By Georg-Sebastian Holzer

Recent activities by US citizens of Somali decent are setting new records in the US security arena. Last weeks’ unveiling of terrorism-related charges against 14 US nationals who allegedly helped 20 young Americans to join the Somali al-Shabaab movement is the largest group of Americans suspected of joining an extremist movement affiliated with al-Qaida since 9/11.

More infamously, the first known US citizen suicide bomber, involved in the simultaneous terrorist attacks in Somaliland and Puntland on 29 October 2008, was of Somali descent.

However, this development is not confined to the US, which has an estimated 200,000-strong Somali diaspora concentrated in the Minneapolis-St Paul area in the midwestern state of Minnesota. Most recently, Britain’s MI5 was warning ministers of an increased number of young Britons travelling to Somalia to fight a ‘holy war,’ some of whom do not have direct family connection to the country. The official estimate gives a number of 100 young Britons, but the true figure could be higher when counting those entering the country overland.

The biggest surprise to counterterrorism analysts concerned with Somalia might yet have been an incident in Australia, a country with no significant diaspora. In August this year, the police claimed to have foiled a suicide plot by four young men of Somali and Lebanese descent to storm a Sydney military base and kill as many soldiers as possible. It is unclear if they hatched the plot on their own or with the connivance of al-Shabaab.

The next Afghanistan?

Taking into account the enduring state failure and the rise of radical Islamic movements that now control most parts of south/central Somalia, many ask if the country might resemble Afghanistan in the 1990s, becoming a save haven and training ground for jihadists from Somalia’s huge diaspora and others.

In fact, this is a question Osama Bin Laden himself was already contemplating when he was looking for his next stop after leaving Khartoum in 1996. It is said that the Somali clan militias were too untrustworthy to provide security, and the country’s Islamist groups were left in the cold by al-Qaida’s global vision, leading bin Laden to opt for Afghanistan instead.

Bin Laden’s conclusions might still hold true today. “Due to poor infrastructure and the prevalence of local warlords and the hundreds of concomitant armed checkpoints, moving men, information and material is slow and requires the frequent payments of bribes [making] Somalia a costly and difficult place for outsiders to operate,” Bill Braniff, FBI program manager and instructor at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, told ISN Security Watch.

In addition, “many of the most well-established Islamist training camps are not Salafi-jihadi training camps, but camps run by nationalist Islamists that want to see an Islamist government in Somalia for all ethnic Somalis. These nationalist camps are championed by pragmatic, seasoned Somali leaders who do not want to see Somalis become the cannon fodder of an abstract and cosmic foreign ideology, nor do they want to see al-Qaida or its affiliated al-Shabaab organization undermine their chance of political primacy in Somalia,” Braniff said.

In contrast to the Taliban, which at a certain point fought for al-Qaida, and according to some analysts, is merging in part with it, the nationalist Islamists in Somalia share their training infrastructure with al-Shabaab for pragmatic reasons.

“If al-Shabaab is seen as a liability moving forward, however, these erstwhile benefactors will not feel obliged to continue hosting Shabaab if they are strong enough to desist,” Braniff said.

Getting local: Somali Islamist movements

Talking to ISN Security Watch, Michael A Weinstein, professor at Purdue University in the US state of Indiana, makes clear that al-Shabaab can not be seen as a unit: “It is, after all, a Somali group and shares the standard characteristics of Somali political groups (decentralization), although it is more ideologically coherent than its competitors.”

While it is difficult to determine with certainty the leadership structure, one thing appears to be clear: “It is not a top-down, hierarchical organization with a predictable chain of command. Wherever the group is dominant, its local leaders have a great deal of latitude and have alliances with local sub-clans,” Weinstein said.

Overall, al-Shabaab represents a rather complex picture - therein resembling the current state of Somalia itself, which is a country in open conflict between factions of armed Islamist opposition groups, Islamists outside the armed opposition with their own militias, clan families, sub-clans, regional power centers, micro-political interests at the local level, legitimate and criminal business interests, and the Transitional Federal Government as just one armed actor among many others.

Al-Shabaab has a clan dimension - its western wing is aligned with the Rahanweyne, its eastern wing with the Hawiye and Darod - but its ideology of transnational jihad and pan-Islamism is fairly well fixed for Somali standards.

According to Weinstein, al-Shabaab’s western and eastern branches have different agendas: “The western branch, centered in the Rahanweyne regions of Bay and Bakool, is associated with Sheikh Mukhtar Robow’s strategy of consolidation and building functioning authorities as a prelude to extension of Islamist emirates. The eastern branch, extending to the Jubba regions to the south and through the central regions, especially Middle Shabelle, to the north, is led by Sheikh Godane with a more militant transnationalist agenda, although I believe the greatest concentration is on Somalia.”

Besides al-Shabaab, the other important Islamist movement on a regional level is Hizbul Islam. It represents the usual Somali movement: It has been and remains nationalist, and is a coalition of resistance groups based on clan membership, in particular Darod Ogaden (Ras Kambooni Group), Darod (Muskar Anole Group) and Hawiye (the faction dominated by Sheikh Aweys). With the exception of the Ras Kambooni Group, the only transnational design concerns the Ethiopian Ogaden region.

Looking for a trigger

In any case, the increased movements of young members of the Somali diaspora to fight in their country of origin have to be put into context. Most of the 20 Americans joined al-Shabaab in 2007 and 2008 when Somalia’s ‘Christian’ archenemy Ethiopia invaded and subsequently occupied the country with US encouragement and logistical help.

Al-Shabaab was perceived as the only resistance force willing and able to confront the Ethiopian military, thereby developing a large domestic constituency as well as strong support from the diaspora. With the Ethiopian troop withdrawal, this polarizing effect of foreign occupation led to diminished grievances, making it ever more difficult for al-Shabaab to motivate members of the diaspora to join their fight.

David H Shinn, former State Department coordinator for Somalia during the UNOSOM intervention and now professor at the George Washington University, told ISN Security Watch that he thinks “this recruitment activity may have peaked in the Somali diaspora of western countries.”

Looking at the self-regulating power of the clans, Shinn points out that “the families of these young men now understand the threat to their children, and they are paying closer attention to the problem.”

In any case, according to Braniff, a strong rationale based on cost benefit analysis might prevent al-Shabaab from terror attacks abroad, referring to the large Somali diaspora: “Remittances provide 10 times the income than does the next closest industry in Somalia, so the world's largest humanitarian crisis would be infinitely worse should foreign governments prevent Somali communities from sending money back home. As a result, any nationalist actor would have to be willing to risk societal suicide should they decide to attack western interests directly.”

If true, this might be an indicator that fighters coming from the Somali diaspora - who are still small in numbers compared to those from ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan - might rather resemble the men that fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s and returned home after 1989. Although several were identified of those who started military activity again in their homelands, most just reverted to their civilian life.

In spite of this, there might be an intrinsic dynamic directly linked to the attention the conflict in Somalia gets in the context of the global war on terror and the motivation of foreigners to sacrifice their lives for a higher cause in Somalia.

As Roland Marchal, senior research fellow at the National Center of Scientific Research in Paris, points out to ISN Security Watch, “[there is] also missing an international attention to Somalia that would provide a reward for foreigners to get involved in Somalia. The success of [Somalia becoming a training ground for jihadists] will be limited up to the time Somalia becomes the place for a major confrontation against the West.”


Georg-Sebastian Holzer is an analyst and free-lance journalist. He focuses in particular on conflict dynamics in the wider Horn of Africa. This article was published by
International Relations and Security Network (ISN)

Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported"

By Fathali M. Moghaddam

Violent extremism is a major problem in a number of contemporary societies; violent Islamist extremism has become a serious global threat, and could remain so during the next few decades. In order to more effectively thwart this threat, it is necessary to explore and better understand its roots. For this reason, I am grateful to you for inviting me to present my views regarding the ideological roots of violent Islamist extremism.

Because ideology is a major focus in this hearing, let me begin by clarifying my own ideological biases. Like hundreds of millions of other Muslims, my hope and goal is that Islamic societies, including those of the Near and Middle East, will become far more politically, culturally, and economically open in the future. The open, democratic Islamic society will be more peaceful, more productive, more affluent, more just, and better for the global economy.

To a significant degree, higher oil prices are the result of dictatorships, monopolies, corruptionlack of open competition, and inefficiency.

But to achieve more open Islamic societies there are major obstacles to overcome, and violent Islamist extremism is one such major obstacle. In order to evaluate this particular obstacle, I find it instructive to review the letter of invitation I received, which states the purpose of the present Senate hearing to be “to explore the ideology that is the root source for the radicalization of potential followers of al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist organizations around the world”. I believe it is useful to critically assess the assumption that an ideology is “the root source for the radicalization of potential followers of al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist organizations around the world”.

An ideology does not arise in a vacuum, nor does it influence behavior in a vacuum. An ideology can only impact behavior under given conditions, when other necessary factors are present.

In the Georgetown University libraries, there are many books that espouse potentially dangerous ideologies. Why is it that young women and men at Georgetown are not influenced by the many dangerous books available, including works on fascism, anarchism, and various kinds of religious fundamentalism? Why do they not turn to terrorism? Clearly because theavailability of a violent extremist ideology serves as a necessary, but is not a sufficient, cause for terrorist action.

We must ask, then, what are the factors that combine with a particular ideology to lead to violent Islamist extremism? How does an ideology supportive of violent Islamist extremism come to influence individuals to support and commit acts of terrorism? I have addressed this question by adopting a ‘big picture’ approach1, exploring radicalization and terrorism in the context of cultural evolution and globalization. In order to clarify my viewpoint, I have found it useful to adopt a staircase metaphor of radicalization and terrorism.

The Staircase To Terrorism

Consider a multi-story building with a winding staircase at its center. People are located on different floors of the building, but everyone begins on the ground floor; where there are about 1.2 billion Muslims. Thought and action on each floor is characterized by particular psychological processes. On the ground floor, the most important psychological processes influencing behavior are subjective interpretations of material conditions, perceptions of fairness, and adequacy of identity. Hundreds of millions of Muslims suffer collective (fraternal) relative deprivation and lack of adequate identity; they feel that they are not being treated fairly and are not receiving adequate material rewards. They feel dissatisfied with the way they are depicted by the international media and, most importantly, they do not want to become second-class copies of Western ideals.

I have argued that the Islamic population on the ground floor of the staircase to terrorism is experiencing a collective identity crisis, and that this crisis is particularly acute in the major dictatorships of the Near and Middle East. Muslims are faced with a choice between two inadequate identities. The first involves copying the West, and confronts what I have termed ‘the good copy problem’. By copying the West, Muslims can only hope to become ‘good copies’ of borrowed Western ideals, but not to achieve authentic identities. The second path open to Muslims for identity development is represented by various kinds of Islamic fundamentalism, which push for a return to ‘pure’ Islam in the form it is assumed to have existed 1,400 years ago. Why is there not a third alternative, a constructive secular third path? The reason is that dictatorial, authoritarian forces continue to imprison, banish, or kill the secular opposition. In country after country in the Near and Middle East, as well as in parts of central and North Africa, Islamic fundamentalism is filling the enormous vacuum left open by the despotic repression of democratic movements.

This situation has resulted in a collective crisis of identity among Muslims. This identity crisis is especially acute because about 60% of the global Muslim population is below the age of 25, and because the psychological experiences of the young are characterized by a yearning for adequate identity.

However, on the ground floor, degrees of freedom are large relative to degrees of freedom2 on the higher floors of the staircase to terrorism, and individual Muslims on the ground floor have a wider range of behavioral options. Only some individuals move up from the ground floor to the first floor, in search of ways to improve their life conditions. These individuals in no way see themselves as terrorists or even supportive of terrorist causes; they are simply attempting to improve the situation of themselves and their groups. On this floor they are particularly influenced by possibilities for individual mobility and voice. Extensive evidence has accumulated to show that when people feel their voice is listened to during the decision making process, they ‘buy into’ the system. However, when they feel they have no voice, they become more dissatisfied and detached. Some of these dissatisfied individuals climb up to the second floor of the staircase, where they come under the influence of persuasive messages telling them that the root cause of their problems is external enemies, particularly America and Israel. Individuals on the second floor are encouraged to displace aggression onto external targets.

Displacement of aggression is a well documented phenomenon in inter-group dynamics in both non-Western and Western societies. By focusing attention on so-called ‘external enemies’, those who oppose openness and democracy find it easier to:

• increase support for aggressive leadership
• silence internal critics and dissenting voices
• isolate and pressure minorities
• gain public support for trampling on civil liberties and human rights
  

Many of the individuals who climb up to the second floor of the staircase remain there, but some keep climbing up to reach the third floor where they adopt a morality supportive of terrorism. Gradually, those who have reached the third floor become divorced from the mainstream morality of their society, which generally condemns terrorism (this is also true in Islamic communities), and take on a morality supportive of an ‘ends justify the means’ approach. Those individuals who continue the climb up to the fourth floor adopt a more rigid style of categorical ‘us versus them’, ‘good against evil’ thinking. Their world is now unambiguously divided up into ‘black and white’, and it is seen as legitimate to attack ‘the forces of evil’ in any and every way feasible. Some of these individuals move up to the fifth floor, where they take part in and directly support terrorist actions.

Individuals who reach the highest floors of the staircase become specialized in their activities in support of terrorism. Through an analysis of the available evidence, I identified nine different specialties involved in terrorist activities and networks. Both the research literature and the media typically focuses on the suicide bomber, a specialty that belongs to a category I have termed ‘fodder’. The eight other specialties are: source of inspiration, strategist, networker, technical expert, cell manager, local agitator and guide, local cell member, and fund raiser. Some of these specialties are more involved with the production and dissemination of ideology, while others tend to be consumers of ideology.

The higher individuals move up the staircase to terrorism, the lower the degrees of freedom. In other words, the power of the context increases, and the behavioral options decrease, on the higher floors. After an individual has become part of a terrorist group or network and has reached the highest floor, the only options left open are to try to kill, or be killed or captured. Personality factors are less influential, and the context is all-powerful, on the highest floor. In contrast, on the lowest floors the degrees of freedom are greater, meaning that individuals have a wider variety of behavioral options, and personality factors play a larger role in determining who climbs up the staircase.

The varying nature of degrees of freedom is evident in all situations where terrorism has existed. Consider the context of Northen Ireland. When I visited Belfast to conduct interviews in the 1970s, it was like walking through a war zone. For example, the offices of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) were in a fortress building, surrounded by sandbags and barbed wire. There was tremendous pressure within both Catholic and Protestant groups to conform to ingroup norms, and not only to maintain a distance from the outgroup but to condone acts of terrorism against the outgroup. This was a situation of low degrees of freedom. Northern Ireland in 2008 is a very different place, where the normative system opposes terrorism and degrees of freedom are far greater. In this transformed 21st century context, individual characteristics will be more influential in determining which individuals participate in and support terrorism.

The Distance-Traveled Hypothesis

I now turn my attention to Muslims in the United States and in Europe, to consider specifically the issue of ‘home-grown’ terrorism. Clearly, the relatively open nature of Western societies and the global reach of electronic technology and the world wide web means that the ideology of violent Islamist extremism is available to Muslims in the United States, as it is available in Europe. However, because of a variety of other factors, Islamic terrorism will be a greater threat in Europe, at least for the next few decades. The most important of these other factors are briefly discussed below.

*The ‘distance-traveled hypothesis’3 proposes that the distance immigrants have to travel in order to settle in a host country determines the (material, educational, and other) resources needed to succeed in the migration. Muslims need to have greater resources to move from the Middle East and North Africa to settle in the United States, than they do to settle in Europe. The greater resources of American Muslims in part explains the greater success of Muslims in the United States, particularly in terms of economic and educational attainment, relative to Muslims in Europe.

• Muslims arriving in the United States have had the resources, including in terms of values, needed to integrate into a competitive, open market system. The openness of the American system and the ‘American dream, anyone can make it here’ belief system has worked well for Muslims in America. The only serious exception I see to this is the potential for violent Islamist extremism taking root in U.S. prisons, among individuals who become convinced they are being unjustly treated because of their group membership, they have no voice, and no hope for a better future.
• The situation of the approximately 20 million Muslims in Europe is more problematic. First, the largest groups of Muslims in Europe (South Asians in the UK, North Africans in France, Turks in Germany) have lower levels of important resources (income, educational attainment, and so on) compared to the local population. Second, these Muslims are geographically closer to major centers of violent Islamist extremist ideology (e.g., Pakistan). Third, the major European countries are confronted by enormous challenges integrating Muslims, who tend to live in collective segregation. Anyone who wants to confirm this only has to walk through South Asian neighborhoods in major cities in England, or North Africa neighborhoods in major cities in France, or Turkish neighborhoods in major cities in Germany. Fourth, European countries are experimenting with a muddled array of integration strategies, from extreme assimilation, the washing away of intergroup differences (“Immigrants must become French”) to relativistic multiculturalism, the highlighting, strengthening, and celebration of intergroup differences (“Sharia law can be implemented in Muslim homes”).
• In both North America and in Europe, more constructive policies must be developed to manage diversity. There are serious flaws in the current policies, both of the assimilation and multiculturalism varieties.4 The ‘third way’ alternative I advocate is omniculturalism, which involves using a foundation of psychological universals and human commonalities as a launching pad for valuing distinct identities. The end point of omniculturalism is a society whose members first recognize the importance of their common similarities and bonds, and on the basis of this ‘common’ foundation recognize and uphold the value of distinct local identities. In omniculturalism, the celebration of intergroup commonalities serve as a stepping stone to the celebration and sharing of intergroup differences.
• A policy of omniculturalism focuses particularly on transforming the economic, political, and cultural role of Muslim women, ensuring their equal progress and participation in the public sphere. Through the transformation of the role of Muslim women, relationships, roles, and socialization practices within the Muslim family will be changed to support open, democratic societies. The healthy family is the basis for the healthy society.
  

In exploring the ideological roots of violent Islamist extremism in the global context, it is vital to consider the active role Western societies should play. In particular, the United States has global responsibilities that must not be neglected. The final part of my statement addresses this key issue.

The “New Global American Dilemma”5

In a study of race-relations in the United States published under the title of An American Dilemma (1944),6 the brilliant Swedish researcher Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) accurately identified the first American dilemma. He pointed out that even after the official end of slavery in the United States, there continued to be a contradiction between, on the one hand the American rhetoric of freedom and liberty, and on the other hand the discriminatory mistreatment of African Americans. As we know, this historic dilemma was eventually resolved in favor of freedom and equality of opportunity through legislative and societal reform. There now looms a second historic dilemma confronting America, one that is global and demands a resolution.

The new global American dilemma arises out of the contradiction existing between American support for, on the one hand, so-called ‘friendly’ dictatorships in the Near and Middle East and, on the other hand, the right of all Muslims to live in open, democratic societies. The new global American dilemma is not ‘Democratic’ or ‘Republican’ or ‘Independent’ in political affiliation, it confronts all Americans and will have to be resolved through unified effort.

The rhetoric of “freedom, equality of opportunity, and democracy for all” emanating from the White House over the last few decades has had a powerful impact on two groups in the Near and Middle East. First, the vast majority of Muslims, and Muslim intellectuals in particular, immediately recognized the basic contradiction between the ‘democracy and freedom’ rhetoric of the United States, and the actual practice of continued support for certain dictatorships in the region. The vast majority of Muslims recognize that it is through American support that certain dictatorships in the Near and Middle East continue to crush secular opposition groups, and prevent women and other minorities from gaining greater freedom and equality. A second group influenced by the ‘democracy and freedom’ rhetoric of American political leaders are Islamic Fundamentalists, who are fearful of any change that gives greater freedom to ordinary people, particularly women. Islamic fundamentalists have generally adopted an ‘anti-progress, anti-democracy’ position.

But why, then, do Islamic fundamentalists manage to gain sympathy and on some issues even some support from many Muslims, in both Western and non-Western societies? Given the moderate positions of most Muslims, why would they sympathize with fundamentalists at least on some issues? The new global American dilemma is at the heart of this puzzle. Four related facts must be kept in mind. First, the U.S. and its allies continue to support certain corrupt dictatorships in the Near and Middle East. Second, dictatorships in the Near and Middle East refuse to allow the growth of secular, democratic opposition groups. Third, the only avenue open for collective activism in the Near and Middle East is the mosque - no dictator has the power to close mosques, although all dictators attempt to control what happens in mosques. Fourth, fundamentalists use the mosque, and religious traditions broadly, to position themselves as the vanguard of opposition to so-called ‘pro-American’ dictatorships. This is exactly what happened in Iran in the late 1970s, and in Algeria in the 1980s, and in a number of Islamic countries more recently. The threat of fundamentalist groups is real and imminent in Egypt, Pakistan, and some other major Islamic societies.

Finally, as a psychologist I am aware that the new global American dilemma is increasing cognitive tensions among Americans. The United States should not and will not shrink from its global responsibilities. Increasing globalization means that the American public is becoming more aware of the contradiction between American rhetorical support for freedom, equality of opportunity, and democracy, and American practices in support of dictatorships in certain Muslim countries. The history of American values will force a resolution to this dilemma,
inevitably in favor of support for democracy rather than dictatorship.

Just as democracy in America is different from democracy in the United Kingdom, which is different from democracy in France, which is different from democracy in Germany, and so on, democracy in Iraq will evolve to be different from democracy in Pakistan, which will be different from democracy in Saudi Arabia, which will be different from democracy in Egypt, and so on. Contextualized democracy7 will eventually evolve in all Muslim countries, as it has in the West.


Fathali M. Moghaddam, Professor, Department of Psychology, Director, Conflict Resolution Program, Department of Government Georgetown University, Senior Fellow, Center on Policy, Education, and Research on Terrorism. This article is a slightly adapted version of his July 10, 2008 statement to the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs “Violent Islamist Extremism in Global Context”. The original version of that statement can be found here.

Notes:
1 For example, see:
Moghaddam, F. M. (2008, September). How globalization spurs terrorism. Westport, CT.: Praeger Security International.
Moghaddam, F. M. (2006). From the terrorists’ point of view. Westport, CT.: Praeger Security International
2 For further clarification of ‘degrees of freedom’ and behavior, see Moghaddam, F. M. (2005). Great Ideas in Psychology. Oxford: Oneworld., and the distinction between ‘performance capacity’ and ‘performance style’ in Moghaddam, F. M. (2002). The Individual and Society. New York: Worth.
3 Discussed in Moghaddam, F. M. (2008, September). How globalization spurs terrorism. Westport, CT.: Praeger Security International.
4 Discussed in Moghaddam, F. M. (2008). Multiculturalism and Intergroup Relations: Psychological Implications for Democracy in Global Context. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association Press.
5 Discussed in Moghaddam, F. M. (2008, September). How globalization spurs terrorism. Westport, CT.: Praeger Security International.
6 Myrdal, G. (1944). An American dilemma: The Negro problem and modern democracy. (2 vols). New York: Harper and Bothers.
7 For a discussion of ‘contextualized democracy’ as a solution in Islamic societies, see Moghaddam, F. M. (2005). The staircase to terrorism. American Psychologist, 60, 161-169, and ch. 10 in Moghaddam, F. M. (2006). From the terrorists’ point of view. Westport, CT.: Praeger Security International

By F.G. Hoffman

What we now sometimes refer to as the Long War began much earlier than the 9/11 attacks on America. But that day was seared into our collective national consciousness and animated our collective response. That sunny morning in Manhattan marked the second most violent day in U.S. history, exceeding Pearl Harbor and even D-Day in fatalities. Only Antietam’s bloody wheat fields have witnessed more carnage in a single day. Since then, our country has mobilized for a global conflict against extremism with a multidimensional approach that has relied heavily on our military forces.

Just what have we accomplished to date in the Long War? Any ledger is going to identify some clear gains. Our campaign in Afghanistan quickly toppled the Taliban, and as a result al Qaeda no longer enjoys any sanctuary in Afghanistan. A major multinational invasion of Iraq led by the United States sliced though the remnants of the Iraqi Army and destroyed Saddam Hussein’s regime. We have generated and exploited a degree of international cooperation and intelligence sharing—much of it very discrete—to foil several plots against ourselves or our partners. We have substantially reduced al Qaeda’s infrastructure around the world, including its leadership, training facilities, and financial networks. And the nation has begun to shore up our home defenses. Notably, no similar attacks have occurred here at home.

But the ledger has both black and red ink. Bin Laden is alive and apparently well, although al Qaeda is a more diffuse organization. The core leadership of al Qaeda itself has probably been weakened, but its cause has been amplified and a generation of Muslims has been mobilized if not radicalized.

Afghanistan remains a key campaign in this war. Our initial campaign was brilliantly conceived by the CIA. An American force of CIA operatives and special forces aided no more than 15,000 Afghan troops to drive out some 50,000 Taliban and foreign fighters in late 2001.[1] But six years later, Afghanistan remains a troubled land. The Taliban, once vanquished, is resurging.

Like the early phases in Afghanistan, the early military operations in Iraq were also conducted in accord with the U.S. military’s preferred style and exploited its overwhelming conventional military superiority. The early successes were ephemeral and temporary. The early occupation of Iraq went well for six months, but then turned sour as political enemies vied for national and local control. What Tom Ricks has called “perhaps the worst war plan in American history” failed to secure victory as defined by our political leaders. The planning shortfalls helped create the conditions for the difficult occupation that followed.[2] For two years, American commanders and diplomats looked for a way out, and tried to nurture along a weak government in Baghdad and shift the fight to the slowly developing Iraqi Army.[3]

The cost for what has been accomplished to date is completely disproportionate to the limited gains. How did we get to this point?

Assessment Framework

In a highly regarded evaluation of modern military history entitled Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War (1990), two noted historians, Eliot Cohen and John Gooch, defined a useful framework or taxonomy for analyzing military failures and their institutional origins. This taxonomy lays out three types or sources of organizational failure derived from a superb assessment of the institutional shortcomings that can lead to lost opportunities and operational defeat.

The first type of failure is the ability to properly anticipate. Anticipation is a crucial function of military services during peacetime as they attempt to discern key trends and the impact of new technologies on the conduct of war. It requires the ability to look past the last war, and anticipate where future threats could arise, and what the ever evolving character of conflict will be in that scenario. Strategic anticipation is abetted by understanding the enduring continuities of war, while ruthlessly looking for potential discontinuities and opportunities.

The second type or source of misfortune is the failure to learn. The U.S. Navy’s failure to learn from Britain’s experiences in World War I or during the Royal Navy’s desperate efforts against the Nazi U-boats in 1940-41 is a notable example. The Navy was slow to implement convoys needed to conduct successful antisubmarine warfare. This resulted in relearning the hard way—in combat—a rather bloody education.

The final and perhaps most puzzling failure is the inability to adapt. “Where learning failures have their roots in the past,” Cohen and Gooch stress, “adaptive failures suggest an inability to handle the changing present.”[4] The U.S. Army Air Corps’ insistence that daylight strategic bombing without fighter cover over Europe during World War II would materially contribute to the war effort, and its deadly persistence despite evidence to the contrary over Germany represents one notable example.[5]

The remainder of this paper will break down these three sources of misfortune and their relevance to the Long War in greater detail.

Failure to Anticipate

The failure to anticipate is perhaps the easiest to understand, as it usually relates to a failure in intelligence or some sort of strategic surprise. The failure to anticipate is often abetted by the use or imposition of false assumptions. These too can be explicit or implied. As one strategic analyst has noted, “Making assumptions can be a double edged sword, correct assumptions can minimize surprise and aid a desired outcome; errant assumptions can ensnare a nation and its armed forces in the unexpected. Sometimes assumptions, rather than physical inferiority, result in fiasco or defeat. The corridors of power are filled with consequential officials boasting of “slam dunk” certitude.”[6]

The American failures in Iraq and the Long War come from such assumptions. They also come from a fundamental misreading in the evolving character of conflict, and an implicit net assessment that did not consider irregular adversaries worthy of study. In fact, rather than conduct serious net assessments, American planners generally worshipped at the altar of technology and imagined future conflicts as a mechanistic engineering exercise rather than a contest of wills with a determined adversary with a different culture and his own rule book.

For far too long American military planners and civilian policymakers have imagined future military capabilities through rose-colored glasses. The Bush administration embraced the Revolution in Military Affairs argument and promised to “skip a generation” in military modernization to exploit precision technology and information systems.[7]

Many if not most of these visions and concepts were not solving existing and evident military or security problems, but were simply advancing military revolutions devoid of political context or historical understanding. They were also often devoid of any opponent, reflecting a rather one-sided misconception about warfare.[8]

The technophiliacs in the Pentagon were abetted by a military culture that since Vietnam had retreated to a narrow view of its professional domain. Military culture is a prime factor in military effectiveness, adaptation, and innovation.[9] The Army didn’t just ignore its Vietnam experience; it deliberately jettisoned the lessons learned and chose not to study it, or to determine what actually worked. Moreover, “it deliberately reconfigured itself physically as well as intellectually only to fight major war.”[10]

The combination of civilian policymakers and a narrow military conception of its professional jurisdiction set the stage for serial failures in anticipation in the run-ups to both Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in the fall of 2002 and Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003. These include failures to anticipate al Qaeda’s resilience in battle and its ability to elude capture in Afghanistan; the extensive timelines and costs of reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq; the long-term implications of its military/kinetic approach against the broader Muslim community and well as potential allies; the effect of its poor strategic communications and public diplomacy resources; the decrepit nature of Iraq’s infrastructure and its implications for post-conflict stability; the need to secure Iraq’s critical infrastructure from damage or to secure its vast stocks of conventional military arms and munitions; the need for comprehensive guidance for the detention, control, and interrogation of large numbers of Iraqis; how improper interrogation techniques would undermine U.S. moral authority and undercut its standing internationally and its legitimacy in Iraq; and the implications of a de-Baathification policy or the impact of the dissolution of the Iraqi army.

Failure to Learn

Each of the above failures of anticipation were ultimately compounded by failures to learn. Even when one fails to anticipate problems, it is usually beneficial to recognize a problem when it arises and immediately seek out historical precedents to compress the learning curve. It is always better to use the experience of others, if only to minimize losses. History is our best source of professional experience, and as General Mattis of the Marines once noted, it provides a professional edge to those willing to invest the time. To simply improvise out of ignorance, “by filling body bags as we sort out what works” is an act of incompetence.[11] With thousands of years of historical knowledge before them, our military has no excuse not to have made better use of its storehouse of history.

These lessons were quite accessible to American policymakers and military planners. But the Army and Marines did not make this portion of the conflict spectrum a focus of effort. “It’s not unfair to say,” Dr. John Nagl has observed, “that in 2003 most Army officers knew more about the U.S. Civil War then they did about counterinsurgency.”[12] Thus, in Iraq and Afghanistan, our forces relearned irregular war the hard way—in combat.

The basic tenets of counterinsurgency warfare can be captured by a set of principles or better yet by a collection of best practices. A number of Americans have produced sets based off of historical case studies and vetted by a variety of counterinsurgency experts.[13] These best practices include the following:

1. Integrated Civil-Military mechanisms. How all government agencies were coordinated, either under the command of a single individual or if “unity of effort” was gained by overall campaign plans and coordination committees.
2. Governance/Political Reforms. The degree to which government or political reforms were instituted to counter weaknesses or enhance credibility of the state.
3. Socio-Economic Services. The degree to which social development and economic projects were employed to better support the local civilian population.
4. Integrated Intelligence. The degree to which special intelligence organs were constructed or existing agencies integrated to deal with the insurgency.
5. Special Units for Foreign Internal Defense. The degree to which special units or local indigenous units were created as counters to the insurgents.
6. Unique Military Training. The degree to which the counterinsurgent forces are uniquely trained to deal with an incipient or full-blown insurgency.
7. Information Operations. How the counterinsurgency employed psychological operations to isolate the insurgents, to degrade their morale, to minimize their accomplishments or promote the government’s themes.
8. Population Control. How the civilian population was isolated from the insurgents through security, identification cards, barriers or forced relocation and reestablishment into safer and cordoned centers.
9. Resource Control. This factor accounts for efforts to limit or isolate the insurgents from food, weapons or other forms of support.
10. Discriminate Force. The degree to which counterinsurgent forces limit the use of military power to the minimal degree necessary to avoid antagonizing the local population and to preclude collateral damage being exploited as propaganda.

The literature suggests a high correlation between all the best practices and operational success. When governments and their supporting allies and partners used these elements as key components of their overall campaign, they were generally successful. The same is true in Iraq. Regrettably, too many U.S. commanders were not familiar with these practices. Only a few officers understood this mode of conflict and this aspect of their profession. Population-centric and kinetically disciplined operations were successfully implemented by then Major General David Petraeus in Mosul in 2003 and in Tal Afar by the 3rd Armored Combat Regiment later in 2005.[14]

In almost all cases, some sort of learning curve was evident, and eventually policymakers and military leaders reassessed themselves and made numerous strategic or operational changes. Some adapted faster than others. Those who ignored history, continued to underestimate the opponent, and failed to learn from the experience of others fared much worse.

The failure to learn is quite understandable if you think of the U.S. military culture. For several decades, thanks in large part to lingering attitudes from the Vietnam War, irregular warfare has been an intellectual and strategic orphan in U.S. professional military institutions. The heavy cost of both wars is the price paid for ignoring known historical lessons and for a narrow military cultural prism that constrained U.S. strategic and operational planning and the intellectual readiness of our Officer Corps.

Failure to Adapt

The final factor in evaluating military failures involves operational adaptation. Adaptation is the ability “to handle the changing present” and the interactive nature of war. Strategic and operational adaptation is a key element in warfare, one often retarded by ideological policies or by military cultures that fail to recognize how critical assumptions in prewar planning have been proven to be false on the battlefield.

The velocity of organizational learning and adaptation is important in insurgencies. The U.S. military has made a number of adaptations in its approach to these conflicts, in how they prepare for them, and for how they train, education and organize their forces:

* The military has moved from ad hoc headquarters to robustly staffed structures to better coordinate the comprehensive activities they are managing with the Iraqis and with NATO.
* Military Transition Teams (MTTs) and Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) have been formed and employed in both Iraq and Afghanistan to assist in training indigenous personnel and to provide development and economic assistance at lower levels.
* There have been substantial changes to the training and educational base to better prepare U.S. service members for irregular warfare.
* The Services have stood up a variety of special cultural and language programs, and centers of excellence for the study of culture, for counterinsurgency, and for stability operations.
* The Army and Marines have adapted their forces to increase the skills sets that are of greater salience in these kinds of war (intelligence personnel, translators and interrogators, explosive ordnance personnel, and military policemen, civil affairs specialists and information or psychological operations experts). But both the Army and Marines have bureaucratically resisted innovative organizational structures dedicated to preventing or prevailing in irregular warfare.[15]
* Probably the most significant shift was the intellectual surge produced by the development and promulgation of an updated counterinsurgency doctrine.[16]

Adaptation, however, is not yet complete. While the Army and the Marine Corps have seen changes in their structures, and more substantively in their training systems, the Air Force is still mulling over what it should do. We still lack the non-military personnel and skill sets from the rest of the U.S. government, although steps are being taken to increase the size of the Foreign Service and establish a Civilian Response Force. The State Department has also stood up a cell to improve cross-agency crisis planning, but the ability of the National Security Council and the broader national security community to develop coherent strategic and operational plans for protracted complex contingencies remains a subject of numerous studies and recommendations.[17]

These are merely operational forms of adaptation. Many were obvious after 2004 but were only eventually implemented after trial and error. This compounded the failure to anticipate and learn.

The more substantial adaptation was the shift in strategy that was approved in late 2006 and executed in 2007 in Iraq. At some point, members of President Bush’s NSC staff, energized by external criticisms and the media and the worst public opinion in U.S. presidential history, started looking for a new strategy. After the better part of a year of various reviews and external study groups, the administration finally settled on a shift in leadership in the Pentagon and in theater. It also crafted a change in priorities and operational focal points, shifting from training Iraqi forces to a population-centric approach that put “boots on the ground” in their neighborhoods. Ultimately, President Bush elected to endorse the strategy shift and the manpower resources to support it. This is often referred to now as the “surge strategy.” This approach is founded on best practices and principles that should have been employed in 2004.[18] Thanks to the combined leadership of Generals David Petraeus and Ray Odierno and then Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the strategy was actually carried out. They made a critical situation more palatable in Iraq, and the turnaround they created will be studied for many decades to come.

Conclusion

In their multilevel taxonomy, Cohen and Gooch noted that the presence of two kinds of misfortune can produce what they called “aggregate failures.” These are usually the result of anticipatory and learning failures. However, when all three kinds of failure simultaneously happen, it is usually catastrophic. Catastrophic failure is most often fatal to nations. Fortunately, a catastrophic failure in the Long War has been averted by the painfully slow adaptation of American strategy and implementing tactics. The sclerotic American strategy process reacted to several years of diminishing results and rising criticism. Key individuals with fortitude, intellectual capacity, and an eye for opportunity were placed in charge.

Continued adaptation in institutions, processes and human capital remain critical if the United States and its allies are to ultimately prevail. Yet, the issue is still in doubt. Whether adaptation and innovation will be locked in is being contested in the Pentagon, and only time will tell if Secretary Gates is successful in adapting long-held mindsets in the armed forces.[19]

History teaches us that rigorous study of the past, questioning received wisdom and reconsidering assumptions are the best security against catastrophic failure.
Notes

1. ^ For a review of Afghanistan, see Daniel Marston, “Lessons in 21st Century Counterinsurgency: Afghanistan 2001-2007,” in Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian, eds., Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare, New York: Osprey, 2008; and David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
2. ^ Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, New York: Penguin, 2006, p. 115.
3. ^ Carter Malkasian, “Counterinsurgency in Iraq: May 2003-January 2007,” in Marston and Malkasian, eds., Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare; and Kilcullen, Accidental Guerrilla, pp. 115-85.
4. ^ Cohen and Gooch, Military Misfortunes, p. 27.
5. ^ The best source is Williamson Murray’s “Strategic Bombing: The British, American and German Experiences,” pp. 96–142, in Murray and Millett, Military Innovation in the Interwar Period.
6. ^ Patrick Cronin, pp. 2-3 in his introductory chapter in The Impenetrable Fog of War: Reflections on Modern Warfare and Strategic Surprise, Westport, CT: Praeger Security, 2008.
7. ^ See Williamson Murray, “Computer In, Clausewitz Out, Military Culture and Technological Hubris,” National Interest, Summer 1997; H.R. McMaster, “The Human Element, When Gadgetry Becomes Strategy,” World Affairs, Winter 2009.
8. ^ Frederick W. Kagan, Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy, New York: Encounter Books, 2006.
9. ^ On military culture and self-identity see Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff, eds., The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, Technology, Boulder, CO: Rienner, 2002, pp. 268-70; and Williamson Murray, “Innovation, Past and Future,” in Murray and Millett, Innovation in the Interwar Period, pp. 312-18.
10. ^ Strachan in Cronin, p. 81.
11. ^ James N. Mattis, “The Professional Edge,” Marine Corps Gazette, Feb. 2004, pp. 19-20.
12. ^ Dr. John Nagl in the foreword to the Chicago University Press edition of the Counterinsurgency manual.
13. ^ Kalev I. Sepp, “Best Practices in Counterinsurgency,” Military Review, May-June 2005, pp. 8-12.
14. ^ George Packer, “The Lessons of Tal Afar,” New Yorker, April 10, 2006.
15. ^ Robert Martinage, The Global War on Terror: An Assessment, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2007, p. 279.
16. ^ Headquarters, Department of the Army (Headquarters, Marine Corps), Counterinsurgency. Field Manual No. 3-24 (Marine Corps Warfighting Publication No. 3-33.5), December 2006.
17. ^ Clark A. Murdock and Michele A. Flournoy, Beyond Goldwater Nichols: U.S. Government and Defense Reform for a New Strategic Era, Phase 2 Report, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 2005. For shortfalls in U.S. government initiatives, see Stephen D. Krasner and Carlos Pascual, “Addressing State Failure,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2005.
18. ^ Tom Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006–2008, New York: Penguin Press, 2009.
19. ^ See David Ucko, “Innovation or Inertia: The U.S. Military and the Learning of Counterinsurgency,” Orbis, Spring 2008.

F.G. Hoffman is Research Fellow at the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, Virginia, and Senior Fellow, FPRI. This essay is based on his talk at the FPRI Wachman Center’s History Institute for Teachers on What Students Need to Know About America’s Wars, Part 2: 1920 - present, held May 2-3, 2009. The Institute was cosponsored and hosted by the Cantigny First Division Foundation at its First Division Museum in Wheaton, IL. See www.fpri.org/education/americaswars2 for videofiles, texts of lectures, and classroom lessons. The History Institute for Teachers is co-chaired by David Eisenhower and Walter A. McDougall. Core support is provided by the Annenberg Foundation and Mr. H.F. Lenfest. Additional support for the military history program is provided by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Stuart Family Foundation, and the Cantigny First Division Foundation. Published by FPRI http://www.fpri.org

By Steven R. Chabinsky

The FBI considers the cyber threat against our nation to be one of the greatest concerns of the 21st century. Despite the enormous advantages of the Internet, our networked systems have a gaping and widening hole in the security posture of both our private sector and government systems. An increasing array of sophisticated state and non-state actors have the capability to steal, alter, or destroy our sensitive data and, in the worst of cases, to manipulate from afar the process control systems that are meant to ensure the proper functioning of portions of our critical infrastructure.

Moreover, the number of actors with the ability to utilize computers for illegal, harmful, and possibly devastating purposes continues to rise.

When assessing the extent of the cyber threat, the FBI considers both the sophistication and the intent of our adversaries. The most sophisticated actors have the ability to alter our hardware and software along the global supply chain route, conduct remote intrusions into our networks, establish the physical and technical presence necessary to re-route and monitor our wireless communications, and plant dangerous insiders within our private sector and government organizations. The actors that currently have all of these capabilities -- which is a finding that is distinct from whether and when they are using them -- include multiple nation states and likely include some organized crime groups.

In the cyber realm, the technical positioning an adversary requires to steal data typically provides them with the very same access and systems administrator rights that could be used for destructive purposes. As a result, Computer Network Exploitation -- the ability of foreign spies to monitor our networks and steal our secrets -- might simultaneously provide our enemies with pre-positioned capabilities to conduct Computer Network Attack -- the ability to deny, disrupt, degrade, or destroy our information, our networks, and the infrastructure services that rely upon them.

With respect to organized crime groups, financially motivated cyber crime typically does not involve acts of violence or network destruction. The exception to this generality however is extortion. Cyber criminals can threaten to hold entire networks, or more simply the data on them, hostage to their demands. Often, cyber criminals have the technical sophistication and access to make good on their threats, especially if an insider is involved.

The FBI has not yet seen a high level of end-to-end cyber sophistication within terrorist organizations. Still, the FBI is aware of and investigating individuals who are affiliated with or sympathetic to al-Qaeda who have recognized and discussed the vulnerabilities of the U.S. infrastructure to cyber attack, who have demonstrated an interest in elevating their computer hacking skills, and who are seeking more sophisticated capabilities from outside of their close-knit circles. Should terrorists obtain such capabilities, they will be matched with destructive and deadly intent.

In addition, it is always worth remaining mindful that terrorists do not require long term, persistent network access to accomplish some or all of their goals. Rather, a compelling act of terror in cyberspace could take advantage of a limited window of opportunity to access and then destroy portions of our networked infrastructure. The likelihood that such an opportunity will present itself to terrorists is increased by the fact that we, as a nation, continue to deploy new technologies without having in place sufficient hardware or software assurance schemes, or sufficient security processes that extend through the entire lifecycle of our networks.

FBI Leadership, Collaboration, and Information Sharing

Based on the significance of the problem, protecting the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes is one of the FBI’s highest priorities and, in fact, is the FBI's highest criminal priority. It is with these factors in mind that, in 2002, the FBI created its current Cyber Division to handle all categories of cyber crime and cyber national security matters.

Today's FBI is comprised of the largest cadre of cyber trained law enforcement officers in the United States, with over 2,000 Special Agents having received specialized cyber training as part of the core curriculum at Quantico. To combat the most sophisticated and urgent matters, the FBI has built a national resource of over 1,000 advanced cyber-trained FBI Special Agents, Intelligence Analysts, and Digital Forensic Examiners. In short, some of the best and brightest minds in the country have joined the FBI, which is positioned with the statutory authority, expertise, and ability to mitigate, disrupt, prevent, and investigate illegal computer-supported operations domestically.

Still, the cyber threat will not be eliminated through the efforts of any one government agency acting alone. It is for this reason that we have made collaboration and information sharing a key component of the FBI cyber strategy. The FBI has established a leadership role across the federal government, with industry, with state and local partners, with consumers, and internationally.

At the federal level, the FBI established and leads the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, a Presidentially mandated focal point for all government agencies to coordinate, integrate, and share pertinent information related to all domestic cyber threat investigations.

Serving by example, the FBI also leads all law enforcement agencies in cyber information sharing. In Fiscal Year 2009, the FBI disseminated over 1,800 cyber intelligence reports and cyber analytic products, providing members of the Intelligence Community, military, and Department of Homeland Security with the information they need to maximize their and our nation's success.

At the industry, state, and local level, the FBI established and leads InfraGard, currently consisting of more than 33,000 members spanning 87 cities nationwide and including representatives from federal, state, and local government, industry, and academia. InfraGard is the nation's largest government/private sector partnership focused on reducing physical and cyber threats against our critical infrastructure. Although InfraGard is an FBI program, established in 1996, it also benefits from the active support and participation of the Department of Homeland Security and each of its Protective Security Advisors throughout the country.

The FBI also established a lead role in the development of the National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance, a group committed to combining the resources of academia, law enforcement, and industry to identify major global cyber threats.

At the consumer level, the FBI established and leads the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) in partnership with the National White Collar Crime Center. The IC3 website (www.ic3.gov) is the leading cyber crime incident reporting portal, having received 275,284 complaint submissions in 2008 alone. From these submissions, IC3 analyzed, aggregated, and then referred 72,940 complaints of crime to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies around the country for further consideration.

Internationally, the FBI operates 75 Legal Attache offices and sub-offices around the world to assist in international investigations, including cyber investigations, providing coverage for more than 200 countries, territories, and islands. The FBI's international efforts have led to the arrest of hundreds of cyber criminals throughout the world, resulting in the dismantlement of major transnational organized crime rings that once preyed on Americans. The FBI also plays a leading role in the National Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Center which, together with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, coordinates the government’s domestic and international law enforcement efforts against IPR violations.

FBI Investigative, Collaborative, and Information Sharing Success

Although an unclassified forum is not suitable for discussing the FBI's counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence cyber efforts, our investigative success on the criminal side provides a glimpse into our capabilities and strategic partnerships that can be used against any adversary. These cases also serve as a warning to would-be cyber thieves: the FBI can and will investigate high technology crimes, we have partners throughout the world who are equally capable and vigilant, and we will ensure that cyber criminals are brought to justice.

Take for example last year's RBS Worldpay case in which a transnational crime organization used sophisticated hacking techniques to withdraw, in less than 12 hours, over $9 million from 2,100 ATM machines in 280 cities around the world, including the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, and Canada. The FBI led the investigation, and its work with international law enforcement led to multiple arrests throughout the world, and last week's indictment by a federal grand jury in Atlanta. The FBI investigation also included United States Secret Service participation, providing them with information that was relevant to their investigation of intrusions into Heartland Payment Systems and TJX Companies, for which there was a separate indictment in August of 2008. Each of these cases also included strong law enforcement assistance from the victims, which proved invaluable. Simply put, working together works.

The FBI's Operation Phish Phry is another recent example of the successful relationships between the FBI, the private sector, and international partners. Phish Phry resulted from ongoing coordination efforts between the FBI and United States financial institutions. Through the course of a two year investigation, the investigation uncovered thousands of victims and identified an international sophisticated computer intrusion, identity theft and money laundering scheme comprised of hundreds of subjects in the United States and Egypt. The FBI investigation yielded a 51 count Federal indictment charging 53 U.S. citizens, while Egyptian law enforcement identified 47 Egyptian suspects directly involved in the criminal conspiracy. Of the identified U.S. targets, 10 possessed violent criminal histories requiring FBI SWAT teams to execute the high risk arrests. Cybercrime is serious business, and the people involved in it are no longer 15 year olds in their parents' homes. Cybercrime is increasingly being adopted as a profitable component of violent, organized, sophisticated, well-financed crime rings.

Another case example of note is the FBI's infiltration and dismantlement of Darkmarket, an online virtual transnational criminal organization. Working with our international partners in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Turkey the FBI conducted a two year undercover operation to penetrate the organization and bring it to its knees. At its peak, the Darkmarket forum had over 2,500 members, spanning countries throughout the world, who were involved in buying and selling stolen financial information, including credit card data, login credentials (user names, passwords), and equipment used to carry out certain financial crimes. Using undercover techniques, the FBI penetrated the highest levels of this group and identified and located its leading members. Multi-agency and multi-national coordination with our law enforcement partners led to over 60 arrests worldwide, as well as the prevention of $70 million in economic loss that otherwise would have occurred from compromised victim accounts.

In order to better protect banks and consumers against the rising costs of online fraud, the FBI has ramped up its collaboration to address matters impacting the financial services industry. In December of 2008, the FBI -- working with the Internet Crime Complaint Center -- issued a press release titled “Web Site Attack Preventative Measures” identifying a considerable spike in cyber attacks against the financial services and the online retail industry, and detailing a number of actions a firm can take in order to prevent or thwart the specific attacks and techniques used by the intruders we were monitoring.

This year, the FBI and the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) developed a new model for intelligence driven collaboration between law enforcement and the private sector. Specifically, during the course of our investigations, the FBI recognized threat trends, tactics, and techniques involving Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions. Not only did we share that information while our investigations were pending, we invited FS-ISAC representatives into FBI space to get a full briefing on our case information. We then asked the FS-ISAC whether the threat information the FBI was seeing was relevant and timely for businesses and consumers to use to better protect themselves, reduce their vulnerabilities, and mitigate the consequences of these types of fraud. Industry representatives not only agreed that the information was pertinent, but that a written product would be useful for its members. In an entirely new collaboration model, we created a joint product in which the FBI wrote the first two sections involving the nature of the threat and how to recognize it, and the FS-ISAC (working with the National Automated Clearing House Association) wrote the second two sections involving industry impact and security recommendations for preventing further fraud.

Each of the above examples demonstrate that he FBI has not only adopted a robust information sharing model, we have moved past it. Our experience shows that collaboration is the answer, with information sharing being only one component of the equation. Taking advantage of each partner's skills and knowledge, and leveraging our nation's combined strengths in common cause, provides significant advantages that are leading to increased and repeatable successes. Which brings me to the FBI's way ahead.

The Way Ahead

In an era of ever growing adversaries, our success clearly depends on working together and ensuring that agencies and industry have mature models in place for sharing information and collaborating, and to do so fully consistent with all civil liberties and privacy protections. Only in this way can we deter our adversaries, locate and bring them to justice, minimize systems vulnerabilities, and ensure that the consequences of successful cyber breaches and attacks are reduced.

As I alluded to earlier, the Federal government's designated hub for domestic cyber threat investigative coordination, integration, and information sharing is the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF). The NCIJTF is a central aspect of the FBI's -- and the nation's -- comprehensive strategy to investigate, predict, and prevent cyber terrorism, cyber espionage, and cyber crime. In this regard, I would like to acknowledge the 19 intelligence and law enforcement agencies who, in addition to the FBI, have representatives at the NCIJTF and who are making vital contributions to our nation's cyber security every day.


Source: This is a slightly edited version of STATEMENT OF STEVEN R. CHABINSKY DEPUTY ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, CYBER DIVISION FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION BEFORE THE
SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM AND HOMELAND SECURITY AT A HEARING ENTITLED “CYBERSECURITY: PREVENTING TERRORIST ATTACKS AND PROTECTING PRIVACY RIGHTS IN CYBERSPACE” PRESENTED NOVEMBER 17, 2009 (the orginal version can be found by clicking on the link)

Al-Qaeda terrorists are exploiting loose visa and immigration rules to enter Britain, the security services fear, it was revealed Saturday.

Counter-terrorism police and officials believe dozens of extremists could have arrived in the U.K. by posing as students or legitimate visitors, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported.

Officials are concerned both by the relatively lax checks that are made on the visitors before they arrive and by the ease with which they can outstay their visas without anyone noticing.

As many as 13,000 visa applicants may have entered the country from Pakistan in a seven month period since October last year without any checks on their supporting documentation.

The security services fear that because most do not mix with home grown terrorists, they are able to operate under the intelligence radar, acting as sleeper cells until ready to launch attacks in Britain, the daily added. Every year around 100,000 visitors arrive in Britain from Pakistan alone, which has been described by the Prime Minister Gordon Brown as being part of a "crucible of terror" along with Afghanistan.

They are supposed to be checked by Home Office visa staff working in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

But according to an official watchdog, the Independent Monitor for Entry Clearance, many visa officers do not have "enough time to go through applications carefully." The security services are also worried about arrivals from Somalia, Yemen and North Africa.

The domestic Intelligence service, MI5, have got 2,000 domestic extremists under surveillance across the country but is becoming increasingly concerned about the threat from abroad.
Similar concerns are felt in the police and one senior counter-terrorism officer told the Daily Telegraph: "There is a lack of control and supervision at our borders in the broadest sense." "The problem is not confined to Pakistan, terrorists could arrive from anywhere, and we simply have no idea how many extremists may be here."

Police have discovered that the leader of an alleged plot to blow up shopping centres in Manchester last Easter ran a visa advice service in Peshawar, Pakistan. He is thought to have helped other alleged members of his terrorist cell to arrive from Pakistan under the cover of student visas. The Home Office has been criticised for moving its visa operation from Islamabad in Pakistan to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, last year.

Source: KUNA

ndia’s newest private security personnel are rapidly transforming from static security guards to anti-terrorism forces.

By Jody Ray Bennett

Thousands of young men throughout India begin each day in blue uniforms that closely resemble that of official police officers, and often armed with little more than batons and radios, they patrol, survey, search and check guests and clients of some of the largest multinational firms in the country.

These young men are escorting VIPs, checking luggage and bags with bomb-sniffing canines, surveying landscapes with binoculars and night-vision goggles and even using hi-tech electronic equipment to scan for cyberinvasions and other network threats for a multitude of private clients.

The company they work for is busy assessing security risks for elite multinationals doing business in India while providing them with personal, private security. In the event of an emergency, the company claims it will deploy a “quick response team” dispatched through a 24-hour manned security control room.

In an increased blurring of the lines between security guard services and the private security personnel of companies that often raise eyebrows in western media, several Indian firms are preparing to earn their spot in the global private security industry.

Meet TerraForce Security Services, India’s newest private security company. Set apart from many of the other private security firms throughout India, TerraForce was recently formed by Indian billionaire Kushal Pal Singh to protect the assets of DLF Group, India’s largest real estate company. DLF states that it is by far the “largest” in terms of “revenues, earnings, market capitalization and developable areas in India,” so it is hardly difficult to identify the company’s vested interest in protecting its businesses, projects and assets in a country that even the US Department of State has said is “ranked among the world’s most terrorism-afflicted countries.”

According to the New York Times, TerraForce is hiring “as many experts as it can,” some of which include “former National Security Guards, the black-clad commandos who reclaimed the Mumbai hotels” in the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and in a statement from TerraForce president and chief executive Harsh Wardhan, the company is “importing instructors from the Israeli army and the United States Marine Corps.”

Anti-terrorism is big business

Much like the private security industry boom that was experienced throughout North America and Europe in the aftermath of 9/11, India also experienced a rapid increase in demand for security in the period following the Mumbai attacks.

According to India’s Central Association of Private Security Industry (CAPSI), as of June 2009 India’s private security industry had grown to “approximately 5.5 million security guards employed by about 15,000 security companies [and] as an industry, is now the country’s largest corporate taxpayer.”

The emergence of companies like TerraForce represents India’s ability to quickly create private forces to respond to perceived gaps in its national security. However, India’s private security industry is rather unique to the degree that it was once made up of mostly unarmed, static security guards that patrolled apartment buildings, hotels and other businesses and are now transforming into armed, anti-terrorism units.

“India's [private military and security] market has gotten very interesting since the Mumbai attacks a year ago. What used to be a country guarded by loosely trained, ‘lathi’-equipped ‘chowkidars’ that guarded individual homes and apartment complexes is transforming to one attempting to address and mitigate sophisticated terrorism,” Shlok Vaidya, analyst and author of NaxliteRage.com, told ISN Security Watch.

“This has meant unprecedented growth as the market adapts to these new demands,” said Vaidya.

One report noted that “Even before the [Mumbai attack], the industry was experiencing an annual growth rate of 25 percent due primarily to the country’s infrastructure development [and CAPSI] now estimates an annual growth rate of 40 percent.”

Essential training

But even as the industry grows, some critics maintain that much of India’s private security companies are still unprepared to respond to threats such as terror attacks. Part of the reason could be the time it takes to prepare employees of these countries to adequately respond in the wake of a crisis. And in the industry’s rapid growth over the last year, private companies are recruiting India’s youth to begin careers that might quickly become India’s first line of defense against unconventional attacks.

In March 2009, Homeland Security Newswire reported that these young men who were “recruited at random […] from India’s small farming communities and thrown a uniform,” must now “prove who they are, pass a medical exam, and show they can read and write and do elementary math, [and while] there are no rigorous investigations into a recruit’s background or character, security firms argue [for] mandatory training courses [to] help weed out the weak and corrupt from the applicants.”

This ultimately resulted in the state’s Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) training many of those new applicants to “to combat terror strikes.” According to a recent report by the Times of India, a senior official with the ATS stated that the employees it had trained would be “allowed at multiplexes, cinema halls, banks and other prominent private establishments” and that it’s training program would “definitely enable them [private security personnel] to assist police in tackling terror.” CAPSI is now scrambling to help modernize and legitimize the development of the industry.

“Smaller companies with less funding are finding out the most useful role they can play in guarding social infrastructure (malls, movie theaters and banks) is to act as a highly trained information sensor for more heavily armed and better trained central police forces or special ops. Instead of chasing big weapons, small outfits are looking for secure, strong radio systems to report crimes or real time terror info. This is what they train on,” Vaidya told ISN Security Watch.

In many of the western private military and security companies, employees typically have previous police or military experience, which is almost always a requirement. In India, however, the dynamic has shifted in which young men can circumvent state police or military enlistment and go straight to private companies, which are in turn trained by state forces.

According to one source, India’s private security personnel begin making approximately 4,000 rupees, or $82 per month, meaning that “the typical security guard starting out in India will make approximately $984 in a country with a per capita income of $2,900 a year.” Some private security companies are even training Indians for employment as armed guards in western countries.

For now, India’s private security market is still in a developmental stage. If certain market forces remain intact, India’s private security industry could soon become the state’s first private line of defense against various security threats.

“The goal of the PMC market in India isn't to supplant governance, but rather to enable it. While these [private security personnel] aren't the heavily armed, highly-trained western PMCs, they are mission-critical information nodes. They join the variety of other private forces such as land owner militias, insurgencies and the underworld that, combined with the central government infrastructure, act as a government and enable life in India today,” Vaidya said.

Jody Ray Bennett is a freelance writer and academic researcher. His areas of analysis include the private military and security industry, the materialization of non-state forces and the transformation of modern warfare. This article was published by International Relations and Security Network (ISN)

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Current discussions of cyber warfare and security parallel those of nuclear strategy in the 1950s, making the notion of cyber deterrence attractive. But applying this nuclear formula to the cyber realm is deeply flawed and largely unworkable – with improvements in cybersecurity ultimately requiring more broadly focused and balanced strategic calculations.

By James A Lewis

Cyber conflict has become part of warfare. Advanced militaries now have the capability to launch cyber attacks not only against data and networks, but also against critical infrastructures that depend on computer networks. These attacks could be a network penetration for intelligence gathering or for the disruption of data, but they could also be an attempt to damage or destroy networked infrastructure. Several countries now have these capabilities and there have probably been a few surreptitious tests.

The problem for countries with advanced militaries is that while they have offensive cyber capabilities, so do their opponents, against whom they must defend. In the nuclear era, a strong offensive capability could serve a defensive purpose, by threatening retaliation and thus deterring an opponent from attacking. Applying this deterrent formula to cyber conflict seems logical, but the notion of cyber deterrence is deeply flawed.

The discussion of cyber warfare and security is in some ways similar to the discussion of nuclear strategy in the 1950s. Like nuclear-tipped missiles, cyber attacks are rapid, cross borders easily, and can serve both tactical and strategic purposes. These parallels are one reason the notion of deterrence is attractive. We do not, however, want to overstate the analogy, as it exaggerates the destructive capacity of cyber weapons and it understates the uncertainties for both attack and defense in cyberspace. Nuclear weapons use was reserved for extreme situations. In contrast, cyber attack (at low levels) is a daily occurrence and no nation will renounce its use. More importantly, key uncertainties in attribution and in the scope of collateral damage make deterrence unworkable.

In cyberspace, we cannot be confident of our ability to determine an attacker’s identity. Identity is easily concealed in cyberspace – we still do not know who was responsible for some major incidents such as the harassment of US and Korean networks in July, and sophisticated attackers are skilled not only at hiding their identity but also making it look as if someone else was responsible. Attackers can never be sure that they will escape detection, but the odds are in their favor. Similarly, the scope of collateral damage is difficult to predict, including both unintended effects on the target and damage to third party networks connected to or dependent upon the target network. Connectivity in cyberspace does not equate to geographic proximity. For example, an attack on an opponent’s network might accidently degrade a neutral nation’s satellite or telecommunications services.

Uncertainty and confusion have always been part of warfare, but the fog of war is especially thick in cyberspace. The implications of uncertainty are most pronounced for deterrence. Deterrence depends on the threat of retaliation to change the opponent’s calculus of the benefits and costs of an attack. But it is hard to convincingly threaten an unknown attacker.

Changing context

The context for deterrence has also changed. There was symmetry in vulnerabilities in the Cold War – each side could threaten their military or civilian target in order to coerce the other to decide against attack. That symmetry no longer exists. The US and other western nations are more dependent on digital networks than some potential opponents, and this asymmetric vulnerability means that even in an equal 'exchange' of cyber attacks, one side will lose more than the other. More importantly, an anonymous attacker may not lose anything at all since his identity in unknown and retaliation is impossible.

Deterrence in the Cold War was buttressed by 'signaling' (nonverbal warnings created by movements in forces or readiness in posture), by statements about intentions, and by implicit or explicit understandings among potential opponents that defined the environment for conflict. There were tacit understandings on 'redlines' and thresholds, which are lacking for cyber conflict. It is not even clear if nations share a common lexicon of terms for cyber warfare. Clear attribution and common understandings allowed for both credible threats and for 'signaling' an opponent; their absence makes cyber conflict more difficult to prevent or manage.

Deterrence strategies in the Cold War professed to accept a large degree of collateral damage as a necessary risk for threatening nuclear retaliation. Strikes would have harmed civilian populations in both NATO and Bloc countries. But the collateral damage from nuclear weapons was in some ways easier to predict than the effect of cyber attack – the blast and radiation effect is limited to an area around impact; in contrast, while in cyberspace, collateral damage may not be contiguous with a target or even located in the target country. Uncertainty about collateral damage will affect decisions by political leaders, who may be unwilling to incur the risk of a cyber attack that could widen or escalate a conflict, or create unfavorable political consequences.

While the military and intelligence forces of nations are the most dangerous opponents in cyberspace, the lost cost of acquiring attack capabilities means that some less sophisticated forms of cyber attack are available to non-state actors. Politically or religiously motivated opponents are much less likely than government leaders to be deterred by the threat of retaliatory attack. They have no capital city or infrastructure to threaten, and their willingness to accept risk will be much greater than most nation-states. Non-state actors do not face the same political constraints that apply to state actions in cyberspace. Some potential opponents may even welcome retaliation, as it could provide justification and expand support for their cause.

The best evidence of the weakness of deterrence in cyberspace comes from the US, which has some of the most advanced cyber offensive capabilities in the world but obtains no deterrent effect from them. Nuclear weapons deterred a potential aggressor. Cyber weapons do not. This is the result of the uncertainty that reduces the credibility of a deterrent threat against an opponent in cyberspace. It may also point to the existence of implicit thresholds for cyber conflict – if attackers limit their actions to espionage, which is generally not regarded as an act of war, there is little chance that the victim will undertake retaliatory attacks.

Deterrence by threatening retaliatory attack does not increase security in cyberspace. While there are good reasons for countries to develop offensive capabilities, we should not expect to get deterrent benefit or greater security from this. Given the limits of deterrence, the nuclear age formula is not appropriate. There was no effective defense against an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). By contrast, cyber conflict could benefit from greater attention to defense. In addition, national defenses would be strengthened by multilateral understandings on acceptable behavior in cyberspace – an explicit norm or obligation that established state responsibility for the private actions of its citizens. Such an obligation, for example, would remove Russia’s ability to plausibly deny its involvement in attacks on Estonia. Just as nations feel a degree of constraint from norms and agreements on nonproliferation, establishing explicit international norms for behavior in cyberspace would affect political decisions on the potential risk and cost of cyber attack. The implicit norms for cyber conflict that currently exist offer an avenue for future agreement on the scope and nature of cyber warfare. Increased attention to defense and resiliency could change an attackers decisions in ways that are not achievable by threatening reprisal or retaliation, by decreasing the chances for successful attack and increasing the costs of detection.

Broad improvement in cybersecurity internationally will require nations to undertake a larger strategic calculation to determine the balance among offensive, defensive and multilateral efforts that best reduce the risk and increase the cost of cyber attack. Most nations have not yet done this. The notion of cyber deterrence is appealing because it is unilateral, and it justifies building offensive capabilities. Real security may require exactly the opposite approach – multilateral agreements and emphasis on defense.


Dr James A Lewis is a senior fellow and program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he writes on technology, national security and the international economy. He has authored more than 40 publications on a range of topics since joining CSIS and was the project director for the CSIS Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency. Lewis holds a PhD from the University of Chicago.

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author only, not the International Relations and Security Network (ISN), where this article was published.

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(KUNA) -- US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said on Monday that the United States would support any role Saudi Arabia chose to pursue in trying to engage Taliban officials.

Holbrooke denied in a press briefing reports about any direct meetings between US and Taliban officials while reminding of the July 15 speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton where she said that Taliban can rejoin the Afghan government if they renounce Al-Qaeda and lay down their arms.

Asked about Afghan President Hamid Karzai's inauguration speech where he said he asked Saudi King Abdullah to play a role in the talks with the Taliban, Holbrooke said "I will let the Saudis speak for themselves".

"I have talked to the Saudis, I have been to Riyadh; I talked to King Abdullah about it myself. We would be supportive of anything that the kingdom chose to do in this regard", he noted.

Secretary Clinton made her first trip to Afghanistan last week to attend Karzai's inauguration.

"She timed it to coincide with the inauguration precisely because we felt that the inauguration marked the end of a long, complicated process and produced a new government", said Holbrooke.

"We have been waiting a long time to work with a government that was a result of the elections. And whatever one thinks of the elections they were not perfect, and we said from the beginning they would not be perfect, they produced a winner and a legitimate government with which we intend to work as closely as possible", he added.

Holbrooke described Clinton's meeting with Karzai as "very warm, very cordial meeting, substantially different in tone from meetings during the election period. The election was behind us" and noted that Clinton agreed to renew the US strategic dialogue with Afghanistan and she will be leading herself the dialogue from the American side.

"We talked about anticorruption efforts and the general financial state of Afghanistan", he added while expressing "deep concern" over corruption in Afghanistan.

The United States is pressuring Karzai to form a more transparent and efficient government, but Holbrooke declined to go into details of the formation of the cabinet.

"Like any government, there are ministers that are better than other ministers. There are some ministers who have extraordinary records. I am afraid if I single one out, it won't be good for his health. So I won't single any out. But we want to work with the strong ministries".

"We want to help the Afghans help themselves. We do not want to replace a sovereign government with internationals", he added.

By Marc Sageman, M.D., Ph.D.

Mr. Chairman, Senator Lugar, and Members of the Committee: I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the threat of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and beyond.

Al Qaeda is once again at the forefront of U.S. Government policy debate. Our strategic interest in Afghanistan is linked to the protection of the homeland and that of our Western allies against terrorist attacks. A moment's reflection will demonstrate this. Al Qaeda found sanctuary in the Sudan for four years, from 1992 to 1996, when the Sudanese government expelled it. During this Sudanese phase, al Qaeda developed its strategy to target the West, and especially the United States and trained potential terrorists there. Indeed, the planning of the simultaneous bombings of our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam was done in Khartoum. Had al Qaeda not been thrown out of the Sudan, I have no doubt that we would be discussing strategy options about the Sudan rather than Afghanistan.

Our ultimate goal of homeland security will be served through a better understanding of the threat confronting it in order to “disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al Qaeda and its allies.” Let me describe this global threat through a comprehensive survey that I conducted of all the al Qaeda plots in the West, all the al Qaeda affiliate plots in the West and all the plots done “in the name of al Qaeda” in the West since the formation of al Qaeda in August 1988. It is necessary to expand our inquiry because al Qaeda is now only one of the many actors in this global neo-jihadi terrorist threat against the West. I call it neo-jihadi because the terrorists have appropriated this contested concept to themselves much to the protest of respected Islamic scholars and the mainstream Muslim communities worldwide1. Terrorism for the purpose of this project is the use of violence by non-state collective actors against non-combatants in the West in pursuit of a self-appointed global jihad.

I conducted this survey when I spent a year at the U.S. Secret Service and an additional year at the New York Police Department as its first scholar-in-residence. Although both organizations helped me immensely, the following remarks are my own and cannot be read as their position or opinions. Because homeland security in the West essentially means population protection in the West, I have limited the inquiry to violent plots to be executed in the geographical territory of the West. By the West, I mean North America, Australia and Western Europe, with the exception of the civil war in the Balkans since terrorism is often a tactic of war, but wartime terrorism may not teach us much about terrorism during peace time. To be included in the survey, each plot had to have some loose operational or inspirational link to al Qaeda or its affiliates; it had to reach a certain level of maturity, characterized by overt acts in furtherance; it consisted of violent acts targeting people in the West, and therefore excluded cases of purely financial or material support for terrorist acts committed elsewhere; some planning had to be done in the West; and terrorists had to initiate the plot. To accurately evaluate the threat, I of course included both successful and unsuccessful plots, which are the true measure of the extent of the threat, rather than just the successful ones. The global neo-jihadi terrorist threat includes plots under the control of al Qaeda core; al Qaeda affiliates like the Algerian Groupes Islamiques Armes (GIA), Pakistani Lashkar e-Toyba (LT), the Uzbek Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), the Pakistani Tehrik e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)…; and threats by autonomous groups inspired by al Qaeda like the Dutch Hofstad group. I excluded lone wolves, who were not physically or virtually connected to anyone in the global neo-jihad, for they often carry out their atrocities on the basis of delusion and mental disorder rather than for political reasons.

My sources of information were legal documents, trial transcripts, consultations with foreign and domestic intelligence and law enforcement agencies, to which my position gave me access. Although all these plots are within the open source domain, I did corroborate the validity of the data in the classified domain.

The specified criteria yielded a total of 60 global neo-jihadi terrorist plots in the West, perpetrated by 46 terrorist networks in the past two decades, from the first World Trade Center attack on February 26, 1993 to the December 16, 2008 arrest of Rany Arnaud, who was plotting to blow up the Direction Generale du Renseignement Interieur, the French FBI equivalent, in a suburb of Paris. Although people associate al Qaeda plots with airplanes or bombs, the plots were quite diverse: simple assassinations, attempted kidnapping and decapitation, car/truck bombs, airplane hijacking, and improvised explosive devices. Some operations were suicidal, but most were not. Of all the plots, only one is completely unsolved – the bombing of the Port Royal Metro station in Paris on December 3, 1996, which resulted in many casualties. Although completely unsolved, the timing, context and mode of operation seem to point to the GIA, trying to avenge its followers, who were put on trial around that time.

The following graph is the timeline distribution of the plots.



We can see from the graph that global neo-jihadi terrorist plots preceded the 9/11/01 attack when the Western public first started to appreciate the true extent of the threat confronting it.

The first plot in the West was the first World Trade Center bombing in February 1993, or about four and a half years after the creation of al Qaeda proper.

The timeline distribution of the plots is bi-modal. The first peak consisted of raids by the Algerian GIA against France and stopped in 1996; the later plots were more widely geographically distributed and reached a peak in 2004, after which they declined.

In the recent controversy over whether al Qaeda (however defined, here I am using a more inclusive and therefore much wider definition of the threat in the West) is on the move or on the run, we can see that the wider “al Qaeda” threat or the global neo-jihadi terrorist threat is definitely on the run since its high water mark of 2004.

Some networks of terrorists, who temporarily escaped arrest, carried out multiple plots in the West. This is especially true of the 1995 wave of ten GIA plots against France, carried out by the same network in France. In order to understand the actual threat, as opposed to the inability of local police forces to disrupt existing networks, I also coded the global neo-jihadi threat to the West according to the specific terrorist networks carrying out operations (as opposed to plots).

Coding the data according to networks rather than plots gives the following graph.


What is most affected by this coding is the collapse of the GIA wave of bombings in France in 1995, now represented by the same group rather than the ten separate plots.

Again, loosely global neo-jihadi networks in the West preceded the 9/11/01 operation.

Here, the graph indicates that global neo-jihadi networks in the West became more numerous in 2001, experienced a temporary small decline, and reached its 2004 high water mark, after which it declined, especially after 2007. So, here again, “al Qaeda” is on the run and not on the move. I suspect the post 2003 bump in the number of networks threatening the West in the name of AQ was a reaction to the Western invasion of Iraq.

Although the press likes to call any militant Islamist plot an al Qaeda plot, let us see how many are truly al Qaeda plots. I coded the command and control of each plot according to the following classification (I did not code the 1996 Paris Metro plot because it is still unsolved):

•  AQ Core means that AQ proper directed and controlled the operation.

•  AQ Affiliated means that an international terrorist organization affiliated with AQ, such as LT or IJU, directed and controlled the operation.

•  AQ Inspired means that there was no direction or control by any of the above organization for the plot. In other words, the plot was completely autonomous.

In this coding system, I leaned backward to give credit to a terrorist organization when there was any doubt about its command and control over an operation. I did this to increase the probability of detecting any coordination of global neo-jihadi terrorism by a single entity, a sort of neo-jihadi equivalent of the Comintern – the Soviet Central Committee in Moscow that tried to coordinate Communist activities worldwide.

The result is:

12 AQ Core controlled operations (20%)

•  LAX millenial plot (1999)
• Strasbourg Christmas Market bombing plot (2000)
• 9/11/01 attack (2001)
• Paris Embassy bombing plot (2001)
• Belgian Kleine Brogel US Air Force base bombing plot (2001)
• Shoe bomber plot (2001)
• London fertilizer bomb plot (Operation Crevice, 2004)
• London limousine bombing plot (Operation Rhyme, 2004)
• London 7/7 bombings (Theseus case) (2005)
• London 7/21 bombing plot (Vivace case) (2005)
•  London airplanes liquid bomb plot (Operation Overt) (2006)
• Danish Glasvej bombing plot (Operation Dagger) (2007)
  

15 AQ affiliated terrorist organizations controlled operations (25%)

• 11 GIA plots against France (1994-5)
• German al-Tawhid bombing plots (Zarqawi group) (2002)
• Sydney bombing plot (Brigitte-Lodhi, LT controlled) (2003)
• German Sauerland bombing plot (IJU controlled) (2007)
• Barcelona bombing plot (alleged TTP control) (2008)
  

32 AQ inspired terrorist plots, carried out either on behalf of al Qaeda or other transnational terrorist organizations (54%)

Al Qaeda-inspired autonomous plots constitute the majority of all the plots, followed by al Qaeda affiliated plots, with true al Qaeda plots closing out the sample at only 20%. Viewing the graph chronologically, al Qaeda Core did not start this terrorist campaign against the West. Indeed, all al Qaeda Core plots in the West took place after bin Laden‟s 1998 hukm (his „considered judgment,‟ not fatwa as is incorrectly reported in the West and which carries much less authority than a fatwa)2.

Two attacks in New York City conducted by former Afghan Arabs inaugurated this worldwide wave of bombings against the West. They were conducted locally, and there is no evidence that there was any guidance, direction or control by al Qaeda Core. If anything, they were more closely connected with the Egyptian Islamic Group than al Qaeda or its ally, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

These attacks were followed by a large wave of GIA attacks against France, which had to do with the internal dynamics of the Algerian civil war in the 1990s, and again had no guidance, direction or control from al Qaeda Core. The actual al Qaeda Core plots in the West began in late 1999, as part of a wave of worldwide bombings to mark the dawn of the new Western Millennium, peaked in 2001, and decreased thereafter to about one plot per year, with a small uptick in 2004-2005 and fading over the next two years. Despite even recent claims that al Qaeda is on the move, it is clear that al Qaeda in the West has been on the decline since its apogee of 2001.

When studying a phenomenon, it is important to count and look at the trend. When one relies on out of context anecdotal evidence, it is easy to make mistakes. I suspect that the recent advocates for a “resurgent” al Qaeda were confused by the complexity of the 2006 London airplanes liquid bomb plot (Overt case) and mistook complexity for resurgence.

The fact is clear that since its loss of sanctuary in Afghanistan in 2001, al Qaeda proper has had trouble projecting to the West. It was able to operate locally in South Asia and Iraq, especially after al Zarqawi proclaimed a merger of his organization with al Qaeda.

Let's look at the past five years:

•  6 AQ Core plots (2004 Rhyme and Crevice plots; 2005 Theseus and Vivace cases; 2006 Overt case, all in Britain, and 2007 Dagger plot in Denmark)

•  2 AQ Affiliated plots (2007 Sauerland & 2008 Barcelona Plots)

•  25 AQ Inspired autonomous plots, conducted by homegrown perpetrators, with no connections whatsoever with any formal transnational terrorist organizations

The above statistics are crystal clear: 78% of all global neo-jihadi terrorist plots in the West in the past five years came from autonomous homegrown groups without any connection, direction or control from al Qaeda Core or its allies.

The "resurgent al Qaeda" in the West argument has no empirical foundation.

The paucity of actual al Qaeda and other transnational terrorist organization plots compared to the number of autonomous plots refutes the claims by some heads of the Intelligence Community (Hayden, 2008) that all Islamist plots in the West can be traced back to the Afghan Pakistani border. Far from being the “epicenter of terrorism,” this Pakistani region is more like the finishing school of global neo-jihadi terrorism, where a few amateur wannabes are transformed into dangerous terrorists.

The graph also shows a sporadic involvement of al Qaeda affiliated terrorist groups in plotting against the West in the past six years. These groups located in Pakistan are showing an increased ability to project against the West, although most of their operations are still confined to South Asia. However, in the internal rivalry among terrorist groups in South Asia, the quickest way to establish one's reputation is to demonstrate an ability to strike in the West. Although it is rare for al Qaeda core to claim credit for its operations in the West, its rivals in South Asia have been quick to claim credit, even for failed plots.

The Islamic Jihad Union claimed credit for the failed Sauerland group plot in September 2007 and Baitullah Mehsud, the deceased chief of Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan claimed credit for the failed Barcelona Plot of January 2008 – although this last claim must be taken with a great deal of caution because he has claimed credits for mishaps in the West that had nothing to do with his organization, like the power outage in the U.S. Midwest in 2007 and the mass murder incident in Binghamton, New York on April 3, 2009.

These empty self-promotions have been categorically refuted by federal authorities. The West may well find itself caught in this militant rivalry for global neo-jihadi supremacy.

My coding probably overestimated the importance of formal terrorist groups. Most of the recent plots coded as under al Qaeda command and control, like the 2004 London fertilizer bomb plot, did not involve such frequent communication with al Qaeda, but included instead a short meeting with a high level representative of al Qaeda, where local Western terrorist wannabes informed al Qeada representatives, Abdal Hadi al Iraqi and his lieutenant, of their own initiative to conduct operations in the West. In such cases, it seems that the meeting with al Qaeda leadership did not affect the desire of the local terrorists to conduct such operations. Here the role of the al Qaeda was passive agreement with little influence on the plot.

The dramatic increase in global neo-jihadi terrorism in the first decade of the 21st Century has come from al Qaeda inspired autonomous groups with no link to formal transnational terrorist groups. This is especially true since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which has inspired local young Muslims to strike out against the West. It seems clear that this invasion has created more terrorists in the West, refuting the thesis that “we are fighting them there, so we don't have to fight them here.”

The fact that these plots peaked in 2004, one year after the invasion of Iraq provides empirical support linking the two events. These scattered plots, not coordinated by any central terrorist body and constituting almost 80% of the plots against the West in the past five years, illustrate how the threat against the West is degenerating into a “leaderless jihad.”3 Far from being directed by a Comintern, global neo-jihadi terrorism is evolving to the structure of anarchist terrorism that prevailed over a century ago, when no such global coordinating committee was ever found despite contemporaneous belief in its existence.

Within this cluster of al Qaeda inspired autonomous groups is a troubling emerging pattern of lone wolves, directly linked via the Internet to foreign al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations: the 2004 Rotterdam Plot (Yehya Kadouri), the 2007 Nancy plot (Kamel Bouchentouf), the 2008 Exeter plot (Nicky Reilly) and the 2008 French Direction Centrale du Renseignement Interieur plot (Rany Arnaud). Although these young men are willing to sacrifice themselves for these affiliate terrorist groups, they have never met them face to face. This may become a trend that will increase in the future.

Another dimension of allied al Qaeda involvement in plots against the West is financial support of these plots. Again, in examining each global neo-jihadi terrorism network for such support, I have erred on the side of inclusiveness of al Qaeda support in this coding scheme.



Out of forty-five global neo-jihadi terrorist networks in the West, al Qaeda at least partially funded ten.

But this overstates its importance in this regard. The funding of the 1993 World Trade Center plot was minimal, and consisted of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sending a few hundred dollars to his nephew Ramzi Yousef.

It is unclear where the money came from, but for the sake of this study, let us assume it came from al Qaeda. The same goes for the GIA wave of bombings in France in 1995. Bin Laden funded the Al Ansar newsletter in London via Rachid Ramda, who funded the bombing campaign.

I do not know where the money for this campaign (as opposed to the newsletter) came from. I suspect that it came from the GIA itself through its fund raising campaign throughout Europe. However, let us again assume that it came from bin Laden either directly or indirectly.

We can see that from 1999 to 2001, al Qaeda either partially or fully funded its operations against the West. This was either in the form of seed money ($10,000 given to Ahmed Ressam for the 1999 LAX bombing plot or the 2000 Strasbourg Christmas Market bombing plot). In each case, the perpetrators were supposed to supplement their initial funds via their own means (robbery in Ressam‟s case; drug sales for the other).

Sometimes, the funding was paid in full, as in the 9/11/01 plot. I assume that al Qaeda at least partially funded the rest of the 2001 al Qaeda plots since I came across no evidence that these perpetrators raised any money on their own. The two alleged al Qaeda plots in 2005 were a departure from this pattern, as there is no evidence that the two London bombing plots of July 2005 received any money from al Qaeda. The last alleged al Qaeda plot, the Danish Glasvej (Dagger) case indicates that the main perpetrator, Hamad Khurshid, came back from Pakistan with $5,000 in cash. It is true that, except for the 9/11/01 operation, terrorist plots are not expensive to carry out. Autonomous terrorists had no choice but to raise the funds for their operation themselves.

On the other hand, the al Qaeda-affiliated transnational terrorist groups seemed to have funded their own operations. The GIA plots were fully funded from outside and none of the perpetrators were tasked with raising money for the plots. The 2002 German al Tawhid plot was probably funded by Zarqawi. LT funded the Sydney plot through money transfers to Willie Brigitte in 2003, and the IJU seemed to have funded the 2007 German Sauerland plot. It is unknown the degree of financial support that the potential perpetrators of the 2008 Barcelona plot received from Mehsud's organization.

For those who like to follow the money, only a very few plots have been funded from the outside in the past five years. Of the twenty-nine global neo-jihadi terrorist networks involved during that period, Al Qaeda core funding has been implicated in only two – Hamad Khurshid and the London Rhyme case. Even if we add the non-al Qaeda funded Sauerland case and possibly the TTP Barcelona case, the total increases to only three or four out of twenty-nine cases (10% or 14%). Since the money involved was mostly in the form of cash, following the trail of money will not detect global neo-jihadi terrorism plots in the West. The vast majority these networks in the past five years have raised their own money.

It has been argued that training by a formal terrorist organization is critically important because it transforms amateurs into seasoned terrorists. Several Western intelligence leaders have stated that all significant global neo-jihadi terrorist plots lead back to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (FATA).

The next graph tests this claim. I plotted the overseas training for all the terrorist networks and coded them as receiving training from al Qaeda, an al Qaeda affiliate, or no training at all – just al Qaeda inspired. Again, I erred on the side of over-inclusiveness of such training, even if just one person in the network, who might not have been involved in the planning of the plot, had simply undergone familiarization training, which did not teach any significant bomb making skills. For this graph, I coded Bouyeri as being separate from the Hofstad network because he carried out the assassination of Theo van Gogh on his own in 2004 and had not gone to any training camp.

Out of 46 different networks attempting terrorist operations in the West,

• 16 had at least one member that underwent training at an AQ Core facility (35%)

•  10 had at least one member that underwent training at an AQ affiliated facility (22%)

• 20 had no training at all (43%)

Lumping the data together hides some important trends.

First, more people have trained from al Qaeda and al Qaeda affiliates than are under the control of these respective organizations. Lately, in the press and perhaps the intelligence community, there is a presumption that attendance in a formal terrorist organization training camp is equivalent to being under control of that organization. So, I included the 2004 London fertilizer plot (Operation Crevice) and the two 2005 London underground bombing plots as al Qaeda controlled because the perpetrators had allegedly received al Qaeda training.

However, there was no evidence of extensive communication between the perpetrators in the field and al Qaeda Core in Pakistan, unlike the 9/11/01 plot or the 2006 London airplanes liquid bomb plot, where the perpetrators were in almost daily communication with al Qaeda core, or the 2007 Sauerland plotters, who were in constant e-mail contact with their IJU sponsors.

This equation of training camp attendance with foreign terrorist organization control was not presumed for the pre-2001 plots, when attendance in an al Qaeda camp did not mean al Qaeda control. For example, Ramzi Yousef, the bomb maker for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, never belonged to al Qaeda, but had undergone extensive training at al Qaeda funded camps and had taught at Abdal Rabb Rasul Sayyaf's University of Jihad. Likewise, members of the 2002 al Tawhid plot had been trained at al Qaeda camps before joining Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al Tawhid organization.

Again, the two ricin plots (the 2002 French Chechen network and the 2003 British ricin plot [Operation Earth]) included members who had trained in al Qaeda camps, even though neither plot seemed to have been known or sanctioned by al Qaeda as far as I know.

Al Qaeda funded most of the training camps in Afghanistan before the U.S. invasion in the fall of 2001. Anyone who had traveled to Afghanistan for training at that time was bound to have been trained in an al Qaeda funded camp. The cases just cited included members who had been in Afghanistan before the fall of the Taliban regime. The result was that graduates from al Qaeda camps in the 1990s dominate global neo-jihadi terrorism from 1999 to 2002. By the time they were planning their operations in the West in 2002 or 2003, they no longer had any active link to al Qaeda. Since 2002, al Qaeda trained terrorists averaged just one plot a year.

As the availability of al Qaeda training faded over time, al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations in Kashmir or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, such as Laskhar-e Toyba or the Islamic Jihad Union, began to fill in the gap starting in 2003 and the graduates of their camps also average about one plot a year. So, while terrorist networks that had training dominate the overall sample (57%), this trend has been reversed in the past five years as only 40% had such training. Indeed, all those who underwent training in the past five years, acquired it in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.

Although I use the generic term “training camp” to describe the place of training before and after 2001, the meaning of the term has since changed dramatically and overestimates the formality and sophistication of training received by global neo-jihadi terrorist networks in the West after 2001. Gone are the large formal camps like Khalden, Farooq or Darunta in Afghanistan, which could accommodate hundreds of novices and had a formal curriculum with increased levels of sophistication sometimes lasting up to a year for the select few (see Ahmed Ressam‟s training for the 1999 LAX millennium plot).

After the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, these formal training facilities were destroyed. People traveling to Pakistan afterwards either went to formal training facilities conducted by Kashmiri terrorist groups in Kashmir (see the legal judgment on Willie Brigitte for a description of such camps) or had to arrange for their training through hiring of a private trainer. These new “camps” were nothing like the former ones: they were small rented housing compounds or even two tents in a goat patch, where one instructor and his son gave private lessons to at most a dozen students, who directly paid for their instruction, the duration of which could be as short as two days to about three weeks (see the transcripts of the 2004 Crevice or the 2005 Theseus cases, which describe this process).

Later, after a series of truces signed between FATA tribal leaders and the government of Pakistan between 2004 and 2006, al Qaeda or IJU provided more formal training in Waziristan, but they never reached the level of sophistication in instruction that prevailed before 2001. These new facilities in Waziristan were more visible than before and could accommodate up to about twenty trainees at a time. Indeed, the presence of these camps probably led to alarms that al Qaeda was resurgent. Strangely enough, the presence of these new “camps” did not affect the frequency of al Qaeda linked plots in the West. The slight bump in frequency of terrorist trained arrests or actual bombings in 2004 and 2005 was not due to these truces, because the training of the perpetrators preceded the truce agreements. Despite the widespread alarms in the West, the truces do not appear to have any effect on global neo-jihadi terrorism in the West.

In any case, the graph shows clearly that the majority of global neo-jihadi terrorist networks from 2004 onwards did not have any formal training from foreign terrorist groups (60%), contrary to the statements of Intelligence agency chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic. They were purely homegrown and had no link to the FATA, which some have called “the epicenter of terrorism.” Instead, they had to rely on themselves and the Internet for their acquisition of terrorist skills, consistent with the leaderless jihad argument.
How dangerous is global neo-jihadi terrorism? In other words, what is the result of global neo-jihadi terrorist plots in the West? I coded all 60 plots in the West in terms of whether they caused any injuries; were carried out but failed (no explosion because of a technical error); or were interrupted through law enforcement arrests.


Extent of damages of global neo-jihadi terrorist plots

The results are as follows:

14 Plots were successful in terms of incurring any injury and or death (23%)

• Only 2 al Qaeda core plots in the West in the past two decades were successful (9/11/01 and 7/7/05). Of course, they were among the most devastating, resulting in about 3,000 fatalities for 9/11 and 52 fatalities for 7/7.
• 9 were GIA plots against France, from 1994 to 1996 (I have counted the 1996 Paris Port Royal metro station bombing in this total. The total for all of these attacks is 17 fatalities)
• 3 were al Qaeda inspired plots (1993 World Trade Center bombing, resulting in 6 fatalities; 2004 Madrid bombing, resulting in 191 fatalities; 2004 Bouyeri‟s assassination of Theo van Gogh)

10 Plots resulted in failure to explode (17%)

• 3 failures in networks that had succeeded elsewhere (2 by 1995 GIA network in France; and by 2004 Madrid network when bomb on the AVE train line near Toledo failed to detonate)
• 2 failures by al Qaeda trained networks (2001 Shoe bomb plot and 7/21/05 London underground bombing plot)
• 1 failure in network of French Bosnian war veteran (Roubaix group)
• 4 failures in networks that had no foreign terrorist organization training (2004 Rotterdam plot; 2006 Koblenz train plot; 2007 Doctors‟ plot; and 2008 Exeter bomb plot)

36 Plots were interrupted through arrests (60%)

It is interesting to note that for all the fear of al Qaeda, the organization managed only two successful plots in the West in the last twenty years! The fact that they were so deadly overshadows this truth.

Indeed, successful independent plots outnumber successful al Qaeda plots in the West. However, both are eclipsed by the GIA, which infiltrated a team of trained terrorists to France, whose wave of terror in the mid-1990s accounts for almost two thirds of all successful global neo-jihadi bombings.

This low rate of success (23%) should not be much comfort to intelligence or law enforcement agencies. In ten plots, the terrorists succeeded in setting their bombs down without being detected. The bombs simply did not detonate, which cannot be due to good intelligence or police work. So, the rate of a plot going to termination without being detected is 40%, a very high rate indeed, no cause for comfort. Lest the reader thinks that the cause for failure to detonate was the lack of training by homegrown wannabes, six out of the ten failures happened to groups that had been trained or been successful before. So, 60% of the failures to detonate were not due to poor training but to poor execution by experienced terrorists.

It appears that either we are getting luckier or this terrorist threat is diminishing. In the United States, the last casualty dates back eight years to 9/11/01. There has not been even one plot that went to termination since then.

In the rest of the West, there has not been a single casualty in the past four years. The last casualty dates back to 7/7/05, the first London underground plot. However, in the past four years, Europe has witnessed a series of bombs that failed to detonate: the 2005 second London underground plot (Vivace case); the 2006 German Koblenz trolley bombs; the 2007 London and Glasgow Doctors‟ plot; and the 2008 Exeter bomb plot by Nicky Reilly. The last three plots have no physical link to any transnational terrorist groups.

How effective is formal terrorist training for the successful completion of a plot? Several critics have tried to downplay the recent surge of autonomous homegrown plots as less dangerous than those of formally trained terrorists. I analyzed the results of global neo-jihadi terrorist networks according to their type of training: al Qaeda core training; al Qaeda affiliates' training; or no formal training at all (al Qaeda inspired). Excluding the unsolved 1996 Paris Port Royal metro bombing because of lack of information, this leaves forty-five networks. But an untrained member of the Hofstad network, Mohammed Bouyeri, carried out a successful assassination on his own. His “trained” colleagues, Jason Walters and Ismail Akhnikh, had not been aware of his plan and provided no guidance or help. Therefore, I decided to code Bouyeri's assassination of Theo van Gogh as a separate network, and as al Qaeda inspired. The results are the following:

16 AQ Core trained networks:

• 3 succeeded (1993 World Trade Center bombing; 9/11/01; and 7/7/05 London underground bombing) [19%]
• 2 failed to explode (2001 Shoe bomber; 7/21/05 London underground plot)
• 11 were detected and arrested before hand
  

10 AQ Affiliate trained networks

• 2 GIA networks succeeded (1994 AF hijack; 1995 wave of bombing in France) [20%]
• 1 failed to explode (1996 Lille plot)
• 7 were detected and arrested beforehand (including Hofstad network)
  

20 AQ Inspired networks (no formal training)

• 2 succeeded (2004 Madrid bombings & 2004 Bouyeri assassination of van Gogh)[10%, but only 5% if we don‟t count the assassination, which requires no training]
• 3 failed to explode
• 16 were detected and arrested beforehand.
  

The above results seem to indicate that formal training matters. Both al Qaeda core and al Qaeda affiliate formal training resulted in an approximate success rate of 20%, while lack of training led to a success rate of 10%. So, training doubles the probability of success in a terrorist network. However, if the assassination of Theo van Gogh is eliminated from the sample, the resulting rate of success of the untrained networks falls to 5%. In this case, training would quadruple the probability of success in a terrorist network.

Viewing the sample as a whole obscures the degradation of the importance of training in the past five years. During this period, of twelve trained terrorist networks, only one succeeded in causing any casualty, the 7/7/05 London underground bombing. Two untrained networks out of sixteen succeeded in inflicting casualties: the 2004 Madrid bombing – where the bombers got access to dynamite, det-cord and detonators, and did not have to manufacture their explosive – and the 2004 Bouyeri assassination of van Gogh.

I am sorry to have been so lengthy in the presentation of the survey, but the devil is in the empirical details to escape another round of hysterical rhetoric so common in discussion of global neo-jihadi terrorism. Now that I've laid down the facts, let me address some of the unexamined assumptions, myths and misconceptions about the “al Qaeda threat” in Afghanistan and beyond.

1. The threat to the West has unfortunately expanded beyond al Qaeda per se. The various terrorists attempting to carry out operations in the West for al Qaeda allies or in its name clearly outnumber al Qaeda operations. In the past five years, al Qaeda core has been responsible for only 18% of these plots. 78% of these plots during this period have been carried out by homegrown terrorists, inspired by al Qaeda, but with no connection with any formal transnational terrorist organization – evolving into a Leaderless Jihad. This survey does not include the new al Shabaab threat to the West, which has too recently surfaced to be included. But it stems from Somalia and not Afghanistan.

2. The dichotomy of the present policy options between counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency is a false one. The choice is not between counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, but between counter-terrorism and counter-terrorism plus counter-insurgency. No matter what happens in Afghanistan, all Western powers will continue to protect their homelands with a vigorous counter-terrorism campaign against al Qaeda, its allies and its homegrown progeny. The policy option really boils down to, what is the added value of counter-insurgency in Afghanistan to a necessary and continuing counter-terrorism strategy worldwide?

3. The proposed counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan is at present irrelevant to the goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda, which is located in Pakistan. None of the plots in the West has any connection to any Afghan insurgent group, labeled under the umbrella name “Afghan Taliban,” be it a part of Mullah Omar‟s Quetta Shura Taliban, Jalaluddin Haqqani‟s Haqqani Network, or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami. There has not been any Afghan in al Qaeda in the past twenty years because of mutual resentment between al Qaeda foreigners and Afghan locals. In the policy debate, there is an insidious confusion between Afghan Taliban and transnational terrorist organizations. Afghan fighters are parochial, have local goals and fight locally. They do not travel abroad and rarely within their own country. They are happy to kill Westerners in Afghanistan, but they are not a threat to Western homelands. Foreign presence is what has traditionally unified the usually fractious Afghan rivals against a common enemy. Their strategic interest is local, preserving their autonomy from what they perceive as a predatory corrupt unjust central government. They do not project to the West and do not share the internationalist agenda of al Qaeda or its allied transnational terrorist organizations.

4. The second prong of the proposed counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan is the prevention of al Qaeda's return to Afghanistan through a military surge. The assumption is that the return to power by the Taliban will automatically allow al Qaeda to reconstitute in Afghanistan, complete with training camps and resurgence of al Qaeda's ability to project to the West and threaten the homeland.

5. Counter-terrorism is working. The escalation from a more limited and focused counter-terrorism strategy to a larger combined counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency strategy (in a country devoid of the al Qaeda presence!) is predicated on the assumption that the terrorist threat is either stable or increasing – meaning that counter-terrorism has failed. The timeline graphs clearly show that the threat is fading, from its high water mark of 2004. There has been no global neo-jihadi terrorist casualty in the United States in the past eight years and none in the West in general in the past four years. Of course, al Qaeda is not dead as long as its top leadership is still alive. This cannot be attributed to a loss of intent from al Qaeda and its militant rivals. From all indications, including recent debriefs of terrorist wannabes captured in Pakistan and the West, the respective leaders of global neo-jihadi terrorism are still enthusiastically plotting to hit the West and do not hesitate to proclaim their desire on the Internet. Nor is this due to the counter-insurgency in Afghanistan because al Qaeda and its allies all have their training facilities in Pakistan. It is due to effective counter-terrorism strategy, which is on the brink of completely eliminating al Qaeda. A dead organization will not be able to return to Afghanistan.

6. The reasons for the effectiveness of the counter-terrorism strategy so far are multiple. First and foremost is al Qaeda's inability to grow. Unlike the pre-9/11/01 period, al Qaeda leaders have generally not incorporated new recruits among its ranks. The leadership of al Qaeda still harks back to the fight against the Soviets in the 1980s.

Because he has been hiding full time, Osama bin Laden has not been able to appoint and train a new group of top leaders and there is no evidence that he trusts anyone whom he has not known from the anti-Soviet jihad. In the 1990s, al Qaeda incorporated the brightest and most dedicated novices who came to train in its network of camps in Afghanistan. They became its cadres and trainers. In the past five years, al Qaeda has not been able for the most part to incorporate new recruits among its ranks. Western novices traveling to Pakistan in the hope of making contact with al Qaeda have been turned around and sent back to the West to carry out terrorist operations. Meanwhile, the success of the predator drone strike campaign on the Pakistani border has dramatically thinned the ranks of both al Qaeda leaders and cadres. Now it appears that these strikes are also targeting al Qaeda allies with a transnational agenda.

7. Protection of Western homeland involves an effective strategy of containment of the threat in the Afghan Pakistan area until it disappears for internal reasons. In the past five years, al Qaeda or its transnational allies have not been able to infiltrate professional terrorists into the West, as Ramzi Youself did in New York in 1993 or the GIA did in France in 1995. None of the plots during that time involved any full time professional terrorist. This is probably due to good cooperation among intelligence agencies around the world, good intelligence databases and increased vigilance and security at airports around the world. To carry out operations in the West, these global neo-jihadi terrorist organizations are completely dependent on Western volunteers coming to the Pakistani border to meet terrorist groups or on inspiring young Western terrorist wannabes to carry out operations on their own without any guidance or training. These organizations are stuck with the people traveling to the border area to meet with them, mostly through chance encounters. These travelers are relatively few in number, totaling in the dozens at most. The emerging details from the terrorist trials and the interrogations of the Westerners captured in Pakistan are quite clear on this score. Terrorist organizations can no longer cherry pick the best candidates as they did in the 1990s. There is no al Qaeda recruitment program: al Qaeda and its allies are totally dependent on self selected volunteers, who come to Pakistan. Global neo-jiahdi terrorism also has no control over the young people who wish to carry out operations in the West in its names. The result is a dramatic degradation of the caliber of terrorist wannabes, resulting in the decrease in success of terrorist operations in the West despite the increased number of attempts. Containing those who travel to Pakistan for terrorist training is a counter-terrorism problem and is much easier problem to solve than transforming an adjacent nation through a national counter-insurgency strategy. The West has been doing well in this strategy of containment with Pakistan's active collaboration.

8. The decrease of global neo-jihadi terrorism in the last five years is testimony to the effectiveness of international and domestic intelligence as well as good police work. The timeline analysis of global neo-jihadi terrorism shows that the major threat to Western homelands is al Qaeda inspired homegrown networks. Disrupting such homegrown plots has always been a domestic counter-terrorism mission through domestic intelligence and law enforcement. Indeed, there is a strong probability that the proposed counter-insurgency military surge may result in moral outrage in young Muslims in the West, who would take it upon themselves to carry out terrorist operations at home in response to the surge – just as the invasion in Iraq resulted in a dramatic increase in terrorist operations in the West. So, far from protecting the homeland, the surge may actually endanger it in the short term. After going through a learning process, Western law enforcement agencies, in coordination with their foreign counterparts, have done an effective job in protecting the homeland.

9. In conclusion, counter-terrorism works and is doing well against the global neo-jihadi terrorist threat. It consists of a combination of good domestic police work, good domestic intelligence, good cooperation with foreign domestic intelligence agencies, good airport security, good border control, keeping up the pressure on al Qaeda and its transnational allies in Pakistan through arrests and Predator drone attacks, using political and economic skill to deny terrorist sanctuary in Pakistan, supporting the Pakistan military to dislodge foreign militants from Waziristan while sealing the border on the Afghan side, and continued sanctuary denial in Afghanistan. These are measures that will continue regardless of what is done in Afghanistan. There is definitely no necessity and very little value added for the counter-insurgency option, which is the most costly in terms of blood and treasure, probably the least likely to succeed and may even make things worse in the short run.

10. Counter-insurgency and nation building in Afghanistan may be important for regional reasons and I would be honored to address these complex issues at another time. I am pleased to see that the committee invited my former chief, Milton Bearden, to testify on these issues last week. I had the privilege to serve under him in Islamabad, where I spent almost three years in personal contact with the major Afghan Mujahedin commanders fighting against the Soviet Union. I stand ready to comment on counter-insurgency strategy and tactics in Afghanistan based on my personal experiences with important Afghan insurgents. But counter-insurgency in Afghanistan has little to do with global neo-jihadi terrorism and protecting the homeland.

Testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Marc Sageman, M.D., Ph.D., October 7, 2009

Notes:
1 For an analysis of the concept of jihad through Muslim jurisprudence and history,see Richard Bonney, 2004, Jihad: From Qur’an to bin Laden, New York: Palgrave Macmillan

2 See Lawrence, Bruce, ed., 2005, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, London: Verso, page 61

3 See Sageman, Marc, 2008, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press

4 See Mountstuart Elphinstone, 1815, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, and its Dependencies in Persia, Tartary, and India; Comprising a View of the Afghaun Nation, and a History of the Dooraunee Monarchy, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown; Olaf Caroe, , 1958, The Pathans: 550 B.C. – A.D. 1957, Oxford: Oxford University Press; and Akbar Ahmed, 2004, Resistance and Control in Pakistan: Revised Edition, London: Routledge, for sophisticated examples of effective governance in the Afghan tribal areas.

The decision to have Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other 9/11 planners face trial in a criminal court in New York is Obama’s boldest break yet from the much criticized counterterrorism policies of his predecessor; but there is continuity as well.

By Shaun Waterman in Washington, DC for ISN Security Watch

When Attorney General Eric Holder announced the decision Friday, he noted that he was speaking “just over eight years” after the suicide hijacking attacks. But he neglected to mention he was speaking on another, more telling, anniversary. His announcement came eight years to the day after the promulgation by the Bush administration of an executive order giving the president the authority to designate individuals as ‘enemy combatants,’ subject to trial by military commissions and whose treatment was not governed by either by the US Constitution or by the Geneva Conventions.

A secret presidential memorandum laying out new authorities for the nation’s military and intelligence agencies as they prosecuted Bush’s war on terror had already been signed on 17 September. And by that time, Bush officials had already begun anonymously briefing reporters about the secret war they planned against al-Qaida.

The military commission’s order was one of the first public, formal signs that the administration planned to pursue a strategy in that conflict largely untrammeled by US obligations under international law or by the restrictions the constitution placed on state power.

The 13 November 2001 order was one of the cornerstones of that strategy. It was of a piece with the extra-legal renditions to torture of suspected terrorists; the attempt to use the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a legal black hole beyond the reach of US courts; and the development of a network of secret CIA jails where detainees could be subject to water-boarding and other ‘enhanced interrogations techniques.’

That strategy damaged the US' standing in the world and helped strip the war on terror of the moral legitimacy it enjoyed when it was first declared in the aftermath of 9/11. And it was crumbling even before President Barack Obama took office - the Supreme Court declared the military commissions Bush established unconstitutional and claimed jurisdiction over Guantanamo; the Red Cross said those ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ amounted to torture; CIA officers were prosecuted in an Italian court for criminal offences arising from rendition; and the network of secret prisons was closed.

The decision to bring Mohammed and the other plotters in US custody to trial in New York is the latest widening crack in that edifice. It was presaged back in April when Obama told employees at the CIA, “I believe that our nation is stronger and more secure when we deploy the full measure of both our power and the power of our values - including the rule of law.”

Modified Continuity

The decision brought howls of protest from Bush supporters and other Republican critics.

Debra Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot of the plane that was crashed into the Pentagon, and who appeared at the Republican convention in 2004 to back Bush’s re-election, predicted that the trial would become a farce marked by Mohammed "mocking his victims, exulting in the suffering of their families, ridiculing the judge, his lawyers and the American justice system, and worst of all, rallying his jihad brothers to kill more Americans.”

And former GOP presidential candidate and New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called it “part of a bigger picture […] part of Barack Obama deciding that we're not at war with terrorism any longer.”

But in reality, Obama is continuing to use - albeit in modified form - much of the machinery his predecessor established. Renditions will continue, the administration says, albeit with enhanced safeguards; officials acknowledge they do not know when they will be able to fulfill their promise to close the detention center at Guantanamo; and Holder also announced Friday that five other detainees would be tried in the new military commissions Obama has established.

“Just as a sustained campaign against terrorism requires a combination of intelligence, law enforcement and military operations, so must our legal efforts to bring terrorists to justice involve both federal courts and reformed military commissions,” said Holder.

Among the five who will face commissions is Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was 15 years old when he was captured in Afghanistan. His lawyers argue he was a child soldier conscripted by his late father, a long-time al-Qaida militant.

Obama has already taken heat from some of his more ardent supporters for the deliberate pace at which he has moved in dismantling the legal edifice of Bush’s war on terror. And human rights advocates clearly have mixed feelings about Friday’s announcement.

While welcoming it as “an important step toward reinstating the rule of law,” Amnesty International’s US policy director for counterterrorism, Tom Parker, called the decision “narrow.”

“The military commissions have already shown they cannot provide due process or fair trials; they should be abandoned,” he concluded, noting that, since 9/11, federal courts in the US have convicted 195 people of terrorism offenses while military commissions have convicted only one.


Shaun Waterman is a senior writer and analyst for ISN Security Watch. He is a UK journalist based in Washington, DC, covering homeland and national security. This article was published by International Relations and Security Network (ISN)

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