Editor’s Note – The author of this report, Thomas Wyld, is a contributing researcher/writer to SUA. He was also a contributor to the Forward-Leaning Insider publications from the Osen-Hunter Group where he was the Director of Communications and Intelligence.
“No Campaign to Defeat Al Qaeda”
U.S. Not Prepared for a Surging Al Qaeda “Stronger Than Ever”
By Thomas Wyld
Brilliant intelligence trade-craft was in abundance at the 7th Annual Terrorism Conference this month sponsored by the Jamestown Foundation, and the two-fisted consensus was undeniable: Al Qaeda is on the rise, the battlefield is expanding, the Global Jihad Movement is more dangerous – and less prone to detection – than ever before, and the U.S. is ill-prepared to counter today’s threat.
The only thing missing was the punch line.
In September, at the upscale WESTGATE MALL in Nairobi, 4 AL SHABAAB fighters killed 72, held off Kenyan security forces for 4 days and escaped.[1] Months before, I predicted an assault on Jewish-owned resorts, hotels and malls like the WESTGATE.[2] The tactics employed were created by Ilyas Kashmiri, AL QAEDA’s master tactical innovator, and field-tested by 3 units Kashmiri led (or may still lead if alive): the bleeding-edge 313 BRIGADE, an elite force of the best fighters in AL QAEDA and allied militancies; LASHKAR-AL-ZIL (LAZ) (AL QAEDA’s “SHADOW ARMY”); and Kashmiri’s own HARAKAT-UL-JIHAD AL-ISLAMI (HUJI). In a report for the Geneva Centre for Training and Analysis of Terrorism, I assessed that the WESTGATE attack was a prelude to a similar frontal assault on the U.S. homeland. (Unmarked photo from a militant site.)
I expected to hear the punch line at any moment – that blame for years of wildly flawed assessments falls squarely at the steps of the White House, as does this government’s steadfast refusal to keep pace with a constantly morphing Al Qaeda. Yet there was no punch line. No one pointed a finger. No one said a word.
See: Kenya: Prelude to Terrorist Frontal Assault on U.S. Soil?
Virtually every strategist and analyst who took to the podium at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace charged that the U.S. is increasingly less prepared for an expanding, diffused Al Qaeda. Because it has spread itself far and wide, dramatically broadening its footprint in strategically vital regions and, willingly or reluctantly, decentralizing more attack authority downward to affiliates, the threat posed by Al Qaeda has become less vulnerable to detection as we have become more vulnerable to attack.
“The expansion of Al Qaeda that we are witnessing in the Arab world is truly phenomenal, greater than what we saw during the first decade of its existence,” said Bruce Riedel, director of Brooking’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy. “We face extraordinary danger. It is worse than Al Qaeda in Iraq’s regeneration in 2009/2010. We face more danger than ever before.”
“Abaarihii 8:00 aroornimo ee saaka ayaa gaari ay saarnaayeen ciidanka boolika ee dalka Kenya waxaa ka dhacay qarax bambada, waxaan halkaas ku dhintay hal askari qaar kalana way ku dhaawacmeen. Qaraxaan ayaa ka dhacay qaybta loo yaqaano ee xaafadda Islii.” Or: “Around 0800 [the morning of 3 December 2010], a police officer was killed when an unknown man threw a hand grenade at his vehicle. The explosion occurred in the Islii [‘Eastleigh’] neighborhood in Nairobi.” Attacking cities is the new normal for Al Qaeda, argued Australian Dr. David Kilcullen, architect of counter-insurgency in Iraq. In his new book, Out of the Mountains, he predicts that conflict will increase in sprawling coastal cities like L’Ariana, Tunisia, [3] and urban slums like Eastleigh, the Somali-dominant district in Nairobi. Cities, not countries, will be the tipping point for future conflict, and resiliency will be the objective, not stability. (Un-marked photo of Eastleigh from a Somali source.)
Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla – Amazon
Obama White House: For Years, a Systematic Denial of the Surging Threat
Because of the hybridization and dispersal of the movement, anyone who assesses that decapitation is a deathblow to Al Qaeda is dead wrong and delusional. Observed Dr. Bruce Hoffman, Director of Georgetowne’s Center for Peace & Security Studies: “We know that decapitation is not going to defeat Al Qaeda but all too often we forget that truth – and suffer from what we might call Terrorism Alzheimer’s.”
The problem, of course, is not disease, but deliberate design. Since the words of “A New Beginning” were uttered by President Barack Obama at Cairo University in June 2009, the world has suffered from an unrealistic, irresponsible vision that has never squared with the realities of the Muslim world and Islamists particularly.
In Derna, the Islamist stronghold in eastern Libya, thousands of Salafis marched the day after AL QAEDA, wearing its new mask as ANSAR AL-SHARI’A, attacked U.S. SPECIAL MISSION BENGHAZI and killed four Americans. (Unmarked photo from a Jihadi site.)
President Obama’s backers may chant that the world must fit his plan, but Islamists refuse to do so. Not in Bangkok, New Delhi or a half-dozen other cities where Hezbollah tried to kill Israelis. Not in Burgas, Bulgaria, where the Shiite radicals were successful in killing Israeli tourists. Not in the Horn of Africa where Al Shabaab was, in my view, wrongly dismissed at the conference as “collapsing.”
And certainly not in Syria where Al Qaeda was rightly assessed as “dominant,” with the best trained, best equipped and most effective fighting force on the battlefield – some 45,000 Jihadis strong. To make matters worse, far worse, many of those combat veterans possess U.S. and European passports, and they look forward to bringing their lethal skills home soon.
Contrary to “unnamed White House officials” fond of declaring that the “war on terror is over”[4] or the president himself who announced the demise of Al Qaeda some 32 times since last year’s 9/11 attack in Benghazi, the terrorist coda[5] continues to ring out fortissimo: “Strike, Melt Away, Adapt, Accommodate, Strike Again.” As Dr. Riedel put it: “The battlefield is expanding, not contracting.”
See CNS article: Obama has Touted Al Qaeda’s Demise 32 Times since Benghazi Attack
Al Qaeda today has the “capacity, focus and strength” to attack the U.S., observed Dr. Hoffman. He warned that dismissing any Al Qaeda franchise as having an “exclusively local” focus is a “fundamental misreading” of the movement. Al Qaeda has always been a “hybrid of the near and the far away.” They can mount successful attacks on our homeland or theirs, and Jamestown conference speakers uniformly confirmed that Al Qaeda is increasingly capable of attacking us today.
Consistently for the last five years, the Obama Administration has minimized the terrorist threat and painted Al Qaeda as diminished while it has built strength and grown: Soon after the president’s inauguration in 2009, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano famously told Der Spiegel she ordered a change in the language her department used: terrorist attacks would be termed “man-caused disasters.”
In January 2010, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) joined the chorus, as if he was “reporting for duty” as he proclaimed in his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee he chaired issued a report titled Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia: A Ticking Time Bomb. Riddled with errors of commission and omission, the report wrongly assessed that Al Shabaab “does not have goals beyond [Somalia’s] borders” – false on its very face. Mr. Kerry’s committee ignored the insurgency’s rampant recruiting campaigns in Toronto and Minnesota,[7] the axe attack on the bomb-in-turban cartoonist in Denmark[6] and, incredibly, the assassination attempt on Mr. Kerry’s predecessor, Hillary Clinton, in Kenya – all attacks and attack attempts mounted well beyond the borders of Somali, and all pre-dating the amateurish report.[8]
Predictably, Mrs. Clinton ran a damage control drill last January when she delivered testimony before Congress blatantly designed to protect Mr. Obama’s legacy and her presidential aspirations. In the wake of four dead Americans at U.S. Special Mission Benghazi four months earlier, she would not dare affirm the long-standing nature of the Al Qaeda threat and its years-long extraordinary build-up prior to the Benghazi attack, so she framed the threat as new. She emphasized that “we now face a spreading Jihadist threat” – now meaning recent, emergent, unforeseen, sudden, new.
Lead spokesman for AL SHABAAB, Sheikh Cali Maxamed Raage (Cali Dhere), stands amidst the corpses of Ugandan and Burundian soldiers after a battle in Mogadishu in 2011. Raage relished demonstrating that AL SHABAAB had not only vanquished AFRICAN UNION troops, but had also conquered Saliibiyiinta – “Crusaders” (literally, “men of the cross”). Raage put on display the corpses of soldiers with machetes still buried in their chests. But Raage was most proud to display the signs that the dead were Christians, from a Burundi soldier’s bible in his native Kirundi opened to the BOOK OF EZEKIEL to the most reviled object in the Islamist world: the cross, symbol of the faith the Mujahideen are committed to eradicating. (Photo from a militant site.)
The threat was indeed “spreading,” as she confessed, but it was hardly new. Ever faithful to the administration, CNN emphasized the newness of the threat, referring to the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) as a “new arena of instability.” New? Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the region knows full well that instability and the Al Qaeda surge in MENA[9] were not the least bit new – not then, not now.[10]
See: Clinton lays out daunting security challenges in North Africa
Also see: “SECRET” WHITE HOUSE MEETINGS FOCUSED ON NORTH AFRICA AL QAEDA FRANCHISE
The lesson of a surging, stronger Al Qaeda was taught days before Mrs. Clinton’s carefully crafted testimony. She missed the lesson, as did the Obama administration as a whole. The lesson was taught in Algeria, the massive hostage-slaughter at a gas plant masterminded by Mokhtar Belmokhtar. MBM can’t possibly pose a threat, the thinking went at the time. This terror leader was stripped of his North African Jihadi command just months before the gas plant attack in January. Many analysts dismissed him as washed up, Washington ignored him, yet he emerged victorious. Soon after Al Qaeda in the Land of Islamic Maghreb Emir Abdel Malik Droukdel stripped MBM of command of El Moulethemine Khatibat, AQLIM’s “Brigade of the Veiled Ones,” he formed his own unit –a kill squad called El-Mouakioune Bi Eddima (“Signers in Blood”).
I learned from a Tuareg tracker that MBM left Mali the moment the first French bombs fell, trekked across Niger and the Ténéré, the forbidding desert of south-central Sahara, and rolled up into Libya where he ordered the border crossing into Algeria. The tracker emphasized that Belmokhtar pulled off the incredible 1,700 km journey without detection – something the tracker said “only Allah can do.”
Al Qaeda’s lieutenants can journey without detection. Even those most troublesome to Al Qaeda Central. Word was, AQC’s Ayman Al-Zawahiri had earlier chastised MBM for being too independent of AQLIM and AQC. He was “only willing to be followed and obeyed.”
Many analysts interpreted this as an AQ shortcoming. Far from it. A Malian journalist who had interviewed MBM months earlier spotted the terror leader and hailed him, hoping for a word. One of Belmokhtar’s many body guards stepped in, halting the reporter in his tracks: “Vous ne devez pas! Il est – le prince!” Or: “You must not! It is – the prince!”
Belmokhtar is moving ever closer to the title he most covets: that of Emir Al-Sahara, “Prince of the Desert” – while the Obama administration ambles on, “craven, one-dimensional, pathetic,” [11] completely dismissing the truth about the surge and the growing strength of militants in MENA.
In a 17 January 2013 video, Mokhtar Belmokhtar proposed a prisoner swap: he would release American hostages his men captured in the Algeria gas plant attack in exchange for the release of Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahan and Aafia Siddiqui from U.S. prisons. It was hardly the first time the Obama administration had heard an appeal for Abdel-Rahman’s release. JAMA’AT AL-ISLAMIYA, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, was founded by Abel-Rahman. Last year, JAMA’AT member Hani Nour Al-Din obtained a visa illegally thanks to the STATE DEPARTMENT. In flagrant disregard of federal law, STATE did not request from Congress the neccessary special exemption that would allow a member of a designated terror group to visit the U.S. Failure to comply with the law infuriated U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), then-Chairman, HOUSE HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE. By skirting the law, STATE allowed Al-Din to escape Congressional scrutiny so he would be free to pursue his goal: lobbying the White House and STATE to urge the release of Omar Abel-Rahman. [12] In 1995, the Blind Sheikh was convicted of plotting the mass murder of Americans. He was also found guilty of seditious conspiracy, the first such conviction since the Civil War.
(Accompanying video intended to be inserted here has been removed by YouTube.)
Was the lesson of a surging, stronger Al Qaeda learned? No. Neither Mrs. Clinton nor the president were paying attention. On the other hand, Australian David Kilcullen, architect of the counter-insurgency push in Iraq, paid close attention: “The attack on the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria[13] was the sign [that] violence [had] spread throughout the region. Why did this happen? It was a failure of [our] strategy and politics, and the dominance of tactics.
“We have no ability to successfully terminate conflict. This is not a military problem. It is a national problem. We failed to translate military success in Libya to a national success, for example. Differentiating between diplomatic and military strategy is a false dichotomy. In Af-Pak, Syria and Libya, the military situation on the ground is actually better than the political situation that is dramatically worse. The military element of national power is limited by design. The military cannot and must not be capable of delivering a conclusion to conflict.”
Thus the failure is with our national strategy or lack of it, and it is yoked to our political leaders, not our men and women in uniform.
Al Qaeda has survived for over a quarter-century. Even if it sharply restricts attacks to its home turf – and it won’t – all franchises communicate, fund-raise and network globally. They also recruit globally. Al Shabaab, for example, has at least 2 dozen American fighters in its ranks.[14] Al Qaeda has changed. We have not.
The old pattern of young, radicalized Muslim men joining one group for an extended period of time is now history. Today, fighters move from one small group to another, creating an amorphous enemy increasingly difficult to detect.
Again, Al Qaeda has changed. We have not.
Is the threat by Al Qaeda in North Africa new, as Hillary Clinton led Congress to believe last January? Not at all. After “making bay’at”[15] to AL QAEDA IN THE LAND OF ISLAMIC MAGHREB (AQLIM), Moroccan Abdelatif Aoulad Chiba, 36, gathered the toxins and explosives necessary to poison the water supplies at popular Spanish resorts. “Kill the enemies in the heart of Europe and the USA,” the Moroccan native wrote online. “Attack their houses, poison their water, set off explosives in their markets and the places where they meet.” Spanish CT forces arrested him in a coastal town in southern Spain after he posted a farewell message to his wife that revealed just enough to move in. The date? August 2011. (Unmarked photo from a militant site.)
See Fazul here.
Looming: A Mumbai-Style Frontal Assault on the U.S. Homeland
Al Qaeda seeks to model attacks on Mumbai. Its key strategists – Syria’s Abu Musab Al-Suri was specifically mentioned – planted the seeds of Mumbai in the Madrid[16] train and London underground attacks.[17] Al Qaeda longs to replicate Mumbai in Europe and the U.S.
See more on Mumbai here.
The sheer breadth, ferocity and brazenness of an attack mounted by just 10 men made the Mumbai Massacre unique. The attack began 26 November 2008, 2115 local, at the CHATRAPATI SHIVAJI TRAIN STATION (above), one of the world’s busiest, where two LASHKAR-E-TOIBA (LET) gunmen killed 58 and wounded 104 in minutes. For the next 2 hours, 10 terrorists launched a major assault every 15 minutes against 10 total targets. The Mumbai Massacre lasted four days and claimed nearly 200 lives. From “buddy pairs” to bombings intended to throw off India’s security responders, the terror innovations used by the LET attackers were developed, tested and refined by one man: Ilyas Kashmiri. (Mumbai police evidentiary photo.)
Al Qaeda: Unleashing the Perfect Storm Against the West
The jihadi threat is more pronounced today chiefly because of Al Qaeda’s phenomenal rise in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA). As if to disabuse anyone of the notion that the movement is rigidly hierarchical, D. Kilcullen began a summary of the movement’s recent history by explaining the 5 component parts of Al Qaeda: the central core of Ayman Al-Zawahiri & Co., cadres, auxiliaries, guerilla forces and the underground Jihadi movement. How has this lash-up fared for Al Qaeda in recent years? Only too well.
“By June 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed, Al Qaeda Central was in disarray, and popular uprisings in MENA were having more impact that AQC…. In Somalia, AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia) had cleared Mogadishu and was expanding their control beyond the capital….
“By 2013, we witnessed heavy Al Qaeda domination in Syria. In Kurdish Iraq, there was one attack and some 20 casualties a month in 2010. Now, casualties are up to pre-Iraq surge levels, violence unseen since 2006….
“In Egypt, we saw the failure of political Islam and the emergence of Jihadi groups in the Sinai.” Earlier this year, I noted that Syria’s Al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat Al-Nusrah was actively networking with Al Qaeda’s Sinai affiliate, the Mujahideen Shura Council.[18]
“In 2011, Mali was one of the most effective governments in North Africa. Today, it is a shambles.”
The Threat to the West by Trained Jihadis Battle-Hardened in Syria
Jamestown speakers agreed that the most abject U.S. foreign policy and national security failure in recent history is Syria. “After virtually no Al Qaeda presence to speak of when the revolution began in 2011,” Dr. Kilcullen observed, “there are now 45,000 guerillas fighting for AQ and allied groups.”
“With the training [and combat experience fighters] are acquiring in Syria, there is a strong possibility that over the next two years they will be able to fulfill the last wishes of Osama bin Laden – to mount an attack like the one on Mumbai,” said Dr. Hoffman.
The targets? The U.S. and the West.
Its first targets may be a lot closer to home for Al Qaeda, but only initially. We are turning our backs on the security of our two foremost allies in the Middle East – Israel and Jordan – nations that share the border with the biggest terror incubator in the world today: Syria.
Jabhat al-Nusrah and the other AQ-affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham or ISIS, “are slipping into a contest of which insurgency can out-do the other,” warned Dr. Kilcullen. “Don’t be surprised if one tries to out-do the other by carrying out an attack on U.S. interests, such as U.S. Embassy Amman…
“In Syria, the leopard has changed its spots. The new Jihadi is no longer tone-deaf to politics. If Al Qaeda and the Levant got it on and had a love child, it would be Jabhat al-Nusrah,” he said, referring to the prime Al Qaeda franchise in Syria.
Dr. Riedel concurred. In Syria, Al Qaeda is conjuring the perfect storm for the West: “If 2 morons can close the Boston Metropolitan Area and Logan International Airport, think what I could do as a trained Jihadi battle-hardened in Syria.”
AL QAEDA’s Charm Offensive in Syria. The ISLAMIC STATE OF IRAQ AND AL-SHAM (ISIS), a key AL QAEDA affiliate in the Levant, battles for the hearts and minds of Sunni Syrians. Wielding soft power from places like its Shari’a institute in Aleppo (above), ISIS entertains children while indoctrinating them to hate Alawites and Shiites. ISIS routinely provides aid to protestors, free food, below-market fuel and free medical services. No counter-insurgency effort is underway. (Unmarked photo from a Jihadi site.)
Dr. Riedel said we have dismantled Al Qaeda 12 times since the 9/11 attack in 2001, and GEN James Mattis would later intone that we do not have a plan today to defeat the organization. And we need one.
“Al Qaeda’s narrative was challenged in 2011 by the Arab Spring,” Dr. Riedel observed. “Peaceful demonstrations succeeded in toppling dictators. Al-Qaeda’s narrative was at risk. Terror had not produced change. Twitter had.
“But today, everything is different. Al Qaeda’s narrative has been validated in 2013, most notably in Egypt. For those who want to join Al Qaeda’s movement, events in Cairo, in Damascus, have validated what they long said: Jihad is the only solution to the problem of change in the Muslim world today.”
Confronting Jihad & Butchery – with “Friends”
In August 2011, Barack Obama unveiled the Interagency Atrocities Prevention Board to set “mass atrocities and genocide” prevention as “a core national security interest.” A White House Fact Sheet published in April 2012 – little more than campaign literature – boasted that the administration had “amassed an unprecedented record of actions … to protect civilians and hold perpetrators of atrocities accountable.” Atop the “unprecedented … actions?” “The formation of Groups of Friends” for Syria.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/04/23/fact-sheet-comprehensive-strategy-and-new-tools-prevent-and-respond-atro
But friends lend you mittens, ask about the children or meet for neighborhood barbecues. Friends don’t “protect civilians and hold perpetrators of atrocities accountable,” at least they haven’t in Syria. No nation of any stature relies on “friends” to protect and project “core national interests.” We rely on “forces,” because, as we have learned from Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, “Evil has power.”[19]
“Friends” and campaign literature notwithstanding, forces loyal to Bashar Al-Assad slaughter thousands of men, women and children after the White House declaration. Last May, Assad unleashed what I dubbed The Syrian Coastal Massacre of 2013 – a 3-day, village-by-village genocide that exterminated as many as 1,000 Sunnis. The butchery constituted Syria’s Guernica.
The Syrian Coastal Massacre of 2013 – Syria’s GUERNICA. One of my most trusted sources described the last three days in coastal Syria as “village by village” extermination. Entire families were slain in their homes. Note defensive wounds on the arms of men, presumably the fathers and brothers of murdered children. Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece GUERNICA is considered genocide on canvas. (Unmarked photo from a Syrian source.)
GEN Michael Hayden’s “Best Option” in Syria
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden reluctantly admitted that the best option for Syria is also the worst: “Option three is: Assad wins. As ugly as it sounds, I’m kind of trending toward option three as the best out of three very, very ugly possible outcomes.” For GEN Hayden, option one is “protracted Sunni-Shiite conflict,” and option two is “the most likely: the dissolution of Syria and its balkanization into rump states.
“This effectively dissolves the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916….[20] I greatly fear the dissolution of the state … a de facto dissolution of Sykes-Picot,” the secret agreement between France and the U.K. at the close of World War I that set down borders in the Middle East and defined Western and Russian spheres of influence.” With Sykes-Picot eradicated, GEN Hayden warned of the creation of “new, ungoverned space at the crossroads of our civilization.”
And which non-state actor most favors dissolution of Sykes-Picot? Al Qaeda. Dr. Riedel: “Al Qaeda is close to achieving one of its uppermost goals: the eradication of Sykes-Picot … Maintenance of [the Lebanon-Syria] borders is a vital strategic interest of the U.S.,” he said, but “currently, the border between Syria and Lebanon has been washed away.”
GEN James Mattis: The U.S. Has No Plan to Defeat Al Qaeda
The former commander of U.S. Central Command, Marine Corps General James Mattis began his remarks by quoting an Afghan diplomat: “Americans don’t lose wars. We lose interest. Our enemies can’t defeat NATO at sea or our air power at 30,000 feet. They go after us asymmetrically.
“But I do not see any Western leader describing the true threat. During the Cold War, a glossy, monthly publication was put out called Soviet Military Power.” The magazine taught Americans the true nature and dimensions of the Soviet threat, generating the will to win. “Where is our Soviet Military Power on the terrorist threat today?”
GEN Mattis echoed GEN Hayden’s imperative that safeguarding our very civilization is a vital strategic interest: “Violent Jihad is growing, gaining ground … If we don’t ask the right questions, how can we develop a counter-narrative? We are guarding not just territory but the values of our civilization.
“Is political Islam in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Mullahs of Tehran in our best interests? I am not sure that question has been asked.
“Certainly it was premature to announce the defeat of Al Qaeda a few years ago. Al Qaeda is shock-proof. It adapts. Its leaders were hit very hard, but the movement is always expanding, taking advantage of a growing number of sanctuaries.”
Acknowledging Al Qaeda’s concentrated strength in Syria, GEN Mattis said, we have no choice but to “play the ball where it lies” and above all “deal with the return to the West of warriors battle-hardened in Syria. Any veneer of civility has been rubbed off of them.”
He was one of the few speakers who addressed Iran and Hezbollah: It’s important to remember that Shiite radicals waged war against us 30 years ago at Marine Barracks Beirut. This was no a rogue operation but planned and executed at the highest levels. I’ve seen the intelligence. And this brand is still growing….
“We must confront the Sunni-Shiite battle. Our focus on nuclear weapons in Iran is myopic. We must address other mischief, such as bomb plots in Bangkok[21] and [Iran’s] assassination attempt on Saudi Arabia’s ambassador” – Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the U.S., at Café Milano in Georgetowne.[22]
What does Osama have in common with Che? Plenty. Dr. Michael Ryan, senior fellow at the JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION, said AL QAEDA is fighting a “deep battle” against the U.S. and the West, and it orbits around the strategy and tactics of Maoist revolutionaries. Syrian Jihadi leader Abu Musab Al-Suri, patron saint of Lone Wolves and “leaderless Jihad,” wrote in his magnum opus, THE CALL TO GLOBAL ISLAMIC RESISTANCE, that one of the most important works on the global war called for by AL QAEDA was Robert Taber’s WAR OF THE FLEA (1965). The title reflects Chairman Mao’s axiom that a weak flea can successfully bring down a powerful dog. The book delved into Communist insurgent leaders from Castro to Guevara. Said Dr. Ryan: “AL QAEDA is less classically Islamist and more Maoist.” (Public domain photo.)
The general closed by talking about Why We Fight, a series of seven documentary films, most of them produced by legendary director Frank Capra. Commissioned by the U.S. government, the films taught servicemen why they were called to fight and defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Recalling his opening remarks that Americans don’t lose wars but lose interest, the general asked, “Where is our Frank Capra for today?”
See The Nazis Strike
“For me, this conference has shown that we do not have a current, effective campaign in force to defeat Al Qaeda.”
_______________
NOTES -
Akin to Marine fire team rushes, a Mumbai-style frontal attack in Europe or the U.S. homeland is the fiercest and most feared assault among Western counterterrorism experts. Examples: London’s G-20 Summit April 2009 (Forward-Leaning 09-012 22 Mach 2009); the attack on Pakistan Naval Station Mehran in Karachi 23 May 2011; the December 2010 hostage-slaughter threat; and the 2010 threat of frontal assaults on hotels in Europe, the latter 3 instances discussed in “Al Qaeda Master Tactical Innovator Spotted in North Waziristan.” Forward-Leaning 12-010 8 March 2010. The most recent example of an attack modeled on Mumbai was the assault of the Westgate Mall attack.
“Iran-Israel Cold War Spills into East Africa.” Forward-Leaning Insider 12-056 6 July 2012.
Unlike other parts of the world where Al Qaeda has thrived in ungoverned, remote regions, its re-masked incarnation in Tunisia established strongholds in stable coastal areas like L’Ariana or suburbs like Douar Hicher by controlling 400 mosques in the 17 months following its founding in April 2011. “Al Qaeda Calls for Sweeping Attacks Across North Africa.” Forward-Leaning Insider 12-093 20 September 2012.
In April 2012, an unnamed State Department official – almost assuredly terror “root-causer” Daniel Benjamin – declared that “the war on terror is over” and falsely claimed “we have killed most of Al Qaeda,” despite the years-long resurgence of Al Qaeda in North Africa, Syria and the Sinai. Days after the ludicrous claim, Al Qaeda seized northern Mali – a landmass the size of California and Montana combined. Five months later, Al Qaeda would attack U.S. Special Mission Benghazi, killing four Americans. “The Money Quote: “We Now Face a Spreading Jihadi Threat.” Forward-Leaning Insider 13-011 25 January 2013.
I first coined the “terrorist coda in connection with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the dominant drama of Pakistan that gives equal billing to politicians and terrorists. “Quick-&-Dirty (Part One): Inside Punjab – Factory Floor of Jihad.” Forward-Leaning Insider 09-198 29 October 2009.
“Minnesota’s Missing Men.” Forward-Leaning Insider 08-037 6 December 2008.
See “Where is the Blade?” under “Assessment: Can Taliban Mount an Attack Here?” Forward-Leaning Insider 10-076 4 May 2009. Note: The attacker was Maxamed Gelle (Abu Mujahid), a Dane of Somali descent.
“Plot to Assassinate SECSTATE Foiled in Kenya.” Forward-Leaning Insider 09-172 8 September 2009. The attempt was made while Mrs. Clinton was staying at the Hotel InterContinental in Nairobi for talks on the African Growth & Opportunities Act, a favorite project of hers. As with the May attack on Mr. Westergaard in May, the attack involved Maxamed Gelle (Abu Mujahid), 3 other men and a woman. The mastermind of the plot was Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a terrorist who had worked the Horn of Africa for years. The Kenyan-born militant headed al Muhajirun, a unit that fought alongside al Shabaab with Kenyans Ugandans, Europeans and Saudis among its ranks (“Kenyan al Qaeda Force Fighting Alongside al Shabaab” Forward-Leaning Insider 09-132, 22 June 2009). On Monday, 14 September, U.S. Navy SEALs killed Nabhan in a raid near the coastal town of Baraawe, Somalia. [“War Deg Deg Ah!” (Af-Soomaali for “Breaking News!” literally “News Hurry Hurry Being!”) Foreign Incursion into Somalia Just Reported.” Forward-Leaning Insider 09-175 14 September 2009).
“Flash: ‘Secret’ White House Meetings Focused on North Africa Al Qaeda Franchise. The Washington Post portrays a White House Ahead of the Power Curve, but a Resurgent Al Qaeda in North Africa Predates Meetings by More than a Year.” Forward-Leaning 12-018 3 October 2012.
“After 4 Years, a Systematic Campaign of Terrorism Denial Collapses.” Forward-Leaning Insider 13-011 25 January 2013.
Regional expert Michael Young: U.S. “policy toward Syria has been strangely disconnected from its other regional priority, namely containing Iran. It took many months for the administration to acknowledge the Syrian crisis as a major issue. By insisting, on the record and off, that there is nothing they can do in Syria, American officials have effectively ensured that they will do nothing. Their performance has been craven and one-dimensional – in a word, pathetic (emphasis added). “The Money Quote: U.S. Syria Policy is ‘Craven, One-Dimensional, Pathetic.’” Forward-Leaning Insider 12-014 23 February 2012.
“Release of the Blind Sheikh & the Strange Case of Hani Nour Al-Din. Blind Sheikh’s Prosecutor: He ‘Will’ Be Released.” Forward-Leaning Insider 12-094 25 September 2012.
“Algeria Bloodbath: Be Prepared for Further Bad News. Signers in Blood: We’ll Swap you American Hostages for the Blind Sheikh and Aafia Siddiqui.” Forward-Leaning Insider 13-008 18 January 2013.
In fact, foreign fighters in the ranks of Al Shabaab outnumber those from Isaaq, the clan to which Shabaab’s primary leader belongs [Axmed Cabdi Aw Maxamoud Godane (Abuu Zubeyr)]. Godane was formally Shabaab Amiir until Abdullah Muhammad Fazul Husseine Mullah Ati, the commander of Al Qaeda in East Africa, was killed at a police checkpoint in June 2011. (“Fazul: ‘The Ghot Who Can Never Be Caught.’” Forward-Leaning 12-012 17 March 2012). Godane replaced Fazul. Dominated by foreigners, the Golaha Fulinta ee Xukumada Al Shabaab (“Al Shabaab Supreme Leadership Council”) elevated as the new Amiir another Isaaq clansman, Ibraahim Xaaji Jaamac Meecaad [honorific: Dheere Ibraahim Afghaan or Afghaani; nom de guerre: Abubakar Al-Zaylici]. After Zaylici wrote a scathing open letter to Al Qaeda Central Ayman Al-Zawahiri condemning Godane’s reclusive leadership style and brutality, Godane had him gowraceen (beheaded). Technically, no successor has been named since Al-Zaylici’s assassination in the June 2013 timeframe. He was Godane’s cousin.
“Making bay’at” with a terror organization is the equivalent of pledging loyalty to Allah. The jihadi who breaks the pledge to a terror leader betrays Allah. “Al Qaeda Picks a New Leader.” Forward-Leaning Insider 11-061 4 May 2011.
Both Syria’s Al-Suri and Libyan rebel leader Abdel-Hakim Belhadj are suspected of being involved if not masterminding the 2004 Madrid bombings. “Flash 4 Dead After Pre-Planned Terrorist Attack on U.S. Consulate Benghazi. Not a Mob Response to a Movie, but Revenge for Death of Al Qaeda Warrior-Theologian.” Forward-Leaning 12-017 12 September 2012.
“Quick-&-Dirty: The ‘Leaderless Jihad’ of Abu Musab Al-Suri. The Patron Saint of Lone Wolves and the Author of Global Jihad’s Mein Kampf.” Forward-Leaning Insider 12-030 3 April 2012.
“Al Qaeda & Hezbollah Squeezing Israel Around the Compass Rose.” Osen-Hunter Daily Intelligence Digest 14 March 2013. Majlis Shura al-Mujahedin Fi Aknaf Bayt al-Maqdis (the Mujahidin Shura Council in the Environs (or the House) of Jerusalem, or simply the Mujahidin Shura Council). “Israel-Gaza Border Clashes Resume.” Forward-Leaning Insider 12-051 23 June 2012. Groups that we assessed were likely to close ranks under the Council umbrella include: Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades (militant arm of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Jaish al-Ummah (“Army of the Nation”), Jaish al-Quds al-Islami (JQI) (Islamic Army of Al Quds), Jund Ansar Allah (“Soldiers of the Companions of God”) and Fateh (or Fatah) al-Islami (“Islamic Conquest”). Others include Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad Fi Filistin (Group for Monotheism and Jihad in Palestine), Jama’at Ansar al-Sunna [Group of the Followers of Sunna (the faith)] and Masadah alMujahideen fi Filistin (Warriors of the Lion’s Den in Palestine). “Flash: ‘Rumors of War – Ahmadinejad Walks on Lebanese Soil.” Forward-Leaning Insider 10-142 13 October 2010.
When the Holocaust Museum opened in April 1993, Elie Wiesel took Bill Clinton to task for his Balkans policy within days of the massacre of 2,000 Bosnian Muslims in the Lašva Valley. At the museum anniversary last year, Mr. Wiesel asked Mr. Obama: “How is it that Assad is still in power? Have we not learned? We must know that Evil has power.” “Assad Slaughters Hundreds in New Massacre On Syrian Coast. A Day Ago or a Year Ago, the Lesson’s the Same: ‘Evil Has Power.’” WatchStander. 3 May 2013.
“Analysts Trending Toward Balkanization as Likely Next Phase for Syria.” Forward-Leaning Insider 12-113 22 December 2012.
An Iranian who probably earns Frequent Flier Miles on Iran’s Mahan Air is Norouzi Shaya Ali Akhbar, 57, code-named “Control” a.k.a. Bangkok Bombing Plot Suspect #6. He is an Iranian businessman who acts as a facilitator for assassination squads. Even though his Bangkok bombing scheme went south, he is considered a competent operative, he generally exits a country before an attack goes down, so it would behoove agencies to prepare a special welcome for him when he arrives in a particular country. “Iran: Preemptive Strikes, Oil Prices & The Terrorist Threat of Abject Incompetence.” Forward-Leaning Insider 12-013 21 February 2012.
“Flash: FBI, DEA Thwart D.C. Bombing/Assassination Plot Orchestrated by Iran.” Forward-Leaning Insider 1-134 11 October 2011.
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