A possible answer for latest anti-terrorist incoherences

Obama's top intelligence adviser resigns.

A look at kidnapping

the latest Stratfor analysis.

A mixt between the risk of ignoring the risks, living in dangerous environments and exposure. The meeting point with terrorist activities is obvious.

The Gods for political use

This news do not have too much to do with: politics, geopolitics, intelligence, terrorism or countering terrorism. In some respects, it does with certain international PR, but at a very show-business level.

The story is about the book the son of a founder of Hamas, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, is gonna publish very soon, about his relationship with Shin Beth, the Israeli home security services. For sure he prevented and saved many lives. But, what he is more focusing about is his "religious revelation". A kind of competition in between who is the best "god". Because, during his operational activity in dismantling Hamas he decided to convert to Christianism. And, it is how he arrived in the US, following the networks of Christian missionaries and finally left his "intelligence" interests.

In some respects I am curios what his book will bring new about Hamas and terrorism. In some other respects, I am not so curious, as long as I could bet it is another testimony of religious brainwashing.

In direct connection with this mixture between terrorism and religion, I am wondering sometimes how it is possible to be so blind and do not think that your actions are endangering the people you assume you want to save, represent, defend. I've read recently how, for example,a couple of years ago Hamas intended to assasinate one of the sons of Ariel Sharon. Just because "they" wanted to destroy the family of the former prime minister. Without ever thinking about what consequences such an act could produce. Terrorism do not have nothing to do with people with reason or with pondered decision. Nothing.

Intelligent lessons

Using information and the lessons to be learned in terms of intelligence/ and counter-intelligence from the last Dubai case, in a very technical of the whole setting of the operations, in Stratfor. And, on Stratfor again, but from February 17, about the games of hunting and being hunted.

What is the most important aspect, in my opinion, in this case, is in terms of the consequences: for the future of the negotiations in the Middle East, for the terrorist actions, for the relationships between Israel and the countries from the region, as well as with the other Western counter-parts - of course, our intelligence do not allow us to read as such the protests all across the world related to the operations, as the case of the fake passports; publicly, you do not have to say anything else than to condemn, isn't it hypocritical as well? On the other side, the complexity of the operations and the final success show - again, a test for our intelligence - that it was almost impossible to have only one "scape goat" - the operational brain. Local and international help was necessary as well, to whatever main "brain".

For sure, the police-chief from Dubai will have many other flamboyant declarations. Would like to arrest a whole country, maybe. Is his right, including to be ridiculous. The perspectives of the future, for the region, are more important than ever.

The Hasan Case: Overt Clues and Tactical Challenges

Scott Stewart and Fred Burton
Stratfor

November 11



In last week’s global security and intelligence report, we discussed the recent call by the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasir al-Wahayshi, for jihadists to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets in the Muslim world and the West. We also noted how it is relatively simple to conduct such attacks against soft targets using improvised explosive devices, guns or even knives and clubs.
The next day, a lone gunman, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire on a group of soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. The victims were in the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, a facility on the base where troops are prepared for deployment and where they take care of certain processing tasks such as completing insurance paperwork and receiving medical examinations and vaccinations.
Even though the targets of Hasan’s attack were soldiers, they represented a very soft target in this environment. Most soldiers on bases inside the United States are normally not armed and are only provided weapons for training. The only personnel who regularly carry weapons are the military police and the base civilian police officers. In addition to being unarmed, the soldiers at the center were closely packed together in the facility as they waited to proceed from station to station. The unarmed, densely packed mass of people allowed Hasan to kill 13 (12 soldiers and one civilian employee of the center) and wound 42 others when he opened fire.
Hasan is a U.S.-born Muslim who, according to STRATFOR sources and media accounts, has had past contact with jihadists, including the radical Imam Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki is a U.S.-born imam who espouses a jihadist ideology and who was discussed at some length in the 9/11 commission report for his links to 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Al-Awlaki, who is currently living in Yemen and reportedly has contacts with al Qaeda, posted a message on his Web site Nov. 9 praising Hasan’s actions. Despite Hasan’s connections to al-Awlaki and other jihadists, it is unknown at this point if he was even aware of al-Wahayshi’s recent message calling for simple attacks, and therefore it is impossible to tell if his attack was in response to it.
However, one thing that is certain is that investigators examining Hasan’s computer hard drive, e-mail traffic and Internet history will be looking into that possibility, along with other indications that Hasan was linked to radicals.
We noted last week that by their very nature, individual actors and small cells are very difficult for the government to detect. They must somehow identify themselves by contacting a government informant or another person who reports them to the authorities, attend a militant training camp or conduct correspondence with a person or organization under government scrutiny. In the Hasan case, it now appears that Hasan did self-identify by making radical statements to people he worked with, who reported him to the authorities. It also appears that he had correspondence with people such as al-Awlaki, whom the government was monitoring. Because of this behavior, Hasan brought himself to the attention of the Department of Defense, the FBI and the CIA.
The fact that Hasan was able to commit this attack after bringing government attention to himself could be due to a number of factors. Chief among them is the fact that it is tactically impossible for a government to identify every aspiring militant actor and to pre-empt every act of violence. The degree of difficulty is increased greatly if an actor does indeed act alone and does not give any overt clues through his actions or his communications of his intent to attack. Because of this, the Hasan case provides an excellent opportunity to examine national security investigations and their utility and limitations.

The Nature of Intelligence Investigations

The FBI will typically open up an intelligence investigation (usually referred to as a national security investigation) in any case where there is an indication or allegation that a person is involved in terrorist activity but there is no evidence that a specific law has been broken. Many times these investigations are opened up due to a lead passed by the CIA, National Security Agency or a foreign liaison intelligence service. Other times an FBI investigation can come as a spin-off from another FBI counterterrorism investigation already under way or be prompted by a piece of information collected by an FBI informant or even by a tip from a concerned citizen — like the flight instructors who alerted the FBI to the suspicious behavior of some foreign flight students prior to the 9/11 attacks. In such a case, the FBI case agent in charge of the investigation will open a preliminary inquiry, which gives the agent a limited window of time to look into the matter. If no indication of criminal activity is found, the preliminary inquiry must be closed unless the agent receives authorization from the special agent in charge of his division and FBI headquarters to extend it.
If, during the preliminary inquiry, the investigating agents find probable cause that a crime has been committed, the FBI will open a full-fledged criminal investigation into the case, similar to what we saw in the case of Luqman Ameen Abdullah and his followers in Detroit.
One of the large problems in national security investigations is separating the wheat from the chaff. Many leads are based on erroneous information or a misidentification of the suspect — there is a huge issue associated with the confusion caused by the transliteration of Arabic names and the fact that there are many people bearing the same names. Jihadists also have the tendency to use multiple names and identities. And there are many cases in which people will falsely report a person to the FBI out of malice. Because of these factors, national security investigations proceed slowly and usually do not involve much (if any) contact with the suspect and his close associates. If the suspect is a real militant planning a terrorist attack, investigators do not want to tip him off, and if he is innocent, they do not want to sully his reputation by showing up and overtly interviewing everyone he knows. Due to its controversial history of domestic intelligence activities, the FBI has become acutely aware of its responsibility to protect privacy rights and civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and other laws.
And the rights guaranteed under the Constitution do complicate these national security investigations. It is not illegal for someone to say that Muslims should attack U.S. troops due to their operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that more Muslims should conduct attacks like the June 1 shooting at a recruiting center in Little Rock, Ark. — things that Hasan is reported to have said. Radical statements and convictions are not illegal — although they certainly would appear to be conduct unbecoming a U.S. Army officer. (We will leave to others the discussion of the difficulties in dealing with problem officers who are minorities and doctors and who owe several years of service in return for their education.)
There are also many officers and enlisted soldiers in the U.S. Army who own personal weapons and who use them for self-defense, target shooting or hunting. There is nothing extraordinary or illegal about a U.S. Army major owning personal weapons. With no articulable violation of U.S. law, the FBI would have very little to act upon in a case like Hasan’s. Instead, even if they found cause to extend their preliminary inquiry, they would be pretty much limited to monitoring his activities (and perhaps his communications, with a court order) and waiting for a law to be violated. In the Hasan case, it would appear that the FBI did not find probable cause that a law had been violated before he opened fire at Fort Hood. Although perhaps if the FBI had been watching his activities closely and with an eye toward “the how” of terrorist attacks, they might have noticed him conducting preoperational surveillance of the readiness center and even a dry run of the attack.
Of course, in addition to just looking for violations of the law, the other main thrust of a national security investigation is to determine whom the suspect is connected to and whom he is talking to or planning with. In past cases, such investigations have uncovered networks of jihadist actors working together in the United States, Canada, Europe and elsewhere. However, if all Hasan did in his correspondence with people such as al-Awlaki was exercise his First Amendment right to hold radical convictions, and if he did not engage in any type of conspiracy to conduct an attack, he did not break the law.
Another issue that complicates national security cases is that they are almost always classified at the secret level or above. This is understandable, considering they are often opened based upon intelligence produced by sensitive intelligence programs. However, this classification means that only those people with the proper clearance and an established need to know can be briefed on the case. It is not at all unusual for the FBI to visit a high-ranking official at another agency to brief the official on the fact that the FBI is conducting a classified national security investigation involving a person working for the official’s agency. The rub is that they will frequently tell the official that he or she is not at liberty to share details of the investigation with other individuals in the agency because they do not have a clear need to know. The FBI agent will also usually ask the person briefed not to take any action against the target of the investigation, so that the investigation is not compromised. While some people will disagree with the FBI’s determination of who really needs to know about the investigation and go on to brief a wider audience, many officials are cowed by the FBI and sit on the information.
Of course, the size of an organization is also a factor in the dissemination of information. The Department of Defense and the U.S. Army are large organizations, and it is possible that officials at the Pentagon or the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (still known by its old acronym CID) headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Va., were briefed on the case and that local officials at Fort Hood were not. The Associated Press is now reporting that the FBI had alerted a Defense Criminal Investigative Service agent assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Washington about Hasan’s contacts with al-Awlaki, and ABC reports that the Defense Department is denying the FBI notified them. It would appear that the finger-pointing and bureaucratic blame-shifting normally associated with such cases has begun.
Even more severe problems would have plagued the dissemination of information from the CIA to local commanders and CID officers at Fort Hood. Despite the intelligence reforms put in place after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government still faces large obstacles when it comes to sharing intelligence information with law enforcement personnel.

Criminal Acts vs. Terrorism

So far, the Hasan shooting investigation is being run by the Army CID, and the FBI has been noticeably — and uncharacteristically — absent from the scene. As the premier law enforcement agency in the United States, the FBI will often assume authority over investigations where there is even a hint of terrorism. Since 9/11, the number of FBI/JTTF offices across the country has been dramatically increased, and the JTTFs are specifically charged with investigating cases that may involve terrorism. Therefore, we find the FBI’s absence in this case to be quite out of the ordinary.
However, with Hasan being a member of the armed forces, the victims being soldiers or army civilian employees and the incident occurring at Fort Hood, the case would seem to fall squarely under the mantle of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). From a prosecutorial perspective, a homicide trial under the UCMJ should be very tidy and could be quickly concluded. It will not involve all the potential loose ends that could pop up in a federal terrorism trial, especially when those loose ends involve what the FBI and CIA knew about Hasan, when they learned it and who they told. Also, politically, there are some who would like to see the Hasan case remain a criminal matter rather than a case of terrorism. Following the shooting death of Luqman Ameen Abdullah and considering the delicate relationship between Muslim advocacy groups and the U.S. government, some people would rather see Hasan portrayed as a mentally disturbed criminal than as an ideologically driven lone wolf.
Despite the CID taking the lead in prosecuting the case, the classified national security investigation by the CIA and FBI into Hasan and his possible connections to jihadist elements is undoubtedly continuing. Senior members of the government will certainly demand to know if Hasan had any confederates, if he was part of a bigger plot and if there are more attacks to come. Several congressmen and senators are also calling for hearings into the case, and if such hearings occur, they will certainly produce an abundance of interesting information pertaining to Hasan and the national security investigation of his activities.

Mexico: Emergence of an Unexpected Threat

Scott Stewart

Stratfor

September 30

At approximately 2 a.m. on Sept. 25, a small improvised explosive device (IED) consisting of three or four butane canisters was used to attack a Banamex bank branch in the Milpa Alta delegation of Mexico City. The device damaged an ATM and shattered the bank’s front windows. It was not an isolated event. The bombing was the seventh recorded IED attack in the Federal District — and the fifth such attack against a local bank branch — since the beginning of September.

The attack was claimed in a communique posted to a Spanish-language anarchist Web site by a group calling itself the Subversive Alliance for the Liberation of the Earth, Animals and Humans (ASLTAH). The note said, “Once again we have proven who our enemies are,” indicating that the organization’s “cells for the dissolution of civilization” were behind the other, similar attacks. The communique noted that the organization had attacked Banamex because it was a “business that promotes torture, destruction and slavery” and vowed that ASLTAH would not stop attacking “until we see your ashes.” The group closed its communique by sending greetings to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the “eco-pyromaniacs for the liberation of the earth in this place.” Communiques have also claimed some of the other recent IED attacks in the name of ASLTAH.

On Sept. 22, authorities also discovered and disabled a small IED left outside of a MetLife insurance office in Guadalajara, Jalisco state. A message spray-painted on a wall near where the device was found read, “Novartis stop torturing animals,” a reference to the multinational pharmaceutical company, which has an office near where the IED was found and which has been heavily targeted by the group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). Novartis is a large customer of Huntingdon Life Sciences, the research company SHAC was formed to destroy because Huntingdon uses animals in its testing for harmful side effects of drugs, chemicals and consumer items. A second message spray-painted on a wall near where the device was found on Sept. 22 read, “Novartis break with HLS.” Two other IEDs were detonated at banks in Mexico City on the same day.

These IED attacks are the most recent incidents in a wave of anarchist, animal rights, and eco-protest attacks that have swept across Mexico this year. Activists have conducted literally hundreds of incidents of vandalism, arson and, in more recent months, IED attacks in various locations across the country. The most active cells are in Mexico City and Guadalajara.

For a country in the midst of a bloody cartel war in which thousands of people are killed every year — and where serious crimes like kidnapping terrorize nearly every segment of society — direct-action attacks by militant activists are hardly the biggest threat faced by the Mexican government. However, the escalation of direct-action attacks in Mexico that has resulted in the more frequent use of IEDs shows no sign of abating, and these attacks are likely to grow more frequent, spectacular and deadly.

The Wave

Precisely quantifying the wave of direct-action attacks in Mexico is difficult for a number of reasons. One is that the reporting of such incidents is spotty and the police, the press and the activists themselves are often not consistent in what they report and how. Moreover, is often hard to separate direct-action vandalism from incidents of plain old non-political vandalism or tell the difference between an anarchist IED attack against a bank and an IED attack against a bank conducted by a Marxist group such as the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR). Then there is the issue of counting. Should a series of five Molotov cocktail attacks against ATMs or the destruction of 20 Telmex phone booths in one night be counted as one attack or as separate incidents?

If we count conservatively — e.g., consider a series of like incidents as one — we can say there have been around 200 direct-action attacks to date in 2009. But if we count each incident separately, we can easily claim there have been more than 400 such attacks. For example, by our count, there have been more than 350 Telmex phone booths smashed, burned or otherwise vandalized so far this year. (Activists will do things like glue metal shavings into the calling-card and coin slots.) However, for the sake of this analysis we’ll go with the conservative number of about 200 attacks.

Now, Telmex seems to be the most popular target so far for direct-action attacks. In addition to hitting phone booths, activists also have attacked Telmex vehicles and offices and have cut Telmex cables. From their statements, the activists appear to hold a special hatred for Carlos Slim, one of the richest men in the world and the chairman of Telmex and several other companies. In many ways, Slim — a patriarchal billionaire industrialist — is the personification of almost everything that the anarchistic activists hate. In addition to Telmex and banks, the activists also have attacked other targets such as restaurants (including McDonald’s and KFC), meat shops, pet shops, fur and leather stores, luxury vehicles, and construction equipment.

The activists’ most common tactics tend to be on the lower end of the violence scale and include graffiti and paint (frequently red to symbolize the blood of animals) to vandalize a target. They also frequently release captive birds or animals as well as use superglue and pieces of metal to obstruct locks, pay phones and ATM card readers. Moving up the violence continuum, activists less frequently will break windows, burn buildings and vehicles, and make bomb threats — there have been at least 157 incidents involving arson or incendiary devices so far in 2009.

To help put this into perspective, these activists have conducted more arson attacks in Mexico to date in 2009 than their American counterparts have conducted in the United States since 2001.

At the high end of the violence spectrum are the IED attacks, and this is where there has really been an increase in activity in recent weeks. In the first six months of 2009, there were several bomb threats and hoaxes and a few acid bombs, but only two real IEDs were used. In June, July and August there was one IED attack per month — and so far in September there have been seven IED attacks in Mexico City alone and one successful attack and one attempted attack in Guadalajara. Again, by way of comparison, these eight IED attacks by Mexican activists in September are more than American activists have conducted in the United States since 2001.

Proliferation of IEDs

There are several factors that can explain this trend toward the activists’ increasing use of IEDs. The first is, quite simply, that IEDs generate more attention than graffiti, glue or even an arson attack — indeed, here we are devoting a weekly security report to activist IED attacks in Mexico. In light of the overall level of violence in Mexico, most observers have ignored the past lower-level activity by these activist groups, and IEDs help cut through the noise and bring attention to the activists’ causes. The scope and frequency of IED attacks this month ensured that they could not be overlooked.

The second factor is the learning curve of the cells’ bombmakers. As a bombmaker becomes more proficient in his tradecraft, the devices he crafts tend to become both more reliable and more powerful. The improvement in tradecraft also means that the bombmaker is able to increase his operational tempo and deploy devices more frequently. It is quite possible that the few IEDs that were reported as hoaxes in March, April and May could have been IEDs that did not function properly — a common occurrence for new bombmakers who do not extensively test their devices.

The third factor is thrill and ego. In many past cases, militant activists have launched progressively larger attacks. One reason for this is that after a series of direct-action attacks, the activists get bored doing lower-level things like gluing locks or paint-stripping cars and they move to more destructive and spectacular attacks, such as those using timed incendiary devices. For many activists, there is a thrill associated with getting increased attention for the cause, in causing more damage to their targets and in getting away with increasingly brazen attacks.

Finally, in recent years, we have noted a shift among activist groups away from a strict concern for human life. Many activists are becoming convinced that less violent tactics have been ineffective, and if they really want to save the Earth and animals, they need to take more aggressive action. There is a small but growing fringe of hard-core activists who believe that, to paraphrase Lenin, you have to break eggs to make an omelet.

The Ruckus Society, a direct-action activist training organization, explains it this way in a training document: “There is a law against breaking into a house. However, if you break into a house as part of a greater good, such as rushing into the house to save a child from a fire, it is permissible to break that law. In fact, you can say that there is even a moral obligation to break that law. In the same way then, it is permissible to break minor laws to save the Earth.” In general, activists do not condone violent action directed at humans, but neither do they always condemn it in very strong terms — they often explain that the anger that prompts such violence is “understandable” in light of what they perceive as ecological injustice and cruelty to animals.

In recent years there has been a polarization in the animal rights and environmental movements, with fringe activists becoming increasingly isolated and violent — and more likely to use potentially deadly tools like IEDs in their attacks.

Confluences

The very name of ASLTAH — the Subversive Alliance for the Liberation of the Earth, Animals and Humans — illustrates the interesting confluence of animal rights, ecological activism and anti-imperialism/anarchism that inhabit the radical fringe. It is not uncommon for one cell of independent activists to claim it carried out its attacks under the banner of “organizations” such as ELF, ALF or SHAC. In true anarchistic style, however, these organizations are amorphous and nonhierarchical — there is no single ELF, ALF or SHAC. Rather, the individual activists and cells who act on behalf of the organizations control their own activities while adhering to guidelines circulated in meetings and conferences, via the Internet, and in various magazines, newsletters and other publications. These individual activists and cells are driven only by their consciences, or by group decisions within the cell. This results in a level of operational security that can be hard for law enforcement and security officials to breach.

As noted above, these activists have been far more active in Mexico than they have in the United States. One reason for this is that the operating environment north of the border is markedly different than it is in Mexico. In the United States, the FBI and local and state police agencies have focused hard on these activists, and groups like ELF and ALF have been branded as domestic terrorists. There have been several major investigations into these groups in recent years.

South of the border it is a different matter. Mexican authorities are plagued with problems ranging from drug cartels to Marxist terrorist/insurgent groups like the EPR to rampant police and government corruption. Simply put, there is a vacuum of law and order in Mexico and that vacuum is clearly reflected in statistics such as the number of kidnappings inside the country every year. The overall level of violence in Mexico and this vacuum of authority provide room for the activists to operate, and the host of other crime and violence issues plaguing the country works to ensure that the authorities are simply too busy to place much emphasis on investigating activist attacks and catching those responsible for them. Therefore, the activists operate boldly and with a sense of impunity that often leads to an increase in violence — especially within the context of a very violent place, which Mexico is at the present time.

This atmosphere means that the activist cells behind the increase in IED attacks will be able to continue their campaigns against assorted capitalist, animal and ecological targets with very little chance of being seriously pursued. Consequently, as the IED campaign continues, the attacks will likely become more frequent and more destructive. And given Mexico’s densely populated cities and the activists’ target sets, this escalation will ensure that the attacks will eventually turn deadly.

Libya: A Hero's Welcome

Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

Stratfor

August 26

On Aug. 24, Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill addressed a special session of the Scottish Parliament. The session was called so that MacAskill could explain why he had decided to release Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the former Libyan intelligence officer convicted of terrorism charges in connection with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and who had been expected to spend the rest of his life in prison. MacAskill said he granted al-Megrahi a compassionate release because al-Megrahi suffers from terminal prostate cancer and is expected to live only a few months.
The Aug. 20 release of al-Megrahi ignited a firestorm of outrage in both the United Kingdom and the United States. FBI Director Robert Mueller released to the press contents of an uncharacteristically blunt and critical letter he had written to MacAskill in which Mueller characterized al-Megrahi’s release as inexplicable and “detrimental to the cause of justice.” Mueller told MacAskill in the letter that the release “makes a mockery of the rule of law.”
The flames of outrage over the release of al-Megrahi were further fanned when al-Megrahi received a hero’s welcome upon his arrival in Tripoli — video of him being welcomed and embraced by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was broadcast all over the world.
For his part, Gadhafi has long lobbied for al-Megrahi’s release, even while taking steps to end Libya’s status as an international pariah. Gadhafi first renounced terrorism and his nuclear ambitions in 2003, shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In October 2008 he completed the compensation agreement with the families of the U.S. victims of the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 and of an April 1986 Libyan attack against the La Belle disco in Berlin.

Yet despite the conviction of al-Megrahi, the 2003 official admission of Libyan responsibility for the Pan Am bombing in a letter to the United Nations, and the agreement to pay compensation to the families of the Pan Am victims, Gadhafi has always maintained in public statements that al-Megrahi and Libya were not responsible for the bombing. The official admission of responsibility for the Pan Am bombing, coupled with the public denials, has resulted in a great deal of ambiguity and confusion over the authorship of the attack — which, in all likelihood, is precisely what the denials were intended to do.

The Pan Am 103 Investigation

At 7:03 p.m. on Dec. 21, 1988, an improvised explosive device (IED) detonated in one of Pan Am Flight 103’s cargo containers, causing the plane to break apart and fall from the sky. The 259 passengers and crew members aboard the flight died, as did 11 residents of Lockerbie, Scotland, the town where the remnants of the jumbo jet fell.
Immediately following the bombing, there was suspicion that the Iranians or Syrians had commissioned the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC) to conduct the bombing. This belief was based on the fact that German authorities had taken down a large PFLP-GC cell in Frankfurt in October 1988 and that one member of the cell had in his possession an IED concealed inside a Toshiba radio. Frankfurt is the city where Pan Am 103 departed before stopping in London. Indeed, even today, there are still some people who believe that the PFLP-GC was commissioned by either the Iranian or the Syrian government to conduct the Pan Am bombing.
The PFLP-GC theory might eventually have become the officially accepted theory had the bomb on Pan Am 103 detonated (as planned) while the aircraft was over the North Atlantic Ocean. However, a delay in the plane’s departure from London resulted in the timed device detonating while the aircraft was still over land, and this allowed authorities to collect a great deal of evidence that had been scattered across a wide swath of the Scottish countryside. The search effort was one of the most complex crime-scene investigations ever conducted.
Through months of painstakingly detailed effort, investigators were able to determine that the aircraft was brought down by an IED containing a main charge of Semtex, that the IED had been placed inside a Toshiba radio cassette player (in a macabre coincidence, that particular model of Toshiba, the RT-SF 16, is called the “BomBeat radio cassette player”), and that the radio had been located inside a brown Samsonite hard-side suitcase located inside the cargo container.
Investigators were also able to trace the clothing inside the suitcase containing the IED to a specific shop, Mary’s House, in Sliema, Malta. While examining one of the pieces of Maltese clothing in May 1989, investigators found a fragment of a circuit board that did not match anything found in the Toshiba radio. It is important to remember that in a bombing, the pieces of the IED do not entirely disappear. They may be shattered and scattered, but they are not usually completely vaporized. Although some pieces may be damaged beyond recognition, others are not, and this often allows investigators to reconstruct the device
In mid-1990, after an exhaustive effort to identify the circuit-board fragment, the FBI laboratory in Washington was able to determine that the circuit board was very similar to one that came from a timer that a special agent with the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service had recovered from an arms cache while investigating a Libyan-sponsored coup attempt in Lome, Togo, in 1986. Further investigation determined that the company that produced the timers, the Swiss company MEBO, had sold as many as 20 of the devices to the Libyan government, and that the Libyan government was the company’s primary customer. Interestingly, in 1988, MEBO rented one of its offices in Zurich to a firm called ABH, which was run by two Libyan intelligence officers: Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Badri Hassan.
The MEBO timer, model MST-13, is very different from the ice-cube timer in the PFLP-GC device found in Frankfurt in October 1988. Additionally, the ice-cube timer in the PFLP-GC device was used in conjunction with a barometric pressure switch, and the IED used a different main charge, TNT, instead of the Semtex used in the Pan Am 103 device.
Perhaps the fact that does the most damage to the PFLP-GC conspiracy theory is that the principal bombmaker for the PFLP-GC Frankfurt cell (and the man who made the PFLP-GC Toshiba device), Marwan Khreesat, was actually an infiltrator sent into the organization by the Jordanian intelligence service. Kreesat not only assisted in providing the information that allowed the Germans to take down the cell, but he was under strict orders by his Jordanian handlers to ensure that every IED he constructed was not capable of detonating. Therefore, it is extremely unlikely that one of the IEDs he created was used to destroy Pan Am 103.
One of the Libyans connected to MEBO, al-Megrahi, is an interesting figure. Not only was he an officer with Libyan intelligence, the External Security Organization, or ESO, but he also served as the chief of security for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA) and had visited Malta many times. The owner of the Mary’s House clothing shop in Sliema identified al-Megrahi as the man who purchased the clothing found in the suitcase, and Maltese immigration records indicated that al-Megrahi was in Malta on Dec. 7, 1988, the time that the clothing was purchased. Al-Megrahi left Malta on Dec. 9, 1988, but returned to the country using a false identity on Dec. 20, using a passport issued by the ESO in the name of Ahmed Khalifa Abdusamad. Al-Megrahi left Malta using the Abdusamad passport on Dec. 21, 1988, the day the suitcase was apparently sent from Malta aboard Air Malta Flight KM180 to Frankfurt and then transferred to Pan Am 103.
On Nov. 13, 1991, the British government charged al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, the LAA station manager at Luqa Airport in Malta, with the bombing. One day later, a federal grand jury in the United States returned an indictment against the same two men for the crime. In March 1995, the FBI added the two men to its most wanted list and the Diplomatic Security Service’s Rewards for Justice Program offered a $4 million reward for their capture. Al-Megrahi and Fhimah were placed under house arrest in Libya — a comfortable existence that, more than actually confining them, served to protect them from being kidnapped and spirited out of Libya to face trial.
After many years of boycotts, embargos, U.N. resolutions and diplomatic wrangling — including extensive efforts by South African President Nelson Mandela and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan — a compromise was reached and all parties agreed to a trial in a neutral country — the Netherlands — conducted under Scottish law. On April 5, 1999, al-Megrahi and Fhimah were transferred to Camp Zeist in the Netherlands to stand trial before a special panel of Scottish judges.
On Jan. 31, 2001, after a very long trial that involved an incredible amount of technical and detailed testimony, the judges reached their decision. The Scottish judges acquitted Fhimah, finding that there was not proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he was involved in the plot (the British government had charged that he had been the person who stole the luggage tags and placed the suitcase on the Air Malta flight), but they did find al-Megrahi guilty of 270 counts of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum sentence of 27 years.
Although the case against al-Megrahi was entirely circumstantial — there was no direct evidence he or Fhimah had placed the device aboard the aircraft — the Scottish judges wrote in their decision that they believed the preponderance of the evidence, including al-Megrahi’s knowledge of airline security measures and procedures, his connection to MEBO, his purchase of the clothing in the suitcase that had contained the IED and his clandestine travel to Malta on Dec. 20 to 21, 1988, convinced them beyond a reasonable doubt that al-Megrahi was guilty as charged.
In a December 2003 letter to the United Nations, Libya accepted responsibility for the Pan Am 103 bombing. (In the same letter, Libya also took responsibility for the September 1989 bombing of UTA Flight 772, a French airliner destroyed by an IED after leaving Brazzaville, Congo, and making a stop in N’Djamena, Chad. All 170 people aboard the aircraft died when it broke up over the Sahara in Niger.) Nevertheless, the Libyan government continued to maintain al-Megrahi’s innocence in the Pan Am bombing, just as al-Megrahi had done throughout the trial, insisting that he had not been involved in the bombing.
Al-Megrahi’s reluctance to admit responsibility for the bombing or to show any contrition for the attack is one of the factors singled out by those who opposed his release from prison. It is also one of the hallmarks of a professional intelligence officer. In many ways, al-Megrahi’s public stance regarding the bombing can be summed up by the unofficial motto of the CIA’s Office of Technical Services — “Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations.”

Shadows

In the shadow world of covert action it is not uncommon for the governments behind such actions to deny (or at least not claim) responsibility for them. These governments also often attempt to plan such attacks in a way that will lead to a certain level of ambiguity — and thereby provide plausible deniability. This was a characteristic seen in many Libyan attacks against U.S. interests, such as the 1986 La Belle Disco bombing in Berlin. It was only an intercept of Libyan communications that provided proof of Libyan responsibility for that attack.
Many attacks that the Libyans sponsored or subcontracted out, such as the string of attacks carried out against U.S. interests by members of the Japanese Red Army and claimed in the name of the Anti-Imperialist International Brigade, were likewise meant to provide Libya with plausible deniability. Gadhafi did not relish the possibility of another American airstrike on his home in Tripoli, like the one that occurred after the La Belle attack in April 1986. (A number of Libyan military targets also were hit in the broader U.S. military action, known as Operation El Dorado Canyon.) Pan Am 103 is considered by many to be Gadhafi’s retribution for those American airstrikes, one of which killed his adopted baby daughter. Gadhafi, who had reportedly been warned of the strike by the Italian government, was not injured in the attack.
During the 1980s, the Libyan government was locked in a heated tit-for-tat battle with the United States. One source of this friction were U.S. claims that the Libyan government supported terrorist groups such as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), which conducted several brutal, high-profile attacks in the 1980s, including the December 1985 Rome and Vienna airport assaults. There was also military tension between the two countries as Libya declared a “line of death” across the mouth of the Gulf of Sidra. The U.S. Navy shot down several Libyan fighter aircraft that had attempted to enforce the edict. But these two threads of tension were closely intertwined; the U.S. Navy purposefully challenged the line of death in the spring of 1986 in response to the Rome and Vienna attacks, and it is believed that the La Belle attack was retribution for the U.S. military action in the Gulf of Sidra. The Libyan ESO was also directly implicated in attacks against U.S. diplomats in Sanaa, Yemen, and Khartoum, Sudan, in 1986.
Because of the need for plausible deniability, covert operatives are instructed to stick to their cover story and maintain their innocence if they are caught. Al-Megrahi’s consistent denials and his many appeals, which often cite the PFLP-GC case in Frankfurt, have done a great deal to sow doubt and provide Libya with some deniability.
Like Osama bin Laden’s initial denial of responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, al-Megrahi’s claims of innocence have served as ready fuel for conspiracy theorists, who claim he was framed by the U.S. and British governments. However, any conspiracy to frame al-Megrahi and his Libyan masters would have to be very wide ranging and, by necessity, reach much further than just London and Washington. For example, anyone considering such a conspiracy must also account for the fact that in 1999 a French court convicted six Libyans in absentia for the 1989 bombing of UTA Flight 772. The six included Abdullah al-Sanussi, Gadhafi’s brother-in-law and head of the ESO.
Getting two or more governments to cooperate on some sort of grand conspiracy to frame the Libyans and exonerate the Iranians and Syrians is hard to fathom. Such cooperation would have to involve enough people that, sooner or later, someone would spill the beans — especially considering that the Pan Am 103 saga played out over multiple U.S. administrations. As seen by the current stir over CIA interrogation programs, administrations love to make political hay by revealing the cover-ups of previous administrations. Surely, if there had been a secret ploy by the Reagan or Bush administrations to frame the Libyans, the Clinton or Obama administration would have outed it. The same principle applies to the United Kingdom, where Margaret Thatcher’s government oversaw the beginning of the Pan Am 103 investigation and Labour governments after 1997 would have had the incentive to reveal information to the contrary.
While the U.S. and British governments work closely together on a number of intelligence projects, they are frequently at odds on counterterrorism policy and foreign relations. From our personal experience, we believe that it would be very difficult to get multiple U.S. and British administrations from different political parties to work in perfect harmony to further this sort of conspiracy. Due to the UTA investigation and trial, the conspiracy would have to somehow involve the French government. While the Americans working with the British is one thing, the very idea of the Americans, British and French working in perfect harmony on any sort of project — much less a grand secret conspiracy to frame the Libyans — is simply unimaginable. It is much easier to believe that the Libyans were guilty, especially in light of the litany of other terror attacks they committed or sponsored during that era.
Had the IED in the cargo hold of Pan Am 103 exploded over the open ocean, it is very unlikely that the clothing from Malta and the fragment of the MEBO timer would have ever been recovered — think of the difficulty the French have had in locating the black box from Air France 447 in June of this year. In such a scenario, the evidence linking al-Megrahi and the Libyan government to the Pan Am bombing might never have been discovered and plausible deniability could have been maintained indefinitely.
The evidence recovered in Scotland and al-Megrahi’s eventual conviction put a dent in that deniability, but the true authors of the attack — al-Megrahi’s superiors — were never formally charged. Without al-Megrahi’s cooperation, there was no evidence to prove who ordered him to undertake the attack, though it is logical to conclude that the ESO would never undertake such a significant attack without Gadhafi’s approval.
Now that al-Megrahi has returned to Libya and is in Libyan safekeeping, there is no chance that any death-bed confession he may give will ever make it to the West. His denials will be his final words and the ambiguity and doubt those denials cast will be his legacy. In the shadowy world of clandestine operations, this is the ideal behavior for someone caught committing an operational act. He has shielded his superiors and his government to the end. From the perspective of the ESO, and Moammar Gadhafi, al-Megrahi is indeed a hero.

Confidential Informants: A Double-Edged Sword

Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

Stratfor

August 19

Police in El Paso, Texas, announced Aug. 11 that they had arrested three suspects in the May 15 shooting death of Jose Daniel Gonzalez Galeana, a Juarez cartel lieutenant who had been acting as a confidential informant (CI) for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. It was an activity that prompted the Juarez cartel to put out a hit on him, and Gonzalez was shot multiple times outside his home in an upscale El Paso neighborhood. A fourth suspect was arrested shortly after the Aug. 11 announcement. Among the suspects is an 18-year-old U.S. Army soldier stationed at nearby Fort Bliss who the other suspects said had been hired by one of the leaders of the Juarez cartel to pull the trigger on Gonzalez. The suspects also include two other teenagers, a 17-year-old and a 16-year-old.
The man who recruited the teenagers, Ruben Rodriguez Dorado — also a lieutenant in the Juarez cartel — has also been arrested, and the emerging details of the case paint him as a most interesting figure. After receiving orders from his superiors in the Juarez cartel to kill Gonzalez, Rodriguez was able to freely enter the United States and conduct an extensive effort to locate Gonzalez — he reportedly even paid Gonzalez’s cell phone bill in an effort to obtain his address. Armed with the address, he then conducted extensive surveillance of Gonzalez and carefully planned the assassination, which was then carried out by the young gunman he had recruited.
The sophistication of Rodriguez’s investigative and surveillance efforts is impressive, and the Gonzalez hit was not the first time he undertook such tasks. According to an affidavit filed in state court, Rodriguez told investigators that he also located and surveilled targets for assassination in Mexico. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this case is that the entire time Rodriguez was plotting the Gonzalez assassination he, too, was working as a CI for ICE.
While it is unclear at this point if ICE agents played any part in helping Rodriguez find Gonzalez, at the very least, Rodriguez’s status as an ICE informant would certainly have been useful in camouflaging his nefarious activities and could have given him some level of official cover. Although Rodriguez was a legal permanent resident of the United States, having friends in ICE would allow him to cross the border repeatedly without much scrutiny and help deflect suspicion if he were caught while conducting surveillance.
Without having access to the information Rodriguez was providing to ICE, it is very difficult for us to assess if Rodriguez’s work with ICE was sanctioned by the Juarez cartel, or if he was merely playing both ends against the middle. However, when one examines the reach, scope and sophistication of the Mexican cartels’ intelligence efforts, it is clear that several of the cartels have demonstrated the ability to operate more like a foreign intelligence service than a traditional criminal organization. This means that it is highly possible that Rodriguez was what we refer to in intelligence parlance as a double agent — someone who pretends to spy on an organization but is, in fact, loyal to that organization.
Whether Rodriguez was a double agent or just an out-of-control CI, this case provides a clear example of the problems encountered when law enforcement agencies handle CIs — problems that become even more pronounced when the informant is associated with a sophisticated and well-financed organization.

Choir Boys Need Not Apply

While CIs can be incredibly valuable sources of information, running a CI is a delicate operation even under the best of circumstances, and poses a wide array of problems and pitfalls. The first and most obvious issue is that most people who have access to the inner workings of a criminal organization, and therefore the most valuable intelligence, are themselves criminals. Upstanding, honest citizens simply do not normally have access to the plans of criminal gangs or understand their organizational hierarchy. This means that authorities need to recruit or flip lower-level criminals in order to work their way up the food chain and go after bigger targets. In the violent world of the Mexican drug cartels, sending an undercover agent to infiltrate a cartel is extremely dangerous. Therefore, using CIs is even more important in such investigations than it is while working against other types of criminals.
The fact that many CIs are criminals means that not only do they frequently come with a heavy load of psychopathic and sociopathic baggage, but in order to stay in good standing within their organization, they often need to continue to commit illegal acts while working for the government, though the type of criminal activity permitted is often carefully delineated by the government. Not infrequently, these illegal acts can come back to haunt the agency operating the CI, so maintaining control of the CI is very important.
CIs can also come with a host of motivations. While some informants are motivated by money, or promises to have charges dropped or reduced, other informants will provide information to the authorities out of revenge or in order to further their own criminal schemes either by using law enforcement as a way to take out rival gangs or even a rival within their own organization. Because of these varying motivations, it can be very difficult to tell when CIs are fabricating information or when they are trying to manipulate the authorities. In fact, it is not at all uncommon for inexperienced or vulnerable handlers to lose control of a CI. In extreme cases, it is even possible for a smooth and sophisticated CI to end up controlling their handler. And this is not just confined to ICE or small-town police departments; there have been instances of FBI and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents being manipulated and controlled by their CIs.
Out-of-control CIs can do things like refuse to follow orders, shut off recorders or edit recordings, tape meetings and calls with handlers, or even commit murders and other serious crimes while working with authorities. There have also been cases of handlers getting involved in sexual relationships with CIs, providing drugs to CIs, and even committing crimes with CIs who were manipulating them.
At the high end of the threat scale, there is also the possibility that informants will be consciously sent to the authorities in order to serve as double agents, or that the criminal organization they work for will double them back once it is learned that they have decided to begin cooperating with the authorities. Many federal agencies polygraph sources, but polygraph operators can be fooled and polygraphs are of limited utility on people who have no moral compunction about lying. Therefore, while agencies take efforts to vet their CIs, such efforts are often ineffective.
Double agents are particularly useful for the criminal organization because they can intentionally feed very specific information to the authorities in order to manipulate enforcement activities. For example, in the case of the Juarez cartel, they could tip off authorities to a small shipment of narcotics in one part of the sector in order to draw attention away from a larger shipment moving through another part of the sector. Of course, the fact that the CI provided accurate information pertaining to the smaller shipment also serves to increase his value to the authorities. In the case of a double agent, almost everything he provides will usually be accurate — although this accurate information is pretty much calculated to be harmless to the criminal organization (though organizations have used double agents to pass on information to the authorities that will allow them to take action against rival criminal gangs). The outstanding accuracy of the intelligence reported will cause the double agent to be trusted more than most regular CIs, and this makes double agents particularly difficult to uncover.

Not Typical Criminals

When considering the Mexican drug cartels, it is very important to remember that they are not typical criminal gangs. The cartels are billion-dollar organizations that employ large groups of heavily armed enforcers, and many of the cartels have invested the time and resources necessary to develop highly sophisticated intelligence apparatuses.
Such intelligence apparatuses are perhaps best seen in the realm of public corruption. Some of the Mexican cartels have a long history of successfully corrupting public officials on both sides of the border. Groups like the Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO) have recruited scores of intelligence assets and agents of influence at the local, state and even federal levels of the Mexican government. They even have enjoyed significant success in recruiting agents in elite units such as the anti-organized crime unit of the Mexican attorney general’s office. The BLO even allegedly recruited Mexico’s former drug czar, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, who reportedly was receiving $450,000 per month from the organization. This recruitment also extends to all levels of government in the United States, where Cartels have recruited local, state and federal officials. Many of the assassination operations the cartels have launched against one another and against senior Mexican officials have also demonstrated the advanced intelligence capabilities of the Mexican cartels.
With the money to buy foreign expertise and equipment, the Mexican cartels have been able to set up counterintelligence branches that can administer polygraph examinations, signals intelligence branches that can intercept the authorities’ communications and even elaborate (and well-funded) units designed to identify and bribe vulnerable public officials. The Mexican cartels also assign people to infiltrate law-enforcement agencies by applying for jobs. According to a report released last week, in a 10-month period, four applicants for U.S. border law enforcement positions were found through background checks and polygraph examinations to be infiltrators from drug-trafficking organizations. It is important to remember that these four were only those who were caught, and not all agencies submit applicants to the same scrutiny, so the scope of the problem is likely much larger. In light of this history of cartel intelligence activity, it is not unreasonable to assume that the cartels possess the sophistication and skills to employ double agents.

Alphabet Soup

Running a CI against a Mexican cartel is also greatly complicated by the number of agencies involved in the struggle against them. Among local, state and federal entities there are scores of agencies in El Paso alone with some sort of jurisdiction working against the cartels. The agencies range from obvious ones such as the DEA, FBI, Texas Rangers, El Paso Police and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to the less obvious such as the Internal Revenue Service, the Union Pacific Railroad Police and the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Command at Fort Bliss.
This jumble of jurisdictions creates a very difficult environment for working with CIs. Not only are agencies legitimately concerned about protecting the identities of their CIs due to the possibility of corruption in other agencies, but there is also the issue of competition. Agencies are afraid of other, better-funded agencies stealing their informants. If a local police detective has developed a very good dope source, the last thing in the world he wants is for ICE or the DEA to take control of his source, which would in all likelihood mean that he will lose all the information the CI was providing. Likewise, if an ICE agent has developed a good Mexican cartel source, the last thing he wants is for the DEA or FBI to take control of the source.
In the human intelligence world, there is a lot of jealousy and suspicion. This not only means that information is not fully shared across agencies but also that agencies are very reluctant to run checks on their CIs through other agencies for fear of divulging their identities. This insulation results in some CIs double- or even triple-dipping, that is, working with other agencies and providing the same information in exchange for additional payments. This fragmentation also results in the agency running the CI not being able to learn of critical information pertaining to the past (or even current) activities of their CI. It means, too, that the agency that recruits the CI in some cases is simply not in the best position to take full advantage of the information provided by the CI, or that agency competition and institutional rivalries prevent the CI from being turned over to a more capable agency. Certainly, on its face, ICE would not be the best, most logical agency to handle a source like Rodriguez, who was a lieutenant in the Juarez cartel tasked with conducting assassination operations.
The fear associated with the potential compromise of CI identities inside an agency or task force due to corruption can also affect the operational effectiveness of law enforcement operations. It is hard to get much of anything done when people are worried about who may be a mole on the cartel payroll.

Nowhere to Hide

One last thing to consider in the Gonzalez assassination is that it highlights the fact that even though targets will seek shelter inside the United States, Mexican drug cartels will follow them across the border in order to kill them, something we have discussed for several years now. Moreover, incidents like the Gonzalez hit will likely cause high-value cartel targets to move even deeper into the United States to avoid attack — and their enemies’ brazen and sophisticated assassins will likely follow.
Rodriguez’s use of teenage assassins to kill Gonzalez is also in keeping with a trend we have seen in Laredo and elsewhere, that of the cartels recruiting young street-gang members and training them to be assassins. Young gunmen working for Los Zetas in Laredo, Houston, San Antonio and elsewhere have been given the nickname “Zetitas,” or little Zetas. In is not surprising to see the Juarez cartel also employing young gunmen. Not only are the young gunmen easily influenced, fearless and hungry for money and respect, but the cartels believe that the younger offenders are expendable if caught or killed, and will also do less time than an adult if they are arrested and convicted. These young killers are also not given much information about their employers in the event they are captured and interrogated by police.
In the final analysis, CIs are a necessary evil and can be a very effective weapon in the law enforcement arsenal. Like any weapon, however, CIs must be carefully managed, maintained and employed to make sure they are not used against the law enforcement agencies themselves.

Cold War in the middle of Europe

Russia versus Czech Republic.

What's next?

Lockerbie bomber, possible release?

For the moment, there are only the splits between US and Britain, regarding a possible release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the terrorist behind Lockerbie bombing.

Libya - country profile

Hypothesizing on the Iran-Russia-U.S. Triangle

George Friedman
Stratfor
August 10

For the past several weeks, STRATFOR has focused on the relationship between Russia and Iran. As our readers will recall, a pro-Rafsanjani demonstration that saw chants of “Death to Russia,” uncommon in Iran since the 1979 revolution, triggered our discussion. It caused us to rethink Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Russia just four days after Iran’s disputed June 12 presidential election, with large-scale demonstrations occurring in Tehran. At the time, we ascribed Ahmadinejad’s trip as an attempt to signal his lack of concern at the postelection unrest. But why did a pro-Rafsanjani crowd chant “Death to Russia?” What had the Russians done to trigger the bitter reaction from the anti-Ahmadinejad faction? Was the Iranian president’s trip as innocent as it first looked?

A Net Assessment Re-examined

At STRATFOR, we proceed with what we call a “net assessment,” a broad model intended to explain the behavior of all players in a game. Our net assessment of Iran had the following three components:
Despite the rhetoric, the Iranian nuclear program was far from producing a deliverable weapon, although a test explosion within a few years was a distinct possibility.
Iran essentially was isolated in the international community, with major powers’ feelings toward Tehran ranging from hostile to indifferent. Again, rhetoric aside, this led Iran to a cautious foreign policy designed to avoid triggering hostility.
Russia was the most likely supporter of Iran, but Moscow would avoid becoming overly involved out of fears of the U.S. reaction, of uniting a fractious Europe with the United States and of being drawn into a literally explosive situation. The Russians, we felt, would fish in troubled waters, but would not change the regional calculus.

This view — in short, that Iran was contained — remained our view for about three years. It served us well in predicting, for example, that neither the United States nor Israel would strike Iran, and that the Russians would not transfer strategically significant weapons to Iran.
A net assessment is a hypothesis that must be continually tested against intelligence, however. The “Death to Russia” chant could not be ignored, nor could Ahmadinejad’s trip to Moscow.

More Free Intelligence

As we probed deeper, we found that Iran was swirling with rumors concerning Moscow’s relationship with both Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Little could be drawn from the rumors. Iran today is a hothouse for growing rumors, and all our searches ended in dead ends. But then, if Ahmadinejad and Khamenei were engaging the Russians in this atmosphere, we would expect rumors and dead ends.
Interestingly, the rumors were consistent that Ahmadinejad and Khamenei wanted a closer relationship to Russia, but diverged on the Russian response. Some said the Russians already had assisted the Iranians by providing intelligence ranging from Israeli networks in Lebanon to details of U.S. and British plans to destabilize Iran through a “Green Revolution” like the color revolutions that had ripped through the former Soviet Union (FSU).
Equally interesting were our Russian sources’ responses. Normally, they are happy to talk, if only to try to mislead us. (Our Russian sources are nothing if not voluble.) But when approached about Moscow’s thinking on Iran, they went silent; this silence stood out. Normally, our sources would happily speculate — but on this subject, there was no speculation. And the disciplined silence was universal. This indicated that those who didn’t know didn’t want to touch the subject, and that those who did know were keeping secrets. None of this proved anything, but taken together, it caused us to put our net assessment for Iran on hold. We could no longer take any theory for granted.
All of the foregoing must be considered in the context of the current geopolitical system. And that is a matter of understanding what is in plain sight.
Potential Russian Responses to Washington
The U.S.-Russian summit that took place after the Iranian elections did not go well. U.S. President Barack Obama’s attempt to divide Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Russian Prime Minister Putin did not bear fruit. The Russians were far more interested in whether Obama would change the FSU policy of former U.S. President George W. Bush. At the very least, the Russians wanted the Americans to stop supporting Ukraine’s and Georgia’s pro-Western tendencies.
But not only did Obama stick with the Bush policy, he dispatched U.S. Vice President Joe Biden to visit Ukraine and Georgia to drive home the continuity. This was followed by Biden’s interview with The Wall Street Journal, in which he essentially said the United States does not have to worry about Russia in the long run because Russia’s economic and demographic problems will undermine its power. Biden’s statements were completely consistent with the decision to send him to Georgia and Ukraine, so the Obama administration’s attempts to back away from the statement were not convincing. Certainly, the Russians were not convinced. The only conclusion the Russians could draw was that the United States regards them as a geopolitical cripple of little consequence.
If the Russians allow the Americans to poach in what Moscow regards as its sphere of influence without responding, the Russian position throughout the FSU would begin to unravel — the precise outcome the Americans hope for. So Moscow took two steps. First, Moscow heated up the military situation near Georgia on the anniversary of the first war, shifting its posture and rhetoric and causing the Georgians to warn of impending conflict. Second, Moscow increased its strategic assertiveness, escalating the tempo of Russian air operations near the United Kingdom and Alaska, and more important, deploying two Akula-class hunter-killer submarines along the East Coast of the United States. The latter is interesting, but ultimately unimportant. Increased tensions in Georgia are indeed significant, however, since the Russians have decisive power in that arena — and can act if they wish against the country, one Biden just visited to express American support.
But even a Russian move against Georgia would not be decisive. The Americans have stated that Russia is not a country to be taken seriously, and that Washington will therefore continue to disregard Russian interests in the FSU. In other words, the Americans were threatening fundamental Russian interests. The Russians must respond, or by default, they would be accepting the American analysis of the situation — and by extension, so would the rest of the world. Obama had backed the Russians into a corner.
When we look at the geopolitical chessboard, there are two places where the Russians could really hurt the Americans.
One is Germany. If Moscow could leverage Germany out of the Western alliance, this would be a geopolitical shift of the first order. Moscow has leverage with Berlin, as the Germans depend on Russian natural gas, and the two have recently been working on linking their economies even further. Moreover, the Germans are as uneasy with Obama as they were with Bush. German and American interests no longer mesh neatly. The Russians have been courting the Germans, but a strategic shift in Germany’s position is simply not likely in any time frame that matters to the Russians at this juncture — though the leaders of the two countries are meeting once again this week in Sochi, Russia, their second meeting in as many months.
The second point where the Russians could hurt the Americans is in Iran. An isolated Iran is not a concern. An Iran with a strong relationship to Russia is a very different matter. Not only would sanctions be rendered completely meaningless, but Iran could pose profound strategic problems for the United States, potentially closing off airstrike options on Iranian nuclear facilities.

The Strait of Hormuz: Iran’s Real Nuclear Option

The real nuclear option for Iran does not involve nuclear weapons. It would involve mining the Strait of Hormuz and the narrow navigational channels that make up the Persian Gulf. During the 1980s, when Iran and Iraq were at war, both sides attacked oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. This raised havoc on oil prices and insurance rates.
If the Iranians were to successfully mine these waters, the disruption to 40 percent of the world’s oil flow would be immediate and dramatic. The nastiest part of the equation would be that in mine warfare, it is very hard to know when all the mines have been cleared. It is the risk, not the explosions, which causes insurance companies to withdraw insurance on vastly expensive tankers and their loads. It is insurance that allows the oil to flow.
Just how many mines Iran might lay before being detected and bringing an American military response could vary by a great deal, but there is certainly the chance that Iran could lay a significant number of mines, including more modern influence mines that can take longer to clear. The estimates and calculations of minesweepers — much less of the insurers — would depend on a number of factors not available to us here. But there is the possibility that the strait could be effectively closed to supertankers for a considerable period. The effect on oil prices would be severe; it is not difficult to imagine this aborting the global recovery.
Iran would not want this outcome. Tehran, too, would be greatly affected by the economic fallout (while Iran is a net exporter of crude, it is a net importer of gasoline), and the mining would drive the Europeans and Americans together. The economic and military consequences of this would be severe. But it is this threat that has given pause to American and Israeli military planners gaming out scenarios to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. There are thousands of small watercraft along Iran’s coast, and Iran’s response to such raids might well be to use these vessels to strew mines in the Persian Gulf — or for swarming and perhaps even suicide attacks.
Notably, any decision to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities would have to be preceded by (among other things) an attempt to neutralize Iran’s mine-laying capability — along with its many anti-ship missile batteries — in the Persian Gulf. The sequence is fixed, since the moment the nuclear sites are bombed, it would have to be assumed that the minelayers would go to work, and they would work as quickly as they could. Were anything else attacked first, taking out the Iranian mine capability would be difficult, as Iran’s naval assets would scatter and lay mines wherever and however they could — including by swarms of speedboats capable of carrying a mine or two apiece and almost impossible to engage with airpower. This, incidentally, is a leading reason why Israel cannot unilaterally attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. They would be held responsible for a potentially disastrous oil shortage. Only the Americans have the resources to even consider dealing with the potential Iranian response, because only the Americans have the possibility of keeping Persian Gulf shipping open once the shooting starts. It also indicates that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be much more complex than a sudden strike completed in one day.
The United States cannot permit the Iranians to lay the mines. The Iranians in turn cannot permit the United States to destroy their mine-laying capability. This is the balance of power that limits both sides. If Iran were to act, the U.S. response would be severe. If the United States moves to neutralize Iran, the Iranians would have to push the mines out fast. For both sides, the risks of threatening the fundamental interests of the other side are too high. Both Iran and the United States have worked to avoid this real “nuclear” option.

The Russian Existential Counter

The Russians see themselves facing an existential threat from the Americans. Whether Washington agrees with Biden or not, this is the stated American view of Russia, and by itself it poses an existential threat to Russia. The Russians need an existential counterthreat — and for the United States, that threat relates to oil. If the Russians could seriously threaten the supply of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, the United States would lose its relatively risk-free position in the FSU.
It follows from this that strengthening Iran’s ability to threaten the flow of oil, while retaining a degree of Russian control over Iran’s ability to pull the trigger, would give Russia the counter it needs to American actions in the FSU. The transfer of more advanced mines and mining systems to Iran — such as mines that can be planted now and activated remotely (though most such mines can only lay, planted and unarmed, for a limited period) to more discriminating and difficult-to-sweep types of mines — would create a situation the Americans could neither suppress nor live with. As long as the Russians could maintain covert control of the trigger, Moscow could place the United States, and the West’s economies, in check.
Significantly, while this would wreak havoc on Persian Gulf producers and global oil consumers at a time when they are highly vulnerable to economic fluctuations, a spike in the price of oil would not hurt Russia. On the contrary, Russia is an energy exporter, making it one of the few winners under this scenario. That means the Russians can afford much greater risks in this game.
We do not know that the Russians have all this in mind. This is speculation, not a net assessment. We note that if Russo-Iranian contacts are real, they would have begun well before the Iranian elections and the summit. But the American view on Russia is not new and was no secret. Therefore, the Russians could have been preparing their counter for a while.
We also do not know that the Iranians support this Russian move. Iranian distrust of Russia runs deep, and so far only the faction supporting Ahmadinejad appears to be playing this game. But the more the United States endorses what it calls Iranian reformists, and supports Rafsanjani’s position, the more Ahmadinejad needs the Russian counter. And whatever hesitations the Russians might have had in moving closer to the Iranians, recent events have clearly created a sense in Moscow of being under attack. The Russians think politically. The Russians play chess, and the U.S. move to create pressure in the FSU must be countered somewhere.
In intelligence, you must take bits and pieces and analyze them in the context of the pressures and constraints the various actors face. You know what you don’t know, but you still must build a picture of the world based on incomplete data. At a certain point, you become confident in your intelligence and analysis and you lock it into what STRATFOR calls its net assessment. We have not arrived at a new net assessment by any means. Endless facts could overthrow our hypothesis. But at a certain point, on important matters we feel compelled to reveal our hypothesis not because we are convinced, but simply because it is sufficiently plausible to us — and the situation sufficiently important — that we feel we should share it with the appropriate caveats. In this case, the stakes are very high, and the hypothesis sufficiently plausible that it is worth sharing.
The geopolitical chessboard is shifting, though many of the pieces are invisible. The end may look very different than this, but if it winds up looking this way, it is certainly worth noting.

Strategic Calculus and the Afghan War

George Friedman

Stratfor

July 14

U.S. and allied forces began their first major offensive in Afghanistan under the command of U.S. Gen David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal this July.

Inevitably, coalition casualties have begun to mount. Fifteen British soldiers have died within the past 10 days — eight of whom were killed within a 24-hour period — in Helmand province, where the operation is taking place. On July 6, seven U.S. soldiers were killed in separate attacks across Afghanistan within a single day, and on July 12 another four U.S. soldiers were reported killed in Helmand. While the numbers are still relatively low, the reaction, particularly in the United Kingdom, was strong. Afghanistan had long been a war of intermittent casualties, the “other war.” Now it is the prime theater of operations. The United States has changed the rules of the war, and so a great many things now change. The increase in casualties by itself does not tell us much about the success of the operation. If U.S. and NATO forces are successful in finding and attacking Taliban militants, Western casualties inevitably will spike. If the Taliban were prepared for the offensive, and small units were waiting in ambush, coalition casualties also will rise. Overall, however, the casualties remain low for the number of troops involved — and no matter how well the operation is going, it will result in casualties.

Laying the Groundwork for Counterinsurgency

According to the U.S. command, the primary purpose of the operation in Helmand was not to engage Taliban forces. Instead, the purpose was to create a secure zone in hostile territory, staying true to the counterinsurgency principle of winning hearts and minds. In other words, Helmand was to be a platform for winning over the population by securing it against the Taliban, and for demonstrating that the methods used in Iraq — and in successful counterinsurgency in general — would apply to Afghanistan. The U.S. strategy makes a virtue out of the fundamental military problem in counterinsurgency whereby the successful insurgent declines combat when the occupying power has overwhelming force available, withdrawing, dispersing and possibly harassing the main body with hit-and-run operations designed to impose casualties and slow down the operation.

The counterinsurgents’ main advantage is firepower, on the ground and in the air. The insurgents’ main advantage is intelligence. Native to the area, insurgents have networks of informants letting them know not only where enemy troops are, but also providing information about counterinsurgent operations during the operations’ planning phases. Insurgents will have greater say over the time and place of battle. As major operations crank up in one area, the insurgents attack in other areas. And the insurgents have two goals. The first is to wear out the counterinsurgency in endless operations that yield little. The second is to impose a level of casualties disproportionate to the level of success, making the operation either futile or apparently futile. The insurgent cannot defeat the main enemy force in open battle; by definition, that is beyond his reach. What he can do is impose casualties on the counterinsurgent. The asymmetry of this war is the asymmetry of interest. In Vietnam, the interests of the North Vietnamese in the outcome far outweighed the interests of the Americans in the outcome. That meant the North Vietnamese would take the time needed, expend the lives required and run the risks necessary to win the war. U.S. interest in the war was much smaller. A 20-to-1 ratio of Vietnamese to U.S. casualties therefore favored the North Vietnamese. They were fighting for a core issue. The Americans were fighting a peripheral issue.

So long as the North Vietnamese could continue to impose casualties on the Americans, they could push Washington to a political point where the war became not worth fighting for the United States. The insurgent has time on his side. The insurgent is native to the war zone and has the will and patience to exhaust the enemy. The counterinsurgent always will be short of time — especially in a country like Afghanistan, where security and governing institutions will have to be built from scratch. A considerable amount of time must pass before the counterinsurgents’ strategy can yield results, something McChrystal and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have both acknowledged. The more time passes and the more casualties mount for the counterinsurgent, the more likely public support for the counterinsurgent’s war will erode. The counterinsurgency timeline therefore is unlikely to match up with the political timeline at home.

The Intelligence Problem

The problem of intelligence is the perpetual weakness of the counterinsurgent. The counterinsurgent is operating in a foreign country, and thereby lacks the means to distinguish allies from enemy agents, or valid from invalid information. This makes winning allies among the civilian population key for the counterinsurgent. Unless a solid base is achieved among the residents of Helmand, the coalition’s intelligence problem will remain insurmountable. This explains why the current operation is focusing on holding and securing the area and winning hearts and minds. With a degree of security comes loyalty. With loyalty comes intelligence. If intelligence is the insurgent’s strategic advantage, this is the way to counter it. It strikes at the center of gravity of the insurgent. Intelligence is his strong suit, and if the insurgent loses it, he loses the war. Then there is the issue of counterintelligence.

Every Afghan translator, soldier or government official is a possible breach of security for the counterinsurgent. Most of them — and certainly not all of them — are not in bed with the enemy. But some inevitably will be, and not only does that render counterinsurgent operations insecure, it also creates uncertainty among the counterinsurgents. The insurgents’ ability to gather intelligence on the counterinsurgents is the insurgents’ main strategic advantage. With it, insurgents can evade entrapment and choose the time and place for engagement. Without it, insurgents are blind. With it, the insurgent can fill the counterinsurgents’ intelligence pipeline with misleading information. Without it, the counterinsurgent might see clearly enough to find and destroy the insurgent force.

Counterinsurgency and the al Qaeda Factor

The Afghan counterinsurgency campaign also suffers from a weakness in its strategic rationale. What makes Afghanistan critical to the United States is al Qaeda, the core group of jihadists that demonstrated the ability to launch transcontinental attacks against the West from Afghanistan. The argument has been that without U.S. troops in the country and a pro-American government in Kabul, al Qaeda might return, rebuild and strike again. That makes Afghanistan a strategic interest for the United States But there is a strategic divergence between the war against al Qaeda and the war against the Taliban. Some will argue that al Qaeda remains operational, and that therefore the United States must make the long-term military investment in Afghanistan to deprive the enemy of sanctuary. But while some al Qaeda members remain to issue threatening messages from the region, the group’s ability to meet covertly, recruit talent, funnel money and execute operations from the region has been hampered considerably.

The overall threat value of al Qaeda, in our view, has declined. If this is a war that pivots on intelligence, the mission to block al Qaeda eventually may once again be left to the covert capabilities of U.S. intelligence and Special Operations Command, whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere. Widening the war’s objectives to defeating the Taliban insurgency through a resource-intensive hearts-and-minds campaign requires time and patience, both of which lie with the insurgent. If the United States were to draw the conclusion that al Qaeda was no longer functional, and that follow-on organizations may be as likely to organize attacks from Somalia or Pakistan as much as from Afghanistan, then the significance of Afghanistan declines. That creates the asymmetry that made the Vietnam War unsustainable. The Taliban have nowhere else to go. They have fought as an organization since the 1990s, and longer than that as individuals. Their interests in the future of Afghanistan towers over the American interest if it is determined that the al Qaeda-Afghanistan nexus is no longer decisive. If that were to happen, then the willingness of the United States to absorb casualties would decline dramatically.

This is not a question of the American will to fight; it is a question of the American interest in fighting. In Vietnam, the United States fought for many years. At a certain point, the likelihood of a cessation of conflict declined, along with the likelihood of U.S. victory, such that the rational U.S. interest in remaining in Vietnam and taking casualties disappeared. In Vietnam, there was an added strategic consideration: The U.S. military was absorbed in Vietnam while the main threat was from the Soviet Union in Europe. Continuing the war increased the risk in Europe. So the United States terminated the Vietnam War. The Taliban obviously want to create a similar dynamic in Afghanistan — the same dynamic the mujahideen used against the Soviets there.

The imposition of casualties in a war of asymmetric interests inevitably generates political resistance among those not directly committed to the war. The command has a professional interest in the war, the troops have a personal and emotional commitment. They are in the war, and look at the war as a self-contained entity, worth fighting in its own right. Outside of those directly involved in the war, including the public, the landscape becomes more complex. The question of whether the war is worth fighting becomes the question, a question that is not asked — and properly so — in the theater of operations. The higher the casualty count, the more the interests involved in the war are questioned, until at some point, the equation shifts away from the war and toward withdrawal.

Avoiding Asymmetry of Interests

The key for the United States in fighting the war is to avoid asymmetry of interests. If the war is seen as a battle against the resumption of terrorist attacks on the United States, casualties are seen as justified. If the war is seen as having moved beyond al Qaeda, the strategic purpose of the war becomes murky and the equation shifts.

There have been no attacks from al Qaeda on the United States since 2001. If al Qaeda retains some operational capability, it is no longer solely dependent on Afghanistan to wage attacks. Therefore, the strategic rationale becomes tenuous. The probe into Helmand is essentially an intelligence battle between the United States and the Taliban. But what is striking is that even at this low level of casualties, there are already reactions. A number of prominent news media outlets have highlighted the rise in casualties, and the British are reacting strongly to the fact that total British casualties in Afghanistan have now surpassed the number of British troops killed in Iraq. The response has not risen to the level that would be associated with serious calls for a withdrawal, but even so, it does give a measure of the sensitivity of the issue. Petraeus is professionally committed to the war and the troops have shed sweat and blood. For them, this war is of central importance. If they can gain the confidence of the population and if they can switch the dynamics of the intelligence war, the Taliban could wind up on the defensive. But if the Taliban can attack U.S. forces around the country, increasing casualties, the United States will be on the defensive. The war is a contest now between the intelligence war and casualties. The better the intelligence, the fewer the casualties. But it seems to us that the intelligence war will be tougher to win than it will be for the Taliban to impose casualties. U.S. President Barack Obama is in the position Richard Nixon found himself in back in 1969. Having inherited a war he didn’t begin, Nixon had the option of terminating it. He chose instead to continue to fight it. Obama has the same choice. He did not start the Afghan war, and in spite of his campaign rhetoric, he does not have to continue it. After one year in office, Nixon found that Lyndon Johnson’s war had become his war. Obama will experience the same dilemma. The least knowable variable is Obama’s appetite for this war. He will see casualties without any guarantee of success. If he does attempt to negotiate a deal with the Taliban, as Nixon did with the North Vietnamese, any deal is likely to be as temporary as Nixon’s deal proved. The key is the intelligence he is seeing, and whether he has confidence in it. If the intelligence says the war in Afghanistan blocks al Qaeda attacks on the United States, he will have to continue it. If there is no direct link, then he has a serious problem. Obama clearly has given Petraeus a period of time to fight the war. We suspect Obama does not want the Afghan war to become his war. Therefore, there have to be limits on how long Petraeus has. These limits are unlikely to align with the counterinsurgency timeline.

The Taliban, meanwhile, is a sophisticated insurgent group and understands the dynamics of American politics. If they can impose casualties on the United States now, before the intelligence war shifts in Washington’s favor, then they might shift Obama’s calculus. This is what the Afghan war is now about.