So says Gustavo De Las Casas, in an article for Foreign Policy. Basically, the argument is that if the West were to totally decimate the Al-Qaeda network, the global Jihadist movement would disperse, and the local cells that emerged would be that much harder to accurately track, and stop. It’s an intriguing thesis, and certainly a contrary one to basically all conventional wisdom.
There are a few problems, though. First is that the global Jihadist movement has already transitioned away from an insurgency-based force. Al-Qaeda’s training camps in Pakistan don’t resemble their former strongholds in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, would-be Jihadists don’t train primarily in battlefield tactics, but to coordinate and carry-out classical terrorist attacks (hitting public transportation, busy markets, etc).
Mr. Casas does, at the end of his piece, point out that eliminating the root causes of Jihadism (namely, certain aspects of American foreign policy, and undemocratic and closed home societies) would do the most to end al-Qaeda’s recruiting drive. Instead of ‘funneling Jihadists’ towards the al-Qaeda brand and base in northwest Pakistan, we should reevaluate the policies America is engaged in that cause disaffected young Muslim men to turn towards violent radical Islam.
