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Terror Networks
Washington Intel community AQ weasel words
2014-02-19
Information dense, long article. Ignoring the politics around defining whether or not the various more or less interconnected branches of the jihadi movement are actually Al Qaeda or not, there's a lot of meat here, not to mention a fairly useful graphic. The article closes with these paragraphs:
[WashingtonTimes] The rhetoric dovetailed with an analysis given to Congress last week by Bill Braniff, a terrorism analyst at the University of Maryland, who told lawmakers that 2012 was "the most active year of terrorism on record," with more than 6,800 attacks killing more than 11,000 people worldwide.

"Strikingly," said Mr. Braniff, "the six most lethal groups in 2012 -- the Taliban, Boko Haram, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan, al Qaeda in Iraq and al-Shabab -- are generally considered fellow travelers of al Qaeda, and yet al Qaeda itself was not responsible for a single attack in 2012."

"What should we take from these seemingly contradictory developments?" he said. "Did al Qaeda succeed by inspiring widespread jihadism, or has it lost to a variety of more parochial, albeit popular, actors?"
Posted by:Besoeker

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