Promising Heaven, Delivering Dust

Responses to "Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?"

Round 2 (posted September 11, 2006)

by Fawaz A. Gerges

Fawaz A. Gerges is the Christian A. Johnson Chair in International Affairs and Middle Eastern Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and the author of Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy and The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global.

In my last post I argued that al Qaeda has not delivered on its repeated threats to strike inside the United States partly because it is hemorrhaging and encircled within the Islamist movement and the Muslim world more generally. Cracks have emerged even within the bin Laden network itself, with the case of Abu al-Walid al-Masri being a good example.

Before 9/11, Abu al-Walid had been a leading theoretician of the organization and participated in its most significant decisions. But he broke with bin Laden over the attacks, becoming one of the most senior of the Arab Afghans to part company and take his grievances public (through a newsletter and articles in the Arabic press).

Abu al-Walid had worked closely with both Mullah Omar and bin Laden, and in his writings he paints a dark portrait of the latter as an autocrat, running al Qaeda as he might a tribal fiefdom. Bin Laden had thought that the United States would retreat after two or three engagements, basing his assessment on the U.S. Marines "fleeing" Lebanon in 1983 and on what happened in Somalia in the 1990s, when U.S. forces left in a "shameful disarray and indecorous haste." But after September 11, Abu al-Walid notes, matters "took an opposite turn compared to what bin Laden had imagined. Instead of buckling under his three painful blows, America retaliated and destroyed both the Taliban and Al Qaeda."

Abu al-Walid tells us that bin Laden entangled the Taliban in regional and international conflicts against its will and brought about the destruction of the Islamic emirate; Afghanistan was lost because of bin Laden's reckless conduct culminating in the attacks on the United States.

al Qaeda members knew better than to challenge bin Laden, he says. "You are the emir, do as you please!" he reports them as telling their leader. But that attitude turned out to be not only wrong but also dangerous: "It encourages recklessness and causes disorganization, characteristics that are unsuitable for this existential battle in which we confront the greatest force in the world, U.S.A."

By stifling internal debate and underestimating the enemy, Abu al-Walid concludes, bin Laden was personally responsible for the defeat, rendering Al Qaeda's final years in Afghanistan "a tragic example of an Islamic movement managed by a catastrophic leadership. Everyone knew that [bin Laden] was leading them to the abyss and even leading the entire country to utter destruction, but they continued to bend to his will and take his orders with suicidal submission."

The importance of Abu al-Walid's withering criticism -- which is echoed by a number of other jihadists -- is its public acknowledgment of disarray and defeat. Many leading jihadists have concluded that the war is lost and that bin Laden and his hawkish aides promised heaven and delivered dust. In short, for the bin Laden network the war within has been more lethal than the war waged against it by the United States.