President Obama needs to accept that our current conflict is as much against the idea of radical jihadism as it is against the physical presence of ISIS. Furthermore, by failing to define the religious-political ideology underpinning the enemy, the president contributes to an environment where all Muslims are increasingly looked at with suspicion. And when President Obama says that we are not at war with Islam, he is implicitly acknowledging to the public that Islam does have something to with extremism, disorder, and violence.
President Obama has also inadvertently cast a blanket of suspicion on the Muslim community through his rhetoric and framing of the challenge. Wouldn’t it be better if instead the president and the Administration defined the real enemy – a narrow band of radical extremists? However, the president framing makes this more about the Muslim community here at home which feeds into an Islamophobia narrative, and less about addressing the radical Islamic threat.
Many Muslim reformers in this country would like the Obama Administration’s support in their efforts to frame the problem for what it is – radical Sunni extremism – so that they can face the issue of tolerance and reform within the faith. However, many American Muslims express concern and even fear about speaking out – not just fear of home-grown radical jihadists but also a deep-seated concern about the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Many American Muslims don’t think CAIR represents them, and that the CAIR approach further alienates and divides Americans of all faiths. These are the “silent majority” among American Muslims.
Last Sunday, President Obama said, “we cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam.” No, Mr. President, this is more of a war between and among Muslims, and failing to come to terms with this fact contributes to Islamophobia at its worst. Overseas, Muslim leaders like King Abdullah of Jordan and Egypt’s President Sisi recognize the nature of the threat and are calling for a ‘religious revolution’ in Islam. They understand the threat is the extremist interpretation of Islam – the virulent idea. In fact, Pew Research has shown that the majority of Middle Eastern Muslims fear Islamic extremism too. And as former French Prime Minister Valles said after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, ” This is a war on violent radical Islam. It is a threat to liberty, freedom, solidarity and modernity.”
In these perilous times, it is good to recall what Clausewitz said: “The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman or commander have to make is to establish…the kind of war on which they are embarking, neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.”
It is also worth remembering that the seeds of strategic failure often occur due to leaders not understanding the character and nature of the conflict in which they are engaged. Strategic failure occurs when the development of clear options and subsequent decisions are not based upon a well-grounded understanding of the operational environment, situation awareness, and an insightful understanding of the enemy. Not understanding the radical jihadist enemy – whether ISIS or al Qaeda – leads to failing to correctly define the problem and answer the right questions up front. In the cases of both Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. leaders did not adequately understand nor anticipate the kaleidoscope of actors, groups, and agendas in dealing with the many challenges. In our current case, the president and his team are demonstrating that they do not understand this multidimensional enemy.
For decades, the United States has downplayed the role that religion plays in Arab politics, governance, and security due to a lack of understanding and a reliance on secular state actors. (That is until the Arab uprisings and the overthrow of leaders in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.) Importantly, these leaders were never as secular as the CIA and others wanted to believe, and their corruption of civil society helped create today’s poisonous mix. Through this phenomenon, we witnessed the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic State, and Iran orchestrated Shia militia and security coordination across the region. What we are now witnessing throughout the region is the potent mobilizing force of Islamic sectarianism and radicalization resulting in widespread instability, violence, brutality, and conflict. However, the reach of the radicalization is not limited to conflict within Islam in the Middle East – but it is inspiring, recruiting and hitting targets in the West as seen in Paris and San Bernardino.
The heart of the problem, at least since 9/11, is a failure to define and fully grasp the enemy, the kind of war we are in, and the larger strategic context that includes multiple dimensions of an intra-Islamic fight about the role of Islam in private and public life. The president’s framing of the conflict as simply against terrorism contributes to ambiguity and uncertainty, and Americans keenly sense a disconnect from what they see in the news and what they hear from the administration. The American people know that terrorism is a tactic – it is not the enemy.
The extremist jihadi agenda is a dangerous virus and overly focusing on the degrading and defeating ISIS in Syria and Iraq, is by definition failing to understand that this is a fight with a virulent idea. To be successful, we must accept the nature and character of the enemy and the kind of war we are fighting. Our fight since 9-11 against terrorism, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan, has failed in large part because we misunderstood the enemy and had no larger strategic context for defeating radical Islam.
So what are we dealing with at this point?
The radical jihadist agenda is advanced and supported by Saudi Arabian support for Wahabbism. Saudi Arabia and its close partner, Pakistan, with its thousands of Madrassas and support for Deobandism, are a key source of instability within Islam and threats contributing to regional instability. Saudi support for Wahhabism is the major challenge. Wahhabism has an intolerant and totalitarian approach that undermines more moderate and even mystical oriented elements of the Muslim faith such as Sufism. This intolerance creates an environment conducive to intimidation, coercionand violence directed at other Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Moreover, Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism undermines women’s rights, gay rights, free speech, free association, religious freedom, and liberal ideas in general rooted in respect for human rights and diversity. What goes on inside the sovereign country of Saudi Arabia is not so much our concern, but we do care when Riyadh supports Wahhabi expansionism. Nonetheless, we may not be able to so neatly separate these issues for many reasons to include the Saudi Arabia internal problem is a major reason they export the ideology through terrorism or as proselytizers of extremism.
Saudi Arabia’s financial support is critical for Salafi and Wahhabi expansion through education and mosque construction, and support to violent groups such as the Taliban, ISIS, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or the Haqqani Group. The European Parliament reports that the Saudis have spent more than $10 billion around the world to support charitable organizations such as the World Assembly of Youth, which are viewed by many as simply platforms to promote Salafism and Wahhabism – simply another manifestation of the ISIS interpretation of Islam.
Donors from Saudi Arabia have been key to the past success of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and for financing other extremist aspirations. In fact, many intelligence officials and jihadist analysts see Saudi Arabia as merely a watered down version of the Islamic State. Although ISIS seeks to topple the Kingdom, for now, many Wahhabis supporters see ISIS as more important to checking Iranian and Shia influence in both Iraq and Syria.
Meanwhile, ISIS is metastasizing throughout the Middle East, North Africa and into Central Asia. The Soufan Group report says that foreign fighters have doubled over the past 18 months indicating the continued success and appeal of the Islamic State. A more recent concern is that for Jordanian refugee camps it is estimated that between 15 and 20 percent of refugees support the Islamic State.
The unfortunate reality is that it is hard to combat a virulent idea that is grounded in the origins of the faithful and within a major religion. Ultimately, this is not about challenging Islam or fundamentally changing Islam. It is about acknowledging the ongoing debate and violence within Islam, which is about not just about defeating the Islamic State or al Qaeda. Ultimately, success depends on understanding that the conflict is rooted in a fight against an idea; an idea that is deeply rooted in an Islamic strain of thought incorporating the end of days, Islam as the final and perfect revelation, that the Quran is the word of God, and that there is a death penalty for questioning aspects of the faith or for leaving the faith.
Although the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not focus on the intolerant and violent aspects of the Quran and hadiths, nonetheless there exists a reluctance to openly address hard issues or to question aspects of the faith. There is a good reason for this reluctance, since over the years when thoughtful thinkers, working within the structure of Islam, attempted to offer criticism they have been declared apostates, jailed, or killed. And as long as this fear is there, there will be a hesitance to push back against the radicalism whether at home or overseas. Unless we confront the ideas – which begin by properly defining the threat – then this narrow core of radical Islamic ideology will continue to grow.
Events in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq show the increasing importance of sectarianism to outcomes in the region. Recent events give witness to the fact that violence; conflict and sectarianism have imploded within the Islamic umma. This has occurred both between the Sunni-Shia communities and within each of those communities independently and furthermore at varying levels within states such as Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and between states such as between Iran, Syria, Egypt and the Gulf States. The “annihilationist” agenda of Sunni extremists – basically the willingness to tear everything down to recreate the Caliphate is just one accelerating element. The intra-Sunni and Sunni-Shia conflict intersect with challenges of Arab political decay, underdeveloped civil society, and often with ineffective/corrupt governance. Moreover, Iran is sponsoring its own brand of militant Islam that could evolve into another accelerating element.
The intra-Sunni fight is characterized by an intra-Jihadist conflict for dominance, and a broader jihadist challenge to “establishment” Sunni thought about religion, governance, society and security. Most attention is focused on the active political engagement, mobilization, and violence emanating out of “Sunni jihadism”, from the Muslim Brotherhood, the ultra conservative ideology of the Salafists, to extremist violence exhibited by a range of jihadists, to brutality and savagery as represented by the Islamic State. Within the “extreme jihadist” movements there is at times even violent competition among and between groups (e.g. Islamic State vs. Jubat al Nusra and AQ) over leadership of the international jihadist brand.
These dynamics are compounded by the fact that broader Sunni-Shia tensions have become exacerbated through the break down of state authority, security, and the erosion of social contracts resulting in violent conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt extending into the broader Middle East and South Asia. Sunni-Shia conflicts have escalated into crackdowns and brutality in Lebanon and Bahrain. The Sunni – Alawi/Shia Syria’s civil war at its core is a fight over the future — sectarian identity, power, and influence. While Iran continues to seek nuclear capabilities and sponsor violence hoping to expand Shia dominance, Saudi Arabia, and others respond by supporting proxies.
Furthermore, the intra-Sunni and Sunni-Shia conflict have intersected with challenges of Arab political decline, underdeveloped civil society, economic frustration and grievances and ineffective/corrupt governance. Therefore, from local communities to the nation-state level, we are witnessing a confluence of conflict and frustration, within local communities, between communities, and the state and between states. As a result, the Islamic community has effectively imploded due to the collapse of authoritarian rule in a number of nation states. The result is that there is now a struggle for political and economic power and a fight over which interpretation of Islam will influence societies and new leaderships. Secular-oriented totalitarian regimes are not the solution going forward, so the challenge within these communities is to find a workable solution.
The Sunni-Shia conflict and the two dimensions of the intra-Sunni conflict have displaced the broader conflict between Muslims and the West as the primary challenge facing the Islamic societies of the Middle East for the foreseeable future. The sectarian conflict is the primary mobilizing factor within Arab political life today; overall this trends reflects an immense challenges for civil society, governance, development, the rule of law, and security. The many manifestations of the internal Islamic fight will shape future governance, civil society, development, security and even boundaries in the region. This is what the president needs to understand to shape an effective strategy.
The impact on development, security, governance, civil society and, in fact, the current state boundaries in the region make it especially important for the United States to better understand all aspects of Islam and its potential sectarian tendencies seriously as a mechanism for attaining political and economic authority.
Whether we want to fight radical Islam or not is irrelevant. It is unavoidable. Whether we want to deal with domestic subversion and domestic enemies or not is irrelevant. As Paris and San Bernardino have reminded us again, failing to define the enemy and ignoring our enemy doesn’t mean they will ignore us. In fact, it may create space for them to become more dangerous and more lethal. And it does risk strategic failure.
U.S. interventions in both Iraq and Afghanistan were far more costly in blood and treasure because decision makers did not define the enemy and did not sufficiently understand the kind of war in which we were engaged resulting in a failure to adapt and shape a spectrum of military operations and civilian programs accordingly. There are similar problems and challenges for President Obama’s approach to dealing with the Islamic State, and it is resulting in similar outcomes. Michèle Flournoy, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, said recently, “It’s (ISIS) something that’s a long-term challenge that we need to deal with, and I don’t think we are fully resourcing a multidimensional strategy.”
As Senators McCain and Graham wrote this week, “What’s needed is a comprehensive civil-military strategy to destroy ISIS quickly, while creating conditions that can prevent it, or a threat like it, from ever re-emerging. America must not only win the war but also prepare to win the peace. The U.S. has repeatedly failed to do this, and cannot afford to yet again.”
The formula for winning must take into account the need to combat the virulent idea that is radical Sunni Islam, and that this also means addressing the source of support found in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan for this backward thinking ideology. Identifying and combating the ideas of radical Islamic ideology is necessary or it will continue to grow. The sure path to undermine suspicion about our Muslim neighbors and friends is for President Obama to provide clarity about the character of the extremist jihadist threat and the kind of war we are jointly engaged in with our moderate Muslim friends and partners in the Middle East.
Colonel (Ret.) Derek Harvey is a Middle East specialist, Islamic scholar, and terrorism expert. He served as an advisor to multiple U.S. Commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.
