All Things Counter Terrorism

This is a bit of a mixed post, because it’s 5am and I’m sick of fixing my bibliography and it’s too late to go to bed, so I thought what the hell I’ll blog.

Thought I’d do a little round up of the news

First up is Yassin’s fascinating piece about Attiyatallah being killed in Pakistan, and Saif al Adel returning to the field, which you can find here.

A return to the field by al-Adel will have some serious impacts across a range of AQ’s operational activities, but more on that in a later post.

Second up is a piece by Chris on AQ’s media evolution or rather devolution, which you can find here.

This makes for excellent and thought provoking reading especially for me, when my own personal take has been more reductionist and roughly equates to one comment: Adam Gadahn is now in charge of AQ media. He’s got in the innovation levels of a rock.  Surely AQ can do better than him.

Third up is a piece by Aaron, on his thoughts and analysis of Adam’s newest video, which you can find here, and is an excellent read too.

I’ve been stewing these three pieces together because collectively they highlight some strengths and weaknesses in AQ and give a good overview of what may be taking place in its two most important areas of operation: media and external operations, neither of which has exactly gone great for them lately. Having said that, by their metric they’re not doing too badly; causing a several country wide alert, and then the media hype around AQ and their franchise media, which really just gives them more political oxygen, and a few lionised new leaders to boot (hello Awlaki).  Mind you, I can’t see OBL tolerating Awlaki or anyone else rising too far up the foodchain. The million dollar question is whether he can do anything about it, which kind of brings the question full circle  back to what a re-entry by al-Adel provides AQ.

Another thing I’ve been contemplating this morning is the issue of sentence reductions and people being released more generally.

We’ve just seen several guys from the Pendennis trial have their sentences reduced, and a few have already been released. See here

In Canada I think the last of the Osage guys were sentenced for the Toronto 18 plot, getting a similar term to the leader of the Pendennis plot here in Oz. See here.

The thing is that in both instances quite a few of these guys only have a few years jail time left. And as far I know there is no rehabilitation or de-radicalisation programs within the prison system of either country.  And I don’t think that many of them have recanted–at least here.

While we have control orders here, which will help manage those guys when they get out, this is no panacea, and they’re not indefinite. It is a glaring shortcoming and one that is going to become increasingly prominent in a number of countries as people begin to finish their prison sentences.

Yet, there’s been nothing done on developing or instituting a program. Talk about an Achilles heel and one that will be costly too in terms of managing what comes after guys like this get released.

And last, there’s some analysis done by Greg Carlstrom about AQ in Iraq, which you can find here.

This is the money section for me:

Today, Al Qaeda does not exist in Iraq as a single entity. Its mantle has been taken on by a disparate range of groups inspired by its ideology, but lacking the resources and popular support that marked out their predecessor.

In truth, the Wikileaks Iraq war files tell us little that we did not already know about al-Qaeda in Iraq. But they do serve to underline the great irony of the US war in Iraq; that the invasion, billed as part of the so-called “war on terror”, did more to inspire al-Qaeda activity in Iraq than it did to undermine it.

It is an irony that has not been lost on former spymaster Manningham-Buller. “Arguably, we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad,” she said earlier this year.

The thousands of incidents detailed in the leaked documents show just how grateful al-Qaeda was

Zarqawi went to Iraq with 16 people; that was it. What grew from them, came solely from our own actions, as Manningham-Buller notes. For anyone advocating the merits of a military response this should be food for thought.  This is not to say it’s not sometimes necessary, but it is time to address the elephant in the room: that occupation not only drives insurgency but it is the life force of AQ. We need to better understand this before we consider any future action in a similar vein.

On that cheery note I guess I had better go back and do some work so that I can get back to this blog full time and the long list of things I still have to finish.

This is interesting if true…

One of the suspects, the official said, is a 23-year-old mathematics student who was designing computer programmes aimed at jamming the flight controls of unmanned drone aircraft. He was also a bombmaker, the official said.

via Turkish police arrest 5 al Qaeda suspects | World | Reuters.

Article is here.

There’s an interesting parallel here to be made with the way in which things are analysed. The Newsweek article focusses on Hilux as the truck of choice for insurgents and AQ. I know the article was on the Hilux and Guerilla Trucks more generally, and it is widely used. But it depends on who you are looking for. You might find AQ flunkies in a Hilux, but you won’t find any AQ figures of importance in Hiluxes these days and I’d dare to say that goes for most insurgent groups operating in areas at risk of air strikes/drones etc. They’re not that stupid.

AQ’s bosses have predominantly traveled via the rather less intimidating  Toyota Corolla. In fact, Al-Adl commented extensively on how great they were because “the enemy did not notice we were using them” and thus they avoided being targeted.  Motorcycles were also used in the Kandahar battles, and their good performance earned them the title the “iron horse” from al-Adl.  AQ’s leaders  also often traveled via the very unglamorous  mini-bus. Or, and this had me in fits of giggles yesterday, the bicycle. From the Hicks trial a few years ago where the guys received

updates on what was happening from the fat al Qaeda leader in charge who was on a bicycle

Anyway, nothing ground breaking in the article, but it got me thinking about the parallels you could draw with how analysis is framed and conducted, in terms of what you’re looking for.

In which Mr Foust takes the ASG to task. Well worth a read.

The Afghanistan Study Group Report: An Exercise in Determined Ignorance — Registan.net.

I find it interesting this has been portrayed as brutal. By Australian standards, it’s pretty gentle.

By way of example, consider this excerpt from an article that featured in the preeminent broadsheet here in Oz, The Australian.

It begins with this:

PROFESSOR Hugh White of the Australian National University has done something remarkable. He has written the single, stupidest strategic document ever prepared in Australian history by someone who once held a position of some responsibility in our system (White was once deputy secretary of the Defence Department).

The author of this piece is Greg Sheridan, a senior journalist/scholar, who is the Foreign Editor at said newspaper.

Might we finally be seeing the death of that hoary old chestnut thrown about for so long–about a robust pre-9/11 ”AQ” with a large membership base of at least several hundred or more usually several thousand members,  instead of the just under 200 strong membership (198 actually) it had as 9/11 loomed??? As long term readers of this blog will know it is one of the first things I wrote about when I started allthingsct last year.

Peter Bergen’s new piece gives me hope that this may be taking place. Yay!!!

I really hope his piece has some impact in killing off this myth once and for all.

What gives me hope is that this is the first time I can think of  that approximate number has been cited in print with the exception of its original source (which was the 2006 Silverstein article excerpted below which quoted an interview with a former FBI agent)  which I pointed out in this blog a year ago. But I have had my head under the thesis rock recently, so maybe I’ve missed others.

In any case I hope Bergen’s article starts a trend of a broader reconsideration of the figures for no other reason that what I wrote about nearly a year ago…because if we don’t have the baseline correct any effort to define success  is going to be dodgy.  As I noted nearly a year ago

what people miss is that this number of 200 is the same that al Qaeda had BEFORE 9/11. And this comes from a former FBI Agent interviewed by Ken Silverstein (see here).  This is Silverstein’s account:

Two years ago, I interviewed Jack Cloonan, a 25-year veteran of the FBI who, between 1996 and 2002, served on a joint CIA–FBI task force that tracked bin Laden. “How many members of Al Qaeda do you think there are?” he asked me. Cloonan laughed when I pegged its membership at several thousand. The real numbers, he said, “are miniscule.”

Documents discovered by the joint task force, Cloonan said, showed that Al Qaeda had 72 members when it was founded in 1989. Twelve years later, the task force got its hands on an updated membership list after a CIA Predator destroyed a building near Kabul during the American invasion of Afghanistan. The membership list was discovered in the rubble, along with dozens of casualties, including Mohammed Atef, one of bin Laden’s closest aides. It showed that bin Laden had a grand total of precisely 198 sworn loyalists.

I’m reliably informed from another source that this number is  correct and the document authentic.

So then, let’s reconsider….

Are we winning if al Qaeda can keep replicating and stay at the same number of people that it had before 9/11?

On that note Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau also have a very interesting piece in Newsweek

Plenty of this is self evident, so I won’t bore you with any additional comments, except to say that one thing stood straight out when I read this. Their account of the class size–some 30 persons. Why this stood out is that this was the size of AQ’s basic training course at al-Farouq (though sometimes they had up to 40). And this size is actually bigger than the advanced training course size at Tarnak, which usually sat at around 15-20 persons.

Previous reports from recent training had tended to suggest AQ was only training at around 15 or so in a group, so this 30 figure stood out immediately. Whether they can still do this is of course a matter for debate, but nonetheless, even with talk of taking out so many fighters, which the authors cover in their article, this account of a full training compliment gives pause for thought.

Paul Pillar has a very interesting piece in FP called Yes, America Is Exporting Terrorism, which is well worth a read.  The below quote stood out for me. Speaking of the US, he wrote:

More generally, it can try to view everything it does in the name of counterterrorism through its foreign partners’ eyes and get rid of the double standards. And more generally still, it should understand that the United States is not really the center of the counterterrorist universe, that counterterrorism did not begin with 9/11, and that some foreign partners — who had been confronting serious terrorist threats long before terrorism became a top security issue in the United States — have at least as much to teach the United States on the subject as the other way around.

I could add another one to this list, which he omits but I think gets to the crux of  some of these issues. The US (and other countries) need to remember its counterterrorism priorities may not be a significant priority for another state.  For a number of countries, the terrorism threat facing the west simply does not translate into a national security issue for them, or is not as high on their national security agenda. After all, not everyone signed on to making countering terrorism a central pillar of international relations (but this is an entirely new post). This seems to have been a distinctly American construct; unsurprising in light of 9/11, but unsustainable (and I’d argue somewhat counterproductive) over the longer term because of the very nature of terrorism. But I digress…

The problem is the way this chasm in perspectives and national security interests is addressed and overcome. Chest beating is not always the best way to achieve things, particularly not when a perception of double standards exists.

The problem isn’t even in the asymmetries in how the US or other countries handle rendition, information sharing or other aspects of CT, it’s the message that demanding *their* issue be prioritized over the national security of the country on the receiving end of the demand. But here too that’s another post, and I’m meant to be on a blogging ban. So that’s all for me.

A quick comment since I’ve just been tidying up some thesis stuff relating to an article I just caught on FP while sneaking a quick coffee break.

It is interesting,  but if you are going to talk Haqqani and his history the first stop for reading absolutely should be Abu Walid al-Masri’s books, and his series profiling Haqqani in the Taliban magazine  (who he has known since the beginning of the first Afghan War, and arguably through whose links the AQ-Haqqani relationship developed).

AQ was not really as affiliated with Haqqani as it was with Sayyaf and then Hekmatyar.

It’s actually why some former mujahideen  have commented on AQ’s lack of combat experience during the first Afghan war viz other groupings. Those who wanted to fight went to join Haqqani, or at least tried to go fight with him. He was not a fan of untrained numpties trying to go to the frontlines. Those who remained with Sayyaf and co did not see as much action.  AQ was in areas first under Sayyaf,  and then Hekmatyar. AQ also declined to assist a training effort Abu Walid and Haqqani along with some others were trying to establish circa 86. Instead OBL went off and established al-Masada, against everyone’s advice. And the two AQ guys who were close to Haqqani, Hafs al Masri and Ubaida al Banshiri (because they fought with him in 84 I think it was), went off to Jaji to “minimise the damage” after a meeting was held in Islamabad about how to deal with OBL’s actions. After the Jaji battles, AQ went to Jihad Wal, which was Hekmatyar’s turf and OBL payed him rent to establish  training camps there, which remained in operation until the US missile strikes in 98.

For those interested in Haqqani’s marriage links (mentioned in the article). He married into a Yemeni family, if memory serves. It’s in the books somewhere.

To me the question is not about the historical links because they were not that strong, but rather what factors have contributed to them being friends with benefits now. And on the basis of this how strong these links are and under what conditions they will endure, and what might cause them to fragment in the future. I am also interested in whether this relationship has strengthened in recent times, why this might be the case, and  the role generational change may have played in this process.  For example Haqqani’s sons and where they fit. They are mixing in a very different milieu than what existed in Afghanistan either under the Taliban or during the first Afghan war and so the potential for ideological bleed over is stronger. The question here though is whose ideology? I could go off on a tangent and talk the IMU and IJU but this is all I have time for tonight.

Also recommended reading is Sirajuddin Haqqani’s town hall meeting this year. His responses, or lack thereof  in some instances, really put the spotlight on a few of these areas. I didn’t  save a copy but it should be floating around out there and for those of you with OSC access I imagine it got translated.

Ok that’s the coffee break over, back to the thesis for me.

WaPo article I just came across. Some excerpts below

“The bad guys have figured it out,” one U.S. official in Kandahar said. “I’ve never seen them go after implementing partners this way. We’ve got to reevaluate now what we’re doing.”

The U.S. official said it would be foolish to think that the attacks were independent of one another. “This can’t be coincidental,” he said. “This is what they’re doing now.”

A senior U.S. military official in Kandahar said the military is “looking hard at these incidents” for signs of a pattern and to figure out whether targeting contractors has become a tactic. As more U.S. troops arrive and Afghan forces improve, it was to be expected that insurgents would go after more vulnerable targets, the official said, especially “as we focus on improving governance.”

I’m in the middle of a hellish edit so I’m not in the mood to mince my words.

Who’s briefing these guys? Or rather who isn’t? Does anyone bother with OS reading these days?

Here’s a suggestion. Read the Taliban magazine. Read Abu Walid al Masri’s work. Because a move to this type of targeting  strategy was announced LAST YEAR. And with a fair amount of detail to boot.

It’s not like it’s hard to find or written in code. It’s out there for all to see.

Mosharraf  Zaidi has a really interesting piece out that is well worth a read.  It’s on how India should deal with Afghanistan, and Karzai more specifically.  You can find it here.

Christian terrorism has returned to America with a vengeance.

Mark Juergensmeyer, whose work I deeply admire,  has an excellent piece out that is well worth a read.

I’m glad to see him use the term terrorism here because it has been extremely disheartening to see recent terrorist plots involving far right wing Christians reported in a way that ignores or downplays their terrorist nature, and instead depicts these acts as political extremism.  This narrowing of the definitional boundaries of terrorism to be something only a religious ‘other’ does, is not only wrong, but completely counter productive.

I hope others follow his lead and call these activities for what they are: terrorism.