Al Qaeda now

Submitted by Bird Dog on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 3:03pm. Tags:

I was prepared to be impressed with this assessment on the state of al Qaeda, but it just didn't happen. Richard Barrett is a former counter-terrorism official for the British, and now with the UN Security Council. Actually, I think his assessments are cogent...

The core Al-Qaida leadership remains in place, but it is still far from recovering the position of strength it enjoyed in 2001. It has suffered from an inability to clarify its role and aims. Though it may still count on thousands of sympathisers across the world, the leadership has failed to find a consistent and reliable way to connect with and direct its supporters. Furthermore, there has been a considerable backlash against Al-Qaida-inspired violence across the Muslim world, with the result that even in places where Al-Qaida used to be highly active – such as Iraq, Algeria, Egypt, and Saudi-Arabia – its campaign has lost traction and influence.

The one geographical area where Al-Qaida has retained influence, or even consolidated or increased its standing over the last three years, is the Afghan-Pakistan border region. Though fragile, Al-Qaida’s alliance with the Taliban has survived, and the group’s future now largely depends on whether it can maintain this accommodation. With the Pakistan and Afghan Taliban becoming increasingly distinct, the most promising option from Al Qaeda’s perspective is to foster and deepen its relationship with the Pakistani rather than the Afghan Taliban.

...but his solutions pedestrian. There's a lot on the "what" but little on the "how". Barrett mentions that al Qaeda is active in the border region of Afghnistan-Pakistan, but neglects to say that the leadership is entirely in Pakistan, as Engram has noted here and here.

Because al Qaeda has safe haven in a country with atomic bombs, our options for destroying the leadership are limited.

I've always believed that best the way to marginalize al Qaeda into insignificance is to be comprehensive about it. We need to go after their money and their communications networks. We need good intelligence. We need a good strategy for isolating them and for securing the populace where they've chosen to infiltrate. We need to fight them in the arena of ideas, as Matt Armstrong has talked about:

This has been packaged as a "War of Ideas." In his first speech as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Jim Glassman described this "War" central to our national security whose purpose to "use the tools of ideological engagement -- words, deeds, and images -- to create an environment hostile to violent extremism." Many people, he noted, do not like this term, especially the practitioners. (My suggestion is the time tested "struggle for minds and wills", but it doesn’t roll off the tongue as "War of Ideas" even if it’s more appropriate.)

We need prominent clerics to condemn al Qaeda's acts, which has already happened to some degree. Both Barrett and Armstrong are agreeable that al Qaeda sows its own seeds of destruction, but we can hasten it. Barrett does not mention in his 9-page report the strategy that decimated al Qaeda in Iraq. The counterinsurgency formula worked. With a few tweaks, it can work in Afghanistan, as the Marines have demonstrated in Helmand province. The problem is, as Herschel Smith has pointed out, we don't have sufficient force projection, NATO does not have adequate unity of command, and several European nations have ineffectual rules of engagement and are unwilling to undertake offensive operations. Also, we may very well be overusing close air support and aerial bombardment via drones. However, if we can turn the tide in Afghanistan, then al Qaeda is basically stuck in the Pakistani hinterlands.

Another factor missing from Barrett's report is the influence of the Taliban in Afghanistan-Pakistan, together with the counterproductive agreements that Musharraf has made with tribal leaders in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Violent attacks in Afghanistan mushroomed not long after those treaties were signed, and the violence problem wasn't solved on the Pakistani side either. Several Taliban groups use highly similar tactics as al Qaeda, as evidenced by the suicide bombing campaign in Pakistan. In my mind, al Qaeda and the Taliban are of a piece, two sides of the same militant Islamist coin except that al Qaeda seeks a larger stage, but militant Islamist Talibaners need to be peeled off just as much as al Qaeda.

In the financial arena, there's a piece in the Washington Post about how al Qaeda has used inexpensive means to launch attacks, but the tone of the article is overly dour. Because al Qaeda can't get ahold of large amounts of cash, their ability to mount large spectacular bombings is impeded. The result is that they've had to adapt, opting for smaller operations.
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Barack Obama's 2002 strategy for al Qaeda (#112494)

by Bill White on Mon, 08/25/2008 - 10:37am

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

What did John McCain stand for in 2002?

Fence post turtles -- They don't get up there by themselves, some moron had to put 'em there.

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And let's not forget you-know-who in 1994 (#112495)

by Spartacvs on Mon, 08/25/2008 - 11:27am

After you take down Saddam Hussain's government, he asks, "then what are you gonna put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government in Iraq, you can easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off... it's a quagmire ... if you try to take over Iraq... Because if we'd gone to Bagdad we'd have been alone...it would have been a US occupation of Iraq...Once you got to Iraq, took it over, took down Saddam's government, then what are you going to put in its place? How many additional American causalities was Saddam worth? Our judgment was not very many, and I think we got it right."

This was after the extent Saddam's nuclear weapons program had reached under IAEA protocols pre-Gulf War, had become well known. Which kinda cuts the rug from under the subsequent 1% doctrine completely, unless you still believe in the ties between Saddam and AQ fairy tail.

GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.

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Al Qaeda now

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