Borum’s “Radicalization into Violent Extremism I”

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Posted on May 18, 2012

The Journal of Strategic Security recently produced a special issue focusing on radicalization, which should be of immense interest for those of us studying the subject. One essay I’d like to highlight is Randy Borum’s “Radicalization into Violent Extremism I,” which reviews social science theories on the subject. It is an extremely incisive literature review, which raises several points that are well worth considering for those who do work in, or related to, this field of study.

  • Borum notes that “a focus on radicalization … risks implying that radical beliefs are a proxy—or at least a necessary precursor—for terrorism. We know this not to be true. Most people who hold radical ideas do not engage in terrorism, and many terrorists—even those who lay claim to a ’cause’—are not deeply ideological and may not ‘radicalize’ in any traditional sense.” This is not an original point, but is worth bearing in mind when considering the study of radicalization. I will also say, without contradicting Borum’s assertion, that one important aspect of assessing a lack of deep ideology on “many” terrorists’ part is making sure we get the metrics right for measuring their ideological beliefs. I took Jessica Stern to task a couple of years ago for a Washington Post op-ed she wrote that used rather inappropriate metrics for evaluating the religious commitment of those within al Qaeda.
  • The article has an interesting discussion of debates over the role of Islam. Borum accurately notes that “when countries cannot delineate which specific ideas they oppose, their reassurances” that their problem is not with the faith itself “lack credibility.” This points to the generally poor discussion of religion that tends to predominate within the field. Nuanced discussion of Islam is not completely lacking in the West, but tends to be the exception rather than the rule, including within the academic sphere. Borum outlines different schools of thought on this problem. On one hand, he points to a school of thought that distinguishes between Islam and Islamism. In this understanding, Islam refers to “a religion that conventionally–at least in modern practice–does not overtly encourage hatred of non-Muslims and neither mandates nor justifies killing of civilian non-combatants.” In contrast, the term Islamism “refers not to a religion, but to a totalitarian political ideology driven by strong anti-Western and anti-democratic sentiment.” On the other hand, he points to the contrasting view “that core Islamic texts and teachings mandate subjugation of and warfare against non-Muslims.” He concludes that “there are profoundly different strategic and tactical implications … for whether we identify the religion, its holy text, or a narrower ideology as the core threat to global security. These divergent views need to be discussed openly, not with the aim of determining a winner and loser, but to clarify security-related policy objectives.” I’m not optimistic that such a discussion could occur reasonably or productively, but Borum’s point that discussions of radicalization often fail to reference specific ideas that are seen as objectionable is in my view important. Bear in mind, too, that our definition of what views are “radical” and hence problematic may differ from the domestic context to global context.
  • Borum debunks the idea that we should look for a general theory of terrorism. He quotes the respected scholar Walter Laqueur, who noted, “Many terrorists exist, and their character has changed over time and from country to country.” It is certainly instructive, when studying concepts like radicalization or terrorist recruitment, to understand how these concepts have functioned across a range of groups. But recruiting strategies or radicalization processes for the Baader-Meinhof Group or IRA might differ significantly from those of al Qaeda. And even within a group like al Qaeda, there are different pathways to violence. Borum quotes John Venhaus’s division of foreign fighters who sought to affiliate with al Qaeda-related movements into four major types: the revenge seeker, the status seeker, the identity seeker, and the thrill seeker. I question whether this division may give short shrift to the ideologue as a type, but Venhaus’s observation that there are different radicalization pathways even for al Qaeda-related violence is certainly correct.

Borum’s article notes the underdevelopment of extant academic models for radicalization. Reviewing existing models, Borum writes, “none of them yet has a very firm social-scientific basis as an established ’cause’ of terrorism, and few of them have been subjected to any rigorous scientific or systematic inquiry.” He examines three such models–social movement theory, social psychology, and conversion theory–”with the aim of exploring how each might contribute to asking better questions about radicalization.” His review of these theories is well worth reading for anybody interested in the study of radicalization, particularly Borum’s observation about the applicability of conversion theory to such problems as Internet radicalization. His harsh but justified prognosis: “People writing about radicalization have recently begun to use the term (often quite loosely) ‘self-radicalizing,’ as if it is a new discovery, but conversion researchers were working on this phenomenon long before the Internet.”

This article constitutes a competent literature review with solid ideas for improving the theories and studies that it evaluates.

Posted in Academia, Radicalization, Reviews | Leave a comment

Gimme Shelter

by wjrue Posted on May 17, 2012

In 1972, Marine captain Francis “Bing” West published an unadulterated account of a Marine Combined Action Platoon in Vietnam. The Village was and remains the seminal account of the Marine Corps Combined Action Program. Born out of lessons learned in the Banana Wars of the early 20th century, the Combined Action Program paired a Marine rifle squad with Vietnamese Popular Force militiamen and assigned the combined platoon responsibility for protecting a village or hamlet. West’s chronicle of fifteen Marines who lived, fought, and died alongside their Vietnamese brothers for 485 days in Bing Nghia offered a trove of lessons for military advisors fighting a brutal counterinsurgency.

Forty years later, Owen West, a Marine reserve major and Bing’s son, has published his own gripping saga of a modern day variant of the Combined Action Platoon – the Military Transition Team (MiTT) – fighting a similarly brutal counterinsurgency in Iraq. The Snake Eaters follows the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 1st Division (3/3-1) of the Iraqi Army and their American military advisors – known by their all-too-appropriate radio call sign, Outcast – during the dark days of 2005-07 as they attempt to defeat an insurgency and win the allegiance of Khalidiya, a village halfway between Fallujah and Ramadi. It’s a raw account of a motley crew of reservists called up for duty to fight a war for which they were ill prepared, ill equipped, and ill supported. Through force of bravery and grit, Outcast and their Iraqi brothers-in-arms overcome the enemy and, sometimes, their own chain-of-command.

In a sense, Outcast was lucky. Lieutenant Colonel Mike Troster, the team leader during the hard days of 2005-06 and a Drug Enforcement Agent when he wasn’t moonlighting as a reserve infantry officer, instinctively understood both advising and counterinsurgency – many MiTTs had leaders that didn’t. Troster understood the necessity of constant patrolling. He also knew his MiTT needed to accompany 3/3-1 on every patrol in order to gain credibility so that their advice would be heard and heeded. He knew that in order to run constant patrols with a ten-man team, normal rank protocol went out the window. He flattened Outcast’s hierarchy – every man did every job. The military hadn’t trained him for this, but he knew what needed to be done and did it.

Troster led a team varied in complexion; it was a typical group of reservists. Sergeant First Class Mark Huss ran a plumbing company in Iowa and spent his reserve weekends “teaching soldiers how to maintain laundry facilities.” Sergeant First Class Eliezer Rivera, the team’s senior non-commissioned officer, was a post office supervisor. Specialist Joseph Neary was “a heating technician by day and a rock-and-roll guitarist by night.” Sergeant Shawn Boiko was a flooring manager. None had infantry training.

Once teams like Outcast were assembled, the Army and Marines had to train them. Here too, efforts fell far short. But as West incisively notes, much of this was a result of the divide between ground truth and Washington fantasy about the war’s progress and the nature of counterinsurgency. Early advisor teams received, as they described it to West, “forty five days of ill-conceived classes crammed into ninety.” The classes at Camp Atterbury were taught mostly by people who had never been to Iraq and who had never been advisors. The entire training program was premised on the notion that the advisor teams would be living on large, American run Forward Operating Bases, training Iraqi soldiers in basic soldiering skills and staff work. “It was as if Atterbury was preparing the advisors to defend a log fort against a Sioux attack in 1863,” West writes.

As Outcast brutally discovered in late summer 2005 upon arriving in Iraq, their training had been worthless. The Snake Eaters, the name 3/3-1 gave itself, were coming off six months of hard combat and expected more as they were newly responsible for of the more dangerous areas of Anbar Province. The Iraqis didn’t need classroom teachers – they needed combat advisors.

Outcast shouldn’t have succeeded; at least, not on paper. A disparate group of ten reservists with no infantry training or combat experience is a perfect metaphor for America’s efforts in Iraq. But Outcast conducted over 1,500 combat patrols. Team members like Sergeants First Class Huss and Rivera each logged more than 450 combat patrols in a ten-month deployment. Outcast hit fifty improvised explosive devices. Seven of the ten were wounded. One died.

And yet they persevered, overcoming the normal aspects of hard combat and a Spartan existence on a small combat outpost, devoid the normal accouterments found on the larger FOBs, and even a lack of support from their own side. Outcast looked to Task Force Panther, a National Guard unit – who, it should be noted, was also ill prepared and ill equipped for the mission and fight they were given – that was supposed to “partner” with 3/3-1 and support the advisors. But Panther and its higher headquarters didn’t get it. First, there was the order mandating the Iraqis patrol in armored vehicles. Think about that one for a second. Then there was Panther’s refusal to conduct joint patrols with 3/3-1. And as if Outcast’s existence wasn’t Spartan enough, Panther removed the main generator providing power to Outcast’s small outpost. With insightful vignettes like these, West demonstrates one of the main challenges advisors often face is the U.S. military command.

By the end of the book, it’s clear that many of the lessons gleaned forty years ago were either discounted or forgotten when the U.S. military scrambled to field advisors to the newly rebuilt Iraqi Army in the summer of 2004. This inability to retain lessons learned is somewhat surprising. Combat advising is not a new concept – the United States has been in the business of training foreign militaries for at least 100 years. The Marine Corps, as noted earlier, has a long heritage of partnering with and advising foreign militaries. As all Marines are steeped in the Corps’ history, there is institutional memory and widespread awareness of Marines as advisors. The U.S. Army institutionalized combat advisors by creating the Special Forces; however, the pernicious effect of this decision was to insulate this mission within this small community – regular Army units and commanders came to despise the mission. Since their inception in the early days of the Cold War, the Green Berets have been the principal force for advising foreign militaries. They spend years training, and when it comes to advising, the Green Berets are the best the United States has to offer. Regrettably, the task of building and advising the new Iraqi Army after it was disbanded in 2004 vastly exceeded the capacity of the Green Berets to do alone. The Army and Marine Corps were thus forced to field advisor teams like Outcast.

Unfortunately, the services did so with little understanding or appreciation for the task in front of the MiTTs. As West notes:

Our generals are uncomfortable prescribing advisors as a solution to these twenty-first century wars. Advising a foreign military requires nontraditional training that takes years; soldiers need a wonk’s cultural awareness, the rudimentary language capability of a border cop, a survivalist’s skills, and the interpersonal savvy of a politician. Military hierarchy is built on control, so it feels unnatural for the leadership to dispatch these small bands of advisors, who on paper cannot give orders, to live among foreign, sometimes hostile soldiers in an effort to stabilize their countries.

Indeed, being an advisor requires patience, understanding, and tact – three traits not normally emphasized in military training and culture. Throw in an organizational culture that disdains advising as an inferior mission and promotion policies that delineate a career path to the top – advising is, uh, missing – and the result was an advisor selection and training program that emphasized quantity, not quality.

Advising is a mindset. An otherwise outstanding officer might be a terrible advisor, and the most incompetent infantry corporal might be incredibly effective. It’s less instruction and more persuasion. The Army initially turned to reservists like Outcast and later adopted the Marine Corps model, meeting its requirements by pulling individuals from disparate units across the fleet, which sometimes incentivized commanders to send underperformers. West, in his typically blunt manner, notes, “Selection for advisor duty was not rigorous. Soldiers could not be overly prejudiced, handicapped, or too fat to deploy.”

In his history of America’s involvement in Vietnam, Summons of Trumpet, retired Army Lieutenant General Dave Palmer writes: “Another unchanging reality of advising is the more or less constant cocoon of frustration enveloping the advisor. Adjusting to advising is a greater individual challenge than can be easily imagined by anyone who has not done it.” The challenges an advisor faces over the course of a combat deployment are impossible to overstate. Owen West succeeds simply by telling Outcast’s tale. But what really sets The Snake Eaters apart from the other advisor memoirs* to come out of Iraq is his sharp, evocative prose – “a group of jundis who were watering the pavement with spent brass casings” – and his thorough account of the various challenges Outcast faced and their relation to the strategic direction of the war.

When the American military was fielding advisor teams like Outcast in 2004-2005, they could almost be forgiven for forgetting lessons learned from successful advising concepts from wars past. After all, the military did an exceptional job of purging the lessons of Vietnam during the late 1970s and 1980s, and by 2004 Vietnam was but a distant memory. The same cannot be said for our advisory efforts in Afghanistan.

As a part of our campaign plan in Afghanistan, the U.S. is beginning the transition out of the lead for combat operations, just as we did in Iraq. As combat units rotate home, they will be replaced by what the Army is calling Security Force Assistance Teams (SFATs). The good news is that these SFATs will be composed primarily of officers and senior staff non-commissioned officers pulled from the same brigade staff, so there will be a level of familiarity with one another not found on teams like Outcast. More good news is that the SFATs will spend five weeks at their home station focusing on individual and team military skills like land navigation, weapons usage, and patrolling techniques. The bad news is that the pre-deployment training repeats many of the same mistakes from 2004. After the SFATs complete training at their home station, they’ll go to the Joint Readiness Training Center at Ft. Polk where they’ll receive – wait for it – three weeks of advisor training. Three weeks.

Given the spike of so-called “green-on-blue” incidents in the last six months – 22 ISAF deaths in 2012, or 13% of total ISAF KIA, have come at the hands of Afghan security force personnel turning on their advisors – the lack of cultural, negotiation, and language training is troubling. Like the advisors sent to Iraq in 2004-05, the SFATs are not getting the proper training. Green Berets spend years learning how to advise foreign militaries. Even the Marine Corps puts its MiTTs through roughly five months of pre-deployment training, with a heavy emphasis advisor skills like best practices for speaking through an interpreter and cultural do’s and don’ts. These are reinforced throughout the training program so that they become second nature. Of course, this training isn’t perfect, but at least the USMC MiTTs are being set up for success.

The story of American military advisors in Iraq and Afghanistan is not well known. Should Americans read The Snake Eaters and learn more about a little known aspect of the savage wars less than one per cent of their fellow citizens have been fighting, great. But the audiences who will gain the most from reading West’s book are mid-career officers attending the Army and Marine Corps staff colleges in Fort Leavenworth and Quantico. Outcast is a testament that advisors can succeed even when the armed services do not appreciate their mission. The advisor needs robust, appropriate training and the full support of his command as soon as his boots hit the ground because as long as we continue to wage counterinsurgencies as a third party, advisors are our saving grace. As West notes, “No matter how we enter these murky twenty-first century wars, all roads out lead through the combat advisor.”

* Here are the two other memoirs about the military advisor experience to come out of Iraq. Interesting that all three are written by Marine officers.

Gray, Wes. (2009) Embedded: A Marine Corps Adviser Inside the Iraqi Army. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.

Navarro, Eric. (2008) God Willing: My Wild Ride with the New Iraqi Army. Washington: Potomac Books.

Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Military, Reviews, War | 2 Comments

Still in Saigon

by wjrue Posted on May 7, 2012

GEN Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has released his Chairman’s reading list. So far, this one is receiving better reviews than the reading list he released during his short stint as Army Chief of Staff last summer, which received some harsh reviews. Just about every general officer publishes a reading list, formal or informal, but the Chairman’s reading list and those of the service chiefs generally get the most press.

These reading lists are easy to poke fun at and critique because no list is perfect. That said, they serve a useful purpose. Most of the books, especially those targeted to field grade and general officers, are intended to get the military reader thinking and learning about larger, strategic issues that govern the military profession or affect U.S. foreign policy. For instance, both of Dempsey’s reading lists had Robert Kaplan’s Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power and Samuel Huntington’s The Soldier and the State. On the other hand, the generals have a tendency to include some weird stuff, like books about starfish and spiders.

Last summer, I re-read E.B. Sledge’s With the Old Breed. The GOP primary season was nearing its pinnacle of farce and I thought to myself that this book ought to be required reading for anyone who sought the office of President because anyone who wants to be Commander-in-Chief needs to bone up on the consequences of their decisions to send American boys and girls to war. While the military does an exceptional job of publishing reading lists to help officers and staff non-commissioned officers better understand civilians, the reverse is, sadly, not true.

In that spirit, here is a reading list that, if the G&L collective was President or National Security Advisor, it would require each civilian political appointee working in State, Defense, or the NSC to read. Like GEN Dempsey’s list, this one is not exhaustive and I’m sure there are some things we missed or omitted. This will be a list-in-progress and we’ll be adding/subtracting titles. So, feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments section.

America, F Yeah!

Democracy in America
Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy
For the Common Defense
9/11 Commission Report
The New American Militarism
Arsenal of Democracy
Buying National Security

The dogs of war, they’ll carry you away (or: How smart people make bad decisions)

The Guns of August
The Best and the Brightest
Rubicon Theory of War

On combat (or: Carrying shit and killing people is not pleasant)

The Face of Battle
With the Old Breed
If I Die in a Combat Zone
A Rumor of War
Achilles in Vietnam
No True Glory
On Killing

Big(ish) Think

On War (Books I-III, VIII)
Twenty Years' Crisis
Bureaucracy
Arms and Influence
War and Politics
Perception and Misperception in International Politics
War and Change in World Politics
Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy
Shield of Achilles

Posted in Analysis, Civil-Military Relations, Military, War | 3 Comments

Assessing Interpretations of the New Bin Laden Documents

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Posted on May 7, 2012

The documents recovered from Abbottabad that were released on Thursday represent the largest new trove of information about al Qaeda to be made public in years. Researchers and analysts have already written about the release extensively, and we can expect far more to be said about it in the future. One thing I have noticed about terrorism studies is that often narratives set early in a process get recirculated endlessly, regardless of the truth of the matter: this was the case, for example, for the baseless claim that Osama bin Laden was on dialysis, a claim which we never really heard the end of. Thus, I wanted to weigh in on three narratives that I feel are unjustified by the evidence — some of them by writers or institutions whom I respect.

Al Qaeda Honchos Were Offered Tributes

The Christian Science Monitor, in an article purporting to outline the top five revelations in the newly released documents, includes the following:

Like tribute money offered to Mafia dons, funds were offered to Al Qaeda out of fear. One letter in the new trove explores whether Al Qaeda leaders should accept such money. It notes, for example, that Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, “has offered us funds, purportedly to [support] jihad, but there is another reason, namely their fear of becoming targets of our swords.”

The quote is accurate; the problem is that this does not actually demonstrate tribute money being offered to “al Qaeda.” The primary source isn’t al Qaeda’s description of what is happening to one of its affiliates in the Palestinian territories, but rather Atiyya’s response to a number of requests for juristic rulings from the Palestinian salafi group Jaysh al Islam. The request for a ruling quoted above asks whether it is permissible to take money from groups with questionable religious pedigrees.

Jaysh al Islam, though, is not an official al Qaeda affiliate, and in an extensive review of Palestinian salafi groups, Yoram Cohen and Matthew Levitt conclude that “the prospect of a true al Qaeda affiliate developing in this area remains unlikely.” Indeed, Atiyya’s rather cold response to his Palestinian interlocutor provides little reason to think this situation will change anytime soon.

Never Mind Winning the Battle, Just Kill Americans

At Wired, Spencer Ackerman writes that bin Laden simply wanted to target Americans, “even when it made little military sense.” Ackerman states that bin Laden would continually harp on this point “even when it led to bizarre advice.” Ackerman continues:

“If we were on the road between Qandahar and Helmand and army vehicles of Afghanis, NATO, and Americans drove by, we should choose to ambush the American army vehicles, even though the American army vehicles have the least amount of soldiers,” bin Laden wrote to a deputy. “The only time you are allowed to attack the other army vehicles is if those army vehicles are going to attack our brothers. In other words, any work to directly defend the mujahidin group will be excluded from al Qaida’s general politics policy because the mujahidin group should be able to carry out its mission, which is striking American interests.”

Bin Laden kept harping on the point, even when it led to bizarre advice. “Whatever exceeds our capability or what we are unable to disburse on attacks inside America, as well as on the Jihad in open fronts, would be disbursed targeting American interests in non-Islamic countries first, such as South Korea,” he urged in a separate communique. (There have never been any al-Qaida attacks in South Korea.)

Did bin Laden’s advice in fact prioritize attacks on Americans over sound strategic logic? In part, this question ties into a broader debate about whether al Qaeda thinks strategically. In the original source, bin Laden explains the rationale behind targeting the U.S. primarily. He describes the enemy al Qaeda confronts as “a wicked tree” that has a 50 cm trunk and “many branches, which vary in length and size.” The trunk of the tree, in this metaphor, represents America, with the branches representing “countries, like NATO members, and countries in the Arab world.”

Confronted with such an enemy, bin Laden says that the jihadis’ best option is “to slowly cut that tree down by using a saw. Our intention is to saw the trunk of that tree, and never to stop until that tree falls down.” To bin Laden, attacking the branches was a distraction: by more evenly distributing attacks rather than concentrating on Americans, “we could never finish the job at hand.” This paradigm makes sense of why bin Laden said that American vehicles should be targeted in Afghanistan, even if there were fewer soldiers in the American vehicle: doing so weakens the trunk of the tree, while attacking other vehicles wastes time on the branches.

As to bin Laden’s other piece of advice about targeting American interests in non-Muslim countries with what “we are unable to disburse on attacks inside America,” this too falls in line with his guidance to attack the trunk rather than the branches. Ackerman is right that there have never been al Qaeda attacks in South Korea — but given that South Korea only served as an example to illustrate bin Laden’s guidance, rather than a well considered target, we shouldn’t let the fact that there have been no al Qaeda attacks there serve as too much of a distraction. In my recent book Bin Laden’s Legacy, I argue that one of the U.S.’s major strategic errors in undertaking the “war on terror” was unnecessarily broadening the battlefield. Bin Laden is trying not to make similar mistakes, which seems to be a sound approach for a small actor like al Qaeda.

Bin Laden Was Unable to Exercise Control Over Al Qaeda’s Affiliates

West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) described at length the perils of making broad judgments about al Qaeda based on a sample as limited as 17 documents. “Analyzing the state of al Qaeda on the basis of the documents is like commenting on the tailoring of a jacket when only a sleeve is available,” the CTC report accompanying the documents’ release warns. Despite these wise words of caution, some of the report’s conclusions appear to exceed anything justified by the released documents. One notable area is the report’s conclusion about bin Laden’s “seeming inability to exercise control over [the affiliates'] actions and public statements.” Indeed, the report dubs this finding “the most compelling story to be told on the basis of the 17 declassified documents.” However, bin Laden’s inability to exercise control is not as evident from the released documents as CTC claims.

To be clear, CTC is correct that al Qaeda under bin Laden was not a traditional top-down organization in which the emir’s commands would automatically be followed throughout the ranks. There are multiple reasons for this, including the fact that al Qaeda’s core leadership was the target of an intense manhunt and found secure communications with affiliates difficult, a fact that massively slowed communications and diminished (though did not entirely undermine) the central leadership’s awareness of what was happening on various battlefields. To illustrate the view that many al Qaeda specialists had of relations between the group’s core and affiliates prior to the Abbottabad raid, we can turn to Leah Farrall’s March/April 2011 Foreign Affairs article, “How Al Qaeda Works.” Farrall wrote that al Qaeda “is not a traditional hierarchical terrorist organization, with a pyramid-style organizational structure, and it does not exercise full command and control over its branch and franchises. But nor is its role limited to broad ideological influence. Due to its dispersed structure, al Qaeda operates as a devolved network hierarchy, in which levels of command authority are not always clear; personal ties between militants carry weight and, at times, transcend the command structure between core, branch, and franchises.” In fact, some observers thought the core exercised far less influence than this, as can be seen by the debate that raged about whether al Qaeda had become an ideology, rather than an organization.

Farrall described al Qaeda as being structurally composed of “core, branch, and franchises,” but her schema reflects a rather complex relationship amongst them. Farrall’s schema helps to illustrate my dissatisfaction with CTC’s statement that “the framing of an ‘AQC’ as an organization in control of regional ‘affiliates’ reflects a conceptual construction by outsiders rather than the messy reality of insiders.” Essentially, the conceptualization of a core and franchises does not necessarily deny that messy reality — certainly Farrall’s model, in which the core was seen as having more of a role than many other specialists thought, fully anticipated haggling, contention, and extended negotiations between core and franchises.

A second problem with CTC’s conclusion that bin Laden was unable to exercise control over the affiliates is that we do not know this from the released documents. The documents do illustrate his frustration with affiliates, but this is a different matter than the claim that bin Laden was unable to exercise control. There are two important factors in determining whether bin Laden was able to exercise control over affiliates. First, it is important to distinguish bin Laden’s advice from his orders. For example, when bin Laden wrote to Shabaab’s Mukhtar Abu al Zubayr about such matters as targeting the African Union (AMISOM) forces in Somalia, his words appear to be the advice of one who is far removed from the battlefield, rather than the dictates of a supreme commander. The second factor is judging bin Laden’s commands against facts on the ground suggesting whether or not they were followed. For example, several released documents reflect bin Laden’s evacuation order, that al Qaeda members should leave Waziristan. In one document, bin Laden suggests Zabul (there spelled “Zabil”) as a possible place to which these men can escape. A report written by Martine van Bijlert for the New America Foundation notes that around the time that bin Laden stated this, in the summer of 2010, “inhabitants of Zabul and eastern Uruzgan reported an increased presence of Arabs, which resulted in greater pressure on the population.” To be clear: we do not know from these two data points whether bin Laden’s mention of Zabul and the observed increased presence of Arabs there are linked. A causal determination would need to be more extensive than what I just provided. Rather, my point is that this is the kind of analysis — a comparison of bin Laden’s dictates to external evidence — that would help us actually determine whether bin Laden was unable to exercise control.

My final problem with this analysis is that, to the extent the released documents do speak to bin Laden’s influence over affiliated entities, they’re indicative of a degree of deference that isn’t reflected in CTC’s conclusion. This can be seen, for example, in the fact that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula sought bin Laden’s blessing before undertaking personnel changes at the top levels, such as Anwar al Awlaki’s promotion.

Posted in Al Qaeda | Leave a comment

Orwells and Oppenheimers: Drone Opponents’ Marriage of Convenience

by drunkenpredator Posted on May 3, 2012

As a self-aware Predator drone, I get my share of criticism. “You’re flying lost-link again!” “You vaporized a playground!” “You’re trying to usher in a post-human robo-dystopia!” Some of this is valid, some of it…okay, most of it is valid. But sometimes, the public discourse over drones like me becomes so turgid and dramatic that it obscures reasonable discussion of my pros and cons. And when the hyperventilating gets most hyper, when the language becomes most overwrought, when the prognostication gets most preposterous, I see it stemming from the conflation of two very different issues. And I don’t think that that’s an accident.

Two distinct constituencies use UAVs as a touchstone. One is concerned with the national security and foreign policy implications of drones, and the other with their privacy and domestic law enforcement applications. For brevity’s sake, I’ll call the first group “Oppenheimers,” after a guy who got a good look at a new kind of warfare and spent the rest of his life championing international institutions to make sure it never took place. They feel that remotely-piloted aircraft represent a qualitative shift in the ability of a nation, and a chief executive, to use force. And not a shift for the better.

Oppenheimers think drones will usher in an Imperial presidency. The capitalization there is important, because we’re talking Imperial as in Palpatine at the helm of the Galactic Empire. They fear that through technical means, drones are reducing or eliminating the political impediments to war, and blurring the line about what kind of conflict constitutes war in the first place. (Nobody puts a flag over drone wreckage, let alone puts it on the nightly news.) Oppenheimers also deplore the role that drones play in the larger framework of the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, which the Obama administration interprets as giving them clearance to use force (whether under Titles 10 or 50) against al-Qaeda or its affiliates anywhere on the planet.

Oppenheimers advocate for the application of international law to the use of drones, and where such laws don’t exist, for their development and implementation. They see UAVs as tools that let rich countries violate human rights, flout national sovereignty, circumvent the judicial process, and do it all in a legal gray area that requires no real accountability for those who command them. And they foresee a world in which a string of tactical successes, a veritable terrorist Whack-a-Mole, leads to a crippling strategic failure by turning local populations against us through faceless violence.

The second constituency I’ll call the “Orwells.” Their primary concern about drones is domestic. They see the technological potential for drone surveillance, the interest from law enforcement and government agencies, and the massive aerospace industry primed to meet the demand. While there are often noises made about UAV safety, the primary gripe of Orwells- who can point to an actual passage in 1984 which describes small unmanned aircraft peering through people’s windows- is that drones are vanguards of a pervasive surveillance culture. The police watch you outside with robots, corporations like Facebook and Google parse your user data to better bombard you with ads, and the NSA hoovers up your phone and email communications to feed through a secret counter-terrorism algorithm.

But the Orwells face a problem of domestic case law. Despite fractious debate over “reasonable expectations of privacy,” the Supreme Court has consistently held that police departments are permitted to conduct aerial surveillance of private citizens and property, so long as they traverse publicly-available airspace and use the same technology commonly available to members of the public. Those rulings made no distinction between whether the platform used for such surveillance was manned or unmanned, nor do many court-watchers expect that precedent to be soon overturned.

While the Orwells demand action from the FAA (which, as I’ve complained, is a safety regulator and not a privacy watchdog) the only real recourse will come from state and federal legislation to restrict such searches. But it’s certainly not imminent, thanks in large part to burdensome FAA regulations and review processes. Right now, police departments drone programs lag behind such surveillance ninjas as hobbyists and high school science teachers.

The Oppenheimers want to curb the executive branch’s authority to conduct lethal operations overseas, primarily through the military and intelligence community. And they want international norms and laws to constrain the kinetic use of remotely-piloted aircraft. Conversely, the Orwells want to more carefully govern the power of local, state and federal law enforcement to conduct surveillance and evidence-gathering on Americans.

On the surface, the distinction between Orwells and Oppenheimers may not seem significant. But they truly are. Yes, both are trying to rein in the use of flying robots, which, depending on who’s talking, are assuming a role in society somewhere between J. Edgar Hoover and a winged Terminator. And both want to accomplish that goal by bringing national security and surveillance law into the 21st century. But the similarity ends there, and they are doing two important discussions a twin disservice by deliberately allowing the public to conflate them.

The Oppenheimer challenge is relevance. Why should the vast majority of Americans care about the particular platform our spies and soldiers use, when they’re using it to kill people we’ve never met, in a country we’ll never visit, as part of an effort we generally support? And the Orwell challenge is harm. Why should Americans worry about the police using drones when most of us have never seen one, most of us will probably never be surveilled by one, and even if we are, police helicopters do this kind of thing already?

By allowing the two questions to blur together- drones abroad and drones at home- the Oppenheimers demonstrate relevance and the Orwells show harm. The recent FAA reauthorization, despite the hype, allowed only a gradual phasing-in of government drone usage over the next three years. And yet it was a gift to both sides; by using stock photos of MQ-1s, MQ-9s or Global Hawks, media outlets implied that military-grade, Cessna-sized robotic weapons platforms would be found under the Christmas trees of every police department from Manhattan to Mayberry.

It’s a lot easier to make people uneasy over privacy concerns when you pair the article with pictures of a targeted-killing machine. Same way it’s easier to make people care about collateral damage in Yemen or the Phillipines by being able to say with a straight face, “You may be next.” This line-blurring is inaccurate, widespread, and actively harmful to an informed debate.

Oppenheimers are wrestling with the problem of how America uses force in hostile, fluid or ungoverned territory; Orwells are trying to apply 250 years of the rule of law to a new police technology. Both are doing so, by and large, in good faith. But establishing international standards for the deployment and operation of lethal military assets will do precisely nothing to curb the rise of the surveillance state within America’s borders. Nor will enhanced American legal protections against police UAV surveillance somehow prevent collateral damage in the lawless regions of Pakistan or Yemen.

While I actually agree with many of the concerns of both groups, pretending that their goals have anything in common, just because they use the same stock photography, is ridiculous. And when Orwells and Oppenheimers imply that the New Jersey State Police will soon rain Hellfire missiles onto Garden State Parkway speeders, it creates a rhetorical fog bank that’s too thick for logic to penetrate.

These guys are way more of a problem than I'll ever be.
Posted in Analysis, Slightly Larger Arms, War | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Well played, Marine Corps

by caidid Posted on April 26, 2012

Last week it was announced that the USMC will be allowing women to attend its infantry training programs, beginning with the Infantry Officers’ Course and later expanding to training opportunities for enlisted women. While this doesn’t mean that female Marines who complete the training would now be allowed into combat roles, it is still a big step, and a smart move by the Marine Corps.

Many people feel at this point that it is inevitable that our military will have full equality of opportunity. This step seems to be an indication that the Marine Corps certainly thinks so. By starting to filter women into infantry training now, the Corps is putting itself in position to be able to implement immediately when that time comes.

More importantly in the short term, it allows the Marines to take the next step in the exploration of lifting the ban on women in combat that has been going on for more than a year. A close look at standards, an assessment of what is truly required in order for combat units to be effective, will be an important step. The Marine Corps Times reports that “new functional fitness tests are being developed to help Marine Corps leaders determine how women and men perform in, and cope with, various combat tasks. The goal is to establish “gender-neutral” physical fitness standards.” Incorporating women into infantry training programs allows the Corps to test and refine these standards in a hands on manner with real men and women, and doing so now, before there is any directive requiring women to be allowed in combat units, gives them time to do this the right way.

I have stated before that I think women should have the same opportunities as men to serve in our military, provided they can meet the necessary standards to ensure the maximum possible safety and effectiveness of our combat forces. It’s great to see the USMC taking serious and responsible steps toward this.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

The Growing Threat to Saudi Intellectuals: The Case of Hamza Kashgari

by Diana Wueger Posted on April 6, 2012

This guest post is by Lauren Morgan, a writer and analyst from Indiana whose research primarily focuses on regional politics in the Middle East and homegrown terrorism. Since 2009, Lauren has worked as an analyst with the Joint Terrorism Task Force. She holds a degree in Middle Eastern Studies and is a former resident of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She can be reached via Twitter @lemorgan.

Hamza Kashgari, a Saudi writer and poet, created a firestorm of controversy on Milad an-Nabi, the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, when he took to his personal Twitter account, which has since been deleted, and said the following:

  • On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.
  • On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.
  • On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.

Despite the obvious poetic nature of his comments, they enraged conservative Saudi clerics who declared him an apostate and called for King Abdullah to execute the twenty-three year old. Kashgari fled the Kingdom and entered Malaysia on February 7. Two days later, as Kashgari was preparing to leave Malaysia for New Zealand, Malaysian authorities detained him and subsequently deported him to Saudi Arabia, where his fate remains uncertain.

Kashgari made his initial court appearance on March 7 and entered his tawbah (repentance) to the Saudi court system, according to Fadiah Nadwa, the representative for Lawyers for Liberty (LFL) who was contacted by Kashgari’s friend and traveling companion to try to halt Kashgari’s deportation from Malaysia. The courts, however, have given no indication whether his tawbah was accepted, and Nadwa notes that there are cases where defendants, despite entering their tawbah, have remained in detention for years without trial. Since his arrest, Kashgari reportedly has been kept in solitary confinement and denied access to his attorney, renowned Saudi human rights lawyer Abdulrahman Allahim, though Arab News reports that Allahim and Kashgari’s family attended the initial court appearance.

Media attention has been minimal and broadly inaccurate, but the importance of Kashgari’s case as a precedent for similar free speech cases in the Kingdom cannot be overstated. In the past month alone, another Saudi resident, Mohamed Salama, has been accused of apostasy, with many parallels being drawn between his case and Kashgari’s. In addition, well-known Saudi human rights activist and lawyer Walid Abu Al-Khair was banned from traveling to the U.S. at the end of March; he is accused by the religious establishment of being influential to Kashgari. The State Department has issued a statement saying they are “seeking clarification” on the travel ban.

Was Hamza Kashgari Targeted for Arrest?

Since his arrest, rumors have swirled online that the government targeted Kashgari for arrest long before he tweeted the now infamous words about the Prophet. Muath Aldabbagh first met Kashgari four years ago at a gathering led by Abdullah Hamiduddin, a scholar of Yemeni descent known for opinions that differ from the standard Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. After becoming acquainted through Hamiduddin’s circle, Kashgari and Aldabbagh met weekly with a small group to discuss philosophy at coffee shops and homes across Jeddah.

Aldabbagh explained in an interview that Kashgari had recently abandoned the strict religious dogmatism that permeates Saudi society. He emphatically defended Kashgari against critics’ claims that he is an apostate, however, saying that Kashgari is “still within religion, trying to appreciate it in his own way.” Aldabbagh believes Kashgari’s youth and popularity as a newspaper columnist has made him an ideal target for a religious establishment that has become increasingly nervous about the rise of Saudi intellectuals in recent years. He notes that “different groups, such as mine and other groups, have been discussing intellectual matters and taking knowledge into our own hands.” In a country where free thought and critical thinking are not welcomed by the religious establishment, attending groups like the one that Kashgari and Aldabbagh frequented puts these intellectuals at risk for retribution.

The repeated deceptions committed by officials involved with the detention and deportation of Kashgari further validate Aldabbagh’s suspicions that Kashgari was targeted. Malaysian authorities have been intentionally deceptive on multiple occasions about the arrest of Kashgari. Malaysia’s Home Minister intentionally deceived reporters by stating that Kashgari’s detention was at the request of Interpol; Interpol has since strongly denied this claim. Fadiah Nadwa of LFL spoke with me at length about the chaotic scene that developed at the airport in Kuala Lumpur as she and other LFL representatives tried, unsuccessfully, to halt Malaysian officials from deporting Kashgari. She said that lawyers served papers to airport officials to stop the deportation, but police and authorities deceived them in order to prevent the court order from being enacted. In addition, Nadwa claims that when LFL asked to check Kashgari’s immigration report, Malaysian immigration officials claimed there was no record of Kashgari ever entering the country. LFL has since issued a statement and photograph confirming Kashgari’s entrance into the country.

A New Witch Hunt?

Kashgari’s case has evoked a renewed sense of fear amongst activists who have been utilizing social media, and Twitter in particular, to speak openly about rights issues in the Kingdom for the past few years. That Kashgari was arrested just months after Crown Prince Nayef’s ascension is not lost on Saudi activists. If Kashgari was targeted for arrest, it confirms the fears expressed by liberal Saudis following the ascension of Prince Nayef to the position of Crown Prince in October 2011. Then, Saudis took to Twitter to tweet #NayefNightmares – the fears (some real and some humorous) they had about his increased power and influence in the country due to his reputation as a social conservative with strong ties to the religious establishment.

Indeed, more than one activist I interviewed agreed to speak to me only on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. According to one, “the fear for many liberal Saudis isn’t to be labeled an activist anymore. The fear is that you are labeled an atheist.” Aldabbagh echoed this claim, noting that the religious establishment recognizes that “liberal has now become mainstream. Their enemy right now is atheism. Anyone who is against them, they label him as being an atheist.” He admits he has received numerous threats following Kashgari’s arrest from individuals who have warned him “you’re next”.

Conclusion

Kashgari’s case could set a dangerous legal precedent for free speech in Saudi Arabia. It also illustrates the far-reaching influence of the Saudi regime. As Saudi activist Hala al-Dosari notes, “We’ve never had someone brought from overseas to be prosecuted for speaking against Islam.” It is troubling that Kashgari was deported back to Saudi Arabia despite the Kingdom not having an extradition agreement with Malaysia and despite Kashgari having broken no laws in Malaysia.

Equally troubling is the lack of legal movement on Kashgari’s case within Saudi Arabia. Despite publicly retracting his comments and entering tawbah to the Saudi courts, Kashgari’s detention continues.  But Nadwa remains optimistic, saying “the fact that he’s not been tried yet is a good indication for us. I think the pressure is really working.” Still, others fear that the government, under pressure from the religious establishment, will try to make an example out of him. “We fear that he will be a scapegoat,” said Saudi activist Hala al-Dosari in an interview.

The only acceptable conclusion to this case is Kashgari’s immediate and unconditional release from custody. To ensure that the regime does not bow to clerics’ calls for Kashgari’s execution, the international community must demand that the Saudi regime release him at once.  Many Saudi activists agree that the Saudi regime is sensitive to international pressure and does not want negative publicity; Fadiah Nadwa emphasized the urgent need for international attention to Kashgari’s case, saying, “It’s very important for us to step in now and increase the pressure so that they won’t step in and execute him. I think we have to be fast in our actions.”

I would like to give special thanks to Hala al-Dosari, Hasan Radwan, and Daveed Gartenstein-Ross for their assistance in bringing this article to fruition.

Posted in Human Rights, Middle East, Saudi Arabia | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Coups and the politics of security assistance

by dptrombly Posted on April 5, 2012

During the recent coup in Mali, the United States received some unfortunate news: Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, the nominal leader of the rebellious faction of the country’s military, was trained in the United States under the auspices of the Department of State’s International Military Education and Training program. While military aid to the country – aimed primarily at countering al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb – has been suspended, the presence of an American-trained officer in an American-supported military at the forefront of a coup d’etat is a troubling sign for a U.S. foreign policy which would rather pride itself on democratic 21st century statecraft rather than what seems like 20th century skullduggery.

As anachronistic and self-contradictory as the idea of a 21st century coup d’etat may seem to modern observers (although let’s not forget Honduras), it remains as an extreme expression of political engagement that lies beneath the surface even in nominally democratic, transparent societies. Moreover, understanding this political dynamic is crucial in an age when the United States increasingly seeks to leverage and enhance the combat power of its foreign partners.

The Abnormal Situation

Armed forces and security services are, in theory and often in practice, instruments of power. But they are also nodes of power all their own. Their actions can make or break political transitions. Like all bureaucracies, they exert a degree of independent influence and compete for resources and power within a larger political system. However, because they are armed and highly cohesive, they have a unique capability to coercively implement and resist political change. Indeed, militaries are fundamentally political institutions because they are organizations charged with carrying out the ugly side of political behavior.

In a rational-legalistic state, military power exists in the shadow of legislative and deliberative machinery that guides its loyal military force. But militaries often exist to neutralize political conflict within the domestic sphere and enforce the basic rules of the game that make civic engagement possible. Even René Schneider, the 1970 Chilean Army Commander-in-Chief remembered for his resistance to military interference in Chilean politics, recognized that the apolitical role of the military was a political decision in favor of the status quo thus ensuring a normal political process. But Schneider added a caveat: “the only limitation is in the case that the State stopped acting within their own legality. In that case the armed forces have a higher loyalty to the people and are free to decide an abnormal situation beyond the framework of the law.”

In Honduras, for example, the Constitution contained no impeachment process and explicitly stated that the military was responsible for the alternation of the presidency. In Egypt, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was critical to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, yet crafted a constitutional order in which the military retains an implicit veto on any changes to the parameters of Egypt’s burgeoning democratic political system. In both cases, the militaries in question had received large degrees of U.S. support.

The Articulation of Loathsome Interests

In Mali, U.S. support created more capable elements of the Malian military, but it was unable to alter the broader patronage system within Mali itself. Despite U.S. efforts, Toure’s considerations for his patronage network overall supported diverting resources away from the military. As Alex Thurston and other analysts have noted, this has had deleterious consequences for the military’s response to the Tuareg rebellion and the overall conditions of mid-ranking officers and soldiers in the field. The political cooption of high-ranking officers by the regime is an important strategy for regime stability, but if it occurs without buying off the parts of the military who ultimately provide the men on the scene with guns, it is an invitation for a junior officer coup, bringing about men with the notional ability to enforce their rule but limited capacity to enact it substantively. Political complexity does not imply nor require sophistication on the part of all the players involved, but when a shock to the system occurs, the modus vivendi that made loathsome interests mutually compatible can rapidly disappear.

Foreign support and the leverage it brings is inherently bounded in its capabilities to effect systemic political change. Arming and training a foreign military force might improve its capabilities on the battlefield and its organizational cohesion, but it only complicates and does not neutralize or affect  its status as a political actor. Rather than buying an effective civil-military system, foreign support tends to exacerbate existing political cleavages within the security sector rather than transcend them. As political scientists Jeffrey Herbst and William Reno have noted, African politics in particular provide strong case studies of how the traditional links between military and state strength can be perverted or severed. Militaries are only useful tools for state formation to the extent they require mass mobilization, resource extraction, and provide genuinely public goods. If they can gain their resources through domestic extortion, foreign institutional or political support, or otherwise avoid an inclusive economic relationship with local territory, they may not function as engines of stabilization.

For example, the Organization for African Unity’s commitment to de jure sovereignty has significantly reduced African regimes’ fears of external conquest, while vast flows of military and non-military foreign aid have reduced incentives to mobilize resources from the construction of strong extractive state institutions. Indeed, combined with pressure to encourage competitive politics, the development of strong state institutions is a particularly risky prospect, and many weak states have moved to develop “shadow states” and prevent the creation of institutions that might use their effective provision of public goods to challenge the authority of present regimes.

In other words, the strengthening of military institutions can undermine the deliberate strategies of weakening or decentralization of violent power. An under-resourced military reduces the potential that a military will  compete with the government as an independent power base and makes officers more dependent on a centralized patronage network. In some cases, enhancing military capabilities can gravely disrupt a regime’s intentional constraints on power. How foreign powers can effectively provide military aid  while simultaneously strengthening state institutions remains an open question. In pure proxy warfare, the goal of strengthening state institutions, encouraging political competition, and enabling the conditions for the provision of public goods are all basically irrelevant or secondary considerations. The goal was to check the power of rival forces, period. Now, however, the goal is to build state institutions, albeit from afar and with a limited footprint.

Defense Cooperation and Unintended Consequences

On the other hand, there are beneficial aspects of engaging with military forces without quashing their prior political roles within or outside of the state, provided expectations are properly limited. In countries with weak or volatile governing institutions, forging relationships with militaries and security services can provide a more enduring avenue of influence with greater longevity and institutional retention than other elements of the regime can provide. But relationships with foreign militaries must be built with awareness of their political incentives.

As the United States enlists foreign states in the suppression of terrorism and subversion, it must recognize the political dimension of those states’ militaries. In post-withdrawal Iraq, Nuri al-Maliki has already been able to manipulate the security institutions the U.S. left behind to create a highly personalized, coup-proofed force operating at his disposal. Meanwhile, in Yemen, U.S. trained counterterrorism forces have frequently been used in service of defending Saleh and his successor regime. American leverage is temporary, but the political institutions and capabilities that this supposedly leveraging cooperation creates will long outlast the U.S. policymakers’ and public’s attention spans.

The U.S. must acknowledge that foreign security forces do not necessarily represent popular or elite sovereignty, but rather constitute political actors in their own right. In many cases, their machinations carry weight in economic, political, and civil arenas U.S. citizens might not recognize as subject to military influence. Building a military is not simply a technocratic endeavor which teleologically results in a capable, apolitical force, but an intervention in a complex political process and the empowerment of political actors. Coups, as the extreme case of an enduring form of political-military behavior in domestic politics, should not be dismissed as anachronisms or relics from a bygone era. Instead, they are reminders that as the U.S. seeks to stand up partners, measured considerations of U.S. priorities and appreciation for the convoluted nature of deep politics remains as important as ever.

Posted in Civil-Military Relations | 1 Comment

The Last Great Phantom Threat

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Posted on April 4, 2012

Yesterday I wrote about a graphic posted to jihadi forums that garnered some media attention. In it, New York City’s famous skyline at sunset was overlaid with the text: “Al Qaeda: Coming Soon Again in New York.” The print media interpreted the graphic as a possible threat; on Fox News, Rep. Peter King was reportedly shown the image and asked if another attack was coming. I cautioned in my initial New York Daily News column and blog entry that the chance of this being the prelude to another large-scale attack was quite low. “With the recent disruption of large-scale plots, al Qaeda’s need for secrecy will only grow,” I wrote. “The chance of some low-level figure knowing enough about an upcoming plot connected to al Qaeda’s core to post a Photoshopped graphic boasting of it in advance is infinitesimally small.” It turned out, when more information came in, that the graphic wasn’t even a threat at all: if you read the Arabic-language introduction where this photo was posted on jihadi forums, it specifies that the graphic is actually a lesson in Photoshopping.

I got into an interesting discussion on Twitter thereafter about the effectiveness of terrorist threats (because they can garner media attention and either scare people or divert policing resources even when, as with the New York graphic, they are either phantom threats or not really threats at all). I think the conventional wisdom on this point is that jihadis have a relatively easy time getting the media to hype non-existent threats. As is so often the case, I took a position contrary to the conventional wisdom: I think the media’s hyping of questionable terrorist threats is in fact less common than is generally perceived.

To be sure, at one point amorphous threats received a disproportionate amount of national media coverage. But I think the general perception of how often this happens was set relatively early after the 9/11 attacks, when terror alerts were common and the media would devote a great deal of attention to each one. Since 2006, you would be hard pressed to name many examples of inordinate national media attention to threats that don’t exist. The New York City graphic is a recent example, but the kind of attention it garnered honestly isn’t all that impressive. Back in September, more attention than I would have liked was devoted to an alleged plot that would coincide with the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. A militant had fed the bogus story of a new plot to American officials, and it was widely reported. But before that? You would be hard pressed to name the last time, prior to September 2011, that a phantom threat truly received disproportionate national media attention.

In October 2010, a plot to carry out multiple Mumbai-style plots in Europe received a great deal of media coverage — but this represented a disrupted plot, and a large-scale one, rather than a hyped phantom threat. In the summer of 2010, I appeared on a rather remarkable Fox Business segment premised on the idea that “as many as hundreds of members” of Shabaab were slipping into the U.S. through its southern border (the other guest accused me of secretly aiding Shabaab when I cast doubt on that dubious assertion). But that segment can hardly be considered a major national media storm.

My point is not that phantom or amorphous threats do not get hyped — they do — but rather that this doesn’t happen as frequently as most people who follow terrorism closely perceive to be the case. Just as the point of not hyping amorphous threats is that we shouldn’t lose our sense of perspective, we also shouldn’t lose our sense of perspective about the media’s tendency to hype such incidents: it has happened far, far less frequently since the first five years of the “global war on terror.”

In fact, I think we can pinpoint the last great phantom threat with some precision. I believe it occurred in October 2006, when a warning was posted to the Internet message board 4chan that “America’s Hiroshima” was imminent. The message stated:

On Sunday, October 22nd, 2006, there will be seven “dirty” explosive devices detonated in seven different U.S. cities; Miami, New York City, Atlanta, Seattle, Houston, Oakland and Cleveland. The death toll will approach 100,000 from the initial blasts and countless other fatalities will later occur as a result from radioactive fallout.

These dirty bomb explosions would allegedly take place at NFL stadiums, during the games. The 2006 midterm elections were just around the corner, and Media Matters (an organization with which I have considerable political disagreement) has a decent rundown of the kind of media attention this threat received. “CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC dedicated a considerable amount of airtime to a purported threat to NFL stadiums in seven cities,” Media Matters stated. The Media Matters writeup notes that I was interviewed about this threat — appearing on Fox News’s The Big Story — but I wish it had also reported on the content of my appearance, if only because it departed significantly from the cautious way that other commentators treated this “news” item. I said on air that we could be absolutely certain that this threat was bogus — for the same reasons that we could be certain the “Coming Soon Again in New York” graphic wasn’t our first warning of another 9/11. Leave aside the ridiculous claim that the initial death toll from seven dirty bomb blasts would be 100,000 — it most definitely would not — and it is still obvious that this threat was a hoax. Quite simply, if al Qaeda was really prepared to set off dirty bombs simultaneously in seven different cities, would some chump who’d go bragging about the operation on 4chan really be given advance notice? I guess there’s the possibility that this could have been an official al Qaeda announcement — but given the fact that the jihadi group had just seen a large-scale plot disrupted (the August 2006 transatlantic air plot), would it really provide such specific information about where it would strike, such that authorities’ chance of disrupting the plot would be maximized? And if we want to assume that this might have been an official al Qaeda announcement, since when had 4chan, of all places, become al Qaeda’s go-to channel for communication?

A few seconds of thought could thus easily reveal that there was no meat to this story, and I said as much on the air. But the NFL “plot” is so much more hilarious when you know the actual back story. This wasn’t the phantom threat of committed jihadis or their supporters. Rather, the 4chan message was the work of Wisconsin resident Jake Brahm, who was at the time living with his parents and working part-time at a grocery store. Essentially, he was bored and wanted to see if he could cause a bit of a stir by making some juvenile online threats. Before that, Brahm was best known for keeping a personal blog of his masturbatory habits entitled “Jake Brahm Wangs Da Poo.” Sadly, it’s no longer available online — but really, you probably didn’t want to read it in the first place. Brahm ultimately plead guilty to willfully conveying false information, and was sentenced to six months in federal prison. This is the man who briefly scared the whole country:

I think Media Matters was right to link the excessive coverage of Brahm’s self-evidently bogus threat to the 2006 midterm elections. But the bottom line is that this media attention didn’t swing the election, at all. The Republicans, at the time generally considered the tougher of the two parties on terrorism, were trounced at the ballot box; and the media looked awfully silly for how much time it devoted to Brahm’s little cry for attention.

This is a decidedly non-scientific judgment, but I think an analysis of the media’s coverage of vague, amorphous terrorist threats would reveal Brahm’s NFL warning to be the last great phantom threat. I’m not saying that threats have never been hyped since, but rather that to me October 2006 seems to represent the apex of the practice, with terror alerts and random but suggestive data points garnering declining attention thereafter.

Posted in Terrorism | Leave a comment

Is al Qaeda Coming Soon to New York?

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Posted on April 3, 2012

Yesterday, the New York Daily News asked me to write about a new graphic posted to jihadi forums that has garnered a bit of media attention. The graphic depicts New York City, along with the promise that al Qaeda will be “coming soon again.” The resulting Daily News column can be read here. Space limits for print publications being what they are, I am posting a somewhat more fleshed out (yet still short) version of my thoughts here at Gunpowder & Lead.

An image posted on jihadi forums Monday caught the NYPD’s interest as a possible threat. In it, the city’s famous skyline at sunset is overlaid with the text: “Al Qaeda: Coming Soon Again in New York.” What are we to make of this? Is it a legitimate threat?

The chances are that this is mere braggadocio, not something that should scare New Yorkers. And it is virtually certain that this does not presage a large-scale attack, à la 9/11.

NYPD director of intelligence Mitchell Silber provides a powerful framework for understanding what we mean by “al Qaeda plots” in his new book The Al Qaeda Factor. Silber identifies three categories for considering al Qaeda’s role: plots where the core leadership exercised command and control, those that the leadership suggested or endorsed, and those where the core served merely an inspirational role.

Plots connected to the core leadership in a command and control capacity are our greatest terrorism concern because the leadership, at its strongest, can muster the kind of resources and pair the kind of skill sets that could pose a risk of a catastrophic strike. In recent years, two such large-scale plots have been disrupted in Western countries. In August 2006, authorities apprehended more than twenty suspects who plotted to blow up seven transatlantic flights bound for the U.S. from Britain using liquid explosives. In October 2010, a plot was disrupted in Europe that involved “urban warfare” attacks.

Al Qaeda’s central leadership has long exercised very careful operational security: many 9/11 hijackers did not even know their mission until the day of those attacks. With the recent disruption of large-scale plots, al Qaeda’s need for secrecy will only grow. The chance of some low-level figure knowing enough about an upcoming plot connected to al Qaeda’s core to post a Photoshopped graphic boasting of it in advance is infinitesimally small.

There are, however, other possibilities. One is homegrown or lone wolf terrorists unconnected to al Qaeda’s core: think, for example, of infamous Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. Such attackers fall into the category enumerated by Silber wherein al Qaeda plays merely an inspirational role.

The second, and far likelier, possibility is that this is bluster. Even a lone wolf may get caught if he shows his hand too early. And jihadis, along with their supporters, realize that bluster may actually serve a strategic purpose: phantom threats can keep Western countries on their toes, making them pour more resources into playing defense against the threat of terrorism.

Update, 1:20 p.m.: The lack of threat represented by this photo is even clearer now than it was last night, when I wrote my analysis on a rather tight deadline. If you look at the Arabic-language introduction where this photo was posted on jihadi forums, it specifies that the graphic is a lesson in Photoshopping; it wasn’t intended as a threat in the first place, but the media ended up reporting it that way. Thanks to Rusty at The Jawa Report for drawing this to my attention; here is his writeup.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments