The past couple of weeks have been interesting in Indonesia, especially for those concerned with religion and conflict in the world’s most populous Muslim country.

Ahmadiyya sentences.

On February 6 in Banten, West Java, some 1000 villagers attacked a house with several members of Ahmadiyya inside. Ahmadis consider themselves Muslims, but many Muslims consider Ahmadis heretics because of their belief that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was a prophet who came after Mohammad. The tension had been mounting, and the Ahmadis had been asked to leave and faced threats and intimidation. They were also accused of stockpiling weapons — if true, an understandable reaction given the palpable threats they were facing. During the attack, Ahmadis were viciously beaten, and three were killed, their corpses stomped into the mud as police stood by and watched. Video footage of the attacks, including idle police, remains on YouTube. Members of the extremist Islamic Defenders Front, who consider themselves vigilantes, were among the attackers.

Yesterday, a court in Jakarta announced a verdict of six months in jail for Deden Sudjana, an Ahmadi leader whose hand was nearly severed in the attack, for incitement and “maltreatment.” Last month, 12 of those who attacked the Ahmadis were handed down sentences of three to six months. None were tried for murder.

Ahmadiyya is persecuted under Indonesian law; its adherents are not allowed to demonstrate their faith publicly. There have been several attempts to ban the sect outright, and a branch of the sect was attacked in Makassar, Sulawesi last weekend.

Ramadan violence.

The Muslim fasting month of Ramadan is well under way, and in Indonesia, like clockwork extremist groups such as the FPI increased their attacks on what they perceive as immorality. Although they target criminal activities such as prostitution and drugs, they also target activities that are not illegal under Indonesian law, such as selling or eating food during the fast. Indonesia has practitioners of religious traditions other than Islam, as well as a wide continuum among Muslims regarding the strictness with which they carry out their faith. These attacks, including against a food stall in Makassar (Ujung Padang), Sulawesi, the other day, are frequently ignored by local police, who may sympathize with the FPI or may even be afraid to move against them, despite their claims to the contrary.

Another unfortunate Ramadan tradition in Indonesia is the targeting of Christian churches. On August 1 in Riau, two Protestant churches were burned down.

Terrorist Umar Patek brought back from Pakistan.

Umar Patek, a Jemaah Islamiyah member with ties to Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, who was arrested in Abbottabad, Pakistan in January, was repatriated to Indonesia. Conspiracy theorists speculated about his return, which took much longer than expected, accusing the Indonesian secret service of brainwashing him into admitting guilt.Following his return, he admitted his role in the first Bali bombing in 2002 as well as bombings of churches on Christmas Eve in 2000.

It cannot be a coincidence that he was picked up in the same town where Osama bin Laden met his demise, despite American claims to the contrary, although it is still unclear whether the two met. Umar Patek certainly has knowledge about the connections between Southeast Asian extremists and the rest of the world, and likely about the current state of these organizations. There is also speculation that Umar Patek divulged information that led to the raid on Osama bin Laden’s residence.

Whether or not he will talk is unclear, but the United States is among those hoping to be able to interrogate him. According to the head of the Indonesian National Counter Terrorism Agency Ansyaad Mbai, he cannot be tried under the 2003 anti-terrorism law, written in response to the Bali bombing; he will, however, be tried for other offenses including murder and possible explosives charges.

Violence in Papua.

Violence continues in West Papua, where recent demonstrations in favor of an independence referendum have been met with bloody crackdowns, and elections in some regions have turned violent. Indonesian sovereignty in West Papua has been contested since its de facto integration in 1962, formalized in the 1969 “Act of Free Choice.” The 1969 plebiscite was a fundamentally flawed process, and is considered a Cold War appeasement to Indonesian President Suharto, who had come to power four years earlier in a bloodbath of communists.

Papua is not immune to light sentencing for horrendous crimes. Last week a court handed down sentences of six to 15 months to three soldiers for “insubordination.” Their crime? The murder and decapitation of Reverend Kindeman Gire, reported by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Another article, also by Tom Allard, describes a tightly woven web of monitoring and surveillance in Papua that creates a climate of fear and intimidation. A group of professors from some of Indonesia’s best universities, calling themselves the Academic Forum for a Peaceful Papua, called for the government to eschew violence in favor of dialogue to solve Papua’s problems.

These recent events point to the continued increasing influence of extremist Islam the continuing impunity of the military and are a blow to multiculturalism and democracy in Indonesia. Lame duck President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will likely not make any bold steps to reign in groups such as the FPI nor is he likely to make any bold moves to reign in the military.

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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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The first 48 hours after the death of Osama bin Laden were grounds for relief in the United States, its allies, and those who condemn violent extremism, but they have also been fraught with speculation and rumors concerning the operation. Is bin Laden really dead? Did he really use his wife as a shield? Was he really armed and did he fire at the Navy Seals? Why have there been no pictures of his body released? Why was he buried at sea?

Extremists have attempted to pounce on these seeming inconsistencies in the tale of bin Laden’s demise. The Indonesian branch of Hizbut Tahrir emphasized the inconsistencies to cast doubt on the American version of events. Going even further, extremist blog Prisoner of Joy posted a story attributed to Ruslan Sinbarigov of the Kavkaz Center (an Eastern European Islamist website) that claimed – based on the purported tweets of a nearby Pakistani – that the helicopter did not malfunction but rather was shot down, that the operation took two hours and not forty minutes, that the DNA test took too little time to be believable, and others. The implied conclusions?

1. Bin Laden was not in the house that was attacked by the Americans.
2. Bin Laden was indeed killed, but the body was so badly damaged, or the Americans so desecrated his body by doing some of their kufar rituals, that it was not possible to identify him visually.

The Voice of al-Islam parrots these claims: according to the Taliban, Osama bin laden is not dead. Adding fuel to the fire is the presence of fake Osama bin Laden “death photos,” which began circulating just after his death. A simple Google image search brought up these images, but after they were exposed as fake, this became proof of a conspiracy for extremist sites such as Hizbut Tahrir and Prisoner of Joy. The fact that the White House has decided (at this point) not to release images of a dead Osama bin Laden means that these rumors will most likely live on since they haven’t been effectively countered.

Curiously, one above-ground Islamist group in Indonesia, the Islamic Defender’s Front, chose to hold a “service of gratitude” for bin Laden, apparently taking reports of his death at face value. This is curious because the group shares no theological affinity with the salafist al Qaeda, and despite its publicized attacks on specific targets it deems antithetical to Islam, it does not promote the kind of violence – bombings, for example – that al Qaeda does.

The struggle over the image of someone – living or dead – is of course nothing new. I was reminded of this Washington Post article of last year, which described CIA plots to portray both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein as gay. The plan to film a Hussein impersonator in compromising actions was shelved after analysts reached the conclusion that a film showing him bragging of sex with young boys would do little to damage his credibility. The plan against bin Laden actually made it to the filming stage. One CIA employee remarked that “some of us dark skinned employees” were used to portray bin Laden and his cohorts around a campfire, drinking liquor and reminiscing about their homosexual conquests. This plan was scrapped as being “ridiculous.”

There is a history of such plans. In the 1950s, the CIA hatched a plan to make a pornographic film starring a look-alike of Indonesian President Soekarno, using an actor wearing a Soekarno mask. The film, entitled “Happy Days” was apparently shot but not circulated, although still photographs were. The plan was purportedly canceled after some thought that it might actually enhance Soekarno’s reputation among Indonesians (Soekarno was a well-known philogynist). A similar plan was hatched – and later shelved – to film Soviet Premiere Nikita Kruschev in flagrante delicto with a comely spy.

Sometimes, however, rumors and sexual innuendo win the day. As my colleagues Daniel Bernardi, Pauline Hope Cheong, Scott Ruston and I describe in our  book Narrative Landmines: Rumor, Islamist Extremism, and the Struggle for Islamic Influence (Rutgers University Press, forthcoming), the Indonesian government successfully floated a rumor to taint the legacy of Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist Noordin Top (comops blog post here). Following a forensic exam, a police spokesman and a University of Indonesia forensics expert claimed that a physical deformity in Top proved that he was gay or bisexual, antithetical to his puritanical brand of Islam and rendering him a munafiq or hypocrite. The mainstream news reported it, and it soon spread to the Indonesian blogosphere, YouTube, and elsewhere. Despite the fact that the rumor was based on demonstrably false forensic science from the 19th century, Top’s legacy appears to have been successfully tainted: jihadist websites that normally laud killed extremists as martyrs were strangely silent following the announcement.

In the uncertainty and secrecy inherent in operations such as those that killed bin Laden, rumors and doubt will surface and swirl, and sides will jostle for control of the narrative. Although the changes in the American portrayal of the fight are understandable due to its chaotic nature, it nevertheless left some room for extremists to attempt to influence the narrative. At this point, however, it seems a lost cause, especially as these attempts begin to float toward the ridiculous.

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Yesterday the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan over the last year.  It concluded that “2009 proved to be the deadliest year yet for civilians since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.”  The surprise is what it says about the causes of these deaths, which in turn identifies an under-exploited opportunity to amplify ideological contradictions.

Sources of conflict-related civilian deaths in Afghanistan, 2009

Of the 2412 conflict-related deaths in 2009, 67%  were at the hands of “anti-government elements,” whereas 25% were attributable to ISAF and other pro-government forces.  Eight percent “died as a result of cross fire or by unexploded ordinance[sic].”

The anti-government figures represent an increase of 41% over 2008.  According to the report this is attributable to an increase in suicide and IED attacks.  Militants are also killing people they believe to be government supporters.

The pro-government numbers represent a decrease of 28% over the same period.  A report by Dexter Filkins in the New York Times attributes this welcome news to a tightening of restrictions on use of airstrikes.  To maintain the downward trend, American commanders also plan to reduce their use of night missions into villages, which often lead to unintended firefights with locals.

The state of affairs signaled by this report presents the UN/NATO/ISAF forces with a crucial opportunity.  As we argued in a white paper published last year, one of the critical functions of ideology is to smooth-over contradictions, like the one between the realities of extremist operations and the Qur’anic prohibition on killing innocents (especially when they are Muslim).

This function of ideology is why we were treated last month to a desperate video by Adam Gadahn, in which he said his buddies are not killing civilians, and are sorry for any civilians they have killed by accident. His dissembling is a clear sign of worry about the issue, and these new numbers show that there is good reason for worry on their part.

The pro-government response should be to push this contradiction into the open.  Norah Nilan, Chief Human Rights Officer for UNAMA, took a small step in this direction by saying in today’s release

Anti-Government elements remain responsible for the largest proportion of civilian deaths, killing three times as many civilians as pro-Government forces. It is vital that determined efforts are now made by the insurgency to put into effect the Taliban “Code of Conduct” that calls on them to protect the lives of civilians.

She added that “Anti-Government elements must realize that they too have obligations under international law.”

To me this statement is too tepid and deferential to the Bad Guys.  It more or less says that they have good intentions but have problems with execution, and they need to do better.  This is not unlike Gadahn’s argument.

Yet this assessment is at odds with facts stated in the same report that a number of the casualties are from cold-blooded political executions.  And isn’t killing 70 adults and children (and wounding 65) by bombing a volleyball game in Pakistan something more than a failure to stick with policy?

A better statement would be that the extremists are insincere in their claims that they want to protect civilian lives.  The Good Guys should be putting Gadahn saying “we don’t kill Muslims,” and quotes from the Taliban “code of conduct” about protecting civilians, side-by-side with press reports about and images of the innocent civilians who they are killing.

They should ask how the extremists can say they value and protect civilian lives when they bomb volleyball games and execute people.  And how could it be true that the extremists value innocent civilians while the Western forces hate them, as Gadahn claims, when the extremists’ deaths are going up and the Westerners’ numbers are going down?

Muslim allies in the region should be branding the extremists al-Munafiqin (or perhaps an equivalent in local languages).  Because like the Hypocrites of Medina they say they accept the word of God, but then act contrary to it when they see some advantage in doing so.  They are pretending to be devout Muslims for the sake of political expediency, but they are not acting like devout Muslims.

These kinds of efforts would help amplify the extremists’ contradictions and show them for what they really are.  Chiding them about their obligations under international law, not so much.

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Adam Gadahn in mid-rant

Jarret Brachman just did a post on a new video by nice-Jewish-boy-turned-AQ-mouthpiece Adam Gadahn (a.k.a Azzam al-Amriki, video linked on Jarret’s site). Jarret points out that this is the first video in a good long while from as-Sahab, and it has notably lower production values than its normal fare.  But to me the most significant thing is the subject matter of the video.  I, with the help of Jeff Halverson, produced a transcript of the video that you can find here.

Gadahn devotes at least half his time to a refutation of claims that the mujahideen are conducting attacks that are killing innocent Muslims:

we have also begun to see an increase in random bombings and attacks that target innocent Muslims, often in  known centers of support for the mujahideen.  These criminal acts usually result in large number of casualties, especially among women and children.  And invariably the enemies of Islam and Muslims pin the blame for them on the mujahideen. The mujahideen’s denials of responsibility fall on deaf ears.

He goes on at length arguing that the mujahideen are the true vanguard of the Muslims, and that it would just make no sense for them to kill the people they are trying to save:

But I ask every intelligent and thoughtful Muslim to ask himself: Who are the likelier culprits in such brutal, heartless, and unjust attacks?  Are they the mujahideen who have sacrificed everything to defend and liberate weak and oppressed Muslim peoples, uh, wherever they might be, and who have dedicated their very lives to the implementation of Islam and its Sharia which forbids the taking of even one innocent life?

The best explanation for Gadahn’s rather desperate defensiveness is that the killing of innocent Muslims is turning popular sentiment against the extremists in SW Asia.  The recent suicide bombing of a mosque in Rawalpindi, Pakinstan (one of s string of such attacks in recent months) was especially horrific.  A former Pakistani military official expressed his outrage in a BBC interview on December 4, saying that if this incident does not unite Pakistan against the extremists, nothing will.  Perhaps it was indeed some kind of tipping point that resulted in the apparently hasty production of the rant by Gadahn.

Faced with momentum turing against his cause, Gadahn does what any politician does when the wheels start to come off his campaign:  Blame the media.

the uncorroborated allegations of the regimes are carried without criticism and in a one-sided way by the so-called independent media in Islamabad, Kabul, and other world capitals.  Why?  Because these media are now willing weapons of propaganda in the pockets of the crusaders and their puppet governments and armies allied with them.

Not only do these immoral and biased media organizations shamelessly slander the Mujahideen, they also conspire with the regimes to cover up the true extent of the losses suffered by the apostate puppets of the crusaders and even describe those killed as martyrs.

But it’s hard to make that argument stick when mujahideen forces are directly claiming responsibility for attacks, as they did for the Rawalpindi bombing.

Could it be that some rogue elements are doing the killing, rather than people associated with Gadahn?  If so then we are at a loss to explain why Gadahn spends the second half of his speech rattling-off Taliban talking points against the Pakistani government:

The corrupt puppet armies and the affiliated intelligence agencies who fight and kill their own populaces and displace them and leave them homeless for a few billion dollars of crusader bribes, they aren’t your friends and protectors. The atheistic, uh, ethnic and tribal nationalists who murder their own learned men (Alam) to advance their evil ideologies and please their polytheist-idolater (mushrik) patrons and paymasters, they aren’t your friends and protectors. The apostate secular regimes who oppress, rob, and imprison you and sell-out the sovereignty of your countries for personal profit, they aren’t your friends and protectors.

And anyway the record of Gadahn’s outfit with respect to killing Muslims is pretty clear.  As Helfstein, Abdullah, and al-Obaidi point out in a just-released study based on non-Western media sources:

The results show that non-Westerners are much more likely to be killed in an al-Qa’ida attack. From 2004 to 2008, only 15% percent of the 3,010 victims were Western. During the most recent period studied the numbers skew even further. From 2006 to 2008, only 2% (12 of 661 victims) are from the West, and the remaining 98% are inhabitants of countries with Muslim majorities.

Finally we have the fact that Gadahn directly contradicts himself in the video.  At one point he says “the mujahideen declare themselves innocent of these attacks” that have killed innocent Muslims.  But in the next breath he says “we also express the same [condolences] to the unintended Muslim victims of the mujahideen’s operations.”  Adam, if you expect your audience to believe your comrades didn’t intend to kill innocent worshipers in Rawalpindi when they detonated a suicide vest, then threw grenades and sprayed the place with machine gun fire, then it’s time to cut way back on the hashish, m’kay?

So the good news is that this video seems to confirm that the Bad Guys have opened up a say-do gap of stupendous proportions.  We here in the US know what a pesky problem that can be, and our say-do problems are nothing compared to murdering the very people you claim to represent and protect–while they’re at worship.  It’s going to take a lot more than a video to close that gap.

That said, I have to add that I’m a bit baffled as to whom as-Sahab conceives of as the audience for this video.  It’s produced in English and contains no foreign language subtitles or voice-over (unless there are other versions that have it).  Based on that you would think his audience would be the English speaking world.  Yet everything Gadahn says seems to be aimed at people in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.  Previous videos by Gadahn seemed clearly targeted at a Western audience, even addressing them directly.  It made sense that AQ would use an American traitor to deliver such messages.  But why they would choose him as the messenger for this message is a mystery to me.

UPDATE 12/13

Re that last paragraph, mystery solved.  See Aaron’s comment below.

UPDATE 12/15

Leah Farrell concurs that this video shows that the AQ media wing has seen better days:  “If ever one needed proof that As Sahaab is going down the tubes here it is.”

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Pakistani public opinion about the U.S. and its war against extremists is a matter of  considerable concern given the tenuous situation in that country.  As we know, the public is quite unhappy about cross-border missile strikes the U.S. has been conducting this year.

Even if the U.S. and Pakistani governments have a tacit agreement allowing the missile strikes from unmanned aircraft, this does not make them acceptable to the public at large.  And given the weak position of the government, public opinion matters.  As if to show this, Pakistan already shut down the Khyber Pass to NATO supply traffic once this year in a symbolic protest against the missile strikes.

Yesterday the Gallup organization released an “opinion briefing” covering a survey of 840 Pakistani adults conducted in October of this year.  It shows that the pubic diplomacy outcomes of U.S. policy and recent actions in the region are not doing much to asuage public concerns.  Among the highlights:

• Almost half of the respondents believe U.S. missile strikes are ineffective in riding Pakistan of extremists.
• 54% believe the presence of the U.S. military in Afghanistan is a threat to their country (up 9% since June)
• About a third of respondents said cooperation between the U.S. and Pakistan mostly benefits the U.S.

The fact that so many Pakistanis view the U.S. as a threat that takes self-serving action has to be viewed with alarm, especially given that the survey excluded the more radicalized areas of the country (it “did not include the Federally Administered Tribal Areas or Azad Jammu and Kashmir”).

Importantly, it is not the case that Pakistanis view the fight against terrorism as unimportant.  Another report based on the same data showed that 60% feel that their government should do more to rid the country of terrorist activity.  So while they think it is important to fight extremists, they don’t think cooperation with the U.S. in that fight is in their interests.

This poll shows what a public diplomacy challenge President Elect Obama and Secretary Designate Clinton have on their hands.  The Gallup report concurs:

success for Obama’s plans to create an “effective strategic partnership” will largely hinge on how collaborative and mutually beneficial Pakistanis perceive that partnership [with the U.S.] to be.

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For Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri’s communication strategy, its been a year full of ups and downs. Individually, the mishaps seem like minor blips in an otherwise burgeoning online presence, but when combined, they could point to Zawahiri’s diminishing abilities as a skilled communicator and principal figure of al-Qaeda’s online media strategy.

Earlier this year, Zawahiri held an extensive online Q&A session, soliciting questions from anyone who wanted to ask. It was initially thought of as a strategic move to engage directly with followers and teach them about al-Qaeda, or to show an ability to respond intellectually to critics. However, the Q&A revealed serious shortcomings in Zawahiri’s ability to defend the realities of al-Qaeda’s extremist ideology and provide clear justifications for their worldwide operations.

Questions were submitted from exasperated followers, wondering why al-Qaeda hadn’t focused more attention on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and questioning al-Qaeda’s tactics of targeting civilians. Zawahiri’s answers were vague and roundabout, and he provided few clear answers or new ideas. According to Brian Fishman, Director of Research at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, the Q&A was a mistake. In an interview with NPR, he said that

Al-Qaida is an organization run top down with people that don’t want to share power. And in that kind of an environment, it’s dangerous to expose yourself to too many questions. It reveals the amount of discontent within the movement. And one of the things that al-Qaida needs to do, especially from a religious perspective, is that they try to funnel people into a specific set of beliefs. And the more debate that clouds that picture, the weaker al-Qaida is going to be.

In a message released in April, Zawahiri confidently stated that “backing the mujahidin in Iraq is…the most important task of the Islamic nation today.” He sarcastically asked:

So where are the Awakening Councils, which Petraeus announced six months ago that they will achieve victory in Iraq? Were not these Awakening Councils supposed to expedite the date of the US forces’ withdrawal?

Well, it turns out that the Awakening Councils showed up after all. This plus increased levels of U.S. troops in Iraq greatly helped to stabilize the nation, making an expedited withdrawal more possible. And so, like any other embarrassed politician would have done in his position, Zawahiri tried to change the subject and focus on other areas of conflict.

A message released in August was addressed explicitly to Pakistani citizens and members of the Pakistani military and government. This one was decidedly NOT a strategic communication failure. It was skillfully executed and honed in on issues that are naturally contentious for most Pakistanis, namely their government’s alliance with the U.S. and India. In light of the recent Mumbai terrorist attacks, this message is particularly interesting. He concludes the statement with:

Finally, I request every Muslim in Pakistan to ask himself seriously: Does he want Pakistan to truly become Pakistan? Or is he going to stand by idly and passively until it becomes part of Greater Hindustan?

The relationship between al-Qaeda’s calls to action and specific attacks around the world is still unclear. One could suppose that there is some connection between this particular message and the recent attacks in India. Perhaps an affiliate extremist group wants to answer Zawahiri’s call and help re-ignite the jihad in South Asia. But its more than likely a coincidence. Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Pakistani group suspected to be responsible for the Mumbai attacks, doesn’t seem to take its cues from al-Qaeda central.

In November, Zawahiri taped a message in response to the election of Barack Obama. This message received a lot of attention in the press and online, mainly because Zawahiri essentially characterized President-Elect Obama as an African-American that is subservient to his white “masters”. Although the phrase abeed al-beit, translated as “house negro”, has been used in previous messages, this particular usage struck a chord for many people.

In general, however, this message came up short. The target audience of most of al-Qaeda’s messages are the individuals unsure of whether or not they want to join jihad – the people on the fence. If you consider this, then you’d expect Zawahiri to make a dedicated and passionate statement about the need to continue with jihad, regardless of who leads the U.S. In the past, his rhetoric was fiery and convincing, self-assured and motivating. Yet the best he could come up with this time was a recycled racial slur and the same rhetoric we’ve heard for years, antagonizing fence-sitters who are hopeful about the changes Obama might bring and/or African-American Muslims in the U.S. who he had hoped to influence.

In this critical moment, Zawahiri’s job was to communicate to those individuals that were unsure how to react to Obama’s election so that al-Qaeda would remain steadfast in its battle against the U.S. and the West. Now, it’s understandable that he may be a little distracted lately, but it’s hard to understand why Zawahiri didn’t come up with a better response to Obama’s election than this message.

A strike against Zawahiri’s reputation came in November from Sayyid Imam, aka Dr. Fadl. He recently released his new book through a series in Al-Masry al-Youm (for summaries, start here), denouncing Zawahiri and challenging him to a sort of spiritual death-match. While this text was perceived by some as an inconsequential list of character attacks that won’t have an impact on the broader extremist movement, others claim that these sort of character indictments will have a negative effect on Zawahiri’s credibility and could influence al-Qaeda’s target audience. I tend to agree with the latter, because as one of the main faces of al-Qaeda, and thus the broader jihadist movement, Zawahiri’s success as a leader is dependent on whether or not he can gain trust and support.

In late November, in an interview produced by As-Sahab, Zawahiri expounded on some potential new tactics promoted by al-Qaeda (a translation, by the NEFA Foundation, was released on December 10). He spoke extensively about the need for Muslims who are unable to bear arms to join the fight in other ways, specifically via protests and strikes. Although he’s mentioned these tactics before, messages in prior years rarely devoted so much discussion on them. In effect, Zawahiri is suggesting an easier way to wage jihad.

Finally, last week, Zawahiri released another message, titled “The Death of Our Heroes and Betrayal of Our Rulers.” As the title suggests, he discusses the recent executions in Indonesia of the convicted perpetrators of the Bali bombing, and Saudi Arabia’s participation in an inter-faith conference held at the United Nations earlier this month (which included Israel).

These two latest messages discuss issues that people all around the world can rally around, not just the minor factions of extremists. They are umbrella issues, mentioned because of their ability to attract more moderate listeners who share some of al-Qaeda’s concerns and goals, but may not necessarily agree with their tactics. From a strategic communication perspective, this was a good move for Zawahiri. Focusing on issues that appeal to many more listeners is a way for al-Qaeda to get back to the basics of their ideology and mobilize support.

There are a lot of ways to spin this year’s developments. Maybe Zawahiri is being forced to take the helm in al-Qaeda’s communication strategy because bin Laden is otherwise unavailable. Or perhaps he worries that people will not put their faith in a leader who is an untrustworthy hypocrite (as Sayyid Imam would argue), and is struggling to repair his image. Maybe Zawahiri has largely ignored the issue of Iraq in the past few months because he knows al-Qaeda is losing there. Regardless of the explanation, there appears to be a golden opportunity for Zawahiri’s opponents to counter his successes and exploit his mistakes.

Last week, in an op-ed for the Small Wars Journal, Dalton Fury wrote about the need to methodically tear down bin Laden’s character. In light of the various mishaps that centered around Zawahiri this year, the time is ripe for a similar campaign against him. Fury writes that

Our country spent more time, energy, and money on digging up dirt on the Presidential candidates and quickly putting out short psychotronic movie clips than we do on targeting UBL’s character.

U.S. actions against the characters of bin Laden and Zawahiri could include anything from direct responses to al-Qaeda messages (a tactic that is much debated in strategic communication circles), to launching more targeted PSYOP campaigns that focus specifically on de-legitimizing these two al Qaeda leaders.

This string of mistakes and negative PR for Zawahiri could help strip away any credibility he may have with those individuals on the fence. Although al-Qaeda’s ideology has “gone viral” and spread into a worldwide ideological movement, the leadership of the organization is still the central mouthpiece of the global jihadist network. Their tarnished credibility could be used as a catalyst for further breaking down the ideology’s resonance and breadth throughout the world. After all, al-Qaeda’s leadership has gone to great lengths to criticize and insult America’s leadership in the past eight years – I can see no reason why the U.S. shouldn’t respond in-kind.

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The Global War on Terror has been accurately described by some as a global counterinsurgency against the groups and individuals that promote the ideology of violent Islamic extremism. Unlike traditional counterinsurgency campaigns, however, there is no single host-nation (HN) in this fight; the enemy is disparate, networked, transnational, and bound together by a destructive and intolerant religious ideology.

In recent weeks and months, the difficult issues surrounding this global counterinsurgency have been highlighted in Pakistan. There is a wide range of problems including, but not limited to, the complexity of the tribal networks and absence of security in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA), a lack of cooperation from the Pakistani government, and perhaps too much cooperation from the military and the ISI towards elements of the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, TTP). We also find conflicts in the region among different groups of militants, and a resurgence of al-Qaeda and Taliban control. As if this weren’t complicated enough, the mere presence of U.S. forces is unacceptable to many parties, and U.S. incursions into Pakistan tend to delegitimize the Pakistani government and threaten its sovereignty.

The primary objectives of counterinsurgency (COIN) operations are to facilitate a legitimate political system within the HN, and to provide security and stability to the population. This makes military operations and political developments inextricably linked. In Pakistan, however, we face the challenge of waging a COIN operation without the use of our military. So, how do you fight a counterinsurgency without boots on the ground?

One way is to fight the insurgency through strategic communication operations. Last year, in the Marine Corps Gazette, Colonel Thomas X. Hammes (Ret. USMC) wrote an article entitled “The Message is the Insurgency.” He asserts that “modern insurgency has become essentially a strategic communications campaign supported by military action rather than a military campaign supported by effective strategic communications.” Due to the complicated nature of the situation in Pakistan, a rigorous strategic communication campaign may be one of the most effective operations that the U.S. can engage in.

Although this is an extremely complex and dynamic issue, there are three key points to consider when implementing a strategic communication operation aimed at Pakistan.

Multiple Messages

Pakistan is the definitive rugged landscape; there needs to be at the very least two primary messages–don’t drink the lemonade, and trust your local leaders.

The Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Jim Glassman, describes the process of communicating an alternative to the extremist ideology:

Think of America’s values and political system as orange juice; think of the al-Qaeda system of violent extremism as lemonade. Our job for the short term is not to put all of our efforts into getting people to drink orange juice, but to get them not to drink lemonade. They can drink anything else they want: milk, ginger ale, tomato juice, Coke. We are confident that, ultimately, they will come around to orange juice or something close to it, but in the meantime, we want them to stay away from lemonade.

If we’re enticing people to stay away from extremists, there needs be alternatives out there. It is clear that Pakistan doesn’t effectively govern the tribal areas, so what exactly can they offer their citizens to drink?

In a classic counterinsurgency, promoting the legitimacy of the Pakistani government would be of utmost importance. However, the legitimacy of the Pakistani government may not even be relevant in the tribal areas. These areas are largely autonomous, and have been for decades; the national government doesn’t have much influence.

The aim of a strategic communication campaign in these areas needs to be towards empowering local non-militant tribal leaders. Pakistani officials might even be on the right track: During the anti-terrorism operation in Bajaur province, currently underway, they’re dropping leaflets that encourage individuals to trust their local tribesman, instead of the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Also, there was a one-day workshop in Islamabad last week, comprised of Pakistani officials, about initiating a strategic communication campaign in the FATA that acknowledges the importance of these tribal networks.

However, the U.S. Defense Department’s Afghanistan/Pakistan strategic communication plan for the NWFP and FATA doesn’t focus on the fact that citizens in the tribal areas are much more likely to support their local leaders than officials of the national government. Although official COIN strategies emphasize the need for citizens to support their national government, it is clear that the unique situation of the tribal areas in Pakistan warrants a new interpretation of these tactics.

Stick to Principles

Our strategic communication operations in the region need to be coordinated, streamlined, and implemented from the lowest levels all the way up to the highest. They need to be a priority in this global counterinsurgency, and the border regions need to be treated as the central front in the fight against extremism.

There are several COIN information operations (IO) principles (as outlined in FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency) that are particularly relevant to Pakistan. They include engaging the media to provide accurate information about the COIN operation, actively countering the propaganda disseminated by militant groups (in a timely manner), pointing out the successes of the HN government and quickly admitting mistakes, and focusing on the present – making promises that might not ever happen decreases the legitimacy of both the HN and the COIN forces. Other tactics, like initiating a dialogue with the opposition, are much more precarious, and unlikely.

Although the results of a strategic communication campaign will likely be slow to materialize, it is necessary to be persistent in implementing these principles. At the moment, since U.S. troops can’t (and shouldn’t) be on the ground, this may be one of the only options in stopping the spread of violent extremism in this region.

Afghanistan is Key

Success in Afghanistan is crucial. If the tribal regions on the Afghan side of the border can be stabilized, and the Karzai government and local non-militant tribal leaders can be recognized as legitimate, then the news of progress will spread to the Pakistan side of the border.

Even in Afghanistan, where we have a dominant force in place, IO efforts are struggling. The difficulties the U.S. faces in its strategic communication campaign in Pakistan are directly tied to the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

An editorial in a mainstream Pakistani daily newspaper about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan goes so far as to claim that the residents of the tribal areas now consider their past lives under the Taliban as “golden” in comparison to their current life under the Afghan government and the ISAF, and that any kind of dialogue with Karzai’s government regarding the stability of the tribal areas in Afghanistan was a “waste of time.”

Positive developments in Afghanistan need to be widely publicized in order to counter extremist propaganda about the negative influence of the ISAF. If the ISAF is able to make significant and sustainable progress in Afghanistan, it’s likely that the positive effects will be well-received in Pakistan. In order to combat violent extremism in Pakistan, the U.S. needs to convince Pakistanis that the grass is greener on the other side of the Durand line.

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Last night’s PBS NewsHour carried and interview with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.  He said a lot of interesting things. For example, he said that the reason the Pakistani Army can’t go after the Bad Guys in the FATAs is because they don’t have Predators.  He implied that President Bush had agreed to give him some so the Pakistanis could do the flying and shooting.  I wonder how the Indians feel about that.

Gilani also said they are hampered because the Bad Guys communicate by FM radio, and the Pakistani army doesn’t have FM jammers.  Note to Mr. Gliani:  You can find all the parts you need here.  I’m sure the fellows who built the electronics for your nukes can figure out how to hook everything up.

The most interesting thing he said was in the following exchange:

MARGARET WARNER: For a long time, U.S. officials have said that within the Pakistani intelligence services, your ISI, there are figures who are either sympathetic to the Taliban or actually see them as an important asset against Afghanistan or against India, and that that hampers your ability to fight terrorism. How big a problem does that remain?

YOUSUF RAZA GILANI: Actually, ISI is a great institution. It is always used for external or internal threat for Pakistan. But as far as this is concerned, there are somebody — some of them, they are sympathetic to the militants, this is not believable. So we would never expect our ISI, which is a very competent, so that there is anybody who’s a sympathizer, we will not allow that, because the ISI is directly working under the prime minister.

That’s interesting, because today’s New York Times reports that a top CIA official traveled to Pakistan this month to call out “most senior officials” with new intelligence about these relationships:

The C.I.A. emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said.

Since Gilani is certainly a “most senior official” and the ISI works directly under him, I guess he must have missed that meeting.  On the other hand we must not overlook the possibility that he is losing touch with reality, given that in the same PBS interview he said:

I think, when there is any actions that has the support and the backing of a political government, it is always successful.

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Yesterday the Washington Times released video excerpts of an interview with  Hussain Haqqani, Pakistani ambassador to the United States.  While the Times featured statements about coming FATA operations in its print story, I was intrigued by a couple of comments he made about U.S. performance in the war of ideas.

On one count, Haqqani faulted U.S. officials for not spending enough quality time with the foreign media, allowing the Bad Guys to fill the gap:

U.S. officials are not always available to people for briefings.  Like it’s more important for them to talk to the American media than it is to talk to the Arab media or the Persian language media or to Urdu language media.  And so, supporters of Osama bin Laden in the meantime are very active.  So basically, in psychological warfare, bin Laden has made more gains than he should have been allowed to make, and that is the reason why there is confusion.

On another count, he said that what might seem like small incidents here can add up to big stories back home:

Every time a significant, respectable Pakistani is humiliated at an American airport despite having a valid visa, the story doesn’t even make it in your papers but it’s the big story in Pakistan.  They say, alright, these American’s won’t even respect our diplomat, they won’t respect some significant political leader.

Again, he says the extremists exploit such stories for their own propaganda purposes.

I don’t know if it’s true that U.S. officials are not available enough to the foreign press, or whether airport security incidents make big stories in Pakistan “every time.”  But it at least seems plausible that when we think of the “diplomacy of deeds” we think too big, overlooking the impact of small things like foreign press interviews and U.S. airport encounters.

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