Official,
private assessments contradict president’s claim that group is on ‘path to
defeat’
The threat
posed by al Qaeda terrorism around the world continues to increase despite
President Barack Obama’s recent claim that the central group behind the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks is on the path to defeat, according to U.S. and foreign
counterterrorism officials and private experts.
Obama said
in a speech to the National Defense University May 23 that because of the death
of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and most of his top aides, “we are safer.”
While
terrorist threats still exist, “the core of al Qaeda in Pakistan and
Afghanistan is on the path to defeat,” the president said.
However, a
U.S. counterterrorism official said the threat posed by al Qaeda is growing.
“From Africa to Pakistan, it is spreading systematically,” the official said.
The
official blamed the Obama administration policy of focusing its
counterterrorism efforts almost exclusively on central al Qaeda.
The focus
on Pakistan and Afghanistan resulted in a lack of targeted counterterrorism
efforts in other locations, the official said. The official added that
counterterrorism efforts have been weakened by the administration’s policy of
dissociating Islam from al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorism. The policy was a
key effort of John Brennan, White House counterterrorism chief during the first
Obama administration. As CIA director, Brennan has expanded the policy of
limiting links between Islam and terrorism at the agency.
The result
is that Islamist terror groups are flourishing, posing direct threats to the
United States and to U.S. interests outside the country, the official said.
That assessment is bolstered by a new repeted by
the private Lignet intelligence group. The report made public Tuesday says the
U.S. government’s overreliance on sanctions and surveillance has limited the
war on terror.
The result is “a decentralized al Qaeda structure—and a much
greater threat,” the report said.
“Al Qaeda has transitioned from a hierarchical cell
structure to a franchise organization that is now responsible for four times as
many terrorist attacks a year as it was before 9/11,” the report said.
“Al Qaeda training camps are now being established on the
Arabian Peninsula, in Africa, countries of the former Soviet Union, and
Southeast Asia.”
U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Southwest Asia, including a
steady series of armed drone attacks against al Qaeda leaders, have resulted in
central al Qaeda moving out of the region.
York Zirke, head of Germany’s federal criminal police
agency, told a conference in Russia recently that al Qaeda and other terrorist
groups are shifting operations from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Syria, northern
Africa, Yemen, and other countries.
“Speaking about the situation in the world, it has to be
reiterated that al Qaeda and organizations associated with it are not halting
their activities, but the centers of its activities have moved from the area
close to the Pakistani and Afghani borders to other regions such as Syria,
Northern Africa, Mali, and Yemen,” Zirke said during a conference in Kazan,
Russia, on June 6, according to Interfax.
The U.S. official outlined gains by al Qaeda both
ideologically and operationally in expanding its reach as well as developing
affiliates in key regions targeted by Islamists over the past several months.
Al Qaeda has moved rapidly to expand in parts of east, west,
and north Africa, helped by the so-called Arab Spring.
A key affiliate, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, known as
AQIM, and the Somalia-based al Shabaab group are the two main groups operating
and expanding in Africa. The Nigerian al Qaeda group Boko Haram also emerged as
a new affiliate and is posing a significant threat to the region.
About 4,000 French troops were dispatched to Mali in January
to battle al Qaeda terrorists.
AQIM is expanding despite the French military intervention. A
BBC report from
May 29 stated that the expansion is not new. “Militants and armed radical
groups have expanded and entrenched their positions throughout the Sahel and
Sahara over the last decade under the umbrella of [AQIM].”
French troops announced a day later they had uncovered an
AQIM bomb factory engaged in making suicide bomber vests in northern Mali.
U.S. intelligence agencies recently identified a new AQIM
training base near Timbuktu in Mali. An al Qaeda training manual discovered in
Mali revealed that terrorists are training with SA-7 surface-to-air missiles,
the Associated Press repeted.
Al Qaeda affiliates in Libya are moving into the power
vacuum left by the ouster of the regime of Muammar Gadhafi. The main al Qaeda
affiliate there is Ansar al Sharia, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2012, attack
against the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi that killed four Americans,
including Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.
France’s government recently said Paris has become
increasingly alarmed about al Qaeda activities in Libya and is considering a
deployment of troops near Libya for counterterrorism operations.
French President Francois Hollande said in a speech last
month that Libya-based jihadists represent the main security threat to North
Africa and also to Europe. He told a reporter May 23 that the terrorist threat
in Mali “began in Libya and is returning to Libya.”
The concerns are based on recent intelligence reports that
al Qaeda and other jihadists groups have new training camps in the southern
Libyan desert.
Further east in Africa, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood
government is creating an environment that is allowing al Qaeda to develop in
that country.
A U.S. intelligence official has said reports from Egypt
identified al Qaeda groups operating Al-Azhar University in Cairo. The
university is said to be a covert base for al Qaeda organizational and
training activities that is developing a jihadist network made up of many
different nationalities.
Al Shabaab in Somalia continues to conduct attacks, although
there are signs the group is fragmented, with some armed fighting among various
groups within al Shabaab. The group remains a key al Qaeda affiliate.
Attacks related to al Shabaab continue to increase,
according to U.S. officials.
One particular concern for security officials are reports
that al Qaeda is moving into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. A U.S. official said in
May that al Qaeda elements were conducting small arms training in the
mountainous areas of the Sinai Peninsula in preparation for fighting alongside
jihadist rebels in Syria.
The al Qaeda affiliate in the Sinai was identified by U.S.
officials as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM). The group’s logo is similar to that of
al Qaeda—a black flag, an AK-47, and a globe.
Saudi Arabia has been battling the affiliate al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula, which tried several high-profile airline bombings against
the United States. The group is led by several former inmates of the U.S.
prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and is very active against the government of
Yemen.
Earlier this year, a leaked memorandum from Saudi Arabia’s
Interior Ministry revealed that Riyadh is exporting al Qaeda terrorists to
Syria. The memo from April 2012 disclosed that 1,239 prisoners who were to be
executed were trained and sent to “jihad in Syria” in exchange for a full
pardon. The prisoners included 212 Saudis and the rest were foreigners from
Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, Somalia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and
Iraq and included Palestinians.
Syria’s al Qaeda group is the al Nusra Front, which has
emerged as the most powerful rebel group opposing the forces of the Bashar
al-Assad regime.
Obama said in his National Defense University speech that
the “lethal yet less capable al Qaeda affiliates” and domestic jihadists remain
a threat.
“But as we shape our response, we have to recognize that the
scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before
9/11.”
The Lignet report said the use of sanctions and financial
penalties against al Qaeda produced the unintended consequence of transforming
al Qaeda into a coalition of loose, localized, autonomous terror cells.
“In terms of financing, al Qaeda’s shuria or high command
council, no longer plays a central role in allocating expenditures or
soliciting funds,” the report said. “Instead, terrorist financing has moved
further into the ‘gray’ economy. Cells raise funds from a combination of
charities, independent criminal ventures, and licit businesses.”
Crime is now the main source of al Qaeda funds and criminal
activities by the group include extortion, hijacking, theft, blackmail, the
drug trade, and kidnapping for ransom.
“Counterterrorism efforts that target the financing of
terrorism are a work in process,” the report concludes. “The measures employed
by the United States and others in the last 12 years have reshaped rather than
resolved the terrorist threat. It remains to be seen if the United States will
be able to in turn adapt to al Qaeda’s new and alarming franchise cell
structure and finance methods.”
Joseph Myers, a retired Army officer and specialist on the
ideology of Islamist terror, said U.S. efforts to target and kill al Qaeda
leaders have been successful. But al Qaeda affiliates are spreading “from the
Horn of Africa, across North Africa and post-Gaddafi Libya into central Africa
to Dagestan and like-minded bombers in Boston,” he noted.
“Al Qaeda is an idea, not simply an organization and ideas
are not easily ‘killed,’” Myers said in an email.
The U.S. government’s counterterrorism paradigm is misguided
because the forefront of global Islamic jihad is not al Qaeda, but the Muslim
Brotherhood “we are now partnering with as a matter of policy,” he said.
The doctrine of Islamic jihad remains the key ideological
threat that must be recognized, he said. Until that is realized, “we will
continue to have national security failures of analysis and prediction and not
only al Qaeda, but other Islamic jihadist groups will continue to emerge and
spread,” Myers said.
Fred Fleitz, a former intelligence analyst now with Lignet,
said al Qaeda has shifted tactics toward “a multitude of smaller,
low-probability attacks.”
“This includes recruiting members behind U.S. borders through
Internet-based efforts to find and radicalize ‘home grown terrorists,’” Fleitz
said in an email.
“I am especially concerned about the recent plot to bomb a
Toronto to New York train which was backed by al Qaeda members in Iran,” Fleitz
said. “This was a good example of what al Qaeda can still do.”
“We are also seeing al Qaeda franchises and other Islamist
groups growing in strength in Mali, Somalia, and Nigeria. Seven of nine Syrian rebel groups
are Islamist and there is an al Qaeda presence in Syria.”
Sebastian
Gorka, a counterterrorism expert and military affairs fellow with the
Foundation for Defense for Democracies, said the administration has created a
narrative that asserts the United States is solely at war with the remnants of
al Qaeda Central and that the group is on the decline since bin Ladin was
killed.
“The rest
of the national security mission in counterterrorism has been reduced to the
amorphous ‘counter violent extremism’ which is of course fallacious since as a
nation we are not threatened by general violent extremism – Basque separatists
or abortion clinic bombers – but a specific brand of religious extremism:
global jihad,” Gorka said in an email.
“Anything
that countermands the official narrative, such as the the Fort Hood shooter or
the Boston bombers, has to be undermined with labels such ‘workplace
violence’ or ‘loser jihadis’ since anything else would mean that al Qaeda is
very much alive and well,” said Gorka, who teaches U.S. national security at
Georgetown University. “This represents a politically driven distortion of
objective threat assessments.”
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