Islamist Watch: Ritt Goldstein, writing from Stockholm, of all places, writes in
Asia Times, one of the few truly independent and anti-Idiotarian papers in the world, that the CIA has discovered an Islamic extremist ("Salafist" -- remember that term) documend indicating that the movement considers the al-Qaeda war to be a gross mistake:
A recently released Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) provided document affords some remarkably critical and militant Islamic perspectives on the "war on terror". Highlighting the unique nature of the document's perspective, it addresses an analysis of al-Qaeda's efforts by al-Jama'ah al-Islamiyah, a faction which is designated by the US State Department as a terrorist organization. The fact of the document's release by the CIA speaks volumes about its interest.
Providing an equally surprising parallel, in December the US Defense Department's Strategic Studies Institute released a report describing the objectives of the Bush administration's war efforts as "politically, fiscally and militarily unsustainable". Al-Jama'ah observed essentially the same of al-Qaeda. And according to the CIA translation, al-Jama'ah argues that al-Qaeda "entangled the Muslim nation in a conflict that was beyond its power to wage".
Al-Jama'ah is Egypt's largest Salafist group on the US terror list, allegedly complicit in the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center, as well as numerous acts of violence within Egypt. Their goal has been stated as the removal of secular government and restoration of an Islamist state. The group's spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, was convicted for his alleged Trade Center bombing role by a US court.
The militant Egyptian Salafist groups are reportedly Islam's oldest, tracing their roots to the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, five years after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The encroachment of Western secularism spawned the Brotherhood, but al-Jama'ah's activity dates from the 1970s.
Islamic Jihad, Egypt's other major Salafist group on the terror list, was reportedly responsible for the assassination of the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Ayman al-Zawahiri, now allegedly Osama bin Laden's second in command, was reportedly one of Islamic Jihad's two leaders. Al-Qaeda itself is sometimes referred to as a militant Salafist group.
The CIA's original document appeared as an Arabic-language review of a book by al-Jama'ah's leadership, their work entitled: "The Strategy and Bombings of al-Qaeda". It was published by the influential and Saudi-owned London daily, al-Sharq al-Awsat.
Footnoting this, al-Sharq al-Awsat is known for publishing material that coincides with Saudi perspectives. And Salafist is a term which many of the Wahhabi denomination of Sunni Islam use to describe themselves, Wahhabism being the strict branch of Islam most often associated with Saudi Arabia.
But in 1997, al-Jama'ah's leadership reportedly began an initiative to end violence. Their present writings intimate that a policy of confrontation fed anti-Islamic currents within the US, shifting America away from a policy of Islamic accommodation when it suited US objectives.
"The official religion of the United States is its interests," note the authors. They also see the US pursuing an opportunity for "hegemony on the world, global sovereignty, and decisive victory over all rivals".
Their text is noteworthy for its illustration of perceptions within the militant segment of the Islamic community. Al-Jama'ah doesn't take exception to al-Qaeda's motivations, but does to their methods and strategy, al Qaeda's giving "preference to the logic of defiance over the principle of calculations".
The authors blame anti-US violence (including the Trade Center bombing) for casting Islam as "the green peril". They portray a shift in US perception as transpiring during the period when America was attempting to define its "new enemy" following the Cold War.
Particularly singled out as evidence of this American development are the works of Francis Fukuyama The End of History and Samuel Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations). However, the authors pointed out that even during this period, the US sought an accommodation with the Taliban, demonstrating "the supremacy of the US self-serving logic on US strategy". But concurrently the authors saw an al-Qaeda policy of confrontation lead to the foregoing of unique opportunities that may never recur.
According to the text, because of US geostrategic (oil and gas) interests, the Taliban were offered "US$3 billion as a free grant and $300 million annually in return for leasing the pipeline transporting natural gas from the Caspian" to Pakistan. This was in reference to the trans-Afghan pipeline the US had long desired.
Al-Jama'ah cites Islamic history to make the point that mutually advantageous accommodation is not sacrilegious.
The authors note that instead of the assets and stability the proposed pipeline revenue held for both Afghanistan and Pakistan, there have instead been substantive setbacks for the global Islamic community. The siege al-Qaeda is under, as well as the increased pressures on those who are fighting traditional struggles of liberation, were seen as but one part of a much broader fallout. Particular note is given to the extreme nature of September 11, and the West's reaction to it...
On the other hand, the Salafists never renounce their goals of world domination, do they?