Insurgent Design: Re-Emergence of Al-Qa'ida from 9/11 to the Present - Syria, South Asia, Warfare Technology, Enterprise in a Jihadi Market, Exploiting Emergent Battlefields, Federated Macro Structure

This excellent report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. Analysts disagree on how to characterize al-Qa'ida's evolution. One perspective regards jihadi-Islamism in general to be self-marginalizing. A second perspective describes a merging of discrete jihadist grand strategies that is considered symptomatic of the decline of al-Qa'ida and its allies. A third finds that al-Qa'ida is gathering strength. This study expands upon the gathering strength perspective, contending that al-Qa'ida's successes are derived from its design orientation and competence. Al-Qa'ida agents have vigorously redesigned their transnational system to adapt to a profoundly hostile and unpredictable environment. For al-Qa'ida and its brethren, the highest rate of adaptation is occurring on the battlefield, as they experiment with varied technologies of warfare, rather than in debate over grand strategic ideas. Where before there were fleeting, desultory actions by terroristic cells, now maturing organizations vie for territorial control, establishing jihadi emirates and proto-states. To respond effectively to the situation, Western understanding of al-Qa'ida and the wider system of jihadi-Islamist insurgency must evolve apace.

The application of a design lens to the study of al-Qa'ida contributes to improved understanding of the organization's persistence and pattern of re-emergence. It also illuminates how the United States ought to respond to the challenges posed by al-Qa'ida and other jihadi-Islamist groups in the future. The implications of al-Qa'ida's design orientation and competence are numerous. First, al-Qa'ida design agents work within an increasingly expansive, energetic and competitive jihadi market—where competition stands to both fragment and advance collective jihadist causes. Second, the broad field of jihadi-Islamism—in which al-Qa'ida played a leading role for the better part of a decade and half—displays characteristics of a complex adaptive system that is self-organizing and co-evolving with its environment.

Third, it appears that al-Qa'ida's evolution over the last decade-and-a-half is analogous—albeit at a sub-state, inter-organizational level—to the process of state formation through warfare articulated by Charles Tilly in 1992. Whereas Tilly articulates how "war makes states and states make war,"8 in this case, jihadist organizations make insurgency and insurgency makes organizations that are more robust. Increasingly these organizations manifest state-like characteristics in the territories in which they operate—a phenomenon that is not restricted to the self-declared Islamic State, itself an al-Qa'ida offshoot. To contend with an emergent jihadi-Islamist insurgency effectively, Western understanding of the Qa'ida phenomenon is compelled to evolve apace.

This study is organized as follows: the first section reviews existing perspectives on how to characterize al-Qa'ida's evolution; the second elaborates on the design approach, and then proceeds with an examination of the Qa'ida organization's design competence; and the third presents implications of that examination.