WHILE ALL EYES LOOKED NORTH

S. Korea succeeds in testing ballistic missile launch from submarine: Cheong Wa Dae
Defense September 15, 2021

SEOUL, Sept. 15 (Yonhap) -- 

South Korea has become the world's seventh country with an indigenous submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), as it succeeded in an underwater test-launch from a submarine, Cheong Wa Dae announced Wednesday.

President Moon Jae-in inspected the firing at a local test center of the Agency for Defense Development (ADD), hours after North Korea lobbed two ballistic missiles into the East Sea.

The SLBM was fired from the 3,000-ton-class Dosan Ahn Chang-ho submarine at the ADD Anheung Test Center in South Chungcheong Province.

It flew a planned distance and precisely hit a target, Moon's office said.

"Possessing SLBM is very meaningful in terms of securing deterrence against omnidirectional threats and it is expected to play a big role in self-reliant national defense and establishment of peace on the Korean Peninsula, going forward," it said in a statement.


This file photo, provided by South Korea's Navy, shows the 3,000-ton-class Dosan Ahn Chang-ho submarine to be equipped with ballistic missiles.

The ADD earlier carried out several ground- and water tank-based SLBM tests, including ejection ones.

Currently, only six countries have SLBMs with actual field operation capabilities that have high strategic values and are difficult to develop, according to Cheong Wa Dae. They are the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and India.

Meanwhile, the ADD also succeeded in a long-range air-to-ground missile separation test for use by the KF-21 next-generation fighter jet, which South Korea is developing with its own technology, Cheong Wa Dae said.

It means South Korea has secured an aerial missile launch technology, an essential element for fighter jet armament, the office added.

lcd@yna.co.kr

BETTER TALKS THAN SABRE RATTLING

Top nuke envoys of S. Korea, U.S., Japan hold trilateral talks on N.K. diplomacy

All News 

September 14, 2021

By Song Sang-ho and Kim Seung-yeon

TOKYO/SEOUL, Sept. 14 (Yonhap) -- The top nuclear envoys of South Korea, the United States and Japan held trilateral talks in Tokyo on Tuesday about efforts to resume dialogue with North Korea amid renewed tensions over the recalcitrant regime's recent missile launches.

The talks between Seoul's nuclear negotiator, Noh Kyu-duk and his U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Sung Kim and Takehiro Funakoshi, respectively, came after the North test-fired a new type of long-range cruise missile over the weekend amid signs of its reactivation of a plutonium-producing nuclear reactor.

Kim renewed his calls for the North to return to dialogue, while noting the recent developments in the North served as a reminder of the importance of close cooperation between the United States and its allies.

"As we have made it clear repeatedly, the United States has no hostile intent with the DPRK," Kim said in his opening remarks. The DPRK stands for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"We hope the DPRK will respond positively to our multiple offers to meet without preconditions," he added, stressing Washington, in the meantime, will continue to fully implement all U.N. Security Council resolutions on the North.

Noh, Kim and Funakoshi were expected to discuss humanitarian support and other incentives to encourage the North's return to dialogue, as it struggles with a series of economic and other hardships exacerbated by pandemic-driven border closures.

South Korea and the U.S. have been discussing humanitarian aid for the North in certain areas, including public health, sanitation and clean drinking water. Before his departure for Tokyo, Noh took note of "considerable progress" in consultations between the allies over such humanitarian support.

In recent months, Seoul has been revving up diplomacy to reengage with Pyongyang, seeking to tamp down lingering skepticism over a peace drive overshadowed by the reclusive state's continued pursuit of nuclear and missile programs.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has recently reported indications of the North resuming the operation of a five-megawatt nuclear reactor at its main Yongbyon complex, including the discharge of cooling water from the reactor.

Following the trilateral session, Noh and Kim were set to meet bilaterally. Noh and Funakoshi had two-way talks on Monday.

Noh, Kim and Funakoshi last held their three-way talks in Seoul in June. Last month alone, Noh and Kim held face-to-face talks in Seoul and Washington -- a sign of beefed-up cooperation among the countries over the North Korean issue.

Nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang have remained stalled since the Hanoi summit in 2019 between then-U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ended without a deal.


South Korea's chief nuclear envoy Noh Kyu-duk (R) poses with his U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Sung Kim (L) and Takehiro Funakoshi, before their talks in Tokyo on Sept. 14, 2021. (Yonhap)

Boris Johnson boasts UK could be "Saudi Arabia of penal policy under Priti Patel"

KIERAN GALPIN

The whole room laughed at his comments

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has come under fire after 'joking' that the UK could become “the Saudi Arabia of penal policy” under Home Secretary Priti Patel.

During a speech at a Conservative Party fundraiser on September 10, the PM made flippant remarks in relation to Saudi Arabia, as seen in video footage obtained from Business Insider.

“In the immortal words of Priti Patel or Michael Howard or some other hardline home secretary, addressing the inmates of one of our larger prisons: it’s fantastic to see so many of you here,” he said at the InterContinental London Park Lane in Mayfair.

“I said last year we’re the Saudi Arabia of wind. Probably the Saudi Arabia of penal policy, under our wonderful Home Secretary,” Johnson said.

Patel has been criticised on nearly every policy she has discussed. From her armoured Jet skis to her treatment of Channel crossings, Patel is often at odds with a vast number of UK citizens.

Johnson has consequently been called out across the internet for his comments at the luncheon, which cost £500 per ticket.

"Saudi Arabia beheads its own citizens, tortures activists exercising their democratic rights and kills homosexuals. This is disgusting. As ever with Boris Johnson behind closed doors, the masks slips, and we see what he really thinks," Tweeted Labour's Deputy Leader Angela Rayner.

"If Boris Johnson is joking about the UK becoming the new Saudi Arabia of "penal policy", it means that he must know exactly that these policies are in breach of international human rights law, yet he finds this funny. Is the death penalty funny too, Boris Johnson?" tweeted another.

 

JOE.co.uk

Afghanistan's anti-laundering unit goes off-grid, fraying ties to global finance

United Nations officials have said the Taliban made hundreds of millions of dollars from the drugs trade and other illicit sources.

PHOTO: EPA-EFE

LONDON (REUTERS) - A unit in Afghanistan's central bank leading a 15-year effort to counter illicit funding flows has halted operations, four employees said, threatening to hasten the country's slide out of the global financial system.

Since 2006, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Afghanistan (FinTRACA) has gathered intelligence on thousands of suspicious transactions and helped convict smugglers and terrorist financiers, according to its website.

United Nations officials have said the Taliban, which seized Kabul on Aug 15, made hundreds of millions of dollars from the drugs trade and other illicit sources when it was fighting government troops.

The group has vowed that there would be no drug cultivation in Afghanistan from now.

Information on FinTRACA's website indicated that the Taliban was among those in its sights, while the staff Reuters spoke to said the group had been a target since its launch. They declined to be named because of fear of reprisals owing to the sensitive nature of their work.

Sections of FinTRACA's website, which had appeared largely untouched since the Taliban's takeover, were unavailable on Wednesday (Sept 15), with error messages appearing.

With the Islamist militant movement back in power, the absence of a functioning financial intelligence unit (FIU) could curtail Afghanistan's links to the international financial system and to lenders abroad, some experts warned.

Such units, which scrutinise money flows for potential suspicious activity, are critical for any nation that seeks to participate in the global financial community, said Stuart Jones, Jr, founder and chief executive of risk intelligence firm Sigma Ratings. He was also US Treasury attache to Afghanistan between 2008 and 2010.

Reconnecting with the financial system could be complicated by existing sanctions against the Taliban and the fact that a senior government minister heads a US-designated terrorist organisation.

"Afghanistan was considered high-risk by nearly all global financial institutions pre-Taliban takeover," said Jones. "Now, with untested leadership at the central bank, an inoperable financial intelligence unit and current asset freezes on the ruling government by the United Nations and terror designations of key figures by the United States, I would expect foreign financial institutions to tread extremely carefully."

The central bank did not respond to several attempts to reach it via e-mail and telephone.

The Taliban wants access to reserves being held abroad as well as aid and other financing, as the economy reels from decades of war, drought, food shortages and the exodus of thousands of professionals.
Staff fled

The Taliban have said it wants professionals to return to work to help revive the economy and vowed there would be no vendetta against old opponents.

But many members of the ousted administration have fled the country or remain in hiding.

Three staff said some of FinTRACA's 60-odd employees had left Afghanistan or gone underground in recent weeks.

One, who is still in Afghanistan, complained that international partners failed to get staff and their dependants out during the mass evacuation from Kabul that ended last month.

A Taliban spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the status of FinTRACA staff or whether the unit would operate in future.

The US Treasury, which provided technical assistance to the unit with other national and international bodies, declined to comment on FinTRACA staff still in Afghanistan.

Some FinTRACA staff returned to the office last week after a request by acting central bank governor Haji Mohammad Idris - a Taliban loyalist - for all central bank staff to be present in the bank, said one of the employees.

The employee added that the unit's senior management were not present and it was still not operating.

Some parts of the central bank are operational.

Idris has been meeting with commercial banks and the central bank has supplied limited liquidity to banks while issuing directives to control scarce US dollar supplies, said bankers.
Unit disconnected

FinTRACA provided intelligence to the international community through agreements with similar units from countries including Britain and the United States.

It also did so via Egmont Group, which exchanges information on illicit flows between more than 160 intelligence units and partners different bodies in the fight against money laundering and terror financing.

FinTRACA was disconnected from Egmont Group's international secure server on Aug 15, the day the Taliban took Kabul, Egmont Group said on Sept 2.

The group said it stood "in solidarity with our colleagues at FinTRACA and hopes that they and their families are safe".

Egmont Group did not respond to requests for an update on FinTRACA's status.

One FinTRACA staff member said it was still disconnected on Tuesday.

"Disconnecting is a loss for the global FIU community as the aim is always to foster greater cooperation, but the underlying principle under which this cooperation takes place is trust and that is not in place at the moment in Afghanistan," said Mariano Federici, managing director of K2 Integrity and former chair of Egmont Group.

Before Wednesday, FinTRACA's website listed the Taliban as a terrorist group entity prohibited from depositing or withdrawing US dollar bank notes.

One of the unit's roles included creating a "Watch-List" of individuals deemed high-risk to the financial system.

As recently as August, the unit logged 25 suspicious transactions reports in its database, taking the total for the year to date to 645, data on its website show.

With FinTRACA mothballed, local banks expect Afghanistan's status to be lowered by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an illicit flows watchdog, in a move that could further diminish its connectivity to the global financial community.

"The FATF is closely monitoring the developing situation in Afghanistan," the group said in a statement.

The Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering, of which Afghanistan is a member, did not respond to a request for comment.

MORE ON THIS TOPIC

Taleban will not get access to Afghan financial reserves held in US: Official

Afghan central bank chief flees Kabul, blaming President Ghani for chaos

Taliban probing bank accounts linked to Afghan ex-officials

Afghanistan's banks brace for bedlam after Taleban takeover

On Being a ‘Muslim’ Atheist

To disbelieve in the existence of God in the Arab world is no easy thing. Yet more and more of us are coming out of the closet

Khaled DiabKhaled Diab is a journalist, writer, and author

September 14, 2021

Muslim on paper / Getty Images

Names are not always just names. They can signify very different things to different people. I was reminded of this during a recent visit to Crete, where I encountered an Egyptian from Alexandria.

Ayman moved to Crete 30 years ago after falling in love with the Mediterranean island, which reminded him of his coastal hometown but was quieter and more orderly. Nevertheless, he retained a very Egyptian outlook when it came to names.

“But isn’t Iskander a Christian name?” Ayman asked in confusion, after I introduced our son. His confusion was compounded by the fact that my name is Khaled, which people in Egypt and some other Arab countries associate with Islam. However, neither of these assumptions are correct — nor is the assumption that a Muslim father must necessarily pass on his religion.

Although the vast majority of people named Khaled are Muslim, I have encountered non-Muslims with that name, which is not uncommon among Christians in Lebanon, for example. This is particularly the case among pan-Arabists because Gamal Abdel Nasser’s eldest son was called Khaled.

Just as there is nothing especially Islamic about the name Khaled, which predates Islam, there is nothing terribly Christian about the name Iskander (Arabic for Alexander), which predates Christianity. In fact, Iskander is a fairly common boys’ name in Tunisia, where my son once had two other boys with the same name in his class when we lived there. Before that, the only other Iskander he had met in person was an aging Assyrian Christian in Jerusalem.

Iskander is also a common name in Turkic countries, Iran and some other Muslim-majority countries. In Turkey, it is even the name of a popular kebab dish. When we took our son at age 5 to taste “Iskender kebap” in Istanbul, he refused to touch it until we reassured him that it was not made of young boys named Iskander.

Derived from Aléxandros, which means “defender of the people,” the Greek version of my son’s name was popular in Ancient Greece. In addition to the ease with which Iskander can be pronounced by most people, its lack of association with any (living) religion was a major factor behind its appeal to us.

Before Iskander was born, it was important to my wife (who is Belgian) and me to find a neutral name that did not presuppose a particular faith, because we are both of the firm conviction that our son should be entirely free to choose the belief system that appeals most to him.

And with a few exceptions, like in Egypt and Palestine, it has worked. In Europe, only people with knowledge of Arabic know where the name comes from, with many Belgians assuming, for some bizarre reason, that it is a Scandinavian name.

“We want our son to learn about his dual heritage, but we also want him to decide for himself what his beliefs are,” I explained to Ayman, who is raising his children in the Christian faith and sends them to a small Coptic church in Crete.

This is important not only because of our abstract belief in freedom of religion and of conscience but also because, on a personal level, I did not really enjoy that liberty growing up, and I don’t wish my son to have to struggle with labels he did not choose.

Long before I could even grasp what faith meant, I was branded a Muslim from the moment I entered this world. My Egyptian birth certificate marks my religion as “Muslim,” which is also true of my adult identification papers.

Luckily, despite her own profound faith, my late mother raised us as Muslims but never pushed any of us to practice Islam against our will. She also raised us to question even established religion, out of the belief that the only true path to faith was one of self-discovery and knowledge.

Though this worked for some of her offspring, unfortunately for her, my doubts only grew and multiplied with time, until eventually I abandoned not just Islam but religion in its entirety. While my absence of religious faith broke her heart, and probably made her fear what awaited me after death, she knew I was an atheist before I came out of the closet about it and accepted the reality without recrimination or anger.

My family’s and friends’ acceptance of who I am has made my journey in life much easier than for many others who leave Islam and are disowned, rejected or ostracized by their families and communities.

Out of dread of this social excommunication, some decide to keep their lack of faith to themselves. Becoming what you might call crypto-atheists, they must suffer the agony of deception and dissimulation, living their lives pretending to be what they are not.

In countries where atheism is outlawed — it’s punishable by death in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia — many must keep their skepticism secret not just from family but also from society.

In Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive theocracies in the world, those found guilty of atheism or “apostasy” can be flogged pitilessly or receive capital punishment. For example, in 2017, one man, named in the media as Ahmad Al-Shamri, who allegedly renounced Islam and Muhammad on social media, was reportedly sentenced to death.

A thriving community of skeptics and atheists exists out of sight 

Despite the enormous risks involved, a thriving community of skeptics and atheists exists out of sight and beneath the radar of the Saudi authorities, connecting mostly online but sometimes also in the real world. Even though Saudi Arabia is where Islam was born and sees itself as the leader of the Muslim world, a full fifth of the population say they are not religious and 5% are “convinced atheists,” according to a Gallup Poll conducted in 2012.

Some of these atheists are drawn to break cover and seek out like-minded individuals because of the profound sense of loneliness evoked by leading a double life. “I’m as closeted as ever. It makes me feel anxious and I struggle with myself. I sometimes ask myself: What if I’m wrong and everyone who is on the opposite side is right?” Maya (not her real name), an Egyptian who abandoned her faith while living in Saudi Arabia, told me. “That self-confidence I have when I’m surrounded by other nonbelievers or slightly open-minded people, like in Egypt, for example, makes me want to leave here asap.”

Though Egypt is more open-minded and tolerant than Saudi Arabia, it, too, is no paradise for atheists. The contemporary Egyptian state and society possess something of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde attitude toward unbelief.

On the one hand, the constitution, rhetorically at least, guarantees absolute freedom of belief and there are no laws explicitly outlawing atheism or apostasy. This enables some atheists to openly express their rejection of religion without any harm inflicted on their person or their freedom.

On the other hand, Egypt has draconian blasphemy laws that are exploited by some elements of the state and crusading vigilante Islamist lawyers to selectively and randomly crack down on and persecute some skeptics and atheists.

One person who has fallen afoul of these laws is Sherif Gaber. The young freethinker first entered the public eye when he was a student at Suez Canal University following a smear campaign in 2013 by faculty members.

In 2015, Gaber was released on bail pending a retrial. He went underground but courageously refused to be silenced by the state or vigilantes. Gaber runs a popular anti-religion YouTube channel where the videos he produced have been viewed millions of times.

When attempting to flee Egypt in 2018, Gaber was arrested at the airport. After his release, he went into hiding again until he could work out an escape plan. Despite repeated attempts to leave Egypt and solidarity from abroad, Gaber appears to still be in Egypt and in hiding.

Compared with people like Gaber, I have had it easy. I have spent over a dozen years openly writing and speaking about atheism, as well as criticizing Islam and religion, not just in the Western media but also in some Arab publications. The worst I have experienced to date is occasional online abuse and threats but nothing serious enough for me to fear for my safety. In the real world, I have angered and riled up some religious conservatives enough for them to lose their tempers and call me unpleasant things. However, no incident has yet come to blows, though there have been some close calls.

Atheists and atheism are also widely misunderstood by many Arabs and Muslims. At one extreme, there are those who believe us to be Satanists, partly out of the conviction that those who do not worship God must, by implication, bow down to the devil.

There are others who believe that we have no moral compass and that we are debauched degenerates and disillusioned depressives. “An Arab atheist is usually a parasite — someone who claims to be knowledgeable but is not and will probably eventually commit suicide,” wrote a columnist in a Saudi newspaper. “An Arab atheist is usually a drunk, certainly a degenerate and has definitely nothing to offer.”

This insulting and ignorant attitude springs partly from the fact that many have not knowingly met an atheist. It is also influenced by the conviction that morality springs from religion, despite the findings of modern anthropological studies that show it is religion that springs from our innate sense of morality.

Although I disagree on many moral and ethical issues with religious conservatives, such as when it comes to sexual freedom and gender rights, I do not feel I am immoral or amoral in comparison. Moreover, I do not feel that the absence of God has made my life poorer or more depressing — quite the contrary.

Some Muslims, including some who claim to be enlightened and progressive, accept my right to believe what I want but do not believe I should talk about it publicly because it offends believers and supposedly challenges and threatens the social fabric.

This view not only does not stand up to intellectual scrutiny, but also is highly bigoted and offensive. There are people in Europe who find Islam to be offensive and a threat to the social fabric. Should European Muslims then be forced to conceal their faith?

Of course not. And I am a vociferous opponent of any forces that try to limit the freedom of belief or expression of Muslims in Europe, so why do some Muslims feel they are entitled to limit my freedom of conscience?

Moreover, do such people really prefer that I and other skeptics live a lie as hypocritical Muslims, rather than be honest and open atheists and unbelievers? If they can live with that, I cannot. My convictions are an integral part of my identity and so hiding or distorting them would involve a personal denial of who I am.

Although I possess no missionary designs and have zero desire to “convert” people to my beliefs, I also find it important to be open about who I am because there are many out there who share similar doubts but are in no position to express them, with the sense of abject isolation and loneliness that engenders. I want people like that to realize that they are not alone and that they are most certainly not freaks.

This kind of concealment also plays into the hands of conservatives and radicals who wrongly claim that atheism and skepticism are foreign imports that have no place in Muslim societies because Islam is so self-evidently true (and probably better than its rivals) and belief is the natural state for Muslims. However, the more I have delved into the three Abrahamic faiths, the more I have become convinced that the differences among them is like the differences in branded sportswear: indistinguishable to the agnostic and heathen but a source of great pride and identity to the wearer.

Skepticism and unbelief have always been and will always be integral to Islamic societies, at some times and places tolerated and celebrated, at others suppressed and persecuted.

In medieval times, for example, Middle Eastern societies were far more accepting and accommodating of irreligiosity, irreverence and unbelief than their European counterparts.

Take Abu al-Alaa al-Maarri (973-1057), the blind Syrian poet, philosopher, rationalist and hermit who was not only skeptical of religion but was also an early advocate of extreme birth control, convinced, as he was, that humans should not reproduce at all.

Despite his irreverent views, al-Maarri was a highly respected scholar of his day who turned his small hometown of Maarra, near Aleppo, into a magnet for poets, philosophers, students, princes and other admirers who were drawn by his philosophy, humility, hospitality, generosity and asceticism.

In one verse, al-Maarri intuited a view confirmed a millennium later by modern anthropological research: that humans are generally, despite the irrationality and contradictions of religion, predisposed to believe in a god and the afterlife and possess a religious “instinct.”

Now this religion happens to prevail
Until by that religion overthrown,
Because men dare not live with men alone,
But always with another fairy tale.

As a sign of how far matters have apparently regressed more than a thousand years after al-Maarri’s death, jihadists from the Nusra Front decapitated in 2013 all the statues of the blind poet it could find. They would have probably beheaded the revered poet and philosopher himself, or at least flogged him and tortured him until he “recanted,” if he were alive today.

But it would be a mistake to think that skepticism died after the so-called golden age of Islam. It continued to survive, and sometimes thrive, at different intensities depending on time and place.

For instance, al-Maarri’s “The Epistle of Forgiveness,” which depicts a fictional journey to the afterlife in which pagans and irreverent poets live in a highly bureaucratic heaven, inspired the Iraqi poet Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi to write “Revolution in Hell” (1931). In this epic poem, humanity’s most daring and original thinkers have been condemned to eternal damnation as punishment for their courage, while the obedient and pro-establishment are rewarded with everlasting paradise, in a remarkable parallel to how Arab patriarchal dictatorships operate. The subversive inhabitants of hell, led appropriately enough by al-Maarri, storm heaven and claim it as their rightful abode, perhaps mocking the widely held belief that atheists are Satanists.

Despite the apparent rise of radical Islamism, I feel recent years have marked a major turning point

Despite the apparent rise of radical Islamism, I feel recent years have marked a major turning point toward the acceptance of and demand for freedom of belief and expression. The violence of conservative Islamic regimes and nonstate groups is, in my view, a sign of weakness, vulnerability and retreat, not strength, confidence and advance.

Not only do surveys and anecdotal evidence point to a rise in irreligiosity and religious skepticism across the Middle East, millions of people of faith are losing or have lost faith in political Islam and want religion removed from politics — the very definition of secularism.

I have witnessed this on a personal level, too. Since I came out of the closet about the abandonment of my faith, I have encountered not only a healthy number of skeptics but also a surprising level of tolerance and acceptance of unbelief by many ordinary Arabs and Muslims.

I am regularly and pleasantly surprised that my writings on religion and Islam, including my book “Islam for the Politically Incorrect,” have generally been well received, including by some conservative Muslims who, even if they don’t agree with many of my conclusions, appreciate both my honesty and the nuanced reality I depict.

It is my hope that, in these tumultuous times of rapid social change and upheaval, it is this tolerant, pluralistic, open and honest streak that ultimately gains the upper hand. 

SEE

 LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for ARAB ANARCHISM

http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/02/my-favorite-muslim.htm

 

 

What the Global War on Terror Really Accomplished

Twenty years after 9/11, America didn’t dismantle or destroy jihadist groups, but it fundamentally changed the way they think

Hassan HassanHassan Hassan is the editor in chief of Newlines

September 9, 202107:45 EST

A security personnel walks past a wall mural with images of US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad (L) and Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Kabul on July 31, 2020 / Wakil Kohsar / AFP via Getty Images

Iwas introduced to Maysara in 2015. I wanted to hear from him about his decadelong experience of being part of the Islamic State group, and how he spearheaded the fight against it in eastern and southern Syria the year before. Maysara bin Ali, better known by his nom de guerre Abu Maria al-Qahtani, was also interested in speaking to Syrians from the eastern region — of whom I am one — where he previously worked until the Islamic State captured it in the summer of 2014.

Maysara is a longtime jihadist who has operated in Iraq and Syria for the past two decades. In early 2001, he was moved by the killing a few months earlier of Palestinian fifth-grader Muhammad al-Durrah during the second intifada and joined a paramilitary unit established under Saddam Hussein for the “liberation of Jerusalem.” The volunteer army was made up of Iraqi civilians, and Maysara even signed up as a willing suicide bomber.

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, he joined the insurgency in 2003, operating mainly in Mosul and nearby Qayyarah, around his birth town of Herarah. He joined al Qaeda in Iraq and rose through its ranks when it rebranded itself as the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006. Being from the prominent Iraqi tribe of Jubour and having received religious training under notable Iraqi clerics, he served in the organization as a cleric and a tribal engagement official.

I have been following Maysara since the early days of the Syrian conflict, initially because he commanded the militant group that dominated my hometown and other areas in eastern Syria for about three years, and later because he was at the forefront of historical events and conflicts that shook up jihadism from within. I was also researching how jihadists operate in tribal environments, and he fit the bill as both a jihadist ideologue and a social interlocutor.

A year before moving to Syria, he had been released from prison in Iraq for medical reasons. Out of prison, he resumed his jihadist activities and revived contacts, some of whom would become founders of other powerful jihadist factions within the Syrian rebellion. After a popular uprising broke out against the rule of Bashar al-Assad in 2011, he and a half-dozen jihadists operating in Iraq traveled to Syria and linked up with existing sleeper cells to establish Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Support Front, as a Syrian franchise of the Islamic State of Iraq.

Today, Maysara personifies a striking transformation within the world of jihadism. He fought the Americans in Iraq; he immersed himself in jihadist ideology and strategies and quickly ascended within a number of Iraq’s militant groups; he helped create a jihadist startup in Syria; and the two organizations he helped establish and lead became central to the dramatic changes that jihadist movements underwent in the past decade.

Yet, he has emerged as a leading voice in a nascent shift away from international terrorism toward localized militancy and governance. Many jihadists like Maysara have defied both the Islamic State and al Qaeda in favor of a new strategy that emphasizes the consolidation and retention of power regionally instead of waging a global jihad against the West. This is not because their ideology has softened: It is because they have learned that inviting overwhelming reprisals from modern militaries is the fastest way to forfeit their conquests, squander their influence and be forced to start all over again.

Twenty years after 9/11, America did not dismantle or destroy jihadist groups, but it fundamentally changed the way they think. Much of the shift in jihadist thinking has to do with the military campaigns launched by the U.S. as well as the popular uprisings that submerged jihadists in local conflicts and compelled them to focus on issues within their national borders.

Contrary to how some understand the U.S. withdrawal in Afghanistan, the lesson extremists are taking from the Taliban’s success is not simply that jihad works but that diplomacy and engagement are a necessary part of the process, which includes reassuring the West about external threats emerging from their areas. What can be gained from parlays in Doha is more significant and lasting than any terror attack.

In the past month, analysts noted with interest how the Taliban assisted U.S. forces at the Kabul Airport during the evacuation of American citizens and their Afghan allies. The Taliban practically held the door while the U.S. troops departed the country. What appeared bizarre and paradoxical was in fact entirely predictable to anyone who has studied how jihadism, shaped by the past 20 years, has reevaluated its priorities.

The question now is if the U.S. has fully appreciated this transformation. For all the overblown rhetoric about ending “forever wars,” the Biden administration still hews to a core counterterrorism doctrine. The global war on terror continues by stealth, with “over the horizon” missions on specified targets. We are now entering an era of invisible wars, premised on the same view of who and what the enemy is that was adopted within days of the 9/11 attack. In this view, jihadism is both static and transnational, and what stops its adherents from flying planes into skyscrapers and setting off bombs in Western cities is the lack of capacity to do so.

What makes Maysara’s case special is that he is a veteran jihadist who operated under both the Islamic State and al Qaeda but whose heterodox views are now prevailing within the jihadist universe.

Nearly two years before the world came to know about the Islamic State, he proposed to his group in late 2012 a plan to arrest the Islamic State’s now-dead leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and one of his closest aides, Abu Ali al-Anbari, when the two were meeting with commanders and senior members of Jabhat al-Nusra. At the time the Iraqi group was trying to merge the two groups under one organization. Jabhat al-Nusra rejected the idea and the two organizations ultimately started fighting each other in eastern Syria and elsewhere. His plots against the leaders of the Islamic State were later corroborated by testimonies of senior Islamic State members jailed in Iraq, as well as in videos produced by the Islamic State on the group’s attempts to capture Deir ez-Zor and eastern Syria in 2013 and 2014. He told me he opposed the Islamic State even though Baghdadi offered him a higher position if he aligned with him.

It was not just a turf war. Maysara had the same ideological fights with the Islamic State and al Qaeda in Syria after 2011 as he did with the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006: they were over political and religious positions that undermine or distract from the real and urgent domestic cause. Sheikh Abdullah al-Miyahi, one of his religious mentors in Iraq, spoke about these ideological battles Maysara engaged in when the two were in an Iraqi prison in 2004, during Maysara’s first of two prison stints. The sheikh is currently jailed in Iraq for association with al Qaeda, and he attacked Maysara in a series of interviews on an Iraqi television channel. Despite his criticism of Maysara, he acknowledged that Maysara was particularly opposed to the “extremists” of al Qaeda in Iraq at the time, which is currently the Islamic State. Maysara differed with those over questions that came to define the Islamic State relative to other groups, such as takfir (the practice of labeling fellow Muslims as apostates) and collaboration with others after the declaration of an Islamic state.

Years later, now in northern Syria, Maysara would continue such debates but against al Qaeda and its ideologues in Syria in the same way he had done with the Islamic State of Iraq. A common denominator between the two situations, he would point out, was Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a Jordanian jihadist ideologue linked to al Qaeda. Al-Maqdisi was party to the jihadist infighting in Syria, who eventually took a hard stance against the likes of Maysara who advocated for disengagement from al Qaeda and global jihad, accusing the group of “diluting” its jihadist character. Maysara blamed al-Maqdisi for the creation of the monster that would later become the Islamic State, pointing to his writings as a key source of radicalization among inmates.

Maysara is also not an isolated case: Such traditional views are coming back to the fore — and even dominating debates — because recent events like the defeat of the Islamic State’s territorial caliphate in Iraq and Syria and the recent victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan appeared to have vindicated this line of thought.

The success of groups that turned to local militancy instead of global terrorism have underscored the defects of ideologies that focused on waging ruinous global battles.

The best way to understand and assess the next phase of Sunni militancies is to view them through local insurgencies that predated al Qaeda

The localization of jihadist causes is here to stay, and the best way to understand and assess the next phase of Sunni militancies is to view them through local insurgencies that predated al Qaeda and the Islamic State. In a sense, jihadists are not as much converting to a new form as they are reverting to old insurgencies and norms, before al Qaeda hijacked and internationalized them.

The ideology of transnational jihadism targeting the West, “the far enemy,” as epitomized first by al Qaeda and more recently by the Islamic State, has been an aberration in the long history of Islamist militancy that is rooted in local grievances and conflicts. Groups linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State can be traced to indigenous insurgencies or hotspots that preceded these organizations by decades, and these groups are now reconnecting with their old roots to further entrench themselves.

In Syria, for instance, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and Ahrar al-Sham can be regarded as a second iteration of the Islamist insurgency in central and northern Syria in the 1970s and 1980s, even if they were created by veterans of the jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Iraq in the 2000s. This connection is both ideological and organic. These Syrian groups have been guided primarily by the Islamist and jihadist ideas of Abu Musab al-Suri, who emphasized decentralization, pragmatism and deep ties with local communities above organizational rigidity and vanguard ideas and laid the groundwork for a “third generation” of jihadism after Afghanistan and Iraq. These Syrian groups have also been shaped by memories and events in the country, even among returnees who had left in the 1980s and became involved in battlefields in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Iraq. Many younger members and leaders of these groups also share family links and grievances with those involved in the old insurgencies.

The same goes for the Islamic State of Iraq, with roots in old extremist movements north of Mosul and in Kurdistan, and a particular brand of sectarianism that existed in the country, and was even promoted by Saddam’s regime, in the 1980s and 1990s. Maysara, for example, explained that the anti-American atmospherics promoted by the former regime in the 1990s and early 2000s “primed” Iraqis to join the jihad after 2003, and he himself relates to an older and indigenous militancy, in the north, through jihadist mentors from Iraq, more than to materials or individuals from outside the country.

The Taliban, too, are said to look at earlier incarnations of their movement in the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad, and before that in the Afghan Pashtun Islamism, as inspiration to be less dogmatic than they were in the 1990s. As Afghan journalist Ahmed-Waleed Kakar put it in Newlines last week: “Those considered moderate during the Soviet jihad consisted of traditionalists and monarchists keen on accommodating local context and norms.” The Taliban were among those traditionalists, he added. The Taliban will probably not change in any significant way, but the idea of how they seek to justify flexibility by looking back is illustrative of the broader point about older roots for contemporary militant groups, parallels to which can be found in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt and Yemen.

These views existed before al Qaeda, and under al Qaeda as undercurrents, and their vindication means they can emerge as more grounded than the vanguard ideologies that dominated the scene in the better part of the past two decades, because they have an established basis in local realities across the region. The process of reverting to old roots started before the Arab uprisings in 2011, but the consolidation of such changes at the expense of transnational jihadism has taken time to play out.

Militants, thrust into sudden conflicts, needed time to acclimate and establish a footing in their given area. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, meanwhile, provided a ready and functional framework for militants. Many of the conflicts in the region caught locals off guard and pushed them to embrace ideologies already locked and loaded for such armed conflicts. Ahmad Abazeid, a jihadism expert from Syria, attributed the weakening of Syrian militant groups relative to veteran jihadist groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State to the lack of a jihadist or militant ideology grounded in the Syrian context, especially since the country had not seen conflict for four decades. A Syrian jihadist or militant ideology had to be developed in the diaspora, namely in Afghanistan and Iraq. These veterans came back to Syria as part of foreign-led jihadist leagues. It took a while for some of these groups to free themselves from the shackles of the veterans and seek to localize their operation, even if their priorities were shaped by local events and ideologies all along.

When Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi came to Iraq in 2002, to prepare for the fight against the U.S. invasion, he brought with him jihadist expertise and experience, gained through years spent in Afghanistan, that local groups lacked. The foreign jihadists had many such advantages, enabling them to ride the local waves and become leaders of men. Nevertheless, no jihadist ideology could succeed without a local support base that served as its core, and it is that core that eventually took over and “re-Iraqized” the group, in terms of ideology and direction.

The shift to local jihad was not consolidated earlier also because the jihadist splits took time to be crystalized. Take the differences between al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The two had strategic and tactical disagreements since the early days of the war in Iraq, as exemplified in the famous letter Ayman al-Zawahiri, then the deputy leader of al Qaeda, sent to al-Zarqawi in 2005 warning him about his vicious and sectarian tactics in Iraq. Later, after al-Zarqawi died, the Iraqi group ended its oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden and formed the Islamic State of Iraq, declaring its Iraqi leader as “the leader of the faithful” who reported to no one. Despite such disagreements, however, the two sides maintained a civil discourse, and the Iraqi branch continued to respect and refer to al Qaeda’s leaders as their elders. This dynamic changed drastically after 2013, when quiet disagreements turned to loud schisms that polarized the jihadist scene and hardened existing differences among various strands of jihadism and militancy. This caused the sharp fragmentation of jihad for the first time despite differences existing for decades before.

What may have appeared as the recovery of al Qaeda after the popular uprisings and the death of bin Laden in 2011 was arguably an illusion: The very groups that caused the demise of al Qaeda and made it obsolete were the ones that made it look like it was still powerful because jihadists pretended and outsiders assumed that various groups in the region still deferred to it. It would take several years for this dynamic to become apparent, as the dust settled and new realities emerged. Al Qaeda under al-Zawahiri could not keep its own branches, permanently losing the key ones in Iraq and Syria. Other al Qaeda branches, such as in Yemen and Africa, pledged publicly that they would not allow their terrain to be used for attacks against the West. Such pledges were dictated by local imperatives, even if they had the al Qaeda stamp of approval.

Few today doubt that al Qaeda is moribund. The group functions largely through the so-called Hattin Committee (which U.S. officials mistakenly refer to as the Hattin Shura) that includes al-Zawahiri’s aides deputized in his chronic absence to deal with conflict resolution and mediation among jihadists particularly in places like Syria, and even these aides tend to be viewed suspiciously by many jihadists because they were based in Iran. Yet ground-level changes in jihadism and militancy, more than the dysfunctionality of its organization and absence of its leadership, can better explain why al Qaeda has little chance to reverse its fortunes. It is not a question of whether al Qaeda can field a more charismatic or functional leader than al-Zawahiri; instead, the idea itself no longer has the same utility it once had within the extremist circles. Unlike in the past, the jihadist leadership is contested, the movement itself is fragmented, and the vanguard ideas that once attracted a following under the symbolic leadership of bin Laden no longer resonate.

This does not mean the end of al Qaeda, however. Should the pendulum swing and the jihadist experiment in local governance fail, one can imagine the argument for attacking the “far enemy” gaining renewed support among some. This scenario could also happen if drones and bombs continue to drop on civilians in rural areas across the region in the name of counterterrorism. And no organization or movement is monolithic: It is entirely plausible that some individuals inspired by jihadists will continue to seek to carry out attacks against the West. But as a broader remit, it is unlikely that jihadists today will be as ambitious and daring as al Qaeda was in 2001. And this will likely prove to be the rule for the foreseeable future, for several reasons.

First, al Qaeda commands little respect among jihadists today. Al-Zawahiri has a narrow fan base among jihadists, and mostly because he was a companion and a successor to bin Laden. Al Qaeda had the advantage of being an early adopter of transnational Sunni jihadism, which provided them with the symbolism, through bin Laden and others who had just emerged victorious from the fight against the godless Soviets, to lead the Sunni jihadist movement for a while. This leadership role ended after 2011, with the death of bin Laden, the eruption of Arab uprisings and the subsequent jihadist infighting.

Second, jihadists teach their recruits about the need to focus locally not as part of their external propaganda but internally to their own audience. They dismiss the old “jihad of the elite,” of the vanguards and globalists, and advocate for the “jihad of the people,” which caters to local needs. The old way of bin Laden belonged to a different era, they say.

Third, they also take inspiration from their Shiite counterparts, who went through a similar global-to-local evolution. They did not target the West or seek a global caliphate, but they succeeded in controlling several Arab countries with the help of Iran. Within the region’s Islamist landscape, Shiite groups pioneered transnational terrorism and suicide bombing, especially in the 1980s after the Iran-Iraq war. Even though Sunnis were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, they would adopt suicide bombing and transnational terrorism only a decade later, through Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which learned directly from Hezbollah, and with al Qaeda, respectively.

Most important, though, is that the changes within jihadism are happening not just because the localized approach has benefits but also because the alternative carries immense costs. Jihadists have learned two lessons from the past 20 years which have had a moderating and sobering effect. One is that local fights are the priority and more can be achieved by focusing on the local environment, an opportunity that had not necessarily been available in the 1990s and early 2000s. The Arab uprisings were an opportunity that presented itself one decade into the U.S.-led war on terror, and involvement in these uprisings taught jihadists to moderate their views, limit their ambitions and ground their views in country-specific contexts. They now have to fight as insurgents operating and embedding within communities, rather than as vanguards preaching from ivory towers. The other lesson is to not mess with the U.S. if you can help it; in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, jihadists fought the U.S. as an occupier not as the “far enemy” as such. The Taliban limited their fight to Afghanistan, while al Qaeda and the Islamic State took the fight to the West. The first succeeded and the other two failed.

This jihadist transformation is playing out at a time when the U.S. is similarly shifting its priorities away from counterterrorism and maximalist positions in foreign policy, to focus on domestic threats or on great power competition, which in turn reflect widespread attitudes in many circles within the U.S. This two-way change — in American priorities and in the jihadist outlook — will likely further reinforce the dynamics that deemphasize confrontation, not in the sense that the two sides will like each other but in that both have changed their priorities and have less time for each other.

As it did with the Taliban in Afghanistan, the U.S. will likely learn to live with the reality of jihadists controlling certain areas. Washington seems less willing to initiate campaigns against jihadists as a policy reflex, as the U.S. did in many places over the past 20 years to deny jihadists the ability to congregate and operate in certain areas, such as Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Mali, Somalia and Libya. In many of these cases, the U.S. had no particular strategy beyond preventing radical forces from controlling areas merely because they were jihadists, and they left no room for engagement or compromise.

That approach slightly changed with the Taliban, when the U.S. did the unthinkable by engaging, negotiating and striking a deal with their foe of 20 years. This engagement endured under three administrations, with direct negotiations ultimately starting under a Republican administration and enforced under a Democratic one. Even more unthinkable were the scenes of the Taliban and U.S. fighters standing mere inches from each other outside the Kabul airport, coordinating their efforts through mediators.

But it is simplistic to view the persistence of jihadism as a defeat for the U.S.

Behavioral changes within jihadism are in part a product of the U.S.-led campaigns against global jihadism. The Americans may not have defeated or eliminated jihadism, but they helped transform it from being a vanguard movement committed to international terrorism into local actors responsive to both local and international imperatives who came to view as counterproductive the fight as previously defined by bin Laden and al Qaeda.

And that is the unheralded accomplishment of the war on terror, which, besides all the destruction and misery it caused, transformed jihadism. The U.S. achieved its core objective, notwithstanding the rhetoric about nation building, human rights and women’s emancipation, by tempering jihadism to be a threat only to local populations, not to Westerners. In this sense, the global war on terror was in fact won, just not on the high-minded terms in which it was fought.