waging the inchoate war: defining, fighting, and second-guessing the 'long war

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Waging the inchoate war:Defining, fighting, and second-guessing the ‘Long War’Frank ‘Scott’ Douglas aa US Naval War College ,Published online: 08 Apr 2008.

To cite this article: Frank ‘Scott’ Douglas (2007) Waging the inchoate war: Defining,fighting, and second-guessing the ‘Long War’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 30:3,391-420

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ARTICLE

Waging the Inchoate War:Defining, Fighting, and

Second-Guessingthe ‘Long War’

FRANK ‘SCOTT’ DOUGLAS1

US Naval War College

ABSTRACT This article answers three questions: What is the nature of the LongWar? How is progress (or lack thereof) to be assessed? Where is it likely to gonext? An appreciation of Clausewitz shows that practical centers of gravity existfor the Long War, and that the conflict pivots upon the ability to persuasivelylink ideology to events via a strategic narrative. A close examination of anillustrative case study, the interaction between the US and the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq 2004–2006, shows that Al Qaeda has suffered a severe setback,but also that the nature of the war is set to shift yet again. Further tangibleprogress for the US requires waging the Long War as a global counterinsurgencybased on a strategy of ‘selective identification’ (versus pure ‘disaggregation’) aswell as an understanding of how to more effectively craft a strategic narrative.

KEY WORDS: Al Qaeda, Zarqawi, Strategic Narrative, Center of Gravity

The Global War on Terror (GWOT), or as it is now more fashionablycalled, the ‘Long War’, has proven singularly difficult for analysts,policy-makers, and military minds alike to grasp.2 Much of thisdifficulty stems from the shared sense that this war is somehowinherently different; that it somehow slips out of the bounds that our

1The views expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflectthose of the United States Government, the Department of the Navy, or the Naval WarCollege.2I will use both terms interchangeably since they are analytically useful and in widecirculation.

The Journal of Strategic StudiesVol. 30, No. 3, 391 – 420, June 2007

ISSN 0140-2390 Print/ISSN 1743-937X Online/07/030391-30 � 2007 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/01402390701343375

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inherited theories or historical cases might make for it. In fact, it is notuncommon to hear arguments that the American military’s intellectualgod of war, Carl von Clausewitz, may be irrelevant or even dangerouslymisleading in this case.3

This last assertion goes too far. Some conceptual framework isneeded for our collective thinking to be disciplined, and Clausewitz isfar better than most. The great Prussian thinker can remain anextraordinarily powerful tool for analyzing the Long War – if he istaken in equal parts at his word and with some extrapolation. As fortaking him at his word, Clausewitz’s assertion that, ‘The first, thesupreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman andcommander have to make is to establish by that test the kind of war onwhich they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn itinto, something alien to its nature’, provides an invaluable place tostart.4 As for extrapolation, despite (and probably because of) itsintellectual difficulty, ‘center of gravity’ analysis provides a powerfultool for assessing strategic performance, where things have been, howthey stand now, and where they might best be taken.

When it comes to the GWOT, it is easy to see how nearly everyimportant question is somehow derivative of the core question, ‘what isthe nature of this war?’ Some answers to whether or not the name‘Global War on Terror’ is useful or appropriate, whether or not Iraq isa front in such a struggle, and whether or not the US is floundering orforging ahead, all require a definition of the nature of the war as abaseline for analysis. In that spirit, this paper sets out to answer threequestions:

What is the nature of the Long War?How is progress (or lack thereof) to be assessed?Where is it likely to go next?

In so doing, this article also has three parts: a resort to theory(Clausewitz), a hard look at an illustrative case study (the interactionbetween the US and Abu Musab Al Zarqawi in Iraq), and finally, somehypotheses and prescriptions for future efforts.

3For a stark version of the anti-Clausewitz argument and its negative impact on theUS military’s ability to come to grips with its current war, see Tony Corn, ‘Clausewitzin Wonderland’, Policy Review (Sept. 2006), online edition, available at 5www.policyreview.org/000/corn2.html4. For an example of the pro-Clausewitz camp, seeDavid J. Kilcullen, ‘Countering Global Insurgency’, Journal of Strategic Studies 28/4(Aug. 2005), 597–617.4Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret, trans. (Princeton UP1984), 88.

392 Frank ‘Scott’ Douglas

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Untangling Centers of Gravity

The first critical step is to realize that ‘What is the nature of the war?’ isnot a question you must answer only once at the outset of war. Thisquestion can change its answer as the conflict evolves – and in theparticular case of the GWOT, it demands frequent revisiting.Clausewitz’s phraseology (i.e., ‘the first, the supreme, the most far-reaching judgment . . .’) implies such analysis is an introductory task,but it should be considered more an enduring ‘first order’ question thansimply the first question in order.5 Understanding why requiresexploring Clausewitz’s other key concept, the ‘center of gravity’.

For such a vital concept, the Prussian is notoriously stingy in hisdefinition of center of gravity. At one key point he terms it the ‘hub of allpower and movement’, and at another, the target that when struckyields the greatest effect for the attacker’s effort.6 Elsewhere Clausewitzprovides more practical examples from eighteenth and nineteenthcentury battles in which an opposing army or an enemy capital provedto be the center of gravity, the crux around which the conflict revolved –and towards which, he argued, the antagonist ought to direct the mainfocus of his offensive efforts. For example, Clausewitz finds it easy tounderstand why Napoleon aimed at Vienna in 1797 and why theAustrians conceded defeat in that limited conflict despite having moreresources left to fight – and why in a more unlimited setting the Russiansabandoned their capital to fight on in 1812. In one setting, the center ofgravity may well have been a capital; when the context changed, so didthe best conception of what the center of gravity might be.

The problem with center of gravity analysis is that it is conceptuallymuch easier to apply to ‘regular’ wars than ‘irregular’ ones, let aloneirregular ones which potentially span the globe. After the toppling ofthe Taliban, the Long War lost its similarity to the sense of a regularwar most Americans would be comfortable with: defined adversaries,enemy strongholds, territory to be won or lost, and measurableprogress or setbacks. But looked at closely, this change did not meanthat defining the center of gravity concept became a fruitless endeavor,just harder and all the more important to complete.

5The next sentence in On War after the passage cited above, ‘This is the first of allstrategic questions and the most comprehensive’, compounds the false impression thatthis is only an initial task rather than a repetitive one, Clausewitz, On War, 88–9.6See in particular, Clausewitz On War, 485 for ‘greatest effects’, 595 ‘hub’, as well as617–18, 623 for an application to a notional war and a discussion about reducingmultiple centers of gravity into one. The examples of Napoleon in 1797 and 1812 aredrawn directly from Clausewitz’s discussion of ‘Critical Analysis’ on pp.156–69.

Waging the Inchoate War 393

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The most useful means of grappling with this conceptual problemcomes from David Kilcullen who argues that the GWOT is bestunderstood as a ‘global counterinsurgency’ effort.7 His approachgarners some key benefits: the identification of a set of historical caseswhich may prove helpful, a conceptual grounding regarding the relativeuse of military force in such a conflict, and an idea of what tasks needto be accomplished. Yet even while this approach has proved helpful, inpart due to the paucity of good competitors, Kilcullen also backs awayfrom pushing the analogy too far, noting that there are some importantdifferences between this ‘global’ counter-insurgency and its regionalincarnations of the past.8

Both of Kilcullen’s insights are exceptionally valuable, but they canalso can set up analysts for an intellectual pitfall and reinforce fuzzystrategic thinking. In grappling with the legacy of Vietnam, the USmilitary has almost made a catechism of the idea that if there is aninsurgency in country X, then the center of gravity must be the ‘heartsand minds’ of the people of X. The problem with this approach is that‘hearts and minds’ is an entirely ethereal concept; the more tangible wecan make a center of gravity, the more useful it is as a guide to action.

Regular wars also have their ethereal components. In fact, a corepoint of the first and best chapter of Clausewitz’s On War is that waronly goes to complete annihilation of one side or the other in theory.Even with ‘regular wars’, decisive battles, and widespread slaughter,real wars end because the remnants of the enemy state lose their willto continue the fight to such notional extremes.9 A loss of will, albeitsometimes provoked by devastating material results, is what ends a war.

In terms of regular wars, this is hardly a new insight, and thisdimension is the source of such military quips as ‘the enemy always getsa vote’ or ‘it’s not over until the other side says it is’. Irregular wars arenot so different in this regard, and there can be little analytic benefit tomaking the ‘hearts and minds’ of some potentially hostile populationinto the center of gravity. Such a move risks creating a shallowconceptual circle in which the enemy fights because his will is not yetbroken and we must fight until his will is broken – all withoutproviding any conceptual guidance as to how to get to that point. Thecenter of gravity is meant to be a concept which provides a practical,corporeal target for getting at the more ethereal problem of the enemy’swill to fight in any setting. Making the ‘hearts and minds’ of some

7Kilcullen, ‘Countering Global Insurgency’.8See in particular David J. Kilcullen, ‘Counterinsurgency Redux’, Survival 48/4 (Winter2006), 111–30.9See especially Clausewitz, On War, 78–80 on the three ‘modifications in practice’.


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populace into a center of gravity makes defining the nature of anirregular war even harder than it already is.

This is not to deny that ‘hearts and minds’ usefully focuses analysison the fact that there is a populace to win over to one side or the other.Nor do I wish to mute the point that less ‘kinetic’ and more politicalactions are the mainstay of counterinsurgency – militaries can, andfrequently do, purge this lesson at their peril. Yet, however muchviolence may take a backseat to other instruments of national power insuch settings, violence still has a vital role in counter-insurgency. For itto serve political aims well, the center of gravity, at least at the militarylevel of analysis, has to be a practical one – and for regular andirregular wars alike, the center of gravity is more usefully kept distinctfrom the enemy’s will to fight.

Keeping a center of gravity narrowly defined to practical targets canyield considerable insights even for irregular wars, despite the fact theyhave only come to dominate military conversations after Clausewitz’stime. Quite productive conversations can be had about whether or notthe Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese Army was the center of gravitythe US should have focused on in Vietnam. Similarly, if one thinks ofGeorge Washington’s Continental Army as the center of gravity for theAmerican Revolution, then it is easier to understand how theAmericans could lose their new capital, Philadelphia, and suffercountless defeats, yet still emerge victorious in the end. Conversely,this conceptual approach also helps inform analysis about what theBritish could have done to fare better in that conflict, such as riskingtheir army for a battle of annihilation when invading New Yorkin 1776.

At this point it is worth tinkering with Kilcullen’s ‘global insurgency’argument and bringing ‘hearts and minds’ back in. In a counter-insurgency setting like the American Revolution, the Continental Armymay have been the US center of gravity, but George Washington feltcompelled to risk this precious asset to defend fixed sites like New Yorkand Philadelphia just as his contemporary, Benjamin Lincoln,disastrously lost his patriot army to defend Charleston. A simplisticcritic might charge that these were pointless efforts on Washington’sbehalf, but such risks make far more sense when the idea ofinsurgencies as a battle of ideas is kept foremost in mind. Yes, it isvital to keep an armed embodiment of an idea alive (such as theContinental Army as the incarnation of the American sense ofindependence), but such ideas are only partly vested in the armies theyare attributed to. In a very real sense the core struggle did lie, in thatworn out phrase, in the ‘hearts and minds’ of the American people – butthe center of gravity was whatever happened to be the biggest physicalmanifestation of this idea at any given time.


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Thus, the Continental Army was vitally important because theAmerican people saw it as the chief icon of their hopes for inde-pendence. If it were annihilated, victory for the British would come lessfrom the fact that George Washington and his soldiers were dead, thanfrom the associated fact that a rebellious populace might despairbecause of it. Likewise, it would make good sense for Washington torisk his army for a show of hopeless defense in front of Philadelphiarather than to coolly and rationally husband his force by refusing anysuch fight. The reason why lies in the fact that Philadelphia also servedas an incarnation of American independence, only to a lesser degree, sothat the cause lost some luster but did not die with the city’s fall.Washington’s risk was warranted, however, since the cause would havebeen further tarnished had no effort whatsoever been made to defendthe capital – and herein lies the subtle but critical link between anethereal cause and its chief earthly representation.

The link comes from a ‘strategic narrative’, something LawrenceFreedman identifies as a core aspect of contemporary warfare.10 In‘irregular’ wars, the center of gravity is whatever represents the strong-est incarnation of an idea; that is, whatever the people in question col-lectively accept to be the marker for whether their cause is hopelessor alive. Strategic narratives in turn tend to nominate key players whooccupy center stage and thus create at least nascent centers of gravity.In this sense, intangible wars of ideas become concrete tests of arms,and it is this mechanism that best describes why people concede defeatshort of the abstract notion of ‘complete overthrow of the enemy’.

The problem is that the center of gravity can shift even while the warof ideas continues if one incarnation is mauled enough to provoke achange on the enemy side but is not hit hard enough, or with spec-tacular enough results, to cause widespread loss of heart among poten-tial combatants. At this point, the Clausewitzian focus on interactionbecomes absolutely indispensable. ‘So long as I have not overthrownmy opponent I am bound to fear he may overthrow me. Thus I am notin control: he dictates to me as much as I dictate to him.’11

10Lawrence Freedman, The Transformation of Strategic Affairs, Adelphi Paper 379(London/New York: Routledge for IISS March 2006), 22–6, 90–1, esp. Freedmanbuilds on and provides a more comprehensive framework for William Casebeer andJames Russell, ‘Storytelling and Terrorism: Towards a Comprehensive ‘‘Counter-Narrative Strategy’’’, Strategic Insights (March 2005) and John Arquila and DavidRonfeldt, ‘The Advent of Netwar: Analytic Background’, Studies in Conflict andTerrorism 22/3 (July–Sept. 1999), 193–206.11Clausewitz, On War, 77, the larger theoretical point holds here even though in anarrow sense Clausewitz is using this dynamic to set up his ideal type of absolute war asopposed to war in reality.


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If such an irregular war is to continue, at least one side must attemptto cobble together a new center of gravity to support the old narrative,amend the strategic narrative, or more likely, do both. If one side or theother creates a new center of gravity, then the nature of the war mightalso shift in the ‘chameleon’-like sense Clausewitz uses with theculmination of his thought in Book I, Chapter 1.12 In so doing, bothsides must attempt to convince the populations whose ‘hearts andminds’ they wish to sway that their new formulation of the nature ofthe war is what holds the most validity. In more modern militaryparlance, it takes a dominating act of strategic communication to definethe new nature of the war and, consequently, the terms by which peoplewill judge progress or failure. In this Clausewitzian sense, all wars are‘more than a true chameleon’, irregular wars perhaps shifting theircolors and context more than regular ones, and for the reasons below,the GWOT is the most chameleon-like of all.

Al Qaeda, Chameleons, and the GWOT

This pattern is easy to see in the first stage of the GWOT. After 9/11,the US had a concrete enemy (Al Qaeda), in a concrete location(Afghanistan), and a concrete task (annihilate Al Qaeda and overthrowthe Taliban regime that provided them safe haven). After the successfulinvasion of Afghanistan and the dispersal of a mauled Al Qaeda, theGWOT became intangible again. Unlike other counterinsurgencies,access to the Internet allowed Al Qaeda to operate in a much moredispersed pattern, in this case to literally enjoy some loose sense ofcoordination and collective action on a global basis. The advent of avirtual world made possible by ubiquitous computing and the Internetallowed Al Qaeda to do something no other insurgency had previouslybeen able to do – to become almost completely unrooted from any onephysical location. Put another way, a base area for Al Qaeda did nothave to be near the Afghan theater in the same way the Viet Cong hadto stay physically near South Vietnam in order to be effective. Thefront did not have to stay put; it could be anywhere or eveneverywhere.

However different the physical situation might be, the ideologicalpoint remains the same. Victory in the Long War will look like victoryin any other counterinsurgency setting: it will come when the idea of

12Clausewitz, On War, 89, this idea comes with his introduction of the capstone idea ofthe ‘paradoxical trinity’. If interaction within a trinity and between contestants candetermine the shape war must take, it also makes sense that continued interactionwithin each side’s ‘trinity’ and between them over time could alter the nature of the waras well.


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violent jihadism becomes widely unpopular.13 The popularity, andthrough it the threat, of the jihadist vision will rise or fall with theperceived ability of an Al Qaeda core to continue the fight. Oddly, witha mauled but transformed Al Qaeda (now best thought of using thecurrent acronym AQAM for Al Qaeda and Associated Movements) aWestern victory is potentially impossible without the enemy’scooperation. The trick is to make the intangible idea of the jihadistworld vision tangible again – to give populations on both sidessomething concrete by which to gain or lose heart in the struggle.

Once the US was sitting in Kandahar sifting through capturedAl Qaeda documents, the GWOT had already begun to lose shape andslip into an extremely amorphous period. As Osama bin Laden escapedfrom Tora Bora, he had the opportunity to redefine the war even at thesame time his organization had to cope with the consequences of theirbruising confrontation with the Americans.14 People in all of therelevant ‘hearts and minds’ populations were temporarily stunned; inpart because no one, not even US planners it seems, expectedAfghanistan to be so easy, especially with the Russian, and perhapsdimly the British, experience in mind. Afghanistan was an arena inwhich would-be empires went to die by bleeding themselves out on ahostile populace and an inhospitable land, and the rapid US-led victoryquickly spurred a period in which there would be a vastly diminishedrole for organized violence until Al Qaeda figured out what it was andwhat it would do next.

Looking back on the period beginning in the late spring of 2002, it isstriking to see one of the most concrete phases of the GWOTjuxtaposed to one of the most intangible. The world fixed its attentionon the drama of the loya jirga and the official instatement of PresidentHamid Karzai – itself tangible proof of progress since it was a directrefutation of the Taliban component of the original post 9/11 triad.Washington focused on Al Qaeda’s potential safe havens, considering

13I am indebted to Dr Thomas Mahnken for this pithy but quite useful conception ofthe terms of victory in the Long War. As for terminology, I find ‘jihadist’ to be moreuseful than Wahabbi or Salafist since both of these more dogmatic interpretations ofIslam still have non-violent strands to them, and ‘jihadist’ captures the fusion ofreligion and political violence as accurately as ‘crusader’ did for western forces in theMiddle Ages.14A good case can be made that even the death or capture of Osama Bin Laden inAfghanistan at the time would not have ended the GWOT, especially if Zawahirisurvived, even if it might have rendered it far more dormant for a period. SubsequentAl Qaeda operations indicate that mid-level operatives and capable cells were alreadydistributed abroad, and the spectacle of 9/11 would spur this lingering core of jihadistsinto action at some point.


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military operations in areas like Somalia, while also devotingconsiderable energy to maritime interdiction and coordination withthe Pakistani government as the US sought to get a jump on itsopponent’s next move and to wrap up the cells remaining in the area.

While the US sought to outmaneuver its enemy, Al Qaeda faced aglobal array of options. As Al Qaeda morphed out of sheer necessity tobecome AQAM, it did not take long for it to attempt to redefine theconflict, at first by repeating some variants on past themes.15 The Balibombings were an order of magnitude less dramatic than the strikes onNew York and Washington, but probably attempted to capture the samelogic and message. Similarly, the attack against the French freighterLimburg off Yemen echoed the attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Aden.

While both attacks succeeded in a tactical sense, as an effort to re-craft global understandings of the nature of the war through strategiccommunication, they also failed. While the degree of AQAMcoordination and foresight might be up for debate, there is littleargument about their effect as a strategic narrative. These efforts fizzledon the global stage, coming off as pathetic (the Limburg compared tothe Cole) or vile, as in Bali where the images and stories of the victimsoverwhelmed any sense of a feat having been achieved (perhaps becausethere was no dramatic architectural or iconic image to compete withthe victims’ stories).

More subtly, Al Qaeda’s message backfired, and the Bali attacksgalvanized the Australian public at a time when the US might have seenconsensus about the severity of the threat fade among its key allies.Equally important, the attacks prodded the Indonesian and Yemenigovernments into closer cooperation with the US, and dampened someof the easy underdog appeal Bin Laden may have had with Indonesia’spredominantly Muslim public.16 Ironically, it would be the US thatsucceeded in defining the new nature of the war, doing so with a war inIraq that did not necessarily have to be connected to the Long War.

15The inspiration for Al Qaeda’s strategic communications efforts as a war shapingexercise came from Marc Lynch, ‘Al Qaeda’s Constructivist Turn’, Praeger SecurityInternational (May 2006).16As the US government later admitted, its concerted efforts in the immediate post-Taliban period managed to diffuse Al Qaeda attempts (such as an attack on militaryshipping near Gibraltar) which might have been more inspiring echoes of Al Qaeda’searlier feats, but those that did come off were somewhat muted and did not seem tocoalesce into a palpable sense of virile Al Qaeda effort. See the White House factsheet release after President Bush’s speech on the GWOT at the National Endowmentfor Democracy on 6 Oct. 2005, full text available at: 5www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051006-3.html4. The Fact Sheet is available at 5www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051006-7.html4.


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A Cooperative Adversary? Iraq as the Second Front in the GWOT

The initial US justification for confronting and then invading Iraq wasfar more nuanced than it now appears in most public discourse. Tobegin with, the US had a long-standing set of issues with Saddam andthe confrontation had come close to boiling over before 9/11 divertedattention to Afghanistan. The argument about Iraq as an unacceptablerisk due to the ‘nexus’ of terror and ‘weapons of mass destruction’(WMD) certainly served to bridge the two conflicts, but the USgovernment had already been working towards an argument that itwas unacceptable to allow Saddam to develop WMD even withoutthe possibility of cooperation with terrorists – indeed this had been thebasis of the United Nations (UN) Security Council resolutions since theend of the First Gulf War in 1991.

The best evidence of this multifaceted set of policy goals for theinvasion of Iraq can be found in one simple public document: PresidentGeorge W. Bush’s speech at the American Enterprise Institute inFebruary 2003, delivered weeks before the start of the war.17 Readcarefully in its entirety, it comes across very much as sort of anoratorical National Security Directive (NSD-) 54, marching through aset of goals and conditions much like this earlier document did for theFirst Gulf War.18 In this speech, terrorism, and particularly Zarqawi asan icon of Al Qaeda, are present but secondary. In the public discourseand media coverage to follow, however, the more salacious aspect ofterrorism and WMD, rather than the sober argument about prudenceand the diminished value of containment, distorted wider perceptionsof the US formula. At the same time, the White House failed to publiclymaintain a multifaceted presentation of its goals, inadvertently layingthe groundwork for a future strategic advantage once it had weatheredthe storm over WMD stockpiles.

Nevertheless, the invasion of Iraq could have been justified withoutany recourse to Al Qaeda, just as Al Qaeda could have continued toconduct its war elsewhere. Simply put, the two conflicts did not have tooverlap even though they did come to do so. This overlap was, in part,Al Qaeda’s fault.

17The full text is available at 5www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030226-11.html4.18NSD-54 is a Presidential-level document describing a national security vision. Assuch, it gives an excellent picture of the sort of policy-strategy formulation whichwould animate the US defense bureaucracy. With its formulation of aims and militaryobjectives as well as contextual conditions, it is easy to derive a similar formulationfrom either of the Bush speeches above. A declassified version of NSD-54 is available at5www.gwu.edu/*nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB21/06-01.htm4.


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Even with the terrorist argument later coming to the fore in popularUS and Western discourse (the latter largely attacking the idea that thetwo were related, ironically focusing even more on the US contentionthat they were at some level), Al Qaeda did not have to rise to the bait.That it did so now seems a product of chance mixed with the same sortof ‘entrepreneurial’ terrorist actors that made the original 2001 ‘planesoperation’ possible.19 The capture of erstwhile leading figures likeKhalid Sheikh Mohammed, the death of Mohammed Atef, and thesuppression of Bin Laden and his Egyptian-born deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri allowed a second tier of actors to fill the organizationallimelight, most importantly Zarqawi; and he, more than anyone, roseto the Americans’ bait.

Compared to Al Qaeda’s top talent, Zarqawi lacked much thatthe organization might want. He was committed to the jihad, butwas far more dogmatic and inflexible in his strategic thinking. BinLaden and Zawahiri argued for a temporary united front againstthe Americans as the ‘far enemy’ as the best path for achieving analmost transcendent vision of a global caliphate. On the other handZarqawi was more terrestrially and regionally oriented, devoting asmuch if not more effort on the internal fight; purging Sunnis not up tohis standards and attempting to start a civil war with Iraq’s Shiites. Hewas also far less educated, less patient, and seemingly less balancedthan Zawahiri or Bin Laden. However, Zarqawi was extremelyviolent, tactically clever, and charismatic to a very important segmentof Al Qaeda’s potential base audience.

Looking at captured correspondence now, it seems that Zarqawi wasthe one pushing Al Qaeda to take full advantage of the US move toIraq, not the old Al Qaeda leadership.20 In a sign of the distributedloosely coordinated AQAM structure to come, Zarqawi’s efforts wereendorsed with the official Al Qaeda ‘brand’, formally becoming‘Al Qaeda in the Land Between the Two Rivers’ or ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’from 2004, reportedly after a long negotiation in which he sworeallegiance to Bin Laden and presumably agreed to heed the guidance tofocus on the Americans first. Zarqawi’s operations would soon leaveindelible marks on the character of the evolving GWOT, but as I willargue at the end, they have also strategically hobbled Al Qaeda in thewider effort to wage a global jihad.

19The idea of ‘terrorist entrepreneurs’ and their vital role in Al Qaeda’s efforts – a rolewhich has probably only increased with the transition to AQAM – is drawn fromThe 9/11 Commission Report (Washington DC: GPO 2002) esp. 145–63.20The first publicized letter is from Zarqawi to Zawahiri, and is available at5www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/31694.htm4.


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Replacing Preferred Strategies with Interaction

Now that the organization had agreed to endorse Iraq as a front (butprobably not ‘the’ front in the GWOT, judging by the second letter),Zarqawi’s 19 August 2003 attack on the UN mission in Baghdad was aspectacular success from Al Qaeda’s point of view. It quickly snuffedthe nascent UN effort in Iraq, squelching US hopes of drawing themantle of the UN’s global legitimacy onto its occupation tasks. It alsocritically undercut US efforts to diversify the political risks so that allwould have a stake in reconstruction even though there had been sharpdifferences among major powers over the invasion itself. After thebombing of the UN mission, the US-led coaltion would be left morealone and acting more unilaterally as the UN and other organizationsscaled back their efforts, demanding instead that the US establishsecurity first. For its part, the US probably realized that the security taskwas all the harder the longer disaffected portions of the Iraqi and widerMuslim populace saw the occupation as a mainly US and not a worldcommunity effort. Zarqawi’s operational success would goad the US toadapt, setting off a new interaction effect.

For the next year or so after the fall of Saddam, Al Qaeda seemedto get the better of the US in exploiting the bloody intersection of Iraqand the GWOT. Yet from around the time of the second assault onFallujah in November 2004, Al Qaeda’s strategic vision began tobecome a victim of its own operational success. As the insurgencypicked up in potency and world attention, Zarqawi’s prominence alsorose. The attention paid by the outside world to the story of theburgeoning insurgency and the ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’ connection,combined with Zarqawi’s media-savvy efforts to exploit his brutaldeeds, succeeded in shifting the limelight from Al Qaeda’s hunkered-down leadership to the new firebrand in Iraq. The net effectapparently created a sort of feedback loop in which Zarqawi’sattacks and publicity would siphon more recruits from the hard coreportions of Al Qaeda’s potential base; partly because Iraq seemed tobe the most active arena, partly because Zarqawi spoke charismaticallyto this younger segment, and partly because Iraq was simply mucheasier to get to logistically than the more distant (and more watched)Afghan theater.21

Seen in this light, the fierce debate that has grown up around adeclassified National Intelligence Estimate and the contention that Iraq

21For a disciplined look at how the war in Iraq has affected perceptions of the LongWar among the jihadist population, see Thomas Hegghammer, ‘Global Jihadism Afterthe Iraq War’, Middle East Journal 60/1 (Winter 2006), 11–32.


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created more terrorists than it killed is somewhat misplaced.22 But thisis a peculiarly US-centric way of examining the issue, for strategiccoherence may be more vital than logistical ease for terroristorganizations. From the Al Qaeda point of view, US operations maywell have mobilized more active jihadists, but it seemed to draw themoverwhelmingly to the Iraqi theater – and consequently closer toZarqawi’s personal orbit than Zawahiri’s (who should be regarded asthe chief strategist for the traditional Al Qaeda movement and bestrepresentative of Bin Laden’s grand vision). Even when AQAMoperations took place elsewhere as in Madrid or London, the publicdiscourse always tied them back to Iraq.

As Marc Lynch has argued, Zarqawi’s highly publicized brutality,such as the Nicholas Berg killing, used the Internet (and the wider,more targeted distribution it allowed), to fill the gap even as traditionalArab media outlets proliferated and Al Qaeda ‘headquarters’ lost somecontrol over its message.23 As his profile rose, so it seems did Zarqawi’sconfidence, and he soon seemed to ignore the strategic vision of AlQaeda’s leadership – much to Zawahiri’s evident chagrin.

A close read of the second, and far more publicized, Zawahiri–Zarqawi correspondence indicates several points.24 First, Zawahiriseems to acknowledge both the rise in Zarqawi’s de facto stature andthe reduction in Al Qaeda’s high fidelity hold on its media message.Throughout the missive, Zawahiri avoids giving commands, butinstead seems to exhort Zarqawi to obey the original strategicagreement and vision, softening his gentle rebuke with praise forefforts well done and the sop that he understands Zarqawi, but that theignorant masses may not. For example, Zawahiri is reduced to asking ifhis communiques have gotten through or his message fully aired, whileat the same time he closes with a request for money and a morecomplete situation report. It is also hard not to avoid the impressionthat Zawahiri is jealous of Zarqawi’s rise with his continual repetitionthat Zarqawi ought to realize what a blessing God has bestowed onhim by shifting the central front to Iraq, and presumably being a bitmore humble and cooperative with this gift. At the same time Zawahirigives one of the clearest indications of the sort of strategic debatesAl Qaeda may have been having after the fall of the Taliban with his

22The public version of the NIE’s ‘Key Judgments’ is available at 5www.dni.gov/press_releases/Declassified_NIE_Key_Judgments.pdf4.23Lynch, ‘Al Qaeda’s Media Strategies’. See Marc Lynch, ‘Al Qaeda’s MediaStrategies’, The National Interest, No.86 (Spring 2006).24The Zawahiri–Zarqawi letter is available at 5www.dni.gov/press_releases/letter_in_english.pdf4.


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exhortation to ally with the Shia now to fight the Americans, leavingthe internecine struggle for later.

Given events, Zarqawi’s counter-argument presumably was that acivil war would be devastating to the US-led effort to occupy andrebuild Iraq because it would demoralize the American public and forcethe US to withdraw. However, eschewing sectarian war for a strategyof attriting US forces might also affect the American public and wouldhave better fit with Al Qaeda’s global strategy – which might explainwhy it was seemingly tried first. But this approach seems to havebecome very taxing for Al Qaeda in Iraq, partly due to a resurgentinteraction effect. As Al Qaeda attacks on the US increased, the US feltpressure to shore up its political program and fight the possibility thatthe war may be seen as a popular uprising against the Americanoccupiers. In fact, it probably goaded the US into an acceleratedtransition, elections, and a hand-off of sovereignty to a transitionalgovernment. With these political moves and alteration of someoperational postures, the cost of directly confronting US-led forcesrose dramatically, as the daring operations such as an assault on AbuGhraib and the failed stand at Fallujah attest. Rising costs, and theallure of an easier strategy from a regional perspective, probablyinduced Al Qaeda in Iraq to switch strategies and target Iraqigovernment officials and later, Shia populations.25 Zarqawi wasprobably right that an Iraqi civil war would be devastating to USobjectives in Iraq and could precipitate a withdrawal of some sort at afar lower cost to AQAM than attempting to confront well-armed USforces head on. Yet in this sense, Al Qaeda’s optimal strategy for itsregional insurgency would soon dramatically and directly undercut theprospects of its global one.

Becoming Palpable: the Second High Water Mark for the GWOT

At this point, it is worth continuing the shift in perspective from grandstrategy to the strategic and even operational level to analyze theunfolding interaction. The fact that the US benefited from Iraqbecoming the central front in the war on terror, and Zarqawi’s branch

25Fallujah as a ‘‘Capital’’ for the resistance represents a fascinating operational varianton the ‘intangible made real’ dynamic, only this time by accident rather than purposefulUS action. As for a notion of the losses Zarqawi’s network may have suffered, see thetalk of 4,000 plus jihadist dead in Hamza Al-Muhajer’s (Zarqawi’s successor, aka AbuAyyub al-Masri) call for a week of focused violence in Sept. 2006. See for example thecoverage of Al-Masri’s taped speech in ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq: 4,000 Foreign FightersKilled’, AP Newswire 28 Sept. 2006, available at 5www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15044435/4.


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of Al Qaeda becoming its center of gravity, should not obscure thecentrality of an interaction effect in making it a reality – it tookZarqawi to will it into being as well. Reaching the second high watermark for the palpability of the GWOT is a combined product ofZarqawi accepting the increasing limelight and of his severelymisguided efforts to reframe the war to his advantage.

Fallujah, which had become an icon of resistance, collapsed far fasterand at far lower a price to the Americans than most expected, much likeAfghanistan. Although its reconstruction would remain almost fatallyhandicapped, this benchmark was another one which might make sensein a regional counterinsurgency but which was poorly suited to gaugingprogress in this new global one. Zarqawi’s prowess, and the luster ofthe jihadist cause, rested far more on its dramatic ability to strikethe Americans than on the sad story of a stalled and desultoryreconstruction effort. Whether or not AQAM should or could havebeen more patient is worth debating elsewhere, but the important pointhere is that contesting Fallujah’s reconstruction may have appearedentirely too passive to maintain the momentum Zarqawi craved.26

Having narrowly escaped Fallujah himself (by some accountsstopped and released by US and Iraqi forces), Zarqawi sought tocapitalize on its side effects to widen the war. His strategic logic seemsto have been that the durability of the US occupation was possible inpart because of the relative safety of its ‘base areas’ in Jordan, where theUS-led coalition could conduct activities, like training Iraqi policerecruits, away from the maelstrom of Iraq. If he could pull off aspectacular strike there, Zarqawi could perhaps publicize the ‘hypoc-risy and collaboration’ of the Jordanian government and inspire othersto wreak havoc on the areas that the US had previously accepted assafe. By widening the zone of insecurity, Zarqawi might also haveflushed out the nongovernmental organizations and coalition memberswhich were helping the US on the fringes of Iraq, replicating thestrategic logic of the attack on the UN in Baghdad in 2003. He may alsohave simply been motivated by logistical opportunity (he couldpresumably fall back on his Jordanian tribal network near Zarqa toconduct his operation) and personal revenge (he had little love for theJordanian regime which had imprisoned him earlier in his life.)

The Amman hotel bombings of 10 November 2005, however, provedto be a massive strategic reversal for Al Qaeda’s Iraq efforts. For the

26This lack of patience may well have been a critical difference between Zarqawi andZawahiri or Bin Laden. The latter two are frequently credited with a penchant for longrange planning and strategic patience based on the careful preparation of the 1998E. African embassy and 9/11 attacks, to the point that an absence of attacks on the UShomeland still does not convince many that an Al Qaeda attack is not imminent.


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US, this event may mark a subtle but masterful alteration of the war’sstrategic narrative. For Zarqawi, the logical link must have been realwith the dual argument of an attack on base areas and the coup degrace of using operatives who had personal grievances growing out ofthe American-led assault on Fallujah.27 By sheer good fortune, thefourth suicide bomb did not detonate; and the operative, a woman, wastaken into custody by Jordanian officials only to make a televisedconfession a short while later – and so began the unraveling ofZarqawi’s fortunes.

From Amman to Strategic Ridicule

When the Americans released the second Zawahiri–Zarqawi letter, itshowed AQAM in an anxious light and also cemented the publicperception of the two being tied at the hip; a point media coverage drovehome as the name ‘Zawahiri–Zarqawi letter’ was endlessly repeated.In fact, the substance of the letter was so beneficial from the Americanpolitical point of view that it immediately prompted speculation that itwas a forgery designed to show progress.28 The core US task at thispoint was a bit of strategic communication that quietly and stolidlyreiterated the letter’s validity, a subtle but effective approach that didnot diminish the letter’s public value by crowing about it. The key effectof this US move was that it may have prompted Zawahiri to respond bymaking (but not widely releasing) a tape with a much stauncher vote ofpublic confidence in Zarqawi than the letter implied. This tape wasalready in existence when Zarqawi launched the Amman bombings.29

Meanwhile, the strategic communication component of the USreaction to the Amman bombing, either by accident or design, seemedbrilliantly subtle – and if it was not deliberate, then it is precisely thesort of thing that should be done in the future. Condoleezza Rice went

27See for example, ‘Iraqi woman confesses to role in Jordan blasts:Suspect, interviewed on Jordan TV, admits trying to blow herself up’,Associated Press, 13 Nov. 2005 available at 5www.msnbc.msn.com/id/99797474, orHassan Fattah, ‘Jordan Arrests Iraqi Woman in Hotel Blasts’, New York Times, 14Nov. 2005.28For a sophisticated analysis of the letter’s language and a rebuttal of many indicationsof forgery see Shmuel Bar and Yair Minzili, ‘The Zawahiri Letter and the Strategy of AlQaeda’, Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, Vol. 3. (Hudson Institute Jan. 2006).29For the date of the tape see Lee Keath, ‘Al-Qaida’s deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahriurged all Muslims to support insurgents fighting in Iraq ‘for the dignity of Islam’ andsaid the ‘enemy has begun to falter’, according to a video posted Thursday on theInternet.’ AP Newswire, 13 April 2006. See also the discussion of the tape’s date inBrian Fishman, ‘After Zarqawi: The Dilemmas and Future of Al Qaeda in Iraq’,Washington Quarterly 29/4 (Autumn 2006), 19–32.


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to Amman and the bomb sites to show sympathy, but in the largerdiscourse the US seemed to stand back, letting the Jordanian governmenttake the lead so as not to cheapen the advantage by stamping it as a USeffort. The result was a strategic advantage; the Jordanian governmentsuccessfully chose the image which dominates public memory of theevent: a female suicide bomber, wearing her traditional garb and anunexploded suicide belt, being interviewed on Jordanian television. Herconfession confirmed the Zarqawi link and her knowledge of the inno-cents who would be killed by such an operation, as well as admitting herhusband used her and her traditional garb (i.e., abused US and Jordanianrespect for traditions) to get the bomb past hotel security. Zarqawicompounded the problem by rushing to claim credit for the bombing inthe name of Al Qaeda in Iraq and refusing to disavow it despite chancesto do so in the immediate aftermath of the media coverage.

Meanwhile, the Jordanian government moved swiftly. The vision ofthe televised confession was followed by pro-Monarchy publicdemonstrations (probably making the government more secure andpopular than before the bombing) and news of Zarqawi’s triberenouncing him as an outcast, thereby making him eligible for attackby others without fear that his tribe will be honor-bound to exactretribution. Again, it is worth noting that like the National IntelligenceEstimate debate, the US-centric view of this development wasdismissive and largely at odds with the importance it might have ona local level, especially for rural, and therefore tribal, western Iraq.

The Amman attack was quickly followed by anticipation of theupcoming Iraqi elections, to which Zarqawi was radically opposed. Inretrospect, we now know this to be the point at which his Sunni andtribal support base began to fracture badly.30 The belated Sunnidecision to participate in the election, partly for fear of a Shia landslide,pitted Zarqawi against groups who had previously been sympathetic tohis efforts. Subsequent attacks by Zarqawi’s group against the Sunniswho were voting in Anbar province and elsewhere brought the issue toa virulent and personal level. Despite the attacks and Zarqawi’s violentrhetoric, the Iraqi vote went well; the US was undoubtedly there instrength but allowed the Iraqi ‘face’ to dominate, making the iconicimage for American and other strategic ‘hearts and minds’ populaces asmiling Iraqi woman in traditional garb holding up an inked figuresignifying she had voted.

30For a detailed look at Zarqawi’s falling out with former tribal allies, see D. Hazan,‘Al-Zarqawi: A Post Mortem. Prior to His Killing, Al-Zarqawi had Lost His SunniAllies’, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Inquiry and Analysis Series,No. 284 (30 June 2006).


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Even without the retrospective benefit of looking back afterZarqawi’s death, it was possible to see the advantage this created forthe US in re-framing the nature of the war at the time.31 The US wasable to manipulate the anger of some key Sunni tribes, perhapsreinforced by Zarqawi’s new status as an ‘outcast’ to his own tribe afterthe Amman bombings. This continued to such a degree that Americanspokesmen apparently became comfortable calling quiet attention toOperation ‘Tribal Chivalry’, an effort which brought the US intocooperation with some Sunni tribes it had previously been fighting.32

Although the announcement of the operation did not get wide mediacoverage at the time, there were little-cited reports of Zarqawi andassociates being ejected from the cities and towns in Anbar province, aswell as claims of several mid-level AQAM operatives killed by Sunnitribal elements.33

Perhaps because of the potential embarrassment it may have causedif its various strategic communication efforts began to bleed over intoone another, the US did not call too much attention to these results andavoided large-scale Western debates about ‘negotiating with terrorists’(in this case the Sunni tribal elements). Later, the Iraqi government didtalk repeatedly of its contacts with Sunni insurgents, but the US still didnot, once again an indication of a shrewd strategic communicationseffort to define the nature of the war – if it was intentional. Meanwhile,increasing attention began to be paid to jihadist talk of a ‘Shuracouncil’ and an internal AQAM effort to remake its Iraqi effort anddampen Zarqawi’s role.34

A short while later, in April 2006, Zarqawi released a new video,most likely to shore up his public image in response to talk of the Shuracouncil. The effort may have helped in some quarters, but it also raisedmedia attention around the question of his status. Looking at thismoment closely, the strong US emphasis on the tape shows theproblems with attempting two somewhat incompatible strategic-communications efforts with different ‘hearts and minds’ audiences.In short order, American portrayal of Zarqawi’s tape as a desperate

31As an indication that this is not all post-hoc reasoning, I made the bulk of theargument in this section in an interdepartmental email prior to Zarqawi’s death.32For example, contemporary coverage of Operation ‘Tribal Chivalry’ at the time wasfound in Bassem Mroue, ‘Some Sunnis Targeting al-Qaida in Iraq’, AP Newswire, 9March 2006.33See for example Jamal Halaby, ‘Al-Zarqawi’s Jordan Family Renounces Him’, APNewswire, 20 Nov. 2005.34For a good survey of the discussions see Arthur Bright, ‘Has Al Qaeda DemotedZarqawi?’ Christian Science Monitor, 5 April 2006. Fishman also provides a goodretrospective on the fissures in ‘After Zarqawi’.


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effort to stay in control prompted a ‘if he’s so weak, then youmisrepresent the threat’ debate within Western media circles, leading toseveral days where Pentagon and White House speakers simultaneouslycalled Zarqawi weak and on the way out, while defending him as asevere threat. Against the backdrop of this split spectacle, the USmanaged to conduct a rolling series of raids which it acknowledgedthrough sympathetic and well-placed reporters – and one of these raidsled to the capture of an unedited version of Zarqawi’s videotape.35

On Al Qaeda’s side, Bin Laden coincidentally released a speechwhich was strategically unfocused but perhaps designed to counter thefact that Iraq had come to dominate the public mind as the main frontfor the GWOT for both sides. This may explain the questionable call tomove to Sudan as a new front – a call repudiated by the Muslimgovernment of Sudan in short order. Again, the US seemed to bemaking a subtle and astute move by doing little to engage the Bin Ladenspeech lest people begin really speculating on how good or bad a shiftfrom Iraq would be for AQAM. However, the US did seem to redoubleits efforts to cement an agreement in Sudan and hammer out thetransition to a more robust international presence.

Dueling Narratives and Strategic Ridicule

At this point the US seemed to take some risks in order not to cede theground to AQAM to frame the evolving nature of the war. It was in theUS interest to reinforce broader conceptions of the GWOT as having itscentral front firmly rooted in Iraq and for Zarqawi to appear as itscenter of gravity. To keep AQAM from being able to disavow Zarqawi(either by the Shura front or by proposing a new theater), in what maybe a brilliant but unacknowledged move on America’s part, the old(pre-Amman bombing) tape of Zawahiri praising Zarqawi made itsway on to the Internet and succeeded in getting some press coverage.36

This delay may also have been sheer coincidence – but either way itprovides a pattern for future emulation if the US has any influence oversuch things.37

35The best coverage of these actions at the time came from Sean Naylor, who could beexpected to have good access to US military sources, in ‘Closing in on Zarqawi’, ArmyTimes, 8 May 2006.36See for example the BBC coverage of the event, available at 5http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4905406.stm4, for how Zawahiri is praising Zarqawi, but also howthe tape originated in Nov. 2005 and the lack of an explanation for the delay in release.37Fishman asserts the delay was a deliberate move by Zawahiri in ‘After Zarqawi,’ butit could also just be a function of Al Qaeda’s difficult circumstances.


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Whether the delayed release of the Zawahiri endorsement wasdeliberate and coordinated or not, the US seemed to reinforce this effectby taunting Zarqawi using the ‘outtakes’ from the unedited version ofhis tape captured in the recent raids. Presumably the US did this withfull knowledge that it would cross over to Western media and resurrectthe ‘if he’s so weak, then you’re hyping the threat’ debate in addition todrawing criticism as an adolescent move rooted in an atavistic sense ofmachismo.38 But such a move may well have been worth the trade-off,again not when viewed from a US-centric position, but in terms of thechallenge (and goad) it might present to Zarqawi in front of his ownInternet and adolescent jihadist audience.

By employing ‘strategic ridicule’ the US was taking quite a risk.Judging by US background briefings to well-placed reporters, astrategic decision had been made to dwell on the centrality of Zarqawiand then take the added risk of ridiculing him in a way which couldhave backfired by seeming irresponsible if he had gotten away with anew spectacular attack.39 But ridiculing Zarqawi probably helpedthe US capture the attention of Zarqawi’s base, speaking to them in thesame twisted logic of machismo their leader employed. It also keptthe core narrative of the GWOT anchored to a personalized contest inIraq which captured the attention of a diverse array of criticalaudiences but did so in a manner which favored the US.

At this point, two candidate amendments to the war’s core narrativewere running simultaneously, and the fortunes of the US effortsdepended on whether the ‘Amman narrative’ or Zarqawi’s Iraq civilwar efforts bore fruit first. As came out in the press afterwards, bybombing the Amman hotels, Zarqawi had provoked the Jordanianintelligence services into finally re-orienting from internal security tojoining the larger US-led GWOT effort by assisting with externaloperations in Iraq.40 This held the potential of being a significantadvantage for the US effort because the cultural barriers to intelligencegathering would be so much lower, as the Jordanians would be moreadept at maneuvering in the Iraqi and even the wider AQAM milieux.

38For an example of the criticism see, Fred Kaplan, ‘Candid Camera: The trouble withreleasing Zarqawi’s outtakes’, Slate, 5 May 2006, available at 5www.slate.com/id/2141087/4 and C. J. Chivers, ‘Not All See Video Mockery of Zarqawi as GoodStrategy’, New York Times, 6 May 2006.39See Thomas Ricks, ‘Military Plays Up Zarqawi’, Washington Post, 10 April 2006.40Several reports after Zarqawi’s death contained background information fromJordanian intelligence claiming that his assault did spur them to a new out-of-areaorientation. See for example, Borzou Daragahi and Josh Meyer, ‘Zarqawi Attack PutJordan Hot on His Trail’, Los Angeles Times, 12 June 2006.


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In the same timeframe, another bombing, this time the spectaculardevastation visited on the Shia-revered ‘Golden Dome’ mosque atSamarra on 22 February 2006, succeeded in lurching the entire countryof Iraq close to, if not temporarily over, the brink of civil war. This‘civil war’ narrative was Zarqawi’s effort to reshape the nature of thewar even while the US sought to use the ‘Amman narrative’ to gatherJordanian and Sunni tribal allies in order to close in on Zarqawi.The most threatening effect of the Askari mosque bombing was(and remains) the polarizing ethnic cleansing effect it generated, whichcould have healed the post-election rifts among Anbar’s insurgents andrally Sunnis to Zarqawi’s side as the most capable protector of theircommunity – even if they found him repugnant.41 More importantly interms of the goal of undercutting the US effort and public support forstaying, Zarqawi’s efforts ended up reinvigorating, and even legitimiz-ing, Moqtada al-Sadr’s efforts on the Shia side, making his MahdiArmy one of the few organizations which could compete in like termswith Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Zarqawi’s death soon afterward on 7 June 2006 proved that theAmman narrative would climax first, allowing the Americans to showmuch public progress in the GWOT – in essence creating a second highwater mark in US efforts to get at a tangible center of gravity whichwould redound on the ‘hearts and minds’ problem of the Long War.However, the sectarian violence in Iraq stuttered on as reprisalsmounted, escalating into civil war as the year drew to a close, adding toa nagging public sense that the war had become amorphous andpotentially intractable again, especially as the clear Al Qaeda link fadedwith the death of its colorful protagonist and Shia (not Sunni) enemiescame to the fore. In terms of the central contest between the US and AlQaeda to shape the Long War’s strategic narrative to their interests, theduel with Zarqawi from late 2004 to the summer of 2006 was anAmerican victory – but one made short-lived by Zarqawi’s dead handin Iraq’s civil war.

But the fruits of Zarqawi’s efforts have helped other anti-US forcesfar more than AQAM, and in terms of the larger duel with Al Qaeda,Zarqawi’s death marks the point at which, the US having taken a stepforward, the nature of the war risked becoming somewhat rootlessagain. It has not gone so far as it did immediately after the collapse ofthe Taliban in 2001 to swing all the way back to being entirelyamorphous, but the Long War’s nature is now, in a real sense, aninchoate one. It is only partially formed and slowly ebbing back from

41Insights on this dynamic of spurring populations to separate and then reluctantly seekethnic- or religiously-based ‘protection’ can be had by looking closely at the early stagesof the war in Bosnia.


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the growing consensus of centrality that the Zarqawi duel had given it.Similar to after Afghanistan, the field is open for new moves and apotential redefinition of the war’s nature. Reflecting on the periodabove and carefully examining some of Al Qaeda’s recent communica-tions offers some intellectual tools for second-guessing where this mostchameleon-like of wars might go next. For the US, this sort of reflectionis absolutely vital because Al Qaeda did not even wait for Zarqawi todie before attempting to re-frame the war in more advantageous terms.

Looking Forward: Faint Praise and Altered Narratives

Perhaps out of anxiety for the ferocity of the civil war Zarqawi seemedto be provoking (and despite its utility for driving the US out of Iraq),Bin Laden and Zawahiri entered into an unusual spate of strategiccommunication efforts in the late spring and summer of 2006. Asmentioned above, starting just before Zarqawi’s death, Bin Ladenseemed to be trying to diffuse the focus on Iraq and nominate newarenas of competition. In a speech released in April 2006, for example,Bin Laden specifically highlighted Sudan, going so far as to enjoinjihadists to be aware of the muddy season and to study its geography.42

Zawahiri took this approach further, first by muting praise ofZarqawi (or at least his strategic vision) in his eulogy. Then less than amonth later, he adopted Ayatollah Khomeini’s rhetoric in voicingsympathy for Hizballah in its summertime clash with Israel, drivinghome the point by noting ‘the whole world is an open field for us’.43 Inthese cases, flogging Israel, and to a lesser extent Sudan, seemed to bean attempt to return to safe old themes and to grasp at rhetoricalopportunities to portray an expanded front. Meanwhile, the Al Qaeda

42For the full text of Bin Laden’s speech, see Al Jazeera’s translation posted on 23 April2006, available at 5http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F9694745-060C-419C-8523-2E093B7B807D.htm4.43Several analysts at the time made mention of the fact that Zawahiri used phrases thatwere closely associated with Khomeini. The quote is taken from his speech of 27 July2006, a full translation of which is available at 5www.centcom.mil/sites/uscentcom1/What%20Extremists%20Say/What%20Extremists%20Say%20Archive%201.aspx?PageView¼Shared4. Zawahiri’s Shia overtures are quite explicit in his Dec. 2006speech where he intones, ‘And I call on every independent, honorable and intelligentone to ask himself a courageous and brave question: were Imam Ali (may Allah honorhim) or our chief Hasan or our chief Husayn (Allah was pleased with them) todaypresent in Iraq or Afghanistan, would they have colluded with the Crusaders in theinvasion of the lands of Islam, and then cooperate with them and fight the Mujahideenin defense of them?’


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old guard appeared to have been redirecting what jihadist forces itcould back to Afghanistan, a theater which allowed for more directsupervision of the narrative’s performance.44

By late 2006 Al Qaeda’s reformed strategic narrative was formallystated in a speech by Zawahiri entitled ‘Realties of the Conflict BetweenIslam and Unbelief’. In it, Zawahiri paints a wide arc of confrontationbut makes it more tangible by dwelling on six areas in particular:Somalia (the ‘southern garrison of Islam’), Algeria (home to ‘Islam’swestern garrison’), Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet evenwithin these six highlighted areas, he is quite clear about what thepriority should be, stating, ‘I repeat what I mentioned previously: thebacking of the Jihad in Afghanistan and Iraq today is to back the mostimportant battlefields in which the Crusade against Islam and Muslimsis in progress.’45

The rhetorical parity between Iraq and Afghanistan is quite tellingwhen combined with evidence from Al Qaeda’s post-Zarqawi efforts inIraq. To begin with, Zarqawi’s replacement, al-Masri, seems far more aloyal AQAM technocrat than a brash and fiery operator.46 The stage inIraq, politically and militarily, is now dominated by Moqtada al-Sadrand his Mahdi Army; a point made abundantly clear by the relativeoperational weight devoted to Baghdad as opposed to Anbar with theUS force surge in 2007.47 Whether for want of Zarqawi’s operationaltalent or by design, Al Qaeda’s spectacular terrorist attacks like the UNhotel or the Golden Mosque bombings have been missing. Instead,when Al Qaeda in Iraq is mentioned, it is more often in the context ofclashes with tribal elements in Anbar or for increasingly daring and

44For early evidence of Afghanistan as a growing magnet for jihadists which is in directcompetition to Iraq, see Anna Badkhen, ‘Foreign Jihadists Seen as Key to Spike inAfghan Attacks’, San Francisco Chronicle, 25 Sept. 2006. Of particular interest, thearticle mentions an upsurge in Internet communications calling for a jihadist return toAfghanistan beginning in 2005, which indicates their may be a significant lag betweenAQAM shifts in focus and the ability to flow forces to or from a theater.45For the full text of Zawahiri’s speech see 5www.ict.org.il/apage/8215.php4.46For a different take on Al-Masri’s motivations and more on the internal politics of AlQaeda in Iraq see Fishman, ‘After Zarqawi’.47See Bush’s Jan. 2007 explanation of the current US strategy for Iraq, and in particularthe posted ‘backgrounder’ by an unnamed senior administration official, which makesclear that only 1/5 of the additional forces going to Iraq in early 2007 will be directedtowards Al Qaeda’s core area in Anbar province as well as making clear that Sadr is akey target of the Baghdad operation. Both available at 5www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070110-7.html4 and 5www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070110-1.html4.


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sophisticated attacks on US forces, a tactic which realigns the localinsurgency effort with the narrative needs of the global one.48

Seen in this light, Iraq comes across as too durable an arena ofcompetition for Al Qaeda’s narrative to reduce it to the same status asAlgeria, Chechnya, or Somalia. Iraq still resonates with a broad swathof the jihadist base; but it has definitely been reduced to a companionrather than a competing role with Afghanistan. Likewise, Zawahiri’sphraseology suggests that the Afghanistan front has been elevated fromobscurity as much as the Iraq front has been lowered from its pedestal.This move would be entirely logical for Al Qaeda, for Zarqawi’ssectarianism may have permanently hobbled the organization’spreferred strategic narrative. It is Afghanistan, if anywhere, that hasreal potential to salvage this vision and alter the nature of the waragain.

If Al Qaeda can come back with the help of a neo-Talibanimovement, it erases part of the stigma of the earlier collapse and canrally new forces as a mark of the return of ‘God’s favor’ to the cause,resurrecting the myth of the graveyard of empires and breathing newlife into the ‘bleed until bankrupt’ strategy Bin Laden has previouslyenunciated.49 Of equal importance, it could restore the old Al Qaedaleadership, or at least Zawahiri, to the practical center-stage of thejihadist world. This would make Afghanistan the crown ideologicaljewel for Al Qaeda’s reformed narrative, with the Iraq front as a strongbut utilitarian supporting effort, and a string of more opportunisticfronts to flesh out the geographic and civilizational arc of confronta-tion. To the extent that Al Qaeda can make this strategic vision of aclash of civilizations seem real, it will have won an absolutely funda-mental strategic contest by combating the perception the US has beenpromoting of a disaggregated conflict taking place within the Muslimworld, and replacing it with the notion of an epic struggle between theUS and an armed jihadist vanguard.50

48See for example Edward Wong, ‘An Iraqi Tribal Chief Opposes the Jihadists, andPrays’, New York Times, 3 March 2007; Ernesto Londono and Thomas Ricks, ‘BrazenPre-Dawn Attack on US Outpost in Iraq Kills 3, Injures 17’, Washington Post, 20 Feb.2007; and Mark Mazzetti and David Rhode, ‘Al Qaeda Chiefs Are Seen to RegainPower’, New York Times, 19 Feb. 2007.49The ‘bleed until bankrupt’ quote comes from Bin Laden’s speech of 2 Nov. 2004.50Bush’s speech before the National Endowment for Democracy cited above is perhapsthe best government articulation of this strategic vision, but its logic is also evident inCondeleezza Rice’s ‘Transformational Diplomacy’ speech, available at 5http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/59306.htm4.


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More Than Just Defense

The more the US grasps the nature of this conflict, and what it may ormay not have done purposely well in the Zarqawi period exploredabove, the more it will have guides for positive action from the tacticalto the grand strategic level. For example, a large part of the strategiccommunications effort may be the subtle allowance of local ‘faces’ tostay in the forefront, such as the US appears to have done in Amman andIraq above; worth remembering all the more since the temptation for USspokesmen to come to the fore will be stronger in a heavily politicizeddomestic environment. Similarly, Sudan rejected Bin Laden’s first callfor extending the jihad there so there is much to be said for not overtlywarning the Sudanese government about the consequences as AQAMrepeats this message. Likewise, other attempts, such as the Dahabattacks just before Zarqawi died, failed miserably for AQAM followingin the pattern of the Bali attacks.51 In these cases, deliberate silence canbe a powerful strategic choice as the local parties refute AQAM calls fortheir own reasons. These local rejections then resonate with key Westernand Muslim audiences on the larger global stage by counteracting theAQ-proffered vision of a clash of civilizations along a wide arc.

In fact, a staunch supporter of Kilcullen’s strategy of disaggregatingAl Qaeda’s global insurgency might take comfort in these recommen-dations. Moreover, recent spectacular peripheral successes in Somaliaand the Philippines might seem to remove all room for argument. Butthere is an absolutely crucial difference between countering Al Qaeda’sstrategic narrative and the US having its own; it is very much like thedifference between a reactive defense and taking the strategic initiative.Put simply, in addition to disaggregation, the US needs an activecomponent, an aggresive element of ‘selective identification’.

As the operational record of Afghanistan and Iraq shows, the US haslittle problem achieving narrow military goals, but it does have aproblem fully translating them into political and strategic gains. Part ofthis effect comes from the natural attenuation created by having adefensive strategic narrative – of only being able to claim to haveblocked an enemy move rather than achieving something positive ofyour own. The compelling drama in any strategic narrative comes frompublicly daring your enemy to stop you from doing something of value.It is in this manner that the fall of Afghanistan, Fallujah, and Zarqawi

51One of the more enduring images of the 24 April 2006 suicide bomb attack on theDahab beach resort in the Sinai was a picture of a single bloody bare footprint, whichat once conveyed to Western audiences the utterly non-military nature of the targetsattacked, and may well have driven home to Egyptian audiences the threat it posed totourism and therefore their economic welfare.


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probably had real effects on key Muslim ‘hearts and minds’ audiences;but even more so, it is through such interaction that the US seized theinitiative in the Long War by invading Iraq, and after stumbling, mayhave permanently handicapped Al Qaeda’s grand strategy.

A strategy of disaggregation’s chief weakness may lie in its mutedeffect on domestic and allied audiences. For example, far from being acase in point for a disaggregation approach, Somalia is an equallystunning example of the Achilles heel of a defensive strategic narrative.As noted above, Somalia’s takeover by the Islamist Courts Union was avital and prominent feature of Zawahiri’s reformulated Al Qaedavision, and the collapse of Islamist forces there in late December 2006under an Ethiopian attack discretely backed by Washington is abreathtaking reversal rivaling any other in the Long War. But as closeas two days before this rapid and dramatic reversal started, keydomestic political actors like Senator Joe Biden complained that, ‘Bymaking a bad bet on the warlords to do our bidding, the administrationhas managed to strengthen the Courts, weaken our position and leaveno good options. This is one of the least-known but most dangerousdevelopments in the world, and the administration lacks a crediblestrategy to deal with it.’52 While facts on the ground may be affectingkey regional audiences, failing to promote a win in ‘one of the least-known but most dangerous’ fronts in the world – and to stake someAmerican reputation more explicitly on its further outcome – leads to atimid hedging of political bets that leaves the American strategicnarrative more mumbled than conveyed.53

Operational success without strategic context will do little todishearten hostile audiences or bolster potentially friendly ones.Instead, a more aggressively overt but judicious mix of disaggregationand selective identification is needed. Ironically, the US has periodicallyissued clearly articulated visions of the Long War, but it has done soepisodically and in a fashion that seems to court domestic politicalcaution. But the rewards of a stolid but quieter approach to waging thewar in a caustic domestic political setting need to be weighed against

52Karen De Young, ‘US Sees Growing Threats in Somalia’, Washington Post, 18 Dec.2006.53See for example the notable absence of any mention of Somalia, despite the theme of‘offense’ in the GWOT, in Bush’s remarks in what was likely intended to be a majorpolicy speech on the Long War, ‘President Bush Discusses Progress in Afghanistan,Global War on Terror’. As far as a rallying communication of a strategic narrative, thespeech would also seem to be under-advertised and ill-configured for wider coveragedue to its delivery at 10a.m. on a weekday. Available at 5www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/02/20070215-1.html4.


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the potential cost of rhetorical caution and the lost reward of com-peting with more than a defensive ‘counter-narrative’.

If the future of Iraq still holds its stated long-run value for the USGWOT strategy, then more would be gained than lost by being moreexplicit about the internal logic of operations in Iraq. It is ironic but notunreasonable to publicly assert that a Shia actor, Moqtada al-Sadr andhis Mahdi Army, now comprise the center of gravity for a strategicnarrative meant to advance the long run prospects for defeating AlQaeda’s Sunni-based grand strategy through the ‘domino effect’ of ademocratic Iraq. Without daring to make it part of a formallypromulgated strategic narrative, the US could end up paying the pricefor operational success against the Mahdi Army, yet as in Somalia, haveless to show for it politically.

Over and above helping domestic and allied audiences understandhow the inchoate war has come to have two centers of gravity (one inIraq to support a long-run narrative, and a more immediate one inAfghanistan), a more forceful embrace of selective identification wouldhave an impact on Al Qaeda’s immediate strategy. Al Qaeda’s coreleadership seems to have nominated Afghanistan as the new centralfront in their amended strategic narrative – and the US should embraceit. The more the US can raise Afghanistan’s profile and make it anideological pole for Al Qaeda purists, the more it may face a tangibleand lucrative center of gravity in 2007’s military campaigning season.Highlighting a theater may also repeat the somewhat unintended effectof Iraq by tempting Al Qaeda to gamble more recklessly andimpatiently on a local Afghan effort, to the chagrin of more cautious(and potentially more threatening) thinkers in the jihadist camp.54

Moreover, the effort might re-frame the Long War for the key ‘heartsand minds’ audiences around the world, blending the domestic andinternational effects. There should be little shame in acknowledging thecentral factor of interaction in war, or Al Qaeda’s ability, to paraphraseClausewitz, to ‘dictate to the US as much as the US dictates to them’.Such a move might change the perceptions of American involvement inAfghanistan, moving from the sad tale of a half-decade’s worth of astuttering internal defense effort to the idea of a front made central –and quite difficult – once again by a resilient but reeling enemy. In sodoing, the US would also position itself to repeat some of the moreoperational aspects of the Zarqawi duel, such as personifying the

54For example it may divert Al Qaeda from following the more patient (and WMD-oriented) strategy proffered by Al-Suri, which is succinctly captured in Brynjar Lia’s‘The al-Qaida Strategist Abu Mus’ab al-Suri: A Profile’ (15 March 2006) available at5www.mil.no/multimedia/archive/00076/_The_Al-Qaida_strate_76568a.pdf4.


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struggle with Mullah Dadullah as a neo-Taliban icon, or exploitingdifferences between the militant groups to create infighting.55

It is important not to overstate the role of strategic narrative or thepower of one actor to shape a conflict to its liking. It is important tomaintain a focus on all three conceptual components addressed above:the strategic narrative, the centrality of interaction, and the emergent –but de facto – centers of gravity. In a certain respect the proposed USnarrative would simply ratify reality, because two centers of gravityhave already emerged as Iraq and the Long War drift further apartwithout becoming strategically de-linked. But it is vital to rememberthat while a strategic narrative cannot invent something compellingfrom whole cloth, it can have the power to enhance, exaggerate orexploit underlying trends as well as foster a clear-eyed examination ofwhat the centers of gravity might have become. In fact, the chiefmilitary benefit may be an additional safeguard against the mistake ofdeferring hard action in Afghanistan in order to address Iraq first, whilethe chief political benefit may be that only a compelling strategicnarrative can gird a disillusioned US public and a tired military for theburden of a two-pronged effort.

However, these are only options and strategic notions; they will havemore or less validity the more they can be debated in a disciplinedintellectual manner – this is the value of using a clear-headedClausewitzian framework. Without a clearer notion of the nature ofthe current war as it stands today, the US will be challenged toadequately identify the next center – or centers – of gravity and thus thenext best hope for military force to advance its political goals. Similarly,the very real risk remains that without a strong communications effortto the Western public, the continuing Long War effort will look less likea necessarily inchoate war being waged as effectively as the enemyallows (for it will never be fully ‘concrete’ again) and more like anincoherent one, continually covering the same ground, at ever highercost, and with uncertain results. In that sense, how the past phase of theinchoate war is understood may have a vital impact on just howstalwart ‘hearts and minds’ remain on the Western side and howswayed the vital ‘fence-sitters’ are among the populations the jihadistsare attempting to win over. Barring the ability to craft and promulgatesuch a vision, the US is left hoping (with some probability that it willhappen as it has in the past) that the enemy will stumble badly in its

55See for example the profile of Dadullah and his explicit emulation of some ofZarqawi’s more polarizing attributes in Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai, ‘In theFootsteps of Zarqawi’, Newsweek, 3 July 2006. Badkhen, ‘Foreign Jihadists Key’,provides evidence of potential fracture lines that could be exploited on the ‘Anbarmodel’ with the discussion of the new Afghan insurgency being split among four groups.


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efforts to articulate an altered vision of the war. At this point, even thisreactive advantage may be lost unless the US is as nimbly active as it wasin Amman, and even more candidly aware of what went right last time.

Acknowledgements

The work on this article has left me particularly indebted to thefollowing people, who are, of course, blameless for any defects whichfollow: Andrew J. Bacevich, Richard. K. Betts, Megan P. Douglas,Marc A. Genest, Timothy D. Hoyt, Heidi E. Lane, Bradford A. Lee, JonR. Lindsay, Helen E. Purkitt, and Jeff H. Norwitz for his supportthrough the US Naval War College Foundation’s endowment to theBrown Chair of Counterterrorism.

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waging the inchoate war: defining, fighting, and second-guessing the 'long war

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