Have Foot, Will Shoot Posted by Michael Signer

Last week, I wrote a piece suggesting that Al Qaeda's strategy to continue to catalyze world opinion against America may have backfired by attacking Great Britain during the G-8 summit.  The argument there was that Al Qaeda, viewed as a strategic actor, wants and needs to have major nations tilting against the United States and toward sympathy with Palestine and allegedly embattled Muslim nations in general.  But it screws this up by attacking a nation who's not as obviously polarizing -- the United Kingdom.

A WaPo article today by Robin Wright suggests that Al Qaeda may have stumbled in another way -- this time domestically (among its own people) rather than internationally (among the world community).  The article discusses survey results among several Muslim nations about Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and democratization.  The survey was completed before the London bombings, but its results suggest what Al Qaeda was already up against:

Osama bin Laden's standing has dropped significantly in some pivotal Muslim countries, while support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence has "declined dramatically," according to a new survey released yesterday.

Predominantly Muslim populations in a sampling of six North African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries share to a "considerable degree" Western concerns about Islamic extremism, according to the poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, conducted by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization.

The numbers are significant.  2 percent of Lebanese respondents and 7 percent of Turkish thought OBL would "do the right thing regarding world affairs."  In Morocco, OBL's support dropped from 50% to about 25% over the last two years, and in Indonesia from 58 percent to 37 percent.

The one exception was in support for opposition to the American occupying forces in Iraq.  Again, taking everyday, lay Muslims as the audience (rather than supercharged fanatical extremists), this makes a certain kind of sense.  It's easy to rationalize, generically, attacks on the imperialist superpower; it's harder to accept the strategy when it bleeds across boundaries into countries that you can conceive as your neighbor.  Ms. Wright quotes an academic:

"Muslims, like non-Muslims, are plugged into the world. . . . It is one thing to be caught up in the supposed glamour of attacking the superpower or global bully, but it is quite another to have to pay the consequences economically, politically -- not to mention personally. This is what has happened in places like Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey, where many people now see extremist Islam as a threat to their lives, not a fantasy game of kick Uncle Sam."

The tipping point will come when everyday Muslims see extremist Islam, lurking in their communities and living nextdoor, as the threat.  People overshoot their aims all the time (as we've done in Iraq).  Hopefully, Al Qaeda has done the same thing by bombing innocent civilians in Great Britain, a country that has been gracious about assimilating Muslims (like, ironically, its large Pakistani community). 

God willing, they're pushing themselves over a cliff already.  If only the Bush Administration had the diplomatic savvy to give them a hand.

Comments

[MNPundit]

The frightening thing is how much support for suicide bombimg rose in Jordan. According to the Washington Monthly post by Drum that included the handy charts, it went from the low 40s to the high 50s. That's about a 15% increase. YIKES.

Also Jordan is MORE confident in Osama than they were before from about 55% to 60%. These results are troubling. I wonder if this is at all a result of that "favor" Bush asked of King Hussein.

[Dan-NYCIPA]

Initially, I found this report to be some of the best news we have heard since 9/11, but once I started thinking about it I realized that, as is the case with many statistical surveys, it has some significant weakspots that make me question the report's veracity and how comprehensive a representation of opinion it really is.

The most glaring issue I see in the report is the countries that are NOT surveyed (for whatever reasons). The countries I have in mind are: Syria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Algeria, and Libya.

I am curious to know what the figures would have looked like had these countries been included in the survey. Nobody can say for sure, but I suspect that they would not have been so rosy. From my perspective, absent the inclusion of these countries, the report is pretty useless in terms of gauging the relative strength of support for Bin Laden, radical Islam, and attacks on U.S. troops.

FYI, Ted Gurr has a pretty good essay on how terrorism declines through the alienation of populations in Walter Reich's "The Origins of Terrorism." If I recall correctly, the examples Gurr draws on are terrorist movements in the West that had a secular underpinning. Although I do question how comparable religiously based terrorism that maintains qualities of a global insurgency is to secular terrorism such as the Red Brigades etc... To different beasts.

[Dan-NYCIPA]

Oh...and I forgot to add Egypt...how I forgot the birthplace of Qutb and Faraj I do not know.

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