...
For the leaders, perpetuating the movement becomes a central goal. What starts as moral fervor becomes a sophisticated organization. Organizational survival demands flexibility, especially in terms of the mission. Terrorist organizations alter their missions in many ways. Some find a new mission when the old one is completed. Some broaden the mission to make it attractive to a wider variety of potential recruits. Some form alliances with other groups whose missions are different from their own; transform their missions into profit-driven enterprises whose principal goal is enrichment; or form strategic alliances with organized criminal groups. Some groups have sticky missions, but only the spry survive.
Osama bin Laden has changed his mission repeatedly. His first goal was to force Soviet troops out of Afghanistan. After achieving that goal (with help from the US, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and others), he found himself with a band of warriors in search of a new holy war. He offered to help defend the Saudi kingdom after Iraq attacked Kuwait in 1990, but King Fahd turned instead to US troops. Bin Laden then began a new mission, articulated in a 1992 edict: to force US troops out of Saudi Arabia, the Horn of Africa and Somalia.
With each successive fatwa, bin Laden altered his mission. His third fatwa, issued in February 1998, urged followers for the first time to deliberately target American civilians, rather than soldiers. Although it mentioned the Palestinian struggle, this was only one among a litany of Muslim grievances. His fourth, in October 2001, emphasized Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and the suffering of Iraqi children under UN sanctions concerns broadly shared in the Islamic world. Bin Laden was actively seeking to turn the US “war on terrorism” into a war between Islam and the West. The Sept. 11, 2001, “events,” he said, had split the world into two camps: the Islamic world and “infidels,” and the time had come for “every Muslim to defend his religion.” A mastermind of Sept. 11, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, would later describe violence as “the tax” Muslims must pay “for gaining authority on earth.”
Individually, the terrorists I interviewed cited many reasons for choosing a life of holy war, and I came to despair of identifying a single root cause. But the variable that most frequently came up was not poverty or human rights abuses as has been posited in the press but perceived humiliation. Humiliation came up at every echelon of terrorist group members leaders and followers.
For example, the founder and former leader of a Kashmiri group, the Muslim Jambaz Force, told me that the primary factor that led him to start the group was a sense of cultural humiliation. “Muslims have been overpowered by the West. Our ego hurts. We are not able to live up to our own standards for ourselves. It felt to me at the time I was involved in militancy like a personal loss,” he said.
But the militant despaired at what had happened to the jihad movement, saying: “The first generation of fundamentalists Qutb and Maududi was focused on daawa education. We focused on freedom. This generation is much more rigid, stricter, than my generation. They are focused on hate. Hate begets hate. You cannot create freedom out of hatred.”
Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, observed that the “new world order” is a source of humiliation for Muslims. He has argued that it is better for the youth of Islam to carry arms and defend their religion with pride and dignity than to submit to humiliation. Violence, in other words, restores the dignity of humiliated youth. This is similar to Franz Fanon’s notion that violence is a “cleansing force,” which frees oppressed youths from an “inferiority complex, despair and inaction,” making them fearless and restoring their self-respect. Fanon also warned of the dangers of globalization for the underdeveloped world.
...
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/05_02_04_c.asp
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
