All Things Counter Terrorism

Am sleep deprived and very short on time so this will be quick, with more to follow.

Bin Laden’s death is a symbolic victory but for the folks in counter terrorism nothing much changes. In fact their life just got a whole lot busier.

Expect maybe some more raids, strikes etc depending on what intelligence was gathered; not only from the strikes but also from monitoring of those in the immediate network.

To get this type of info a much broader network would have been monitored.

As for AQ.

It’s leadership will go to ground and close ranks while they try to protect themselves and ascertain the degree of damage to their comms channels and other elements of operational security.

External operations (AQ’s attacks against the west) are not likely to be impacted. OBL really only got involved in ops planning to approve spectaculars, particularly those using a new means of attack or against a new target. Second tier leaders deal with external operations for the most part.  Aside from communications disruptions (which do little to disrupt those already deployed) this section will continue on business as usual.

Leadership will automatically pass to the second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. If he goes too, then the position goes to the head of the command council, or potentially the head of AQ’s shariah council, although this is a more informal body.  It’s unlikely to go to a vote in the short term due to operational requirements.

AQ’s branch and franchises will stay on board.

As for retributive attacks,  AQ is unlikely to waste operatives on hasty retaliation.  It will incite others to do so, but it’s own efforts will come later.  AQAP may not be so pragmatic and it already has permission to carry out attacks against the west.

Anyway, that’s just my first thoughts.

More later.

This little snippet from the MOD report, as covered by The Guardian, caught my eye, particularly in light of Abu al-Walid al-Masri and Sayf al-Adl’s dialogue and the discussions currently going on within AQ about targeting strategies.

The insurgents “gain every time a mistake is made”, enabling them to cast themselves “in the role of underdog and the west as a cowardly bully that is unwilling to risk his own troops, but is happy to kill remotely”, the report adds.

This raises a very important point that I don’t feel is adequately addressed in debates about the effectiveness of using drones, and in particular, the unintended consequences of their use. So below are my sleep deprived, off the top of my head thoughts about the issue.

I’m adding this to the pile of things I hope to write about in a more considered way next month, when I am finally free of the thesis. YAY! Well I’m actually free of it next week, but need a small break before leaping into writing again.  In the meantime, here goes with the sleep deprived thinking out loud, off the top of my head effort….

Using drones does exactly as this report notes; it allows the presentation of a narrative that the west is unwilling to risk troops but will kill remotely.  There is a lot of talk about how the use of drones plays into radicalisation, but very little talk about how this feeds into AQ’s ability to ‘sell’ to other groups its external operations and targeting of citizens away from the battlefield, and the operational implications of this.

I’m not talking here about radicalisation at the grassroots level inasmuch as I am about AQ’s standing with other groups, how it interacts with them, how it influences (or not) their targeting strategies, and how it deals with criticism of its MO of targeting civilians off the battlefield.

In other words, in all of the talk about drones and their effectiveness, there has been a failure to address or consider that the west’s use of drones gives AQ an ‘out’ when encountering criticism of its MO from within its own milieu, and allows it to militate against such criticism—by using the argument noted by the report.

But more importantly, I haven’t seen any studies that look into the potential consequences of the use of drones in terms of empowering AQ to advertise its MO, and encourage others to use the same strategy (and here radicalisation of grassroots groups and what MO they adopt if they operationalise does come into it).

I think serious attention needs to paid as to whether a sustained use of drones could see the strategy of external attacks against civilians off the battlefield become the dominant tactic in the militant salafist milieu.

And here I’d note that it currently is not. Not all groups agree with AQ about targeting civilians off the battlefield, some even within AQ may not agree with how its targeting has evolved (as we are seeing in the various debates and releases at the moment). After all, most who are radicalised still want to go off and fight armed jihad. What do they do if there are no soldiers? So there are very real implications on relying on remote warfare to combat external operations by AQ, namely that has a very real potential to  drive an increase in this MO as a means of hitting back at the west in a reciprocal manner. I don’t know what the answer is to this, but I do know that the consequences of using drones as a substitute have not been adequately addressed.

At a time when AQ’s external operations are coming into question through various international events and internal discussions (both within the group and the broader milieu) serious thought needs to be given as to how using drones might allow AQ breathing room, because it adds to the justification of external operations as a way of evening the battlefield. In other words, AQ can justify, in a cloak of legitimacy, external operations as its own reciprocal form of ‘remote’ warfare.

This has implications for not only radicalisation but also the operational uptake of the MO across a broader swathe of groups, particularly if the MO is sanctioned by new fatawa.

Following on from this, there has been no consideration as to whether the use of drones is going to drive (or has driven?) stronger ‘shariah’ justifications  from within the militant salafist milieu for the use of external operations against civilian targets.  In this respect, there has been, to my knowledge, very little, if any consideration of how the west’s use of drones may in fact drive (or have driven) the issuing of a number of new fatawa, particularly since militant salafists could draw from their own exegesis of stipulations relating to reciprocity in warfare.

Of course adopting or choosing a course of action based on what the other side is going to do is not always reason enough to stop or start something, but the point I fear I am rather badly making is that these real and potential consequences of the use of drones have not been examined, and are not being addressed.

Instead, we find the ubiquitous argument that drone strikes are effective in preventing AQ from launching attacks. This is not an argument that can stand up to close scrutiny, particularly if we look at the variables that impact upon capacity, capability and planning to operationalisation dynamics. Simply put, this can not be proven, only assumed. And that assumption goes straight out the window when an attack coordinated or directed from the region takes place, or is foiled.

Here I’d also note the planning has not stopped, or the operational tempo necessarily slowed down. What has changed is that more plots are being foiled. And the role of drones in foiling plots is questionable. Law enforcement and intelligence work foil plots.  And as I noted earlier, arguing that drones have reduced capability, based on the argument that senior leaders have been taken out, or trainees killed, overlooks a number of other variables and is not something that can be easily proven.

But anyway, even assuming the argument that drones have reduced AQ’s capability and capacity is correct and verifiable ( that is, to say that AQ’s intent to attack remains, but its ability is restricted) what then if drone attacks actually drive a broader adoption of the MO of external attacks? (Here I’m thinking of the foray into external operations by the Pakistan Taliban, as a case in point.) What if fatawa are released that sanction external attacks based on the notion of reciprocity of ‘remote’ attacks?

If we consider how AQ exercises command and control via its manhaj and ideology, and then we look at a potential spread of the MO, ‘sold’ as a means of evening the battlefield and reciprocity of action, the argument for what makes drone strikes effective tends to go out the window.

Why? Because there is a diffusion of the MO, sanctioned, incorporated into strategic guidance, and not necessarily requiring the input or support (beyond broad strategic direction) of the senior leadership. I’m sure there’s an analogy for this somewhere. I just can’t think of one right now, so instead let’s move onto the counter-argument.

While the counter-argument to this is that AQ is likely to find any excuse to attack, relying solely on this argument overlooks a broader dynamic at play.  The more remote warfare is used, the more AQ’s narrative and justification is reinforced, as the above snippet from the report highlights. That means  more ‘justification’ for AQ to exercise  reciprocity of  ’remote’ attacks ( Translation: external operations against civilian targets in the west). If this is accompanied by new fatawa, which  justify external operations in this context, the MO spreads.

It spreads to grassroots groups following AQ’s manhaj and who seek to implement its strategic guidance by carrying out external operations. And it has the potential to spread to other groups.

More importantly, it weakens the position of those in the milieu who stand for jihad being restricted to the battlefield. And more importantly again, it weakens those who are trying to combat the spread of such an ideological position. This in turn has implications for combating the spread of the ‘grassroots’ phenomena and for CT prevention strategies in the west, particularly those targeted at vulnerable groups and the means used to argue against using such MO.

Whew. So there you have it. That was what went through my mind when I read that snippet. It was basically a very long winded and stream of consciousness way of saying that much more attention needs to be paid the consequences of using drones, particularly over the long term. It may seem like an attractive solution, and it’s all fine and good to talk about how effective they are, but if you’re not considering these consequences I don’t see how you can make that argument.

Update: thanks for @azelin for pointing out spelling error, perils of writing while tired.

I spent most of yesterday eating a bucket load of  ice cream and reading the transcripts and evidence  from the 7/7 inquests and although much of this focussed on the resourcing of CT investigations in the period 2001 through 2006 in the UK, a few things really did stand out for me.  That turned into a 3000 word sugar fueled rant, which I decided to spare you all from and instead sleep on it and return today for a more coherent post, before the thesis arrives back tomorrow, with the final list of changes to be made.  But anyway, back to the inquest and the things it made me think about.

One thing that struck me was the ongoing problem of making sure officers assigned to particular tasks do not get dragged off every time the balloon goes up and another job becomes high priority. This is particularly important not only for keeping continuity across a range of investigations, which need to keep moving on too, but also for ensuring those staffed with what the security service calls Legacy reviews are not dragged off into other work. (see 42-43 for this mention)

Legacy reviews appear to be along the lines of looking for what I’ve coined as “edge of network” links, where a dedicated team sits and goes through previous investigations looking at the information and intelligence gleaned and at persons of interest who have not been deemed essential targets.  Properly conducted, it should move beyond even looking at lower targets and be combined with a methodology focussed on green fields targeting. That way you get what one of my bosses used to call the helicopter view as well as the bottom up review and hopefully prevent things falling through the gaps and not turning up after something goes boom or is perilously close to it. (You can find two earlier posts about edge of network connections I wrote earlier here and here if you are interested.)

The problem with this type of work is that agencies have to essentially measure their output against criteria,  and so with criteria not geared for this type of work, it can be difficult to show progress and on occasion, benefit viz resource output. The curse of *benchmarking* performance (I detest that word)  A good result might be finding you have your bases covered and not generating targets. Another result might be generating targets, investigating, but then no further activity needs to be, or can at that time be, conducted.  An LEA agency using this type of methodology may not produce investigations leading to prosecutions. It  may not always find new targets for investigation– that meet the threshold.  This may not be such an issue for intel services where the threshold is much lower and very different, but it can be a problem for LEA.  By that I mean an LEA cannot and should not go on a great big fishing expedition. But taking a wide view and using particular methodologies are key to properly understanding and examining your data holdings and ensuring people don’t fall through the gaps.  It’s a fine line to tread.

But this isn’t really the big problem. The big problem is that this type of work, whether in intelligence services or LEA, takes a long time, and people doing it can be seen to be doing something that is non essential.  Sometimes it is, sometimes, as was the case with my experience in this area, it turns up something that foresees and contributes significantly to a future investigation and prosecution.

The problem there too is that teams who do produce  work that contributes to or generates an investigation then get pulled off into the ‘new’ operation, and then the task of what the service calls Legacy review falls by the wayside.  Teams doing this type of work aren’t always well staffed versus other areas to begin with and when the balloon goes up, off they go.

There’s always the risk that a team doing this type of work can become isolated and insular in its focus too, but it really is an important aspect of proactive CT investigations, and one that consistently seems to suffer by being the first area tasked for operations support. That’s inevtiable to some degree because the corporate knowledge is there, but it is equally important for funding to be set aside and management support given to teams doing this type of work to be left alone to do it.  It doesn’t tend to work  when there is not good  management and government support as well as resourcing  to make these areas more robust, and also to support this activity with an additional capacity for green fields targeting.

As an aside, seeing this has given me the proverbial kick up the backside to make it a priority to flesh out my still underdeveloped theory (yes I use this word loosely) on “edge of network connections.” Once the thesis is finally bound and off to examiners, fingers crossed, by the end of March, I’m planning on re-visiting this, along with a great big lessons learned post on all the things I have managed to get wrong since I started blogging. I’m a big fan of critical self-reflection so chief on the list, making errors in attributing persons to groups where they are not members or vice versa, missing parts of the evolution of JAT in Indonesia, and getting it wrong in relation to Bekkay Harach.

So, these are the blogging plans, but with the thesis still needing a few last tweaks, the bigger item blog posts such as the above will be on hold until that damn thing is bound and sent off to torture some poor unsuspecting professor who has to read it. Cheers.

Today I unfollowed @nirrosen after his comments about Lara Logan.

Nir has issued a series of tweets apologising, but I notice from them that not one single tweet directly addresses Lara and apologises to her.

Lara is the victim in this situation; Lara is also a victim of Nir’s mockery of her being a victim of sexual violence. Neither of which Nir has acknowledged in his tweets.

He has apologised directly to his followers, but not to his victim. Hence the impression is given that Nir still does not understand the gravity of his comment or the gravity of sexual violence, more generally.

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so perhaps he does, and perhaps he intends to apologise to her  privately.

But if Nir genuinely feels that he has given a poor reflection of who he his, then perhaps he should come out publicly and make an on the record apology to Lara, not to his twitter followers.

UPDATE 10:34 AEST:  Via @mattduss who just sent me the following link, where Nir offered a direct apology to Lara half an hour ago. http://twitter.com/nirrosen/status/37841784973303808

I tweeted before seeing this so in the spirit of eating humble pie, when needed, I offer my apologies to Nir for not noting his apology in my tweet http://www.tweetdeck.com/twitter/allthingsct/~MQjRS He has stepped up to the mark and done the right thing. And I have learned hit refresh on your search before sending a tweet.

Regular readers of this blog will know that AQAP has been an obsession of mine for years and that  my view of AQAP differs somewhat to conventional wisdom.

In January this year after the undie bomber episode, I had a little rant in which I explained why I find it frustrating that AQAP is viewed as a new and organizationally distinct entity from AQ core and  I stand by this analysis. In fact, since then I’ve found even more things to bolster the case I made there, which I really looking forward to releasing in the thesis, which is creeping ever so much closer to being sent off for examination.

What I wrote in January and what I demonstrate in my thesis is that AQAP is a branch of AQ. It is  not an affiliate, not a franchise, and not a network. Rather it is  an operating branch of AQ, which means that while it may have authority  for attacks in its area of operations (the Arabian Peninsula), it comes under AQ’s strategic command and control for external attacks outside of this area of operation.  And it has always done so, right back to 02.

In other words AQAP cannot launch operations against the US without approval from HQ in the Afghanistan/Pakistan borderlands.  This practice also extends to franchises more generally but it is particularly relevant to AQAP because it is a branch of the organisation rather than a franchise. This means it is held by a tighter set of what you might call operating instructions and requirements.

So, this plot is quite fascinating to me because it gives us the opportunity to look more closely at the nature of how branch and HQ interact and the degree of operational autonomy AQAP has as a branch. In particular, it gives us the opportunity to determine whether blanket approval is provided and then the branch left to its own devices, or whether additional permissions are required when expanding the target sets and tactics used . It also gives us the opportunity to delve into what degree of cooperation occurs, and to what extent is HQ briefed into operations from this branch. So, when I picked up on this snippet of information I was particularly fascinated:

The alert was triggered by intelligence from a unit of GCHQ surveillance experts stationed in Afghanistan, the Sunday Express can reveal. Operating from a converted shipping container in Helmand, the team picked up the words “A wedding gift is being delivered”.

It’s rare to see this type of leak or acknowledgement of the role of what comes across the wires in starting operations, despite this often being the case, and I’m surprised to see that this leak may have originated with the Brits, since they are usually watertight and the unsung heroes of this type of work, particularly in that neck of the woods.

Of course this report could be wrong, but I suspect not, for reasons I’m not inclined to expand upon here. The report is also a little murky, particularly in relation to when and how the Saudis got in the game and via which type of exploitation, which is not surprising for a number of reasons, and which again I’m not inclined to expand upon here.

However, this snippet has me very interested because it suggests there is a greater level of cooperation going on than I had thought between branch and HQ.  It also leads to me ask a number of questions as to whether or not keeping HQ in the loop so to speak is novel to this particular plot or whether it is standard practice.

In the current threat environment and with things reportedly on the boil from HQ in terms of its own external operations believed to be targeted at Europe,  I think it raises a number of important questions and warrants a closer look at external operations planning and coordination, particularly in relation to strategic objectives. On the basis of that I think it is dangerous to view this plot in isolation. I’d also make the same remark in relation to viewing AQAP in isolation  too.

Having said that lumping everything together as one homogeneous whole is also problematic. As is all of the rubbish being spouted about Awlaki in relation to this plot and his status in relation to AQAP more generally (ie the new OBL, ugh what a load of rot)

What that snippet tells me (and with the caveat in place that it could be wrong) is that comms networks between branch and HQ are resilient and also dynamic. The comms channel picked up  appears to have been  new, hence extra assistance was required to contextualise and operationalise the raw intel, which led to the plot being uncovered and disrupted.

This is why historical knowledge is important and why we need to work to fill gaps in our understanding. Clearly there are some contours in the relationship between branch and HQ that we do not fully understand yet, as well as parts of each elements’ operational trajectory.

As I said, this info could be wrong, but even so, on the basis of AQAP’s status as a branch of AQ, I’d argue seeking answers to these questions and further investigation into AQ’s external operations coordination are worthwhile activities, particularly in the current climate.

the plan consists of storming buildings in Germany, France and Britain at the same time and holding the people inside hostage with the aim of forcing the release of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind 9/11 who is now sitting in jail in the United States awaiting trial for the attacks.

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.

I’ve been watching the debate about the Afghanistan Study Group report with interest. And while I’m cynically amused by the sooky la la reaction of some contributors to the criticism they have encountered and even more amused at the irony of this given their report criticized the current US strategy, I’m also extremely worried.

Several people have criticised the report not so much for the conclusions that it reached but the manner in which it reached them. See for example Josh, Christian and maybe Andrew .  To my mind, the main issue of contention seems to be that the foundation of knowledge (or assumptions) upon which this report was based is deeply flawed. That’s been covered elsewhere in great detail, some of which I agree with and some of which I don’t.

But what worries me the most is the “so what?” issue that seems to be prevailing in response to criticisms about issues with the foundation of knowledge, or whether it is required when authoring a study like this. That somehow a policy document does not need such a foundation.

The “so what?” dynamic seems to be manifesting as an argument that goes something like this: since this is a document dealing with US national interests and grand strategy it does not matter.  But this isn’t just a document about grand strategy.

It’s a document about strategy in Afghanistan. Look at the five point approach for example. Leaving aside the issues here in terms of a levels of analysis problem, and also purpose schizophrenia, I’d like to highlight why I think people are getting their knickers in a knot over the foundation being flawed because it seems that this has not been set out in some of the critiques.

And the way I like to look at these things is the good old “what if?” question. What if this document is accepted, and then adopted?

Here’s where it gets tricky.  If the foundation of knowledge upon which conclusions are drawn and an alternative strategy fashioned is wrong, what follows will be wrong.

For example imagine if the premises upon which the ASG formed this “way forward” shape or influence operational strategy.  That’s when things would start to go very pear shaped, if the foundation of knowledge was wrong. Because the reality doesn’t meet the strategy, because the strategy has started top down and not only just top down but based on assumed wisdom that is potentially deeply flawed. Then the top down strategy gets imposed onto the situation and some poor bastard  has to try to move forward with something that doesn’t fit the reality and is basically given the task of trying to hammer a square into a circle.

Or we might look at it this way. The ASG has reached similar conclusions to a number of people, but based on a reportedly deeply flawed foundation.  So, imagine if they then get asked to provide input as to how to operationalise this strategy. Because of the way in which they have reached their conclusions and their “way forward” and the deeply flawed foundation of knowledge they have, the way that they suggest going forward  is not going to meet the outcomes they outlined.  Nor would it necessarily survive on the ground, and thus be a pretty pointless exercise. To my mind, aside from the other critiques, this is the main point people are trying to make. That this report and its “way forward” is a house built on sand. It looks great, people  like it. But it can’t hold up because the foundation of knowledge is flawed.

I think Andrew Exum touched on this when he suggested he’d have people who were in charge of operationalising a strategy as well as subject matter experts involved with formulating such a study. (at least this is my reading of what he meant)

I know that my outline above is a very simplistic reading of “what if” but it is important, because as Steve Clemons himself noted, the signatories have influence. That’s great, but in this case, if the foundation is flawed, it’s also a big problem.

I’m not averse to their conclusions, like many others. But I do think, given the concerns voiced about their foundation of knowledge being deeply flawed,  they have a responsibility to “rethink” their “rethink”. Here I’d draw upon the objectives of the study being to put forward an alternative strategy. To continue to push forward in this direction without further engagement and consideration of whether the foundation upon which they based their study is indeed flawed,  would be deeply irresponsible.

So, on that note, I’m sincerely hoping to see reports of more meetings and a revised document. The folks of the ASG have a wonderful opportunity to now show us how it is done. And we’d all learn from it.

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.