Making Sense of Jihad

France’s Failure, But Not Yet Ours (2)

France’s “burqa” law is terrible policy, drawing a deep, dark line between the French ideals of secular governance and the conscience of some of its citizens, creating a self-isolating community that could pose significant internal threat to stability in the long term.  It also feeds the legitimacy of anti-immigration sentiment throughout Europe. But perhaps the worst failure here is the failure of France’s much-admired intellectual class that was unable to understand or accept the primacy of conscience over secular ideologies.

Before France’s veil laws, Muslim women may have veiled for a variety of personal reasons, such as the dictates of conscience, the habits of culture, or the strictures of parents.  None of these reasons posed a threat to the public order.  After the veil laws went into enforcement, the act of wearing a niqab ceased to be one personal preference among many and became an act of public defiance against an antagonist state.  Though some women may chose to modify their veiling, many won’t.  As a result, they are forcefully isolated, and the communities where these women live become increasingly isolated from their government.

It would be easy to blame Europe’s “Far Right” movements for France’s burqa ban and similar ones in development in other EU states.  Yet when France’s National Assembly voted (336 to 1) to proscribe the public wearing of niqab in July 2010, and the Senate followed suit (246 to 1) in September, it was clear that the legislation was more than an attempt to placate Europe’s xenophobic fringe. Some of the law’s most vocal proponents came from France’s center-left intelligentsia.  That public dialogue, played out in France’s mainstream press, exposed the deep alienation between the country’s elite and some members of its Muslim population.

There’s no better comment that crystalizes the alienation between France’s intellectual and political classes and the women targeted by the “burqa” ban than a simple (sarcastic) sentence written at Muslimah Media Watch. Summarizing French feminist Elisabeth Badinter’s patronizing response to their clothing choices, one writer noted: “The enlightened philosopher speaks to the savages with veils.” The women on the receiving end of Badinter’s civilizational condescension are just as self-aware as the philosopher kings in Paris, but their language is the language of religious conviction. Badinter’s patronizing sentiment is a common response among France’s elite and other Western countries -- including the United States. 

Extreme religious practices always present an antithesis to the secular social order.  However, they rarely constitute a threat to that order.  There is no doubt that many women who wear the niqab  in Western countries do so as a rejection of contemporary norms of women’s fashion.  But they also wear it out of the personal conviction formed by the dictates of their conscience. It’s not just a symbol to be (mis)interpreted, it’s a personal risk taken to live a life against the grain of contemporary norms.  To impose a law against an extreme, but otherwise harmless, religious practice in the name of a secular order simply reinforces the validity of that practice against the secular order.

There is something else to consider.  France’s “burqa” ban is often defended by asserting the primacy of France’s secular political order and its secularized “public square.”  But it’s just this type of secular absolutism that inspired the political and extremist Islamic movements of the 20^th century in the first place.  The questions of appropriate governance obsessed Muslim Brotherhood leader Hassan al-Banna (and contemporaries in Turkey, India and the Levant). He wrote extensively on the topic in the 1930s and 40s.  Works such as Toward the Light proposed an Islamic alternative to a secular political order.  The unknown promise of an “Islamic alternative” continues to animate political and radical Islamic movements in their many forms.  It’s just this type of secular challenge - veil laws -- that helped form these movements in the first place.  It is too soon to tell if EU-wide “burqa” bans will posed similar challenges to secularism, but the laws themselves create an environment where some form of challenge is probable.

Perhaps the fundamental failure here is not France “burqa” law itself, but the lackluster arguments of its proponents.   It was as if France’s intellectuals just gave up.  Christian, Jewish and Muslim community leaders understand that programs of inter-religious dialogue are generational efforts.  It sometimes takes years just to build the frameworks for productive discussion.  But the secularist in France’s case, didn’t seem to care much for building a  common framework or engaging in the kind of debate that would accept the legitimacy of the other side’s concerns. Few understood the role of conscience, and even fewer spoke directly to the women themselves.  None understood the relationship between secularism and radical Islam.  There wasn’t even a perfunctory “show-commission” producing pro-forma rubber stamp opinions like the 2003 Stasi Commission Report.  They just wrote their opinion pieces, gave their interviews, mouthing the same platitudes on laïcité, and turned to the state to finish the job.

It was as if they were all bored with arguments, couldn’t be bothered with those “savages in veils,” and just wanted to get it all over with.  Mission accomplished.  But the very weakness of the defense of laïcité among France best and brightest intellectuals bodes ill for secularism.  If even the secularists seem tired of defending secularism, then perhaps those “savages in veils” are closer to victory than they think. 

France’s Failure, But Not Yet Ours

Here and there in the midst of American society you meet with men full of a fanatical and almost wild spiritualism, which hardly exists in Europe. From time to time strange sects arise which endeavor to strike out extraordinary paths to eternal happiness. Religious insanity is very common in the United States.

Alexis de Tocqueville

I was at a local discount store the other day, where I saw a common sight here in Northern Virginia: a woman in a niqab.  An African-American woman, wearing a niqab, was standing at the customer service counter trying to return an item.  The customer service rep - another African american woman - was straining to understand her.  Both were so engaged in the transaction that  only the woman’s young daughter - adorned in a hijab - noticed me observing the transaction.  The customer service rep was clearly uncomfortable with the transaction.  Having worked a similar job, I could sympathize with her.  Part of deciding whether to accept an item for return is assessing the customer’s sincerity, a nearly impossible task if you can’t see the person’s face.  The niqab is a discomforting site for many people, but it very rarely poses a threat to the “public order."

Among American Muslims the niqab is shrugged off as an expression of extreme practice, but not much more.  The community of women who wear niqab may be small, but more important, it is part of a broad and variable continuum of Muslim religious practice. In other words it is just one idiosyncratic expression of faith among many.

Anyone who sincerely practices an Abrahamic faith recognizes those co-religionists who perhaps take it a little too far.  For the most part, they inspire indifference.  Idiosyncratic characteristics of all three Abrahamic faiths lend themselves to America’s vibrant faith life.  America has become home to many communities of extreme practice that co-exist in mutual indifference with everyone else.   They echo de Tocqueville’s idea of America’s unique “religious insanity.”

Not so the government of France which has been meddling in the conscience of its Muslim citizens since the first hijab controversy in 1989.  But with its latest effort -- the 2010 national “burqa ban” -- the government tacitly accepts defeat in a decades-long engagement with Muslim communities within French society. 

France’s much-admired intellectual and political classes apparently never fully engaged the country’s Muslim communities.  Its collective arguments are generalized (women’s rights),  condescending, (they’re forced to wear it), and weak (it’s counter to French “ideals”) when juxtaposed to extreme Islam’s powerful appeal to conscience.  As a result, whatever engagement did occur had no effect on the religious practices of the most extreme of France’s Muslim community.  One spoke post-structuralist jargon concerning the power of “symbols;” the other spoke of a personal relationship with God.  Both spoke past each other. In the end, the French political class chose to imposed its view of Muslim religious practices through the full force of government.

There are lessons in France’s “burqa” and foulard laws for anyone involved in the current dialogue over counterterrorism strategy or counter violent extremism (CVE) policy.  They are terrible policy, creating an artificial confrontation between government and citizens where none existed before.  They ignore the true roots of radical Islam in both its intellectual and physical confrontation with secularism and secular governments.   Its enforcement builds a long-term environment of mutual distrust and intellectual isolation that practically guarantees homegrown collective challenges to the state within a generation

More later..

 

Around the Web, Favorites Edition

Now that Twitter is my drug of choice, I’m basing this Around the Web edition on the numerous tweets I’ve favorited over the past few weeks.

While I was stoned on twitter, Leah at All Things Counterterrorism published an excellent article in Foreign Policy in the true counterterrorism tradition.  I also agree with her assessment of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) - they are greatly underestimated, even after Mumbai.

Aaron Zelin’s coverage of Boko Haram is second to none.  He also linked to this Jihadica study of Sayf al-Adl’s recent letters of “revision.”

Evgeny Morozov’s link to this Social Science Resource Council analysis of the religion in the Arab public sphere was quite popular.

The more I see “radicalization” applied in the real world, the less I’m willing to accept its legitimacy as a discipline within counterterrorism.  Daveed posted a link to a Brennan Center for Justice report on radicalization that scratches the surface of this deepening crap pile.

The Arabist linked to this Guardian article on Egypt’s media revolution.

Steve’s link to the Flaming Oil Port Index gives you a bit of context on why we’re paying over $4 dollars for Premium.

IslamBlog linked to an article on the Pope’s new call for inter-religious dialog.

In other Europe-centered news, Martijn linked to this CSMonitor article on the slow agonizing end of Europe’s the multiculturalist experiment.

Saying Hello to Post-Post-Colonialism

My only college age memory of Mr. Dude comes through a pot-induced haze.  A friend of a friend had a friend who was having a party off campus at this guy’s house.  The owner of the house was “cool,” and they all called him Mr. Dude.  The night wore on and my “date” was passed out on the couch.  At some point the early 90s grunge music stopped. Mr. Dude pushed himself off the floor, stumbled over to the stereo, and fumbled around for a CD of the “hippest” music he had ever heard.  We were going to love it.  It was Jimi Hendrix...

From the onset of Egypt’s revolution, go-to Islamists, western talking heads, and any number of yammering academics were all beginning to sound a little out of step.  Now, people die on the streets of Libya, Bahrain and Algeria.   Libya, especially, looks inevtiable.  As I write this the post-colonial narrative -- as it was taught to me in 1990 -- of an endless cycle of exploitation and suppression in the Middle East, South America and Central Asia, is finally coming to its much-deserved end. 

A nationalist revolution shouldn’t happen in an Arab country, the narrative went.  Supposedly Arabs never identified with the phony lines drawn by the colonial powers.  They would were supposed to admire strong men and follow their religious leaders like gods.  I’ve been skeptical of the post-colonial narrative since 1990, but I finally gave up on it completely after watching video the November 2010 soccer match between Algeria and Egypt. 

As goal #4 went in and the joyous screams of "Masr! Masr!" filled the room, it was brutally obvious to me that there were plenty of Arabs who identified with the supposedly illegitimate borders drawn by those evil Westerners.  And it's clear now that there’s no room on the soccer field for over-analysis of the Sykes-Picot accord.  Perhaps the Algeria-Egypt soccer rivalry is a key source for the Egyptian revolt.

In his new audio message, Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two and chief strategist, speaks of Sykes Picot and of godlessness of democracy.  It sounds so quaint, as if he’s fighting a war that is long over.  The music stopped about a week ago, and he’s slid the once-”hip” post-colonial CD into the stereo.  I’ll call him Dr. Dude from now on.

To be honest, I was dreading my much-needed return to graduate school. Parroting Edward Said in order to pass my classes was, for the most part, the reason why I didn’t pursue any more graduate education.  But without the weight of a “sonofabitch” to control the lives and defer the dreams of millions in Egypt and probably the rest of the Arab world, I now see paths of study that didn’t even exist one month ago: business and finance in dynamic economies, rancorous but peaceful civil institutions, and one that is close to my heart: sincere, organized inter-religious dialog, now untainted by the manipulations of state-sponsored media.

It’s a wonderful time to be alive.  To watch global paradigms collapse twice - first “communism,” now  “post-colonialism” -- just before I reached the half-way mark in my life is truly amazing.  I don’t mind living in “interesting times.”  If more people are made free by these “interesting times,” then, God, please, please make them even more interesting.

Counterterrorism à la Française

I came across this April 2009 Le Figaro report on the FBI’s new-found interest for things French.  In it, Yves Jannier, a French counterterrorism judge, crows about French influence in FBI’s evolving CT approach.

“There has been an increase in the number of technical meetings between ex[perts from the two countries,” the report notes.  “Last week French teams were at the American embassy in Paris to exchange information directly with their colleagues during the course of an encrypted videoconference...”

I have mixed emotions after reading this report.

US and French cooperation goes back a long time.  And there’s been innumerable articles in the US press  (random one here) on our post 9-11 Atlantic partnerships with the UK, France and other EU countries.  However, I’ve never read one specifically about the Bureau before, and in the French press no less!  Without knowing it, the article provides a good clue to the Bureau’s changes in CT approach.  More sting operations, more arrests earlier in the radicalization "cycle."

I’m more than happy to see the Bureau finally grasp on to some strategy.  When I was there in 2003, the Bureau and its phalanx of NSLU and DOJ attorneys were still drifting without a clear mandate, let alone a means of achieving it.  Someone, at some point, grabbed the reigns and has sought solutions. 

But did they have to be French solutions?  With their draconian detention laws, and their unhealthy reliance on individual magistrates, the French way provides few checks against abuse of judicial power.  Regardless of how many times Kepel condescendingly reminds his American audiences that France has not experienced a terrorist attack since the '95 Metro bombing, is this really what we want for the US?

Hooray, sort of.

The God Thing, Revisited

Over at the Agenda, the brand spanking new blog of the brand spanking new Current Intelligence magazine, I discuss a recent report from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.  

I've also discussed the "capabilities gap" in posts here at MSJ.

The God Thing

Cue the Ominous Music

What Rosenzweig Says

Clueless or Condescending?

Another Look

Too many dots to connect (expanded edition)

Cross-posted at Current Intelligence

The Christmas Day attack has exposed a broader systemic failure in the entire post-9/11 approach to intelligence: the “over collection” of information. It is leading, once again, to an ever-expanding bureaucracy of stovepiped analysts disconnected from real threat activity.  In one of many cringe-inducing situations since 12/25, the Skeptical Bureaucrat recently highlighted this painful exchange between "senior State Department officials" and the press during a briefing following the release of the Department's Security Review of the Christmas Day attack

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: -- the interview. As far as being anything else, no, I don’t think there was – I don’t think the not knowing that he didn’t have a visa, not reporting that – and the report says that. It says: “A determination to revoke his visa, however, would have only occurred if there had been a successful integration of the intelligence by the CT community, resulting in his being watch-listed.” So --

QUESTION: So even if he was he was spelled – even if it was spelled right and you knew he had a visa, he still wouldn’t have been – it still wouldn’t have been revoked?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: That’s correct.

There is more Q&A here, but the exchange gives you an idea of the complexity of the failure.  Numerous embarrassing anecdotes leaked over the past two months -- from a CIA analyst waiting on a picture to some $12/hr contractor "misspelling" Abumutallab's name – expose an ungovernable system devoid of imagination and will.    

Marc Ambinder noted that within the intelligence community (IC),

There had been plenty of discussions about Yemen, and the U.S. was clearly concerned about the fertile soil there for extremism -- but no policy maker seems to have taken the intelligence about AQAP's intentions seriously enough to significantly alter counterterrorism policies regarding AQAP's ability to threaten the U.S

That, however, is always the failure when an intelligence failure occurs, in the United States or in any country in the world. Bureaucratic, moribound intelligence organs focusing on major threats (USSR, Israel), fail to see the emerging threats in front of them (Hizbullah, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiya). Even the suggested solutions appear to be conventional: better training, more information sharing, the application of “structured methods,” etc.

Yet a broader problem is hinted at in this January 27th post at Govexec.com:

The National Counterterrorism Center does not have enough analysts to comb through the thousands of pieces of terrorism-related information it receives every day, even though a plan to cut millions of dollars from its budget has been reversed, NCTC Director Michael Leiter told House lawmakers on Wednesday… Each day, the NCTC receives more than 5,000 pieces of terrorist-related information and reviews 5,000 names of suspected terrorists, Leiter said.

There is a broader systemic failure in the entire post-9/11 approach to intelligence: the over-collection of information. In the rush to find and “connect” dots after 9-11, the focus of information collection became too broad, encompassing too many sources, and offering little direct authority for possible response.  The result is disparate points of information get caught up in the cogs of bureaucratic processes disconnected from any reason to act. 

Information collection on such a vast scale – 5000 pieces of information per day, according to NCTC officials -- is a sign of systemic weakness.  It shows an inability to pinpoint current and emerging threats at their source, and to focus analytical capability at those known threats.  Instead, analysts sit a desk each working day, reading thousands of pieces of “information” that have little or no connection to real threat activity.  In this environment, conventional wisdom becomes the most intellectually expedient answer to policy maker’s demands.

The answer lies in redirecting collection toward real-world threats, not loose dots of information.  If we were better prepared in Yemen, then we would have never missed Abumutallab, regardless of how a $12/hr data entry clerk spelled his name. 
   
After September 11th, senior policy makers and bureaucrats feasted on an avalanche of executive-level attention and, more important, funding.  It was a brief moment in time when real reforms could have made the IC an effective defense against the United States’ myriad threats.  Instead, bureaucrats without real experience managing information were given money to expand collection based on personal whims and the inevitable interest in maintaining their pockets of power. 

The “one-stop shop” portal became a mantra of the IC. “Watchlists” were established, supposedly designed to be single-sources of information on all suspected threats.  None of this was ever designed to fix systemic problems, despite what the brochures said. Rather, it only added to the inevitable stovepiping of information. So many one-stop shop portals and single source databases were implemented that bureaucrats responsible for  “information sharing” began to demand integration of the portals.

This is where my experience as a library manager kicks in.  Information collection is, by nature, an expensive cost with few immediate or tangible benefits whether it is an oil company library or an analytical team in a ministry of energy.  One of the only means of adding sustaining value to information collection services is by promising subject specialization and service exclusivity.   In other words, offering quality versus quantity. 

Government bureaucrats, unskilled in the day-to-day work of research and information management, tend to see value in collecting more information, not better information.  They also tend to rely on complex technological solutions to support collection, rather than real-time command and control.  Bad idea.  Professional experience has shown me, at least, that human-based management is always more effective than IT solutions.  The failure of the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) is a case where a one-stop shop portal, based on an proven IT “solution,” failed to support its underlining mission. 

The powers that be are failing again to address the problem of achieving quality over quantity in collection and analysis. The govexec.com article goes on to report that the very points of weakness, such as unusable “watch list” databases, are expecting further expansion.  Do you feel safer?

American Salafist-Jihadism Emerges

Despite numerous arrests, convictions, reports of recruitment activities, and general vile behavior, the United States' small but very vocal Salafist-Jihadist (SJ) community saw its first inspired terrorist attack on US soil last week at Fort Hood.  Numerous British and US reports paint a picture of a man who was active in this small, mostly virtual community.  As Jarret (and Jihadica and Jawa Report) report, Hasan's violence has been met with elation in the US SJ community and on English language jihadi forums:

Bottom line up front: On the English-language, pro AQ websites, Nidal Malik Hasan’s attack at Ft Hood is being hailed as a victory for Islam and al-Qaida. The participants involved in the discussion see this as the opening shot in what they hope to be a long and bloody war in the United States.

These reports also highlight the key role of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American scholar of Islamic law who was once touted in the local press as a young, moderate leader of Northern Virginia's burgeoning suburban Muslim community.  This while the FBI was investigating his connections to several of the 9-11 hijackers. Interestingly, anyone who has been monitoring the US-based SJ community was well aware of the centrality of Awlaki's role in it.  After he fled the United States, he landed in Yemen and has been running an "American"-language blog (written in prefect idiomatic American English) since 2007-2008 (I'm working from memory here).  His posts, audio and video commentaries, and fatawa, were prominently displayed throughout the US-based SJ community.  That he has only now come to the awareness of many in the military and intelligence communities, is more evidence of the appalling mediocrity and endemic bureaucratic indifference that defines the policy and analysis industries here in Washington, DC.

Since it emerged in earnest back in 2005-6 with a collection of blogs and websites, America's SJ virtual community has expanded its presence to include active members of Scribd, Archive.org, and Youtube.  However, it appears to be more talk than action.  Reports following the arrest of Tarek Mehanna and 2 associates, make this small circle of terrorist wannabes appear to rather hapless.  Most of the global SJ action remains in the Middle East and South Asia.  Arabic and Urdu are still the primary languages of SJ ideology.  The US network's only real religious authority has been the commentary and fatawa of al-Awlaki.

The Fort Hood attack has changed all this, however.  It's clear that Hasan was very active in the US SJ community.  He communicated with al-Awlaki, and there are now reports that he was talking to others as well.  His 2007 power point presentation on Islam is the crystallization of the SJ ideology, expressed in American English, intended for an American audience.

There is good news here, if you can call it that.  Hasan's attack may have happened too soon in the SJ community's development.  The community still lacks authoritative heft it needs to be taken seriously inside the global movement (like a "Blind Sheikh").  By "coming of age" too soon, it may doom itself to jihadi caricature.   That may change in the next 5-10 years as recently convicted Salafist-Jihadis are released from prison, having had many years to study and delve deeper into the justifications for violence.  It's hard to predict what if any will be the impact of this cadre of radical American Muslims with prison cred, but I can practically guarantee that it will shock our policy and intelligence communities.

Around the Web: Final Edition

You've probably noticed that I haven’t been posting “around the web” posts recently.  A new job and a busy personal life have drawn me away from dedicated posting here at MSJ.  I’ll continue to post here, but not as regularly as in the past.  I know that – somehow, some way – you will survive, readers, especially since Tim is doing such a good job with his InfoBore posts.   Meanwhile, I’m contributing to CTLab’s Current Intelligence blog.

Now, on to the post.

Report: "Understanding the Survival Mechanisms of Global Salafi Jihad" (via Drew)

Great blog post title winner

Ahmed Rashid, via mp3

Dreaming of the Caliphate, here and here

Easier analyzed than achieved

Finally.

Data Challenges for the IC (also via Drew)

Another Renunciation

Registan’s Threat Assessment for Central Asia

Well, is it?

Noting the obvious: the US doesn’t have enough Pashto speakers

Hudson Institute recently looked at the future of the MB

Islamists working the system here .. and in Egypt

Thomas Rid has joined Kings of War

Reviewing Juan Cole

New (to me) Blogs & Sites of Interest

Science of Global Security & Armed Conflict (via Current Intelligence)

DOD Energy Blog (via CNAS Natural Security)

Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation

Underreported

National Security Drone

Report Linker

Remarkz

If I Ruled the World...

...there'd be more Kermit and less Carter in our current policy toward the current theocratic regime in Iran.  But I'm just a blogger, and the only thing I can do is wish safety and a whole lot of good luck for the young people of Iran.

Some Thoughts on Ancient History (And on reaching 11,000)

Back in March 2002, I was working on an R&D project for Raytheon in a desolate industrial park off the Dulles Toll Road.  It was a temporary job, designed to buy me time until I could find something more permanent. I was working on an emerging OSINT data-mining tool called Genesis.  After telling the program lead that I was interested in pursuing OSINT in the intel community, she warned me to be prepared to be ignored.  OSINT wasn’t taken seriously.  My cynical response was something along the lines of: Hey, I’m a librarian.  No one takes me seriously.  I might as well be paid more to be ignored.

After fleeing an analytical position at the FBI in the summer of 2003, I landed a contract position at DOE.   I was in part responsible for bringing more OSINT into the department’s small, specialized counterterrorism program.  I consider myself lucky. The management was good, and they were opened to open source.  I went on to work with OSINT in even greater depth in another DOE program.  Yet,  there were general problems that I saw across agencies that made my job more challenging than I expected. 

When I began briefing my clients on emerging OSINT issues, particularly terrorist use of the internet, most of them had no idea what I was trying to explain to them.  It wasn’t that the concept of forum or blog was difficult, it was the simple fact that practically all of these men and women had never used the Internet for more than e-mail and the occasionally Amazon purchase or <ahem> soft core <fill in the blank>.  It may be a challenge to explain the significant role Forum A has on, say, an operational tempo in country Z.  It’s a whole different animal when the decision-makers simply cannot conceive of what a forum is and how it works.

Add to that the omnipresent “terrorism” experts (geezers with experience in 70s-era Athens or 80s-era Belfast, given too much credibility and often possessing too much ego) who dismissed all jihadi media as “propaganda” and thus meaningless.  The word "propaganda," conjuring up images of Mao posters, was used too often by people who had little to no experience with jihadi media.   I was working in a toxic mix of ignorance and bad information that was nearly impossible to break through.  Aaron and SITE Institute were the first to sound the alarm, and I was following their work closely at this point, because they were the only ones really integrating the jihadi virtual world with real world analysis.  The first signs of awareness within the policy-making community came after Irhabi007 "hosted" jihadi material on the website of the Arkansas Department of Transportation.  Then, and only then, did you have the first signs of intellectual life within the policy-influencing community.

It’s been slow going ever since; however, I’m heartened by what I see.  Conversations are less clueless and rudimentary; conclusions are based on better information and more nuanced understanding of online dynamics.   The recent blog discussions (example) on Andrew Exum’s TNR article lifted my sprits even more.  There is finally a cadre of bright young (and not so young) analysts, familiar in the languages of the enemy, and with operational experience in both the physical and the virtual jihads. 

Sheikh Maqdisi has reason to be concerned. 

I began this blog back in 2004 as a means of sharing primary source material – jihadi documents – with anyone who knew enough to appreciate it.  I received practically no hits and no attention for the first three years.  Granted, I didn’t keep track of my traffic, but last year I began tracking stats with Sitemeter. Recently, I noticed that my hit count passed 10,000 – it’s now passed 11, 000.  It’s safe to say that the number only counts for the time Sitemeter has been working its magic, and that the actual hit count is much higher. 

Though I’m not the best at analyzing user stats, I can tell you that a substantive portion of these 11,000 hits have come from regular readers who share my posts with others.  I am grateful for each and every one of my readers, but particularly the regular ones.

Thank you, folks.  And G-d bless you.

Around the Web - Easter-Week Mega Edition

I know, I know.  I've been remiss in my duties to post an Around the Web, and now I've been writing one for what feels like a week. It's going to take you about a week to get through it, too, but I don't want to hear any whining. It's a slow week in most offices.  If you can catch up on your fantasy baseball picks, you can read this post.  

We start with Jihadica, and the squibs from hell: Thomas surveys recent jihadi publications. They also have a roundup of their recent Workshop in Oslo (Part I and Part II). Excellent work all around.

Staying in Europe:  Italian police carried out CT raids last week:

Three of them, who lived in Naples, are though to be Islamist radicals sympathetic to the radical 'Takfiri' ideology...The three radicals had already been involved in falsifying documents to aid jihadist groups.

Meanwhile the Financial Times throws some cold water on all this talk of Islamic finance saving the world. [This talk concerns me, because the vast majority of people who know known nothing about Islamic finance.] (via Aqoul)

And the Times of London is reporting on something that happened, what?  Two weeks ago?

Holy Spicolli!  Abu Muqawama is an actual...guy.  I thought he was just a blog.

In Stage One, the agency (in this case the FBI) embraces radical Islamist front groups.  In Stage Two reality sets in and said agency withdraws their cooperation with groups, once understood that they share the same goals as AQ.  In Stage Three these "moderate" groups start making bizarre accusations hoping to test and intimidate said agency. In Stage Four said agency will apologize for something it's not doing and cave to all demands.

So where does the money go?  This recent Reuters list of "Gulf Arab foreign investments" gives you some idea. (via The Arabist)

I welcome to the club of "blogs she reads":

Shariah Finance Watch

http://www.shariahfinancewatch.org/blog/

And a jihadi blog (via The Pest)

http://millatibraheem.wordpress.com/

Flash: there are Salafi groups in the Levant, according to MEMRI there's a new Salafist-Jihadist one in Gaza, and two S-Js reported killed in Gaza.

Meanwhile, MB's Supreme Guide plans to retire.

And apparently there's a little competition for hearts and minds inside Egypt -- and it's not between "moderates" either

Good/Bad News from Libya? (via CBSNews)

An updated CRS Backgrounder on Egypt (via The Arabist)

Morocco apparently takes sides in the struggle between Sunni Arab states and Iran.  Meanwhile, there are still plenty of jihadis in North Africa, including Salafi-Jihadis in Morocco.

The Patriarch of Venice asks an essential question at the heart of the Christianity-Islam debate in a new book "Mestizaje: coexistence, or confusion?"

Speaking of Africa: The Pest of all people pointed out the novel qualities of a current release from AQ's Somalia branch.  It's an all-English video, featuring an American muj, rapping, or something. 
More at Jawa Report, Danger Room, and others including here and here.

The Pest's post is here: http://revolution.thabaat.net/?p=1096

You can find it here: http://www.archive.org/details/kmen-bradle

The video does suggest that there is an audience for this jihadi vileness in the US, and belies the commonly acknowledged trope that "our" Muslims (ie, the US) are not as radical as "their" Muslims (ie. Europe). Perhaps, but then, how do we know?  

Over in Yemen, Waq-al-Waq notes a recent article in AQ's periodical Sada al-Malahim that provides some "good background" on KSA's 85 Most Wanted.

And MEMRIBlog reports that Yemeni officials have their own Most Wanted list

Via EagleSpeak: Somali Pirates: U.S.Navy sees a new pattern

The List: If you're interested in Israeli politics, here's the list of new government officials.

Evil.  Pure Evil.

A virtual crisis for AQ?  Tim has the link.

What about the analog version of the group? Al Qaeda Today:  a Policy Forum luncheon hosted by The Washington Institute's Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. (PolicyWatch #1477: Special Forum Report)

Drew has a post on a recent study that challenges the work of Robert Pape: Decision Processes of a Suicide Bomber

Question to the audience: How many suicide bombings in a row before it's called an offensive?
It must be Spring.

Unfinished

I came across this unfinished essay I wrote earlier last year…It's not Schubert, but I thought some of the ideas resonate and may pick them up again some time in 2009. 

Thinking with the enemy

On a March evening in 1928 in a schoolhouse in the provincial city of Ismailiya, Egypt six men offered Hassan al-Banna their fortunes, if he would guide them.  They decided to form a group, and the “Al Ikhwanul Muslemoon,” Muslim Brotherhood, was born.  Later al-Banna would write, “We determined on solemn oath that we shall live as brethren; work for the glory of Islam and launch Jihad for it.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is acknowledged as the father of practically every jihadist group in the world today.  Al Qaeda got its start in that schoolhouse. There continue to be strong ideological connections between Hassan al-Banna’s learned and articulate writing and Ayman al-Zawahiri’s polemics.  And yet do policy makers and members of our intelligence community know much about the ideology of the Brotherhood and its offshoots?  Can they articulate that ideology with the same comprehension they once knew the Soviets?

For starters it cannot be understood outside of its deep, enduring Islamic roots.  “We are united to serve the cause of Islam,” Al-Banna wrote, hence the group’s name.  Eight years later, in a letter to then Egyptian king Farouk I, he implores the king to establish an Islamic state rather than a secular one, “it would be inexcusable for us to turn aside from the path of truth -- the path of Islam -- and to follow the path of fleshly desires and vanities -- the path of Europe.  Along the path of Europe are to be found outer show and cheap tinsel...But the path of Islam is glory, impregnability, truth, strength, blessedness…”  A group founded as the “cause of Islam” as its purpose should be understood in the context of Islam, without that much consideration to its roots, our picture is woefully incomplete.

Despite violent crackdowns, leadership executions, long jail sentences, and numerous dissolutions over the past 80 years, the Brotherhood is more important than ever.  Numerous western governments have identified the mosques they run, the businesses they control, their media houses, and their worldwide leadership.  And yet there are no in-depth studies of what makes the group so resilient.  Is it possible that the same resilience exists in Al Qaeda and its offshoots?  We don’t know.  The question has implications for our long-term strategy against Al Qaeda’s global movement.  If the answer turns out to be Yes, then we will have to rethink our understanding of enemy and how he views his place in the world, and more important, how he fights his wars.

The rest is just random notes

Around the Web

I'm working on a Mumbai post, but it's going to take a few days.  In the meantime, I would suggest you read my study of Dhiren Barot's (aka Issa al-Hindi) 1998 book, The Army of Madinah in Kashmir.  This is the memoir of an AQ emir's time fighting for Lashkar-e-Tayyiba in Kashmir.

A Free Prediction (and worth every penny of it):  In two years you're going to see package tours to Saudi Arabia and Iraq:

A group of 38 tourists from the US arrived in Tabuk Friday from Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt. The tourist trip has come as part of the ongoing cooperation of the Saudi Supreme Commission for Tourism and local tourism companies....The government passed a law in 2007 allowing domestic travel agencies to bring in foreign tours.

In OSINT news:  The power of distributed networks to share information was on display this past week in Mumbai.  Meanwhile, the power of distributed networks to absorb information and spit it out again was on display in NYC after a Belgian cabinet minister became the subject of a blogging bartender. 

Several professional librarians organizations have teamed up to develop something better than Google: 

While experts from three top library and information science institutions have begun a process that they promise will lead to a new search engine with a new infrastructure designed to emphasize authoritative content, the process is at very early stages yet.

In other OSINT news:  You can now Google the archive of Life magazine.  Lot's of images that may be new to you, including this of the Blind Sheikh, and other curiosities.

Thomas Barnett notices the "shift into Africa." Here's a question for those readers in the IC:  Are we ready for Africa?

Mr. Axe on the Good News and Bad News in Somalia:

That’s good news, for Islamists likely represent Somalia’s future. This year, two main Islamic groups have made steady gains in the country’s south, two years after they were driven from Mogadishu by a mixed army of Ethiopians, northern Somali militiamen and U.S. Special Forces.

Something from the Yeah, duh! files:  International hotels draw elites and terror threat (AP)

In a related link, center-right talk show host Hugh Hewitt links to some good advice for corporate CEOs who find their employees in the middle of a crisis.

Abu Muqawama has a lite reading list for the Christmas holidays.

I was going to post on the Salafist and Salafist/Jihadist response to the Mumbai attacks, but the Jawa folks beat me to it.  No need to reinvent the wheel.  Lest you think it's only The Pest's little following doing this, I saw other, more "mainstream," Salafist blogs, doing the same thing.  That said, I just don't think this is important enough to blog on.

New issue of Parameters (via Small Wars Journal)

"Saudi Interior Minister Appeals to Religious and Education Establishments to Fight Ideological Extremism in the Country" (Via MEMRI)

Also, a different type of campus radical.  Or is that a radical campus? You decide!

And last but not least, a new article:

Legal Safeguards in Egypt's Petroleum Concession Agreements
Author: Khatchadourian, Minas1
Source: Arab Law Quarterly, Volume 22, Number 4, 2008 , pp. 387-396(10)

Around the Web

First things first.  A little note to a friend: Congratulations on your engagement, c!

I'll start off this week's edition with a little dose of reality via The Shack.

My humble advice is to wait until after the guy is sworn in to claim victory in the War on Terrorism.

It's getting worse in the Gulf of Aden.  Despite increasing naval commitments in the region, a Danish ship was taken this past Friday.  

Londonstani stirs up a hornets' nest.

Ubi looks tired.

And I ask you, reader: how medieval can you get?  I love the idea.  It would sow the seeds of the most perfect fitna evah!

Jane has news of a new threat to CONUS.  Actually, it's not new.  I warned my (then)client about just such a possibility two years ago.

And a recent report on Somalia's al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile, Will has a summary of the new issues of Sada al-Malahim, the jihad journal of AQ in Yemen.  The Clearinghouse post links to still-active download links.  Git 'em while they're...active.

Over at the Pest's blog, he notes the arrest of Abu Qatada, http://revolution.muslimpad.com/2008/11/08/shaykh-abu-qatadah-has-been-arrested-this-morning/.

A case of "hijra" gone terribly wrong. (The last sentence is a runner up for "understatement of the year")

Wait, I thought it was the Israelis.  

Speaking of Israel:  "Energy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict," Middle Eastern Studies, Volume 44, Issue 6 November 2008 , pages 937 - 944.  Looks interesting.

Very strange bedfellows.

In OSINT news

A new EU-funded project called PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research):

PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research), supported by the European Union (EU), will investigate the effects of the large-scale, systematic depositing of authors’ final peer-reviewed manuscripts (so-called Green Open Access or stage-two research output) on reader access, author visibility, and journal viability, as well as on the broader ecology of European research. The project is a collaboration among publishers, repositories, and researchers and will last from 2008 to 2011.

ZIA links to a new study, Mathematical Model of a Hostage Situation.  And this. Ushahidi:

In a nutshell, Ushahidi allows individuals to report instances of violence, looting, and other incidents via  local SMS messages. The report is then displayed on a web-based map using the Ushahidi engine.

More at Intellibriefs.

While others do, the IC keeps on talking about dots and the need to connect them:

The report, “Defense Imperatives for New Administration”, released on Nov. 4, said combating terrorism requires putting domestic intelligence collection on par with foreign intelligence. The creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which placed all intelligence agencies under an umbrella organization, was supposed to achieve this parity. But the science board said, “successive directors of national intelligence have been slow to embrace domestic intelligence, and that must be remedied.”

Around the Web

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross announced the availability of a new report, a profile of Abu Yahya al-Libbi. 

Awesome OSINT tool for maritime analysis (via Information Dissemination): Live Ship Map.  The librarian in me sat silent and played with this like I was a 10 year old boy playing the coolest, most popular video game for the first time.

"Egypt: Between Democracy and Islamism"

Sources and Methods blog lives up to its name, with  two recent "how-to" posts worth reading if you're interested in good OSINT methodology.

Sources and Methods links to the experimental "GenderAnalyzer" that apparently "seeks to automatically determine the sex of a particular blog's author."  Well, I tried it on MSJ, and it failed miserably.  As a few fellow bloggers can attest, I am all girl and proud of it. 

Is it any good?

CBS's Internet Terror Monitor points out that AQIM is employing Iraq-style IED tactics.  Tell that to the Brown and Root-Condor employees targeted in December 2006.

There are new issues of Perspectives on Terrorism, CTC's Sentinel, and Strategic Analysis.

A few new reports in the area of COIN: Armed Groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism, and Counterinsurgency, Deterrence: From Cold War to Long War: Lessons from Six Decades of RAND Research, and Small Wars Journal briefs the Marines.

Geopolitics imitates the Godfather?

Zero Intelligence Agents has an excellent post on top five national security research challenges facing the US.  It points to some of the emerging trends in threats and countermeasures.

In a related post OSINFO blog discusses implementation of NERC CIP standards.  Don't know what NERC CIP standards are?  It's okay.  You're still a good person.

Around the Web (Feverish Edition)

I'm feeling a bit under the weather, and so blogging will be irregular over the next few days.

MarineLog has photos of the kidnapped crew of the MV Faina, a merchant ship carrying Russian tanks, hijacked by Somali pirates last week.

Armies of Liberation recently reported on a new Yemeni front group, er, think tank: this one started by Abu Jindal, UBL's former body guard.

Long War Journal reports on the new Adam Gadahn video.

Arabic Media Shack is quickly becoming a daily must-read, including recent posts on a unique form of misogyny directed toward Western women and a few good North African blogs.

If this recent article in Dar al-Hayat is an accurate reflection of the general sentiment following a recent visit by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, then the next administration will have its work cut out for them. 

Perhaps the Maghreb and the Sahel will see stability operations.  Hopefully not before there's much more cultural training for military, diplomats, and spies.

Gulfnews reports on a new generation of restless Ihkwanis, on the web.

I can almost hear the Jeopardy! music while reading this...(http://clearinghouse.infovlad.net/showthread.php?t=17150)

Cue the ominous music for The Economist's melodramatic article on data mining.

Magical hijab.  Apparently a head scarf worn by a Muslim woman gives her an extra special pass to be a bigoted as she wants to be in the Sunday opinion section of the Washington Post.

"Excuse me, but a woman with Saint Paul in her religious heritage has no place feeling superior to a Muslim woman, as far as woman-affirming principles are concerned." 

Yawn.  Okay.  Whatever.

Around the Web

Thanks, Joe.  Now, can you work your magic on Archive-dot-org?  Please?

The diligent Ray Ibrahim has a new column at NRO on the continued relunctance of some in military and civilian government circles to study Islamic doctrines of war.  And a new review of Michael Scheuer's book Imperial Hubris.

Meanwhile, it looks like both DoD and Congress are dropping the ball on Africom.  The DR report notes that there's plenty of blame to go around.  Actually, if Africom is lost, this may have significant long term consquences.  Someone, somewhere in government (military or civilian, I don't know) figured out that many of our strategic challenges will originate from or will have signficant play in Africa.  If we don't begin the process now of building political, military and cultural capabilities, then we will be doing it later at much greater cost of life and wealth.  The problem here is that Africom is a long-term strategic move (ie, 10, 20, even 50 years), and no one can see that far ahead in a government that operates on FY cycle thinking. 

For radical Shiite watchers:  Zamin posts a translation on a recent interview of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah.

Crossroads Arabia has more details on the arrest of five Saudis involved in online jihadi activity, including this telling detail:

Arab News reports that the men were using ’sock-puppetry’—one person commenting under a large number of names in order to create the impression that his point had greater support than just his own opinion.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) held their Open Source Intelligence conference this week.  I was signed up to go, but couldn't make it.  However, I have been receiving their spam of official statements.  And here's a blog about the conference. 

A current LA Times report on new FBI guidelines for surveillance and intelligence gathering contains this cold, hard fact about the nature of the Bureau's problems:   

That has led to different guidelines on the methods and techniques agents can use at different phases of investigations, depending on whether the probes involve potential crimes or national security concerns. In general, agents have been more constrained when working on national security matters...

The official cited a hypothetical example in which the FBI receives a tip about illegal activity in a bar.

If a tipster claims that a patron is dealing drugs, the guidelines for criminal investigations allow agents to conduct more intrusive preliminary interviews and take other action.

If the tipster claims the patron is raising money for a suspected terrorist group, an obvious national security concern, the alternative guidelines limit investigators to the more public methods, absent more evidence.

The officials said the new rules would also make it easier for the FBI to collect intelligence on the activities of foreign governments in the United States.

In assessing possible terrorist threats, agents now are limited to conducting interviews and gathering data through public sources, such as the Internet. The changes would allow them to conduct physical surveillance in a public location, recruit and deploy informants, and conduct interviews without identifying themselves.

Of course, the ACLU is flipping out.  When listening to their hysterics, though, remember this: as of right now, the Bureau has more latitude to go after drug dealers than it does suspected terrorist.  Still, after seven years.

No, not skepticism, idiocy.

========================
Now for something completely different...Hurricane Ike news...

Bloomberg reports that Hurricane Ike has "caused more than 19 per cent of the nation's refining capacity to close."  My mother was whining to me that gas is $5/gallon where she is.  That's probably gittery gas station owners, panicking at refinery news like this.  As I was telling mom this morning, gas station owners have to pay at the time of delivery of gasoline to their stations, and if they don't know the stability of supply, they raise prices in anticipation of a worse case scenario. 

If you're interested in tracking energy emergency response to the hurricane, I would usually suggest you go to my former client -- DOE's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability -- for situation reports.  However, as of 10 AM Saturday, there are no situation reports on the site.  Perhaps later in the day.

In other hurricane news, here's a nail-biting tale from the Gulf of Mexico.

Thinking About Africa

There's been a wave of reports and analytical pieces on Africa, or more accurately, regions and countries in Africa.  Until recently I was no better than many analysts and policy wonks who tend to see Africa as a monolithic culture, rather than an enormous continent of mostly failed states, rich in human and natural resources and competing interests.  There are also enormous risks and rewards to be gained in Africa, and so I've started to gather information on the continent into an informal analysis.

Even as the US is dedicating more analysis and increasing its military presence in Africa, so is al-Qaida.  Jihadica recently posted a summary translation of an Ekhlass forum "analysis" by an individual they suspect is a senior AQ commander.  The forum post author, "Assad al-Jihad," sees AQ's presence in Somalia and North Africa as a sign of the group's resilience. [More on this in another post]

This isn't a new trend, however.  An al-Qaida "strategist" wrote an article for Sada al-Jihad back in June 2006 talking about the group's possibilities on the continent.  Soon after, Dr. Z announced the group's merger with Algeria's Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), now called Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).  Somalia's AQ members emerged after their catastrophic loss to Ethiopia in 2006-07, and are now thriving.  AQ's local leadership has commented on events in the Sahel, including last month's coup in Mauritania.  Obviously seeing themselves as players in the region, they are suspected in a number of recent attacksin Mali and Mauritania. 

Somalia is clearly an emerging region of active, organized jihad.  The organization is key, because the longer the group operates with strong, hierarchical leadership the better entrenched it becomes in the Horn of Africa.  It may soon build reliable sources of weapons, income and attract mujahideen from all over the world, becoming the Chechnya of Africa. Two increasingly reliable sources of cash for them right now are kidnapping for ransom and piracy. 

Recent reports of an increase in the number of kidnapping for ransom cases could signal the group's efforts to gain fast cash for near-term strategic operations.  Also the dramatic increase in incidents of piracy off the coast have caused the US and allied countries to respond with a stronger naval presence in the Gulf of Aden.  Even with a recent announcement of increased US counter-piracy activities, the number of incidents continues to grow.  Eaglespeak recently posted on reports of piracy being used to fund jihadi activities in Somalia.  According to this post at Information Dissemination,

Bottom line, coalition naval forces aren't able to aid victims and nobody is stepping up to stop it. often with coalition warships passing right next to hijacked ships. There is no political will in the west to stop piracy, and the rules of engagement are so restrictive that even when pirates are identified at sea, coalition forces simply scare them away.

If AQ's elements in Somalia can build closer operational ties the group's leadership in Yemen, there's greater likelihood of better coordinated attacks on both land and sea, complicating CT responses.

It is more than Somalia. North African countries are experiencing a resurgence of jihadi activity.  Just this week Morocco dismantled a near operational cell:

The 15-member terrorist network called 'Fath Al Andalus' was in possession of chemicals and electronic equipment used to make explosives, police sources said, cited by MAP.

The alleged terrorist network was planning attacks in Morocco and had "established operational links with foreign extremists of the Al-Qaeda organisation," MAP quoted the sources as saying.

Meanwhile, Algeria has suffered a series of AQIM strikes targeting security forces.  The group's leadership has kept up a steady pace of attacks on military and security targets, preventing some of the criticism that the group's Iraq affiliate received for its brutality toward civilians.

AQ may find fertile ground in Nigeria and other areas of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).  It appears that they now claim stabilized and growing organizations in the Maghreb and the Horn.  The region in between, particularly the Sudan, could open up recruits, safe havens, and financial opportunities.

Prioritizing

Most of the readers of this blog have a good idea of the energy sector's complex role in US geopolitical strategy.  And I think we can all agree that energy played a dominant role in Russia's recent incursion into Georgia.  However, but securing (or controlling) energy assets isn't just the game of superpowers.  Saudi Arabia announced its plans last year, and a recent post at War is Boring noted Brazilian naval exercises designed to improve security around their offshore oil reserves:

Why does the U.S. Navy care so much about South American waters all the sudden? Perhaps for the same reasons the Brazilian Navy cares:

Brazil’s armed forces will hold maneuvers next month to show they are capable of defending new offshore oil reserves that could convert the country into a global energy player, a senior official said on Friday.

As our sources of energy diversify, so too will the geographic distribution of our forces … and the nature of our strategic alliances.

I hope that the emerging dialog about energy will include some time dedicated to strategic alliances, and perhaps a whole new global strategy.

Change is in the air

There’s an emerging state of affairs here in DC that can’t be ignored, and I suspect that it will have a profound effect over the U.S.’s CT policy over the next 8 to 10 years. 

September 11th took us entirely by surprise, and there was nearly no capability within the government (military or civilian) to identify, analyze, draft policy or effectively act against the enemy.  Our understanding of the enemy began to mature around 2005-06, thanks in no small part with the military’s learning curve in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Since then our understanding of the enemy has developed enough to create competing approaches to analysis and policy.  I’ll attempt to name and describe these competing analytical approaches, argue that one is clearly taking the lead, and place it into the context of the next ten years.

The GWOT got off to a bad start.  Imagine the day after the Soviet Union detonated their first atomic bomb, and the first question out of President Truman’s mouth was “Who’s this Stalin character?  And what is communism anyway?”  Well, it wasn’t that bad on September 12th but close enough.  President Bush called America’s efforts to prevent another 9-11 "the global war on terrorism."  It turned out to be an imprecise term that unfortunately led to early mistakes in policy and training. 

Reactive bureaucrats began training analysts in “terrorism.”  I went through such a course at the FBI Academy in early 2003.  There was lots of talk of terrorism (November 17th Group, IRA, PFLP, etc), nearly nothing on radical Islam.  I’m convinced now that it wasn’t because government officials were intentionally avoiding radical Islam. Rather it was that there was no ready capability or even lexicon to explain radical Islam, particularly in the context of federal law enforcement.  However, there were plenty of guys who had worked the PFLP in the 1980s.

I was still new to radical Islam in 2003, but it was clear to me that al-Qaida was something different.  Al Qaida may use violence to achieve its political goals, but it's violence within the context of a religious tradition that is nearly 1500 years old.  It also has a pedigree of thinkers and a history of actors that is broad in scope and personality.  Beider-Meinhoff gang were a group of commie malcontents and murderers.  They had no Abdullah Azzam.  They lacked the credibility of fiqh.  They were incapable of recruiting many more than a handful of like-minded thugs.  Contemporary violent jihadhas been a global, non-state actor, organizing, transporting and training thousands of young men to fight irregular wars all over the globe for thirty years.  The fundamental differences are so profound that any time spent analyzing the tactics of an ETA or an IRA is time wasted.

I noticed a shift in both lexical precision and  improvements in analytical quality around 2005-06 .  I suspect that when confronted with al-Qaida on the battlefield the government, mainly through the military, had to collect and analyze data on the enemy.  There’s nothing like a war to make the obvious obvious, and it was clear that al-Qaida was not just a terrorist group – a la ETA or Beider-Meinhoff.  The military’s need for precision in lexicon and analysis and our diplomatic and nation-building efforts in Afghanistan, areas of Africa and Asia brought other government agencies in line to identifying the movement for what it is, violent radical Islam.  It’s sometimes called jihadism or Salafist-Jihadism.

With the enemy more or less identified, the process of bringing analysis and policy in line has followed.  This healthy and inevitable process has lead to different analytical and policy approaches.  I’ve identified three viable analytical frameworks active within the US intelligence community that includes policy makers, think tanks, national labs, academic institutes, and analytical shops.  The first framework is the Ideological Model, advocated more or less by Bruce Hoffman.  The second is the Law Enforcement Model, as advocated by Marc Sageman in the form of “Leaderless Jihad.”  The third is what I call the Neo-Marxist Model popular among academics, leftist pundits, and pockets within the US government more or less advocated by University of Chicago professor Robert Pape.  Briefly,

The Ideological Model

Places the current struggle within the historical context of radical Islamist thought, the groups that have embraced and propagate radical Islamist thought, and the actors within those groups.  It tends to see the enemy as rational actors within organizations that have specific goals both global and regional. 
Characteristics: Global.  Group-centered.  Strategic.  Centered on confronting and neutralizing specific groups and their ideas.

Law Enforcement Model

Places the dynamics of small groups and local organizations within their regional social, political, and economic context, but generally rejects as inconsequential radical Islamic thought.  It tends to see most acts of terrorism as independent, disconnected from any particular movement, as a response to social or political factors.
Characteristics:  Local.  Cell-centered.  Tactical and Legal.  Centered on law enforcement efforts.

Neo-Marxist Model

Places radical Islamist movements and the violence they perpetrate squarely in the context of Hardt/Negri’s concepts of "multitude" and “resistance” to "Empire."  It tends to apply common academic theories such as French post-Modernism, Edward Said’s Postcolonialism, and a traditional Marxist interpretation of “root causes,” focusing on economic and social conditions. 
Characteristics: Root-causes.  Critical of CT and response tactics.  Centered on geopolitical, social and economic forces.

Most analysts take the cafeteria approach, accepting a little from all of these models.  However, a thinking analyst will accept the general premise of one over the others and adopt it as an analytical philosophy. I lean toward the Ideological Model, but I respect the Law Enforcement Model within the context it was meant for:  law enforcement.

I take a fractal-like view of counter terrorism, developed over several years of studying al-Qaida’s threat to energy infrastructure, both operational and strategic. Call it the Mandelbrot approach.  At the global, long view the threat takes on different patterns, the data collected needs to be analyzed within the context of a broader time line and deeper bench of personalities. Ideas matter, and ideas-men matter most of all.  As you move closer in to studying individual cells, and the means of neutralizing them, the threat looks different, the data collected behaves differently.  Connections to specific global ideological movements grow fuzzy.  The dynamics of small group psychology kicks in.  Radicals behave more like individuals than ideological movements.

There's the possibility of excellent analysis from a hybrid approach.  But it has been my experience that when the models are mixed together, they often create a muddled product.   For example, a recent RAND report has all the elements of imposing one model (Law Enforcement) over a problem that clearly requires the other (Ideological). The result is, as Michael Ledeen puts it,

The whole RAND study suffers from constant errors of context.

This is just one example, but there have been many others.  The most obvious has been the dialog between Bruce Hoffman and Marc Sageman.  Highlighted here, here, here, and here.

As for the Neo-Marxist Model it was recently on display in the State Department/NCTC memo providing lexical guidance for strategic communications within the CT community.  The primacy of lexical manipulation was seen at the time as a really bad case of political correctness, but it actually has its source in the post-modern assumption that language is an explicit instrument of power.

Though the Neo-Marxist view often gets most of the attention, and has been the standard analytical framework since September 11th, the Law Enforcement Model is in ascendancy within the US intelligence and policy community.  There are numerous factors involved in the shift, and I identify several below:

First:  Major military successes in Iraq and Afghanistan have released some of the pressure to be the collection and analysis leads.  The Law Enforcement model gives federal agencies cover, by centering primary CT responsibilities at the local level.

Second: Law Enforcement model appears to best explain current threat trends, including al-Qaida’s apparent ineffectual efforts to commit large-scale attacks in the West, and the picture supposedly painted by open source information on thwarted attacks.

Third:  It fits in well with the disparate and haphazardly collected data sets used in strategic analysis across the intelligence community.  In other words, Marc Sageman’s data, collected and applied to the analysis found in his books, acts to reinforce the data reliability of other sets.

Again, there are other issues, but I won’t get into them all now.  It’s safe to say that it takes an act of will to ignore the obvious signs of an organized, global movement.  However, because existing data is ambiguous the Law Enforcement Model gives analysts and policy makers a path of least resistance to something they can present as a solution to the terrorist threat.

What the US government does matters greatly to how the world identifies and acts on this threat.  Our political and military approach influences how other countries frame their own efforts.  The ideological battles underway will impact how the next generation of American leaders envisions the country in the world.    My concern is that the Law Enforcement Model is beginning to be applied without a real understanding of what it describes, and without acknowledging its limitations.  The coming years will give us an idea of whether radical Islam survives to inspire another generation. 

However, the strategic signs are dim.  I don’t see any effort to systematically confront the core ideas of radical Islam, to dismantle radical Islamist groups, and discredit their leaders.   Though individuals like Dr. Fadl may openly question the legitimacy of jihad against Muslims, he does nothing to dismantle Qutb, the acknowledged fount of violent radical Islam.  Though there is increased cooperation among countries to stem the tide of money laundering, there’s nearly no expertise to deal with the mechanisms of money laundering to radical Islamist groups and so the money will continue to flow.  Rather than hit at the core of radical Islam the Law Enforcement model will permit federal analysts and policy makers to fall back to sleep.

"Sahabs"

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I was heading into a lull on posting just to get through a few articles.  Well, it didn't happen then, but is happening now.  I need a break.  Right now, I'm just more interested in "sahabs."  No not As-Sahab, these "sahabs."

Don't get me wrong.  Just because DC is easing into its summer lull, doesn't mean there's isn't plenty of interesting news and research to comment on.  For instance:

There's an ongoing policy debate over the efficacy of having our security and military  agencies "working with" radical Islamist front groups whose long term strategy is the ultimate destruction of the American way of life.

In an apparent example of economic jihad, Moroccan officials say they broke up a cell preparing attacks on tourist sites.

China's official news agency actually reports on the country's other Muslims, the Hui, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-06/23/content_8424881.htm

New Scientist reports that leftist archaeologists are going to let US and/or Israel bomb cultural sites inside Iran. 

Crossroads Arabia notes that a senior Saudi scholar called Bin Laden names, or something.  Big deal.  Unless they're willing to excommunicate him (and they won't), it doesn't matter.

Apparently, our man (al-)Libbi is too busy for video.  His latest is an audio is summarized at Internet Terrori Monitor.

Half a world away, The Pest posts pics of a smiling Abu Qatada, who has apparently fallen off the wagon on his diet.  The link is here:  http://revolution.muslimpad.com/2008/07/11/may-allah-protect-you-shaykh-abu-qataadah/

The Long War Journal reports on the surrender of the "unconventional" warlord, Bibi Aysha.  (Before you get  shocked! that a patriarchal tribal society like the ones found in SW Asia could produce a Bibi Aysha, just remember there are Western examples, too, including my favorite.)

Perspectives on Terrorism published an article exploring the "battle of ideas" from the Pakistan perspective.  Meanwhile, a new NEFA Foundation report reminds us why Pakistan is so important.

Kevin Knodell's "backgrounder" posts on Central Africa (at War is Boring here, here and here) are great starting off point for anyone curious about the region. I suspect that Central Africa is going to become a region of much greater strategic interest in the next five years.

Mihalka and Anderson have written "Is the Sky Falling?  Energy Security and Transnational Terrorism."  Good work.  I agree with the conclusion, but it is based entirely on data analysis.  Comprehensive CT analysis needs a little more. After all there were no hijack-jetliner-crash-into-skyscraper data points on September 10, 2001.  Still it's worth reading, because it sums up all the OSINT data we do have on terrorist attacks on energy infrastructure.  Their article is published in the US Navy's Center for Contemporary Conflict's journal Strategic Insights.

Speaking of oil IntelFusion recently linked to a Harvard-based report on the possible impact of a closure of the Straits of Hormuz.  It's a reminder of how complex and -- vulnerable -- the global energy supplies are to "outside" events.

And speaking of IntelFusion, they're reporting on new efforts by DoD in something called "cloud computing." See also this KMWorld report.

I'm back to those clouds again.  Posting will be light over the next two weeks as I seek to get a little more out of my summer of "independence."

Al Arian Gets an Ankle Bracelet?

The Investigative Project on Terrorism website reports that Sami al-Arian may be released on bond pending trial on criminal contempt charges. 

Al-Arian faces two counts of criminal contempt for his refusal to testify before federal grand juries investigating terror financing by a northern Virginia think tank, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), with which he had worked closely. Prosecutors granted him immunity in exchange for his truthful testimony and his defiance triggered two civil contempt orders.

Jihadica Points the Way

I think it's pretty obvious that this blog reflects my interest on the Sunni-side of the radical spectrum.  Except for  my post on an Iranian newspaper article on Ahmadinejad, there's little of things-Shiite on this site.  I rely on others for insights into the radical Shiite/Iranian threat. 

Will at Jihadica points to a wonderful new blog, Zamin, dedicated to news and primary source material (OSINT) associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Around the World

In Iraq:  Al Qaeda is moving on (via GulfNews)

Baghdad: Some groups of Al Qaida terror network in Iraq have started leaving the country towards other hot spots in Africa like Sudan and Somalia, security sources tell Gulf News. A key reason behind the change in strategy by the so-called Al Qaida Organisation in Mesopotamia is the intensity of the latest military strikes launched by Iraqi and US forces against the network, which has been the major challenge to restoring the stability of Iraq, the sources said....A source at Iraqi Ministry of National Security said that documents and letters found in hideouts of "some elements of Al Qaida" during search operations in Sunni suburbs in Baghdad, which were previously under the control of Al Qaida, "prove these elements left Iraq for Somalia and Sudan".  The information, which could not be confirmed by independent sources, could represent a victory for the Iraqi government, headed by Nouri Al Maliki..

In Italy (via AKI)

Milan, 7 July (AKI) - The President of the northern Italian city of Milan, Filippo Penati, has triggered widespread debate with a controversial proposal to fine Muslims who pray on the streets outside the city's mosque.  According to authorities, the number of people praying on the sidewalk creates traffic and obstacles for pedestrians in the area surrounding the Viale Jenner mosque, a converted garage.

and this (via AKI)

Rome, 7 July (AKI) - Abdellatif Ibrahim Fatayer, one of the men convicted of hijacking the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985, was freed in Rome on Monday. Fatayer, who was born in the Tel al-Zaatar Palestinian refugee camp north of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, is the youngest of the hijackers. According to the Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, Fatayer was expected to be deported from Italy after serving a 21-year sentence plus three years under police surveillance. But Lebanon refused to accept him after he was freed from jail.

In Pakistan (via AKI/DAWN)

Khar, 7 July (AKI/DAWN) - Pro-Taliban militants in Pakistan have established Sharia or Islamic courts in the Bajaur tribal region which borders Afghanistan.  A large number of people are believed to be waiting to use the courts established by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan in order to resolve disputes instead of waiting for action by the tribal administration. The courts have been functioning for a couple of weeks in the Sewai area, about 20 kilometres northwest of Khar, the regional headquarters of Bajaur tribal region.

In Washington, DC (via Danger Room)

Ha hahahahahhaha ha ha  ha  ha aaaaah

UPDATE (07/12/08): Okay, I knew this, but it's still funny.