Well, Is Al Qaeda Winning Or Not?

Some of my favorite thinkers have diametrically opposing pieces in The Atlantic today. Will McCants and William Rosenau write about How We Won the War on Terror, while Daveed Gartenstein-Ross writes that Al Qaeda is Winning.

Followers of my work will know that I reviewed and agreed with the thesis put forward by Gartenstein-Ross in his new book, Bin Laden's Legacy.

However McCants is a powerhouse in this field, and the piece he and Rosenau put forward makes some very valid points, arriving at a completely different conclusion but ultimately making some of the same policy prescriptions as Gartenstein-Ross.

While there are many reasons I agree with Gartenstein-Ross' thesis, I want to talk briefly about an issue that neither column raises, but which I think is chiefly responsible for Al Qaeda's failure to mount a successful mass casualty attack since 9/11.

For more than a decade prior to September 11, Al Qaeda and its close allies ran a series of mass production terrorist training camps in the AfPak region. The U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, along with substantial pressure on Pakistan, has crippled that training camp network.

Although the camps have not been totally eliminated, they have been massively disrupted. In the past, the camps could and did process hundreds of recruits at any given time, providing religious indoctrination, basic military training and advanced military training. The training could take place over the course of months or years, and there were relatively few obstacles to traveling to the camps.

Such camps still exist, but they're no longer centralized. They are harder to reach, and the courses they offer are less thorough and much more rushed.

When we talk about Al Qaeda winning or losing, we have to account for the fact we are fighting a war of containment rather than clear victory. The continued pressure we are exerting over the training camp network is largely responsible for Al Qaeda's inability to carry out mass casualty attacks or to train loosely affiliated comrades to do the same.

Since 9/11, we have seen foiled attacks and we have seen failed attacks. On the latter front, from Times Square to the underwear bomber to the lone wolves, lack of training is an overwhelming theme. Training camps still exist, but they are smaller and less secure, with fewer experienced personnel. The training regimen is rushed, candidates enter and are turned around very quickly for attacks without the months or years of advanced training and religious indoctrination seen in the past.

If Faisal Shahzad or Omar Abdulmutallab had been thoroughly and competently trained, their attacks could easily have succeeded, and we'd be having a very different conversation today.

Without fully operational mass-production training camps, there would not have been a World Trade Center bombing in 1993, there would not have been the East African embassy bombings in 1998, and there would not have been a September 11.

Unfortunately, there are two reasons why we can't declare victory on this issue.

First, it is obvious to everyone that we can't stay in Afghanistan forever. Our success in the AfPak region, such as it is, is based on a strategy of constant pressure.

In the absence of that pressure, and under any foreseeable (to me) scenario involving a weak Afghan government and an ambivalent Pakistani military-intelligence apparatus, I see very little reason to think that Al Qaeda's camps won't regenerate once we leave the region. We have the tool of drones today, which we didn't have before, but it's not a magic wand that can operate forever without restraints, especially in the absence of local support.

Second, Al Qaeda now has growing opportunities to train operatives in other places, most notably Somalia and Yemen, and future prospects in Iraq and various points around Africa. Those operations are still small relative to their AfPak predecessors, but they appear to be growing.

We have drone operations in some of these locations, but as noted above, I'm not convinced they can be as effective over a long haul as our substantial military presence in the AfPak theater.

Despite coming at it from different angles, McCants and Gartenstein-Ross -- and a growing chorus of other experts -- all agree that we need to scale back our military and security outlay for reasons both financial and sociological, and I agree with that as well.

But we need to accept that such cutbacks will likely enhance Al Qaeda's prospects for successful attacks in the medium-term future. That enhancement, combined with the wild political uncertainties of the Arab Spring, make it hard for me to be optimistic that we have won -- or can be said to be winning -- our war with Al Qaeda in the foreseeable future.

A final note of caution: The complex attack carried out in Norway by Anders Breivik is likely to inspire imitators. Breivik did something that no one else has -- he showed that a single person can carry out a spectacular terrorist attack, and he provided a detailed account of how he accomplished the task. This could be a game-changer even in the absence of a robust training network, but if and when the network regenerates, the new breed of instructors will most certainly be studying Breivik's tactics (as will other, non-AQ actors).

The war against al Qaeda is most certainly changing, but I'm hard pressed to see how that change puts us in the position of winning or having won. It's arguably an overstatement to say Al Qaeda is winning, per se, but it is successfully executing a large part of the "bleed-to-bankruptcy" strategy it has delineated in its statements. The Arab Spring, the death of bin Laden and other factors may well help us, but we are a long way from seeing the ultimate impact of those events.

For more about al Qaeda training camps and the terror network's American recruits, check out J.M. Berger's new book, Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam, on sale everywhere.

Labels: 9-11, Al-Qaeda, East-African-Embassy-Bombings, Faisal-Shahzad, September-11, Umar-Farouk-Abdulmutallab, World-Trade-Center-Bombing

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink

 

State Department Put 'Political Pressure' On FBI To Deport Brother-in-Law Of Osama Bin Laden In 1995

By J.M. Berger
INTELWIRE.com

"Pressure from the political portion of the State Department" contributed to the end of a 1995 FBI investigation into Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, who the FBI believed was a terrorist financier, according to a newly released document.

Read the document

The FBI teletype was written on May 11, 1995, just days after Khalifa was deported to Jordan after five months in U.S. custody.

Khalifa, a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, was arrested in December 1994 by the INS after his visa was revoked. The revocation was predicated on terrorism charges filed against Khalifa in Jordan.

Khalifa was subsequently acquitted of those charges. He steadfastly denied any connection to terrorism until his murder in Madagascar in 2007.

Shortly after Khalifa's arrest during a business trip to San Francisco in December 1994, authorities in Manila broke up a terrorist cell led by World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef, who had been planning to simultaneously bomb 11 U.S.-bound airliners over the Pacific. Assisting him in this plot was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, future mastermind of the September 11 attacks.

Wali Khan Amin Shah, an associate of Yousef implicated in the airliner plot, was in contact with Khalifa during his U.S. trip. The FBI and CIA believed Khalifa also had direct contact with Ramzi Yousef, according to sources and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The FBI also believed Khalifa was connected to Omar Abdel Rahman, the radical sheikh whose followers in New York had helped carry out the World Trade Center bombing.

After spending some months fighting deportation to Jordan, where he was expected to stand trial for an alleged role in a series of cinema bombings, Khalifa agreed to be deported at the end of April 1995, shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing.

According to the FBI teletype, Khalifa was thought to have agreed to the deportation "his retrial in Jordan will result in his quick acquittal."

"Khalifah's deportation to Jordan, although conforming to the express intent of the U.S. Secretary of State, likely will not result in Khalifah receiving any punishment for his criminal and terrorist activities, and will more likely lead to his quick acquittal and departure from Jordan," the teletype stated.

The FBI had petitioned the State Department to delay the deportation in order to allow more time for investigation.

At the same time, the CIA had informed State that deporting Khalifa would likely result in him being freed, according to CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, who worked on the Khalifa investigation at the time and afterward.

"When it got to the State Department, all the State Department wanted to do was get it off our plate," Scheuer said.

Even the State Department's own embassy in Amman warned that deporting Khalifa would likely result in his release, according to cables obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

"Embassy continues to believe that Khalifah will be acquitted if tried in Jordan," read the last of these warnings, sent the same day that Khalifa was extradited.

In addition to information from the embassy, the FBI has sent a team to Jordan to liase with officials there. Jordanian officials expressed "indifference" about prosecuting Khalifa there and suggested the U.S. should consider its options for criminal charges, the May 11, FBI teletype states.

"[Prosecutors in] the Southern District of New York and the New York [FBI] office attempted, in every way, to have visa fraud charges presented against Khalifah in the Northern District of California," the teletype stated. "The pressure from the political portion of the State Department, as well as the problems that were evident in the case, assured that DOJ did not insist on a prosecution in California." The teletype does not state what the "evident" problems were, nor do other documents obtained by INTELWIRE make those problems clear.

"It is unfortunate that the time needed to possibly tie Khalifah to [name redacted, likely Ramzi Yousef] and to develop more serious terrorism charges on Khalifa could not be accomplished while Khalifah was in U.S. custody," the telegraph concludes, noting that a grand jury investigation against Khalifa had nevertheless been initiated.

The ongoing FBI investigation was later closed due to the unlikelihood of Khalifa ever returning to the U.S., according to other records.

Previously on INTELWIRE:

U.S., Interpol Tracked Khalifa In Days Before Madagascar Murder

Mohammed Jamal Khalifa: Life and Death Secrets

Labels: Bojinka, Jamal-Khalifa, Philippines, Ramzi-Yousef, Wali-Khan-Amin-Shah, World-Trade-Center-Bombing

Views expressed on INTELWIRE are those of the author alone.

Posted by J.M. Berger | Permalink