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Article Excerpt
The terrorist attacks in Mumbai occurred just two months after the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad was devastated by a huge truck bomb, and trials of terrorists in Britain and Australia revealed plans for atrocities in those countries.
Taken together, these events reveal radical changes in the strategy of the global jihad movement since it first began to develop a mass military capacity in Afghanistan in the 1980s, fighting with the Afghan resistance against the invading Soviet army. Indeed, it appears the movement has entered a new phase. This emphasises not the "defensive jihad" waged against the "near enemy" in Afghanistan or Iraq, but the "offensive jihad" against the "far enemy" represented by soft targets such as the private citizens of democratic societies such as the US, Britain and Australia, especially where they can be found in countries such as India, Pakistan or Indonesia.
It is vital that the people of Western societies and their political representatives recognise that this new phase constitutes an evolution of the global terrorist campaign into fourth-generation warfare (4GW). In this phase, the distinctions between war and politics, peace and conflict, and military and civilians are blurred so that wars can proceed in an undeclared or unacknowledged manner. Such conflict places a high value on propaganda and agitation, supported by high-profile terrorist atrocities. It is low-intensity, long term and transnational, and involves many forms of force--military, political and ideological--operating globally through terrorist networks and franchises, cyber-warfare and "leaderless jihad". (1) It is based on small terrorist cells whose activities are characterised by an emphasis on particularly savage acts such as the mass attacks in Mumbai, and on what is called "the jihad of individual terrorism".
Cells can be raised by al-Qa'ida or its affiliates, including rogue elements from highly experienced and well-resourced intelligence services, such as the Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan. Alternatively, they can be self-recruiting, self-radicalising, and self-training, supported by jihadi instructional and ideological material provided within a radically decentralised network that makes maximum use of the internet, as we have seen in Britain and Australia. This in turn involves a fundamental evolutionary shift in terrorist-training doctrines, as we will see in this article.
Despite the weakening of political resolve and public support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, (2) all evidence suggests that global jihadism is reinventing itself while adhering to its long-standing, hard-line position. For example, Osama bin Laden has specifically denounced all calls for co-existence with non-Muslims and has declared that "battle, animosity and hatred [of the infidel] is the foundation of our religion"; while his declaration against "Jews and Christians" asserts that it is a duty of all Muslims to kill Americans and their allies, and that the Islamist doctrine of offensive jihad requires Muslims to wage war against non-Muslims. "Islam is spread with the sword alone", he insists, and "gives infidels but three options: Islam, jizya [the poll tax] or the sword". Waging jihad "is our only option for glory, as has been continuously demonstrated in the [Islamic] texts". (3)
Ayman al-Zawahiri is equally hard-line, claiming that "the Lord Almighty has commanded us to hate the infidels and reject their love", (4) while his declaration on "Jihad, Martyrdom, and the Killing of Innocents", provides seven theological justifications for targeting civilians in terrorist attacks. (5) As experts have observed, "the sheer breadth of these conditions leaves ample theological justification for killing civilians in almost any imaginable situation". (6) Bin Laden's mentor in Afghanistan, Abdullah Azzam, who was a trained Islamic theologian, similarly declared that "Jihad in God's name means killing the infidels in the name of God". (7)
How this is to be done is set out in the 10 volumes of the Encyclopedia of the Afghan Jihad, and in the Al Qaeda Handbook. The latter declares that its main mission is to overthrow godless regimes and replace them with Islamist regimes, and lists kidnappings, assassinations, bombings and instilling hatred as its principal tasks. (8) All of these jihadi works, and similar ones, are available, and are used by jihadi groups around the world, including Australia.
Scale of threat
The shift in global jihad strategy from the near enemy to the far enemy was signalled in an interview given by the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and posted on the web in October 2008. Apparently claiming responsibility for recent terrorist plots in Glasgow and London, he declared that "all the countries that participated in the hostility against Iraq and their crimes against our people are a legitimate target for us, no matter how long it takes". (9) Fortunately, at the time, it appears the scale of the threat was recognised by the British Security Minister Lord West, who warned in October 2008 that the UK faced a huge terrorist...
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