Fighting Open Space Organizations

[Koos de Heer]

Hello All,

I have been very quiet for a while, partly because of a large amount of
work, partly because I was overwhelmed by the flood of messages on this
listserve which was just too much to follow. I am just in the process of
picking up again. I came across Chris' post about Al-Qaeda resembling an
Open Space organization and I would like to make a few comments. I will
quote only what is relevant, those who would like to see Chris' original
post can find it in the archive on October 15.

At 10:19 15-10-2001 -0700, Chris Corrigan wrote:
>    * Would an organization with global reach organized around a purpose
> of a "higher good" stand a chance of being as successful as Al-Qaeda has
> been in achieving it's objectives?
Before this question can be answered, we need to ask another one: Is
Al-Qaeda successful?
And before we can answer that one, we need to know what the objectives of
the organization are. If we look at it from the outside, it looks as if its
objectives are to destroy or at least severely cripple the United States as
a nation. But I do not believe that is a goal in itself. I think the reason
people become so passionate about this is a profound feeling of injustice.
So I would like to think that the longterm goal of movements like this is
justice. There is no doubt in my mind that the people in this organization
must be very desperate to make them listen to a very sick (but probably
also charismatic) man like Osama bin Laden. But these two things are
important: most of these people are  1. desperate and  2. seeking justice.

Now I ask the question again: are they succesful? I think they are not. The
means they have chosen will not likely bring them justice. At this moment,
it is only bringing them the retaliation of the largest military force on
earth. Which will only increase their feelings of injustice. Which in turn
will make it easy for Bin Laden's recruitment agency to find more
desperados. In this light I fully agree with the writings of Robert Bowman,
posted by Julie Hotard on the 12th of this month.
>    * For the countries that are at war against Al-Qaeda, what kind of
> thinking and organizing is going to be successful in defeating this
> network?  Is it possible for governments to fight an group organized this way?
In the light of what I just wrote, do we still want to fight them? If their
ultimate goal is justice, we might want to consider helping them.

I would like to know what you think.

Best regards,

Koos


Koos de Heer
Auryn management advies BV
Utrecht, the Netherlands
mailto:koosdhr at auryn.nl
http://www.auryn.nl/
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