Commentary.
Steve Pieper: Islamic Extremism, Western Europe, and Tinder
The vagaries of identity generate temporary alliances along social lines of variable significance, but one theme remains constant throughout many examples in history: every division and amalgamation generates an “us” and a “them.” While the United States remains embroiled in military anti-terror efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Europe festers with a nascent Islamist uprising drawing its strength from a highly effective ideological campaign designed to segregate Islam from Western culture. Seething Islamic extremists, often marginalized in European society and eager to return to an era of Muslim dominion over much of Europe and North Africa, busily and noisily demarcate the battle lines in their burgeoning struggle against their chosen “Other”—Western society, largely perceived as the bastion of the Infidel. Deplorably few moderate Muslim voices emerge to decry the violent fringe (Frontline, European Muslims), leaving the political space widely available to truculent fundamentalists. As a result, radicalism is becoming dangerously mainstream, fueled both by de facto European segregation and America’s clamorous military presence in the Middle East. Extremists exploit the freedoms endemic to Western societies to mobilize and indoctrinate their constituency, then deploy their clandestine army to the proving grounds of Iraq and Afghanistan. The most dangerous terror threat is not in the shifting sands of the Middle East, but along the genteel European boulevards around which Islam’s diaspora radicalize and organize. Consequently, the solution to Islamic radicalism’s viral expansion is far more likely found in civic adjustment and effective police work than application of military force.
The emerging danger of Europe’s radical Muslims is difficult for Americans to fully appreciate. A tradition of intermingled heritage and a relatively gargantuan landmass separate American reality from European circumstances. While ethnic enclaves are entirely common in the United States, such as San Francisco’s famous Chinatown and New York’s storied ethnic neighborhoods, the United States is eminently assimilative compared to European countries. Muslim immigrants to the US “entered a gigantic country built on immigration” (Leiken in Foreign Affairs 2005, p. 121). Muslims in America are “geographically diffuse, ethnically fragmented, and generally well off;” in stark contrast, Europe’s Islamic immigrants typically “gather in bleak enclaves” to commiserate over their bleak economic and social outlook (ibid, p. 121). America’s Islamic immigrants certainly gravitate to similarly inclined company in their adopted land, but their European counterparts share far more significant, polarizing bonds: common culture, ethnicity, and nationality, with disproportionately large concentrations of “Algerians in France, Moroccans in Spain, Turks in Germany, and Pakistanis in the United Kingdom” (ibid, p. 121). Europe’s Islamic immigrants form pockets of nearly homogeneous nationality, religious sect, and culture; consequently, Middle Eastern and North African migrants become insulated and galvanized against European assimilation, which limits economic opportunity and provides ample occasion for ideological exploitation.
Immigrants form social islands not entirely of their own volition. Europe hasn’t proven overly welcoming, and it is not insignificant that the country with the highest percentage of Muslim immigrants has done the poorest job of assimilating them. While official census information stubbornly casts little light on the ethnic picture, conservative estimates count France’s Muslim diaspora as seven to ten percent of its total population (ibid, p. 122). Riotous, disenchanted, largely disenfranchised, and ideologically isolated from the native French, Muslim immigrants have gained little traction in French society. Leiken notes that “As the French academic Gilles Kepel acknowledges, ‘neither the blood spilled by Muslims from North Africa fighting in French uniforms during both world wars nor the sweat of migrant laborers, living under deplorable living conditions, who rebuilt France (and Europe) for a pittance after 1945, has made their children … full fellow citizens’ ” (ibid, p. 122).
The phenomenon is not unique. While French culture is notoriously (and often vehemently) insular, Europe is itself a historically unstable collection of social and political enclaves, semi-united only recently and titularly under a European Union auspice. Traveling two thousand miles in America spans but a single official language; in Europe, the same distance may traverse half a dozen tongues, each with its own prohibitive regional dialectics. A six-hour trip on a US train may change little more than the favorite sports team, while a similar journey in Europe is almost certain to cross at least one palpable set of political, linguistic, cultural, historical, and ethnic boundaries. Because thousands of years of continental cohabitation have resulted in comparatively little cultural commingling, and have generated little more than a begrudging tolerance that is more a hangover from the two deadliest clashes in human history than a social or institutional ethos, it is somewhat Quixotic to expect Europeans to readily adopt an assimilative attitude toward their Muslim “guest workers.”
Similarly, for a continent whose constituent polities are most accustomed to cross-border conflict (and who relatively recently removed armed checkpoints from their boundaries), it is difficult for European states to fully comprehend the relevance of this internal hazard. The underappreciated salient reality is that the European Islamic threat arises not from a neighboring rival state, but from a comparatively amorphous political entity emerging from internal ethnic ghettos. Once a collection of quiet, insulated and isolated neighborhoods, the Muslim near-citizen population has become a considerable force. An under-prepared Europe was taken by surprise, as “in a fit of absentmindedness, during which its academics discoursed on the obsolescence of the nation-state, western Europe acquired not a colonial empire but something of an internal colony, whose numbers are roughly equivalent to the population of Syria” (ibid, p. 122).
Even optimists acknowledge a churlish situation. While Giry glazes France’s abortive integration policies with a somewhat rosy patina, she asserts that “the status of Muslims in France is at once much healthier and more problematic than most recent commentary lets on” (Giry in Foreign Affairs 2006, p. 88), and posits that “the French political class seems too flummoxed, ideological, or opportunistic to address [Muslim] issues with the seriousness they deserve” (ibid, p. 99). While it may be true that recent French Muslim riots “had little to do with yearnings for a worldwide caliphate and much to do with domestic socioeconomic problems” (ibid, p. 87-88), it is extremely difficult to argue that the uprising wasn’t progeny of what Moghaddam terms “fraternal deprivation, involving feelings of deprivation that arise because of the position of an individual’s group relative to that of other groups” (Moghaddam in American Psychology 2005, p. 163). Perceived socioeconomic imbalance, foisted upon the proverbial “us” by a maleficent “them,” is an indispensable “ground floor” foundation of terrorism (ibid).
While astute political entrepreneurship clearly consolidates and focuses an otherwise vague but endemic European Muslim sense of social inequity, radical Islam’s indispensable kindling is largely systemic: “[immigrant] expectations for improved economic conditions and greater political freedom are not being met. In addition, there is deep anxiety in many [Muslim] societies that local cultural and linguistic systems are being swept away and that traditional identities and allegiances are threatened by the massive sweep and reach of ‘Americanization’” (ibid, p. 162). Dogmatic solutions commonly emerge from ideological and ethnic underpinnings, and Giry’s assessment notwithstanding, it is no stretch to conceive that political violence aimed at establishing a Muslim caliphate might seem a reasonable curative course to Europe’s disillusioned and disheartened Islamic expatriates.
In such a social and economic context, it is easy to envision Europe’s Muslim population congealing along arbitrarily ideological lines. As “Frontline” and CNN tellingly observe, most of Europe’s radical Muslims grew up well educated and politically and religiously moderate (even indifferent), and have only recently embraced their faith and ethnicity with a zealot’s fervor. This phenomenon strongly suggests the magnetic influence of a far more cultural than spiritual undercurrent. Frustrated politically and economically, European Muslims perceive the most significant proximate fissures along social lines, yet unite and mobilize under the only palpably relevant and sufficiently inclusive ideological banner: violent Islam. Alleged American adventurism in the Middle East provides ample fodder to further electrify Europe’s disgruntled Muslim diaspora, particularly when facts are provocatively twisted by entrepreneurial Muslim imams and a biased Middle Eastern press.
Nevertheless, flame requires tinder. Unfortunately, the volatile mixture of sustained American interventionism in the Muslim Middle East and Europe’s frosty reception of Islamic immigrants is likely sufficient to fuel a conflagration. While the problem seems clear, the solution appears far from lucid, and even less readily implemented, as underlying systemic difficulties endure. Though America’s civil rights record is undeniably less exemplary than advertised, it is easy for American policymakers to view Europe’s integration strategy with condescension. As a bleak example, the dour state of French cultural accommodation is such that the 2006 hiring of a Black regional news anchor made international news (Giry in Foreign Affairs 2006, p. 99). Equally, Europe’s ardent anti-interventionism arises from a long history of painful foreign conflict, resulting in a decidedly isolationist political inflection; such defensive seclusion has formed a social and political substrate that readily villainizes American involvement in the Middle East. As long as American efforts in Islamic nations appear militaristic, colonial, and Crusade-like, and as long as European states condense their Muslim expatriates into stagnant social and economic distillations, little progress can be expected; as long as Europe and America both find substantial grounds to blame each other for the paltry state of Islamic relations, neither political force will experience sufficient impetus to enact substantial change.
Now What?
The solution set must encompass tactical as well as strategic scopes. On a tactical level, an effective civil investigative and enforcement apparatus offers the best chance of uncovering and undermining existing and emerging subversive networks within a society. Peru’s Sendero Luminoso met its end not through extensive military efforts, but through sound investigative police work (Peruvian Truth Commission). Italian police investigations led to the arrest of a key suicide terror recruiter and trainer responsible for the Madrid train station bombing that killed 190 and wounded 1,240 in March of 2004 (CNN, The Enemy Within). Civil investigative arms marginalized the Red Brigade (Stein Kynoe’s presentation). The Provisional Irish Republican Army saw many of its efforts thwarted through police-like development of “a street-by-street and family-by-family analysis of the [affected] areas,” utilizing “plain-clothes” detectives (Bamford in Intelligence and National Security 2005, p. 587). Eventually, British operatives “penetrated a number of terrorist groups at some of their most senior levels and were able to ‘tap’ into the thinking of the groups’ senior commands that, in turn, enabled them to thwart terrorist attack” (ibid, p. 581).
Civil investigation is often the only viable method to detect and undermine fringe terror cells, which are frequently linked ideologically but not operationally. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation recently destroyed a small Islamist cell with Caribbean Islamist ties before the group was able to complete plans to attack JFK International Airport (CNN.com). Less than a month before, investigators uncovered a homegrown splinter group with Al-Qaeda sympathies, plotting a terror attack at Fort Dixon, New Jersey (MSNBC.com). Police investigations have also toppled such groups as the Squamish Five (Culbertson presentation) and the Symbianese Liberation Army (Pieper presentation), both small but violent Leftist groups operating without logistical ties to larger movements or networks. For an international phenomenon such as radical Islam, there is relatively little need for extensive logistical networks and operational hierarchies to facilitate acts of terror; independent cells emerge naturally where ingenuity, initiative, and sufficient ideological identification with Islamist extremism combine. Consequently, local law enforcement elements are at the vanguard of tactical counter-terror efforts.
While many of the previous examples clearly contain a concomitant military effort, the record casts doubt on the efficacy of a militaristic approach to countering terror. In the main, military units doctrinally abide by international norms for armed conflict; “A bedrock of the laws of war for more than a century, noncombatant immunity encompasses two key concepts: distinction and proportion” (Kahl in Foreign Affairs 2006, p. 83). Unfortunately, insurgent conflicts (with their attendant terrorist components) lend themselves disproportionately to harsh measures taken by military arms, as the “tripartite distinction between combatant, noncombatant, and support/supply system is typically blurred in guerilla war, unlike conventional war” (emphasis original), a phenomenon that has fostered many examples of military efforts exacerbating a terror problem (Wickham-Crowley, 1991, p.83). Viet Cong insurgents expanded the tactical ambiguity “by actually locating themselves within villages,” eliciting a severe American response characterized by “village bombings and terroristic [sic] sweeps, with drastically reduced regard by U.S. soldiers for combatant-noncombatant distinctions” (Wickham-Crowley, 1991, p.83). The Peruvian Army’s draconian and indiscriminate measures against ambiguously inclined rural populations accelerated Shining Path growth exponentially (The Peruvian Truth Commission). Similarly, Batista’s brutal attempts to suppress the Castro uprising in Cuba “drove the people of Santiago and the Sierras into Castro’s fold” (Thornton, 1980, p.75). Difficulty detecting the enemy often undermines principles of proportionality in practice, undermining the offending authority’s legitimacy and morality.
Distressingly, despite ample historical examples, American forces in Iraq routinely engage in “large-scale offensives against insurgents in densely populated urban areas with little regard for the inevitable civilian casualties” (Kahl in Foreign Affairs 2006, p. 93). Fallujah is a ready example—US Marines destroyed or damaged 18,000 of the city’s 39,000 buildings and killed an estimated 1,000 civilians (ibid, p. 94). With many news agencies (Muslim and American) covering the carnage left by American military violence, it is easy to understand that many Muslims may reasonably and logically view their cause as a moral imperative—Moghaddam’s third tier of terror—and may rapidly come to perceive that they “are ‘morally engaged,’ and it is ‘enemy’ [Western] governments and their agents who are morally disengaged” (Moghaddam in American Psychology 2005, p. 165). Similar approaches in Afghanistan led one tribal elder to lament “’What we have realized…is that the foreigners are not really helping us. We think that the foreigners do not want Afghanistan to be rebuilt’” (Rubin in Foreign Affairs 2007, p. 61). Predictably, indiscriminate tactical execution has served thus far only to undermine rather than bolster the strategic objective, evidenced by Taliban resurgence and the exponential growth of Iraqi insurgency and terror into what is now commonly termed a “deepening civil war” (Moisi in Foreign Affairs 2007, p. 10). In short, “U.S. actions have tipped the balance of power within the Muslim world to its most radical Shiite elements” (ibid, p. 9).
In a similar strategic vein, it seems likely that European states would benefit from a comprehensive economic and social assimilation approach for its outcast Muslims. Europe’s Islamic segment exceeds the American Hispanic immigrant populace in political and financial significance (Leiken 2006); it follows that in order to mitigate many of the underlying systemic causes of European Islamic extremism, European policy must assuage the social and fiscal grievances found in its crowded Muslim corridors (Moghaddam 2005). Such an approach is at least as collectively useful as it is distasteful to the various (and vociferous) parochial European interests, particularly when viewed in an historical light. The Italian Red Brigade, ETA, and the PIRA all emerged from a morass of social and economic dilapidation and isolation very similar to that experienced by modern Muslims (Stein Kynoe’s presentation and Frontline). Effective incorporation of the Islamic diaspora thus appears strategically imperative; as Moisi observes, “the challenge is not figuring out how to play moderate Islam against the forces of radicalism. It is figuring out how to instill a sufficient sense of hope and progress in Muslim societies so that despair and anger do not send the masses into the radicals’ arms” (Moisi in Foreign Affairs 2007, p. 12).
Of perhaps greater importance, the United States must listen intently to European entreaties to revise an intrusive and violent American approach to Middle Eastern affairs in order to undermine Islamic extremism’s hip-pocket ideological and sociological underpinnings. Inherent in such a change is frank admission that American efforts have exacerbated, not ameliorated, a volatile Muslim predicament, and that current military efforts are poorly conceived and executed. Even dubious social conditions in Europe might incite far less vitriolic Muslim resentment in the absence of such obvious and poignant anti-Western ideological iconography. Removing the cheap Crusader symbolism—a clear and violent dividing line between “us” and “them”—from the Middle East, would likely free both Europe and America to pursue far more effective foreign and domestic anti-extremism efforts. As in most endeavors, symbiosis of solutions seems to offer the most practical answer. But cooperation in this case requires palpable conciliation from all quarters. Muslim vilification and marginalization are no longer viable options for Western governments, and the painful lessons of previous and current abortive military violence must resonate pragmatically if the West is to succeed in eradicating Islamic terror’s perceived morality.
Europe’s Angry Muslims. Robert S. Leiken. Foreign Affairs. New York: Jul/Aug 2005.Vol.84, Iss. 4; pg. 120
France and Its Muslims. Stephanie Giry. Foreign Affairs. New York: September/October 2006. Vol.85, Iss. 5; pg. 87
The Staircase to Terrorism. Fathali M. Moghaddam. American Psychologist: February/March 2005. Pg 161.
CNN, “The Enemy Within.” In-class presentation, Regional Studies in Low Intensity Conflit: Europe, Naval Postgraduate School, May 2007.
Frontline, Irish Republican Army. In-class presentation, International Terrorism. Naval Postgraduate School, April 2007
Frontline, Islamic extremism in Europe. In-class presentation, Regional Studies in Low Intensity Conflit: Europe, Naval Postgraduate School, May 2007.
Peruvian Truth Commission Report. In-class presentation, International Terrorism, Naval Postgraduate School, April 2007.
Stein Kynoe’s In-Class Presentation, Red Brigade. International Terrorism, Naval Postgraduate School, May 2007.
Cary Culbertson’s In-Class Presentation, Squamish Five. International Terrorism, Naval Postgraduate School, May 2007.
Steve Pieper’s In-Class Presentation, Symbianese Liberation Army. International Terrorism, Naval Postgraduate School, May 2007.
Bamford, Bradley. “The Role and Effectiveness of Intelligence in Northern Ireland.” Intelligence and National Security, Vol.20, No.4, December 2005, pp.581 – 607 ISSN 0268-4527 print 1743-9019 online DOI: 10.1080/02684520500425273 a 2005 Taylor & Francis
CNN.com: “4 charged with terror plot at JFK airport.” June 2, 2007. http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/02/jfk.terror.plot/index.html
MSNBC.com: “Unraveling a Terrorist Cell.” May 8, 2007 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18560956/site/newsweek/?from=rss
Thornton, T.P. Terror as a Weapon of Political Agitation. In Harry Eckstein, (ed), Internal War: Problems and Approaches, Greenwood, 1980.
Kahl, Colin H. “How We Fight.” Foreign Affairs. November/December 2006, Volume 85, No. 6, pp 83-101.
Wickham-Crowley, T. Exploring Revolution Chapter 3, “Terror and Guerilla Warfare in Latin America 1956-1970.” M.E. Sharpe, 1991.
Moisi, Dominique. “Clash of Emotions.” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007, Volume 86 No. 1, pp 8-12.
Rubin, Barnett R. “Saving Afghanistan.” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007, Volume 86 No. 1, pp 57-78.