Congressional forum on Islam

Today over lunch I appeared at the CSIS Congressional Forum on Islam, where I talked with a group of Congressional staffers about how Islamists of various stripes use media technologies.  I'm not going to go into all of what I talked about, but preparing the talk made me reflect a bit on some of the trends I've been working with lately.  In particular, the research which went into the "insurgency against al-Qaeda" arguments from earlier this year probably wouldn't have been possible even a few years ago - since most of the information came from internet forums and various websites.  I see three really interesting implications here:

First, the online debates really do matter - not just for the propaganda and recruitment and training aspects which get most of the media attention over here, but for establishing their own ideas and attitudes.  In this case, the argument in the forums forced supporters and opponents of the Islamic State of Iraq to articulate much more sharply their visions for the jihad - especially the tension between al-Qaeda's vision of Iraq as mainly a launching pad for global jihad and the Islamic Army of Iraq's vision of the jihad as mainly an insurgency for national liberation.  I haven't blogged about most of the interventions in that debate, because I'm writing a longer academic/policy piece on it, but the debate has been incredibly illuminating - not least because I, a total outsider with no special privileges or intelligence resources, have been able to follow it in real time.   Following the forums has become something similar to what watching al-Jazeera used to be, at least for those of us interested in the ideas and strategies of this small subset of jihadists - it's the place where real arguments about the identity, strategy, and goals of the movement are being hashed out.  And while the interventions by Zawahiri do still matter, other voices matter a lot too.  It's a good thing that not all these forums have been shut down, because they have become indispensible for anyone trying to make sense of jihadist thinking.   

Second, those online debates aren't just about abstract points of theory - they are organically related to major political developments and the patterns and timing of violence.   The major communiques from the Islamic State of Iraq, the Islamic Army of Iraq, Ansar al-Sunna, Hamas Iraq, and others have been released to the internet sites as a primary, not secondary, outlet.  What's more, it's clear that the violence is related to those online debates, with spectacular terror attacks caught on video serving as a kind of political currency:  the ISI would do something big, post the video, and then implicitly or explicitly challenge the IAI to show what it could do.  This point isn't new, of course - my friend Jon Alterman, who hosted my appearance today, argued a few years ago that many of the terror attacks and hostage takings in Iraq were "made for TV events".  These are made for the internet, but the same principle applies.  As the competition between various Iraqi insurgency factions has intensified, it's probably not even worth blowing up an American tank if they don't get it on video.

Finally, it's been interesting to see how a debate which originates among these Iraqi groups has brought in the heavyweights of the jihadist universe .  Jihadi internet luminaries such as Hamed al-Ali, Hani Siba'i, and a plethora of pseudonymous influentials have weighed in repeatedly on the debate over the Islamic State of Iraq and the future of the jihad.  Rather than these debates originating with al-Qaeda Central (bin Laden, Zawahiri) and trickling down, they are starting in Iraq and developing on their own.   The momentum, the energy, the high stakes seem to be in these debates about Iraq, with AQ Central almost seeming marginal to the definition of the future of the jihad (recall Hareth al-Dhari vainly imploring bin Laden to intervene and clarify whether he supported the Islamic State of Iraq's strategy).   

Anyway, that was only a small part of today's talk, but I thought it was worth throwing out some of these meta-level reflections as I get back into the blogging routine.