StormWarning’s Counterterrorism

End of 1st Q ‘08, so its time for observations again.  Scouting around some of the “usual suspects” on the Internet, much of what I see is “happy talk.”  Despite all of this “happy talk,” it is way too early to declare victory!  At least one unjaded opinion (mine) sees a number of opportunities for disappointment - Pakistan (where I may have been wrong about the transition from Musharraf), Iraq with the post surge upsurge in sectarian violence, Iraq with the trembling of the Maliki gov’t, and still in Afganistan where the resurgence of the Taliban continues and I maintain doubt about Karzai’s future.

The degree and level of Iranian involvement in all of this is still at the root of the discussion about what is really going on.  There are some very reputable experts who see the non-transparent imprint of Iran on what is happening in Iraq today (watching the shoooting war outbreaking in Baghdad and Basra) while others less expert seem to consider al Sadr to be the culprit (while I do not question the role of Iran in all of this, there is also no doubt that al Sadr plays a role, and his Mahdi Army remains a threat worse than al Qaeda - according to Maliki).  In time, we will see the residual effects of the troop surge.  We will also see if the Maliki gov’t can stay power, or worse, what will happen if it fails.  We will witness the impact of Bhutto’s assassination, Musharraf’s electoral loss and the seating of a new government in Pakistan, a Muslim nuclear power.  And finally, we will see the impact when Karzai’s gov’t falls and the Taliban regain their foothold in Afghanistan.

For convenience (mine), I’m simply going to list a few readings:

Taliban declares start of new Afghan offensive-Web

The Taliban announced the start of a spring offensive in Afghanistan, promising “painful strikes” to force all enemy soldiers to leave, according to a Web message seen by a U.S.-based monitoring service on Thursday.

NATO-led forces have conducted wide-ranging offensives in southern Afghanistan to disrupt the insurgents ahead of spring, which each year heralds a surge in violence as the snows melt and fighters emerge from their mountain hideouts.

The Web message entitled “Taliban declares beginning of spring offensive in Afghanistan” was from Mullah Bradar Akhund, who styles himself deputy emir of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, according to a translation by the SITE Institute terrorism monitoring service seen in London.

Taliban again threaten spring offensive

The Taliban says it will use new techniques and draw on years of fighting experience to again increase attacks in Afghanistan this spring.A statement attributed to Taliban senior commander Mullah Bradar also warns Afghans working with the government to quit their jobs or risk being targeted.

Bradar said the Taliban is aiming to collapse the government of President Hamid Karzai. He said the militants would continue their attacks until the government is ousted and U.S. and NATO forces withdraw.

U.S. and NATO military officials dismiss the idea of a Taliban spring offensive and say the only offensive that will take place this year in Afghanistan is one by Western and Afghan troops.

Taliban increasingly turns to suicide bombings

Suicide bombing used to be a subject of debate among the Taliban, as they struggled to decide whether the tactic was too extreme, but the frightening new reality in Afghanistan is that the radicals appear to be winning that argument within the Taliban ranks.

None of the 42 insurgents surveyed by The Toronto Globe and Mail were willing to express any reservations about suicide bombings when confronted by a researcher with a video recorder, and many of them boasted that they were ready to volunteer for such missions themselves.

Some Taliban have previously argued that it’s cowardly to wear an explosive vest, because it prevents an insurgent from fighting his enemy face-to-face. Others suggested that the carnage among civilian bystanders that often results from a suicide blast alienates ordinary Afghans from the insurgency. A Taliban faction even took out an advertisement in one of Kandahar’s weekly newspapers in 2006, blaming recent suicide bombings on foreign fighters and promising to stop the attacks: ”We will punish them,” the advertisement said.

The Impact of Pashtun Tribal Differences on the Pakistani Taliban

Though members of militant Islamic groups such as the Pakistani Taliban and other jihadis have almost the same anti-United States and pro-al-Qaeda worldview, they are not especially disciplined when it comes to organizational matters. Difficulty in this area explains the existence of so many extremist factions operating under different leaders and commanders who sometimes express conflicting opinions on domestic and international issues.

The formation of an umbrella organization, Tehrek-e-Taliban-Pakistan (Movement of Pakistani Taliban, or TTP) on December 14, 2007, was meant to bring the different Taliban groups operating in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) into one formation and improve their coordination (The News International [Islamabad], December 15, 2007). Its spokesman, Maulvi Omar, a shadowy figure using a fake name, claimed that 27 Taliban factions operating in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) were part of the movement. Nobody was surprised when Baitullah Mehsud, amir of the Taliban in the territory populated by the Mehsud Pashtun tribe in South Waziristan, was named as leader of the TTP. He was the most powerful among the Pakistani Taliban commanders and it was natural that he would lead the organization.

PLEASE NOTE AND REMEMBER HERE MY CONSISTENT AND LONG TERM CAUTION ABOUT TRUSTING THE PASHTUN

Al Qaeda’s Resurgence

FOUR YEARS AGO, HIS WORDS WOULD have represented an almost unquestioned consensus view. In late January, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, Dell Dailey, described al Qaeda’s top leadership as isolated, saying that they have “much, much less central authority and much, much less capability to reach out.”

He is not alone in this assessment. In July 2007, Stratfor’s Peter Zeihan argued that while a few thousand people may claim to be al Qaeda members, “the real al Qaeda does not exercise any control over them. . . . The United States is now waging a war against jihadism as a phenomenon, rather than against any specific transnational jihadist movement.” The most prominent proponent of this view has been Jason Burke, a reporter for London’s Observer and the author of Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam. By the time that book hit newsstands in 2003, Burke was already arguing that the “nearest thing to ‘Al-Qaeda,’ as popularly understood,” only existed for a five-year period, and the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001 showcased “the final scenes of its destruction.” Now, Burke contends, we are “in a ‘post-bin Laden’ phase of Islamic militancy.”

Unfortunately, all these men are wrong–and we will fight the war on terror less effectively if we continue to harbor mistaken assumptions about the al Qaeda network. It is important not to overstate what the terror group’s leadership needs to do to remain relevant. Even if the central leadership’s role is limited to connecting terrorist nodes–pairing skill sets, financing, and operatives–it can transform terrorist groups from disunited regional problems into cohesive adversaries capable of threatening Western societies. Moreover, the safe havens that al Qaeda’s leaders have gained in recent years magnify their lethal capabilities.

There are so many moves left in this chess game that no one can adequately predict the outcome, no matter how much they wish to project a positive one [just my opinion].  Wearing rose colored glasses is a fashion statement…putting your head in the sand can do two things.  It can keep you from seeing what is going on around you…and it can get your head shot off when you finally lift it to see how the world has changed, despite the happy talk.