Since the brutal attack in Boston a few weeks ago, the word terrorism, without being preceded by the word "cyber," unfortunately returned to our lexicon.  For those who have spent the better part of the past decade obsessed by the al Qaeda terrorism threat, there was much in Boston that looked very familiar.

Two men who have spent an even longer time watching the evolution of the al Qaeda threat, Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor in chief of the London-based newspaper, Al-Quds al-Arabi, and Phil Mudd, a former CIA analyst, Deputy Director of the agency's Counterterrorist Center, and Deputy Director of the National Security Branch at the FBI, have both written important and well-argued books that have a direct relevance to the al Qaeda inspired attack in Boston, the ongoing evolution of the al Qaeda threat and the U.S. intelligence community's current and future capacity to understand the ever-changing nature of that threat.

Abdel Bari Atwan's book, After Bin Laden - Al Qaeda the Next Generation, as its title connotes, seeks to explain the characteristics of "Al Qaeda and Associated Movements," or AQAM as he likes to call them, in the wake of bin Laden's death. 

Not surprisingly, Mr. Atwan makes a compelling case that while the death of Osama bin Laden and the decimation of al Qaeda Core's top leadership has hurt the central organization that was based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the movement and ideology, with its worldwide presence via regional associated movements, is as much of a menace to the West as ever and undiminished in its goal of a global caliphate.

Mr. Atwan spends considerable time discussing the poorly named "Arab Spring," the successive revolutions which occurred across the Arab world and the relationship that these events have with indigenous al Qaeda-associated movements that have their own deep roots in some of the very states that saw their governments topple, sectarian conflicts break into the open, and civil wars erupt.

While many of us in the West hoped that the revolutions in the Arab states would herald better governance and the opportunity for homegrown secularists with their own domestic legitimacy to rise, Mr. Atwan saw a different future - one where Islamist parties would dominate the ballot box and armed Islamists or AQAM would have a role to play as well.

Mr. Atwan takes the reader on an impressive tour of the Islamic world, with chapters and sections on almost every country and region from Arabia to Uzbekistan.  While some of the background history that he provides on each country or region is old news to regular readers of the New York Times international section, they do provide the context in each locale for Mr. Atwan to make his most provocative argument - al Qaeda-associated movements are poised for a comeback when either the Islamists or secularists fail in their efforts of good governance, regardless of whether it is in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Nigeria, North Africa, Sinai, or Central Asia.  While the situation in each country is distinct, in general, regional al Qaeda-type violence certainly seems unabated and potentially is on the upswing in countries like Iraq, Nigeria, Mali and Syria.

Mr. Atwan is at his best when explaining the tribal dynamics in such places as Yemen, where different alliances among the tribes and their long standing dissatisfaction with any central government make them a natural ally of al Qaeda-associated movements, who also seek to challenge the central government, are armed, and espouse an austere form of Islam that is not foreign to the locals.  Mr. Atwan draws similar astute insights about local dynamics when considering the prospects for growth for al Qaeda in the states of North Africa or the Islamic Maghreb.

Unlike many who follow jihadist groups, Mr. Atwan did not neglect the unstable Russian Caucasus region, including Chechnya and Dagestan -places now etched in the American consciousness.  While some may not have understood the centrality of the Caucasus in the al Qaeda narrative, Mr. Atwan captures not only its importance, but also its worldwide links to jihadists in Pakistan, the Middle East, and even Europe.

With such a broad array of al Qaeda-associated threats gathering across the globe, and a sporadic, hard to characterize, homegrown threat now having proven its capability to kill, one is likely to worry how the United States will confront this multi-faceted threat matrix.

Fortunately, we have Philip Mudd, who ate, slept, and dreamt this threat for the better part of this past decade from within various parts the U.S. counterterrorism bureaucracy, to provide a unique perspective on how the United States is organized to confront this threat.  What gives Mr. Mudd's book, Takedown - Inside the Hunt for Al Qaeda, its arc is his career trajectory within a counterterrorism bureaucracy that was constantly evolving to catch up to and ultimately try to stay ahead of a rapidly evolving al Qaeda threat.

For an outsider, Mr. Mudd provides unique insights as to what it was like on a day-to-day basis working in the CIA Counterterrorism Center and FBI National Security Branch and how those entities functioned, faults and all.  Mudd's descriptions of his encounters with senior policymakers and agency heads like Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and FBI Director Robert Mueller could easily have been found in a typical Bob Woodward book about inside Washington.  However, Mr. Mudd is a gentleman and takes the high road in his recollections.  The book is less about "takedowns" of particular terrorists and much more a story of Mr. Mudd's experiences inside the U.S. national security apparatus, embedded in explanations of the functioning of the U.S. counterterrorism community's threat bureaucracy.

Mr. Mudd's vantage point from inside the different organizations at particular points in time allows him to explain how the al Qaeda threat looked to the U.S. government at various points during the last decade.  This perspective is quite important and in many ways sets up the findings of Mr. Atwan's book about al Qaeda post-bin Laden.

Mr. Mudd served as a National Security Council staffer when the attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred, after which he returned to CIA where he found himself at the rapidly growing Counterterrorism Center.  At that time, the U.S. intelligence community was concerned primarily - and rightly - with al Qaeda Core in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and how to understand the hierarchy and network that supported it.  So, the arrests, capture, and subsequent interviews of senior al Qaeda leaders such as Abu Zubayda and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed provided the intelligence community with information that could help potentially thwart plots or provide insights on other plotters and was, as Mr. Mudd describes it, "gold" for intelligence analysts.

As progress was being made against al Qaeda Core in the Af/Pak region, the United States mobilized for the Iraq War.  Mr. Mudd describes how, suddenly, the al Qaeda-linked insurgency in Iraq that rose up in the wake of the 2003 U.S. invasion became an important focus and required an expansion of resources at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center.  Moreover, the phenomenon was not confined to Iraq after 2003 - but rather, an al Qaeda threat was spreading through South East Asia, North Africa, Turkey and Europe, as evidenced by attacks in these areas.

Although Mr. Mudd does not provide the detailed historical context or local dynamics that Mr. Atwan focuses on to explain this geographic proliferation of the al Qaeda threat, he does focus on one element that is a key common factor among all the al Qaeda associated groups regardless of where they are - ideology.  This ideology is not only anti-Western, but also requires the overthrow of Middle Eastern regimes, and thus "attacks are meant to spark a revolution, not an end in themselves." 

Furthermore, Mr. Mudd explains that it was during this time period (2003-2006) that the U.S counterterrorism community felt an acute sense of "surprise and unknowing" given the geographic sprawl that characterized al Qaeda attacks during this time. As time wore on, though, the intelligence community began to dedicate analysts not solely to al Qaeda Core but rather to these geographically disperse regions that now seemingly housed al Qaeda problems.  Interestingly, what Mr. Mudd describes happening at the national level was also happening at the NYPD Intelligence Division, and we too had to both widen the aperture of our analytic lens and devote more resources to a broader and more diverse al Qaeda threat during those years.

Once Mr. Mudd moved to the FBI, on loan from the CIA, he gained insight into the threat that was increasingly manifesting itself in the West and ultimately struck in Boston - the homegrown threat, comprised of "loose clusters of youths, typically kids who were angry and thought other members of their communities weren't serious about opposing what they saw as a U.S. or Western crusade in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere."  These men had little if any operational links to al Qaeda, but rather were inspired to act by the group's ideology.  

As the reader finishes both books, the authors veer off into very different directions.  Mr. Mudd makes no predictions as to what the threat will look like in future years, but gives the impression that the terrorism threat management bureaucracy in the United States had become more streamlined and regularized, or "far more well-oiled and less jumpy, than in the first years," suggestive of a higher level of functionality and capacity to thwart future al Qaeda plots.

Mr. Atwan, however, paints a picture that unfortunately does not bode well and in some ways challenges the assertions that the U.S. intelligence community has adequately evolved enough to face the diffuse, de-centralized al Qaeda threat that we face today.  In Mr. Atwan's world, various al Qaeda-type groups coordinate and collaborate across huge swaths of the earth and take advantage of the chaos and instability of the post-Arab Spring Middle East.  New post-revolutionary governments, whether Islamist or secular, may face protestors and al Qaeda-type terrorists who work together, if they falter or fail to deliver the changes that were promised. 

Mr. Mudd is clearly right in that the U.S. intelligence community now has the bandwidth and regional expertise to adequately focus on a diverse and dispersed al Qaeda threat.  However, the ability to better understand the threat and the ability to roll it back are different processes (intelligence analysis vs. counterterrorism policy execution).  Unfortunately, greater and deeper insights do not assure American counterterrorism success, especially when Mr. Atwan makes a compelling case that we face a future of many ‘al Qaedas' who have metastasized in hard to get at places, are unlikely to be completely defeated on the battlefield, nor collapse because of infighting, nor be successfully rendered impotent via U.S.-led decapitation strategies.  Thus, despite the U.S. intelligence community's increase in terms of both breadth and depth of expertise, the longest war will probably go on longer, and we may have to be content with an American strategy that can keep the regional al Qaeda franchise threats in check, but cannot eradicate them. 

Mitchell D. Silber is the Executive Managing Director of K2 Intelligence and was the Director of Intelligence Analysis for the New York Police Department from 2007 to 2012.  

There seems to be some disagreement between Pakistan's extremists over participation in the May 11 elections. Pakistani Taliban spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan recently told Pakistanis to boycott the elections because democracy is un-Islamic, while Maulana Sami ul-Haq, a conservative cleric who runs a religious seminary that trained many Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, said in a follow-up statement that voting is a religious obligation.   

Could it be that the Taliban's brutal attacks on politicians belonging to the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) coalition have actually been detrimental to the wider extremist movement in Pakistan? The attacks definitely handicap religious parties, who often share sympathies and ideologies with the Taliban, at a time when they could potentially capitalize on staunch public disappointment with the outgoing government's performance.

While religious parties lost big in the 2008 elections, they probably anticipated some role for themselves in the next government, which is likely to be led by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, a conservative political party known for its own "special relationship" with extremists. Religious parties were further bolstered by a survey conducted by the British Council earlier this year revealing that 38 percent of Pakistani youth surveyed believed Islamic law is better suited for Pakistan than democracy.

Instead, Taliban attacks have likely increased chances of a high sympathy vote for the secular parties, a dynamic that helped usher in the PPP coalition in 2008 following the tragic death of Benazir Bhutto.

Why is it, though, that the extremists are not speaking with one voice? The commonsense - and most likely - argument is that they are just plain unorganized. Even though many of Haq's students joined the Taliban movement, it's doubtful that he has direct influence over the Taliban command and control structure - hence the very public statements contradicting the official Taliban position.

Let's not forget that Haq is a politician who leads his own political party and previously served in the Senate. His statements are more a warning for his former students than anyone else to not ruin his chances or those of the others who have been sitting on the sidelines for several years. A return to politics means a chance to advance the ideological agenda of the religious right, but it also allows individuals like Haq and his friends to benefit from state resources, foreign aid flows, and other "perks" of being in power.   

No one expects the religious right to take over...yet. Religious parties never have much success in Pakistani elections. Furthermore, the likelihood of a General Zia ul-Haq figure emerging on the scene is low. Zia, the military dictator who introduced a conservative interpretation of shariah law in several areas of Pakistani culture and law, began the trend of mixing religion with politics as a tool of state power. The approach engendered a vast network of militants that fought mostly Pakistan's battles while invoking the name of Islam; some were also used by the United States in pushing the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, while others advanced their own sectarian agendas. 

While no one can compete with Zia's quasi-theocratic feat at the moment, religion and politics still mix - and badly. Pakistan's long relationship with militants and its cooperation with the United States in Afghanistan after September 11, 2001 have engendered a new breed of religious right - those against the state, namely the Pakistani Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

It is because of this shift in the state's relationship with militants that the Pakistani military has a clear interest in strengthening the religious right's political chances. Could the likes of Sami ul-Haq and other religious political parties convince the Pakistani Taliban to stop attacking the Pakistani military, secular politicians, and ordinary citizens? Don't bet money on it, but in February the Taliban did say they would participate in talks with the military if they would be mediated by one of the following individuals: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz President Nawaz Sharif, Jamaat-e-Islami leader Syed Munawar Hasan, or Jamiat-Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman.

The talks did not happen. Instead, the Pakistani military began an operation in the Tirah Valley where numerous security officials and militants have died. It is becoming harder and harder for the Pakistani military to respond to battlefield challenges by militants who now want access to the ballot box too. In addition to militant leader Hafeez Saeed's new "political career," dozens of individuals with alleged links to militant organizations have filed papers for the elections.

The entrée of such unsavory characters into Pakistani politics would not be a first, but it would be the wrong direction for a country that is still testing a rapidly evolving democratic culture and also trying to clarify the role of religion in politics. Islam, after all, is inextricable from Pakistan's history. The country was formed in 1947 as part of a political push by Muhammad Ali Jinnah to establish a homeland for the Indian subcontinent's impoverished Muslims. General Kayani, Chief of Army Staff, reiterated this point last week when he told the country's premier military academy that "Pakistan was created in the name of Islam and Islam can never be taken out of Pakistan."

Many believed Kayani's remarks justified religious extremism. This can hardly be the whole truth given the losses the military has suffered fighting the Pakistani Taliban. But the skepticism provoked by his remarks illustrates just how damaged religion and politics has become in Pakistan.

If extremists can take advantage of this characterization of Pakistan to advance their violent agendas, then surely the country's secular parties and government institutions can strengthen themselves against the militant threat in the name of Islam as well. But with extremists such as the members of the banned sectarian group, Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, fielding candidates in this week's elections, such progress does not appear imminent.

Shamila N. Chaudhary is a South Asia analyst at the Eurasia Group and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. She served as director for Pakistan and Afghanistan at the White House National Security Council from 2010-2011.

Most people remember the harrowing cover of TIME in late July 2010 depicting the 18-year-old Afghan woman whose nose and ears were cut off following a Taliban sentence for her attempt to flee from an abusive husband. Many can recall the penetrating glare of the green-eyed Afghan girl in a refugee camp on the cover of National Geographic. Both images are powerful reminders of the past atrocities, present humanitarian strife, and future aspirations of millions in Afghanistan as the international military presence draws down.  Many Afghans ask, "Can my country avoid a relapse into civil war?"  Even those who assess this question with some optimism still find themselves asking, "Will Afghanistan be safe enough to raise my children and build a livelihood?"

Preventing an outright civil war is directly related to the national interests of the coalition countries engaged in Afghanistan.  A civil war would strengthen the hands of the numerous terrorist groups that operate on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.  Moreover, destabilizing spill-over effects would weaken an already fragile Pakistan, exacerbating the internal cleavages and security threats confronting the state with the world's fastest growing nuclear arsenal.  Therefore, the primary objective of the U.S.-led coalition is to ensure a stable and cooperative Afghan political order that denies terrorist groups the capacity and opportunity to conduct large-scale attacks against Western interests.  

Human rights perspectives, beyond those necessary to achieve this primary objective, are at best second order issues.  If human rights were a primary objective, the international community would have intervened earlier and stayed longer-something that is unfeasible and not in the interest of any of the coalition countries currently engaged in Afghanistan.  But this does not and should not preclude an effort to advance human rights in Afghanistan while the international coalition is present.  Though a second-tier objective, the international community has an interest in and a moral duty to improve human rights, or at least to do no harm.

The problem is that the human rights agenda has been undermined by unrealistic goals and ineffective efforts, too often driven by a desire to please domestic, Western audiences rather than to help the Afghan population.  International rhetoric has often elevated the drive to promote human rights-in particular the equality of women-as a goal on par with the primary security agenda.  This reflects measures of both idealism and cynicism.  Some have held sincere yet naïve visions of Afghanistan's social and political transformation.  Others have simply used the human rights agenda as an instrument to garner political legitimacy and justify the human and material costs.  

Both views have led to vast amounts of foreign aid and political attention being squandered. Many schools and clinics have been built irrespective of the local demand.  Foreign aid has been conditioned by counterproductive gender quotas. Incredible amounts of time and resources have been spent on largely symbolic cases such as legislation on women's shelters or on Shiite marriages or the recent appointment of the new intelligence chief, Asadullah Khalid. But battling atrocious laws or a controversial appointment is the wrong fight. What matters is what affects the human rights that Afghan's exercise in their daily lives.

This raises the question: What is the right fight? What is the realist perspective on human rights in Afghanistan? Without reverting to naïve aspirations and while maintaining a realistic order of objectives, how can the international community more effectively advance human rights?

The single most effective thing the international community has done to promote human rights in Afghanistan and empower women is to send Afghan boys to school.  This should certainly not be understood as an argument against girls' schools or female education in general. But under conditions tantamount to patriarchal totalitarianism, the key to promoting human rights resides in the hands of Afghan men. Save a rebellion by Afghan women, only a voluntary shift in the attitudes of Afghan men can empower women and advance the human rights of every Afghan. All Afghan girls should get an education, but unless the men ease their repressive dominance, half of the population will never have the opportunity to exercise their human rights. Such attitudinal shifts are more sustainable if nurtured indigenously and voluntarily through education.  Conditioning aid on gender quotas and human rights principles mostly leads to counterproductive tension or symbolic gestures by Afghan counterparts.

In theory, conditioning aid could perhaps entice a shift in Afghan behavior but unless the international community is ready to withhold aid entirely if conditions are unmet-and be willing to jeopardize their national interests at stake-it is very unlikely to occur in practice.  Afghans know this. Besides, once the international presence in Afghanistan recedes, human rights gains will erode in the absence of the indigenous preference shifts necessary to sustain them. For change to last, Afghans must want it.

The good news is that primary education is one of the greatest legacies of the international effort in Afghanistan since 2001.  Fewer than 1 million children were in school before the intervention and virtually no girls received primary education.  Today, some 9 million children receive primary education and about 40 percent are girls.  This is a monumental achievement.  Unfortunately, it is not mirrored in the higher education sector.  Although progress has undoubtedly occurred-Kabul, for instance, has witnessed a surge in newly established universities-the capacity of the higher education sector is still far from sufficient to absorb the influx of students from the primary sector. A more concerted international effort to improve the higher education sector would significantly increase the opportunity of the youth to fulfill their potential and, in doing so, improve conditions for advancing human rights and greater gender equality.

A realistic time horizon is also important to establishing an effective human rights effort.  Too much, too soon is too risky. Some say clocks tick slower in Afghanistan.  It is safe to say, at least, that past attempts to quickly roll out vast social reforms have triggered civil unrest. Modernizing efforts by King Amanullah Khan ignited revolts and eventually a civil war in 1928. He was forced to abdicate the next year. Only the Soviet intervention in 1979 kept the Communist rule from the same fate after it had introduced its radical reform agenda in 1978.

The lesson is that sustainable social change in Afghanistan is slow.  The human rights agenda must therefore be attuned to a long-term perspective. Here is great potential. Navigating between currents of modernization and conservatism, between forces of societal change, tradition, and stagnation, Afghans will chart their own course on human rights after 2014. In doing so, the Afghan youth can be decisive. In a country stricken by an adult illiteracy rate around 70 percent, and where 43 percent of its 30 million inhabitants are aged 14 or younger, the 9 million children currently in school have truly transformative potential.

Surely the lives of too many Afghans can still be described in Hobbesian terms as brutish, nasty, and short.  Immediate and concerted action remains necessary as human rights violations and humanitarian strife across the country must be addressed.  It is because of this that many international actors take a short-term view when assessing how to advance human rights and show legible results. This has a persuasive logic, but it also has counterproductive implications.  In particular, this short-term lens has led to a strong inclination in the international community to focus on the near-term ebbs and flows of the human rights agenda in insulated Kabul.  

International pushback against proposed legislation and specific cabinet appointments has often dominated the human rights agenda.  Highly visible international intervention in a specific political or legal case may resonate well with Western audiences, but through Afghan eyes it risks tainting the human rights agenda as an avenue of international social engineering and a principle question of Afghan sovereignty.  Such perceptions render Afghan advocates of human rights much less effective and undermine the local ownership which is so difficult to nurture, but so important in order to sustain change.

An incremental, low-profile, long-term international effort holds the greatest chance of success in the promotion of human rights in Afghanistan.  A more realistic and effective approach must cultivate and support Afghan agents of change, particularly the educated youth. But their potential can only be unleashed if they are given the opportunity to do so by a stable environment.  As security is the basis of any human rights progress in Afghanistan, the primary objective of a stable country bereft of terrorist havens both meets and complements the human rights agenda. 

Christian Bayer Tygesen is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at Copenhagen University.  He conducted field research and diplomatic assignments in Kabul in 2011 and 2012.

Sectarian violence is raging in Pakistan, and some commentators are now describing the relentless assaults on Shia Muslims as genocide. Predictably, many observers fear that this unrest-coupled with a dangerous overall security situation-could delay Pakistan's May 11 national elections.

It's an understandable, yet ultimately misplaced, concern. As was recently pointed out, Pakistan has held elections under much more trying conditions-including one in Swat in 2008, during the height of the Pakistani Taliban's insurgency there.

Few commentators, however, are talking about another possible impact of sectarian strife on the elections: Shias-roughly 20 percent of the Pakistani population-mobilizing en masse to vote the ruling political party out of power.

Their motivations would be obvious. Shias-like Ahmadis, Christians, and other religious minorities in Pakistan-are incensed at the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) for failing to protect them, and for taking no meaningful action against those who terrorize them. In the blunt words of Abdul Khaliq Hazara, a prominent Hazara Shia in Quetta who heads the Hazara Democratic Party, "the government doesn't have the will to go after them."

Under this scenario, who would the Shia vote for? Probably not the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)-Pakistan's chief opposition party and the current favorite to lead the next governing coalition. The PML-N's bastion is in Punjab Province, which is also the home base of some of Pakistan's most vicious sectarian extremist groups, including the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). Yet instead of confronting the LeJ, the PML-N is seemingly courting it. Last year, the law minister of Punjab's provincial government (led by the PML-N) campaigned with the leader of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), LeJ's parent organization. And just days ago, the secretary general of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ)-like the LeJ, a splinter group of SSP- bragged: "We have thousands of voters in almost every constituency of the South and Central Punjab and the PML-N leadership is destined to knock at our doors when the elections come."

Rumors have abounded that, with the election in mind, the PML-N is negotiating a "seat-adjustment" agreement with ASWJ. (The Express Tribune, in an article later removed from its website, described the deal as follows: the PML-N will support the ASWJ in races for three National Assembly seats, while in return the ASWJ, "whose votes often play a vital role in helping candidates win," will withdraw its candidates from contesting about a dozen National Assembly seats in Punjab) Last month the PML-N denied the rumors-only to be contradicted just days later by SSP's leader. Regardless of who's telling the truth, the PML-N has done little to dispel the expectation that, if it leads the next government, it will do little to address the Shias' plight.

A more likely choice for the Shias might be voting for Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. The PTI, more so than the PML-N or PPP, has gone out of its way to condemn the country's sectarian bloodshed and its chief instigators. Pakistani analysts have contrasted Khan's strong and unequivocal denunciations with the "obfuscations and meaningless remarks" uttered by the Pakistani government. After an LeJ bombing killed nearly 90 people in a Quetta market last month, Khan declared at a press conference: "I tell you by name, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi...there can be no bigger enemy of Islam than you." He also accused the LeJ of exhibiting "the worst kind of enmity towards Islam." Such strong language is rarely used by the PPP or PML-N. In January, Khan even endorsed Shia demands for targeted operations against religious militants.

Admittedly, the PTI has no plans to take aim at the root causes of sectarian violence. For example, reforming-much less repealing-Pakistan's blasphemy laws (which are often used as a pretext to persecute religious minorities) is a move no political party in Pakistan dares make; the late Punjab governor Salman Taseer was assassinated for merely criticizing them. Nonetheless, compared to the two major parties, the PTI gives the impression of genuinely caring about, and wanting to help, Pakistan's besieged minorities (along with other vulnerable segments of the population; the party recently released a new manifesto to protect the disabled). Tellingly, after an attack on a Quetta snooker hall targeting Hazara Shias left more than 100 dead in January, Khan visited the victims' grieving families-a meeting that occurred before the arrival of Pakistani government officials. Shias in Lahore and other areas of Punjab-home to 148 of Pakistan's 272 national assembly seats-could cause significant damage to the PML-N's electoral prospects if they vote as a bloc for the PTI. 

But there's little reason to believe Pakistan's Shias will actually turn out in droves to vote for the PTI. Many Shias are suspicious of Khan because of his support for talks with the Taliban and other gestures perceived as sympathetic to religious militants. Such suspicions intensify when PTI officials (including party vice chairman Ajaz Chaudhry) share the stage with hardline Islamist figures-including members of the ASWJ-during rallies of the Pakistan Defense Council, a collective of conservative religious parties. A recent video produced by the Shia rights group ShiaKilling.com captures the contempt that Pakistani Shias harbor toward the PTI (and toward the PML-N as well). One Shia cleric (who does not appear to enjoy a large following) has even peddled an elaborate conspiracy theory involving Saudi Arabia and the ISI colluding to install Khan as the leader of a new "Saudi-Wahhabi Islamic State" of Pakistan.

There's also little reason to believe Shias will band together and vote en masse for any other political party. Formal research on Pakistani Shia voting patterns is limited, but based on informal conversations and anecdotal evidence, it's safe to say that such patterns are far from monolithic. On May 11, some will vote along ethnic lines. Others will opt for the PPP; in a by-election last year in the Punjab city of Multan, the PPP candidate triumphed-and analysts noted that he earned Shia votes (in fact, according to research by Andrew Wilder, Shias in Punjab tended to vote for the PPP as far back as the 1990s -because of the perception that it was more liberal and tolerant of religious minorities than were other parties). Others still will vote for the MQM. This is a party that has controlled Karachi politics for decades-and has traditionally received many Shia votes (though given Karachi's violent political culture, many of them were probably cast under pressure). Some will simply choose a sympathetic patron. Finally, many Shias-due to fear, apathy, or sheer disgust-probably won't vote at all.

This isn't to say Shias aren't joining forces to pursue political goals. Last November, a top official with the Majlis-e-Wahdat-e-Muslimeen (MWM), a collaborative of Pakistani Shia religious scholars, announced that the organization would be establishing a Shia Solidarity Council "to promote harmony" among the country's Shias. The MWM, he added, "has been making all-out efforts to unite all Shia parties of Pakistan at one platform." (MWM party leaders, incidentally, have also said they seek to "counter [the] nefarious designs of the imperialist forces" against Pakistan, and the MWM has staged U.S. flag-burnings in front of the American embassy in Islamabad.)

Several weeks ago, the MWM  registered as a political party with Pakistan's Election Commission, and has now decided to contest elections. Party officials have vowed to field candidates for 100 parliamentary seats (60 of them in the national assembly), mostly representing Shia-majority areas in Punjab and in Pakistan's other three provinces. However, owing to a variety of factors-such as the lack of electoral success of Pakistani religious parties, and the MWM's dearth of political resources-the party's big-picture prospects appear dim.

The takeaway? Pakistan's sectarian violence is unlikely to delay this year's election. And, owing to the strong likelihood of a PPP or PML-N victory on May 11, the votes cast by those in the crosshairs of that violence will fail to delay the inevitable-the arrival in power of another fragile coalition unable or unwilling to protect them.

Michael Kugelman is the senior program associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He can be reached at michael.kugelman@wilsoncenter.org or on Twitter @michaelkugelman

Just after Christmas, the Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP) offered a peace deal of sorts to the Pakistani government.  In exchange for a cessation of TTP violence, they demanded Pakistan's constitution be brought into conformity with their version of Islamic law and the government break ties with the United States.  In response, a senior Pakistani government official reportedly called the offer "preposterous." 

Yet it may not be, especially regarding the implementation of religious law.  Similar demands were met in 2009 after the TTP took the Swat valley, with the Pakistani government giving away these very rights.  The local government led by the Awami National party agreed to establish sharia law in Swat and the broader Malakand Division, which was approved by the national parliament and signed by President Zardari.  It was only when the Pakistani Taliban pushed for more territorial gains that the government responded with force of arms.  If past is prologue, the government may bend to get a deal now. 

However, the status quo arguably meets TTP demands regarding religious law, as much of what they seek already exists -  Islamic law plays a major role in governance, and militants are free to violently force their religious interpretations on the population. 

This slide towards religious governance goes back to the country's founding.  From the outset, the Objectives Resolution of 1949, which preceded the first of several constitutions, tilted Pakistan towards an Islamic state where citizens and their rights were defined by religion.  This occurred despite Jinnah's famous speech two years earlier to the Constituent Assembly, in which he said, "You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed -- that has nothing to do with the business of the State."  The Objectives Resolution went in a different direction, and while it recognized the presence of religious minorities, it only promised "adequate provision" of basic rights, while defining the entire state in Islamic terms. Constitutions that followed built off and expanded this foundation.

The biggest leaps came from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's secular Prime Minister from 1973-1977, and General Zia ul Haq's reign from 1978-1988.  Under Bhutto, the Ahmadis were effectively outlawed through constitutional changes that created a definition of a Muslim that excluded Ahmadis.  The constitution was also amended to establish the Council of Islamic Ideology to advise on whether proposed laws are compatible with Islam.  Not considered particularly devout, he took these and other steps to shore-up his flagging political fortunes, currying the support of religious leaders. 

Zia went even further, setting into place much of what the TTP wants today, changing both statutory law and constitutional provisions.  He amended the blasphemy law, a colonial era holdover, and increased the penalty to include death, but without requiring the provision of evidence.  This alone has had far-reaching effects.  The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) where I work knows of at least 17 people on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy and 20 others serving life sentences. Many more are in jail awaiting trial or appeal.  The surprising outcome of the Rimsha Masih case is an exception to the sad norm.

In addition, Zia altered the penal code to criminalize the basic acts of the Ahmadi faith. He amended the constitution to create the Federal Shariat Court to review legislation that may conflict with sharia law, creating an unclear legal structure that appears to run parallel to or oversee the secular system. In addition, Zia Islamicized the education system, the banking system, and the penal system through the Hudood ordinances. 

And today, for what the law does not forbid (which is much), militants have free reign to impose their religious views at the point of a gun. 

This was shockingly evident last week, with the January 10 attack that killed 81 Shi'a Muslims in twin bombings in a Shiite area of Quetta.   The attack was tragically predictable, as the targeting of Shia Muslims steadily increased throughout 2012, with rights groups estimating (before this attack) more than 400 murdered.  The TTP, and fellow travelers like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, regularly claim responsibility.  Human rights organizations continue to criticize government inaction, but the body count keeps rising. 

Another case in point is the TTP murder of Shahbaz Bhatti, the Federal Minister of Minority Affairs and the only Christian in Zardari's cabinet.  Working bravely against the blasphemy law, the TTP answered Shahbaz's efforts in 2010 by assassinating him steps from his mother's Islamabad home in broad daylight.  The TTP were so brazen as to leave fliers at the scene claiming responsibility, but no one has been held accountable and the investigation fizzled. 

Ahmadis continue to suffer discrimination, abuse, and violence.  80 Ahmadis were killed in May 2010 when two of their mosques were attacked by the TTP.  Violence continues today throughout the country - in July of this year the president of a local Ahmadi community outside Karachi was murdered and in December over 100 Ahmadi graves desecrated in Lahore. Hindus too are among the victims of Pakistan's climate of intolerance. The forced conversion and marriage of Hindu girls has increased in Sindh Province, and in 2012 upwards of 250 Pakistani Hindus from Sindh and Baluchistan Provinces have migrated to India to avoid increasing violence.  Christians remember the violence of Gojra in 2009, where an entire village was burned to the ground and no one held to account, and last year the National Commission for Justice and Peace found nine places of worship were damaged, destroyed or vandalized, including 5 churches and 3 Hindu temples. 

Clearly, the Pakistani Taliban's demand for enforcement of their version of Islamic law is not far from reality.  In the current environment, Pakistani law is used to enforce religious views, and militants act with impunity against those they consider un-Islamic.  Both the majority Muslim population and minority religious communities are at risk.  Pakistan's active civil society must continually retreat and retrench to protect the small openings for peaceful debate and human rights work.  Consequently, the very fabric of Pakistan is being torn, and if this "preposterous" ask is implemented, it could unravel more.

Knox Thames is the Director of Policy and Research at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The views expressed here are his own and may or may not reflect the views of the Commission. He can be followed on Twitter @thames22.

When people began pouring out onto the streets in Pakistan to protest on Friday, there was little chance that the government would take any action against them. After all, it was a declared public holiday to mark love for Prophet Mohammad, and religious and political groups had taken the government's move as a sign that the protests were sanctioned by the state.

Pakistan has been engulfed with protests against the controversial film the Innocence of Muslims. Over the course of a week, members of a religious grouphave broken through police cordons to amass outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi and protestors attacked the enclave reserved for diplomatic missions in the capital city of Islamabad. In Hyderabad, the second largest city in the Sindh province, a businessman was accused of blasphemy for not participating in the protests.

Friday was a free-for-all in Pakistan. Television channels broadcast footage of riots from nearly every major city. Protestors burned down cinemas in Karachi and Peshawar, as well as a church in Mardan, and attacked banks, police vehicles, buildings and even a public hospital.

In Karachi, hundreds of members of groups as diverse as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a mainstream political party, to the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan dominated the streets. Dozens of effigies of U.S. President Barack Obama were burned along with American flags, and protestors chanted against the U.S., Israel and the filmmaker behind Innocence of Muslims. Police were deployed at several key locations, but did not act to stop the protestors. In any case, they were largely outnumbered: about a half-dozen police officers are no match for hundreds of angry rioters.

The issue in Pakistan is not just of one day, or one week, of protests. The problem is institutional. The outrage at issues like an allegedly blasphemous film or cartoons has a legal basis, which stems from controversial laws that make blasphemy punishable by death, and excommunicate an entire sect. Government officials not only support the law, but the Interior Minister Rehman Malik once declared that he would kill a blasphemer himself. In a speech on Friday, Pakistan's Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf questioned why those denying the Holocaust were punished while there was no consideration for the feelings of Muslims.

The government has supported the outrage ensuing from the film, not just by declaring a holiday, but also by summoning the current U.S. Charge d'Affaires in Pakistan to protest the film, blocking YouTube and reportedly approaching Interpol. These measures do little to control violence. More importantly, the government has failed to act against banned organizations that operate openly and protest without anyone batting an eyelid.

Acting against the protestors -- as the Karachi police did when members of a Shiite group protested outside the U.S. Consulate -- is construed in Pakistan as the state attacking civilians for the sake of protecting ‘foreign governments.'

The outrage is also politicized, though not entirely. Many of the groups protesting are used by political parties for support during election campaigns. The Difa-e-Pakistan Council, a coalition of over 40 religious organizations that also protested on Friday, seeks to become a pressure group to raise issues of religious ‘honor' and issues related to foreign policy, and will likely support many of the candidates from coalition parties in the upcoming elections.

However, many protestors in Karachi said that they were not linked with political parties or religious groups, but had taken to the streets because they genuinely felt angry over the film. In a country where religious honor is tied in with nationalism, it is not surprising that many felt the need to protest. The protestors were from a wide spectrum, ranging from office workers to students to clerics. And for many of them, it was an opportunity to vent: President Asif Ali Zardari was condemned as vociferously as President Obama was.

The protests will likely die down in a few days, if not earlier. The pattern of these protests has been fairly consistent over the years, and the issue will be abandoned in favor of something else.

But the question of what the government can do to stop the protests may now be too late. The rot in Pakistan has been many decades in the making. Sectarian conflict has been stoked by successive rulers, including military dictators, religious outrage has received state approval by governments and political parties, and those responsible for massacres of various religious sects continue to fundraise to kill more. The military backs anti-U.S. sentiment, as evidenced during the debate in Pakistan over the Kerry-Lugar bill, or the outrage over the May 2 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. What is undoubtedly worse, though, is that there is no attempt to reverse any of the damage that has been done over the decades. Instead, the current government - and successive ones - will likely play a game of appeasement with religious groups in the hope that they will one day back them. That bet, as history has proven, will not pay off.

Saba Imtiaz works as a reporter for The Express Tribune in Karachi, Pakistan. She can be reached at saba.imtiaz@gmail.com.

Religion matters in Afghanistan in significant ways. However, U.S. policy over the past decade has paid it insufficient attention, costing the United States in its effort to build a stable country that does not foster violent extremism. I diagnosed the problem in my last posting, providing a coup d'œil of sorts about the tactical and strategic advantages of thoughtfully engaging Afghanistan's religious terrain. Now I am returning to offer specifics on how to advance religious tolerance and freedom in Afghanistan in a way that doesn't create a backlash. Much depends on fostering a legitimate government that respects, rather than represses, fundamental rights and provides the civic space needed for peaceful debate on issues of religion and state.

Granted, the legitimizing role of religion has been sought after in the Afghan nation-building enterprise.  Military counterinsurgency and stability operations doctrine places much emphasis on fostering a government viewed as legitimate, attempting to pull the "uncommitted middle" away from the irreconcilable insurgents into the government's orbit through outreach to religious leaders and communities. Yet U.S. doctrine and practice does not contemplate the consequence of pulling religious leaders with a Taliban-like religious viewpoint into the government fold.

A recent example of this error comes from President Hamid Karzai's endorsement of a so-called code of conduct issued by the Ulema Council, an influential body of clerics sponsored by the Afghan government, which permitted spousal abuse and promoted gender segregation. Yet Karzai has the legitimacy equation backwards. While it is doubtful the Afghan populace viewed him differently after his statement, the Ulema Council emerged with greater perceived influence as an entity that impacts political power. This is seriously problematic. The Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre highlighted two years ago how the result of such accommodation "has been both to sustain the former jihadi leaders' influence and contribute to the marginalization of more moderate Islamic forces." 

The key is to change the equation, so political leaders see the benefit of legitimizing voices supporting religious tolerance and rights, instead of trading them for ephemeral political gains. 

To advance this idea, the United States needs to foster and build an indigenous movement of religious leaders and public figures who can shape the environment in a positive way through their deeds and interpretations of Islamic law and practice. For those courageous enough to step forward, speaking out can be life-threatening. The murders of Salman Taseer and my friend Shahbaz Bhatti in neighboring Pakistan speak to this danger, as they resolutely criticized Pakistan's deeply flawed blasphemy law, but did not enjoy wide support and were vehemently opposed by the clerical class.    

How can we avoid this? Iraq offers a surprising example of how the U.S. government engaged the religious dynamic constructively. 

From 2006 to 2007, the Command Chaplain of Multinational Force-Iraq, Col. Michael Hoyt, together with Anglican clergyman Cannon Andrew White, began to engage Sunni and Shia religious leaders about the sectarian violence ripping the country apart. Over a year of tireless and dangerous work, Chaplain Hoyt and Cannon White found voices willing to denounce the violence. Far from being one chaplain's good initiative, the process had political backing from both General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, as well as enjoying the support of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and his National Security Advisor.

The outcome was the issuance of a remarkable document that denounced violence, which included the two major Islamic sects, as well as religious minority leaders who were also being victimized. The document was issued the day after the second bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, an attack that was followed by none of the widespread killing unleashed after the first Samarra bombing. In addition, observers credit this initiative with creating the conditions under which Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani urged calm and Shiite militant leader Moqtada al-Sadr chose not to incite his fighters.

Chaplain Hoyt's effort made a difference, sowing the seeds of tolerance by finding key leaders to embrace the effort, and a similar approach could work in Afghanistan. What follows are specific suggestions for how the U.S. government could increase its efforts to foster religious tolerance and freedom, creating the civic space needed to undercut extremists and to empower many voices that can legitimize this approach.

Prioritize: Decide that creating civic space through the promotion of religious tolerance and freedom will be a priority and act accordingly. For those skeptical about the ability of the United States to move the needle on sensitive issues woven into societal and religious mores, look no further than the progress made on women's rights. The Taliban were terrible persecutors of women, denying them education and forcing them under a burqa, and tradition-bound Afghan society was thought to be beyond moving on sensitive social issues. While much work remains, the international community's emphasis on women's rights has already benefited millions of Afghans. 

This did not happen by accident. It happened because the issue was made a priority and woven throughout U.S. and international engagement.  For instance, the Chicago NATO Summit Declaration on Afghanistan had very strong language on women's rights.  The emphasis of the international community likely compelled President Karzai to condemn the brutal assassination of a woman for alleged adultery.  A similar commitment could do the same for religious tolerance and freedom, which could further concretize gains for women.

Change the conversation: To push extremist voices out of the civic space, steps must be taken to change the domestic conversation and educate the population about other interpretations of their faith.  The United States should flood Afghanistan with Americans and religious leaders who can speak credibly about issues of religion, society, and law.  The visits of the U.S. Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Rashad Hussain, to Afghanistan have been very successful.  He is able to "talk religion" with high-level Afghan Government officials, religious leaders, civil society representatives, and students.  More of these trips are needed, but also with delegations of religious leaders crossing sectarian and/or religious lines. Further, the U.S. government can facilitate trips of religious leaders to the United States or through Islamic democracies.  

Utilize military chaplains:  The United States has at its disposal religious leaders in uniform in the chaplaincy corps.  In 2009, the Pentagon issued Joint Publication 1.05 for religious affairs in joint operations, which gives commanders the option of using chaplains to engage religious leaders in their area of responsibility. The change in doctrine reflects that chaplains understand religion in unique ways and can be deployed in conflicts where religion is a driving factor. Smartly using chaplains in this role worked in Iraq.  Of course Afghanistan is not Iraq, but religion matters in both.  With the chaplaincy corps still in theater, there is an opportunity to deploy them with like-minded partners to build a movement for tolerance and religious rights. 

Bolster and protect: Any effort must privately encourage the Afghan leadership to appoint politically moderate religious leaders, political reformers, and human rights defenders to key positions.  This would be in government ministries, but also in Afghanistan's court system, Ulema councils, the human rights commissions, and other places of influence.  Once in place, the international community can bolster their progressive work by supporting and funding initiatives.  At the same time, the international community must emphasize that their security is a matter of serious concern and press for the provision of adequate protections. 

Educate. The children of Afghanistan need to understand that "the other" has value, even if they have different religious or political views, thereby countering the narrative that leads to violence.  USAID has a major role in such an effort, in developing primary and secondary education materials and textbooks that incorporate themes of religious tolerance and religious freedom. Curriculum for both secular and religious schools should incorporate international human rights standards and speak of Afghanistan's pluralistic record in prior times. 

Talk about it:  To demonstrate a deep interest, matters of religious tolerance and freedom should be a prominent part of the bilateral conversation and agenda. Despite no reference in the Strategic Partnership Declaration, these issues can be addressed in communiqués from donor and contact group meetings. As recommended by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), where I am policy director, the U.S. government should include a "special working group on religious tolerance in U.S.-Afghan strategic dialogues" and integrate "human rights concerns into the reconciliation process looking toward a post-conflict Afghanistan."   

Train:  Along with efforts of this sort should come a commitment to train U.S. personnel, both civilian and military, on Islamic law and Afghan custom. The Afghan constitution in Article 3 enshrines Islamic law, stating "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam," and Article 130 states that Hanafi Islamic law shall apply when the law is silent. Together, these two provisions bring Islamic religious law into the realm of secular application. The JAG corps, the military's lawyers, are embracing this reality by including training on Islamic law, but more needs to be done. The U.S. government has no role in theological debates, yet it must be able to understand and engage with the law of the land. 

All these steps, if taken together and vigorously executed, could foster a wider understanding of the benefits of religious tolerance and freedom, which could begin to give reformers the support they need to guide Afghanistan toward a progressive future. Without a course correction, President Karzai will continue the flawed approach of attempting to build legitimacy by pulling neo-Taliban religious actors toward the government and trading human rights for political support. This won't work and is done at the peril of U.S. interests. And while engaging the religious terrain to promote religious tolerance and freedom is not a silver bullet, to quote Chaplain Hoyt from Iraq, it should be "part of the ammunition belt" that brings stability. 

Knox Thames is the Director of Policy and Research at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The views expressed here are his own and may or may not reflect the views of the Commission. He can be followed on Twitter @thames22.

Among the more interesting revelations from the documents recovered during the raid on Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound was bin Laden's angry reaction to Faysal Shahzad's effort to detonate a bomb in Times Square on May 1, 2010, based on the notion that Shahzad had violated the oath of allegiance he swore to the United States in a naturalization ceremony.  The critique was included in an October 2010 letter from bin Laden to ‘Atiyatullah ‘abd al-Rahman, a veteran Libyan fighter who would go on to become al-Qaeda's second-in-command after bin Laden's death.  The dispatch is part of a larger selection of documents that the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point released on May 3, 2012.

In the letter, Bin Laden criticizes both Shahzad and Hakimullah Mahsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader who offered him training and advice:

Perhaps you monitored the trial of brother Faysal Shahzad. In it he was asked about the oath that he took when he got American citizenship. And he responded by saying that he lied. You should know that it is not permissible in Islam to betray trust and break a covenant. Perhaps the brother was not aware of this. Please ask the brothers in Taliban Pakistan to explain this point to their members. In one of the pictures, brother Faysal Shahzad was with commander Mahsud; please find out if Mahsud knows that getting the American citizenship requires talking an oath to not harm America. This is a very important matter because we do not want al-Mujahidn[sic] to be accused of breaking a covenant.

The concern reappeared in another letter, likely from bin Laden or ‘Atiyatullah to Nassir al-Wuhayshi, emir of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).  The author counseled the emir:

If the government does not agree on a truce, concentrate on the Yemeni emigrants who come back to visit Yemen and have American visas or citizenship and would be able to conduct operations inside America as long as they have not given their promises not to harm America.

Bin Laden's (and ‘Atiyatullah's) sensitivity towards this issue reflects a sustained debate in the jihadist universe.  Although the idea of covenants have a long pedigree in Islamic theology, stretching back to the Prophet Muhammad's arrangements with the various non-Muslim tribes throughout the region, the issue gained relevance for jihadists only recently.  In 1998 Bin Laden formally articulated his strategy to abandon the jihad against "near enemy" Arab regimes and redirect the war towards the west.  But making the West (as opposed to the Islamic world) the battleground posed a series of theological challenges, including identifying the rules that governed the conduct of jihadists already living in or travelling to the West.

Probably not coincidentally, around this time a community of predominantly London-based sheikhs and commentators began discussing the obligations of jihadis residing in the West.  Abu Baseer al-Tartusi, an exiled Syrian scholar known for his radical, if often dissenting views on the conduct of jihad, lectured publicly about the importance of maintaining what he saw as a "covenant of security": Muslims in the West were not allowed to attack the countries in which they lived or had taken refuge in.  Al-Tartusi also spent a portion of his 1999 treatise al-Istihlal on the issue, and his followers later translated this section and issued it as a pamphlet (these works are available on Tartusi's website).  Tartusi explained that he was motivated to comment on the covenant because:

[A] great number of Muslims -both those living in the West as ‘citizens' and others- who enter the lands of non-Muslims in a covenant, do not really know what rights Sharia Law gives them and what responsibilities it assigns to them... And what makes this matter worse is that those wrongdoers' ignorance about the teachings, rulings and "purposes and intentions" of Islam makes them commit such acts in the name of Islam and under the impression of holding fast to Islam, while Islam has nothing to do with such irresponsible acts! 

While some prominent jihadis criticized Abu Baseer's view, other London-based jihadist figures expressed their adherence to the idea of the covenant.  In fact, after the 7/7 bombings in Britain (carried out by British Muslims) Tartusi issued a strongly-worded refutation of the attacks, arguing that tactics and strategy must always be grounded in theology, not vice versa.  Tartusi's ruling and subsequent controversy that erupted in militant circles was one example of the sensitivity around the issue.  The recent decision of the British government to re-launch their anti-radicalization "Prevent" strategy has revitalized the discussion among British extremists. 

The implications of bin Laden's far enemy strategy also ignited criticism from Middle Eastern-based jihadist figures.  Most prominently, in 2007 Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, aka Dr. Fadl, a former leader of the Egyptian group al-Jihad, leveled a series of theological, strategic, and personal attacks on Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda.  Al-Sharif opened with an interview for the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat in which he castigated al-Qaeda for violating this covenant.  In the most colorful portion, Sayyid Imam warned that "the followers of Bin Ladin entered the United States with his knowledge, on his orders, double-crossed its population, and killed and destroyed. The Prophet, God's prayer and peace be upon him, said: "On the Day of Judgment, every double-crosser will have a banner at his anus proportionate to his treachery." Shortly thereafter, Imam released a book which expanded on many of these criticisms. As he wrote in Guiding Jihad Work in Egypt and the World:  "Whoever receives permission to enter the unbelievers' countries, even if they do so with a forged visa, they must respect this as a religiously-approved security contract, and any Muslim must honor it...(pg. 20)"

For their part, al-Qaeda and Ayman al-Zawahiri tried to brush off the criticism. Zawahiri countered with a book of his own a short while later, The Exoneration, in which he defended the decision to reject the covenant.  As he argued:

If we assume for argument's sake that a visa from America or from any other crusader country allied with America in its more than 50-year-long aggression against Muslims is an aman (grant of safe passage), this aman is void for two reasons. First, no aman protects the life of someone who wages war against God and His prophet, harms Muslims, and insults their prophet and religion. Second, America and its allies violate the aman every day. (pg. 154)

At the time there was little evidence that the exchange caused a reassessment.  In the following years, public statements from al-Qaeda-affiliated figures showed little interest in revisiting the issue.  For instance, in late 2010 Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born cleric, wrote in the fourth issue of Inspire, AQAP's magazine, that "Muslims are not bound by the covenants of citizenship and visa that exist between them and nations of dar al-harb." (pg. 56).   It is worth noting that in another Abbottabad document, bin Laden was skeptical of al-Awlaki, politely but firmly rejecting al-Wuhayshi's suggestion that al-Awlaki be designated the leader of AQAP.

A complete judgment will have to await additional information, including the release of more than 17 carefully selected documents.  But these two passages point to a tension between those who, like bin Laden and ‘Attiyatullah ‘abd al-Rahman, remained concerned over the theological foundations of al-Qaeda's war against the west, and those who apparently subsumed the theological questions to the urgency of carrying out high-profile attacks.  These same types of tensions and conflicts have historically riven the jihadist movement, and al-Qaeda itself.  Now, with bin Laden, ‘Attiyatullah, and al-Awlaki dead, it remains to be seen if Ayman al-Zawahiri will overcome or exacerbate these divisions. 

Steven Brooke is a PhD candidate in the Department of Government at The University of Texas at Austin.

It was 2009 in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Mossarat Qadeem was sitting on the floor of a house with about a dozen young Pakistani men -- some of whom had nearly become suicide bombers. Qadeem's goal: to undo the destructive brainwashing of the al-Qaeda and Taliban teachers who trained them in extremism, in part by asking the students to narrate their life stories.

"We were handling one of the boys, and he just came, put his head here in my lap, and he started crying and weeping," Qadeem recalls. "I was taken aback. It is very unnatural in my country that a man that tall can just sit at your feet and put his head here. [The other men] were all crying with him, and I was looking at him, and thinking, ‘my God.'"

All in a day's work for Qadeem. She's the national coordinator of Aman-o-Nisa, a coalition of Pakistani women that convened in October 2011 to combat violent extremism in Pakistan at the grassroots level. A delegation of 12 women from Aman-o-Nisa, sponsored in part by the Institute for Inclusive Security, recently traveled to Washington, DC to share their work with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Washington policymakers. The AfPak Channel sat down with three of the women -- Qadeem, the founder of Pakistan's first center for conflict transformation and peacebuilding,  Sameena Imtiaz, the founder and executive director of the Peace Education and Development Foundation, and Bushra Hyder, the founder and director of Qadims Lumiere School and College -- while they were in town for a conversation about why so few women work in counterterrorism, and the tactics they use to reverse the violent, extremist mentality.  

The interview is condensed and edited below.

Of course, Islamic extremism is a major problem in many other countries besides Pakistan. Why are there so few groups like Aman-o-Nisa, and so few women working to counter extremism?

Bushra Hyder: Most of the women are not even aware that they can play a positive role combating extremism. Secondly, there are security reasons involved. In our part of the country, if a woman goes out and starts getting involved in such activities, she is definitely going to be at risk. Naturally, the males of the household and family would not like their women and females...facing any kind of security threat. That could be the reason, but the fact is the majority of the women are not aware of it.

Sameena Imtiaz: [Women] are also not recognized by men as [people] who could play a very supportive role in combatting extremism in countries such as Pakistan. [In] the security sector in countries like Pakistan, for instance, women are hardly visible. They are not at the dialogue tables, they are not consulted and valued in the policymaking processes that are there.

Mossarat Qadeem: Extremism per se has never been recognized and debated upon in Pakistan as a threat. We feel that there is a foreign hand involved in the incidence of extremism that takes place in Pakistan. And ...we leave it to the government to respond to it. Even the men in the community and society have never thought that they can do something at their level to combat it or to address it. Everyone says it's the responsibility of the government , and they should respond to it because it's a foreign threat - it has nothing to do with Pakistanis, it's not our issue.

Why do Pakistanis see it as a foreign threat? Is it because the extremism in Pakistan isn't homegrown, as it tends to be in Morocco, for example?

MQ: In Pakistan...it's so unobtrusive. It's not obvious that someone is coming and asking the people to become Taliban, to become an extremist, unlike Morocco. That's why this invisible enemy, this invisible hand, is so dangerous, because you don't know who to counter and how to counter.

What are the origins of extremism in Pakistan?

SI: Talibanization and extremism are not new phenomena in Pakistan. We have to go back into the early 80s when many Pakistanis were fighting in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. There was a lot of money that was poured into Pakistan to help these militant groups who are now called Taliban and who have become a monster. They have been thriving on foreign aid.

A lot needs to be done to undo what has been done in the past. But what we are expecting from Pakistan at the moment is there should be a magic wand and all this disappears. It [requires a] change of mindset. You have for decades taught young people that they have to fight this fight in the name of Islam. If you have trained young people to become fighters and warriors, you cannot expect them to become mercenaries of peace immediately. You have to work with them...deradicalize the people who already have this mindset now, and to stop the slide of these young people into extremism. You have to provide them other opportunities, you have to open up avenues for alternative work opportunities for them. What do they do if they don't fight? If they don't become militants? Do they have then food to eat, places to sleep in? You have to look at them as human beings and treat them as human beings.

How do you go about trying to transform the mindsets of radicalized youth?

MQ: We use the Quranic verses -- the true interpretation of the Quran, and of course the teachings of the Holy Sunna. We give examples of the Prophet Muhammad. That's the best way to counter radicalization and extremism in Pakistan, because the [verses] have been misquoted and misinterpreted [by extremist trainers]. We use a lot from the history around the world, giving examples of why peace is important.

What are the subjects - or verses - that you bring up the first time you speak to a radicalized young person?

MQ: Before doing all of this, I conducted research [to find out] what tools have been used to transform these youth.  I came across certain verses that were misinterpreted and misused -- particular verses about jihad. And I had to take different sources and different interpretations of various religious scholars and accumulate them. I had to actually work with some of the trainers and scholars [who had radicalized the youth] because I wanted to know, what should be my approach?

How did you get these trainers to talk to you? And what did they tell you?

MQ: Two are transformed now. They told me, these are the verses we have been using, these are the tactics we have been using, this is the picture we used to draw for these students. I did it in a very different way. I used the same tactics, but it was real, it's what the Quran says.

What's an example of a verse that has been misinterpreted?

MQ: There is a particular verse in the Surah Maidah that says ‘go out and fight.' But the fighting in that particular verse was misinterpreted. That verse was used in a particular period of time when Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was living in the state of Medina, and the people wanted to kill every Muslim. So they really had enemies to face - [they] were being killed, and [there was the risk that] Islam would [disappear].

Obviously, you all do very risky work. How often do you feel directly threatened?

SI: All the time. We are working in such a sensitive area.  The risk is always there. We have so many times received life-threatening messages. There have been attempts on many of us. So yes, that's part of the game.

Elizabeth Weingarten is an editorial assistant at the New America Foundation.

In September 2010 Afghan President Hamid Karzai named Maulvi Qalamuddin to the High Peace Council, an Afghan organization set up to negotiate with the Taliban-led insurgency. Qalamuddin has a notorious past as the former deputy minister for the General Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Elimination of Vice (Amr-e-Bil M'arouf wa Nahi Anil Munkar) during the Taliban regime. He oversaw the implementation of the extreme and strict Islamic laws through religious police squads who ran surveillance on the Afghan populace. Activities included public beatings of women who were deemed to be dressed or behaving inappropriately, banning women from working in public space, smashing televisions, and forcing men to grow beards and spend more time in mosques.

Maulvi Qalamuddin is among the most controversial of the five Taliban members who have been appointed to the HPC as part of the Afghan government's efforts to include more hardliners into the peace process. He is considered to be among the few of Taliban members who still have significant clout and connections among insurgents, including the Taliban leadership. Qalamuddin is a product of the Dar-ul Uloom Haqqania madrassa in the town of Akora Khattak, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, the same madrassa that produced Mullah Omar and other Taliban ministers and commanders, including Jalaluddin Haqqani, the leader of the Haqqani Network and one of the most dreaded insurgent leaders in Afghanistan. In an effort to build trust with insurgent leaders, Afghan government has petitioned the U.N. Security Council to remove Qalamuddin and 19 other former Taliban members from a sanctions list that has prevented them from travelling or sending money abroad since 1999.

As the rush towards withdrawal gathers momentum, and the search for political solution intensifies, the urge to portray a moderate face of the Taliban is gaining traction. While those who have joined the peace process appear to have moderated their views, the key question of whether there has been a genuine change of heart or whether nominal moderation represents mere opportunism remains unanswered.

Afghans who have been fatigued by the unending war and uncertainty of the international presence are broadly supportive of the peace and reintegration processes, but they, too, remain sceptical about the motives and intent of the former Taliban leaders who are eyeing a return through political negotiations. Concerns remain over how the Taliban might behave once they are allowed into some kind of power sharing arrangement. Moreover, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Omar, remains elusive, with little or no real indication of his thoughts on the peace processes.

Through my discussions with the members of the High Peace Council, as well as the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program (APRP), it was interesting to observe the various strands of thinking on reintegration, reconciliation and peace processes. The HPC and APRP members were optimistic about the reintegration process, though they expressed concerns about the reliability of guarantees from the government of protection, compensation and employment opportunities to prevent the militants from re-joining the insurgency. As for the reconciliation and peace process, members lamented the lack of clarity on the role and powers of HPC with the U.S. having set up the parallel Qatar process. Most feel that this should be an Afghan-led negotiation, and any parallel process should be in consultation with the Afghans, and needs to be gradually integrated into the Afghan effort. They perceive the present U.S. effort at negotiation as a face saving formula rather than a serious stake holder in the negotiation process. However, some concede that the Qatar track may also take the heat off of the Afghans to find a political solution, given that the HPC had lost a lot of steam after the assassination of HPC head Burhanuddin Rabbani last year. Concerns remain over the potential spoiler role that could be played by Pakistan, and the belief that the Pakistani establishment has control over the Quetta Shura or at least continue to provide sanctuary to Taliban militants.

During a conversation with Maulvi Qalamuddin in Kabul, I had a rare opportunity to get a glimpse into his personal views on the various issues that have confounded the Afghans and the international community, and threatened the viability of the peace process. He paints a very optimistic picture of the prospects of reintegration and reconciliation, though he remains wary of the role of the United States and neighbouring countries.

Below are Maulvi Qalamuddin's responses to my questions.

Shanthie D'Souza: Why do you think peace and reconciliation is important? Do you think the Afghan government can bring peace?

Maulvi Qalamuddin: Reconciliation and peace are important to bring an end to the war. The people of Afgahnistan are tired of war and violence and want peace. So it is important to work with the government to bring peace. The Afghan government by working through the provincial offices of the High Peace Council has been able to reach out to large segment of tribal elders that has helped gain grass root support.

SD: Why didn't you support or join the government earlier?

MQ: By direct political negotiations, there were many like Maulvi Qalamuddin who were ready to join the government but were arrested in 2002. There were many like him who wanted to join the government earlier but were captured or killed. This created a trust deficit.

SD: Why did you join the Taliban and why are you supporting the Afghan government now?

MQ: The rationale for joining the Taliban was to put an end to the conflict caused by the incessant infighting among the mujahideen in the 1990's. The Taliban were the only ones who were able to being security and  justice to Afghanistan. Likewise, my present decision to join the government is to help bring peace to the country. Eleven years of war has worked to no one's advantage. I will support any government that has and serves the interest of the Afghan people.

SD: Was the Taliban regime better or more effective than the present government?

MQ: The Taliban regime was good because there was a security, justice in Afghanistan and it was a pure Islamic state. The present Afghan government is good because it has money, professional cadre and international support. In the time of the Taliban, one could not visualise offices with young people working on computers that one sees today. That is a good sign. I have three television sets at home and I watch Televison programs[The Taliban during its rule and under Qalamuddin's direction had carried out public executions of TV sets as it was considered as ‘idolatry']. For a man averse to  photography, he was open to being photographed. 

SD: Are the Taliban ready for talks? Who should be included in the talks and negotiations?

MQ: Taliban has shown inclination for talks. Not all Taliban are useful and they do not depict the Afghan culture. The present excesses of the Taliban like beheadings and suicide bombing are unacceptable. There is a need to separate the criminalised networks from the real Taliban.

SD: What are the challenges to the reconciliation process?

MQ: The presence of criminal groups who function under the name of Taliban are a main challenge. There are also issues of night raids [by the international forces], torture, detention centres, black listing of Taliban member and role of neighbouring countries. More importantly, there is lack of trust and confidence between the government, international community and the Taliban

SD: How do you think these challenges can be addressed?

MQ: For reconciliation to work there is a need for change in the constitution, provide guarantees, build trust and international community's support.

SD: What do you think of the Qatar Process? Do you think it will help establish contact and official address for the Taliban?

MQ: The Qatar process is an informal dialogue and not an official channel. Thus, it has its limitations. Taliban had only a presence in Qatar, not an office. This window has opened on to a path that might lead eventually to peace negotiations. [His emphasis was on the Afghan process].

SD: What should be done after 2014 in case of international withdrawal?

MQ: There is a need to work together with the Afghan government and the international community.

SD: If the Taliban were to come back to power in some form, would women's rights be protected?

MQ: The west does not understand the Afghan society. I am not against women working in offices or going out in public alone. Look, you are a foreigner. If you can cover your head and respect our culture, we appreciate and expect the same from Afghan women. The present breed of Afghan women appearing on TV without head scarves is not acceptable. Women need to adhere to the sharia laws in consonance with the Afghan culture.

***

When I asked other HPC officials about women's rights, they were adamant that the respect and protection of women rights would not be compromised by reconciliation with the Taliban. Based on my own observations in Afghanistan, there appears to have been a marginal (or tactical) shift in letting women in public space, but not letting them dress the way they want to, for example . While most Afghan women would like to wear the traditional attire or cover their head, there are others who believe they should have the freedom to make that choice themselves. Interestingly, Qalamuddin let me photograph him, but declined to have his picture taken with me, presumably because I am a woman. I perceive this as a marginal change, and not a full, attitudinal change.

The Afghan women leaders with whom I have had discussions, such as Fawzia Koofi, Sima Samar, Shukriya Barakzai and others in Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, Nangahar, are very apprehensive. They feel that once back in power, the Taliban will resort to old ways. Unless the international community ensures some guarantees on women and human rights, Afghanistan risks reverting to its pre-2001 ways.

Do Qalamuddin's views signify a dramatic shift in thinking among the Taliban? Are these early signs of transformation or tactics of opportunism? It is important for the United States and its allies, who are pushing for hasty deals through multiple negotiation channels, to sieve through these strands of thinking to prepare for eventualities when the Taliban are back in some form in the Afghan society and polity. Obviously, these attempts at peace making and negotiations should not fritter away a decade-long achievements in areas of democracy, human and women rights.  

Shanthie Mariet D'Souza is a research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), an autonomous institute at the National University of Singapore (NUS). She can be reached at shanthied@gmail.com. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the institute.

My article criticizing certain rituals in the Shi'a Muslimtradition in Pakistan's Express Tribune on December 8 spurred a firestorm ofcontroversy, as a number of commentators deemed it inappropriate or worse. Myargument was that religious adherents need to repudiate rituals that infringeon collective rights, and which can escalate sectarian conflict; these includethe rituals during the commemoration of Muharram, that can involve men and evenchildren flagellating  themselves withknives on chains, and processions of bleeding men as a display of adoration forthe martyred Imam Husain (this is byno means reflective of all Shi'a practice, but is widely practiced amongSouth Asian Shi'a).

The controversy grew more intense on Twitter, and evennotable commentators such as NasimZehra asked for an immediate apology from the Tribune on grounds that thearticle was "outrageously offensive."To her credit, Ms. Zehra later noted thatafter the apology the matter should be closed. However, hate mail from all over followed,including several messages to the president of the University of Vermont (whereI teach) asking for my dismissal, a surprising torrent against free speech evenfrom highly educated writers. The university noted that the article was wellwithin the confines of free speech and was in fact condemning violence. Insteadof admonishing me, the university offered me police protection.

Under pressure from sponsors and amid fears that other mediahouses would use this episode to spur a consumer boycott, Tribune decided tofirst edit and then completely remove the article, and noted that I was"banned" from writing in their pages again. My intention was never to rebukeShi'ism itself, but rather such rituals whose practice further leads toacrimony between Shi'a and Sunnis. Furthermore, a ritual with so much bloodbeing spilled in a procession can be a public health issue, and has been repeatedlyquestioned and curtailed in Iran, Syria, and Lebanon.

Ireposted the article on my site with a clear apology for specificstatements which were, in retrospect, inflammatory for Pakistan's religioussensibilities. The newspaper's "ban" on my writing was later edited out of the apology statement posted onthe Internet, but this episode left me deeply troubled about the state ofjournalistic independence in Pakistan. The country has a vibrant civil societyand promising career track for journalists and independent writers, but therehas been a rapidrise in abductions and murders of journalists whose views were consideredantithetical to certain religious perspectives.

This episode highlighted for me a larger issue of mediafreedom in a country which often prides itself in having private TV channelswith fiery talk shows blasting politicians. Yet religious debate, often socontentious and even violent in Pakistan, remains off limits. Pakistan as asociety needs to understand that the right to offend in journalism is afundamental right. I don't mind getting hate mail despite the norms of freespeech, but what surprised me was that educated people questioned my right tocriticize a cultural practice by referring to it as "hate speech." I wasrepeatedly asked what my point was if criticism could further cause conflict. Stillanother asked, "could you criticize Jewish rituals the same way in America?" Thiskind of reaction could have taken place in many Muslim societies -- and Sunnisare equally culpable on such matters as Shi'a.

Pakistan's infamous blasphemylaws are a result of exactly this kind of oversensitivity and pattern ofraising ire following any hint of criticism about religious rituals or edicts.The valorization of extreme religious edicts by the State has unfortunatelybeen successful in co-opting the sensibilities of even many educated citizens. Thisin turn has strengthened the religious establishment's efforts toinstitutionalize a radical inertia within the political system.  Perhaps unwittingly, liberal commentators whowould rather avoid tougher issues of dissent scorned my article, and by doingso strengthened the same kinds of arguments that fanatics use to marginalizeminorities or their opponents.

Ironically, in my article, I clearly stated that lawsagainst hate speech must be enforced. Speech that directly urges violence towardsany particular person or group of people must be avoided at all costs. Yet tounderstand sectarian conflict, which is often compared to "cancer," we have tolook at both proximate and systemic causes. Just as one treats cancer withchemotherapy, groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi(LeJ) need to be hunted down for terrorist crimes. But we also need to searchfor systemic causes of sectarian strife, which in Pakistan can be traced totheology in both Shi'a and Sunni doctrines as well as political interventionand alleged statesupport for sectarian groups like LeJ or Sipah-e-Sihaba Pakistan (SSP).

In a pluralistic society, the limits of what is allowed insuch cases can be debated and questioned, and laws can be passed and changedthrough democratic processes. For example, there are laws in some Europeancountries against questioning the historical validity of the Holocaust, but inthe United States, such historical questioning is protected by the firstamendment to the U.S. constitution (despite the repeated accusations by many Pakistanisthat American law and politics reflect undue Jewish influence). While Idisagree with the limitations on free speech in Europe, there is at least aworkable legislative pathway for repeal of these laws. In Pakistan, the prospectof any legislative change to errant laws is stifled by precisely the kindof bullying about religious sensitivity exhibited in this episode.

The duty of any socially conscious writer is to push theenvelope and challenge people to question their assumptions. This will makepeople uncomfortable, but incremental social change always happens through sucha dialectical process. If people were always trying to stray from controversy socialchange would never take place. Cultural sensitivity is far too often used as anexcuse for maintaining the status quo in places like Pakistan, and this needsto change if the country is ever to overcome the polarization that continues toimpede communitarian peace.

Saleem H. Ali is professor ofenvironmental studies at the University of Vermont's Rubenstein School ofEnvironment and Natural Resources and the director of the Institute forEnvironmental Diplomacy and Security at the James Jeffords Center for PolicyResearch. He can be followed @saleem_ali

The killing September 30 in Yemen of the militant American-Yemeni preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, arguably the most recognizable transnational jihadi figure beside Osama bin Laden, deprives the transnational Sunni jihadi movement represented by Al-Qaeda Central (AQC) of its premier ambassador to English speaking and reading audiences around the world.  His killing also cuts short his further ascendance as one of the most promising members of Al-Qaeda's missionary vanguard of charismatic ideologues who harness their rhetorical flare and varying degrees of scholarly bona fides to further the goals of AQC and its sister groups.  Using his gifts as a rhetorician, al-Awlaki fulfilled a key communicative role between Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which confirmed his death in a statement issued October 10, and the broader AQ movement and potential supporters.  Al-Awlaki maneuvered himself into the position of being one of the transnational jihadi movement's key ideologues, the most effective missionary of its self-declared "jihad" among English-speaking audiences.

Al-Awlaki's influence has steadily expanded beyond this base since late 2008.  His writings, sermons, and audiovisual messages have been translated into a number of languages beyond their original English or Arabic including Urdu, Bosnian, French, Russian, Somali, Indonesian, and Bangla.  He has been referenced and praised by media networks affiliated with Somalia's Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahideen (Al-Shabab) insurgent movement and the Islamic Emirate of the Caucasus.

Based on open source information, including AQAP media materials, al-Awlaki's exact position within the organization, if any, continues to be debated after his death.  There is no debate, however, that he was publicly endorsed by high-profile AQAP leaders including amir Nasir al-Wihayshi and Fahd al-Quso, who is wanted by the U.S. government for his alleged involvement in the October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.  Al-Wihayshi pledged his group's support for al-Awlaki in a May 16, 2010 audio message. Al-Quso referred briefly to al-Awlaki in an interview with the London-based Arabic-language daily newspaper al-Quds al-‘Arabi that was published on September 19, saying that the American "agrees with the mujahideen in their vision and opinion."  Neither al-Wihayshi nor al-Quso specifically listed al-Awlaki's position, if any, within AQAP. 

The nature of al-Awlaki's relationship with AQAP and his importance to their broader media operation is indeed unclear.  Despite frequent contributions by and references to him in AQAP's English-language Internet magazine Inspire, al-Awlaki has only been mentioned a couple of times and usually in passing in short "news updates" featured in AQAP's flagship Arabic-language magazine, Sada al-Malahem (Echo of Battles), which is aimed at its core base of supporters both inside and outside Yemen, whose native language is Arabic. 

The level of support for al-Awlaki outside of AQAP and in particular within AQC's leadership is debated.  Anonymous U.S. government officials have claimed that intelligence gathered from bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan shows that some wanted the American to replace al-Wihayshi as AQAP's amir but that the Saudi founder of AQC vetoed the suggestion.  The evidence for this claim is not publicly available for public evaluation.  A lengthy clip from al-Awlaki's last video message, "Make it Known and Do Not Conceal It," released on November 8, 2010, was included in the fifth installment of al-Zawahiri's series of audio and video messages about Egypt after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, which was released on April 14.  A clip of al-Awlaki, taken from his "exclusive interview" with AQAP's Al-Malahem Media Foundation that was released in May 2010, was first used by AQC in an October 2010 video message from fellow American Adam Gadahn. Al-Awlaki was not, however, explicitly or publicly endorsed by AQC's senior leaders. Nor did he seem adamant about self-identifying or promoting himself as an official member of al-Qaeda, probably hoping to maximize the benefits of his image of relative autonomy in terms of freedom of speech and association.

The role of Muslim religious scholars (‘ulama) in supporting al-Qaeda's "jihad" was one of al-Awlaki's key interests, partly because he presented himself as a religious scholar and preacher, and he addressed the ‘ulama's responsibilities in much of his work.  In "Make it Known and Do Not Conceal It," he calls on Sunni ‘ulama to fulfill their duties by supporting AQAP against apostate governments in the Muslim world, like that of Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, that are allied with the "Crusaders, Zionists, and Rafidah ("Rejectionists," a derogatory term for Shi'ites). Al-Awlaki, in effect, was attempting to dialogue with other ‘ulama by strongly questioning why they have not yet spoken out.  Al-Awlaki was also at the forefront of the transnational jihadi attempt to delegitimize the March 2010 Mardin Conference in Turkey, at which a group of Sunni ‘ulama attempted to re-interpret and contextualize a series of juridical rulings by the medieval jurist Ibn Taymiyya with the objective of delegitimizing al-Qaeda's claim of juridically sanctified violence.  "The [Mardin Declaration] is an ignominy... It is an insolent statement that shows no respect to the suffering of our ummah," he wrote in an eight-page article in the second issue of AQAP's Inspire magazine. 

Although al-Awlaki has presented himself as a scholar in order to solidify his legitimacy on the transnational jihadi scene, it is really the pragmatic and socially relevant content of his message that has built and sustained his popularity. His straightforward and unambiguous advice, on matters ranging from proper diet to the legitimacy of suicide attacks, has fed the appetite of his followers for everyday guidance. In an article titled "The Ruling on Dispossessing the Disbelievers Wealth in Dar al-Harb," al-Awlaki has engaged in an extensive discussion on Islamic jurisprudence regarding the legal status of goods stolen by Western Muslims from their fellow, non-Muslim citizens. Claiming that the West was considered Dar al-Harb (from the Qur'anic concept of the "House of War") because of its repeated military interventions in Muslim countries, he concluded that Muslims could legally dispossess non-Muslims since covenants of non-aggression based on citizenship and visa were invalidated by the non-Muslims' attacks. The preacher had voiced arguments requesting that his followers abandon mainstream economic activities and stop paying taxes on previous occasions, with the ultimate justification that "income generated from booty taken by force from the enemies of Allah [was] purer and more virtuous" than any other type of income.  These unconventional yet contextually-relevant exhortations were meant to alleviate the funding issues facing jihadi groups and to facilitate his followers' transition to the outlaw lifestyle required by jihadi militancy.

Part spiritual adviser and part self-styled legal expert, al-Awlaki also produced timely and compelling political analyses. In response to the massive public uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya against autocratic regimes, al-Awlaki attempted to spin the rapidly changing events in AQ's favor.  In his article "The Tsunami of Change" published in the fifth issue of Inspire, al-Awlaki offered a rebuttal to the idea that the events of the Arab Spring had rendered al-Qaeda unattractive and irrelevant. Taking a pragmatic view of regional developments, he reassured his audience, which was wary of the seemingly secular trajectory of the Arab Spring, by declaring that there was no need for the immediate result to be Islamic governance because any political outcome could certainly not be worse than the regimes being overthrown.  Al-Awlaki further claimed that the events in fact constituted an opportunity for jihadis across the Arab world to link up and pool their resources.

In addition to his role as a "missionary" ideologue masquerading as a learned religious scholar, al-Awlaki is perhaps best known publicly for his role in inspiring and in some cases actively counseling and encouraging the radicalization of a number of North American and European Muslims.  The highest profile of those influenced either in exchanges over the Internet or in person with al-Awlaki were Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, and Faisal Shahzad.  Lesser known, particularly in the U.S., is the American's influence on Mounir and Yassin Chouka, two German brothers who currently occupy high profile positions in the Pakistan-based Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).  In a written narrative of their "journey to the IMU" released online by the IMU in February, Yassin, who is known within the IMU as "Abu Ibraheem al-Almani (The German)," wrote that he and his brother "benefited greatly" from him during the "precious hours" in which the preacher spent with them.  Al-Awlaki and one of his associates ultimately played a key role in the brothers' decision to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan to wage "jihad."

Parts of al-Awlaki's life story remain debated or shrouded in mystery. Little is known, for example, about his summer 1993 experience in Afghanistan, the degree of his foreknowledge or involvement in the 9/11 attacks, and the exact nature of his role within AQAP. However, it is undeniable that he was an individual with unique abilities whom the transnational jihadi movement will no doubt have a hard time replacing. U.S. officials, and some AQAP experts , have claimed that before his death he had been playing a key operational role in the organization as the "chief of external operations," though this claim is debated. There is ample evidence that al-Awlaki played a very successful role as an ideologue in the radicalization process of members of his audience, but fewer concrete examples of his operational leadership. The real legacy of al-Awlaki lies in his popular message that lives on through his still widely-accessible lectures and online messages.

On October 14, al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdul Rahman, who was also an American citizen, was killed along with his 17-year-old Yemeni cousin in a second U.S. drone strike in the Yemeni province of Shabwa.  The boy's family has spoken out forcefully against claims by Yemeni and U.S. government officials that he was a member of AQAP and was 21.  The family released Abdul Rahman's Colorado birth certificate showing that he was born on August 26, 1995.  The two teenagers' killings, which have also been condemned by the Yemeni Organization for Childhood Protection, have reopened the debate about the legality of the Obama Administration's extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism.

Christopher Anzalone is a doctoral student in the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University where he studies modern Muslim socio-political movements, Shi'ite Islam, and Islamist visual culture. He blogs at Views from the Occident and Al-Wasat.

Bruno-Olivier Bureau is a master's student in the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University where he studies the modern history of the Middle East, radical Islamist ideology and the propaganda strategies of the transnational jihadi movement.

This week's AfPak Behind the Lines assesses the state of al-Qaeda in Iraq with analyst Brian Fishman.

1. What is the current status of al-Qaeda in Iraq, following the deaths of its leaders Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in a U.S. airstrike in Tikrit earlier this year? How has the group adapted to these losses, organizationally and ideologically?

Since the deaths of al-Masri and al-Baghdadi, AQI (operating as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI)) has demonstrated that it can still cause death and destruction in Iraq. Nonetheless, since its dramatic decline in 2007, the ISI's operational profile has changed significantly, from attempting to control and dominate territory unilaterally toward more intermittent large-scale attacks. No doubt this shift was a concession to the reality of decreased influence and authority in Iraq, but by 2009 ISI was finding ways to use major attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere to discredit and undermine the Iraqi state. This trend has continued since the deaths of al-Masri and al-Baghdadi, though one might argue that the group has focused more on attacking Awakening Councils rather than the formal Iraqi state. It is too early to draw that conclusion, in my opinion, but it is interesting because it raises questions about ISI's sense of self and purpose. Little is known about the new Emir of the ISI, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Husayni al-Qurashi and his deputy Abu Abdullah al-Husayni al-Qurashi. They have given little indication of their strategic focus or background.

Read on