CAIRO — An American think-tank linked to the Pentagon is suggesting a series of strategies to undermine Muslim groups deemed as a threat to Western dominance.
"The United States is currently engaged in what has been characterized as the 'long war'," RAND Corporation said in a new comprehensive study.
"The long war has been described by some as an epic struggle against adversaries bent on forming a unified Islamic world to supplant Western dominance, while others characterized it more narrowly as an extension of the war on terror."
In its "Unfolding the Future of the Long War," RAND classifies such groups into three main categories; doctrinaire jihadists, religious nationalists and secularists.
RAND Corporation, a non-profit group working to help improve policy and decision-making in the US through research and analysis, is suggesting a raft of strategies to tackle these groups.
One strategy is based on driving a wedge among what it describes as Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each others.
"This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operation, unconventional warfare and support to indigenous security forces."
Under this strategy, Washington and local allies use some "jihadist" groups to launch proxy campaigns to discredit transnational campaigns by rival groups.
It suggests seizing on the Sunni-Shiite tension by taking the side of conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite movements in the Muslim world.
"Divide and Rule would be an inexpensive way of buying time for the United States and its allies until the United States can return its full attention to the long war."
Regime Change
Rand also suggests that the US should work to restrain the space in which "Jihadist" groups can operate.
"It is an 'outside-in' approach that seeks to stabilize the outer geographic edge of the Muslim world to the point where those countries are inoculated against Salafi-Jihadist ideology," it said.
"After isolating the transnational jihadists from the rest of the jihadist movement, the US could work to eradicate the transnational jihadist presence from the outer geographic rings of the Muslim world."
The think-tank proposes strengthening established regimes to deprive "Jihadist" groups from public support.
"The theory here is that the main driver behind the Salafi-jihadist surge is the existence of ungoverned spaces and public administrations that cannot deliver basic services to ordinary people."
The study recommends that the US seizes strategic areas throughout the Muslim world to work on sidelining "Jihadist" groups.
"Under this strategy, the US would work with key allies like Algeria, Egypt, and Yemen to remove all Salafi-jihadist elements from certain areas through a classic COIN approach that concludes with infrastructure restoration and the formation of local self-defense militias.
"The hope here would be that over time the Salafi-jihadist groups would be relegated to the geographic margins of the Muslim world and cut off from one another."
RAND also recommends using decisive military force to change regimes in key Muslim countries.
"The theory here is that the geopolitical earthquake caused by regime change will empower democratic forces throughout the Muslim world and force much of the Salafi-jihadist warrior community to come out into the open to fight US conventional forces, thus giving the US a better chance of crushing them decisively."
Click to read the study