The Emerging Shape of the Coming Jihad

By Douglas Farah

The coming shape of the Islamist jihad war is becoming clear: self-starting groups that are increasingly decentralized structure, linked by shifting networks and communicating almost exclusively through the Internet.

The chief architect of this strategy is the Spanish-Syrian strategist Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, the subject of a very nice piece in The Washington Post, whose 1,600 page treastise, "The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance," has been circulating on Web sites for 18 months.

Written under the pen name Abu Musab al-Suri, the document espouses the concept of "nizam, la tanzim," or ‘System, not organisation.’ Jihadist groups should develop a template that allows them to create structures wherever they are, and carry out recruitment, fund-raising and attacks.

The leadership, as traditionally understood in hierarchical structures, would be limited solely to general guidence of the true believers. This would essentially do away with the role of the traditional al Qaeda leadership in directing attacks or plotting a grand military strategy. My full blog is here.

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