Hoping for strategic stupidity

By Fester:

Riffing off of BJ's post from earlier today, there are a couple of things that have stood out in the ongoing insurgency and civil war in Somalia. One which the LA Times is hitting upon and that is the introduction and operatalization of an Al-Qaeda in XYZ franchise.

  U.S. officials said it's unclear whether Shabab's threat is real or just anti-Western rhetoric intended to rattle U.S. intelligence officials. Analysts note that Al Qaeda faces the same challenges that prevented it from establishing a Somalia base before, including power struggles among the country's Islamists, competition from local clan networks and differences between those seeking to focus attacks in Somalia and those favoring Al Qaeda's global agenda.....

a growing radicalization of Somalia's Islamists. Although Somalia has long had hard-liners, most of the population practiced a moderate form of Islam, and even extremists limited attacks to inside the country or against Ethiopia, a longtime rival....

Barno cautioned that Al Qaeda still faced resistance from Somalia's major clans, which so far have been less interested in radical anti-Western attacks and frown upon Al Qaeda's signature large-scale attacks, particularly when they result in civilian casualties. Clan leaders also have been reluctant to send their men to fight with Al Qaeda outside Somalia, he said.

 

Here
is hoping that Al-Queada remains stupid and incapable of learning. Areas of disorder and chaos that are created
by weak and locally illegitimate states are the seams where non-state actors
flourish best. Al-Quaeda in Iraq was a small but very visible force that
attracted cross-border support and notoriety. It was defeated because they pissed off the local fighters who were
doing most of the fighting and most of the dying for their own reasons. AQI attempted to impose its own will without
buy-in or support from local power brokers, and after they made one too many
grabs for smuggling revenue and religious extremism, the other Sunni Arab
groups flipped on them. 

AQI
did this in part because of the fundamental strategic diagnosis of Al-Quaeda. Their theory of change focuses on the far enemy
and taking deep strikes against the United States. This is because their analysis indicates that
corrupt, repressive, unpopular local regimes are virtually unassailable as long
as they can count on significant American support. Fighting the local fights in this world view
is a waste of time and resources as they are insignificant fights. This also means that paying attention to the
local power dynamics is not necessary as long as the AQ-affiliated fighter is
hitting a US target at the same time. 

This
strategic blindness kicked AQI�s ass because the locals very reasonably thought
that their lives and their interests should predominate and that a three or
four sided war against numerically superior foes with better firepower was not
a way to secure their interest.

Generalized
disorder is the friend of Al-Qaeda and other non-state actors while order and
predictability is the goal of state actors. Hopefully the leadership of AQ-East Africa will not be able to learn
from the mistakes of another localized franchise of AQ and thus create massive
local disorder within supportive social and political networks. Here is hoping that they remain stupid.