Holy War and the Professions

Paul Cruickshank writes about al-Qaeda's love of technically skilled professionals:

Jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda have particularly focused their recruiting efforts on attracting highly skilled individuals, like doctors, as operatives. Such recruits are more likely to have the technical skills needed in assembling explosive devices and the discipline required to carry off an operation. Al Qaeda's standardized application form, discovered by the U.S. military in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, required candidates to specify their precise educational achievements and to list their "intellectual" and "professional skills." This helped Al Qaeda recruit only the most promising operatives from the thousands of jihadists present in Afghanistan.

He also mentions in this regard an article by Peter Bergen and Swati Pandey (PDF) which looked at the biographies of a sample of the 79 participants in the five biggest anti-western terrorist attacks and saw that "more than half of the group we assessed attended a university, making them as well educated as the average American." Marc Sageman makes similar points in his 2004 book Understanding Terror Networks.

In my view, this shouldn't really be all that surprising. Political movements of all sorts tend to be led by relatively well-educated middle class professionals. That's true of the major social reforms of American history and the major nationalist movements of the decolonization era, and also of the Khmer Rouge, the Jacobins of the French Revolution, and, as best one can tell, al-Qaeda.

Comments

If they're recruiting fluent English speakers, that's puts them one step ahead of us.

Posted by JP | July 9, 2007 10:11 AM

"doctors...more likely to have technical skills"!?

Not for bomb-making, well, at least not this Internist. Most of us aren't surgeons, and there's a reason for that, which I personally exemplify to the highest degree.

Historically, doctors have been prominent as revolutionaries, though more in the planning and ideology departments than in anything that requires technical skills. There's George Habash, and Jean-Paul Marat, and my personal favorite, Giovanni da Procida. He founded the revolutionary movement that got the Angevins out of Sicily, but which, for lack of anything better to do after that achievement, evolved into the Mafia. Not many organizations last 800 years.

Posted by Glen Tomkins | July 9, 2007 10:32 AM

Of course it's hard to run a revolutionary, violent organization when you don't know how to read or right.

Posted by Reality Man | July 9, 2007 11:27 AM

I thought Cruickshank's article sucked. All this nonsense about how doctors potentially have access to various exotic weapons. Radiation! Viruses! Oh, scary!

I'm more interested in finding out why well-educated healers would be attracted to killing people, however they do it. But nothing on that in the article.

Posted by Dave | July 9, 2007 11:38 AM

Dave:

"I'm more interested in finding out why well-educated healers would be attracted to killing people, however they do it."

For the same reason other radical Muslims are attracted to killing people. Remember, Al Qaeda's #2 is a physician.

Posted by Harry | July 9, 2007 11:47 AM

Viva la revolucion...

E. Guevara, A.C. Sandino, D. Ortega...ok, these guys are all people from the middle-class (and not professionals). Uh...and do we lump revolutionaries with terrorists? Any thoughts about the Latin American contribution here?

G

Posted by Gus | July 9, 2007 11:55 AM

Wait, Al Qaeda has a standardized application form? Is there a terrorist 'Common Application', you know, when you want to keep your terrorizing options open?

Posted by mikem | July 9, 2007 1:25 PM

I agree with mikem. What may be more telling is not that so many professionals are involved with Al Qaeda (although it does tend to shed light on what their goals are, pace Bush & CO ... c.f. Glen Tomkins et al on physicians and other professionals as revolutionaries), but that they have a standardized application form.

Essentially we're fighting a corporation! Of course, that's the last thing Bush & CO would want to admit ... which is why we can't trust nitwit free-traders, corporate-shill righty-tighties, etc., to fight terrorism, no matter what man-crushes the SCLM has.

Posted by DAS | July 9, 2007 2:14 PM

Political movements of all sorts tend to be led by relatively well-educated middle class professionals. That's true of the major social reforms of American history and the major nationalist movements of the decolonization era, and also of the Khmer Rouge, the Jacobins of the French Revolution, and, as best one can tell, al-Qaeda.

Not to mention the communists of the nineteenth century and the Bolsheviks in Russia.

Posted by Tyrone Slothrop | July 9, 2007 2:33 PM