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11. Beyond counterterrorism: Defeating the Salafi-jihadi movement

Author:
Katherine Zimmerman
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
The US is losing against al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other like-minded groups, which are all part of the Salafi-jihadi movement. US counterterrorism efforts have made Americans safer, but the Salafi-jihadi movement is more than its terrorism threat. That movement now prioritizes developing its relationships with local Sunni communities, from which it draws its strategic strength, to transform the Muslim world. Winning today means adopting a strategy beyond counterterrorism that will defeat the Salafi-jihadi movement, instead of just countering the terrorism threat. The US must reframe its approach against al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other groups. With the help of partners, the US must sever the ties of the Salafi-jihadi movement to local Sunni communities. America and its allies must offer these communities a viable alternative to these terror groups.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Terrorism, Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Salafism, and Islamism
Political Geography:
Middle East, North America, and United States of America

12. Defying the System: The Origins of Anti-Westernism in the Non-Western World and the Case of Iran

Author:
Oguzhan Goksel
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Turkish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
Institution:
Turkish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
Abstract:
Anti-Western sentiment is a common feature of politics in many non-Western societies such as China, Cuba, Venezuela, Turkey, Iran and various Arab countries. Challenging the scholarly literature that depicts anti-Westernism as an “irrational, extremist and fundamentalist reaction to the cultural hegemony of the West,” this article conceptualizes anti-Westernism as a rational reaction to –and an unsurprising consequence of– the problematic political/economic interactions between non- Western societies (e.g. Iran) and Western powers (e.g. Britain, France and the US). Iran is a particularly noteworthy case because anti-Westernism played a key role in the formation of the modern state in the country. The foreign policy behavior of Iran in our time and the historical trajectory that produced the Islamic Republic after the 1979 Revolution cannot be understood without acknowledging anti-Westernism. The origins of anti-Westernism in Iran are explored in this article through interpreting the path dependent historical experience of the country, with a particular emphasis on the relations between Iran and Western countries. In contrast to works that attribute Iran’s anti-Western foreign policy to the Islamist ideology of the post-1979 era, it will be argued that hostility to the Western-dominated international political system should actually be traced to the transformation in which the Iranian national identity evolved in the early 20th century.
Topic:
Imperialism, Islamism, Revolution, and Anti-Westernism
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Iran, Middle East, and North America

13. The primacy of praxis: Clerical authority in the Syrian conflict

Author:
Shiraz Maher
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
A close look at the competing claims, actors, and movements for authority within the Syrian civil war reveals three distinct periods of political and religious influence: that of Syrian scholars, who were the first to inject religious language into the revolution; that of Salafi scholars predominantly from the Gulf; and lastly, that of jihadi organizations like ISIS and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, who were active on the ground. This paper focuses on which figures relied on action—rather than theoretical abstraction—to establish legitimacy and authority on the ground in Syria. Tracing the conflict from the first clerical attempts to coordinate the Syrian opposition to the conflict’s regionalization, and, later, internationalization, this paper demonstrates that the words of actors on the ground are more likely than those of far-off figures—however popular—to resound effectively.
Topic:
Politics, Religion, Syrian War, Islamism, and Jihad
Political Geography:
Middle East, Syria, and Gulf Nations

14. Political and Doctrinal Sources and Valuable Framework of the Political Islam in the Context of Political Ideologies

Author:
Nikola Gjorshoski
Publication Date:
02-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Liberty and International Affairs
Institution:
Institute for Research and European Studies (IRES)
Abstract:
The relation between religion and politics is a field of mutual interaction, as well as source and promoter of many historical, current, and probably future political movements, parties, and organizations. Political Islam represents the old-new dimension in the spectrum of contemporary political ideologies with specific characteristic and own socio-political worldview which pretend to penetrate into countries with Muslim inhabitants. The authors analyze those value’s elements, their first term, and modern interpretation, as well as their indicators for change. Level and dynamic of society’s development in many cases are determinate in political ideologies and Political Islam tries to present itself in this light with the affirmation of its/own postulates of organization and regulation on socio-political living. This paper in addition to analyzing those values’ framework logically offers and reviews of political doctrine sources which concept Political Islam in the whole of its time-space aspects.
Topic:
Islam, Politics, Religion, Ideology, Islamism, and Political Parties
Political Geography:
Middle East, North Africa, and Global Focus

15. Secularist and Islamist Constitutional and Political Concepctions in the Modern Muslim World: The Cases of Kemalist Turkey and Khomeini’s Iran

Author:
Nikola Gjorshoski
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Liberty and International Affairs
Institution:
Institute for Research and European Studies (IRES)
Abstract:
Modern constitutional and political concepts, in a broad sense, represent an expressed codification of the elements of value that structure the relevant society or the particular group that tries to project or channel them through the existing order. The secularism vs. Islamism dichotomy is a part of such a conceptual framework. The author elaborates and compares both ultimate constitutional and political designs, specifying them through the example of Turkey and Iran, as well as to shows the basic characteristics through the prism of their political legitimacy, the organization of power, the human rights and freedoms, as well as the possibility of political activism. The thesis that the author notes develop in the direction of a warning that the extremes contained in the constitutional provisions in the vividly ideologically divided societies can be a source of conflict and/or can generate instability or suffocation of the pluralism in the political arena.
Topic:
Islam, Politics, Constitution, Islamism, and Secularism
Political Geography:
Iran, Turkey, and Middle East

16. The Ineffectiveness of American Covert Regime Change Operations During the Struggle Against Islamist Terrorism

Author:
Jason Cooley
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Following the September 11th terrorist attacks, the United States government embarked on a campaign to weaken the Islamic extremist organizations that were present in the world. Some of the steps that this lone superpower took to accomplish this objective could be easily detected. However, there were others that went undetected until investigative reporters wrote about them in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other reputable newspapers. Once these covert initiatives were exposed, certain parties began to conduct inquiries to ascertain whether or not they were helping the United States prevent terrorist attacks by Islamist networks. Two initiatives, which received a considerable amount of attention in the post-9/11 era, were the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone and enhanced interrogation programs. In 2009, the members of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that they would be conducting a thorough review of the latter. Approximately five years after this announcement, the committee released a report to the public that said sleep deprivation, waterboarding and other forms of torture did not lead to actionable intelligence. In other words, they did not produce any information that enabled the CIA to foil terrorist attacks which were on the verge of being carried out against the United States (Klapper and Dilanian 2014). A lot of the analyses of the CIA’s drone program were conducted by prominent academics like Fawaz Gerges. At one point in The Rise and Fall of Al Qaeda, this professor at the London School of Economics mentions how drone strikes often killed innocent civilians in Muslim countries. When civilians did perish, extremist organizations would see a rise in the number of recruits who were interested in executing terrorist operations (Gerges 2014, p.25).
Topic:
Intelligence, Regime Change, 9/11, and Islamism
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

17. Full Issue: Money & War

Author:
Sarah Detzner, James Copnall, Alex de Waal, Ian M. Ralby, Joshua Stanton, Ibrahim Warde, Leon Whyte, Richard Weitz, Jessica Knight, John H. Maurer, Alexander Tabarrok, Alex Nowrasteh, Tom Keatinge, Emily Knowles, Karolina MacLachlan, Andrew Lebovich, Caroline Troein, and Anne Moulakis
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Fletcher Security Review
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
The Fletcher Security Review: Managed and edited by students at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, we build on the Fletcher School’s strong traditions of combining scholarship with practice, fostering close interdisciplinary collaboration, and acting as a vehicle for groundbreaking discussion of international security. We believe that by leveraging these strengths – seeking input from established and up-and-coming scholars, practitioners, and analysts from around the world on topics deserving of greater attention – we can promote genuinely unique ways of looking at the future of security. Each issue of the Review is centered around a broad theme – in this issue, we tackle “Money & War.” Money influences every aspect of warfare, conventional or unconventional. No nationstate military, insurgent group, terrorist network, trans-national criminal organization, or hybrid actor can be understood, or countered, without knowing where the money is coming from – as well as where, and how, it gets spent. Evolutions and revolutions in financial tools and practices quickly translate to transformations in military affairs, and some cases, vice versa.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Economics, Human Rights, Governance, Sanctions, Military Affairs, Finance, Islamic State, Navy, Arab Spring, Maritime, Conflict, Multilateralism, Islamism, Drugs, and Currency
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Africa, China, Iran, Sudan, Darfur, Middle East, Asia, North Korea, Mali, Asia-Pacific, Sahel, United States of America, and North America

18. Avatars of Checkbook Diplomacy: From the Afghan Jihad to the Arab Spring

Author:
Ibrahim Warde
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Fletcher Security Review
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
​ The United States and Saudi Arabia lavished money and weapons on unsavory characters during the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, giving little thought to the possibility of a blowback or boomerang effect—that they would in effect be funding and arming their future enemies. It is indeed ironic that the principal bankrollers of the jihad later became the main targets of offshoots of that jihad. A non-negligible part of the money and weapons sent by the United States to Iraq, in particular as part of the “Sunni awakening”, is now in the hands of extremists.With the near-exclusive focus on military developments, the financial front of the war on terror is all but ignored. This article traces the evolution of checkbook diplomacy in conflicts involving the Islamic world.
Topic:
Diplomacy, History, Finance, Weapons, Islamism, War on Terror, and Jihad
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, and United States of America