The co-founder and editor-in-chief of Bloggingheads.tv, author Robert Wright talks to anthropologist Scott Atran in this video above, "Lessons Learned: The Creation of Terrorists." Atran has written a book, "Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists," that details his experience and conclusions from talking to terrorists from all over the Muslim world. Both of them are liberals critical of the USA and its war on terror. Wright feels its futile to kill jihadi leaders, who he considers endlessly replaceable from the bottomless well of Islam. Atran favors a touchy feely approach to defeating jihadis, fighting the war in the abstract rather than concretely, to do less with more results. It sounds a little too dreamy. He also has a rather romantic view of the Arab Spring which is sure to be cruelly disappointed. Even so, the interview offers much of substance. Atran claims that formal religious training does not make terrorists, with the exception of peculiar places like the Pakistani madrassas, where there is no public education alternative. He says that most jihadis are young kids in flux, who are seeking an identity. They could follow the example of a famous soccer player, Barrack Obama, or Osama Bin Laden. They don't see the difference between them. Usually they follow their friends into jihad, one step at a time on a long journey to radicalization. Once they join their friends into the local radical mosque, one of the guys eventually gets tired of all the radical talk but no action and leaves. His friends follow him and isolate themselves in a radical coccoon, where they descend to the next level of radicalism and immerse themselves in dreams of glory. The Saudis spot radicals by noting when they stop going to the mosque. Up until that time, intervention will work, particularly a combined appeal from elements of their entire community: friends, family, clergy. However, once they form their radical cell, they are too committed to be talked out of it. Once the radical cell has gestated for a period, the jihadis seek affirmation from an established jihadi organization. Al Qaeda never recruited, but rather took applications from such types. The classic example is Mohammed Atta's Hamburg cell. Al Qaeda operated like the National Institute of Health does in medical research, examining proposals for terrorist attacks and funding those it favored. The successors to Al Qaeda turn their applicants away with advice to make jihad where they are. Example: Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter. Atran favors the British approach, in which the bad guys are quietly killed. He disapproves of the America public fury in attacking the bad guys, which tends to feed their propaganda. He finds the drone attacks, how successful, are counterproductive. Atran says that the number of bad guys is so small that a noisy public campaign to kill them tends to give them too much publicity and the consequent recruits, keeping their movement alive. Hmmm.
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Posted
Sep 18 2011, 10:32 AM
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BLACKFIVE