ji·had·ica

The Non-Strategic “Special Strategic Study”

The “Falluja Think Tank” recently published the “Special Strategic Study of the Global Battle and the Jihadi Movement’s Place in It.” Like Thomas, I had high expectations, but was disappointed in the end because the study amounted to little more than general summaries of U.S. and jihadi history. However, the author did state that divine providence allowed 9/11 to happen, which caused the U.S. to abandon its principles of democracy and human rights. The author started by establishing that the battle between the United States and the jihadis is religious in nature rather than geopolitical or for acquiring resources. He commented that today’s “crusaders” are not only supported by their governments, but also by the “dogmatists” like the Knights Templar and the Knights of Malta, who, he claimed, “resemble the mujahedeen because they fight for faith.” He went on to chart America’s “path” to global dominance and then gave a

Read More »
Scott Sanford July 22, 2009

The Strategic Effects of 9/11, Part 5: The Jihadi Domino Theory

Continuing… Why did al-Qaeda attack the U.S.?  Was it to drive the U.S. out of the Middle East?  Or was it to strike the far enemy for the sake of destroying the near enemy (i.e. regimes in the Arab and Islamic world)? Regardless of the intent of al-Qaeda’s leaders, the sequence of events gives weight to the second possibility, which could also be termed the Domino Scenario. According to a 2007 article by George Friedman, Bin Laden saw a rare opportunity after the fall of the USSR to begin re-establishing the worldwide caliphate.  But, says Friedman, armed groups can’t establish empires.  They can, however, seize a state and use it to begin to establish an empire.  UBL realized that Afghanistan wasn’t the ideal place for this because of its geographical position and its weakness. Based on Zawahiri’s pre-9/11 writings, Friedman believes that UBL wanted to topple local regimes and replace

Read More »
Will McCants September 23, 2008

No Nuke Chatter?

Unbeknownst to me, ABC ran a story yesterday saying that al-Qaeda will release a new tape about WMD attacks on the West. A little later in the evening, Evan Kohlmann wrote at the Counterterrorism Blog that ABC and the FBI had been duped by fringe reporting about a silly AQ fan video posted online that showed scenes of nuclear annihilation. He rightly observes that such a video is not an AQ product. But he goes beyond that to say the following: For the record: there is no indication whatsoever that Al-Qaida’s As-Sahab Media Foundation is preparing to release anything in the next 24 hours. There has been no notification posted on the usual channels, there are no glitzy advertisements, and there is no credible electronic chatter, period. Rather, the intel community appears to have (once again) fallen victim to poorly researched open source news reporting. If you read Jihadica yesterday,

Read More »
Will McCants May 28, 2008

Going Nuclear

I feel like I missed something over the Memorial Day weekend. The forums are buzzing today with talk about an impending AQ nuclear attack on the U.S.; I counted nine separate posts on Ekhlaas alone. There is usually some trigger–say, a recent Bin Laden statement–that prompts this clustering of topics, but I haven’t been able to find it. Just because there is chatter online doesn’t mean there’s anything to it. Most of the people who post to these forums don’t know much more about AQ operational planning than I do.  My current hypothesis is that the longer AQ goes without a major attack on the U.S. homeland or on Israel, the more expectations increase. Hence this nuclear talk or the recent speculation on AQ ops in the Palestinian territories. But why the sudden chatter about nukes? I did notice that the one Ekhlaas poster uploaded an article on Frontpagemagazine.com called

Read More »
Will McCants May 27, 2008
Latest Jihadica
Subscribe

Copyright © 2024 Jihadica