How the CT Community Failed to Anticipate the Islamic State by Nelly Lahoud and Liam Collins, Democracy and Security Journal, via Modern War Institute
Abstract: This article is a critique of the dominant approach within the counter-terrorism (CT) community that failed to analyze IS’s trajectory as a distinct group since at least 2006. We argue that two factors account for this failure. The first concerns the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), the law that was enacted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, providing options to the U.S. President to authorize the use of Armed Forces “against those responsible” for the 9/11 attacks. We contend that this law served as an incentive to lump regional jihadi groups under the AQ umbrella instead of discerning their differences. The second factor concerns what we term as the “al-Qa‘ida fixation,” it has to do with a post-9/11 bias towards understanding the threat emanating from jihadi groups around the world through the lens of AQ. This translated into falsely constructing a so-called “al-Qaeda Central” in the business of ‘franchising’ its brand and cloning its violent operations by establishing regional jihadi groups that served as its “affiliates” and carried out its orders. In the post-9/11 era, these two factors fed off each other. Our critique is not meant to suggest that the CT community is expected to predict the unpredictable, and we also recognize that one gains greater clarity with the benefit of hindsight. However, we argue that had the CT community given due attention to the differences between jihadi groups, there was ample evidence in the open source realm that was pointing to IS being AQ’s bête noire, and was seeking to outbid it.
Comments
From an overall perspective (think not just the Greater Middle East here but also such places as Russia, China, etc., today also), what we seem to not have appreciated (due to our misguided belief in "universal vales, etc.) and, thus, seem not have anticipated at all, was that the U.S./the West's post-Cold War "expansionist" efforts -- undertaken and designed to transform the entire Rest of the World more along modern western political, economic, social and value lines -- would:
Meet with much the same resistance (and for much the same reasons) -- and meet with much the same resistors (to wit: the conservative elements of various populations )-- as that which the Soviets/the communists experienced in the Old Cold War. (A time when the Soviets/the communists then, much like the U.S./the West today, sought to transform the entire Rest of the World more along a single -- alien and profane -- political, economic, social and value model's lines.)
Herein, the "expansionist" U.S./the West today, much like the Soviets/the communists in the Old Cold War of yesterday -- and via these such "expansionist" efforts -- finding ourselves being (1) exceptionally vulnerable to "containment" and/ "roll back" strategies (undertaken individually and/or jointly by the Rest of the World nations) and, thus, being (2) exceptionally vulnerable to a consensus-building "fight for your way of life" objective and rallying cry (led by the U.S./the West back then; led by the likes Russia, etc., today).
These such matters (caused by a belief that "our stuff does not stink?") helping to explain -- not only why the CT community failed to anticipate the Islamic state -- but, also, why the U.S./the West, in general, did not anticipate that Russia, China, and indeed the Rest of World, would come to actively resist our such "transformative" designs" for their states and societies, and do so:
a. For the very same and highly effective reasons that we did (to preserve one's individual and unique way of life, one's independence, etc.),
b. Via the very same and highly effective parties that we used/relied upon in the Old Cold War (the conservative elements of the various populations), and
c. Via the very same and highly effective methods that we used back-in-the-day ("containment,""roll back," etc., and, specifically, "political warfare" with unconventional warfare employed in the service of same).
This, in a nut-shell, (a) explaining a lot of our problems today and (b) from a necessary "overall" point-of-view?
As a counter point to the possibility we failed to learn, adapt, and anticipate, I think we failed to describe the problem correctly. We had a paradigm we have viewed the problem through for years. We used this paradigm to facilitate our learning and adapting for over a decade, but it may be the wrong paradigm. As for anticipate, I don't think the Islamic State was a complete surprise. The Shia were pushing the Sunnis into a corner, and the backlash was unavoidable at some point. The fact that the group called themselves the Islamic State, and operated as effectively as they did was a surprise, but the idea of a backlash was pretty obvious (I think).
These terrorist organizations are regional and global networks, so I think the authors may overstated their case. Local grievances does not fully explain why foreign fighters from many areas of the world flocked to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State. However, when we only view these organizations as networks, and depict them as a series of links and nodes (dark networks in this case), we fool ourselves that this visual representation is a predictable system, and if we only target key nodes the rest of the network will collapse. We have been doing this for over 10 years with now predictable results. Understanding the links and nodes is important, but it is not decisive. There is something larger our community is missing. The flaw ultimately links into our view of targeting where we view everything as a system, whether it is Warden's Five Rings, or PMESII. We have to simplify to start grasping reality, but our simplifications are not reality.
Maybe if we viewed our response as counter revolutionary warfare, counterinsurgency, etc. (as I think you suggested above), instead of counterterrorism we would develop a more accurate paradigm to more effectively facilitate learning, adapting, and anticipating?
With no disrespect to the "counterterrorism community" I fear that our focus on counterterrorism is a "current operation, " focused on the threats here and now rather emerging threats. I hate to beat a dead horse but Eliot Cohen and John Gooch and their book Military Misfortune apply here - all military failures are a result of three things - failure to learn, failure to adapt, and failure to anticipate (and this applies beyond the military to national security failures). Our counterterrorism community has demonstrated a phenomenal capability to learn and adapt (e.g., F3EAD and employment of SOF and UAS to capture kill HVTs on an industrial scale). But I would submit that our weakness not only in the counterterrorism community but in our broader national security community is our failure to anticipate. Of course hindsight it 20-20 and we can look back and see how we failed to anticipate and understand the complex issues for why we did not anticipate ISIS but the question is can we learn from our mistakes? Our counterterrorism capabilities are huge, phenomenal, and tremendous, to borrow from the current political campaign but they do trump our ability to think strategically, to think long term, and to anticipate future conditions and threats that really emanate from a spectrum of threats and conditions: revolution, resistance, insurgency that often result in civil war. Terrorism is a symptom of those conditions and I think our myopic focus on terrorism blinds us and prevents us from anticipating. Please do not misunderstand me. Our counterterrorism capability is the best in the world and we have developed some of the most sophisticated military and intelligence capabilities that allow us to capture/kill high value targets at the time and place of our choosing anywhere in the world. What I am simply trying to point out is that our counterterrorism capabilities are necessary but not sufficient. We need more than just a counterterrorism capability to address the full spectrum of threats in the 21st Century.