A New Dawn?

Fissures among the jihadists? Here is a revealing bit of information: two internal conflicts are waging at the moment. Iraqi insurgents have demanded that al Qaeda leaders (bin Laden, Zawahiri) reign in their fighters in Iraq. The demand comes after in-fighting between the two groups over at least the past few months. In a striking parallel, tribal groups aligned with the Taliban in Waziristan Agency at the Pak-Afghan border have been fighting foreign militants - Uzbeks aligned with al Qaeda - for the past few weeks.

These two conflicts are significant for a few reasons: fistly, they illustrate the failure of al Qaeda to convince the vast majority of Muslims that their Great Jihad is valid. In Iraq, the alliance between Iraqi insurgents and global jihadists has, from the onset of the war, been a partnership of convenience. The relationship was never based on common ideology. A similar situation prevails in Afghanistan and the Tribal Areas of Pakistan where foreign fighters have been tolerated in the context of a common cause. Here, the situation is a bit more complex: there is a religious debate raging on the scope of the jihad. Some leaders, mostly from the Taliban, want to focus on the Afghan occupation. Others, mainly from the foreign fighters, are ideologically bound to the larger jihad against the infidels worldwide. The debate covers a broad range of topics, from the nature of jihad (in other words, as a defensive war, what should be its targets) to the tactics permissable in Islamic warfare. The foreign fighters generally see anyone associated with foreigners as infidels, including Muslims. The Taliban are not so robust in their definition of the enemy. In terms of tactics, some Taliban leaders are against suicide bombings; al Qaeda, obviously, is not. I had a firsthand experience with that debate while interviewing a Taliban commander in the Panwayi district of Kandahar. He tried to convince me that suicide bombing was permissable. The way he was speaking, his tone and body language, indicated to me that this was part of a debate, that he'd only been recently convinced.

Other Taliban leaders have not been convinced. The local uprising in South Waziristan against al Qaeda is a symptom of the larger disconnect between various jihadists. More imprtantly, it illustrates that the al Qaeda movement does not command popular support among Muslims. It is a destructive aberration in an otherwise legitimate set of grievances, grievances that can be traced back hundreds of years to the glory days of colonialism and western interference in Islamic societies (we must remember also that this era is not finished; there is historical continuity that gives the wars of the 21st century some context, some grounding in things like the Paris conference of 1919, or the partitioning of India and Pakistan in 1947, or the Russian invasion and subsequent civil war in Afghanistan of which the current conflict in Afghanistan is another phase - all of these events are connected).

Is this the beginning of the end of al Qaeda? I don't think so. The movement is by its nature self-generating. The al Qaeda phenomenon is the hydra it is today not because of popular support but because of the lengths its adherents will go to make their point. It's the acts that make it such a frightening beast, not its size. Those acts are starting to piss off even the more militant Islamists in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. But rather than treat this as the natural end of al Qaeda, we should rather see it as an opportunity to strengthen the majority Islamic viewpoint, even among the Taliban. There is room to discuss legitimate grievances and sideline the radical ideologues. What we need are credible leaders to start those discussions (not the U.S., not Britain, not Pakistan).

Muslims should also see this as an opportunity. Al Qaeda has damaged Islam's image; it has reinforced the suspicion of Islam nurtured over centuries of Orientalist thought and study (Edward Lane couldn't have dreamed of a better symbol for his image of Islam). But now a space is opening up for discussion, a place where Muslims can finally represent themselves truly for who they are, in opposition to al Qaeda. Simultaneously, the Bush administration is crumbling.

This is a crucial moment. Let's hope moderate voices can fill the impending vacuum.