Author Archives: Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Reflections on Byman’s “Breaking the Bonds”

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Posted on August 12, 2012

The incisive Daniel Byman recently published a new study with the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy entitled Breaking the Bonds between al Qaeda and Its Affiliate Organizations. This is a critical topic for the contemporary study of al Qaeda driven and inspired terrorism, in large part because how we judge al Qaeda’s strength in late 2012 comes down to the question of how to assess gains made by the affiliates against losses inflicted on the core. Debates on this issue are often crude, with strong assertions made about affiliates’ connection, or lack thereof, to al Qaeda’s core without factual or theoretical substantiation. It seems that a significant amount (but by no means all) of the commentary about the relationship between core and affiliates is outcome-determined, based on whether the commentator in question wants to find a strong or weak al Qaeda.

Byman’s study can significantly sharpen this debate by providing a sound framework for such discussions. In it, he elucidates various degrees of connection between affiliates and the core; motivations for linkage from both the affiliates’ and core’s perspective; the reasons that other salafi jihadi groups have chosen not to affiliate; and possible strains in the affiliate-core relationship. Byman concludes with policy prescriptions about how the U.S. can magnify tensions between al Qaeda’s core and affiliates, and thus minimize cooperation between them. A careful reading of Byman’s report makes clear that it doesn’t try to answer the question of how tightly bound al Qaeda’s core and affiliates truly are today — which is almost certainly a wise decision, given our limited visibility into that issue based on available open source information. He does, however, provide a great deal of sound historical information that can improve our consideration of the core-affiliate relationship.

Byman provides seven different motivations that might cause a regional jihadi group to join up with al Qaeda, mustering historical examples of how each of them operated in the past. One reason is failure, when a salafi jihadi group’s inability to make progress in its fight against a local regime produces an internal crisis. Second, there are monetary considerations, with both al Qaeda’s core and also certain powerful affiliates (such as al Qaeda in Iraq during its heyday) being able to influence other groups due to their prosperity, at least by jihadi standards. Third, a safe haven from which to operate has proven to be a strong motivator for linkage in the past. Fourth, Byman notes that training, recruiting, publicity, and military experience have all been assets of the al Qaeda core; it has been able to bolster regional groups’ capabilities in all of these ways. Fifth, there is the issue of a common defense. Byman writes, “A number of individuals or cohorts within groups that loosely cooperated or operated in proximity to al Qaeda have chosen to affiliate as a result of being subjected to counterterrorism measures.” Sixth, there have been branding benefits to affiliates, in terms of recruits and funders. Earlier I mentioned monetary considerations; yet it is unlikely that al Qaeda’s currently diminished core will be able to channel money to regional affiliates as it once did. However, despite the core’s relative weakness, al Qaeda’s brand may help these groups to raise money from al Qaeda’s donor base (such as certain individuals and foundations in the Gulf Arab states). Seventh, there is the importance of personal networks. “Once a connection among jihadists has been forged,” Byman writes, “it is very challenging for an outside party to break it, so much that because of the prevalence and breadth of personal networks, it is difficult to truly destroy jihadist organizations.”

Byman also outlines five reasons why al Qaeda’s core may want to join with new affiliates. One reason is mission fulfillment, seeking affiliates in areas where Islam is perceived to be under attack, and in turn pushing the affiliates to adopt more global agendas. Second, relevance: al Qaeda has been on the defensive ever since the 9/11 attacks unleashed U.S. and international counterterrorism efforts against the organization. Byman notes that “some of the most notorious ‘al Qaeda’ attacks since 9/11 have in fact been carried out by affiliate groups.” Third, al Qaeda’s reach will grow due to its relationship with new affiliates. Fourth, affiliates can offer logistical advantages to al Qaeda, including “access to their media resources, recruiters, and other core parts of their organization.” Fifth, al Qaeda has often been able to gain new experienced members through its relationship with affiliates.

Yet despite the advantages that both regional jihadi organizations and also al Qaeda’s core can gain through affiliation, many groups have decided not to affiliate with al Qaeda when the opportunity presented itself. One reason is ideological differences, something illustrated by the decision of Egypt’s Gama’a al Islamiyya (GI) not to affiliate with al Qaeda due to the latter’s prioritization of “jihad over other forms of Islamicization.” One GI leader, Najih Ibrahim, told the Arabic-language London daily Al Sharq Al Awsat that GI decided not to join al Qaeda “because their goal is jihad, whereas our goal is Islam.” Other reasons that Byman provides include the question of takfir (declaring other Muslims to have apostatized themselves from Islam), the targeting of civilians, local agendas that predominate over the global, the fear of taking on new enemies, limited contact or interaction between the prospective affiliate and the core, and personal rivalries. In addition to this, Byman also outlines strains that may exist in the core-affiliate relationship even where both entities have chosen to take on an explicit affiliation.

Overall, Byman’s study makes a tremendous contribution to our thinking about the relationship between al Qaeda’s core and its affiliates, and analysts trying to assess this relationship would do well to use it as a basis for thinking about this question. Byman concludes by illustrating the complexity of acting (or not) on a developing core-affiliate relationship in a way that is often not reflected in popular debates about the subject:

There are no simple choices when confronting al Qaeda affiliates. On the one hand, ignoring groups until they become affiliates, or ignoring affiliates until they strike at U.S. targets, risks leaving U.S. intelligence and security officials in a defensive and reactive mode and vulnerable to a surprise attack. On the other hand, too aggressive an approach can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, strengthening bonds between al Qaeda and other jihadist groups by validating the al Qaeda narrative and leading groups to cooperate for self-defense and organizational advancement.

For any study of this kind, I will have quibbles, find evidentiary points with which I disagree, and the like. Byman’s study is no exception. Yet the overall contribution that Byman’s study makes on this important issue renders my quibbles and minor disagreements almost beside the point. This is one of the five most relevant studies about terrorism published this year, and I encourage all readers interested in the issue to give it a careful read.

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Powering Guantánamo

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Posted on August 2, 2012

Last month, I undertook field research into U.S. detention policy at the detention camp operated by Joint Task Force-Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO). While out there, I had the opportunity to interview Captain John R. Nettleton, the commanding officer of Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, who only recently assumed his command. As Nettleton observed during our conversation, if you pay attention to media coverage of Gitmo, you might overlook the fact that there is a naval base at all — and that fact apparently surprises some media visitors as well. As the Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman noted, “In what might come as a surprise to many, there are many recreational facilities at the naval base, from a golf course to an open-air cinema as well as a Starbucks Coffee and a McDonald’s restaurant.”

The Naval Station Guantánamo Bay is separate from JTF-GTMO (the latter being responsible for detentions). However, it faces some issues that other overseas bases simply do not. First and foremost, it is the only naval station located in a country with which the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations. As the U.S.’s oldest overseas base, the country has been making use of this territory since February 1903, when it first leased 45 square miles of land to use as a coaling station. In 1934, a treaty between the U.S. and Cuba affirmed the lease agreement, with the stipulation that the lease could not be terminated unless the U.S. and Cuba both agreed to it, or the U.S. abandoned the base. International agreements do not simply expire following revolutions, and hence the U.S. legally maintained its base at Guantánamo Bay even after the Fidel Castro-led revolution. However, in February 1964 Castro cut off water and other avenues of supply to the base, which forced it to be self-sustaining. It has been self-sustaining for more than forty years, generating its own power and — as of 2012 — desalinating about 1.2 million gallons of water per day.

Before “war on terror” detainees were moved to Gitmo, the base was almost in a caretaker status. That is, enough people were kept on the base to keep it going, but no money was put into maintaining buildings that were unlikely to be used again. So when JTF-GTMO began, the base was not fully manned: instead, the basic functions included guarding the perimeter, refueling ships coming through, and upkeep of the base. Most of the prominent base facilities — including the Starbucks and McDonald’s that Today’s Zaman specifically noted — are recent additions, specifically created to serve the needs that arose after JTF-GTMO’s establishment.”The JTF was created and suddenly you had a lot more people here, and that created the need to build up the base,” Nettleton told me. “All of a sudden you had a doubling of our base population. You had to feed them, clothe them, build new buildings.” Today there are over 5,400 personnel at the Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, including about 2,435 military and 2,965 civilians (of whom about 1,570 military and 320 civilian personnel are attached to the JTF).

Because the base has to be self-sustaining — and because food, supplies, building materials, etc. have to be brought in from elsewhere — that significantly increases costs at the naval station. One thing that I found particularly interesting is that a large percentage of the base’s electrical power comes from liquid fuels. Costs are not just related to the expense of the fuels themselves, but also the expense of bringing them to the naval station in the first place. Given the military’s push for green energy, I wondered if this might be an area where the base could save money in the long term.

To be clear, one of the very prominent features of the Guantánamo naval station is four windmills atop one of the hills (only three of which are functioning at present). However, only 2-3% of the base’s electricity on any given day is generated by the windmills.

Based on the sheer amount of sunlight it experiences, Guantánamo Bay also seems like it could be an ideal place to harness solar energy. And indeed, the base features a small solar field that is set inside an old high school running track that is no longer in use. But like the windmills, this solar field does not make a significant dent in the base’s overall electricity consumption.

The naval station’s solar field

Nettleton told me that they have been looking into a variety of alternative energy options because “this would be a great place” for it. “DoD has looked here for algae,” he said. “You can grow algae here all day long.” He also mentioned possible further development of solar power, in that new technology has been bringing down the cost of solar.

One barrier to expanding the base’s use of green energy is the cost of building new projects. The cost of transporting materials to Guantánamo Bay doesn’t just increase the expense of liquid fuels, but would also make new solar or wind projects more expensive as well. “Building anything here costs twice as much,” Nettleton told me. “You bring all the materials down, and you’re paying to have them shipped down. You’re paying a contractor to build it for you; you’re not only paying their end of the contract, but also they’re billing all their living and sleeping expenses, and everything else. So it’s twice as expensive here than it would be to build anything in the States.”

The other factor impeding green energy at Guantánamo Bay is uncertainty about the future of the base. “There is no end state in sight for the JTF,” Nettleton said. “It could end next year, or ten years from now. If you don’t know, you’re kind of in this nether region. You plan the best you can, but until the bosses make up their mind what they want to do, it is hard to make a case to invest a lot in infrastructure for 6,000 people when you don’t know if there will be 8,000 or 3,000 two years from now.”

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Terrorism, Economics, and the London Olympics

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Posted on July 26, 2012

On July 25, I spoke on a panel at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies on the topic of Combating Olympic Terrorism (video of which can be found here). This entry is adapted from my remarks.

 

Here is a provocative question: how much did hosting the 2004 Olympics contribute to Greece’s current economic meltdown?

The Olympics were probably a more significant contributor than you would intuitively think. In general, the Olympics is a very expensive spectacle event to host, and the costs of the past three summer games (including London) have skyrocketed. But cities and countries still want to host the Olympics because they realize the games can serve as a valuable investment. If you have been to a city that hosted the Olympics in the past twenty or thirty years, and paid attention to development patterns, some of the host cities have been revitalized by the Games. That is the case for Los Angeles (the 1984 host), and it isn’t difficult to discern how the Atlanta and Sydney Olympics produced development and revitalization.

But the Greece Olympics faced a double disadvantage that simply could not be foreseen when the country won the bid in 1997. The first problem was that the Athens Games would be the first post-9/11 Olympics, which increased security costs exponentially. Greece had initially budgeted about $1.6 billion for the entire Olympics, not including infrastructure and development projects. But unfortunately for Greece, the cost of security itself ended up being about as large as the entire estimated budget for hosting the Olympics. (The 2004 Olympics ran over budget in virtually every way: they cost $15 billion, about ten times as much as the initial proposed budget. This is in addition to about 20.9 billion Euros spent on venues and infrastructure upgrades.) The other problem that Greece faced was the collapse of the global economy in 2008. Because of the financial collapse, the gains that Greece expected to make from its investment in the Olympics did not materialize to the degree expected. Greece’s economic and fiscal problems obviously run far, far deeper than the Olympics — but hosting the Games did not help, and other commentators have also pointed to the causal role that the Olympics may have played in Greece’s debt crisis (along with other factors, of course).

The reason I begin with this point is because when I think about the Olympics and terrorism, the main lens I look at it through is economic. My major argument in Bin Laden’s Legacy is that al Qaeda’s strategy has focused on economics. The economy of the foe was important to Osama bin Laden since before he declared war on the United States. He first cut his teeth in the Afghan-Soviet War, and his perspective was that this war brought down the Soviet Union — that not only had he defeated a superpower on the battlefield, but also actually caused its collapse. (His self-perception was overly grandiose, of course: foreign fighters were entirely incidental to the outcome of the Afghan-Soviet war.) If you think through the logic of that perception, it clearly points to the importance of economics. Nobody would contend that leaving Afghanistan is what caused the Soviet Union to fall. Rather, the way you might get from the Afghan-Soviet war to the Soviet Union’s demise is through economics: through the argument that the costs imposed by the Afghan-Soviet war prevented the Soviet Union from adapting to other problems, such as a major grain crisis and the collapse in the worldwide price of oil (something that the Soviet Union’s budget depended upon because it was a major oil exporter).

I am not endorsing the view that the Afghan-Soviet war brought about the Soviet Union’s demise; but bin Laden thought so. He expressed that belief repeatedly, even explaining how it was the economic cost of the war that destroyed the Soviet Union. This colored his view of how to make war on a superpower. Thereafter, al Qaeda’s war against the United States and the West went through a number of identifiable phases. But the global financial crisis left an indelible impact on al Qaeda’s strategy. The group’s current strategy has been articulated in a significant document, a special issue of Inspire (the English-language online magazine of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) published in November 2010. That special issue dramatically illustrates the differences in how the U.S. has viewed this war and how al Qaeda perceives it.

The November 2010 issue of Inspire was a commemorative issue celebrating a plot that occurred in October 2010, in which bombs disguised as ink cartridges were put onto two planes (a Fed Ex plane and a UPS plane). What we might think is odd about the publication of this special issue of AQAP’s magazine is the fact that the group would issue a special edition of its magazine to celebrate a plot in which nobody died. Saudi Arabian intelligence was able to infiltrate the plot, and alerted U.S. officials to the danger. Locating and defusing the bombs was harrowing: after the tip came in from Saudi Arabia, the UPS plane was diverted to Britain’s East Midlands Airport, where officials cordoned off the cargo area and emptied the plane. They conducted a thorough search, but found nothing out of the ordinary. Even a seemingly innocuous printer cartridge hiding 400 grams of PETN was cleared by security. Fortunately, officials called from Dubai. They had discovered PETN in a Hewlett-Packard cartridge routed through their country, and instructed their British colleagues on how to locate the explosives, which were disguised to avoid detection by an X-ray machine. British authorities again cordoned off the area, and this time found the bomb. So the process was harrowing, but to us this was a failed plot. Yet AQAP issued a commemorative issue of their magazine devoted to it. Why?

The reason is that AQAP believed all they needed to do was get the bomb on board the plane. Anwar al Awlaki wrote in Inspire that blowing up cargo planes “would have made us very pleased but according to our plan and specified objectives it was only a plus.” He continued: “The air freight is a multi-billion dollar industry. FedEx alone flies a fleet of 600 aircraft and ships an average of four million packages per day. It is a huge worldwide industry. For the trade between North America and Europe, air cargo is indispensable and to be able to force the West to install stringent security measures sufficient enough to stop our explosive devices would add a heavy economic burden to an already faltering economy.” To Awlaki, even this failed plot is a victory, presenting the enemy with a dilemma: either Western countries spend billions to address such plots, or AQAP is free to try again.

This special issue of Inspire dubbed this late stage in al Qaeda’s economic war against the U.S. the “strategy of a thousand cuts.” In their view, they don’t need to launch another 9/11. Rather, attacks focus on driving up the West’s costs, particularly security costs, and jihadi groups hope that their foes will collapse under their own weight.

The reason I focus on al Qaeda is because when you review recent security events related to the Olympics, we can see that the threat of al Qaeda and al Qaeda’s fellow travelers looms largest in the perception of security planners. To be clear, Islamist terrorism is not the only kind about which there are concerns. There are also concerns about far-left and far-right terrorism (think Anders Breivik, or else Eric Rudolph, the 1996 Olympics bomber). There are also fears of nationalist terrorism, although I think IRA attacks are exceedingly unlikely.

In terms of Islamist terrorism, the British press reported that an alleged militant thought to have fought for Shabaab in Somalia crossed through Olympic Park five times, breaking a ban that officials had placed on him. This is not as concerning a story as it has been portrayed: the reason we know he passed through Olympic Park this many times is because he wore an electronic tracking device: when you think of the greatest threats to the Games, someone wearing an electronic tracking device isn’t going to be in your first quartile. But there have been other incidents. In June, two Muslim converts were arrested on the suspicion that they were plotting to attack the Olympic canoeing venue in Waltham Abbey, Essex. And this month two separate anti-terror operations yielded fourteen arrests. So when you look at the combination of presence, persistence, and capabilities that al Qaeda and fellow travelers have demonstrated in Britain, much of the concern about terrorism underlying terrorism-related security expenditures has been driven by them. And these security expenditures, which many now see as so routine, are enormous. They are costly to the British government, costly to Londoners, costly even to Olympic sponsors.

The London Olympics has a security force of over 50,000, including 18,200 soldiers. (This number was larger than planned because a security contractor, G4S, was unable to provide the manpower that it had promised.) In addition to security costs, there is widespread perception of a city under siege due to these measures. Visible aspects include a 17.5 kilometer electrified fence around Olympic Park, constant surveillance by closed-circuit television cameras, and six surface-to-air missiles on downtown buildings. Londoners love to complain, and there have been a lot of complaints about the Olympics, but one has to concede that there is validity to these complaints. We have sadly reached a point where the threat of terrorism — and the way that it massively increases costs for events like this, as well as imposes great inconveniences — is taken as a given.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy fix. Even if you didn’t have the threat of terrorism, security outlays would be large due to concerns about crime, crowd control, and maniacs who can’t be classified as terrorists (such as what we just witnessed in Aurora, Colorado). However, looking for ways to reduce these costs moving forward is vital. In looking at security measures that have been reported in the press, those that hold the greatest promise for cost reduction are multilateral efforts where capabilities are paired. Interpol has played a role, with workers “compiling databases on fugitives and terror suspects who shouldn’t cross borders,” as well as “keeping track of lost passports to make sure they haven’t fallen into the wrong hands.” The U.S. is also providing assistance.

Combining capabilities in this manner can help to create economies of scale, so not every country that hosts the Olympics has to rebuild the whole security apparatus again and again. When we think of the Olympics and terrorism, it is worth keeping in mind the strategy of the terrorist group that has driven the past decade of U.S. national-security policy, and the centrality of economics to this strategy. Solutions are not easy, but we should be attuned to the crushing weight imposed by security for such events.

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Islamists and Rick Santorum: A Response to Bernard Finel

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Posted on July 20, 2012

My recent post with Lauren Morgan, “Islamism in the Popular Imagination,” serves as a rebuttal to a remarkably inane Huffington Post article about the terminology Westerners use to describe political Islam. One rather implausible claim put forward in that piece is that Rick Santorum is in fact more extreme than are newly empowered Islamist politicians in Egypt:

In his own interviews, for example, [Mansoor] Moaddel has found that, “In some respects, Mr. Santorum is more extremist” than leading figures of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, who today talk relatively less about Islamic law than about having to face the challenges of economic development and cutting back on pollution.

There are also a number of other misleading arguments advanced in the Huffington Post, as our entry outlines at length. But Bernard Finel, in a thoughtful entry that is on the whole supportive of our argument, challenges our comparison of Santorum and Islamist figures. The thrust of his argument is that — while the policies advocated, put in place, or likely to be maintained by Islamist parties are in fact worse than anything Santorum has proposed — the comparison itself is misleading:

I’d argue this is an apples to oranges comparison. Santorum’s limits are defined, I think, more by the limits imposed by American institutions rather than his ideology per se. In other words, GR is comparing institutionally unconstrained ideological positions with those heavy constrained by institutions. It actually is not at all difficult to find actors on the right who would like to see religious freedom severely curtailed.

I have two responses to this. First, in most countries where Islamist parties have been victorious or ascendant, there are in fact institutional constraints on their political programs. Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, and Libya all have significant and very visible constraints on the agendas of their respective political parties. (Iran and Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, have institutions that in practice support theocratic rule.) That being said, Finel is correct that institutional constraints do play a role in shaping the policies that religiously-inspired political actors will advocate, or can implement, in the West versus those they will advocate or can implement in the Muslim world.

That being said, my second point is that the role of institutions doesn’t actually undercut our initial argument. (Although we didn’t mention them explicitly in the earlier post, we certainly had them in mind implicitly: for example, constraints created by the U.S. Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas account for some, but by no means all, of the differences in terms of the legal treatment of homosexuality.) In comparing the relative extremes of Santorum versus those of Islamist parties, we were not trying to offer a moral judgment on the relative righteousness of those two actors (to be clear: we use “actor” in the loosest possible sense here, since Islamist politicians are by no means a unified actor). Rather, we were comparing exactly what we have just specified: the policies Santorum has advocated or implemented versus those that Islamist parties have advocated or implemented. It is true that institutional constraints play a role in defining said policies, but our goal was illuminating policies that are likely to have an impact on anyone’s life, and not judging Santorum’s “heart of hearts.” Hence, it is a direct apples to apples comparison of what policies are advocated by these two different actors. It would only be an apples to oranges comparison if our goal were moral judgment.

So Finel writes: “It is surely true that Santorum is not worse than various Islamist regimes in the Middle East, in terms of religious freedom, women’s rights, and gay rights, but man that is damning with faint praise isn’t it?” That would indeed be damning with faint praise if our purpose were to praise — but instead it was to correct a flawed analogy, one where Finel (by his own framing of the subject) actually agrees with the substantive points that we made.

Finel makes one interesting point at the end in terms of moral comparison: “But the bigger issue is that comparing ideology to ideology is perhaps more useful than comparing policy outcomes simply because institutions matter.” Again, our purpose was not moral comparison, but I do want to make one point in response: institutions and context help to shape our ideology. The ideology of a 21st century American Christian is likely to be very different than the ideology of a Christian living in 16th century Spain; the ideology of a white 21st century American on racial matters is likely to be very different than the ideology of a white 19th century American. And the ideological and societal context with respect to the relationship between religion and state that Santorum has known all the life is different than that which has shaped politicians in the Brotherhood. So, while it is a bit beside the point I intended to make in my earlier post, I think Santorum would still almost certainly look less extreme in this regard even in a direct ideology-to-ideology comparison that ignores policy outcomes.

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The Strategy of Targeting al Qaeda’s Senior Leadership

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Posted on June 8, 2012

Leadership decapitation is one means of combating violent non-state actors. However, the fact that the leader of a terrorist or insurgent organization being fought can be killed doesn’t mean that he should be. One obvious example is when a group’s leader is incompetent. In such a situation, it may make sense to target his deputies, but leave him in place to continue blundering. Other situations may also arise where targeting a group’s leadership does not make sense. Is the case of Abu Yahya al Libi (who is reportedly dead, but whose demise remains unconfirmed) one such situation?

Australian analyst Leah Farrall strongly answered yes in a provocative blog entry that has garnered much attention. Her argument is summarized well in the following passage:

I wonder if those who think this is a victory (and those supporting the strategy of extrajudicial killings more generally) have given ample thought to the fact that he along with others who have been assassinated were actually a moderating force within a far more virulent current that has taken hold in the milieu. And yes, given his teachings I do note a certain irony in this, but sadly, it’s true. What is coming next is a generation whose ideological positions are more virulent and who owing to the removal of older figures with clout, are less likely to be amenable to restraining their actions. And contrary to popular belief, actions have been restrained. Attacks have thus far been used strategically rather than indiscriminately.

Farrall’s entry touched off a days-long debate on Twitter, primarily between her and American analyst Will McCants, over whether al Libi should be seen as a moderating force in al Qaeda in a way that matters. Before I turn to my own thoughts on the debate, let me say that I think it was an excellent model of argument within this sphere. Competitive analysis is important, and it is generally best when conducted in the open, as this has been. Further, the exchange has been respectful and collegial, something that is atypical for today’s debates. That being said, I rather decisively come down in McCants’s corner.

It is important to note what this debate is not about. It is not about the drones program writ large. I have serious reservations about drones as strategy for reasons similar to those articulated by Bill Roggio in a recent Threat Matrix entry. Judging from McCants’s Twitter feed, he also appears to have problems with the U.S.’s over-reliance on drones. Farrall’s argument is more specific than a general critique of the U.S.’s drones policy: she argues that al Libi’s death will make the world more dangerous because he will be lost as a “moderating force within a far more virulent current.”

The first problem I have with Farrall’s argument is that it means we have an enemy whom we cannot fight because eliminating him from the battlefield is too dangerous. If you follow the logic of her argument, it is not only too dangerous to kill al Libi (or someone similarly situated) but even to arrest him. After all, if al Libi were imprisoned, he would still be eliminated from al Qaeda’s ranks and hence unable to serve as a moderating force.

The second problem is that, contrary to Farrall’s argument, a strategic opponent actually seems far more dangerous than an indiscriminate opponent. Note that in her quote above, she poses these as two ends of the spectrum: “Attacks have thus far been used strategically rather than indiscriminately.” I think this is an accurate assessment of two means that al Qaeda could employ in its fight against the U.S. and others. One of McCants’s major objections to Farrall’s argument is that al Libi’s ends weren’t limited. Farrall doesn’t dispute the point that al Libi would continue to threaten the U.S., but argues that we’ll be worse off if al Qaeda slips from its current strategic posture to one that is more indiscriminate (i.e. with less limited means).

Let’s leave aside McCants’s various arguments that al Libi was not actually a moderating force, and assume for the sake of this argument that he did in fact serve as one in the way that Farrall claims. When your opponent is a violent non-state actor, and thus an opponent of necessarily limited resources, its ability to act strategically is precisely what makes it dangerous. One overarching argument I made in Bin Laden’s Legacy is that one of the reasons our approach to combating al Qaeda has often been lacking is the assumption that the jihadi group is not a strategic actor. A strategic actor is able to spread its brand into new theaters. A strategic actor is able to garner public sympathy. A strategic actor is able to coordinate its actions in a way that will drive up its opponent’s expenses.

An indiscriminate actor will be less effective than a strategic one in the medium to long term, though it may cause horrifying damage in the short term. Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is one example of an actor who allowed its own excesses and bloodthirstiness to get the better of it. Though it was seen as the “dominant organization of influence” in the Anbar province in August 2006, AQI overplayed its hand. The well known-and hugely successful-Anbar Awakening was a response to an actor that employed largely indiscriminate violence. Beyond the context of Iraq, one of al Qaeda’s biggest weaknesses, which has lost it a good deal of popular support, has been the large amount of Muslim blood that it shed. Indeed, we know from the Abbottabad documents that Osama bin Laden recognized this weakness. He wanted to address it in part because doing so would make his organization more efficient at killing Americans.

One can, and should, have numerous questions about our current counterterrorism strategies. And as I stated at the outset, in some cases it will be more strategic to leave a violent non-state actor’s leadership in place when fighting it. But al Libi does not appear to be that case; and al Qaeda appears to be more rather than less dangerous when it operates strategically rather than indiscriminately.

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On American Military Intervention in Syria

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Posted on May 31, 2012

Dan Trombly, who is always worth reading, had an interesting post Wednesday at Slouching Towards Columbia on U.S. intervention in Syria. Those who have read Trombly will not be surprised by his position on intervention-he’s against it-and, as I noted on Twitter, I expect that many readers won’t agree with all of his points. Such is the price of consistently writing long and broad posts: it gives readers far more to disagree with. Trombly’s post triggered some thoughts of my own on a possible U.S. military intervention in Syria, which I outline here.

First, Trombly is certainly correct that the massacre in Houla and other regime atrocities that have been unearthed do not change American strategic interests with respect to Syria. Horrible as they are, they don’t tell us anything new about the nature of this odious regime. If it was a bad idea to intervene prior to the latest revelations-and in this case, the mode of intervention that Trombly criticizes is Danielle Pletka’s prescription of arming the rebels, giving them air cover, and supporting safe corridors-then it remains a bad idea even despite the recent grotesque news. We should not base our foreign policy around heated reactions to tragedy: doing so is a recipe for error.

Second, I think it’s worth visiting reasons that it seems anti-interventionists often end up losing foreign policy debates-and on Syria, I put myself in the anti-interventionist camp. One reason is that anti-interventionists often fail to put forward competitive options, instead stopping with the case against military action. I agree with that case (at least in its conclusion, though I may differ on some of the details), but analysis should not end there. After all, the Syrian regime is perpetrating atrocity after atrocity on its own citizens, and we all have a natural human impulse, an admirable one, to want to stop massacres if we can. So can those who don’t favor military intervention propose, maybe even come to some rough agreement on, median solutions that can deal with humanitarian concerns without resorting to an air war? When the choice presented in these debates seems to be between military intervention and doing nothing, the choice of doing nothing often loses. While I don’t disagree with Trombly’s assertion that “the average American voter” probably “likes killing terrorists but is sick of war,” the relevant audience here is really foreign policy elites within the administration. They are the ones who must be persuaded not to go to war. Given that Mitt Romney is trying to out-hawk Obama on Syria, a new war in that theater may not be politically costly for Obama.

Another thing that anti-interventionists could do a better job of is specifying what the world looks like without the U.S. militarily involved. I am by no means trying to pick on Trombly-my friend, co-author, and someone whom I deeply admire-on this point. But his post is illustrative of something I see as problematic in the anti-interventionist discourse. He writes, for example: “The only way the Assad regime is going to fall in Syria, short of an Iraq-style invasion, is by prolonging the war and defeating the Assad regime through attrition. In other words, the interventionists’ preferred solution of creating ‘safe corridors,’ arming rebel groups, and conducting airstrikes will only drag out the war without assuring victory.” What does drag out the war mean in this context? Is it because Assad is poised to crush the rebels in the status quo? If so, Trombly-or whomever is making a similar case-should come right out and say that. I think realistic assessments of what a world without military intervention would look like would significantly benefit the debate. Perhaps this world is very ugly; that doesn’t mean the case against intervention fails. As I wrote in Bin Laden’s Legacy:

The sad reality of the twenty-first century is that we cannot respond with full vigor to every perceived threat, or we won’t have the resources left over to address those that are most pressing. The sad reality is that lives will be lost in other parts of the world, like Libya, and we won’t be able to do anything about it. This should give us no comfort, but we must be realistic. When we are facing a crushing national debt, the interest payments for which are projected to eclipse our current defense budget by 2019, we cannot afford to overreact to every terrorist threat and to intervene in every conflict.

A third and final point is that Syria illustrates why I disagree with Jason Fritz’s rather thought-provoking argument that a coherent U.S. grand strategy is in effect useless. Rather than being driven by my perception of a “grand enemy,” my own sense of grand strategy is driven by what I see as the overarching-and, in many ways, interrelated-challenges that we confront as a nation, challenges that I outlined at some length on G&L. The national debt and violent non-state actors are among the primary concerns I listed. It seems to me, based on this view of the world, that a military intervention in Syria is not cost justified-particularly because, as Trombly points out, it’s possible that jihadi elements among the rebels may be strengthened rather than marginalized by U.S. involvement. It is hard to justify a new military campaign when our strategic resources would be better devoted to areas where we have very concrete strategic interests-places like Somalia, Yemen, North Africa, Mali, Afghanistan-and we’d also likely be better off if these resources were simply conserved.

My specific thinking on Syria is, of course, a bit more complex than this. But my point is that a sense of grand strategy shaped around the challenges the U.S. confronts can be useful in approaching foreign policy problems-and, in my view, can accomplish precisely what Fritz is concerned with, avoiding foreign policy mistakes.

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Did Adam Gadahn Play a Significant Role in bin Laden’s al Qaeda?

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Posted on May 30, 2012

Brian Dodwell has an article in the new CTC Sentinel entitled “The Quiet Ascent of Adam Gadahn.” The piece includes some genuinely interesting insights about Gadahn’s evolution as a thinker. It also includes repeated assertions about “the significant role Gadahn played in bin Laden’s al Qaeda.” While analysts recognize Gadahn as a media adviser for the jihadi group, Dodwell argues that the newly-released Abbottabad documents-or, more specifically, one document in particular-demonstrate Gadahn’s “role beyond that of media adviser within the organization.” The bottom line is that Dodwell’s conclusion about Gadahn’s significant role in al Qaeda is not justified by the available evidence.

The document that Dodwell relies on in concluding that Gadahn played a more significant role in al Qaeda than previously believed is a 21-page letter written by Gadahn himself. Part of that letter, as Dodwell recounts, is a response to a request from bin Laden, who asked that Gadahn translate an article by Robert Fisk and provide input on which U.S. media to engage with for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Gadahn completed both of these assigned tasks, but Dodwell notes that he also “went a step further and provided an additional 15 pages of commentary and advice on various ideological and strategic issues.” Gadahn’s advice on ideological and strategic issues was genuinely interesting, and certainly provides us with insight into Gadahn’s thinking. But does it provide us with insight into the role he played in bin Laden’s al Qaeda?

Dodwell argues that the answer is yes, based on Gadahn’s apparent confidence and comfort in providing the advice. “[T]he fact that he felt empowered to raise the substantive issues addressed in his letter demonstrates an evolution beyond just media tasks,” Dodwell writes. He makes the same point a couple of other times:

  • “Gadahn appears to have carefully crafted a role for himself in the organization, and through competent performance has presumably garnered the respect necessary to expand that role.”
  • “One may debate the precision of his critiques (although it appears they were in line with many of Bin Ladin’s concerns), but the point here is that Gadahn’s willingness to provide them and his superiors’ willingness to allow him to contribute to such internal debates suggests a more substantive role for Gadahn in al-Qaeda than has been previously acknowledged.”

To be frank, when removed from the context of al Qaeda, we can rather clearly see that such analysis, based on the confidence with which Gadahn provided advice and suggestions to bin Laden, does not hold up:

  • “The fact that Rev. Jeremiah Wright felt empowered to write a letter raising substantive political issues with President Obama demonstrates that he evolved beyond just being Obama’s preacher, and was in fact a significant policy adviser.”
  • “The fact that Charlie Sheen felt empowered to submit a six-and-a-half minute video to President Obama on the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks demonstrates his evolution from actor to high-level national security adviser.”

Okay, both of these are obvious reductio ad absurdum examples; and further, unlike Gadahn in al Qaeda, neither Rev. Wright nor Charlie Sheen have played any substantive role in the Obama administration. But the point stands that one cannot determine the influence an individual has on an organization, whether a government or a militant group, based solely on the letters that he writes to that organization. To Dodwell, Gadahn’s letter makes it appear that Gadahn had “carefully crafted a role for himself in the organization, and through competent performance … garnered the respect necessary to expand that role.” Another plausible interpretation, based on the same letter, would be the exact opposite: that Gadahn crafted a role for himself in al Qaeda as a media adviser, but though he wrote 15 pages of substantive advice to bin Laden in an attempt to expand that role, his substantive advice was completely ignored. Yet another plausible interpretation is a middle ground between the two: that Gadahn crafted a role for himself in al Qaeda as a media adviser, and wrote 15 pages of substantive advice to bin Laden in an attempt to expand that role, but bin Laden was killed before deciding whether to allow Gadahn to do so. Basically, there is no reason to believe that the likeliest interpretation from Gadahn’s own letter is that he played a significant role within al Qaeda beyond that of media adviser.

Further, when Dodwell writes that Gadahn’s superiors showed a “willingness to allow him to contribute to … internal debates,” this is also something we do not know. Gadahn wrote a letter attempting to contribute to al Qaeda’s internal debates. Even within a group like al Qaeda, writing such a letter did not require the ascent of his superiors. Whether they took it seriously in any way is the real question-and one that we cannot answer, based on the evidence before us.

Dodwell makes one further argument about how Gadahn’s advice to bin Laden (some of which concerned al Qaeda’s taking of innocent Muslim lives) may have been received:

Gadahn’s proposed declaration was never released, although bin Laden died only three months after this letter was written so it is impossible to know how he reacted. Bin Laden’s own thoughts on this topic, however, are instructive. His concern about the killing of Muslims is well documented, but he also appeared to concur with Gadahn’s suggestion to both publicly denounce such acts and publicly take responsibility when mistakes are made. He asked `Atiyya to send guidance to “every amir in the regions” to exercise control over their military actions and not conduct operations that unnecessarily risk Muslim lives. If such an event does occur, he asked “for the brothers in all the regions to apologize and be held responsible for what happened,” and if they do not, “we [al Qaeda] should then assume the responsibility and apologize for what happened.” Based on this document, one would presume that Gadahn’s proposal reached a sympathetic ear.

In other words, Dodwell argues that the possible influence that Gadahn’s letter may have had is bolstered by the fact that bin Laden, prior to receiving Gadahn’s letter, expressed similar concern about al Qaeda’s killing of Muslims. This may indeed have made bin Laden more receptive to Gadahn’s letter; or bin Laden may have had a low opinion of Gadahn beyond his assigned role as media adviser, and thus may have decided to ignore the American’s advice despite his expressed sympathies for the concerns that Gadahn raised.

The CTC Sentinel is a respected publication, and often analysis that appears in such places will echo throughout much of the Western literature on terrorism. I expect to see Gadahn’s “significant role” in al Qaeda mentioned either frequently or at least occasionally in articles, reports, and the academic literature. But really, it shouldn’t. The idea that Gadahn had gone on to a significant role in al Qaeda beyond that of media adviser amounts to nothing more than supposition based on a single document that Gadahn himself authored.

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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

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.

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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.

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