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Terror Networks
Ready to strike any time, anywhere
2003-11-23
If anything is a signature of al-Qaida, it is the staging of simultaneous attacks. From the September 2001 "spectacular" which targeted both towers of the World Trade Centre in New York as well as the Pentagon in Washington, to the abortive attempt a year ago to hit Israeli tourists in the air above Kenya at the same time as others were dying on the ground, the movement created by Osama bin Laden has sought to sow confusion and fear through the use of double strikes.
I guess it's a signature of a sort. Casablanca had five explosions within 30 minutes. Djerba only seems to have had the one. The Pak attacks were a hodge-podge, mostly single booms like the Sheraton or the American consulate. So there's a pattern, but it's not unbreakable...
Istanbul added a terrifying new twist to its modus operandi: in the midst of devastation and distress, al-Qaida, through its Turkish allies, returned within the space of a week to stage a second pair of attacks. Thursday’s suicide bombings of the British consulate and the local branch of the British-based bank HSBC were not only all the more unexpected for coming just five days after the previous Saturday’s bombs at two synagogues in the same city, they were timed with chilling precision to coincide with the high point of President George Bush’s state visit to Britain. They sent a powerful message to three countries at once: al-Qa’ida is still alive and still venomous.
Actually, if I was bin Laden or Dr. Fu Manchu or Professor Moriarty, I'd use that tactic regularly. I was very surprised when there wasn't a followup to the WTC attacks within days, and then another followup within days of that. The devastation would have been magnified and the sense of vulnerability amplified. My feeling is that the anthrax letters were expected to be much more effective than they were at spreading the disease. Since then, I don't think they have the capability to mount successive waves of attacks. Even when they tried it in Pakland last year, it ended up with al-Aalmi getting wiped out.
That is one of the few clear statements one can make about the "war on terrorism". "Unlike wars against a conventional enemy, al-Qa’ida has no territory to occupy, no army to surrender and no flags or statues to tear down," Kevin Rosser, a Middle East analyst for Control Risks, writes in the consultancy’s risk assessment for 2004. "It is a nebulous entity, with operatives and sympathisers scattered in as many as 60 different countries."
The model is much more SPECTRE and Dr. Fu Manchu than it is anything outside of fictional experience. Dealing with it requires a lot of intel, much of which at the tactical level can only come from hoovering millions of e-mails and keywording them. That'll drive civil libertarians nuts, but I really don't see an alternative. Operations agains the Bad Guys will be police missions, with occasional military backup, so we should be putting together some sort of international SWAT team. And for the extrajudicial moments, we really do need a few kill squads. If I was doing strategy for whoever's running this, I think I'd also be poring over old records of the Catholic church — which had quite a bit of success at rooting out secret societies, albeit using painful methods.
Terrorism experts disagree on whether the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, which ousted the Taliban regime and scattered the al-Qaida leadership and its followers, has decapitated the movement. Some argue that while Mr bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, remain at large, they will continue to have an influence, though there is no dispute that the US and its allies have struck some serious blows at the network. In particular, the capture in Pakistan last March of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaida’s top operational planner, removed a crucial element of co-ordination.
Likewise Abu Zubaydah, Hambali, and the other, lower-level captures and kills.
"In October 2001 al-Qa’ida’s inner core numbered about 4,000," said Rohan Gunaratna of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore and the author of Inside al-Qaida: Global Network of Terror. "Today their strength is about 1,000, but that has not removed their ability to strike. They compensate for their comparative lack of operational capability by working with the groups they armed, trained and financed in the past, especially in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida has been weakened, but it has not been operationally defeated."
That's why the war's not over, isn't it?
Since September 2001 al-Qa’ida has not struck successfully in the West, where it is actively hunted, public vigilance is high and there is unprecedented co-operation among intelligence and police agencies. But Dr Gunaratna said: "Though the network’s capacity to attack in Western Europe and the US has diminished, it has not lost its interest in doing so. Any complacency will be punished."
The complacency is also coming. Watching the news this morning, Iraq was a sidelight. The public's much more interested in Michael Jackson. Bush isn't keeping the WoT in the public eye, and the Dems are diluting the awareness with the "Bush lied" non-issues.
In the meantime al-Qaida has reverted to what some call "franchise terrorism": using regional partnerships to hit at Western interests in the "global south" from where it draws its recruits. This is where it began in 1998, when it attacked the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. And as American targets abroad are better protected, it is switching its attention to Washington’s close allies, with considerable success. It has killed German tourists in Tunisia, French naval technicians in Karachi, Australians in Bali — and Britons in Istanbul. When diplomatic, military and government institutions become more difficult to attack, even in the less stable parts of the world, al-Qaida can take its pick of softer — mainly commercial — targets which cannot all be protected. The rhetoric of a "war against terror" creates expectations that sooner or later it will end in victory, but it is impossible to foresee an end to a campaign against an adversary which has no negotiable demands, just a utopian vision of a medieval form of Islam ruling the world. "In many respects al-Qaida’s attacks are an end in themselves," said Josh Mandel, another Control Risks analyst.
Posted by:Dan Darling

#2  Good one Boris. Good post too. This is a pick your target kind of war. Some targets have borders others don't. Our tactics must, at times, mimic those of Islamic murderers. Looks like SA is starting to come to terms with what it is they like and don't like about AQ. Whats troubling is the Bipolarness regarding Iran. It makes me dizzy. Their willingness to support mass murder is strange. Car bombs, Iranian criuse missles.
Posted by: Lucky   2003-11-23 1:13:02 PM  

#1  "Unlike wars against a conventional enemy, al-Qa’ida has no territory to occupy, no army to surrender and no flags or statues to tear down," Kevin Rosser, a Middle East analyst for Control Risks, writes in the consultancy’s risk assessment for 2004. "It is a nebulous entity, with operatives and sympathisers scattered in as many as 60 different countries."

So, Al Qaeda does this to be on the Evening News?

The analysis is fatuous at its base. Of course there are resources to be had, countries to conquer and statues to take down. Just because they are not a conventional enemy in no way means they do not have conventional goals, at their base: Power and wealth masked by quoting the passages of the Koran and dipped in innocents' blood.

The rhetoric of a "war against terror" creates expectations that sooner or later it will end in victory, but it is impossible to foresee an end to a campaign against an adversary which has no negotiable demands, just a utopian vision of a medieval form of Islam ruling the world. "In many respects al-Qa’ida’s attacks are an end in themselves," said Josh Mandel, another Control Risks analyst.

They must be paying this guy off in rock cocaine. The war on terror is not rhetoric. Were Clinton still in power there is not doubt you could consider it rhetoric, but at this moment in history the war on terror is anything but rhetoric.

An opponent with no negotiable demands is little more than a target. What was that about rhetoric, again?

A terrorist with negotiable demands does not exist, nor should they.

The scare quotes around the term war on terror is a cute touch but it doesn't make this analysis any more congent for having used them.

In my view the war on terror is imminently winnable, especially now that Al Qaeda has chosen the eventually disasterous strategy of shitting in thier pool.

I would say the opposite of what this writer says. The attacks in Istanbul are a sea change in Al Qaeda tactics and operations. Western interests are hardened because the United States has the resolve to take Al Qaeda pussies head on. My conclusion is that war on terror has turned the tables on Al Qaeda.
Posted by: badanov   2003-11-23 8:49:24 AM  

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