Know the past to understand the present

The Arab term “Jihad” is commonly understood to mean the “holy war” which, according to the radical interpretation, every “good Moslem” must wage for the territorial expansion of the Islamic faith. The Jihad, therefore, is considered, by the orthodox Moslem, not only a means of religious propaganda, but a real political-military instrument dedicated to the realization of the Caliphate, a theocratic regime based on the Shari’ah, the Islamic Law. The Arab expansionism first, and then that of the Ottoman, have represented a constant threat to Europe, starting from the death of Mohammed in 632 AD, until 1683, the Turkish defeat at the walls of Vienna and the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Caliphs, Sultans and Emirs have, in fact, conquered, in various historical periods - besides the Arabic Peninsula, the cradle of Islam - a vast territory which went from Afghanistan to all of North Africa to the Sudan, then on to Spain and Cicely. The expansion continued in the direction of the Anatolian Plain, India and the Balkans until arriving at the point of seriously threatening the Habsburg Empire, defined “the Bastion of Europe”, but left too often to its own destiny by the very Catholic King of Spain and the very Christian King of France (often conniving with the “Sublime Gate”.
In the colonial epoch there were insurrections and wars under the flag of the Jihad by Moslem populations. For example, the Indian Revolt of 1857 against the British occupation, the Anglo-Afghan wars (1839-1842 and 1878-1880), the Revolt of the Mahdis in Sudan, which forced the Anglo-Egyptians into two bloody military campaigns (1881-1886 and 1896-1898 and the Algerian War of Independence against French domination (1954-1962).
The concept of Caliphate as a political-religious entity, however, failed with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War and the birth of the modern Turkey, founded by Kemal Ataturk in 1923, to which it is necessary to add the emergence of nationalistic movements with “secular” vocations in much of the Middle East, such as “the young Turks” and the “Baaht”, i.e. the socialist party of the Arab “rebirth”, (in power in Syria and for a long time in Iraq). Particularly, in the 20’s and 30’s and in the second post-war period, a strong Pan-Arab movement developed, which had its principal exponent in Gamal Abdel Nasser. The movement led by a group of young officials, was the protagonist, in 1952, of a bloodless coup d’état in Egypt, which liberated the Country, definitively, from Franco-British neo-colonialism, Nasser cherished a great ideal of nationalist renewal of the Arab world.
His political objective was to realize a great federation which was to redeem all the Moslem populations that had been humiliated by the Ottoman oppression and bad government, liberating them, at the same time, from western imperialism.
The Pan-Arab Movement raised incredible hopes and enthusiasm and its failure – starting from 1967, after the defeat in the “Six Day War” against Israel – deprived the Arab world of an interlocutor able to assert the weight of a regional power. The failure created also a void of ideals, which favoured the re-emergence of religious movements that preached the return to the “purity” of Islam. One of these movements, for example, is the “Moslem Brotherhood” in Egypt, which has always opposed the secularization of the Islamic nations, and another movement “Wahhabita”, named after the founder, a religion with Puritan vocations of the 18th Century, which still today, exercises much influence on the Saudi Arabia Royal family and among the Sunnites.
The leaders of these movements retain that, in the absence of the Caliphate, the political leaders of the modern Islamic Countries – as it emerged from the second postwar period – are in charge of the political-religious conduct of their own State. Unfortunately, the “contamination” of the government representatives towards the Western “infidels” and their alleged subservience, means that such leaders are perceived, to a certain extent, as enemies of the true Islam and therefore, are delegitimized in the eyes of public opinion which is often poor, uneducated, frustrated and unable to accept any change in traditions and religious culture of which the variegated Islamic clergy (ulema, ayatollah, mullah or imam) is the bearer.
Today, the Jihad has become the principal source of ideological support for terrorism on a global scale by groups which feel called to the holy war and which have in Al Qaeda the principal international symbol in whose conceptual framework other local movements move, such as the “Lashkar-e Taiba” in Kashmir and in the Punjab, the “Jemaah Islamiyah” in Indonesia and Malaysia, the “Harakat Islamyah” (more known as the “Group of Abu Saayf”) in the Philippines, the “Yemenite Islamic Jihad”, the “Shaabab” (young people) in Somalia, the “Salaphite Group for preaching and Combat” in Algeria, and still others dispersed in a vast galaxy of interfaith sectarianisms.


The radical Islamic spiritual movements

The Islamic movements which have influenced the various Jihads, from the end of the 19th Century and all of the 20th Century, are principally three, and between these the most conspicuous are the “Moslem Brotherhood” and the “Wahhabism” between the Sunnites and the “Mahdism” – culturally developed in the Shiite area – even though the transversality of the interests in the field has, in reality, confirmed the overcoming of the basic sectarianism
The “Moslem Brotherhood Movement” originated in Egypt in 1928 and lay within the framework of a cultural and religious awakening that opposed the westernization of the Islamic society, promoting the dignity and redemption of the Moslem populations through a rigorous observance of the Koranic precepts and solidarity in everyday life. The privileged sectors of action are tied to the active participation in political life, teaching (in a traditional sense), improvements of the health conditions and the social activities conducted by groups of devout whose chief reference is the mosque. One of the most amply debated themes within the mosque is that of the Jihad.
Exiled by Nasser, the Moslem Brothers are held responsible for the death of the successor, Anwar el-Sadat in 1981, “guilty” of having signed the peace agreements of Camp David with Israel. Among others, Ayman al-Zawahiri, medical doctor and number two of Al Qaeda, came out of the ranks of the “Moslem Brothers”. In Egypt, at the present moment, there exists a component of the sect, “legalized” under the form of a political party of the fundamentalist-style, which hopes for success in the next elections, trusting on the exit from the political scene of the present President Hosny Mubarak.
Wahhabism although commonly considered synonymous with “Islamic fundamentalism” par excellence, aspiring to a rigid doctrine that preaches the return to the origins of the Koran, has represented the first great reform of contemporary Islam.
The assumed theology of the doctrine, developed in the Arab Peninsula in the XVIII Century, is the affirmation of the absolute unity of God and the fight against all deviant forms of cult. His advocate, Muhammad al Wahab, was always tied to the House of the Saudi, so in 1924, when Abdul ibn Saud took power in Arabia with the consent of Great Britain, he adopted Wahhabism as the official doctrine of the new reign to be fully legitimized in all of Islam as guardian of two of the most important holy places in existence: The Mecca and Medina.
The Saudi Dynasty, enriched with the proceeds from oil, justifies also in this way, the ambitions and aspirations to the role of guide of the Arab world and of regional power, in open contrast with the Iranians, Shiite and of Indo-European strain. Riyadh, in its geo-strategic logic, invested considerable economic resources to finance Islamic religious groups all over the world (Bosnia, Albania and FYROM included) with the purpose of obtaining a return in image and power. It is no accident that the Jihadist movements of Chechnya, Afghanistan and Pakistan are considered Wahhabi observant.
Mahdism is the spiritual movement whose story presents, despite the obvious different conditions of time and place, characteristics similar to the evolution of Al Qaeda.
It is based on the figure of the Mahdi, the “well-guided by God” who – in the Shiite ambit – is held to be the last of the Imam descended from Alì, who is not dead, but simply “disappeared” to a secret place until his definitive return to bring back goodness and justice on earth. Mahdism developed, in particular moments of crises of the Islamic society, as an attempt to bring about a complete renewal. Among the Mahdists who have influenced the more recent history are the founder of the Fatimide Dynasty, Ubayd Alla, who built the city of Mahdia (city of the Mahdi) in Tunisia, and the initiator of the Dynasty of the Almohadi, the Moroccan, Ibd Tmart. Mahdism is known, above all, for the anti-colonial revolt in Sudan against the Anglo-Egyptian dominion in the last 20 years of the XIX Century by Muhammad Ahmad, who founded an ephemeral Islamic State (the Mahdiya, 1884-1898).


The Sudanese Mahdism

Muhammad Ahmad (1844-1885) Arabic-Sudanese of modest origins, after becoming head of the Shiite sect of Sammanyya, earned the reputation of a mystic and around 1880, proclaimed himself Mahdi, endeavouring to unify the tribes of Central and Western Sudan. In 1881, he headed the nationalist revolution against the Egyptian dominion, supported by the English, which culminated with the Battle of El Obeid (1883) and with the siege of Khartoum (1884), which terminated in the following January with the massacre of the entire garrison of the city and of its English Commander, General Charles George Gordon. With the withdrawal of the Egyptian and British forces from Sudan, completed in 1886, the Mahdis were able to establish an Islamic State of the theocratic-Jihadist type, which lasted until 1898. The characteristics of this “original” form of government were represented by the imposition of the Shari’ah, the elimination of all the opponents to the regime and the destruction of the previous administration in favour of local tribalism. Ahmad died of typhus in July 1885, but the political vocation inspired by him was continued both within and outside of Sudan by Abdallahi ibd Muhammad, who assumed the title of Khalifa (the Successor). The Mahdiya drained itself of vigour and resources in a series of campaigns without success against the Christian Ethiopia (1887-1889), Egypt (1889) with incursions against the north of Uganda controlled by Belgium (1891) and against Italian Eritrea (1893).
From 1896 to 1898 the British and Egyptian Forces under the command of General Kitchener, attacked the Mahdi State, which survived up to the Battle of Omdurman (September, 1898) and until the successor of the Mahdi was killed in the November of 1899. In this year, the British constituted the Anglo-Egyptian protectorate of the Sudan, but wars, pestilence and famine had, in the meantime, dispersed and halved the population of the area.


Al Qaeda

Al Qaeda, founded by the Saudi millionaire of Yemenite origin, Osama bin Laden and ideologically inspired by the Egyptian, Ayman al-Zawavhiri is considered, at the moment, above all, a network and a brand utilized to indicate a “confederation” of Jihadist organizations that aim to restore Islam from the origins, accepting also recourse to violent means and spectacular and ferocious attacks.
The birth of the terrorist organization, originally a formation intended to conduct anti-Russian guerrilla actions in Afghanistan, goes back to around 1988. A very young Osama bin Laden, in fact, had approached the cause of the Islamic mujahidin at the beginning of the Soviet invasion of that Country (1979), to organize, in 1984, a supporting structure for the Afghan cause, to recruit fighters, raise funds and send arms. The subsequent step of the political, military and religious activities of Osama was the transfer of the general quarters to Khartoum, in Sudan, under the protection of the Sudanese President, Omar al-Bashir and of the party in power, the Islamic National Front (1991).
From here, with the support of certain religious organizations financed by bin Laden himself, Al Qaeda increased the penetration of its own affiliates in the direction of the Asiatic south-east, of north Africa, in the sub-Saharan area, and in the Islamic communities of Europe and the United States. In 1996, due to the growing activism of the organization and of suspicions on the intentions of same, it expressly declared an end to the influence of the western Countries and urged Moslems to give life to a great new Caliphate, even resorting to acts of terrorism (the attack on the World Trade Center of the 26th February 1993, is attributed to the Islamic fundamentalists), Osama was forced to abandon the Sudan.
However, bases continued to operate in Khartoum and significant economic interests of the network remained. Al Qaeda reorganized itself in Afghanistan where, in the meantime, the Koranic students – the taleban – had taken power and, with the support of the theocratic regime of the Mullah Omar, continued in the activity of proselytism and attack on western objectives.
On August the 7th 1998, we have the first claims following the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania with the initial experiments of the media disclosures. The most shocking of the actions remains that of the Twin Towers in New York on the 11th September, 2001, the heart of the United States and symbol of western economic power. This operation demonstrated the undoubted organizational capacity and media knowledge attained by Al Qaeda. The partial decline of the Kabul taleban regime, following the American intervention, generated the dispersal of the Qaedist chiefs of staff, so that bin Laden had to reconfigure his organization, introducing the direction of operations based on the centralization in the strategic decisions and entrusting the tactics execution to the decentralization, in such a way as to be able to operate in global terms even in a fragmented and geographically isolated situation. The new directives leave to the responsibility of the affiliated groups, the liberty of conducting terrorist actions planned on site, in the time and in the mode held to be the most expedient, while the central organization continues to carry out functions of support typical of a directional/logistics and media center of strategic level.
The meaning of the Arab term Al Qaeda may be considered similar to “the base”, with reference to the original compound for the training of the Afghan mujahidin, evolved into a “network” of support to organized international terrorism.
The attempts conducted so far to capture the “Sheikh of terror” have been unsuccessful. Similar to the figure of the original Mahdi, also Osama bin Laden seems to have disappeared into thin air, even though, periodically and through satellite broadcasts, messages of incitement to the Jihad fighters are diffused to affirm their presence and multiply media effects. Perhaps surviving the devastating bombardments of Tora Bora of 2001, and the kidney problems which were purported to have struck him, bin Laden could have taken refuge in Waziristan, a rough mountainous region in the so-called Pakistan tribal zone bordering with Afghanistan.
In any event, the air of mystery which surrounds him craftily feeds the symbolism, the fame and the legend of the “Network of Osama”, above all, among the populations of Islamic faith.


Conclusion

In identifying cases which are similar to the present affairs, it might be helpful to retrace some historical stages.
To researchers and to the analysts – professional figures who transform raw data into really usable material to define choices and strategies in sectors that range from politics to the economy, from terrorism to organized crime and military operations – is left the difficult task of decrypting effects of media, threats, disclosures and claims of responsibility, in which truth is intertwined with likelihood or the implausible, in the most classical of the scenarios for the Intelligence
To sustain, without the support of analyses, that the Global Jihad proclaimed by Al Qaeda at the end of the 90’s, would have entailed a long-term war against terrorism with very uncertain results, would have been hazardous without an accurate study also of historical events in the distant past.