Terrorist Strategies Against America

This evenings meet the author program features Walid Phares. Author of Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against America. Walid Phares is the leading authority on Jihad strategies worldwide. Walid Phares presents a frightening new picture of what we can expect from terrorists in the future. He writes that there has been a fundamental misunderstanding about Al-Qaeda's ultimate goal in the west and describes what victory really means to Jihadists. He also presents an in depth analysis of Jihad terrorism and its roots and makes strong suggestions for the United States to win the ideological war at the heart of Jihad. Walid Phares is currently NBC's..MSNBC's terrorism and Middle East expert and a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington D.C. He has been a professor of Middle East studies and ethnic and religious conflict at Florida Atlantic University and lectures worldwide. Dr. Phares has conducted briefings to the State Justice Defense and Homeland Security Departments, the U.S. Congress, The European Union, The United States Security Council, and other international bodies. His briefings have covered the Middle East, Jihadism, counter terrorism, democratization, and Al-Qaeda. And just as an added note he will be appearing tomorrow morning on KRON at 8:30 sharp, in the morning, on their morning show, being interviewed with Phil Matier. Please join me in welcoming Walid Phares. Thank you very much Dr. Adler. I'd like first of all to thank the World Affairs Council for extending this invitation, its an honor and a pleasure to be first with the council at one of the forums and also in San Francisco a prestigious and a wonderful city. I'd like also to thank Stacey's books for making this signing possible. I'd like also to thank above all, all of you who made it possible tonight to have an event. Meaning coming from far away, in the midst of a San Francisco, very tough driving that I just got some experience through it. So thank you again everybody, from all areas, all fields, all ages, all backgrounds. I know I have been assigned thirty-five minutes. That is short for a professor's lecture, but that is huge for somebody that appears, for example, Chris Matthew's Hardball by where I'm asked under ten seconds tell us what's in the Middle East and its impossible to do that. So, try to do my best between sound biting and without biting too much on the issues that I'd like to talk about. So having thanked everybody let me just dive into my presentation which is going to be short, right to the point. "Future Jihad" this book which has been releases a few weeks ago, which is not my first book but my first book in the field of, lets call it comparative politics, terrorism strategies and also comparative ideologies. This book is a late book and at the same time it is an early book. Let me explain this drama. It's a late book in the sense that I have been trying to write it and then publish it for many, many years. This is not a post 9/11 publication. You know after 9:30 a.m. on September 11 suddenly you had, at least in the United States, the rise of about a thousand experts in the Middle East whereby most of this expertise wasn't there by 8:30a.m., just appeared, this is not a criticism of my colleagues who were wonderful and were doing a lot. But this is not it, this is not a work in reaction to 9/11 although obviously the subject is, the theme is and my recommendations are drawn from the drama the United States went through and the international community as well, since the attacks of September the 11th. It is a late book because I have began my research and my interaction with other intellectuals and people who have same opinions, different opinions, completely opposed opinion, since basically I started long time ago from Beirut first all the way to Washington through Florida were I taught for about fourteen years, to interact with this idea of understanding what is jihadism? Obviously I started that work before the Cold War, excuse me, before the end of the Cold War, and under the Cold War during the nineties, very interesting experience, and after 9/11. It is an early book, let me be clear about it because I think it will be one of the first that'll be followed by other books dealing with the various aspects of the many chapters of this book. And I know it will trigger a lot of reactions. I am ready for that, the waves are coming on the horizons and I feel that this book basically is not gonna be the first one in trying or attempting to better understand, not just what is Al-Qaeda, that's just one organization, but what's the ideology behind Al-Qaeda and more important, more relevant to most of us I guess, as citizens, residents were in California, we have to be careful, and of course with regard to the international community. The road to the book, in a sense, is as important as the book itself. It took three experiences I developed, intellectually speaking. One is the one in Beirut from the early eighties. My first book was published in 1979 in Arabic that was titled "Pluralism" and it dealt with issues that today people in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Syria, Sudan and the rest of the world are handling as hot potatoes. Pluralism, meaning the existence, the potential existence of coexistence between a variety of religious, ethnic and other communities in an environment which basically has always experienced a dominant ideology, one dominant ideology, could be from the left, from the right, could be religious, could be atheist, but one dominant ideology Till very recently many intellectuals in the Muslim and Arab world are now exploring this pluralism which I had the experience of writing about in 1979 into the early '80's. I wrote another book, "Democratic Dialogue" which was basically a first encounter with intellectuals who later on influenced tremendously the so-called ----- movement, ie, fundamentalist, militant movement and on so. In 1987, I wrote another on the Islamic revolution of the Iran the humanists jihadi view of the world. So that road was started first as an experiment in Beirut which was known by many as the cultural capital of the Arab world before it degenerate into warfare and conflict. In the 90's in the United States I've published articles and also interacted with the academic community in this country and of course in the west in general looking at what was missing in the debate. Today, we are harvesting probably some of the failures that have existence, in a sense, that's my own conclusion, in the 90's and the 80's of understanding, or not understanding, or understanding differently what was jihadism developing since the early 80's through the 90's. My third route through this book is post-9/11, and I have to admit, obviously, the huge interests that rose after 9/11 not just in terms of pinpointing or defining what are the geo-strategic plans of Al-Qaeda, but really the long term vision, ideology, future plans, how they view the world. We've been very good at looking at ourselves, extremely centric. What did we do, what we didn't do our mistakes. The 9/11 commission hearings were amazing in terms of exploring our own failures, remember the famous sentence by former advisor on counter terrorism or -- Richard Clark, who in his books, many books has centralized the idea of we've failed you. He failed the public and then the government failed the public in the sense that there was a major failure somewhere. I, in this book, added one chapter to this recognition of failure which is, who failed basically the government, the public and its various agencies. At some point in time, and this is one of the various conclusions, of the book, there was in the U.S. and in the west in general a failure of analysis in what Al-Qaeda was intended, its strategies, its plans, which led to a misreading of all the signs that were coming from the region which were within the United States and the west in general. That is basically my, the free roots that compelled me to write that book. Now the first question, first point that I make is about really the debate about the war on terror. Tremendous questions, as simple as they are, if you recall it, as I'm sure you do, its not so long ago, that after the attacks of September the 11th the first major question in the networks on campuses around the nation and beyond was a very simple one, but astounding one, why do they hate us? And as a comparativist I looked around in similar situations around the world, all nations at war, wars declared against have rarely asked a similar question. Questions would be how did they do it? How were they able to perform that? Not why do they hate us, I mean to ask that question means that there is a cultural, ideological epidemic failure in explaining that there was a war going on. And I would remind the audience of the statement made by one of the commissioners on the 9/11 commission during those hearings and in the four hundred pages book, which I'm sure everybody has read every single word of it, including myself, said how come that in 1998, February of 1998, Osama Bin Laden, himself, in good health at the time, on Al-Jazeera, declared war. Grabbed a bunch of --- religious edicts at the time, and declared war in a twenty-nine minute long speech. Today if he appears, or his shadow appears every single network will call every single expert from bed and will say "hey, what you think? Where is Waldo? I mean, where is Osama Bin Laden? We are concentrating on where he is rather than what he's thinking, and what he wants to do and his plans, that was just a little footnote you know, tempting to do footnotes. So that first question is very important. It denotes a lot of other questions, so the next one to me is more dramatic. It is about who they are. Now wait a minute, first question is why do they hate us and then we stop in the middle of the process and so there is a they. So who they are is a huge question. Is this an ideology, an organization, party, regimes across the board is it a cultural issue, an ideological issue and so on and so forth. Because of these questions, I consider the debate generated as a result of the 9/11 commission hearing created a lot of questioning that has to do with the future of this so called war on terror. Now let me just go quickly because my time goes quick. I do not call it a war on terror because terror is an instrument, a method. Its like war on the ---, or war on the commandos. This is a war between two parties that is ideological, it is political. It is not the only war going on but it is between two camps, each one has a vision of the world, has methods to implement them. Definitely, the methods implemented by the terrorists will have to be recognized and identified by the international community. It could be organizations, could be regimes, could be individuals so on and so forth. The debate of the 9/11 commission centered on a declaration of war and on the term of jihadists without a lot of explanation. I mean it was left to the experts to determine was is the jihad, what are the jihadists, who are the jihadists. And as somebody who taught at one of the campuses, lectured at a lot of campuses and interacted with many of my colleagues around the nation, especially in the field of you know terrorism strategies or in the field of Middle Eastern studies I came up with a concern, with a great concern that the expert community which is supposed to have explained, identified, analyzed what is jihad, the surge of this movement, who are the followers, what are their plans? On behalf of the government, Congress, media, think tanks basically produced a problem because it, in its immense majority and of course there is a lot of debate about it today, even as I'm speaking, in its immense majority the community of expert did not come up with a clear definition of who the jihadist were and when asked the questions, including very prominent academics, prominent books they deflected the real meaning that the jihadists have given to themselves. By meaning, when I'm asked in the classroom or in think tanks or beyond, in the public what do they really want, I don't assume that this is what they want, I read what they want. That's why when a book was published recently about the speeches of Al-Qaeda I considered it as a very important manual to start understanding what is the vision, are they chances or solutions for this ideology, or the solution of this ideology would be to win the war of ideas to allow the Arabs and Muslims to win the war of ideas by themselves. A quick review of jihadism. Definitely this is going to be probably the fastest review I will do in my life. I'm going to mention a few names, the branches and then from there on I will go over the five points that would lead me to the end of my intervention and open the door for Q's&A's. There is a linguistic issue as jihadism which now is raging in the west, what is jihad? Amazingly enough this debate doesn't exist in the Arab and Muslim world. Half of my life was spent there on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and you could call, and if you are a part of those roots you would realize that jihad is jihad. And I wrote and article back in the 90's, back in the Palestinian Times, which it was published, and I said why is it that there's a debate about what is the meaning of jihad. I mean, in the root places where jihad came from the debate is should jihad be applied or not. Its not about what is jihad. And in on of the chapters, the first chapter of this book, basically it's the linguistic analysis of how the term came, how it developed, what it means, so on and so forth. Number two, the jihadists. The actual followers of the concept of jihad. Who they are, how did they start, what is their world vision? There are several important names, I'll throw a few middle ages, 13th century ---- just a word , just a indicator to the beginning of what then in the middle ages a reinterpretation of what was, now I'm gonna use terms you may ask me about or read about, the ---Caliphates, the caliphate. of the Islamic Empire from the 7th century to the 13th century, was a normal entity as Charlemagne had an empire, as the Mongols had an empire. So, what was international relations of the time, pre-medieval and medieval was normal at the time. --- developed a doctrine of the return to two important concept, out of which the school of helotism or Islamism in modern times came from. And that is to stick with the codes, religious, theological codes. Codes Sheria, his interpretations of sheria, not the other interpretations of sheria because Baghdad at the time became the capitol of the civilized world, at least for 200 years and they were, this is important for us in the West to understand, there were tremendous attempt for modernization, reform for changes which was happening in the Arab and Muslim world even before the Judeo-Christian world or the Asian world. So ebintimia is very important as a bench mark of change. Centuries after, out of Arabia, came, now another concept I'm sure your familiar with Uahibsm, founded by Muhamed Uahubad, happened to be now in Saudi Arabia. He influenced a group of dynasties that founded Saudia Arabia. The first experiment of Uahibahbism was the establishment of the state Saudi Arabia. Now in Egypt, same time 1923 another emanation of thelothism were the muslim brotherhood---. So now we have a line going, ideologically, through ebintimia to the wahabi experiments in Arabia and the muslim brotherhood founded by hasan al bana. And those two, wahabism and muslim brotherhood are going to converge to, later on produces felothism or jihadism. Not the entire group, but those who've experienced implementation of theory or this ideology in the real world. This movement of jihadism was accompanied later on, much later as of 1979, by another form of jihadism which was shia inspired because ----- is suni inspired. It doesn't mean that the Sunni's are or the Shiites are but these ideologies were born in the midst of these two different communities and that is the humanist experiment out of, out of Iran. Now, quickly since time is rushing me. There was an experiment of Jihadism in international relations, which is very important to understand. Jihadism is not a reaction. This is facts that are know, this is not a reaction to foreign policies of others only. So what Osama Bin Ladin, Al-Qaeda or others have done on 9/11 is not a reaction to a specific policy of the United States only. It is and ideology that has its views, it has its own roots, it has experienced world politics and viewed the world at different stages. From the 20's to World War Two there is an abundant jihadi vision of World War Two meant to them. That literature didn't come then as much as it came recently in many pounds, on Al-Jazeera and other pan-era networks of course on the web site world and so on and so forth. The most important relevance for us is jihadism under the Cold War, which determined the future of jihadism. The essence of it was that the jihadist movement at large viewed Soviet Union and United States as powerful forces, infinite powers. They chose very sophisticated way to bring down the Soviet Union first for a variety of reasons ideological, political stragtegic so on and so forth. One foot note which is very important is that they didn't mind an alliance with the United States through Saudi Arabia and Pakistan at the time. So the jihadist are not people who are entirely ideological. They can when they want and when they wish to see their objectives being reached establish any alliance, even with foes, who they consider transitional. So the C.I.A. connection with --- in Afghanistan was blessed more or less by the ---- for a period of time till the Soviet Union collapsed. Now that analysis of the Cold War was amazing. It tells us more on the jihad than what we know or what we pretend to know. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a debate. You know we in I.R. love to find those debates. The debates within he jihadists worlds.Both and but mostly ---. One camp said we're not gonna engage with the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union because the time is not right. And because basically we have what they called "jihad regional battlefields", Kashmir, Chechnya, Arab-Israeli conflict, Sudan, Indonesia even Muslim on Muslim, Sunni on Sunni battlefields such as in Algeria. Let me just remind ourselves that in Algeria alone in the 90's one hundred and forty thousand people perished as a result of a Taliban like conflict meaning the organizations in Algeria which basically engaged themselves against government and civil society there where inspired by the work of the --- as well. The other camp, and that's more relevant to us, the other camp are the international Jihadist, those who would form Al-Qaeda first ---then Osama Bin Laden , --. They said no, time is ripe. They did their own reading of United States foreign policy here at --- of the reaction of the U.S. to a variety of challenges from Beirut, with experience in 1983, to 1993 first attack to the, against the Twin Towers. '94,'95 of --- and the other incidents in Arabia. '96 the rise of the Taliban, '98 the declaration of war by Osama Bin Laden February, and '98 in August the strikes against embassies in Africa followed by the ---. All of that was followed by the 9/11 commission. Now we have to understand that Al-Qaeda reads that . And the reading of Osama and his policy planners was that, and this is the gist of it, a strike against the United States in 2001 is very risky. It could shift the U.S. in one or other direction, one it could shift towards collapse in the inside, model Madrid, we strike, new policy, but the other could be an overwhelming reaction against the actual bases of Al-Qaeda including regime change of the Taliban. That was the most adventurous, most daring decision Al-Qaeda had to make attacking straight the United States. Knowingly, knowing that the U.S., if the objective are not reached, will counter-attack and will develop a policy. Now here we can discuss the ti, about was the policy of the United States sound or not, was Afghanistan the right thing to do, and Iraq, goodness, you know how many voices we have here to discuss Iraq and we will if you want. From, from 9/11 on, let me just conclude as we get closer, it is my assessment in the book that, and that what I call and now the media calls the scariest chapter, chapter thirteen. This is only based on analysis this is not factual. All the other chapters are chapters based on facts and analysis, this is purely analytical but based on facts that have already existed. I did a mathematical, statistical projection plus political projection to the future. Had Al-Qaeda not attacked on September the 11th, 2001 but September 11th same date , 2008 that's seven years after, what would have happened? Now you're gonna read the chapter by yourself but we don't have time. I just multiplied the factors instead of one --- and eighteen of his companions two to three hundred would have been produced by the --- in an environment that was not actually at war yet, as the commission mention. Instead of one alleged bomb, dirt bomb maker, which is now a case, not yet done, about twenty or forty. And then is multiplied all these factors onto 2008 plus adding, had the Taliban regime not collapsed the influence over Pakistan, Pakistan's possession over the nuclear capabilities the Taliban not engaged in these activities would have led radical clerics in Saudi Arabia, which is expected still, on my assessment, to gain a lot of power on Saudi Arabia. So the emergence of a larg. influence and political power in that region plus a deeper infiltration by the jihadists in the west, I took the example of in Russia, Madrid, London combine them and came up with a very scary, terrifying scenario, possibility of Al Qaeda success had they delayed their strike. Hence, brought it back to the debate, which existed among the jihadist. That debate, one of which a subject of a panel on Al Jazeera. After 2001 there was a panel and that panel, many others later on, was amazing. You have two groups of jihadist two views, one of that says it was a mistake to do 9/11 that early and the other one said not at all, look at the level of recruitment we have been able to achieve. Finally, as we get close and closer, what could be done to stop that future jihad from happening if we consider that the only development the jihadists would do future wise would be to increase their recruitment worldwide, if we consider that the only development the jihadists would do future wise would be to increase their recruitment worldwide, try to establish regimes like the Taliban if they are successful in a variety of other places, including in Iraq, but Iraq is very complicated. And what to do to stop the growth of terror cells that are inspired by jihadism, and not just in the United States, but around the world and not just in Europe, but including in the Arab world and Russia, India, Pakistan and elsewhere. The recommendations that I put in my book in the last chapter are inspired by what are the root causes of jihadism and basically to put in clear terms. TI do believe, I do conclude that winning the war terror. Which I don't believe is the right term to be used, but the word jihadists, is to win the war of ideas. And the war of ideas basically is by the words now of Osama Bin Laden, who will reach, who'll be the first one to reach the next generation? Its like the Lord of The Rings, its not about the Lord its about the Rings. Who will grab those rings in the next generation? In one of his interviews on Al-Jazeera , just before tora bora, the collapse of the regime of the Taliban, Osama Bin Laden, not knowing probably that the regime is going to collapse said as long as we in the jihadist world, Al-Qaeda in particular can reach out to the next generation, of those who are thirteen, fourteen all the way to seventeen years old, we gonna continue the battle. Our losses, our perception of losses are not equivalent to the perception of losses of the West of America. And remember that important slogan, "as much as you love life, I love death" or "we love death". Of course, he meant love of ideological issues here. So the real future is gonna to belong to those who are going to be able to reach the next generation. And its not issue of, I don't wanna overlap with other subjects but of winning the minds and hearts of Arabs and Muslims. Again, because hearts and minds are formed when you are at a much younger age, your view of the world is formed already. Its basically the next generation. Who is going to reach the teachers. The teachers in the Arab and Muslim world are the most important ingredient for the future. And of course that would necessitate huge changes in our foreign policy. I could go on for hours, I have one minute, to talk about you knowour perception of that region, how we've been seen as supporters of regimes, oppressive, of their civil societies, sometimes we stood by them, sometimes we allowed them to do things, including the regimes we've uprooted ourselves. I don't want to get too political now, but both the Taliban, were very cozy with the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein, oh boy that would gates for big, big debate tonight. But the most important thing is education here. If we are not educated as a public, and that's why I thank those who organize events like these ones, if were not educated enough, we have a wrong judgment of how to proceed on the war on terror if we believe there is a war on terror because I do respect all opinions and I do know that in this very, very happy nation we have those among us who say there is no war on terror its just a political process that's happening and were using the war on terror to accomplish other political goals, I respect that and those who believe that there is a war on terror but we don't know who the enemy is. Who are they and what do they want to do. On time, thank you. Q & A