Blood in Shallow Waters

Blood in Shallow Waters

Shane Drennan^[i]

“The dictatorship tries to function without resorting to force. Thus, we must try to oblige the dictatorship to resort to violence, thereby unmasking its true nature as the dictatorship of the reactionary social classes. This event will deepen the struggle to such an extent that there will be no retreat from it. The performance of the people’s forces depends on the task of forcing the dictatorship to a decision - to retreat or unleash the struggle - thus beginning the state of long-range armed action.” (E. Guevara, 1961, p. 149)

                                                                        -Ernesto “Che” Guevara

 

 “All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written Al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.” (O. Bin Laden, 2004)

                                                                        -Osama bin Laden

Introduction

Al-Qaeda senior leadership has clearly described its objectives over the years, broadcast via every global media outlet imaginable. Al-Qaeda aims to expel the United States from Muslim lands, especially Saudi Arabia; to force the U.S. to abandon support to Israel and ‘apostate’ regimes; and eventually reestablish the Caliphate. While there is some variation and internal debate of Al-Qaeda’s tactical objectives, these strategic goals are largely constant.

This paper focuses on the facet of Al Qaeda’s stratagem very plainly laid out by Osama bin Laden above, further explicating Al-Qaeda’s plan to cripple the U.S. through a series of proxy wars: an integral – and currently the most pertinent – component of its aggregate strategy. The aim of this paper is simply to elucidate the precipitating effects, intended or unintended by Al-Qaeda, of large scale U.S. military ground operations against Al-Qaeda and its franchise organizations. First, I give a brief description of the evolution of Al-Qaeda’s overarching strategies leading to the above described strategic component. Second, I review some of the literature that has touched on this facet of Al Qaeda’s strategy. Third, I outline Al-Qaeda’s concept of entrapping the U.S. in multiple guerrilla wars designed to force U.S. expenditure of military resources and to strain political alliances. In this section I describe not only the first order impacts of this plan, but also the intended residual effects of U.S. military ground attacks on Al-Qaeda affiliates. I support these points with brief case examples to highlight that Al-Qaeda is indeed actively applying this plan on multiple fronts with evidence of its effects. In conclusion, I note that as raising the Al-Qaeda banner isn’t quite a sufficient condition, Al-Qaeda is still working toward drawing the U.S. and other Western nations into ground conflict and suggest implications this strategy has concerning the conflict in Syria.

The History Behind the Strategy

With the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia in 1990 as a preparation for the First Gulf War, bin Laden and a few other Afghan mujahideen leaders turned the focus of their jihad to the United States; the intervention in Somalia beginning in 1992 presented a prime opportunity for bin Laden to fight his own proxy war against the U.S. Although there is debate regarding proof that bin Laden’s fighters were directly involved in the infamous 1993 ‘Blackhawk Down’ battle, Ali Mohamed (Miller, 2002), Mohammed Atef (Vick, 1998), Fazul Abdullah Mohammed (Arnett, 1997), and others were sent by bin Laden in order to train local warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid’s men for combat with U.S. troops. After the withdrawal of American forces from Somalia, bin Laden laid claim to his assistance there saying, “With Allah’s grace, Muslims over there cooperated with some Arab mujaheddin who were in Afghanistan… against the American occupation troops and killed large numbers of them.” (O. B.-M. Bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri, Taha, Hamzah, & Rahman, 1998)

In 1998 Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and others launched the World Islamic Salvation Front Against the Jews and Crusaders. In the fatwa (religious edict) announcing this official union between bin Laden, Zawahiri and a few lesser known jihadi leaders, the men laid out the goals they had been pursuing for a number of years, this time largely aimed at the U.S. and Israel: “…fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)”.[ii] This fatwa indicated a marked shift of (what would become) Al-Qaeda’s military focus from the traditional targets of ‘apostate’ governments ruling over Muslim constituencies (the ‘near enemy’) to the ‘far enemy’ composing the underlying support and strength of those governments: namely the United States.^[iii]

Al-Qaeda began attacking the ‘far enemy’ with spectacular strikes intended to force the U.S. to change its foreign policy in some manner. The simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were obvious indicators of Al-Qaeda’s displeasure with U.S. political influence in Muslim states and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen symbolized Al-Qaeda’s resistance to the U.S. role as a hegemonic global police force (Husayn, 2005). However, these actions didn’t affect U.S. policy in the dramatic fashion desired by Al-Qaeda leadership; something grander was necessary.

Following the events of September 11^th, 2001, the Al-Qaeda moniker became a household name worldwide. Having quickened U.S. targeting of their organization, bin Laden and Zawahiri formulated a strategy to draw U.S. forces into costly guerrilla conflicts similar to the situation in Somalia in 1993. Sayf Al-Adl, Al-Qaeda’s security chief, recounts the subsequent events following the operations on September 11^th, 2001 as following Al-Qaeda’s cogent strategic program:

Our ultimate objective of these painful strikes against the head of the serpent was to prompt it to come out of its hole. This would make it easier for us to deal consecutive blows to undermine it and tear it apart. It would foster our credibility in front of our nation and the beleaguered people of the world. A person will react randomly when he receives painful strikes on his head from an undisclosed enemy. Such strikes will force the person to carry out random acts and provoke him to make serious and sometimes fatal mistakes. This was what actually happened. The first reaction was the invasion of Afghanistan and the second was the invasion of Iraq. The mistakes might happen over and again and there might be other random reactions…

Our objective, therefore, was to prompt the Americans to come out of their hole and deal powerful strikes to the body of the nation that did not exist. Without these strikes there would be no hope for this nation to wake up. We have a knowledgeable and sincere leadership that has a well-examined plan, but we cannot discuss its details at the moment. The sleeping nation will soon wake up. The Americans, their allies, and their lackeys have been fooled (Bergen, 2006, p. 309).

Like most of Al-Qaeda’s public communications, this account of their strategy came after the operation and its effects. This ex-ante account of grand strategy may indeed have been a creative effort of Al-Qaeda leadership and media personnel designed to give the organization an appearance of having a more robust and impressive strategic design than they had. Given the history of Al-Qaeda affiliated organizations and operations by both Al-Qaeda affiliates and U.S. and other western military and security services throughout the last 12 years it would be foolish to believe that Al-Qaeda doesn’t consider, if not aim for, a response by the U.S. and other western forces through military means.

Al-Qaeda’s Strategies

Most Al-Qaeda analysts project a similar picture of the group’s means to achieve its ends - Al-Qaeda is conducting concurrent terrorist and guerrilla campaigns largely aimed at the U.S. and U.S.-backed local governments to dislodge its grip on the local governments and policies and to topple the current ‘apostate regimes’.  Terrorism is used throughout the globe against U.S. interests and affiliates by Al-Qaeda supporters and operatives as a means of coercion. In some locations where the U.S. military has deployed ground forces, Al-Qaeda has capitalized on the opportunity to pursue guerrilla wars via their local proxies. The prima fascia objectives of these acts are to compel the U.S. to withdraw completely from Muslim lands, both physically and politically, as a prerequisite to toppling apostate regimes in Muslim lands in order to eventually reestablish the Caliphate.

Several authors have focused on different facets of Al-Qaeda’s strategy. Ranstorp’s analysis of bin Laden’s anti-American coalition (the roots of Al-Qaeda) in 1998 presents a preliminary picture of a globally interconnected organization designed to expel the U.S. from Saudi Arabia (Ranstorp, 1998). Gerges further explicates Al-Qaeda’s paradigmatic shift from the ‘near enemy’ to the ‘far enemy’, as a strategy to attack the root of the problem, which is the Western backing of apostate regimes (Gerges, 2005). Hoffman has often made the same ‘far enemy’ versus ‘near enemy’ observations and has hinted upon Al-Qaeda’s capacity as a guerrilla organization in addition to their oft noted abilities as a global terrorist movement which may be used to achieve their goals (Hoffman, 2004). Gunaratna analyzes the organization in detail, constructing a picture of a strategic movement composed of concentric Al-Qaeda categories ranging from the core fighters to the passive supporters, all compelled (if not directly controlled) by Al-Qaeda senior leadership to carry out and facilitate attacks to accomplish its objectives (Gunaratna, 2003). Each of these precepts of Al-Qaeda’s strategy is correct, but incomplete.

Al-Qaeda’ strategy is not one-dimensional; no belligerent pursues war via a single method. The component of Al-Qaeda’s strategy outlined in bin Laden’s passage at the beginning of this essay is recognized but largely unexplored or altogether ignored. Some authors (Hoffman for example) have identified Al-Qaeda’s jubilation with the American invasion of Iraq and the opportunity for a new guerrilla war there, the Iraqi quagmire acting like a black hole for U.S. troops and money. As Zawahiri put it, “We thank God for appeasing us with the dilemma in Iraq after Afghanistan… The Americans are facing a delicate situation in both countries. If they withdraw they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed to death.” (Reed, 2006, p. 1)

A few analysts have suggested that Al-Qaeda desires to deliberately draw the U.S. into such conflicts. Scheuer has keyed in on this point,[iv] though he describes this strategic component as one of serendipity, or as he puts it, an unexpected Christmas present (Scheuer, 2005b, pp. 212-214). Kilcullen does note that inciting a military overreaction is one of the components of Al Qaeda’s strategy as they intend to “become the leading player in a loose coalition of takfiri extremist movements” focused on “bleeding the United States to exhaustion and bankruptcy, forcing America to withdraw in disarray from the Muslim world so that its local allies collapse, and simultaneously use the provoking and alienating effects of U.S. intervention as a form of provocation to incite a mass uprising within the Islamic world.” (Kilcullen, 2009, pp. 28-29) However, as the intention of Kilcullen’s book was not to detail this process, his description of the effects of the ‘bleed to bankruptcy’ strategy is a simple listing of the effects, lacking further explanation or supporting research to support their presence (Kilcullen, 2009, pp. 14-28). Moreover, his account of Al-Qaeda’s co-opting capabilities leads the reader to believe that Al-Qaeda is able to metastasize at will, notwithstanding adverse conditions and local group and populace aversions. (Kilcullen, 2009, pp. 34-38)

In general agreement with Kilcullen, I argue that Al-Qaeda has restructured its strategic paradigm of using terrorism to expel the U.S. from the Muslim world and is now focusing more heavily on intentionally drawing the U.S. into Muslim lands – a reaction seemingly antagonistic to its goal. By doing so, Al-Qaeda hopes to provoke the U.S. giant into fighting multiple guerrilla wars, destroying the U.S. militarily, politically, and economically. To use an analogy, Al-Qaeda is dumping blood into shallow waters in hopes of luring the bloodthirsty U.S. military shark into a depth where it is weak, exposed, and unable to withdraw before being severely injured while thrashing about and lashing out in the process.

The Domino Effect of ‘Provoke and Bait’

Al Qaeda is not capable of successfully engaging the United States in combat on U.S. soil. Although terrorist attacks in the U.S. are useful tools, operations on the 9/11 scale are difficult to realize. Additionally, a series of terrorist attacks may have the opposite effect of the intention, such as the rally ‘round the flag’ effect and the global sympathy displayed for the Americans following the attacks on September 11^th, greater international cooperation and targeting of Al-Qaeda forces, and increased criticism of Al-Qaeda by other jihadi organizations and supporters.[v] This is not to suggest that Al-Qaeda has abandoned terror attacks in the U.S., rather that terrorism is simply one tool of many in their battle repertoire. Given the difficulty of realizing end state strategic gains through terrorism[vi] and the ease and popularity of attacking deployed U.S. soldiers, it seems Al-Qaeda is most actively pursuing the latter. In essence, Al-Qaeda is bringing the fight to its own back yard. Doing so was, at least in the past, much easier than one might imagine with the U.S. pushing more than Al-Qaeda was pulling for war.

This component of Al-Qaeda’s strategy is essentially a plan to cripple the U.S. through a series of guerrilla wars in Muslim lands. As an amendment to Maoz’s hypothesis that weak actors choose a strategy of attrition when engaged in a war with a superior conventional force (Maoz, 1990, pp. 137-166), Al-Qaeda has not only chosen a guerrilla strategy when faced with war - the organization has actively sought ground combat with the U.S. in wars of attrition. What is unique in this case is that guerrilla warfare in Al-Qaeda’s strategy is not only a reaction to an invasion or an occupation. Rather, Al-Qaeda has begun provoking war with the militarily superior United States, with the intention of drawing U.S. forces into protracted conflicts throughout the globe. Hinting toward this, Zawahiri threatened, "Obama, whether you admit it or not, Muslims have defeated you in Iraq and Afghanistan and will defeat you in Palestine, Somalia and the Islamic Maghreb...” (Khalil) Al-Qaeda has been immensely successful in lending its brand name and a few soldiers to Islamist guerrilla forces throughout the globe as the first necessary condition for this facet of its strategy.

"The most important and critical of these transformations - and Allah knows best - is the emergence of the Mujahid vanguard of the Muslim Ummah as a power imposing itself on the world stage as a result of the intensifying jihad awakening surging through the Islamic world… And the [those] groups of the Mujahid vanguard are now uniformly [continuously being] deployed and - by the grace of Allah - are coming together and uniting." (Mansfield, 2009, p. 352)

Al-Qaeda’s plan of bait and snare via franchising disparate guerrilla forces accomplishes seven objectives.  First, Al-Qaeda is able to gain reaction by U.S. leadership resulting in a military response and a new guerrilla conflict. Second, the military response puts U.S. boots on the ground in even more Muslim lands lending even greater credit to the argument that the U.S. is engaged in a crusade to occupy and exploit Muslims and Muslim lands throughout the world. Third, Al-Qaeda’s image of the vanguard of Muslim resistance to the imperialist U.S., a Robin Hood of the Muslim world, is reinforced by the primacy the U.S. assigns to it. Fourth, Al-Qaeda is able to frame the conflict as being fard ‘ayn (individual duty) to defend Muslim lands from an invading force, thus flooding their ranks with new recruits. Fifth, increasing international opposition to U.S. military action often proves detrimental to U.S. political efforts. Sixth, domestic support for the U.S. government will be further diminished as troops and money are allocated to conflicts that are largely perceived to be ‘none of our business’, divisions which are exacerbated by Al-Qaeda’s media prowess. Seventh, the U.S. military is further strained and weakened by these new battlefronts. Each of these objectives is further developed below.

The first objective Al-Qaeda attains by lending their brand name and a few Afghanistan or Iraq jihad veterans to a new struggle is generating a U.S. overreaction.[vii]  Given the military nature of the Global War on Terror (this includes the military, security and intelligence activities which are a response to potential terrorist threats after 9/11 which have not or no longer use the GWOT moniker), that reaction often comes in the form of ground troops, resulting in a new guerrilla conflict for U.S. forces. In essence, the concept of ‘securitization’[viii]  used to give immediacy to an issue and justify expenditures is the same concept that compels Al-Qaeda to network its name. Doing so facilitates the U.S.’s ability to ‘Al-Qaedize’ issues of its concern, legitimizing military intervention.  The U.S. reaction to the Islamic Courts Union takeover of Somalia in 2006 is a case in point.

The U.S. initially refrained from military involvement in the recent Somali conflict during the country’s takeover by the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in 2006. Although the ICU’s militant Salafi bent gave the organization a political worldview similar to Al-Qaeda, ICU leadership denied linkage to Al-Qaeda (BBC, 2006) and U.S. efforts to combat the coup remained largely within the political realm. Only weeks after bin Laden’s message to the Somalis pledging combat support was published, and after a U.S. media campaign ‘officially’ connecting the ICU and Al-Qaeda, Ethiopian troops backed by U.S. forces invaded the country.[ix] Although U.S. ground forces are not currently engaged in Somalia, they are the brass ring of the Al-Qaeda’s fight there as evidenced by occasional claims of killing U.S. soldiers.[x] Further, rather than being quelled by U.S. backed forces, the insurgency in Somalia grew Al-Shabbab which formally aligned with Al-Qaeda in February of 2012 (Center, 2009). It is probable that, given the U.S. was quick to link Al-Shabbab to Al-Qaeda, officially branding it a “ Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity” in 2008, and the economic lures Al-Shabbab-linked piracy employs, it is probable that Al-Qaeda’s plan for this franchise is to draw U.S. ground forces into Somalia once again.

The second and subsequent goal achieved by Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership from a military response is the propaganda generated from the image of uniformed U.S. soldiers on ever more Muslim soil. Al-Qaeda leadership continuously resounds the idea that the U.S. is engaged in a crusade (an idea reinforced by former President Bush’s famous comment (House, 2001)) against Muslims throughout the world designed to loot the wealth of Muslim natural resources, evidenced by US military presences in Muslim countries with significant amounts of natural resources. Jihadi speeches and web postings are replete with references to military and security services’ counterterrorism efforts in general as being a crusade, and the terms ‘cross worshipers’, ‘crusaders’ and ‘colonialists’ describing U.S. deployed troops are ubiquitous in jihadi rhetoric. Bin Laden’s April 2006 speech focused on this perception of the U.S. military counterterrorism operations, especially regarding Sudan (O. Bin Laden, 2006a).

In 2006 the crisis in Darfur piqued the attention of Al-Qaeda as the U.S. led U.N. Security Council proposed sending U.N. peacekeepers to the region. Bin Laden quickly responded to the idea of U.N. troops (whom he regards as being synonymous with U.S. troops) in Sudan by saying that the U.N. is “an instrument to implement the Zionist-Crusader decisions against Muslims, including resolutions to wage wars against us and divide and occupy our land.” (O. Bin Laden, 2006a) He claimed that the U.S. interest in Sudan lies solely in its oil reserves and encouraged jihadis in the region to “to prepare for managing a long-term war against thieves and Crusaders in western Sudan.” (O. Bin Laden, 2006a) His stated goal for this call to arms: “to defend the people and land of Islam”. Interestingly, the opinions of people in Muslim countries often parrot the perceptions promoted by Al-Qaeda senior leadership. In a public opinion poll taken in 2007 72 percent of Moroccans, 86 percent of Egyptians, 68 percent of Pakistanis and 53 percent of Indonesians believed that the U.S. goal in the “war on terrorism” was to “weaken and divide the Islamic religion and its people” and to achieve political and military domination to control Middle East resources” with only a minority in each country believing that the U.S. “war on terrorism” was waged for defense purposes (Kull, 2007).[xi]       

Third, as U.S. troops engage in ground warfare with Al-Qaeda cadre, the organization’s image as the preeminent force actively challenging American power is reinforced by both jihadi and Western media. With the U.S. drawing connections between organizations just tangentially linked to Al-Qaeda to justify war, Al-Qaeda benefits from being framed as the antithesis of American hegemony. The David versus Goliath image, one trumpeted by Western academics and military experts, is brought to mind in every combat engagement where the vastly superior force of the U.S. confronts a band of Al-Qaeda’s guerrilla fighters equipped with AK-47’s yelling ‘Allahu akbar!’ The U.S. assignment of target primacy to Al-Qaeda within the context of the military and security services’ counterterrorism efforts validates the perception that Al-Qaeda is the vanguard of the counter-hegemonic movement against the world’s only superpower. [xii] Furthermore, the status given to Al-Qaeda by the Bush administration’s terming counterterrorism actions a ‘war’ has at least rhetorically elevated the organization to a level of state importance, placing U.S./Al-Qaeda battles in a category of conflict beyond the U.S. engagements in Vietnam and Korea. The emergence of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is a salient example of how U.S. engagement with Al-Qaeda elements bolsters the group’s image.

Beginning with Colin Powell’s reference, before the Coalition Forces invasion, to Al-Qaeda having an Iraqi connection through Abu Mus’ab Al-Zarqawi (CNN, 2003),  followed by the infamous Zarqawi-led beheadings, AQI maintained the focus of global attention in Iraq above all other organizations. AQI realized immense benefits for the Al-Qaeda movement as Zarqawi’s popularity with the media filled the ranks of his organization with volunteers, both foreign and Iraqi. His popularity as a hero of the mujahideen battling the Americans became so great that he has been featured in jihadi video games[xiii]  and bestseller books in the West identifying Zarqawi’s organization as the most potent threat to U.S. military efforts in Iraq (Brisard & Martinez, 2005). Armed exclusively with locally available conventional weapons and crude technology, AQI’s influence reached a point where its control over the ‘Sunni Triangle’ led one U.S. Army commander to deem the region a “political lost cause” (Ricks, 2006). Upon his death, Zarqawi was eulogized and exalted by numerous Salafi leaders. Regarding his accomplishments against the U.S. in Iraq, the Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC - what is now largely Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb/AQIM) stated, “We know that he left behind him a complete generation, all of who are Zarqawi.” Lewis Attiya Allah, a prominent Salafi-jihadi scholar, simply remarked: “We are all Zarqawi.” (Drennan & Black, 2006) Although it is impossible to know if Zarqawi’s organization would have achieved the same perception as the key adversary to U.S. efforts in Iraq without the Al-Qaeda brand name and the attention of the U.S. military and media, it is highly unlikely.

Fourth, Al-Qaeda is able to publicly frame the image of their combat engagements with U.S. forces as a ‘defense of Muslim peoples’.[xiv] Guerrilla warfare has been traditionally employed as a rebellion and defense of their rights and ways of life by peoples who feel voiceless and oppressed by a government. Al-Qaeda’s guerrilla wars against U.S. ground forces are likewise construed as defensive wars. With the deployment of U.S. troops, the concept of fard ‘ayn (individual duty to jihad as a defense of Muslim lands) is easily invoked by Al-Qaeda senior and local leadership as the presence of uniformed U.S. military personnel is, in the leery Islamist community, an axiom of invasion. When employed properly, the call to jihad framed as fard ‘ayn draws not only soldiers, but all forms of logistical support.

Afghanistan has been the epicenter of fard ‘ayn for decades. Beginning with Abdullah Azzam’s call to arms against the invading Soviet forces through his famous dictum Defense of Muslim Lands,[xv] and continuing to the present, Afghanistan has been the home and training ground to thousands of immigrant ‘defensive’ jihadis. Although immediately following the attacks on September 11^th, 2001 the majority of the Muslim world did not rally to support the ‘Afghan Arabs’, the U.S. invasion of Iraq shed a different light on the conflict and volunteers again headed for Afghanistan and Pakistan.[xvi] Salafi scholars of the jihadi lean promote the idea that if one is not physically able to answer the call to defensive jihad, they remain obliged to assist the struggle financially, logistically, and rhetorically.[xvii] Interestingly, defending Afghanistan and defeating the U.S. there is often viewed as the linchpin for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Muslim lands worldwide.[xviii]

The fifth residual effect of this strategy is the increased state opposition to the U.S. in the form of soft-balancing. Although a number of arguments have been made as to why there has been a lack of hard power balancing (Lieber & Alexander, 2005)[xix] against the U.S.,[xx] Nye argues that nations are indeed ‘soft balancing’, effectively hamstringing U.S. ability to wield its military might (Nye, 2004, pp. 127-147). Paul asserts that soft balancing against the U.S. invasion of Iraq resulted in the diminution of the U.S.’s ability to pursue imperialist objectives elsewhere (Paul, 2005).  Kelley describes how states used ‘strategic non-cooperation’ (a form of soft balancing) against the U.S. push for war with Iraq as an opportunity to level the international political playing field (in spite of evident immediate relative gains from choosing cooperation) (Kelley, 2005). For example, the former Director-General for External and Politico-Military Affairs in the EU Council of Ministers (1994-2002) remarked, “US leadership is inescapable, and indeed necessary and desirable; but the EU needs to carry enough weight to ensure that the United States sees its own interests in that leadership being shared and not just imposed.” (Crowe, 2003) Although Brooks and Wohlforth claim that ‘soft balancing’ has not been proven,[xxi] effects of state opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq are evident. For example, the U.S. has borne tremendous economic costs (Barnes, 2009) from its unilateral action in Iraq. Regarding the political aspect, state alliances absent U.S. membership are being actively pursued by states desiring to balance against the U.S., and those alliances are realizing an increasing advantage in global politics (Kelley, 2005). International obstinacy is not the only opposition the U.S. administration encounters.

The sixth result which stems from a new front in the ‘war on terror’ is the loss of popular domestic support for the administration. Domestic support for the U.S. administration fades congruently with the costs and length of the war(s). This is especially true in conflicts where force is “used to engineer internal political change” (Jentleson, 1992)[xxii] or conflicts perceived to be undertaken purely for economic gains.[xxiii] Al-Qaeda, just as guerrillas before them,[xxiv] knows that democracies and the U.S. in particular, are averse to economically draining conflicts. Since the media functions as a global conduit for popular opinion issues, Al-Qaeda senior leadership is able to manipulate and even directly address the concerns of the American populace through their own media channels.[xxv] Bin Laden specifically addressed U.S. domestic fears of the increasing cumulative costs of war:

“As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the mujahidin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan - with Allah's permission.” (O. Bin Laden, 2004)

In this way, Al-Qaeda is able relate U.S. ‘war on terror’ to the coffers of the American people. The reason for doing so: democratically elected representatives listen to their constituents.[xxvi]

Just as protracted wars strain a state’s economy, the state’s populace itself grows weary from the seemingly endless battle and mounting casualties of their troops on foreign soil (Gelpi, Feaver, & Reifler, 2006).[xxvii] Al-Qaeda strategists seem to understand that democracies are less successful in protracted wars (at least wars where the invading state is not existentially threatened) (Bennett & Stam, 1998),[xxviii] largely due to the effect public opinion has on policy makers’ decisions (Burstein & Freudenburg, 1978). Al Qaeda’s millenarian vantage of the ummah’s struggle thrives upon its predicted lengthy duration of the holy war with the West. This conflict timeline (or lack thereof), coupled with mixed and ambiguous progress reports of the military and security services’ counterterrorism efforts, contributes to the war weariness of the U.S. public. In the eyes of Al-Qaeda strategists, the U.S. is not so different from the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. As Kissinger remarked, “The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.”[xxix]

The seventh objective achieved by coaxing the U.S. to deploy the military is the negative effects on the U.S. military itself. Since Al-Qaeda is essentially the ‘home team’ they are able to set the rules of the war, of course choosing guerrilla warfare.[xxx] In each battleground, the U.S. is forced to fight wars for which its military is not designed.[xxxi] In addition to fighting awkward wars, U.S. military forces are spread over a greater geographical space, depleting reactionary and logistical capabilities.[xxxii] Taber’s description of ‘the war of the flea’ is apt:

Analogically, the guerrilla fights the war of the flea, and his military enemy suffers the dog’s disadvantages: too much to defend; too small, ubiquitous, and agile an enemy to come to grips with. If the war continues long enough—this is the theory—the dog succumbs to exhaustion and anemia without ever having found anything on which to close its jaws or to rake with its claws. (Taber, 1970, pp. 27-28)

And while the U.S. certainly has the economic and military capacity to build and sustain the current conflicts and possibly future endeavors, negative international and domestic opinions mirror, and probably contribute to, the decreased morale of deployed servicemen.[xxxiii] As with every other repercussion of the military and security services’ counterterrorism efforts, Al-Qaeda senior leadership has keyed in on declining troop morale:

“I say that it is useful for you to listen to the moving messages by your soldiers in Iraq… If they leave their barracks, then landmines would get them.  If they refuse to leave their barracks, then they would receive court orders.  This leaves them with no choice but to commit suicide or cry.  Both choices are among the worst tribulations… Can you feel their great suffering?” (O. Bin Laden, 2007)

Previously, Al-Qaeda found realizing this strategy to be easier than one might imagine with the U.S. pushing more than Al-Qaeda was pulling for war. As Zawahiri put it, “We thank God for appeasing us with the dilemma in Iraq after Afghanistan… The Americans are facing a delicate situation in both countries. If they withdraw they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed to death.”[xxxiv] The current push for intervention in Syria threatens the US with the same trap.

Conclusion

Al-Qaeda has become increasingly adept at creating and implementing strategies to combat states which are vastly superior in conventional measures of power. Their success against the Soviets in Afghanistan reinforced Mao’s guerilla principles. Their conversion from a hierarchical military apparatus into a transnational movement has made prosecution of the organization as a whole extremely difficult. Most recently Al-Qaeda’s ‘provoke and bait’ strategic component designed to bleed the U.S. into bankruptcy has been successfully realized in two theaters as Al-Qaeda senior leadership continues the search for other opportunities.

Al-Qaeda has pursued a decades-old global guerrilla strategy designed to “[get] the enemy out of its natural environment, forcing him to fight in the regions where his own life and habits will clash with the existing reality…” (E. Guevara, 1961, p. 149) By doing so, it is able to propagate its construction of the war with the West as a new crusade, promote its status as the spearhead of the fight and the defender of Muslim lands, create both domestic and international opposition to the U.S. government, and weaken the U.S. military goliath. In pursuit of this plan, Al-Qaeda only had to give a few soldiers and their name to established Islamist organizations that would then operate under the Al-Qaeda flag. When executed properly, the concept is both low-cost and immensely damaging.^[xxxv]

However, this scheme is not always easily implemented. Al-Qaeda’s ability to prod the U.S. into charging lies heavily with the ability of the local franchises to do so. While the Al-Qaeda moniker is indeed a magnet for the U.S. military via the ‘war on terror’, there are a number of opposing and mitigating factors that Al-Qaeda may encounter in their expansionist ventures. Al-Qaeda must first identify states with established Salafi organizations, weak governmental control and/or poor intelligence capabilities, a population supportive of the Al-Qaeda ideology and methodology, and an entrée for U.S. intervention. Once all of these prerequisites are met, Al-Qaeda must then identify and convince a local, compatible, cooperative and somewhat subservient organization that will allow itself to be annexed. Finding this combination is no easy task. Moreover, the captured letters from the raid on Bin Laden’s compound are evidence that there is significant internal conflict concerning which organizations should be be given the Al-Qaeda brand and what the franchise relationship entails (Lahoud et al., 2012).

Despite the difficulties of finding the proper organization to brand “Al-Qaeda in...” and bait the U.S., there has been continuous progress in franchising salafi-jihadi organizations. The 2006 merger of the GSPC (now AQIM), the 2012 merger of Al-Shabbab, and the more recent announcement of Al-Nusra Front’s formal relationship to Al-Qaeda are evidence that Al-Qaeda is still expanding it’s organization and operations. Although Al-Shabbab has yet to draw significant ground forces, the conditions for luring the U.S. there are undeniably prime: a failed state with an Al-Qaeda organization wreaking economic and human rights havoc. However, there evidently hasn’t been a powerful enough catalyst in Somalia to draw U.S. ground forces. And, while the U.S. hasn’t engaged AQIM militarily, France has. Pointing to Al-Qaeda’s desire to bait and bleed France in norther Mali, AQIM threatened that “the youth of Islam will turn all of Africa to a swamp where the French army will sink in it, and a hell where it will be impossible for the French companies to remain...” (Maghreb, 2013) Further to the point, Omar Ould Hamaha (AQIM affiliate and military leader of Tawhid wal-Jihad in West Africa) said, regarding Hollande’s “war on terrorism” (Internationale, 2012) in Mali, that France "has opened the gates of hell [and] has fallen into a trap much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia" (Hirsch & Willsher, 2013). So, in following with Al-Qaeda’s most recent franchises of Al-Shabbab and AQIM, is the formal affiliation of Al-Nusra Front in Syria with Al-Qaeda an attempt to bait the U.S. into committing ground forces to the conflict there? I argue that it is their intent, at least in part, as history suggests that Al-Qaeda does indeed want U.S. ground forces with which to engage in Muslim lands.

More to the point, how much does it matter if the intent of the Al-Nusra Front affiliation with Al-Qaeda was to draw ground forces, once ground forces have been committed? As noted above, previously this strategy may have been accidental or ex-post facto constructed through discourse - a convenient rewrite of history. But, the precipitating effects remain severe in either case. And, as Al-Qaeda has keyed in on this strategy throughout its decades long war with the West and realized a number of the victories outlined above, the newly minted Syrian Al-Qaeda affiliate will surely pursue those same goals if the U.S. and other Western countries commit ground forces. The affiliation of Al-Nusra Front with Al-Qaeda is clear. Al-Qaeda’s strategic intent for the new franchise is less clear, though it is undoubtedly multi-faceted with one of those facets being the desire to lure the US into engagement. Committing the US to the war in Syria, especially with boots on the ground, serves to bolster Al-Qaeda’s cause its network and its ranks while bleeding the US politically and economically as it bleeds out Western forces on the ground as outlined above. Moreover, since the political, religious, and ethnic contentious milieu in Syria is similar to Iraq (that is, it is heterogenous and extremely factious with each faction fighting for its telos of post-war dominance) any intervention will not be quick or easy. As the US considers its options and leans towards military engagement, Al-Qaeda is preparing for another front and another long war.

^[i] The author would like to thank Andrew Black of Navanti Group, William Josiger, Dr. Michael Boyle of LaSalle University, Dr. Gilbert Ramsay of the University of St. Andrews (HCSTPV), Tone Danielsen of FFI, Edward Burke, and Oded Raanan for their criticisms and comments on previous drafts of this paper.