ji·had·ica

Three new books

Joas Wagemakers June 18, 2014

As readers of Jihadica know quite well, jihad – the core subject of this weblog – is quite different from Salafism and even from terrorism, although they are, sadly, all too often equated. This does not mean, however, that studies on any of these three subjects may not benefit students of one of the others. With this is mind, Jihadica readers may be interested to know that three books that I have personally been involved in have recently been published. Two of them deal with Salafism and one with terrorism.

Utopian ideals

The first of these books was published in Dutch – sorry about that, but there are bound to be some Dutch readers among you – and was written by two of my colleagues at Radboud University Nijmegen (the anthropologist Martijn de Koning and the political scientist Carmen Becker) and myself. The book is called Salafisme: Utopische idealen in een weerbarstige praktijk (“Salafism: Utopian Ideals in a Stubborn Reality”) and was published by Parthenon. The book contextualizes Salafism within discussions on fundamentalism and radicalization, but really tries to show that Salafism is first and foremost a religious trend within Sunni Islam, not the producer of terrorists that some think it is. The book deals with the history of Salafism, its ideology, its presence in the Middle East and Europe, Salafi activities and ritual practices on the internet and Salafism in the Netherlands. The chapters on ideology, the Middle East and the Netherlands obviously also deal with the radical ideas and the violent actions of Jihadi-Salafis, how these developed and how these have been influenced by the Arab Spring.

True Islam

The second book (this one in German) that I would like to draw your attention to was edited by Behnam T. Said and Hazim Fouad – both German scholars of Islam – and is entitled Salafismus: Auf der Suche nach dem wahren Islam (“Salafism: In Search of True Islam”). It was published by Herder and contains – apart from my own chapter on the classification of Salafism and its relation with al-wala’ wa-l-bara’ (loyalty and disavowal) – chapters on many different aspects of Salafism, including a discussion on Salafism as a distinct category, its creed, Salafism as a school of law and as a political ideology, its role in several Muslim countries (Egypt, Morocco, Turkey and Saudi Arabia) as well as special attention for Europe in general and Germany in particular. Chapters that Jihadica readers may be extra interested in are those written by Behnam T. Said on Salafism and political violence, the chapter by Aaron Y. Zelin on Jihadi-Salafis in Libya and Tunisia and the one on the concept of ghuraba’ (strangers) by Benno Köpfer.

Terrorist Leaders

Finally, the third book – don’t worry, this one’s in English! – was edited by Kacper Rekawek and Marko Milosevic, two experts on terrorism from, respectively, Poland and Serbia, and is entitled Perseverance of Terrorism: Focus on Leaders. It was published by IOS Press and, as the title suggests, focuses on leadership in terrorist movements. Although my chapter is a bit of an outlier since it focuses on religious authority among leaders in Jordanian quietist Salafi and Jihadi-Salafi networks and does not deal with terrorism at all, the other chapters cover many different aspects of terrorism, including definitional and strategic issues, terrorist links with crime, the question of eliminating terrorist leaders and case studies of movements in Macedonia and the Czech Republic. Chapters touching on or explicitly dealing with jihad in relation to terrorism are Ekaterina Stepanova’s study on “lone wolves” and leaderless jihad, Dario Cristiani’s chapter on the Sahelisation and hybridisation of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghrib, Ryszard M. Machnikowski’s research on terrorism in the AfPak region and Marko Babić’s chapter on Islamist radicalisation in the Western Balkans.

Although these three books are quite different in style and focus – particularly the last book, of course – I’m sure that Jihadica readers will find much of interest in all three. I’m not aware of any plans for translations of the first two books, but I can tell you that another interesting book on Salafism in English will be published later this year or next year. If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter (@JoasWagemakers), you will certainly hear about this. If not, watch this space…

Usama bin Laden Called Yunus Khalis “the Father Sheikh:” Weird But Possibly True

Kevin May 21, 2013

Many authors have tried to fill in the gaps in the historical account of how al-Qa’ida’s central leadership came to reside in Jalalabad for part of 1996, with mixed results. Yunus Khalis has become a fixture in these narratives largely because he was the best known person that Bin Laden interacted with in the summer after al-Qa’ida’s leadership fled Sudan for Nangarhar. For many authors, Khalis’s fame and prominence in the region combined with his known interactions with Bin Laden provide an adequate explanation: al-Qa’ida must have come to Nangarhar in 1996 because of the importance of the Khalis-Bin Laden relationship.

This is, of course, a vast oversimplification, and I hope that the report I recently published for West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center will go some way towards exposing the most obviously untenable parts of this narrative. But as part of the research for this monograph, I have also found a primary source which upholds what I had long believed to be the most unlikely component of the accepted account of al-Qa’ida in Afghanistan: the idea that Usama bin Laden called Yunus Khalis a father.

The biographical material on Yunus Khalis is extensive and appears to be growing relatively rapidly. Some of his biographers, like Haji Din Muhammad, are still aligned with the government in Kabul and so have clear reasons for downplaying the connections between Yunus Khalis and the erstwhile al-Qa’ida leader. Other biographers,  like Puhnamal Ahmadzai, take a different approach by either ignoring the issue entirely or by actually playing up Khalis’s contact with Bin Laden for one political purpose or another. One of these latter biographers, ‘Abd al-Kabir Talai, states explicitly what has heretofore only been the subject of speculation and hearsay: that Usama bin Laden called Yunus Khalis “the Father Sheikh.”

Although this is so far the only known primary source that makes such an argument about the relationship between these two, Talai gives a clear and believable reason for why Usama bin Laden had such a warm view of Khalis. I encourage anyone interested in the specifics of this exchange to read my report, but for now I’ll simply say that apparently Bin Laden appreciated that Khalis was not a “fair weather friend.”

In any event, there was nothing particularly exceptional about someone calling Khalis by such a familiar name; the titles of two of his biographies refer to him as “Khalis Baba.”  In Pashto and Persian “baba” can be either “papa,” “granddad,” or simply a term of respect for an older man, and it is entirely possible that Bin Laden was just following the practice of Khalis’s Pashtun friends by using this term of endearment.

Although I was frankly surprised to find a confirmation of this particular historical tidbit about Bin Laden’s fondness for Yunus Khalis in my primary source research, there are a number of excellent reasons to believe Old Man Khalis was peripheral to the growth of al-Qa’ida as a major terrorist organization. So far there is every indication that Yunus Khalis was dismissive of Bin Laden’s calls for jihad against the American presence in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s. And in any event, by 1996 when the al-Qa’ida leadership returned to Afghanistan, Khalis was nearing the end of his productive working life.  Although he remained engaged in attempts to promote negotiations between the Taliban movement and various mujahidin factions, he would soon be too ill to have much effect on the operations of groups like al-Qa’ida even if he had wanted to.

The exciting thing about discovering these kinds of historical nuggets in the biographical material of mujahidin leaders like Yunus Khalis is that it reminds us how little we still know about both Khalis and other, much more famous people like Usama bin Laden. And as more sources become available in print, I suspect that we can look forward to all kinds of unexpected adjustments to the current mujahidin myth cycle.

The Jihad of Images – al-Qaeda’s Prophecy of Martyrdom

Nico Prucha May 2, 2013

Asiem El Difraoui, a senior political scientist and an award winning documentary filmmaker, has recently published a new book on the subject of Jihad videos as the most important propaganda phenomenon. He currently is a senior fellow at Institute for Media- and Communication Policies in Germany.

In his book, The Jihad of Images – al-Qaeda’s Prophecy of Martyrdom, Asiem analyses the visual communication strategy of contemporary jihadism along the iconography and overall narrative jihadists have successfully promoted in the recent years.  Asiem has been engaged in studying jihadists and their propaganda for several years and is a regular member at conferences (here and here).

Out of the range of Asiem’s recent publications, his study jihad.de is of particular interest (in German, click here).

Here is the English book description by the publisher (for French, click here):

“Without the creation of a highly complex propaganda strategy with videos as its most efficient weapons, Al-Qaeda and its Jihadi allies might already have ceased to exist. The Jihad of Images not only retraces the history of Al-Qaeda’s propaganda from its beginnings and the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan – thus offering a unique insight into the history of the Jihadi movement – it also analyses in detail the symbolism of Al-Qaeda’s revolutionary visual language in Islamic terms and the different genres of propaganda videos. Most importantly, the author illustrates that through its video production, Al-Qaeda hijacks the mythology of Islam and its symbols to create its own eschatological myth of martyrdom, presented as the sole path to salvation. This myth includes a cosmology in which leaders such as Osama bin Laden become prophets in Max Weber’s sense of the word, and the so-called “martyrs”, saints. In this way, Al-Qaeda qualifies as a sect. Yet despite its failure to mobilise the Muslim masses, Al-Qaeda, through its videos, has nevertheless succeeded in creating a culture of Jihad that is recognized by a considerable number of Muslims today and could inspire future generations. The research for this book was not only based on the screening of hundreds of Jihadi films but also on impressive field work including rare interviews with: leading Jihadi propagandists, Jihadi sympathisers, captives of jihadi groups as well as those engaged in the fight against global Jihad and its propaganda – from Afghanistan and Iraq to the United Kingdom and the United States.”

 

 

 

Yunis Khalis and Social Justice: an early political discussion in Nangarhar

Kevin December 18, 2012

Much of the secondary literature in the West depicts Professor Ghulam Niazi as the progenitor of the mujahidin movement in Afghanistan in the 1960s. For a variety of reasons this contradicts primary sources that focus more on the various resistance efforts elsewhere in Afghanistan during this period. Of course, the primary sources are also influenced by the political projects of their authors.

Take, for example, the case of Yunis Khalis. Khalis’s biographers are more interested in a narrative that gives their subject a prominent role in the fight against the Soviets than they are in writing about the creation of an Afghan Islamist movement initiated by Professor Niazi at Kabul University. On the other hand, the two mujahidin parties that trace their founding mythology directly to Professor Niazi (Hizb-e Islami (Gulbuddin) and Jami’at-e Islami) have also been remarkably successful at setting the terms of the historical debate about the origins of the Afghan mujahidin. So it should be no surprise that the Khalis literature reflects the importance of the political gatherings hosted by Yunis Khalis and other eastern ‘ulama, while the material linked to the Kabul Islamists emphasizes Professor Niazi.

It may be decades before it is possible to untangle the accounts that have already been published by eye witnesses to this chaotic period of Afghan history; so many of the principal actors have died that we will probably never know the full story. But while it is too early to offer a full depiction of the resistance activities in Nangarhar in the years before 1979, my recent research on the biographies of Yunis Khalis has given me some unexpected insight into the kinds of political discussions that were taking place in eastern Afghanistan before the mujahidin parties had fully formed. While Khalis did not take a major leadership role in the early days of the resistance movement, he was active in a variety of circles and led many discussion groups with students and others about political and religious issues. These meetings were generally much less public or contentious than the sometimes raucous activities organized by the Muslim Youth, but they were not without their own controversy.

At one such gathering at Nangarhar University in 1349/1970, a doctor (or medical school student–Khalis’s biographer Din Muhammad equivocates) spoke out on an issue that apparently touched one of Khalis’s nerves. According to Din Muhammad the doctor said that “Mullahs are up to no good when they preach against money or they teach children; they must not take money or a salary (Din Muhammad 2007, 32).” Although we do not get a full picture of this doctor or his argument, Khalis’s contemptuous response to him is fascinating and I include it here in its entirety:

I studied in private mosques, and I paid my own expenses for traveling to and fro for my education, and I worked in the mosques. There were very many students like me who did not even have full bellies, and we had no clothing, and we would go long distances barefoot to find teachers to educate us in the mountains. And you, the cost of your housing is paid, and you study in beautiful cultivated areas; to you living expenses have been given for passing the night in beautiful places. From among you doctors are made, and the national budget has decreased because of you, while nothing has been spent on me. Come, in the manner of a mullah I pledge to you that I take absolutely no money for being an imam, and I teach classes for children without such money. You, a doctor, come to me and pledge to me that you will write prescriptions for sick people without charge.  (Din Muhammad 2007, 32-33)

This argument at a gathering at Nangarhar University echoes a theme that Din Muhammad elaborates in his discussion of Yunis Khalis as a homeopathic healer: healers should serve the poor for no charge (Din Muhammad 2007, 224-226). Without having more information about other similar gatherings, it is hard to know the extent to which this discussion at Nangarhar University was typical. But even so, it reveals something about Khalis’s perception of himself, his own life story, and the role of social justice in his political ideology.

The critical importance of providing for the poor in the community is also discussed prominently in the context of Khalis’s decision to create a new housing development called Najm al-Jihad south of Jalalabad after the end of the Soviet-Afghan War (Din Muhammad 2007, 266-267). Din Muhammad explicitly states that the name for this neighborhood was chosen to reflect its connection to the famous Mullah of Hadda, also known as Najm al-Din Akhundzada. Today Khalis’s neighborhood is only a few kilometers west of the Mosque at Hadda, and future investigations may help to uncover whether Khalis’s connection to the famous Mullah of Hadda goes any deeper than his choice of a name for a housing development that was ostensibly designed in part for poor people, the disabled, and war widows.

The Khalis biographies should not be read as a coherent argument against Professor Niazi’s prominent position in the development of Afghan Islamism. However, they do offer important clues about the political activities of prominent ‘ulama in eastern Afghanistan in the 1970s who were only peripherally involved in the Kabul Islamist movement. In the process of depicting these largely informal discussion groups and gatherings, Din Muhammad goes out of his way to stress the critical role that social justice played in Khalis’s politics. Any serious conversation about the history of the Afghan mujahidin will always have to account for the better known activities of Professor Niazi’s protégés in the Muslim Youth and Jami’at-e Islami.

However, this story of Khalis’s argument with a doctor at Nangarhar University in 1349/1970 is a helpful reminder that the relatively cosmopolitan scene at Kabul University was not the only important site of political contention in Afghanistan in the 1960s and 1970s. It is too early to say who attended these kinds of gatherings in Nangarhar or what significance this participation may have had for the later development of the mujahidin movement, but as more sources are published these kinds of investigations promise to show us a much richer picture of the early days of the anti-leftist political resistance in eastern Afghanistan.

Holiday Reading

Thomas Hegghammer December 21, 2010

Two pieces of advice for those of you wondering what to read over the Christmas break:

First, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has released its long-awaited report on ideological divisions in the jihadi movement. I had the great pleasure of reading it in advance as an external reviewer, and all I need to say is that it is destined to become a classic in the field of jihadism studies.

Second, Aaron Zelin has posted very useful lists of important books, articles and reports (part 1, 2, 3, 4) on jihadism published in 2010. I had missed some of the items myself, so I am grateful to Aaron for compiling them.

The Jihadis’ Path to Self-Destruction

Thomas Hegghammer November 28, 2010

Nelly Lahoud’s much-awaited new book, the Jihadis’ Path to Self-Destruction, is out. Lahoud, who recently joined West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center as an associate professor, is one of the finest scholars of jihadi ideology around. Her book is a brilliant dissection of contemporary jihadi discourse with an original twist, namely an in-depth comparison of modern jihadism with early Kharijism. She argues convincingly that the takfiri reflexes of contemporary militants will lead to their internal fragmentation and political marginalisation, just as it did with the Kharijites. A very impressive work.

A Brief History of Jihadism in Turkey

Einar Wigen June 26, 2009

Despite the Istanbul attacks in 2003, the Turkish fight against terrorism has remained largely synonymous with the fight against Kurdish separatists. To my knowledge, there are few if any in-depth academic studies of Turkish jihadism. Not even the 2003 Istanbul attacks have been closely examined by scholars, despite a wealth of available Turkish sources. At most, there are studies of how the Turkish media covered these events, and the emphasis is on the narrative being used by non-jihadists to describe the phenomenon (see e.g. Gökhan Gökulu’s 2005 M.A. thesis “Terör Eylemlerinin Medyaya Yansıması”). With the exception of Mehmet Faraç’s book İkiz Kulelerden Galata’ya: El Kaide Turka and the reporting of a few other journalists, Turkish writers and intellectuals seem surprisingly uninterested in the phenomenon itself. Although it has been thought that the secular Turks were almost immune to militant Islamism, the Turkish jihadist community appears to be growing.

The first Turks entered the jihadi scene in the late 1980s. Ferzende Kaya has interviewed a few of the surviving Turkish fighters from the Afghan war against the Soviets in the 1980s. The first Turkish jihadists went to Afghanistan as early as May 1980. According to Kaya, most of the veterans of the war either died in combat or retired from jihadism as they returned home.

Brian Glyn Williams offers a rare account of how a new generation of Turkish jihadists were recruited and trained in the 1990s. He puts its genesis down to the influx of Turkish Islamists who entered Islamist universities in Pakistan after 1994. The students, argues Williams, frequently crossed to border into Afghanistan to get what he calls “hands-on education”. Very little is known about this period, and I am uncertain what source material Williams bases these claims on.

Whether or not they arrived there by way of Pakistani universities, Turks arrived in Afghanistian in large enough numbers to keep a Turkish-language jihadi training programme running. By 2001 a Turkish group had coalesced around a Turkish Emir called Habib Akdaş. They were based in the Khalden camp in Eastern Afghanistan. Sometime between 9/11 and the American-led attack about a month later, the group left for Turkey. Two years later the group carried out the attacks against the British Consulate, two synagogues and an HSBC branch in Istanbul. According to his own account, the al-Qaida Iraq leader abu Musab Zarqawi’s right hand man, Louai al-Sakka, was the master mind behind the attack and the link between the Akdaş group and the al-Qaida leadership. Al-Sakka is now in prison for both the 2003 attacks and for attempting to bomb an Israeli cruise ship in 2005. The cruise ship plot was foiled when the chemicals al-Sakka was to use exploded in his rented apartment. Akdaş died fighting in Iraq.

In April this year, there appears to have been a spate of arrests in South-Eastern Turkey, and one of the arrestees is an Uzbek. The Turkish press described the arrested men as al-Qaida members. The Turkish (or rather Kurdish) Hizbullah (not to be confused with its Shia namesake in Lebanon) is located in this area, which also seems to provide many of the Turkish recruits for the Islamic Jihad Union. Although little is certain, there may be a link between IJU and Hizballah.

Arrests of alleged al-Qaida members are nothing new in Turkey. There have been raids many times before. One such wave of raids happened in April last year. If one is to believe the Islamic Jihad Union member Ebu Yasir el-Turki, as many as 2000 Turks have arrived in Afghanistan since 2001. He claims that most of them have gone back to Turkey where they try to create groups and recruit people for the Jihad in Afghanistan. As many as 5000 Turkish militants may have joined the insurgency in Iraq. If this continues, Turkey may have an important role to play in the global Jihad. Maybe it will not be a combatant or front, but Turkey is already a conduit, recruitment base and maybe also training ground for jihadists going to the hot fronts.

Jihadists Study Jihadi Studies

Thomas Hegghammer April 29, 2009

At the risk of seeming omphaloskeptic, I will add a few more observations about jihadists citing western scholars, because this phenomenon taking larger proportions than I expected.

Since my last post on the subject, both the Militant Ideology Atlas and the RAND study mentioned by al-Maqdisi have been posted on al-Maqdisi’s own website, Minbar al-Tawhid wa’l-Jihad (MTJ). Maqdisi’s readers can now enjoy the original version, the original executive summary as well as an Arabic summary of both reports. As many of you know, MTJ is the largest online library of jihadi literature, so this means that the CTC and RAND are now part of the official jihadi literary canon.

It also means we now know which RAND study al-Maqdisi was referring to in last week’s statement:  Building Moderate Muslim Networks by Angel Rabasa, Cheryl Benard, Lowell Schwartz and Peter Sickle.

Since the last post I have also learned that Joas Wagemakers has been cited before; In fact, both Muhammad al-Mas’ari and Abu Humam al-Athari have mentioned him in the past. The latter notes on p. 94 of his book The Exalted Declaration that “A Christian from one of the European countries has written a PhD thesis on al-Maqdisi in which he speaks about our sheikh al-Maqdisi and the sayings of his opponents and supporters. Curiously, this Christian has read all the books of our sheikh al-Maqdisi and he has an article in which he responds to the claim that al-Maqdisi has revoked his positions.”

At FFI we have been watching all these references to colleagues in the field with a mixture of jealousy and relief. We seemed to have escaped the scrutiny of the jihadists. Or so we thought.

A few days ago a scanned PDF version of Brynjar Lia’s book Architect of Global Jihad turned up on the al-Faloja forum as well as on Archive.org . It soon also appeared on Thabaat where it was applauded as “objective” (hat tip: Adam R.)

But the icing on the cake was the appearance, on Minbar al-Tawhid wa’l-Jihad, of an Arabic translation of my colleague Hanna Rogan’s FFI report on Jihadism Online. The translation is the work of the MTJ itself and is accompanied by an introduction to the report, to FFI and to Hanna’s bio. The fact that al-Maqdisi’s assistants took the time to translate Hanna’s 38-page report into Arabic is quite extraordinary. I have not seen this honour bestowed on any other recent academic publication.

What’s next, the Infidel Scholar Atlas?

Document (Arabic): 04-29-09-minbar-new-articles-inventory
Document (Arabic): 04-29-09-minbar-atlas-summary
Document (Arabic): 04-29-09-minbar-rand-summary
Document (Arabic): minbar-translation-of-hanna-rogan-ffi-report
Document: 04-27-09-faloja-architect-of-global-jihad

Update (30 April): Jihadica’s reporting inspired a frontpage story in the New York Times today.

Jihadi Pundit Translates, Analyzes RAND Study

Will McCants August 4, 2008

Yaman Mukhaddab, a Jihadi pundit who’s appeared on this blog several times, has translated the summary of the new RAND study, How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa’ida. It’s a fast turnaround for a translation, given that the existence of the study was first reported in Western media on July 28 and Yaman finished his work on July 30.

Yaman says he has rushed to translate the document for two reasons. First, he believes that it is dangerous. RAND, he says, has finally understood that the reason al-Qaeda attacks the U.S. is to provoke it into a direct military conflict in the Middle East, which will strengthen and consolidate the mujahids and bring about greater losses for the U.S. and its allies.

Second, RAND is the go-to contractor in the U.S. for crafting the government’s response to al-Qaeda. Past RAND studies have had a huge influence in this regard and most of their recommendations have been implemented.

Yaman further argues that the next administartion will follow the plan outlined in this study. Both Republicans and Democrats want to end direct engagement with mujahids in the Middle East and use proxies and clandestine operations instead.

Since RAND’s recommendations for correcting the U.S. response to al-Qaeda derive from a scientific study of past terrorist groups, the mujahids would do well to read them so as to not fall into the enemy’s new traps. Moreover, RAND studies are public and provide an early warning of what the U.S. will do next, so the mujahids would be foolish to ignore them.

After posting his translation of the summary, Yaman offers five thoughts:

  1. The enemy has finally begun to understand.
  2. There is much in this study that torpedoes the propaganda of the enemy, which will help the mujahids.
  3. How can the enemy’s new strategy be thwarted?
  4. The RAND study is not an exercise in disinformation. But it still has some major holes that its authors haven’t perceived.
  5. The study will be implemented. Indeed, there are signs of this happening already.

In the coming weeks or months, Yaman plans to flesh out the five points above. He also intends to translate the fifth section in the complete study called “Military Force and al-Qa’ida in Iraq” since it contains much of benefit to the mujahids. Finally, Yaman hopes to translate the entire 225 page document. I’ll keep you posted.

7-30-08-yaman-mukhaddabe28099s-commentary-on-rand-study-how-terror-groups-end

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