9-11 and the Middle East

1.  Origins
2.  American responses

I.  Middle East Origins of 9-11

          A) great irony is that the ultimate origins of 9-11 lie in the two great recent successes of US-Saudi cooperation:  Afghanistan and the Gulf War

                   1) Afganistan:  ideological and organizational base.  The jihad against the Soviet Union was the ideological and the organizational basis for subsequent development of the salafi-jihadist movement:  ideologically – victory over a superpower, internationalization of Islamist causes [Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya]; organizationally – network of Arab volunteers and other volunteers, bin Laden’s Rolodex.

                             -salafi-jihadist ideology:  mix of the narrowness, intolerance and social Puritanism of salafi Wahhabism, with the political activism of the Sayyid Qutb branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (bin Laden-al-Zawahiri partnership represents this).  The success of the Afghan jihad gives this ideological mix quite a bit of cachet in the Muslim world.

                             -Saudi Arabia deeply involved in the development of the network of funding, recruiting and ideological legitimation of the jihadist view during Afghanistan.  United States passively supporting; Pakistan also greatly affected as the base. 

-The networks for fund-raising, recruiting and ideological legitimation do not close down in Saudi Arabia with the end of the jihad in Afghanistan.  They are re-directed:  Chechnya, Bosnia; to a lesser extent Palestine (money) and Kashmir.  Saudi government chooses not to deal with this head-on.

                   2) Gulf War:  gives the salafi-jihadists a new target.  Within Saudi Arabia a great deal of below-the-surface discontent with the United States role and presence during the war.  Story about bin Laden going to the King in 1990.  Salafi opposition emerges in Saudi Arabia toward the regime in the 1990’s, bin Laden involved, mostly from abroad.

          B) Bin Laden in the 1990’s

                   -1989:  starts building a presence in Sudan

                   -1992-3:  Somali involvement

                   -1993-94:  breaks with Saudi ruling family, stripped of citizenship

                   -1996:  pressured out of Sudan (US-Saudi pressure on the government), return to Afghanistan under Taliban.  Issues in December 1996 his Declaration of War on the Crusader-Zionist Alliance.

                   -1998:  formation of al-Qaeda, with Egyptian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups

          C) The near enemy and the far enemy

                   -the shift comes in the mid-1990’s, with the failure of the Afghan Arab insurgencies in Algeria and Egypt (to a lesser extent, in Syria in the early 1980’s and in Saudi Arabia in mid-1990’s), with the reversal in Sudan, which he had seen as a potential Arab base for Islamic government.

                   -the formation of al-Qaeda is the signal of the change in strategy:  1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, warning signals in the summer of 2001, followed by 9-11.

II.  U.S. Responses

          -immediate response is the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban.  Easy to understand. 
 

          -more controversial and complicated response is the diagnostic one.  Why did this happen, and how can we respond to it?

a) dominant response in the Administration, and in the American political class more generally:  There are deep cultural and societal reasons why this terrorist phenomenon has emerged in Muslim/Arab states – Bernard Lewis’ thesis about long-term historical decline in the power of Muslim countries over 300 years; Thomas Friedman’s ideas of a lack of democracy and problems with “modernity” in many parts of the Arab world leading to extremist and fundamentalist responses.

                             --accepting this dominant view leads to U.S. policy prescriptions that are sweeping and very ambitious:  make democracy promotion the center of American policy in the region; overthrow the Iraqi government and replace it with a democracy; declare former friendly states like Saudi Arabia “enemies” and part of the axis of evil.  Really calls for an imperial response from the Middle East.

b) there is a minority view:  that al-Qa’ida is a more unique phenomenon, the product of a set of circumstances coming together to produce a small, violent, effective movement:  personality and money of bin Laden, experience of Afghanistan, ideological development in salafi-jihadi Islam, failure to overthrow local governments leading to focus on the U.S.  Perhaps the dominant view has some merit in explaining the rise of this phenomenom.

                             --in this view, U.S. policy prescriptions can be more focused, not on the broad, sweeping level of the previous view – concentrate on destroying al-Qa’ida network and its support system, as the most important step we can take to protect ourselves.
 

          -this debate, in effect, gets centered on the Iraq War.