This writer from Pakistan is comparing the Salafi terrorists aka Talebans strategy to that of Anarchists.

Seeing that their aims have absolutely nothing in common with any sort of anarchism, you would think this would be complete nonsense.

As for the assertion that jihadis "borrow heavily" from late 19th-century anarchist writings I would ask what the source is for that. As there is no source given, I've never heard of anything even vaguely like this, and I can't think of any elements of late 19th-century anarchist writing which could be of any use to any jihadis, or which has been put into practice by them at all.

Also, propaganda by deed style anarchism was rapidly discredited. That said even when it was reasonably significant it was manifested almost entirely by targeted assassinations of key political figures: politicians, kings, police and military officials etc. Which isn't what islamic terrorists do at all, which is predominantly mass murder civilians.

So, basically, I call bullshit.

Much more likely that the jihasits have read Che Guevara, Mao and General Giap on guerilla warfare than 19th century anarchist writing. Maybe they've dredged up an old Bakunin texts on sieges.

It could be a vague reference to Nechayev’s ‘Catechism of a Revolutionary’ (1869) - and what a pile of manure that was!

I forgot the name of the author but I've read a study about suicide bombings around 10 years ago where the author tracks it back to Japanese traditions which were brought by the mental ML group Japanese Red Army to the Middle East around 1975 e.g. with the atrocities committed by the JRA at Lod airport in Israel

Is this writer a CIA plant trying to get anarchists placed on the terrorist list? I'd say a 93.7% chance of yes. They're using gorilla war tactics based on the Art Of War, some of the writings from South American gorilla warfare theorists and Vietnam. Maybe mixed with a little Japanese Kamikaze culture.

there are some striking differences between the Jihadist and most "classical" left-wing or nationalistic guerilla groups, the latter generally placed high emphasis on getting away after an attack without own casualties and tried (not always successful) to avoid harming civilians while Islamists (and a few other groups like the DHKP-C, LTTE) don't give a shit about their members' life and try to cause maximum carnage and not to win sympathies ... as I understood it, even the "propaganda of deed"-anarchist didn't intended like Islamists or LTTE, JRA and DHKP-C members to be killed during the attack but to use the court case afterwards for propaganda

I guess, that they don't have adopted that much of Guevara ... treating wounded enemies (he had several clashes about it with Castro in the Sierra Maestra) and trying to convince captured soldiers to join the Guerilla before releasing them is definitely not high on the Jihadist agenda ... probably Guevara's (and Debray's) foquismo is in its intentions relatively close to anarchist/Narodniki "propaganda of the deed" concepts ... both have failed so far

In the Congo gorillas waged a guerrilla war against poachers, this was in the 1960's. Their leader wrote a handbook and sent it to the Taliban. It is said Osama Bin Evil himself trained with the gorillas, and perhaps the gorillas are anarchists who help fund 9/11. I'm writing a book on the subject entitled "Gorilla Guerrilla War; The Dark Side Of Bananas". Should be published some time in 2014. Serious.

I think the differences between left/national liberationist terrorism and Jihadi terrorism is overblown by the current geopolitical prominence of the latter and the demonization that goes hand in hand with it. During the Cold War it was standard to depict Reds as de-individualized hoards of lemmings- for instance to this day the Chinese in the US-Korean War are depicted as endless waves of fanatics who didn't care about their lives and were sacrificed by the thousands in the face of machine guns.

The NLF of Vietnam pioneered the use of car bombs in urban areas and they would carry out campaigns of bombing of Western targets such as Western hotels and Western nightclubs throughout the mid-sixties. How that is different from from Islamist groups who blowing up Western hotels and nightclubs in that same region today? Same thing goes for other guerrilla groups. The ANC bombed "soft targets," the Mau Mau massacred the families of loyalist African forces, the PKK killed teachers. And don't forget the car bombs of the Shining Path against yuppies or that they carried out genocide against ethnic groups as part of their armed struggle.

I think the popular image of Jihadi terrorism as extraordinary cruel comes from the Civil War in Iraq but that was different from "normal" terrorism because it was part of a sectarian war and for sectarian/ethnic wars the committed acts are the norm regardless of ideology. The general population is targeted because the strategy is for the enemy population to lose territory. An example would be in Rwanda the genocide of Tutsis by the Hutus and then Hutus by Tutsis. Everything else Jihadis do are either generic tactics for national liberation armies (such as the Taliban use) or generic tactics for "urban guerrilla groups" (like Hamas blowing up "soft targets" like restaurants in the 2000's the way the PLO did in the 80's). This could be apocryphal but I recall reading that when presented with the offer of funding the 9/11 attacks Bin Laden refused a scenario to fly a plane into NYC local nuclear power plant because it would cause too much "collateral damage."

And finally all this violence isn't different from what normal armies use. The US bombed out Iraq's civilian infrastructure during the 91 war and then instituted an embargo on civilian goods to maximize the consequent civilian deaths. Nothing out of the ordinary. And even in the JRA example that you use, their plan wasn't to be "killed during the attack" on the airport and in fact they claim that they were there for a hijacking and the massacre was the result of a shootout. Now maybe they're lying (though their constituents in Lebanon and Japan cheered the act regardless) but the point is that even here they make the pretense that they're not out to slaughter civilians.