muslim resistance as an anti-Serb tactic — thousands of mujahadeen traveled to fight in Bosnia's mountains. Although the former Yugoslav republic was not to become a Muslim State, many jihadists settled there, considering it an advanced base for fundamentalism in Europe. From the Bosnian Mountains they would spread the fundamentalist word and contribute to setting up jihadist networks in various European countries, among them Italy and Germany.
The third front was the Caucasus. Chechnya was the epicenter there in the battle for independence from Moscow. The objective: a Caucasian caliphate also extended to other Russian federate republics such as Dagestan, and parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan, with Saudis and Pakistanis sending equipment and men to provide the national Chechen cause with a fundamentalist face.
Pakistan pursued its own particular jihadist strategy: to infiltrate the central-Asian area freed by the fall of the Soviet Union, and fully implement its attack against India in Kashmir.
The objective was to create a Pakistani caliphate extended to Afghanistan and to the southern borders of the former Soviet Union. The leading players in this strategy were the Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and above all the secret services. Drug trafficking provided the fuel for the plan's motor.
Pakistan plotted on an even larger scale, looking to South East Asia. Playing on Bangladesh (ex East Pakistan), Islamabad attempted to establish continuity for its range of influence by sea, from Karachi to Dacca to Singapore. The Jemaah Islamiyah, a jihadist organization active in south-eastern Asia, is also largely influenced by Pakistan.
Osama bin Laden's role as an entrepreneur of jihad was essential for the network's progressive self-financing. In the beginning, bin Laden placed his personal fortune at the cause's disposal as well as his relations with the economic and financial world in the Arab Peninsula deriving from his family's business. These relations involved groups linked to the most extremist Saudi ‘ulama´ and Muslim Brothers in Kuwait, Qatar, and Dubai. Financing for the jihadist network was channeled through Islamic NGOs linked in various ways to bin Laden's brotherhood.
In the course of time the Gulf's initial "shareholders" were joined by new partners, most of them Asian. Assets all ended up in the hands of a group of at least 400 financiers, two thirds Arabs and the rest Pakistanis and other Asians, with hundreds of companies spread all over the world. From the islands of Mauritius to Singapore, from Malaysia to the Philippines, from Lebanon to Panama, from Zurich to Hong Kong, London and New York, the sun never sets on Osama's holding companies. These companies involve a variety of activities, not only used as fronts: property companies in France, Great Britain, and Tangiers; timber industries in Turkey; paper in Norway and Sweden; milk and its derivates in Denmark; and livestock breeding in Albania and Somalia. But the most lucrative joint ventures involve drug trafficking.
When the Taliban was in power, the jihadist multinational managed all Afghan opium trafficking. The war lords who dominate the drug routes in central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans, allowed the consolidation of the production-transformation-transport-marketing circuit from Afghanistan to Europe. Bin Laden's support to guerilla warfare in Kosovo was used to redesign an autonomous Balkan drug trafficking system. Income from drugs was also helpful for greasing relations with deviant Pakistani secret services.
Money laundering involved numerous states from South America (Ciudad del Este) to the United States, from Switzerland to Africa (Mombassa and Zanzibar), from the Middle East to former Soviet Asia. After September 11th, when the hunt for the jihadist network accounts began, fundamentalist groups resorted above all to the traditional system of hawala, which allows money transfers to take place through a trusted intermediary, leaving no trace.
As far as profit deriving from drug trafficking is concerned, it is entrusted to money laundering guaranteed by the commercial activities of the Muslim Diaspora, from Lebanon to East Africa or Karachi. In Africa, Osama's brotherhood has penetrated the precious stones market, linked to Amsterdam via the Lebanon.
As in any other respected holding company, jihadists also look after image and information. From radio stations to websites, from bulletins to spokespersons, videos to cyber cafés, militant extremists use western freedoms to promote the holy war.
Strategies supported by bin Laden's holding companies were routinely followed until September 11, 2001. But already before the attack on the Twin Towers and on the Pentagon, the jihadist International prepared to withstand repression, delegating the finalization of specific terrorist plans to regional and local organizations in their respective areas of competence. Communications between the various sections of the network were guaranteed by couriers responsible for revitalizing the common ideal. The courier par excellence is Doctor al-Zawahiri, perpetually involved in a militant apostolate between Asia, Africa and the Balkans.
American retaliation bore the stigma of imperialism; a global answer to a global attack.
And this time there were troops on the ground to prove that America was not afraid of risking its soldiers' lives to hunt down Osama. Stage one consisted in the invasion of Afghanistan, culminating in the bombardment of Tora Bora and the hunting down of terrorists in the mountains of Hindukush. A terrifying response, Bush wanted to prove to the enemy that America was not a paper tiger after all. The Afghan base was swept away.
The loss of Afghanistan as a logistic and training hinterland was a serious blow for the jihadists.
The geostrategic effects of the American reaction followed rapidly. Pakistani leader Musharraf was obliged to fall into line with Washington's dictates. The repression unleashed by the regime in Islamabad was directed at the decontamination of the ISI (only partially successfully) and breaking up jihadist cells. America also pushed Pakistan to do the unthinkable: accept a drafted anti-terrorist agreement with India. Hence, Musharraf was provided access to Delhi's intelligence about his own deviant secret services.
In North Africa, Bush set-up an effectively unproductive anti-jihadist alliance from Mauritania to Egypt. Only a few local cells suffered setbacks. But it was Gadaffi who provided the largest gift for America. The Libyan ra´is had an old account to settle with bin Laden, who had tried to assassinate him in 1995 using the local fundamentalist opposition. He was the first to report Osama bin Laden to Interpol as a terrorist leader (April 15th 1998). Gadaffi handed over to the Americans his intelligence service's complete archive on extremist movements in Africa and in the Middle East.
Another African alliance for eliminating jihadist breeding grounds and opposing the clandestine movements of terrorists in the area was organized on a pan-Saharan level (Mali-Niger-Chad-Nigeria). The understanding promoted by the Americans in the Horn of Africa between Sudan and Ethiopia--enlarged to include Yemen--and based on American bases in the region, appears more effective. Thanks to an ad hoc American task force, it should also prove possible to keep Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania under control. The attempt to restore the Somali black hole through a federation is the geopolitical expression of this military strategy which also includes a maritime element, based on patrolling the Arabian Sea and the West Indian Ocean. The objective is to intercept the jihadists' movements by sea and to clamp down on drug trafficking leaving from the coasts of Baluchistan and nourishing militant fundamentalist cells. From the China Sea to the coasts of Africa there is a sophisticated compulsory code for maritime and harbor controls: any vessel not complying with the rules is immediately blocked. In this manner the Americans attempted to penetrate the maze of South East Asia's archipelagos that today seem to represent the safest base for the jihadist International. However, while Washington and her allies attempted to seal the Indian Ocean, another jihadist hotbed emerged in Southern Thailand, as chance would have it, exactly along one of the main routes used for drug trafficking out of the Golden Triangle.
Another anti-terror regional alliance involves Russia, China, and the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, from the Caucasus to Xinjiang. Among the few concrete results there is America's green light for Russia's repression of its Islamic minority's militant ambitions, starting with Chechnya, while the Chinese have a free hand against the Uighur Muslims in the Xingjian.
Europeans did not follow the USA in the logic of the global war on terror. Intelligence is their priority. The objective was to redesign the enemy's overall profile--a sort of geostrategic identikit. European investigators thereby discovered that Europe was and remains an area for recruiting jihadists to be sent to the various fronts. Many of the proselytizers come from the Balkan experience and important terror routes and circuits have been identified. The paradox is that a number of cell leaders who have been arrested and tried, escape prison because the Americans refuse to fully cooperate with European investigators, denying them crucial sources and evidence.
Bin Laden and his associates perceived the Anglo-American attack on Iraq as the announcement of an imminent final offensive against the Islamic people. For jihadists, but also for most of Arab and Islamic public opinion, the occupation of Mesopotamia was seen as a "Judaic-crusader" super-conspiracy. To ensure Israel's security and Western access to Arab oil, the southeastern States would be broken-up and reduced to weak mini-territories and strategic enslavement, existing only to serve the Western powers' economic exploitation plans. Israel would annex the Sinai and the Palestinian Territories; Syria would be divided along ethno-religious lines with the Alawite northern coast, the Sunnite Interior, and a tiny Druze state made slave to the Israelis; and Saudi Arabia would end up in pieces. Washington would encourage the secession of the Eastern al-Hasa Province, rich in oil and mainly Shiite, which had already in the past attempted to escape the supremacy of the House of Sa‘ud. This area would be united with the southern desert region of Rub al-Khali, thus providing it with extremely significant oil and gas reserves. Protection of the Holy Place of Mecca and Medina would be entrusted to the Hashemites, together with the most troublesome area in the North, allowing the Americans to recover their base in Tabuk. As far as Yemen was concerned, it would lose Hadramawt, the rebel province to be transferred to Oman.
In Osama bin Laden's message, broadcast on January 4, 2004 by al-Jazeera, the "disaster" of America's occupation of Iraq--the result of Islam's corruption--was linked to the "Zionist-crusader chain of Evil", part of an "economic-religious war" the next stage of which would be the occupation of the Gulf States. Having laid their hands on the Middle Eastern oilfields, the Americans would be able to complete "the conquest of the world".
The threat of a break-up of the Arabian Peninsula was emphasized by bin Laden to encourage general mobilization of the jihadist network on the basis of a new strategy, modulated in reaction to American pressure on all fronts. It was a question of giving new impulse to jihadists playing on the supreme obligation to protect the Holy Places. Is there a more legitimate and globalizing jihad than this? Hence it became necessary to concretize this danger by drawing the Americans to Saudi Arabia. The specter of the Saudi regime's implosion, which would mark the accession to power of the most radical Islamists, could push Washington to engage in a prevemptive strike. This is bin Laden's trap. The final crisis of the House of Sa‘ud and other pro-American regimes in the Gulf seems mature. In his proclamation on January 4th , Osama decreed: "Honest people, worried about this situation, like the ‘ulama´, the leaders most followed by the people, the dignitaries, the notables and the merchants, must unite and gather in a safe place beyond the shadow of these oppressive regimes and form a Council of Ahl al-Hall wa al-‘Aqd (literally, "those who release and bind", hence the leaders who in the Islamic tradition can appoint or remove a government, ed.). The scenario of an Arabian Peninsula as a jihadist stronghold is a nightmare for Washington. Osama grasps the basic contradiction in Bush's approach: destabilization in the name of democracy could hand the Middle East to the jihadists, perhaps through regular elections.
Preparation for the supreme holy war in Saudi Arabia is well advanced. Evidence is provided by the appearance on the internet of the first of the manuals for the perfect combatant: al-Battar Training Camp, an online training camp signed by the Military Committee of the Arabian Peninsula's mujahadeen. A guide in three parts, it provides a geopolitical outline of the reasons for the war, instructions for making every possible kind of weapon, and clandestine operations.
In Osama's mind the holy war will be unparalleled. It will not imply an inflow of external mujahadeen; the Saudis will suffice. On the contrary, the liberation of the Land of the two Mosques from the ungodly regime of the Sa‘ûd and the occupation of the "crusaders", will return the Arabian Peninsula to its role as a beacon for Islam. Inverting the logic of the Afghan jihad, it will circulate outward by concentric circles rather than inward.
This new type of jihad involves Iran and Shiite fundamentalism. Bin Laden has always insisted on the need for reconciling Islam's two most important souls in the battle against the "Great Satan", expressing consideration and approval for the Iranian people. Since 1992, Osama's brotherhood has established special and totally covert relations with part of Teheran's regime. One result of this cooperation, among others, was the 1996 attack on the American base in al-Hubar, requiring the complicity of local Shiite communities. The Shiite terrorists familiarized their Sunnite colleagues with their specialty: suicide attacks. At the end of the Nineties, after its rapprochement with Baghdad in an anti-American entente, Teheran had also encouraged contacts between jihadists and Saddam's regime. Their sights were set on the Saudi regime. Hence the terrorist cells were able to use training areas in mainly Shiite areas, such as Nasiriyya, and the former mujahadeen camps in Khalq. This bond should allow the mobilization of the peninsula's Shiites within the context of the new jihad.
Osama is extremely farsighted. Should they fall into the Arabian trap, the Americans would be obliged to leave four fronts unprotected: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Egypt.
Pakistan is already balkanized; the Islamabad redoubt, General Musharraf's refuge, is surrounded by jihadist outposts, from disputed Kashmir to the Punjab and Baluchistan, where the madrassas churn out thousands of young fundamentalists. The hub of Pakistani jihadism is Karachi with its hinterland. Musharraf, caught between the terrorist threat and American pressure, sends his special troops to hunt down bin Laden and his partners in the northwestern tribal areas. However, the attempt to modify the curricula for Koranic studies on the basis of a package made in Washington is backfiring on the Pakistani regime, as had already happened to the Saudis. Offended and incensed, the religious hierarchies, even the most moderate, have protested against this intolerable intrusion in their affairs.
In Afghanistan, the best ally is one of the cleverest warlords, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is reestablishing relations with the Northern Alliance and exploiting his relations with the deviant ISI and various jihadist groups. Participation in the drug circuit, from Central Asia to the Balkans, is the basis for this new alliance. Hekmatyar's return to the Afghan political scene is all the more incisive in relation to the obvious precariousness of the American's man, the "mayor of Kabul", Hamid Karzai.
In Iraq, guerrilla warfare and terrorism have not been tamed; on the contrary, so as to reroute young fundamentalist militants from their own territory, the Saudi regime allows them to filter into Mesopotamia--an foretaste of the jihadist radiation that would result from the collapse of the Sa‘ud. Iraq would also represent a natural gateway for an American invasion of Saudi Arabia. The result: to cover the Saudi front, Iraq would be left unprotected. The crisis has become even more delicate after the Arab League's animated reaction to the risk that Iraqi Sunnites might be compressed between a small Kurdish State to the North and a Shiite macro-region in the center-south.
As far as Egypt is concerned, it may well be the first victim of America's democraticist rhetoric; the quickest route to an Islamic totalitarian state is the electoral one. Following in the footprints of the Algerian FIS, the Muslim Brotherhood today claim their right to participate in parliamentary elections as a real political party. This request is the result of an agreement between all elements of the Brotherhood in its various transnational projections.
To what extent is this plan dangerous for us, the Italians and Europeans? The fundamentalist nature of the governments in Muslim countries does not per se represent a problem. An Islamic regime would not necessarily attack our interests or threaten our security. If provided with a considerable degree of consensus, it could instead fill a number of holes, with great advantages for us. Iran is a typical example: we negotiate and trade with the ayatollahs quite normally. Military, "secular" Algeria, on the contrary, is not at all safe.
The danger arises from the fact that the jihadists are among us and their aim is to organize parts of the European territory — especially various urban suburbs, the theater of massive Muslim immigration — into outposts of the dar al-islam in its fundamentalist version. Our relations with them cannot disregard the war on terror. After September 11th this war has two faces for the Americans. One is strictly defensive: to prevent new attacks on American soil capable of producing devastating psychological consequences. The other is offensive: to play on this threat to expand American hegemony on a global scale. This urges Washington to amplify pressure on strategic regimes in the Islamic world targeted by jihadists. The priority is to prevent Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt from falling into the hands of Osama's followers. The problem is that the Americans have no soft power in Muslim societies (cultural and political influence, trustworthy ruling classes, etc.) let alone in the three key countries. To make up for these limitations of power, Washington resorts to a naïve and counterproductive invasiveness, as when demanding the rewriting of the curricula for Koranic studies. At this rate, Bush risks provoking rather than preventing the formation of radically anti-American and anti-Western Islamic States and we are not far from this prospect in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, but also in Iraq, Morocco, and Indonesia.
Most Europeans reacted to September 11th by hiding their heads in the sand. The hope was that after the war in Afghanistan and having hunted down the terrorists in the Hindukush mountains, everything would more or less return to normal. We did not ponder the profoundness and the imminence of the fundamentalist threat in our own countries.
It is not easy today to assume an Italian and possibly a European position on how to defeat the jihadist project--something which is necessary for negotiating a reassessment of the war on terror in a perspective more suited to our interests. For those with jihadists in their own territories and at their borders, it is better to first of all reject the clash of civilizations ideology. In bowing to the crusader rhetoric the only result we would obtain would be a consolidation of the Islamic masses around the more extremist mullahs and paradoxically our suburbs would become impassable. Apartheid strategies, cultivated by radical cells and paradoxically stimulated by the secular "French-styled" approach, means renouncing control over part of our own territories, creating hotbeds of urban guerilla warfare and encouraging Islamic terrorists.
If instead we could distinguish between the war on terror and the confrontation with Muslims in Europe, we would win on both fronts. We cannot pretend there is an integration that does not exist. We must break down the incommunicability existing between us and them, establishing the foundations for coexistence based on reciprocal respect; namely, an acknowledgment of our respective cultural identities while demanding an observance of our laws. Otherwise we will be unable to prevent a number of mosques, Muslim cultural centers, and electronic preaching centers from cultivating hatred for us.
Europe could then provide a model of coexistence among cultures that are not however assimilable. At that point it would be the "European" Muslims themselves who would spread a more peaceful message in their countries of origin. The jihadists would lose a decisive voice for broadcasting their calls to the holy war in the dar al-islam.
In this manner we would also help the Americans. A number of European countries, among them Italy, have already obtained more decisive results in the battle against terrorist cells than those boasted by the FBI or the CIA. If we have managed to strike a number of terrorist networks it is because we have interpreted their logic and penetrated their environment.
One day the war on Islamic terrorism will be over. The quality of the peace will depend on the manner in which we will have obtained our victory. If the Muslim world can be persuaded that the West fought only to inflict further humiliation, we will not be able to enjoy the taste of our triumph for very long.