The War Of Ideas

NEW YORK

Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy, emerged this week in a newvideotape, taunting US President Bush for failing to kill him with a January13th missile attack in Pakistan. The tape, proof that al-Zawahri lives, promisesdefeat for the US and targets Bush: "Butcher of Washington, you are not onlydefeated and a liar, but also a failure. You are a curse on your nation and youhave brought and will bring them only catastrophes and tragedies," al Zawahirithundered.

In an earlier tape, Osama bin Laden claimed that Al Qaeda is winning itsglobal war and that his warriors "are increasing in number and strength" tobring about America’s "ultimate failure." The tape threatened to penetrateUS defenses and carry out another spectacular attack.

Separating Al Qaeda’s rhetoric from reality is not easy. Bin Laden and hisjihadist cohorts are waging an ideological war for Muslim hearts and minds, onethey consider as vital as their military campaign. Last October the USgovernment intercepted a letter from al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leaderof Al Qaeda in Iraq, reprimanding him for videotaped and widely broadcast imagesof hostage beheadings, and bombings that have slaughtered ordinary Shia Muslims,sometimes within mosques. Muslim public opinion abhors these "terror"methods, wrote al-Zawahiri, the ideologue and brains of Al Qaeda, and "willnever find them palatable." He continued, "We are in a race for the heartsand minds of our Umma," referring to the worldwide Muslim community.

Al-Zawahiri and bin Laden seek to convince Muslims, particularly militantIslamists, that Al Qaeda is winning its war against America. Such conviction,they reason, would incite their sympathizers to attack US interests around theworld. "War in Iraq is raging with no let-up," bin Laden declared on hislatest tape, "and operations in Afghanistan are escalating in our favor."

The bin Laden tape addresses the American people, both threatening freshattacks and offering hudna, or long-term truce, if America withdraws from Iraqand Afghanistan. He knows that Americans, unconvinced by the arguments behindhis attacks against the US, won’t buy his truce offer. In reality, the tapewas for Muslim ears: bin Laden intends to establish himself in the eyes of hisputative constituency as a legitimate leader, concerned with wartime diplomacy -that like George W. Bush, he is a wartime leader. The tape also answers Muslimcritics who faulted him for violating Islam’s fundamental rule of war:Americans were not thoroughly warned before the September 11 attacks - for thatmatter, neither were Africans, Iraqis, Indonesians, Jordanians, and others.

These subtexts are the tape’s real messages. Osama bin Laden is a fugitive;he must assure his supporters, anxious about his fate, that all is well. Inmid-January, a US air strike in Pakistan that targeted al-Zawahiri reportedlykilled four principal Al Qaeda figures. The Al Qaeda cohort is being closelytracked, and Al Qaeda cannot win if its top leaders spend most of their time inhiding, trying to survive. If nothing else, the bin Laden and al-Zawahiri tapessay "we are winning because we are alive."

Al Qaeda’s grand failure is its inability to win the war for Muslim heartsand minds. A major miscalculation of bin Laden and al-Zawahiri was believingthat a US attack would mobilize Muslims against their pro-Western rulers andthose rulers’ superpower patron. Al Qaeda expected a river of volunteers toflow into Afghanistan to fight the US. Only a trickle turned out. While publicsurveys show many Muslims sympathize with Al Qaeda’s foreign policy grievancesagainst the US, they oppose its terrorism and are unwilling to kill or be killedon its behalf.

Al Qaeda has failed since September 11 to reinvigorate and unify asplintered, war-torn jihadist movement and restore its "credibility" in theeyes of the Umma. Many Islamists and former jihadists, even within bin Laden’swing of the movement, saw September 11 as a calamity. A senior member of the AlQaeda shura, or consultative council, Abu al-Walid al-Masri, publicly lambastedbin Laden’s "catastrophic leadership" and his underestimation of Americanwillpower. Since September 11 more than a dozen books, memoirs and diaries byleading jihadists offered devastating critiques of what they called Al Qaeda’scolossal miscalculations and recklessness.

Since the late 1990s an intense struggle, an internal upheaval has torn thejihadist tribe apart. This civil war, which has hardly been noticed let alonecritically examined, in the US, has deepened since September 11. The jihadisttribe is split between the ultra-militant wing, including Al Qaeda, and anon-violent faction that commands greater numbers and political weight. The warin Iraq has overshadowed this civil war - a godsend to Al Qaeda - divertingattention from its zero-sum game and lending it an air of credibility. Bin Ladenand al-Zawahiri have successfully tapped into the widespread Muslim oppositionto the American-led occupation of Iraq. The war in Iraq proved a powerfulrecruiting tool for Al Qaeda, giving it time to regroup.

The Iraq war has merely postponed the inevitable shift of power towardactivists who oppose violence in the service of politics. The indiscriminateviolence of al-Zarqawi’s followers have turned Arab and Iraqi public opinionagainst global jihad. There are daily reports of armed clashes betweenhome-grown Iraqi fighters ­ the overwhelming majority of the insurgency ­ andthe al-Zarqawi network. Sunni tribal leaders and clerics have reportedlypromised to chase al-Zarqawi extremists out of their villages and towns. Thewidening rift between the two camps does not bode well for the survival of AlQaeda in Iraq.

This promising development does not mean the US is winning in Iraq. Al Qaedastill benefits from America’s woes in the war-torn country.

Equally important, Al Qaeda no longer exists as a coherent, unifiedorganization with centralized leadership and decision making; it is diffuse anddecentralized with local affiliates taking matters into their own hands, asdemonstrated by attacks in Iraq, Indonesia, Madrid, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, andLondon. Now bin Laden and al-Zawahiri focus primarily on providing spiritualinspiration and overall strategic direction to jihadist factions. Al Qaeda,while still dangerous, is a skeleton of its former strength. Bin Laden wouldhave us believe that Al Qaeda is on the verge of striking inside the US withanother 9/11. His claim flies in the face of Al Qaeda’s degraded militarycapabilities and the dwindling support for the global jihad in Muslim lands.

Notwithstanding the weakening of Al Qaeda, the struggle against thistransnational network cannot be won on the battlefield. The most effective meansto put the global jihad out of business is to complete its internalmarginalization in the Muslim world. Muslims almost universally reject Al Qaeda’sglobal jihad. Yet the Bush administration only pays lip service to the war ofideas, and has not taken effective measures to win Muslim minds. US prioritiesshould include extracting American troops from Iraq, earnestly promotingreconciliation and peace between Palestinians and Israelis, and investingsocio-political and economic capital in the rule of law and democracy in Muslimlands.

Fawaz A. Gerges holds the Christian A. Johnson Chair in Middle East andInternational Affairs at Sarah Lawrence College. He is the author of "TheFar Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global," published by Cambridge University Pressin 2005, and "Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy," to bepublished by Harcourt this year. Rights: © 2006 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.YaleGlobalOnline