From the archive, 9 Mar 2005

JIHADI WAR IN STRATEGIC THEORY

Introduction

Jihad has acquired center stage in strategic literature over the past decade. However the analytical focus has been limited to a pragmatic engagement with the phenomenon. This essay attempts to situate jihad in strategic theory. This aim springs from the understanding that theory informs practice - therefore theoretical exegesis on jihad should also be part of strategic literature. At the outset the essay makes a distinction between the Islamic doctrine of jihad and the jihadi war launched by self styled jihadis. To do otherwise would be concede to jihadis the definition of jihad, a contested terrain not gone into here. Here the term ‘jihadi war’ is used instead. To gain a theoretical perspective on jihadi war, it is examined in the context of revolutionary war theory and of the concept of generations of warfare. 

 

The Evolution of Revolutionary War Theory

 

Mao’s military doctrine posits three phases: Strategic Defensive; Strategic Stalemate and Strategic Offensive. In Phase 1, when the base is under preparation, revolutionary forces were to be on the defensive. After consolidation of the base, generally seen as being in the peasant dominated countryside, they were to engulf the town in Phase 2. This involved military action in guerrilla style against government forces. With the government forced on the defensive, the guerrilla forces were to acquire characteristics of conventional forces and take the initiative in the third and final phase of the revolutionary war.

 

This doctrine was based on conditions that obtained in China. This served as a model for other revolutionary forces in the post Second World War period.

 

Further evolution in the revolutionary doctrine thereafter took place in Latin America and Africa in the fifties and sixties. In Latin America, the triumph of Fidel Castro led up to the conceptualization of the ‘foco’ theory by Che Guevara. This theory relied on the Cuban revolution led by Castro that overthrew the Batista regime in 1958.

 

The departure here from Mao’s theory was in the dispensing with the first phase of building up of a base. The idea was that the governments in the area being generally corrupt and incompetent, it would require only a small group of motivated cadres to mount the revolution. This small group would form the ‘foci’ of the revolutionary movement, thereby the name ‘foco’ theory. The people fed up with oppressive dictatorial governments would welcome the change thereby according legitimacy to the new revolutionary dispensation. This doctrine was borne out by the Cuban revolution. However, when confronted with firmer governments elsewhere in Latin America, it proved less successful leading to the death of its proponent Guevara at the hands of Bolivian security forces in a vain attempt to make the theory work.

 

Frantz Fanon in Africa and Marighella in South America further added to revolutionary war theory by centering it in an urban industrial context obtaining in the area of their operations, thereby taking revolutionary thought further away from its antecedents in Mao’s thinking.

 

Ever since the demise of communism as an inspirational doctrine with the eclipse of the Soviet Union and the Chinese adaptation of capitalism, revolutionary war theory has found limited impetus. This however has not precluded its adaptation by groups fighting perceived oppression and injustice all over the globe, be it in Columbia, Nepal or the Philippines. Of interest however is the influence revolutionary war theory has had on the jihadi ascendance from their origin in evicting the Soviet Union from Afghanistan to taking on the hyper-power in a global contest.

 

In Afghanistan, it is well documented that the jihadi forces were a creation of the CIA engaged in paying back the communist Soviet Union for its role in America’s debacle in Vietnam. The conduit was the ISI of Pakistan, catapulted by the Afghan war into being a ‘frontline’ state. In terms of Mao’s theory, a base already existed in Pakistan from where jihadi forces were launched into Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, base areas were carved out by warlords in remote areas. These base areas were used to interdict and harass Soviet and government forces. An example is the Panjshir valley controlled by Ahmed Shah Massoud and its influence on the arterial route through Salang tunnel. In the base area, there was adequate cannon fodder in terms of refugees and also under privileged Pakistani youth graduating from madrassas. Escalation of the war with the influx of radical Islamists from elsewhere in the Muslim world, additionally weaponry and its qualitative upgradation such as through the induction of Stinger missiles, ensured the move from strategic stalemate to strategic offensive by the end of the eighties. This military pressure combined with the Gorbachev initiated perestroika and glasnost within Soviet Union ensured its departure from Afghanistan. 

 

By the end of the war radical Islam was a political and military reality amounting to a threat to US backed conservative regimes elsewhere in the Islamic world. The victory over the super power gave inspiration to the jihadis that the remaining super power could also be humbled similarly through asymmetric war. The philosophy of jihad was relied on to inspire and mobilize cadres from disaffected and deprived peoples in Muslim countries. Militarily, the Quranic injunction to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy was fore grounded. Thus terrorism was the strategy in a global war mounted by the jihadis or Arab Afghans who rendered under employed by the retreat of the Soviet Union.

 

The target of the war was mainly conservative Arab regimes including Algeria and Egypt. The US intrusion into Saudi Arabia and its patron status to clientelist regimes made it also a target. The ever present Israel and its hard-line actions under right wing regimes through the nineties added to the angst capitalized on by radical Islamists to expand into Arab political space. Local factors in South Asia and South East Asia led to their ideological and military intrusion in these areas also. The high point of this war was the attack on mainland USA known to history as 9/11.

 

The theoretical basis of jihadi war and its linkage with revolutionary war theory explicated above have not been conclusively established. That the jihadis are inimical to communism indicates that their overt inspiration is not Mao. However Maoist thought, the ‘foco’ theory and of urban guerilla warfare does appear to inform jihadi theorizing and action.

 

Their doctrine is based instead on Islamic mythology associated with the rise and spread of Islam under adverse circumstances. The period of strategic defensive can be discerned to being the early period of the propagation of the faith leading up to the Prophet’s exile. The ‘base’ in the Prophet’s time can be taken to be Medina. The period of strategic stalemate can be taken as lasting between the Prophet’s exile from and reclaiming of Mecca. The subsequent expansion of Islam in the peninsula in the time of the ‘rightly guided’ caliphs can be taken as the period of strategic offensive. Thus there is a correlation between Maoist doctrine and the inspirational fount of Islamists.

 

Politically, they are also feeding on the ennui, angst and the persecution complex of the deprived classes. They are also proto nationalist elements in that they are seen as combating clientelist regimes. They are also seen as the underdog in a global face off with the sole super power. They also have a universalistic ideology.

 

The military organization is also based on a loose cellular structure reminiscent of Fanon and Marighella. Their tactics correspond to guerrilla tactics with an admixture of technology. The influence of the ‘foco’ theory can be discerned in the jihadi core being taken as the revolutionary vanguard for the masses. However, the departure with the ‘foco’ theory is in jihadis also having a long term agenda in preparing the masses as a Maoist ‘base’ through social work and Islamist education in their midst, witness the Hamas in Palestine.

 

Thus similarities with secular revolutionaries abound to the extent that the Islamist revolutionary program can be seen as extending revolutionary war as a strategy into the twenty first century – the era of ‘fourth generation warfare’.

 

Jihad and Fourth Generation Warfare

 

There are varying conceptualizations on the evolution of warfare – one being its classification into four generations of warfare by two Marine Corps officers in conjunction with a civil military theorist in the Marine Gazette, circa 1989. In their postulation, the first generation comprised the Napoleonic ear when the smooth bore musket dominated the battlefield. The advent of machine guns and barbed wire in the American civil war lead up to the second generation of warfare with its high point in the First World War. The third generation of warfare had its inception in thinking on breaking through the trench lines of the Great War. It comprised the use of mechanized forces in conjunction with air power in a battle of maneuver. The ultimate was reached in Norman Swarzkopf’s ‘Hail Mary’ maneuver in Iraq War I. Prognostication on the direction of warfare led these theorists to conjuring up Fourth Generation Warfare which was in effect a return to the old manner of war that has recurred even as warfare moved through the preceding three generations of technology induced innovation - the manner the Spaniards fought Napoleon, the Boers fended off the British, and the Slavs held down the Nazis. In effect fourth generation warfare is the original form of warfare though not technologically innocent in that it innovates in the field of information rather than steel.

 

An extract below from a document forming part of an inaugural publication of the Army’s Center for Land Warfare Studies, ‘Army 2020’ (New Delhi; Knowledge World, 2005) makes clearer the concept of ‘generations of warfare’:

 

“Military analysts in the USA are now deliberating and reflecting on a fourth generation warfare in which the target will be the whole of the enemy’s society (ideology, culture, political, infrastructure and civil society)…The aim would be to cause the enemy to collapse internally rather than physically destroying him.  There will be little distinction between war and peace…If we combine these general characteristics with new technology, we see one possible outline of the new generation of warfare.”

 

The fourth generation of warfare retains some of the characteristics from earlier generations. For example, the Total Wars of last century were also aimed at structural and ideological changes. Likewise, the Cold War was neither peace nor war and was a global physical and ideological contest between capitalism and communism, but was fought through proxy in the Third World so as not to disturb the central strategic balance across Europe. Civilian targets were not spared and joint operations were pursued to the extent material was available.

 

Crystal ball gazing in 1989 however has not captured the essence of the conflict well underway by the turn of the century for it was focused on conflict between state actors. In the ongoing global conflict, the chief characteristic however is of

 

non-state actors combating a ‘coalition of the willing’. Non-state Islamist cells embedded in society have waged a technologically sophisticated war, best exemplified by the coordinated attacks on the symbols of American capitalist, political and military might on Sept 11, 2001. Their transnational linkages are as yet subterranean and their organizations impervious. The ‘generations of warfare’ theorizing does provide the necessary conceptual tools to grapple with the phenomenon of jihadi war.

 

This dimension of the latest form of war has not been adequately covered in fourth generation warfare conceptualization indicating that at the turn of the penultimate decade of last century, America was interested in discerning contours for employability for its massive military power. Towards this end fourth generation warfare conceptualization provided a blueprint, while Huntingtonion theorizing provided the rationale for a new enemy in the form of radical Islam. The unfolding of the last decade appears to have borne out the authors even if Huntington has had his share of valid criticism.

 

An admixture of asymmetric war theorizing drawing on Maoist revolutionary theory helps flesh out the concept of fourth generation war in its adaptation by jihadis. The asymmetric dimension is implicit in the David versus Goliath analogy exploited by the jihadi opposition, while the lead nation in the ‘coalition of the willing’ engages in the war its military is best configured for – that of fourth generation war towards regime change in ‘rogue states’. The US has demonstrated its competence in this kind of war against forces both conventionally configured forces as in Iraq as also the more irregular Taliban. The aimed for ‘internal collapse’ was achieved, however the jury is still out whether the war is quite over in both cases.

 

It is here that the linkage between jihadi war and fourth generation war can be established. In order to take on the military might and cultural hegemony of the

 

USA, its allies and client states, the Islamist opposition has to rely on the jihad doctrine to mobilize its supporters for the encounter. As with any universalistic movement, Islamism also has a comprehensive ideological frame affixed on Islam. That Islamic doctrine obtains in many narratives and that privileging any does not command a consensus is not material. Instead the ‘foco theory’ referred to earlier is being relied on to energize the opposition to the USA. The actions of the USA in this regard have only deepened the skepticism with which they are received. The point is that ascendance of jihadi war owes to the asymmetric dimension of fourth generation war being engaged in between Islamism and the USA.

 

Fourth generation warfare theory as envisaged and adopted by the US requires extension to cope with the strategic problem posed by jihadis at war. A refocus on psychologically influencing opposition planners and public opinion is required not only through means of military might and information warfare but also through ensuring legitimacy of aims and methods. This would help best the terrorist networks franchised by Al Qaeda, who appear to have transited into ‘fifth generation warfare – devoid of morality, humanity or sense: but mindlessly destructive and violative of every tenet of Islam’ (Prof Richard Bonney; ‘Jihad: From Quran to Bin Laden’; Palgrave, Macmillan).

 

Conclusion

 

To hold that theory must engage the professional military man is to challenge orthodoxy predisposed military minds. That the challenge of jihadi war has been faced thus far in a theoretical vacuum has resulted in likening jihadi war to terrorism alone. A more fleshed out approach facilitated by a theoretical understanding would help energise analysis dealing with the most salient strategic problem of the era that takes its name from its culminating point – post 9/11 era.