American Footprints » terrorism

The Importance of Training Camps

Brian Ulrich — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 23:19:10 +0000

Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed a trend of people pointing to terrorist plots hatched in, for example, Europe as evidence that “safe havens” for terrorist groups do not matter. In his monograph Jihad in Saudi Arabia, Thomas Hegghammer comes to a different conclusion:

“The arguably most important lesson from the history of al-Qaida is that unhampered access to territory can dramatically increase a terrorist group’s military capability. For a start, the safe haven allowed al-Qaida to quietly plan operations on its own schedule with virtually no outside interference. Moreover, it allowed Bin Laden to build a core organisation with a relatively high degree of bureaucratisation and functional task division, which in turn improved organisational efficiency. Most important of all, territorial access enabled Bin Laden to set up an elaborate military educational system, the like of which has never been seen in the hands of a transnational terrorist organisation with such a radical agenda. This infrastructure – or “University of Global Jihadism” – greatly improved al-Qaida’s ability to operationalise recruits. The training camps are also key to understanding the characteristic organisational unity of al-Qaida, namely the simultaneous existence of a hierarchical and bureaucratic core and a much larger and looser network of camp alumni.

“Beyond increasing the recruits’ paramilitary expertise, the camps constituted an arena for social processes that improved al-Qaida’s operational capability. Many of these processes imitated those cultivated by professional military organisations. Instructors first of all sought to desensitise the recruits through intensive weapons practice and through the promotion of an ultra-masculine and weapons-fixated camp culture. Moreover, the hardship of camp life made recruits forge strong personal relationships, thus building the deep internal loyalty and trust needed for long-winded operations such as the 9/11 attacks. Finally the ‘graduates’ of these camps were imbued with self-confidence and a sense of being part of a vanguard, which turned many into leading or entrepreneurial figures in the militant communities in their home countries. In addition to these social processes came the ideological indoctrination into global jihadism. Recruits were exposed to lectures and writings of global jihadi ideologues. Instructors also encouraged anti-American statements within the camps, leading recruits to try to rhetorically outdo one another. On the whole, the alumni from these training camps were more brutal, more bound together and more anti-Western than most of their peers.”

Some context for the second paragraph is provided by Hegghammer’s prosopographical study of 197 al-Qaida recruits from Saudi Arabia. Almost all of them travelled to Afghanistan intending to fight in prominent limited conflicts such as that in Chechnya and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Only in the training camps in Afghanistan did some start becoming committed to the al-Qaida vision of a global campaign against the United States or socially recruited into other agendas. The fact that deception about al-Qaida’s actual agenda was involved, not only in fundraising, but recruitment, leads me to hate al-Qaida even more now than I did this morning.

I suspect suspicion about the “safe haven” idea results from skepticism about American policy into Afghanistan bleeding over into one of the primary rationales for our involvement there. I do not, however, draw from the work of Hegghammer and others whom I have read any especially militant conclusions. Specifically, it seems clear that al-Qaida and the Taliban themselves had different agendas, and that many within the Taliban were not keen on harboring Bin Laden’s state within a state. This is, in fact, why he ordered the assassination of the Taliban’s arch-rival Ahmad Shah Massoud ten years ago today. In addition, while it seems common sense that trained terrorists are more capable of inflicting harm than untrained ones, the point about drawing recruits into Bin Ladenism seems irrelevant now that everyone can clearly see what it is. I haven’t closely followed the war in Afghanistan for several years, but given my sense of the situation on the ground, I would not be averse to a withdrawal that involved some elements of the Taliban gaining some measure of political power in the country, along with a sufficient intelligence presence to be aware of and a willingness to act against any new “training camps” that were sufficiently threatening to U.S.’s national interests.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Radicalizing al-Awlaki

Brian Ulrich — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 13:55:03 +0000

The Jamestown Foundation has some interesting information on Anwar al-Awlaki, who probably played a role in radicalizing Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan and would-be Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab:

“In November 2001, an American Muslim cleric told the Washington Post that he had no sympathy for the perpetrators of 9/11, that Muslims and non-Muslims needed “more mutual understanding,” and that the Taliban had no right to impose the burqa on women (Washington Post, November 19, 2001). The cleric, Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki, is the same man who is now believed to have played a major role in radicalizing Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. army psychiatrist who killed 13 American soldiers at Fort Hood last November, and 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to detonate explosives aboard an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day…

“There is a huge difference between the moderate statements al-Awlaki made in the period between 2001-2002 and the radical views he has expressed since 2007. In the intervening period, al-Awlaki moved to Yemen, where he was banned from re-entering the United States and detained without charge in a Yemeni prison for over a year. Al-Awlaki believes he was imprisoned at the request of the United States, but describes his detention as “a chance to review the Quran and to study and read in a way that was impossible out of jail. My time in detention was a vacation from this world” (Interview with Infocusnews.net [Anaheim], September 17, 2008). The shaykh says he was interrogated in prison by the FBI about his connections to the 9/11 terrorists (Interview with cageprisoners.com, December 31, 2007).”

Maybe al-Awlaki was secretly a militant while in this country. However, from the information presented in the article, it sounds like he was only radicalized by his stay in prison, a process understood to be important in many Arab countries.

I’d Rather be Famous than Righteous or Holy

Eric Martin — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:52:53 +0000

Ben Smith is impressed with the Obama administration’s relatively low-key approach to counterterrorism:

One of the most striking differences between the Obama and Bush administration is the handling of domestic terror arrests. The Bush White House trumpeted every arrest and disrupted plot — in some cases, ones that were nowhere close to fruition — as a major win in the War on Terror and a reminder of the need to be vigilant.

The Obama administration, by contrast, keeps them relatively quiet. There hasn’t been a statement from the White House, or any comment save a Justice Department press release, on the arrest of seven men on charges that they helped raise money and provide training for attacks in Israel, and trained to participate in attacks in Israel and Kosovo.

The decision not to talk about terrorism is just that — a choice, with the goal of ending the "politics of fear" that Obama denounced during the campaign.

While dialing back the fever pitch of fear is beneficial in a number of ways – not the least of which is crafting policies based in reason rather than emotion - the understated approach is also a counterterrorism tactic in and of itself. As Marc Sageman makes abundantly clear in Leaderless Jihad, publicity and fame are coveted by would-be terrorists, and depriving that oxygen from the movement is crucial. Here is Sagemen from a piece discussing that book:

There has been talk of an al-Qaeda resurgence, but the truth is that most of the hard core members of the first and second waves have been killed or captured. The survival of the social movement they inspired relies on the continued inflow of new members. But this movement is vulnerable to whatever may diminish its appeal among young people. Its allure thrives only at the abstract fantasy level. [...]

Terrorist acts must be stripped of glory and reduced to common criminality. Most aspiring terrorists want nothing more than to be elevated to the status of an FBI Most Wanted poster. “[I am] one of the most wanted terrorists on the Internet,” Younis Tsouli boasted online a few months before his arrest in 2005. “I have the Feds and the CIA, both would love to catch me. I have MI6 on my back.” His ego fed off the respect such bragging brought him in the eyes of other chat room participants. Any policy or recognition that puts such people on a pedestal only makes them heroes in each other’s eyes — and encourages more people to follow the same path.

It is equally crucial not to place terrorists who are arrested or killed in the limelight. The temptation to hold press conferences to publicize another “major victory” in the war on terror must be resisted, for it only transforms terrorist criminals into jihadist heroes. The United States underestimates the value of prosecutions, which often can be enormously demoralizing to radical groups. There is no glory in being taken to prison in handcuffs. No jihadi Web site publishes such pictures. Arrested terrorists fade into oblivion. Only martyrs live on in popular memory. [emphasis added]

It would be nice to think that the Obama administration is heeding the advice of people like Marc Sageman.