AQI And Max Boot's Invisible Armies

JP1-02 defines an insurgency as “An organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict”. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is a modern example of an insurgency. This insurgency arose after the invasion or “liberation” of Iraq by United States and Coalition forces in March of 2003. AQI supports the JP1-02 definition of an insurgency. I will give a background on the rise and decline of AQI. Supporting evidence will be provided from Max Boot’s excerpt “Implications – Twelve Articles, or The Lessons of Five Thousand Years” from his book Invisible Armies.

AQI traces its roots to its founding father Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his organization Jama’at al-Tawhid wa’al-Jihad (JTJ). Zarqawi

JTJ conducted terrorist attacks and waged an insurgency meant to incite sectarian conflict in order to make the occupation and government transition more difficult. JTJ routinely carried out attacks on aid workers, native Iraqis, and Shiite targets. Their brutal tactics included suicide bombings against civilians, assassinations and gruesome beheading videos that were released on the Internet after kidnapping and killing non-Arabs in Iraq. (Stanford.edu) Zarqawi and his group quickly found themselves among the most prominent players in the Iraqi insurgency. The tactics that JTJ and AQI utilized support article number two: “Guerrilla warfare is not an “Eastern Way of War”; it is the universal war of the weak. Guerrilla warfare is a tactic of last resort for those too weak to create regular armies. Likewise, terrorism is the tactic of last resort for those too weak to create guerrilla

AQI’s popularity and support began to wane when coordinated bombings of three Amman Jordan hotels killed 60 people on November 9, 2005. The victims were mostly Muslims attending a wedding party. The bombings caused a Muslim backlash across the region. (Kindar, M.J.) Al Qaeda and AQIs image and message became further tarnished due to AQI’s terrorist tactics. Max Boot’s article five states that “The most important development in guerrilla warfare in the last two hundred years has been the rise in public opinion”. This was evident with AQI’s tactics and their eroding of public support. Insurgences often deploy tactics that are meant to delegitimize the Host Nation (HN) government and sway local and global public opinion. AQI’s terrorist tactics were meant to terrorize, coerce and intimidate. AQI waged effective psychological operations and propaganda campaigns which aided and delegitimized their