Hydrablog Glossary
AfPak: Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Pakistan), North Western Frontier
Province (Pakistan), tribal belts in Afghanistan and/or Pakistan
Allah: Arabic word for God; more or less the same, monotheistic God worshipped by
other “great” religions
Al Qaeda (also al Qaida): Arabic for “the Base”; group that began as a resitance
group to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan but later became the first head of the
global-jihadis hydra to win recognition (infamy) by planning the attacks of
September 11, 2001
BME or bme: broader middle east
Bonjinka (Operation Bojinka):
DCI: director of central intelligence; the position that was the titular head of all of
America’s disparate intelligence agencies from 1947, when the National Security Act
(NSA) became law, until December 2004 when the Intelligence Reform and
Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) amended the 1947 NSA (see M. Kent Bolton, U.S.
National Security and Foreign Policymaking after 9/11: Present at the Re-Creation
(Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)
DNI: director of national intelligence created by the IRTPA which became law in
December 2004; DNI more or less supplanted DCI (see DCI) who was the titular
head of America’s intelligence bureaucracy as created in the 1947 NSA. When the
1947 NSA became law (June 1947) the older and an hoc OSS (which has spied on
Nazis) and small code-breaking units within the unitary military structure) was
permanently replaced by the Central Intelligence Agency. Since the CIA’s early days,
the US intelligence community (IC) proliferated into some 16 different and often
disparate agencies with different but overlapping missions. (See http://dni.gov.)
DHS: department of homeland security, created after 9/11 and made a cabinet
agency by slicing and dicing some 20-plus former bureaucracies into the new
bureaucracy that is today’s DHS; prior to DHS’s creation, America had not agency
tasked specifically with ensuring homeland security. Indeed, two of the findings of
the 9/11 Commission were that America’s intelligence community failed to share
valuable intelligence with one another contributing to 9/11 and that since no
specific agency existed to ensure homeland security no bureaucracy assumed that
responsibility
DOE: department of energy (which includes joint management of America’s nuclear
weapons with the Pentagon as well as its own intelligence bureau(
DOD: department of defense; includes both the uniformed military and the civilian
leadership that terminates with the U.S. president as the Constitutional commander
in chief; its principal mission is fighting wars effectively
DOJ: department of justice whose mission is “justice” but under whose aegis is the
FBI
DOS: department of state; beyond its principal mission of avoiding war (diplomacy),
dos has its own intelligence agency known as INR which during the Bush
administration dissented (along with DOE’s agency) with the findings that Iraq had
reconstituted its nuclear weapons program
Hydra: mythological multi-headed monster that I coined for global jihadis
(especially al Qaeda) early on and used for website and future consultation company
GSAVE or gsave: refers to the Bush administration’s specifically but presumably for
the next administration, the global struggle against violent extremism (especially
jihadis hydra)
GWOT or gwot: the unfortunate acronym the Bush administration used early on for
the Global War on Terrorism
IC: U.S. intelligence community; a warren of some 16 different intelligence
collection, analysis, and distribution agencies; though they span different cabinent
agencies (DHS, departments of defense, state, energy, treasury, justice) they have a
common chief, the DNI and his office of DNI (ODNI) where budget and tasking
priorities are centralized, in theory. In creating the IRTPA Congress intentionally left
the process especially between the DOD (under whose rubric approximately 80% of
the IC actually exists), the DNI and the Attorney General (AG) whose department of
justice houses the Federal Bureau of Investigation. See M. Kent Bolton, U.S. National
Security and Foreign Policymaking after 9/11: Present at the Re-Creation (Maryland:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)
IRTPA: the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (see Intelligence
Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act of 2004, Public Law 108-455 (December
17, 2004), available at http://intelligence.senate.gov/laws/pl108-458.pdf in
Acrobat Reader version
Insurgency: any attempt broadly to overthrow a duly elected government; here it’s
used for disparate movements such as the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka to the Taliban
insurgency. Note: since the Taliban are Sunni-Salafi jihadis who are trying to
overturn the Hamid Karzai govt—as imperfect as the latter has proved—the Taliban
are considered here as jihadis and insurgents
Islam: religion established by Prophet Mohammed during 7th century; considered
by its members to be more perfected version of succession of religions from Judaism
to Christianity; Islam believes in the Old Testament Prophets of the Bible and
consider Jesus (Issa in Arabic) another Prophet of God but, in particular, the most
recent prophet in the succession of Abraham (Ibrahim) through Jesus, through
Mohammad.
 Sunni Islam: the majority of the Islamic world (greater than 70%) who
believed that when Prophet Mohammad finally ascended to Heaven, the next
leader Caliph was a companion of Prophet Mohammad and that Prophet
Mohammad had so designated him as such
 Shi’ite Islam: the minority of the Islamic world who believed that blood
succession (son in-law and nephew of the Prophet Mohammed) was the next
Caliph;
 While many other differences have emerged since this early split, the schism
over succession is what characterized the original split.
Islamic Caliphate: between 639 BCE (following Mohammad’s death) and around
715* BCE Islam expanded eastward across Persia (today’s Iran) and South Asia,
westward, across northern Africa onward to southern Spain, northward across
former Byzantium, and northwestward into Europe to the doorsteps of France (the
land of those whom the Arabs called Frankish); the various Crusades that were
violent bloodbaths begun in the 11th century (around 1099) and continued in wave
into 12th and 13th centuries. The Caliphate was re-established first in Baghdad
(Mesopotamia anciently and today’s Iraq) then Egypt and finally under Turkish rule
and part of the Ottoman Empire until shortly after WWI ended the Ottoman writ;
Turkish secular leader Ataturk ended the Caliphate in 1923-24, a date of ignominy
and infamy for Salafi jihadis
-ir: shorthand for Iraq, occasionally for Iraqi
hydra: global jihadis hydra (name I coined in 2002 and used in the title of my 2004
book on U.S. foreign policy
jihadis: Sunni-Salafi jihadis
Hadith: the saying of the Prophet Mohammad; “his a collection of traditions
containing sayings of the prophet Muhammad that, with accounts of his daily
practice (the Sunna), constitute the major source of guidance for Muslims apart
from the Koran” (quote from Oxford English Dictionary)
Kufir (check plural-singular)
Koran: Islamic holy scripture created after Mohammad descended back to earth
from heaven
ODNI: the office of the Director of National Intelligence, the position that supplanted
the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) in December 2004 when the IRTPA
became law (see DNI)
Salafi: sect of Islam who believe in the original interpretation of the Koran and the
Hadith; somewhat analogous to what Christians might call fundamentalists who
believe in literal and original interpretations of the Bible
Takfir: in Sunni-Wahhabi tradition being able to label others as apostates infidels
without proper cleric approval is the verb takfir’ it has been an essential thing for
Sunni-Salafi-jihadis because it has allowed them to designate who can be punished
including killed (from Shi’ia “heretics” to most any Muslim deemed not pious to
infidels)
use psci350: use for political science, psci 350, global governance course
use psci355: use for political science, psci 355, U.S. foreign policy course
use psci455: use for political science, psci 455, U.S. national-security policy course
Wahhabi (also Wahabi and Wahhabism and Wahabism): a form of Sunni tradition
emanating from Saudi Arabia in 18th century; “a member of a strictly orthodox Sunni
Muslim sect founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–92). It advocates a
return to the early Islam of the Koran and Sunna, rejecting later innovations; the
sect is still the predominant religious force in Saudi Arabia “
NSSherlock: obvious point; one needn’t be Sherlock Holmes to make self-evident
observation; the observation was hardly a scoop
NWFP: North-West Frontier Province; swath of land between the Afghan-FATA
border and Pakistan proper that is mix of tribal and non-tribal peoples and cities
Madrassa: Islamic schools wherein the curriculum is heavily focused on Islamic
tenets and not traditional educational curriculum
Levant: regions of former Islamic Caliphate in eastern Mediterranean including the
area’s islands
Islamic Maghreb: northern Africa that became part of the Islamic Caliphate system
between 639 BCE and about 720 BCE
Taliban: one-time ruler of Afghanistan whose name the Talib means scholars in
Pashtun, one of the principal languages of Afghanistan; Talibs are far from scholars
in any traditional sense; rather, they have studied the Koran in madrassas in
Pakistan and elsewhere, hence, they are considered “scholars” in AfPak
Sharia: Islamic governance and law from the tenets of the Koran including such
policies as not charging interest on loan, harsh and strict punishments for
proscribes “crimes” and differentiation between Muslims and non Muslims; the
leader of the Caliphate, the Cailiph, would normally be entrusted with adjudicating
conflicts that may arise over interpretation of Sharia; interestingly, the modern
global-jihadis hydra (of which al Qaeda is a part) gets around not having a Caliph by
means of takfir.
USFP (usfp): U.S. foreign policy
Recurring Names Referred to in Hydrablog Archive:
Dr. Ayman al Zawhiri: Egyptian pediatrician from prominent Egyptian family; he Dr.
Zawhiri involved himself in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and eventually formed
a more radical groups of Islamists known as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad; eventually
Dr. Zawahiri and cohorts assassinated the Egyptian President * after which they
were imprisoned and tortured in Egypt. Once out of Egypt, Dr. Zawahiri joined up
with OBL in Afghanistan becoming bin Laden’s theoretical-intellectual agitator
(what Tom Friedman once called bin Laden’s version of Lennin’s Trotsky)
The Blind Sheik (Omar Abdel-Rahman): Egyptian cleric who immigrated to the U.S.
and became instrumental in issuing religious justification for the 1993 Twin Tower
attacks as well as 9/11 and other jihadis attacks that killed numerous
noncombatants (innocent civilians)
Mullah Omar: enigmatic leader of the Islamists known as the Taliban some of whom
have become jihadis, meaning they are willing to kill infidels and apostates and
civilians (noncombatants) in order to re-create the Caliphate
Osama bin Laden (OBL): former Saudis citizen who was one of a handful of young
Muslims who formed an Afghan bureau for Arab recruits against the Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan; he went on to create and lead the global jihadis group, al
Qaeda