First, Know the Enemy, Then Act

In retrospect, the December 2000 report of the U.S. National Intelligence Council, “Global Trends 2015,” was chillingly prescient. It predicted that “terrorist tactics will become increasingly sophisticated and designed to achieve mass casualties.” At the same time, it envisioned a trend away from state-supported political terrorism and toward “more diverse, free-wheeling, transnational networks--enabled by information technology.” It forecast attacks “on U.S. soil.”

Now that those attacks have come, America will have to devise strategies to cope with terrorism--as have, to greater and lesser effect, England, Northern Ireland, France, Spain, Colombia, Peru, Sri Lanka, Japan, Algeria, Turkey and Israel.

As each of those countries has come to realize, the first step is to know one’s enemy. Al Qaeda differs from other terrorist movements in selecting targets on a global rather than a regional or local scale and in using tactics that initially defied the imaginations of the most experienced counterterrorist specialists. Al Qaeda is also thoroughly modern, representing the dark side of globalization. Its membership transcends national boundaries, drawing from Muslim countries throughout the Middle East and South Asia. In a strange irony, the group’s multinational makeup has its roots in the U.S.- and Saudi-approved recruitment of transnational Arab and other foreign fighters to the cause of expelling the Soviets from Afghanistan after they invaded in 1979. Al Qaeda, whose leadership includes many first drawn to Afghanistan in support of the anti-Soviet cause, has developed into a flexible multinational organization. Despite determined international surveillance, it has moved cash, people and weapons across frontiers.

Like the drug lords of Colombia in the 1980s, Al Qaeda is defensively organized. Its chain of command is not formal and hierarchical, so it is less open to destruction and interdiction. The Colombian drug lords offered plata o plomo--silver or lead, a bribe or a bullet--to induce cooperation or acquiescence. Al Qaeda, claiming to act in the name of Islam, pays out less than the drug barons because it makes stronger ideological claims. Its message may appeal only to a tiny minority, but, for that minority, Al Qaeda’s ideological appeals, calls to action and track record are convincing.

In part, the group’s success can be traced to its ability to effectively use the tools of the pop culture it rejects. An Al Qaeda recruitment video that circulated widely in the Middle East prior to Sept. 11 demonstrated that the group’s propaganda skills reached the “Arab street”--its target audience--more effectively than the Western superpowers or many Arab governments. The video begins with the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. It then moves to a quick-cut montage of aggression against Muslims in Palestine, Jerusalem, Lebanon, Chechnya, Kashmir and Indonesia. Many of the images are from Western news clips that still bear the BBC or CNN logos. The scenes are juxtaposed with images of a scholarly Bin Laden, posing in front of bookshelves or seated on the ground like a religious scholar. Then, putting to rest any thought that this is an organization of wimps, come clips of Al Qaeda military training in Afghanistan, including target practice on a projected image of Bill Clinton.

So, knowing the enemy, how do we devise strategies for managing the risk of living in a world with Al Qaeda? The war against terrorism has already brought short-term abridgements of human rights and political liberties, both domestically and internationally--especially in Central Asia and the Middle East. But these are not long-term solutions to reducing the threat posed by Al Qaeda and like-minded groups and may even be counterproductive.

Addressing underlying issues of poverty, unemployment and global economic imbalances--however desirable--is also not sufficient. Poverty and unemployment do not in themselves breed terrorism. Many of the most dedicated terrorists and advocates of extreme violence are affluent professionals or scions of the middle class. And some members of Al Qaeda’s top leadership--including Bin Laden and his Egyptian colleague, medical doctor Ayman Zawahiri--come from the wealthiest stratum of society.

Yet, they have grasped what the U.S. and its allies have not: how to appeal to disaffected elements of the Arab street, an increasingly educated public that today has access to a wide range of uncensored media and information that creates a desire for accountability from governments. In villages and small towns in Egypt and Iraq in the late 1960s, I frequently saw men at coffee shops or seated in circles, with one of the few literates reading aloud to the others. In Morocco in the early 1970s, rural people sometimes asked me to “translate” newscasts from the standard transnational Arabic of the state radio into their colloquial Arabic. Today this is no longer required. Mass education and new communications technologies enable large numbers of Arabs to hear and see Al Qaeda’s message directly.

The growth--and challenge--of this new public was widely recognized in U.S. policy circles well before Sept. 11. In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in February 2001, CIA Director George J. Tenet cited the Arab street, in explaining that “the right catalyst--such as the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence--can move people to act. Through access to the Internet and other means of communication, a restive public is increasingly capable of taking action without any identifiable leadership or organizational structure.”

Because many governments in the Middle East are deeply suspicious of an open press, nongovernmental organizations and open expression, it is no surprise that the public is increasingly influenced by the often extreme and hard-to-censor “new media.” Leadership can remain anonymous, an advantage in the Middle East, which, in general, has a democracy deficit and a demonstrated propensity for cracking down on critics.

One consequence of this democracy deficit is to magnify the power of the street in the Arab world. Bin Laden speaks in the vivid language of popular Islamic preachers and builds on a deep and widespread resentment against the West and local ruling elites identified with it. The lack of formal outlets to express diverse political opinions makes it easier for terrorists like Bin Laden, who cloaks himself in religion, to hijack some in his audience and motivate a lethal few to action.

We must accept that there will always be ideas available to justify intolerance and violence, and there will also always be ways for terrorists to manipulate open societies for their own nefarious ends. Countering radical ideologies and theologies of violence is not easy. Yet, the very proliferation of voices arguing in open debate about the role of Islam in the modern world and in contemporary society can contribute significantly to defusing terrorist appeals to the street. Public opinion is easier to hijack in the absence of full debate. Without public discussion, ideas are reduced to their simplest and starkest terms. That is why British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s response to Al Qaeda videotaped propaganda on Qatar’s Al Jazeera Satellite TV last October--he immediately asked Al Jazeera for equal time to reply--was more appropriate than the first U.S. response, which was to call for censoring the broadcast of Al Qaeda tapes.

The best long-term way to mitigate the continuing threat of terrorism is to encourage Middle Eastern states to be more responsive to their populations’ demands for participation. Some countries, including some of our allies, see such “open society” activities as subversive--as Egypt demonstrated in May when a security court sentenced civil rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim to seven years of hard labor for criticizing the regime and calling into question the fairness of recent elections.

It is no easy job to convince Arab states that it is in their interest to create open societies. But they must recognize that increasing levels of education, greater ease of travel and the rise of new communications media are turning the Arab street into a public sphere in which large numbers of people--and not just a political and economic elite--want a say in governance and public issues. Some countries, like Morocco, have been moving steadily in that direction. The terrorist option has no appeal to Moroccans. They have a greater stake in their society. The example of neighboring Algeria offers Moroccans a harrowing example of the alternative, and the Moroccan street speaks of it often.

There are liberal as well as illiberal voices in the Middle East and multiple contenders for the guardianship and interpretation of Islamic beliefs and values. Giving larger numbers of people a greater stake in decision-making in their societies and the opportunity to express their views will undermine the appeal of the terrorist alternative--and diminish its appeal to the street.

*Dale F. Eickelman, a professor of anthropology and human relations at Dartmouth College, is currently at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. He is the author of “The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach.”A lack of outlets for opinions makes it easier for terrorists like Bin Laden