Abu Musab al-Suri
Important piece in the New Yorker discussing the marginalized member of Al Qaeda who actually got it.
AQ followed an obsolete model pre-9/11 and should understand its fleeting nature –
“Al Qaeda is not an organization, it is not a group, nor do we want it to be,” he writes. “It is a call, a reference, a methodology.” Eventually, its leadership would be eliminated, he said… In the time that remained to Al Qaeda, he argued, its main goal should be to stimulate other groups around the world to join the jihadi movement. His legacy, as he saw it, was to codify the doctrines that animated Islamist jihad, so that Muslim youths of the future could discover the cause and begin their own, spontaneous religious war…
He was on the trajectory of becoming a systems disruption knowledgable global guerrilla – emphasis mine –
The goal, he writes, is “to bring about the largest number of human and material casualties possible for America and its allies.
Wanted to open source the effort, tear down the existing state structure and replace it with an organic system of governance –
He proposes that the next stage of jihad will be characterized by terrorism created by individuals or small autonomous groups (what he terms “leaderless resistance”), which will wear down the enemy and prepare the ground for the far more ambitious aim of waging war on “open fronts”—an outright struggle for territory. He explains, “Without confrontation in the field and seizing control of the land, we cannot establish a state, which is the strategic goal of the resistance.”
Luckily we managed to capture him in Pakistan last November. But the clock is ticking.
-Shlok
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