"Occupation by Policy" - How Victors Inadvertantly Provoke Resistance Insurgency

[Dayuhan]

AQ wages UW. UW requires conditions of insurgency to work. AQ is probably best thought of as a non-state political action group dedicated to the removal of overt Western influence in the Middle East along with those Regimes in the region who have become corrupted by some mix of wealth, power or Western influence, with the Saudis being #1 on that list. They also wish to create a coalition of Muslim states to once again have sufficient power to not have to worry about such external exploitation.

I think it would be more accurate to say that AQ seeks to take power in the Middle East and as much of the Muslim world as possible. It's less about what they want to remove than about what they want to install: themselves.

Where do you think AQ's power comes from? They have no population of their own, they must borrow populations from others. The only populations interested in what they are selling are those who are Sunni Muslim and that perceive their own governance to need to change, or that perceive external Western influence to be a corrupting factor that once removed will allow their governance to return to what they see as appropriate.

How do you reconcile the idea that "The only populations interested in what they are selling are those who are Sunni Muslim and that perceive their own governance to need to change" with the observed reality that Gulf populaces are willing to support AQ wholeheartedly as long as AQ is fighting the West somewhere else, but that support drops to near zero when AQ tries to rock the boat in their own countries? How do you reconcile that statement with the observed fact that AQ's predecessor organizations rallied enormous support for their effort to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, even though that conflict had no bearing at all on domestic governance?

AQ draws support from a whole lot of motivators. Some comes from anger over the historical decline of Islam and the rise of the Christian West, and a desire to restore the romanticized days of Muslim ascendancy. Some comes from the affront to Muslim manliness posed by the dismal performance of Muslim armies against non-Muslim foes: even many Arabs who loathed and feared Saddam felt a bit disheartened at the ease with which the US rolled over Saddam's "mighty army". There's a great deal of generic resentment over non-Muslim occupation of "Muslim land", anywhere, even where it has zero bearing on domestic conditions. As Outlaw points out, there's anger over Israel and the Palestinians, exacerbated again by repeated military victories on the Israeli side. There's resentment over the colonial and neocolonial meddlings of the past... even Sunnis who loathe the Ayatollahs will point to the Anglo-American overthrow of Mossadegh as an example of what they hate about the West. All of this rolls into what Bernard Lewis called "aggressive self-pity": an overwhelming sense that Muslims are generically oppressed and beat up and a general tendency to support any Muslim who is sticking it to the West, anywhere, whetehr or not there is any actual or perceived impact on local conditions. There is, as mentioned above, a general preference, especially in the Gulf, for the sticking it to the West to take place someplace else, not at home where the resultant mess might land in the front yard. They want to watch it on Al-Jazeerah, not in the town square.

You live in SEA, have you ever wondered why AQ's message falls flat there? The nations there are proudly sovereign, having thrown off inappropriate and illegitimate Western influence during the course of the Cold War. They have no occupation by policy drivers of resistance effects toward the West. Do they have internal revolutionary pressures still, and do some of those revolutionaries accept help from AQ? Yes.

What is the difference between the ME and SEA? Primarily the fact that the ME was held static politically as a major battle ground of our Cold War containment, and because frankly communism/land reform does not resonate among non-agrarian and non-industrialized populations. But in SEA communism/land reform resonated widely among tenant farmers weary of scratching out a scant living for some Western Colonial master or some local mixed breed elite caste master as Spain left behind everyplace they colonized. So SEA Muslims largely addressed these issues and have moved on. Now it is time for those in the ME to do the same. But we are too fixated on the symptoms and how it affects us to see the problem clearly.

AQ only has real influence where certain conditions exist. Address those conditions and they will rapidly fade into irrelevance. But those conditions are political, not ideological or purely economic.

Here I think you stray from the path.

In general, you can divide SEA Muslims into two groups: those who live in Muslim-dominated countries (Indonesia, Malaysia) and those who live in Muslim-minority countries (southern Thailand, southern Philippines, Burma).

By your model, southern Thailand and the southern Philippines should be ideal for AQ: Muslim minorities have been for generations marginalized, denied self-determination, oppressed, and generally kicked around by US-allied governments. In actual fact, while groups in these areas have taken assistance from (and provided refuge to) AQ and allied groups, the message has gained very little traction. Populaces in these areas are not concerned with pan-Islamic issues and not moved by an Arab-dominated and Middle East-centric message. Their concerns are local, and they see little connection between the message and their struggle.

In Indonesia, on the other hand, the larger AQ and JI message does have a good deal of popular support, though (as in many places) there's very little support for action campaigns that kill local people or rock the local boat. The message gains traction not because of a perception of oppression by their own government, but because of greater identification with a larger Muslim whole, and greater sympathy with pan-Islamic issues and that eagerness to restore Muslim prestige and self-perceived potency by driving the West out of whatever Muslim land they happen to occupy (again, the farther from home the better).

In short, I don't think the actual dynamics of popular acceptance of the AQ and allied group message in SEA supports your theory at all.