OBL IN ABBOTTABAD: AN ARM-CHAIR AMIR WITH WANING INFLUENCE

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO.748

B.RAMAN

During the years he fled from the jihadi battle-front in the Af-Pak region and took shelter in his hide-out in Abbottabad in Pakistan (2005-2011), Osama bin Laden was reduced to a pathetic Amir in arm-chair who exercised little authority or influence over the global jihad being waged by Al Qaeda and its associates. His advice was often sought by his jihadi associates out of respect for his past contribution and “achievements”, but rarely followed. The new post-9/11 crop of jihadis waged their jihad in their own way without paying heed to his words of caution and advice. After he moved to Abbottabad, he was neither the commander-in-chief nor an ideologue par excellence, but a senior jihadi who counted less and less.

2. That is the conclusion that comes out loud and clear from a tiring study of 17 of the documents found in his Abbottabad hide-out by the Navy Seals and since de-classified by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and handed over to the Combating Terrorism Centre (CTC) of West Point which has got them translated from Arabic to English and published them in a compilation titled “Letters from Abbottabad”. This compilation was released by the CTC to the public on May 2, coinciding with the first anniversary of the death of OBL. (http://www.ctc.usma.edu/ )

3. On its web site, the CTC describes itself as “an independent, privately-funded research and educational institution situated at West Point that informs and shapes counter-terrorism policy and strategy.” It describes the documents released to the public as electronic or draft letters---possibly indicating thereby that while some of them were recovered from the computer hard and soft ware seized from OBL’s hide-out, others were in a manuscript form.

4. I have studied these documents keeping in view the possibility that the de-classification and release of these documents might be part of the CIA’s PSYWAR against Al Qaeda. While I do not rule out the possibility of some motivated editing before the documents were made available to the public, I have no reasons to suspect that the documents might have been fabricated. They seem to me to be largely genuine.

5.My impression of their being genuine is strengthened by the fact that some of the conclusions emerging from a study regarding the declining authority and influence of OBL negate the assessments disseminated by the US during those years projecting OBL as the all-powerful head of the global jihad. It now turns out that he was not and that the earlier assessments were wrong.

6.The earliest of the documents is dated September 2006 and is a communication to OBL from one of his supporters in Saudi Arabia ( apparently influential) sounding a wake-up call that the popularity of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Umma had started declining because of what was projected as its strategic folly of attacking Saudi Arabia and Yemen and targeting the Saudi oil riches. According to the originator of this communication, this policy had very little support from among Arab intellectuals and other elite and even from the common man.

7. A recurring theme of the communications exchanged between OBL and his associates is the wrong tactics adopted by the affiliate of Al Qaeda in Iraq called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Pakistani Taliban called the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which came into existence after the raid into the Lal Masjid of Islamabad by the Pakistani security forces in July 2007.

8. The documents clearly show that OBL and some of his senior associates were disturbed by what they viewed as the pollution of the jihad by the Islamic State of Iraq and the TTP. They saw signs of this pollution in the attacks on Christians---particularly Catholics--- in Iraq and in the indiscriminate suicide attacks carried out by the TTP in mosques during prayers. The degeneration of the jihad in Iraq and Pakistan from targeted attacks on identified enemies of Islam to indiscriminate suicide attacks that killed the identified enemies and many innocent Muslims who had nothing to do with them was a matter of growing concern to OBL and his senior associates.

9. They even drafted a declaration on the subject deploring such attacks to be issued by OBL but for some reasons not clear, it was not issued. What is revealing and clearly indicative of OBL’s declining authority and influence is the cruel fact that OBL’s displeasure and admonitions over this pollution had practically no effect on the Islamic State of Iraq and the TTP. They continued with their acts of pollution unmindful of OBL’s feelings and concerns

10. In his famous Fatwa of 1998 issued from Kandahar where he was then based, OBL had projected the global jihad as directed against the Crusaders and the Jewish people---meaning essentially against the US and Israel. It subsequently turned into a jihad not only against the US and Israel, but also against even Islamic rulers seen as collaborating with the US.

11. The realisation that this was a tactical and strategic mistake with negative consequences for the global jihad is writ large in the declassified communications. The need to revert to the primary focus against the US---in the US Homeland itself as well as in non-Islamic countries having a US presence--- is repeatedly underlined  in the communications. To kill a snake one must crush its head and not its tail is an expression that finds eloquent expression in the communications.

12. Those who exchanged these communications felt that Al Qaeda should focus on Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia where victory was within its grasp and should not fritter away its energy in other areas. But neither their ideas nor their assessments nor their caution and advice had much of an impact on the jihadis who had started increasingly waging the jihad in their own style, only paying lip-service to their loyalty to OBL.

13. The documents speak very little of the leadership style and likely strategy of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the present Amir of Al Qaeda. There are some tantalising tit-bits indicative of his growing influence at the expense of that of OBL, but the evidence on this score is sketchy.

14. There are other interesting tit-bits about OBL wanting to have President Barack Obama and Gen.David Petraeus, the then US Commander in Afghanistan, assassinated in Afghanistan through Ilyas Kashmiri, the Pakistani commando turned jihadi terrorist, but those are not  of present significance now that OBL is no more. ( 5-5-12)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com Twitter : @SORBONNE75 )

AL QAEDA: WEAKENED, BUT NOT DECIMATED

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO.747

B.RAMAN

(Written at the request of the “Hindustan Times”. An edited version of this was carried by it on May 2,2012 at http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/Chunk-HT-UI-ViewsSectionPage-TopStories/Down-but-not-out/Article1-849128.aspx )

A year after the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of the US Navy Seals at Abbottabad in Pakistan on May 2 last year, the central command and control of Al Qaeda based in Pakistan continues to be in a state of disarray.

It has not been able to recover from the severe leadership losses inflicted on it by the US Drone (pilotless plane) strikes  after the death of OBL. The lack-lustre leadership of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the new Amir of Al Qaeda, who is also believed to be operating from hide-outs in Pakistan, has not been able to restore the elan and the motivation of its central command and control.

The disruption of its central command and control appears to have affected its ability to plan and launch catastrophic terrorist strikes in far way places like the US Homeland. However, its affiliates like the Talibans of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Haqqani Network of Afghanistan, the Lashkar-e-Toiba ( LET) and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) of Pakistan, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen; al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, based in Algeria and Mali; al Shabaab of Somalia; and Boko Haram, of Nigeria have maintained their capability for sporadic acts of terrorism involving mass fatalities in their respective areas of operation.

While the global reach of Al Qaeda has been affected due to the inability of its present leadership to plan and carry out terrorist strikes on a global scale, its regional command and control, regional cadres and regional ability to carry out strikes remain unimpaired.

The affiliates of Al Qaeda continue to use the multi-modus operandi and multi-target operations that they had learnt from Al Qaeda. This was evident from the recent commando style attacks on different targets in Afghanistan by the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network. Mass casualty terrorist attacks carried out during the last one year by affiliates of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Nigeria highlight their continuing motivation and ability to strike when an opportunity presents itself.

The death of OBL has not only weakened the lethality of   the central command and control, but it has also blunted its Net-based PSYWAR campaign on which Al Qaeda was dependent for winning new recruits and for imparting online training and for disseminating online instructions. As a result, there has been a decline in the flow of Arab recruits with a capability for global attacks and in attacks launched by Net-motivated “lone wolf” jihadis.

There are also indications that after the death of  OBL, who was a Saudi of Yemeni origin with influential family connections n Saudi Arabia, there has been a decline in the flow of funds to Al Qaeda from so-called charity organisations and affluent Saudi families. The shortages caused by this decline have not been made good by the money earned from narcotics smuggling.

The weakening of Al Qaeda as a global terrorist organization should not be taken to mean that dangers of a catastrophic or mass casualty act of terrorism of the kind practised by Al Qaeda before the death of OBL are less likely now. The dangers will remain high so long as the intelligence agencies of the world are not able to identify and neutralize the operatives of Al Qaeda trained and placed in sleeper cells in different parts of the world by OBL when he was alive.

The central command and control of Al Qaeda has been disrupted, but not its global network of sleeper cells. If a new leader emerges who is able to rally them around and motivate them to act, we may still face new acts of mass casualty terrorism.

So long as Al Qaeda’s global network of sleeper cells is not disrupted, dangers of maritime terrorism, acts involving weapons of mass destruction material and mass disruption of the internet have to be guarded against through international co-operation in intelligence collection and sharing and physical security.

The 9/11 strikes by Al Qaeda in the US Homeland led to a decade of close international co-operation against global terrorism. We cannot afford to let this co-operation weaken till Al Qaeda is decimated beyond recovery. Al Qaeda has presently been weakened, but not decimated.

India has to maintain a high state of vigilance and preparedness  against commando-style, complex terrorist strikes of the kind launched by the LET in Mumbai on 26/11 and by the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan recently.  The LET has not repeated its 26/11 style terrorist strikes in Indian territory after 2008. But, its training camps in Pakistani territory have been as active as ever and the anti-India radicalization of its leadership shows no signs of abating.

There are no indications of any change in the use of terrorism as  a strategic weapon against India by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

If the US and other NATO forces carry out their plans to thin out their presence in Afghanistan in the coming months, the US is expected to transfer its holdings of arms and ammunition to the Afghan Security Forces. There will be dangers of the leakage of some of them into the hands of the jihadi terrorist groups in the Af-Pak region.

With the thinning down of the NATO presence, the jihadi terrorist organisations now operating in Afghanistan will find at their disposal surplus jihadis well-trained and motivated. India has to be prepared to the possibility of some of these cadres and weapons being diverted to Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) to re-kindle terrorism and the Pakistan-sponsored proxy war in Jammu & Kashmir.

At a time when there is an urgent need for revamping our intelligence collection , follow-up action and physical security capabilities through close co-operation between the central agencies and the State Police and through fresh instruments such as the proposed National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC), it is  worrying  that the differences between the Centre and the States on the NCTC are threatening to come in the way of the exercise to strengthen our counter-terrorism capability.

Stability in the Af-Pak region is years away. Till a modicum of stability is established, the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan will continue to be the epi-centre of the attempts to revive global terrorism and to keep India bleeding. The international community---and particularly India and the US, which face the maximum threats from the terrorists based in the Af-Pak region---cannot afford to slacken their vigilance.

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Research & Analysis Wing.He was the head of its Counter-terrorism Division for six years) 

INTERNAL SECURITY: TIME FOR PM TO STEP IN

B RAMAN

Individual States can control regional terrorism or insurgency with a limited spread. We have had success stories as in the case of Al Ummah in Tamil Nadu.

2.But terrorism or insurgency of a pan-Indian spread is a different kind of threat like that of the Indian Mujahideen or insurgency of the Maoists. The whole of India is their theatre. And target. No individual State police, however professional and competent, can deal with the threat on its own.

3.We are on the threshold of other and more deadly mutations of terrorism such as maritime terrorism. Global terrorist organisations have been on the look-out for weapons of mass destruction material that they can use. From global, such threats are likely to become national.

4.Only the Government of India can deal with these mutations and prevent them from operating in our territory. No individual State Police has or will ever have the expertise and capability to prevent and neutralize them.

5.Our internal security problems are inextricably entwined with our external environment. The non-State actors of today---whether terrorists or insurgents---copy-cat States in their ability to use modern technologies and new means of causing death and destruction.

6. Protecting ourselves and our nation from these ever-changing threats is the business of all of us--- whether the central agencies or the State Police. When our Constitution was framed more than 60 years ago, our internal security tasks were simple ---dealing with dacoities, robberies and insurgencies of the Telangana kind. Our founding fathers had the confidence that the States can deal with any internal security threat alone. In their keenness to preserve and protect our federal State, they made the Police a State subject.

7.Threats have changed today. Beyond our worst imagination. No single Government or agency or police force can cope with the threats of today by operating from an island of its own imagination. The island mentality and the island techniques in the management of internal security have to give way to a co-operative and co-ordinated way of managing internal security.

8.Federalism is no longer the ability to act alone. It is the willingness and the ability to act together. Terrorists and insurgents are increasingly acting together at the regional, national and global level. But we in India are not. We find it easier to co-operate with other nations, but not with each other.

9.The current controversy over the National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) between the Centre and the States illustrates the continuing prevalence of the island mentality in dealing with pan-Indian internal security threats.

10.The concept was borrowed by P.Chidambaram, the Union Home Minister, from the US where its NCTC has played a useful role in preventing terrorism. Normally, there should have been no controversy but Chidambaram’s action in seeking to make the NCTC a part of the Intelligence Bureau with executive powers of arrest and search has rightly alarmed the opposition-ruled States.

11.IN the US and elsewhere, such instruments function independently and not as a wing of the intelligence agency. They have no powers of arrest and search. The IB is a clandestine instrument. Fears of likely misuse of such powers by it are legitimate. They have to be addressed.

12.We used to have good habits of co-operation in the past when the same political party was in power in the Centre and the States. These habits are withering away due to the emerging multipolarity of our political landscape in which everything is getting politicized.

13.We need new instruments to deal with the threats of today. Yesterday’s instruments are out of date. To oppose the new instruments under the pretext of threats to federalism is short-sighted and will prove to be suicidal.

14.We have to think of new ways of interpreting and protecting federalism that would strengthen our ability to maintain internal security without jeopardizing our federal structure. Dogged, unthinking opposition to new, much-needed structures such as the NCTC will prove counter-productive.

15.The Centre cannot escape blame for the current controversy. It should have realized that it cannot deal with internal security without the co-operation of the State Police. Instead of consulting the States on equal basis and encouraging them to get into the same boat, it has added to their suspicions by playing games that politicians play unmindful of national interests. Its action in avoiding political consultations on the NCTC before issuing the notification on its creation is haunting it now. Instead of making the States more flexible and responsive to ideas of pan-Indian counter-terrorism management, it has made them more distrustful of the Centre.

16.It is time for the Prime Minister to come to the forefront, take over the leadership role in this matter and remove the suspicions and apprehensions of the States. How can India have internal peace if the institutions of individual States decay and how can individual States  have internal peace if the central institutions are thwarted from functioning as they should ?

17.The Prime Minister should announce the withdrawal of the notification already issued and set up a small group of experts from the Centre and the States to come out with a fresh draft of how the NCTC will function without adding to frictions between the Centre and the States.

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com Twitter : @SORBONNE75 )

AL QAEDA: A YEAR AFTER THE DEATH OF OBL

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR---PAPER NO. 746

B.RAMAN

There is an air of nervousness all over the world where there is a strong US presence regarding the dangers of Al Qaeda-inspired attacks on US nationals and interests coinciding with the first anniversary of the killing  of Osama bin Laden by US Navy Seals during a clandestine raid into his hide-out in Abbottabad in Pakistan on May 2 of last year. A terrorist alert has already been sounded and US intelligence agencies and security forces are already in a state of preparedness to counter any attack.

2.The greatest danger is feared in the Af-Pak region where there is considerable US presence offering tempting targets to Al Qaeda and its affiliates. This is also an area where there is maximum anti-US anger. The US is particularly concerned over Pakistan where the Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have not been  co-operative with the US in unearthing and neutralising the remnants of Al Qaeda.

3.After seeing the impunity with which Osama bin Laden had been living and operating from right under the nose of the Pakistani Army in Abbottabad, one has reasons to fear that those remnants of Al Qaeda that have escaped death from the US Drone strikes must be similarly living in sanctuaries in the urban centres of Pakistan and biding their time for an opportunistic attack on US targets.

4.Among those still believed to be living and operating from Pakistani territory is Ayman al-Zawahiri, who took over as the Amir of Al Qaeda, after the death of OBL. He is not as charismatic as OBL and not as innovative in conceiving and having executed terrorist operations of a catastrophic nature on a global scale similar to the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US.

5. Under his leadership, the anti-US PSYWAR campaign of Al Qaeda is showing signs of losing some lustre. I have seen no evidence to show that Al Qaeda under Zawahiri’s leadership is making as effective use of social media networks as other traditional fundamentalist organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt have been doing.

6.In fact, none of the six organisations that have emerged as terrorist organisations with Al Qaeda like potential for catastrophic acts of terrorism have shown a capability for imaginatively using social media networks for promoting their ideological campaigns and terrorist strikes. These six organisations are the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) of Pakistan, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) popularly known as the Pakistani Taliban, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen; al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, based in Algeria and Mali; al Shabaab of Somalia; and Boko Haram, of Nigeria.

7. The loss of momentum of PSYWAR operations after the death of OBL has led to a decline of “lone wolf” terrorist attacks of the kind witnessed in Glasgow in June,2007.   Individual Muslims inspired by online radicalisation and training launching terrorist attacks on their own is no longer as dreaded as it was before the death of OBL

8. Organised jihadi terrorism is still a major threat to be reckoned with. The six organisations mentioned above have shown a capability for sustained operations in their respective areas and sporadic strikes outside their territory like the LET’s 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai and the AQAP’s failed attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound US plane on December 25,2009. The death of OBL at the hands of the US Navy Seals was followed by the death of Anwar al-Awlaki of the AQAP reportedly by a US Drone strike in Yemen on September 30,2011.

9. OBL, a Saudi of Yemeni origin, Ramzi Yousef of  Pakistan, now in a US jail, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, another Pakistani now in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre,  al-Awlaki, a US citizen of Yemeni origin, and Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed of the LET of Pakistan were the conceptualisers and executers of well-orchestrated and imaginatively planned terrorist strikes outside their traditional areas of operation. Of these, only Sayeed has presently the motivated cadre and infrastructure to organise trans-national terrorist strikes of Al Qaeda kind.

10.Zawahiri is more an expert on jihadi intifada, a kind of regionalised insurgency in areas where there is a high level of alienation as in Somalia, Algeria, Mali and Nigeria. Thus, after the death of OBL, one sees two jihadi trends--- an intifada-cum-insurgency kind of a regional dimension inspired by the thoughts and exhortations of Zawahiri and trans-national  terrorism of Al Qaeda inspiration promoted by the LET and the TTP, either on their own or with the collaboration of Al Qaeda and the Haqqani Network of Afghanistan.

11.Of the five conceptualisers of global or trans-national terrorism, two---OBL and al-Awlaki --- are dead and two---Ramzi and KSM—are in US custody. This leaves Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed as the terrorist with the greatest lethal potential for global or trans-national operations. Unless he is eliminated by India and the US—either acting alone or jointly--- the continuance  of global or trans-national terrorism of Al Qaeda kind will remain a major threat.

12.Al Qaeda and its affiliates are now operating on two planes----regional and trans-national. The regional has its epicentre in Somalia, Algeria, Mali and Nigeria. The trans-national has its epicentre in the Af-Pak region and Yemen. While the neutralisation of the regional terrorism has to be the responsibility of the States concerned with appropriate outside assistance,  that of the trans-national kind has to be the responsibility of the international community with the US playing the leadership role.

13.While the US is now convinced of the trans-national dimensions of the threat posed by the LET, it is still hesitant to mount against the LET a counter-terrorism operation, with no holds barred, of the kind mounted against Al Qaeda and bin Laden. Unless it does so, the threats emanating from trans-national terrorist groups and the remnants of Al Qaeda operating from the Af-Pak region will remain as high as ever.

14. The magnitude of these threats could increase after the thinning down of the US and other NATO forces in Afghanistan. The implications of the continued non-cooperation of the Pakistani Army and the ISI in dealing with the LET and the remnants of Al Qaeda and of a premature withdrawal of the US and other NATO forces from Afghanistan are factors that have to be carefully analysed in any assessment of the terrorist scenario after the death of OBL. In its anxiety to thin down its presence in Afghanistan, the US is not paying adequate attention to these factors.

15. The thinning out of the US and other NATO forces from Afghanistan is likely to lead to a transfer of large quantities of arms and ammunition of different kinds to the Afghan security forces by the departing US forces. There are dangers of the leakage of many of these into the hands of  the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, the Haqqani Network, Al Qaeda, the LET and other Pakistani jihadi organisations.

16. The Af-Pak region is again likely to be awash with arms and ammunition as it was before 9/11. There is a danger of some of them finding their way into Jammu & Kashmir along with surplus trained cadres of the Pakistani jihadi organisations. If India is not  careful, it may face a repeat of 1989 when surplus trained cadres and arms and ammunition from Afghanistan made their way into Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir to assist in an ISI-organised proxy war to annex J&K.

17. OBL is dead, but the threats emanating from the region will remain as high as before until the jihadi terrorist remnants operating from this region are neutralised and their sources of funding and arms and ammunition are forced to dry up. ( 27-4-12)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com Twitter : @SORBONNE75 )