Two Worrisome Trends

By Douglas Farah

There are two stories today that point to ongoing problems and the future contours of the conflicts in which we will be emerged in coming years.

The first is the extensive New York Times piece on who lack of resources, bureaucratic infighting and lack of unified vision (coupled with a high tolerance for Pakistan's game-playing) has helped allow al Qaeda to regroup in the tribal regions.

Perhaps the most disturbing item in the piece, which chronicles numerous disturbing elements that show how much the inter-agency process is returning to its pre-9/11 mindset the further the memories recede, is the following:

Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

Radical Islamist groups (as well as most radicalized groups) desperately need areas where they can gather to mutually reinforce their beliefs, weed out unbelievers and build a joint narrative that allows them to tell their stories to themselves in which they are doing the will of Allah.

Without that, members grow in doubt, drift away from the core beliefs and lessen in their ardor for the cause. Joint experiences are also vital to forging the kind of comraderie that needs to exist among groups that are prepared to kill and be killed.

To allow these camps to be reconstituted is perhaps one of the single most dangerous failures we face. My full blog is here.

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