Time is an Abstract: the State of Jihad

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” — Leo Tolstoy

Feb 09, 2020

Late on February 6, President Trump announced that al Qaeda leader Qassim al-Rimi had been killed during an airstrike strike in Yemen. The terrorist group has been in America’s cross-hairs for many years after declaring jihad against the US.

Radical terrorists, like al Qaeda, have used the term “jihad” to both describe and defend their heinous acts around the globe over the years.

For many reporters in the west, it’s been the norm to conflate the words “jihad” and “terrorism.” However, in the Islamic religion, “jihad” can also mean the struggle within oneself against sin.

Much to the chagrin of Islamic clerics and scholars, Islamic radicals like the Taliban, al Qaeda and ISIS subscribe to the other, more radical and jingoistic “jihad” definition — “a struggle or fight against the enemies of Islam.” It’s these Islamic radicals, terrorists, that have committed many of the atrocities around the world since al Qaeda committed the attacks on September 11, 2001.

It’s in the wake of those attacks that led to the global “War on Terror.”

COLD WAR

After the collapse of the Cold War in 1991, a void was created for the US military. With the collapse, former Soviet countries were freed from the grip of their rule and began their quest, and fight, for independence.

While military conflict rooted in religion was not a new issue for the US, it was during the Bosnian War in 1992 when they gained modern exposure to jihad.

At the same time, the US was gaining exposure to jihad in Bosnia, Osama bin Laden was further radicalizing his group of mujahideen, al Qaeda, in Afghanistan.

They were preparing to fill the void left by the Soviets.

The conflicting ideas of capitalism and communism and their influence defined the Cold War. Today’s not so cold war, Islamic jihad, is overly simplified as solely being associated with Islamic violence against “the enemies of Isalm.”

Jihad is not only a military “fight against the enemies of Islam” but there is also a political component to jihad that can not be denied.

In a recent article on The Intercept, anthropologist and author Darryl Li (The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity) said:

“Consider for a moment three different things: the Irish Republican Army, the Republican Party in the United States, and Plato’s Republic. All of these employ the term ‘republic,’ and all of them somehow have a connection with violence. If you lumped them together and claimed they represent an ideology called ‘republicanism,’ that obviously wouldn’t make any sense. Yet that’s what the category of ‘jihadism’ essentially does.”

While not always regional, today’s jihad can vary from a small army in one country to a splintered section of regional cells in others to mass shooters and automotive attackers.

It’s this transient nature that makes the battle against jihad or terrorism more complicated.

The nearly two decades old “War on Terror” has seen periodic military successes, but given the nature, mobility, and breadth of the combatants, it’s proven a challenge to definitively end. Many of those successes may have been short-lived. While they may have curbed further advancement of one Islamic terrorist or group, the success, in turn, radicalized others. After ten years on the run, the death of Osama bin Laden would splinter al Quada and lead to an even more extreme version of jihad, the Islamic State or ISIS.

ISIS initially began by calling for a worldwide caliphate and would go on to help the Iraqi insurgency during the American invasion. ISIS has proven to be horrific in their jihad. Their crimes include:

videotaped beheading of civilians, aid workers, and journalists
the destruction of cultural heritage sites
numerous human rights abuses
war crimes
crimes against humanity
ethnic cleansing
genocide.

The group spent many bloody years of fighting in Iraq and Syria, but in February of 2019, President Trump declared that “ISIS was 100% defeated.”

This was categorically “not true.”

Like many of Trump’s comments about the US military, this bold statement was given without consulting the military leadership. The Pentagon was left scrambling to defend the statement and kept the US involvement in Syria.

Six months later, the Pentagon issued a report saying that ISIS was “re-surging” in Syria, stating: “The reduction of US forces has decreased the support available for Syrian partner forces at a time when their forces need more training and equipping to respond to the ISIS resurgence.”

Despite the Pentagon’s report, two weeks later US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper stated ISIS is “not in a re-surgent state.”

Because this type of jihad or terrorism is so amorphous, it transcends state, region, country, and continent. It also isn’t limited to one fundamentalist Islamic concept. While ISIS may be considered the more extreme and well known, there are other international groups like the Afghan Taliban, Boko Haram, and al-Shabob.

RUSSIA, CHINA & AFRICA

The Middle East is still ripe with plenty of military and ideological conflict. It remains the hotbed of jihad where peace, if found, is sporadic and short-lived. However, over the years Africa has seen the rise of these radical Islamic believers and jihad making it a growing global concern.

It’s gotten so bad in Africa that in January of 2020, France President Emmanuel Macron threatened to withdraw French forces from Africa. He summoned the presidents of Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania to a meeting to curb hostilities and work out how to stop the “rapid advance of armed Islamist extremists in their regions.”

The two largest American adversaries have begun asserting more influence on the African continent.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has increased arms sales while creating security agreements and training programs for some of the unstable African countries like Libya. There Putin has dispatched both troops and aid to help militia leader Khalifa Hifter curb the civil war.

China has increased its commercial investment in Africa. They’ve helped build factories and infrastructure in addition to operating a major port in the East African country of Dijibouti. The Chinese military is currently considering a new port in Senegal under the pretense of assisting the Senegalese Navy.

This makes US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s weighing the withdrawal of forces in Africa perplexing.

Esper’s stated goal is a re-alignment of American troops amid heightened tensions in the Middle East between Iran and the US. With the inroads being laid down by both China and Russia, it would have made this mover confounding. Luckily, late in January Esper decided not to re-locate the troops.

The American assassination of Iranian Major General Qassim Suleimani further complicates the War on Terror. Not only because it inflamed tensions in the Middle East but the US also lost one of their staunchest indirect supporters of the elimination of ISIS.

There is no doubt that Suleimani orchestrated the death of numerous American’s and allied forces in the Middle East. However, Iran had mastered the art of the “proxy war” under Suleimani and he was equally as deadly towards ISIS.

Not helping matters is that both Germany and Britain have begun pulling their forces from Iraq and The Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS has ceased operating.

In recent NYTimes Op-ed, former FBI agent Ali H. Soufan said:

“In 2016, Donald Trump, then a candidate for president, described Barack Obama as the ‘founder of ISIS.’ In the end, it may be Mr. Trump who comes to be known not as the terrorist group’s founder, but as its savior.”

“Jihad” and “terrorism” aren’t synonymous but the line between the two is pencil thin.

$5.6 TRILLION

Regardless of what it’s called or referred to, the American led War on Terror has been a financial sinkhole. According to Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, as the war inches into its second decade, the financial cost for the US on both military operations and veteran care is around $5.6 trillion.

In addition to the astronomical financial cost, the human toll has also been significant — 10,003 American deaths and 56,422 injured or wounded.

500,000+ DEAD

According to a report in 2018 from Brown University’s Costs of War Project, the cumulative toll on impacted countries including Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan deaths by direct violence total between 480,000 and 500,000, 244,000 of them civilians. That number jumps into the millions when considering those impacted by disease, displacement, and loss of infrastructure.

Despite all the proclamations from various governments, the bombings, battles and the death in the Middle East, and increasingly in Africa, prove that jihad or terrorism is still very much alive and thriving. While the periodic jihad leader may be killed or captured, there will be someone to replace them…and they’ll be angrier.

On February 20, the Taliban claimed that “five or six” Americans were killed, along with six Afghan troops, in a firefight in the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

Given the shapeless and the inchoate existence of jihad practitioners, the war may not be on terror…but with time.