In December, COMOPS was invited to participate in a question and answer forum with General Stéphane Abrial, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, hosted by Atlantic-Community.org. Atlantic-Community is a leading European online think tank focused on transatlantic relations. The Q&A reveals that General Abrial has an integrative, forward-looking conceptualization of the role of strategic communication in NATO.  A close read also suggests that NATO faces both internal, as well as external, strategic communication challenges.

As the head of Allied Command Transformation (ACT), General Abrial is one of two strategic commanders in the NATO organizational structure (Allied Command Operations or ACO is the other, led by Admiral James Stavridis), and is charged with leading and facilitating the continuous improvement of NATO capabilities to meet NATO missions, operations and goals now and into the future.  The online forum consisted of a video by General Abrial introducing the concept of “Smart Defense”, an initiative recently put in place by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and General Abrial’s thoughts on what Smart Defense means for ACT.

Members of Atlantic-Community were invited to submit questions to General Abrial, facilitated by the editors at Atlantic-Community, and over the course of two subsequent sessions General Abrial answered a selection of these questions.  The first set of questions addressed specific implementations of Smart Defense, including definitions and ACT implications as well as transparency and development concerns.  The second inquired about broader NATO issues such as maritime security, cultural obstacles to cooperation and strategic communication.  The complete question and answer session can be found here.

One of the underlying factors driving Smart Defense, emphasized both in General Abrial’s introductory video and his answers to multiple questions, is the increased pressure on defense budgets in the face of the current European debt crisis and severe recession in the United States.  Yet, the security challenges faced by NATO and member countries have not abated.  These fiscal conditions motivate a need to do more with less, or as the general puts it: “We need to spend better.”  General Abrial provides some interesting thoughts about cooperative procurement as a method to leverage economies of scale.  In addition, he suggests the coordination of each member-country’s unique strengths and capabilities would be more efficient than developing parallel capabilities across the Alliance.

Acknowledging the fiscal challenges underpinning Smart Defense, my question to General Abrial centered on what sort of security dividend could be realized by emphasizing strategic communication as an additional tool for achieving NATO security objectives.  In other words, with the significant rise in insurgency and other irregular warfare situations, might non-kinetic solutions offer a cost-effective supplement to traditional kinetic military capabilities (and by implication, could successful non-kinetic solutions reduce the need for expensive weapons systems procurement and maintenance, if only slightly)?

General Abrial’s answer emphasized the role of strategic communication as part of a broad public diplomacy effort and cited a 2009 NATO Summit conclusion that strategic communication must be an integral part of both political and military objectives.  This dual role of strategic communication points to a significant challenge for conducting it effectively.  Which arm of NATO (or any government for that matter), the political or military, should lead strategic communication?

Thinking of strategic communication in terms of public affairs and information operations is too restrictive. It is a discipline that bridges both political and military domains and is intricately enmeshed with both political and military operations.  It requires careful planning and forethought, otherwise devaluing its strategic benefit.  General Abrial calls for “building a professional framework strategic communications related military disciplines” and I would argue that this framework should be overtly collaborative with the political dimension of the alliance’s functions.

General Abrial’s answer also got me thinking about two sides of strategic communication and the special challenges faced by NATO.  All countries when seeking to communicate their objectives and goals, and seeking to persuade an audience to cooperate in the achievement of those goals have two audiences, external and internal.  In its traditional definition—communication crafted and coordinated to support the achievement of a goal—strategic communication is often conceived as an externally focused process, and this is especially true when subcomponents of the discipline such as public diplomacy, information operations and psychological operations (psyops) are considered.  However, countries have domestic audiences that require information and need to understand what their government is trying to accomplish.

In NATO’s case, this internal audience presents a particular challenge:  28 member countries, each with its own unique security and diplomatic concerns, its own internal political turmoil, not too mention significant historical and cultural concerns.  Each country itself has both internal and external audiences.  General Abrial’s comments introducing Smart Defense indicates this need to address this internally-focused facet of strategic communication.

He observes that a question facing NATO is: “how do we best encourage groups of like-minded countries to reap economies of scale by working together more often?”  This sounds like a strategic communication issue, but not one suited to information operations or pysop campaigns.  Rather, it is about getting all the member countries to share the same vision of NATO’s future and the same vision about how they can contribute to that future.  In short, they need to participate in the same narrative.

This challenge illustrates how approaching narrative from a systemic perspective can be helpful, not only in terms of narrative analysis and understanding, but also in terms of strategic communication planning.  Smart Defense already articulates some fundamental themes: cooperation, fiscal prudence, balancing sovereignty and solidarity, etc.  As we’ve noted here at COMOPS Journal before (notably here and here), a narrative is (1) an explanatory organization of information; (2) is structured with a trajectory towards the resolution a conflict or satisfaction of a desire (and the events of this trajectory illustrate themes, values and ideals); and (3) is a system of stories.

Constructing a Smart Defense narrative, then, would consist of identifying a variety of stories that constitute the events in the overall narrative trajectory.  For an effective and coherent narrative that unites the alliance, these stories would ideally be sourced from the member countries and thus consistent with those narrative landscapes.  Next, they would contain within them actions and characters and events that, when collected together, place Smart Defense at the resolution of the conflicts or the satisfaction of  desires germane to each member country.  Of course, that’s easier said than done.

The most encouraging of all the general’s comments, though, was his assertion that strategic communication “must be incorporated into all operational planning, instead of being relegated to an after-the-fact attempt to explain, or build support for a decision that has already been taken.”  As my co-authors and I argue in our upcoming book Narrative Landmines, understanding the narrative landscape and incorporating that knowledge into the decision-making process at operational and strategic levels can make the difference between success or failure of civil affairs, public outreach, crisis management and other soft power enterprises.

We at COMOPS thank General Abrial and Atlantic-Community for the opportunity to engage in this dialogue, and look forward to following NATO’s efforts in implementing Smart Defense and ensuring both European and Transatlantic security in the years to come.

____________________________

*Dr. Scott W. Ruston is an Assistant Research Professor at the Center for Strategic Communication at Arizona State University. A specialist in narrative theory and media studies, he is the co-author of Narrative Landmines: Rumors, Islamist Extremism and the Struggle for Strategic Influence (Rutgers UP, available March 2012).  He is also an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve newly assigned to a NATO ACT reserve support unit.

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I’ll admit that I slip sometimes in everyday conversation and use the word “story” as a synonym for “narrative.” A lot of people do it. But I should know better. There’s an important difference between the two. For the average conversation the difference doesn’t really matter much. However, when it comes to strategic communication and understanding the role of narrative in messaging strategies, it’s a distinction that has to be made.

Explaining the difference between a story and a narrative can easily get bogged down in academic jargon. Eyes will glaze over. There might be some dismissive comments about the “ivory tower.” I think I can avoid this with a good example that illustrates the differences.

First, I want to give you a definition of narrative. We have a detailed definition in our book Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). But since we’re avoiding academic language here, let’s abbreviate it by defining narrative simply as a “system of stories.” That means that narratives are composed of multiple stories that relate to one another.

The aforementioned book also provides a nice academic definition of “story.” But again to keep things moving, I’ll abbreviate that too. Let’s define story simply as an “event unit.” It relates the ‘who, where, when and how’ of an event that occurred (or will occur if we’re talking about ‘prophecy,’ although prophecy is prefaced as something ‘revealed’ in the past). A narrative is made up of several of these interrelated “event units” that work together as a system. There’s no maximum number, but there is a minimum (at least two). And the system isn’t exclusive either. A narrative can have stories added, subtracted, and swapped out. Confused? Let’s get to that great example I told you about.

Talk to your average Christian at church on Sunday morning and ask him or her to tell you the “story” of Jesus (by which you actually mean “narrative”). The response is what we’ll call the “Jesus narrative.” Most readers probably already know the narrative. You’ve seen it depicted in a movie or two or three. It’ll start with Jesus being miraculously born to a virgin, Mary. The virgin birth (no, it’s not called the Immaculate Conception – that’s Mary’s birth, honest) is a story. It’s one story that operates within the system of stories that makeup the Jesus narrative.

Now if you open a Bible while you’re at church, you’ll find that the New Testament contains four different narratives about the life and mission of Jesus Christ. We call them the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Each one of these Gospels contains similar but different narratives, which is why the Church fathers decided to include four Gospels instead of one. For example, the story (event unit) of the virgin birth is found in only two of the Gospels, namely Matthew and Luke. We won’t find it in the narratives of Mark or John. As you’ll recall, narratives aren’t exclusive. That means that when you ask someone at church to tell you about Jesus, the stories from all four Gospel narratives can come together to form a coherent system of stories, the Jesus narrative.

Let’s take another example. When I was a kid attending Risen Christ Lutheran Church in Rochester, New York, I was taught the Lord’s Prayer. It’s the one that starts, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Jesus teaches this prayer to his disciples in the Jesus narrative. But again, if you pick up the Bible, you’re only going to find that story in the narratives of Matthew and Luke. You won’t find it in Mark and John. Additionally, the “Lord’s Prayer” I was taught, the one Christians use every week at Church, is only found in Matthew (6: 9-13).  It’s much shorter in Luke. This story unit from the Matthew narrative is freely incorporated with the stories of John, Luke, and Mark to form the system of stories we know as the Jesus narrative.

Seeing the distinctions between stories and narratives may sound like academic nit-picking. But it’s essential when it comes to organizing and making sense of narrative and the way people deploy or use them. Stories are pieces that can come and go, change, and morph, but the narrative remains.

When the narrative shows great resilience, we have “master narratives,” meaning narratives that have endured the test of time and become deeply embedded in culture. These are the most important narratives in strategic communication. People make use of them all the time. The American Revolution is a master narrative that we learn in grade school civics class, and it’s composed of a lot of stories like Paul Revere’s ride, Washington crossing the Delaware, the Boston Tea Party, and so on.  A modern political group calls itself the “Tea Party,” using revolutionary slogans, dressing up in period costumes, and so on.  They don’t do that for nothing:  Their aim is to invoke the values, thinking, and grievances of the American Revolution in the minds of people they hope to persuade.

When we look at the way extremists utilize master narratives, we can see the dynamics of the story system working. An extremist may invoke a master narrative as a whole while ignoring some stories it contains, to better serve his or her ideological goals.  For example, Islamist extremists like to call the U.S. and other Western countries Christian “crusaders” and liken themselves to the Muslim champion Saladin. However, Saladin was actually allied with Byzantine Christians against the Crusaders of the Holy Roman Church. It was hardly a cosmic clash of civilizations.

Recognizing these kinds of inconvenient stories allows us to subvert, refute, and disrupt extremists’ use of  narratives, perhaps by promoting a different variation of the story system that challenges their own.

* Jeffry R. Halverson is an Islamic studies scholar and an Assistant Research Professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. He is the author of Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam (Palgrave Macmillan 2010), Searching for a King: Muslim Nonviolence and the Future of Islam (Potomac 2012), and co-author of Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism (Palgrave Macmillan 2011).

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On Sunday, September 25, a lone suicide bomber detonated a bomb at a Protestant Church in Surakarta (Solo), Central Java, as services were letting out. Along with the bomber, one congregant was killed and several wounded from the shrapnel composed of nails, bolts and buckshot. In the ensuing week there has been a struggle over how the event should be framed, with most Islamist groups denying responsibility.

The bomber has been identified as Pino Damayanto aka Yosepa Hayat Ahmad aka Abu Daud Raharjo, and was wanted by police in connection to the network that bombed a mosque in a police station in Cirebon, West Java, last April. Police have since announced that they are in pursuit of others suspected of being a part of the attack, who might have fled to East Java, as well as a number of bombs that are suspected to have been built. On Friday, Indonesia’s anti-terrorism squad Densus 88 captured Beni Ahmad Asri, wanted in conjunction with the Cirebon network, in West Sumatra.

Police announced that the bomber was a member of jailed terrorist leader Abu Bakar Basyir’s Jama’ah Ansarut Tauhid (JAT). This was quickly met with a denial by a JAT spokesman. It has been confirmed, however, that he studied at the Islamic boarding school run by Abu Bakar Basyir at Ngruki.

One immediate concern was whether this bombing was a reaction to the sectarian violence in Ambon three weeks ago. As my earlier post notes, extremist Islamist groups have stoked the flames of violence in Ambon, calling for jihad and continuing to portray Christians in the region as separatist members of the Republik Maluku Selatan (Republic of the South Moluccas, or RMS). The RMS was defeated in the early 1950s, was supported then by both Christians and Muslims alike, has little support in the Moluccas, and has never been a significant threat to the state of Indonesia since its defeat.

The day of the Solo church bombing, there were three bombs found in Ambon, in front of churches.  A fourth was found a day later. Despite the location of the bombs, extremist sites such as Prisoner of Joy place the blame on Christians. Indonesian police have reported similarities in the construction of the bombs found in Ambon to those found and used in Cirebon and Solo. One extremist site, Ghur4ba,  proudly proclaimed its support for the church bombing, and linked it to the violence in Ambon, the general crusade of Christians against Muslims, the apostacy of the Indonesian government, and referred to the bomber as a martyr. The declaration has appeared on several other sites, and is attributed to Forum Islam al-Busyro.

On Saturday, the head of Indonesia’s anti-terrorism agency proclaimed that after investigation, the violence in Ambon was not tied to the bombing.

As the toll rose to two dead including the bomber and 22 injured, Detik.com and others reported that the suicide bomber had apparently left a bag containing a Qur’an, gloves and other items at a nearby internet cafe, where he used a computer just prior to carrying out the bombing. The day after the bombing, news site Surya published this story stating that the bomber had looked at the extremist site ar Rahmah before the bombing.

Eastern Indonesia’s flagship paper Pos Kupang gave a list of the stories that the bomber had viewed. The stories the bomber viewed were mostly about American and allied casualties in Afghanistan, with one about Osama bin Laden. The stories referenced powerful Islamist master narratives, notably the crusader master narrative and the martyr master narrative (the latter in reference to Osama bin Laden).

In the days following the Solo bombing, police and investigative journalists began to release details about the bombing, and extremists began issuing their predictable condemnations of the event – while continuing to valorize suicide bombings elsewhere and jihad in general. Mainstream Muslim groups such as Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah immediately condemned the bombings, and an NU spokesman asked that the government take down extremist sites.

Responding to calls for shutting down extremist websites, Indonesia’s Minister of Communication and Information Titaful Sembiring stated that websites are likely not what push people to radicalism, but rather it is a fundamental misunderstanding of Islam, which bans attacks on places of worship. While I agree with the latter part of the statement, there is mounting evidence that self-radicalization can occur via the internet.

Extremist sites such as ar Rahmah and Voice of al-Islam cited the minister’s speech in defense of their right to publish, and argued that they are the only ones exposing the true war against Islam in Indonesia, citing (once again!) the conflict in Ambon. Ar Rahmah plays the persecuted card, as though it is a victim of Islamophobia (and as though it doesn’t publish stories inciting violence in the name of twisted interpretation of Islam). Ar Rahmah published a story asking why the death of Christians warranted so much attention, when the deaths of Muslims in Ambon — according to them — did not.

As extremist groups began distancing themselves from the bombing, ar Rahmah published a story asking people not to link the bombing with jailed terrorist leader Abu Bakar Bashir. Conspiratorial thinking emerged as well — according to another story on ar Rahmah, intelligence analyst A. C. Manullang stated that the bombing may have been a pretext to crack down on radical groups in  Solo. In a story on Voice of al-Islam (which was subsequently removed), head of the paramilitary group Islamic Defenders Front Habib Rizieq claimed that the bombing was part of a “divide and conquer” tactic by the government.

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Last year, my colleagues Steven Corman, Jeffrey Halverson and I wrote a series of blog posts exploring Islamist reactions to anti-Islam and anti-Muslim events in the US, including the debate over the Park51 Islamic Center and an American pastor’s proposal to burn a Qur’an on 9/11, among others. One of the points we made in our final post was that these events fuel the extremist narrative that the US and its allies are at war with Islam, rather than counter the extremists’ messages. We also argued that the State Department could play a more proactive role in refuting the acts and rhetoric that damages the American message abroad, especially since the acts and rhetoric were mainly coming from private citizens, and not the government. What to do, however, when it is the government itself that is making the gaffes?

Last week a story about an FBI trainer gained a lot of traction in both the American mainstream media as well as various online outlets including blogs and news sites. William Gawthrop, who is an instructor at the American Military University and has held several positions in national security and intelligence, also trains law enforcement officials in counterterrorism. On June 8 he was discovered to have been continuing to conduct law enforcement training lectures that repeat messages about Islam and Muslims, even though the FBI claimed that the presentation was a one time affair that ended in April after fierce criticism of its content. Gawthrop’s analysis, which essentially states that the problem isn’t radical Muslims but Islam itself, was spread to a room full of law enforcement officials who likely trusted that their source of information was not only better informed that they were, but well informed. Gawthrop violated this trust, however, and delivered a lecture that demonized Islam.

Counterterrorism experts have widely criticized Gawthrop, yet he continues to misinform law enforcement. From a Wired article (with a video clip of the presentation), here is Aki Peritz, a former analyst with the National Counterterrorism Center:

This is mind-numbingly stupid and dangerous. If we were to follow his idea to a logical extension, that means we have individuals in every single government agency, at top levels, from CIA to the Defense Department to members of Congress, that are part of this cabal to destroy Western civilization. If you truly believe that, then this is McCarthyism on steroids.

Not only did this story spread through US media, but it spread to extremists sites where it was touted as evidence that the US was actually at war with Islam; Gawthrop’s plays right into the terrorists’ narrative. First, some of what Gawthrop said.

Gawthrop’s assertion that Islam was 17 percent religion and 83 percent ideology might have seemed charitable when compared to Dutch Islamophobe Geert Wilder’s assertion that the proportion are more like 5 percent and 95 percent, respectively. Both comments cry out for an explanation, however; how in the world did Gawthrop come up with that number? He doesn’t say. Most offensive, however, is his general demonization of Islam, comparing Muslims to iron filings and stating that Islam is like a magnet determining their movement, and whose “force is exerted against you” — a room full of New York City police officers. Most dangerous is his claim that instead of focusing our counterterrorism efforts on groups such as al Qaeda, we should instead focus them on the “ideology” of Islam. Gawthrop cites Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis, which has been widely criticized for its lack of depth and understanding and broad generalizations of the “civilizations” that Huntington purports are destined to fight each other.

This kind of disinformation about Islam is unfortunate because it spreads incorrect and dangerous ideas to American law enforcement, and increases tension between them and the American Muslim community. This tension causes distrust, and makes law enforcement more difficult. Yet it is not simply a domestic problem.

Not only did this story spread through US media, but it spread to extremists sites where it was touted as evidence that the US was actually at war with Islam; Gawthrop’s ideas are consistent with Islamist extremists’ narrative. It plays directly into the hands of Islamist extremists the world over, and bolsters their message that America’s desire to end Islamist terrorism is really a war on the religion of Islam itself. This message could be effective at drawing recruits to terrorism. But is the message really spreading? Is the Muslim world paying attention?

The answer is a definite yes. In Southeast Asia, Islamist extremists have picked up the story about Gawthrop and spread it, including on social media cites such as Facebook. Posted Wednesday, September 21, the ar Rahmah story on Gawthrop’s lecture had nearly 3000 hits by Thursday afternoon, and the link was recommended by 811 people on Facebook. On their Facebook posting of the same story, it was “liked” by 101 people, and 30 comments. Comments range from the hope that non-believers will find one day find Islam to agreeing that this is proof that the United States is at war with Islam. Some of these comments include violent rhetoric. Does this mean everyone who posted comments will take up arms against the United States? Of course not. But will they spread the message that Americans are admitting that they are at war with Islam? Almost certainly, and this can lead to radicalization. In the Arab-speaking world, the story spread as well; Islamist Ansar al Jihad, for example, has posted it. The story has also been reported in mainstream news outlets in the Muslim world.

This is similar to a flap that occured last week, when an FBI manual was found to contain similar anti-Islam sentiments. In one graph, the manual argued that the more devout a Muslim was, the more likely the Muslim was to be violent. This story was also reported in the Muslim world, for example here on al Jazeera (this is the English language version), an here on Islamist site Islamic Awakening.

The United States Government has repeatedly acknowledged that it needs to work on its message to the Muslim world. This latest flap shows that it also needs to work on its message to Americans, because the wider Muslim world continues to pay attention.

 UPDATE, January 26, 2012

In another example of a messaging gaffe on the part of the American law enforcement, the film “The Third Jihad,” an anti-Muslim film that purports to show the threat to the United States from American Muslims, continued to be shown to law enforcement oficers despite widespread condemnation and statements that it was no longer shown, according to the New York Times and other sources.

The film is another example of anti-Muslim scare tactics that do not reflect reality, but rather complement the Islamist extremists’ messages that the US is at war with Islam. “This is the true agenda of much of Muslim leadership here in America… A strategy to infliltrate and dominate America… This is the war you don’t know about,” warns a narrator. Using this kind of misinformation to train law enforcement is not only mind boggling, but it creates clear difficulties and mistrust between law enforcement and the Muslim community.

The New York city Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly is featured in the film, but a police spokesman initially denied that he participated, stating that his presence in the film was based on old interviews. The film’s website, however, contradicts that claim and states that the Commissioner sat for an exclusive 90-minute interview. Yesterday the New York Times printed a story describing Kelly’s acknowledgement and regret at having participated in the film.

The film shows inflammatory images such as an Islamic flag flying over the White House. Images such as these are easily obtained from Islamist extremist sites, but to portray them as common ideas among American Muslims is grossly misleading. Furthermore, in a statement defending the film, its producer Raphael Shore argues that it is based on information provided by terrorism experts, including Kelly and Rudolph Giuliani. These two may have tactical knowledge regarding how to deal with terrorism, but I question the depth of their knowledge of Islam as a religion, or even Islamist movements in general, based on their statements. And despite what the Islamist extremists and the anti-Islam propagandists want us to believe, the two are very different subjects.

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Violence between Muslims and Christians broke out in the city of Ambon, Maluku Province, Indonesia on Sunday, September 11. Official sources state that an ojek (motorcycle taxi) driver named Darmis Saiman was killed in an accident on September 10. But rumors sent via text message spread the following day when he was buried claimed that the Muslim driver had been tortured to death by Christians.At last count, seven people have been confirmed dead and at least 60 wounded, and the government has sent between 200 and 400 Mobile Brigade (Brimob) forces to the region as back up. Although rational voices are pleading for calm, Indonesian Islamist extremists are using the conflict to stoke more violence, recalling the sectarian conflict that roiled the region between 1999 and 2002 and claimed some 9000 lives.

Islamists were quick to use the master narratives of the Crusades and martyrdom in their reports on the conflict.  That the incident occurred on the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the United States was not just a coincidence for the extremists. The extremist web site Voice of Islam reported that the attack was provoked by the United States as a way to portray Ambon as a hotbed for terrorists.  The site stated that if Islamist groups come to Ambon to help the Muslims fighting there, America will simply portray it as terrorism and thus use it as an excuse to kill Muslims.

Voice of Islam also covered Abu Bakar Basyir’s statement on the violence.  Basyir is the former spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah and leader of Jama’ah Anshorut Tauhid, recently jailed for 15 years. He issued a fatwa for jihad in Ambon, and repeated the claims that the violence is a conspiracy to to bring attention to the region so that the “crusaders” can eliminate Islam there. Ar Rahmah, perhaps the most popular extremist web site in Indonesia, also invoked the crusader master narrative in its early reporting of the conflict, linking the violence to a coordinated attempt by Christians to wipe out Islam.

In another posting, ar Rahmah urged Ambonese Muslims to be at the ready. The site reported that the violent paramilitary group the Islamic Defenders Front is preparing to send jihad forces to Ambon, using the term “laskar jihad.” This is a loaded term, because Laskar Jihad was a group that formed Islamist militias to go to Ambon in 1999 during sectarian violence there. The group was subsequently disbanded under pressure from the government in the aftermath of the 2002 Bali Bombing.In the story, the FPI claimed that separatist members of the Republic of South Moluccas (RMS) are part of the Christian group, and that Jewish conspirators are behind the violence.

Although there are a few remaining supporters of the RMS in Ambon, and a fringe group called the Moluccan Sovereignty Front emerged during the 1999-2002 violence, separatism is not a serious threat. The RMS exists mostly as a government-in-exile in Holland, and has made recent statements that it is willing to accept Indonesian sovereignty in the region. Nonetheless, the “threat” of separatism — imagined or real — is frequently used to incite violence. A post on Suara Islam Online linked the violence to a supposed Christian military training camp in Bogor, West Java named Christ of Ambon.

Others chimed in to incite. The Council of Indonesian Ulama released a statement as well, claiming as factual that the death of Darmis Saiman was caused not by the accident but by stab wounds inflicted by Christians. They called for a reduction in influence of Christians in Ambon, as well as a call to arm Muslims to prepare for jihad.

Blogger Ghur4Ba invoked the Crusader narrative, and appealed to readers to pray for the warriors of jihad. Voice of Islam, in a subsequent post entitled “The Lessons from Ambon: Preparing Strength for Jihad is Important,” condemned the Crusaders and urged Musims to prepare to fight:

In conclusion, Muslims must begin to prepare for jihad, to begin physical training, preparing the means of war, and make efforts for the perfection of jihad fi sabilillah. That’s because the jihad, according to the basic beliefs Ahlus Sunnah wal Jama, will remain until the end of time.

Despite the rhetoric of the extremists, cooler heads are noting marked differences in the violence between 1999 and Sunday, such as the unwillingness of larger groups to join in, and the fact that the violence did not spread to other regions. In an article in the Jakarta Globe, Najib Azca, an expert on violence in Ambon and a researcher at Gadjah Mada University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies, noted that some of the factors that stoked conflict a decade ago remained, such as poverty and religious segregation. Coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence Haris Azhar, however, argued that this wasn’t sectarian conflict, and noted the differences between Ambon then and now. The article noted how the violence remained contained, and that others in the religiously segregated communities worked to protect minorities in their midst.

Although it ran an alarmist headline, this Jakarta Post story noted President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s desire to not repeat the mistakes of a decade ago, and included plans to reach out to local leaders. Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Marshall (ret) Djoko Suyanto acknowledged the role of provocation-by-SMS, and the importance of providing factual information to counter instigation:

In the future, we need to reinforce the people’s resilience so that they are not so easily incited, including through SMS or twitters instigating anarchy. People should be able to filter information.

This brief interview by Radio Australia with International Crisis Group Southeast Asia Senior Advisor Sidney Jones describes the phenomenon of SMS instigation in Indonesia and elsewhere. Consistent with analysis by well regarded Indonesianist political scientists such as Gerry van Klinken, Jones notes that the political context is much different now. In the earlier conflict, in the context of a democratizing Indonesia, local actors in Ambon were jockeying for new political opportunities, which fueled the violence. Politically, things are much more stable now, and it appears that calm — albeit a nervous calm — was restored quickly and has thus far maintained.

Because of the potential for violence, police have been searching passengers for weapons on passenger ships bound for Ambon in Java’s major ports, and continue their efforts to find those who spread incitement via text messages.

Update, 9-21-11:

Reports of police sweeps of ships heading to Ambon noted that some “sharp weapons” were confiscated, but no firearms. The Jakarta Post reports that the police still don’t have a suspect in the sending of the text messages that stoked the violence. Although it is clear Ambon remains peaceful, there are understandably some underlying tensions that remain, as well as some internally displaced persons who have not returned to their homes. Islamist extremists, however, continue to spread disinformation in an attempt to stoke violence.

Islmaist site Ghur4Ba provided some updats on the situation in Ambon, included alerting its readers to where groups of armed Muslims are gathering in preparation for fighting. No fighting broke out, however.

English language site Prisoner of Joy (among others) questioned the police response to the riot, arguing that Muslims were the victim sof the rio, and so it is unjust that they are being targeted by security forces. Accounts of the violence, however, clearly point to Muslim provocateurs sending the original text messages, and starting the upheavals. Although a official account of the death of Darmis Saiman, the ojek driver, showed that he died of injuries sustained in the traffic accident, and that Christian onlookers attempted to help him after the accident, Islamist sites continue to insist that he was murdered and tortured by a group of Christians. Umar Abduh, an Indonesian convicted on terrorism charges but now free after serving a 10-year sentence, argued that the police in Indonesia support “the Crusaders” and, perhaps most astonishingly, that Christians, including those who opposed the Jakarta Charter (which would have made sharia the land of the law in Indonesia), are anti-Indonesia, separatist, and anti-pluralism. This belies a stunning ignorance of Indonesian history, a history in which Christian Indonesians played significant roles in the anti-colonial struggle and in the founding of the Indonesian state. Ar Rahmah posted a story quoting Umar Abduh that paints the violence as a governmnet conspiracy, and argues that the UN should try those responsible in the Indonesian government for the violence. The Islamic Defenders Front, a thuggish paramilitary group organized under the guise of protecting Islam, has given the Indonesian government an ultimatum of one month before they start sending jihadis to the region.

These responses show that the Islamists are merely eager to stoke more violence in the region. It is particularly ironic to hear Islamists such as Umar Abduh accuse the small minority of Indonesian Christians of being against pluralism and diversity — clearly against their self-interest — as well as hear the cry for the UN to get involved, given Islamists history of antipathy toward the organization.

Update, October 4

The International Crisis Group has released its report on the violence in Ambon, available here. As usual, it is a well researched and documented report, and perhaps most notably it describes the presence of “peace provocateurs,” an interfaith group in Ambon who used social media to dispell and counter rumors that were circulating in order to stoke violence:

Their core group was about ten, each of whom had some ten or fifteen contacts around the city’s major flashpoints. They were on the phone with each other constantly, checking out stories and sending informationover Twitter and Facebook and by text messages. When a member of the network in one part of town heard the rumours about the Silo Church being destroyed, he called a member of the network stationed at the church totake a photograph with his phone and circulate it, to prove it was standing undamaged.

 The report also criticizes the government, police and military responses to the violence, and discusses some of the theories circulating about the causes of the violence.

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Unlike the protests of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt, the campaigns underway against the Assad regime in Syria have a distinctly sectarian character. The Assad regime is dominated by the Alawites, a little-known esoteric Shi‘ite sect. However, the majority of Syria’s population is Sunni Muslim (approx. 75%). And caught in the middle of the conflict are Syria’s Christians (10% of the pop.), Druze, Twelver Shi‘ites, and others, including a small number of Jews. In July of 2011 alone, at least 30 people were killed in violent clashes between pro-regime Alawites and anti-regime Sunnis in the city of Homs.

Conflict between the two religious communities is nothing new. During the reign of Hafez Assad (d. 2000), the Alawite regime perpetrated an infamous massacre of Sunni Muslims in the city of Hama, just north of Homs, that claimed between ten thousand to forty thousand lives. And back during the reign of the Sunni Ottoman Empire in Syria, Alawites were not recognized as Muslims or People of the Book, but rather as heretics with no legal status. The history of conflict and tense relations between the Alawites and Sunnis in Syria is obviously long and complex. Yet, these complexities aside, the sectarian dimension of the Syrian conflict reveals much about the significance and power of narrative.

For those interested in politics, democratization, and international relations, looking at the role of narrative in the Syrian uprising is particularly informative. Indeed, by framing the conflict in Syria in sectarian terms (as I did above), we see the belligerents through their religious affiliations and the differences that exist between them and little else. The Alawites have different doctrines, rituals, practices, institutions, and so on, than do the Sunni Muslims. The variety of differences in the area of religion can be distracting and misleading though.

These differences, and the broader implications they have had, are actually all symptoms of a conflict of narratives, albeit profoundly shaped by the accidents and currents of world history. Without narrative, all of the doctrines, rituals, or institutions would be nothing beyond what is observed by a person that does not know the narratives involved, and they would carry no substantive meaning or significance. For example, without narrative, the act of wudhu or ritual ablutions by a Sunni Muslim becomes simply a hygienic act of washing.

To illustrate the conflicting narratives that exist between the Sunnis and the Alawites, I have radically paraphrased and structurally simplified the core underlying narratives at play in both sects.

Sunni Muslims: The One Deity revealed His Will to His Final Prophet and humanity must follow that revealed knowledge to select wise leaders, create a just and righteous society, and earn salvation after death in Heaven through steadfast effort and intention.

Alawites: The Triune Deity (think “Holy Trinity”), incarnated during the time of the Prophet, revealed esoteric knowledge of the true religion through the Family of the Prophet and select initiates, and, through this secret esoteric knowledge, initiates can attain salvation and their souls will transmigrate into more perfect forms.

[Note: Alawites historically practice taqiyya and avoid exposing their beliefs and practices to outsiders, thus scholars debate the actual tenants of the Alawites]

These serve as starting points for notions of identity, institutions, worldviews, and customs. Due to the particularly insular nature of the Alawite narrative,  and the Sunni rejection of them as fellow Muslims, the Alawites have existed as a minority in Syria (indeed, a more precarious minority than Christians, who are at least “People of the Book” as an Abrahamic pre-Islamic religion) and the Alawites have acted in ways  that support their interests, such as serving the French colonialists or supporting Baathism and crushing Sunni Islamism.

Religion, at its most skeletal level, is narrative. More specifically, I mean to say (tipping my hat to Bruce Lincoln) that “religion,” at its core, is a particular, communally-shared narrative (or narratives) attributed to a transcendent source (e.g. deity, ancestor, totem etc). This makes these particular narratives qualitatively different than those attributed to a mundane human author or folk culture (where anonymity may rule the day). Practices, community and institutions all start and take shape from there. Due to this exceptional attribution (“Allah revealed these stories to our leader on the mountain”), the narrative(s), and the beliefs or rituals or institutions that the narrative(s) supports, carries transcendent authority.

These two qualities distinguish religion, or (for the sake of convenience) a “religious narrative,” from all other narratives. This is one of the principal reasons why older religions, such as Judaism or Christianity, are privileged in our society over younger religions, such as Mormonism (LDS). The narratives of the older religions are protected by the ambiguities and gaps of the past, lost in history (as well as longstanding communities and institutions), and the rhetorical tricks that these obscurities of the past have allowed contemporary adherents and institutions to enjoy. But how does this business of religion and narrative relate to Syria?

When we look at the conflict between the Alawites and the Sunnis in Syria through the lens of narrative , we can see people following different or conflicting narratives. There is no empirical verifiable evidence to support the religious claims of either group (or any other religious sect for that matter); there are only the narratives (and that is what matters) that they tell to relate a certain depiction of the past, explain the origin and meaning of their communal identity, or rituals, or extol the authority of their texts and traditions and the ongoing authority of those texts and traditions in the 21^st century, et cetera. The rival conceptions of authority and identity that the Alawites and Sunnis profess put them at odds with each other and delineate them as two factions, consisting of individual human beings, engaged in hostilities throughout the years.

When we see the conflict through the lens of narrative, we can also see certain solutions. Namely, a narrative lens suggests that the key to a vibrant democratic-nationalist society in Syria, where citizenship displaces sect, is the formation and adoption of a resonant narrative that offers an alternative reference point for the formation of Syrian identity. As an example of one such successful narrative, one that has largely displaced religious (or sectarian) or ethnic narratives and fostered a democratic society, we can look to the United States of America. That said, the success of that narrative (as we know) in the United States has not been a simple or bloodless process at all, nor will that process be so in Syria (nor should we expect it to be). It is, however, an effort worth supporting.

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If you’ve read our book Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism then you already have a solid understanding of the major master narratives employed by Islamist extremists in their communications. For example, you’re able to recognize the significance of a Pharaoh reference when an extremist is condemning a world leader. Or you’re able to see the apocalyptic scheme articulated in Ahmadinejad’s praise of the “Lord of the Age” (which is not a reference to Allah). However, it becomes more difficult when the master narratives are implicit and the fragmentary references in an extremist text are more obscure. When this is the case, it can be much easier to miss them. Let’s look at a recent example.

On July 10, 2011, a statement was posted online announcing the creation of a new extremist website and forum (or “network”). The new website is called “Al-Fida Islamic Network.” The word al-Fida’ means “sacrifice” in Arabic. The announcement included the following passage:

O proud Islamic ummah: Even though the slaves of dirham and dinar allied with the servants of the Cross under the leadership of the brothers of apes and pigs in order to stifle and silence the voice of jihad, they will fail to do so because this religion is supported by the Lord of all creation.

In the above passage, there are three master narratives that stand out to me. Let’s go through each of the three and see how these implicit master narratives can be unpacked for further analysis.

We can see from the start that three distinct groups are being mentioned in relation to each other, as indicated by the words “slaves,” “servants” and “brothers.” It’s the modifiers tied to these three groups that reveal the master narratives.

1. Let’s take the easy one first: “the servants of the Cross.” As we know this is a reference to the Crusader master narrative, a really common framework used by extremists to quickly depict the United States or Western Europe for their audiences.

2. The second one is trickier: “the slaves of dirham and dinar.” This is a reference to the Arab or Muslim leaders (and their security forces) that are cooperating with the United States in military operations against the extremists. The specific choice of the currencies “dirham” and “dinar” could refer to specific countries, such as Morocco and Iraq, but this is unlikely and the phrase is likely a general one. The claim is that these “slaves” (i.e. Muslims) are not “true Muslims” and they betray the ummah for the sake of money and wealth (e.g. U.S. financial aid). To emphasize this point, the word abd or “slave” is used to describe these enemies, because a “true Muslim” is the abd of God (Allah) Almighty and serves no one and nothing but Him (recall the pious name Abdullah or “slave/servant of God”). The extremists are implicitly invoking the Hypocrites master narrative here, which consists of a ruse story form and includes an archetypal traitor and imposter, to characterize their troublesome adversaries within Arab and Muslim countries as disingenuous or false Muslims.

3. Finally, the third master narrative  is evident in the phrase: “under the leadership of the brothers of apes and pigs.” This is a direct reference to verses from the Qur’an, which states that God (Allah) punished a group of Israelites (i.e. Jews) for breaking His commandments, apparently those related to keeping the Sabbath and banning graven images (i.e. idols), by turning them into apes and pigs. Some Muslim exegetes interpret these verses in a metaphorical sense, meaning that the offenders were henceforth unclean and base creatures excluded from God’s grace.  However, that is not how the verses are typically understood by extremists (they usually read it literally). The reference (“brothers of apes and pigs”) is intended to denote “the Jews” and more specifically those Jews leading the “servants of the Cross,” which is a reference to the common “Zionist-Crusader Alliance” trope found throughout Islamist extremist texts. That last bit, expressing the relationship between these two groups in the statement, clarifies that this reference is about Zionism and therefore the Nakba master narrative and not the Khaybar master narrative (both of which relate negative Muslim experiences with Jews).

These are the three master narratives implicitly invoked through fragmentary references in a single sentence of this extremist text. In doing so, the extremists associated with al-Fida’ are positioning themselves within an existing scheme of a global conflict underway. Readers know precisely who al-Fida is opposing or fighting in their “internet jihad” without any further necessary exposition. The amount of master narratives condensed into a single sentence, presenting the three groups as a single alliance, also conveys a sense of urgency. In other words, the forces aligning against the “true ummah” are so vast and ominous that al-Fida‘ is a vital endeavor that others should become involved in immediately.

For further reading and more details about the different master narratives I mentioned in this analysis, I invite readers to consult chapters 9, 5, and 12 in Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism.

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The CSC has released a new white paper entitled The Tariq ibn Ziyad Master Narrative by Jeffry R. Halverson.  The executive summary is as follows:

Master narratives provide important insights into the cultures and societies that analysts and diplomats encounter on a daily basis. Understanding how those narratives are utilized by factions hostile to the interests of the United States can be the difference between successful diplomacy and international catastrophe. Given the current geo-political climate, master narratives employed by Islamist extremists are among the most important. Many of those narratives are recorded and analyzed in the book, Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). This paper addresses an additional master narrative employed by extremists, albeit less frequently than those included in the book.

The Tariq ibn Ziyad master narrative relates the conquest of Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal) by the Berber commander, Tariq ibn Ziyad, in 711. The master narrative posits a champion archetype (Tariq) as a conquering hero who ventures to a new land, strikes down the infidel tyrant (King Roderick), and ushers in a kingdom of righteous and just rule. The master narrative, as it is utilized by extremists, typically exists in a radically simplified form. It ignores many of the inconvenient details of history that problematize the message of the extremists, such as the role of Tariq and Musa?s Jewish allies.

The Tariq ibn Ziyad master narrative is viewed an exemplary model for jihadist action against “infidel” or “apostate” dictators and governments, especially in the West. Due to the historical connections of the narrative to North Africa, the master narrative is most commonly found among Islamist extremists in that region, such as al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQLIM).

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The Karbala master narrative is one of the most rich and influential in the Islamic world, specifically among Shi‘a societies. We devoted an entire chapter to it in the book Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, and Kamran Scott Aghaie has penned a wonderful study of it in relation to the history of Iranian identity and nationalism. There is a terrific documentary too, examining the narrative in contemporary Iran and Iraq, which aired on PBS several years ago, called Pilgrimage to Karbala. Nevertheless, despite its prominence and the scholarly attention the narrative has received, I was very much surprised to see Ayman al-Zawahiri invoking this master narrative in his eulogy for Usama bin Laden.

In fact, al-Zawahiri made an explicit analogy comparing Bin Laden to Imam Husayn. He stated:

[Usama bin Laden] departed to his God, stained with the blood of his martyrdom. He was the man, who did not surrender, until the last moment of his life. He was killed among his family and sons. Abu Abdallah Usama Bin Ladin was killed the same way Abu Abdallah al-Husayn [the grandson of Prophet Muhammad], may God be pleased with him, was killed among his family and children. Abu Abdallah al-Husayn cried in pride on the day he was slain in Karbala: “I will never show humiliation.” Abu Abdallah Usama Bin Ladin did the same in Abbottabad, when he cried: “I will never show humiliation to the United States, I will never show humiliation to the arrogance of the Crusaders, I will never show humiliation to the collaborative Pakistanis, and I will never give concessions on the ummah’s sanctities and dignity. (Ayman al-Zawahiri, June 8, 2011)

Ayman al-Zawahiri’s use of the Karbala master narrative is unusual for a number of reasons. The Shi‘a master narrative carries deep cosmic and redemptive significance. These sectarian notions run contrary to several core Sunni Muslim beliefs. Indeed, a common Sunni polemical argument against Shi’ism is that it deifies Husayn and the other Imams and thereby commits the unforgivable sign of shirk (idolatry). As such, Sunnis would reject much of the content found in Shi‘a accounts of the Battle of Karbala, such as those traditionally recounted or performed during Ashura.

These theological disagreements notwithstanding, the tragic death of Husayn at Karbala in 680 (CE) is certainly an acknowledged event in Islamic history that is lamented by Sunni Muslims. Reverence for Husayn as a wali or saint among Sunni Muslims is also particularly strong in Egypt, where an ornate shrine believed to contain his severed head serves as one of the two holiest Muslim sites in the country. The other is the shrine-tomb of Sayyida Zaynab, who was Husayn’s sister. I personally visited the shrine of Husayn, as well as Zaynab, in Cairo back in 2001 and saw the Sunni reverence for Husayn first hand. And as most everyone knows, Ayman al-Zawahiri is Egyptian.

The shrine of Sayyidna Husayn in Cairo, Egypt

Nevertheless, there is great irony in eulogizing Usama bin Laden, who was a Saudi Wahhabi, by comparing him to Imam Husayn. In 1802 (CE), Saudi Wahhabi zealots from Arabia (later “Saudi Arabia”) launched an attack under Abdul-Aziz bin Muhammad bin Saud on the mosque-shrine of Husayn at Karbala in Iraq. The Wahhabis committed a massacre of the Shi‘a Muslim inhabitants in the holy city and proceeded to plunder and destroy Husayn’s sacred tomb-shrine. In their view, Shi‘ism was an infidel heresy and its idolatrous shrines, the foremost being those at Karbala and Najaf, needed to be destroyed under the banner of “true Islam.” They also carried out a similar attack against the mosque-shrine of Husayn’s father, Ali, at the holy city of Najaf in Iraq, and later in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

It must be profoundly disturbing for Shi‘a Muslims to hear a contemporary Wahhabi zealot being explicitly compared to Imam Husayn. If al-Zawahiri was trying to craft an ecumenical message that might unite Sunnis and Shi‘as against the “Crusader” United States, then he most certainly failed.

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As details pour in regarding this past weekend’s daring raid in which U.S. Navy SEALs  killed elusive al-Qaeda leader and world’s most wanted terrorist Osama Bin Laden, the exact details of the events keep changing slightly. The New York Times titled an article covering a recent revision to the sequence of events and details about the operation as “White House Corrects Bin Laden Narrative”.

I would argue, however, the “Bin Laden Narrative” that matters most is not the play-by-play account of what happened, and in what sequence, in that Abbottabad compound. (In fact, I wouldn’t even call that sequence of events a “narrative” in order to avoid confusion about that term.)  While the details of who was shot first and where are important, the bigger narrative concern is what happens now that Osama bin Laden has been killed. And, my interest here in this piece is not an operational question, i.e. will Ayman al-Zawahiri take over as the leader of al-Qaeda or will another figure assert leadership of the terrorist network. No, my concern here is: How will the U.S. (collectively both the government and the populace) frame, conceive and think about the contemporary world order now that the number-one-most-wanted-terrorist story has come to an end.

In an earlier post I noted that narrative is more than simply the recounting of events. Stories and events are crucial parts of narrative: They are parts of the system that is narrative. And, systems are more than just assemblages of their parts. Systems have emergent properties, and in the case of narrative, one of those properties is sense-making.

Narrative, fundamentally, is a method of making sense of a body of information that includes actors (entities that act, not Denzel Washington or Natalie Portman), actions/events,  settings and even stories. Sometimes a narrative is a system comprised of actual events, real actors, and a collection of stories told about them. Other times, a narrative is a fictional construction. The factual and fictional domains can also overlap and influence on another. America is famously a world leader in generating moving image narratives (films and television), so I use examples from that art form in what follows.

As Americans, we tend to organize the world in the most simplistic of narrative structures, the binary. In a binary narrative there is one protagonist who is understood as the good guy.*  This is usually “us” or “America” or our hero-du-jour, be it John Wayne, Tom Cruise, General MacArthur, President Abraham Lincoln, or James Bond (never mind that he’s English). The hero represents all that is good and right about us. The good guy is opposed by the antagonist “bad guy.”

The original Star Wars film offers a readily accessible example of how the binary offers a simple and air-tight understanding of a world. In a galaxy far away, a young man (Luke Skywalker on behalf of “The Republic”) enters into battle with an archetypal enemy (Darth Vader, dressed ominously in black and leading the forces of the evil “Empire”). Understanding this world is simple. There are those allied with Luke and the Republic and there are those allied with Vader and the Empire. It is a black and white world.

Our predilection for formulaic, familiar and always-resolved narratives is evident in the overwhelming popularity of police and medical “procedurals” on American television. While these shows might appear on the surface to be more complicated than the binary just described, at base they are just that.

In most police procedurals (think the CSI franchise, the Law and Order franchise, and the host of newer shows like Castle or the newly remade Hawaii Five-0.), the “good guys” and the “bad guys” are clearly delineated. The police (and prosecutors) represent the forces of good, normative American society opposing a criminal element—classical bad guys whether they are on-screen shooting at police or the off-screen subject of a mystery investigation.

In the medical procedurals (think House or Crossing Jordan as well as the reality-based medical/crime crossover shows like, Dr. G: Medical Examiner and Forensic Files), the intelligent and committed medical practitioners battle their enemy, disease or mystery, and the disease’s ever-present ally of the ticking clock.  All of these shows, whether fictional or reality-based, share the common traits of a clear protagonist (individual or group), a clear antagonist (criminal or disease) and, most importantly for what I see as the dominant form of narrative in the American psyche, a clear resolution.

So, what does all this have to do with Osama Bin Laden? For more than 10 years, Osama bin Laden has been the Darth Vader leading an evil empire of al-Qaeda, Taliban and miscellaneous Islamist extremists. The antagonist umbrella even covered Iraq and Saddam Hussein for a period of time (before the lack of narrative coherence finally separated Iraq from the bin Laden/al-Qaeda menace). The binary narrative structure in which the U.S. fights bin Laden and his allies actually simplifies a complex geo-political landscape into a format already familiar to the American public—the Cold War.

A classic binary narrative structure, the Cold War narrative neatly divided the world into good and evil, protagonist and antagonist, and made understanding simple. With the demise of the Soviet Union, that binary narrative structure was disrupted until the advent of bin Laden. While both President Obama and President Bush have repeatedly asserted that the U.S. is not at war with Islam or the Arab people, neither would have had to say this if the binary narrative that offers only two options (you’re with us or you’re against us) had not been dominating the American psyche.

Iraq was a sub-plot, one that we tried to force-fit into the fairly simple binary narrative pattern of protagonist vs. antagonist. The lack of unity in accepting the Iraq campaign illustrates that it did not cohere with the overall narrative system. This is a good illustration of the narrative comprehension process. Data is received (actions, events, actors) and a template (such as the binary structure here described) is applied. If the data fit the template, a concise comprehension is achieved. If they don’t fit, back to the drawing board. The situation in Iraq has never conveniently fit the binary template, which gave rise to the considerable contention, confusion and lack of understanding surrounding that ongoing episode.

With clear resolution being one of the hallmarks of the binary structure (House cures the disease, Benson and Stabler catch their criminal, Luke Skywalker defeats Darth Vader), what happens to our narrative understanding of the world now that resolution of this narrative is at hand?  With bin Laden dead, does the narrative end and the credits roll?  Hardly.

The geo-political landscape is just as complicated and unsuited to a binary narrative today as it was a week ago (not to mention 10 years ago). It seems to me that we have two options. We can take the “24 approach” and simply discover a new antagonist. This path elevates Ayman al-Zawahiri (or perhaps, as our friend Jarret Brachman suggests, Abu Yahya al-Libi) into the antagonist role. Then we could continue comprehending the contemporary moment as one of conflict between the U.S. and al-Zawahiri (or whatever new figurehead represents the evil empire of Al Qaeda, Taliban, AQAP, AQLIM, etc.).

Alternatively, we could jettison the binary narrative structure, its simplicity of conflict and its obvious path to resolution. Perhaps it is time that our mainstream culture and mainstream media recognize what our troops on the ground in Afghanistan already know and deal with everyday. There is no simple us vs. them arrangement in Afghanistan, or across the Middle East. Pakistan seems to be playing both sides of the fence. The Taliban is only one of at least five different insurgent groups in Afghanistan contesting the American presence. The Arab Spring has displaced leaders like Egypt’s Mubarak (who by virtue of the binary structure became an ally but who is now revealed as a less-than-savory bedfellow), and has left only questions in the wake of the uprisings. I’m not saying there isn’t evil in the world that needs to be opposed by American will and American military might. But I am saying that in the complicated geo-political and socio-cultural landscapes we face, an overly simplistic and binary organization of people, events and actions into some sort of uber-narrative structure is problematic and unhelpful.

The considerable gnashing of teeth occurring right now over Pakistani complicity or incompetence in bin Laden’s concealment illustrates the flaws of the binary that has dominated American culture. Why?  Because we had assigned to Pakistan the ally role in our binary narrative. Discovering the archetype of evil residing in relative comfort 60 miles from the capital of an ally does not comport with a simplistic understanding of “us vs. them”. Politicians across the political spectrum are grand-standing and calling for investigation in the $4 billion of foreign aid provided to Pakistan annually, claiming, essentially, some sort of breach of contract.

The reality is twofold. As a single nation-state entity, Pakistan has multiple interests (deter India, collect U.S. aid, limit anarchy in the northwest, deter further extremist attacks inside Pakistan, assert Pakistani sovereignty, develop relations with Russia and China, etc). As a fractured, barely functional government, different factions exercise different agendas and thus the government may not act in a consistent manner. This reality means that elements in Pakistan might have known of bin Laden’s presence and some may have aided him, but it does not mean that Pakistan is secretly a member of bin Laden’s evil empire. It also means that Pakistan is not always a stalwart ally. Complicated.

What to do then? We live in a complex world and it is time for our mode of understanding to embrace that complexity rather than try to over-simplify. Rather than imposing one, dominant and over-arching narrative to explain all things, we should embrace the systemic (recognize that sub-components of narrative such as stories, actors, events, settings may play different roles in multiple smaller narrative systems), multi-layered (rather than one dominant explanation that all components fit under, recognize that narratives exist in parallel and at multiple levels) and intersecting qualities of narrative.

These qualities are increasingly apparent in popular culture in the field of transmedia storytelling. Stories that share some common elements are told across a variety of media platforms. The recent glut of comic book hero movies exemplifies the trend. Spiderman begins as a comic book (one with multiple titles, no less), then movies and video games (and an animated television series with an oh-so-catchy theme song, lest we forget) proliferate.

The stories told on these different platforms sometimes integrate, and sometimes contradict. Add in fan-generated fiction from fan sites, and the system of stories, actions, events, actors and settings proliferates in a complex and tangled web. Yet, despite contradictions, the Spiderman universe remains eminently understandable. Complementary (and complimentary) stories add to Spidey’s heroism, while contradictory stories can be held at the same time by the reader/viewer. These add nuance and multiple facets to characters and situations without compromising understanding. This is precisely because these seemingly contradictory elements are part of smaller narrative systems that are flexibly interlinked into a broader system, rather than components being force-fit into a single, simplistic, binary narrative structure.

From cowboys vs. Indians to Axis vs. Allies to the Cold War, American culture has been fond of its simple, binary narratives. This same, familiar pattern has been applied to America’s conflict with terrorism and Islamist extremism, but now with bin Laden’s death perhaps we can put an end to this detrimental over-simplification. Again taking a cue from pop culture, our political communication can embrace the complexity of narrative structure that the culture is clearly capable of managing, and drive towards a more nuanced understanding of the complicated world around us.

____________________

* it is almost always a guy or a team that collectively constitutes the good team. Female-lead fictional narratives tend towards structures other than the binary.

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