Beware the Morphing of Al Qaeda in Iraq
By Douglas Farah
One of the fundamental truths of dealing with networks, terrorist or otherwise, is that they will morph quickly to survive and adapt as the environment around them changes.
This seems to be the case in Iraq, where, as we know from captured documents that al Qaeda linked groups there have been badly hurt in recent months.
The strategy may now be to move outside Iraq and wage a different type of war from surrounding countries.
The indicators, as outlined by Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, are leaders leaving with cash and seeking refuge outside of areas of intense U.S. pressure.
If anyone remembers the drug wars in the Andes in the 1980s and 1990s (which I covered intensely for more than a decade), one will remember the great joy at the felling of the individual cartel leaders (Rodriguez Gacha, Pablo Escobar, the arrest of the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers etc.), and the inevitable statements that these actions would have a significant impact on the amount of cocaine entering the United States.
Of course, the flow of cocaine was never dented at all. The organizations simply regrouped, decentralized, became much more difficult to attack frontally, and business went on. My full blog is here.
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