'Al-Qaeda has got it wrong'...

[cantwealljustgetalong]

A recently released Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) provided document affords some remarkably critical and militant Islamic perspectives on the "war on terror". Highlighting the unique nature of the document's perspective, it addresses an analysis of al-Qaeda's efforts by al-Jama'ah al-Islamiyah, a faction which is designated by the US State Department as a terrorist organization. The fact of the document's release by the CIA speaks volumes about its interest.

...

"The official religion of the United States is its interests," note the authors. They also see the US pursuing an opportunity for "hegemony on the world, global sovereignty, and decisive victory over all rivals".

Their text is noteworthy for its illustration of perceptions within the militant segment of the Islamic community. Al-Jama'ah doesn't take exception to al-Qaeda's motivations, but does to their methods and strategy, al Qaeda's giving "preference to the logic of defiance over the principle of calculations".

The authors blame anti-US violence (including the Trade Center bombing) for casting Islam as "the green peril". They portray a shift in US perception as transpiring during the period when America was attempting to define its "new enemy" following the Cold War.

...

According to the text, because of US geostrategic (oil and gas) interests, the Taliban were offered "US$3 billion as a free grant and $300 million annually in return for leasing the pipeline transporting natural gas from the Caspian" to Pakistan. This was in reference to the trans-Afghan pipeline the US had long desired.

Al-Jama'ah cites Islamic history to make the point that mutually advantageous accommodation is not sacrilegious.

The authors note that instead of the assets and stability the proposed pipeline revenue held for both Afghanistan and Pakistan, there have instead been substantive setbacks for the global Islamic community. The siege al-Qaeda is under, as well as the increased pressures on those who are fighting traditional struggles of liberation, were seen as but one part of a much broader fallout. Particular note is given to the extreme nature of September 11, and the West's reaction to it.

...

Al-Jama'ah intimated that while al-Qaeda's late 1990s creation of the Islamic World Front to Combat Christians, Jews and Americans may have been pure in ideology and motive, it represented an unrealistic overreach which succeeded only in "enraging and antagonizing the enemy". The authors see a key result of this in US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice's later promise to "liberate the Muslim world". The perceived threat this represents to the "values and traditions of the Muslim culture" is highlighted as very significant.

Alternately, strong concerns are raised that Islam must avoid the "trap of clash of civilizations", instead pursuing a policy of "interaction". Simultaneously advocated is "maintaining the Muslim identity and defending and struggling against any attack on the principles of Sharia and the supreme interests of our faith, homelands, and nation".

...

Evaluating the benefits al-Qaeda received via its widely spread front of hostilities, al-Jama'ah notes that while the Soviets were militarily and socially exhausted in Afghanistan, the breadth of America's global presence already provided sufficient, less provocative opportunities for this. They also argue that America's overriding interest is oil, and that unlike in Vietnam or Somalia, the US is prepared to accept substantive casualties to assure its "oil hegemony".

Translating out the thrust of the text's criticism, flexibility is much of its essence. Al-Jama'ah accuses al-Qaeda and others within the Islamic militant community of failing to go beyond a path "of force only", adding that "rigid reliance on one single strategy does not bring the flexibility that is needed to attain the aspired goals".

A failure in determining the requisite priorities for successful confrontation is subsequently emphasized. According to al-Jama'ah, "Al-Qaeda built its strategy without a sound arrangement of the priorities and without taking into consideration the limitations of its capabilities."

...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FC26Ak01.html