[Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (www.conservativenannystate.org). He also has a blog,"Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues. You can find it at the American Prospect's web site.]

For most of this decade, progressive economists have said the economy was growing fine, but typical workers were not benefiting because income was being redistributed upward. We can no longer say this.

The Commerce Department revised its growth data last month. It now shows the economy grew much slower over the last three years than we had previously thought. In particular, the new data implies productivity has been growing at just a 1.5 percent annual rate over the last three years. This is the same rate the economy experienced during the long productivity slowdown from 1973 to 1995. It is a full percentage point below the 2.5 percent growth rate from 1995 to 2004.

While productivity may be an alien concept to most people, it is the most important determinant of our standard of living. Productivity measures the value of the goods and services an average worker produces in an hour of work. The standard of living for different segments of the population (e.g., school teachers and hedge fund managers) will depend on how output is distributed, but if the economy is not very productive, then we don't have very much to distribute.

For example, the population of Chad, which has very low levels of productivity, would be very poor even if everything produced were distributed equally among the population. Chad's per capita income is just $1,500 a year. A family of four living on $6,000 would have a very tough time getting by under any circumstances.

Of course, the gains from productivity growth don't have to be taken in the form of more things. They can also be taken in the form of more leisure time. Workers in Europe enjoy an average of more than five weeks a year of vacation, and often put in 35-hour workweeks when they are not vacationing. Europeans can have a great deal of leisure time and still have a comfortable standard of living because they have a high level of productivity during the hours they do work.

Productivity increases could be a way to allow us to have more leisure without large reductions in our income. Higher productivity growth also makes it easier to deal with global warming and other environmental problems.

The fact productivity growth has now slowed is a very bad sign. It means the economy is not doing well by any measure. The argument for conservative economic policy was always that by giving people more incentive to work and invest, productivity would grow more rapidly, and that this would benefit everyone in the long run. It turns out, even with the massive upward redistribution of income over the last quarter century, productivity is now growing at its slowest pace in the post-war period. In short, we are not seeing much growth and the growth we are seeing is going to those at the top.

It is still too early to know whether this recent productivity slowdown will persist. No one saw the 1973 slowdown coming, or the 1995 uptick in productivity growth. Even after the fact, we don't have a good explanation for either event. However, we should be prepared for the possibility the slowdown will continue. This means policies have to be focused not just on improving the situation of those at the middle and bottom, but also at increased productivity growth.

In many cases, this may amount to the same thing. For example, in addition to failing to provide insurance to 45 million people, our health care system is also incredibly inefficient. If we had a universal Medicare system, it would both provide security for the entire population and make the health care system far more efficient by eliminating the waste associated with the private insurance industry. This can be a model for a change that both serves important public goals and increases productivity.

We can also try to catch up with the rest of the world and start giving our workers paid vacations. I don't know if this will increase productivity, but there are few people who would not appreciate a few weeks each year of vacation. If we ended the protections that benefit workers at the high end, workers at the middle and bottom would be able to enjoy their vacations with no cut in pay. This is also, by far, the most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that anyone currently has on the table. (I'll elaborate in another column.)

There should be no mistake; the slowdown in productivity growth is definitely bad news. We should all want higher, more rapid productivity growth. But this does mean the policy of redistributing income upwards has been a clear failure, insofar as its goal was to increase economic growth. This means we should not be shy about looking to take economic policy in new directions.

[Gabriele Marranci is a Lecturer in the Anthropology of Religion
School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, King's College, University of Aberdeen.]

It was during the autumn of 2001 that I met Kafeel Ahmed, a fellow student at Queen’s University of Belfast. I was a PhD student in the anthropology department, researching Muslims in Northern Ireland and Europe; he was a student in aeronautical engineering. Kafeel, an Indian Muslim born in Bangalore, was a very active member of the Islamic Students Society of Northern Ireland (ISSNI). Unsurprisingly, he became one of my respondents and contacts. I still remember his jokes about me being Italian, and the references to the film The Padrino.

Kafeel, the Kafeel who I knew from 2001 to 2003, when I left Belfast, was a very welcoming person, very reserved and shy. Yet when you came to know him better, you discovered his intellectual side, his strong belief in Islam as justice and God’s love. He was a very calm, quite ‘westernised’ Muslim, ever ready to laugh at jokes. Interested in sport, particularly cricket, we spent time speaking at my preferred coffee shop in Botanic Avenue about Muslim identity, the experience of living in Northern Ireland as a Muslim, the tension between India and Pakistan, and the Palestinian Intifada. Kafeel had always expressed moderate ideas, so much that, if you are tempted to look for him within my book Jihad Beyond Islam, maybe thinking of one of the pseudonyms, I can tell you that you would be seeking a phantom. He is not there. He never discussed jihad, he never referred to the struggle of Muslims in Palestine or Chechnya, as such. He was more focused on injustices that Muslims were suffering, specifically on the emotional side of the sufferance of Muslims. Yet he was very concerned about what was happening to Muslims in one of the most forgotten conflicts, the Chechen conflict.

After I left Belfast, I lost total contact with him, like many of my respondents. I never met him again or had occasion to speak to him. Little by little, he faded from my memory, and became, as often happens in fieldwork, part of a past research project, one among the many voices. As usual, during anthropological research, some people become friends, others just remain respondents, people with whom you have shared ideas and opinions.

I never heard of him again. This was until an amateurish car-bomb hit a Glasgow airport terminal and burst into flames. No innocent person was injured in the terrorist attack. Yet everyone has seen the dramatic pictures of one of the perpetrators, covered in flames, still struggling with the policemen while his body was suffering massive burns. Today, that human torch, who attempted to inflict the same pain he has suffered for days on unknown innocent travellers, died in Glasgow. That burned and unrecognisable body was Kafeel Ahmed. Although I still cannot believe that Ahmed the aspirant murderer was the same Kafeel who used to smile and joke about me being Italian, and inevitably playfully humming The Padrino main theme, or serving a portion of chips while working in a kebab shop. I have to accept that something in his life happened which killed Kafeel’s soul much before the flames destroyed his body. But what kind of ‘larvae’ could have entered his heart to transform him, as in a horror movie, into a killer. Thge man I knew was so against injustice, innocent people being killed and had condemned the 9/11 tragedy openly? Perhaps the answer could be found in India, back in his town. Yet it could also be found in his shyness, and in his way of perceiving the world as full of injustice and sufferance. It could be found in the emotional way in which things affected him.

What can we learn from Kafeel Ahmed’s story? The first thing is that the environment in which people live means a lot in affecting their identity. Kafeel in Belfast lived in a very open Muslim community, which knew very well, being based in Northern Ireland, how peace among people was important. He saw the damaging effects of sectarianism, and religious as well as political hatred. He spent time with Muslims from different nations, with different beliefs (and sometimes deeply different views, since Shi’a Muslims shared the mosque and prayed there) and ideas. He saw difference and engaged with it. Kafeel in India, or Cambridge, where it seems that he moved in 2004, may have met a very different environment. The Muslim community in Belfast is a special one. There might be disagreements among the members, as in any other community, Muslim or not, but there is a great understanding of the values of negotiation and understanding in achieving peace and wellbeing for all. As Kafeel faded from my memory bit by bit, I think that the Northern Irish experience faded from Kafeel’s mind.

I am now receiving phone calls and messages from people who knew him, and had shared the pale blue carpet and walls of the mosque, a very quiet place when empty, but very alive when full of people. All of them are traumatised about Kafeel’s actions. I personally do not know what happened to Kafeel while in India, but I know that he was a very emotional person that lived with his heart open to any injury that life can inflict.

Yet this tells us something. We have to stop using stereotypes to discuss terrorism. It is not Islam as religion that brings young Muslims to commit such horrible actions. It is not just the radical websites and propaganda that can brainwash them (though they can be used to reinforce the process and personal convictions). It is not a particular philosophy or the attraction of a phantomatic Al-Qaeda, which is less and less credible every day.

No, it is a complex process, which often happens very quickly. When people like Kafeel experience a particular personal crisis of identity, and they start to identify with the suffering of others, with the feelings of those whom suffer injustice, and they want to bring justice, they can easily end up in a circle of panic and emotions, in which the end is seen as the only beginning. They want to escape a world that they cannot tolerate, but they also want paradise and not the damnation that Islam promises for suicide. I have explained in another post why they do not feel guilty about taking innocent lives.

Indeed, I am now thinking that on that day I could have been at the terminal, just entering it, while the car is approaching. I would not have recognised him, but if the plan was better organised and evil luck helped his action, I could have been killed, burned to death, by Kafeel, the same, but yet not the same smiling Kafeel who was once ready to give me an extra portion of chicken and rice during Ramadan in the Belfast mosque.

I have only one hope, now that Kafeel is dead. I hope that in the days that death waited to call him, he had reflected on his actions, and reflected that innocent people, instead of him, may have been there in that hospital dying. I hope that he understood, and felt in his heart, that he betrayed the religion he worshiped, the Muslim community, his family and friends, that he went against God’s teaching, and that he had insulted Islam, so that he deeply repented before surrendering his soul.

[Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His books include Radical Protest and Social Structure, The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz) and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His work on Iraq has appeared on numerous internet sites, including TomDispatch, Asia Times, Mother Jones, After Downing Street, and ZNET; and in print in Contexts, Cities, and Z Magazine. His email address is Ms42@optonline.net.]

The NY Times op ed, entitled"A War We Just Might Win," by Brookings Institute Fellows Michael O’Hanlan and Kenneth Pollack is attracting a lot of attention in the major media, from the President and his hench-people, and even from the anti-war movement. That is what makes this an important document—the attention. In fact, it is just another puff piece that repeats (as though it were authentic journalism) the official American government line. These guys went to the Green Zone and other secure locations and talked only to occupation officials (“American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel”). We should not take their testimony as primary data, but as a presentation of the American military’s version of the current status of the war. Knowing that, we should not be surprised that they say “we just might win,” since the U.S. military has been saying that (or even more positive things) right along.

But what is the reality there? And are they (meaning the U.S. military leadership) right that we just might “win.” Not at all.

In fact, I think that this op-ed is actually a “benchmark” that the surge is officially over; that we have entered the next stage of the war—the (almost certain to be a failing) attempt to co-opt the Sunni insurgency.

Keep in mind that O’Hanlon and Pollack rest most of their argument on the prospect that the “alliance” between the U.S. military and the Sunni insurgents has been and will be successful in rolling back Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other jihadists. (They refer to as picking “the right adversary.”)

But let’s be clear on one point: this is a reversal of the surge strategy. The surge was supposed to clean out both the Sunni militias and the jihadists (aka “al Qaeda”) from the Sunni neighborhoods and towns; and purge the Mahdi’s army from the Shia neighborhoods and towns. (Petraeus and the gang abandoned offensive against the Mahdis several months ago; instead of trying to destroy the Mahdi’s army, they are now trying to select Shia areas of the country where the Mahdis have not consolidated power and prevent them from doing so. In the meantime, as I say in my recent Tom Dispatch commentary, the Mahdis have expanded their domain in Baghdad and strengthened their ties with the Shia community. They are now in a position to win any (actual) election they choose to contest in any part of the Shia areas, except perhaps Basra.)

After several months of failing to uproot the Sunni militias (i.e., insurgents) from various neighborhoods and towns around Baghdad (but succeeding in annihilating many communities), Petraeus has also abandoned this aspect of the surge—the most crucial element—except in selected places (e.g., Baquba, which is quiet now, after the destruction of several neighborhoods in July). In its place, he has negotiated an “alliance” with these very same militias that he has been fighting during the surge and for all these years since the end of “major combat opertaions.” This is the strategy that O’Hanlon and Pollack find so promising. (See the Tom Dispatch commentary for a more complete discussion of the nature of the “alliance.”)

The immediate consequence of this alliance is that the nationalist insurgents will fight against the jihadists (generally referred to in the U.S. press as “Al Qaeda in Iraq,” but actually consisting of a number of small groups that target Shia civilians with carbombs and other terrorist weapons). This fight has been brewing for quite some time. Over the last few years, the jihadists have increasingly alienated the Sunni communities that host them because the nationalists do not support attacks on Iraqi civilians (even Shia), and they bitterly resent the attempts by the jihadists to impose their particular fundamentalist ideas on their hosts. This friction has led jihadists to use their terrorist tactics within some of these communities (and therefore antagonizing large majorities of the populations) and/or to less spectacular violent confrontations.

In the past, the local insurgents could not effectively expel the jihadists because of the Americans, who not only kept them busy with constant invasions into their cities or towns or communities, but also because any effort to fight a sustained battle would expose them to easy attack from the Americans. So this truce with the Americans is an opportunity for them to put their unhindered energy into expelling the jihadists. In most places they will probably be successful.

So this “alliance” is actually a double victory for the insurgency. Not only are they finally able to expel the jihadists, but Petraeus is also giving up his attempt to dislodge them. That is, he has agreed to leave the indigenous militias in charge. Violence will be (and has been in Anbar province) drastically reduced, since the major violence occurred when the Americans sought to wrest control from the local insurgents (now Petraeus’ allies), mainly from the application of overwhelming U.S. firepower. (It has been these battles that account for most of the death and destruction in Iraq (much, much more than the carbombs and the death squads put together)).

When O’Hanlon and Pollack say in their NY Times commentary that the surge might work, they mean that this “alliance” has been and will continue to reduce the jihadist presence in these communities. At the same time, it has consolidated the power of the militias, which were, only a few months ago, the chief target of the Bush surge.

So this alliance is not “working” to advance Bush Administration strategy for pacifying the country. Instead it is a victory for the nationalist insurgents, who will finally obtain uncontested sovereignty over their local communities.

Petraeus hopes that after a while, he can turn this into an American victory by buying off the leadership of the local guerrillas and getting them to accept, first American, and then Iraqi government control of the communities. They will probably refuse (they detest the Iraqi government even more than they detest the Americans). So, in most areas, the fighting will be renewed very shortly.

But in those areas where the US can buy-out or co-opt the leadership, the U.S. (and its client Iraqi government) will seek to integrate the community into their vision of the new Iraq, including the shuttering of government enterprises and services (and/or the services provided by local clerical leaders in place of the government), the abandonment of the food and fuel subsidies (many of which are now being implemented on the community level by local groups), and all the rest of the “old” Iraq that the U.S. has been trying to destroy since the occupation began. If the battle hasn’t already begun, it will begin then, because the local insurgents have been demanding all along that the government deliver the services to which they feel they are entitled, and these are exactly the services that the Americans have pledged to replace with “the market.”

Stated bluntly, if the U.S. wants to get control of these rebellious communities, for itself or for its client government in Baghdad, it will have to renew its war with the nationalist insurgency.

Therefore, the only way the “alliance” can lead to peace in the Sunni areas is if the U.S. abandons its effort to control them.

If the U.S. does abandon its effort to gain control of Sunni cities and communities, it be the beginning of a real American withdrawal from Iraq, because the Iraqi government is already moribund. It has no army or police force (that does not depend on the U.S.) and it has no administrative or governing presence outside the Green Zone. Without the U.S. fighting a war of conquest around the country, it could not extend its power beyond the building in which the parliament meets.

If the U.S. leaves these little city-states alone, then each local municipality will be controlled by its local militia. By and large this would leave the Sadrists (who are irretrievably anti-American) in control of the Shia areas, and the Sunni nationalist insurgents (who are irretrievably anti-American) in control of the Sunni areas. Eventually, they would erect a new government that reflected their common interests. (Their common interests include: that the Americans have to be expelled; that the American effort to dismantle the Iraqi welfare state and erect a neoliberal state is exactly and completely wrong; and that the government should not be an ally of the US.) Even before the government consolidated itself, the American presence would become untenable, as the various insurgent groupings would certainly lob grenades into military bases and mine all the highways that brought supplies to American troops. Without an offensive strategy, the American troops would certainly be “sitting ducks.”

So this episode (like many before it) can only lead to peace if it leads to U.S. withdrawal. My guess is that Bush and the gang (including the leading Democrats) will not opt for withdrawal.

We can therefore expect a return to ferocious attacks on Sunni communities in the near future and perhaps equally ferocious attacks on Mahdi army strongholds (e.g., Sadr City) in the not too distant future.

[Michael Radu, Ph.D., is Co-Chair of FPRI’s Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and Homeland Security. He is currently at work on a book on Islamism in Europe.]

Al Qaeda is stronger now than at any time since 9/11, say some; it is less strong than it could have become, answers the administration. Congressional Democrats say that instead of catching Bin Laden, Bush took his eyes off the ball and got mired in an irrelevant war in Iraq; the White House replies that if we don’t fight the jihadis in Iraq, we will have to do so in Manhattan.

And so American politics argue in what seems to remain a cognitive vacuum, confusing the public and producing inane statements from our elected leaders. Had Al Qaeda consciously planned how to thoroughly confuse the infidels, this would have been the ideal result. It is all the persistent and inevitable outcome of executive delusions (jihadis are “a small minority”) and Democratic flippancy (“the war on terrorism is a bumper sticker,” Sen. John Edwards has charged) against a background of popular ignorance and an oversupply of lawyers and human rights activists. The result is that six years after 9/11 we (and the Europeans are generally worse) are still fighting a war in a conceptual fog—and not getting any close to winning it.

In reality, the nature and goals of the enemy, albeit complex, should be quite clear, as should the ways to defeat it. Until we understand a few key realities, we will continue to tread water and remain on the defensive.

What is Al Qaeda?
Al Qaeda (“the base”) is at the same time an Islamist totalitarian terrorist organization and the particularly violent part of a global Muslim revivalist movement. As the name implies, it was established as a vanguard, elite organization, not dissimilar, conceptually, from the previous Marxist Leninist self-selected vanguards of the proletariat (Shining Path in Peru, Red Brigades in Italy, etc.), seeking to reestablish Islam’s historic (and mostly mythical) supremacy and purity throughout the world via the unification of the umma, the Islamic community, under a single political and religious leadership and state—the Caliphate. The means to accomplish this is jihad, strictly defined by the followers of this ideology as warfare.

Al Qaeda was not originally intended to exist as a territorial base, but the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan unexpectedly offered that opportunity. Al Qaeda took advantage of that opportunity, but controlling those lands was neither intended nor absolutely necessary. The same applies now to the wild areas of Pakistan that Al Qaeda uses for refuge and training—they are important but not vital. That fact is still misunderstood and explains the continuous surprise of some that after the Taliban’s fall in 2001 and the heavy losses it incurred at the time, Al Qaeda did not die.

While it incessantly claims to be defending an Islamic umma under attack from all sides—the most theologically convenient way to justify jihad—Al Qaeda’s ideology and strategy are aggressive and revisionist. Al Qaeda aggressively attacks the home base of the “Crusaders” (see 9/11 or the attacks in the UK) and revisionistically seeks to reintegrate into the umma the long-lost territories of Islam, such as Al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula).

Al Qaeda’s ideology is rigorously anti-nationalist. That allows it to attract alienated and poorly integrated elements among Muslim communities in the West and explains in part the attraction it has among Muslim elites everywhere. As Iraq today suggests, however, it could also be a serious threat to the organization, since it also clashes with the interests of established postcolonial elites and regionalist or separatist groups (Kurds, Berbers, many Palestinians).

The enemies, and thus the targets, of jihad are a) all governing regimes in the Muslim world (the “apostates”); b) their outside manipulators, controllers and supporters (the “Crusaders” led by the United States but including all Western states and Israel; c) all other infidels “oppressing” Muslims (India for Kashmir, Russia for Chechnya, China for Turkestan); and d) for the most radical jihadis (the takfiris), all Muslims who do not actively support the cause and, especially, the Shias. While these are all enemies, the priority given to each depends on circumstances, capabilities and opportunity.

Al Qaeda in Iraq
This latter fact is another cause of confusion in the West, as demonstrated by the case of Iraq. While an Al Qaeda associate group did have a small presence in Iraqi Kurdistan prior to the spring of 2003, at least on a large scale Iraq is a target of opportunity. Al Qaeda’s growth (or present decline) there depends on the chaos and confusion that followed the 2003 invasion and the vacuum created by the fall of Saddam. The scale of and media attention on its presence in Iraq aside, Al Qaeda’s role there follows the same pattern as in Afghanistan and Chechnya in the late 1990s, or Somalia more recently - it tries to implant itself wherever a political vacuum or persistent instability develop in the midst of military conflict. Lebanon, Gaza, the Sahel, southern Thailand and Philippines are, or should be expected to become, such areas of implantation. In all such cases Al Qaeda interferes in an evolving conflict, exacerbates it, and tries to channel the outcome towards its own goals and translate local motivations into a coherent ideological and global cause.

It is precisely this Al Qaeda piggybacking on existing conflicts that makes the often heard distinctions between our fighting sectarian conflict or Al Qaeda in Iraq nonsensical. Al Zarkawi stirred up the Sunni-Shia conflict but did not invent it, and separating the two in practical terms is not a serious proposition, any more than trying to do so in Afghanistan between Taliban, Pakistani Islamist spillover, and Al Qaeda. For Al Qaeda such parasitic behavior serves to magnify its influence, and it will try to repeat it in every possible circumstance. This fits perfectly in the organization’s elite, vanguardist ideology. It sees itself and behaves as the spearhead of global jihad, not as its rank and file.

Ultimately, what seems to escape so many commentators, especially among politicians, is that Al Qaeda is two things simultaneously: (1) a violent Islamist organization with worldwide tentacles and a small core leadership of ideologues and strategists, and (2) part and parcel of a large and growing political-religious movement of Islamist revival. The organization tries to channel and recruits from the movement, and the latter looks to it for strategic direction and, often, tactical purpose.

Islamic Revivalist Movement
The Islamic revivalist movement that is by now dominant in most of the Muslim world from Malaysia to Morocco, including huge segments of the Muslim communities in the West, shares some of Al Qaeda’s basic ideological tenets: that Islam is in crisis and under attack, from inside and outside by alien, Western, mostly American influence and domination. Roughly put, Islamic countries and Muslims generically are victims of the West. The only solution is a return to the “original” principles of the faith, those that gave it world importance and power centuries ago, and to umma unity and solidarity.

These basic perceptions are shared by a majority of Muslims and Islamic organizations everywhere, from the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest, to individuals and smaller groups, whether in Muslim-majority countries or in the West. While refuge in religious revivalism as an answer to civilizational, political and military decline is far from unique to Islam, its contemporary manifestation is largely Islamic.

The interface between the general perception of Islam as victim of the West—a perception often encouraged by Western elites themselves—and Al Qaeda’s (or the Salafi) view that the victimization is largely due to naked aggression is thin. This is demonstrated by a seldom noticed aspect of the reaction of nonviolent, even anti-Al Qaeda groups and personalities, including those in the West, to Islamist terrorism. Those groups have steadfastly opposed not just the conflict in Iraq, where the arguments used in favor of the U.S.-led intervention could always be debated, but also the 2001 U.S.-led attack on the Taliban. Indeed, almost always in Islamic critiques of American and British policies, whether they come from London or Riyadh, the Muslim Brothers or others, Afghanistan is mentioned in the same breath as Baghdad. Since the removal of the Taliban and its Al Qaeda proteges was a clear-cut case of self-defense, Muslim condemnations of the Afghan operations could only mean that umma solidarity is more important to them than the Taliban’s crimes. Precisely the kind of attitude Al Qaeda needs to thrive.

Where most of the Islamic revivalist movement and its supporters depart from Al Qaeda’s ideology is the method whereby Islam is to be renewed. In that sense, Western leaders’ claim that “most Muslims” reject jihadism is correct, but far from encouraging. Despite attempts, such as those sponsored by Jordan’s Crown prince Hassan to have respected imams condemn jihadi terrorism (the method not the ideas leading to it), not only has no important Sunni scholar declared Bin Laden a non-Muslim (the most influential, Al-Qaradawi, would rather let Allah decide), but many large Islamist organizations, such as Hizb ut Tahrir (an international Party of Liberation) or the Tablighis (Muslims missionary movement), could and do claim to be seeking the Caliphate by nonviolent means while their recruits often “graduate” to jihadism—again, same beliefs, different methods, and all unhelpful. Thus, even when revivalist Islamists sincerely claim to oppose jihadism, they are voluntarily tying their own hands. Hence the eternal and annoying “we condemn terrorism… but” that so confuses Western politicians, media and publics.

Why, in this context, anyone in the West would expect such Muslims, as a whole or organized ones, to condemn anything other than acts of terrorism is a mystery.

Al Qaeda/Movement Relationships
The relationships between the different Al Qaeda parts of the movement are dynamic, both centripetal and centrifugal at the same time.

Centripetal. The centripetal expansion of the movement follows general, indeed universal terrorist patterns of recruitment and indoctrination. In the specific case of Al Qaeda this means two distinct, but related methods.

The first is centered on the thousands of trainees who graduated from the Afghan camps prior to the end of 2001, who returned to their countries of origin—Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and countries in North Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe. Once back, they either established cells or founded or radicalized existing organizations (the cases of Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon). These people know and share Al Qaeda core’s ideology and many retain ties, including personal ones, with it and with each other.

A typical case is that of Saad Houssaini, a.k.a. Moustapha, one of Al Qaeda’s most prominent cadres in Spain and North Africa. Born in Meknes, Morocco, from a middle-class family (his father was a professor)—an almost universal pattern among Al Qaeda cadres, Houssaini obtained a government scholarship to study chemistry and physics at the University of Valencia in Spain. It was there that he was attracted, or recruited, to Islamism under the influence of Sheikh Rachid Ghannouchi, the London-based ideologue and leader of Al-Nahda (the Revival), Tunisia’s major Islamist organization. Already under Spanish surveillance, in 1997 he fled to Taliban’s Afghanistan where he underwent further training in explosives in Al Qaeda camps, met other Moroccans, Bin Laden, Al Zarkawi and Al Zawahiri—the latter was a witness at his marriage. Following the U.S. attack in the fall of 2001, he returned to Morocco in April 2002, became a founder of GICM (Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, now part of the Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb—AQIM) and trainer of its bomb makers. By September 2006 he was running a network of Moroccan volunteers to Iraq, until his arrest in March 2007.[1] It was under the influence of one of the many “nonviolent” Islamist ideologues in Spain harbored by “Londonistan” that he was radicalized, shifted to jihadism, established personal ties to the Al Qaeda core, and later served as a force multiplier for the organization thousands of miles away.

Second, Al Qaeda’s central core (Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, etc.) have sometimes accepted and given their “brand copyright” to organizations formed independently, such as the Algerian Salafi Group for Combat and Preaching, which last year became the AQIM, or autonomously, like Al Zarkawi’s group, now Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

Like metastasized cancerous tumors, members and trainees of these formal Al Qaeda franchises, and some informal ones, like Southeast Asia’s Jemaah Islamiah, spread the ideology and expand the committed membership of the movement.

Centrifugal. There is, however, another dynamic within the movement, a centrifugal one. This consists of thousands of individual Muslims, many from the West and including a disproportionate number of converts to Islam, who have no personal ties to the Al Qaeda core or its main franchises, but feel attracted to its ideology and the methods it uses. With each spectacular jihadi attack or campaign, their numbers grow and they flock to the latest battlefield, as defined by Al Zawahiri in his Al Jazeera statements or by the innumerable jihadi Internet sites and their do-it-yourself jihad recipes.

There is not always a clearly defined line between the two dynamics—Al Qaeda recruiting for its cause and would be, self-recruited jihadis seeking a battle under its flag, or at least its cause.

The case of Shaker Al-Abssi, the leader of Fatah Al-Islam in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr Al-Bared, near Tripoli, Lebanon, lately under assault by that country’s army, is revealing. A Palestinian born in a camp near Jericho, his family migrated to Jordan after 1967, and he joined Yasser Arafat’s Fatah as a teenager. The organization sent him to study medicine, but he dropped out in favor of becoming a pilot, receiving training in Libya and later serving as an instructor in South Yemen. Later he participated in combat, on the winning Sandinista side in Nicaragua and on the losing Libyan side in that country’s conflict with Chad. Disappointed with Arafat’s corruption, he joined dissident, pro-Syrian factions and moved to Damascus, where he discovered religion and became a fervent believer. Afterward he became associated with Al Zarkawi’s group in Iraq and Jordan, and was sentenced to death in absentia for his role in murdering an American diplomat in Amman in 2002. Why? Because, says his brother Abdel Razak, a doctor, “The Palestinians have tried Marxism and Arab nationalism. All failed. I believe that for Shaker Islamism was the ultimate solution.” Now, claims his family, “we wait for him to become a martyr, hoping that his death will be the fuel that will set on fire the Palestinian cause.”[2]

This, then, is a case of a rebel in search of a global ideological and strategic anchor to articulate and justify his fight for a particular cause. Associating with Al Qaeda satisfied both needs. The fact that Fatah Al-Islam is seen as both an Al Qaeda spin-off and a Syrian tool should not be confusing, not in light of the organization’s pattern of tactically piggybacking other causes.

Another good example is a new jihadist group, Ansar al Islam fi Sahara al Bilad al Mulazamin (The followers of Islam in Sahara, the land of those lifting the veil). Made up of Moroccans, Algerians, and Mauritanians, dissident elements of AQIM, it first surfaced in June 2007. Ansar refuses to obey direct orders from Al Qaeda’s core, all the while telling the latter that “You should know that we are in the same trench.” Indeed, it shares Al Qaeda’s well-known obsession with the “recovery” of Al-Andalus and hatred for all North African governments and France.[3] This is a perfect example of what French analysts call the “Al Qaeda nebula”—a multiplying system of jihadi groups ideologically, but not always hierarchicaly, tied to the core group. We are once again confronted with the interface of movement and terrorist group.

Conclusion
German-Turkish author Necla Kelek was right when she pointed out that

“Politicians and religious scholars of all faiths are right in pointing out that there are many varieties of Islam, that Islamism and Islam should not be confused, that there is no line in the Koran that would justify murder. But the assertion that radical Islamic fundamentalism and Islam have nothing to do with each other is like asserting that there was no link between Stalinism and Communism.”[4]

But just as Stalinism (and Pol Pot or Mao) was made possible by the mass of usually peaceful and naive believers in the Marxist Utopia, Al Qaeda and its nebula are permanently feeding up from the growing Islamic revivalist movement. To separate the two should be the goal of Muslims and non-Muslims alike, since they are all targets of jihadism. To deny the intimate link between the two is to deny reality. By making artificial distinctions between the two, one only postpones and avoids the real struggle.

Notes

For his career, see “Adil Boukhima, Portrait: Le Marocain d’Al Qaida,” TelQuel (Casablanca), May 17, 2007; Craig Whitlock, “In Morocco’s ’Chemist,’ A Glimpse of Al-Qaeda Bombmaker Typified Resilient Network, Washington Post, July 7, 2007; Driss Bennani, Abdellatif El Azizi, Ismail Bellaouali and Lahcen Aouad, “Enquete. Au-dela de la panique,” Tel Quel, July 5, 2007. [back]
Cecile Hennion, “De la colere au djihad, le chef du Fatah Al-Islam raconte par son frere,” Le Monde, June 5, 2007. [back]
Antonio Baquero and Jordi Corachán , “Actividad Extremista En El Desierto. Un nuevo grupo terrorista magrebí amenaza a España,” El Periodico (Barcelona), July 12, 2007. [back]
Quoted by Peter Schneider, “The New Berlin Wall,” New York Times, Dec. 4, 2005. [back]

[Executive Summary of the conclusion of Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism & Guerrilla Warfare from the American Revolution to Iraq. By William R. Polk, to be published on September 15, 2007 by HarperCollins. ]

... Is there some new magic formula for success? Generals David Petraeus and James Amos argue that there is. They have laid out a counterinsurgency doctrine. (December 2006 Counterinsurgency Field Manual). But it is not new. When tried in Vietnam, it did not work. As Petraeus and Amos admit, the key element in insurgency is political: “each side aims to get the people to accept its governance or authority as legitimate.” Is this a feasible objective for foreigners? One searches the historical record in vain for an example of success. The foreign occupying force, by definition, is alien. Vietnam showed that even when the aliens (us) had a numerous and established local ally (the South Vietnamese government) that ally was more apt to be alienated by its association with the foreign military force than that force was to be “Vietnamized” by their native ally. In sum, the single absolutely necessary ingredient in counterinsurgency is extremely unlikely ever to be available to foreigners.

Can we not, therefore, “Iraqize” the war? We tried in Vietnam to “Vietnamize” that war by empowering the South Vietnam Government. But there, and elsewhere, natives always see such action as facades behind which foreigners stay – as the British did in Iraq. So the foreign-supported governments are not supported and have little power. We saw this in Vietnam and are already seeing it in Iraq and Afghanistan. No insurgency has been defeated in this way for at least the last century. In fact, trying this ploy in Vietnam, and gradually withdrawing over four years, cost an additional 21,000 American lives.

What about “the war on terror” beyond Iraq? Little public attention is paid to Afghanistan or – so far – to Somalia and the Philippines. Another campaign is in the advanced positioning stage against Iran. Others are being discussed for various parts of Africa and at least one for Latin America. The men who designed the current Bush administration foreign policy, the neoconservatives, have called the combination of these campaigns “the long war” and have predicted – indeed proposed – that they will last half a century. Going down this path will result in thousands of American dead and tens of thousands crippled, will severely strain American democratic institutions at home and further erode America’s reputation abroad. The monetary costs have been estimated at 15 trillion dollars. ...

[Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu.]

He may be the most beloved man in Iraq right now. Younis Mahmoud, the Iraqi soccer team captain who scored the winning goal in Iraq’s final win over Saudi Arabia in the Asian Cup, triggering mass jubilation in his tortured country, is a symbol of Iraqi nationhood.

Mahmoud, a Sunni Muslim on a majority Shiite team, scored on a pass last Sunday from Mulla Mohammed, the team’s only Kurdish player, for a 1-0 victory. I can only imagine how moving that was to the secular Baathists, the Sadrist nationalists, and others worried about civil war provoked by the invasion, or partition as openly suggested by some U.S. politicians like Joe Biden. All kinds of people are saying that Iraqis should learn from the soccer team and unite to achieve national goals. Praise for the team vents contempt for the corruption and lethargy of the compromised political class.

But does Mahmoud plan to head home and bask in his country’s affection? No, he’ll return to his home in Qatar where he plays for a local team.

“I don’t want the Iraqi people to be angry with me,” he told AP, noting that a bomb killed Iraqis celebrating the teams’ win over South Korea last week. The dead included a boy. “His mother said when her child was killed in front of her, she didn’t cry. She said, ‘I present my son as a sacrifice for the national team.’ Then we had to win.” Mahmoud is perhaps disturbed that anyone would attack a group of soccer fans celebrating a victory. But he also expresses fear towards those ruling Iraq.

One of the team captain’s closest friends has been arrested during the occupation, “and for one year neither me nor his family knew where he is.” Mahmoud has no confidence about his own security in Iraq, even as it unites in pride over his athletic achievement. He’s afraid he’ll be killed if he goes back, and makes it clear where he places the blame for the catastrophe.

“I want America to go out,” he declares. “Today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, but out. I wish the American people didn't invade Iraq and hopefully it will be over soon.”

I doubt his reputation in Iraq will suffer from the report of those remarks.

* * * *

Other Iraqi soccer-players’ quotes from the past

Olympic team midfielder Salih Sadir, responding in Athens in August 2004 to Bush’s claim that Iraq wouldn’t be able to participate in the games had he not “liberated” their country tells Sports Illustrated: “Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign. . . . He can find another way to advertise himself. . . .We don’t wish for the presence of the Americans in our country. We want them to go away.”

Star player Ahmed Manajid, Sunni from Fallujah, after declaring that if he weren’t playing soccer in Athens he would “for sure” be fighting alongside his people: “I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists? Everyone [in Fallujah] has been labeled a terrorist. These are all lies. Fallujah people are some of the best people in Iraq. . . How will [Bush] meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women? He has committed so many crimes.”

Team coach Adnan Hamad stressed, “My problems are not with the American people. . . They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. . . The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the stadium and there are shootings on the road?”