Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [115]
Even those who would take part in jihad overseas, forgoing American targets, are subject to prosecution or death by drone. The most active jihadists overseas are declared enemies of the United States, even when their concerns are primarily local. The participation of American citizens and long-term residents in any sort of jihadist activity is now treated as a security threat in itself, regardless of the nature of that activity.
Several factors have contributed to that change, aside from the broad shift in American attitudes after September 11. U.S. diplomatic and intelligence efforts have deliberately linked jihadism to terrorism in the sphere of international relations, with a considerable amount of success.3
And the jihadists themselves have almost universally come to define America as the enemy. Although this war was launched by al Qaeda in almost every meaningful sense, the subsequent invasion of Iraq on the basis of unfounded claims about weapons of mass destruction has provided jihadist ideologues with all the ammunition they need to deflect and avoid the question of “who started it.” No future change in the course of U.S. policy can fully erase the impact of that mistake.
In Iraq and Afghanistan today, U.S. military forces are directly fighting jihadists on the battlefield. In Somalia and Yemen, the “hidden hand” of U.S. military and political influence is seen as manipulating events on the ground, not without some justification.
For better or worse, America is embroiled in a global war with jihadism, and there is no immediately foreseeable end to that conflict. The ultimate direction of that war is beyond the scope of this book. The goal here is evaluating the threat from the self-styled jihadists in our midst. There are three major considerations:
Quality of entry-level recruits: As noted in chapter 11, early jihadist recruits generally had relevant skills, often some kind of traditional military training. As the Internet replaced the real-world network of recruiters and personal connections, jihadist volunteers began to reflect a different demographic. The most rabid supporters of jihad today are very young converts with little practical experience in Islam, fighting, or life. They’re often not even particularly good at using the Internet securely. Abdullah Azzam, writing in 1988, complained about the immaturity and the shallow Islamic learning of his followers.4 He would likely have been horrified to see the state of jihad in 2010.
Numbers: Offsetting the low quality of many of these volunteers is the Internet’s reach. Before 9/11 you had to find and engage a real world social network in order to learn about and eventually win an invitation to jihad. Now anyone with a computer can find himself hip-deep in jihad-friendly social circles in no time flat and can e-mail someone like Anwar Awlaki for encouragement and instructions on how to proceed with mayhem. The pool of people with more than a casual interest in jihad is much larger, and it’s easier for them to find social reinforcement to go deeper. There are more traps and dead ends for aspiring jihadists online than there were for someone walking down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn in 1990, but generally anyone with enough persistence can move from talk to action with active support from serious players met online. A 2010 report claiming that three hundred Americans had trained with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula raises alarm bells.5 I’m a bit skeptical about this estimate, but if it’s true, that could be more Americans than took part in the wars in 1980s Afghanistan and 1990s Bosnia combined.
Lack of training: The devastation wrought on al Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan has paid dividends to U.S. national security. No one has ever come close to replicating the success of al Qaeda’s training network, in terms of length of training, quality of graduates,