A Downward Spiral in Latin America

By Douglas Farah

Several developments over the past week add to my growing sense of pessimism over certain parts of Latin America.

The first is the decision of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez to bring on board a senior Cuban official with a long time specialty in internal security and torture to act as a consultant on Venezuela's energy crisis.

What Ramiro Valdes, one of the four remaining "originals" of the 1959 revolution, can bring on the electrical side is open to question, given that Cuba is not a model of electrical efficiency and management. What he can bring is a strong sense of how to control the internal opposition and make repression more efficient, which is his specialty.

This leads to my second concern. As Chávez grows more beleaguered and under siege, the one card he holds to wreak havoc in the region is his relationship with the FARC in Colombia.

Valdes, the old guerrilla with a strong penchant for supporting armed movements, is a likely candidate to help escalate that relationship at a time when the FARC, a designated terrorist organization, has money from cocaine sales to pay for increased training and access.

Another desperate regime, that of Iran, is also scrambling to survive, and the two friends are likely to jointly seek ways to save themselves while sinking their own countries and others.

A third area of concern is increasing violence in Juarez, Mexico, where I just was. The massacre of the 16 young people has brought to the forefront the sense of despair and hopelessness people feel, and the profound disillusionment with the government and its counter-drug efforts.

When people lose all faith in a government, the situation will be very difficult to reverse. The narcos and allied gangs such as Barrio Azteca and Artistas Asesinos feel a complete sense of impunity that is well-deserved. Less than 2 percent of all homicides in Mexico are ever prosecuted and in Ciudad Juarez the numbers are even lower. The military is widely viewed as corrupt and abusive, the federal police generate little trust and the municipal police are viewed as handmaidens of the cartels.

This leads to the type of terror on the streets of a once lovely city, with 2,600 homicides last year and already on pace to surpass that by a significant amount.

A fourth issue is the eroding freedom of expression across the Bolivarian sectors of Latin America. It was driven home to me after the release of our new report on Ecuador, Ecuador at Risk. Not only has the ordered his ambassador in Washington to see if he can sue us, his government has threatened to try to find my sources.
My full blog is here.

Bloody Friday: Anti-Shia Terror Violence Hit Karachi Again!

By Animesh Roul

On the Chehlum day (40 days after the day of Ashura), Pakistan’s port city Karachi has witnessed twin bomb explosions that killed almost 25 people and scores of them injured, mostly from the monitory Shia community. The first explosion occurred in the afternoon when a remote controlled VBIED (Vehicle borne Improvised explosive device) exploded near a passenger bus carrying 30 to 40 Shiite mourners. Initial reports suggested that the blast was a suicide attack and the biker’s suicide jacket contained 15-20 kg of explosive material. However, later officials played down it as remote controlled IED blast.

The second blast, the more strategic one, took place outside the emergency ward at the Jinnah Hospital where injured were being shifted for treatment. Nearly 11 people got killed in the hospital blast which also damaged vehicles at the vicinity. Another live bomb has been recovered from the premises of Jinnah Hospital and later it was defused by the bomb disposal squad. The hospital bombing was carried out only to maximize damage and inflict fear among the relatives of the injured and among the emergency responders (doctors and nurses).

Surprisingly enough, both the attacks took place despite tight security measures were in place for Chehlum Processions across the city. Late December Ashura blast in Karachi had claimed nearly 45 lives. Then, Pro-Taliban elements and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) outfit were blamed for the attack. However, no groups have taken resposibilty for Friday's (Feb 05) twin blasts so far.

Karachi has a history of ethnic tensions, targeted killings and sectarian violence.

Terrorist Dropouts

By Michael Jacobson

I had a piece in Foreign Policy yesterday on the subject of why some seemingly committed jihadists have left terrorist organizations. This piece is drawn from my recent Washington Institute monograph, entitled "Terrorist Dropouts: Learning from those who have left."

Here is an excerpt from the Foreign Policy piece:

When I served on the staff of the 9/11 Commission, one of our primary tasks was to assemble the story of how al Qaeda's plot developed. One of the aspects of the plot on which we focused our attention was, therefore, the movements, activities, and associations of the 19 hijackers. The basic question we struggled to answer was how al Qaeda persuaded 19 young men to participate in an attack that would result in their certain death. Although al Qaeda's "success" on this front was rather startling, the organization failed to convince all of the initial would-be attackers to go through with their plot. Why not? The stories of the individuals selected for the 9/11 attacks who backed out, even in the face of pressure from the terrorist group, have received little attention in the media or among policymakers, but could teach us important lessons for thwarting future attacks.

While Mohamed Atta, the hijackers' operational leader, is now a household name, Mushabib al-Hamlan and Saud al-Rashid are far less well known. These two young Saudis were selected by al Qaeda's leadership to participate in the attacks and left the training camps in Afghanistan to return home to Saudi Arabia to obtain visas for travel to the United States. Both, however, were beset by second thoughts after arriving in Saudi Arabia.

To read the entire piece, click here:

The Washington Institute also recently hosted a launch event for this monograph. I was joined on the panel by Mark Williams, a senior official from the UK's Home Office, and George Selim, a senior policy advisor in DHS's Office of Civil Liberties & Civil Rights. Click here for a rapporteur's summary of that event.

Assessing the Militant White Separatist Movement

By Madeleine Gruen

Today the militant white separatist movement faces leadership and organizational challenges: after the deaths and arrests of significant movement leaders over the past decade, it is fractured and appears poorly led. Further, the movement’s recruitment and training capabilities appear relatively crude, and it lacks a unified ideological outlook. However, it would be a mistake to conclude from this that the American white separatist movement will remain incapable of orchestrating violence on a large scale. A confluence of factors producing discontent with the status quo are likely to bolster the movement, including the present economic crisis, the migration of jobs overseas, and the fears and concerns produced by demographic trends that suggest whites will become a minority in the United States by 2050.

Indeed, most observers believe there has been an increase in support for the white separatist movement in recent years. This article assesses the current state of the movement by evaluating its operating environment, the competing strategies of top-down leadership and leaderless resistance, circulation of the movement’s core doctrine, training and access to weapons, and tactical and strategic successes.

Operating Environment

An important factor that will contribute to an extremist group’s success is a favorable operating environment. An environment is considered favorable if it provides the qualities necessary for a group or movement to sustain operations, and to eventually achieve its objectives. Some factors include a population that is ideologically supportive, and from which the movement may recruit members; a safe haven or protection from adversaries (in this case, the U.S. government); ability to train operatives; and the ability to access weapons and material necessary to launch attacks.

The environment in which the white separatist movement operates is decidedly mixed. On the one hand, the overall social tide in America appears to be moving against an agenda of white separatism or white supremacy. This is reflected, among other things, in the fact that the voting public elected an African-American president who hung his campaign platform on the concepts of hope and change. Further, demographic measurements show the country will only become more ethnically and racially diverse over time.

But paradoxically, the movement can also draw strength from these factors. Demographic trends give rise to fears and concerns in segments of the white population; in some ways Obama’s election has magnified rather than diminished racial tensions; and political issues that have drawn people to the white separatist movement (such as immigration and gun control) have only been thrown into sharper relief. Moreover, the economy remains sick, with seventeen states having an unemployment rate of over 10%. The poor economic future that whites face as the country changes has long been a theme that movement leaders believe draws people to white separatism. As one movement publication, The Truth at Last, stated:

Similarly, Bobby Norton of the Aryan Nations told researchers Betty Dobratz and Stephanie Shanks-Meile in the 1990s: “I think the economy is going to get really bad so that’s also going to bring a lot of suffering on us but it is going to make our ranks swell.” It is obvious why the movement would focus on the economy: as conditions worsen, the U.S. government may lose the population’s support. Pockets may become increasingly disgruntled and prone to aggressive, possibly even violent, expression of discontent. Riots may lead to government crackdowns, which would further erode trust in government. We spoke recently with Tom Metzger, a veteran of the white separatist movement and founder of the White Aryan Resistance, who sees even riots within the black community as a possible call to action for white separatists. “We’re waiting for the system itself to tip,” he said. “They’re the ones who are going to become more brutal, more oppressive.” Hypothesizing that the unemployment rate among African-Americans in the Detroit area would lead to unrest, Metzger said: “The government will come in and show its face. That will be the ‘go’ signal for us to defend ourselves.”

Unlike such militant Islamist groups as al-Qaeda, the white separatist movement is unlikely to have a solid base of operations or clearly assigned field bases from which to maintain a sustained military campaign. This will impede the implementation of any long-term strategy.

To continue reading this article, please click here.

This article (co-written by Madeleine Gruen & Daveed Gartenstein Ross) will appear in the third issue of CTR Vantage.

Ft Hood's Terror: The US failed by its own experts

By Walid Phares

Ft Hood Terror Act: A Jihadi operation

The Pentagon's review of the act of Terrorism committed at Fort Hood by Major Nidal Hasan deserves national attention not only regarding its important conclusions but also what it missed in terms of analysis. In this piece, I'll address major points made public in the media and raise issues about the bigger picture regarding the terror threat America is facing today.

Jihadi Penetration: Part of a War

As announced by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the report "reveals serious 'shortcomings' in the military's ability to stop foreign extremists from trying to use America's own soldiers against the United States." The Pentagon's review of the Fort Hood massacre stated that "serious shortcomings" were found in "the military's ability to stop foreign extremists from trying to use its own soldiers against the United States." The first question that comes to mind is to know if the issue is about "shortcomings," as described by the Pentagon, or is it about "systemic failures" as announced by President Obama in his evaluation of the Christmas Day terror act? For as underlined by the Department of Defense in the case of Major Hasan, these failures were about the military's ability to "stop foreign terrorists from using American soldiers against the United States." Such a statement is extremely important as it finally informs the public that US personnel is indeed being infiltrated and recruited by foreign Jihadists, which are described politically by the Administration as "extremists." Hence, the first logical conclusion from that finding is that Jihadi networks are performing acts of War (and thus of Terrorism) against US defense assets and personnel in the homeland. Thus this warrants the reevaluation of the conflict and re-upgrading it to a state of war, even though it would still need to be determined "with whom."

Setback in Baghdad: Counter-Forensics and Counter-Terror

By Aaron Mannes

Counter-forensics has long been part of the terrorist playbook, so today’s attack on the central forensics lab in Baghdad is by no means unprecedented in the annals of terrorism.

CSI Belfast
According to Tony Geraghty’s fascinating The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict Between the IRA and British Intelligence the IRA was obsessed with preventing evidence from falling into the hands of British authorities. The developed extensive internal research and development capabilities to counter British forensic science and wrote manuals to train their members how not to leave evidence. The manuals get very detailed, including instructions about the dangers of incriminating particles and fibers in the hair and clothes of operatives.

The IRA had good reason to be concerned. British authorities found clothes and hair to be forensic bingo and actually ran an undercover operation disguised as a mobile valet service to gather forensic evidence.

Read the full post here.

When Yemen Meets Gaza

By Matthew Levitt

The following is an excerpt of my latest article, which appears in Foreign Policy.

The Christmas Day pants bomber traveled a well-worn path to global terrorism: through Yemen. From the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in the Gulf of Aden, to the role key Yemenis played in the September 11 plot, to the increasingly prominent role of Yemen-based leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Gulf country has long been a terrorist hot-spot. Now, a small number of Yemeni jihadists have reportedly joined others from Syria, Egypt, France, and Belgium to fight a new war on an old battlefront: Gaza.
According to intelligence officials, up to a few dozen foreign fighters have entered Gaza from Yemen and other Middle Eastern and European countries. Some are experienced fighters there to provide training, while others seek to be trained and experience jihad. Some of the Europeans have even reportedly "come with their credit cards" and financed jihadist activities while in Gaza.

The influx is beginning to have an effect on what has traditionally been a local jihad. Groups such as Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade weave Palestinian nationalism and radical Islamism together but limit their operations to the Israeli-Palestinian front. Now, under the influence of more worldly jihadists, some Palestinian fighters are signing up for groups inspired by al Qaeda, fighting not for Palestine but for the whole Muslim umma.

The complete article is available here.

New Study on Ecuador's Growing Role in Transnational Crime and the FARC

By Douglas Farah

My colleague at the International Assessment and Strategy Center Glenn Simpson and I just published a major new study on Ecuador's growing role as a sanctuary for the FARC and Mexican drug trafficking organizations and the regional implications of these developments.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa is a member of the Hugo Chávez-led Bolivarian Revolution, and has had an extraordinary political trajectory. The Belgian and U.S.-educated economist is often said to be "Chávez Lite," because he has not implemented some of the more aggressively-authoritarian measures of the other Bolivarian states.

But, as we document in "Ecuador at Risk: Drugs, Thugs and Guerrillas and the Citizens' Revolution," the FARC in Colombia, having been cleared from the center of the country, are increasingly relying on the Ecuador-Colombia border as a vital resupply region. The camp of senior FARC commander Raúl Reyes, killed in a Colombian attack on March 1, 2008, was in Ecuadorean territory.

Now, the FARC and Mexican drug cartels use Ecuador as a neutral meeting ground, further developing ties that strengthen both groups. Major FARC cocaine laboratories, as well as R&R camps, remain on the Ecuadorean side of the border.

In addition, Correa has developed relationships with Iranian banks under U.S. and U.N. sanction, a move that will help allow Iran to avoid international financial sanctions.

This is the second paper in our series on the effects of the Bolivarian Revolution. The first one, "Into the Abyss: Bolivia Under Evo Morales and the MAS," can be found here.

The Consolidation of Bolivarian Authoritarianism and Terrorist Ties

By Douglas Farah

As Jackson Diehl writes in today's Washington Post, Hugo Chávez's version of the Bolivarian Revolution is in a deep crisis.

He is enough of a crisis that his pulled force RCTV off the air for refusing to carrying his endless and inane speeches en toto, even though they take hours of air time. Not that there is even the appearance now of freedom of the press, but the price to Chávez's already-sullied international image will be high.

However, I am not sure I share Diehl's optimism that the system is on its way to collapse. It would be in a normal world, but given Chávez's clear willingness to profit from the expanding cocaine trade through Venezuela, he has more of an economic slush fund to draw that could allow him to limp along and keep a deeply inefficient system running.

More evidence of Chávez's ties to terrorist groups is now in hand. The FARC and much smaller (though still declared Marxist) ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional - Army of National Liberation) have reached a ceasefire in order to stop killing each others' troops in the field.

The three meeting to reach an agreement of the two designated terrorist organizations were held in Venezuelan territory to discuss a truce, and were ultimately sign an agreement to jointly confront the Colombian government

Among the points discussed were how to bring the ELN more fully into the FARC's primary umbrella front group, the Movimiento Continental Bolivariano. The MCB publicly held its most recent plenary session in Caracas in December, and named senior FARC commander Alfonso Cano to its directorate.

My full blog is here.

LTTE’s Canadian Sympathizers Jailed in USA

By Animesh Roul

Two Tamil sympathizers (Canadian of Sri Lankan origin) of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), have been sentenced to prison terms in the United States on January 22. In 2009, both, Nadarasa Yogarasa (a.k.a Yoga) and Sathajhan Sarachandran (a.k.a. Satha) had pleaded guilty to providing material support to the LTTE. A New York court has sentenced these two for 14 years and 26 years in prison respectively in connection with their attempt to purchase missiles and Assault rifles for LTTE.

Both were arrested, along with other two accomplices way back in August 2006 during a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) undercover sting operation. FBI nabbed them after they had agreed to a shipment of 10 surface-to-air missiles(SAMs), ten missile launchers, and 500 AK-47s. Two of their accomplices Suhil Sabaratnam and Thiruthanikan, also Canadian Tamils, pleaded guilty to the same charges and awaiting court sentence.

LTTE designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in the US in 1997.

Terrorist Dropouts: Learning from those who have Left

By Michael Jacobson

In December 2001, Sajid Badat and Richard Reid, two young Muslims from England, were scheduled to blow up two U.S.-bound planes by using explosive-laden footwear, Jacobson writes. Reid -- like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, al-Qaeda's most recent alleged plane bomber -- made the attempt and failed. Badat, however, abandoned the plan, later telling prosecutors he wanted to "introduce some calm" into his life. What led Badat to choose an alternative path? What can we learn from his case and from the many other terrorist "dropouts" who have left al-Qaeda? In a newly released Washington Institute study, I explore these difficult but important questions. To read the study, click here:

Trying to understand how to reverse, halt or stop radicalization is an issue which is taking on increased urgency for the US government, as it copes with evidence of a growing problem on the home front. For years, the commonly held view has been that the US did not have a serious radicalization issue at home, in contrast to what was occurring on the ground in Europe. The slew of cases over the past year of US citizens who were radicalized and apparently eager to take action, against targets here and abroad, has raised new concerns about the threat of homegrown terrorism. Senior Obama administration officials have candidly acknowledged that the view of the situation has changed. As U.S. attorney general Eric Holder observed in a July 2009 speech after a spate of arrests in the US, the "whole notion of radicalization is something that did not loom as large a few months ago...as it does now." And in December, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano noted that “[h]ome-based terrorism in here. And like violent extremism abroad, it will be part of the threat picture we must now confront.”

The Political Economy of Syrian Support for Iraqi Insurgents

By Matthew Levitt

In 2008, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international body focused on preventing money laundering and terror financing, reported that while financing individual attacks may be relatively inexpensive when set against the damage inflicted, "maintaining a terrorist network, or a specific cell, to provide for recruitment, planning, and procurement between attacks represents a significant drain on resources. A significant infrastructure is required to sustain international terrorist networks and promote their goals over time." Creating and maintaining such support and facilitation networks, FATF concluded, requires significant funds.

FATF's findings have a particular relevance to Syria where terrorist and insurgent groups have established sophisticated networks in order to facilitate the movement of foreign fighters from around the world into Iraq. While the number of foreign fighters infiltrated through Syria fluctuates, these networks are especially important since foreign fighters operating in and moving through Syria have been responsible for numerous attacks on Iraqi civilians and coalition forces. Given the primary role that Iraq and Syria both play in the Obama administration's efforts to stabilize the Middle East, it is of great importance to understand the role of Syria and Syrian-based foreign fighters in the Iraqi insurgency. There is now a wealth of information available on these fighters, on their networks, and on their economic impact.

The complete article, Syria's Financial Support for Jihad, published in the latest volume of Middle East Quarterly, is available here.

Targeting Jordan

By Aaron Mannes

An important detail of the December 30 attack on the CIA Camp Chapman is that the Jordanian intelligence officer killed, Ali bin Zaid, was a relative to Jordanian King Abdullah II. It cannot be a coincidence that a cousin of the king was personally in charge of this highly sensitive portfolio. This illustrates broad points about how much of Middle Eastern politics is in fact a “family affair,” but it also has specific implications for the Kingdom of Jordan.

Clan Tectonics
Much of what passes for politics in the greater Middle East are in fact driven by family, clan, and tribal interests. There is a famous Arabic expression:

I against my brother;
I and my brothers against my cousins;
I and my brothers and my cousins against the world.

Read the full post here.

Tariq Ramadan Now Allowed to Enter the United States

By Douglas Farah

The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report broke the story that the U.S. State Department has lifted Tariq Ramadan's ban from entering the United States. Ramadan , an influential European leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, was long banned because of alleged ties to terrorist activity.

The lifting of the ban, ordered by Secretary of State Clinton, is a significant victory for the Brotherhood, who has sought to frame the issue of Ramadan's exclusion as one of academic freedom rather one of national security. Ramadan was ecstatic, saying on his blog:

Today’s decision reflects the Obama administration’s willingness to reopen the United States to the rest of the world, and to permit critical debate. Coming after nearly six years of inquiry and investigation, Secretary Clinton’s order confirms what I have affirmed and reaffirmed from day one: the first accusations of terrorist connections (subsequently dropped), then donations to Palestinian solidarity groups, were nothing more than a pretense to prohibit me from speaking critically about American government policy on American soil. The decision brings to an end a dark period in American politics that saw security considerations invoked to block critical debate through a policy of exclusion and baseless allegation. Today I am delighted at the decision.

The truth of the grandson of Hassan al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, is far more complex, and there is little doubt that, in the end, he is an agent of radicalization rather than peace. A rock star in the European Muslim scene, Ramadan, despite weak academic credentials, has been offered a teaching position at Notre Dame University.

As noted in this extensive review of Brother Tarik: The Doublespeak of Tarik Ramadan by French journalist Caroline Fourest, the definitive look at Ramadan's cannon, he is intent on saying one thing to Western audiences while something else to his followers. They often do not match up.

This is typical of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is eager to use the freedoms that would never exist under the caliphate is so desires to create, in order to promote its totalitarian vision. It demands the right to be heard while being unequivocal in its unwillingness to view as equal anyone who does not embrace its view radical Islamism. While it is willing to use the democratic process to achieve its goals, often putting it at odds with militantly violent groups such as al Qaeda, in the end the Brotherhood and Osama bin Laden share an identical vision of what the world should look like under Allah's rule.
My full blog is here.

The Escalating Ties between Middle Eastern Terrorist Groups and Criminal Activity

By Matthew Levitt

In the latest in The Washington Institute's CT lecture series, Ambassador David Johnson, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, discussed the growing nexus of major terrorist groups with international crime. Ambassdor Johnson highlighted the terror-drug connection in particular, something my colleague Mike Jacobson and I have highlighted before. In a comprehensive review of his office's activities in the Middle East and beyond, the Ambassador covered INL's activities in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, the West Bank and more. Read the Ambassador's prepared remarks here.

Terror Taxonomy: Re-Emergence of al-Qaeda Prime

By Aaron Mannes

Since 9/11 there have been innumerable articles on the emergence of al-Qaeda 2.0 or 3.0. The attack in Afghanistan that killed several CIA officials along with a Jordanian intelligence officer, harks back to al-Qaeda prime – the disciplined organization that from the late 1990s to 9/11 carried out a series of sophisticated, meticulously planned, multi-pronged strikes against hard targets.

The attack on the CIA base in Afghanistan similarly involved a careful analysis of American systems and vulnerabilities and tremendous patience and tradecraft. And it did devastating damage to a particularly sensitive node – experienced CIA operatives are the products of decades of experience, they are not easy to replace. In addition procedures for vetting information and agents will become more cumbersome, further hampering operations.

Yemen Franchise
If the attack on the CIA in Afghanistan represents al-Qaeda Prime, the attacks emanating from Yemen are examples of al-Qaeda 2.0 and 3.0. While the attacks linked to Yemen have received far more press and drew more blood – they have not had the same level of sophistication. From a technical standpoint the attempted Christmas bombing was only a slight variation on a previously tried tactic – that has had only limited success in the past. The operational security was not sophisticated (which is why so many are in an uproar that US intelligence failed to intercept the bomber.) This is al-Qaeda 2.0, a regional affiliate operating independently and while not as capable as al-Qaeda prime, still possessing substantial capabilities.

Read the full post here.

INDIA: "Islamic Terrorism"

By Animesh Roul

I just published one article titled “Islamic terrorism in India: organizations, tentacles and networks” in Klaus Lange (ed.), Security in South Asia: Conventional and Unconventional Studies & Comments, No. 9, December 2009, Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, Munich.

This paper focuses on Islamic terrorism in India (overview), with particular attention to the major groups operating and perpetrating violence in the country and their operational and logistical linkages.

Here is an excerpt:

For decades now, India has been facing various forms and waves of terrorist violence ranging from separatist and ethnic terrorism to ideological and religion-driven terrorism. With the emergence of new and hybrid terror organizations and conglomerates, there has been a sea change in the nature of terror tactics, technology and the way terror tentacles and networks have spread in the hinterlands of India and beyond.

Before the December 1992 demolition of Babri Masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, terrorism in India was to some extent synonymous with the Khalistan movement in Punjab which was separatist in nature. Subsequently, Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism emerged as a proxy war strategy which later developed into a systematic terrorist movement against India.

At least two sets of players are involved in terrorism in India. The first set comprises Pakistani and Bangladesh-based terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaishe- Mohammad (JeM) and Harkat-ul-Jihadi Islami (HuJI). The second set is composed of a network of disgruntled Muslim youth, students and criminal elements which largely work as a support system, e.g. the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula Denies Suffering Losses During Raids, Threatens Response "On Land, Sea, and Air"

By Evan Kohlmann

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has issued a new communique -- the first since acknowledging its role in the failed airline bomb plot executed by Nigerian national Umar Abdulmutallab.

In its statement, AQAP strongly denied "false claims... that [the Yemeni government] has killed six of us in the provinces of al-Jawf and Saa’da in the al-Ashajer region, and we assure our Muslim Nation that none of the mujahideen were [actually] killed in that insidious unjust attack, but some of the brothers suffer from some minor wounds." The AQAP accused the Yemeni government of seeking to claim a false victory against Al-Qaida "as an offering to Obama and Brown and their allies in the London summit."

The group further threatened, "today, the duty of our Muslim nation is to declare Jihad against the infidels and their apostate puppets; not only on land but on sea and in the air too.”

Indonesian Counter-Terrorism: The Great Leap Forward

By Zachary Abuza

Too often the news surrounding terrorism is dominated by the headline-catching acts of terrorism, such as last summer’s twin suicide bombings in Jakarta, or the take-down of terrorist operatives such as Dr. Azahari bin Hussin or Noordin Mohammad Top. Less is written about success in counterterrorism operations. No country deserves more credit for improving its counterterrorism operations and capabilities than Indonesia. While terrorism will never be eliminated, Indonesia has developed a strong and effective counterterrorist force, while at the same time consolidating its democratic transition. There is no other country in the world that can make this claim.

The rest of the article can be found at the Jamestown Foundation's website.

Indian Mujahideen: Jihadi Threat Continues

By Animesh Roul

Last week, media reports in India quoting Intelligence sources have underscored threats emanating from Indian Mujahideen (IM), the homegrown jihadi organization which perpetrated series of attacks on India’s urban centers in 2008. As per the reports, the IM has been plotting to carry out a ‘9/11-type' terrorist attack using hijacked airplanes. India’s Intelligence Bureau has identified couple of IM suspects as Shahzad Ahmed (a.k.a Pappu) who had underwent pilot training couple of years back and Mirza Shadab Baig, both could be spearheading the next teror strike.

Many IM/SIMI militants are now under custody and they were arrested from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. Couple of them were also arrested from southern states of Karnataka and Kerala. Those arrested include Zahid Shaikh, Yunus Mansuri, Abu Bashar Kazmi, Qayamuddin Kapadia, Abdul Raziq, Peerbhoy. However, the top leadership and the masterminds of the attacks, Iqbal Bhatkal, Riyaz Bhatkal, Tauqeer and Amir Raza Khan are still at large.

IM's Terror Footprints:

• May 13, 2008: Jaipur city suffered nine bomb blasts that killed over 60 and injured scores of people. The explosions occurred in busy market places, including Tripolia market, Manek Chowk and Johri Bazaar.

• July 25, 2008: IM struck again in India’s IT capital, Bengaluru (Bangalore, Karnataka State), with eight simultaneous low-intensity blasts, in which at least two people were killed and seven injured. The explosions occurred near the Madivala check point in Hosur Road, the Adugodi area, a place near the Mallya Hospital, and another site near the Rashtriya Military School.

• July 26, 2008: A series of over 16 synchronized bomb blasts hit Ahmadabad (Gujarat State), in which as many as 38 people were killed and more than 100 others injured. Most of the blasts occurred in crowded places like Hatkeshwar, Bapunagar, Narol, Ishanpur, Saraspur, Sarangpur, and L.G. General Hospital in Maninagar.

• September 13, 2008: The national capital, New Delhi, was hit by a series of five bomb blasts that killed nearly 30 people and injured over 100 others. The explosions took place in the crowded Karol Bagh area, the busy Barakhamba Road, the market place at Greater Kailash, and the Central Park in Cannaught Place area.

Besides the above mentioned events, IM's link in the November 26, 2008 Mumbai terror episode is under investigation now. Intel sources see a money trail that was routed through IM's Riyaz Bhatkal from the Gulf countries to execute the operation.

For more on IM, See:
'Indian Mujahideen planning 9/11-type attack', Headlines Today Investigative Bureau, January 6, 2010.

The End of the Myth of the "Wretched of the Earth" Jihadists

By Douglas Farah

One of the striking things in the three most recent high profile jihadist attacks -- the "Underpants Bomber," the Ft. Hood assassin and the attacker on the CIA base in Afghanistan -- has been the attackers themselves.

While many studying terrorism have understood that the threat is not from the dispossessed of the earth, but from an educated elite in the semi-Westernized (or completely Westernized) world who radicalize in different ways.

Yet there is still a policy, going back many years and continued now, that aims at a completely different social and economic demographic -- the poor and wretched of the earth who are believed to be angry at the U.S. and the West for its policies in the Middle East.

We spend vast amounts of money to convince one group that we have virtually no way to reach that they should like us, while having little strategy to deal with those who have repeatedly shown themselves to be the greater danger.

Yet we have Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a a doctor who was the son of middle-class, English-speaking Jordanians; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who grew up in a wealthy Nigerian family and studied at University College London; and Nidal Hasan, who was born in Arlington, graduated from Virginia Tech and did his psychiatric residency at Walter Reed.

One of the chief radicalizing influences in the case of the latter two was Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who did not rise out of the teeming ghettos or dirt-poor villages, but family that lived in the United States, a country he returned to in order to study at George Washington University.

Perhaps this will put an end to the myth of the poor and wretched jihadist, waging a form of religious class struggle.

As Anne Applebaum wrote in the Washington Post, we are seeing a "international jihadi elite" that resembles international elites of the Bolshevik days who were no more working class than the Tsar. As she notes:

These people are not the wretched of the Earth. Nor do they have much in common, sociologically speaking, with the illiterate warlords of Waziristan. They haven't emerged from repressive Islamic societies such as Iran, or been forced to live under extreme forms of sharia law, as in Saudi Arabia. On the contrary, they are children of ambitious, "Westernized" parents who sacrificed for their education -- though they are often people who, for one reason or another, didn't "make it," or didn't feel comfortable, in their respective societies.

My full blog is here.

The MB Groups in the U.S. March On

By Douglas Farah

One of the truly amazing things about the Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups in the United States is that they continue, against significant odds, to march boldly on, despite prosecutors publicly tying their origins to Hamas and their consistently predictably hysterical reactions to rational policies. One of the best ways to track the MB on a global scale is a newly public website, the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, which had been a free subscription service.

Today, its its public debut, the GMBDR looks at the Muslim Brotherhood background of the new ISNA secretary general, Safaa Zarzour. It also looks a the entirely predictable and off-base CAIR reaction to the TSA's decision to scrutinize immigrants from 14 high-risk countries, and the MB presence in a UK conference held by the far left in that country.

The site is not affiliated with the CT Blog. I point it out because it consistently monitors the global actions of an organization that has been the gateway to radicalization of many of the jihadists who move to violent action. The Ikwan advocate a similar broad agenda to violent jihadists, focusing on converting the world to Islam and recreating the Muslim Caliphate, under sharia law. Hamas, a designated terrorist organization by the United States, is directly and organically part of the Muslim Brotherhood. So, is is worth keeping an eye on and this site is an interesting way to do that.

Deterred but Determined: Salafi-Jihadi Groups in the Palestinian Arena

By Matthew Levitt

Last summer, Hamas security forces raided a mosque affiliated with the Salafi-Jihadi group Jand Ansar Allah, killing 24 and wounding 130 in the ensuing firefight. This relatively recent episode highlights the presence in Gaza of Salafi-Jihadi groups inspired by but not yet formally affiliated with al-Qaeda. Unlike Hamas, which despite espousing violent Islamism has nevertheless occasionally agreed to short-term ceasefires, Salafi-Jihadi groups champion "pure resistance" in their dealings with Israel. The resulting tension between these groups and Hamas, the latter currently reigning as the political authority in Gaza, has created the perfect environment for further radicalization of Palestinians.

So far, none of the Salafi-Jihadi groups have established formal ties to al-Qaeda, but many intelligence analysts argue that such a relationship could develop quickly given the right combination of circumstances. Should U.S. policymakers be concerned? In The Washington Institute' s newest Policy Focus, my co-authors Yoram Cohen and Becca Wasser and I assess the game-changing potential of a formalized al-Qaeda presence in the West Bank and Gaza, including implications for the wider Arab-Israeli conflict and international counterterrorism efforts. In the troubling words of one senior Palestinian Salafi-Jihadi leader, "So far al-Qaeda has not sponsored our work. We are waiting to carry out a big jihadist operation dedicated to Sheikh Usama bin-Laden."

The full study is available here. You can also read advance coverage of the report in the Los Angeles Times.

Eight Years in Guantanamo

By Douglas Farah

Posting by Margot Williams, Counterterrorism Blog newslinks editor and director of research at SNS Global LLC.

On January 11, 2002, the first prisoners from the war on terror in Afghanistan arrived at the United States Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay on an Air Force cargo plane, wearing orange jump suits, face masks, shackles and manacles. On that first day, about 23 suspected enemy combatants were locked into the wire cages of the now-abandoned “Camp X-Ray.”
According to public records available on the Pentagon web site, 23 men were processed into the detention camp on January 12, their weights and heights recorded. On January 12, the New York Times reported that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld implied that there was nothing special about these prisoners – “I don’t even know their names” – and suggested that they had been sent to Cuba simply to make way for more prisoners being captured in Kandahar. “We just have to keep the flow going, that that’s what taking place,” Rumsfeld said.
Eight years later, twelve of the first arrivals remain in detention in Guantanamo.* Their names and Internment Serial Numbers (ISNs) were compared with a Pentagon list of detainees who have been released, the measurements of heights and weights, court documents relating to military tribunal proceedings and cases in U.S. District Court. Among them is Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulman al Bahlul, from Yemen, a former Al Qaeda propaganda chief convicted of terrorism charges in November 2008 and sentenced to life in prison. Half of the 12 remaining from the original group are citizens of Yemen, the country currently in the spotlight for the threats and actions of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a terrorist organization led by former Guantanamo detainees and a fugitive from a 2006 jailbreak in Yemen. The others are from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Tunisia.

According to analysis of government documents, the 12 detainees* who arrived on the first flight are:
Abdul Haq Wasiq ISN #4, Afghanistan
Mullah Norullah Noori ISN #6, Afghanistan
Mullah Mohammad Fazl ISN #7, Afghanistan
Mahmoud Abd al Aziz Abd al Mujahid ISN #31, Yemen
Ibrahim Othman Ibrahim Idris ISN #36, Sudan
Abd al Malik Abd al Wahab ISN#37, Yemen
Ridah Bin Saleh al Yazidi ISN #38, Tunisia, approved for transfer
Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al Bahlul ISN #39, Yemen, sentenced to life in prison
Abdul Rahman Shalabi ISN #42, Saudi Arabia
Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel ISN #43, Yemen
Mohammed Rajab Sadiq Abu Ghanim ISN #44, Yemen
Ali Ahmad Muhammad al Rahizi ISN#45, Yemen

*It is possible that this group may include either of two unidentified detainees who were recently transferred to Hungary and Belgium.
Links for information on the detainees point to the New York Times “Guantanamo Docket” database; the author of this posting was the administrator of the database during her employment at the Times as database research editor.

The Intelligence Conundrum in Terrorism

By Douglas Farah

My former colleague and friend David Ignatius offered some valuable insights into the problems in the intelligence community that highlight one of the most difficult aspects to deal with:How to gather the right information and get it to the right people? And why isn't the counter-intelligence capabilities of non-state armed actors taken seriously?

The first problem has been building for some time and is likely to get worse before it gets better. Volume rather than quality is often a driving force in intelligence collection, because no one ever wants to be the one that did not report an important link. So everything, from mundane to serious, and the vast majority in between, is not only put into the system but often is left to the highest levels to sift through. This renders the entire process inefficient, because no one can sort through the volume of information flowing in and make intelligent decisions.

As Ignatius noted:

"The problem is that the system is clogged with information. Most of it isn't of interest, but people are afraid not to put it in," explains one agency veteran. The Counterterrorism Center is supposed to review more than 120 databases; senior officials there are supposed to process 10,000 to 12,000 pieces of information a day; large stations can receive several thousand cables a day. No wonder the real threats get lost in the noise.

What has the solution? Much of it is cultural and revolves around leadership. When people are afraid of making mistakes and work avoid them, rather than to a job and find solutions, you get a machine that performs with technical efficiency but with a minimum threshold for risk. Too much risk, of course, also leads to problems, but we are not close to that at this point.

Having spent years as a foreign correspondent, I liken what I see to a reporter abroad, with a good or bad editor back home (and I have had both.) The good ones provided guidance on what would be of interest but trusted the people in the field to do their job and cover issues largely based on the correspondent's initiative and evaluation of what was important. My full blog is here.

"Vanguards of Khorasan" Interview with Jordanian CIA Bomber "Abu Dujanah al-Khorasani"

By Evan Kohlmann

On September 26, 2009, the Al-Fajr Media Center -- the official logistical group responsible for distributing Al-Qaida propaganda online -- published the 15th issue of "Vanguards of Khorasan", a well-known propaganda magazine about the Afghan jihad. The magazine prominently featured an interview with "Abu Dujanah al-Khorasani", identified as one of the former administrators of the Al-Hesbah jihadi web forum, who had recently traveled to Afghanistan in hopes of joining the mujahideen. "Abu Dujanah" has since been identified as Humam al-Balawi, a young Jordanian doctor who was allegedly working as a CIA informant--and who carried out a devastating suicide bombing attack on Dec. 31 targeting a group of CIA agents at a U.S. outpost in the southeastern Afghan province of Khost.

A complete translation of the "Vanguards of Khorasan" interview with al-Balawi is now available at Flashpoint-intel.com.

Additionally, Al-Qaida's claim of responsibility for al-Balawi's attack (signed by Mustafa Abu al-Yazid) can be accessed via the NEFA Foundation website.

NEFA Backgrounder: Sgt. Hasan Akbar and 2003 Attack on Fellow Soldiers

By Madeleine Gruen

In Kuwait , in March 2003, Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar killed two fellow military officers and wounded 14 others in an attack that bore many similarities to the November 5, 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood by Muslim American Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Both Akbar and Hasan were born and raised in the United States , and both had personal, academic, and military careers punctuated with difficulty and failures. Both were influenced by militant brands of Islam, which ultimately led them to believe that their attacks on fellow military personnel were committed in the defense of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan . This NEFA backgrounder profiles Hasan Akbar and sheds insight into his radicalization, which led to the deaths of CPT Christopher Seifert and Major Gregory Stone.

Please click here to view the PowerPoint backgrounder on Hasan Akbar.

More on the Yemeni Detainees

By Douglas Farah

Posting by Margot Williams, Counterterrorism Blog newslinks editor and director of research at SNS Global LLC.

The six Yemenis who were repatriated from Guantanamo on December 19 are the last to be transferred any time soon. President Obama said on Tuesday: “Given the unsettled situation [in Yemen], I've spoken to the attorney general and we've agreed that we will not be transferring additional detainees back to Yemen at this time." See Washington Post: “Return of Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay is suspended”

The current situation of those six, however, seems to be less clear. According to the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, U.S. officials assure that they remain in their government’s custody:

“Six Yemeni nationals repatriated last month from Guantanamo Bay will remain in the Sana'a government's custody indefinitely as part of a deal reached between the Obama administration and Yemen, U.S. officials said.”

But according to Associated Press reporting from Yemen on Sunday, the men have been released from custody there.

“Yemen has freed the six Yemenis who were released from Guantanamo Bay and returned to the country on Dec. 20, security officials and a lawyer for the men told The Associated Press.
The lawyer, Ahmed al-Arman, said the six were freed from Yemeni custody over the last week, with the last two freed Saturday night. They were handed over to their families.
Security officials held the six for questioning and investigation since their handover by the United States, but they found no evidence of involvement in terrorism or other crimes, Yemeni security officials said. The six gave guarantees that they would not leave the country, would not associate with terror groups and would report regularly to the police, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.”

The six men released in December include two who were captured in a student house that was raiding in connection to Abu Zubaydah’s capture (Mohmmad Ahmad Ali Tahar (ISN #679), and Fayad Yahya Ahmed al Rami (ISN #683)), two who were connected to the Al Wafa charity organization (Jamal Muhammad Alawi Mari (ISN #577) and Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi (ISN #627)), a man who claimed to have been a victim of mistaken identity (Riyad Atiq Ali Abdu al Haf (ISN #256)) and a man who maintained he had traveled to Afghanistan to teach the Koran to children (Farouq Ali Ahmed, Yemen (ISN #32)).

There are currently about 91 Yemeni detainees in Guantanamo. Approximately 20 of them had been cleared for transfer in September 2009; an unknown number of additional Yemenis have been cleared since then. Eleven former detainees from Saudi Arabia were reported by Saudi officials to have gone to Yemen to join militants there, including men in leadership positions in the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

*Links for information on the former detainees point to the New York Times “Guantanamo Docket” database; the author of this posting was the administrator of the database during her employment at the Times as database research editor.

al Qaeda has the initiative in attacking US national security

By Walid Phares

In 2001, one would-be shoe bomber forced millions of travelers to take off their shoes. In 2006, terrorists planned to bring down aircraft on transatlantic flights by smuggling liquid explosives onto planes. They were thwarted but they succeeded in preventing passengers from bringing liquids into airline terminals.

Lesson number one: In this terror war, the jihadists have the upper hand. They are the ones who choose to use a new weapon and they are also the ones who – by using simple logic -- have refrained from using the same terror weapons more than once. In fact, since September 2001, Al Qaeda’s Terrorists have avoided rushing into the cockpit of an airliner with box cutters. Does this mean we were successful in deterring the terrorists? Of course: as long as we can prevent them from using the 9/11 methods, they won't be naïve enough to repeat the same strategy. So is the US winning the fight with Al Qaeda by using these specific measures? No, we are simply protecting our population until the war is won. But winning is not measured by surviving potential copycat attacks.

Instead, this confrontation will be won by striking at the mechanism that produces the jihadists. And on that level, no significant advances have been made either under the previous administration nor under the incumbent one. For, as President Obama admitted late last month after a near-terror attack on Northwest Flight 253, there is a "systemic failure" in our defense against the jihadi terrorists.

Internationalizing The "No Fly" List

By Victor Comras

The attempted Christmas bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253 has focused considerable attention on the “No Fly List” and its importance to US homeland security. US intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security have come in for intense criticism for failing to connect the dots that would have placed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on that list. But, consider this. While US and other intelligence services have identified a very significant number of Al Qaeda trained operatives, most of those identified continue to be able to travel freely internationally, even if they are to be refused boarding on US bound aircraft. The US “No Fly List” is not widely disseminated, particularly as many of the names contained thereon stem from intelligence gathering.

According to past Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the U.S. “No Fly” list contains only about 2,500 names, with an additional 16,000 persons that have been identified as meriting extra scrutiny. This probably includes only a small subset of those identified by US intelligence sources as having received Al Qaeda indoctrination and training. Hopefully, this shortcoming is rapidly being rectified.

US prescreening activity involves the required submission of passenger relevant data and the matching of passenger identifying information, including name and date of birth, against the U.S. No Fly and Selectee Lists. These lists are extracted from a much larger Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB). The identity matching is conducted by both air carriers and the U.S. government. A second prescreening activity, separate from identity matching, involves using risk assessment tools to analyze passenger data to assess the security risk that a passenger might pose. US airlines and authorities also review travel documents for evidence of possible forgery or fraudulent use.

International mobility is an essential element of Al Qaeda-related terrorism. And, while the United States remains a main al Qaeda target, much of the rest of the world also remains at high risk. That is why the UN Security Council, after 9/11, decreed in UN Security Council Resolution 1390 that all countries “prevent the entry into or the transit through their territories” of persons identified as members or associates of al Qaeda and the Taliban. However, this action only comes into play after such persons are actually designated by the UN’s Al Qaeda Committee and placed on the committee’s so called “Consolidated List.” And, that list is woefully short and out of date. A conscious decision was taken from the inception of the consolidated list not to add rank and file al Qaeda members. The list now contains only 142 Taliban members and 255 members, associates or material supporters of Al Qaeda.

In addition, UN Security Council resolution 1373, which “criminalized” international terrorism, also requires all countries to “prevent the movement of terrorists or terrorist groups by effective border controls and controls on issuance of identity papers and travel documents, and through measures for preventing counterfeiting, forgery or fraudulent use of identity papers and travel documents.

While airport physical security screening has now become common place at international airports around the world, only a handful of foreign transportation authorities or foreign airlines have adopted passenger pre screening procedures for non US bound passengers. This short list includes, among a few others, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Relatively few other countries employ such pre screening or other effective border entry/exit controls on suspected terrorists that are not included on the UN’s consolidated designation list.

The nearly avoided flight 253 tragedy should serve as a warning to all. Airport physical screening is not sufficient and should be supplemented by passenger pre-screening. Such pre-screening procedures should include access to disseminated terrorism suspect lists. Perhaps consideration should now be given also to internationalizing the No Fly concept by expanding the functions of the UN Security Council’s Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee to include the establishment and maintenance of an international “no fly” list. There is no excuse for not identifying and stigmatizing Al Qaeda members and associates, and stopping them from traveling.

FP: Toward a Radical Solution

By Lorenzo Vidino

Recently there’s been some talk of the U.S. government following into the footsteps of several European countries and developing its own counter-radicalization program. While nothing official has been announced yet, it is well known that NCTC, State Department, DHS and other members of the U.S. counterterrorism community have been looking into the idea. I just published a piece in Foreign Policy which extrapolates 10 useful lessons from the European experience that U.S. authorities might want to consider should they decide to launch their own full-fledged counter-radicalization program. You can read the piece here.

Why Did AQAP Upstage Bin Laden With Xmas Bomb?

By James Gordon Meek

As Washington’s response to the attempted Christmas bombings descends into the spin cycle of recrimination without true accountability, a major question has emerged about the motive behind Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s martyrdom operation. President Obama in his weekly radio address said the 23-year-old Nigerian suspect in custody “joined” Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an “affiliate” of Osama Bin Laden’s Pakistan-based group, which “trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America.”

But why did Al Qaeda’s small franchise - which formed in Saudi Arabia in 2003, staged a bombing spree, fought losing gun battles in Saudi streets, but gained strength after a 2006 jailbreak in Yemen, where it has relocated - launch an “external” operation against the U.S. homeland?

Terrorism analysts are wondering what the answer to this question may be, and “so are we,” a top White House aide told me Sunday.

So for whatever Team Obama is certain of, in terms of the suspect’s ties to what had previously been a regionally focused terror group, they are much less certain why AQAP is suddenly trying to upstage “core” Al Qaeda, headed by Bin Laden, with a U.S. strike. Past attacks by AQAP had targeted U.S. interests such as our embassy in Sanaa - which Obama closed on Sunday - but never on American soil.

The President’s counterterror chief John Brennan told NBC’s “Meet The Press” that, “Now it’s very clear that they’re trying to bring these attacks to the homeland. We’re not gonna let them do that. So, we’re gonna take strong action against them.”

Brennan said “everything is possible” as far as retaliation goes - including U.S. military strikes, which I’m told took place Dec. 17 and 24 during Yemeni government raids prior to the Christmas attack by Abdulmutallab. A third set of raids occurred last week north of Yemen’s city Bajil. A senior Yemeni government official told me that the operation was supposed to go down last Thursday but was moved up one day.

“There’s a mosque there we’ve been keeping an eye on” as an AQAP hideout, the top Yemeni official told the New York Daily News last week. “Three raids in 12 days - we’re on a roll.”

The raid last week by Yemen’s special forces and fighter jets came a day after Obama raised the profile of America’s clandestine counterterror war in the Horn of Africa region by stating America will hunt jihadis “whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere where they are plotting attacks against the U.S. homeland.”

Ex-CIA Director Michael V. Hayden told NBC that Yemen has been on the counterterror radar screen since Bin Laden’s thugs blew a hole in the Navy destroyer USS Cole right before the 2000 presidential election.

“As pressures increased on Al Qaeda in the tribal region of Pakistan, we always looked to Yemen and Somalia as a place where the senior leadership could flee to,” Hayden said Sunday. But, “the senior leadership has not gone there.”

Looking at the operational tempo of CIA armed drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas over the past 17 months, it’s easy to see why Bin Laden’s compañeros might eye Yemen as a safer locale. A year ago, the Daily News's Mouth of the Potomac Blog and the Counterterrorism Blog posted my exclusive on the CIA’s AfPak hit list. There have been 50 drone strikes since Obama’s inauguration, according to Long War Journal’s Bill Roggio, and a counterterror source provided me with an updated list of Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders added to the “involuntary martyrdom” rolls in the past year:

• Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan - Linked to the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
• Abu Sulaiman al-Jaziri - A senior trainer and external operations plotter
• Baitullah Mehsud — Leader of the Pakistani Taliban
• Yahyo - A leader of the Islamic Jihad Union
• Saleh al-Somali - A senior Al Qaeda external operations planner

Yemen’s battlespace - if that’s the appropriate term - falls under the Pentagon’s Central Command (CENTCOM) and Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa. The CJTF-HOA website doesn’t list Yemen officially as part of its hearts and minds humanitarian mission, but a map of its “operating area” includes the oil-rich desert nation on the opposite side of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

“I was in Yemen in August. And we have a growing presence there … of Special Operations, Green Berets, intelligence,” Sen. Joseph Lieberman told Fox News last week.

Last February, Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri asked in a speech, “How, oh noble and defiant tribes of the Yemen, can you agree to let the Yemen be a supply center for the Crusade against the Muslim countries? How can you agree to let the ruling authority in Yemen be the CIA?”

Apparently many jihadis heard Zawahiri loud and clear. Last month’s raids against Al Qaeda targets by Yemen’s security forces with American drones, and what Brennan confirmed was U.S. intelligence support, came as a result of two developments.

“We’ve witnessed [Al Qaeda] operatives coming from the Horn of Africa across the Red Sea, from South Asia in the Hindu Kush and Pakistan, and from our northern borders this year,” the Yemeni official told me last week. “Secondly, Al Qaeda has started killing our best intelligence and top criminal investigation officials in the local areas.”

“Yemen has always been on our radar — we’ve had advisers there,” says retired Army Special Forces Lt. Col. Jim Gavrilis. But as far as aggressive counterterror operations go, the U.S. has fallen short and Obama hasn’t deployed the full capabilities of the Special Operations community. “They’ve got stallions in the stable but they don’t let them run that often,” Gavrilis says.

To comment on this story, please visit the Mouth of the Potomac Blog by clicking here.

What Yemen Tells Us About the Importance of Afghanistan

By Douglas Farah

The recent and growing attention to the critical situation in Yemen, where al Qaeda's presence is spreading and the government is weak and does not control much of the physical space, is perhaps the best argument for pursuing a vigorous Afghanistan policy.

It is clear that the jihadist movement, to reuse an overused cliche, will flow like water downhill, taking the paths of least resistance. Yemen, with its declining oil revenues, weak central government, inhospitable geography and population that is at least intellectually in tune with al Qaeda's fundamentalist theology, is such a place. It has the added benefit and symbolic value for Osama bin Laden and his family of being their ancestral home, from whence bin Laden's father came to Saudi Arabia.

Radical Islamists need different spaces for different reasons. Criminalized states allow them to move money and generate funds. Failed or failing states with a strongly sympathetic population in which to move undetected afford something even more valuable - the chance to establish a physical space that is part of their vision of the Caliphate, or Allah's kingdom on earth.

It is easy to forget that immediately after 9/11 there were many in the jihadist community that argued that the attacks had been a mistake, not because of the loss of human life but because it mobilized the international community to invade Afghanistan and put an end to the existence of the Muslim state that declared itself the beachhead of the global Caliphate.

This is of primary importance to the Islamist community, and one that highlights the reasons for such fierce fighting and penetration in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. My full blog is here.

Abdelmutalib's Act of War

By Walid Phares

Abdulmutalib

In the Arab world there is a saying: “Take their truth from their crazies.” I didn’t think it would fully apply in geopolitics until I heard Libya’s dictator, Moammar Qadhafi, claiming on al Jazeera few years ago that Bin Laden had acquired intercontinental missiles.

The “crazy boy,” as the late Egyptian President Sadat used to call him, argued sarcastically that al Qaeda has developed an unstoppable weapon: human transoceanic missiles (Sawareekh bashariyya abira lil qarrat). He meant by that Jihadists who were committed to istishaad (martyrdom) by blowing up commercial jets over targets in America.

The man who has been ruling Libya for the past forty years knows his region very well and despite his peculiar behavior, has predicted what most observers of the Jihadist movement have also projected: al Qaeda and its allies worldwide have discovered the Achilles heel of American defenses: the inability of its security apparatus to identify the readying of the new weapon, its deployment and its launching.

The situation is so bad, that a man who was on some “persons of interest” list was nearly able to massacre hundreds of passengers and possibly innocent people on the ground but for the failure of his underwear bomb and the courage of a citizen of the Netherlands who rose to defend humanity with his bare hands.

Flight from Amsterdam

Testing a Dangerous Yemen

By Jonathan Winer

It is no accident that Al Qaeda has found a home in Yemen to prepare for terrorist attacks directed at other countries, including the attempted airplane suicide bombing of last week. Al Qaeda's power there has visibly increased over the past two years, with Al Qaeda in Yemen conducting multiple attacks within the country.

As with Pakistan and Afghanistan, the central government of Yemen has never been in control of tribal areas. Like Iraq under Saddam Hussein, a small corrupt group around long-time President Abdullah Ali Saleh controls most of the country's wealth, dominated by oil. Like Saudi Arabia, with whom it shares a largely open border (despite efforts by the Saudis to build a security barrier, since halted), Yemen hosts radical Wahabi clerics who promote jihad to would-be holy warriors.

Yemen's attractiveness for terrorists has been further increased by local factors such as the Houthi-Shi'ia rebellion in Yemen's northern Sa'ada province, secessionist war in the south, the estimated six to nine million small arms distributed among its 23 million population, and a national tradition of generating resources through kidnappings-for-ransom. Government institutions and private sector entities operate in an environment with little accountability, enabling illicit financial transactions to move unencumbered within an economy laced with illicit activity. Yemen’s government agencies are poorly administered and subject to minimal oversight, and enforcement of regulations on such issues as money laundering and terrorist finance (only recently criminalized) is lax. Afghan Arabs returning to Yemen have penetrated political, security, tribal and religious institutions, and constitute important elements of Al Qaeda in Yemen, which generates funds that move freely through Yemen’s cash economy, formal banking system, and alternative remittance houses.

Over the past decade, Yemen’s government has balanced actions against terrorists with efforts to work out forms of cohabitation. On the one hand, it has participated with the U.S. and other countries in military training and shared intelligence, especially in the months immediately after 9/11, and prior to the U.S. decision to invade Iraq. It worked with the U.S. on the targeting and killing by drone of Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, a Yemeni suspected of helping organize the USS Cole attack. More recently, Yemen carried out a raid in August 2008 on an al-Qaida Yemen cell, killing the cell leader. On the other hand, it has provided safe havens to known terrorists through such mechanisms as a surrender program that provides lenient punishment to those who agree to surrender themselves and to cease blowing things up. Yemen refuses to extradite Yemenis to the U.S., regardless of what they have done.

The results have been deficient, especially over the past few years, with Yemen emerging as a stronghold for terrorists training for what Al Qaeda's leaders have termed a "wave of action" against Western targets. Last year's State Department Country Report on Yemenese terrorist activity, including that directed against the U.S., is chilling.

Short-term, President Saleh will need to take visible action to crack down on the places, people, and institutions which are supporting terrorism and which to date have felt safe in Yemen. Here, it would help if the US and UK were not the only countries demanding action. Independent action by the Saudis on the ground in border areas (and perhaps across them, as the Saudis appear to have done repeatedly against the Yemeni Shi'ia), as well as Saudi diplomacy, might help.

The Myth of "Acting Alone"

By Douglas Farah

Perhaps none of the generally-accepted conventional wisdom items on the recent jihadist attacks is as dangerous as the constantly-repeated refrain that the individuals "acted alone." While the acts may have been carried out by individuals, they are all part and parcel of the broader Islamist movement to recreate the caliphate as Allah's kingdom on earth. There are push and pull factors and actors that part of a coherent whole that work with these individuals to make their actions possible.

There are catalyzing agents, such as Anwar al-Aulaqi, who seems to have had a direct hand in galvanizing the primary actors in both the Ft. Hood massacre and the Christmas airline attack. And there are individuals who seek to be galvanized.

Loneliness and alienation seem to push certain people toward seeking a spiritual experience, and certainly not solely in Islam. But one of the great structures looking for such individuals is the Muslim Brotherhood and its many, many institutions.

As the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report (free subscription required) reports, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who has been charged with attempting to blow up a U.S. airliner, was president of the campus Islamic Society, but the group says he never expressed any extremist views…..The British Federation of Student Islamic Societies confirms Abdulmutallab led its UCL chapter between 2006 and 2007, but it insists it heard nothing to suggest he supported illegal acts. In fact, a spokesman says, during his tenure the society worked to forge closer ties with student groups of all faiths and no faith.

But wait. The Islamic Society is part of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies in the U.K. and Ireland (FOSIS), founded in 1962 and described as an umbrella grouping of most major university Islamic societies in the U.K.

What is the Brotherhood's basic message, as written by its founder and chief ideologue? That the world is in a state of darkness and utter sin, and the more uncomfortable and alienated one is, the closer the individual is to finding the truth in Islam.

So, you have lonely, alienated and unhappy people, in effect being told that their alienation is a sign that they are close to Allah and on their way to salvation. What is required of them? To use whatever means available to attack the current system perpetrated by infidels, and bring about a new, Islamic world.

Not everyone who joins the Brotherhood ends up committing acts of terrorism. But it is certainly one of the key gateways to radicalization, and one that provides a community and support structure for those who do. My full blog is here.

Freedom in 2010

By Roderick Jones

I’ve previously written about the importance I felt the book Daemon has with regard to considering future warfare, insurgency and terrorism threats. The descriptions within the book of what could be future battle-spaces and particularly, the use of ‘D-Space’, a mixed reality environment, all seem to be arriving by the minute. Yelp’s Monocle as used on the iPhone is a pretty good first-gen version of the “D-Space” described in Daemon. Other themes surrounding the use of gaming as a social organizer and the fragility of western corporate systems and government to well-aimed insurgencies also seem apt.

Therefore, as the New Year approaches it is worth noting that the sequel to Daemon arrives on January 7th 2010 - Freedom. I was fortunate enough to receive an advanced copy and recommend it to anyone who’s job is to think about the future of conflict. The ides in Freedom continue to be engaging at both a tactical and strategic level. The move into virtual conflict holds both opportunities and vulnerabilities for the west. Considering the ideas presented by Daniel Suarez is an excellent place to start.

Why Did the Bush Administration Send Hardcore Terrorists Back to Al-Qaida?

By Evan Kohlmann

One of the most troubling aspects of the recent explosion of activity by Al-Qaida in Yemen (otherwise known as "Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula") is the role being played by Saudi nationals who are former detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At least eleven former Saudi Gitmo prisoners who were sent back home by the Bush administration between 2003-2007 have promptly rejoined Al-Qaida in Yemen -- including individuals who made no secret of their intentions upon being released. The biographies of these men are all included in my NEFA Foundation report from earlier this year, "The Eleven: Saudi Guantanamo Veterans Returning to the Fight.” I reprint the conclusions of my report here:

In at least four of the eleven cases-Fahd al-Jutayli, Murtadha Magram, Adnan al-Sayegh, and Ibrahim ar-Rabeish-ARB panels in Guantanamo Bay specifically found that the men continued to represent "a threat to the United States and its allies" only months prior to their transfer from custody in Gitmo back home to Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, it is almost inexplicable that the U.S. government would even consider releasing, albeit, a mid-ranking Afghan-trained Al-Qaida recruit such as Yusuf al-Shehri-who has happily advertised to his interrogators that "he considers all Americans his enemy" and that "he will continue to fight them until he dies"-except under the most stringent of conditions. Or, alternatively, we have the case of Murtadha Magram-who boasted that had gone "to the jihad to die", that he "wanted to be a martyr for the cause", and that he "hates Americans and all non-believers." These hardly sound like obvious choices for early parole from Guantanamo... In at least one regrettable instance, if the account of the New York Times is to be believed, a terror suspect now thought to be quite dangerous (Mishal al-Shedoky) was released and sent home to Saudi Arabia from Guantanamo, primarily in order to help win Saudi political support for the botched U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Pakistan: Sectarian Terror and Killing Ritual on Muharram

By Animesh Roul

Annual Shia festivity of Youm- e- Ashura (also known as Muharram in the region) has been marred by suicide blasts and sectarian violence in Pakistan. The epicenters of the latest terror violence were centered around port city of Karachi and Muzafarbad in the capital city of Pakistan Administered Kashmir targeting Shia community. Karachi blast was fourth in a series of attacks targeting Shia processions and gatherings in the last three days. The suicide attack took place near the Light House at Jinnah Road. Besides deaths and destructions caused by the blast itself, the resulting mob violence that spread around Karachi city estimated to have destroyed nearly 500 shops and many vehicles.

Mourning processions by minority Shiite Muslims in Pakistan are often attacked by majority Sunni militants.

•December 28: A suicide bomber blew himself up near a Shiite mourning march in Karachi killing at least 33 people (according to latest fatality count) and injuring several others.

•December 27: At least 15 people were killed and over 100 others injured in suicide blasts near the Pir Alam Shah Bukhari Tomb, a place for Shia prayers in Muzaffarabad, provincial capital of Pakistan Administered Kashmir (PAK). Another suicide attack however, was foiled elsewhere in the Bagh district in PAK that day.

•December 26: A remote controlled bomb blast injured nearly 26 Shia mourners at Khalifat Chowk in North Nazimabad Town of Karachi.

•December 26: Another bomb blast in Orangi Town in Karachi left 24 people injured. Angry mob had resorted to arsons and anti-government protests in reaction to the blast.

In Pakistan, pro Sunni terrorist groups used to carry out deadly attacks in regular intervals against minority Shia populations. Although no terrorist outfit has claimed responsibility so far, the needle of suspicion now is on the Sunni centric Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan and its affiliate anti-Shia outfit Lashkar- e- Jhangvi. According to a recent circular distributed by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Pakistan, TTP’s newly floated suicide wing 'Mujahid Abu Faraz' has reportedly been assigned to carry out country wide terrorist attacks during Ashura ceremony. The TTP leader Qari Hussain Mehmood has formed the group to avenge the death of Abu Faraz (a.k.a. Nasim Shah), a Taliban commander in Swat). Faraz, a close associate of Mullah Fazlullah, was killed during a recent fight (On 03 December) in the Kabal area of Swat.

Al-Qaida in Yemen Claims Responsibility for Christmas Day Airline Terror Plot

By Evan Kohlmann

Al-Qaida's network in Yemen (otherwise known as "Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula") has issued an official communique claiming responsibility for the failed terrorist bomb plot targeting a Delta/Northwest airliner traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas day. The communique included original photographs of would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab grinning in front of an Al-Qaida banner. The group acknowledged that the device had failed to properly detonate, but promised that it would "continue on this path until we achieve success." The statement also congratulated Ft. Hood shooter Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan and urged fellow Muslims to follow in his footsteps and kill American soldiers.

A complete translation of the communique from AQIY/AQAP can be accessed via the NEFA Foundation website.