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Terror Networks

Intel analysts see al-Qaeda paradox

2003-11-23

The recent surge in terrorist strikes on "soft targets" like consulates, banks and synagogues in places like Turkey and Saudi Arabia is worrying, but paradoxically reflects progress by the United States and Europe in disrupting Al Qaeda, especially its leadership structure, American and European intelligence officials said Friday.
It means that theyâre getting desperate.
"We continue to disrupt Al Qaedaâs activities and capture more of their leaders, but the attacks are escalating," a senior counterterrorism official in Europe said. "This is a very bad sign. There are fewer leaders but more followers."
And most of those leaders appear to be living in Iran ...
The officials said they regard Al Qaeda as less capable than before of striking at American embassies, military targets and landmarks that were the hallmarks of its campaign before the Sept. 11 attacks. But the terrorist threat has evolved, they said, into a much broader, more diffuse phenomenon than before, with a new strategy of attacks by loosely affiliated groups against highly vulnerable targets. The shift to softer targets does not make Al Qaeda and its followers any less dangerous, the officials cautioned. They said there is deep concern here and in Europe that the United States and its allies are facing more â not fewer â terrorist foes than before. The killing and capturing of Al Qaeda leaders is failing, they said, to keep pace with the number of angry young Muslim men and women willing to participate in suicide attacks. "Itâs inevitable that when you step on the anthill, there are going to be plenty of ants coming out the side," a senior American official said.

I prefer to think of it as an example of "pay me now or pay me later," with interest. We didn't step on the anthill in 1995, so stepping on it now gives us more ants to swarm. Waiting ten years would have given us even more. Never doing it at all would have ultimately allowed the ants to take over the world.

In a classified warning to law enforcement agencies late Thursday, the United States reiterated its concern about Al Qaedaâs "continued desire to plot or plan terrorist attacks with an emphasis on U.S. interests abroad," federal officials said. The State Department issued a new global terror warning Friday, saying that it saw "increasing indications" that Al Qaeda is planning to strike American interests abroad. It also said that it could not rule out another Qaeda attack within the United States, one "more devastating" than the Sept. 11 attacks.

Expect it. If they can manage to logistics, they'll do it. That's a feature of fighting an enemy that doesn't worry about "getting away" with an attack. It's also a bug. Ask any of the Japanese troops who fought to the last man 50 years ago. Heroic, yes. Militarily effective, no. They weren't available to counterattack in another place at another time, were they?

Intelligence and counterterrorism officials in Europe said Friday that several recent attacks, in Istanbul and Jakarta, were engineered by groups affiliated with Al Qaeda, not by Al Qaeda itself.

There isn't a difference.

Several officials said this suggests that Al Qaeda might no longer have the capacity to organize attacks and has instead become an inspiration to new and existing groups with similar goals and ideology.

They have the capacity to organize them using other groups' cannon fodder...

"Al Qaeda, as such, is too busy trying to survive right now," said a senior intelligence official based in Europe. "Al Qaeda is more or less brain dead. I donât think they are extremely efficient at planning and coordinating new attacks."

I think Ayman, Saad and Saif are the resource managers, two out of three in Iran, and that Zarqawi's the operations guy. Zarqawi's got lots of contacts throughout the Middle East and Europe, so we're seeing his flavor of attack. Saad and, I guess, Saif have ties within Soddy Arabia, with the clerics allied with al-Hawali and crew, and we're seeing them imitate Zarqawi's techniques.

Despite that cause for optimism, the intelligence officials said they are troubled by evidence suggesting that more young militant men are becoming terrorists than ever before. The men are joining groups inspired by the occupation of Iraq and the exhortations to fight by Osama bin Laden, who is seen as a hero to many disaffected Muslims. "These people have found a new motivation with the aggression of the United States against the brethren in an Arab country," one official said. "If you follow what is being said on the Web sites and by other groups with similar goals to Al Qaeda, they are all trying to ride the wave and trying to raise new recruits through this motivation. And itâs working."

At the moment, it's Qool to be Qaeda in the Islamist world...

In a private memorandum to associates last month, in which he warned of a "long, hard slog" ahead in the war on terrorism, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld raised similar concerns. "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrasas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"

Probably not, at the moment. We haven't yet managed to set up the certainty of failure in their perception. It's something we should be harping on: Qaeda attacked the U.S. at the WTC and the Pentagon; as a result, they lost Afghanistan and a couple thousand of their best, and their protectors lost power. Jemaah Islamiyah boomed a nightclub in Bali; as a result, they lost most of their command structure and a good bit of cannon fodder. Salafi Jihad boomed Casablanca; as a result, the Moroccans are cleaning them out. If the report the other day that GAI is down to 60 people is true, we can add them to the list, especially if the Algerians manage to bump off a few more. These are things we should be emphasizing, just as they're emphasizing the continuing carnage in Kashmir, Paleostine, and Chechnya, where things are way out of hand for the good guys.

Islamic Great Eastern Raiders-Front, also known as IBDA-C, is the Turkish terrorist organization that claimed responsibility for Thursdayâs attacks against the British Consulate and HSBC bank in Istanbul. The group, founded in the mid-70âs, is a violent opponent of Turkeyâs secular government and its ties to the European Union and the West. Several senior counterterrorism officials in Europe, however, said that they are uncertain that the group has strong ties to Al Qaeda. One intelligence chief said that Al Qaeda does not usually time its attacks to coincide with political events, as the suicide bombers on Thursday seemed to do in striking British targets during President Bushâs state visit to Britain.
Maybe theyâre changing tactics, thatâs what you do in a war ...
But a senior counterterrorism official took exception to that assessment, saying that the coordinated nature of the suicide bombings, occurring within five minutes and a few miles of each other in Istanbul on Thursday, was the hallmark of an Qaeda terrorist operation.

The fact that the controllers of the first boom were the boomers of the second also implies the "Great Eastern Raiders" don't have a lot of willing manpower to work with. Controllers don't normally explode.

Senior counterterrorism officials in Europe and the Middle East have grown increasingly concerned that smaller, harder-to-detect groups with loose ties to Al Qaeda, or even independent of it, have struck soft targets all over Europe. The trend was first seen in the early months of 2002, with attacks by local groups with loose Al Qaeda affiliations in Pakistan and Tunisia. The authorities also broke up attacks planned against United States military and diplomatic targets in Bosnia, Italy and Morocco.

The little groups have been there all along. Takfiri have been bumping people off because of the color of their turbans since before Binny declared war. The groups are an outgrowth of wahhabism and its emphasis on jihad, rather than al-Qaeda. The one sows, the other reaps.

Several officials have insisted that they are much more concerned with new terrorist groups in North Africa and Western Europe than with the leadership of Al Qaeda. The groups are actively recruiting young men, who were not necessarily trained in Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, the officials said.
That would be the GIA and the GSPC, though the latter has reportedly merged with al-Qaeda and even pledged allegiance to it so take your pick ...
"Al Qaeda is not my main headache," a senior official said. "The spontaneous groups that are sprouting up from the northern African community based in Europe, and going down the path of jihad, are what Iâm most worried about. They are inspired by bin Laden, but this is not Al Qaeda. They are not there yet â they are not necessarily even ready to launch attacks â but these groups are raising the next generation of terrorists."

Posted by:Dan Darling

#7 killing first born sons?

no, too godlike. They jews did not do the act, god did. Keep your bible straight.

Posted by: capt joe 2003-11-23 10:52:20 PM

#6 Maybe we should just kill all first-born sons?

Nah - too Jewish...

Posted by: mojo 2003-11-23 8:35:32 PM

#5 Nice one B. So follow the money and you have what? Iraqi oil/Turkey cooperatiion means center of power in that camp, money wise. Which would lead me to the AQ/SA connection. Or Iran as they want that slice of the pie and the center of power moves there.

Turkey, the fly in the ointment, must really bug both those camps. It would be to Irans favor to keep Kurdish/Turkey hostile to one another. And AQ/SA and their cousin Syria would still want to control the ME oil flow.

Posted by: Lucky 2003-11-23 7:40:18 PM

#4 I still think that the Istanbul attacks were coordinated with the attack on Talibani's house to make a point. Both happened while? Talibani was in Turkey to talk about economic alliances between Iraq and Turkey. If Short or the British Consulate were facilitating those talks then I think AQ went out of their way to intimidate anyone even thinking of getting these two countries to form a sucessful democratic block in the ME

Posted by: B 2003-11-23 2:36:06 PM

#3 How you know that this is propaganda
The Tell:
The men are joining groups inspired by the occupation of Iraq

And.... another bogus statement that anyone who knows anything about leadership recognizes as untrue:
"There are fewer leaders but more followers."

The greatest lie contain a truth. The truth in this article is the opening line:
The recent surge in terrorist strikes on "soft targets" like consulates, banks and synagogues in places like Turkey and Saudi Arabia is worrying, but paradoxically reflects progress by the United States and Europe in disrupting Al Qaeda, especially its leadership structure Ah..true, true.

Oh..but wait...

THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING!

Why? "The killing and capturing of Al Qaeda leaders is failing... to keep pace with the number of angry young Muslim men and women willing to participate in suicide attacks. "

So, I guess we should all just pack up our bags and go home since the more sucessful we are wiping out AQ, the worse off we will be in the long run. Right?

Posted by: B 2003-11-23 6:52:58 AM

#2 Here we go again: angry Muslims. The truth is that they are angry because they are teached they deserve to be the overlords of the world allowed to kill, enslave and rape the ~~untermensch~~ kaffirs like they do in Sudan. Instead they see is the insignificance of the Muslim countries, thus the anger. But the answer to terrorism is destroy this teaching who is financed by teh wahabis of Saudi Arabia.

Posted by: JFM 2003-11-23 3:40:03 AM

#1 We have taken out a bunch of the qaeda terrorists, but the beast will only re-grow its arms, unless we slaughter it at the head in Saudi Arabia.

Posted by: ISLAM SUCKS 2003-11-23 1:34:17 AM

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