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Religious IntelligenceRon E. Hassner aa Department of Political Science , University of California,Berkeley , Berkeley , California , USAPublished online: 10 Nov 2011.

To cite this article: Ron E. Hassner (2011) Religious Intelligence, Terrorism and Political Violence,23:5, 684-710, DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2011.598197

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Religious Intelligence

RON E. HASSNER

Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley,Berkeley, California, USA

Sacred rituals and symbols can act as force multipliers that motivate and constrainthe effectiveness of actors. Religious intelligence involves an assessment of how theserituals and symbols affect combat operations. The fourfold challenge faced by thereligious intelligence analysts is to ascertain how prominent a role religion will playin a given conflict, what the relevant sacred phenomena are, how salient they are forthe specific religious communities present, and how they will affect a given conflict.The case studies that form the core of this article highlight three issue areas open toreligious intelligence collection and analysis, and exhibit variation in the ability ofintelligence analysts to correctly assess those religious factors. Egyptian and Israelidecision making prior to the 1973 Arab-Israeli War illustrates how informationabout sacred time can influence war initiation. The diverging outcomes of twocounterinsurgency operations at the same sacred site, Operation Blue Star(1984) and Operation Black Thunder (1988), demonstrate the utility of intelli-gence about the parameters of sacred space. A final case study explores the U.S.failure to grasp the importance of religious authority in the Iranian Revolution. Iconclude by considering the actors best suited for gathering and processing religiousintelligence. Religious intelligence requires interdisciplinary teams that combineexpertise in religion, area studies, and military operations.

Keywords conflict, culture, holy, intelligence, religion, sacred

Introduction

The Sunan Abu-Dawud is one of the most significant collections of hadith, reports onthe deeds of the Prophet Muhammad. Compiled in the 9th century, it is unique indedicating an entire volume to the Prophets detailed predictions about the comingof the mahdi, the Muslim redeemer. One hadith locates the precise spot in which themahdi will reveal himself: between the Rukn and theMaqam in the Grand Mosquein Mecca.1 This pinpoints the site of the redeemers appearance to within severalyards, between the corner of the cuboid shrine at the center of the Grand Mosque

Ron E. Hassner is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. He is the author of War on Sacred Grounds (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 2009).

The author thanks Pauletta J. Otis, Dariush Zahedi, Ryan Carroll, and David Patel fortheir comments and suggestions. He is extremely grateful to Andrius Galisanka for his out-standing research assistance.

Address correspondence to Ron E. Hassner, Department of Political Science, Universityof California, Berkeley, 202 Barrows Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. E-mail: hassner@berkeley.edu

Terrorism and Political Violence, 23:684710, 2011Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0954-6553 print=1556-1836 onlineDOI: 10.1080/09546553.2011.598197

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in which a meteorite is embedded (Rukn al Aswad), and the Place of Abraham(Maqam Ibrahim). Another report describes the lineage, appearance, and name ofthe redeemer: The Prophet said: The Mahdi will be of my stock, and will have abroad forehead a prominent nose . . . [his] name will be the same as mine.2 Yetanother narration goes as far as to establish the timing of the mahdis appearanceprecisely at the turn of an Islamic century.3

The dawn of a new century is a rare event. The only such instance in the 20thcentury occurred on November 20, 1979, the first day of the Muslim year 1400A.H. It was on that date precisely, and with these prophesies in mind, no doubt, thata group of armed insurgents presented the mahdi to an astonished crowd of pilgrimsinside the Grand Mosque in Mecca. The purported mahdi, Muhammad ibn AbdAllah al-Qahtani, matched the descriptions in the hadith perfectly, Aquiline noseand all. Standing at the precise spot prophesied by the hadith, the insurgentsdemanded allegiance from all those present, denounced the corrupt rule of the Saudiroyal family, and called for the establishment of a traditional Muslim society on theSaudi peninsula. They then locked the gates of the mosque, trapping thousands ofhostages inside and launching the bloodiest and most protracted hostage crisis inmodern Saudi history.4

The Saudi regime was dumbstruck by the attack. Security forces required threehours to arrive at the scene.5 Another four days would pass before the governmentcould secure the religious sanction to launch an all-out attack on the insurgents inthe mosque.6 Given multiple, ambiguous, and often contradictory predictions regard-ing the appearance of the mahdi in various hadith collections, it would have beenreasonable for the Saudi government to approach the narratives in Sunan Abu-Dawudwith some skepticism. But given the precision with which this source describes thisonce-in-a-century event, given the impact of such an event, should it occur, and giventhe minimal costs of preparing for this contingency (be it by enhancing security in themosque once every one-hundred years, or by preparing an honor guard to welcomethe mahdi), it is difficult to understand the Saudi decision to ignore this informationaltogether. The hostage crisis of November 1979 is very much the result of a failureto gather, evaluate, and act on religious intelligence.

I define religious intelligence as the branch of cultural intelligence responsible forobtaining and analyzing information about the sacred and its impact on securityoperations. Underlying this concept is the assumption that religion pervades all con-flicts. The role of religion in conflict is more varied and subtle than studies of fun-damentalism, terrorism, and insurgency lead us to believe. Religion can affectboth the initiation of disputes, their conduct, and their aftermath. As I demonstratebelow, religion can play as important a role in interstate wars, police operations, andrevolutions as it does in civil wars, terror campaigns, and counterinsurgencies. It cando so because participants in these conflicts, radicals and moderates alike, are ofteninfluenced by religious beliefs and practices, including rituals, symbols, superstitions,and social structures. It is these beliefs and practices that religious intelligence seeksto expose and analyze.

I begin this article by exploring the role of religion in conflict. I argue that reli-gion can act as a force multiplier that motivates and constrains the effectiveness ofactors. Sacred rituals and sacred symbols can both enhance and inhibit an actorscapabilities. Religious intelligence involves an assessment of how these rituals andsymbolswhether held by an opponent, an audience, or even ones own troopswill affect operations.

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This assessment is bedeviled by four challenges to which I turn in the second partof this paper. First, analysts must estimate how prominent religious ideas and prac-tices are in a given conflict. The prominence of religion depends on whether religiondefines the cause, the identity of participants, or merely the audience to a dispute.Second, researchers must rely on religious ideas to determine the centrality of thesacred phenomena that are relevant for the execution of combat operations. Third,they must study religious practices in order to evaluate the salience of these factorsfor the specific religious communities present. Finally, they need to examine militarypractices in order to evaluate the impact of sacred symbols and practices on combat.

In the third section of this article, I explore three of the many issue areas open toreligious intelligence collection and analysis. Information about sacred time, sacredspace, and sacred authority can provide answers to when, where, and whoquestions about religion and conflict. The late 20th century case studies that formthe bulk of this paper were chosen to highlight these three sacred phenomena. Thethree cases examined here also exhibit interesting variation in the prominence of reli-gion as well as in the ability of intelligence analysts to correctly assess its centrality,salience, and impact. I begin by investigating the ways in which information aboutsacred time can influence war initiation, as illustrated by Egyptian and Israelidecision making prior to the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The diverging outcomes oftwo counterinsurgency operations at the same sacred site, Operation Blue Star(1984) and Operation Black Thunder (1988), demonstrate the utility of intelligenceabout the parameters of sacred space. A third case study explores the perils of faultyintelligence collection about sacred authority by analyzing U.S. failure to predict theleading role assumed by Shia clergy in the Iranian Revolution.

I conclude, in the fourth section of this article, by considering the actors bestsuited for gathering and processing religious intelligence. Though scholars of religionand theologians are adept at exposing the prominence and centrality of particularreligious factors, only area experts can account for their contextualized salience,and only trained military personnel can evaluate their impact on military operations.This suggests that religious intelligence-gathering and analysis should be conductedby interdisciplinary teams of experts, such as the Human Terrain Teams currentlypiloted by the U.S. military.

Religion and Conflict

Religion pervades all aspects of contemporary conflict. Religious beliefs and practices,such as the notions of sacred time, sacred space, and sacred authority, can act as forcemultipliers, influencing the capabilities of actors engaged in conflict. For example,religion did not compel U.S. involvement in Iraq but it indirectly influenced planningand performance by shaping the interests and identities of U.S. troops, their oppo-nents, and third parties. U.S. troops had to contend with the fluctuation of insurgentattacks during Ramadan, recognize the vulnerability of Shia and Christian communi-ties to sectarian violence during their respective holy days, as well as consider the costsof initiating operations during dates of religious sensitivity to a broad Muslim audi-ence, both inside and outside of Iraq. At the same time, U.S. troops strove to protectchurches and mosques from assault, while risking condemnation for desecrating holysites in which insurgents sought refuge. Throughout, military chaplains, Islamist cle-rics, and local religious leaders played a key role in the conflict, acting as mediators,motivators, and interpreters of religious principles relevant to the conduct of war.

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In emphasizing the pervasive effects of religion on contemporary conflict, thispaper seeks to shift the focus in the study of religion and international security awayfrom a preoccupation with religion as a cause of discord. The attacks of September2001, and subsequent U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, have focused theattention of international security scholars on radical non-state actors, primarilyIslamic terrorists and insurgents, who are said to be driven into conflict by religiousideals.7 The quadruple emphasis on the causal effects of religion for radical, Islamic,and non-state actors has obscured the manifold effects that various religious tradi-tions have on professional armed forces (including Western militaries) short ofcausing war.

International Relations scholars have now turned their attention to the greatvariety of ways in which religion can influence conflict. Jonathan Fox and MonicaToft have documented the effects of religion on the frequency and lethality of civilwars.8 Michael Horowitz has analyzed how religious beliefs and institutions affectwar duration.9 Sohail Hashmi has demonstrated that religious ethics have shapedstate choices about weapons of mass destruction.10 Isaak Svensson has studied theeffects of religious beliefs on conflict resolution.11 My own work draws attentionto the ways in which religious transgressions, such as desecration and blasphemy,provoke violence.12

In this article, I define religion and organize typologies around the concept ofthe sacred. Religion can be conceptualized in innumerable ways, ranging from arelationship with God to membership in a community of believers. I choose to followin the footsteps of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, who traced the foun-dation of religion to the distinction between the sacred and the profane.13 Accordingto Durkheim, all religious beliefs, rites, and places express either the nature of sacredthings or the relationship between sacred and profane things. Religious phenomenathus divide the universe into two classes, sacred and profane, that embrace all thatexists but exclude one another. These phenomena include sacred rituals, relics, texts,images, and communities. They also include the three spheres investigated in thefollowing pages: Sacred time, sacred space, and sacred authority.

One way of understanding the sacred is to identify the functions that it providesto believers: insight into religious meaning, communication with the divine, receivingdivine favors.14 Only through appropriate relationships with holy places, holy days,and religious leaders can believers partake fully in the religious experience. Anotherway to circumscribe these sacred categories is to explore the rituals and symbols thatdistinguish these phenomena from their profane counterparts.15 Believers rely on arange of practices and prohibitions in order to maintain the distinction betweensacred and secular in matters of time, space, and authority, and emphasize theunique status of the latter. These can include prayers, ablutions, feasts, fasts, honors,and status symbols; prohibitions on particular actions, speech, clothing, or attitudes;and the requirement that practices prohibited in relation to secular time, space, andauthority be committed. Transgressing by eating sacred foods at secular times, omit-ting gestures of approach when entering a sacred space, or disregarding the rulings ofa prominent cleric, for example, constitute acts of desecration, sacrilege, or blas-phemy. The rules regulating these offenses offer yet another way of identifying thesacred. These categories are distinguished by means of social sanctions attached tocompliance and desecration.16

Because these rituals and symbols are crucial components of the sacred orderthat is at the foundation of all religion, they play a central role in the lives of

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individuals and their religious communities. They do not merely constrain actor pre-ferences and strategies in relation to sacred time, space, and authority, but also shapethe meaning of these categories and even influence perceptions of secular time, space,and authority. By definition, all believers partake in these rituals and symbols, to dif-fering degrees, at all times.

Sanctioned and prohibited rituals and symbols may not have the explicit pur-pose of regulating or motivating combat but they are nonetheless salient at timesof conflict. In times of war as in times of peace, combatants who share religiousaffiliation will wish to partake in ceremonies that honor holy days and will avoiddesecrating holy days by abstaining from prohibited behavior. They will seek tohonor the ordinances governing access to and behavior within sacred sites, and striveto respect the rules regarding the rights and obligations of religious leaders. At thesame time, the symbolic significance of the sacred can shape the meaning of actionin the presence of sacred space, time, and authority, thus influencing how comba-tants understand their actions. The sacred thus encourages or discourages partici-pation in conflict, and constrains what participants are and are not willing to doin the course of conflict. Even when sacred time, space, and authority do not providethe impetus for disputes, and merely serve as backdrops for conflict, they canencourage or discourage the use of force.

Sacred rituals may be an asset to aggressors when the rules governing theserituals constrain the ability of their targets to engage in conflict. For example, ifregard for the sacred requires combatants to indulge in the consumption of intoxi-cants, or abstain from bearing arms, these demands may heighten their vulnerabilityrelative to their opponents. Conversely, rituals disadvantage conflict initiators whentheir systematic exploitation of religious vulnerabilities provokes outrage in targetsor third parties, or provokes actors into engaging more vigorously in combat.

Sacred symbols can similarly constrain or motivate participants depending onthe meanings derived from sacred place, time, or authority. Sacred times, sites,and leaders associated with quietism, pacifism, or harmony may inspire reluctancein an actor contemplating combat. On the other hand, holy days that commemoratetriumphal martyrdom, holy places that honor martial deities and religious leadersthat sanction the use of force, will inspire actors to engage in conflict. The impactof these symbols on conflict is primarily constitutive, not causal. Religious symbolsdo not cause shifts in power directly, but lend context and meaning to conflict. Theyact as a force multiplier or divider if participants choose to act on these meanings.

The ability of religious rituals and symbols to act as either force multiplier orforce divider is complicated by the coexistence of sacred phenomena that have incon-gruous effects. Indeed, even one and the same sacred phenomenon can provoke morethan one response in the same actor or community. It is the task of the religiousintelligence analyst to unravel these forces.

The Religious Intelligence Challenge

Religious intelligence is responsible for obtaining and analyzing information aboutsacred phenomena relevant to a conflict situation. Its goals are to predict the effectsof religious beliefs and practices on allies, opponents, and third parties, and providean assessment of how those various effects might constrain or facilitate combat.

Failures in religious intelligence analysis stem from four common, if false,assumptions about the role of religion in conflict. First, religion is not a dichotomous

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variable in conflict. Because religious ideas and practices are present in all disputes todiffering degrees, conflicts cannot be divided into purely religious and seculartypes. Second, the role of religion is not limited to ideas. Religious symbols, rituals,and authority structures shape conflict as well. Third, these ideas and practices donot always conform to a religious movements orthodoxy or orthopraxy as capturedin formal theology or scripture. They are often local, popular, and eclectic variationsthat reflect the preferences or habits of a religious subgroup. Fourth, combatants donot automatically succumb to religious ideas. Their resilience depends on theirreligious identities as individuals and on their organizations discipline.

To guard against these traps, the religious intelligence analysts must ask fourquestions. First, how prominent are religious ideas and practices in a given conflict?Prominence captures the ability of religion to define the cause, the identity of part-icipants, or merely the audience to a dispute. Second, what sacred phenomena arerelevant for the execution of combat operations and what is their formal centrality?Centrality is determined by religious ideas. Third, how salient are these factors forthe specific religious communities present, given available information about theiridiosyncrasies? Salience is determined by religious practices. Fourth, how are theparticular symbols and practices which this community associates with the sacredlikely to impact combat? Impact is determined by military practices. Each of thesesteps deserves a brief discussion.

Prominence

The sacred is particularly prominent when religion acts as a primary motivator ofconflict, as in wars of conversion, disputes over sacred space, or holy wars. In thesesettings, participants and observers will permitindeed, rely onreligious symbolsand rituals to play a significant role in regulating violence. Such wars of religion are,however, few and far between, particularly in the contemporary era.17

A more common setting, in which the sacred plays a less prominent role, is one inwhich parties are either self-defined or other-defined based on religious indicators,regardless of dispute cause.18 In these ethnic or sectarian clashes, the parties drawon the sacred not to define the purpose of conflict but to determine the fault linesseparating their camps. Religious rituals and symbols act as identifiers, enhance groupcohesion, and provide actors with an auxiliary justification for joining or abstainingfrom conflict. Finally, the sacred will play a relativelymodest role when only third par-ties organize or determine their stance in the dispute based on religious principles. Inconflicts such as these, in which religion plays a least prominent role, religious intelli-gence is unlikely to have a crucial effect on outcomes. In all these cases, the influence ofthe sacred falls along a continuum: it motivates conflict more or less, and shapes theidentities of one, two, or more parties and bystanders to varying degrees.

The greater the likelihood that religious considerations will affect combat, themore vital the contribution of religious intelligence to decision making. The promi-nence of religion in a given conflict thus determines the extent to which faulty oraccurate religious analysis can sway conflict outcomes.

Centrality

The centrality of sacred time, space, or authority depends on their formal ability toprovide key religious functions to believers. The more central a factor is in the

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religious landscape of the community, the greater its ability to provide access to thedivine by enhancing communication with the gods, manifesting the presence of thegods, and conveying divine meanings.19 For example, formal Catholic doctrine sug-gests that believers can hope for a closer experience of God during Easter Mass, inSt. Peters Basilica in Rome, and in the presence of the Pope. These beliefs and prac-tices are formal by virtue of having been enshrined in sacred scripture, validatedthrough continuous community practice and reverence, and endorsed by the appro-priate religious hierarchy.

These sources allow us to rank sacred phenomena by centrality. Formally speak-ing, sacred sites of primary centrality tend to be those on which some divine revel-ation or the founding moment of a religious movement has taken place. Mecca isthe most central site in Islam because Allah manifested himself there to thepatriarchs and to Muhammad and because He decreed that this should be the focusof all prayers. Sites of secondary importance, like the Great Mosques of Cairo,Damascus, Baghdad, or Istanbul, are located on consecrated ground, chosen byreligious leaders, and imbued with significance by tombs and relics. Sites of tertiaryimportance, such as village mosques, mirror more central shrines in design andorientation. The more central a shrine, the better its utility in providing believerswith religious benefits and the more likely believers are to respond vehemently todamage or desecration.20

Sacred time can be ranked along similar lines. The more significant the historicalor mythical event commemorated on a sacred day, the greater the importance of theholy day. Salient dates tend to occur less frequently in the religious calendar, areoften characterized by rules and practices that deviate more significantly fromday-to-day behavior, and are accompanied by stricter penalties for transgression.21

Because of these penalties, as well as the potential favors to be gained on particularlypotent sacred days, significant sacred days can often be recognized by the crowdsthey draw to rituals and sacred sites. For example, Jews crowd in synagogues onRosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, considered the High Holidays that mark thebeginning of the New Year and a commemoration of creation. Because Jews believethat God decides individual fates in this period, even secular Jews seek repentancethrough fasting and prayer on these days. Passover, which marks the Exodus fromEgypt and which is distinguished by a prohibition on the consumption of leavenedbread, is accorded similar respect. Fewer Jews practice the rites associated withthe Festival of Weeks and the Feast of Booths, and only the most observant partici-pate in rites that mark the new moon.

In religious movements characterized by a hierarchical leadership, such as Cath-olicism, Shia Islam, or Mormonism, the centrality of a religious actor is determinedby their position in that hierarchy, which in turn depends on their seniority, therespect they command among peers, and their technical expertise in matters sacred.In non-hierarchical movements, such as Shintoism, Judaism, or Sunni Islam, central-ity is more elusive, often correlating with the ability to attract and lead a religiouscommunity. The more central a religious actor, the greater their ability to interpretand even manipulate the rules that govern sacred parameters like time and space.

Salience

Contrary to the guidelines above, common practice may well elevate seeminglyinferior sacred times, places, and authorities to a high status depending on their

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salience to a particular religious community. Believers do not practice religion in itspure form. Religions do not consist of sacred precepts locked in ancient scriptures:they are lived and dynamic, displaying local idiosyncrasies. These practices are notdeviations from true religion, since no such absolute standard exists. Rather, theyare variants which believers accept as valid and meaningful.22 For example, despiteformal doctrine, many American Christians regard Christmas and Halloween ashighly as they do Easter, if not more so. Since 1981, when the Virgin Mary was saidto have appeared to six children in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, millions ofCatholics have conducted pilgrimages to this Marian Shrine, although it is notformally recognized by the Vatican. Both Martin Luther and his 20th centurynamesake, Martin Luther King, were able to influence the use of violence by theirfollowers beyond what might be expected of a monk and a pastor.

To further complicate matters, believers will place a higher value on religiousfactors if they perceive those to be under threat. Conflict during a sacred day, at asacred site, or involving a religious leader can thus serve to enhance the significanceof each of those phenomena. Recognizing the relevance of a religious factor in aparticular social and political setting thus requires a contextualized understandingof local biases, practices, superstitions, and preferences and how those shift theofficial centrality of a given factor.

The botched raid by agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alochol, Tobacco, and Fire-arms (BATF) on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, on Sunday, Feb-ruary 28, 1993, exemplifies the perils of miscalculating salience. The timing of theattack was influenced by intelligence from undercover agents who had infiltratedthe Waco compound by posing as members of the sect. These agents reported thatthe armory and the chapel were at opposite ends of the Branch Davidian compoundand recommended attacking on Sunday morning because during Sunday morningprayer service the men were separated from the women and children and from acache of weapons.23 The BATFs goal was to time a surprise under conditionsin which Koreshs followers could not get to the weapons so as to minimize the dan-ger of resistance or mass suicide.24 Yet when the BATF agents assaulted the Wacocompound, Koresh and his men were not at prayer. They were waiting, guns inhand, firing at the intruders from forty different positions inside the compound.25

What had gone wrong?Branch Davidians are an offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventist movement,

named after the pivotal doctrine that Saturday, not Sunday, is the holy day of rest pro-posed in the bible. The BATF assault proved disastrous, in part, because the intelli-gence on the sects religious practices that determined the timing of the attack wasfundamentally flawed. Any undergraduatemajor in religion could have told them thatSeventh-Day Adventists worship on the Sabbath, meaning the seventh day or Satur-day, observed one critic, noting the BATFs clumsiness and stupidity.26 Koreshsfollowers considered themselves Christians but they also considered Sunday worshipto be a pagan practice that had corrupted the original biblical commandment.27

Since the Waco confrontation was marked by high religious prominence, thecosts of this intelligence blunder were high. Four BATF agents were killed and four-teen were wounded that Sunday, in addition to an unknown number of BranchDavidians, launching the two-month siege that would culminate in a disastrous con-flagration at the compound.28 Insofar as knowledge of sacred time might have aidedin the successful execution of a surprise attack on the Waco compound, Sunday wassimply the wrong choice.

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Impact

Finally, the analyst must translate findings from the religious to the military spherein order to assess the impact of religious beliefs and practices on combat operations.An understanding of salience may suffice to ascertain how civilian observers willreact to conflict at sacred times, in sacred space, or involving sacred authority,but it will provide inadequate information about how combatants will act in thesecircumstances. Determining the military impact of combat involving sacred factorswill require taking into account the distribution of religious identities among comba-tants (and hence prevailing perceptions of centrality and salience) as well as theextent to which military discipline mitigates or amplifies religious proclivities.

George Washingtons surprise attack on the Hessian troops in Trenton, NewJersey, on December 26, 1776, exemplifies how these calculations might affect mili-tary planning. The religious significance of the date was certainly not a primary con-sideration in Washingtons decision to cross the Delaware on December 25.29 Wecannot know for certain, but Washington may have hoped that the Hessian garrisonwould be distracted by Christmas celebrations, a distraction that would have con-tributed a small measure of enemy confusion to an already well-planned surpriseeffect. They make a great deal of Christmas in Germany, and no doubt theHessians will drink a great deal of beer and have a dance to-night, wrote one officerin Washingtons staff. They will be sleepy tomorrow morning.30

Though Christmas is a holy day of high centrality for Christians, December 26 isnot. The day after Christmas is, however, a date of significant salience to GermanChristians, who celebrate St. Stephens Day.31 Customs associated with this holidaysince the 5th century include heavy communal drinking, known as StoningSt. Stephen (Stefanus Steinigen), leading Germans to refer to the day as DrunkStephen (Supsteffen from Sauf Stefanus).32 Unlike their American counter-parts, the Hessians should have celebrated December 26 with drunken revelry.

But if Washington expected to find the Hessian troops still drunk and lying intheir beds after celebrating Christmas,33 he severely underestimated the discipline ofthe Hessian garrison. The Hessians were alert and armed on the morning of the26th.34 Throughout Christmas, they had conducted regular troop rotations andinspections. Soldiers remained armed and horses harnessed during the holiday.There is no evidence of excessive celebration or heavy drinking among the Hessians;only the sick were excused from duty. Though surprised by an attack in the midst ofa snowstorm, they responded rapidly to the arrival of the American forces andfought effectively.35 If Washington relied on sacred time as the linchpin of his stra-tegic surprise, he miscalculated the impact of the holy day on this particular garrison.

Three Issue Areas

To illustrate the interaction between various requirements for successful religiousintelligence analysis, the following pages examine conflicts in which informationabout sacred time, sacred space, and sacred authority affected decision making. Ihave chosen to focus on these three aspects of the sacred (rather than on sacredrelics, identities, or discourse, for example) because they provide answers to when,where, and who questions about religion and conflict. I have selected theseparticular cases, from the wealth of 20th century examples available, because theyare dramatic instances that highlight the three sacred phenomena at the core of this

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paper. Moreover, these conflicts exhibit interesting variation in the prominence ofreligion as well as in the ability of intelligence analysts to correctly assess the central-ity, salience, and impact of the sacred (see Table 1).

The 1973 War exemplifies the use of religious intelligence to analyze the effects ofsacred time on mobilization and battle effectiveness. Egyptian decision makers werecorrect in recognizing the centrality of YomKippur and its salience for Israeli citizensbut they overestimated its impact on military operations. The implications of this mis-judgment for the outcome of the war were modest, since religion did not play a promi-nent role in defining the cause or the identities of participants in the 1973 War.

Religion played amore prominent role in two Indian counterinsurgency operationsat the Sikh temple in Amritsar. Although these were not disputes over sacred space, theinsurgents and their audience defined the conflict in terms of religious identities, so thequality of intelligence proved an important factor in determining the success and failureof these operations. In the 1984 operation, Indian forces failed to accurately assess thesalience or impact of the sacred space for their opponents or their own troops, resultingin intelligence failure. In the 1988 operation, these faults were remedied.

The Iranian Revolution was not merely a conflict involving religious authoritybut, ultimately, a conflict about religious authority. Yet both Iranian and Americanintelligence analysts failed to gather or evaluate information about sacred authorityprior to the revolution. Consequently, they recognized neither the centrality, nor thesalience, nor the impact of Khomeinis charisma. Because religion played a promi-nent role in the Iranian Revolution, this failure of religious intelligence had a parti-cularly detrimental impact on decision making.

Sacred Time: The 1973 War

Sacred time refers to holy periods, usually days, weeks, or months, in which areligious movement commemorates key events in its mythical past. The rituals andsymbols associated with sacred time can advantage or disadvantage conflict initia-tors by acting as a force multiplier or divider. Decision makers armed with religiousintelligence about their opponents sacred days may elect to launch wars on thesedates in the hopes that religion will affect the capability or enthusiasm with whichtheir own soldiers or their opponents soldiers engage in battle.

Sacred time affects individual combatants in two primary ways. First, the ritualsassociated with sacred time have material effects on mobilization and combat

Table 1. Case studies, variables, and outcomes

1973War

Amritsar1984

Amritsar1988

IranianRevolution

Phenomenon Sacred time Sacred space Sacred authorityProminence Low Medium High

Correct assessment of:Centrality Y Y Y NSalience Y N Y NImpact N N Y N

Result Mixed Failure Success Failure

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effectiveness. Holy days that require soldiers to congregate, isolate themselves, fast,abstain from work, or forego sleep, for example, will affect the ability of these sol-diers to engage in combat. Second, the symbols associated with sacred time canshape the meaning of combat for participants. For example, holy days dedicatedto mourning martyrs or celebrating religious triumphs will influence the fervor withwhich combatants pick up arms and fight. The initiation of the 1973 Arab-IsraeliWar exemplifies both of these processes.

During the planning of the 1973 War, Egyptian decision makers concluded thatlaunching an attack on Israel on the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur would dis-advantage their opponents. Egyptian beliefs about Yom Kippur observance in Israelacted alongside other tactical, operational, and strategic constraints to influence thechoice of October 6th as the launch date for their surprise attack.

Based on statements by members of Egypts high command, Egyptian religiousintelligence made three sets of assumptions about how Yom Kippur would affectIsraeli mobilization and combat readiness. First, due to the centrality of the hol-iday in Judaism and its salience to Israelis, secular and religious alike, the Israeliarmy would stand down. Egypts Chief of Staff Saad al Shazly explained thaton that day both religious and secular Jews fast, abstain from the use of fireand electricity (which meant transportation would be at a standstill), and muchof the Israeli army would be demobilized.36 This statement implies a second con-jecture, namely that hungry reservists would be ill-prepared for combat. Third,Egyptian decision makers expected that observance of the holy day would impedethe mobilization and transportation of reservists to the front. Egyptian PresidentAnwar el-Sadat observed that on this day all public service in Israel would be sus-pended, and the Commander in Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces, MohammedAbdel Ghani El-Gamasy, stated that it was the only day throughout the year inwhich radio and television stopped broadcasting as part of the religiousobservance . . . consequently, they would have to use other and slower means tomobilize the reserves.37

In actuality, few of these expectations were realized. The timing of the attackdoes not seem to have affected the speed of troop movements to the front, but itwas one of several factors that led to Israeli hesitation in calling up reserves inthe first place. The primary reasons for this reluctance had nothing to do with theholiday: they stemmed from concern over the costs of a redundant mobilizationand over inadvertently provoking war, and thus bearing responsibility for thatwar. The presence of Yom Kippur complicated this calculation further by hamperingthe broadcasting of a public alert and by increasing the likelihood that the publicwould overreact to such an alert.38 These considerations are evident in the followingexchange between Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan and the Chief of Staff ofthe IDF, David Elazar, in a meeting the day before the war, as recalled by then Chiefof Military Intelligence, Eli Zeira:

Elazar: . . . the problem is that during this holy day the entire country isdead.

Dayan: That wont stand in our way.Elazar: It will, if something happens and we want to openly mobilize or

issue alerts.Dayan: There will be no mobilizing unless it really starts. The roads are

empty today.

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Elazar: But we have no radio. Weve been thinking, perhaps we shouldinstruct themilitarys radio station to read psalms every two hours?

Dayan: Thenwewould have to tell everyone to listen to themilitarys radiostation. That would cause a great panic. If we dont, who wouldtune in to listen to psalms? Nobody would turn on the radio.39

There is some anecdotal evidence of Israeli soldiers praying or fasting when theattack began but no indication that this affected their ability to fight, since ordersto break the fast, accompanied by rabbinical sanction, were issued rapidly andobeyed immediately.40 Some Israeli soldiers, perhaps as many as a quarter of thosestationed at certain units along the front, had been given holiday leave.41 Yet air raidsirens immediately after the attack alerted Israelis to turn on their televisions andradios, which started broadcasting the call to arms half an hour after the initialEgyptian assault.42 This alert was backed up by means of phone calls and couriers,who were able to locate reservists readily at their homes or nearby synagogues.43 AsDayan had recognized, vacant roads due to the norm against driving on YomKippur facilitated both the movement of couriers and the rapid deployment oftroops to the front.44 As a result, the majority of units reached the front within 48hours, the standard time allotted by the Israeli military for mobilization, and manydid so within 24 hours.45

In sum, Egyptian analysts were correct in attributing great significance to YomKippur as a date of religious centrality in the Jewish calendar. They were also correctin their assessment of the days salience for Israelis, regardless of piety. Widespreadobservance of Yom Kippur rites prevails in Israeli society, across social, ethnic, andeconomic divides. Egyptian planners erred, however, in expecting that these practiceswould have a significant effect on IDF capabilities. Israeli commanders were quickto override any such impact by implementing alternative means of mobilization,aided by a taboo on driving that their Egyptian counterparts seemed to have beenunaware of.

Israeli intelligence fared much worse, given its inability to predict the timing,means, or scale of the combined Egyptian-Syrian assault. Ironically, the Israeli fail-ure to give credence to advanced warnings about an impending Arab attack mayhave stemmed, in small part, due to a misreading of Muslim sacred time. The sur-prise attack on Israel coincided not only with Yom Kippur but also with the holyMuslim month of Ramadan. According to Gamasy, the expectation that Israeli lea-ders would dismiss the likelihood of an assault during this holy Muslim month alsofigured into Egyptian calculations: The enemy would not have expected us to carryout an attack during the month of fasting.46 Gamasy seems to have overestimatedthe extent to which Israeli analysts were aware of Muslim fasting practices or werewilling to incorporate those into their estimates. To the contrary, a report preparedby the research department of the IDFs military intelligence branch, a day beforethe war, noted recent Egyptian orders that prohibited soldiers from observing theRamadan fast, yet failed to realize the significance of this key indicator.47

Israeli analysts also failed to recognize the salience and the impact of the holi-days symbolism for Egyptian soldiers. The 6th of October was not just Yom Kippurbut also the anniversary of the Battle of Badr, a battle fought by the ProphetMuhammad against the Meccan tribe of Quraish on the 17th day of the month ofRamadan in 624 C.E. In Muslim tradition, the Battle of Badr is seen as a decisivemilitary victory against all odds guided by divine intervention.48 Launching an

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attack on the anniversary of the Battle of Badr was a good omen in the words ofEgyptian Minister of War Ahmad Ismail, and to the moral and psychologicaladvantage of our own forces, according to Gamasy.49 Rather than handicapEgyptian forces, Ramadans symbolism propelled them into battle.50 Israeli decisionmakers, on the other hand, remained wedded to the conception that Ramadan poseda vulnerability for their adversaries. The aforementioned intelligence reportexplained unusual Egyptian troop movements in terms of Egyptian apprehensionsof an Israeli intention to exploit . . . the Ramadan feast for an offensive.51 In otherwords, the Israeli assumption was that if sacred time mattered at all, it did so to thedetriment of Egypt, not Israel.

Why did Egyptians and Israelis fail to correctly assess the impact of sacred timeon their opponents? Organizational explanations for faulty intelligence analysis areoutside the scope of this paper so any answer must rest on speculation. One possiblehypothesis is that both errors stemmed from a mirror imaging of religious prac-tices. According to this premise, Egyptians overestimated the effects of Yom Kippurbecause they analyzed it through the lens of Ramadan. The Ramadan fast extendsfor a month and has a higher effect on fatigue than the day-long Yom Kippur fast.Muslims work during Ramadan and gather in mosques in the evenings, whereasJews spend all of Yom Kippur at home or in synagogues. Ramadan increases trafficwhereas Yom Kippur brings it to a standstill. Israelis, on the other hand, may havemisread the implications of Ramadan on war initiation because they analyzed theMuslim holy day through the lens of the Jewish holy day. Unlike Ramadan, the sym-bolic association of Yom Kippur is not with victory and solemn festivity but withrepentance and trepidation.

Because the 1973 War was not a war of religion, nor a war in which the identitiesof the parties were defined primarily in religious terms, these failures of religiousintelligence played only a small role in determining its outcome. Sacred time maynot have produced the results that Egyptian military planners hoped for but the falseexpectation that it would shaped Arab and Israeli behavior both before and duringthe war. The 1973 Arab-Israeli War is thus remarkable because it demonstrates therelevance of religious intelligence in a secular, contemporary war between secular,professionalized armed forces.

Sacred Space: Operations Blue Star (1984) and Black Thunder (1988)

Sacred spaces are religious centers, natural or manmade, perceived by believers asimbued with a particular divine presence. Sacred space, like sacred time, can actas a force multiplier. The rules governing access and behavior in sacred space,designed to prevent desecration, constrain access by combatants, and constrainthe use of force in and around sacred space. Most religious movements ban weaponsand violence in holy places. Others go so far as to prohibit harm to plants and ani-mals in a sanctuary. Rites of purification and gestures of approach, such as removingand donning of clothes, further encumber the movement of combatants in and out ofsacred space. Moreover, since the sanctity of the underlying space transfers to theman-made structure above it, religious communities consider their shrines to beinviolable. These communities will respond in anger to damage caused to sacredstructures in the course of conflict, particularly when combat destroys sites of highcentrality that represent the groups values, heritage, and pride. Such attacks are seenas particularly egregious when they harm worshippers.

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Vulnerable combatants can take advantage of the rituals and symbols associatedwith sacred space in order to level the playing field against superior opponents.52

When insurgents who share religious affiliation with a local community establish astronghold in that communitys sacred site, they can enjoy a freedom of movementand access that may be unattainable to their adversaries. Moreover, if insurgents canpersuade worshippers that they are acting in defense of the faith, they may be able toflaunt taboos banning weapons or prohibiting the use of force, a luxury unavailableto their rivals. They may also escape responsibility for damage to the shrine, whichwill rest primarily with counterinsurgency forces positioned outside the structure.When this happens, decision makers rely on religious intelligence to assist in strikingthe difficult balance between alienating the local population by desecrating sacredsites and responding to the tactical use of those same sites by insurgents.

This dilemma is exemplified in two counterinsurgency operations conducted byIndian forces in the Golden Temple in the 1980s. The Golden Temple in Amritsar,India, is the most sacred Sikh shrine. The temple complex, known as the Court of theLord, is made up of several ornate structures, arranged around a large, rectangularreflecting pool. Most prominent among these are the Akhal Takht (Throne of theEver-Living God), and the Harimandir, a two story building in the center of thepool, where pilgrims worship the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book.

In 1980, an extremist preacher and leader of a radical Sikh separatist movement,Sant Jarnail Bhindranwale, sought refuge from the Indian police in the temple. Overthe course of four years, Bhindranwales forces turned the temple into a fortifiedstronghold, replete with fortified machine gun nests and ammunition depots. Bhin-dranwales men took full advantage of the architectural layout of the shrine byassuming positions in or near the most revered of the temple structures.53

Had the army acquired religious intelligence about the implications of thetemples design, it could have apprehended Bhindranwale in 1983: Until half a yearbefore Operation Blue Star, the insurgent leader resided not in the Golden Templeitself but in the Guru Nanak rest house. By consulting with Sikh religious experts,decision makers would have learned that the rest house was not formally part ofthe temple and thus outside the area in which the insurgents could have appealedfor sanctuary. Uncertain as to whether or not the structure was part of the temple,the authorities chose not to apprehend Bhindranwale there.54 It was only inDecember 1983 that Bhindranwale moved into the Akhal Takht in the center ofthe temple complex, from which he proved far more difficult to dislodge.55

Rather than consult the temple priests, or confer with the Sikh community,Indian special forces began planning a complex operation against the insurgents.56

The operation, code named Blue Star, was launched on June 3rd, 1984.57 It wasan unmitigated disaster. Orders to fight inside the heavily fortified shrine withoutdamaging its structure constrained military operations and the Indian army founditself incapable of flushing out the insurgents.58 Indeed, in seeking to prevent damageto the shrine, the army seemed to make no distinction between different parts of thetemple or between the temple and its immediate surroundings.59 Eventually, aftersuffering extreme losses, the military used six tanks and approximately eightyhigh-explosive squash-head shells to reduce the insurgents fortified positions torubble. This led to the surrender of the insurgents and Bhindranwales death butalso burned much of the library and many of the invaluable manuscriptswithin, destroyed the Akal Takht, and severely damaged the Golden Temple andthe Treasury.60

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Aside from the damage to the temple and the sacrilegious behavior of soldierswithin the complex, the Indian governments insensitivity to Sikh precepts, asdemonstrated by the date chosen for the operation, ranked high among the factorsthat exacerbated the public response. The date of the attack marked the martyrdomof the Sikh guru and founder of the temple, Guru Arjun, who had undergonereligious persecution and was ultimately executed, an act marking the evolution ofthe Sikh movement from one of pacifist reform to ritual militancy. When the attackoccurred, Amritsar was crowded with visitors who were there to commemorate theday. The attack also coincided with the fifth day of a lunar month, a particularlyauspicious day for bathing in the temples lake. One thousand pilgrims were saidto have lost their lives in the attack. These acts of outrage led to mass mutinies ofSikh soldiers as well as, six months later, the assassination of Gandhi by her Sikhbodyguards.61 Gandhis assassination, in turn, unleashed months of inter-communalrioting in the Punjab and across India. An estimated 2,700 Sikhs died in these riots.62

Operation Blue Star did little to suppress the Khalistani movement in thePunjab. Four years after the disastrous siege, Sikh insurgence once again found ref-uge in the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Indian authorities responded by launchingOperation Black Thunder. Though both operations involved Sikh separatists seekingrefuge in the same sacred space, they differed in several respects.63 Bhindranwalesfollowers had spent years preparing for a showdown with Indian security forcesby fortifying the temple and stocking it with weapons, ammunition, and supplies.In 1988, on the other hand, the insurgents lacked food, water, and ammunition.The police, and not the military, were responsible for executing Operation BlackThunder. Consequently, the operation relied on the Black Cat commandos ofthe National Security Guard, employing sniper fire, as opposed to infantry andarmor units of the army as in 1984. The army had used overwhelming military forceto conquer the temple in three days whereas the police placed a nine-day siege on thetemple compound, using continual pressure but minimal force.64 During OperationBlue Star the army had also failed to develop a public relations campaign to revealhow the insurgents were desecrating the shrine and counter their claims to religioussanction.65 Kanwar Pal Singh Gill, Director General of Indias Police in the Punjabin 1988, chose to conduct Operation Black Thunder under comprehensive mediacoverage, televising the combat wherever possible and permitting public scrutinyof the polices and insurgents actions inside the compound.66

Most importantly, Gill made the explicit decision to take the sanctity and designof the Golden Temple into careful consideration in planning the operation becausehe did not want to repeat the mistakes made by the Indian army in the 1984 raid.67

Indian officials met with the Jathedar (head of the Sikh priesthood), as well as theTemple priests and local Sikhs in order to evaluate the effects of a siege on the com-munity of worshipers and to ascertain popular support for an assault.68 In assessinghow the Sikh community might respond to destruction or desecration of differentparts of the shrine, the police concluded that combat in the parts of the temple wherepilgrims and staff resided, the serai, would provoke little protest. Fighting in thelangar, the communal kitchen in which Sikhs partake in traditional egalitarianmeals, would lead to greater outrage whereas combat in the Harimandir would beconsidered a highly provocative act. Based on these assessments, Gill ordered thepolice to occupy the serai and langar first and limit attacks within the temple to briefincursions.69 When several militants sought refuge in the Harimandir, police forcesheld their fire for fear of damaging the temple.70 When the crisis ended, Sikh leaders

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were invited to oversee the ritual cleaning of the temple, the reinstallation of thesacred text, and the resumption of daily rituals. The success of Operation BlackThunder, in the absence of significant damage to the Golden Temple or affrontto the Sikh community, contributed significantly to the quelling of the Khalistaniinsurgency.

Because the two operations in the Golden Temple involved parties identifiedalong religious lines, intelligence about sacred space, time, and authority provedfar more important than in the 1973 War. Information about sacred authority wouldprove even more critical during the Iranian Revolution, an event characterized byhigh religious prominence.

Sacred Authority: The Iranian Revolution

Sacred authority is the ability of a religious leader to compel obedience based on areputation for religious expertise and charisma. Religious leaders are responsible foridentifying, interpreting, and monitoring the implementation of rules that regulatethe conduct of war, including directives attached to sacred time and sacred space.71

Under unique conditions, religious leaders can even create, suspend, or annul sym-bols and rituals linked to sacred time and sacred space. Since the ability to do sohinges on a leaders authority, correctly assessing the centrality, salience, and impactof that authority is of utmost importance. Accomplishing this task requires thereligious intelligence analyst to contrast a leaders formal ranking in the leadershiphierarchy of a religious movement (the centrality of his authority) with the leadersde facto following and influence (the salience of his authority), and with his influenceon decision makers and combatants (the impact of his authority).

Formal authority depends on seniority or expertise, whereas popularity maydepend on perceived charisma. Both types of authority are checked from aboveand below: religious elites determine the leaders formal ranking and can overrulehis proclamations; the religious community is attracted by rulings that resonate withtheir needs and repelled by rulings that stray too far from the norm. The proclama-tions of a religious leader are thus constrained by the attributes of the sacred para-meter at stake, pressures from religious elites, and the demands of a religiousconstituency.

Social considerations that complicate the analysis of sacred time and sacred spaceencumber the study of sacred authority fourfold. This difficulty explains, in part, thefailures of decision makers to accurately identify and evaluate the contribution ofreligious actors to recent conflicts. For example, when U.S. decision makers selectedkey religious leaders for the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) in 2003, they underesti-mated the influence of the young Shia clericMoqtada al-Sadr. CIA and State Depart-ment analysts correctly identified the centrality of three Shia Ayatollahs (Alial-Husayni al-Sistani, Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, and Mohammad Bahr al-Ulloum) who were invited to participate in the IGC. These analysts dismissed al-Sadrbecause he lacked formal scholarly credentials: He did not hold the title of Ayatollahor mujtaheed (senior scholar).

Instead, al-Sadrs informal reputation derived from his lineage: The al-Sadrfamily traces its ancestry through the sixth and seventh Shia imams directly tothe Prophet Muhammad. Moqtada al-Sadrs father, Grand Ayatollah MohammadMohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, who had led the Shia opposition against SaddamHussein after the First Gulf War, was assassinated with two of his sons in 1999

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before the torch passed to Moqtada al-Sadr. Sidelined from the IGC, Moqtadaal-Sadr formed a shadow government and led a militia group in violent resistanceagainst U.S. forces in Iraq, confirming the salience and impact of his religiousauthority. What al-Sadr lacked in formal ranking he made up for in popularlegitimacy.

If the mistake in Iraq in 2003 was to privilege the centrality of religious authority,the blunder in Iran in 1979 was to ignore it altogether. U.S. diplomats and intelligenceofficers failed to foster ties with Irans Shia clergy and proved unable to foresee therole that Ayatollah Khomeini would play in the events of 1979. This profoundinability to recognize the prominent role of religion in the Iranian Revolution playeda primary role in the intelligence and policy breakdown of 1978-9.72 No one in ourgovernment understood the role of religion and Khomeini, wrote Robert Jervis inhis review of the intelligence failure of 1979. Analysts, like everyone else at the time,underestimated the potential if not existing role of religion in many societies.73 U.S.observers of events in Iran had no conception of fundamentalist Islam and bore nosuspicion that religious leaders would become the focal points of revolutionary senti-ments and activities.74 CIA experts who tried to draw attention to Irans religious lead-ership were mocked by fellow analysts. For example, when Earnest Oney, a formerCIA branch chief and Iran expert, called for an in-depth study of Irans religious lead-ership, his proposal was dismissed as sociology by his superiors. He was given thenickname Mullah Ernie.75

Several factors account for the U.S. failure to anticipate the fall of the Shah andthe rise of Khomeini. The rapid pace of developments in Iran caught the foreignaffairs bureaucracy of the U.S. off guard at a time when decision makers were pre-occupied with SALT II negotiations and the Egyptian-Israeli peace talks.76 The CIAhad focused its resources in Iran on the communist threat, as did its Iranian counter-part (SAVAK). This shared threat perception led the agency to forge close ties withSAVAK while dedicating few resources to intelligence gathering on domestic Iranianissues. The common obsession with the Soviet Union also made it difficult forAmerican and Iranian intelligence officers to conceive of agitators other than com-munists and distorted their diagnosis of the impending revolution.77 At the sametime, U.S. deference towards the Shah and his advisors led to an over-reliance onIranian intelligence sources. The CIA hesitated to develop contacts in the Iranianopposition not only because these assumed a low priority but also because theagency feared undermining or antagonizing the Shah.78

With other forms of opposition suppressed, Irans mullahs came to assume anincreasingly salient role as articulators of popular sentiments and as focal pointsof anti-Shah protest, for religious and secular followers alike.79 Yet U.S. decisionmakers continued to assume that religious groups were marginal to Iranian societyand underestimated the ability of Irans Shia leaders to gain a substantial follow-ing.80 Jervis concludes:

The problem was not the missing of one or two vital clues to the nature ofthe religious groups; rather it appears to have been a general outlookwhich did not give credence to the links between the religious leadersand the grievance of wide ranges of the general population. This outlookpowerfully influenced the interpretation of incoming information (as anyestablished belief will do) and specifically led the analysts to be insensitiveto the possibility that the opposition could unite behind Khomeini.81

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The failure to take Irans religious leadership seriously had a direct effect on U.S.policy in Iran in the months leading up to the revolution. The embassy in Tehranestablished links to each and every Iranian opposition group but it had no such tieswith Irans clergy. Only one of the 104 names on the contact lists of leading politicalofficers at the embassy between 1969 and 1976 was that of a religious leader, and hewas a marginal figure in the Shia establishment.82 Only in December 1978, a monthbefore the ultimate departure of the Shah, did the American ambassador, William H.Sullivan, enter into dialogue with members of the religious opposition. He did so insecret, for fear of angering the Shah as well as concern over defying his superiors inthe State Department who had explicitly prohibited such contacts.83 And only onJanuary 18, two days after the fall of the Shah, did the State Department issueSullivan with instructions to start communicating with Shia leaders.84 Not surpris-ingly, by that point in time the clergy proved resistant to American overtures.85

The CIA fared similarly badly in gathering information about the religiousestablishment. Of the hundreds of cassette tapes that Khomeini used for circulatinghis revolutionary message, for example, the embassy and CIA station collected onlyone, presumably deeming the rest to be of no value. Analysts knew little about whatthe future leader of the revolution was preaching, beyond what they could read in thenewspapers.86 Field officers paid little attention to the religious factor and analystssought out no experts on the topic.87 The CIA station in Tehran recruited heavilyamong officials in the Shahs regime but it did not recruit among average Iraniansand had no points of contact with religious leaders.88 Rare references to religion inintelligence reports, such as a recognition of prominent religious leaders in a 1974National Intelligence Estimate or a reference to religious restiveness in an embassyreport from 1977, were overshadowed by a concern with the liberal opposition inIran and thus prompted no tangible policy changes.89

A direct consequence of this failure to appreciate the power of the clergy was theconsistent refusal by all stakeholders to meet with Khomeini or his representatives. InSeptember 1978, principal White House aide for Persian Gulf Affairs, Gary Sick, pro-posed a meeting between Khomeinis representative in the U.S. and a low-level StateDepartment official. The State Department vetoed the idea.90 In December of thatyear, George Ball urged President Carter to open a disavowable channel of commu-nications with Khomeini, an idea scuttled by national security advisor ZbigniewBrzezinski.91 By January 1979, with the revolution all but over, Ambassador Sullivanfinally recognized the tremendous influence that Khomeini was wielding over theopposition movement. With tacit consent from the Shah, he arranged for a meetingbetween Theodore Eliot, former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, and Khomeini.President Jimmy Carter, backed by his entire cabinet, canceled the meeting at the lastminute.92 . . .My surprise and my anguish could not have been more complete, Sul-livan reported in his memoirs.93 The Shah responded to the cancellation with evengreater agitation, throwing his hands up in despair and demanding to know howwe expected to influence those people if we would not even talk to them.94 The firstdirect meeting between a U.S. official and a Khomeini aide did not take place untilJanuary 16, twenty-four hours before the Shah left Iran.95

CIA director Stansfield Turner summarized the level of ignorance regarding therole of religious leaders in the events of 1979: We did not known beans about whomade up the Revolutionary Council.96 Analysts were in the dark regarding thestructure and organization of the religious opposition, its means of decision makingand communication, its methods in selecting targets for riots, or its relationship to

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the middle class.97 Neither I nor the embassy was ever able to make much progressin comprehending the mind set of the Shia hierarchy, admitted U.S. ambassadorSullivan, who suspected at the time that moderate religious leaders would not followthe more radical Khomeini.98 Less than half of the embassys local employees weremembers of Irans Shia majority, an institutional trend that further insulatedembassy personnel from Iranian society.99 Carters special envoy to Iran at theheight of the crisis, U.S. Air Force General Robert E. Huyser, admitted to havingnever heard Khomeinis name before April 1978. When he arrived in Tehran inJanuary 1979, he estimated that Khomeini had the support of less than 20 percentof the Iranian population.100

As a consequence, analysts had little insight into the beliefs and values ofreligiously-motivated protesters, let alone an understanding of Khomeinis motiva-tions, his influence relative to other religious leaders, the size of his following, orwhat he would do after gaining power. Even after the fact, notes Jervis, it was notclear to the CIA how or when he achieved dominance or why other ayatollahsfollowed his lead.101

Conclusion: Assigning the Task

Due to the speed with which the Iranian regime collapsed and the uncertainty sur-rounding the Shia opposition, U.S. decision makers relied on academics to providemuch of the information about religion in Iran during the revolution. Most of thesescholars failed to assess Khomeini and his followers correctly.102 For example,Richard Cottam, Iran scholar at the University of Pittsburgh, asserted in October1978 that Khomeini was a moderate and centrist who had no interest in runningthe government and planned to retire to Qom.103 Three months later, James Bill, his-tory professor at Bard College, claimed in Foreign Affairs that the Shia imamswould never participate in the formal government structure.104 Both Cottamand Bill had been among the select scholars consulted by the State Department,White House, and CIA.105 In January 1979, James D. Cockcroft, a professor of soci-ology at Rutgers University, joined the ranks of academics who did not expect theclergy to take an active role in Iranian politics.106 Two weeks after Khomeinis returnto Iran, Princeton Professor Richard Falk penned a New York Times op-ed titledTrusting Khomeini in which he presented Khomeini as nonviolent and adesperately-needed model of human governance.107

If political scientists and historians cannot be relied on to provide accuratereligious intelligence, who can? Should scholars of religion, anthropologists, militarychaplains, or soldiers perform these tasks? The difficulty posed by the subject matterrequires an analyst who can brave the four challenges discussed above: evaluatingthe prominence, centrality, salience, and impact of the sacred in a given conflict.In the absence of individuals who are proficient in theology, politics, anthropology,and military affairs at one and the same time, decision makers will have to rely onteams of specialists who can complement one anothers abilities.

Scholars trained in religion and politics are often adept at overcoming the firsttwo obstacles. Armed with information about a conflict and the relevant religioustraditions, they can offer careful speculation about the religious ideas and practicesat play in a dispute and the degree to which they might shape motivations and iden-tities. The third hurdle, estimating salience, requires supplementing these hypotheti-cals with in-depth knowledge of local traditions, practices, and biases. The detailed

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ethnographic familiarity required for understanding how a specific religioussub-group perceives and implements the formal symbols and ceremonies of abroader religious movement, suggests the need for anthropological training andexperience.

Indeed, the U.S. military has engaged in several efforts to recruit anthropologistsas advisors on cultural issues. This practice is part of a larger move towardsculture-centric warfare in the U.S. military.108 In the U.S. armys 2006 counterin-surgency field manual, two contributing anthropologists, Montgomery McFate andDavid Kilcullen, detail the cultural experts skill set. It includes the ability todecipher social structures, language, power, authority, and interests. Cultural knowl-edge, they argue, involves information about local notions of rationality, appropri-ate behaviors, levels of religious devotion, norms concerning gender, rituals,symbols, myths, narratives, ancient grievances, and more.109

The deployment of anthropologists in support of combat troops raises several dif-ficulties. For one, a vocal majority in the American Anthropological Association(AAA) is vehemently opposed to cooperation with the military. Many anthropologistshave decried the military-anthropology complex as a grave breach of the AAAscode of ethics.110 The use of anthropological observation and analysis as a sourceof intelligence, they argue, endangers informants, other anthropologists, and the integ-rity of the discipline. These critics have branded colleagues who advise armed forces aswarrior-intellectuals who are providing a manual for indirect colonial rule.111

Whereas the Department of Defense has teamed up with the National Science Foun-dation to launch Minerva, an initiative to fund social science research on culture inregions of concern, alarmed scholars have formed the Network of Concerned Anthro-pologists to counter the militarization of their discipline.112

A second problem with the use of anthropologists as military contractors is thattheir ability to analyze the salience of religious factors is not matched with skills forinterpreting their impact on military operations. Social scientists who specialize inlocal cultural practices are unlikely to have an expertise in military affairs. Eventhose few who are capable of working alongside military forces in a combat zoneare thus unlikely to be able to translate their findings from the religious to the mili-tary sphere unaided.

Because analyzing the tactical and strategic impact of rituals and symbolsrequires an understanding of both religion and military operations, the U.S. militaryinitially considered tasking chaplains with this role. Military guidelines routinelyrequire chaplains to provide information to their commanders regarding religiouspractices of the local population, analyze religious and cultural factors, and trainmilitary personnel to respect religious beliefs.113 At the same time, the militaryexpects chaplains to leverage their religious expertise in the service of outreach tolocal religious leaders in conflict zones. Chaplains now regularly act as liaisons,forming channels of communication with local communities and enhancing trust.114

These two tasks, intelligence gathering and winning hearts and minds, are in cleartension with one another. Chaplains receive no formal training in the gathering oranalyzing of religious intelligence and the expectation that they will act as unarmedbattlefield spies endangers their status as non-combatants.115

Aware of this conflict of interest and the potential danger to chaplains, the U.S.military has recently moved to explore a new option. The Human Terrain System(HTS), launched in the fall of 2006, is a program to create embedded teams taskedwith providing direct social-science support in the form of ethnographic and social

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research, cultural information research, and social data analysis.116 Each teamconsists of an officer acting as leader, two social scientists tasked with analyzingthe region and its culture, and two military personnel with a background in tacticalintelligence acting as research manager and analyst. Their goal is to create a databasecovering social, economic, and cultural information that can be used by aforward-deployed brigade or relayed to a larger team of social scientists located inthe Foreign Military Studies Office in Fort Leavenworth.117 This ReachbackResearch Center (RRC) is part of a larger organization that will act as a clearing-house for cultural knowledge, provide on-the-ground ethnographic research, andconduct pre-deployment cultural training on specific countries.118 It is not clearhow much of this effort will be aimed at gathering, analyzing, or implementing infor-mation about religion.

The Human Terrain System is still in its infancy. Though it has earned someinitial praise, the Army has provided little public information about its record sofar.119 The strength of this approach, a reliance on a combination of academicand military resources, may also prove its primary weakness.120 Despite ongoingintegration training, members of HTS teams will find communication andcooperation across the academic-military divide to be a significant challenge. Justas scholars are unlikely to be attuned to operational needs, so soldiers are unlikelyto make research requirements their top priority. On the academic side of that div-ide, social scientists in the front lines will encounter time, resource, and securityobstacles to conducting professional analyses. Basic social science techniques, fromcontrolled sampling to participant observation, are unfeasible in combat zones.Given significant opposition to the HTS program among social scientists, its notobvious where the military will find qualified Ph.D.s (in suitable physical condition)or how it will assess the quality of their research. On the military side of the equa-tion, commanders will encounter difficulties recruiting and training soldiers ofadequate academic background to support the research needs of their academiccounterparts and exploit their findings in an optimal manner.

Despite these difficulties, HTS and similar programs are likely to grow in pro-minence as actors identified in religious terms become increasingly involved in asym-metric conflicts. This projected growth in the prominence of religion should promptdecision makers to draw on the combined expertise of religion scholars, politicalscientists, ethnographers, and military specialists for religious intelligence analysis.Political scientists who are interested in supporting such efforts should broaden theiroutlook on religion and conflict from an exclusive focus on the sacred as an idea thatgenerates religious disputes and onto the sacred as a constellation of symbols andpractices that pervades all disputes. By studying the manifold ways in which thesacred shapes combat, beyond the analysis of sacred time, space, and authority,political scientists can play their part in exploring the prominence and centralityof religion in conflict.

Notes

1. Sunan Abu-Dawud, Kitab al-Malahim, Book 36, Number 4273.2. Ibid., Book 37, Numbers 4272 and 4269.3. Ibid., Book 37, Number 4278.4. Ayman Al-Yassini, Religion and State in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Boulder, CO:

Westview Press, 1985), 124129; Yaroslav Trofimov, The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten

704 R. E. Hassner

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Uprising in Islams Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda (New York: Doubleday, 2007);Pascal Menoret, Fighting for the Holy Mosque: The 1979 Mecca Insurgency, in Treadingon Hallowed Ground: Counterinsurgency Operations in Sacred Spaces, eds. C. Christine Fairand Sumit Ganguly (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 117139; and Joseph A.Kechichian, The Role of the Ulama in the Politics of an Islamic State: The Case of SaudiArabia, International Journal of Middle East Studies 18, no. 1 (February 1986): 60.

5. Fighting Continues at Moslem Shrine, Associated Press, November 24, 1979.6. Alexander Bligh, The Saudi Religious Elite (Ulema) as Participant in the Political

System of the Kingdom, International Journal of Middle East Studies 16, no. 4 (1985): 48; andRon E. Hassner, War on Sacred Grounds (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009),146151.

7. On religion and terrorism, see Michael Barkun, Religious Violence and the Mythof Fundamentalism, Politics, Religion & Ideology 4, no. 3 (2003): 5570; Michael Barkun,Millenarian Aspects of White Supremacist Movements, Terrorism and Political Violence1, no. 4 (1989): 409434; David C. Rapoport, Messianic Sanctions for Terror, ComparativePolitics 20, no. 2 (Jan, 1988): 195211; David C. Rapoport, Fear and Trembling: Terrorismin Three Religious Traditions, American Political Science Review 78, no. 3 (1984): 658677;David C. Rapoport, The Four Waves of Rebel Terror and September 11, Anthropoetics 8,no. 1 (Spring=Summer 2002); Jeffrey Kaplan, Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Move-ments From the Far Right to the Children of Noah (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press,1997); Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Mohammed M. Hafez, Suicide Bombers inIraq: The Strategy and Ideology of Martyrdom (Washington, DC: USIP Press, 2007); BruceLincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11 (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 2003); and Ron E. Hassner, Terrorism, in Mark Juergensmeyer and WadeClark Roof (eds.), Encyclopedia of Global Religion (New York: Sage, 2012).

8. Jonathan Fox, The Rise of Religious Nationalism and Conflict: Ethnic Conflictand Revolutionary Wars, 19452001, Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 6 (2004): 715731;and Monica Duffy Toft, Getting Religion: The Puzzling Case of Islam and Civil War, Inter-national Security 31, no. 4 (Spring 2007): 97131.

9. Michael Horowitz, Long Time Going: Religion and the Duration of Crusading,International Security 34, no. 2 (2009): 162193.

10. Sohail Hashmi, Islamic Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: An Argumentfor Nonproliferation, in Sohail H. Hashmi and Steven P. Lee, Ethics and Weapons of MassDestruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 321352.

11. Isak Svensson, Fighting with Faith: Religion and Conflict Resolution in CivilWars, Journal of Conflict Resolution 51, no. 6 (2007): 930949.

12. Ron E. Hassner, At the Horns of the Altar: Counterinsurgency and the ReligiousRoots of the Sanctuary Practice, Civil Wars 10, no. 1 (March 2008): 2239; and Ron E.Hassner, Blasphemy and Violence, International Studies Quarterly 55, no. 1 (March2011): 2345.

13. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph WardSwain (New York: The Free Press, 1915).

14. Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion (New York: New AmericanLibrary, 1974), 367; and Gerardus van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 386.

15. Durkheim (see note 13 above), 55.16. James George Frazer, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, in The Golden Bough: A

Study in Magic and Religion (London: Macmillan, 1911); and Mary Douglas, Purity and Dan-ger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1996).

17. James Aho, Religious Mythology and the Art of War: Comparative Religious Symbo-lism of Military Violence (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981); R. Scott Appleby, TheAmbivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (Lanham, MD: Rowman& Littlefield, 2000); and Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God (see note 7 above).

18. Alexander De Juan and Andreas Hasenclever, Framing Religious ConflictsTheRole of Elites in Religiously Charged Civil Wars, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 43 (2009):178205; Toft (see note 8 above); and Fox (see note 8 above).

19. Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion (see note 14 above), 375.

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20. Joel P. Brereton, Sacred Space, in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade(New York: Macmillan, 1987), Vol. 12, 526535; Ron E. Hassner, To Halve and to Hold:Conflicts Over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility, Security Studies 12, no. 4(2003): 133; and Clinton Bennet, Islam, in Sacred Places, ed. Jean Holm (London: Pinter,1994), 88114.

21. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation (see note 14 above), 386;Barbara C. Sproul, Sacred Time, in Eliade (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion (see note 20 above),535544; and Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), 7.

22. On religious ideas versus practice see Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking aboutReligion after September 11 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 718 and 73; andErnest Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (London: Routledge, 1992), 922.

23. Stephen Labaton, Siege in Texas; Agents Advice: Attack on a Sunday, The NewYork Times, March 3, 1993, A11.

24. John R. Hall, Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in NorthAmerica, Europe, and Japan (New York: Routledge, 2000), 63. The agents concern regardingthe possibility of group suicide is documented in Richard Scruggs et al., United StatesDepartment of Justice Report on the Events at Waco, Texas, February 28 to April 19, 1993(Washington, DC:U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993), 210214; and Edward S.G.Dennis,Report to the Deputy Attorney General: Evaluation of the Handling of the Branch DavidianStandoff in Waco, Texas, by the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Bureauof Investigation (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1993), 3639.

25. Dennis (see note 24 above), 35.26. Susan J. Palmer, Excavating Waco, in James R. Lewis, From the Ashes (New

York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1984), 104. The agent himself was completely ignorant regardingthe most basic theological principles or practices of the sect and Christianity in general. Dick J.Reavis, The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 66 and 73.

27. James T. Tabor and Eugene V. Gallagher, Why Waco?: Cults and the Battle forReligious Freedom in America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), 4748;Kenneth G. C. Newport, The Branch Davidians of Waco (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2006), 145146; James Moore, Very Special Agents: The Inside Story of Americas MostControversial Law Enforcement Agency The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms(New York: Pocket Books, 1997), 286.

28. Scruggs et al. (see note 24