The Diplomat » al-Qaeda

The Militarization of Paradise?

J. Berkshire Miller — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:24:28 +0000

More than a year on and the verdict on the long-term implications of the Arab Spring continues to be muddied, from the Maghreb to the Indian Ocean. Yemen was hardly a dark horse pick to suffer unrest as a result of the tide of political change ignited by the collapse of decaying regimes in North Africa. Indeed, conflict had been simmering in the troubled state for decades, fuelled by the ghosts of Yemen’s civil wars, tribal factionalism, piracy, gun running and al-Qaeda. And, despite the recent removal from power of strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh and the election of a new leader, the country continues to teeter on the brink of civil war.

But while the headlines are dominated by incidents such as the claim today that the U.S. military has killed 18 al-Qaeda members in four airstrikes in the country, there’s growing interest from international suitors including China, Russia and the United States over a small Yemeni island chain that is often dubbed a paradise and the most alien-looking place on earth.

Located in the Indian Ocean just east of the Gulf of Aden, and only 80 kilometers from the outstretched arm of the Somali coast, the idyllic archipelago of Socotra – a newly minted UNESCO site – is an integral part of Yemen’s sovereign territory.

Socotra’s relative isolation from the capital of Sana’a has granted it a modest reprieve from the tribal conflicts erupting on the mainland. (Its geographic isolation, interestingly, also means that a third of its plant life is unique to the island). Historically, the archipelago’s geostrategic position ensured that history would lend it many foreign masters, including brief rule under the Portuguese in the 16th century and forced suzerainty by the British in the late 19th century. More recently, Socotra was ruled by the Mahra Sultanate – a quasi-autonomous regime under mandate of the British protectorate. The Sultanate was dissolved in 1967 after Britain determined that its colonial dalliance in Yemen was costing too much royal blood and treasure to merit continued protection. The Yemeni state was subsequently divided between North and South – with Socotra falling under the rule of the latter.

While Socotra has largely avoided much of the unrest of the mainland, it remains a strategic asset for the government in Sana’a – regardless of the outcome of the current crisis. Socotra’s geographic proximity to the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula has garnered attention from a number of international suitors, and Saleh’s government certainly wasn’t ignorant of Socotra’s value, reportedly holding discussions with senior U.S. officials on enhancing the defensive posture of the archipelago.

U.S. interest in Socotra isn’t surprising considering the geostrategic shift of the war on terror from South Asia to the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa. While the death of Osama bin Laden undoubtedly advanced this change, it continues to be nuanced, and has been gradually shifting since 2009 when al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) reignited its campaign with a flurry of attacks on U.S. targets. U.S. intelligence officials have tacitly – and sometimes not particularly discreetly – acknowledged that AQAP has been the primary target of American counterterrorism activities in recent months.

Mind Games in Afghanistan

Richard Weitz — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:11:47 +0000

Last week’s mysterious leaking of a secret U.S. report summarizing thousands of interrogations of detained Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other suspects in Afghanistan has weakened the NATO campaign and peace efforts there by sowing discord between the alliance and its regional allies, while deepening doubts about the Taliban’s ultimate intentions. Indeed, the Taliban’s sympathizers – or at least someone unhappy with the NATO presence in the country – may well have leaked this report with these very goals in mind, so its content needs to be read with care.

According to the BBC and The Times, this report “On State of the Taliban” was compiled last month by U.S. military personnel at Bagram air base north of Kabul, where more than 3,000 Taliban prisoners are normally detained at any one time. The report summarizes the key findings of 27,000 interviews with more than 4,000 detainees, who encompassed suspected senior Taliban commanders, rank and file Afghan guerrilla fighters, members of al-Qaeda and other foreign terrorist organizations and Afghan civilians sympathetic to the insurgents.

The report made for some explosive headlines. Unfortunately, too often, media outlets simply repeated its excerpts verbatim, or with sympathetic supporting commentary, neglecting that all the opinions were second-hand and from suspect sources. The report’s authors didn’t provide, or apparently even seek, any evidence to confirm what the Taliban prisoners were telling them. And the Taliban told their interrogations precisely those things that would most serve their cause by boosting the insurgents’ moral and discrediting the United States’ closest allies in the war against them.

The United States and its NATO allies in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) are already transferring the leading combat role in various provinces from NATO to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) as they continue to withdraw forces added during last year’s troop surge. In light of this impending withdrawal, one of NATO’s main worries is that the Afghan government and ANSF may be ineffective and too corrupt to survive alone against the Taliban without an indefinite foreign troop presence buttressed by enormous volumes of international assistance.

The report certainly feeds this worry by describing widespread collaboration between the guerrillas and the Afghan security forces in areas that ISAF has transferred to ANSF control. Afghan soldiers reportedly sell their weapons to the Taliban, while even government officials supposedly express growing interest in joining the Taliban movement. The detainees are summarized as believing that, “Afghan civilians frequently prefer Taliban governance over the Afghan government, usually as a result of government corruption.”

Another concern is Taliban duplicity. The Taliban leadership has moderated its formal position on some issues, and instructed its field commanders to do likewise in a recent field manual. But such policies seem like tactical maneuvers to reduce Afghan resistance to their return to power as well as facilitate recruitment and retention. The report suggests the stratagem has helped gain some external support and “at least within the Taliban, the refurbished image is already having a positive effect on morale."

But even if Taliban leaders endorsed a peace agreement, it would be hard to trust their intentions. They could easily imitate the North Vietnamese strategy of professing to accept a compromise settlement in order to secure a foreign military withdrawal, and then resuming offensive operations against the local government before it had fully recovered from its years of dependence on foreign military support.

Pakistan – Evolution or Revolution?

diplomat_admin — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:27:34 +0000

Events have been moving fast in Pakistan in the last few months. Yet while the country’s longest lasting democratic government has been widely reported as being on the brink of a coup, rumors of its death have been premature. Indeed, the classic standoff between civilian government, the military and the justice system seems to have been tempered by another element – the free media and its counterpart, informed public opinion. The likely scenario if all factions hold to the status quo will be an early election following the March vote for the Senate.

This will be an opportunity for emerging leader Imran Khan and his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf,or the Movement for Justice Party, to step into the political space being created, and to prove that Pakistan’s fragile democracy really has taken root. In a CNN interview on January 22 with Fareed Zakaria, Khan stated his ambition is to end “the war with no objectives,” as well as to put an end to corruption, the deepening sense of gloom, the unprecedented inflation and the sense that “Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world.”

Khan’s call for peace is also a powerful protest against the United States and its policies in this turbulent area of the world. Anti-U.S. feeling is strong in Pakistan ever since the killing of Osama bin Laden in his Pakistan refuge, something that caused major embarrassment to the military establishment and its intelligence service, the ISI. Relations with the U.S. became even frostier in November, when 24 Pakistani troops were killed in a NATO aerial attack on two border outposts. Pakistan still doesn’t accept the U.S. account that puts partial blame on Pakistani forces.

Then there’s the recall of Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani, also in November, which has broken the communication established between the two countries. Haqqani, a key ally of President Asif Ali Zardari, was well regarded by the Obama administration. He’s now said to be under virtual house arrest in a presidential guest suite in Islamabad because of his implied role in asking for U.S. help should there be a coup in Pakistan. He denies that he wrote the memo or that he asked an American businessman of Pakistani origin, Mansoor Ijaz, to deliver it to then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen.

Ijaz was scheduled to arrive in Pakistan before January 24 to give evidence before the judicial panel investigating the allegations, but he is reportedly refusing to enter the country because of fears over his safety. In the meantime, the government announced on January 19 a “parliamentary review of bilateral relations,” saying this was the reason a visit by U.S. Special Envoy Marc Grossman was rebuffed. Grossman is currently touring the region for consultations over the peace process with the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan is said to be annoyed about not being informed about such talks and the opening of the office in Qatar. Pakistan had recently also asked Washington to reschedule a visit of the Central Command head Gen. James Mattis to the country, saying that “Pakistani leaders were busy with an internal political dispute.”

Another point of tension is the closing of NATO supply routes by Pakistan as retaliation for the fatal airstrikes in November. Pakistan plans to reopen these routes, but will impose tariffs on supplies, both to express their anger and to raise funds for the government. At present, the United States is paying six times as much to send war supplies to troops in Afghanistan through alternate routes, and hundreds of vehicles stacked with goods and fuel are still being held at the border.

The Endless Pakistan Tragedy

Richard Weitz — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 03:58:05 +0000

Yesterday’s tragic friendly fire incident along the Afghan-Pakistan border, and today’s response, are eerily familiar to any observer of Afghan-Pakistan-United States ties over the past decade.

NATO aircraft “highly likely” – in the words of an alliance spokesperson – killed 24 Pakistani troops and wounded 13 others at two posts located about 1,000 feet apart on a mountain in the Mohmand region of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Pakistani militants based in this mountainous northwest frontier use the FATA as a safe haven for conducting cross-border guerrilla and terrorist attacks in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan itself.

In response to the pre-dawn attack, which found most of the garrison still asleep, Pakistani authorities have again blocked vital supply routes for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. The government also said it would review all diplomatic, military and intelligence cooperation with ISAF forces.

Pakistani authorities also repeated their demand that the Pentagon leave the Shamsi Air Base in Balochistan Province used to service U.S. drones that launch missiles at al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Pakistan’s tribal region. This time they included a 15-day deadline for the withdrawal.

A spokesman for NATO forces, Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, said Afghan and ISAF troops were operating in the border area of eastern Afghanistan when “a tactical situation” prompted them to call in airstrikes in support that “highly likely” caused Pakistani casualties.

Ironically, the airstrike came one day after a meeting between Gen. John Allen, in charge of ISAF, and Pakistan army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in Islamabad to review border operations. According to a Pakistani military statement, the two discussed “coordination, communication and procedures…aimed at enhancing border control on both sides.”

This is only the latest crisis to befall the border region during the last decade. Relations among Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States have been extraordinarily troubled for most of the past ten years. Historical conflicts, different priorities, and personal animosities have combined to weaken the collective ability of the three countries to repress Islamist extremists operating along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

The United States has pursued several initiatives to reduce tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan and to encourage both governments to concentrate their attention on countering the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists operating inside their territories. Despite these efforts, the border region remains a major source of tension in their trilateral relationship.

Most recently, the intensified fighting in Afghanistan, due in part to increase cross-border support from Pakistan, has prompted ISAF to adopt a more aggressive policy along the frontier. Hence, yesterday’s incident was bound to happen someday.

For some time, the U.S. helicopters assigned to ISAF have been engaging in a more aggressive campaign to defend Afghan border outposts. Taliban and Haqqani network guerrillas sally forth from their sanctuaries in Pakistan and attack Afghan army outposts in eastern Afghanistan, then flee back across the border with NATO aircrews in hot pursuit. ISAF commanders had been justifying the border air strikes by citing the failure of the Pakistani Army to occupy and suppress the guerrilla and terrorist bases in the tribal regions, especially in North Waziristan.

Philippines Ceasefire Under Threat

Luke Hunt — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:09:30 +0000

A showdown is looming among rebels in the southern Philippines as insurgents factionalize and splinter amid infighting over government sponsored peace talks, threatening the fragile ceasefire and forcing an unlikely alliance between the military and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The MILF fired the latest salvo, which was designed to shut down rogue Commander Ustadz Ameril Umbra Kato, who has arrest warrants issued against him for murder and arson but who has been protected by the ceasefire agreement struck between Manila and the MILF leadership.

Kato has opposed peace talks aimed at ending the long-running conflict, and established the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement (BIFM). However, the MILF responded, determining that Kato ‘is no longer with us’ – effectively removing his immunity against prosecution.

Fears of an escalation in violence are genuine.

Lt. Gen. Arthur Tabaquero, chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ Eastern Mindanao Command, has also noted the ceasefire allows the military and the MILF to conduct joint actions against criminals and terrorists under the Ad-Hoc Joint Action Group. He says a manhunt will be launched once Kato, former head of the MILF 105th Base Command, officially renounces the MILF.

This was expected, given his defiance of the MILF Central Committee, the formation of the BIFM earlier this year, its attacks on troops and former comrades, and the passing of a September 26 deadline imposed by the MILF that allowed him time to cool down and return to the fold.

Authorities are also contending with militants who have regrouped under another banner called Awliyah, led by a commander identified as Hatib Zacaria. Zacaria led an attack on government troops guarding a school construction site that is being funded by the United States.

Under his command, about 50 gunmen attacked two marine detachments in the hills around Talipao in the southern Philippines in late September, but were repulsed after two hours of fierce fighting. Thirteen gunmen, two marines and at least one villager were killed. Six other military personnel were wounded before the gunmen withdrew into the forest.

Rumours are already being spread about the Awliyah, whose followers claim Zacaria and his henchmen have supernatural powers. Awliyah simply means ‘leader.’ The authorities, for their part, claim the Awliyah is largely made up of hard-line elements from the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), as opposed to the MILF, and is associated with the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf, which has been leaderless for more than a year but continues to battle troops between routine acts of banditry, kidnappings and extortion.

Hardly comforting was last weekend’s crash of a Philippine Air Force UH-1H helicopter, which killed three crew members while transporting supplies to Sulu, where troops were battling Abu Sayyaf militants.

Awliyah associates include rogue members of the MNLF under Jawalibal Ujod and Khabier Malik, another renegade MNLF leader. The attack was launched about 2.5 kilometres from Malik’s base; he is facing criminal charges after his group captured a government peace mission in February 2007.

Their rise also comes as Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the terrorist outfit that enjoyed a close association with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, was effectively obliterated by forces as far flung as Indonesia and Pakistan after a decade-long counter terrorism operation was launched following the September 11 strikes on New York and Washington. Still, JI’s demise has created a vacuum in the southern Philippines, which the BIFM and Awliyah seem intent on filling.

More broadly, dissent within the rebel Mindanao ranks isn’t without precedent. The MILF was formed in 1977 as a hard-line splinter of the MNLF, which it split from in 1981 after peace initiatives failed to win over the hardliners. Ironically, 30 years ago, it was the MILF that was seen as the extreme element. Today, though, it’s considered the moderate negotiator and potential ally for the military in hunting down recalcitrant rebels.

‘The military held its punches against Kato’s group because of the ceasefire mechanism,’ Brig. Gen. Ariel Benardo, head of the government’s ceasefire panel says. He added the priority was not to jeopardize the truce and that any action would be coordinated with the MILF.

Kato initially gained international prominence in 2008, when a court in Manila overruled a peace deal struck between the MILF and the government of then-President Gloria Arroyo that gave the rebels an ancestral domain in central Mindanao. That legal decision resulted in widespread attacks across the south, leaving 300 people dead and 600,000 people homeless. Four decades of civil war have killed 120,000 people, displaced another two million and ensured the resource rich Muslim south remains the poorest of the poor in the Philippines.

The MNLF signed a peace accord with the government in 1996 after it dropped its secessionist bid. It settled for limited Muslim autonomy in the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines, but many Moro rebels didn’t lay down their arms. They claim the Philippine government reneged on its promises.

The government insists it’s attempting to address those issues. At the same time, the latest talks with the MILF have stalled since August, with the MILF again demanding that the creation of a sub-state be placed firmly on the political agenda.

But it is the latest ructions within the MILF and MNLF, not disputes at the negotiating table, that have signalled a significant shift in the politics of Mindanao, while providing Manila with its greatest obstacle since Benigno Aquino was swept into office more than a year ago amid promises of peace in the country’s south.

US Takes Gloves Off With Pakistan

diplomat_admin — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 01:03:22 +0000

You could be forgiven for dismissing the latest diplomatic spat between the United States and Pakistan as just another hiccup in a long-estranged marriage. Trading accusations and navigating diplomatic crises has become a weekly affair for this deeply troubled alliance. But the broadside launched against Pakistan by the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in congressional testimony on September 22 represents a rupture so dramatic that its significance is difficult to overstate.

On Thursday, Adm. Mike Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Pakistan was using ‘violent extremism as an instrument of policy’ and said the Haqqani network, Af-Pak’s deadliest militant outfit, ‘acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Internal Services Intelligence Agency.’ Mullen further explained that Pakistan was using militant proxies to ‘hedge their bets’ in Afghanistan, adding, ‘in reality, they have already lost that bet.’ To be sure, independent analysts and former government officials have been airing such complaints for years. But never in the long, dark history of the Afghan war have serving officials so unequivocally called Pakistan to account for its double game.

Pakistan’s reaction was swift but uninspiring. The country’s new foreign minister warned that the United States ‘cannot afford to alienate Pakistan,’ while Mahmood Shah, a former army brigadier, explained that the US is simply ‘mak(ing) Pakistan the scapegoat for (its) failures in Afghanistan.’ Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani added: ‘They can’t live with us. They can’t live without us.’

That sort of response simply isn’t going to cut it anymore. The Obama administration – indeed, the country at large – has lost faith in Pakistan. The turning point for the White House appears to have been the September 13 attack on the US embassy in Afghanistan; a brazen assault by Haqqani network insurgents that resulted in a 20-hour gun battle in a fortified corner of the Afghan capital. Just a few days earlier, the Haqqani network orchestrated a truck bombing outside a US base in Wardak that wounded 77 US soldiers and killed five Afghans.

Indeed, a barrage of crises has been propelling the United States and Pakistan toward a reckoning for months. The year opened with the Raymond Davis saga, when Pakistan refused to grant diplomatic immunity to a US contractor who killed two armed Pakistanis in a mysterious confrontation in January. That was followed by the expulsion of US military trainers and intelligence agents and a diplomatic row over visas to US officials. A series of US drone strikes on al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan’s tribal lands strained ties even further, as did the continuing refusal of the Pakistani military to launch an assault on the militant stronghold of North Waziristan. The discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden in May in a wealthy suburb miles from Pakistan’s premier military academy served as the grand finale.

The bin Laden raid raised red flags across Washington, not least on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers were told by then-CIA director Leon Panetta the Pakistanis ‘were (either) involved or incompetent.’ Many congressmen and senators, long in the dark or uninterested in South Asian affairs, were shocked to find the degree to which Pakistan was misusing American aid and harbouring US enemies. Key congressional leaders began demanding a fundamental reassessment of the United States’ Pakistan policy, and in July the US announced it was withholding $800 million in Pakistani aid.

Pakistan has fared little better inside the administration. Under former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Pentagon had been a staunch opponent of taking a tougher line with Islamabad. The defence department helped torpedo stiff restrictions on US aid to Pakistan in the $7.5 billion Kerry-Lugar bill. But now Gates is out, and tough talking Leon Panetta is in. As the United States’ top spy from 2009 to 2011, Panetta is intimately familiar with the ISI’s transgressions. He expressed his frustrations recently, explaining, ‘Time and again, we’ve urged the Pakistanis to exercise their influence over (the Haqqanis) and we’ve made very little progress. The message they need to know is: we’re going to do everything we can to defend our forces.’

Panetta will find an ally in his replacement at the CIA. David Petraeus carries his own intimate knowledge of Pakistan’s double game, having served as the top US commander in Afghanistan for the past year. His heroic efforts there were consistently stifled by the safe haven and support Afghan militants receive from Pakistan, and his relationship with Pakistan’s generals is famously estranged. The Agency has its own bone to pick with Pakistan: the CIA blames the Haqqani network for a December 30, 2009 bombing at an agency outpost in Khost, Afghanistan that killed seven CIA officers – the single deadliest attack on US intelligence personnel in the Agency’s history. Moreover, the last two CIA station chiefs were forced to leave Pakistan after they were publicly ‘outed’ in December 2010 and May of this year. Nor will Pakistan find help inside the State Department, which is still reeling from the embassy attack. The new US ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, told Radio Pakistan on September 17 that the Haqqani network was responsible for the assault and ‘there is evidence linking the Haqqani network to the Pakistan government…This is something that must stop.’

How al-Qaeda Recruits Online

diplomat_admin — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:31:28 +0000

In December 2009, five American men were arrested in Sargodha, Pakistan over terrorism-related charges – namely criminal conspiracy and the funding of a terrorist organisation. The men, all from middle class Alexandria in northern Virginia, had travelled to Pakistan with the aim of joining Jaish-e-Mohammed, a banned organisation that focuses on training terrorists and conducting operations aimed at expelling foreign troops from Afghanistan.

The men were arrested and tried by Pakistani authorities and sentenced to 10 years hard labour. How did these young, Western, educated individuals convince themselves that it was their duty to travel thousands of miles to commit acts of violence in Asia? The answer lies largely in the increasingly sophisticated – and creative – recruiting power of the internet.

Of course, not every teenager is destined to swap their Gameboy for an AK-47 – the process of radicalization is a multi-layered process that usually takes significant time. According to a New York Police Department study, for example, an individual must first be exposed to extremist ideology, then consciously identify with it, before finally submitting themselves to a long process of intense indoctrination.

Most individuals don’t get past the first couple of stages. But those susceptible individuals that do make it through this process do so because of the presence of an incubator – a venue or platform that provides extremist ‘fodder’ or fuel to intensify the process. It’s unsurprising, then, that the internet is playing an increasing role in radicalization – it’s an easily accessible incubator that provides, with just a few clicks, a wealth of influential material. And the Virginia Five are just the tip of a growing iceberg of online radicalization that usually begins with three key recruitment steps.

Step One: Provide the Spark

To export their ideologies, extremists first need to first increase their audience to reach susceptible individuals. The first recruitment tactic, then, is to disseminate a wide range of messages with the aim of getting the attention of potential recruits. According to a recent report by the United Nations CTITF Working Group on Use of the Internet for Terrorist Purposes, this is done by disseminating simplistic messages on complex local and international social, economic and political issues, usually with a straightforward, violent solution.

With an eye on younger audiences, the last decade has seen the rise of a recruitment campaign based around the idea of ‘Jihadi Cool,’ in which extremists utilise pop culture inspired media including rap, video games, and comics portraying Islamic fundamentalism in an appealing light.

The dissemination of extremist-themed hip hop videos is one of the odder but most popular calls to arms. The most notorious example, the hip hop/dancehall fusion ‘Dirty Kuffar’ by Sheikh Terra (‘Kuffar’ means unbeliever), was downloaded onto millions of computers worldwide, with users drawn by lyrics such as:

Peace to Hamas and the Hezbollah,

OBL pulled me like a shiny star,

Like the way we destroyed them two towers ha-ha.

Other successful examples have included tracks by Abu Maleeq, the former German rapper known as Deso Dogg, who converted to Islam in late 2009. His lyrics, which focus on condemning US drone attacks in Pakistan and glorifying the concept of martyrdom, were allegedly a source of inspiration for Arid Uka, a 21-year-old German who murdered two US service members in March.

Jihadi-inspired video games are also popular. One example, a production by extremist cyber-propaganda veterans Global Islamic Media Front, is a free first-person shooting game called ‘Night of Bush Capturing.’ Players in the game embark on their own individual jihad with the aim of hunting down former US President George W. Bush. Similarly controversial games include the Hizbollah produced ‘Special Force’ series, which pits players against an invading Israeli defence force.

But militants hope to broaden their audience still further with a foray into another medium – cartoons. A new cartoon movie entitled ‘al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’ has been announced in online forums and is due for release soon. As the title suggests, the movie is aimed at boosting recruitment to al-Qaeda while also providing an alternative to ‘the poison that is broadcast by other TV channels to our children.’

A Decade Later, Al-Qaeda Threat Real

diplomat_admin — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 17:08:39 +0000

Al-Qaeda has had a tough year. Since the May 2 killing of Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, the organisation has suffered a series of setbacks. On June 25, Ibrahim al Afghani, a senior terrorist belonging to Somalia-based al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab, was killed in a drone strike in southern Somalia. On July 5, Saifullah, a 50-year-old Australian described as a key aide to bin Laden, was reportedly killed in a drone attack in Pakistan’s North Waziristan. On August 22, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, al-Qaeda’s number two, was killed in another CIA drone attack in Pakistan. Then, on September 5, Pakistan announced the arrest of Younis al Mauritani, a senior al-Qaeda leader suspected of directing attacks against the United States, Europe and Australia.

This series of losses poses serious existential challenges for the organisation, and on the surface would seem to have forced al-Qaeda into self-preservation mode, rather than allowing it to expand and execute any major attacks against its stated enemies.

Such a view has prompted the United States to issue a number of optimistic assessments over its ability to defeat al-Qaeda once and for all. Indeed, on August 31, White House counter-terrorism chief John Brennan described al-Qaeda as being ‘on a steady slide’, ‘on the ropes’ and ‘taking shots to the body and head.’ Newly-installed Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, meanwhile, affirmed that the US focus had narrowed to capturing or killing 10 to 20 crucial al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

And less than a month later, a more forceful pronouncement surfaced. Media reports quoting unnamed CIA sources have suggested that only ‘a relatively small number of additional blows could effectively extinguish’ al-Qaeda. According to these new assessments, 1,200 al-Qaeda militants have been killed since 2004, including 224 this year alone. Violence by al-Qaeda proper, the reports suggested, ‘as the global, borderless, united jihad’ may thus be close to an end.

But there are good reasons to believe this optimism should be tempered.

Notwithstanding the public posturing, a closer examination of some of the trends identified in several other assessments of al-Qaeda by US agencies suggests that the outlook for the organisation's capacity to survive – and even thrive – is not as bleak as some proclamations would have us believe.

For a start, al-Qaeda’s core leadership and structure is intact in Pakistan. Its new chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is believed to be hiding in Pakistan’s mountainous tribal regions, largely because of the safety the region provides. And even after Atiyah Abd al-Rahman’s death, attempts to target top leaders could prove difficult, especially with the ongoing bickering between the United States and Pakistan. Even with the September 5 arrest of Younis al Mauritani, which appeared to have introduced some much needed sobriety into the two countries’ bilateral relations, it seems unlikely that ties will return to normal anytime soon. This reality provides al-Qaeda’s leadership a chance to survive and regroup.

Second, while al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) might have been weakened considerably, the terrorist group’s Algerian-based North African affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), remains the organisation’s most dangerous affiliate. Indeed, then-US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in March that AQAP remains ‘the most active and at this point perhaps the most aggressive branch of al-Qaeda.’

The 2010 US State Department Country Report on Terrorism released in August, meanwhile, highlighted the growing threat posed by AQAP, and noted the group’s capacity for hatching terrorist plots outside of its usual stomping grounds. AQAP was, for example, behind the failed December 2009 attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, and a 2010 plot to destroy several US-bound cargo planes.

Third, al-Qaeda continues to receive support from several anti-US regimes (Iran and North Korea – the so-called ‘axis of evil’ – being the prominent ones) which will likely help the organization survive the US military onslaughts. Iran has been accused by the United States of aiding al-Qaeda, and on July 28, documents filed by the US Treasury Department accused Iran of facilitating an al-Qaeda-run support network that transfers large amounts of cash from Middle East donors to al-Qaeda’s top leadership in Pakistan’s tribal region, debunking the myth that radical Shiites and Sunnis could never cooperate. The Treasury Department blacklisted six members of al-Qaeda working with Iran. Previously, Washington has also accused Tehran of supporting militias inside Afghanistan and Iraq that carry out attacks against US forces.

Al-Qaeda Goes Local in India

Madhav Nalapat — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:13:02 +0000

For decades, India’s security agencies boasted that there was ‘zero’ local recruitment to al-Qaeda and its affiliates. This claim seemed to be corroborated by the fact that none of the terrorists involved in plots across the world were Indian nationals, not even from the one state in the country where resort to Islamist violence has been endemic: Kashmir. Even there, for more than a decade, the ongoing insurgency has been manned by recruits from outside—mostly from Pakistan, but also from the Middle East, Sudan, Chechnya, and even Xinjiang.

Such immunity from the siren song of terrorism was attributed to India’s democracy, and to its secular Constitution. The first was seen as giving ample—and peaceful—outlets for dissent, while the other was held to ensure that the country’s 155-million Muslim minority didn’t feel persecuted or disempowered, the way they do in Gaza, for example.

Certainly, India‘s huge Muslim community has been as peaceable as the other religious groups in the country. In particular, the 12 percent of Indian Muslims who are Shiites are similar to the Jains and the Buddhists in almost never entering into violence against people of other faiths. Almost all outbreaks have involved the small Wahhabi segment of the Sunni community. One reason is the fact that in Sunni mega states such as neighbouring Pakistan, Muslims are given a higher status relative to people of other faiths, exactly as they are in parts of the Middle East and in Malaysia. As a consequence of the positive discrimination shown to Muslims in these locations, a small segment of the community in India is dissatisfied at the fact that a similar superior status for Sunnis is absent in secular India.

The other reason behind the increase in recruitment to India’s extremist groups is Gujarat. The indefensible 2002 pogrom against the Muslim community in that state, which was launched in retaliation for a previous terror attack on Hindu pilgrims travelling by train in that state, has been the single most effective recruitment factor in al-Qaeda’s drive to bring into its fold not just Arabs, North Africans, Bangladeshis, and Pakistanis, but Indian nationals as well.

Gruesome accounts of Muslims being battered and burnt to death in Gujarat proliferate on social networking sites. The fact that there has thus far been almost no punishment meted out to the principal actors behind the 2002 violence hasn’t helped douse Muslim rage at this attack on their co-religionists in Gujarat, which many believe to have been sponsored by the Bharatiya Janata Party government of the state.

The BJP has consistently refused to censure those within it who were—at the least—negligent in preventing more than 2,000 Muslims from being killed in the spasms of violence in Gujarat that followed the Godhra train attack. Such a refusal to accept responsibility and ensure accountability converted the 2002 Gujarat massacres into a catalyst that has—for the first time—led to growing Indian recruitment into al-Qaeda and its regional affiliates, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Indian Mujahideen (IM). Since it came to office in 2004, the Manmohan Singh government has worsened the situation by going slow on enforcing legal accountability for the Gujarat riots, while simultaneously being in denial about the proliferation of local networks active in facilitating terror attacks.

Take as an example the November 2008 carnage in Mumbai. The investigation into that outrage deliberately bypassed leads that pointed to local involvement in the reconnaissance that preceded the Mumbai attacks. Almost certainly, such a turning away from facts was motivated by an official desire to protect the police and others who had been negligent in fending off the attack, and in properly tackling it once the Pakistani attackers began their three-day orgy of bloodshed. Because of the continued refusal to acknowledge that there’s now significant local involvement in al-Qaeda, certain localities in cities such as Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, and Lucknow that are known to host pools of radicals had—in effect—been declared as ‘no go’ areas, with the police having been directed to look the other way because of the involvement of key politicians and officials in tolerating such extremist nests.

The Dangerous Afghan Drawdown

diplomat_admin — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 11:59:28 +0000

In his much-anticipated announcement of the drawdown of troops from Afghanistan, US President Barack Obama declared that the United States will withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by September 2012. Striking a confident tone, he assured his nation that the drawdown of troops was being undertaken from a ‘position of strength.’ Under his assessment, ‘the tide of war is receding…in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance.’

The decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan is certainly going to be game changer. But will it lead to greater or less stability in Afghanistan?

Certainly, the early indications are that the Taliban might have been emboldened by Obama’s announcement. They’ve stepped up their activity, and the attack on the fortified Intercontinental hotel in Kabul this week is a bad omen. Such a projection of resilience is in stark contrast with the desperate lack of governance in Afghanistan, combined with lax security, rampant corruption, high unemployment, weak institutions and rising civilian casualties from Western air attacks.

The problems are compounded by the fact that Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States – the three key players in this war – have divergent views and interests over counterinsurgency operations and reconciliation with the Taliban. And, with the three likely to pursue different agendas as the US troop drawdown begins, expect them to move to try to maximize their own gains in the post-withdrawal phase.

Already, the United States is engaged in secretive talks with the Taliban, with an eye on being able to hasten its drawdown. US hopes lay in putting together a political arrangement that includes the Taliban, and to this end it has already softened its position, helping to ensure that the Taliban are separated from al-Qaeda operatives on the list of entities under UN sanctions. The idea here is to induce the Taliban into breaking its links with al-Qaeda, renounce violence and recognize the Afghan constitution as part of any talks.

Yet the US efforts to talk directly with the Taliban have upset the Pakistanis, and there seems a genuine possibility that, as in the past, Pakistan will try to scuttle US discussions with the Taliban. The United States would therefore do well to heed the words of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who said, ‘Nothing will happen without us, because we are part of the solution.’

Why? Because Pakistan regards Afghanistan as a rearguard, and it sees US efforts as being at odds with its own interests.

The US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, who was hiding deep within Pakistan, has seriously strained US-Pakistan relations. The Pakistani Army has been publicly criticized for having failed to defend the country’s sovereignty, and Pakistan has forced the United States to withdraw 120 of its operatives, including those who were providing training for the Frontier Corps.