Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of Al Qaida Strategist Abu Mus'ab al-Suri

***** Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of Al Qaida Strategist Abu Mus‘ab al-Suri. By Brynjar Lia; published by Columbia University Press, cup.columbia.edu (Web); 510 pages; $28.95

With his pale skin, green eyes, and ginger beard, the Syrian best known by the nom de guerre of Abu Mus‘ab al-Suri hardly fits the popular image of a leading jihadi. Yet the man some say more closely resembles an English pub patron than a terrorist was one of his movement’s most influential theoreticians. Arrested in Pakistan in 2005, al-Suri is the subject of this significant new biography by Brynjar Lia of the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment.

Born in 1958 in Aleppo, Syria, al-Suri, whose real name is Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar, has a lengthy jihadi resume: participant in the Islamist uprising against the Syrian regime in the early 1980s, military instructor in the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood’s camps in Iraq and at its safe houses in Jordan, and military instructor to Arab volunteers in Afghanistan from 1987 to 1992. After spending the mid-1990s in Spain and Britain, he returned to Afghanistan in 1998 to run a jihadi training camp and a media center.

What makes al-Suri so significant, Lia writes, is a body of theoretical work that culminated in his 1,600-page treatise, “The Call to Global Islamic Resistance.” Widely disseminated on jihadi Web sites and among cells and networks, it provides the kind of practical guidance and solace that IRA members found in their “Green Book.”

In the document, al-Suri recommends an end to the traditional jihadi structure based on a hierarchical chain of command and sanctuaries in friendly states. The reason? In his view, the coordinated global response to 9-11 demonstrated the severe limitations of a centralized organizational  approach.

Rather, Lia writes, al-Suri advocates a highly decentralized structure in which there are no organizational links between the international jihadi leadership and its various operational units. In al-Suri’s view, the jihadi leadership’s role is not to plan and direct day-to-day operations. Rather, it is to create and disseminate systems or templates that would allow any individual or small group to effectively—and independently—further the aims of global jihad. This is summed up in al-Suri’s slogan: nizam, la tanzim, which Lia translates as “system, not organization.”

The West would ignore the threat posed by al-Suri’s ideas—and their attractiveness to homegrown jihadis—at its peril. Remarkable for the breadth of its scholarship and the depth of its insights, this work should be on the bookshelf of every serious student of terrorism.

Reviewer: Mario A. Possamai, CFE (Certified Fraud Examiner), CAMS (Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist) is managing director of Forensic Financial Research and Consulting, Inc., in Toronto. He is a member of the ASIS Global Terrorism, Political Instability, and International Crime Council.