Yemeni-American preacher Anwar al Awlaki has becoming something of an international boogeyman, with traces and connections to him being found amongst an ever expanding array of terrorist plots around the world. According to the U.S., he has gone beyond being a nuisance preacher to being actively involved in terrorist plotting – his connections to underpants bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab have earned him a place on the U.S. Predator hit-list.

But in many ways, more interesting than his apparently growing role as a preacher moving up the ladder to training individuals, is his ability to reach out through cyberspace to an ever-expanding and diverse community of people. Two recent cases highlight this in particular: Paul “Bilal” Rockwood and his wife Nadia in Alaska, and on the other side of the world in Singapore, Muhammad Fadil Abdul Hamid.

Awlaki is the common thread between the two. According to court documents, Rockwood was a long-term follower, having converted in “late 2001 or early 2002” while he was living in Virginia. He rapidly became a “strict adherent to the violent Jihad-promoting ideology of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki….This included a personal conviction that it was his (Rockwood’s) religious responsibility to exact revenge by death on anyone who desecrated Islam.” While his timings appear to correlate with when Awlaki was also in Virginia it is unclear from information in the public domain whether they actually met.

Having been radicalized, over the next eight years Rockwood, who when he was arrested was a 35 year-old weatherman in the charmingly named King Salmon, Alaska, identified a list of possible targets through “visiting websites on the internet that professed to identify individuals, including American servicemen, who were alleged by the websites to have committed crimes of violence against Muslim civilians.” He further researched how to execute them “including discussing the use of mail bombs and the possibility of killing targets by gunshot to the head.” He narrowed his list down to 15 possible targets and planned on sharing this list, through his knowing wife, with a third person whom he believed shared his beliefs. From here it got to the Feds, certainly suggesting that this third party was not all that he or she seemed.

On the other hand, it seems highly unlikely that Muhammad Fadil Abdul Hamid ever had opportunity to meet the preacher. A 20-year old national serviceman in Singapore, he self-radicalized online and attempted to make contact with Awlaki through the net claiming to want to fight alongside him in Yemen. He was also in contact with a suspected Al Qaeda recruiter who urged him to go fight in Afghanistan and he produced at least one “self-made video glorifying martyrdom and justifying suicide bombing.” According to information released after his detainment under the Internal Security Act, his main influences appear to have been Anwar al-Awlaki and Australian-Lebanese former boxer Feiz Muhammed.

At around the same time as they detained Hamid, Singaporean police also placed Muhammad Anwar Jailani, 44, and Muhammad Thahir Shaik Dawood, 27 on two-year “restriction orders.” Jailani was apparently distributing Awlaki material, while Dawood went so far as to try to join the preacher in Yemen, though he was unable to connect with him and was instead rather disillusioned by what he did find there.

While not delving into the detail of the plots (which are not quite on the scale of 9/11), the running theme is Anwar al-Awlaki and his ability to provide some sort of indirect ideological guidance to people through the internet. While he may have had some contact with Rockwood early on, it still took Rockwood about five years before he started his research, and another three years before he moved into action. For the Singaporean’s, no contact appears to have taken place, but (like many others) the men appear to have sought out Awlaki as a guide to carrying out contemporary jihad. It would seem in many ways as though Awlaki, rather than Osama or even Abu Musab al Suri, is actually proving to be the globalized voice of jihad. His cry for personalized jihad in English appears to resonate amongst the global community of disenfranchised individuals across racial, national, and generational lines (I have not seen any evidence of gender yet, but women in jihad remains a marginal feature).

What is not clear if this is anything particularly new, or whether he is simply the latest in a long line of radical clerics whose charisma is able to draw people to him and it his ability to use the internet that has given him a global reach. Whatever the case, it is clear that his online presence is also what will guarantee him longevity beyond if the Predator’s do ever catch him.

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It has become something of an article of faith to say that poverty and economic misfortune are not drivers of terrorism. This seems a sensible conclusion to reach when one considers the volume of poverty and misery in the world and the relatively small volume of terrorists that emerge from it. Were poverty truly a determinant of a predilection for terrorist radicalization then theoretically speaking there would be far more terrorists in this world than there are.

But at the same time, it seems clear that there is some sort of correlation between social deprivation and radicalization – even if only from the perspective that it often appears as a constant in communities where radicalization seems able to take root (though of course this is not always the case). This is a difficult correlation to understand as it is not one that appears to exist on a steady or universal gradient, but it is clearly plays some sort of a role in the radicalization picture.

Understanding this question, however becomes increasingly salient as we enter ever tighter economic times, as theoretically speaking we are increasing one of the possible drivers. The core point is: are we are going to see an increase in radicalization amongst communities as they feel the economic squeeze?

One possible vision of the consequent trends can be seen in the recent annual Europol report on terrorism trends in the EU (which I wrote about for the Jamestown Foundation). Amongst other things, it highlighted a growing level of concern about left-wing and anarchist radicalization: “In 2009, the total number of left-wing and anarchist terrorist attacks in the EU increased by 43% compared to 2008 and more than doubled since 2007.”

These trends are discernable at a wider level too: the emergence in the UK of far-right groups like the English Defence League appears to at least in part be the product of social disaffection stirred up by disenfranchisement. Rioting in Greece has taken an increasingly violent turn and there has also been a more general increase in anarchist violence and extremist activity. And German officials have expressed concern about the discovery of an 80-page pamphlet entitled “Prisma” which offers ideas for bomb-making, avoiding detection by police and other tips for urban guerrillas. They have also marked a 53% jump in left-wing attacks in 2009 which has included some large scale acts of vandalism and violence.

All of which would point to an increase in radicalization amongst communities that do not appear to be so directly influenced by the Al Qaeda narrative. So does this mean that the poor economic climate is directly contributing to radicalization in general: youths are becoming angry at the system and fighting against it, is the free time they are left with due to their economic disenfranchisement giving them the time to indulge in such activity? Well, possibly, but it seems as though it would be best not to leap to any conclusions about this quite yet or any draconian reactions. Anyway, what exactly would be the abrupt security reaction be: pour security funding into economic stimulus packages?

At the end of the day what we might assess as the underlying causes of some of the increase in right/left/anarchist violence may indeed be the economic crisis, but care must be paid to not exaggerate our response to this particular cause over others. As previous experience has shown, an exaggerated response leads to mistakes the impact of which is impossible to measure.

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This is the first in a series of blogs covering the panel discussions at our Peace and Security Summit in New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel.

After morning and afternoon sessions of expert working groups (the findings of which will be posted later), the first panel discussion of the ICSR Peace and Security Summit took place.  Entitled ‘Nine Years After 9/11: Are We Safer?’, the panel brought together an

All four of our panelists: (from left to right) Arif Alikhan, Amb. Cofer Black, Steve Clemons and Fran Townsend

impressive mix of government officials and experts to discuss if the terror threat in the West has changed and if the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the billions of dollars invested in security, have had any real and positive effect.

Representing the Department of Homeland Security was Arif Alikhan, the Assistant Secretary for Policy Development.  He was joined by Ambassador Cofer Black, former Director of the CIA’s Counter-terrorism Center; Steve Clemons, Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation; and Fran Townsend, who was previously the Homeland Security Advisor to President George W. Bush.

Moderated by our very own Dr. Peter Neumann, the panelists discussed a range of crucial issues, beginning with the simple question of are we safer now than we were nine years ago?  Fran Townsend was optimistic but cautionary, pointing out that although America is now safer, they have become victims of their own success.  Expanding on this point, she noted that a lack of successful terror attacks on the US homeland since 9/11, which was down to successful counter-terrorism measures, meant that a sense of complacency was beginning to creep into the American psyche, whereby a lack of attacks has translated into a dangerous underestimation of the threat.  She also laid out her three main solutions to the threat: a re-strengthening of alliances with foreign intelligence agencies; an improvement of the relationship between central and local government; and encouraging a greater understanding among American citizens of the true extent of the terrorist threat, who without their active involvement and support the government would be unable to prevent future attacks.

Steve Clemons was far less optimistic in his assessment, claiming that the US was far less safe now than it was.  His main worry was that whereas before 9/11 the world perceived America as a dominant country with no bounds, the attacks engendered a global shift in this attitude, whereby the country is now seen as “beset by constraints” both militarily and economically.  In response, Clemons said that the US must now take steps to “reinstate its capacity to change global gravity” and “gain a capacity to sculpt the global system.”  

When the same question was posed to former CIA agent, Ambassador Cofer Black, he seemed to agree more with Townsend, noting that before 9/11 it was very difficult for the US to “accept and validate” the real threat of jihadist terrorism, and was struggling to make the transition from a Cold War mentality.  Crucially, the US military had not undertaken any sort of counter-terrorism training and was wholly unprepared for the emerging threat.  The attacks on New York awoke the government and its security agencies from their collective slumbers, and as a result, Ambassador Black said that the country is far better prepared to face the threat than it was almost a decade ago.  His message did come, however, with a warning: although tactically the US and its allies are now safer, the threat can “change quickly and dramatically”.

Finally, Arif Alikhan concurred that the US was now safer, but warned that threats are not static.  Comparing terrorists with the criminals he had dealt with in the past as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, he claimed that they will evolve and adapt over time.  In response, governments must anticipate future threats, and translate this into action.  Like Townsend, Alikhan also stressed the central importance of a strong relationship between central and local governments.

 

In discussion: Alikhan and Amb. Black

Dr. Neumann then shifted the discussion to specifically address the threat of ‘homegrown’ terrorism, asking the panelists if they thought that this represented a sudden change in terrorist tactics, or if indeed it was something that has been coming for some time.  None of the panelists believed that this was in any way a dramatic shift or change, and Townsend referred to two English speaking jihadist ideologues, Adam Gadahn and Anwar al-Awlaki, as evidence of a long term al-Qaeda strategy to appeal to young, Western Muslims.

Alikhan was also asked by Dr. Neumann if he, as the highest ranking Muslim in the Obama administration, believed that American Muslims were less vulnerable than their counterparts in other countries to becoming radicalised.  He began by stressing that there is in fact no ‘Muslim community’, and there are hundreds of different communities that are by no means a homogenous block.  He argued that it is not communities that are susceptible to extremism, but rather it is often isolated individuals who become terrorists and that communities are not the problem, but the solution.

In the closing minutes of the discussion, the floor was opened to the audience who asked a number of incisive and interesting questions.  Chief among them was a request that that each panelist give a short and sharp assessment of the how they saw the future threat.  Ambassador Black commented that an attack on the US homeland was an “actuarial certainty”, and Townsend agreed, also foreseeing that these attacks will likely have a low casualty count, involve a transport target and will emanate from either al-Qaeda or one of its regional affiliates, including the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

Thus, this impressive and informative discussion was concluded, leaving the audience with much to take in and think about, and setting the tone for a successful conference.

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My first substantive post to this blog was on the topic of terrorism in Italy and the attempt by Mohammed Game to blow himself up at a barracks in Milan. Fortunately, no-one was killed in Game’s attempt and he remains in custody along with two alleged accomplices – the three are going on trial (in two separate cases) May 12 and June 26.

While undoubtedly more information will come out during the trials, it would appear from what is already in the public domain as though Game and his contacts were a relatively free-standing “Lone Wolf” terror cell. A phenomenon which appears to be increasingly common in Italy, where details have just been revealed about the reasons behind the expulsion of a couple of Moroccan students from Perugia University towards the end of April. The two students, now apparently living freely in Rabat, were thrown out of Italy following an assessment that they were a threat to public safety.

It has now been revealed that Mohammed Hlal, 27, was overheard saying that he wanted to kill the Pope in order to guarantee himself a place in paradise, part of a regular digest of anger apparently directed at the Catholic Church. It is unclear what role his accomplice 22-year old Ahmed Errahmouni had in the plot, though a wide array of images of famous Italian locations were found in their possession, alongside numerous maps, and an instruction manual on how to build bombs. No actual weapons or explosives were located, though apparently confiscated computers had encryption programs installed.

Italian services had been alerted to the two in October of last year, following unspecified leads about concerns being expressed of radical views heard amongst some Moroccan students in Perugia. An investigation was launched, and in late April a series of arrests were made, allegedly because the group was becoming more isolated and radical and there were concerns that some action might be on the horizon. In the initial sweep another four Moroccans, a Tunisian and a Palestinian with an Israeli passport were also picked up: the group apparently used to attend the same mosque in Perugia.

Reporting to have emerged from the cell appears to point to the fact that it was a largely self-contained group who self-radicalized – much like the narrative being painted around Mohammed Game and his cell. This is a phenomenon which Italian investigators are seeing an increasing amount, including in the case further north  of Abdelkader Ghafir, 44, and Rachid Ilhami, 31, two Moroccan laborers accused by security head Bruno Megale of being in a cell like Game’s atlthough in an earlier phase (two others stand charged of immigration offences alongside them). Those men’s trial is currently ongoing. And Game’s cell has been repeatedly referred to in the context of the Perugia cell that threatened the Pope.

In all cases, the groups appear to be self-contained and have (according to reporting) no connections to Al Qaeda core or a regional affiliate. The individuals involved appear to be mostly of North African extraction (like most Muslim migrants in Italy) and male, but aside from this they tend to defy uniform classification. Their radicalization appears for the most part to be self-generated, though they appear to also operate on the fringes of known networks. In the case with the Game group who were also linked to the radical Viale Jenner mosque in Milan, a former Imam of which was incarcerated last month, while Ghafir and Ilhami were also apparently helping run a local Islamic center. According to the press, the other students involved in the Perugia sweep are being looked into for connections.

In my earlier post on Game I described the group as a Lone Wolf Pack – something I have been exploring in greater detail in a longer paper that I am currently working on. The phenomenon is not in fact isolated to Italy, both the Fort Dix group in the United States from 2007 and Jihad Hamad and Youssef el Hajdib, who in July 2006 left a set of suitcase bombs on a Cologne train, have elements similar to the Italian groups. What is interesting, however, is the apparent high instance of these sorts of groups in Italy – I have yet to see any analysis as to exactly why this is (of course, it has to be said that all of these Italian groups are being tried or are on trial (or have not been tried and simply ejected from the country) – so they are in fact still innocent until proven guilty. Only Game would appear to be conclusively guilty of something).

What is not clear is to me yet is whether these sorts of groups coming together is something which needs to be analyzed within the context of Al Qaeda plots or if it should be analyzed within the context of trying to understand the impact of the internet as an accelerant of the ideology. Or maybe it is something which is a social phenomenon which needs to be understood using the sort of social network analysis that Marc Sageman deploys. Whichever is the case, it would not surprise me if this sort of phenomenon in one way or another becomes an increasingly important element of counter-terrorism in the West that will require deeper understanding and research.

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In an article in this past weekend’s Observer, Luke Harding tells the story of 17-year old Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova. According to Harding, it was she who detonated her suicide belt at Moscow’s Lubyanka metro station, killing nearly two dozen commuters last Monday, 29 March. Notwithstanding the confusion over the identities of who did what where, Harding has at least identified the reason why this act of terrorism happened:

But though a precise explanation for Dzhennet's actions can never be known, we shouldn't ignore a simpler reason: the internet. In recent years the insurgency in Russia's north Caucasus has mutated. During the 1990s, the rebels were largely Soviet-educated and secular, seeking to establish their an [sic] independent Chechen state. Today's insurgents are radical Islamists, fighting for a Taliban-like emirate across the Caucasus mountains. The web has become a potent tool for recruiting volunteers. According to Kommersant newspaper, Dzhennet and Umalat [Magomedov, husband, insurgent, dead] met while chatting online; at the time she was just 16.

And so ends the article. Somewhat abruptly, but that’s OK as the ‘mystery’ is obviously solved.  This is fairly typical for what passes as comment and analysis in the mainstream press when it comes to examining the links between the internet and political violence.  

In this case, what Harding has provided is a classic case of a ‘logical fallacy’, of the post hoc ergo propter hoc or ‘questionable cause’ variety: because Y happened after X, X must have caused Y. In the context of Abdurakhmanova’s internet use and her subsequent terrorist act, correlation does not imply causality, and this particular example is a form of technological determinism that allows little room for human agency.

It belongs to the same school of thought that treats people as empty vessels into which an ideology is placed, ‘causing’ radicalisation, leading to terrorism.  At the same time, proponents of this view also like to generalise from specific cases, an inductive approach that tends to result in ‘othering’ as many people as possible. You can argue for the relevance of many factors in someone’s biography leading to the commission of violence but you can’t have your cake and eat it.

What compounds Harding’s error is that he arrived at this conclusion because he cannot appeal to any other data. This is not even an application of Occam’s Razor: it’s just lazy. Such linear and dubious argumentation has plagued counterterrorism policy for years, although governments are far cannier about such things these days. In this case, both journalist and The Observer’s editorial staff are at fault. Why is taking so long for the media to catch up?

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Up North at Manchester Crown Court, brothers Abbas and Ilyas Iqbal have been found guilty this week of charges relating to their the dissemination of material useful to terrorists and preparation of acts of terrorism. A third man, a white Muslim convert, was cleared of charges against him.

The men became dubbed the "Blackburn Resistance" after a video was uncovered on a mobile SIM card in Abbas Iqbal’s luggage as he tried to board a plane at Manchester airport. The clip showed the men running around a park in Blackburn in camouflage and seemingly imitating command training with As Sahab-type music in the background. At the beginning of the video the words the "Blackburn Resistance" featured prominently, and a voice intoned "They are fighting against oppression, they are The Blackburn Resistance."

Alongside this footage and a wide array of other photos of the men brandishing or trying weapons out, a variety of knives, BB guns, an air rifle and pistol, crossbows and live ammunition were found with the men. Two documents entitled “attack planning” and “urban combat” were also found bearing the brothers fingerprints.

But while some of the pictures of the group are quite dramatic looking, the reality is that it is very hard to imagine this group as a cell of hardened terrorists. Cognizant of this, the prosecution was very careful to not paint the men in too heavy a light, recognizing that "some aspects of the material may at first blush seem almost comical in [their] amateurishness." Nonetheless, they saw the group as "intoxicated by the evil of terrorism," and actively preparing to disseminate recruiting material abroad.

The men ultimately received relatively light sentences, Abbas Iqbal, 24, was sentenced to two years in prison for the dissemination of terrorist publications, while his younger brother Ilyas, 23, was incarcerated for 18 months for possessing a document likely to be useful to a terrorist. Given he has spent almost that amount of time already on remand, Ilyas was released, while his older brother will still serve another three to four months. Their co-defendant was cleared on all charges having spent 387 days in custody. A fourth man picked up with them at the airport is still on trial in a separate case.

But it is hard to judge exactly how much of a victory this really is for counter-terrorists. This is not a cell of global travelers with contacts to Al Qaeda core, but rather a group of young men who through the internet and home computers were able to create an imitation set of videos and pictures of themselves dressing up as terrorists. That they may have later gone on to do something is of course perfectly possible, but as the prosecutor pointed out: "at the stage when they were stopped by police, they had not got very far."

It is easy to see how this could play badly in the court of public opinion, where what even the prosecution described as "larking around in a park in Blackburn," was painted as potential terrorist training. The fact they seem not to have been receiving much coverage in the press is a good thing, and probably the product of the fact that very few editors would have taken the group very seriously.

A final point I would add about these chaps, however, is how lucky they are to have been caught doing these acts in the UK – had they been nabbed for similar things in the U.S., they would probably be looking at very long stints inside.

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An increasing number of analysts in the United States are beginning to address the problem of home-grown Islamist terrorism in much greater depth than ever before. Unlike the 7 July 2005 London bombings, the attacks of 9/11 were, of course, perpetrated by foreign nationals.

In part, this has contributed to something of a consensus in the United States that home grown radicalisation was a problem which was largely confined to Europe and that the main threat to American national security was external.  "The feeling was we're a country of immigrants and people tend to come to the US and feel accepted, whereas in Europe they are caught between two worlds", observes Stephen Grand, director of US-Muslim relations at the Brookings Institution.

However, a number of events in recent weeks and months have led to a serious reappraisal of this view. The most dramatic of these was the Fort Hood shootings of 15 November 2009, which killed 13 people, and was allegedly perpetrated by Nidal Malik Hasan, a US Army major who was serving as a psychiatrist. Hasan’s radicalisation has also been linked to Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Islamist preacher of Yemeni dissent, who is a US citizen and has spent much of his life in the country.

There is worrying evidence that these events are indicative of a broader pattern. Al Qaeda has a history of trying to attract UK and American citizens to become active agents for its cause. Further, as the The Sunday Times has reported, during the past eight months alone, there have been 13 cases in which 30 American citizens allegedly plotted to carry out attacks or joined terrorist organisations in Pakistan or Somalia. Earlier this month, Sharif Mobley, a 26 year old New Jersey man of Somali heritage, was arrested in Yemen and charged with membership of Al Qaeda. Reports also claimed that Mobley had worked in power plants in the US before moving to Yemen.

Last week, in another dramatic development, news broke of the October arrest of Colleen LaRose ('Jihad Jane'). LaRose has been accused of actively trying to recruit others as part of a plot to assassinate the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who lives under a fatwa for cartoons he drew about the Prophet Mohammed. As part of the same investigation, it also emerged that another American woman, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31 years old and originally from the town of Leadville in the Rocky Mountains, had been arrested in Ireland. Newspaper stories claim that both women had been discontented divorces, until finding Islam and becoming radicalised; it also seems that the internet played an important part in their radicalisation.

These incidents feed into another growing concern, which is the potential role of women in Islamist terrorism. In a prescient article for the Hudson Institute, published the very day that the 'Jihad Jane' story broke in the media, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens observed that Islamist teachings on the involvement of women in jihad have developed significantly in recent years, and seem to forecast an increasingly prominent role for female jihadist. As Meleagrou-Hitchens summarises:

As the United States and Europe have slowly come to terms with the grim reality of the Islamist terror threat, comment and analysis on how to deal with it have almost invariably concentrated on angry young males. What has frequently been overlooked is the role played by females on the peripheries of many terror plots in the West. Their involvement has ranged from encouraging their jihadi relatives, ensuring that their will to carry out the operation remains strong until the end, to withholding information from the authorities. Although the West has yet to see its first female suicide bomber, recent developments suggest that such an incident is likely, perhaps even inevitable.

In late 2009, the wife of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote "A letter to the Muslim sisters" in which she argued that Muslim women should "fulfill whatever they [the commanders of jihad] ask of us, may it be through monetary aid to them or any service or information or suggestion or participation in fighting or even through a martyrdom operation." Nor is this an unprecedented phenomenon. Between 1985 and 2006, there were an estimated 134 Islamist-inspired suicide attacks carried out by women across Russia and Chechnya, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Morocco, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan.

On Wednesday 10 March, the Center for Strategic and International Studies convened a panel to discuss the issue of domestic radicalisation in the US. The contents of the discussion can be viewed here. The Center has also published a report, by Rick Nelson and Ben Bodurian, which contains two overriding pieces of advice for US policy makers in this area:

First, they must consider new ways to interdict the growing trend of "Internet radicalization." Many of last fall's suspects connected with transnational terrorist recruiters via the Internet; stopping this sort of activity is crucial to stemming domestic extremism in the United States.

Second, several of those arrested last fall seemed to harbor the belief that the United States is at war with Islam. This is a "narrative" that al Qaeda and other global terrorist groups actively promulgate; it holds that U.S. counterterrorism efforts signify a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam. The United States must continue to work to puncture this narrative. White House officials already have discarded phrases like "war on radical Islam." But ultimately, the United States needs to go further than this, because al Qaeda seizes on more than just U.S. rhetoric to galvanize support for its agenda; the group also points to America's military presence in Muslim countries as evidence for its preferred narrative. The United States, then, should consider how to balance the need to combat global terrorism with the drawbacks of large-scale, direct military intervention. Doing so will require the United States to forge stronger partnerships with states plagued by extremist violence.

These conclusions provide a starting point for a range of discussions, particularly the connections between foreign policy and domestic radicalisation which have previously been identified in the UK. The report also makes a brief suggestion that ‘Europe’s experience with, and responses to, homegrown extremism have much to offer U.S. policymakers and officials’, arguing that small-scale initiatives such as the Quilliam Foundation illustrate the value of official engagement with Muslim communities.

Understandably, senior US policy makers have taken great interest in the fact that the UK has funnelled much time, money and effort into counter-terrorism policies, as part of the CONTEST (and CONTEST II) strategies. But the emphasis on outreach and engagement leaves a number of questions unanswered. What does 'engagement' mean and, more importantly, just who should the state be engaging with?

There are some things the UK does very well in this field; other things it does less well. Approaches to domestic counter-terrorism have evolved significantly since 9/11 and 7/7.

Nonetheless, it is important for US policy makers to recognise that the sagacity of the CONTEST (and CONTEST II) and the Prevent strategies continue to remain a great source of debate within the UK. In particular, the long-term wisdom of using non-violent extremists as a bulwark against those prepared to use violence has been questioned, alongside the precise criteria used for 'engagement' with various Muslim groups.

As Amm Samm's previous posts on FREERad!cals have made it clear, senior US policy makers should think long and hard before they transport the UK model to American soil. Further quality in the debate is needed.

 

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In response to Amm Samm's last post, "visitor" raised a number of interesting points, one of which I wanted to use the opportunity to quickly highlight.

Amm Samm: "there are no clear metrics for measuring success"
Visitor: "what do you offer?"

This is something that I have to admit that I have also been guilty of, complaining about the absence of metrics of PREVENT without necessarily offering any solutions. Consequently, I will use this opportunity to sketch out some thoughts I have been recently having on the topic (Amm has some coming up too I believe).

On the one hand, it should be quite easy to measure success: no terrorism attacks means the strategy is "preventing" terrorism. But how do we know whether what we are spending public money is actually having an impact and it is not other factors? This is important if we do not simply want to be throwing money away.

One solution that has been offered is to calculate the amount of good that groups receiving Prevent funding are able to do in their community: are they helping kids, providing useful local social functions, etc.

A police view that I have instead heard is that success in Prevent is measured by the amount the community trusts and engages with them – are communities coming forwards to offer information on people unsolicited? Are traditionally more sceptical communities using local social services, and thus "trusting" the system and becoming more engaged and less alienated?

But while both of these sound like reasonable areas to use as a basis to measure success, it remains hard to know exactly how many terrorists have been "prevented" in each case for each pound spent. Also, it seems awfully unclear to me that either of these metrics is somehow evidence that the government's strategy is in fact shielding us from the few individuals within society who choose to get involved in terrorism.

Without wanting to sound like I am throwing the baby out with the bathwater, maybe the root of the problem is that the scope we have defined for PREVENT is simply too large, and thus this is why we cannot find suitable metrics: maybe if we pared PREVENT down to simply being activity which pre-empts terrorist activity before it reaches the PURSUE stage then we might be able to measure success it in better.

As I have said before, this does not mean stopping work being done under PREVENT, simply de-tagging it from security. Instead, let us have PREVENT be more intelligence based activity or strengthened (and targeted) social work, alongside efforts to actively counter the spread of radical ideas and breaking up groups actively recruiting people to go abroad to fight. While it will remain hard to calculate success (we are still after all talking about measuring something by its absence), it will theoretically be more tangible than the slightly abstract societal measures that are currently offered by NI 35.

I look forward to hopefully having a conversation with people on this either in the comments or via email if you would prefer.

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Last night BBC 2 showed the first episode of Peter Taylor's three-part series on 'Generation Jihad'. The opening episode focused on the roots of radicalisation among young British Muslims.
Taylor is an experienced and talented journalist, who is chiefly known for a series of well-regarded documentaries on Northern Ireland. But the first instalment of Generation Jihad also raised a number of important additional questions – particularly about the relationship between radicalisation and Western foreign policy.

Two prominent themes that emerged early in the programme were the central importance of the internet as a tool of radicalisation (something dealt with at length in Tim Stevens's report for ICSR) and the crucial role played by radicalisers, as active and predatory agents of extremism within Muslim communities.

For example, Taylor discussed the case of Hammad Munshi, Britain's youngest terrorist convict who was targeted and groomed by older extremists at the age of 15, without the knowledge of his family. Indeed, there is evidence that even younger children have been targeted in this way. At the end of January, police from the Counter-Terrorism Unit in Manchester released a video seized in a raid, apparently showing two infants handling a Kalashnikov rifle and being encouraged to express their desire to 'kill the infidels'.

In tracing the genesis of Islamist extremism within the UK, Taylor identified the furore over the publication of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses in 1988 as a moment of awakening and heightened political consciousness among UK Muslims, which was subsequently manipulated by extremists to their own ends. He also emphasised the continued importance attached by UK Muslims to the 'Ummah', the wider Islamic diaspora.  

Most of Generation Jihad was filmed in West Yorkshire, the home of a number of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the 7/7 bomber, and where Taylor himself grew up. Those interviewed (by a Muslim colleague, rather than Taylor himself) included Bilal Mohammed and Rizwan Ditta, who have both served prison sentences for terrorism-related offences. These young men articulated a long list of Muslim grievances about the conduct of 'Western' foreign policy over the last two decades. The list included the plight of Bosnian, Chechnyan and Palestinian Muslims, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. While denying active support for terrorism, some of the interviewees did express sympathy for the al Qaeda aim of cleansing Muslim lands of the presence of Westerners.

Much of this is binary narrative is, of course, familiar. Indeed, it is often given credence by those who campaign against perceived Western ‘imperialism’ but have no formal connection to the Muslim community. It is also temptingly plausible to Western audiences, as its exponents are well aware. But the reality is that extreme Jihadist Salafist ideology is not as relativist or reactive to Western actions as this narrative would suggest.

It would have been interesting to see the interviewees pressed further on the contradictions in the Al Qaeda narrative, and the shifting sands on which it is predicated. In the case of Bosnia for example, there is evidence that it was the failure of the West to do more to prevent the slaughter of innocent Muslims – that radicalised many young British Muslims, rather than the NATO intervention of the mid-1990s.  

Likewise, even amongst strong opponents of the Western presence in Iraq, it is hard to make a case for Al Qaeda in Iraq as liberators. That group’s tactics, which peaked in 2007, have been to ignite sectarian warfare between Muslims through a succession of huge attacks against the Shi'ite community in the country.

In other words, while there are many links between foreign policy and domestic radicalisation, these are not as simple as are often presumed and should be distilled with care.
Taylor ended the programme by reflecting on the difficulties faced by the authorities in dealing with the threat of home-grown terrorists. He agreed that it was serious and that 'the police and security services cannot afford to take their eyes of Generation Jihad' but expressed concern that 'the danger is that we create even greater resentment that will only end in further attacks'.

This evokes a point that Taylor has often made in his earlier work on Northern Ireland – that heavy-handed security measures exacerbated the terrorist threat from the IRA, by gaining them more sympathisers and recruits. It is certainly the case that the less resentment the police and the security services create, the more that they will be able to isolate extremists within these communities. As yet, however, despite some notable mistakes, there have been no major security blunders against 'Generation Jihad' on the scale that characterised the early phase of 'the Troubles' in Northern Ireland. And to this point, as far as existing evidence goes, the counter-terrorism efforts of the authorities have not in themselves been a primary driver of violent radicalism.

The next part of Generation Jihad will be on BBC Two at 9pm on Monday 15 February.

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One of the things that's always bothered me about the 'lone wolf' moniker, used to describe violent extremists seemingly acting on their own initiative, is the simple fact that they’re usually not alone.  Although there may be little or no material support from an active network of co-conspirators, 'lone wolf' Islamists act precisely because they are not, in their own minds, isolated at all: they have the love of Allah, solidarity with the ummah, and the ideological and psychological support of online and other communities, who may or may not be aware of their intentions.

For me, the term retains associations with Freud's Wolf Man, of whom Lacan wrote, his "fascinated gaze is the subject himself", and Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf, in which Harry Haller attempts to achieve transcendence of his paradoxical nature through the murder of the bourgeois Hermine. Haller's sociopathy may well be apparent in the psychology of some terrorists, and the narcissism of many terrorists and insurgents has long been evident. Think of Andreas Baader and tell me that guy didn't 'fancy himself', in modern parlance.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I’m aware the use of 'lone wolf' to describe Islamist terrorists is a Western characteristic, and it speaks more to our north European cultural heritage than it does to its analytical utility in trying to understand the phenomenon. In fact, it may be a classic example of framing, or at least projection, and reveals more of our cultural anxieties than it does of the organisation or psychology of those who would attack 'us'. In that sense, it may hinder the West's abilities to counteract those individuals rather than help it.

Last October, Raff Pantucci suggested that lone wolves might run in a 'pack', which he quickly equated with a 'cell', a transference of terms quite compatible with theories of 'leaderless resistance' originating in earlier white supremacist movements. I don't know if Raff meant thereby to neutralise the lupine metaphor but I think he did it quite successfully anyway. Lone wolves are, in this context, potential or actual terrorists, and the collective noun is a 'cell', as per decades of insurgent and terrorist theory (i.e. it didn't start with Marc Sageman's 'leaderless jihad').  

In a new article for Foreign Policy, essentially a review of jihadi online punditry, Jarret Brachman writes of Al Qaeda's Armies of One. Jarret argues that web jihadists are now 'joining the physical fight', and that,

countries across the world―and particularly the United States―should brace themselves for an exodus from the Web forums and onto the battlefield by self-styled al Qaeda armies of one.

'Armies' can belong to larger military units like battle groups, military alliances and international coalitions, and the phrase taps into the belligerent rhetoric of jihad quite succinctly, as well as noting the importance of self-image. Again, I don't know if Jarret is intentionally abandoning the 'lone wolf' tag, but it does not appear once in his piece. The point here is that discussions of 'online radicalisation' usually include this phrase to somehow both describe and explain those who become radicalised via internet activity, and go on to perform acts of violence we normatively recognise as terrorism.

'Lone wolf' is applied to almost anyone outside of a traditional command structure, regardless not only of ideology, but whether they actually communicate with others of similar mindset. The original 'lone wolves' of the far right were defined by their lack of contact with their ideological brethren. The current crop of Islamists is defined precisely by mutual contact and the sense of shared identity, another reason why the term doesn't sit well with me. A terrorist acting alone is rare enough, one truly thinking alone even more so.

What should they be called, then? I’m not sure, and my thoughts can be rubbished at many levels. I don’t think Jarret means for 'an army of one' to be a unit of analysis, for example, and we would perhaps do best just to call these guys terrorists or extremists, or something that is generally understood across the security spectrum as a measure of tactics and intent. That doesn't help us discover or define their specific modus operandi but neither particularly does 'lone wolf', as this can mask the connections that actually exist between superficially autonomous individuals and the movements of which they are a part, formally or otherwise. The Unabomber was a genuine lone wolf, so perhaps Abdulhakim Muhammad and many others; the likes of Hasan Nidal are not. Just because the ties are virtual does not mean they act in isolation, and we should understand what lies behind the term before we sprinkle our discourse with it. Otherwise it means very little indeed.

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"From Usama to Obama, if our letters could be sent to you by words, we would not have sent it by plans!" By those words Usama Bin Laden (UBL) started his short audio message to the American President. Despite the short length, the contents of the message were quite salient. This was one of the rare time that Bin Laden himself takes direct responsibly for an operation organised and executed by a branch of al-Qaida. By doing that, he wanted to say that after eight years since 9/11, he is still an organizational leader, not only just a spiritual 'godfather' for global jihadists. This brings to mind the statement of General Stanley McChrystal to the BBC last December: "I don't think that we can finally defeat al-Qaida until Bin Laden is captured or killed." 

Another message was clearly demonstrated by the focus on Palestine. Al-Qaida intends to capitalize on the current increasingly frustrating conditions in the Middle East Peace Process in general and in the Gaza Strip in particular. Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan were all missing in Bin Laden's new message. Palestine was not; Bin Laden stressed that the operation was for it and about it. He repeated his old and probably favourite recruiting statement: "the Americans will not live in peace, until the Palestinians do."

The current conditions in the Middle East features a stalemate in negotiations between the PA and Netanyahu's government, a ceasefire imposed by Hamas in Gaza, a blockade imposed by Israel and the Mubarak regime in Egypt on Gaza, expanding settlement activities in the West Bank, a failure of the US envoy in the region, and a confession by President Obama that he underestimated the obstacles to peace in the Middle East. In other words, this is a good time for al-Qaida's recruitment activities. And the chances for recruitment can be significantly higher if the rhetorical focus is on Palestine. Bin Laden did not wait too long to capitalize.

A third message that can be read is that al-Qaida is continuing and officially adopting decentralization as its strategy in 2010. Branches, cells, or individuals may be self- or organizationally recruited. They will operate either by orders from al-Qaida Central or will self-activate. In the latter case, the centre will take responsibility for the action and it will be accredited to al-Qaida. Basically, we are back to 2001!  

A final message is about al-Qaida’s resilience. After each defeat, there is a quick recovery. The defeat in Afghanistan (2001-2002) was followed by a re-emergence in the Afghan-Pakistan border regions (2004-Present). Other defeats in Saudi Arabia (2004-05) and Iraq (2007-09) were followed by resurgences in Algeria (2007), Somalia (2009) and Yemen (2009). The 'resilience' was a clear message conveyed by Bin Laden: "our attacks will continue as long as there a US support for Israel." Eight years after 9/11, al-Qaida's leader still has the will and the capacity to continue the terror campaign and still lacks the desire for changing the rhetoric, the ideology, and the behaviour.   

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Thanks for staying with me as I am unfolding my argument (Parts One, Two, and Three). This is the fourth post in a series about the coming Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) policy in the US.  I launched into this because I am worried about some fundamental misunderstandings I have seen about radicalization and movement participation. I am also concerned that US policymakers aren't as aware of the flaws of the UK's Preventing Violent Extremism strategy as they should be (next post is on the "sins" of Prevent).

As I have argued in previous posts, the frustration-aggression and grievance obsessed models that policymakers and others are applying are woefully incomplete lenses through which to understand why people participate in movements and are driven to action.

In this post, I point to collective identity as the foundation of what has come to be called radicalization.  Islamist movements from al-Qaeda to the Muslim Brotherhood work hard to foster a sense of collective identity among Muslims worldwide. This identity is not simply "I am a Muslim" – 1.57 billion people hold that identity. It goes beyond that, tying into a network of shared meaning. I call it an ummah-oriented Muslim activist identity.  It involves membership in the ummah, which becomes the most salient source of identity and loyalty. Islam (or an interpretation of it) becomes the highest source of legitimacy for thoughts and actions from the mundane to the profound. It is an activist identity that fosters affective bonds between all members of the ummah and encourages a compulsion to some sort of organized action (some good, some bad, some neither – but let's try to keep moral judgments out of this as long as we can) on its behalf – whether that be donating to an Islamic charity for earthquake victims in Kashmir, protesting outside of an Israeli embassy, funnelling supplies to the mujahideen, or strapping explosives to your crotch and boarding a plane bound for Detroit.

This is not to imply that collective identity is inherently threatening. It is a social phenomenon that every person on the planet experiences in one way or another. Patriotism (otherwise known as nationalism) is a potent example of collective identity.

Collective identity is a necessary foundation for mobilizing people to action – for any cause.  Unlike grievance, alienation, relative deprivation, etc a great deal of social science research has unambiguously found that that collective identity is an explanatory variable or an "intervening causal mechanism."

Thus, when shaping policy on counter-radicalization, it would be wise to avoid designing and funding programs that encourage and foster an ummah-oriented Muslim activist identity among Muslim-American youth.  This mistake has been made in a big way by our British friends and it is one of the cardinal sins of Prevent.

Beyond that, grasping the concept of collective identity will allow policymakers, practitioners, and other stakeholders to better understand (1) why and how people are hostile towards out-groups, (2) what shapes peoples' interpretations of justice and injustice, (3) why some people are more willing to engage in collective action or individual action on behalf of a collective, and more.

Collective identity can be defined as

[A]n individual's cognitive, moral, and emotional connection with a broader community, category, practice, or institution.  It is a perception of a shared status or relation, which may be imagined rather than experienced directly, and it is distinct from personal identities, although it may form part of a personal identity.  

More simply, it is a sense of "we-ness" with distinct boundaries. It is not just what "we" are; it is what "we" are not. Collective identity mediates the relationship between the society and the world, and the individual and society. It is at the crux of the relationship between objective and subjective realities. We have numerous collective identities simultaneously – but one collective identity is usually more salient than the others, focusing one’s attention on issues that impact the group one believes he/she is a part of, often at the expense of individual concerns.

All social movements seek to enlarge the sense of collective identity for mobilization. Studies have found that out-group hatred and discrimination is not difficult to activate or generate "even absent direct conflict and prior hostility." Such is the power of collective identity. Thus, generating a collective identity among a constituency is the important task facing social movements. Collective identity also serves five psychological functions for the individual: belonging, distinctiveness, respect, understanding/meaning, and agency. These functions help explain why grievances are seen as such and through what prism or scripts they are understood. Identity often precedes grievance. This explains in part, for example, why a British-Pakistani teenager from Leeds feels tied to Palestinian suffering.

Gamson explains that collective identity "is central in understanding people's willingness to invest emotionally in the fate of some emergent collective entity and take personal risks on its behalf." He continues:

It has the consequences for how people understand the sociocultural system they are attempting to change and which strategies and organizational forms they will see as appropriate. Groups that have achieved a successful integration of personal and collective identity will have an easier time doing what it takes to launch many kinds of collective action.

Melluci argues: "The propensity of an individual to become involved in collective action is thus tied to the differential capacity to define an identity."

Collective identity helps overcome the free rider dilemma, as "high levels of group identification increase the costs of defection and the benefits of cooperation." Drawing on Melluci's concept of "networks of shared meaning," Wiktorowicz explains:

[R]adical Islamic activists promote a set of values and identities that challenge dominant cultural codes. In doing so, they seek to create a common community of "true believers" tied together through a shared interpretation of Islam typically characterized by high levels of tension with common religious understandings. Activist proselytizing thus focuses on teaching Muslims (and even non-Muslims) about the deviance of mainstream interpretations while offering the movement's own understanding as definitive. The resulting network of shared meaning is the basis of a common identity that frequently involves commands to risky activism in the name of God.

This is a very broad overview of a huge body of literature and I am at a 1,000 words so my conclusion is abrupt. As such, I had to pass over some things, but I think I made the case that collective identity is a – if not the – foundation for any process leading to collective action or action on behalf of a collective.

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There's a good discussion going on at Kings of War, our academic cousins in the KCL family.  Rob Dover's post, Terror on Campus, has kick-started some informed debate about the role of higher education in radicalisation, and the susceptibility of well-educated persons to radical narratives and ideas.

In response to Rob's suggestion that 'a look back in history might be worth while', the commenters have come up with several historical examples, touching on the 'engineers of jihad' phenomenon and the radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s.  David Betz mentions the Red Army Faction (RAF/Baader-Meinhof) and wonders about the 'revolution is sexy' interpretation of RAF recruitment, which Steve Corman develops further.  I've just finished reading Stefan Aust's The Baader-Meinhof Complex (2008), the revised edition published as a tie-in to the film of the same name that acts mainly as a visual portrayal of the book.  David is right about the narcissism of the main protagonists, particularly Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, and the relatively dispassionate tone of movie and book allows this facet of their characters to emerge quite naturally.  Although we can happily argue that the initial impetus of the RAF derived in part from the broader political milieu of the turbulent '60s, including the student movements of the far left―radicalised bourgeois youth, let’s not forget―it's hard to ignore the role of charisma in the sustenance of the first and second generations of the RAF.

More pertinent to the radicalism/education discussion, I came across a passage late in the book on the life of Zohair Youssif Akache prior to his role as 'Captain Mahmud' in the hijacking of a Lufthansa 737 in 1977.  The hijacking was intended to force the West German government to release Baader, Ensslin and other RAF members from prison, and ended in Mogadishu in October 1977 after the plane was successfully stormed by German special forces.  Have a read of what Aust has to say about Akache, and note the similarities between this account and the concerns raised recently about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s background and the intelligence failings prior to his attempted destruction of Delta Flight 253:

'Captain Mahmud', whose Iranian passport bore the name of Ali Hyderi, and whose real name was Zohair Youssif Akache, was known to the police.  He had enrolled as a student of the Chelsea College of Aeronautical and Automobile Engineering in London in 1973, and received his diploma in aeronautical engineering two years later.

He first came to the notice of Scotland Yard in December 1974, when he suddenly attacked police officers at a peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Trafalgar Square.  He was known to be a member of the PFLP, and was in danger of being deported, but was finally allowed to remain and continue his studies.  A year later, Akache attacked the police during another pro-Palestinian demonstration.  This time he was arrested and ended up in Pentonville prison.  After going on hunger strike, he was deported to Beirut.

He was back in London at the beginning of 1977.  Under a false name he moved into a hotel opposite the Royal Lancaster, where the former prime minister of North Yemen was staying.  On 10 April, the ex-prime minister, with his wife and a member of the staff of the Yemeni embassy, got into a Mercedes outside the hotel.  Akache had been in wait behind the car.  He walked around the vehicle, opened the right-hand front door, and fired a pistol fitted with a silencer at the three occupants.  They died instantly.  Akache managed to fly out of London the same day.  Scotland Yard had had him under surveillance before the assassination, but had not sent his personal details and description through to Heathrow Airport. (pp.384-5)

Six months later he was dead on the Somali tarmac, and dozens of airline passengers could breathe again.  The differences between the two men are as great as their superficial similarities but 32 years later, does any of this sound even remotely familiar?  


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The decision to proscribe Al Muhajiroun, Islam4UK, and a cluster of their successor groups is not entirely surprising. The combination of a successful prosecution in Luton of five members (or individuals linked to Al Muhajiroun or one of its off-shoots) after their performance at a homecoming parade for troops from Iraq in March 2009 and the fact that the Prime Minister got dragged into the public debate over whether the group was going to make some sort of ceremonial march through Wootton Bassett, all pointed to things coming to some sort of a head. The question really is whether this time it might mean something final for the group?

The short answer is: no. It would seem highly unlikely that this is the last we shall hear of Omar Bakri Mohammed’s acolytes. Last time the Home Office went forwards with a decision to proscribe some of them in July 2006 (that time it was Al Ghurabaa (the strangers) and the Saved Sect), the decision was made in the months after a group of them had been picked up and charged by police for comments they made at a protest outside the Danish Embassy in which they crossed the line and "solicited murder." In that instance four group members were given custodial sentences, while in April and May of 2007 another six group members were arrested on charges of "inciting terrorism overseas" and "terrorist fundraising." 

This clamp-down of sorts appeared to work for about a year, though the group did not go away and simply adopted a lower profile. Then the website http://www.islam4uk.com popped up and things started to take off again, culminating with ever more confrontational and loud statements, an attack on Conservative Muslim peer Baroness Warsi and the protests for which the aforementioned Luton group were just convicted. And while I have seen nothing linking Christmas Day underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to the group, the renewed attention he drew to today's Londonistan meant some reaction was likely.

If history is anything to go, this should mean that we will see some further arrests in the near future – recent comments by some prominent members appear to tread close to the lines laid out in recent terrorism legislation of incitement or glorification of terrorism. But this will undoubtedly not stop them from reappearing once again, as such groups thrive on the oxygen of publicity (Anjem Chaudhury was quite open in his admission that the main reason for their raising the idea of the march in Wootton Bassett was to attract publicity), and given the relatively light sentences that will be imposed, these individuals will be in and out of jail (some of those from the previous swathe of arrests are already back out). These boys believe they are about God's work and a short stint inside is unlikely to deter them.

The more interesting question is what is their relationship to terrorism? The fact they have been proscribed under anti terrorism legislation means that the British government says there is a link – according to the BBC the impetus for the ban was a JTAC report that was commissioned after Al Muhajiroun reappeared last year – but it is hard to imagine that serious terrorists would associate with people who go around drawing the sorts of attention to themselves that the Al Muhajiroun chaps seem to thrive on. Instead, it is more likely that individuals who are involved in terrorism operate on the fringes of such groups – keeping an eye out for possible recruits amongst the zealous youngsters who are drawn in by to these groups. By shutting them down in this way, the government is at least creating a further hurdle to making them quite so easily accessible – though it is likely that they will in the long-term simply reappear under a new guise. For a period at least, they will have to tread carefully.

Conveniently I suppose, this decision to ban the group comes just ahead of an upcoming article that I have in March's Studies in Conflict and Terrorism journal entitled "The Tottenham Ayatollah and the Hook Handed Cleric: An examination of all their jihadi children," which catalogues the links to terrorism from Al Muhajiroun and Supporters of Shariah (Bakri and Hamza's groups respectively). More on that later!


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Part One
Part Two

In my last post I addressed the focus on marginalization, alienation, and relative deprivation in the discourse about radicalization and counter-radicalization, as seen in Daniel Benjamin's speech last month on CT policy. I pointed out that these are discredited and/or insufficient explanations for why violent radicalization – and indeed movement participation as a whole – occurs. As I noted, we find that individual terrorists do not experience higher levels of relative deprivation, but that they often come from communities or even countries that are relatively deprived.  This, however, should not come as a surprise as most places and communities have less than other countries and communities.

Thus, saying that violent extremism emerges from relatively deprived communities is not much more analytically useful than observing that violent extremism emerges from communities where they breathe oxygen. Both are everywhere. Not to mention the fact that violent extremism also emerges from communities that are not relatively deprived (but not communities where they don't breathe oxygen…so far, at least).

This brings me to another quote from Daniel Benjamin's speech:

There is no denying that when children have no hope for an education, when young people have no hope for a job and feel disconnected from the modern world, when governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, when people despair and are aggrieved, they become more susceptible to extremist ideologies.

Benjamin's speech reflects the assumption that grievances represent root causes and that it thus is possible to identify grievances, structural strain and dysfunction which have ‘alienated’ individuals from society, driving them to look for different providers of belonging, satisfaction, and meaning which can lead them to violent Islamism. The implication is that, if the right grievances and system imbalances can be identified, we can tackle the 'roots' of terrorism by changing policies or implementing programs aimed at resolving them. As a result, individuals will feel less alienated and extremism melts away.

The trouble with this logic is grievances are ubiquitous, but collective extremist ideologies aren't. Grievances do not lead to ubiquitous terrorism. They don't lead to ubiquitous violence. They don't even lead to ubiquitous collective action of a milder sort, like protests and boycotts.

As Trotsky said, 'In reality the mere existence of privations is not enough to cause an insurrection; if it were, the masses would be always in revolt.'  Most of the poorest countries in the world, where basic needs are not provided (except for a select elite), and jobs are few and far between have produced little or no terrorism, despite the presence of deprivation – both absolute and relative – political disenfranchisement, and other things to be aggrieved about.

Along these lines, Wiktorowicz decries 'overly simplistic formulation of an inexorable linkage between structural strain and movement contention.'

He continues:

Systems are not inherently balanced or static, but rather consistently dynamic as they experience the pressures and strains of societal changes, events, and interactions. More importantly, structural strain and the discontent it produces (the alleged catalyst for contentious action) are ubiquitous in all societies...yet do not always elicit a movement....Movements are not merely psychological coping mechanisms.

So if strain, deprivation, grievance and discontent are everywhere on every country and in every ethno-religious community, how do we account for violent Islamism? How do we account for the majority of people that do not become involved in it? Why do some 'aggrieved' people choose terrorism over crime or charity or political involvement? The answer is: we need to look elsewhere or bad policy will result.  

Bert Klandermans, professor of applied social psychology at Free University (Amsterdam), argues that grievance interpretation is at the core of the social construction of contention and 'interpretations, rather than reality itself, guide political actions…'

But we don't want to get ahead of ourselves.  We first must address collective identity, or that sense of 'we-ness' that makes the interpretations meaningful and relevant to the individual and group. This is the most crucial and under-appreciated element of 'radicalization' – violent or otherwise. Crucial because without it, the rest doesn't happen.

Stay tuned...


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Since October 2009, the Egyptian Muslim Brothers (MB), one of the largest and most influential Islamist movements in modern history, has been going through a leadership crisis between the General Guide, Muhammad M. Akif (leader of the MB), and some of the members of the Guidance Office (GO - the highest executive body in the MB).

In the latest elections held on 18 and 19 December, the Conservative factions held an outright majority in the 18-member GO. This is not good news. But it should not come as a surprise either.

Despite (incorrect) rumors that the leadership crisis originated from Akif's statements siding with Hezbollah against the Mubarak regime; the General Guide asserted in an interview with al-Jazeera Network that the decision to support Hizbullah was unanimous in the GO.

This crisis (like in 1949, 1951, 1964, and 1995) had more to do with the enduring factionalism within the MB, a persisting phenomenon within the organisation since the 1930s. The different factions can be loosely termed as 'Reformists,' 'Pragmatists' and 'Conservatives.' The main points of contention between them are the nature of relationship with the Mubarak regime, with the West (and with the "other" in general); the relationship between the missionary and the political activities; and, finally, the relationship between the organisation and its peculiarities on the one hand and the society on the other.

The Reformists, whose leading figures include Dr Abd al-Moneim Abu al-Futuh (a member of the GO until this month) and Dr Essam al-Arayan (a former MP in 1987), tend to be more open towards the "other" and more interested in separating the missionary (or the religious) and the political (in other words secularism finally!).

The most well-known figure of the Pragmatic camp is Dr Muahmmad Habib, a geology professor from Assyut University in Upper Egypt and the first deputy of the General Guide. The stance of this camp shifts quickly depending on the balance of power within the organisation. The Pragmatist camp is perceived as the main losers in the latest GO elections. As a result, Habib declared that the elections were "illegitimate."

The Conservatives, or as some analysts like to call them, the ‘Qutbists’ (though it is a bit misleading since they include more than just the followers of Sayyid Qutb) are led by Dr Mahmud Izzat, the General Secretary of the MB.  That faction has multiple ideological orientations. But its defining characteristics include utter secrecy when it comes to internal organisational affairs (in other words the MB should remain a black box for the outsider), mistrust regarding the "other," and less inclination for political alliances. Many of the Cons leaders (Izaat included) belong to the so-called "1965 generation" (the grassroots and mid-ranks who were imprisoned with Sayyid Qutb in 1960s, witnessed the time of his execution, and were severely repressed by the state). The mentality of that generation is usually different from those of the "1970 generation" (the mid-ranks who were active during the time of relative openness of the Sadat regime). Most of the leading Reformist figures belong to the latter generation.  

The success of the Conservatives in the recent elections are rooted in the conditions of political repression and frustration in Egypt do not in any way reward moderation of behavior or encourage openness or toleration. For the grassroots, the mid-ranks and the shura (Consultative) Council members, the intense cycles of repression made the Conservatives’ preferred behavior of secrecy, mistrust and exclusion sound necessary for survival.

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"Brother Mujahid Umar al-Farouk is a hero who destroyed the legend of American intelligence."

By that sentence al-Qaida's branch in the Arabian Peninsula (mainly in Yemen) took responsibility for the recent terrorist attempt to blow up the Northwestern flight over Detroit on Christmas day. The statement declared war on all western diplomats in the region, called for launching a full-scale war against the "crusaders," and stated that the failed attempt was a response to the US-sponsored attacks on al-Qaida’s camps in Yemen earlier this month.

The rhetoric is not new, nor is the elusiveness of al-Qaida. The organization and its branches suffered severe losses in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, its central command is under intense pressures in Pakistan. But then it reemerges like a phoenix in Yemen to plot an international attack in Detroit. This "phoenix phenomenon" can also be observed in West Africa (the home region of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab) and East Africa (where the Shabab movement declared allegiance to al-Qaida-Central). In the Middle East, however, al-Qaida's center of gravity has shifted from Iraq to Yemen.

Since al-Qaida's birth in the late 1980s, Yemen has been always under the organization's radar. In addition to Bin Laden's blood ties to Hadhramaut in Central Yemen, the conservative social setting, the rugged geographical terrain, the traditionally weak central authority, and the dominance of the tribal system over the state system are all factors that al-Qaida manipulated and capitalized upon.

Over the past twenty years, Al-Qaida's life in Yemen can be divided into three phases:

•    The first was between 1990 and 1994 when Bin Laden and his Yemeni associates tried to unite other Islamist factions to topple the regime and declare an Islamist state. That attempt failed. Instead, elements of al-Qaida and their supporters fought in the 1994 Yemeni civil war on the side of the incumbent president, Ali Abdullah Salih.
•    The second phase is between 1995 and 2006. That phase was characterized with a distinct organizational structure for al-Qaida and a constant confrontation with the Yemeni regime. By 2006, al-Qaida was severely weakened due to security strikes, international coordination, and a de-radicalization program that was partly successful.
•    In 2006, a third phase for al-Qaida in Yemen started with a successful escape attempt from the Political Security Prison in Sanaa by al-Qaida’s commanders. The escape was just the tip of the iceberg. The imprisoned leaders were able to reorganize the group and communicate with Iraq and Afghan Yemeni veterans. Following reorganization, al-Qaida was able to strike multiple targets including military, state security, and foreign ones. The more recent activity of the group was giving life to the defunct “al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula,” an organization that was already burned-dead by the Saudi security services.

Al-Qaida has declared that it reestablished a regional, organizational leadership in Yemen. Last January, the leader was declared to be Abu Basir Nasr al-Wahishy from Abyan Province in the south. Earlier this month, al-Qaida held a public rally in Abyan, in the same site of the US-backed air raid; there its commanders declared that they will take revenge, just a few days before the Detroit terrorist plot unfolds.

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I suppose I knew it was inevitable, but it looks as if Britain's Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) strategy is coming to America, as...Countering Violent Extremism (CVE). Prevent is one of the 4 P's (the others being Pursue, Prepare, and Protect) of CONTEST, the UK counterterrorism strategy. Prevent is a national effort that draws heavily on local governments and funds community organizations. It is designed to:

•    challenge violent extremist ideology and support 'mainstream' voices
•    disrupt those who promote violent extremism and support the institutions where they are active
•    support individuals who are being targeted and recruited to the cause of violent extremism
•    increase the resilience of communities to violent extremism
•    address the grievances that ideologues are exploiting

And, it is very controversial.

I now quote Daniel Benjamin, the head of the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department, at length. He gave a speech last month on CT policy in the Obama Administration. I know this post is about a month late, but I thought it best to wait until after the holidays.

Benjamin's speech is signaling a major domestic and foreign policy development – partially in reaction to a year full of Islamist terrorist plots. Benjamin is an old National Security Council hand from the Clinton years and one of the first people to start seriously talking about al Qaeda and mass casualty terrorism in government before 9/11. Now, as Benjamin explained in his speech:

We are also addressing the local drivers of radicalization that still lead large numbers of people to adopt al-Qaida's ideology, and as I said earlier, we understand the dangers of radicalization, and we are working both to undermine the al-Qaida narrative and to ameliorate the conditions that make it attractive. We know that violent extremism flourishes where there is marginalization, alienation, and perceived–-or real–-relative deprivation. In recognition of this, my first step has been to build a unit focusing on what we in the government call "Countering Violent Extremism" in my office to focus on local communities most prone to radicalization. There is a broad understanding across the government that we have not done nearly enough to address underlying conditions for at-risk populations–-and we have also not done enough to improve the ability of moderates to voice their views and strengthen opposition to violence.

Adopting a tailored-approach to countering violent extremism does not mean we can neglect broader structural problems. There is no denying that when children have no hope for an education, when young people have no hope for a job and feel disconnected from the modern world, when governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, when people despair and are aggrieved, they become more susceptible to extremist ideologies. But a tailored-approach to CVE requires identifying which of these problems are driving radicalization and are amenable to change with the help of local governments and leaders who understand the problems best.

Over time, the measures and the methods I have described above will reduce terrorists' capacity to harm us and our partners. No element can be neglected if we are to succeed since they reinforce one another. Global engagement builds coalitions based on mutual interests and mutual respect. And these coalitions, in turn, help us partner with individual nations to enhance their capacity to counter extremism. This, finally, enables us to work with them to develop tailored-approaches to preventing extremists from becoming violent extremists.

The influence of the British experience is evident: Focusing on 'local communities most prone to radicalization.' Local governments and leaders will be vital to the effort.  And, most significantly, the last sentence in the excerpt indicates the strategy will be focused on keeping extremists from becoming violent extremists, rather than keeping them from becoming extremists in the first place – a major hallmark (some might call it a flaw) of Prevent. And c'mon: PVE and CVE?

Stay tuned for a series of posts on radicalization and counter-radicalization. I'll be...

•    Challenging some of the assumptions in Benjamin’s remarks that are also pervasive in the discourse on the subject (namely about marginalization, alienation, and deprivation – relative or otherwise);
•    Addressing the crucial and overlooked role of collective identity;
•    Discussing the problems with Prevent in the UK and its applicability to the US;
•    Observing how US-based ‘non-violent’ Islamists have seen the writing on the wall and are positioning themselves to co-opt any US counter-radicalization programs;
•    And tying it together with some other thoughts and observations.


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Check out Lorenzo Vidino's new paper for the Real Instituto Elcano, The Homegrown Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland (pdf). Here is the summary of this very timely piece:

The wave of arrests and thwarted plots recently seen in the US has severely undermined the long-held assumption that American Muslims, unlike their European counterparts, are virtually immune to radicalisation. In reality, as argued in this ARI, evidence also existed before the autumn of 2009, highlighting how radicalisation affected some small segments of the American Muslim population exactly like it affects some fringe pockets of the Muslim population of each European country. After putting forth this argument, this paper analyses the five concurring reasons traditionally used to explain the divergence between the levels of radicalisation in Europe and the US: better economic conditions, lack of urban ghettoes, lower presence of recruiting networks, different demographics and a more inclusive sense of citizenship. While all these characteristics still hold true, they no longer represent a guarantee, as other factors such as perception of discrimination and frustration at US foreign policies could lead to radicalisation. Finally, the paper looks at the post-9/11 evolution of the homegrown terrorist threat to the US homeland and examines possible future scenarios.

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The conclusion of the trial against Adam Khatib, 22; Nabeel Hussain, 25; and Mohammed Shamim Udin, 39 marks further confirmation of the apparently very real plot that was being hatched back in the summer of 2006. The three, described by the prosecution as the "backroom team" were all linked to Abdulla Ahmed Ali, the man who appears to be at the centre of the UK end of the plotting. Ali was convicted in September of this year along with co-conspirators Tanweer Hussain and Assad Sarwar – all were given life sentences (Ali 40 years; Hussain 36 years; and Sarwar 32 years). Three other men who appeared in court with them are facing a third re-trial, sometime next year.

These three appear to be part of the network of East London natives that Abdullah Ali recruited to help in various aspects of the plot. It is not clear that any of them knew that airlines were the target, but in at least Khatib's case, he was deeply involved in the plot. By his own account a rebellious teenager, Khatib dabbled in drugs and wrote an essay at school for French class about "going to Afghanistan, finding a wife and joining Al Qaeda," signing it "Adam Osama bin Laden." After graduating, he met Abulla Ali through one of Ali's brothers and the older man appears to have taken him under his wing.

Significantly, in 2005 Khatib went with Ali on a six month trip to Pakistan – at the same time as already convicted co-conspirator and plot "quartermaster" Assad Sarwar. Sarwar admitted on the stand to learning how to make bombs in Pakistan, and in emails and information released during this trial, it would appear as though Khatib too – as when they returned from their trip in Pakistan, he started undertaking in-depth research into bomb making materials. He also shared notes on his findings with other plotters, giving advice on how to construct devices and was apparently in direct contact with their contacts in Pakistan.

The other two appear to have played a more supportive role – Nabeel Hussain met with Ali a number of times, had written a will, was in contact with him on a particular number that Ali only used for him and Sarwar, and had applied for a £25,000 loan. The jury obviously did not find anything suspicious in the fact that Uddin had allowed Ali to use his computer to do research on bomb making material, but did find him guilty of possessing information useful to terrorists. According to a police statement, "the three men made no comment during police interviews."

While two allegedly key players in this plot remain at large – one on a control order and the other living freely in London (Bruce Hoffman's recent article in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism goes into some detail about them) – this set of arrests highlights again the importance of Abdulla Ali in this cell. He may not have been the absolute emir of the plot, but it certainly appears as though it was his ability to draw his East London friends into his conspiracy that turned a plan being developed in the badlands of Pakistan into a conspiracy involving up to 8 British Muslim suicide bombers.

Yahya Birt has argued that this plot will mark the "end of an era" in Al Qaeda plotting against the UK – in that the model of using British Muslims who appear loosely connected to networks on the periphery of the radical preachers appears to have been repeatedly compromised and is probably now beyond practical use for Al Qaeda. This may be a premature, though it has been almost three years since these chaps were arrested and while a number of other individuals connected to this network have been arrested, none have been involved in what Jonathan Evans described as "late stage planning." This is unlikely, however, to mark the end of Al Qaeda's plotting against the UK.

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Two well-respected and prolific watchers of the soft, jihadi underbelly of the internet are having a respectful conversation about the use of a particular term to describe those who subscribe to the e-jihad.

Jarret Brachman and Aaron Weisburd know of which they speak.  Both are seasoned observers of the internet jihad and have not flinched from tackling their adversaries head-on; both are hate figures on the jihadi forums as a result.  Aaron describes Jarret's current strategy of baiting online jihadis as 'the curious art of poking homicidal freaks with a sharp stick', and this pretty well sums up his approach, which frequently deploys humour and ridicule as a means of calling out some of the patently ludicrous antics of our internet friends.

Aaron has now called Jarret out―for his use of the term jihobbyist, which he sees as downplaying the risk that some of these individuals pose.  Jarret countered by suggesting the word has 'increased the overall nuance in public discussions about what constitutes support for al-Qaida.'  Aaron's response to this reiterates his initial position but adds that as public discussions are mainly brokered by the mainstream media, Jarret’s assertion is somewhat weakened.  He also makes this pertinent comment, referencing David Kilcullen along the way:

… keep in mind that along with labeling there is self-labeling. These aspiring 'guerillas' are not so accidental.  They go to great lengths to construct an identity for themselves and feast on hate and violence.  It's as though they suffer from PTSD, only it's a self-inflicted wound.

Which goes to the heart of the grievances that fuel jihobbyists, or whatever you wish to call them.  I've glossed over the subtleties of Jarret and Aaron's arguments, so I recommend readers go direct to their posts.

I've used the term jihobbyist myself, although I'm more of a fan of pyjamahideen  I stole that from Bruce Sterling in another context, and I think it retains the insurgent flavour of which these individuals are so proud.  Neither term is flattering and both do indeed risk the label masking the reality.  For some elements of the e-jihad crowd they may be applicable but―as Jarret and Aaron would both agree―these terms are only shorthand, rather than a typology that should be followed without critique.

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I've just had the pleasure of finishing reading Heartland by Anthony Cartwright. It is what I have been allowing myself by way of a break as I continue to plough through mountains of information about extremism and radicalization in the UK.

The book is a work of fiction (hence the break I referred to above), that explores in a wonderfully nuanced and sensitive way the issues around the BNP's rise in the British Midlands against a backdrop of inter-racial tensions in the immediate post-9/11 period. Set in the fictional ward of Cinderheath – which is in the real city of Dudley in the heart of the Black Country – the book follows Rob, a young man who briefly touched minor celebrity as a footballer, but who is settling into life as a school P.E. teacher/assistant. His uncle is the local Labour councilor who is fighting a seemingly losing battle against a slick BNP candidate and his army of football thugs, as the local Muslim community builds a large mosque and people worry about the precedent set by the revelation that three local lads are in Guantanamo Bay (the very real "Tipton Taliban"). In the front of everyone's minds, however, is football – with England battling their way through the 2002 World Cup (to no avail), while the country's press are fixated on a local league game which is pitting a local Muslim side against a non-Muslim side.

Written in a way that seamlessly blends dialogue and prose, with a fine ear for the local brogue, the book does get a little confusing in parts. There are no chapters (it is divided into four sections: first half; half-time; second-half; and final score), and it can be hard to know exactly what is being said sometimes. But it really feels like it captures the underlying tensions that lie at the heart of the BNP's rise. There is less exploration of the motivations that might persuade young men from these areas to throw their lot in with the Taliban, but we get a sense of what it might be like for the locals with the references to a ghostlike "Adnan the mujahedeen" peppered throughout the book. Overall, well worth the read if you have a moment.

This also gives me an opportunity to highlight the case of the Tipton Taliban – who after being freed worked with Michael Winterbottom to produce the impressively one-sided The Road to Guantanamo (which can actually be found on YouTube in its entirety), which while rightly highlighting the excesses of Guantanamo, probably should have done a little more background research before charging ahead. I say this, as on largely un-watched and un-reported Channel 4 show called "Lie Lab," one of the chaps admitted that he had in fact been to a training camp and fired weapons while in Afghanistan (another refused to take the polygraph-type device that was at the heart of the show). Not quite the babes in the wood that they are portrayed as in the film.

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ICSR hosted Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation for a talk today on their new report, Unlocking Al-Qaeda: Islamist Extremism in British Prisons (pdf).

Nawaz said that the UK's National Offender Management Service (NOMS) faces a huge challenge now that more and more people who have been convicted of terrorist offences are populating the prison system.

In his view, the authorities have vastly underestimated the potential role of prisons in the process of radicalisation. Prisons have been the incubators of terrorism, yet – in many countries – they have also served as the principal engines of de-radicalisation.  

Which one it will be in the UK's case remains to be seen.

Right now,  he says, there are few signs that the challenge is being taken seriously. Extremist literature is widely available in prisons, and – on a number of occasions – imprisoned extremists have been allowed to become the representatives of prison wings.

The audience was particularly interested by Nawaz' explanation of the latent, untapped power of a corpus of literature renouncing violence that was produced by al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the Egyptian Islamist group responsible for waves of terrorist violence in Egypt during the 1990s.

Those of us studying terrorism have been aware of these books for a long time and, like Nawaz, we have wondered why they have not been translated into English.

His analysis is connected, of course, to his incredibly powerful personal story. As many readers of this blog are likely to know, Nawaz – a former member of Hizb-ut Tahrir – was imprisoned in Egypt shortly after the 9/11 attacks in the United States. There, he became acquainted with the imprisoned luminaries of the Egyptian Islamist movement, including some of those behind the assassination of Anwar Sadat.  

While in prison, Nawaz came to question his (then) radical beliefs, especially under the influence of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya's new literature and after he was adopted by Amnesty International – an organisation he had previously vilified – as a prisoner of conscience.

Maajid Nawaz' talk was recorded and can be listened to here. 

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Last week, I spoke at an excellent symposium on Islamist terrorism, which took place in Hamburg. The event was organised by the Hamburg state Office for the Protection of the Constitution – the local branch of Germany's domestic intelligence service.

The event was remarkable for the complete openness with which German officials described the situation in front of a 200 strong audience, which included many journalists.

Perhaps, I shouldn't have been surprised. Before the German federal elections in September, the services were warning that jihadists had Germany in their crosshairs. Back then, a lot of these warnings were dismissed as 'hype' and 'fear-mongering' in the German media.

The symposium was the services' opportunity to make clear what the fuss had been about.

A speaker from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV)  explained that the service's assessment was based on a number of events and developments, which had been observed over the course of the entire year:

• From January, an increasing number of jihadist videos mentioned Germany or were recorded in the German language.
• From March, a higher than usual number of Germany-based jihadists went on trips to Pakistan. Of the 185 travels to Pakistan by Germany-based jihadists over the past decade, nearly a quarter took place in 2009.
• In May, warnings started coming through from foreign partner services.
• That same month, one of the leaders of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb appeared in a video, saying that jihadists should 'Look for Germans!'
• In September, a number of jihadist videos specifically addressed the issue of the federal elections, warning that an attack was imminent. Germany's most prominent jihadist, Bekkay Harrach, who is believed by the BfV to belong to the Al Qaeda core, featured prominently in several of them.

 
With the elections over, the immediate danger seems to have passed. The jihadist threat, however, continues to be high on the BfV's agenda. The BfV speaker at the symposium highlighted the following trends:

• An increasing number of 'home-grown' cells
• The rising number of converts involved in jihadist activities
• The increasing attractiveness of jihadism to Muslims of Turkish descent, who – for years – had been considered 'immune' to the jihadist message

The last point was backed up by an excellent speaker from the Hamburg state office, who provided extensive data on the ethnic affiliations and socio-economic characteristics of Hamburg-based jihadists, as well as Germany's leading expert on Islamist terrorism, Guido Steinberg of the German Institute for Security and International Affairs.

For German policymakers, of course, the 'Turkish factor' is the biggest headache. Muslims of Turkish descent represent the vast majority of the Muslim population in Germany. If jihadism starts spreading among German Turks, Islamist terrorism could become a huge political and social issue in addition to being a security problem.     

All in all, I was very impressed with the professionalism and openness of the German authorities, especially the Hamburg state Office.

Despite being German myself, I always used to have a rather low opinion of my country's abilities in this field. This event made me believe that, perhaps, I was wrong.

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Al Qaeda has been described as a being a part of a global Islamist insurgency. It is helpful to view the minaret ban with that in mind. It is thus unfortunate that the measure banning minarets in Switzerland has passed with 57% of the vote.

Insurgent/terrorist groups seek to provoke repression (violent or non-violent) of a constituency. For example, let’s use...I dunno, banning minarets as an example of repression. That constituency is then further alienated from the government/host society and support for the insurgent group increases.  

Writing about more traditional insurgencies, Bard O’Neill explains:

[T]he insurgents try to provoke arbitrary and indiscriminate government reprisals against the population, calculating that this will increase resentment and win the insurrectionary forces more support. The success of such an insurgent ploy is affected by the nature of the government response and by the social groups involved.

This was the infamous Irgun Strategy. This is why Hizballah and Hamas fire rockets from residential areas and schools. This is why the Taliban fire on ISAF troops from populated hamlets. The Viet Cong did the same thing. Al Qaeda uses the same dynamic in a much more psychological way. They have made many believe that the threat emanates from Muslim communities in the hopes that the West will turn on their Muslims with repression of some sort.

Now the Swiss have banned minarets and Islamists there and elsewhere will certainly capitalize on this.

This is one of the key means used by al Qaeda to draw in recruits and supporters – particularly in the West.  Leah Farrall has a decent piece on this over at All Things Counterterrorism:

To my mind the most telling thing is that this is yet another example of people failing to realise that terrorism’s efficacy stems from its ability to manufacture difference.  This is the true impact of terrorism. It doesn’t come from the immediate death and destruction caused by a terrorist act no matter how hideous and how truly awful it is for its victims.  The true power of terrorism  comes from reactions to terrorist violence by those watching.
…
These types of reactions start of [sic] vicious cycles of discrimination, feed alienation and only end up supporting and more importantly legitimizing the terrorist and extremist meta narrative of a clash of civilizations.

The banning of minarets in Switzerland – a country with only four minarets – feeds into one of the uglier Islamist propaganda pieces and makes a mockery of the practice of religious freedom, which is guaranteed by the Swiss Constitution. Al Qaeda and some other Islamist groups promote the narrative that the West is engaged in a War on Islam and that we are a bunch of lousy Zionist-Crusaders who hate Muslims simply because they are Muslims.  

They do not need to be right to successfully promote this narrative and foster false grievances, but it certainly helps them out when they can point to the reality of a Western country proscribing the religious practices of Muslims.

One of the authors of the bill claims that the minaret ‘is a political symbol against integration; a symbol more of segregation, and first of all, a symbol to try to introduce Sharia law parallel to Swiss rights.’  While there are various Islamist movements actively pursuing both grassroots and top-down strategies to institute aspects of Islamic law in the West, minarets on mosques have nothing to do with this. The ban will only serve as further hindrance to integration and strengthen the influence of the Islamist narrative, accomplishing the exact opposite of what it was intended for.

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When Thomas Hegghammer publishes, it's always worth taking the time to read what he has to say, and his latest piece for Current Trends in Islamist Ideology is no exception.  Thomas focuses on The Ideological Hybridization of Jihadi Groups and argues that this phenomenon is poorly understood but may be evidence of a structural weakening of the jihadi 'movement'.  

Thomas proffers some ideas as to why this diversification of ideology might be occurring: changes in political environment, organisational structures, and radicalisation/recruitment pathways may all account for some of the differentials we can see between 'jihadi' groups across the world.  This is not to so that they do not remain a potent force under some circumstances and in some places, but that they are far less homogeneous than often thought.

One additional driver Thomas identifies is the modern media environment.  He writes:

A … possible explanation is that hybridization is the result of changes in the media and communications environment of jihadist groups.  The Internet revolution in the 2000s has, of course, greatly facilitated the production and distribution of jihadi propaganda, and this has made it easier for groups to borrow talking points and operational ideas from each other.  As such, new communications technologies may have had a homogenizing influence on jihadist groups.  For example, the increasing global jihadist influence on revolutionary groups since 9/11 reflected, at least partly, the realization by local groups of the formidable propaganda value of the al-Qaeda brand name.  The Internet also produced fierce competition between jihadist groups for the attentions of prospective recruits and supporters, as well as for the attention of the world’s mainstream media.  Thus, in an effort to extend their reach and influence, groups may have sought to opportunistically escalate their rhetoric on issues where they used to be relatively moderate.  

This is linked closely to another of Thomas' suggestions, that

Ideological ambiguity or heterogeneity may be seen by some groups as a way to appeal to a broadest possible constituency.  By addressing a wider range of grievances―global as well as local―they hope to widen their prospective recruitment base.

In this formulation, global information space is an environment of abundant opportunity (propaganda vehicles, recruitment channels) but also one of scarcity (recruitment base, attention span).  The medium is, in part, responsible for the shaping of the message, without which the message will not survive on the global internet.  To borrow a Darwinian concept, the message must be 'fit' for the medium in which it is intended to operate.  Darwin only stretches so far, though, as iterative attempts to make the message palatable and effective may actually be fragmenting the ideological integrity and 'fitness' of the message.  This is what Johnny Ryan calls the 'atomisation' of the message, and what Thomas suggests may in the long run hinder jihadis more than it helps them.

This is an important point.  Analysts often assume that the internet provides the perfect medium for jihadis to promote their cause and to which new followers adhere through radicalisation and recruitment.  The above comments suggest this is only partly true, at least as far as the ultimate utility of the internet.  The nature of the medium may be forcing propagandists to spread themselves mighty thin in an effort to remain relevant and to maintain a viable support base.  The ubiquity of the internet might actually be contributing to them becoming less effective, rather than more.  

This has significant implications for information counter-strategies as well as legal responses to 'internet terrorism', and shows once again that the internet is not something to be trifled with: things are not always as straightforward as they seem.


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The anniversary of the Mumbai attacks is this Thursday, which also happens to be Thanksgiving for those of us here in the U.S. Talk about dichotomous experiences. Before hopping on a plane to go eat turkey with the family, I'll do a proper retrospective. In the meantime, I've got a new piece out in the CTC Sentinel looking at the threat LeT poses to India and the West. For those interested, here is the link.

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Two stories surfaced over last weekend which I have only now gotten around to processing properly – first is the case of Jan Schneider, the latest convert linked to the infamous Sauerland group that has the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) on high alert, and second is the case of Khalid Kelly, former head of Al Muhajiroun in Ireland (or at least one of its more prominent activists) who has now surfaced in the Swat valley.

Both stories are amusing in their own way thanks to their predictability. Jan Schneider is merely the latest in a list of sons of Germany linked to the Sauerland group who have gotten Germany's security services into a high state of tension. An earlier scare with Eric Brenniger turned embarrassing when he released a video of himself running around an Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) training camp, ridiculing BKA concerns. And just before the elections, Bekkay Harrach, a young German-Moroccan, released a series of threatening videos which seemed to suggest that AQ or the IJU had a terror attack planned in the weeks after the recent elections. Nothing, however, surfaced which might mean nothing, or might mean everything (there was an earlier discussion about this on Free Rad!cals). This time concerns are focused that Schneider may do something in Afghanistan, maybe follow in the footsteps of Cuneyt Ciftici, another member of the broader Sauerland group network nicknamed the 'Bavarian Taliban' who has the dubious honour of being Germany's first known suicide bomber.

The Khalid Kelly case is instead amusing for the bluntness of his "coming out" interview in the Sunday Times. In it he states "I'm already on the path to jihad….next week, inshallah, I could be in Afghanistan fighting a British soldier," and if he is unable to locate a British one, he will "settle" for an American. Charming as they may be, such comments are not entirely new for a chap who once said "Osama bin Laden is a good man," and who wishes that he had "been on those tube trains" on July 7, 2005. One imagines not in a passenger role.

Kelly is a known quantity and has been active in Al Muhajiroun circles since he came back from Saudi Arabia a changed man in 2002. Initially migrating to Saudi as a nurse, he was incarcerated for bootlegging and while inside converted to Islam. Upon returning to the UK, he started attending Omar Bakri Mohammed's lectures and became an activist with his group. Schneider appears to be a brighter sort of chap: German authorities claim he is one of the intellectual figures on the Islamist scene with others seeking him out for advice, making him a possible leader. A German born in Kazakhstan (during the war Stalin brutally relocated Germans living in the Soviet Union to Kazakhstan as a pre-emptive measure), he uses the name "Hamza" (powerful), has a young family and apparently studied in Saudi Arabia for a while.

Tactically both cases are interesting in that they suggest two known European support networks feeding fighters to Afghanistan remain active. The converts angle is also interesting, however, as it highlights the high proportion of converts who appear in radical groups. Most major plots in the UK have counted a convert amongst their ranks – something that was explained to me as the product of the fact that often a convert can have a catalytic radicalizing effect on a group. Any individual who chooses to convert is clearly already very zealous – and if they are attracted towards an extreme path, it stands to reason that this zeal will follow them down this road. This in turn might drive those around them to greater lengths to prove their piousness.

It is unclear how useful Kelly will prove to be in Swat – by his own admission he is out of shape, 42 years old and seems a little under-prepared with only five hours training on an M-16. Schneider may seem scarier, but at the same time, the German government's regular shouting of wolf about individuals in this network appears not to have been answered with any attacks, something one suspects is probably beginning to dull public belief in them.

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As I mentioned in an earlier post, the other major theme that appears to be on everyone's minds in Britain's Muslim communities is focused around the belief that the UK's "Prevent" counter-terrorism strategy is in fact a vehicle for spying on Britain's Muslim communities. This is not an entirely new concern – one can see earlier expressions of it amongst the almost complete lack of trust in the British government that can be found, in particular when considering the counter-terrorism strategy, amongst communities in the UK.

The recent spate of worries have been set off by a report released by the Institute for Race Relations (IRR), which looked in detail at the Prevent program (Prevent being the forward looking aspect of the 4 P's of Britain's counter-terrorism strategy which seeks to prevent people from choosing a path to terrorism). In particular, press attention was grabbed by the salacious details of how the government was using programs funded under Prevent to gather intelligence on communities. The scandal around this was spurred on when Ed Husain made some comments that proved a gift for the Guardian's Vikram Dodd, giving him the eye-catching headline: "Spying morally right, says thinktank."

Reports have long been bouncing about of the intelligence community pushing community workers in a variety of ways (one report from the Independent showed how Somali youth workers were being harassed into helping the Security Service), and I have heard first hand reports of tales of community workers being asked for intelligence information. Similarly, an official report by the Audit Commission & Her Majesty's Inspectorate of the Constabulary (HMIC), entitled Preventing Violent Extremism: Learning and Development Exercise, done for the Home Office and Department for Communities and Local Government in October 2008, highlighted that "partnerships need to collect and process information from staff so that vulnerable individuals and communities can be identified."

And more generally, have we all forgotten about the infamous "Operation Rich Picture" by which the security services sought to map out Britain's Muslim communities and thereby understand them better? The point here is that I am surprised by how much of a splash this has made, though admittedly some of the more egregious cases should be highlighted and frowned upon. None of this is of course to excuse it, but I think the furor is masking a bigger picture issue.

As Prevent has expanded out to becoming Preventing Violent Extremism and from being one of four strands to being the central focus of counter-terrorism, it has started to grow beyond what one might usefully describe as its practical parameters. One of the deleterious side-effects of this is that it has slowly turned everyone into counter-terrorists, as it evolved from being program to counter terrorism to being something which was seeking to remodel a substantial portion of our society. Not only does this mean that a wide community of individuals beyond traditional security services need get involved, but also that an ever expanding pool of money was guided towards a specific community in an ever-broader fashion (a recent Newsnight report put it at £140 million).

On the one hand, a case can be made that years of underinvestment needed to be redressed, but at the same time, this focus appears to have also had the impact of exacerbating the community cohesion problems that the money was in part meant to fix. But within this also lies at the core of the problem: work which should be defined as social work is being re-defined as counter-terrorism.

The problem with Prevent is that it would appear as though we have long lost our way in understanding exactly what Preventing terrorism is about any more. In the quest to understand and fix this, the solution has been to push the program out to an ever expanding circle of individuals as we move further and further back up the radicalization chain (though I hate linear descriptions of radicalization). This has had the added problem of confusing what everyone’s roles within this are.

Police need community intelligence to be able to do their jobs; but this should be obtained through confidence building, rather than bluntly milked from community workers. It is unlikely to be helpful to the cause of countering terrorism, or policing more generally if the current trend continues. Programs seeking to redirect youngsters from a radical path should stay firmly within a local community and civilian remit – putting them in a police direction has implications which will naturally make community workers less comfortable with using them.

More generally, however, Prevent needs to be re-focused. A tighter remit needs to be drawn up which separates out the social work being done under a Prevent banner – to work that should once again be done under its proper heading. Instead, Prevent work should remain firmly focused on countering-terrorism, as in de-radicalizing prisoners, stopping young men making contact with extremists, and lessening the appeal of jihad. Making people more integrated into British society, helping them get jobs or training, giving them a more positive outlook, and making sure they are accepting of other religions are all important things, but not things that should be tagged as counter-terrorism work.
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In the wake of the Fort Hood shooting, commentators on this blog and elsewhere have been exploring more broadly the connections between grievances, ideology and violent action. Too often there is a tendency to see a certain inevitability in processes of violence, to believe that people with particular grievances will inevitably be tempted to engage in or at least support violent acts. I thought it might be interesting to look at a case that disrupts these assumptions.

A very fine organisation that I used to work for in Washington, the Middle East Institute, is hosting its annual conference this week. At the opening session, an award was presented to Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian doctor, for his efforts in promoting peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. An obstetrician who worked for many years in both Israel and Gaza, he continually engaged people on both sides in projects that would deepen understanding (such as joint research on the effects on conflict on children in Gaza and in Israel) and in humanitarian efforts, including bringing desperately ill Palestinians into Israel for treatment.

His commitment to peace is made even more remarkable by the events of 16 January 2009. Dr Abuelaish lost three daughters and a niece when an Israeli shell hit their home in Jabaliya, Gaza. He was at the scene and saw with his own eyes the blown-apart remains of his daughters. (The Israeli army said it was returning fire after being fired upon from the area.) A Reuters TV report on the incident can be seen here.

Despite this personal tragedy, Dr. Abuelaish has not forsaken his efforts to build peace and understanding. At the MEI conference, he explained his thinking thusly:

For me the 16th of January, 2009, is the day when my three precious daughters and niece were killed by Israeli shells. It is hard to describe the dreadful scene and events of that day. The body parts of those beautiful girls – each of them was a special world – spread over the ceiling and were drowning in a pool of blood. I do not want anyone in this world to witness or see what I have seen.

But we are all human and we all make mistakes and commit sins from time to time. As a believer with deep faith as a Muslim, I fully believe that what I have lost – what was taken from me – will never come back. I need to go forward and be motivated by the spirit of those I lost and do them justice…

We need to discover the humanness inside all of us and adopt it as our pathway. We have to defend loudly the humanity that we all belong to and in this way we defend ourselves. Willingness and talking is not enough. It is a matter of action. As Martin Luther King said, our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends…

What do we need to understand and respect each other, and that the dignity of all is equal and live in collaboration and partnership? We need to smash and destroy the mental and physical barriers within each of us and between us. Let us build a new generation who believes that advancing human civilization is a joint project and that the most holy things in the universe are humankind and freedom. Instead of building walls of separation, let us build a bridge of understanding, respect and love, and restore the trust we need to activate our big open minds, hearts, eyes and arms.

The personal experience of losing family and friends to violence is often cited in studies of radicalisation within conflict zones. It is perhaps one of the more easily understood factors – after all, feelings of loss and the desire for revenge are not ideologically dependent but emotionally and psychologically resonant across wildly varying human societies. But the story of Dr. Abuelaish – and the many other Palestinians who support peace and reconciliation efforts – reminds us that any investigation into the sources of political violence must also consider those upon 'the path not taken'. To engage in violence is a choice – not a predetermined outcome – and a choice made at the expense of alternative paths. Understanding why people with similar grievances make divergent choices is a complex field within the broader political violence literature.

Finally, I would call attention to Dr Abuelaish's evocation of Dr Martin Luther King. When we talk about global ideologies, we tend to think of those that advocate extremism and/or violence; we equate the term with threats. It is worth remembering the vast, cross-cultural influence of ideas and ideologies that promote non-violent activism, pacifism and transnational cooperation in pursuit of peace. In most conflict zones, peace activists get little support or attention and it is all too easy to dismiss their efforts, or conflate genuine peace activism with political efforts of a more dubious nature.

Nevertheless, the global network that rests upon the ideas of people like Dr King and Mahatma Gandhi, and that endures in the same political and military space as global networks of jihadism or other violent tendencies, offers an interesting counterpoint to many of the ideas now circulating in media and policy circles.


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Last Friday, Foreign Policy ran an online article by the NEFA Foundation’s senior investigator Evan Kohlmann, 'A Web of Lone Wolves', in which he exhorted US security agencies to get their act together in dealing with terrorist propaganda on the internet.  In a refreshing departure from his occasional hawkishness, Evan rightly summed up one particular factor in governments’ responses to the problem:

With such a generalized threat, it will be a continuing challenge for Western governments and societies to draw the fine line between what is protected under the freedom of speech and what is criminalized as direct incitement to murder.

This is correct, as we flagged up in our ICSR report on online radicalisation earlier this year, and is also a problem similar to those faced by governments in tackling the potential of cyberterrorism.  I wanted to just briefly point out the differences between the terms, ‘internet terrorism’ and ‘cyberterrorism’, or at least what they represent in public discourse.

'Internet terrorism' is used to describe many activities but generally refers to the use of the internet for the recruitment, radicalisation and mobilisation of individuals into extremism, and crucially involves the publication of propaganda that facilitates this, as well as the types of online fora in which interactions take place.  Most of this activity is geared to effecting kinetic terrorism in the physical world, although the 'e-jihad' is sanctioned as a legitimate branch of jihad in itself; participants are performing their duties to Allah even if not engaged in physical actions.

'Cyberterrorism', on the other hand, is the exploitation and subversion of computer networks themselves, for the purposes of facilitating or causing acts construed as terrorism.  Examples include the theft of intelligence data, the manipulation of SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, disruptive hacking of government assets, etc; the list is long.  Although the risks of cyberterrorism are massively overhyped, the possibilities exist, and security planners are paying a great deal of attention to them.

Whilst there might be a good deal of overlap between the two―extremists might discuss hacking power networks openly on a forum, for example―they are quite different, even if often confused in newspaper reports, etc.  I don’t particularly like either term, and I’m only using them because they are illustrative of concepts.  I think of both as forms of terrorism, in terms of desired effects (material damage, publicity, human costs) and actors, although there are so many disputes and terminological debates in this field that one is liable to receive a bloody nose no matter what one says.

Perhaps more importantly, counter-strategies differ depending upon what it is we're talking about.  It could perhaps be said that ‘internet terrorism’ is better tackled at the ‘hearts and minds' level, although technical knowhow is obviously required when it comes to disrupting and interdicting particular elements of the techno-social world of the internet.  'Cyberterrorism' is a trickier beast to prevent, and probably relies as much on network defensive measures as it does on sorting out the root causes of why people might feel the need to put people’s lives at risk in these ways.  Both require legal clarity, political sensitivity, and social awareness, as well as an iron fist when really necessary.

The core difference is that 'internet terrorism' is about ideas and getting people to act upon them; 'cyberterrorism' is about control over resources and connectivity.  The former is more ideological, the latter logistical.  It's easier to punt ideas onto the internet than it is to take control of an enemy network.  The effects of either could be very serious indeed, although the likelihood of either resulting in human casualties is actually very low.  Neither is 'new' in the sense that war has always involved clashing ideologies, as much as it has been largely dependent on logistical superiority.  The modern vehicle of this particular conflict of wills―the internet―sometimes causes things to become slightly foggy, particularly linguistically.  We need to be clear what we’re talking about or we won’t find effective strategies for coping with it.



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While I recognize that I still owe a piece on Prevent in the UK, the events in Fort Hood have sparked off a different line of thought which I thought I would quickly scribble down – this is the aspect of Major Nidal Malik Hasan as a Lone Wolf.

Let me quickly emphasize two things, one I do not have some sort of morbid fascination with the concept of Lone Wolves, and two, I am not by any means prejudging what might later come out about Hasan Malik.

The reason that this aspect has struck me, is the parallel story in the America that we are coming up to execution day for John Allen Mohammed, the infamous DC sniper who in October 2002, with the assistance of brainwashed teenager Lee Boyd Malvo, brought fear and terror to Washigton's streets. For as-of-yet not completely explained reasons, Mohammed (a Muslim convert who served in the U.S. Army during the Gulf War) decided to cruise around Washington, Virginia and Maryland and take pot shots from the back of their car at people going about their daily business.

Ten people were killed and three injured at random (Malvo further claimed they had killed another four people, though nothing more is known of this), and the city was practically brought to a stand-still. Having gotten to Washington myself about six months later, I can testify that people were still shaken by the experience then.

The men's plan was apparently to extort some $10 million from the government which they were going to use to train an army of homeless children in Canada to carry out similar acts across the country, the Washington shootings were merely the first phase. This plan is nothing like what we have currently understood Malik's to be (which are at best unclear at the moment, though speculation appears to focus around the fact he apparently did not want to be deployed in Afghanistan), but the terror and impact that has been caused is on a par.

While I may be proved wrong, it would be surprising if Hasan Malik's attack turns out to be some plot orchestrated by Osama and friends in a cave in Afghanistan/Pakistan. More likely he will be listed under the category of Lone Wolf, or individual who for his own reasons chooses to launch a random terror attack. Whether this is classified as Islamist terrorism, thanks to the links to Al Awlaki, the fact he was shouting "Allahu Ackbar," or details that are yet to emerge we shall see, but what remains clear is that a single man armed with weapons has essentially taken over global headlines. Back in 2002, John Allen Mohammed (admittedly more of a Lone Wolf Pack, by which I mean a group of individuals operating without any tangible connections, and it seems clear that it was Mohammed who was driving the agenda), brought America's capital to a standstill for a few weeks.

The point here is that Lone Wolves (or Lone Wolf Packs) are surprisingly effective terror tools when they are actually able to carry out their action. Think what would have happened had young Isa Ibrahim managed his plot to attack a mall in Bristol or if Nicky Reilly's manipulation pushed him to successfully blow up a restaurant rather than just himself (a friend also told me of a case in 2005 in the US of a chap who blew himself up, however, I cannot find more information – if anyone else knows please let me know...).

The troublesome thing is, however, that these individuals are equally hard to legislate or police against – all sorts of warning signs can be seen posthumously, but it is with the 20/20 given by hindsight. It is understandably hard to figure out how you are going to legislate against the insane or those who are simply driven to insanity by the hothouse of modern life.

But none of this detracts from the fact that they can be grimly effective, and that in many ways one can see an attempt to harness their potential in the writings of someone like Abu Musab al-Suri whose ideal of "a global insurgency" is constructed around individuals independently choosing the same path, with no tangible and thus compromisable connections, but driven by a similar ideology and towards a similar goal.

In a way, this is maybe the real face of the "leaderless jihad" that Sageman has spoken about. Fortunately, it remains clear that as appealing as the Al Qaeda narrative may have appeared at times, it has not managed to make this leap yet.

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Last week, US military psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan took the disastrous step of opening fire with a handgun on Army colleagues at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 and injuring 30 more.  Quite rightly, the world has been wondering how exactly this came to pass.  Was he, for example, a radicalised Islamist, or did he just ‘flip’ as a result of factors unrelated to the US 'war on terror'?  One issue that has inevitably arisen is whether the internet might have played a role in his decision-making prior to the shootings.

The day after the events at Fort Hood, Associated Press reported that Hasan was on law enforcement's radar six months ago as a result of internet postings that  'discussed suicide bombings and other threats'.  The Los Angeles Times reported that this comment―left on online document sharing site Scribd under the name 'NidalHasan' on 20 May 2009―could have been Maj. Hasan. 

As one of the other Scribd users comments, a quick Google reveals multiple Nidal Hasans on the internet, and there is no evidence they are one and the same.  What none of the news agencies reported is that 'NidalHasan' left this single comment in response to an Islamist tract on suicide bombing but that it elicited no other comments or discussion until after his death when, presumably, there were a lot of people Googling multiple variations of his name.  This user also did not upload documents to the site and cannot be considered―under that moniker at least―to have been very active at all.

The FBI (presumably) did not open a case on this or other 'Nidal Hasan' internet activity, so if he was 'under suspicion' it was probably a pretty thin file at that time.  After the events of 5 November, a preliminary forensic search of Hasan's computer showed that he 'visited Web sites promoting radical Islamic views, but investigators have not found any e-mail communications with outside facilitators or known terrorists.'  Officials therefore tentatively concluded that he was working alone.  Subsequent reports that he attended the same mosque as two of the 9/11 hijackers mean that the default theory will probably be that he was at least influenced, if not radicalised, as a result of exposure to individuals like this and the mosque's 'radical imam'.

Investigations are ongoing and it is far too early to tell what the role of the internet may have been in causing an ostensibly peaceable medical man to become a violent killer.  It seems likely that whatever his online activities in life, the internet will remember him in other ways. 

Researchers report that the jihadisphere has been alive with praise for the man, including an approving epitaph from radical Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and support from al-Awlaki's followers.  More details will doubtless emerge of the pyjamahideen's predictable transformation of Hasan from American army officer to jihadi hero and, if found guilty, shahid.  In the meantime, it seems that Hasan's internet footprint will be substantially greater as a result of other people's online actions than his own.

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The shooting at Fort Hood has pushed some ideas kicking around in my head to the surface – namely the relationship between ideology and grievance.  (Long post, I apologize)

From what we know now (much more will be revealed in the coming days, weeks, and months – but contrary to what some are saying, this isn't a reason to abstain from analysis) Major Nidal Malik Hasan had been vocal about the presence of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For example, Col Terry Lee, a colleague of Hasan's, claims that at a conference 6 months ago, Hasan said that the US shouldn't be 'over there' and that Muslims should 'stand up and fight against the aggressors'. Col Lee also reported that in the aftermath of the summer shooting at a Little Rock recruiting station, Hasan was happy about the attack and said that it was a sign that the US should leave Iraq and Afghanistan. Hasan was also very upset about the way the Little Rock shooter was treated and allegedly said that Muslims should blow themselves up in Time Square. He wrote a comment on a website that seemed to justify suicide attacks.  Someone else reported that he 'heard Hasan equate the war on terrorism to a war on Islam'. And yet another person 'had previously argued with Hasan when he said that he felt the "war on terror" was really a war against Islam, expressed anti-Jewish sentiments and defended suicide bombings'.

What we see here is the interplay between ideology and grievances, with framing processes mediating between the two. Ideology on its own is not a motivating factor, but once grievances and experiences resonate with ideology, you have something potentially dangerous on your hands (ICSR's Peter Neumann nudged me in this direction).  How is that resonance achieved?

Frames are 'schemata of interpretation' that allow people 'to locate, perceive, identify, and label' experiences and events. According to social movement theorists Benford and Snow, collective action frames are 'action-oriented' legitimating frames that seek to 'mobilize potential adherents and constituents, to garner bystander support, and to demobilize antagonists'.

Collective action frames are strategically produced in a process of interaction between movement leaders, supporters, and participants as well as the opposition, neutral actors, and the media. Frames are not the same as ideology, but they often draw heavily on ideology.

Collective action frames have three core tasks: diagnostic (what is wrong and who is to blame?); prognostic (what do we do?); and motivational (why should we participate?).

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their impact on Muslims there clearly had an effect on Hasan. He spoke about it with his colleagues, even when he knew his opinions were unpopular. These were important issues for him. He felt a strong tie to Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan – people he had never met – which shows powerful affective ties to an imagined community through the concept of the ummah.

Ideology helped make sense of this for him. It both fostered the 'in-group' love for fellow members of the ummah and provided a script for understanding and action, through frames, which are disseminated by Islamist activists, scholars, and terrorists through various forms of media. These frames are ubiquitous, due to modern telecomm (a search of his computer found that he visited 'radical' websites), and simple to grasp.

They helped him to diagnose, by explaining what was wrong (the US is occupying Muslim land and killing Muslims) and who was to blame (the US and US service members); make a prognosis, by explaining what was to be done (Muslims should attack American targets to deter the US); and motivate his own participation in action (this is justified according to Islam, which states that non-Muslim occupying powers must be resisted).

And the jihadist movement has now incorporated Hasan's actions into its own framing. Anwar al-Awlaki (pdf), a pro-AQ cleric, has praised Hasan's actions. Note the (color-coded) diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framing in Awlaki's blog post:

Nidal Hassan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people. This is a contradiction that many Muslims brush aside and just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Any decent Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a US soldier. The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam. Its army is directly invading two Muslim countries and indirectly occupying the rest through its stooges….[T]he only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the US army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal….The fact that fighting against the US army is an Islamic duty today cannot be disputed. No scholar with a grain of Islamic knowledge can defy the clear cut proofs that Muslims today have the right -rather the duty- to fight against American tyranny. Nidal has killed soldiers who were about to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in order to kill Muslims.

Awlaki was an imam at the Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, VA when two of the 9/11 hijackers attended that mosque. Awlaki supposedly knew the hijackers well and served as a sort of spiritual guide to them. During the same period, Hasan held his mother's funeral at Dar al Hijrah.

While Hasan reportedly had great respect for Awlaki's teachings, this doesn't mean there is any real connection between Awlaki and Hasan or between the hijackers and Hasan – both possibilities are doubtful. But it is interesting to see that Awlaki seems to have framed both Hasan's worldview before the attack as well as the attack itself for the rest of the world.

 

UPDATE: I just saw this (thanks to a friend). Apparently, Hasan was trying to make contact with Al Qaeda.

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Thirteen people were killed and 31 wounded when Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist, opened fire at Fort Hood in Texas.

Some good coverage from the Telegraph:

The major is a psychiatrist who had been treating soldiers returning from Iraq for post-traumatic stress and alcohol and drug abuse problems.

"He was making outlandish comments condemning our foreign policy and claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans," Col Lee told Fox News.

"He said Muslims should stand up and fight the aggressor and that we should not be in the war in the first place." He said that Maj Hasan said he was "happy" when a US soldier was killed in an attack on a military recruitment centre in Arkansas in June. An American convert to Islam was accused of the shootings.

Col Lee alleged that other officers had told him that Maj Hasan had said "maybe people should strap bombs on themselves and go to Time Square" in New York.

He claimed he was aware that the major had been subject to "name calling" during heated arguments with other officers.

Federal law enforcement officials have said Maj Hasan had come to their attention at least six months ago because of internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats.

The officials said the postings appeared to have been made by Maj Hasan but they were still trying to confirm that he was the author.

Maj Hasan's cousin Nader Husan said he was happy working for the military but did dread deployment to Iraq.

Another good article on Hasan from MSNBC.  It is beyond me why this extremist was still allowed to be an officer in the US Army and had access to firearms.

I hope there will be two investigations: One into Hasan himself, his process of radicalization, and his ties and another into how the Army handled Hasan once it came out he held these beliefs. I would hope names will be named (in both) and people will be fired or dishonourably discharged for not seeing the danger in someone who advocated attacks on American soldiers.

My heart goes out to the victims, their families, friends, and brothers/sisters-in-arms.

Please feel free to post your thoughts and link to other articles on this as more information goes out.

 

 

UPDATE: See footage of Hasan on the morning of the attack, provided by CNN.  We also see a conflicting portrait of Hasan emerging:

Staff Sgt. Marc Molano, based at Fort Knox, Kentucky, told CNN Hasan treated him for post-traumatic stress disorder earlier this year at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

"Dr. Hasan provided me with nothing but the best care," Molano said. "He was a very well-mannered, polite psychiatrist, and it's just a shock to know that Dr. Hasan could have done this. It's still kind of hard to believe."

Molano described him as "far and away one of the best psychiatrists I ever dealt with."

A soldier who served two tours in Iraq and is awaiting medical retirement for chronic PTSD and severe mental disorders called Hasan "a soldier's soldier who cared about our mental health."

"Hasan hears nothing but these horror stories from soldiers who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan," the soldier said. "Just hearing it I'm pretty sure would have a profound effect."

Mindy B. Mechanic, an associate professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, said listening to horror stories can have an impact, but such as extreme one is unlikely.

The impact on therapists who work with traumatized individuals is known as vicarious traumatization or compassion fatigue, Mechanic said.

"But they don't go out on shooting sprees," she said. "They might get depressed or have some emotional fallout from it, but to go on a shooting spree is not part of what happens to people from having to deal with trauma survivors all the time."

 

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I have been traveling around the UK the last few weeks. Two things appear to be atop everyone's concerns, the "rise of the right" and the fact that the British government may be using the "Prevent" counter-radicalization and counter-terrorism program to spy on Muslim communities. I plan on dealing with each in separate posts, but first on the "rise of the right".

For those who have missed it, the United Kingdom is finding it has an increasingly belligerent and noisy right-wing which is not only managing to make unpleasant speeches and protests, but are also able to win votes in elections. The far right British National Party has won a growing number of seats in first local elections, and most stunningly in the 2009 European Parliament elections it was able to secure two seats and a total of just under 1 million votes nationally.

This seeming acceptance of an openly xenophobic party into the mainstream of British politics received its crowning moment recently when BNP leader (and holocaust denier) Nick Griffin made an appearance on the BBC's flagship politics program Question Time.

In parallel to this seeming legitimization of racists by the ballot box, the UK has also recently seen the emergence of the English Defence League (EDL), a group claiming to be "demonstrating against the spread of radical Islam" for whom the infamous Luton protests against returning British soldiers in March of this year were the "final straw".

Their response was to stage a series parades up and down England in which overwhelmingly caucasian crowds of well-lubricated shaven-headed chaps protest against extreme Islamists (a full list of their demos shows a fixation with the latest incarnation of Omar Bakri Mohammed’s extremist group Al Muhajiroun). At core a blend of skin-heads and football hooligans (something most clearly borne out during the violence in Birmingham), the group is nevertheless able to rally a few hundred protesters at a go under the banner of "taking back England" from "jihadists".

Disturbingly, there has also been an increase in armed far-right terrorists, including one group who apparently had some 300 weapons, 80 bombs and links around the world, the two right-wing extremists who were convicted for "inciting racial hatred", and separate "lone wolves" Martyn Gilleard and Neil Lewington (who was picked up with incendiary devices in his bag after he got pissed on a train and took a leak in public while on his way to a date. Lucky girl).

Responding to this growing threat, one police commander said, "I fear that they will have a spectacular", suggesting that extremists might attempt some major action in order to stir up inter-ethnic hatred.

This last group can be addressed as a clear counter-terrorism issue, but what of the others and their impact which might be said to provide the ideological backdrop for the violent extremists?

The BNP may have managed to secure the veneer of respectability, but they have not found many friends in the European Parliament (something no doubt helped by Mr. Griffin’s charming comments about sinking boat-loads of migrants) – this is significant as it dilutes their power.

Furthermore, while they may have mustered just under a million votes, this should be seen against a backdrop of falling support nationally for the main parties, who cannot shake pay scandals and a bad economy. The BNP specialize in going into economically depressed parts of the country, where they capitalize on local grievances and a sense of abandonment from Westminster with a localized narrative which dresses up anger in anti-immigrant and "national identity" language.

This is enough to rally a core group of voters who actually show up on Election Day and give the BNP its success (it is worth highlighting that it was with a less-than-impressive 9.8% and 8% of the vote that they won in each EP seat).

Similarly, while the EDL appear able to get crowds after football matches, they are almost always matched by a larger counter-protest uniting a wide array of factions. BBC's Newsnight (part 1, part 2) called them a "drinking club with a website," estimating their numbers at some 300-500 members nationally.

One concern they have voiced, about the focus of current counter-extremism funding towards Muslim communities appears to also have some parallels amongst other communities, but they do not seem to have much of a plan of action beyond running around the streets and ejecting people like Anjem Choudhary from the country. This may win them some more drinking buddies, but is hardly the basis of an election manifesto.

For Muslims in the UK, it is the terrorist group that is most bothersome – if there is this growing menace of potential right-wing terrorism, then why isn’t there the same fixation on them that one sees with terrorists who instead choose an Islamist garb?

The answer is relatively simple (the right-wingers tend to be local nutters bereft of serious external connections, and their inability to carry out effective attacks reduces their news value) – but the bigger problem does exist of how these far-right groups (violent and non-) might be impacting cohesion between communities in the UK.

More radicalization amongst Britain’s right means more protests on the streets, and likely more violence. Maybe even to the level of the famous 2001 Northern City riots, in which localized social problems provided kindling which was set alight by a growing far-right presence. None of this is to exaggerate the threat (the numbers are still quite small in contrast to continental Europe which appears to have institutionalized racist parties long ago), but it would be dangerous to simply ignore the groups all together.

What does seem clear, however, is that there is a growing well-spring of disaffection amongst Britain's communities which is finding solace in extreme rhetoric – what is positive is that we are seeing a substantial grass-roots reaction against it, and the main political parties appear willing to stand up against it.

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Last year, the US Department of Defense banned its personnel from using portable USB drives (thumb drives, memory sticks, insert jargon of choice), a decision it is on the verge of partially rescinding.  After a spate of incidents in which data was mislaid as a result of employee negligence, the DoD opted for this relatively simple measure in order to increase operational security (OPSEC).  Someone should have impressed upon Houria Chahed Chentouf the importance of keeping such devices safe and secure:

The court heard she accidentally dropped a memory stick containing the documents when she was being questioned at Liverpool John Lennon airport on October 16 last year after arriving on a flight from Amsterdam.  The memory stick, which had been concealed in her clothing, contained more than 7,000 files including an explosives manual for 'The Brothers of the Mujahadeen'.  The device had been tied to an inner sleeve of her burka, but fell out as she reached down to scratch her leg, prosecutor Simon Denison told the court.  The following day she was arrested at her home in Longsight [Manchester].

Subsequent searches of her home found a handwritten note extolling the virtues of suicide bombing and forensic digital evidence of her support for online shuhada.   The 41-year old was sentenced to two years in custody but freed immediately on account of serving over a year in remand.  The Guardian report suggests that a history of mental illness may have mitigated the sentence and the court accepted that she was unlikely to have been planning any terrorist acts off the back of her 'mini-encyclopaedia of weapons-making'.

You'd have to be slightly unhinged to attempt to smuggle a small electronic device on your person through an X-ray machine in the first place (it looks like a SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4GB, he says, with his geek hat on).  Unless there were some rare jihadi gems on the drive, why bother even transporting the data in this form?  We have internet in the UK, you know, assuming you don't live in Wales.  It's also mighty careless to let slip your device just as you're being questioned by security, unless you really wanted to be caught, of course.

As a result of Chentouf's naiveté, counterterrorism police were led to other computers in the UK and Netherlands, and spent 12000 man hours translating recovered documents from Dutch and Arabic.  Whether this resulted in further arrests is not stated but Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Porter had this rather flat assessment of the investigation:

We do know she has got known and established links to extremists abroad and that puts us on notice to be concerned.  She is on our radar and she will know she is on our radar so I think we are in a better position than we were a year ago.

No, I don't know what that actually means either.  Evidently, she was not part of any major plot, or a more canny co-conspirator would have told her about Google Docs or some other form of online document storage, and insisted she left the offending hardware at home.  Luckily for the average citizen not all wannabe jihadis are super-geniuses.

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The idea that the US would in any way provide assistance to a terrorist group affiliated with the Taliban and Al Qaeda must seem laughable to many. Yet this is exactly what the Iranian government and an array of international observers believe to be the case. In the wake of last week's revelation that Ahmed Wali Karzai is apparently on the CIA payroll, it's worth remembering the long history of covert US support for unpalatable characters and the resilience of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' thinking.

Let's not also forget that the 'global war on terror' is not the only focus of US strategic thinking, and there are bound to be times where its objectives conflict with other important strategic considerations – such as the ongoing US confrontation with Iran.

To be clear from the outset: the US emphatically denies providing any support to Jundallah, which rocketed back into the news recently with a dramatic suicide bombing in Sistan-Baluchistan that killed several dozen people, including high-level Revolutionary Guard officers. Formed in 2003, Jundallah is a extremist Sunni group (most closely affiliated with the Deobandi tradition) that engages in violence in support of a typical narrative of self-defence, in this case on behalf of the ethnically, religiously and linguistically distinct Baluchi people.

While Baluchi separatism remains a potent cause across the three states in which they are found – Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan – Jundallah specifically focuses on Iran's Shi'ite regime and claims to fight not for separatism but merely greater rights and equality. Based in Pakistani territory, it has carried out a number of attacks in Iran in the past few years, including car bombs, ambushes, mass abductions and suicide attacks. Jundallah has apparently strong links to Pakistani Taliban networks and alleged connections to Al Qaeda; it shares both organisations' vehement anti-Shi'a rhetoric and violence.

Like most militant groups, Jundallah requires a significant amount of funding whose sources are murky at best. There is little doubt that the group profits from the enormous flow of drugs traversing the Pakistan-Iran border in that region (by providing protection rackets rather than direct involvement in the trade itself). Beyond that, we are in the realm of allegations, suspicions and denials. Iran has accused not only the US but Pakistan and Saudi Arabia of supporting Jundallah.

There is, of course, a broad spectrum of activities that could fall under the rubric of 'support', from direct financial and military assistance to covert training to network development. Outside of the Iranian government, few seem to believe that the US is directly funding Jundallah or providing it with weapons or other military assistance.

A more likely scenario, as described in an ABC News report, is that the US has facilitated funding from other sources (such as the Saudis and expat Iranians) while also playing some kind of covert 'advisory' role. The aim would be to make use of Iran's indigenous opposition groups to destabilise and eventually bring down the current regime, a strategy that gained some currency during the Bush administration as a means of forestalling Iranian nuclear development without direct military intervention. But as a recent Foreign Policy article noted:

"[T]he Barack Obama administration might be tempted to use direct or indirect funding as a means of surrogate warfare to further pressure Iran's government. Violent anti-Iranian Sunni groups like Jundallah have not been placed on the U.S. State Department's terrorism list. And the Obama administration might feel that it's already being punished for the perception that it's funding the rebels and may as well try to reap some of the rewards.
But this would be shortsighted. The basic problem with any strategy to destabilize Iran via Sunni tribal rebellions is that Baluch nationalism spans three countries -- not just Iran, but also Afghanistan and Pakistan. Supporting a pan-Baluchistan movement would only worsen societal instability and national fragmentation in West Asia and South Asia."

The question of US support for Jundallah highlights a flaw in concepts like the 'global war on terror' and 'global insurgency'.  If we conceive of our worldwide struggle against terrorism and extremism as a unitary effort, this implies some level of consistency and ideological rigour – we will combat terrorism in any manifestation, in any location.

However, this kind of analytical framework does not always match real-world political and strategic considerations, in which the temptation to utilise terrorist groups as proxy armies against our adversaries must be fairly high.

Has the US given in to this temptation? In the absence of 'smoking gun' evidence, I remain agnostic on this question. If hard evidence of US support (indirect or otherwise) were to surface tomorrow, however, I would not be in the least surprised. Would you?

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Jean-Pierre Filiu, a leading expert on jihadism, former French diplomat, now a professor at Sciences-Po Paris (who also blogged for a bit on Jihadica) has just published a book which looks at the future of Al Qaeda.

In his most recent book: The Nine Lives of Al Qaeda (in French "Les Neuf Vies d'Al-Qaïda"), he explains that after twenty years of existence, the organisation has never been closer to disappearing.

His central argument is that the election of Obama is the worst thing that has happened to Bin Laden. AQ had planned on a Republican victory with John McCain. But when Obama was elected, they had no plan B. "That's the weakness of Al Qaeda," he says "despite its mobility on the field its ideology is very rigid". With Obama as president Al Qaeda had to improvise: the racist hatred came first, calling him a house slave and then accusing him of betraying his Muslim roots.

Filiu explains that the desire to demonize Obama stems from the lack of directions for Al Qaeda to attack the US. Similarly, Al Qaeda's old propaganda favourites (the war in Iraq, Guantanamo) had vanished in the first months of the Obama administration.

Today Al Qaeda is fighting for its ninth life in Pakistan, in the same zones along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where the organisation was born 21 years ago, back in 1988 when its militants were fighting against the Red Army in Afghanistan.

With a very thorough analysis Filiu identifies 9 crucial moments in the history of the organisation:

1.    The Great Work : 1988-1991 (Abdallah Azzam, Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Zahawiri support the Afghan resistance in Peshawar)
2.    The Sudanese Exile : 1991-1996 (thanks to Hassan Abdullah al-Turabi)
3.    The Challenges to America : 1996-1998 (bombing against the US embassy in Nairobi which killed 213 in August 1998)
4.    The Afghan Jihadistan : 1998-2001 (with Mollah Omar and the Afghan talibans)
5.    The Collapse of the Sanctuary : 2001-2003 (the September 11 attacks and the American invasion in Afghanistan)
6.    The Campaign of Arabia : 2003-2004 (attempted Jihad in Bin Laden's natal country)
7.    The Blood of Iraq : 2004-2006 (attempt to take advantage of the American and allies' hodgepodge there)
8.    The Caliphate of Shadows : 2006-2007 (development of AQ in Maghreb and Pakistan)
9.    The Headlong Rush : 2007-2009 ( AQ setbacks in Iraq and its other "mission territories")

The apogee of AQ on 9/11 was also the beginning of its decline, he says "the attack generated a feeling of disgust and reject throughout the Arab world, even the most radicals Sheikhs did not support these actions."

The War in Iraq is another missed opportunity for AQ who lost the fight against the Arabic and Sunni guerrillas. While venturing for the first time on Arab land, AQ suffered its most patent failure and has now lost most of its impact in the Arab world.

In a final spurt of effort Al Qaeda has recently tried to generate support in Maghreb (Algeria) and Sub-Saharan Africa, namely Somalia. But AQIM failed to recruit outside Algeria and Al Shabaab's (Somalia) allegiance to Bin Laden was more of a dare to their direct rivals Hizbul Islam than an utter celebration of Al Qaeda's leadership in Islamic jihad.

The story of AQ, as told by Jean-Pierre Filiu, is one of lucky accidents, gross mistakes made by its enemies and rivalry. That does not mean that people will not be fighting in Jihad anymore, but that the type of Jihad that AQ created, the global Jihad, the cult of Jihad for Jihad will soon cease to exist.

 

For those of you who understand French, Rue89 has a podcast of an interview with Jean-Pierre Filiu. Listen here.

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A couple of weeks have passed since 35-year old Libyan Mohamed Game attempted, in an alleged  revenge for Italian involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, to carry out a suicide attack on the Santa Barbara army barracks in Milan, where forces going to Afghanistan are based.

Using a fertilizer-based explosive concealed in a tool box, Game detonated his bomb in the morning of October 12, apparently as a reference to 12 November 2003 when a suicide bomber blew up an Italian military police base in Iraq killing 19 Italians. The bomb failed to completely explode, mutilating Game (his hand was amputated, he was blinded by shrapnel and remains on life support), while only injuring one guard at the base.

The attack raised speculation about possible connections with other extremists in Italy. Game had apparently been a congregant at the infamous Viale Jenner Mosque in Milan and the barracks he targeted where on the list of possible targets of a cell arrested in Milan last December. However, the President of the Milan Islamic Institute in Viale Jenner, Abdel Hamid Shaari (also of Libyan extraction), said he had only seen Game a couple of times at the Mosque and police rapidly dismissed these connections saying Game had not been on their radar before.

The next day, however the police arrested two men in connection with the attack: 52 year-old Egyptian engineer Abdel Haziz Mahmoud Kol and 33-year old Libyan electrician, Mohammed Imbaeya Israfel. The day before his arrest Israfel had been interviewed about Game, and had said that Game had been "talking about jihad generally in the last month," that "it was likely suicide" was his intention, and "he probably wanted to end his life and go to paradise" (rough translation of mine).

None of the men had appeared in any serious way on police radars before ( even though Israfel's home had been searched in July) and Italian security services continue to call the group an independent cell with no connections to a wider terror network or to Italian radical milieu's.

And this is most alarming: all three men are apparently below any radar. All three had their papers in order, two were employed (Game had lost his business a couple of years ago), and Kol and Game were both married with children. According to the security services, the three men self-radicalized and formed a cell, they set up a bomb factory (in a flat rented by Kol, went to nearby Corvetta to buy 120kgs of fertilizer and other reagents then used a recipe taken off the internet to mix the explosive. Kol apparently drove Game to the scene of the attack.

It seems to me that other details should be investigated: in the flat, 40 more kilos of fertilizer were found; there was a fridge full of food which could indicate that more than just three men were present and a mysterious "list of important people's families" was found. It also seems unclear where their money came from given all three were living in rather tough circumstances (some reports suggest that Kol and Game were squatters). Game and his wife were even interviewed in August by a local news show to show the plight of poor families in Milan.

It is perfectly likely that this group will turn out to be a cell of lone wolves who, aggrieved at their downtrodden situation in Italy and stirred up by the nation's involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, concluded that a path of violence was their only option left.

This is not the first time such incidents have occurred in Italy – on September 11th, 2003, Jordanian Mohammed Al Khatib tried to blow himself up outside a synagogue in Modena, while on March 29th, 2004, Moroccan Moustafà Chaouki attempted a similar action outside a McDonald's in Brescia. In both instances, the wannabe-suicide bombers and their cars were the only victims, though they both left letters behind explaining what they were doing, something Game has not done. The only hint of a rationale behind his action is the disputed allegation that he shouted something about Italian involvement in Afghanistan before blowing himself up.

All of which suggests that the combination of dissatisfaction and Al Qaeda's single narrative is one that appeals to a growing constituency in Italy. It is still too early to dismiss possible connections between the cell and others but the seeming surprise with which the police were caught and the relatively amateurish nature of the attempt all suggest that none may be uncovered.

Italian investigators should be alarmed as this could suggest that the problem of radicalization in Italy has moved beyond the traditional networks of North Africans providing support for fighters going to Afghanistan or Iraq (which in some cases stems from previous networks sending support to Bosnia), to a domestic problem which is refusing to go away and is a source of violent anger amongst the community of Muslims in Italy.

The call by Interior Minister (and Lega Nord member) Roberto Maroni who called for a profiling of Muslim communities based on the radicalization model of Game to identify possible threats in the future and the hawkish statements aimed at the Viale Jenner mosque by Defence Minister Ignazio la Russa suggest that the social aspect of the problem will most likely not be addressed.

What is worrying is how many more cells alike may be operating beneath the radar and how long it will be before one of them gets their explosive blend right.

 

UPDATE:

Since publishing this, a friend has pointed out to me that the Viale Jenner link may be stronger than Shaari indicated in his telling. Stories in the respected Corriere della Sera and more right-leaning Il Giornale, show photographic evidence that he was involved in a Ramadan event being held near (and organized by) the Mosque in September of this year. The Giornale report goes so far as to say he served as security at the event, suggesting a possible closer link.
 

 

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This is a short introduction to my corner of FreeRad!cals which will look at radicalization, terrorism and extremism – with a particular focus on what is happening in Europe and Asia. An ambitious remit which I share with a number of co-contributors to FreeRad!cals, but I look forward to adding my two cents to the debate on this growing site.

My work over the last few years has increasingly focused in on what is happening in radicalization in Europe, and specifically the United Kingdom. I am in the process of working on a large writing project trying to understand where Britain’s jihadist culture has come from and this is likely to be a major focus of my contributing on this site. However, recent work has also looked at "Understanding the Shabaab Networks," and I write regularly for the Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Monitor on a wide range of terrorism-related topics. Further, I am currently spending most of my time in Asia on a European Community grant – so I hope to be able to bring some more information and analysis on that to the table too.

To give you some background about where I am coming from, I have been a researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) since 2006, and before that I worked in Washington at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). I write for a wide array of other outlets, and my literary canon can be found here.

I plan on using this blog to add my thoughts on the increasing fragmentation of the Al Qaeda threat – which has evolved from its earlier franchise-based structure (as laid out by Jason Burke) into a wide array of different threats, encompassing traditional structured Al Qaeda threats, lone wolves, self-radicalizing seekers, and fellow traveler or affiliate groups like the Islamic Jihad Union or AQIM. And against this backdrop we continue to see the radicalizing impact of wars abroad amongst certain sections of Muslim diaspora communities.

I look forward to hearing your collective thoughts and reactions (positive and negative) to my contributions and hope to bring something useful in the ongoing debate of radicalization and where Al Qaeda and global jihadism is going.

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A new radio station called Voice of Prisoners has now officially hit the airwaves in the Gaza Strip.

As the name suggests, the radio programmes are specifically directed to the Palestinian detainees and focuses on allowing them to maintain ties with their relatives.

In an article written by Ali Waked for Ynet, Rafat abu-Khalil, one of the station's personalities and a former prisoner, who was detained in an Israeli prison for fifteen years for partaking in the Islamic Jihad, says that Voice of Prisoners meets an increasing need for such programming.

Indeed even though similar programmes have been broadcast for years from the Israeli area, it was only for a few hours a week. Rafat abu-Khalil added that this only led to requests for more programmes and complaints that there was not enough air-time.

Prison management cannot prohibit the station from broadcasting. However the programmes can sometimes be quite challenging because prisoners can use it to transfer information to other prisons. But at the same time it can also be a good tool for prison management to gain useful intelligence.

Israeli public opinion is very much against such an initiative. Many comments have been left on the website saying that it is crazy to let them communicate with their families, a parallel has been drawn with Gilad Shalit who has barely seen the light of day, let alone talk to his family, for more than three years now.

During my research as a Criminologist, I’ve always supported any initiative that could improve conditions for Palestinian or "Security" prisoners which I believe are crucial to allow them to go through the process of de-radicalisation, and for us to have a better society.

But as an Israeli I can only relate to the comments that have been posted which deplore the lack of reciprocity and the different attitude to human rights and life itself.

You can also read the article in Hebrew here.

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The current surge in violence in center-east Tajikistan sheds some light on a precarious and dicey situation in the Central Asian country. Host of a five years ugly civil war, the likes of deceased Arab-Chechen warlord, Amir Khattab (Samer al-Suwailem) and the Head of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan's (IMU) Armed Wing, Jum'a al-Namanjani (Jumaboi Khojayev), the country is no stranger to jihadism and armed Islamism (yes, there is quite a difference...and no, not just another academic luxury….the distinction has an impact on both behaviour and policy). 

Very briefly, recent developments in Tajikistan included the return of a few "Afghan-2001" veterans (as opposed to Afghan-1979), the resurfacing of Mullah Abdullah, the strong militia leader who refused the 1997 peace agreement, and a few clashes. One of those resulted in the death of the former leading field-commander of the United Tajikistani Opposition (UTO), Mirzo "Jaga" Ziyoev. In the post-conflict agreement, the UTO, a combination of Islamists, democratic and nationalists forces (though clan, region and sect may explain the fault-lines better!), was supposed to be granted 30% share of the government.

In that regard, Ziyoev was handed the "Ministry of Emergency Situations;" a ministry that was created for him with no power and no clear mandate! Disenchanted with the political conditions in the country as well as with the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP) (which he severed as one of its leading commanders but never joined it officially), Ziyoev chose to exit: rearm and hit the mountains.

He had few followers this time. Commander Ziyoev was more attractive for jihadist wannabes than Minister Ziyoev . What we do not know so far are the details of his plan, the scope of his contacts, and why did he chose to go down and negotiate with the government forces. What we do know is that he was killed during these negotiations.

The regime, armed opposition and even the IMU are denying responsibilities. More importantly, however, is that the conditions in Tajikistan are bad enough to make a former minister prefer the mountains to the office; the gun to the pen. Some Tajik analysts described post-2001 political environment as follows: "Iraq lost Saddam, we are about to get one!" In other words, Takrit and Dangra became synonymous. 

It is no coincidence that the IRP, a party that once led the armed opposition and now looks up to the Turkish AKP as a model, is losing grounds to Salafis, Hizb al-Tahrir as well as armed Islamism. In a recent meeting with Dr Muhiydin Kabiri, the head of the IRP, a Tajik youngman asked: "if you can't influence policy, constantly harassed and repressed, and suffering from election rigging, why are you in that game?!"

The current political environment is by no means rewarding moderation; if it is not punishing it. The potential for re-radicalization is quite high. In that repressive context, Mirzo Ziyoev might not be regarded anymore as a "sellout" but as a "martyr" whose steps in the Tavildara Mountains should be followed.

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As you may have heard, WorldNetDaily (WND), a far-right 'news' website at the forefront of such causes as the 'birther' movement and the vapid and vitriolic insanity surrounding the debate on health care just came out with this scoop:

As revealed in a new book detailing the operation and its findings, the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, is not the beneficent Muslim civil-rights group it claims to be. Indisputable evidence now shows CAIR and other "mainstream" Islamic groups are acting as fronts for a well-funded conspiracy of the Muslim Brotherhood – the parent of al-Qaida and Hamas – to infiltrate and destroy the American system.

The article continues:

'Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America,' a WND Books publication by counter-terrorism investigator P. David Gaubatz and "Infiltration" author Paul Sperry, documents CAIR's ultimate purpose to transform the United States into an Islamic nation under the authority of the Quran.

Apparently, a young man pretended to be a convert to Islam - even growing a beard – got a job at CAIR, stole or copied some documents, and his dad, Dave Gaubatz wrote a book (published by WND, naturally) about his experience with Paul Sperry, author of Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington. As you can see from the WND quote, this new book has an even catchier and more sensationalist title.

Gaubatz’s name hit the news in 2007 when he claimed that Saddam did actually have WMD (not to be confused with WND). Gaubatz is the 'director of intelligence and counter-terrorism studies' at something called the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE). SANE’s mission statement, no longer posted, can now be found here. If you can tell me what it means, please comment and explain it to me, because I don't understand it. To me, it sounds vaguely like Nietzsche on LSD or Italian fascist political theory from the 1920s (also on LSD, of course). A taste:

National Existence is political order experienced by men of the nation as a Rise to Being. Its opposite is a replacement of political order experienced by men, women, children and slaves as a Fall from Being. This Redirection in the experience of the Terms of Being (Self, Society, G-d and World) results in the collapse of Self into Society and all into World. The goal, wittingly or otherwise: a World State.   

As readers of this blog may have picked up, I am no fan of CAIR.  There has been evidence in the public domain for years now about CAIR’s origins as a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. It was originally launched to manipulate the discourse about the Oslo Accords and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the early 1990s on behalf of Hamas.

The most persuasive evidence was released for the terrorism financing trails against the Dallas-based charity, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which was found to have funnelled millions to Hamas over the years. CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in both trials (the first ended in a mistrial, the second in a guilty verdict). The exhibits in the case – including internal Muslim Brotherhood documents and financial records – can be found on the website of the federal district court, northern district of Texas (Some of the more interesting exhibits are here, here, and here – English translations at back of documents). Prosecutors described CAIR as part of 'the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.'

While claiming to be a civil rights organization, CAIR is anything but. CAIR and other Islamist civil society groups like the Muslim American Society try to appropriate the methods and discourse pioneered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and many other prominent activists (who represent the best of American ideals), but these groups do so disingenuously and in support of an Islamist agenda which runs contrary to the values promoted and lived by Dr. King.

So, if I believe all this, why do I have a problem with WND's book? It's pretty simple. WND represents the worst of web journalism: they are conspiratorial, fringe, and lack credibility. Their reporting is offensive, divorced from facts and ethics, and often promotes an exclusionary and even racist point-of-view (Some highlights here, here, here, and here...oh and here).   There is no reason to think this book on CAIR will be any different. In fact, I would be shocked if it was. 

As I commented to a friend the other day, I don't know who pisses me off more: WND or CAIR.

Rep. Sue Myrick wrote the forward to the book. I have long respected Rep. Myrick, but I worry she has made the wrong decision by hitching herself to this wagon.

When the wackos of WND take on an issue, the credibility of the entire cause is damaged. It is hard enough when most of CAIR's critics are already on the right. It makes it much easier for CAIR's spin doctors to claim their opponents and critics are racists, bigots, and liars. CAIR's favourite weapon in their arsenal is the 'Islamophobia' smear. Anyone they don't like promotes 'Islamophobia'. And they have been joined by liberal blogs, such as the Washington Independent, who are rightfully turned off by WND's campaigns.

 It usually isn't true, but in the case of WND, it is. And that makes it much harder for the rest of us who prefer to stick to the facts and shy away from sensationalism. And so, we find that WND is actually hurting the cause they now try to champion.

To WND:

Please stop.

Very Sincerely,

Amm Sam


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Today gunmen in Pakistan have killed up to 39 people in attacks on the Pakistan security services.

These most recent attacks have seen gunmen storming security installations in Lahore and a suicide bombing in the north-western town of Kohat.

These were allegedly carried out by the Taliban in revenge for the US missile strike that killed their leader Baitullah Mehsud in August of this year. These follow a spate of attacks throughout Pakistan, which are becoming increasingly brazen and have left up to 100 dead in the past two weeks alone.
What is most concerning about these attacks is they are show a resilient response to the death of one of their top commanders, demonstrating their ability to quickly regroup after such a setback. They also suggest the Taliban is becoming increasingly brazen by setting their sights at the security services, rather than the "softer" option of civilian targets.

Furthermore, Lahore and other towns throughout the Punjab had until recently maintained a level of relative stability, but are now increasingly becoming the target of such attacks, with three occurring in Lahore alone this year. Some have suggested that the Punjab is becoming a new front line in Pakistan's fight against militancy. 

As Pakistan's cultural capital, instability in and around Lahore has enormous implications for the rest of the country. A security official in May said, "Whoever wants to destabilise the country or the government, would go after Lahore."

The government's response seems to reiterate this and Interior Minister Rehman Malik has recently been quoted as saying "All roads lead to South Waziristan…now the government has no choice but to launch an offensive."

 

Here is a reminder of the major attacks in Pakistan since Oct. 5 (h/t to The Long War Journal):

Oct. 15, 2009:
Terrorist assault teams attacked the Federal Investigation Agency building, the Manawan police training centre, and the Elite Force Headquarters in Lahore.

Oct. 15, 2009:
A suicide bomber rammed a car into a police station in Kohat, killing eight people, including policemen and children.

Oct. 12, 2009:
A suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives as a military convoy passed through a checkpoint in a market in Alpuri in Shangla. Forty-one people, including six security personnel, were killed in the attack.

Oct. 10, 2009:
An assault team attacked the Army General Headquarters and took 42 security personnel captive. Eleven soldiers were killed, including a brigadier general and a lieutenant colonel, along with nine members of the assault team; and 39 hostages were freed.

Oct. 9, 2009:
A suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives in a bazaar in Peshawar, killing 49 civilians.

Oct. 5, 2009:
A suicide bomber entered the World Food Program office in Islamabad and detonated his vest, killing five UN workers, including an Iraqi.

 

This article was written by Charlie Pembroke

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It should be apparent by now but, in the broad and complex field that is the confluence of the internet and terrorism, what is good for the goose is nearly as good for the gander. 

The Canadian trial and conviction of Saïd Namouh on terrorism charges shows that evidence gleaned from internet use can counterbalance the terrible things that wannabe and actual jihadists are said to be doing online.

A lot has been written about online anonymity and whilst it's true that aliases can be used to mask identity, and various tools are available to hide one's physical location, there are very often cracks in one's system that can be exploited by investigative agencies to generate actionable intelligence and evidence admissible in many judicial systems. 

There are, of course, serious problems with both the gathering and consequent admissibility of this type of evidence, but neither we – nor terrorists – should assume that an individual's ability to evade detection is necessarily that great.

In Namouh's case, the National Post describes his internet use as revealed in court:

Hundreds of pages of transcribed conversations, retrieved from password-protected web sites and Namouh's computer, proved that he was an active member of the Global Islamic Media Front, a propaganda arm for al-Qaeda and smaller terrorist cells in Gaza and Somalia … he worked tirelessly to spread videos glorifying jihad and offering bomb-making tips.  He assured a colleague that he was free from the surveillance he might have attracted in a big city.

In March, 2007, he created Internet links to publicize a video warning the governments of Germany and Austria that they would suffer terror attacks if their troops were not withdrawn from Afghanistan.  Then, that May, he provided art for a communiqué by the Army of Islam, claiming responsibility for the kidnapping in Gaza of BBC reporter Alan Johnston and demanding the release of prisoners.

In August, 2007, authorities began to intercept Mr. Namouh's Internet chats, revealing plans to explode a truck bomb outside Canada.

'I have the information and experience for acquisition of explosives in a country and the way to have them easily,' he said at one point.  Later he discussed plans to travel to North Africa and said, 'Terrorism is in our blood, and with it we will drown the unjust.'  He said his dream was that he die a martyr and that his son in Morocco grow up to be a mujahedeen.  Namouh was arrested by the RCMP on Sept. 12, 2007, as he prepared his departure.

Namouh will be sentenced on 13 November, and will doubtless serve several years in jail, but the GIMF and many other organisations will continue to produce and disseminate propaganda on behalf of the jihad.  Other people will persist in plotting to commit violent acts in Canada and elsewhere.  Assuming that proper and consistent legal provisions are brought to bear on the use of the internet for planning terrorist acts, the Namouh conviction is another signal that violent extremists do not act with impunity in cyberspace.

 

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Dalia Mogahed, President Obama's advisor on Muslim affairs, recently appeared on a London TV discussion show hosted by Ibtihal Bsis – an official from Hizb ut Tahrir. Hizb ut Tahrir is a global Islamist movement that calls for the overthrow of un-Islamic governments worldwide and revival of the Caliphate.

The Telegraph reports:

During the 45-minute discussion, on the Islam Channel programme Muslimah Dilemma earlier this week, the two members of the group made repeated attacks on secular "man-made law" and the West's "lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism".

They called for Sharia Law to be "the source of legislation" and said that women should not be "permitted to hold a position of leadership in government".

Miss Mogahed made no challenge to these demands and said that "promiscuity" and the "breakdown of traditional values" were what Muslims admired least about the West.

She said: "I think the reason so many women support Sharia is because they have a very different understanding of sharia than the common perception in Western media.

"The majority of women around the world associate gender justice, or justice for women, with sharia compliance.

"The portrayal of Sharia has been oversimplified in many cases."

This story about the interview also graces Hizb ut Tahrir's website.  Dr. Mogahed, a member of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is also the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and wrote a book with John Esposito, a well known scholar and apologist for Islamism.

The White House needs to send an unambiguous message that it is not acceptable for its advisors to appear on television with enemies of the United States and empower their message.

Dr. Mogahed missed a great opportunity to challenge Hizb ut Tahrir and engage in an informed debate with them about Islam, values, and the place of the United States in the world. Clearly she did not feel inclined to do so. This is a simple issue – hopefully one that will be resolved soon.

 I am not surprised to see Dr. Mogahed promoting Sharia. I believe in freedom of speech and she should be able to say whatever she wants (no matter how distasteful and dishonest), but not as a representative of the President of the United States.

Fire Dalia Mogahed.

 

UPDATE: The television segment can be viewed here

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One of the thorny issues presented to modern states is the issue of how to regulate cyberspace without compromising the rights of citizens whom online security measures are meant to protect. 

It's no controversy to suggest that no state has yet to get the balance quite right―and some have failed miserably―such are the velocity and fluidity of information environments.  Two recent statements by leading international officials may herald the beginning of a period in which we will see rapidly how these difficulties scale globally.

Yesterday, Hamadoun Touré, head of the International Communication Union (ITU)―the United Nations' ICT agency―stated that by the end of 2010, the UN hoped to have in place 'a global agreement with every country to protect its citizens online, not to harbor cyberterrorists, and not to start an online attack'.  This is a complex undertaking, and one that I doubt will result in a single agreement, or at least not one with any teeth. 

The problems posed by internet fraud and the like are not the same as cyberterrorism, and are substantially different from the kind of inter-state warfare suggested by the banning of first cyber strikes.  Each field has its own peculiarities, and although the member nations could sign a protocol signalling global goodwill across the piece, any real action is going to require a much more granular, yet muscular, approach.

Having said that, in a speech to the UN General Assembly on 25 September, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves had this to say about securing the future of cyberspace:

Our long-term aim should be the creation of a universal cyber culture – a universally accessible, secure and safe environment for all.

This would seem to be exactly the sort of outcome on which the UN should remain focused when drafting the agreement(s) of which Touré spoke. 

There are probably too many constraints on the UN for them not to keep this is mind but in the current climate of panic and over-reaction to so-called 'cyber threats', a cool head is required. 

Keeping your eyes on the prize is one condition of being an effective broker in any situation and we can but hope that forthcoming UN initiatives are harnessed to a proper strategic vision.  Rather that than bowing to short-term tactical gains that result in long-term degradation of one of mankind's most valuable social and economic resources.

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Amid threats of sanctions from Western countries over its nuclear program Iran decided to look the other way where their Shahab-3 and Sejil missiles were being tested this morning.

Despite Tehran's defense that the missile tests had been planned for a while and have nothing to do with the current nuclear dispute they have been deemed "deeply destabilizing" by the French Foreign Ministry, Bernard Kouchner. It "sends the wrong signal to the international community" said the U.K. Foreign Office said in an e-mailed statement.

A former U.K. ambassador to Iran, Richard Dalton, had a more cynical view and stating that Iranian officials have "been poked and they think this is a good moment to show off their capabilities."

For all of you ballistics people, you can read more about Shahab-3 here.

I just wanted to give you details on how far these missiles can reach in more geographical terms than the approximate 2000 km-range recorded in 2008 when the missiles were last tested.

In Europe, shot from North West of Iran a Shahab 3 missile reaches the eastern part of the EU: that is Bucharest, Sofia, Athens. It can also target Kiev and Moscow.
It's already been said that these missiles can reach Israel, but basically the whole Near East could be at risk especially Cairo in Egypt and Turkey. A missile could also reachAfrica as far as Djibouti if fired from the extreme South of the country. All the ex-soviet republics of Central Asia, Afghanistan and the extreme West of China, as well as Pakistan and the North-west of India (including New Delhi and Mumbai) are also at range.

 

h/t to French journalist Jean-Dominique Merchet and his blog on Libération who concludes "one certainly understands why this is worrying to a lot of people".

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Echoing to my brief article on the situation in Somalia, I interviewed Roland Marchal, an expert on the politics of Africa. Hoping he could clear up some questions for us.

ICSR: Why do you think Al-Shabaab wanted to publicise its allegiance to Al-Qaeda despite its previous denials of any ties with the organisation?

Roland Marchal: Websites affiliated to al Shabaab have already sworn allegiance once or twice to Al-Qaeda and have received a positive response from Zahawiri.

In the current context, their latest video seems to be more like a distress call: Al-Shabaab is losing in Mogadishu and fears a more offensive behaviour of the AMISOM. This does not mean the latter will win or that the Transitional Federal Government would emerge as a credible alternative but the power struggle would be less visibly favourable to Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam.

Al-Shabaab could also be weakened by the fight over the port of Kismayu (a very lucrative source of income for Al-Shabaab) against Ras Kamboni (likely to be supported by the CIA).

This umpteenth call to foreigners mostly underlines that the previous ones have been unsuccessful.

ICSR: Many say that the Somali president is the best chance to fight Al-Shabaab because he has a strong legitimacy and he is a religious man. What do you think?

Roland Marchal: Sheikh Sharif was indeed a popular personality especially within the Hawiye and appeared as a moderate figure, a good listener. I myself shared this appreciation but two elements have to be taken into account since February 2009.

On the one hand he has "inherited" the TFG and its illegitimacy and he has appeared much more dependent on "foreigners": AMISON, European Union, etc ... But the population because it hasn't seen any improvements and hasn't received any benefits from this connection, is now bitter (especially because some members of the government have helped themselves).

On the other hand, he has appeared much weaker and less political than expected: his political "brain" is his minister of Finance who seems to always agree with the last person he talks to and has missed several opportunities to improve the political climate.

ICSR: The UN food agency has recently published a report saying that Somalia was facing its worst food crisis in 18 years. Can one expect the Somali government to tackle the insurgency and the food crisis? What part can the international community play?

Roland Marchal: The TFG spends all his time focused on its own survival; it is true that this team is different from the former team and much more positive towards humanitarian workers: they do not impose any restriction, but this is also the case because they cannot do anything.

The International community must discuss directly humanitarian aid and the rest with the armed opposition. Without that war will happen. And nobody can win it.


Roland Marchal is a senior research fellow at the National Center of Scientific Research, based at the Center for International Studies and Researches, Paris. He was the chief editor of the French academic quarterly Politique africaine from 2002 to 2006. He has been researching and publishing on the conflicts and politics in Africa.

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Yesterday and for the first time, Somali Islamic militant group Al-Shabaab has pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda in a video which was spread through Jihadi blogs. In the video, militants can be seen shouting their support to Osama Bin Laden chanting: "At your service Osama!” and vow to avenge a US raid that killed one of their leaders this week.

Al-Shabaab militants have always officially denied links to al Qaeda and it is still unclear why this video was released at this particular time. But in the recent context of terrorist attacks by Islamist insurgents in the country, this video might be just another way for the insurgency to assert itself against the West. 

Somalia's President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed  has been growing ties with the international community and the US has shown more interest and implication towards Somalia. Sharif met last month with Hillary Clinton, who pledged to expand American support for Somalia's government.

It may seem odd that the US would support a President who imposes the Sharia (Islamic law) on its people. But the US probably wouldn't back an Islamic President unless its legitimacy and credibility made him the strongest ally the Obama administration can have in the region. "Washington has [...] labelled him a moderate, despite his imposition of sharia law, and sent his forces 40 tonnes of weapons, while the international community has committed more than $200m to train Somali security services" reports Daniel Howden in The Independent.

Listen to this interview with Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times which explains why Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed is the best thing that has happened to Somalia for decades.

Also the UN has just released a report stating that Somalia is facing its worst food crisis in the last 18 years.

I'm sure the international community, as well as sending weapons, will help the Somali government fight this battle against hunger. Right?

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The International Crisis Group has released an intriguing new report on the expansion of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) in Kyrgyzstan and, in particular, the role of women within this Islamist movement.  Given the inroads HT appears to be making across the region, the report offers useful information on the movement’s operations, membership and appeal to different social groups.

HT emerged in Central Asia following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 and has since been widely repressed or banned by the region's increasingly authoritarian regimes. Its central aim is the restoration of the caliphate through 'peaceful political change' and educating Muslims about the deficiencies of Western socio-political systems (in Central Asia, this caliphate will be established in the Ferghana Valley).

Globally, the characterisation of HT as non-violent has been controversial, with critics alleging their ties to violent groups or, at the least, their role as a 'gateway' movement to more radical groups. In Central Asia there are concerns that militants returning from the Afghanistan/Pakistan theatre will turn HT cells toward violence. However, thus far there is little evidence of HT evolving in a violent direction in Kyrgyzstan.

The number of HT members, who operate clandestinely, is disputed: the government claims only a couple thousand, Crisis Group estimates up to 8,000, and scholars I spoke with in Bishkek last summer said the true number could reach into the tens of thousands.

It is important to note, however, that actual membership – which comes only after recruitment, training, exams and loyalty oaths – is magnified by the apparently much broader popular support and sympathy for HT among some parts of the population. This support is largely based within the rural, conservative, poorer and predominantly Uzbek segments of the southern regions but may be spreading into the middle-class and northern areas as well.

The report is highly useful in examining a little-examined topic: the role of women in radicalisation. More specifically, why would women enjoying the benefits of a secular-based society and government equality initiatives be attracted to a movement that seemingly revokes them? According to the report:

•    The lack of a strong national identity post-independence leads to more personal searches for identity, with three main potential models: Soviet, Western and Islamic. The cultural and historical deficiencies of the first two enhance the appeal of Islamic identities, as do the social mores of rural communities.

•    Official and local representatives of ‘traditional’ Islam often do not reach out to women, especially adult women. HT, on the other hand, effectively offer religious education and social services to women. The report notes, 'HT recruiters are not only often more competent in theological issues than traditional imams but also less rigid in their prescriptions. It is not all about prohibitions with them, a local journalist noted. Indoctrination takes place gradually, organically and almost imperceptibly, to both participants and state'.

•    Women suffer inordinately from the collapse of the Soviet state welfare system, high unemployment and growing socioeconomic inequality in Kyrgyz society. The social justice elements of HT teachings and the emphasis on the 'Islamic sisterhood' are thus very appealing, as are HT explanations of the causes of social ills. Local social services provided by HT also help alleviate the strain of economic suffering.

•    In conservative areas, women are rather restricted in their social activities and status. HT meetings (which are gender-segregated) provide an acceptable outlet for women to socialise, build relationships and gain social prestige.

•    HT taps into broad popular dissatisfaction with the current political system and promises women that within a caliphate they would have more opportunities to express themselves politically and religiously.

The report goes on to detail HT recruitment and training practices for women, as well as recommendations for government and donor initiatives to curtail the expansion of HT membership among the Kyrgyz population generally. All in all, it is a very interesting case study that should be of interest to anyone focusing on radicalisation mechanisms and outcomes.

I find myself most interested in the motivations of Kyrgyz women to join HT, as they seem to be a mix of the universal and the particular. For example, it is not unusual for population groups who feel powerless or alienated to join such movements; it is interesting, however, that HT child care services are proving effective in bringing women into their sphere, as it shows a real understanding of local needs and an openness to female membership that is lacking in other Islamist movements.

It will be interesting to see whether HT proves more successful than other movements at least in part because of its outreach to women – thus far, its appeal has been mostly linked to its continued non-violent stance, but this report opens up other possible explanations.

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As Amm Samm noted, eight years after 9/11 our elected leaders are still having problems deciding who we're actually fighting, or why.  There seems to be a similar lack of clarity in the murky world of jihadi internet forums, as Thomas Hegghammer reports at Jihadica:

 

Like last year, this year's 9/11 anniversary is the occasion of a major cyberbattle over jihadi forums.  At least three of the top jihadi discussion forums - Faloja, Shouraa, Shumukh – have been down for the past couple of days, and I bet my left arm they have been hacked for the occasion.  Other big forums such as Ana Muslim and Ansar were reportedly down for a while (though I didn't see it and they are back up again now).  Minor forums such as Tamkin, Madad al-Suyuf and al-Tahaddi seem to have been untouched.

Fighting each other, or fending off differently-motivated hackers, I don’t know, but it’s interesting to see that the 9/11 anniversary amongst the pyjamahideen is being marked with relative chaos and upheaval.  As Thomas has done, I've left the hyperlinks in for interested readers to explore these forums – report back if you like.  Thomas did so as a farewell gift to his readers – he's on a blogging sabbatical, so good luck Thomas, and see you on your return.

It's not all doom and gloom though, as Thomas and Internet Haganah both report on the re-emergence of forum granddaddy al-Ekhlaas.  Al-Ekhlaas – as well as al-Boraq and al-Firdaws – had been down since just before last year’s 9/11 celebrations.  All three are allegedly connected with al-Qaeda's media operation al-Fajr.  I wonder if a resurgent al-Ekhlaas will be pumping out media of AQ's new poster-boy, the achingly cool Sheikh Abu Yahya al-Libi?

 

Update:

Internet Haganah reports that al-Ekhlaas is down again. For good?

 

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Just in the last month or so, there has been a spate of reports illustrating the offensive use of the internet by politically or religiously motivated hackers.

In China, the Uighur 'Spy HackerZ' group is suspected of defacing a number of local government websites, leaving messages in support of Uighurs and Muslims.  Indonesian hackers claim to have attacked dozens of Malaysian websites on Malaysia's independence day, calling it payback for Malays 'stealing' their culture.

Islamist hackers are thought to be behind a more serious distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on Kosavar newspaper, The Express, in response to the paper's coverage of the US trial of Hysen Sherifi, an ethnic Albanian accused of terrorism offences.  Disruptions to Armenian government and high-profile private websites have been blamed on Azeri and Turkish hackers, and are probably related to the long-running dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Twitter and other social networking sites were laid low after hackers tried to drive Georgian blogger, CYXYMU, off the web. Shortly thereafter, the non-profit US Cyber Consequences Unit released a report heavily implicating Russian criminals in the cyberattacks against Georgia in 2008.

None of this is really 'new' to long-term internet-watchers, but it does show – once again – how important the internet is as a vehicle and focus of offensive actions by a wide range of political non-state actors. Strategic planners take this as read these days, although no-one has really come up with appropriate responses to this element of the transnational threat environment. Jailing a couple of Azeri bloggers for a talking donkey is hardly a well-considered counterstrategy. Securing your own systems properly might be.

As the technical tools of propaganda and persuasion become more widely distributed, and the barriers to entry lower, how will your government respond?

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I was at the movies recently and saw a trailer for the Baader Meinhof Complex, a German film about the infamous Red Army Faction (RAF) directed by Uli Edel based on the book of the same name by Stefan Aust.

The trailer surprised me, and I'll tell you why.

I happened to see the movie last fall when I was on a trip in Europe. It tells the story of the RAF from formation to imprisonment. They murdered police officers, shot and bombed judges and state officials, bombed a newspaper office, bombed the US Army barracks in Frankfurt and much more. They were most active in the 1970s, but did not officially disband until 1998.

The film does not portray them as heroes or freedom fighters. It shows a group of misguided, angry, rebellious and somewhat sadistic young people (even Jean-Paul Sartre thought Baader was an 'asshole'). The son of one RAF victim even praised the film for showing the group as 'a merciless, ruthless gang of murderers.' Christopher Hitchens comments that the film 'interrogates and ultimately indicts (and convicts) the West German terrorists rather than the state and society which they sought to overthrow.' It is a great film and I recommend it...

BUT, we have this US trailer, which leads in:
    

Germany 1967. The children of the Nazi generation have grown up in the ruin their parents created. They vowed fascism would never rule their country again.

We see clips of action, police brutally pursuing protesters, a young woman (RAF member) being shot by police, one clip where a hot shirtless Irmgard Möller announces that 'screwing and shooting are the same'.

We hear Möller speak of 'resistance' and 'historical responsibility.' We are asked: 'Rebels? Radicals? Criminals? Heroes? Martyrs? Murderers? Victims? Villains? Icons?'

As if the historical record is far too ambiguous to know…and all with The Who's 'My Generation' in the background.

Dark music comes in to inform us the West German security officials are the real villains. The fleeing RAF terrorists are innocent. The narrator explains, 'In the fight for freedom, they lost themselves to the cause and ignited a revolution around the world.' Lost themselves to the cause? What does that even mean? Ignited a revolution? Where?

Is this bizarre to anyone else?

I found the UK version of the trailer. Heavy music, riots, crime sprees, a female RAF member killing someone, hijackings, BOOOOM:

A group of radicals were ready to change the world. Revolutionaries. Criminals. Murderers. A true story. Europe's most notorious terrorists.

Heavy-handed, sure. But perhaps better acquainted with the reality of the film. The German trailer too is much different from the American.
 
For some reason, Hollywood (behind the marketing of this film, not its creation) seems incapable of marketing anything about revolutionaries without romanticizing them (for instance, Che, a film about a 'heroic' butcher, dead-beat dad, and failed/'romantic' revolutionary). Fortunately, the Baader Meinhof Complex doesn't play along with their dreams.

Do Hollywood studio execs and marketing wizards have fonder memories of the New Left and the late 60's and early 70's (or what they can remember of it) than the Germans do? Probably. While the times they were a'changin' in the US, the German experience was much more traumatic.

RAF violence traumatized a people dealing with demons of WWII past and divided by the Cold War. For an excellent account, check out Bringing the War Home by Jeremy Varon.

Also, if you've ever wondered about the role of minotaurs in our terrorist detainee program, this is hilarious, from the Onion, h/t Abu Muqawama.

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You may have heard about the great Atkin conference on Middle East peace we hosted in July.

 

ICSR brought together experts and policymakers from across the region to work out ways in which to move the situation forward.

The result is a booklet with 15 ideas on 'how to fix the Middle East'. They are snapshots of the discussions and the debate that took place at the conference.

They don't amount to a comprehensive peace plan, nor are they all complementary. But they really provide an excellent overview of the issues that have to be addressed.

And they show that positive action is possible, no matter how fraught the situation appears to be.

Now that President Obama seems to be moving the process forward, it is precisely this kind of creative thinking and debate that's needed now more than ever.

Have a look at the various ideas... tell us which ones you like most... and contribute your own!!

Let's see if we can get 15 MORE ideas on how to fix the Middle East from the Free Radicals' blog... ;-)  

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Australian police and intelligence agencies are said to have prevented a major terrorist plot.

Over the past 20 hours, the following facts have emerged:

•    Following a series of coordinated raids on 19 properties in the Melbourne area, four Australian citizens of Somali and Lebanese descent, mostly in their mid-20s, were arrested in the morning hours. Several others are being questioned.

•    According to the acting federal police commissioner, the suspects’ intention was to attack the Australian Army’s Holsworthy Barracks in suburban Sydney, killing Australian military personnel as well as themselves. Planning is said to have been at an advanced stage.

•    The police believe that the attackers might have been inspired by the Somali-based militant movement Al Shabaab, with two associates of the cell having travelled to Somalia in order to participate in fighting.

Much of the context and circumstances, however, remain unclear:

•    The method of attack. The Australian authorities claim that the attack was to be an ‘armed assault with automatic weapons’. The alleged intention was to kill as many military personnel as possible before being killed themselves. If true, this would be the exact same method that was used by the Pakistani militant group Lashkar e-Taiba in Mumbai in November 2008. Was it the suspects’ intention to copy these tactics?

•    Links to Al Shabaab. Al Shabaab is the youth militia of the Supreme Islamic Courts Council in Somalia, which – for a few months in 2006 – represented the Somali government. Like the Taleban in Afghanistan, Al Shabaab is an extremist Islamist movement with links to Al Qaeda. It has driven much of the recent fighting in Somalia: its aim is to expel international forces, overthrow the government and establish a harsh form of Islamist rule.

Al Shabaab has been successful in recruiting ‘foreign fighters’ from across the world, mostly – but not exclusively – members of the Somali diaspora. The most recently reported incident is that of two groups of men from Minnesota, one of whom died in Somalia. Earlier this year, Channel 4 in Britain uncovered the case of a young man from Ealing (West London) who blew himself up in Somalia.

Intelligence services have long been concerned about the rising traffic of jihadists to and from Somalia. In an interview earlier this year, the head of the British Security Service MI5 expressed concern about 'returning fighters', urging policymakers to ‘focus more on the Horn of Africa and Somalia in particular’.

In the context of the Australian plot, the question is whether the four individuals had successfully established ties to Al Shabaab, or whether it was merely their intention to do so.

How did they try to connect with Al Shabaab? What role was played by the internet? What prompted them to turn their attention from fighting in Somalia towards attacking a target in Australia?     

•    Al Shabaab and the global jihad. Al Shabaab has long had ties to Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda leaders have repeatedly encouraged followers to join Al Shabaab’s jihad. Thus far, however, Al Shabaab’s operations have been limited to Somalia and the Horn of Africa. Whilst drawing on the support of the Somali diaspora across the world, there have been no overseas operations, nor has Al Shabaab encouraged terrorist attacks against Western targets abroad.

This, again, raises the question to what extent the four men were ‘freelancers’ who were inspired by Al Shabaab propaganda on the internet, or whether they followed orders directing them to attack targets in Australia.

If the latter turns out to be true, the alleged plot would represent a major escalation of Al Shabaab’s campaign. If the former is correct, it demonstrates the ease with which jihadist recruits seem to be able to transfer their attention from one jihadist ‘battlefront’ to the other. If indeed they were freelancers, the planned attacks seem to have been purely opportunistic, resulting from their inability to go to Somalia and participate in the kind of jihad which appears to have radicalised them.

The significance of this plot has been depends on the answers to the questions above. There can be no doubt, however, that the situation in Somalia is finally spilling over into the West. The Australian plot together with the cases of radicalised Western Muslims joining Al Shabaab may be harbingers of a new – albeit not entirely unexpected – problem for Western security agencies.

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I was sitting in a Home Office seminar yesterday when someone mentioned in offhand fashion that the UK's terrorism threat level had changed.  MI5 and the cross-agency Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) have reduced the threat level from 'severe' – where an attack is deemed highly likely – to 'substantial', where an attack is considered a strong possibility. 

This might seem like linguistic tweaking but has evidently been the result of a significant intelligence assessment.  The 'severe' assessment is the lowest the national security footing has been at since 9/11 – the threat level has oscillated between severe and critical since August 2006, when it was first made public.

Alan Johnson, current Home Secretary, had this to say: 'The change in the threat level to substantial does not mean the overall threat has gone away – there remains a real and serious threat against the United Kingdom and I would ask that the public remain vigilant.' 

Some have suggested that the downgrade is a political ploy to convince an increasingly sceptical public that the war in Afghanistan is succeeding in reducing the domestic terrorism threat – this week's stated strategy. 

Apart from the fact that JTAC works independently of Whitehall and Westminster, I doubt this slightly conspiratorial assertion, although the timing of the announcement might, of course, work in government's favour.

The reduction has been signposted for a while, with both ex-Home Sec Jacqui Smith and now CT police chief John Yates hinting in recent months it was imminent. 

I agree with Paul Wilkinson, widely quoted across the news and intahwebs, who says it is a 'very cautious, very tentative reduction'.  It does sit slightly at odds with MI5 boss Jonathan Evans' statement in January that two thousand terrorism suspects were under constant surveillance.  Can we assume that the situation is now firmly in hand?

The question is a straw man.  The downgrading is not a cause for a general relaxation of vigilance, as Alan Johnson says.  It merely means that the likelihood of a terrorist attack tomorrow is marginally less than it was yesterday; it is no longer probable but possible. 

The whys and wherefores of this assessment are unknown, and neither MI5 nor JTAC can be expected to tell us.  Nevertheless, an interesting development. 

One can only hope that nothing serious does happen; it would be unfair to the intel services to cop more flak for another status downgrade ahead of an attack, as happened prior to 7/7.

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Imagine this news headlines: 'Bin Laden’s New Fatwa Prohibits Attacks Against the West' or 'Bin Laden Denounces Terrorism.' Too preposterous? May be. But the series of processes that we now call 'de-radicalization' does not suggest so. 

De-radicalization is a process of relative change, one in which a violently radical group reverses its behavior and ideology to abandon and de-legitimize the use of violent methods to achieve political goals, while also moving towards an acceptance of gradual social, political and economic changes within a pluralist context.  Does that even apply to armed Islamists? Yes, it does – in quite a large scale. 

Several armed movements, factions, and individual militants have shown remarkable behavioural and ideological transformations towards non-violence. The 'de-radicalization' processes of these movements removed tens of thousands of former militants from the ranks of al-Qa'ida's supporter and acted as disincentives for would-be militants. These processes have taken place on a large scale (organizational levels, in Egypt, Algeria, Tajikistan, and on a relatively smaller scale (factional and individual levels) in the United Kingdom, France, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia -- among other countries.

Too many questions pop up: Reasons? Conditions? Repercussions? I cannot answer them all here. However, previous research on de-radicalization processes concludes that a combination of charismatic leadership, state repression, interactions with the 'other' as well as within the organization, and selective inducements from the state and other actors are common causes of de-radicalization. 

There is a pattern of interaction between these factors leading ultimately to de-radicalization in many of the aforementioned cases as well as in non-Islamist cases. State repression and interaction with the 'other' often affect the ideas and the behavior of the leadership of an armed organization and probably lead them to initiate three endogenous processes: strategic calculations, political learning, and weltanschauung(s) revision(s).

The first process is based on rational-choice calculations and cost-benefit analyses. The second process is a product of socialization and interaction with the 'other'. The leadership will update its beliefs and reassess its behavior due to the behavior of their interaction partner(s). The third process is mostly based on perceptional and psychological factors. It is a process in which the leadership of an armed Islamist movement modifies its worldviews as a result of severe crises, frustration and dramatic changes in the environment.

Following these processes, the leadership initiates a de-radicalization process that is bolstered by selective inducements from the state as well as by internal interactions (lectures, discussions, meetings between the leadership, mid-ranking commanders, and the grassroots in an effort to convince them about the merits of de-radicalization).

Also, de-radicalized groups often interact with violent Islamist groups and, in some cases, the former influence the latter (domino effect). That type of interactions is well-demonstrated in the Islamic Group and al-Jihad Organization in Egypt; the Islamic Salvation Army (AIS) and other smaller Islamist militias as well as factions from the GIA and the GSPC in Algeria; and de-radicalized Islamist figures and individual suspects in Saudi Arabia.

So what should we do from here – both policy and research-wise? Well, for starters, this is an understudied phenomenon not only in security studies, but also in sociological, political, Islamic and area studies. In that sense the new project on de-radicalisation of ICSR is commendable (yes, Neumann strikes again!). 

Policy-wise, there are already some implications regarding counterterrorism, security, foreign and social policies. There is no wonder that more than thirty countries rushed to setup de-radicalization programs in their prisons – from the liberal and free (UK, US and others in Western Europe) to the repressive and not so free (Uzbekistan did not miss the rush!).

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Since 2000 the Islamic Republic of Iran has put in place one of the most extensive media censorship regimes in the world. At least a hundred publications have been shut down by the judiciary at the behest of government, and dozens of people have been imprisoned for disseminating inappropriate material online.

The state has implemented complex and pervasive internet filtering systems, so much so that Iran is today considered one of the 'Big Three' of internet censorship, along with China and Saudi Arabia.

At the same time Iran has experienced massive uptake of internet services, more than any other country in the region.  The Farsi blogosphere is one of the largest language groups after English and its vibrancy and variety easily rivals that of similarly sophisticated nations across the globe.  The Iranian government has tried hard, and with some success, to restrict user access to a wide range of 'foreign' content, as well as cracking down on political expression within Iran itself.

Inevitably, the recent presidential campaign was in part played out online. Supporters and opponents of the two candidates wrote and argued robustly across a number of platforms, from Facebook to Twitter, and on blogs and forums. While the jury is still out on whether online activism translates into tangible political effect, there is little doubt that the internet has facilitated these forms of political expression, whether the government likes it or not.

Since the results were called last Friday internet activity relating to the elections has increased rather than decreased, reflecting the level of protests seen in Tehran and elsewhere.  Predictably dubbed the 'Twitter Revolution' by the press (a term used to describe earlier events in Moldova), the rampant micro-blogging platform is being used by both sides to mobilise support and organise demonstrations.

At the time of writing Mr. Mousavi's Facebook page has nearly 60,000 supporters, for example. Iranians 'tweet' live from demos and protests and thousands follow these feeds in Iran and the diaspora. The government has retaliated by blocking access to some social networking sites and users have simply evaded these measures with the usual ingenuity and inventiveness that characterises both Iranians and the wider internet-using public.

There's an awful lot more that could be written about the 'hows' and 'whats' of current events in Iran and on the internet. The real point though is that as every conflict, military or otherwise, occurs the use of the internet and other online tools ramps up around it. Think Gaza this past winter, or Estonia last summer.

Whilst I’m sceptical about whether the internet delivers democracy, as its most ardent supporters have prophesied for years, it does speak of political and politicised engagement with technology for playing out real-world issues in real time. It is highly unlikely that merely shouting loudly on the net produces real and lasting change, or even that any government will capitulate to tweeters and Facebook groups, but it does make life a lot harder for governments attempting to suppress dissent.

It’s very hard to filter dynamic environments effectively and the counterproductive aspects of censorship are very much on display. The key concept here is 'transparency'. Ahmadinejad is being told in no uncertain terms by Iranians, 'The world can see you, Mr. President. Better watch your step'.

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I should be blogging about radicalisation in Europe – a topic I have been looking at for many years – but it is Bin Laden’s new tape which has caught my imagination.

Assuming it really is Bin Laden – and all the experts seem to think so – the recording proves that Bin Laden is alive and able to communicate with the outside world.

Many questions remain unanswered, however. Where is Bin Laden? Why is it so difficult to find him? Does it matter?

I obviously don’t know where Bin Laden is. Over the years, people have tried to convince me of the wildest theories, ranging from Bin Laden sipping tea somewhere in India to him being locked away in a secret CIA prison in Morocco.

Needless to say, none of my informants could produce even the slightest shred of evidence to substantiate any of these claims.

Still the most plausible scenario is what a very, very senior American intelligence official told me eighteen months ago. Namely that Bin Laden is likely to be somewhere in the Pakistani region of Waziristan.

In his own words: ‘We haven’t stopped looking for him. We still do. But we haven’t had any signal or indication for a long while. It’s embarrassing, but we really don’t know where he is.’

Does it matter? I think it does.

Bin Laden is clearly no longer running Al Qaeda in operational terms. Nor is he the inspirational figure he once was. But he is still an important symbol.

He is the face of 9/11 – Al Qaeda’s one victory, its one moment of undisputed ‘glory’.

No one wants to back a loser. As Bin Laden himself put it: ‘When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.’

I am under no illusions, of course. The problem won’t be solved with Bin Laden’s capture or death. 

 

But if Bin Laden was to be found and caught, the Al Qaeda brand – its mystique and sense of invincibility – would surely take a serious hit. Contract article -