Under the threats of terror

The week-end started with the failed terrorist attempt in the US and ended with a suicide attack in Istanbul's populated area of Taksim, wounding 32 persons. The main suspect, the separatist PKK Kurdish party denied any involvement.

In the Yemen case, several investigations are currently under deployment, framing the need of an extensive intelligence share between countries aiming to oppose terrorism, the attack being attributed to Al Qaeda operatives. Al Qaeda suicide bombers carried out a series of attacks in Istanbul in November 2003 that killed 62 people and wounded hundreds. Several Islamist militants were arrested last month. But officials have played down the likelihood of Islamist role.

Turkey is a couple of days ahead the 2010 EU Progress Report and is still trying to find a solution regarding the conflict with Cyprus. The geopolitical ambitions and the temptation to become leader in the Muslim world antagonized the country's foreign relations with former partners in the region. Ankara is showing its full disponibility to enter the EU, pledging Turkey's future role in increasing the potential of the organization.

The last 23 years of terror

Hamas is receiving a lot of publicity these days. A movement far of being united or acting unitary, given various foreign influences, up to the funding offered, but with a clear focus on terror and intolerance, including against its own Palestinian/Muslim fellows. The opposition to peace process is understandable, as the direct path to their political death. Voices in the Israeli media are pretending that the blockade contributed significantly to the current radicalization and the solution would be to "open" Gaza. Maybe, but what are the risks at stake for the state of Israel, once you don't have the control over the area? A typical Middle Eastern deadlocked situation, when you have to look more broadly and read the smallest details in the overall geopolitical context.

From the journalistic point of view, I have a small observation. Every time there is a conflict where the Israeli Army (IDF) is involved, the foreign media is abounding in critical and moving-to-tears articles about the victims. I didn't see too many - or not at all - critical articles about what this organization represents, about the fact that it is holding hostage since 2006 a soldier, Gilad Shalit, without allowing the international organizations or other third party to offer the normal assistance, about the terrorist threat and the intolerance towards normal standards of human rights. A blindness having its price.

Another ways to pursue public diplomacy

The development of social networks is offering a wide array of opportunities for public diplomacy. And equally, for abuse and widespread hate and terrorism on line.

I was this year to a conference about the Middle East where one participant, originally from Pakistan, was encouraging the contacts between Westerners and people from the Muslim world, as a way to exchange ideas and share insights from the two worlds. On the other side, the reality is that, from my own experience, this kind of dialogues are limited unfortunately to sharing our own stereotypes and taking the advantage of anonimity for sharing the hate. In this case, a mix between classical public diplomacy tools to be continued and pursued in the virtual environment. Using only one tool is not enough and the enthusiasm is not a miraculous cure of old and aggressive hates.

Latest on WikiLeaks

CIA Reporting Memorandum on exporting terrorism.

"Aid" flotilla - supported by terrorist organizations

A documented conclusion and report - here.

A possible answer for latest anti-terrorist incoherences

Obama's top intelligence adviser resigns.

Grassroot terrorism needs a reply from the grassroot involved citizens

It sounds very militant, idealistic and revolutionary, but in fact many of these terrorist actions and activities are taking place in usual open environments, counting on the ignorance and the indifference of us, the daily serious tax-paying citizens. The Stratfor analysis made a round-up of the latest cases from the US, including regarding the dirty bombs.

The profile of Faisal Shahzad, involved in the Times Square incident, is offering an example of a failure. A failure of integration - not necessarily a political failure - the absence of offering to the immigrants a different way to insert into the society. And a failure of the security policies of various US agencies in mapping preventively security threats.

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.

New airport security measures in the US

To be announced today, by president Obama, a consequence of the latest December incident.

We and our states

The legal, moral and political problems following September 11 terrorist attacks represented the inspiration of various political and artistic standpoints. Music, literature, arts, pros cons, debates from various perspectives. In the center: how much our freedom is/will be threaten by the legislation allowing the state to enter and access our privacy.

Most part of these statements, in my opinion, are lacking exactly the wider perspective assumed from the very beginning, by not stressing the problem of what is, in fact, the essence and content of this freedom? And, even less, the ways in order to stop or at least diminish the causes provoking this reaction from the part of the states.

The German journalist Heribert Prantl is outlining the German example, but in a very rhetorical way. Page after page, he is gathering more arguments for a public requisitorium of a more intrusive state. With roots back in the past of the German experience in facing the Rote Armee Fraktion and other terrorist threats in the 70s. Ironically enough, but not so logically unexpectedly as Prantl let us believe, one of the promoters of the strict German legislation was the social-democrat Otto Schilly, former Federal Minister of the Interior between 1998 and 2005, during Gerhard Schröder. In the 70s, the same Schilly was defending the Rot Armee Faktion members and, late in the 80s, was one of the founding member of the Green Party.

The rhetoric is continuing, but without a single line of arguments devoted to understanding the whole landscape: the causes of this situation, the alternatives and the options - how, in fact, the state ought to defend its citizens of terrorism, of being innocent victims of fanatics, the possibilities to counter such situations and to play a game with win/win outcome.

It is very easy to outline all these issues and to complain and accuse an invisible and (assumed) mighty power of the state(s), the temptation to control our privacy - doubtful, given the eagerness we, all of us, we are sharing our information and privacies online, via social networking sites, without being requested - the tighter limits to our freedom. As in the case of the Middle East, it is very easy to express an opinion, as a proof of our freedom to think, accuse, evaluate. But, in order to provide a wiser outline of the landscape, more than rhetorics are needed. For example, a critical anaylsis, going beyond the public acclaimed statements. Otherwise, we are getting trapped in the common places of the self-delivered ideas.

Obama in Afghanistan: Keep the troops on the run

An (expected) surprise visit of Barack Obama in Afghanistan with expected encouraging messages to the Americans fighting for the security of Afghanistan.

Messages of continuing the support for fighting Al Qaeda and finishing to deliver the answer of post-9/11 America. The new American story still to be written.

US visa security

The lack of communication between various federal agencies in cases related to counter-terrorism, long before, before and after 11/9 was often criticized, scrutinized and analysed, without any positive results.

The security concerns increased, the number of agencies increased, the bureaucracy as well. But not at all the level of information sharing. In many situations, the terrorists entering to or intending to enter the territory of the USA were having valid passports and valid visas. Maybe, in some cases, according to the consular services, there were not qualified as immigrants so got freely the visa. They do not even try to access the visa waiver service, but follow the very bureaucratical and for many, unsuccessful way.

Too many challenges, too many agencies, too much bureaucracy, too much insecurity.

What kind of parliament for Iraq?

A relative calm, in a tensed framework in Iraq, expecting the Sunday vote for the the parliamentary elections. Meanwhile, the partners of the coalition who toppled Saddam Hussein are more concerned lately with the inquiry of the reasons and explanations of the 2003 actions than of offering a substantial support for the democracy and the creation of a normal life.

The overuse of the anti-war arguments are neglecting a common sense reality: as long as you had the war and you have to face a new - post-Saddam situation, in this case - it is not a sign of lack of responsibility to simply ask for the military withdrawal in an institutional and political vacuum?

The situation from Iraq is far from stable and, one of the most dangerous aspects from the point of view of the regional equilibrium is the resurgence of an extremely violent and aggressive Jihadist movement.

And, a long, but not exhaustive list of questions:

- Who is interested in an instable Iraq, whose instability is threatening as well the other Islamic countries?

- Who is providing the ammunition for the almost daily terrorist attacks?

- How could the forces of the coalition intervene in offering a more secure environment? And, given the plans of the Obama administration of a full withdrawal by the end of 2011, how evolution could be expect on the ground?

- How could an Islamic Iraq put an end to the current internal sectarian conflict?

- How the democracy in Iraq should look like, in order to offer a broader representativity for the antagonistic religious factions?

And an observation: Very often, in the Western media, it is over used and abused the idea of "islamophobia". In many parts it is a reality and it deals with the anti-immigration and xenophobic feelings. But, in the same time, you have in Iraq an example of the fratricid conflict between two branches of the same family, who not only hate each other but are killing each other as often as possible. The reality is by far more diverse than various ideological and stereotypical approaches would like to make us think. And, another aspect to be taken into consideration, the low level of unity among the Islamic countries from the Middle East, rooted, in some cases, in old tribal confrontational histories. The black-and-white "evaluations" are not only poor, but inadequate to the situation from the ground.

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.

Pakistan: The South Waziristan Migration

Scott Stewart
October 14
Stratfor.com

Pakistan has been a busy place over the past few weeks. The Pakistani armed forces have been conducting raids and airstrikes against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other foreign Islamist fighters in Bajaur Agency, a district inside Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), while wrapping up their preparations for a major military offensive into South Waziristan. The United States has conducted several successful missile attacks targeting militants hiding in areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border using unmanned aerial vehicles.

Threatened by these developments -- especially the actions of the Pakistani military -- the TTP and its allies have struck back. They have used larger, vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) in attacks close to their bases in the Pakistani badlands to conduct mass-casualty attacks against soft targets in Peshawar and the Swat Valley. They have also used small arms and small suicide devices farther from their bases to attack targets in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, the respective seats of Pakistan's military and civilian power.

Initially, we considered devoting this week's Security and Intelligence Report to discussing the tactical details of the Oct. 10 attack against the Pakistani army headquarters. But after taking a closer look at that attack, and the bigger mosaic it occurred within, we decided to focus instead on something that has not received much attention in the media -- namely, how the coming Pakistani offensive in South Waziristan is going to have a heavy impact on the militants currently living and training there. In fact, we can expect the Pakistani offensive to cause a large displacement of militants. Of course, many of the militants who are forced to flee from South Waziristan, the epicenter of Pakistan's insurgency, will likely land in areas not too far away -- like Balochistan -- but at least some of the militants who will be flushed out of South Waziristan will land in places far from Pakistan's FATA and North-West Frontier Province.

The Coming Offensive

The Pakistani military has been preparing for the coming offensive into South Waziristan for months. They have positioned two divisions with some 28,000 troops for the attack, and this force will be augmented by paramilitary forces and local tribal militias loyal to Islamabad. As seen by the Pakistani offensives in Swat and Bajaur earlier this year, the TTP and its foreign allies are no match for the Pakistani military when it turns its full resources to address the problem.

The Pakistanis previously attempted a halfhearted offensive in South Waziristan in March of 2004 that only lasted 12 days before they fell back and reached a "negotiated peace settlement" with the militant leaders in the area. A negotiated peace settlement is a diplomatic way of saying that the Pakistanis attempted to pay off Pakistani Taliban leaders like Nek Mohammed to hand over the foreign militants in South Waziristan and stop behaving badly. The large cash settlements given to the militants did little to ensure peace and instead allowed the Taliban leaders to buy more weapons, pay their troops and essentially solidify their control in their areas of operation. The Taliban resumed their militant activities shortly after receiving their payments (though the most prominent leader, Nek Mohammed, was killed in a U.S. missile strike in June 2004).

This time, the South Waziristan offensive will be far different than it was in 2004. Not only do the Pakistanis have more than four times as many army troops committed to it, but the Pakistani military has learned that if it uses its huge airpower advantage and massed artillery, it can quickly rout any serious TTP resistance. In Bajaur, the Pakistanis used airstrikes and artillery to literally level positions (and even some towns) where the Taliban had tried to dig in and make a stand. Additionally, in January 2008, the Pakistani army conducted a successful offensive in South Waziristan called "Operation Zal Zala" (Earthquake) that made excellent progress and resulted in the loss of only eight soldiers in four days of intense fighting. This offensive was stopped only because Baitullah Mehsud and his confederates sued for peace -- a truce that they quickly violated.

The lessons of past military operations and broken truces in South Waziristan, when combined with the recent TTP strikes against targets like the army headquarters, have served to steel the will of the government (and particularly the military). Pakistani government sources tell STRATFOR that they have the intent and the ability to "close the case for good." This means that there should be no negotiated settlement with the TTP this time.

Of course, we are not the only people who can anticipate this happening. The TTP and others like the al Qaeda core leadership know all too well what happened in Bajaur and Swat. They have also been watching the Pakistani military prepare for the South Waziristan offensive for months now. The TTP leadership realizes that if they attempt to stand and fight the Pakistani military toe-to-toe they will be cut to shreds. Because of this, we believe that the TTP will adopt a strategy similar to that used by the Taliban in the face of overwhelming U.S. airpower following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, or that of the Iraqi military following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Rather than fight in set-piece conventional battles to the bitter end and be destroyed, after some initial resistance the TTP's fighters will seek to melt away into the population and then conduct insurgent and terrorist strikes against the Pakistani military, both in the tribal regions and in Pakistan's core regions. This is also the approach the TTP leadership took to the Pakistani offensive in Swat and Bajaur. They made noises about standing and fighting in places like Mingora. In the end, however, they melted away in the face of the military's offensive and most of the militants escaped.

Contrary to popular perception, the area along the Afghan-Pakistani border is fairly heavily populated. The terrain is extremely rugged, but there are millions of Pakistanis living in the FATA, and many of them are extremely conservative and hostile toward the Pakistani government. This hostile human terrain poses perhaps a more significant obstacle to the Pakistani military's operations to root out jihadists than the physical terrain. Accurate and current population numbers are hard to obtain, but the government of Pakistan estimated the population of South Waziristan to be nearly 500,000 in 1998, although it is believed to be much larger than that today. There are also an estimated 1.7 million Afghan refugees living on the Pakistani side of the border. This human terrain should enable many of the TTP's Pashtun fighters to melt into the landscape and live to fight another day. Indeed, the militants are already heavily embedded in the population of South Waziristan, and the TTP and its rivals have controlled much of the area for several years now.

We have seen reports that up to 200,000 people have already fled areas of South Waziristan in anticipation of the coming military operation, and it is highly likely that some TTP fighters and foreign militants have used this flow of displaced people as camouflage to leave the region just as they did in Swat and Bajaur. Whether the coming offensive is as successful in destroying the TTP as our sources assure us it will be, the military action will undoubtedly force even more militants to leave South Waziristan.

The Camps

In the wake of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the many militant training camps run by al Qaeda and other organizations in Afghanistan were destroyed. Many of the foreign jihadists who were at these camps fled to Pakistan with the Taliban, though others fled to Iran, Iraq or elsewhere. This migration shifted the focus of jihadist training efforts to Pakistan, and South Waziristan in particular. Quite simply, there are thousands of foreign jihadists who have traveled to Pakistan to receive paramilitary training at these camps to fight in Afghanistan. A smaller number of the trainees have received advanced training in terrorist tradecraft, such as bombmaking, in the camps.

Due to the presence of these transplanted training installations, South Waziristan is "jihadist central," with jihadists of all stripes based in the area. This confluence will complicate Islamabad's attempts to distinguish between "good" and "bad" Taliban elements. Both the good Taliban aligned with Islamabad that carry out their operations in Afghanistan and the bad Taliban fighting against Islamabad are based in South Waziristan, and telling the difference between the two factions on the battlefield will be difficult -- though undoubtedly elements of Pakistani intelligence will attempt to help their Taliban friends (like the Haqqani network and Mullah Omar's network) avoid being caught up in the coming confrontation.

There are literally thousands of Arab, Uzbek, Uighur, Chechen, African and European militants currently located in the Pakistani badlands, and a good number of them are in South Waziristan. Many of these foreigners are either teaching at or enrolled in the jihadist training camps. These foreigners are going to find it far harder to hide from the Pakistani military by seeking refuge in Afghan refugee camps or small tribal villages than their Pashtun brethren.

Some of these foreigners will attempt to find shelter in North Waziristan, or perhaps in more heavily -- and more heterogeneously -- populated areas like Quetta (Mullah Omar's refuge) or Peshawar. Others may try to duck into the Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan, but there is a good chance that many of these foreign militants will be forced to leave the Pakistan-Afghanistan area to return home or seek refuge elsewhere.

This exodus will have mixed results. On one hand it will serve to weaken the international jihadist movement by retarding its ability to train new jihadists until replacement camps can be established elsewhere, perhaps by expanding existing facilities in Yemen or Africa. On the other hand, it will force hundreds of people trained in terrorist tradecraft to find a new place to live -- and operate. In some ways, this migration could mirror what happened after the number of foreign jihadist began to be dramatically reduced in Iraq -- except then, many of the foreigners could be redirected to Pakistan for training and Afghanistan to fight. There is no comparable second theater now to attract these foreign fighters. This means that many of them may end up returning home to join insurgent movements in smaller theaters, such as Chechnya, Somalia, Algeria and Central Asia.

Those with the ability and means could travel to other countries where they can use their training to organize militant cells for terrorist attacks in much the same way the foreign fighters who fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s and left after the fall of the Soviet-backed government there went on to fight in places like Bosnia and Chechnya and formed the nucleus of al Qaeda and the current international jihadist movement.

The Next Generation

There is a big qualitative difference between the current crop of international fighters in South Waziristan and those who fought with the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s. During the earlier conflict, the foreigners were tolerated, but in general they were not seen by their Afghan counterparts as being particularly valiant or effective (though the Afghans did appreciate the cash and logistical help they provided). In many engagements the foreigners were kept out of harm's way and saw very little intense combat, while in some cases the foreign fighters were essentially used as cannon fodder.

The perception of the foreigners began to change during the 1990s, and units of foreigners acquitted themselves well as they fought alongside Taliban units against the Northern Alliance. Also, following the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the foreign jihadists have proved themselves to be very effective at conducting terrorist attacks and operating in hostile territory.

In fact, over the past several years, we have witnessed a marked change in the ways the Afghan Taliban fight. They have abandoned some of their traditional armed assault tactics and have begun to employ al Qaeda-influenced roadside IED attacks and suicide bombings -- attacks the Afghan fighters had previously considered "unmanly." It is no mere coincidence that the number of suicide attacks and roadside IED attacks in Afghanistan increased dramatically after al Qaeda began to withdraw its forces from Iraq. There is also a direct correlation between the IED technology developed and used in Iraq and that now being employed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

All this experience in designing and manufacturing IEDs in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan means that the jihadist bombmakers of today are more highly skilled than ever, and they have been sharing their experience with foreign students at training camps in places like South Waziristan. Furthermore, the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has provided a great laboratory in which jihadists can perfect their terrorist tradecraft. A form of "tactical Darwinism" has occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan as coalition firepower has weeded out most of the inept jihadist operatives. Only the strong and cunning have survived, leaving a core of hardened, competent militants. These survivors have created new tactics and have learned to manufacture new types of highly effective IEDs -- technology that has already shown up in places like Algeria and Somalia. They have been permitted to impart the knowledge they have gained to another generation of young aspiring militants through training camps in places like South Waziristan.

As these foreign militants scatter to the four winds, they will be taking their skills with them. Judging from past waves of jihadist fighters, they will probably be found participating in future plots in many different parts of the world. And also judging from past cases, they will likely not participate in these plots alone.

As we have discussed in the past, the obvious weakness of the many grassroots jihadist cells that have been uncovered is their lack of terrorist tradecraft. They have the intent to do harm but not the ability, and many times the grassroots cells end up finding a government informant as they seek help acquiring weapons or constructing IEDs. When these inept "Kramer terrorists" manage to get linked up with a trained terrorist operative, they can cause considerable damage.

The possibility of these militants conducting attacks or bringing much-needed capability to grassroots cells means that the South Waziristan migration, which has almost certainly already begun, will give counterterrorism officials from Boston to Beijing something to worry about for the foreseeable future.

Pakistan: Biting the Hand that Feeds You

Scott Stewart

Stratfor

October 7

The Islamabad office of the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) was struck by a suicide bomber just after noon local time Oct. 5. The bomber, who wore an improvised explosive device (IED) concealed under his clothing, was wearing the uniform of the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary force, and reportedly made his way past perimeter security and into the facility under the ruse of asking to use the restroom. Once inside the facility, he detonated his explosive device, killing five WFP employees — one Iraqi national and four locals — and injuring six others.

The attack, claimed by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), would be the first successful TTP attack in Islamabad since June 6, and the first attack against Western interests in a Pakistani city since the June 9 attack against the Pearl Continental hotel in Peshawar using a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED).

In his Oct. 6 call to The Associated Press and other media outlets to claim responsibility for the attack, TTP spokesman Azam Tariq said the group is planning additional attacks against similar targets. “The WFP is promoting the U.S. agenda,” Tariq said, and “such types of suicide attacks will continue in the future. We will target all people and offices working for American interests. We have sent more suicide bombers in various parts of the country and they have been given targets.”

The WFP office in Islamabad is located in an upscale part of town but outside of the diplomatic enclave. While the roads leading into the area are blocked by police checkpoints, the sector is not nearly as heavily locked down as the diplomatic enclave, which made it easier for an attacker to approach the WFP office. The office does have an exterior security wall, but that wall provides very little standoff — in other words, there is not much distance between the building and the road. From an attacker’s perspective, the WFP is a far softer target than a facility such as the U.S. Embassy, which has a significant standoff.

The only thing that provides protection from a large explosive device is distance, and due to the small amount of standoff at the WFP office, if that office had been attacked using a large VBIED like the one used in the September 2008 attack against the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, the attack would have been devastating. However, the attack against the WFP office was not conducted with a massive device but with a small one. It appears that the pressure the Pakistani government has placed upon the TTP (with U.S. assistance) has reduced the group’s ability to conduct high-profile attacks. Indeed, following the attack on the Pearl Continental hotel, there had been a noticeable lull in the TTP’s operations — even before the Aug. 5 death of TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud in a U.S. missile strike. The WFP bombing serves as a message that while the TTP is down, it is not yet out and more low-level attacks can be expected in the near term.

Going Small

Small-scale attacks like the one the TTP launched against the WFP office are relatively easy to conduct and require very few resources. This makes them far easier to sustain than large-scale VBIED attacks. The approximately 2,000 pounds of explosives used in the massive VBIED deployed against the Islamabad Marriott could be used to create scores of suicide IEDs like the one used against the WFP. There has been a trend in the last few years in which militant groups have shifted away from larger devices in favor of smaller ones.

This trend is especially noticeable when the group is under intense pressure, like Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad in Indonesia (and the TTP at the present time). Small-scale attacks require fewer resources, and smaller devices can be built and transported more clandestinely than huge VBIEDs. They can also be manufactured more quickly, which allows for a higher tempo of operations. However, these smaller devices must be used in a different type of attack and are often taken into the targeted site using a ruse, like a Frontier Constabulary uniform in Islamabad; posing as hotel guests and workers in Jakarta; or even hidden inside the bomber’s body, as we saw in Saudi Arabia on Aug. 28.

In the wake of the WFP attack and the TTP’s warning that more attacks are coming, security measures at the offices of humanitarian aid, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are certain to be inspected and tightened up (at least until complacency sets in) to protect against this type of ruse attack using a small suicide device.

One of the other advantages of using these small devices is that they provide attackers a great deal of flexibility in employing them — a flexibility that is often used to bypass security measures. However, identifying gaps in security requires surveillance — often extended surveillance — and during that surveillance attackers are susceptible to being identified.

Historically, aid organizations simply do not have the security budget to afford the types of physical security equipment and guard coverage afforded to embassies or even commercial establishments like large hotels, and this makes them relatively soft targets. But even if these offices are hardened by increased security and by proactive measures such as employing countersurveillance teams and the offices thus become more difficult to strike using small devices, the employees of these organizations will remain vulnerable as they do their work in the field.

Aid Workers as Targets

By its very nature, the work conducted by an aid group is very different from that conducted by a diplomatic mission. While diplomats like to travel to different parts of the country they are assigned to and meet with a variety of people, their primary mission is to be the representatives of their home government to the foreign government where they are assigned and accredited. This means that, while they may balk at strict security measures, they can still perform many of their functions in dangerous locations like Islamabad or Baghdad, even though their movement outside of the embassy is tightly restricted and requires considerable security. The same is simply not true for organizations like the WFP, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Doctors Without Borders or the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), among others. These organizations exist to bring shelter, food and medicine to refugees and displaced people, and such people are often found in conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. This means that aid employees are very vulnerable to being targeted when they are outside of their offices.

Last October, STRATFOR discussed the growing trend of jihadists attacking aid workers and the tension the trend was creating among jihadist ideologues. Some ideologues, such as Isam Mohammed Taher al-Barqawi, more popularly known by the nom de guerre Abu-Muhammad Asem al-Maqdisi, have taken a clear stand against targeting “genuine” humanitarian organizations. In his writings, al-Maqdisi has specifically referred to the International Committee of the Red Cross, noting how it is a legitimate humanitarian organization with no hidden agenda and that its valuable services to the poor and dispossessed should be appreciated.

However, many jihadist leaders do not differentiate between the political aspect of the United Nations and the separate organizations that operate under the aegis of the United Nations for humanitarian purposes, such as the WFP, UNHCR, UNDP and UNICEF. In addition to the Oct. 6 message from the TTP spokesman who noted that the WFP is an infidel organization that promotes the U.S. agenda, other jihadist leaders have also spoken out against the United Nations. In an April 2008 speech, al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri said, “The United Nations is an enemy of Islam and Muslims: It is the one which codified and legitimized the setting up of the state of Israel and its taking over of the Muslims’ lands.”

Clearly, over the past year this ideological battle inside jihadist circles has been decided in favor of those who advocate attacks against humanitarian workers, since such attacks are increasing — and the problem is not just confined to Pakistan. A recent report by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office noted that attacks against aid workers in Afghanistan are twice as frequent as they were last year — and 2008 had seen significantly more fatalities than 2007 — so things are clearly getting worse there, and the Afghan Taliban are launching more frequent ambushes and roadside IED attacks against clearly marked white aid vehicles. In Pakistan, at least three UNHCR employees have been assassinated so far this year, and a UNHCR employee and UNICEF employee were among those killed in the June bombing of the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar. The Pearl was essentially the headquarters for many of the aid organizations in Peshawar. Outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan, aid workers also have been attacked in Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and Sudan, among other places.

For these aid workers, the perception by groups like the Afghan Taliban, the TTP and al Qaeda that they are a part of the U.S. agenda — and this translates into a war against Islam — means that they will be targeted for attacks.

The increase in attacks has often led to the drawdown of Western aid employees in a given country, and this has forced these organizations to rely heavily on local, mainly Muslim, employees to conduct most of the relief work in the most dangerous places. However, the track record over the past few years has demonstrated that local employees are every bit as likely to be targeted as their Western colleagues. This is in part due to the fact that jihadists declare that all Muslims who work with infidels are apostates and therefore no better than infidels themselves. (This is called the doctrine of Takfir, or apostasy, and the fact that the jihadists claim to have the ability to declare another Muslim an apostate is very controversial within Islam, as is the killing of non-combatants such as humanitarian workers.)

In Pakistan, local aid workers are dedicated to reaching the hungry, sick and dispossessed people they serve, and this makes them extremely vulnerable to attack because they operate in some very remote and dangerous places. They are far more likely to be working outside of the larger, more secure organizational offices and in smaller, more vulnerable clinics and food distribution points. Because of this, there is a high likelihood that if the organizational offices present too hard a target, these lower-level aid workers and smaller aid distribution points could be targeted in lower-level TTP attacks. This would be part of the TTP effort to derail what it perceives as the U.S. agenda to stabilize (or, in the TTP’s eyes, influence and control) Pakistan by providing aid to the people displaced by the fighting between the government of Pakistan and the TTP and its foreign allies.

Such attacks will hurt the TTP as far as public opinion goes, as have its attacks in Islamabad, Peshawar and elsewhere. But in light of the losses it has taken on the battlefield in places like Swat and in light of the coming offensive in South Waziristan, the TTP’s priority is to prove that it is still a force to be reckoned with — and more important, negotiated with. So the attacks will continue, and we can anticipate that many of them will be against humanitarian workers.

The Death of a Top Indonesian Militant

Scott Stewart

Stratfor

September 23

On Saturday, Sept. 19, the Indonesian National Police announced that a DNA test has positively identified a man killed Sept. 17 as Noordin Mohammad Top. Top was killed in a raid on a safe-house in the outskirts of Solo, Central Java, that resulted in a prolonged firefight between Indonesian authorities and militants. Police said four militants were killed in the incident and three more were taken into custody. (Two of them were arrested before the raid.) Authorities also recovered a large quantity of explosives during the raid that they believe the militant group was preparing to use in an attack on Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Indonesian National Police had reported Sept. 17 that the dead man’s fingerprints matched Top’s. But given several inaccurate reports of Top’s demise in the past, combined with reports that the body believed to be Top’s was headless — perhaps due to the explosion of a suicide belt — most observers were waiting for DNA confirmation before removing Top’s name from the pinnacle of the organizational chart of Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad.

Now that Top’s name officially has been scratched off the list, big questions emerge: Can Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad continue without him? Can the group be effective as a militant organization? And who will step up to fill the void left by Top?

The Importance of Leadership

All three of these questions touch on the issue of leadership. Without leadership, militant groups wither and/or disintegrate. Without skilled leadership, militant groups lose their ability to conduct effective attacks. Quite simply, leadership, skill and professionalism make the difference between a militant group wanting to attack something — i.e., possessing intent — and the group’s ability to successfully carry out its intended attack — i.e., its capability.

Although on the surface it might seem like a simple task to find a leader for a militant group, in practice, effective militant leaders are hard to come by. This is because militant leadership requires a rather broad skill set. In addition to personal attributes such as ruthlessness, aggressiveness and fearlessness, militant leaders also must be charismatic, intuitive, clever and inspiring. This last attribute is especially important in an organization that seeks to recruit operatives to conduct suicide attacks. Additionally, an effective militant leader must be able to recruit and train operatives, enforce operational security, raise funds, plan operations, and then methodically execute the plan while avoiding the security forces constantly hunting the militants down.

The importance of leadership to a militant organization has been wonderfully illustrated by the trajectory of al Qaeda’s franchise in Saudi Arabia. Under the leadership of Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin the Saudi al Qaeda franchise was extremely busy in 2003 and 2004. It carried out a number of high-profile attacks inside the kingdom and put everyone from the Saudi monarchy to multinational oil companies in a general state of panic. With bombings, ambushes and beheadings, it seemed as if Saudi Arabia was on its way to becoming the next Iraq. Following the June 2004 death of al-Muqrin, however, the organization began to flounder. The succession of leaders appointed to replace al-Muqrin lacked his operational savvy, and each one proved ineffective at best. (Saudi security forces quickly killed several of them.) Following the February 2006 attack against the oil facility at Abqaiq, the group atrophied even further, succeeding in carrying out one more attack, an amateurish small-arms assault in February 2007 against a group of French tourists.

The disorganized remaining jihadist militants in Saudi Arabia ultimately grew frustrated at their inability to operate on their own. Many of them traveled to places like Iraq or Pakistan to train and fight. In January 2009, many of the militants who remained in the Arabian Peninsula joined with al Qaeda’s franchise in Yemen to form a new group called al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) under the leadership of Nasir al-Wahayshi, the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen who served under Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan before being arrested in Iran. Al-Wahayshi was returned to Yemen in 2003 through an extradition deal between the Yemeni and Iranian governments and subsequently escaped from a high-security prison outside Sanaa in 2006.

Al Qaeda in Yemen’s operational capability improved under al-Wahayshi’s leadership, and its operational tempo increased (even though those operations were not terribly effective.) In the wake of this momentum, it is not surprising that the frustrated members of the all-but-defunct Saudi franchise agreed to swear loyalty to him. The first real fruit of this merger was seen inside Saudi Arabia in the Aug. 28 attempted assassination of Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. That the plot had to be planned and launched from Yemen reveals AQAP’s weakness inside the kingdom, and the plot’s failure demonstrates that, overall, AQAP is far from an effective organization.

Like the Saudi node, the fortunes of other al Qaeda regional franchises have risen or fallen based upon the ability of the franchise’s leadership. For example, in August 2006 al Qaeda announced with great fanfare that a splinter of the Egyptian jihadist group Gamaah al-Islamiyah had become al Qaeda’s franchise in Egypt. Likewise, in November 2007 al Qaeda announced that the Libyan Islamic Fighting group (LIFG) had joined its constellation of regional groups.

But neither of these new franchise groups ever really got off the ground. While a great degree of the groups’ lack of success may have resulted from the oppressive natures of the Egyptian and Libyan governments — and the aggressive efforts those governments undertook to control the new al Qaeda franchises following the announcements of their creation — we believe the groups’ near total lack of success also stems in large part from the lack of dynamic leadership. Recently, LIFG leaders have issued statements speaking out against al Qaeda’s operational principles and general methodology.

Dynamic leaders are indeed hard to find. Even though Indonesia has an estimated population of more than 240 million, Top — considered the most dangerous and most wanted man in Indonesia before his death — hailed from Malaysia, not Indonesia. He was an outsider like the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who brought al Qaeda in Iraq into the global spotlight.

Of course, not every leadership change is disastrous to a militant group. Sometimes a new leader breathes new life and energy into a group (like al-Wahayshi in Yemen), or the group has competent lieutenants able to continue to operate effectively after the death of the leader (like al Qaeda in Iraq after the death of al-Zarqawi). Top’s replacement, and how the leadership transition affects the group, must therefore be closely monitored.

Topping Top

Top was an accomplished operational commander. He was responsible for a number of terrorist attacks in Indonesia, including the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings, the 2003 JW Marriott bombing in Jakarta, the 2004 attack on the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, and most recently, the July 17 bombings of the JW Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton in Jakarta.
Because of these attacks, Top and his militant colleagues were under extreme pressure from the Indonesian authorities, who were aided by the Australian and American intelligence services. Many of Top’s closest associates, like Ridhwan Isam al-Deen al-Hanbali and Azahari bin Husin, were arrested or killed, and operations launched by Indonesian authorities thwarted several of the group’s planned attacks between 2005 and 2009.

But external pressure was not the only challenge facing Top. He was also forced to deal with mounting ideological opposition to high-profile terror attacks from within Jemaah Islamiyah itself, a difference of opinion that led to Top’s split with Jemaah Islamiyah and his decision to form the new group Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad in early 2006.

Yet in spite of all this external and internal pressure, Top was still able to recruit new operatives, secure funding and maintain tight operational security. Top’s penchant for security even sparked rumors that he had some sort of mystical protection, rumors fanned by the many false reports of his capture or death. The ability to operate under such trying circumstances is the mark of a seasoned leader.

In a further challenge to Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad, two of Top’s key lieutenants also died in the Sept. 17 operation. These were Maruto Jati Sulistyo, thought to have been one of Top’s main bombmakers; and Bagus Budi Pranoto, who had previously served a three-and-one-half-year prison sentence for hiding Top and Azahari. (Pranoto, aka Urwah, was thought to have been a polished recruiter.)

Despite the deaths of Maruto and Pranoto, there are a number of potential successors to Top. Among these are Reno, aka Teddy, the reported deputy of Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad; Saifuddin Jaelani, who reportedly recruited the suicide bombers responsible for the July hotel attacks in Jakarta; and Jaleni’s brother, Muhammad Syahrir. Of course, someone outside Top’s immediate circle could take up the fallen militant leader’s mantle. Scores of Jemmah Islamiyah militants have been released from prison in recent years, and several skilled militants like Dulmatin and Umar Patek, who have fled to the Philippines, could return. And senior Jemmah Islamiyah militants like Zulkarnaen, who enjoy respect within the group, also remain at large.

No matter who replaces Top, the follow-on investigation to the operation that resulted in the death of Top will surely prove challenging to the future leadership of Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad. Operations like the one that resulted in Top’s death offer not only the opportunity for capturing or killing militants but also the potential for a huge harvest of intelligence. Indonesian authorities (aided by their allies) are surely attempting to exploit any information gained in the raid in an effort to locate other operatives, safe-houses and weapons caches. Indeed, Top himself was found due to intelligence gathered from the arrest of an associate named Rohmat on the same day as the raid in which Top died. Because of this intelligence windfall, we can anticipate a string of raids by the Indonesian government in the following days and weeks.

And while Top was able to weather such operations in the past, now that he is gone, it remains to be seen if his replacement is capable of withstanding the pressure and keeping the group together and operationally effective.

Convergence: The Challenge of Aviation Security

Scott Stewart

Stratfor

September 16

On Sept. 13, As-Sahab media released an audio statement purportedly made by Osama bin Laden that was intended to address the American people on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. In the message, the voice alleged to be that of bin Laden said the reason for the 9/11 attacks was U.S. support for Israel. He also said that if the American people wanted to free themselves from “fear and intellectual terrorism,” the United States must cut its support for Israel. If the United States continues to support Israel, the voice warned, al Qaeda would continue its war against the United States “on all possible fronts” — a not so subtle threat of additional terrorist attacks.

Elsewhere on Sept. 14, a judge at Woolwich Crown Court in the United Kingdom sentenced four men to lengthy prison sentences for their involvement in the disrupted 2006 plot to destroy multiple aircraft over the Atlantic using liquid explosives. The man authorities claimed was the leader of the cell, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, was sentenced to serve at least 40 years. The cell’s apparent logistics man, Assad Sarwar, was sentenced to at least 36 years. Cell member Tanvir Hussain was given a sentence of at least 32 years and cell member Umar Islam was sentenced to a minimum of 22 years in prison.

The convergence of these two events (along with the recent release of convicted Pan Am 103 bomber Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and the amateurish Sept. 9 hijacking incident in Mexico using a hoax improvised explosive device [IED]) has drawn our focus back to the topic of aviation security — in particular, IED attacks against aircraft. As we weave the strands of these independent events together, they remind us not only that attacks against aircraft are dramatic, generate a lot of publicity and can cause very high body counts (9/11), but also that such attacks can be conducted simply and quite inexpensively with an eye toward avoiding preventative security measures (the 2006 liquid-explosives plot.)

Additionally, while the 9/11 anniversary reminds us that some jihadist groups have demonstrated a fixation on attacking aviation targets — especially those militants influenced by the operational philosophies of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) — the convictions in the 2006 plot highlight the fact that the fixation on aviation targets lives on even after the 2003 arrest of KSM.

In response to this persistent threat, aviation security has changed dramatically in the post-9/11 era, and great effort has been undertaken at great expense to make attacks against passenger aircraft more difficult. Airline attacks are harder to conduct now than in the past, and while many militants have shifted their focus onto easier targets like subways or hotels, there are still some jihadists who remain fixated on the aviation target, and we will undoubtedly see more attempts against passenger aircraft in spite of the restrictions on the quantities of liquids that can be taken aboard aircraft and the now mandatory shoe inspections.

Quite simply, militants will seek alternate ways to smuggle components for IEDs aboard aircraft, and this is where another thread comes in — that of the Aug. 28 assassination attempt against Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. The tactical innovation employed in this attack highlights the vulnerabilities that still exist in airline security.

Shifts

The airline security paradigm changed on 9/11. In spite of the recent statement by al Qaeda leader Mustafa Abu al-Yazid that al Qaeda retains the ability to conduct 9/11-style attacks, his boast simply does not ring true. After the 9/11 attacks there is no way a captain and crew (or a group of passengers for that matter) are going to relinquish control of an aircraft to hijackers armed with box cutters — or even a handgun or IED. A commercial airliner will never again be commandeered from the cockpit and flown into a building — especially in the United States.

Because of the shift in mindset and improvements in airline security, the militants have been forced to alter their operational framework. In effect they have returned to the pre-9/11 operational concept of taking down an aircraft with an IED rather than utilizing an aircraft as human-guided missile. This return was first demonstrated by the December 2001 attempt by Richard Reid to destroy American Airlines Flight 63 over the Atlantic with a shoe bomb and later by the thwarted 2006 liquid-explosives plot. The operational concept in place now is clearly to destroy rather than commandeer. Both the Reid plot and the 2006 liquid-bomb plot show links back to the operational philosophy evidenced by Operation Bojinka in the mid-1990s, which was a plot to destroy multiple aircraft in flight over the Pacific Ocean.

The return to Bojinka principles is significant because it represents not only an IED attack against an aircraft but also a specific method of attack: a camouflaged, modular IED that the bomber smuggles onto an aircraft in pieces and then assembles once he or she is aboard and well past security. The original Bojinka plot used baby dolls to smuggle the main explosive charge of nitrocellulose aboard the aircraft. Once on the plane, the main charge was primed with an improvised detonator that was concealed inside a carry-on bag and then hooked into a power source and a timer (which was disguised as a wrist watch). The baby-doll device was successfully smuggled past security in a test run in December 1994 and was detonated aboard Philippine Air Flight 434.

The main charge in the baby-doll devices, however, proved insufficient to bring down the aircraft, so the plan was amended to add a supplemental charge of liquid triacetone triperoxide (or TATP, aptly referred to as “Mother of Satan”), which was to be concealed in a bottle of contact lens solution. The plot unraveled when the bombmaker, Abdel Basit (who is frequently referred to by one of his alias names, Ramzi Yousef) accidentally started his apartment on fire while brewing the TATP.

The Twist

The 2006 liquid-bomb plot borrowed the elements of using liquid explosives and disguised individual components and attacking multiple aircraft at the same time from Bojinka. The 2006 plotters sought to smuggle their liquid explosives aboard using drink bottles instead of contact lens solution containers and planned to use different types of initiators. The biggest difference between Bojinka and more recent plots is that the Bojinka operatives were to smuggle the components aboard the aircraft, assemble the IEDs inside the lavatory and then leave the completed devices hidden aboard multi-leg flights while the operatives got off the aircraft at an intermediate stop. The more recent iterations of the jihadist airplane-attack concept, including Richard Reid’s attempted shoe bombing and the 2006 liquid-bomb plot, planned to use suicide bombers to detonate the devices midflight. The successful August 2004 twin aircraft bombings in Russia by Chechen militants also utilized suicide bombers.

The shift to suicide operatives is not only a reaction to increased security but also the result of an evolution in ideology — suicide bombings have become more widely embraced by jihadist militants than they were in the early 1990s. As a result, the jihadist use of suicide bombers has increased dramatically in recent years. The success and glorification of suicide operatives, such as the 9/11 attackers, has been an important factor in this ideological shift.

One of the most recent suicide attacks was the Aug. 28 attempt by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to assassinate Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. In that attack, a suicide operative smuggled an assembled IED containing approximately one pound of high explosives from Yemen to Saudi Arabia concealed in his rectum. While in a meeting with Mohammed, the bomber placed a telephone call and the device hidden inside him detonated.

In an environment where militant operational planning has shifted toward concealed IED components, this concept of smuggling components such as explosive mixtures inside of an operative poses a daunting challenge to security personnel — especially if the components are non-metallic. It is one thing to find a quantity of C-4 explosives hidden inside a laptop that is sent through an X-ray machine; it is quite another to find that same piece of C-4 hidden inside someone’s body. Even advanced body-imaging systems like the newer backscatter and millimeter wave systems being used to screen travelers for weapons are not capable of picking up explosives hidden inside a person’s body. Depending on the explosive compounds used and the care taken in handling them, this method of concealment can also present serious challenges to explosive residue detectors and canine explosive detection teams. Of course, this vulnerability has always existed, but it is now highlighted by the new tactical reality. Agencies charged with airline security are going to be forced to address it just as they were previously forced to address shoe bombs and liquid explosives.

Actors

Currently there are three different actors in the jihadist realm. The first is the core al Qaeda group headed by bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The core al Qaeda organization has been hit hard over the past several years, and its operational ability has been greatly diminished. It has been several years since the core group has conducted a spectacular terror attack, and it has focused much of its effort on waging the ideological battle as opposed to the physical battle.

The second group of actors in the jihadist realm is the regional al Qaeda franchise groups or allies, such as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Jemaah Islamiyah and Lashkar-e-Taiba. These regional jihadist groups have conducted many of the most spectacular terrorist attacks in recent years, such as the November 2008 Mumbai attacks and the July 2009 Jakarta bombings.

The third group of actors is the grassroots jihadist militants, who are essentially do-it-yourself terrorist operatives. Grassroots jihadists have been involved in several plots in recent years, including suicide bomb plots in the United States and Europe.

In terms of terrorist tradecraft such as operational planning and bombmaking, the core al Qaeda operatives are the most advanced, followed by the operatives of the franchise groups. The grassroots operatives are generally far less advanced in terms of their tradecraft. However, any of these three actors are capable of constructing a device to conduct an attack against an airliner. The components required for such a device are incredibly simple — especially so in a suicide attack where no timer or remote detonator is required. The only components required for such a simple device are a main explosive charge, a detonator (improvised or otherwise) and a simple initiator such as a battery in the case of an electric detonator or a match or lighter in the case of a non-electric detonator.

The October 2005 incident in which a University of Oklahoma student was killed by a suicide device he was carrying demonstrates how it is possible for an untrained person to construct a functional IED. However, as we have seen in cases like the July 2005 attempted attacks against the London Underground and the July 2007 attempted attacks against nightclubs in London and the airport in Glasgow, grassroots operatives can also botch things due to a lack of technical bombmaking ability. Nevertheless, the fact remains that constructing IEDs is actually easier than effectively planning an attack and successfully executing it.

Getting a completed device or its components by security and onto the aircraft is a significant challenge, but as we have discussed, it is possible to devise ways to overcome that challenge. This means that the most significant weakness of any suicide-attack plan is the operative assigned to conduct the attack. Even in a plot to attack 10 or 12 aircraft, a group would need to manufacture only about 12 pounds of high explosives — about what is required for a single, small suicide device and far less than is required for a vehicle-borne explosive device. Because of this, the operatives are more of a limiting factor than the explosives themselves, as it is far more difficult to find and train 10 or 12 suicide bombers.

A successful attack requires operatives not only to be dedicated enough to initiate a suicide device without getting cold feet; they must also possess the nerve to calmly proceed through airport security checkpoints without alerting officers that they are up to something sinister. This set of tradecraft skills is referred to as demeanor, and while remaining calm under pressure and behaving normal may sound simple in theory, practicing good demeanor under the extreme pressure of a suicide operation is very difficult. Demeanor has proven to be the Achilles’ heel of several terror plots, and it is not something that militant groups have spent a great deal of time teaching their operatives. Because of this, it is frequently easier to spot demeanor mistakes than it is to find well-hidden explosives.

In the end, it is impossible to keep all contraband off aircraft. Even in prison systems, where there is a far lower volume of people to screen and searches are far more invasive, corrections officials have not been able to prevent contraband from being smuggled into the system. Narcotics, cell phones and weapons do make their way through prison screening points. Like the prison example, efforts to smuggle contraband aboard aircraft can be aided by placing people inside the airline or airport staff or via bribery. These techniques are frequently used to smuggle narcotics on board aircraft.

Obviously, efforts to improve technical methods to locate IED components must not be abandoned, but the existing vulnerabilities in airport screening systems demonstrate that emphasis also needs to be placed on finding the bomber and not merely on finding the bomb. Finding the bomber will require placing a greater reliance on other methods such as checking names, conducting interviews and assigning trained security officers to watch for abnormal behavior and suspicious demeanor. It also means that the often overlooked human elements of airport security, including situational awareness, observation and intuition, need to be emphasized now more than ever.

Muslim world decreased the support for terrorism

http://www.pewglobal.org/

September 10

Eight years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Pew Global Attitudes Project finds that support for Osama bin Laden has declined considerably among Muslim publics in recent years. Moreover, majorities or pluralities among eight of the nine Muslim publics surveyed this year say that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilians can never be justified to defend Islam; only in the Palestinian territories does a majority endorse such attacks.The drop in support for bin Laden has been most dramatic in Indonesia, Pakistan and Jordan. Currently, about one-quarter of Muslims in Jordan (28%) and Indonesia (25%) express confidence in the al Qaeda leader to do the right thing regarding world affairs; in 2003, majorities in each country agreed (56% and 59%, respectively).

Read the full commentary at: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1338/declining-muslim-support-for-bin-laden-suicide-bombing

AQAP: Paradigm Shifts and Lessons Learned

Scott Stewart

Stratfor

September 2

On the evening of Aug. 28, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister — and the man in charge of the kingdom’s counterterrorism efforts — was receiving members of the public in connection with the celebration of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting. As part of the Ramadan celebration, it is customary for members of the Saudi royal family to hold public gatherings where citizens can seek to settle disputes or offer Ramadan greetings.
One of the highlights of the Friday gathering was supposed to be the prince’s meeting with Abdullah Hassan Taleh al-Asiri, a Saudi man who was a wanted militant from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Asiri had allegedly renounced terrorism and had requested to meet the prince in order to repent and then be accepted into the kingdom’s amnesty program. Such surrenders are not unprecedented — and they serve as great press events for the kingdom’s ideological battle against jihadists. Prince Mohammed, who is responsible for the Saudi rehabilitation program for militants, is a key figure in that ideological battle.
In February, a man who appeared with al-Asiri on Saudi Arabia’s list of most-wanted militants — former Guantanamo Bay inmate Mohammed al-Awfi — surrendered in Yemen and was transported to Saudi Arabia where he renounced terrorism and entered into the kingdom’s amnesty program. Al-Awfi, who had appeared in a January 2009 video issued by the newly created AQAP after the merger of the Saudi and Yemeni nodes of the global jihadist network, was a senior AQAP leader, and his renouncement was a major blow against AQAP.
But the al-Asiri case ended very differently from the al-Awfi case. Unlike al-Awfi, al-Asiri was not a genuine repentant — he was a human Trojan horse. After al-Asiri entered a small room to speak with Prince Mohammed, he activated a small improvised explosive device (IED) he had been carrying inside his anal cavity. The resulting explosion ripped al-Asiri to shreds but only lightly injured the shocked prince — the target of al-Asiri’s unsuccessful assassination attempt.
While the assassination proved unsuccessful, AQAP had been able to shift the operational paradigm in a manner that allowed them to achieve tactical surprise. The surprise was complete and the Saudis did not see the attack coming — the operation could have succeeded had it been better executed.
The kind of paradigm shift evident in this attack has far-reaching implications from a protective-intelligence standpoint, and security services will have to adapt in order to counter the new tactics employed. The attack also allows some important conclusions to be drawn about AQAP’s ability to operate inside Saudi Arabia.

Paradigm Shifts

Militants conducting terrorist attacks and the security services attempting to guard against such attacks have long engaged in a tactical game of cat and mouse. As militants adopt new tactics, security measures are then implemented to counter those tactics. The security changes then cause the militants to change in response and the cycle begins again. These changes can include using different weapons, employing weapons in a new way or changing the type of targets selected.
Sometimes, militants will implement a new tactic or series of tactics that is so revolutionary that it completely changes the framework of assumptions — or the paradigm — under which the security forces operate. Historically, al Qaeda and its jihadist progeny have proved to be very good at understanding the security paradigm and then developing tactics intended to exploit vulnerabilities in that paradigm in order to launch surprise attacks. For example:
Prior to the 9/11 attacks, it was inconceivable that a large passenger aircraft would be used as a manually operated cruise missile. Hence, security screeners allowed box cutters to be carried onto aircraft, which were then used by the hijackers to take over the planes.
The use of faux journalists to assassinate Ahmed Shah Masood with suicide IEDs hidden in their camera gear was also quite inventive.
Had Richard Reid been able to light the fuse on his shoe bomb, we might still be wondering what happened to American Airlines Flight 63.
The boat bomb employed against the USS Cole in October 2000 was another example of a paradigm shift that resulted in tactical surprise.
Once the element of tactical surprise is lost, however, the new tactics can be countered.
When the crew and passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 learned what had happened to the other flights hijacked and flown to New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, they stormed the cockpit and stopped the hijackers from using their aircraft in an attack. Aircraft cockpit doors have also been hardened and other procedural measures have been put in place to make 9/11-style suicide hijackings harder to pull off.
Following the Masood assassination, journalists have been given very close scrutiny before being allowed into the proximity of a VIP.
The traveling public has felt the impact of the Reid shoe-bombing attempt by being forced to remove their shoes every time they pass through airport security. And the thwarted 2006 Heathrow plot has resulted in limits on the size of liquid containers travelers can take aboard aircraft.
The U.S. Navy is now very careful to guard against small craft pulling up alongside its warships.
Let’s now take a look at the paradigm shift marked by the Prince Mohammed assassination attempt.

AQAP’s Tactical Innovations

First, using a repentant militant was a brilliant move, especially when combined with the timing of Ramadan. For Muslims, Ramadan is a time for introspection, sacrifice, reconciliation and repentance — it is a time to exercise self-restraint and practice good deeds. Additionally, as previously mentioned, Ramadan is a time when the Saudi royal family customarily makes itself more accessible to the people than at other times of the year. By using a repentant militant who appears on Saudi Arabia’s list of most-wanted militants, AQAP was playing to the ego of the Saudis, who very much want to crush AQAP, and who also want to use AQAP members who have renounced terrorism and the group as part of their ideological campaign against jihadists. The surrender of an AQAP member offered the Saudi government a prize and a useful tool — it was an attractive offer and, as anticipated, Prince Mohammed took the bait. (Another side benefit of this tactic from the perspective of AQAP is that it will make the Saudis far more careful when they are dealing with surrendered militants in the future.)
The second tactical innovation in this case was the direct targeting of a senior member of the Saudi royal family and the member of the family specifically charged with leading the campaign against AQAP. In the past, jihadist militants in Saudi Arabia have targeted foreign interests and energy infrastructure in the kingdom. While jihadists have long derided and threatened the Saudi royal family in public statements, including AQAP statements released this year, they had not, prior to the Prince Mohammed assassination attempt, ever tried to follow through on any of their threats. Nor has the group staged any successful attack inside the kingdom since the February 2007 attack that killed four French citizens, and it has not attempted a major attack in Saudi Arabia since the failed February 2006 attack against a major oil-processing facility in the city of Abqaiq. Certainly the group had never before attempted a specifically targeted assassination against any member of the very large Saudi royal family — much less a senior member. Therefore the attack against Prince Mohammed came as a complete surprise. There are many less senior members of the royal family who would have been far more vulnerable to attack, but they would not have carried the rank or symbolism that Mohammed does.
But aside from his rank, Mohammed was the logical target to select for this operation because of his office and how he conducts his duties. Mohammed has long served as the primary contact between jihadists and the Saudi government, and he is the person Saudi militants go to in order to surrender. He has literally met with hundreds of repentant jihadists in person and had experienced no known security issues prior to the Aug. 28 incident. This explains why Mohammed personally spoke on the phone with al-Asiri prior to the surrender and why he did not express much concern over meeting with someone who appeared on his government’s list of most-wanted militants. He met with such men regularly.
Since it is well known that Mohammed has made it his personal mission to handle surrendering militants, AQAP didn’t have to do much intelligence work to realize that Mohammed was vulnerable to an attack or to arrange for a booby-trapped al-Asiri to meet with Mohammed. They merely had to adapt their tactics in order to exploit vulnerabilities in the security paradigm.
The third tactical shift is perhaps the most interesting, and that is the use of an IED hidden in the anal cavity of the bomber. Suicide bombers have long been creative when it comes to hiding their devices. In addition to the above-mentioned IED in the camera gear used in the Masood assassination, female suicide bombers with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have hidden IEDs inside brassieres, and female suicide bombers with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party have worn IEDs designed to make them look pregnant. However, this is the first instance we are aware of where a suicide bomber has hidden an IED inside a body cavity.
It is fairly common practice around the world for people to smuggle contraband such as drugs inside their body cavities. This is done not only to get items across international borders but also to get contraband into prisons. It is not unusual for people to smuggle narcotics and even cell phones into prisons inside their body cavities (the prison slang for this practice is “keistering”). It is also not at all uncommon for inmates to keister weapons such as knives or improvised stabbing devices known as “shanks.” Such keistered items can be very difficult to detect using standard search methods, especially if they do not contain much metal.
In the case of al-Asiri, he turned himself in to authorities on the afternoon of Aug. 27 and did not meet with Mohammed until the evening of Aug. 28. By the time al-Asiri detonated his explosive device, he had been in custody for some 30 hours and had been subjected to several security searches, though it is unlikely that any of them included a body cavity search. While it is possible that there was some type of internal collusion, it is more likely that the device had been hidden inside of al-Asiri the entire time.
AQAP’s claim of responsibility for the attack included the following statement:“…Abdullah Hassan Taleh al-Asiri, who was on the list of 85 wanted persons, was able, with the help of God, to enter Nayef’s palace as he was among his guards and detonate an explosive device. No one will be able to know the type of this device or the way it was detonated. Al-Asiri managed to pass all the security checkpoints in Najran and Jeddah airports and was transported on board Mohammed bin Nayef’s private plane.”
AQAP also threatened additional surprise attacks in the “near future,” but now that the type of device al-Asiri used is known, security measures can — and almost certainly will — be implemented to prevent similar attacks in the future.
While keistering an IED is a novel tactic, it does present operational planners with some limitations. For one thing, the amount of explosive material that can be hidden inside a person is far less than the amount that can be placed inside a backpack or is typically used in a suicide belt or vest. For another, the body of the bomber will tend to absorb much of the blast wave and most of any fragmentation from the device. This means that the bomber would have to get in very close proximity to an intended target in order to kill him or her. Such a device would not be very useful for a mass-casualty attack like the July 17 Jakarta hotel bombings and instead would be more useful in assassination attempts against targeted individuals.
We have not been able to determine exactly how the device was triggered, but it likely employed a command-detonated remote device of some kind. Having wires protruding from the bomber’s body would be a sure giveaway. The use of a wireless remote means that the device would be susceptible to radio frequency countermeasures.
One other concern about such a device is that it would likely have a catastrophic result if employed on an aircraft, especially if it were removed from the bomber’s body and placed in a strategic location on board the aircraft. Richard Reid’s shoe IED only contained about four ounces of explosives, an amount that could conceivably be smuggled inside a human.

What the Attack Says About AQAP

While the Aug. 28 attack highlighted AQAP’s operational creativity, it also demonstrated that the group failed to effectively execute the attack after gaining the element of surprise. Quite simply, the bomber detonated his device too far away from the intended target. It is quite likely that the group failed to do adequate testing with the device and did not know what its effective kill radius was. AQAP will almost certainly attempt to remedy that error before it tries to employ such a device again.
In the larger picture, this attempt shows that AQAP does not have the resources inside the kingdom to plan and execute an attack on a figure like Prince Mohammed. That it would try a nuanced and highly targeted strike against Mohammed rather than a more brazen armed assault or vehicle-borne IED attack demonstrates that the group is very weak inside Saudi Arabia. It even needed to rely on operatives and planners who were in Yemen to execute the attack.
When the formation of AQAP was announced in January, STRATFOR noted that it would be important to watch for indications of whether the merger of the Saudi and Yemeni groups was a sign of desperation by a declining group or an indication that it had new blood and was on the rise. AQAP’s assassination attempt on Prince Mohammed has clearly demonstrated that the group is weak and in decline.
AQAP has not given up the struggle, but the group will be hard-pressed to weather the storm that is about to befall it as the Saudis retaliate for the plot. It will be very surprising if it is able to carry through with its threat to attack other members of the Saudi royal family in the near future. Indeed, the very fact that AQAP has threatened more attacks on the royal family likely indicates that the threats are empty; if the group truly did have other plots in the works, it would not want to risk jeopardizing those plots by prompting the Saudis to increase security in response to a threat.
Lacking the strength to conduct large, aggressive attacks, the weakened AQAP will need to continue innovating in order to pose a threat to the Saudi monarchy. But, as seen in the Aug. 28 case, tactical innovation requires more than just a novel idea — militants must also carefully develop and test new concepts before they can use them to effectively conduct a terrorist attack.