Rewriting the Narrative: An Integrated Strategy for Counterradicalization

By Matthew Levitt

EXPAND FOCUS FROM COUNTERTERRORISM TO COUNTERRADICALIZATION,
TASK FORCE URGES

"As the U.S. government has come slowly to the realization that military force alone cannot defeat radical Islamist extremism, a precise strategy to effectively counter this extremism and empower mainstream alternatives has proved challenging."

A strong investment in counterradicalization -- with special focus on helping mainstream Muslims provide hopeful and practical alternatives to jihadist ideology -- should be a critical element of the Obama administration's counterterrorism strategy, a high-level Washington Institute task force urged today.

Rewriting the Narrative: An Integrated Strategy for Counterradicalization is the final report of the Task Force on Confronting the Ideology of Radical Extremism, a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission of diplomats, legislators, strategists, scholars, and experts. A joint project of two Institute programs -- Project FIKRA and the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence -- the task force has been meeting since June 2008 to devise a comprehensive strategy to counter the growing radicalization of Muslim populations, particularly youth, worldwide.

The report provides analysis and recommendations on a spectrum of discrete policy issues -- democracy promotion, political reform, public diplomacy, strategic communications, and counterradicalization -- offering an integrated approach to staunching the spread of Islamist extremism. The extensive recommendations suggest an array of policy instruments, from creating a Counterradicalization Forum that draws on "best practices" of friends and partners in Europe and the Middle East, to infusing with renewed mission, urgency, and creativity U.S. international broadcasting to Arab and Muslim societies.

Rewriting the Narrative is endorsed by a distinguished group of policy practitioners: members of Congress Jane Harman (D-CA); Sue Myrick (R-NC), and Adam Smith (D-WA); former 9/11 commissioner Timothy J. Roemer; former U.S. ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg; former deputy assistant to the president for homeland security Frank J. Cilluffo; the presidents of the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute Kenneth Wollack and Lorne W. Craner, respectively; prominent scholars Bruce Hoffman and Mohammed M. Hafez; former Kennedy School dean and Clinton administration official Joseph S. Nye, Jr.; former Bush administration officials Randa Fahmy Hudome and M. C. Andrews; president of the Henry L. Stimson Center Ellen Laipson; Freedom House executive director Jennifer Windsor; Hudson Institute vice president S. Enders Wimbush; president of the Progressive Policy Institute Will Marshall; Johns Hopkins SAIS adjunct professor Joshua Muravchik; and Washington Institute executive director Robert Satloff.

J. Scott Carpenter, Michael Jacobson, and Matthew Levitt of The Washington Institute convened the task force.

A free PDF version of the full report is available here.

Are Acts of Staged Controversy an Islamist Strategic Tactic?

By Madeleine Gruen

Through careful study of terrorist incidents and investigations and study of the histories of the terrorist groups, U.S. law enforcement officers, security officials, and intelligence analysts have developed an understanding of the tactics, techniques and procedures used by terrorists preparing for and conducting attacks. Professionals can usually distinguish between a truly suspicious incident and benign behavior. However, there is a third category of non-violent activities that is more difficult to identify, which we will refer to as "acts of staged controversy."

There are some cases where witnesses describe actors' behavior as "odd" yet very overt—behavior apparently designed to attract attention. Viewed under differing prisms, the behavior could be classified as either benign or as some type of terrorist activity. Decision makers and practitioners should consider the possibility that certain incidents are staged or that they are escalated by manipulation of the media and the legal system to create controversy and to provoke a response to serve strategic purposes.

It is very difficult to prove ulterior intentions behind what we are referring to as "acts of staged controversy." Perhaps these acts are deliberately provocative. Or, it is possible these are innocent events that may be seized upon by advocacy groups for political gain. We present this hypothesis to provide an alternative way of analyzing these types of incidents.

Full article available on the Investigative Project on Terrorism web site.

Mexico Rises to Near the Top of the Foreign Agenda

By Douglas Farah

For those of us who have been watching Mexico's death struggle with the drug cartels, the sudden surge in official interest is both welcome and overdue.

It is particularly welcome because it both acknowledges the depth of the problem and the danger it poses to the United States directly (as well as the Mexican state), while also at least nodding to the fact that the United States itself bears a significant burden of responsibility for what is happening.

What is no longer in debate is that Mexico is at war, and the war is having severe spillover effects across the border. (For a graphic look at how and where the killings occur, as well as links to important stories, see interactive map and other resources at the Los Angeles Times.)

As DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano stressed in her recent Congressional testimony, Aiding the Mexican government's fight against drug cartels is a top priority that demands the "utmost attention" of U.S. security officials, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said yesterday, announcing new steps aimed at preventing the spillover of violence into the United States.
My full blog is here.

Shift in British CT Strategy?

By Lorenzo Vidino

Dangerous Riptide Threatens Financial Institutions

By Dennis Lormel

A riptide or rip current is caused after waves coming in from the ocean hit the beach. The receding water is referred to as a backwash, causing a rip current on the surface. The bigger the waves, the more dangerous the riptide becomes to swimmers. In a strong riptide, swimmers are at greater risk of being caught in the backwash. The ultimate consequence is drowning. Riptides occur on the surface and swimmers trapped in them have a chance to survive by relaxing and swimming across the current, parallel to the shoreline. Unfortunately, the natural tendency is to swim against the current directly toward shore. This places the swimmer at higher risk of tiring and drowning, which could be avoided had the swimmer swam across the current and out of the riptide. More harrowing is an undertow. Undertows are currents along the bottom of the backwash. They pull their victims down beneath the surface. A strong undercurrent can knock a swimmer down and drag that individual out to sea on the bottom of the ocean. This makes the risk of drowning far greater.

What is the relevance of this information to financial institutions?

Many financial institutions are currently treading water in an ocean of economic uncertainty. They are having enough trouble staying afloat without having to worry about riptides, or worse yet undercurrents. Regrettably, the waves hitting the banks attempting to stay afloat are growing larger and more violent making it more difficult for those institutions to tread water. Consequently, the resulting riptides and undercurrents are gaining momentum and becoming extremely dangerous.

As the financial crisis has worsened over the last six months, many thousands of bank employees have lost their jobs. As this situation continues to grow bleaker, the layoffs will continue. In addition to the alarming number of layoffs, financial institutions have had to slash budgets dramatically. These overwhelming resource reductions are placing financial institutions at greater risk for falling prey to dangerous riptides or worse, a fatal undertow.

Although financial institutions are being forced to downsize staff and budget because of the losses they are sustaining, it does not relieve them of their Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) compliance and reporting obligations. Many of the people being let go from financial institutions are compliance professionals. The loss of talent and experience, coupled with likely diminished compliance functionality, could well be the next crippling blow causing one or more financial institutions to drown due to a catastrophic compliance breakdown.

The BSA requires financial institutions to establish and maintain a robust anti-money laundering (AML) program. An AML program has four mandatory requirements:

1. Development of internal policies, procedures and controls
2. Designation of a Compliance Officer
3. Ongoing employee training programs
4. Independent audit function to test programs

Essentially, financial institutions must have the ability to assess and mitigate risk. They must have the ability to monitor their systems for risk and to establish controls to ensure they meet all BSA reporting requirements, the most important of which are suspicious activity reporting and know your customer policies and procedures. The loss of highly qualified compliance professionals and the potential of decreased monitoring make it extremely challenging for financial institutions to adequately meet their reporting requirements. In many institutions, compliance professionals are not considered revenue generators, only cost centers. Therefore, a mindset could easily exist among senior business executives that compliance professionals are more expendable. This rationale is pervasive in the industry and incredibly flawed.

Compliance professionals may not be revenue generators. However, given the opportunity to perform and meet their obligations, they are revenue savers and/or loss preventers. If financial institution business executives follow their natural instinct and opine to cut compliance professionals because they are merely considered cost centers, then they will find themselves swimming against the riptide and will be more likely to drown in unnecessary business risk.

In today’s monetary crisis, many financial institutions are taking responsible steps to reduce unnecessary overhead. There are a number of internal institutional redundancies, where reductions are justified. This is particularly true where fraud, security and/or AML programs overlap by virtue of having been stove piped or having been duplicated as the result of mergers or acquisitions, resulting in redundant functions. In those instances, compliance resource reductions are generally more justifiable. However, compliance staff reductions must be assessed for the potential risk of inability to adequately meet BSA reporting and monitoring requirements.

The two elements of the AML program mandatory requirements that are most susceptible to budget cuts are training and internal controls. Training budgets have probably been sliced to the bone, as one of the easiest places to cut. How can compliance professionals continue to learn about the nuances of money laundering, emerging trends, and to adequately understand terrorist financing, if they do not receive appropriate training? Likewise, internal controls and monitoring capabilities have likely been reduced to more minimal levels. Any reduction in controls and/or monitoring capabilities place financial institutions at greater risk of vulnerability. How much compliance risk are these institutions willing to accept in order to meet budget reduction demands?

A troubling reality exists. Budget cuts have not escaped the attention of fraudsters, money launderers, and most problematic, terrorist financiers. The best of these bad guys know how to identify systemic weaknesses and exploit them for their nefarious purposes. They must be salivating at the opportunity in front of them.
In spite of the massive problems the financial crisis is causing financial institutions, there are two questions they better come to terms with:

1. How far are they willing to cut their compliance programs and risk non-compliance with BSA reporting requirements?
2. Do they have a belief that the regulators will give them a pass from BSA reporting requirements because of the perilous position they are already in?

Before answering these questions, financial institutions should come to the realization that they could be swept up in a dangerous riptide or undertow. Will they swim across the tide and reach safety or will they swim against the tide and drown. It will be interesting to see the choices they make as this unprecedented financial crisis plays out.

What's Missing in the New Threat Assessments

By Douglas Farah

In recent days two high-level assessments of the threats facing the United States have come out, and both are striking for their stark omissions of the same central theme: the criminal/terrorist nexus that is driving so much of what we see around the world.

The first assessment is the Annual Threat Assessment presented by Dennis Cl Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, presented as Congressional testimony.

The second is FBI Director Robert Mueller to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Both are interesting reading, and is heartening to see the Horn of Africa move far up the priority scale in both discussions. The DNI report also focuses some passing (but more than any other public statement) attention on Latin America, particularly Venezuela.

Director Mueller correctly states that: The world in which we live has changed markedly in recent years, from the integration of global markets and the ease of international travel to the rise and the reach of the Internet. But our perception of the world—and our place in it—also has changed...The universe of crime and terrorism stretches out infinitely before us, and we, too, are working to find what we believe to be out there, but cannot always see.

What has changed less, it seems, is the ability to integrate into out thinking and assessments changes as they occur. My full blog is here.

Case Western University Guantanamo Bay Report

By Michael B. Kraft

Amid the discussions inside and outside the government over how to deal with the hard core prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and in advance of President Obama’s reaffirmation last night of his intention to close the prison facility, Case Western University has released a new report calling for a comprehensive approach.

In brief passage in his speech to Congress last night on the nation’s economic situation, President Obama said:

“To overcome extremism, we must also be vigilant in upholding the values our troops defend — because there is no force in the world more powerful than the example of America. That is why I have ordered the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists — because living our values doesn't make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger. And that is why I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture.

The Case Western University Report said that shutting down Guantanamo is a start, but it will not be a comprehensive solution to the question of security detention (detention without charges of persons deemed a threat to national security) for the United States and other countries. The report suggested it is likely that security detention will continue to be utilized, though to a lesser extent and in different venues, by the new administration. Meanwhile, the report predicted that other countries would continue to experiment with their own various security detention programs.

The report and associated articles, was published last week in the Winter 2009 issue of the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law and can be accessed at http://www.case.edu/orgs/jil
The report came out after my February 19 roundup blog item on recidivism and released terrorists.

The report was based on two days of meetings last September by a group of U.S, and international officials, law experts and academics, at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland by the International Committee of the Red Cross and Case Western Reserve University's Frederick K. Cox International Law Center.

Case Western Reserve University Professor Michael Scharf (and a former State Department lawyer) who organized the project was quoted in a university’s press release as saying “Guantanamo was designed as a law-free zone, a place where the government could subject detainees to indefinite incarceration and harsh treatment without having to worry about the legality of such action."

Members of Congress Agree: Federal Agencies Should Cut All CAIR Ties

By Andrew Cochran

Three U.S. Senators have today joined a U.S. House Member in requesting additional information from the FBI on the recent cessation of its relationship with the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which was reported by the IPT on January 30. Moreover, the Senators specifically demand that all federal agencies cut any relationship with CAIR, a policy which I first enunciated on November 24, immediately after the guilty verdicts in the Holy Land Foundation criminal trial. Senators Jon Kyl, Charles Schumer, and Tom Coburn sent this letter today to FBI Director Mueller, asking whether all FBI field offices have cut off ties with CAIR and whether the Bureau knows of any other federal agencies with ties to CAIR.

In my post on November 24, I proposed the issuance of "a statement of policy which mandates that no component of the U.S. government will enter into any contract, grant, or agreement with any person or entity which is an unindicted co-coinspirator in a federal criminal case brought by the Department of Justice." The Obama Administration has plenty of incentive, in the form of this bipartisan letter, to do that now through a management memorandum issued by the Office of Management and Budget.

But Congress can also take direct action now by adding that policy to the FY 2009 omnibus appropriations bill now winding its way through Congress. Why wait?

Washington Balances Syria Engagement with Commitment to Lebanese Allies

By David Schenker

A few days ago, the State Department announced it would meet with Syrian Ambassador to Washington Imad Mustapha. The Syrian envoy had largely been ignored by the Bush Administration since the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri in 2005. It will be Mustapha’s highest-level administration meeting in years.

The meeting with the Syrian ambassador follows closely on two Obama Administration overtures toward Syria—the licensing of spare parts for Syrian Airlines Boeing 747 airplanes and allowing the transfer of $500,000 in charity to a Syrian charity affiliated with President Asad’s wife, Asma.

With Lebanese parliamentary elections set for June, Washington’s initial foray into engagement highlights the challenge of how to balance diplomatic outreach to Damascus with its ongoing commitment to allies in Beirut.

I’ve written a piece on this issue for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy which can be found here.

Is Removal of Cuba From "State Sponsors" List Inevitable?

By Andrew Cochran

The release by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) of a draft staff report on U.S.-Cuba policy, his statement yesterday upon release of that report, and statements by Secretary of State Clinton on the future of the relationship point towards the removal of Cuba from the "state sponsors of terrorism" list within the next 18 months, perhaps even this year. Sen. Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released the report with the following indictment of U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba: "Despite uncertainty about Cuba's mid-term political future, it is clear that the recent leadership changes have created an opportunity for the United States to reevaluate a complex relationship marked by misunderstanding, suspicion, and open hostility. Economic sanctions are a legitimate tool of U.S. foreign policy and they have sometimes achieved their aims, as in the case of apartheid in South Africa. After 47 years, however, the unilateral embargo on Cuba has failed to achieve its stated purpose of 'bringing democracy to the Cuban people,' while it may have been used as a foil by the regime to demand further sacrifices from Cuba's impoverished population. The current U.S. policy has many passionate defenders, and their criticism of the Castro regime is justified. Nevertheless, we must recognize the ineffectiveness of our current policy and deal with the Cuban regime in a way that enhances U.S. interests."

When posting news of the report, Steve Clemons also reported that U.S.-Cuba policy is under a complete review at the State Department. Secretary Clinton didn't deny that the review could include removal from the "state sponsors" list when Sen. Lugar asked a question on point during her confirmation process (see Question 104). The Lugar staff report discusses the process by which that would be accomplished (page 19). Michael Kraft discussed the process and other issues in a post about Cuba and North Korea on February 19, 2008. Quoting: "In Cuba’s case, the country has been relatively passive in its support for terrorism in recent years, perhaps because of the demise of the old Soviet Union, its major backer, and Cuba’s resulting economic problems. It remains on the terrorism list primarily because of its harboring of Latin American terrorist suspects and a few American fugitives from law. However, Castro’s regime has not sought removal from the terrorism list, making it more difficult for a President to be able to obtain and give Congress any credible assurances that the Cuban regime would not support terrorism in the future. Perhaps even more important is the opposition that would likely be aroused among the Cuban-American voting bloc in the politically important state of Florida. While Castro was in power no Administration has an incentive to take on that issue." During our panel discussion about FARC and Chavez last March, Jonathan Winer discussed the lack of evidence of Cuba’s support for terrorist groups in the past 10 years for terrorist groups with Steven Monblatt, the former Deputy Counter-terrorism Coordinator at the State Department.

Thus, based on an objective reading of the record, Cuba does not warrant inclusion on the list.

There would be another complication if the Administration moved to remove Cuba from the list, as I discussed last year when writing on the precedential value of the Libyan Claims Resolution Act: "Cuba is a special case. The Foreign Claims Settlement Commission at the Justice Department has already verified over 5,900 valid claims against the Castro regime for expropriating U.S. nationals’ property and for causing the disability or death of U.S. nationals, with a total principal value of over $1.9 billion. What happens to those certified claims if/when Cuba is removed from the "state sponsors" list and we normalize relations? Will those claimants be consulted before a settlement deal is concluded? At this point, I can only guess the answers." I predict that could be a sizable source of conflict, as that commission is not known for rapid adjudication of claims before it.

Mike Kraft wrote a year ago, "In short, any Cuban supporters... who may think that removing these countries from the terrorism list is a simple matter have more home work to do." Sen. Lugar's report and support for a sea change in relations moves the ball considerably.

MercyHurst Virtual Worlds Initiative

By Roderick Jones

MercyHurst College has a new exhibit on virtual worlds, which is well worth visiting.

The project is called Maleperduys and the website can be linked to here. The project examines virtual worlds from a wide variety of angles including terrorism, espionage and crime.

In its own words the site is a "... a custom intelligence analysis produced by graduate students at the Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies. The goal of this analysis is to illuminate the implications of the emergence and evolution of virtual worlds (VWs) to US national security. "

The exhibit also runs in its own custom browser based virtual world on the Just Leap In platform, which can be linked to via the website. This neatly demonstrates the value of virtual worlds in presenting information in a cogent virtual fashion.

FBI Director Vindicates Visa Waiver Criticisms By CT Blog Experts

By Andrew Cochran

Today, in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, FBI Director Robert Mueller gave official credence to the warnings voiced here by Michael Cutler and Bill West of the Visa Waiver Program. While discussing the threat of Mumbai-like attacks in the U.S., Director Mueller told the crowd, "Today, we still face threats from al Qaeda. But we must also focus on less well-known terrorist groups, as well as homegrown terrorists. And we must consider extremists from visa-waiver countries, who are merely an e-ticket away from the United States."

I should give Director Mueller credit; today isn't not the first time he's warned that the Visa Waiver Program is a giant security hole - it's actually the second. Last August, at the 5th Annual Border Security Conference in El Paso, he said, "It is sobering to realize that a terrorist in a visa-waiver country may be just a plane ticket away from the United States—or that a violent gang member may cross the border from Mexico and end up in Michigan. Yet this is today’s reality."

Yes, it is. But it's been a reality to us on this site, especially to our two former senior federal agents who worked customs and immigration cases, for four years. In fact, four years ago yesterday, Michael posted this when discussing homegrown terrorist Ahmed Omar Abu Ali: "It is safe to assume that there are other individuals living in other countries who are similarly related to Al Qaeda but who acquired citizenship in countries that participate in the Visa Waiver program, either by being born in those countries or by having been naturalized. There are 27 such countries plus Canada. This is why, given the on-going "War on terror" the Visa Waiver program needs to be terminated to provide our officials better opportunities to more effectively screen aliens who seek admission into the United States." You can read all of Michael's posts and Bill's posts on this topic.

Now if Director Mueller would only go further by admitting that the only "good" Visa Waiver Program is a "dead" Visa Waiver Program.

By the way, here are more comments by Michael on immigration fraud, sent in response to the news of the arrest in California of another homegrown terrorist suspect:

Terrorist Financing: Balancing the Benefits and Burdens of Reporting Requirements

By Dennis Lormel

Since Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) reporting requirements were enhanced by passage of the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, there has been an ongoing debate about their usefulness. In essence, are the benefits of reporting requirements to the law enforcement community outweighed by the burdens placed on financial institutions? The more important question is: are such measures effective or ineffective? The reality is, reporting requirements are here to stay. Therefore, we must continuously strive to develop, implement, improve and modify mechanisms to make reporting requirements as effective as possible.

Another reality is that terrorist and criminal organizations require funding in order to operate and succeed. Invariably, their funding sources will flow through financial institutions. This is why BSA reporting requirements are critically important to our National Security. This fact becomes more compelling in view of the actuality that finance is one of the two most significant vulnerabilities to terrorist and criminal organizations.

Regardless of how limited, there is a level of effectiveness with respect to BSA reporting requirements in identifying terrorist financing. The bottom line is, it is possible for financial institutions to identify terrorist financing, but it is highly improbable. We must take continual actions that increase the probability factor, and thereby increasing the possibility. The challenge confronting the government and banking community is to improve the effectiveness of the process.

Each side of the issue presents persuasive arguments supporting their respective positions. Starting with the burden side, many in the financial sector are frustrated by the fact that, unlike money laundering, terrorist financing is extremely difficult and challenging to detect. Many will argue it is virtually impossible to identify. This sense of frustration is exacerbated by the fact that industry experts frequently opine that law enforcement does not provide the intelligence information or guidance to enable financial institutions to effectively focus their monitoring and search capabilities to improve the probability of uncovering terrorist financing. These are the primary reasons they believe the BSA reporting requirements to identify terrorist financing are ineffective.

On the other side of the debate, law enforcement has been the direct beneficiary of BSA reporting requirements. There have been numerous law enforcement successes, and from a broader perspective, government wide terrorist financing successes, that were achieved because law enforcement was able to have legal access to BSA documents, such as Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) and Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs). The government considers many of these successes to be extremely significant in disrupting or denying terrorists the access to funding. Hence, law enforcement considers the reporting requirements beneficial.

In this context, the banking sector is generally not cognizant of the benefit to law enforcement. Instead, they consider the reporting requirements to be burdensome, cost prohibitive and ineffective. On the other hand, law enforcement is generally satisfied by the benefits they derive and therefore do not consider the reporting requirements to be ineffective. Consequently, they are not necessarily sensitive to the cost burden or sense of ineffectiveness felt by the financial sector. Likewise, the financial sector not being mindful of the true benefit, does not appreciate the significance of how law enforcement has benefited from BSA information. This is where the government and banking sector must come together to establish a middle ground where they can balance the benefits and burdens of BSA reporting requirements.

The first step moving forward is for government to understand why the banking sector considers BSA reporting requirements to be burdensome and ineffective and simultaneously, for the banking sector to understand why law enforcement considers the reporting requirements to be beneficial. The two sides need to work together both collectively and unilaterally to identify, develop, implement and improve mechanisms to effectively identify terrorist financing.

Collective measures would include working together to establish mechanisms to legally share information, finding meaningful feedback mechanisms and delineating red flags through case typologies. Unilateral measures would include the government enhancing mechanisms to identify emerging trends and developing methodologies to deal with such emerging trends. Likewise, financial institutions should take steps to better recognize risk within their institutions and to enhance their internal monitoring capabilities to identify terrorist and criminal exploitation threats.

There are six steps the government and industry should take to collectively and unilaterally increase the probability of identifying terrorist financing. They are:

1. The government and financial sector must recognize the importance of terrorist financing specific training. This is a dimension that is lacking on both sides. Without specific training, the ability to understand and disrupt terrorist financing is more difficult to achieve.

2. The government must develop a means to legally provide security clearances to select personnel in financial institutions in order to share limited intelligence information that could be scrubbed against bank monitoring systems to identify account or transactional information associated with terrorists. The FBI has been discussing this challenging issue since 9/11, in concert with select industry compliance leaders and experts.

3. A consistent and comprehensive feedback mechanism from law enforcement must be developed that demonstrates the importance of BSA reporting, especially the significance of SARs. FinCEN’s SAR Activity Review is a good mechanism that provides insightful information. In addition, specific feedback from law enforcement to financial institutions concerning the value and benefit of BSA data, including SAR filings, would have a dramatic impact on the morale of individuals responsible for SAR reporting. The FBI is currently in the process of initiating publication of a periodic newsletter, which will provide such feedback to the financial community. The FBI plans to disseminate this newsletter through FinCEN.

4. There must be an assessment by the government of all SARs related to or identifiable with terrorism cases. Such a review would identify specific red flags that could be used as a training mechanism and more importantly, could be factored into the monitoring/surveillance capabilities of financial institutions. In addition, a determination could be made as to why the financial institution filed a SAR. In many instances, the SAR was filed for violations other than terrorist financing. Understanding what triggered the SAR filing; in tandem with how the SAR ultimately was linked to terrorist interests would be insightful. The FBI’s Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW) is a powerful data mining tool. IDW’s implementation magnifies the importance of BSA data. Based on its capability, the FBI has determined that 41.7 percent of all terrorism investigations have BSA data identifiable with the case. In addition, this type of assessment would enable financial institutions to use their monitoring systems more effectively and increase the probability factor.

5. In addition to assessing SARs, the government and industry should collectively identify and assess as many case studies, of terrorist financing related investigations, as can be identified and legally publically accessed. The case studies should be compared to determine what types of commonalities and patterns of activity exist. In addition, common red flags should be easily discernable. This type of case study assessment, coupled with the SAR analysis, would provide more meaningful information to consider in identifying terrorist financing characteristics. This would enable financial institutions to more effectively surveille and monitor transactional information. There is at least one informal grassroots working group comprised of government, former government and industry experts who are identifying hundreds of case studies for analysis.

6. A combination of BSA data, particularly SARs, combined with empirical and anecdotal information would enable the government and financial sector to collectively and unilaterally conduct trend analyses. This would be a significant factor in identifying emerging trends. On a government level, this would contribute to implementing investigative and enforcement strategies. On the institutional level, this would enable the financial sector to implement strategies to mitigate risk.

As noted earlier, it is possible for financial institutions to identify terrorist financing, but it is highly improbable. The six steps set forth above would clearly increase the probability, and thereby, the possibility of detecting terrorist financing. These measures would not only enable financial institutions to better meet their BSA reporting requirements, they would improve the effectiveness of the process. In so doing, financial institutions would be taking steps to enhance our National Security by diminishing necessary funding streams to terrorists.

Cross Pollination Among Terrorist Groups

By Douglas Farah

My colleague Zachary Abuza wrote an interesting look at the Tamil Tigers, now in demise. As he notes, the LTTE pioneered many innovations in the use of terrorism that spread to other terrorist groups around the world.

Among the strategies the LTTE innovated are the use of suicide bombings and fund raising outside of state sponsorship. One of the most adaptive groups using some the LTTE model has been the FARC in Colombia, while suicide bombing have been taken up by Islamist groups around the globe.

This is, to me, one of the biggest changes that the new world order has brought in the past 15 years among non-state armed groups-the ability to rapidly exchange "best practices" and experiences across the globe.

In years past, Marxists would train Marxists, (the Cubans, Sandinistas and FMLN for example, in the Central American conflicts) and U.S. sponsored groups would receive instruction, but there was no real way, except direct meetings in camps and under state sponsorship, to exchange experiences.

The internet has changed that, and the end of the Cold War has helped erase many of the lines that once existed in who will deal with whom. At the same time, state sponsorship for many organizations was being reined in or cut off.

The shifting lines was largely lost on the intelligence community looking at radical Islamist groups, who believed Sunni groups like al Qaeda would not deal with Shiite groups like Hezbollah, although the documented cross-training between the two groups began at least in the ealry 1990s, while bin Laden was in Sudan.

As LTTE pioneered certain tactics, so did ETA in Spain (the use of explosives and LNG bombs), the IRA and IRA-P in Ireland (also explosives and cell structures) and others. The FARC, in turn, picked them up, improved on them, and taught new techniques. My full blog is here.

Demise of the Tamil Tigers? Perhaps, but an Appreciation

By Zachary Abuza

“The report of my death is an exaggeration” – Mark Twain

While I would love to eulogize about the death of the Tamil Tigers, it is of course premature. However, I offer this “appreciation” of the Tamil Tigers, an organization that has been, bar none, the most cutting-edge, adaptive and creative terrorist organization in the world. There is not a terrorist organization in the world that has not adopted LTTE tactics or at least aspired to do so. As the LTTE has never targeted the United States, it has been a low priority for law enforcement, military and the intelligence services. Yet, the Tamil Tigers merit study.

Founded in May 1976, by Villupilai Prabhakaran, the Tamil Tigers – formerly the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – grew from being a several thousand man guerilla force to being at its height a conventional force with some 10,000 combatants. Though their military collapse since mid 2006, has been surprisingly swift, one cannot forget that for years, they fought the Sri Lankan military to a standstill and controlled a significant amount of territory. Their nearly forty-year struggle is highlighted by firsts and superlatives:

NEFA Foundation: New Zawahiri Audio - "From Kabul to Mogadishu"

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has obtained a new audio recording from Al-Qaida Deputy Commander Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri released on February 22 and titled, "From Kabul to Mogadishu." During the recording, Dr. al-Zawahiri congratulated the Shebaab al-Mujahideen Movement in Somalia on their recent victories against Ethiopian and AU peacekeeping forces, and warned them to avoid any negotiations sponsored by the United Nations or United States. Al-Zawahiri appealed, "why, O Muslims in Somalia, did you sacrifice thousands of martyrs in order to purify Muslim Somalia from the infidel invaders, then someone comes to you today wanting to deceive you by changing the names and forms of the invaders, but the invasion is the invasion and the occupation is the occupation… And why did you sacrifice thousands of martyrs to expel the American invasion hiding behind the cloak of the United Nations, then someone comes to you today wishing to deceive you by telling you that you must respect the principles of the United Nations?" Dr. al-Zawahiri also directed a message to "the growing Jihadi awakening on the Arabian Peninsula in general and in the Yemen in particular... don't be less than your brothers in the defiant Pushtun and Baluch tribes who aided Allah and His Messenger and made America and the Crusaders dizzy in Afghanistan and Pakistan... Be helpers of Allah, and don't be helpers of America. Be helpers of Allah, and don't be helpers of Ali Abdullah Salih, the agent of the Crusaders, and be a help and support to your brothers the Mujahideen and don't be a support to the Crusaders and their campaign which kills the Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine."

An English translation of the audio recording can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.

NEFA Foundation: AQIM Claims Kidnapping of U.N. Envoy & Four European Tourists

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has obtained a new communiqué, dated February 18, from Al-Qaida's Committee in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claiming responsibility for the kidnapping of U.N. special envoy for Niger Robert Fowler, his Canadian aide Louis Guay, and four European tourists. According to the statement, Fowler and Guay were kidnapped two months ago, while the European tourists -- identified as Edwen Dyer (England), Marianne Petzold (Germany), Werner Greiner (Switzerland) and Gabriella Burco Greiner (Switzerland) -- were seized on January 22nd. The statement added that "the mujahideen reserve their right in treating the prisoners in accordance with Islamic Shari'a.”

An English translation of the AQIM statement can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.

The Growing Taliban/Drug Connection

By Michael Braun

Specially trained and equipped U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agents assigned to Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams (FAST), and specially trained officers assigned to the National Interdiction Unit (NIU) of the Counter-Narcotics Police of Afghanistan, successfully raided a number of remote heroin laboratories and hashish processing facilities in Afghanistan in the past several months. The raids were strongly supported by U.S. military and Department of State assets, which is unmistakable proof that the inter-agency ‘enforcement’ aspect of the Afghan counter-narcotics strategy is beginning to work. However, the need for a more forceful and consistent approach is just as evident.

What is most troubling, although no real surprise, is that these facilities were under the command and control of the Taliban. The best estimates by our government are that the Taliban generates somewhere between $300 - $400 million dollars a year from their involvement in the Afghan drug trade. I happen to believe that number falls woefully short of the real figure. A traffickers compound that was successfully raided over a year ago by FAST/NIU operators resulted in the seizure of evidence that clearly showed about $170 million dollars flowing through the hands of the responsible, Taliban-affiliated drug baron in just a 10 month period.

Our military, intelligence and law enforcement communities are doing magnificent work in disrupting the funding streams from very powerful, private donors, as well as from the Taliban’s state sponsors. As a result, the Taliban leadership has clearly been forced to make the same choice the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia were compelled to make about 18 years ago when their state sponsored funding stream evaporated virtually overnight—to move from simply taxing farmers, one of the most fundamental forms of extortion, to wholesale involvement in the manufacture and trafficking of drugs. The Taliban is quickly evolving into what I classify as a ‘hybrid terrorist organization’: one part designated foreign terrorist organization (by our Congress), and one part global drug trafficking cartel.

What’s the answer? The Afghan government, our military and intelligence services, as well as NATO forces on the ground in Afghanistan, have to become more aggressively involved in supporting counter-narcotics operations. I recently ran across a study dated July 12, 2002 conducted by Professor James D. Fearon of Stanford University entitled, “Why Do Some Wars Last So Much Longer Than Others?,” that sums it up pretty well. Fearon studied 128 insurgencies and civil wars over several decades and found that 17 lasted four to five times longer than the other 111, extending those 17 from the average of about 8 years as I recall, to over 40 years. What did the 17 all have in common that the others did not? The government opposition forces had access to contraband revenue—mostly drugs. The bottom line: we’re not going to be successful in Afghanistan, and will not get our troops out of the country, until the Afghan government, the United States and NATO get serious about cutting off the Taliban’s most important funding stream—the drug trade.

Is Twitter useful after all?

By Roderick Jones

Announcing $35M in new funding last Friday Twitter was one of the few bright spots in a collapsing economy. The micro-blogging service has been attracting increasing attention within the mainstream, as the political classes adopt the service – most notably, congressman Pete Hokestra (R-Mich.)who produced a stream of tweets detailing his location as he traveled from Andrew’s Air Force base to Baghdad and back. Besides the disbelieving head shaking this particular series of political tweets attracted, it does highlight the amorphous nature of Twitter -- it isn’t clear what it really is.

Certainly, the revenue model remains unclear, as does its true utility or even what the unintended consequences of using the service may be. In a National Security sense Twitter emerged as a powerful networked communications platform during the Mumbai terrorist attacks, when a stream of tweets marked #Mumbai (# being the global tagging system Twitter employs) gave a seemingly real-time commentary on events as they unfolded in Mumbai. Similarly, Twitter has been used to communicate the message and activity surrounding the riots in Greece using the #Griot tag. These are examples of the network effect working with a rapid communications platform and developing a powerful narrative from many different observation points. The style is anarchic but increasingly compelling.

Therefore, one argument regarding the long-term use of Twitter, in the National Security space at least, is that Twitter in conjunction with other tools, continues the trend of making ordinary citizens active producers of potentially actionable intelligence. This equally applies to Microsoft Photosynth and the meshing of user created digital platforms is a future trend, which doesn’t seem too far away. One of Twitter’s more recent high profile moments was the picture of the USAirways plane in the Hudson taken by an ordinary citizen who happened to be on a ferry, which went to the scene. This picture quickly and succinctly explained the situation to any emergency service in the area. This same principal can clearly be globally extended in terms of data and geographic reach. In fact it is the increasing penetration of mobile devices, which would seem to offer a bright future for the Twitter platform.

An area, which the Twitter platform excels in are the tools that can be used to manipulate the information within Twitter. This is where the open feel of the service suggests it somehow has more potential than the well designed social networking platforms such as Facebook. Information is messy and Twitter fits around this principle.

In order to examine Twitter we established a Twitter feed at www.twitter/In_Terrain. The idea behind this was to use the RSS feed Twitter tool TwitterFeed to push content of interest (such as the CT Blog) to a Twitter account and then examine ways in which this could be consumed. The results so far have been impressive. Twitterrific available for Apple products displays the security information feed in a very useful way. Tweetr for windows does a similar thing for Microsoft based systems and TwitterBerry covers Blackberry users. If users join Twitter they can chose to ‘follow’ the In_Terrain feed and receive the same information and potentially reply to specific tweets they find interesting – thus creating the ‘conversation’ Twitter, desires. Similarly, if other security and intelligence focused twitter feeds become apparent the In_Terrain twitter feed can ‘follow’ those conversations – thus beginning the network effect.

Clearly, this is still experimental and there are other avenues to explore with regard to GPS Twitter applications. The aim with the In_Terrain Twitter account is to generate tweets from mainstream information sources as well as the 'lower frequencies'. Starting a National Security focused tweet seems like an interesting idea right now – so I welcome CTBlog readers to ‘join the conversation’ – and please make suggestions for improvements or content additions. Maybe it will even become useful.

I forgot to mention a couple of other useful Twitter aps. TweetBeep - which acts in a similar fashion to Google alerts and HelloTwitFace - a Twitter client for Windows Mobile.

Recidivism and Released Terrorists Insights

By Michael B. Kraft

The knotty problem of what to do with the terrorist suspects being held in Guantanamo and whether or not they might engage in terrorist activities if they are released has prompted new looks at rehabilitation programs and recidivism rates.

In this context, a research paper by a former State Department intelligence analyst, Dennis Pluchinsky, is worth noting: 'Global Jihadist Recidivism: A Red Flag', published in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.

For several years, some Muslim countries, notably Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, have been conducting deradicalization programs for young men who have been arrested for their involvement in terrorist activities. But most of the western experts I have heard say it is still too early to tell how effective the relatively new programs will be in the long term. The very expensive Saudi program, which includes finding jobs and even wives for young men caught up in Islamic radical militantism is too costly for most countries to imitate. And doubts arose about the effectiveness of the Saudi program after recent disclosures that at least two men had re-emerged as terrorists and the Saudis rearrested nine of its “rehabilitated” men, as reported in the New York Times.

For more details also see the Feb. 12 Counterterrorism Blog item by Evan Kohlmann on his NEFA foundation report “The Eleven: Saudi Guantanamo Veterans Returning to the Fight.”

The Washington Post Monday carried a front-page article describing four cases that illustrate the difficulties in deciding what to do about some of the Guantanamo prisoners who may be too dangerous to release and/or no country is willing to take them.

The article by Peter Finn notes that “Obama administration officials acknowledge that closing the prison is not risk-free and that some detainees may return to terrorism. But the president has concluded that Guantanamo has sapped America's moral stature abroad and mired the country in endless litigation, forestalling justice for the alleged terrorists. Of the 779 people taken to Guantanamo, only three have been convicted, and two of those have since been released.”

The Washington Times National Security Section today front-paged a long story by Rowan Scarborough headlined “Rehabilitation never tried at Guantanamo.” It noted that this contrasted to a program that the U.S. Army ran at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. A Pentagon spokesman was quoted as saying that the U.S. does not have a rehabilitation program at Guantanamo because “it was constructed to keep dangerous enemy combatants off the battlefield.”

Truce with the Taliban at a Tipping Point

By Farhana Ali

Earlier this week, a truce between the Pakistani provisional government and the leader of a militant group was designed to restore peace to the once-idyllic Swat valley. Today’s breaking news of a Pakistani journalist found dead after he was abducted and brutally murdered in Swat could be viewed as a setback to a fragile peace agreement. The latest tragic incident also raises concerns about the use of dialogue with a tenacious Taliban.

On Al-Jazeera English Sunday night’s program, I stated that any agreement with the Taliban is risky business. Historical record has proven the Talibs, as they are called, are unable to keep their end of the bargain. Then why does Pakistan take a chance on militant leaders? The answer is simple. Pakistan can only fight one war at a time. This was the rationale offered to me by a senior Pakistani military commander. In a recent phone conversation, I was told that the Pakistan Army is under pressure to fight extremists in the tribal areas, guard against a possible Indian threat, and battle hard-core jihadists in the Swat valley. The commander, who wished to remain anonymous to protect his identity, said, “We do not have the manpower or the equipment to keep fighting like this. If America expects to win in Pakistan, then we need more assistance.”

NEFA Foundation: Video of Suicide Bombing in Khost in Southeastern Afghanistan

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has obtained a newly-released video recording of a November 20, 2008 suicide truck bombing attack on a joint-U.S.-Afghan military base in the southeastern Afghan province of Khost. The video shows footage of the bomber—identified as "Qari Abu Omar", a "patient man with experience in jihad" -as he assists in the preparation of nearly 3,000kg of explosives, his farewell to the camera, and the subsequent blast itself.

Excerpts from the video can be viewed on the NEFA Foundation website.

Saudi Guantanamo Veteran and Al-Qaida Commander Mohammed al-Harbi Reportedly Surrenders in Yemen

By Evan Kohlmann

News agencies are now reporting that Saudi national Mohammed al-Harbi (a.k.a. Abul Hareth Mohammed al-Awfi)--a former Guantanamo Bay detainee accused of participating in jihadi conflicts in Chechnya and Afghanistan, who was later released and rejoined Al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia--has surrendered without a fight to authorities in Yemen. I recently profiled al-Harbi in my report published by the NEFA Foundation, "The Eleven: Saudi Guantanamo Veterans Returning to the Fight."

An excerpt from that report:

Mohammed al-Harbi, born on July 13, 1973, is a Saudi Arabian national and former Guantanamo Bay detainee no. 333. A resident of the Saudi capital Riyadh, al-Harbi claimed to be a small business owner selling fruits and vegetables. Later, before an ARB panel in Guantanamo Bay, al-Harbi bristled when he sensed that a panel member was teasing him about the scale of his business dealings. “Don’t think I’m a merchant,” he shot back. “Don't think the Mercedes I bought [in Kuwait] was a $40,000 model. The Mercedes I bought was an ‘87 model and very old. Don’t look at me like I'm a big merchant or something.” When confronted with a charge sheet in his hearing that suggested al-Harbi had “traveled extensively with little or no means of support throughout the Middle East and former Soviet Union during the period between 1999-2000”, he replied: “I have traveled, but not extensively. This is shown in my passport and other documents. I went to Turkey on vacation once and I took a short trip to Georgia, in the former Soviet Republic, and I made a trip to Kuwait to buy a Mercedes Benz. I do not understand how that constitutes extensive travel throughout the Middle East… The dates mentioned 1999-2000, were long before the United States was involved with Afghanistan, militarily… Concerning my means of support, I have three businesses in Saudi Arabia, which provide plenty of money for a vacation of several months to Turkey and the former Soviet Union.” However, contrary to his account before the ARB panel, the U.S. military learned from its own sources that al-Harbi had allegedly been “in Chechnya for approximately nine months in 1999… A source reported that the detainee underwent basic training and physical training in Chechnya"... In the late fall of 2001, Mohammed al-Harbi traveled on a religious pilgrimage to the Saudi city of Mecca for the holy month of Ramadan. It was “at this time he decided to travel to Pakistan and provide assistance to the Afghani refugees that were residing at camps on Pakistani soil”...

For more, read the whole profile on the NEFA Foundation website.

Welcome to Yala, Mr. Abhisit

By Zachary Abuza

Since the September 2006 coup in Thailand, attention has been focused on the country’s rapid political turnover and instability. Yet the Malay-Muslim insurgency in the country’s three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat has continued unabated. The new government in Bangkok has stated that resolving the insurgency is one of its top priorities, and it has spoken of the need for reconciliation and social justice. The insurgents, unconcerned about who is in power in Bangkok, have continued their campaign of violence with no end in sight. This article addresses Thailand’s political turnover, provides an analysis of the violence, and finally offers a review of new policies that the government has initiated in the south.

The article appears in the February issue of Sentinel, published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. http://ctc.usma.edu/sentinel/

NEFA Foundation: AQIM Denies Surrender of Commander Abou Tamim Amine

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated a new communiqué, dated February 3, denying reports of the surrender of Abou Tamim Amine (a.k.a. Ben Touati Ali). According to the statement, “following the… imprisonment of Brother Amine-the commander of the al-Ansar Brigade, may Allah protect him-last week while traveling en route to a jihadi mission, several news agencies mentioned the news, and they cited two stories. The first story, the accurate one, included the phrase 'the capture of.' But, the other false story is the one that certain media agencies, directed by the intelligence agencies, rushed to report-alleging that Brother Amine had surrendered to the apostates, and that he had served as their agent for a long while. From this, a bigger lie was extracted, built upon the first lie: namely, that our organization has been infiltrated from top down… Accordingly, we strongly deny the news of the surrender of Brother Amine, the commander of the al-Ansar Brigade (central zone)-may may Allah free him from his shackles-and we confirm that our brother was captured last week while in the midst of a jihadi mission. We ask Allah to ease his hardship, and allow us to liberate our prisoners from the Algerian Guantanamo.”

An English translation of the AQIM statement can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.

International Commission of Jurists Report Faults UN, EU and US Terrorism Designation Procedures

By Victor Comras

The International Commission of Jurists has just published the report of a special blue ribbon panel on the conduct of the war on terrorism and its effect on international law and human rights. The report concludes that Western democracies, along with most of the rest of the world, went well overboard in sacrificing established principles of international law and human rights in the quest to defeat terrorism. Among the measures criticized in the report is the increased and overlapping use of “designation lists” by the United Nations, the European Union and the United States to identify, freeze the assets and restrict the movement of persons and organizations suspected of supporting terrorism. The group is particularly critical (as shown in the excerpts below) of the lack of due process procedures, either prior to, or after, listing, to assure against error or abuse.

Identifying and freezing the assets of persons, groups, and organisations involved in terrorism are clearly acceptable, and possibly even necessary, tactics in effectively combating terrorism. However, the Panel received virtually uniform criticism of the listing system as it presently operates. The UN sanctioning of lists is seen as arbitrary and inconsistent with the obligations of States under international human rights law. This can cause difficulties for Member States if they try to abide by UN procedures. On the one hand they have human rights obligations by which they are bound, and on the other hand they have obligations to implement decisions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. This may give rise to legal challenges in domestic and international tribunals. In this regard, the report welcomes a recent landmark decision of the European Court of Justice, which ruled that the implementation within the EU of listings by the Security Council have to be measured for their full compliance with human rights law. (See Executive Summary page 13)

****

“Affected persons or entities are rarely given an effective opportunity to challenge their designation – before or after being designated. Even in situations where legal provisions exist to allow an appeal or review against listing before a judicial body, the remedy is often limited, with the aggrieved person having little or no opportunity to challenge facts, or the proportionality of the measures. Like other preventive mechanisms, the appeal process is characterized by secrecy, allowing for non-disclosure of key materials. Since the original information is often based on secret intelligence, or may originate from an earlier international listing decision, individuals and organizations have few remedies.” (See ICJ Report page 115 )

EU countries are still struggling with the effect of the European Court of Justice decision in the Yassin Kadi Case, and how to appropriately balance EU due process requirements with their UN obligations. Following the Kadi case decision the EU amended its procedures to institute a six month review procedure for all those under EU designation. However, many European jurists consider this as only a partial fix and are likely to challenge the designations measures further before the European Court.

US courts are also facing similar and increasingly sophisticated constitutional challenges to US designation procedures. Federal court rulings have held that while the government may designate individuals and entities without prior notice or challenge procedures, they must still afford sufficient post designation procedures to assure due process. And what constitutes sufficient due process is still being considered by the US District Court in Portland Oregon in the Al Haramain Oregon Case.

President Obama’s decision to order a full review of the non judicial legal proceedings involving the Guantanamo detainees, has given rise to both praise and criticism. One can expect that he will now face increasing pressure to also order a review of US designations pursuant to his executive authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). A new review of designation procedures is now being conducted by the the UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee. (See my article on the need for such a review here). In this regard, the International Commission of Jurist Report recommends adoption of the following principles:

• The Criteria leading to listing should be clear, publicly available and non discriminatory.
• The listing must be strictly time-limited and subject to limited renewal.
• There must be sufficient notification to the affected parties.
• Opportunities must be accorded to rectify errors.
• There must be an effective remedy to allow decisions to be contested,
• There must be independent review mechanisms.

(ICJ report page 122)

Preserving designation as an effective international tool for combating terrorism and terrorism financing must remain a high priority objective of the Obama Administration. The first step must be recognition that the designation system as now constituted is under broad international human rights attack. We must seriously consider how it can be reformed to address the most serious of these concerns. Steps should be taken expeditiously to review these procedures, to clarify designation criteria and to provide a clear and meaningful post-designation review process with judicial oversight.

Will Afghanistan Awake?

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Earlier this year, I wrote a couple of pieces about the prospects of an Afghan "Awakening" with my colleague Joshua Goodman (detailing Iraqi Awakening leader Sheikh Ahmad Abu Risha's suggestions for an Afghan Awakening, and responding to the early criticisms of Canadian defense minister Peter MacKay). Yesterday I had an op-ed in the Washington Times that analyzes four of the major criticisms of the prospects of an Afghan Awakening. An excerpt:

U.S. Central Command recently announced it will be supporting an indigenous movement opposing al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, similar to the Awakening movement that was central to turning Iraq around. Already, critics are saying it won't work.

Iraq's Anbar Awakening was a collection of Sunni tribesmen, Iraqi nationalists, former insurgents and others united by the goal of driving al Qaeda from their country. Coalition forces gave this movement protection and support at key points, and it was later broadened through the Sons of Iraq, a U.S. initiative authorizing formation of paramilitary organizations.

There are good reasons to think the case for pessimism in Afghanistan is wrong. Four arguments are commonly made suggesting an Afghan Awakening could not succeed: that it would detract from improvements in Afghan security forces, that Afghanistan is too different from Iraq, that the Pashtun tribes would not support an Awakening, and that these efforts could destabilize Afghanistan.

Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay, for example, opposes an Afghan Awakening because he prefers a more formal training process that leads to a more reliable, more professional soldier and Afghan national security force. One problem with this view is that Afghan forces have been slow to develop. Newsweek recently reported that U.S. commanders think Afghan units may not be able to operate independently for another five years. Moreover, there is no forced choice between an Awakening and the development of Afghan forces. Both can be done at once.

You can read the entire op-ed here.

Post Mumbai analysis in German Magazine: Can Democratic Revolution isolate Jihadism?

By Walid Phares

In the ongoing debate generated by the Mumbai attacks, and as the US Administration is attempting to find alternative strategies to exclusive military intervention against Terror forces, a growing number of indicators -mostly drawn from Jihadi debates- advances the possibility that democratic revolutions can be effective against the expansion of these ideologies. This concept, different from but not unrelated to the previous school of "spreading democracy" focuses on the "native" identity of the counter Jihadi forces. In an interview with Progressive Magazine Konkret , a monthly published in Germany, I introduced a number of points I have covered in my book The War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracy. Following is the text of the short interview in English followed by the German initial version.

Belgian "Al Qaeda Cell" in touch with Architect of Transantlantic Airline Plot

By Paul Cruickshank

This connection is revealed in the CNN program "One Woman's War," my documentary about the extraordinary story of Malika el Aroud, a Belgian woman who authorities say has become an icon of the global jihadist movement.

The documentary will make its CNN domestic debut this afternoon at 2.30pm Eastern.

My profile of Malika el Aroud, "Love in the Time of Terror," is also the lead feature in the March issue of Marie Claire.

CNN's report is below:

Belgian "Al Qaeda Cell" linked to 2006 Airline Plot

Belgian investigators told CNN that a pro-al Qaeda Web site administered by el Aroud helped radicalize the members of the alleged Brussels terrorist cell.

Read more of CNN's investigation into the Belgian alleged terror cell here.

You can view the documentary online here.

The half-hour program, on which I collaborated with CNN's Nic Robertson, includes exclusive interviews with Malika el Aroud, her brother and sister, and Belgium's top counter-terrorism officials.

Intel Committee Chair: U.S. Drones 'Flown Out Of A Pakistani Base'

By James Gordon Meek

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s new chairman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), raised a few eyebrows on Thursday during a hearing by bringing up the diplomatically sensitive matter of Pakistan’s cooperation with U.S. missile strikes on its soil.

Here’s the setup: Feinstein raised a recent National Public Radio report about the success of the CIA-led offensive in Pakistan’s tribal areas - which the New York Daily News's Mouth of the Potomac Blog exclusively reported last month (and mirrored here on the CT Blog) has zapped at least eight mid-level Al Qaeda leaders since July. The NPR report said the missile strikes by remotely-piloted drones had decimated Al Qaeda and brought it to the edge of extinction.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair disagreed with such rosy assessments, remarking, “I have no idea why people would talk in those terms when the facts as I know them are not that optimistic.”

“I don’t know whether you’d care to comment on this, but I also notice that [special U.S. envoy Richard] Holbrooke in Pakistan ran into considerable concern about the use of the Predator strikes in the FATA area of Pakistan, and yet as I understand it these are flown out of a Pakistani base,” Feinstein said next.

Blair did not comment. But some veteran intelligence officers told me yesterday that they were taken aback, since the Predator bases located inside Pakistan are part of a classified covert action program.

Spokesmen for the longtime lawmaker insisted Feinstein wasn’t divulging any secrets she’s been briefed on as the top intelligence oversight official in Congress. They said she was simply referring to an article she read in the Washington Post last March, which cited “Predator strikes launched from bases near Islamabad and Jacobabad in Pakistan.”

“The first question was based on an NPR story. The second was based on the Washington Post story,” Feinstein spokesman Gil Duran told me late Thursday in response to an inquiry. “She did not cite the story in her question, but it ran on [Page] A1 and was the source of the question.”

CIA had no comment.

The More Things Change...Chávez Rolls On

By Douglas Farah

Despite repeated promises and public statements, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez continues to allow the FARC to operate from Venezuelan territory. This is not surprising, given that Chavez has not often kept his word on such issues.

What is interesting is that the support continues despite the FARC's recent killing spree of indigenous people in Nariño province. Wasn't the Bolivarian Revolution supposed to be against that? Respected groups like Human Rights Watch have documented the incidents.

Then there is the rising anti-Semitism of the Chávez folks, and the official hate speech and attacks on places of worship,.

But the point is that such reports of ongoing support come as the FARC is showing clear signs of regrouping after a very difficult past few months. The release of the handful of hostages has perhaps helped people forget the other 700 that remain behind.

The revelation in Semana magazine that the FARC summarily executed 11 Colombian members of congress in 2006, when they mistook some comrades for an army patrol should remind folks of what the FARC is really like.

Clearly the FARC, with access to cocaine revenue streams and extra territorial support, can survive long after their ideology has faded away. It is, slowly, regrouping in the triple canopy jungle, enjoying a rear-guard protected by Chávez and making their presence felt by a series of attacks against unarmed civilians. My full blog is here.

Is Victory Almost At Hand in Iraq?

By James Gordon Meek

President Obama’s new intel guru, retired Navy Adm. Dennis Blair, dropped what I considered kind of a bombshell on Thursday which was all but ignored in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing looking at global threats to the U.S. You'll have a hard time finding it in news coverage, too, though we reported it in today's New York Daily News.

Buried 19 pages deep in Blair's 49-page statement - and not even worthy of his office's press release - Blair said that Iraq’s Sunni insurgency has all but quit the fight after six years of war against the U.S.-led coalition:

“Most Iraqi-led Sunni insurgent groups have largely suspended operations against the Coalition, favoring engagement with the United States to protect their communities, to oppose AQI, or protect against feared domination by the Iraqi Government, although many are hedging by maintaining their organizational structures and access to weapons.”

Blair also noted that operations targeting the foreign-led Al Qaeda in Iraq...

“[H]ave reduced AQI’s operational capabilities and restricted the group’s freedom of movement and sanctuaries. Nevertheless, we judge the group is likely to retain a residual capacity to undertake terrorist operations for years to come.”

I certainly don’t want to leap to any conclusions here or get too far ahead of events, but…doesn’t that essentially mean WE HAVE WON?

Next question: Why did it take so long to figure out how to do it?

Al-Qaeda Today

By Matthew Levitt

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of sharing a Washington Institute podium with two acclaimed scholars, Assaf Moghadam and Farhad Khosrokhavar, for a discussion about al-Qaeda today and the changing face of the global jihadist threat. Dr. Moghadam is assistant professor and senior associate at the U.S. Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Center at West Point and the author of the new book The Globalization of Martyrdom. Dr. Khosrokhavar is a professor of sociology at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and is currently a visiting professor in Harvard University's Islamic Legal Studies Program. He is the author of the new book Inside Jihadism. My own comments were drawn from the volume I co-edited with Michael Jacobson, "Countering Transnational Threats."

The full audio of the event and a rapporteur's summary are available here.

NEFA Report - "'The Eleven': Saudi Guantanamo Veterans Returning to the Fight"

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has released a new report I have written titled, “The Eleven: Saudi Guantanamo Veterans Returning to the Fight.” The report includes in-depth profiles of eleven former Saudi detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who are now listed on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s roster of its 85 “most wanted” terrorist suspects: Saeed Ali Jabir al-Kathim al-Shehri (a.k.a. “Abu Sufyan”, “Abu Asma”); Yusuf Muhammad Mubarak al-Jebairy al-Shehri; Jabir Jubran Ali al-Faify (a.k.a. “Abu Ibrahim, “Abu Jaffar al-Ansari”); Fahd Saleh Suleiman al-Jutayli (a.k.a. “Hamza Aqeedah”); Mohammed Ateeq Owaid al-Awfi al-Harbi (a.k.a. “Abul-Hareth Mohammed al-Awfi”); Murtadha Ali Saeed Magram (a.k.a. “Abul-Baraa al-Hadrami”); Meshal Mohammed Rashid Al-Shedoky (a.k.a. Mishale Ashadouki); Adnan Muhammad Ali al-Sayegh; Ibrahim Sulaiman Mohammed ar-Rubaish (a.k.a. “Abu Mohammed”); Turki Meshawi Zayid al-Assiri (a.k.a. “Al-Mutasim al-Makki”); and, Othman Bin Ahmed Bin Othman al-Ghamdi (a.k.a. Othman al-Omairah). The NEFA report notes, “whether we speak of Jabir al-Faify, Fahd al-Jutayli, Murtadha Magram, Ibrahim ar-Rabeish, Turki al-Assiri, or Othman al-Ghamdi, their stories are remarkably familiar… Yet, for all the brimming confidence in their “Afghan” credentials, the detailed accounts of these men offer credible reasons to doubt their actual military capabilities… These men now face somewhat of a daunting challenge to prove their military capabilities in the face of their relatively young age and their lack of sustained frontline combat experience… In fact, the major distinction between men like al-Shehri and al-Harbi versus previous generations of Al-Qaida leadership in Saudi Arabia is that they have chosen to launch their operations from a lawless Bedouin-style sanctuary just beyond Saudi borders in Yemen—instead of the risky urban warfare model adopted by Abdelaziz al-Muqrin and his contemporaries… It remains to be seen whether the intriguing decision to move the central Al-Qaida leadership beyond the reach of the Saudi Interior Ministry—and away from urban areas tightly packed with Muslim civilians—will have a significant long-term strategic impact in terms of addressing the group’s litany of setbacks.”

The report also warns of the “dangers of insufficiently vetting Guantanamo veterans for a release back to their countries of origin, and the foolishness of allowing diplomatic courtesies and issues of political expediency to trump the assessments of professionals who have deemed these men to represent a continuing threat to the United States and its allies":

In at least four of the eleven cases-Fahd al-Jutayli, Murtadha Magram, Adnan al-Sayegh, and Ibrahim ar-Rabeish-ARB panels in Guantanamo Bay specifically found that the men continued to represent "a threat to the United States and its allies" only months prior to their transfer from custody in Gitmo back home to Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, it is almost inexplicable that the U.S. government would even consider releasing, albeit, a mid-ranking Afghan-trained Al-Qaida recruit such as Yusuf al-Shehri-who has happily advertised to his interrogators that "he considers all Americans his enemy" and that "he will continue to fight them until he dies"-except under the most stringent of conditions. Or, alternatively, we have the case of Murtadha Magram-who boasted that had gone "to the jihad to die", that he "wanted to be a martyr for the cause", and that he "hates Americans and all non-believers." These hardly sound like obvious choices for early parole from Guantanamo... In at least one regrettable instance, if the account of the New York Times is to be believed, a terror suspect now thought to be quite dangerous (Mishal al-Shedoky) was released and sent home to Saudi Arabia from Guantanamo, primarily in order to help win Saudi political support for the botched U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Michael Braun, Former DEA Operations Chief, Joins Us As Contributing Expert

By Andrew Cochran

We are very pleased to welcome, as our newest Contributing Expert, Michael Braun, who recently retired after 33 years in law enforcement as Chief of Operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He was responsible for DEA's 227 domestic and 87 foreign offices and several divisions. Mr. Braun was the first interim director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force Intelligence Fusion Center and was responsible for leading the development of that multi-agency, national drug intelligence center that supports the national drug strategy and the war on terrorism.

Mr. Braun joined the DEA in 1985, where he served as a Special Agent in the St. Louis Division. In 1991, he was promoted to the rank of Supervisory Special Agent and was assigned to a special enforcement project in Latin America. He led host nation counterparts and DEA Special Agents on drug enforcement operations in the jungles of South and Central America to disrupt the production and transportation systems supporting the cocaine industry. After serving in senior roles in DEA offices in Houston, Los Angeles, Detroit, and DEA headquarters, Mr. Braun was detailed in June 2003 to the Department of Defense to serve on special assignment in Iraq as the Chief of Staff for the Interim Ministry of Interior, Coalition Provisional Authority. He assisted in creating the new Iraqi National Police Service and Customs and Borders agencies, and with developing plans to rebuild the public safety segment of the Iraqi security infrastructure.

Mr. Braun served in the U.S. Marine Corps served from 1971 to 1973 as an infantryman, including limited service in Vietnam. He received a B.S. degree in Criminal Justice in 1977 from Southeast Missouri State University, and he has attended a number of government, military, and private leadership courses, including the Senior Managers in Government Program at Harvard University and the National Executive Institute.

Michael Braun is a leader in investigating the criminal-terrorist nexus, and his lecture last year at the Washington Institute is included in WINEP's latest volume on countering transnational threats, edited by Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson. He is now a security consultant and officer at Spectre Group International, LLC in northern Virginia. We look forward to his contributions.

Al-Qaida’s “A Bailout Plan for Germany”: A NEFA Analysis

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has released a new report by NEFA Contributor Antje Kraschinski analyzing the Al-Qaida video "A Bailout Plan for Germany." The January 2009 video features German citizen Bekkay Harrach and is the third German-language video issued by Islamic terror groups since October 2008. Displaying a deep and detailed knowledge of the political background of the German military engagement in Afghanistan, Harrach repeats his central message several times: Germany must pull its troops out of Afghanistan. To advance that goal, Harrach appeals to the German people to vote for a party in the upcoming elections that supports the withdrawal. Harrach’s video has alarmed German officials. On January 25, German Interior Ministry State Secretary August Hanning commented: "For the first time we are seeing that Germany is addressed very clearly, and namely from someone who knows our home affairs, who knows the internal conditions here and who grapples very specifically with us here in Germany. We regard this as a new quality of threat." This paper provides extensive context to Harrach's message and offers a snapshot of Harrach's life in Germany and the Pak-Afghan area.

The report can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.

NEFA Foundation: Taliban Claim Responsibility for Kabul Attacks

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has obtained a new communiqué from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the Taliban) claiming responsibility for the coordinated February 11, 2009 attack on the Ministry of Justice, the Directorate of Prisons, and the Ministry of Education in Kabul, which killed at least 26. According to the statement, "16 mujahideen from Al-Hamzah martyrdom group in Afghanistan Islamic Emirate launched a revengeful campaign for the prisoners who were killed by the hands of the crusaders and their mercenary agents in Pol-e-Charki prison during the days of the recent Eid Al-Adha. " Further, the statement claims that "8 mujahideen were martyred and 8 mujahideen went back without harm to their stations.”

An English translation of the Taliban claim can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.

Washington Licenses Parts for Syrian 747s

By David Schenker

A series of recent articles have cited a US decision to rehabilitate Syrian Boeing 747 airplanes as a sign that in an effort to repair relations with Damascus, the Obama Administration has jettisoned the Syria Accountability Act (SAA) sanctions enacted during the Bush Administration.

The 2004 Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act (Law 108-175) mandated that the Administration level a series of sanctions against Damascus in response to Syrian support for terrorism, its role in undermining stability in Iraq, its continued meddling in Lebanon, and the regime’s ongoing development of WMD and ballistic missile programs.

Sanctions included a prohibition on the export of munitions and dual-use items, as well as (1) the prohibition of exports other than food or medicine to Syria, and (2) the prohibition on Syrian aircraft landing or taking off from the U.S.

These sanctions were not particularly effective. Indeed, because they did not affect food and telecommunications equipment—the primary U.S. commodities purchased by Syria—bilateral trade actually tripled between Washington and Damascus since the passage of the measure. Still, the sanctions have an important symbolic impact and are an annoyance to Syria’s Asad regime.

Clearly, the Obama Administration is going to take a different tack with Damascus. It’s likely that Washington will resume a dialogue with Syria, repost an ambassador, and perhaps even get involved in Syrian-Israeli peace talks. But the characterization of airplane parts sales as a signal of a warming of ties is misleading and premature.

Under the terms of the 1944 International Civil Aviation Conference convened in Chicago, Washington is obligated to sell airplane parts for U.S. equipment to ensure “safety of flight.” Because the Syrian planes are U.S. origin, the Administration is compelled to do so. In fact, the U.S. has extended the same courtesy to Tehran. Because Iran has a 747 in military service, however, Washington has indicated that to ensure that the parts are not being utilized for non-civilian purposes, the repairs should be made in Germany.

Congress Moves to Keep Attention to Bout's Extradition Process

By Douglas Farah

A large, bipartisan group of Congressmen, led by Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) is seeking to insure the the extradition of Viktor "Merchant of Death" Bout from Thailand remains a high priority for the incoming administration.

In a letter to new AG Holder and Secretary of State Clinton signed by 27 House members, the group asked that Bout's extradition "remain a top priority for your departments and the United States government."

Bout was arrested in Bangkok in March 2008 in an elaborate sting operation set up by the DEA. Bout left his safe haven in Moscow to sell large quantities of sophisticated weapons to a group he thought represented the FARC of Colombia, a designated terrorist organization and one of the largest drug trafficking entities in the world. The undercover agents made it clear they wanted weapons that could be used to target U.S. personnel and radar installations, something Bout eagerly agreed to.

Bout, who armed the FARC before, as well as the Taliban, Libya and a host of unsavory warlords and thugs in Africa, has been held in Thailand for almost a year as his extradition case wends its way through Thai courts. A preliminary hearing is expected in early March. He is the prototype of the facilitator that crosses among the worlds of terrorists, organized criminals and criminal states, procuring whatever they need for a price. My full blog is here.

Analysis of the Munich Conference on Russia, Iran and Afghanistan issues

By Walid Phares

In the wake of the Munich security conference, CT and military analysts are attempting to read the new trends developing between the US, NATO partners and the Russian Federation regarding international terrorism, Iran, Afghanistan and other relevant issues. The annual conference is a platform for mostly Western powers and democracies to brand their policies and test ideas and suggestions. At times the forum is used to raise challenges, especially since the 2003 Iraq war. This year the US delegation made noted efforts to signal "changes in strategic approaches" regarding Russia, Iran and to some extent Afghanistan. In my reading these changes are still in the abstract stage which means that they can go in different directions. On these matters I had the following media conversation with military expert Thomas Smith published in the World Defense Review and Family Security Matters. I added a related interview on Russia Today TV and a link to my participation in a debate on France 24 TV (English channel) on Afghanistan's future.

NEFA Foundation: Al-Qaida Says Two of Saudi's 85 "Most Wanted" Already Dead

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has learned that at least two of those who have been listed on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's most recent roster of its 85 most wanted terror suspects may already be dead. Two years ago, in January 2007, family members of the #32 most wanted, Saudi national Sultan Radi al-Otaibi, announced his apparent "martyrdom" in neighboring Iraq: "Allah rewarded him with martyrdom five days ago (January 12, 2007) in the city of Baghdad during a fierce battle with American forces." Likewise, the #47 name on the Saudi most wanted roster—Abdullah Mohammed Abdullah al-Ayad—was profiled as a deceased “martyr” in a propaganda video released by Al-Qaida's As-Sahab Media Foundation in early 2008. During the video, a masked man identified as al-Ayad was shown with other mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan, as he addressed the camera: “Praise be to Allah who freed us from our prisons and brought us to the land of jihad, after being separated by the tyrants. So, we say to these tyrants that, by Allah, your alliance with the Cross and your imprisonment of the finest from our nation are the weapons of the mujahideen… we know the reality of the tyrants through having walked the halls of their jails and into [the doors] of their intelligence bureaus. And, by Allah, this hasn’t weakened their faith, nor has it deterred what is in their hearts. Allah willing, you will witness that soon… For those of our brothers who are in prison now, by Allah, we shall not take any other action, nor will we have peace of mind, nor will our eyes rest until you are alongside us fighting in our jihad... So be patient, we are coming. And if we don’t succeed, then others will follow and climb over our blood and corpses.

An English translation of the al-Otaibi communique and an English-subtitled excerpt of the al-Ayad video from As-Sahab can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.

Divided against Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

By Olivier Guitta

I wrote a piece for the Middle East Times looking at the current situation in Africa and the response of various nations to the threat of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
You can read it in full here.
Here is an excerpt:

On Jan. 22, four European tourists - two Swiss, one Briton and one German - were kidnapped at the border of Mali and Niger. The major terrorist group in the region, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), is very likely behind this operation. This should not come as a surprise. In an article for this publication in March 2008 ("AQIM's new kidnapping strategy"), I had warned about this worrisome new strategy.
In fact, North Africa has become in the past two years a major front in the war against radical Islam. While Algeria has witnessed regular attacks and has been in the news a lot, its neighbors have also not been spared by Islamist terrorism. Indeed, Morocco, Tunisia and more recently Mauritania have suffered terror attacks.

AQIM's original intention was to federate all the Islamist terror groups of the region. In fact by putting together resources and attacking what they call "infidel" regimes, AQIM thinks it can recreate a portion of the Caliphate.

AQIM is using this to its advantage the porous and virtually uncontrollable borders in the region. The group is actually following the advice given in the early 2000s by a Yemeni representative of Osama bin Laden to GSPC's (AQIM's former name) then leader, Amir Hassan Hattab, to use the Sahara as its fallback base. Since then, the Sahel has become a haven for jihadist groups more or less linked to AQIM.

The West knows about it and tries to do something about it. For example a French Breguet Atlantique airplane, based in Dakar, flies over the area regularly, an operation that is tantamount to finding a needle in a sand dune. The United States has a training center in Gao, in Northern Mali, where it trains Malian military in anti-terror combat.

Encircling Kabul, Taliban Gaining Ground

By Douglas Farah

Today's coordinated Taliban attacks inside Kabul, and the length of time it took to eliminate the perpetrators, is an important indication of two things: the growing strength of the Taliban, and the rapid decay of the Karzai government.

It is no secret that the rampant corruption, tolerance for many years now of abusive (and extremist) warlord governors and lack of focus by the outside world have worn out the civilian population and convinced many that democracy holds few benefits.

The Taliban, in response, has been following two tracks: using drug money to recreate themselves from a defeated force immediately after 9/11 to a force controlling much of the country-and now able to carry out attacks in the heart of the capital, the last government stronghold; and spreading terror among the population, knowing the government cannot protect them.

The attacks are important for several reasons: it shows the Taliban has good intelligence within Kabul, as well as an infrastructure of safe houses and access routes for combatants. It shows the ability to select specific targets and coordinate several different groups.

By targeting the Justice ministry, the Education ministry and prisons, the Taliban have shown their priorities. My full blog is here.

Countering Transnational Threats: Terrorism, Narco-Trafficking, and WMD Proliferation

By Matthew Levitt

Today, The Washington Institute release the second edited volume of lectures from its senior counterterrorism officials speaker series, entitled "Countering Transnational Threats: Terrorism, Narco-Trafficking, and WMD Proliferation."

This second volume features the next six participants in this unique speaker series: Homeland Security Advisor Ken Wainstein; Drug Enforcement Administration Assistant Administrator Michael Braun; National Intelligence Officer Ted Gistaro; Commerce Undersecretary Mario Mancuso; Chairman of the National Intelligence Council Tom Fingar; and Department of Defense Assistant Secretary Michael Vickers.

As the Obama administration’s counterterrorism team assesses the terrorist threat today, they will find that while much has been accomplished over the past eight years there is still much to be done. Global Jihadist terrorists remain intent on carrying out acts of spectacular violence targeting the United States and its allies, including attacks using weapons of mass destruction. While terrorists do not appear to have the capability to carry out a WMD attack today, they remain committed to that ideal. In the meantime, al Qaeda senior leadership are plotting attacks from the safe haven of tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border while franchise groups and like-minded followers plot attacks of their own -- sometimes independently and sometimes in collaboration with al Qaeda planners. Helping to facilitate terrorist planning is a growing nexus between terrorism and crime through which terrorists not only gain access to significant sums of money but also develop cooperative relationships of convenience with violent criminal networks.

As the first volume of this lecture series stressed, the terrorists threat continues to evolve. Identifying and keeping pace with these changes is critically important for a successful counterterrorism campaign. To that end, the insights of the senior counterterrorism officials who participated in this series are timely indeed.

The full monograph, edited by myself and Michael Jacobson, is available here.

Strategic analysis of the Mumbai attacks: Few points to project

By Walid Phares

As the Indian Government has issued its various reports on the Mumbai attacks and as a number of Think Tanks worldwide are issuing their evaluation and projections, the long term debate about what the operation meant, was meant to become and could generate in the future is now wide open. Pakistan's Government evaluation is focusing on minimizing the possibility of an inside assistance to the perpetrators. The Indian Government and agencies are focusing on determining the responsibility of Islambad's Government. In the West and also in Russia, analysts are studying the ability of international or local (called Homegrown) Jihadists of producing similar attacks in the future. As a contribution to the ongoing discussion I have briefed a number of US Representatives and members of the European Parliament on some points of projection and published several short pieces over the past month. Many of these points were expanded by colleagues. Following is an article published by the World Defense Review. I have added an interview with ETWN aired just before the inauguration of the new Administration.

NEFA Foundation: Army of Islam Issues Message to the Austrian Government

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has obtained a new communiqué from the Army of Islam in Gaza, in which the group urges the Austrian government to release Muhammad Shawqi Mahmoud from jail. In March 2008, Mahmoud was sentenced to four years in prison for belonging to a terrorist organization. Mahmoud, a central figure in the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF), was involved in producing a March 2007 GIMF video that threatened Austria and Germany if the countries did not withdraw their troops from Afghanistan. That same month, BBC reporter Alan Johnston was kidnapped in Gaza; the Army of Islam subsequently issued a videotaped claim of responsibility for the operation. During the February 2009 Canadian trial of Mahmoud’s GIMF co-conspirator, Said Namouh, prosecutors revealed that Mahmoud and Namouh “played a major role for the GIMF in the editing” of that Army of Islam video. However, in this statement, the Army of Islam claims that "Muhammad Shawqi Mahmoud has no ties to the Army or any part in capturing the British reporter Alan Johnston by any way, shape or form. He has no relation to or knowledge of this operation, and these accusations directed to him are nothing of the truth, and basically pure falsehood.”

An English translation of the communique can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.

NEFA Report on Anwar al-Awlaki: "Pro Al-Qaida Ideologue with Influence in the West"

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has recently published a new background report on Imam Anwar al-Awlaki. This report on Awlaki discusses his experience in the United States, his reputation as an ideologue, and his connections to Al-Qaida. Awlaki, an American who lives in Yemen, may be an influential player in Al-Qaida’s efforts to radicalize and incite American Muslims to commit terrorist acts. His lectures on leaderless jihad were downloaded by, and provided inspiration to, the conspirators in the 2006-07 plot to attack Fort Dix. In early January of 2009, al Awlaki published an essay titled “44 Ways to Support Jihad” on his web site. The paper is targeted to a young, English-speaking , Muslim audience and calls for armed and financial support of Jihad.

The background report on Imam al-Awlaki can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.

Will NSC Reorg Deal Realistically With Terrorist Threats?

By Michael Cutler

I am certain that I am not the only person who wished that our world was not plagued by the threat of terrorism. I am also not alone in my wish that our nation's economy and the economy of many other countries have been shaken to the core or that international criminals and terrorists are on the move around the globe, plying their trades wherever they can, seeking weaknesses and exploiting those weaknesses. The problem is that those critically important challenges confront our nation and most other nations on the face of this planet. Therefore it is imperative that our nation's leaders put political differences aside and stop pandering to the various special interest groups and business interests and make our nation's security the unequivocal number one priority!

This news article was forwarded to me by one of the many folks I have been in touch with ever since I decided to attempt to provide my insights concerning immigration in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It appeared in a British-based newspaper, the Telegraph, and addresses two of the many areas of concern I have been hammering away at; the Visa Waiver Program and the lack of resources devoted to enforcing the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.

This second article appeared in yesterday's edition of the Washington Post and was entitled, "Obama's NSC Will Get New Power." If the whole point is to seek out and then devise strategies to protect our nation, then our nation's leaders must incorporate the issues of border security and the enforcement and administration of the immigration laws into their national security strategies.

Let's start out considering the Visa Waiver Program that the Bush administration, in its final weeks, expanded from 27 participating countries to 34 countries. The travel and hospitality interests hired Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security to be their "talking head" to hawk their program called, "Discover America." As I have pointed out on many occasions, Mr. Ridge and his deep-pocketed friends in the travel and hospitality industries appear to have forgotten that al-Qaeda and other terrorist and criminal organizations have already discovered America! Remember that citizens of Great Britain are eligible to seek to enter the United States without first applying for a visa.

The Dangers of Our Weak Counterintelligence Efforts

By Douglas Farah

A vitally important description of one of the nation's vulnerabilities-the failure of counterintelligence- was buried in the Washington Post's Outlook section yesterday. It is worth revisiting.

The author, Michelle Van Cleave, headed the Bush administration's first congressionally mandated national counterintelligence executive, a vital mission, she writes that today, "is on life support."

It is a problem that spans the recent administrations, and one the Obama administration should address forcefully as it looks to reshape the intelligence community. The litany of reasons for the current situation, however, are familiar, including:

-lack of centralized thinking and action on the issue
-stovepiping of information
-lack of coherent policy

The lack of attention is borne out by the fact that Van Cleave was the FIRST national head of counterintelligence, appointed only in 2003.

Counterintelligence has to have true national leadership, and is too important to be left to the hodgepodge of agencies that currently carry out bits and pieces of the policy.

Why? As Van Cleave correctly notes, the Chinese have managed to steal EVERY nuclear weapons design the U.S. has, allowing them not only to leapfrog generations and billions of dollars in development, but also to identify every vulnerability in the current systems.

Russia no longer needs to rely solely on KGB thugs to carry out much of its espionage. It simply carries out the best business intelligence gathering operations through front companies, and hires lobbyists to collect other information of interest.

Most tellingly, the Islamist world is heavily invested in the United States through shell corporations and the governments that host and sponsor terrorists, from Hezbollah and al Qaeda. My full blog is here.

Indonesian Radical Group Claim Jihadists Will Go To Gaza

By Kenneth Conboy

On 6 February, the chairman of the Aceh provincial branch of the Indonesian Islamic Defender's Front claimed that two snipers and four suicide bombers would go to the Gaza Strip next week in order to fight against Israel. That chairman, Yusuf al Qardhani, claimed that they were selected from a group of 80 who passed a four-day interview and physical training in North Aceh district last month. He claimed that 50 out of the 80 were fit to be sent abroad; of the 50, they would be sent not only to Palestine but other Islamic countries as well. The six allegedly headed to Gaza were aged between 21 and 27. They had trained alongside an Indonesian named Abu Alyas, a veteran of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan who also fought with the Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines and is a member of Hamas.

The central office of the Islamic Defender's Front in Jakarta claimed that two other batches of jihadists had been sent to Gaza in January.

It should be noted that Indonesian radical groups, including the Islamic Defender's Front, have claimed to have dispatched jihadists to places like Lebanon and Afghanistan on several previous occasions since 2001. However, these have been largely dismissed as publicity stunts.

Last, last chance for diplomacy with Iran

By Olivier Guitta

I wrote a piece for the Middle East TImes on the slim chances of a potential resolution of the Iranian nuclear file through diplomacy at this time.
You can read the full article here.
Here is an excerpt:
This coming week, for an umpteenth time the P-5 plus one –the U.N. permanent five members plus Germany - will meet to talk about Iran and try to adopt a common position. It will be the first time the U.S. Barack Obama administration will take part in the discussions. With an affirmed will of breaking from the precedent administration, the Obama team has a lot at stake. At this point, with Iran inching so much closer to acquiring a nuclear weapon, the next few weeks might be the last chance for a diplomatic solution.
Obama's opening to the Tehran regime has been received quite coldly. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad replied by demanding apologies for the crimes the United States has allegedly committed. He also asked for the U.S. withdrawal from both Iraq and Afghanistan. But that is not all, when it comes to the core issue of Iran's military nuclear program, Aliakbar Javanfekr, a senior aide to Ahmadinejad, stated that Iran had no intention of stopping it.

That sounds pretty definitive. A non-starter, really. Interestingly, the White House muscled up its tone when it warned Iran that military action is still one of the options on the table. But at the same time the very dovish German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier reiterated his view that only diplomacy should be used, therefore removing a large stick from the negotiating table. Indeed, if Iran thinks there will be no major repercussions for defying the international community, then what incentive has Iran to stop?

NEFA Foundation: Al-Qaida Suicide Bomber Assessed by Pentagon as "Aggressive", "Committed Jihadist" Prior to Release from Gitmo

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has obtained a copy of the transcript of the 2005 Pentagon Administrative Review Board (ARB) assessment of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Kuwaiti national Abdullah al-Ajmi. According to that document, “Al-Ajmi is committed to jihad… Al-Ajmi wanted to make sure that when the case goes before the Tribunal, they know that he now is a Jihadist, an enemy combatant, and that he will kill as many Americans as he possibly can. Upon arrival at GTMO, Al Ajmi has been constantly in trouble. Al Ajmi’s overall behavior has been aggressive and non-compliant, and he has resided in GTMO’s disciplinary blocks throughout his detention… Al Ajmi is regarded as a continued threat to the United States and its allies.” As reported by the NEFA Foundation, in April 2008—following his inexplicable release from custody in Guantanamo Bay—Abdullah al-Ajmi carried out a suicide bombing on behalf of Al-Qaida in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Iran's New Satellites: The Pasdaran in Space

By Walid Phares

The launching of an Iranian satellite into orbit, said to be about "communications technology" and "earthquake monitoring," would have been a normal news item not exceeding the greater news report about India landing a space craft on the moon last month. But according to news agencies around the world, Western chanceries and national security agencies have taken the development "seriously." Associated Press and the BBC described reactions as "nervous." Although the debate about the value of Iranian space technology and commercial rocket capacity usually concludes that the Mullah regime is far away from reaching a respectable level, many defense analysts dismiss the issue as about the sole industrialization of the Islamic Republic: In fact it is about the "weaponization" of the satellite. Obviously this one launch may not be the crossing for the line, but the first step was accomplished and statements were made about the immediate following steps. The quasi consensus today is about the strategic intention of Tehran's war room, solidly in the hands of the Pasdaran. As I argued in discussions I had on France 24 TV and the BBC this week, the space program is one component of a regional strategic deployment. Hence it deserves to be analyzed from this perspective. Following is a short article published in Human Events

What Does Ethiopia's Withdrawal Mean for Somalia's Future?

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

As Ethiopian forces have withdrawn from Somalia, Shabaab militants have taken their place. Shabaab's area of effective control now stretches from Baidoa in south-central Somalia and Kismayo in the far south all the way to the capital of Mogadishu. Today I have an article in the Middle East Times examining the situation that Somalia confronts. An excerpt:

The circumstances of Ethiopia's withdrawal can only be described as a defeat. Anti-Ethiopian insurgent forces split into two primary groups during the course of the fighting. The Alliance for Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) is frequently described as a "moderate Islamist" faction by the international press, and much pressure was brought to bear on the TFG [transitional federal government] to constructively engage with ARS, including by the U.S. State Department. (Some observers believe that labeling the ARS "moderate" is inaccurate.) The insurgent faction that now lays claim to a large part of Somalia, Shabaab, is regarded as extremist by virtually all outside observers.

A large number of Somali members of parliament fled their country as the Ethiopians left. The exiled lawmakers settled in Djibouti, where they promptly set about undertaking "reconciliation talks." The representatives agreed to double the size of the parliament to include Islamist MPs affiliated with the ARS, and they selected ARS leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed as their new president following Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed's December resignation.

President Ahmed has said, "I think we can improve the situation in Somalia and establish genuine peace and reconciliation in my country." But it's difficult to see how this can be accomplished.

"Where will this parliament go?" asks Abdiweli Ali, an associate professor of economics at Niagara University and a former adviser to the TFG. "The seat of government has already been captured by Shabaab."

NEFA Foundation: AQIM’s Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud Calls for Terror Strikes in Vengeance for Gaza

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated a new audio recording (dated January 13) of the top commander from Al-Qaida’s Committee in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud, titled, “Gaza - Between the Hammer of the Jews and Crusaders, and the Nail of the Apostates.” Abdel Wadoud condemned the recent Israeli invasion of Gaza and insisted that Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is just as responsible for the plight of Gaza as the much-maligned Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak: “[the one] who has laid siege to Gaza and set his dogs, with their iron bars, upon the Egyptian people seeking to rescue their brothers, isn’t any more deceitful or shameless than the one who is preventing Muslims in Algeria from conducting peaceful protests… That person is Bouteflika, beloved by the Jews… That is Bouteflika and his generals, who appointed a Jew as an advisor in their damned government.” The AQIM commander demanded that Algerian soldiers and policemen abandon their support for Bouteflika’s government: “when will you stop directing your weapons and the bombs of your aircraft against your own people? At what point? Aren't you mortified by the thought of Allah [knowing about] the bombing runs of your aircrafts across Jijel, Boumerdas, and Tizi Ouzou over our heads, synchronized with the Israeli bombings targeting our brothers in Gaza?” Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud further called upon faithful Muslims across North Africa to launch terror strikes on “Jewish”, “crusader”, and “apostate” targets in vengeance for Israeli attacks on Gaza: “I call upon you to begin campaigns of destruction that will not end until the injustice against your brothers comes to a halt, putting pressure on this silent, treacherous regime… in particular, our brothers and beloved ones in Mauritania, the people of steadfastness and jihad. And so, I say to them, today is your day to support your brothers, [because] purifying Mauritania of the Israeli flag raised aloft in its skies, shooting the Jews, and closing their embassy is [our] duty… The peaceful demonstrations aren't sufficient anymore for Mauritania to respond to the voice of truth and honesty. The permanence of this relationship [between Mauritania and Israel] and its continual presence is not merely a sin against you alone, but it is also [a sin] against Islam and all its faithful… I call upon you to wage jihad, and attack the Western interests, everywhere… And to those in the Islamic Maghreb at large… lend your hands to the mujahideen, and coordinate with them in destroying Jewish and crusader interests in our regions without mercy or remorse. Carefully choose your targets, and provide your brothers with the intelligence. Plan quietly, rely on secrecy and silence, depend solely upon Allah, and do not seek anyone’s permission to destroy the killers of prophets and the cross-worshippers who are allied together in order to demolish us mercilessly and remorselessly.”

An English transcript of Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud's speech on Gaza can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.

Next Panel: “Reforming U.S. Counter-Terrorism Assistance Programs”

By Andrew Cochran

On Thursday, February 12, from 2 to 4 pm ET, Professor Yonah Alexander and I will co-chair a special seminar titled, “Reforming U.S. Counter-Terrorism Assistance Programs,” in room 2200 of the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington. Opening remarks will be delivered by Michael Swetnam, CEO and Chairman of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies; Rep. Brad Sherman, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade, U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs; and Rep. Edward R. Royce, the Subcommittee Ranking Member.

My co-chair, Prof. Alexander, is the distinguished Director of the Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies and the author or editor of almost 100 books on the various aspects of terrorism and counter-terrorism policy. Prof. Alexander and I participated in panels last year on the evolution of U.S. counterterrorism policy, the outlook for Iran and the U.S., and on relations between Turkey and the U.S.

Our panelists will be:

Contributing Expert Michael Kraft, former State Department Counter-Terrorism Office Senior Advisor, and co-author of a recent study on U.S. antiterrorism training assistance and counter-terrorism funding programs;

Contributing Expert Victor Comras, Attorney/Consultant, former UNSC Counter-Terrorism Monitor, and former Director of the U.S. State Department's International and Counter-Terrorism Sanctions Programs; and

Contributing Expert Matthew Levitt, Director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The event is co-sponsored by the Counterterrorism Foundation; the Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies, the International Center for Terrorism Studies at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, and the Inter-University Center for Legal Studies at the International Law Institute.

We will prepare a transcript of the event for posting on this site. To RSVP, contact Michelle Zewin by e-mail or call 703-562-4522 with your name and affiliation. Acceptances only, please.

Afghanistan In a Downward Spiral

By Douglas Farah

The prospect of building a successful strategy in Afghanistan is getting more and more complicated. The government of Kyrgyzstan is going to close a key resupply center, the Manas Air base-largely, it seems, at the instigation of the Russians. (Guess whose side Russia is on?)

The broad policy reassessment underway seems to point to retreat on governance issues and an emphasis on the military hunt for the Taliban.

Obama said Tuesday night in an interview with NBC News' Brian Williams that there is already "convergence between myself and the Joint Chiefs and my national security team about what we have to do." Obama added that "there's a shared view that Afghanistan is getting worse, not getting better."

"Afghanistan is really hard," Obama told NBC. "And we're going to have to bring all the elements of American power to bear in order to solve the problems."

The Joint Chiefs' plan reflects growing worries that the U.S. military was taking on more than it could handle in Afghanistan by pursuing the Bush administration's broad goal of nurturing a thriving democratic government.

This could be recognition of reality-we do not have the time and resources to do a multi-pronged approach. My full blog is here.

Spies Form Virtual Units on The Fly to Track Terror

By James Gordon Meek

When a cell of 10 Islamic militants stole into the Indian port city of Mumbai in November and began to unleash a fusillade of hell on two hotels, a train depot in rush hour and a Jewish center, US spooks scrambled to make sense of it all. About 20 analysts from across the globe immediately convened - not in the same room, but on two classified Web sites called Intellipedia and A-space.

It's like Wikipedia and Facebook for spies.

The first Mumbai entry was posted by a watch officer at the National Counterterrorism Center at the onset of the attacks, US officials told me recently. Soon, analysts from across America’s 16 spy agencies familiar with extremists in India and Pakistan logged on to A-space - a discussion site accessible to only a few thousand US intelligence analysts with the highest security clearances - to weigh who the attackers might be.

Analysts posted realtime satellite imagery and video depicting the carnage outside the Taj Mahal Hotel, which showed a sluggish response by Indian security forces. They also uploaded the first news photos of one young terrorist in Mumbai’s rail station who was later nabbed alive - noting how professionally he carried his weapons, and how he was dressed as blandly Western as the 9/11 hijackers 7 1/2 years ago.

The ad hoc group of analysts, who did not all know each other - including at least one in a Far East military outpost - quickly agreed that a claim of responsibility by the unheard of “Deccan Mujahadeen” was malarkey. It was really the handiwork of Pakistan’s Al Qaeda-affiliated Lashkar-e-Taiba.

“The analysts concluded it was LeT hours before that was made public,” one senior US intelligence official told me.

The Mumbai strikes were the first big test of the new system of collaboration using social networking tools put in place last fall by Directorate of National Intelligence chief technology czar Michael Wertheimer and his crew of savvy young spooks from the Myspace Generation. There are also Top Secret elements modeled on YouTube and Flicker.

Read more about how US spies are using A-space and Intellipedia in my full post on the New York Daily News' Mouth of the Potomac Blog.

Iran’s Fear of a Velvet Revolution?

By Walid Phares

Over the past few weeks more reports about Iranian suppression of opposition surfaced, including by Iranian-backed media. One particular report revealed a number of arrests among Ethnic Azeris inside Iran, only months after other reports about significant incidents in the Ahwaz southern region. Azeris in the North West and Arab ethnics in the south West are among the largest minorities in Iran. However arrests in Iranian Azerbaijan can be a significant development as traditionally the region has not been as agitated as other ethnic provinces. Interestingly, Iranian regime sources described their action as "counter intelligence" accusing the United States of inciting against Tehran. Even more surprising was Iranian intelligence accusations against US-based NGOs and a number of American public figures on the left of the political landscape of fermenting these unrest. This is happening as the Obama Administration is bracing for the long expected talks to come with the Mullahs regime.

In the wake of these Iranian reports about arrests of Azeri opposition elements, I had a conversation with military commentator Thomas Smith published in the World Defense Review and other outlets. Following is the text:

How to Avoid Funding Hamas: Scrutinize Those Who Receive U.S. Aid

By Matthew Levitt

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is one of the primary vehicles the U.S. government intends to use to provide newly pledged aid to Gaza. Amazingly, the agency is resisting efforts to implement a program to ensure that U.S. funds do not inadvertently support terrorism.

On Friday, the U.S. government announced that President Obama has authorized the use of $20.3 million to address critical post-conflict humanitarian needs in Gaza. Under the system as it exists today, some or all of those funds could end up in Hamas coffers.

The necessary first step to fix all this is simple and long-overdue: a partner verification system. Unfortunately, while USAID first published the proposed rule for such a system in July 2007, and a final rule was just published in the Federal Register last month, the proposed vetting system is still being vigorously opposed within USAID. In fact, the final rule was scheduled to go into effect Monday -- but was dealt a new setback when USAID bureaucrats held a backdoor meeting and effectively extended the implementation date.

Fortunately, President Obama will have the opportunity to rectify USAID's vetting shortcomings. As the final notice in the Federal Register notes, "The decision as to whether to implement PVS [a partner verification system] will be made by the incoming Obama administration."

The full article, which appears in todays' New York Daily News, is available here.

NEFA Foundation: New Audio From Zawahiri on "Sacrifices of Gaza and the Plotting Against It"

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated a new audio recording from Al-Qaida Deputy Commander Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri released on February 3 and titled, "Sacrifices of Gaza and the Plotting Against It". During his address, Dr. al-Zawahiri expressed his solidarity with embattled Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip: "we are standing with them, and we are avenging them in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Algeria by confronting the ongoing crusader campaign stretching from Chechnya to Somalia, and from Afghanistan to the Islamic Maghreb. I give them the good news that while Israel was bombing resolute Gaza, the treacherous Pakistani Government was forced to cut-off the NATO supply route between Karachi and Jalalabad under the pressure of your brothers, the mujahideen in Pakistan." Once again, al-Zawahiri was sharply critical of U.S. President Barack Obama, mocking his professed "concern" for the "the killing of civilians in Gaza." Dr. al-Zawahiri taunted, "Concerned! We are very thankful for your concern, Mr. Obama. Your concern has reached us, accompanied by thousands of bombs and tons of white phosphorus, mixed with the blood, corpses, and tears of Muslims in Gaza... In his inauguration speech, he failed to mention a single word about what happened in Gaza." Al-Zawahiri once again called upon faithful Muslims to volunteer service with mujahideen organizations or else contribute the necessary financing for mujahideen operations. He implored, "if the Zionist-Crusader campaign confronts us everywhere, and attacks Islam and Muslims across the entire world in the so-called ‘war on terrorism’—but in reality, it is the ‘war on Islam’—why would we not attack them everywhere? Why wait for the enemy to choose for us the battlefield, the time, the place, and the method with which we shall fight him?"

An English transcript of al-Zawahiri's recording can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.

Blunt Tools and Online Sex-Predators

By Roderick Jones

There has always been something of an ongoing debate in the Counter-Terrorism community about whether extremist online networks should be closed down. On the one hand closing them down would make some activities harder to achieve but on the other they provide a valuable insight into extremist thinking. Closing virtual networks down probably isn’t wholly possible given the ability to re-create your own communities using new identities or platforms. Furthermore, simply shutting a virtual network down would push it elsewhere and is a blunt way of dealing with a complex problem. However, this lesson or debate has not filtered into domestic concerns relating to online sex-predators.

There are of course of variety of sex-offender lists throughout the US and in some other western countries. Therefore, it is possible to exclude individuals from virtual communities, such as Facebook or MySpace based on this data and importantly add further information to this such as Instant Message profiles. This would therefore, work in a similar fashion to the airline watch-list maintained by the DHS, which famously and probably unfairly is best known for excluding US Senator Ted Kennedy from flying. In short a system, which compares a list of known sex-predators against the names on any virtual network is a pretty low-tech instrument with which to control a complex problem. Similarly, it does nothing to combat anonymous use of any system nor does it prevent anti-social elements from operating in other virtual spaces. In short a blunt and potentially ineffective tool. However, this is exactly what a company called Sentinel Tech offers to MySpace and has started a furor with Facebook because Facebook won’t use their services to ban sex-offenders (original story on TechCrunch). The populist tone struck by this company, MySpace and the Connecticut AG is in itself the first reason to be skeptical of this approach. But its seeming lack of sophistication in a world of extensive online behavioral knowledge is quite shocking. Surely it would be better to judge online behavior on what actually is being done online rather than matching names, emails or other online profiles, (which could have no relation to reality and is USA centric) to a sex-offenders register. This issue of controlling anti-social behavior in online networks is not new – the response remains old (How to prevent anti-social behavior in online social networks).

Sex-offenders create the hysteria but there of course other anti-social groups active across a variety of online platforms. There is little evidence to suggest banning them goes any way to curtailing their activities. In fact, the opposite may be true certainly one of the most effective campaigns against anti-social elements in a virtual space was the collective activity against the French National Front when it opened an office in Second Life. In that vein Facebook already has a ‘get child molesters off Facebook’ group.

Facebook’s chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly, has also questioned why there isn’t a national sex offender database. A very good question, and maybe one which the forthcoming economic stimulus plan could invest in. This could be used by all social networks to do preliminary filtering and act as a center for sharing expertise with other government agencies. The MySpace approach powered by Sentinel and supported by the Connecticut AG is not only blunt but also likely ineffective – in short the worst of all worlds and Facebook is correct to push back against this hue and cry.

Qatar Challenges Washington on Hamas

By Matthew Levitt

As part of The Washington Institute's focus on Gulf and counterterrorism issues, my colleague Simon Henderson and I co-authored this piece on Qatar's move away from the Arab consensus and toward Syria and Iran, as evidenced most recently by its stance on Hamas:

Speaking last week in Qatar, Hamas leader Khaled Mashal thanked Qatar for its support and declared that Palestinian fighters had "won the war [in the Gaza Strip] by defeating Israeli plans." Mashal also lauded controversial Islamic scholar Yousef al-Qaradawi as the "shaikh of resistance." By tolerating such an event, Qatar, which hosts a vital U.S. command center as well as a substantial air wing and storage facilities, highlighted its diplomatic journey away from the Arab consensus -- via support for Islamist extremists -- toward an alliance with Syria and Iran. Qatar's developing stance hampers Washington's policies on Iran and the Middle East peace process.

The complete article is available here.

Note: The Institute announced yesterday that Kenneth L. Wainstein has joined the Institute as the Sheila and Milton Fine distinguished visiting fellow, focusing on counterterrorism issues. He was appointed as the nation's homeland security advisor by former president George W. Bush on March 30, 2008, and served in that position until January 20, 2009. Mr. Wainstein chaired President Bush's Homeland Security Council and reported to the president on a range of homeland security and counterterrorism matters. Mr. Wainstein will write and speak on emerging U.S. counterterrorism challenges in the Middle East, including the Gulf States.

NEFA Foundation: Taliban Reject Formation of “Awakening”-Style Movements in Afghanistan

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated a new communiqué from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the Taliban) rejecting the formation of new paramilitary security organizations in Afghanistan modeled on the apparent success of the “Awakening” movements in Iraq. The Taliban warned that the Karzai administration “can label these militias with any name it wants, but in fact they are just like those from the former communist-era, such as Gilam Jam ([Abdul Rashid] Dostum's militia)… The nation should not be deceived by these names. The formation of these new militias is testimony to the fact that U.S., NATO, and Afghan National Army and local police forces have suffered total defeat at the hands of the Taliban. They are like a drowning person trying to grab any object floating by. They are repeating the same experience of the communists. The brave nation of Afghanistan will not consider these irresponsible raiders as their defenders, and neither will they dispatch their sons to join these useless ranks.”

An English translation of the communique can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.

Understanding the Islamist Agenda and Negotiations

By Douglas Farah

There are many good reasons for wanting to talk directly to one's enemies, particularly states that pose a direct threat to one's security. The Obama administration, facing a host of domestic problems and inheriting the ineffective policies of the previous administration in dealing with Iran's nuclear program, has incentives to want to get the Iran issue contained, at a minimum.

The same can be said for the Afghanistan crisis, which is lurching from bad to worse. The Taliban, flush with opium money, is making inroads while the corrupt and ineffective government fiddles, and Kabul is close to burning.

But one has to be clear that the other side wants some sort of serious back and forth. This is what is missing in both cases. One must start from a recognition of what it is Iran wants: the abolition of Israel, the unimpeded sponsorship of armed non-state actors (Hezbollah and Hamas, with the dalliance with al Qaeda when convenient), and imposition of a global theocracy. None of these issues is negotiable.

From this Wall Street Journal piece, it is quite clear that Iran sees nothing to be gained by talks, and much to be gained by trying to humiliate the incoming administration. Perhaps they are simply recognizing the reality that their basic goals leave little room for substantive negotiations.

It seems to me that Fareed Zakaria makes serious mistake in his assessment of Afghanistan policy in calling for talks with the Taliban. My full blog is here.

Higher Education and Democracy in Iraq: Book Review

By Aaron Mannes

The latest issue of Policy Review just published my review of John Agresto's Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq.

Agresto, a former President of St. John's College and chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities served as the special adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education for about a year. Although a true believer in the cause, he has harsh criticism for poorly thought out U.S. policies. However, as that story has been told by so many others I focus on Agresto's deeper questions about the nature of democracy, the role of higher education in democracy, and the enormous challenges to building an Iraqi democracy. I did not realize that the article would come out as Iraq's provincial elections were being held. The elections have been generally peaceful and according to some reports the secular parties are winning. However, as I discuss in the review, the Iraqis appear to have adopted the forms of democratic government - but the open question remains whether or not the substance has taken hold. This is a fundamental question for reform in Iraq and throughout the region.

Read the complete review here.

NEFA Foundation: Video Transcript of Former Gitmo Detainees Swearing Allegiance to Al-Qaida in Yemen

By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated a new video from the Al-Qaida Organization in the Arabian Peninsula released on January 23, featuring two former inmates at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba who have returned to senior positions within Al-Qaida. During the video, former Gitmo prisoner no. 372 Said al-Shihri (a.k.a. Abu Sufyan al-Azdi) offered his thanks to supporters in the Muslim world: "may Allah reward you handsomely for me and for my brothers, the prisoners in Guantanamo-for the time when you were a blessing to us… when you stood with us and shared our pains, and prayed for us. And we felt its impact upon us in terms of patience and determination... By Allah, our imprisonment has only increased our persistence and adherence to our principles... Here we are today... [in] the land of Yemen and faith. We pledge our allegiance to our brother Abu Basir Nasir al-Wahishi... so that we will serve as a buttress for the jihad to expand from the [Arabian] Peninsula to Palestine, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and all the Muslim countries." Later in the video, former Gitmo prisoner no. 333 Mohammed al-Awfi (a.k.a. Shaykh Abul-Hareth al-Awfi) threatened to the camera, "we say to the Christian countries which are preparing for war in Saudi Arabia and which are supporting the Christian war against the Muslims: by Allah, we are surely coming for you! ...And we say to the police and [internal] investigations [system] of the Saudis, and to those who guard the Jews and the Christians: repent to Allah for the deception and treachery that you are culpable for when you guard the entrances to their embassies, their secret temples, their population centers, and their military and intelligence bases. The one who gives fair warning cannot [afterwards] be blameworthy, O' servants of the Dirham and the Dinar."

An English transcript of the video can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.

U.S. Public Health System Needs To Acclerate Attention to Bioterror Threat

By Jonathan Winer

Regardless of whether the recent reports of terrorist experimentation with bubonic plague in Algeria prove true or false, they serve as a reminder that the U.S. remains inadequately prepared to detect quickly or respond effectively to biological attacks.

It is worth looking back at the last sustained Congressional testimony on the topic, from the departing head of the public health component of the Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Jeffery W. Runge, on July 22, 2008.

He warned that the risk of a large-scale biological attack on the U.S. remained "significant," finding that al-Qaeda continued to seek to develop and use a biological weapon to cause mass casualties in an attack on the U.S. He highlighted anthrax, not plague, as the most likely choice, and warned that a single successful urban attack could kill hundreds of thousands of people, making an aerosolized anthrax attack DHS's number one bioterrorism concern.

His three major recommendations address important needed steps. First, speeding detection through technologies that reduce the time-to-detect to allow the necessary time to deliver life-saving medical countermeasures to the population. Second, moving forward on the National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC), to integrate interagency information across the sectors of human health, animal health, food, water and the environment. Third, integrating the work of DHS and our health community to build common access to information and systems that work together for security and for health.

As of July 2008, the GAO found that the NBIC was a work in progress, which appeared to have very limited existing capabilities, needing to complete its work in any number of areas. But even assuming DHS is able to get its act more fully together in this realm to speed detection and knit together resources, the question remains whether the underlying public health resources are sufficient to meet the tests a mass event may someday impose.

The findings of a December 2008 report, "Ready or Not?" issued annually by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation project "Trust for America's Health" suggest we still have a great deal to do to be ready for any form of significant terror-generated health emergency, and that budget cuts are leading to deterioration in existing capacities, even as planning for future integration and enhancement goes forward. The report provides a detailed report card on many aspects of public health disaster planning and capabilities at both the federal and state evels, and is worth reviewing in its entirety. But one set of statistics stand out. We have slightly less than one million hospital beds in the United States, which typically run at circa 80% capacity, leaving some 200,000 beds empty on any given day. All of that changes the moment a mass public health emergency begins. For example, half of the states would not be able to generate enough bed capacity within two weeks of a moderate pandemic—that is, a pandemic with a severity midway between the severe 1918 flu outbreak and the mild flu outbreak in 1968. In a severe pandemic (like in 1918), 47 states and the District of Columbia would run out of hospital beds within two weeks. Creating large quantities of additional beds at hospitals that remain unused under normal circumstances would not seem to be the best answer -- but the absence of an alternative system to deal with the types of mass emergencies that we would face in the event of a significant bioterror attack is one we would regret if the predicted catastrophe ever becomes a reality.

The Algerian plague allegations may or may not prove that Al Qaeda is further down the road of planning a bioattack on the United States. (The posts by CT Blog contributor Olivier Guitta provide an excellent integration of relevant currently available public facts.) Regardless, it should be another wake up call that the work to be done in integrating our public and private capacities into a system that can meet our needs in emergencies must be accelerated.

Iraq Provincial Elections: Pointing the Way to the Future or a Return to Oppression?

By Walid Phares

Per UN observers, NGOs and legislators from various assemblies around the world, the latest Iraq provincial elections showed a significant level of professionalism and organizational clout. Despite a number of incidents and flaws, within norms of societies emerging away from dictatorship, the Iraqi electoral process has moved forward since its first post Baathist election in 2005. The main achievement in these provincial elections was the demonstration by Iraqi security and defense forces of their capacity to organize such an exercise on a national scale despite the al Qaeda menace and Iranian penetration of the country. This thus opens the discussion of Iraqi military responsibility as the United States are now contemplating the first stages of redeployment and withdrawal. In a future piece I will share some of the discussions I had with European and Iraqi legislators regarding these next stages. Following is a short piece I published on the Fox News Forum.