Routledge Handbook of U.S. Counterterrorism and Irregular Warfare Operations

Michael A. Sheehan, Erich Marquardt, Liam Collins, Michael A. Sheehan, Erich Marquardt, Liam Collins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000423389
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This handbook comprises essays by leading scholars and practitioners on the topic of U.S. counterterrorism and irregular warfare campaigns and operations around the globe.

Terrorist groups have evolved substantially since 9/11, with the Islamic State often described as a pseudo-state, a terrorist group, and insurgency all at the same time. While researchers', analysts', and policymakers' understanding of terrorism has grown immensely over the past two decades, similar advancements in the understanding of counterterrorism lag. As such, this handbook explains why it is necessary to take a broader view of counterterrorism which can, and often does, include irregular warfare.

The volume is divided into three thematic sections:

• Part I examines modern terrorism in the Islamic world and gives an overview of the major terrorist groups from the past three decades;

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• Part II provides a wide variety of case studies of counterterrorism and irregular warfare operations, spanning from the 1980s to the irregular warfare campaign against the Islamic State in northern Syria in 2018;

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• Part III examines the government instruments used to combat terrorism and wage irregular warfare, such as drones, Theater Special Operations Commands, and Theater Commands.

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The handbook fills a gap in the traditional counterterrorism literature by its inclusion of irregular warfare and by providing analyses from academic experts as well as practitioners. It will be of much interest to students of counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, U.S. national security, military affairs, and International Relations.

The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-US-Counterterrorism-and-Irregular-Warfare-Operations/Sheehan-Marquardt-Collins/p/book/9780367758363, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Part I

The threat and regional security issues

1
The evolution of Islamist terrorism in the 20th century

James J.F Forest.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003164500-2

On November 13, 2015, terrorists from the Islamic State launched a multipronged assault in Paris and the surrounding area, killing 130 people in the deadliest attack on France since World War II. There have been dozens of Islamist terrorist attacks in recent years, and the Islamic State continues to plot and conduct attacks in the West and the Middle East. Yet before the advent of the Islamic State, key events in the 20th century set the foundation for today’s terrorism threat from al-Qaida, the Islamic State, and their many affiliates. A half century ago, terrorism was not as brutally lethal or indiscriminate as it is today. From an ideological and strategic perspective, several streams have emerged over time and flowed in a similar direction, leading to what is now a global sea of groups and individuals who are committed to carrying out brutal terrorist attacks on behalf of violent Islamist ideologies.

This chapter describes various forms of terrorism in the Islamic world through nearly half a century, accounts for the rise and sometimes decline of several prominent terrorist groups during this period, and explains how this historical evolution impacts the understanding of the Islamist terrorist threat today. The chapter begins with a review of a movement that served as the primary contributor to the evolution of Islamist terrorism: the Muslim Brotherhood. It then describes the historical prominence of Palestinian terrorist groups, including the Palestine Liberation Organization, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. Next, it describes the evolution of Hezbollah and the contribution it made in popularizing suicide bombings as a terrorist tactic.

The chapter then provides a brief history of terrorism in Algeria and Egypt, with a focus on the Armed Islamic Group and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and describes how some terrorist groups transitioned their targeting from the “near enemy” (local governments) to the “far enemy” (the West). Finally, the chapter describes the critical role that Afghanistan played in Islamist terrorism.

The ideology of violence: the Muslim Brotherhood

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, a schoolteacher and imam, primarily as a response to what he viewed as threats from both outside and within the Muslim world—not least of which was the British military presence in Egypt at the time.¹ Al-Banna argued that Muslims around the world should engage in jihad against infidel rulers in Muslim lands. He said that the greater jihad was not the internal spiritual struggle in which most Muslims believed, but rather it was the armed physical struggle against injustice and disbelief, as well as a God-ordained defensive requirement for all Muslims.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the Muslim Brotherhood gathered a large following, including some senior members of the Egyptian government. When the fighting of World War II reached Egyptian soil, members of the Brotherhood protested the presence of alcohol, drugs, and prostitution that accompanied the Westerners. In 1946, Egyptian Prime Minister Ismail Sidqi facilitated the distribution of funds, books, and supplies to the Brotherhood’s schools.²

In 1948, Brotherhood members volunteered to fight in the war over Palestine. When the secular-minded Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi was assassinated in 1948 shortly after outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian authorities killed al-Banna and several of his associates, sparking a brief Islamist armed uprising that was brutally suppressed.

Yet the Muslim Brotherhood continued to grow into a powerful political force. One of its most influential figures during the 1950s and 1960s was Sayyid Qutb. Qutb not only spent a large portion of his life in prison (where he wrote his popular book Milestones,³ also known as Signposts), but he would become a martyr to Arab and Muslim revivalists after his execution by Egyptian authorities.⁴ Milestones is reportedly one of the most widely read books in the Muslim world besides the Quran and has become the ideological cornerstone of many Islamist reform movements. In his book, Qutb criticized not only Western society but also all Muslim societies where he described a loss of direction because the people were willfully ignorant of true Islam. He urged that Islamic societies be judged by how closely they adhere to Sharia (Islamic law) and that governments which are branded takfir, or apostate, must be forcefully replaced.

Qutb proposed a multi-stage process for reviving true Islam. First, a true Muslim movement is formed, whose vanguard sounds the call to the community to return to sovereignty only under God and Sharia. Second, this movement’s message is ignored by the jahiliyya⁵ (age of ignorance) society and the government. Third, the movement then removes itself either spiritually or physically (or both) from the ignorant society to purify itself and to build up its strength. The final stage is the movement’s jihad bil saif (armed and violent struggle) to overthrow the existing unbelieving regime and restore justice and the practice of true Islam. God as man’s legitimate ruler, according to Qutb, makes this victory possible. Qutb embraced a secular and nationalistic conception of jihad and its role in establishing a “truly” Islamic government, and he also incorporated a 13th-century notion of jihad that includes the overthrow of regimes that fail to enforce Sharia.

In 1952, a group within the Egyptian Army led a revolution and established a new government, with Gamal Abd al-Nasser as its president. Al-Nasser promoted ideals of pan-Arabism and African unity and proceeded to suppress religious movements like the Muslim Brotherhood. Following an assassination attempt against al-Nasser in 1956, the government responded with lengthy prison sentences for many Muslim Brotherhood members. Since Qutb advocated the use of violence to achieve political and societal change, he was incarcerated from 1955 to 1964 and then executed in 1966 by al-Nasser’s government.⁶ He remains one of the most enduring ideological inspirations for most Sunni Islamist extremist groups worldwide.

The Muslim Brotherhood also helped establish and nurture a variety of groups throughout the region, from Morocco to the Palestinian Territories (including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad) to Syria. In many cases, these groups originally built up popular support through educational programs, social services, and political activism. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt renounced violence in the 1970s, but that had the effect of causing more radical members to spin off and create their own groups.

In sum, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated groups throughout the Middle East can be seen as an evolutionary cornerstone of Islamist terrorism. The core ideology of violence originating from this movement influences a broad spectrum of today’s terrorist groups and informs our understanding of what those groups hope to achieve through the use of violence.

The historical prominence of Palestinian terrorist groups

In the Palestinian Territories, the most prominent terrorist factions today are Islamist groups. Yet the early history of terrorism in the Palestinian Territories was mainly secular. In fact, leaders of Islamist groups across the globe have drawn inspirational and operational lessons from the nationalist groups of the 1960s and 1970s like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. These and other groups have at one time or another been factions of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that was established in 1964 as an attempt to form a government in exile that would represent the interests of the Palestinian people.⁷

Following the 1947 resolution by the United Nations to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, the Israeli military forced many Palestinian families to flee their homes, while other Palestinians fled on their own accord. Refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt swelled to hundreds of thousands, becoming fertile grounds for recruiting angry young men seeking vengeance. Meanwhile, the surrounding Arab countries rejected Israel’s May 14, 1948, declaration of independence and attacked the new state on several occasions. Israel was victorious each time, giving little hope to Palestinians that they would someday be able to return to their homes.

By the late 1960s, they turned toward militant groups like the PLO. Originally, the al-Fatah faction led by Yasser Arafat came to dominate the PLO, but when the PFLP joined in 1968, it became the second largest faction. These and other PLO factions launched a campaign of terrorist attacks, including kidnappings, shootings, bombings, and hijackings.

Palestinian militants viewed terrorism as a means to achieve the following key objectives: boost recruitment and moral support among Palestinian refugees; attract financial support from nation-states, such as the Soviet Union; and draw international attention to the Palestinian cause. Arafat and other leaders of this era frequently described terrorism as a necessary means to liberate Palestinians by making life unbearable for Israelis. For decades, Palestinians living in refugee camps or under Israeli military control felt powerless to bring about change—and the quest for power is central to the strategy behind terrorism.

According to te...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgment
• Preface
• List of figures
• List of abbreviations
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• Part I The threat and regional security issues
• Part II Operational case studies
• Part III Government instruments in countering terrorism and waging irregular warfare
• Index