Geopolitics and Salafi-Jihadist Strategy

A lmost eight years after the death of Osama bin Laden, and despite ongoing military and intelligence efforts as part of the Global War on Terror, the West has defeated neither the organization bin Laden founded nor the wider Salafijihadist movement of which it forms an integral part. On the contrary, al-Qaeda's fighting strength today is an order of magnitude larger than it was on the day bin Laden died—and that does not count the tens of thousands more who have pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda's breakaway rival, the Islamic State group. One major factor in this remarkable survival and growth has been the ability of Salafi-jihadi groups to use conflict throughout the Arab and Islamic world simultaneously as both a shield against scrutiny and a recruitment tool.

This article examines Salafi-jihadist grand strategy and shows how the movement's shift in emphasis from global terror to local insurgency constitutes not a departure from that strategy but rather its fulfilment. It then examines the successes the movement has wrung from conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, before moving on to outline what the future may hold for al-Qaeda and groups of its ilk.

Geopolitics and the Salafi-Jihadist Project

All significant Salafi-jihadi groups follow essentially the same grand strategy, and out of necessity, that strategy has always entailed certain geopolitical elements. It was codified at length in The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage through Which the Umma [Islamic People] Will Pass, a 2004 treatise published in the online al-Qaeda magazine Sawt al-Jihad (Voice of Jihad) under the nom-de-plume Abu Bakr Naji.¹ The Management of Savagery enumerates a tripartite strategy closely aligned with official al-Qaeda doctrine. The first stage, Naji claims, is the use of violence—the phenomenon we call terrorism—to create "regions of savagery," chaotic zones in which the writ of traditional nation-states does not apply. The next stage is "justifying [Salafi-jihadist rule] rationally and through the Sharia," not to the West, nor to any pre-existing governmental authority, but directly to Muslims themselves, in a way that makes the cause seem right, even inevitable, and that draws in more and more recruits. One of the keys to this process of justification, Naji tells readers, is to provide people with fair and efficient governance, albeit based on the precepts of Sharia law as Salafi-jihadists understand it. Only once public support is assured can the movement enter phase three: the establishment of permanent governmental structures toward an Islamic state.

Osama bin Laden had firm views on how to prosecute this plan. He often distinguished among his enemies by analogizing them to a tree with a sturdy trunk and many thin branches. The trunk was the United States; the branches were its allies. To bring down a tree, bin Laden reasoned, one needed to concentrate on sawing through the trunk.² Therefore, al-Qaeda should focus on attacking the United States and ignore other enemies, whether local regimes in the Muslim world or US allies in the West.³ This was the essence of the "near enemy" versus "far enemy" debate. Thus, in bin Laden's fatwas of 1996 and 1998—issued before the East Africa embassy bombings that began the organization's career of anti-American violence—al-Qaeda expressly (and at great length) singled out the United States for a declaration of war.

Bin Laden insisted on this strategy even in situations where modifying it might have produced greater short-term gains.⁴ Thus, when the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) wrote to advise bin Laden that the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, was ripe for al-Qaeda's taking in 2010, amid the chaos of Yemen's civil war, bin Laden rejected his counsel, suggesting instead that AQAP try to reach "a truce with the apostate government."⁵ Bin Laden provided similar instructions with regard to al-Qaeda's heartland of northern Pakistan.⁶ He also ordered the group's West African franchise, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), to negotiate cease...