Jihad's New Leaders

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Kyle Dabruzzi
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2007
http://www.meforum.org/article/1710

The recent deaths of prominent Al-Qaeda terrorists such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq and Abu Hafs al-Urdani in Dagestan, as well as a host of less publicized kills and captures, have hastened the arrival of a new generation of jihadist leaders. As they learn from their predecessors' mistakes, these new leaders may become even more lethal.

Five new terrorist leaders have demonstrated their importance: Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys in Somalia, Abu Ayyub al-Masri in Iraq, Matiur Rehman and Faqir Mohammed in Pakistan, and Aris Sumarsono (also known as Zulkarnaen) in Indonesia. Even if these leaders prove short-lived, their decisions have already had a profound effect on the course of the global war on terror.

They may represent disparate communities, but each of these new terrorist leaders employs similar strategies. First, they are more aware of their international image than their predecessors. While they seek to shock and strike fear into their enemies, they also wish to appear reasonable to their constituents and the larger Muslim population. While the Taliban engaged in massacres, and Zarqawi distributed videos showing the beheading of captives, the new leaders minimize overt acts of brutality that could undermine public support. Second, the new jihadists consider management of civil society more than did their predecessors. They do not wish to preside over failed states. The Islamic Courts Union (ICU) actually raised Somalia's standard of living modestly.[1] Third, these new leaders have exploited advanced communications technologies to improve their outreach and forge broader alliances. It should not surprise that jihadist movements have grown stronger.

Examination of each of their cases and areas of operation demonstrates how these new jihadist leaders have enacted these new strategies.

Somalia: Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys

On June 5, 2006, the fundamentalist Islamic Courts Union (ICU) seized Mogadishu and, over the next several months, consolidated control over the country's other major cities. However, as they moved on Baidoa, the last bastion of the U.N.-recognized government, Ethiopian forces swept through the country, forcing the ICU from Mogadishu and other major cities. The Ethiopian government remained concerned about the ICU because its predecessor and major component, Al-Ittihad al-Islamiya (AIAI), had sponsored Islamic separatist groups in the Ethiopian border province of Ogaden.[2] Nevertheless, the ICU's brief success catapulted it into a model for other jihadist groups. Twice, Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called for Islamic fighters to flock to Somalia to support the ICU.[3]

Despite their routing, the ICU leadership survived the Ethiopian advance. ICU leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has called for an insurgency,[4] and the U.N.'s Monitoring Group on Somalia has warned that "the ICU is fully capable of turning Somalia into what is currently an Iraq-type scenario, replete with roadside and suicide bombers, assassinations, and other forms of terrorist and insurgent-type activities."[5] Already, there are initial signs that Ahmed's threat is not empty. In early 2007, ICU militants attacked African Union peacekeeping forces[6] and attempted to assassinate President Abdullahi Yusuf.[7]

The man most likely to lead the insurgency is Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys. As a 42-year-old Somali army colonel fighting in the 1977 war against Ethiopia, he won a medal for bravery.[8] He then worked to establish himself as a respected religious figure and also a political leader with considerable clout in Islamic extremist circles. In 1991, Aweys cofounded and led AIAI, which sought to create an Islamic state in the Horn of Africa.[9] Then, starting in 2006, he served as head of the ICU's consultative council. In this capacity, he shaped ICU policies, which brought a strict version of Shari‘a (Islamic law) to Somalia but in a manner that was more consistent with economic growth and civil society than previous jihadist attempts at imposing Islamic law.

As the ICU gained power, Aweys pursued the three new jihadist strategies. First, he committed himself to winning over rather than alienating the Somali population. He sought to harness Islam, Somali nationalism, and Somalis' distaste for the warlords' rule.[10] The ICU portrayed itself as the only major faction in Somalia that upheld Islamic ideals. "The Somalia people are a homogenous people having the same culture, same language, same religion, same sect also," Aweys told Newsweek in a rare interview. "The only system they can accept to choose is Islam; no one can force them to take another."[11] He exploited Somali nationalism by describing the Ethiopian government's support for the transitional government as meddling in Somali affairs. He positioned the ICU as an alternative to the chaos and corruption of the warlords' rule. His emphasis on stability and rule-of-law won the sympathy of the Somali business community, which, at the very least, welcomed the ICU's strict rule as a means to reduce security outlays.[12] Although there are no reliable estimates as to how much the average businessman had to pay for security, the U.N. Monitoring Group's late 2006 study on Somalia reports that checkpoints established by the warlords cost businesses several million dollars a year.[13] The ICU's elimination of certain checkpoints that collected extortionate fees also reduced business expenses, in some cases by up to 50 percent of the delivery costs.[14]

Second, Aweys ensured that the ICU minded its international image. It sought to diminish initial comparisons with the Taliban through restraint. Upon taking Kabul, the Taliban ransacked a U.N. compound, captured the former Afghan president sheltering inside, emasculated and hanged him. Widespread massacres marked the Taliban conquest of Mazar-i Sharif. In conquest, the ICU kept its subjugation relatively bloodless. As the ICU captured strategic Somali cities, there would often be little if any bloodshed. They often allowed the warlords who had earlier controlled the cities to escape.[15]

Finally, the ICU worked to establish a broad-based jihadist coalition. A military intelligence source has confirmed a 2002 nongovernmental Partners International Foundation report that found sixteen operational terrorist training camps in Somalia.[16] In 2006, the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia reported, "Foreign volunteers (fighters) have also been arriving in considerable numbers to give added military strength to the ICU … Importantly, foreign volunteers also provide training in guerrilla warfare and special topics or techniques."[17] One senior ICU leader, Sheikh Hassan "Turki" Abdullah Hersi, openly admitted foreign involvement in Somalia during a speech to supporters after the seizure of Kismayo. "Brothers in Islam," he said, "We came from Mogadishu, and we have thousands of fighters, some are Somalis and others are from the Muslim world."[18]

Iraq: Abu Ayyub al-Masri

Abu Ayyub al-Masri is another trendsetter. When U.S. forces killed Zarqawi on June 7, 2006, some officials and analysts said Al-Qaeda in Iraq was in trouble. Iraqi national security advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie, for example, said, "Al-Qaeda is on the run now in Iraq, and this is the beginning of the end of Al-Qaeda in Iraq."[19] Al-Masri proved such statements hollow. He is a more effective leader than Zarqawi. Under Al-Masri's leadership, Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been able to repair its damaged reputation and has formed a broader alliance with other Iraqi jihadists.

Al-Masri was born in Egypt around 1967. Under the tutelage of Zawahiri, he joined Al-Jihad al-Islami al-Misri (Egyptian Islamic Jihad) in 1982.[20] After the Egyptian government began a crackdown that lasted through much of the 1980s, he took refuge in Sudan and, in 1995, moved to Pakistan.[21]

When Al-Qaeda incorporated Zawahiri's group in mid-2001,[22] Al-Masri traveled to Afghanistan and trained at the bin Laden-sponsored Al-Faruq training camp.[23] He met Zarqawi there in 2001[24] and also became an expert at assembling bombs.[25] Al-Masri traveled to Iraq in 2002, before liberation, and helped establish the Baghdad area's first Al-Qaeda cell.[26] After the U.S. invasion, Al-Masri provided logistical support to Al-Qaeda in Iraq and helped Zarqawi run the pipeline of foreign fighters.[27]

Al-Masri's effectiveness is highlighted by comparison to his predecessor. It is true that Zarqawi captured the imagination of many people throughout the Middle East,[28] but he was also a ruthless killer. His videotapes showed the beheadings not only of Westerners but also of Iraqis. Such brutality turned many Iraqis against the group and opened a rift between Zarqawi's foreign fighters and Iraqi insurgents. This fact was not lost on Al-Qaeda's central leadership. Zawahiri sent Zarqawi a letter in July 2005 that urged him to curtail his brutal tactics:

Among the things which the feelings of the Muslim populace who love and support you will never find palatable—also—are the scenes of slaughtering the hostages. You shouldn't be deceived by the praise of some of the zealous young men and their description of you as the shaykh of the slaughterers, etc. They do not express the general view of the admirer and the supporter of the resistance in Iraq, and of you in particular by the favor and blessing of God … We would spare the people from the effect of questions about the usefulness of our actions in the hearts and minds of the general opinion that is essentially sympathetic to us.[29]

Zawahiri's objection to Zarqawi's actions was more strategic than moral. He implored Zarqawi simply to shoot his captives.[30]

Al-Masri has taken Al-Qaeda in Iraq in a different direction. On one hand, he has worked to build a coalition of insurgent groups and has sought to incorporate Iraqi tribes under his banner. In essence, he is trying to "Iraqify" Al-Qaeda.[31] On the other hand, he has reached out to a broader range of jihadist groups. In an audiotape released just after the November 7, 2006 U.S. elections, he urged a more united front to destabilize the Iraqi government:

O you the commanders of Al-Ansar and Al-Mujahidin army, and the rest of the faithful ones. Our yearning for you has increased, and we are longing for your amity. Your brothers pray to God to protect you … We are not better than you so that we come forward while you step back. You have started jihad before us, you are more disinterest[ed] in leadership than us, and your soldiers are more obedient. We consider you to be more faithful to God in your religion.[32]

While Zarqawi would label as enemies all Muslims who did not support his mission, Al-Masri urges other jihadists to "take care of our Sunni kinsfolk" and to "leniently call for the good and preach against evil especially since the infidel Baath Party had confused the people vis-à-vis their religion."[33]

Al-Masri's strategy is designed to accomplish two of the new generation of jihadists' objectives. While U.S. forces prevent Al-Masri from controlling territory and therefore running mechanisms of state, he now avoids alienating Iraqi civil society while creating a larger jihadist front.

Pakistan: Matiur Rehman

Pakistan is central to Al-Qaeda's war against the West. Al-Qaeda and its allies largely relocated to Pakistan after the 2001 U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan. This has caused changes in the Al-Qaeda organization. The group's foot soldiers previously were predominantly Arab; today, they are largely Pakistani. Al-Qaeda has made strategic gains in Pakistan, most notably the September 5, 2006 Waziristan accord, in which the Pakistani government essentially ceded the Waziristan region of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.[34] This safe haven is problematic for U.S. national security. As the 9-11 Commission reported, one of the key elements in planning a catastrophic terrorist attack is a sanctuary that provides "time, space, and ability to perform competent planning and staff work."[35]

No one has benefited from this accord more than Metiur Rehman, a Punjabi from Pakistan born around 1976.[36] While Rehman may be unknown in the West to all but professional terrorism and intelligence analysts, he may be the man most likely to plan the next attack on the United States.[37]

Analysts believe that Rehman became an expert in explosives in the mid-1990s. Soon after, he became an instructor in Al-Qaeda's camps, focusing his efforts on recruits visiting from the West.[38] He became deputy to Amjand Farooqi, leader of Harakut ul Ansar, one of the most violent Kashmiri terrorist groups.[39] Both are suspected in the kidnapping and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. After Pakistani police killed Farooqi in 2004, Rehman remained in sole possession of the database of all Pakistanis trained in Al-Qaeda camps.

Rehman is now the chief liaison between Al-Qaeda and Pakistan's jihadists. He is linked to many of the assassination attempts against Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf between 2003 and 2006[40] and is also a suspect in the plot to bomb several airliners over the Atlantic in August 2006.[41] Unlike Aweys and Masri, he focuses more on terrorist operations than on organizing a broad-based movement. Still, he is willing to exploit local civil society to his goals, a task made easier by the shift in Pakistani public opinion against President Musharraf and the United States.[42]

Pakistan: Faqir Mohammed

The Waziristan accord has also indirectly strengthened Faqir Mohammad. Born around 1970 in Chopatra, a village in the Bajaur province about 20 kilometers from the Afghan-Pakistan border, he studied religion until age twenty under the prominent Salafi imam Maulana Abdus Salam and, later, at the Darul-Uloom Pamjpeer, a local madrasa (Islamic school). His Salafi education prompted him to embrace the Afghan Arabs, jihadists from the Persian Gulf states who flocked to Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviets. Faqir Mohammed became a jihadist in 1993 under the tutelage of Maulana Sufi Mohammad, an active leader in Jamat-e-Islami, a Pakistani Islamic movement allegedly linked to terrorist groups. Thereafter, Mohammed fought in Afghanistan with the Taliban.[43]

Faqir Mohammed continued to fight in Afghanistan even after the Taliban's fall, but he also established a base in Pakistan. A strategic marriage allowed Mohammed to establish himself in the Mamoond tribe in the North-West Frontier Province's Bajaur district. This has enabled him to provide Al-Qaeda with a local safe haven. In January 2005, the Central Intelligence Agency fingered his house in Bajaur as Al-Qaeda's winter headquarters.[44] On October 30, 2006, U.S. forces staged an air strike on a madrasa in a Bajaur tribal village that also allegedly served as an Al-Qaeda training camp. Faqir Mohammed felt so confident, however, that he gave an interview near the scene of the destroyed school[45] and, later, attended and even spoke at the funeral for the eighty people who died in the attack.

Mohammed's role is important. He controls a strategic area from which his forces stage cross-border raids on NATO forces in Afghanistan.[46] The new jihadist leaders increasingly focus on establishing pure Islamic "emirates" to serve as stepping stones toward a greater caliphate, which they seek. Figures such as Faqir Mohammed are central to this strategy because they provide a link between Al-Qaeda and local tribes. They can mitigate ethnic tensions which otherwise might undercut Al-Qaeda's effectiveness.

Also consistent with the new jihadist strategy, Mohammed has not sought to overturn the tribes' civil society in Pakistan. Instead, he works within the existing tribal structure, trying to carve out a place for Al-Qaeda within it. This approach is more likely to engender long-term success than past jihadist efforts to completely remake the societies in which they operated.

Indonesia: Aris Sumarsono

Another new generation jihadist leader focuses upon Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. Aris Sumarsono, also known as Zulkarnaen, was born in 1963 in central Java, Indonesia.[47] He became Jemaah Islamiya's chief of military operations in February 2004 after the arrest of his predecessor[48] and now sits on Al-Qaeda's main decision-making council.[49] He is well-connected with access to thousands of potential operatives and cultivates an image of humility, innocence, and self-restraint that many Southeast Asian Muslims find appealing.

As a young man, he reportedly studied at an Islamic boarding school, Al-Mumkin, founded by Abdullah Sungkar.[50] Sungkar, along with Abu Bakar Bashir, founded Jemaah Islamiya, an Islamic terrorist group that seeks establishment of an Islamic state across southeast Asia.[51] In the late 1980s, Sungkar sent a group of his best students, including Zulkarnaen, to Afghanistan to train with Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a Saudi-financed Afghan mujahideen leader.[52] Zulkarnaen became a protégé of Muhammad Sauwki al-Istambuli, an Egyptian terrorist leader.[53] Zulkarnaen stayed in Afghanistan for a decade, developed an expertise in sabotage, and trained other Jemaah Islamiya members.[54]

Sydney Jones, an expert on Jemaah Islamiya and director of the Jakarta branch of the International Crisis Group, said that while in Afghanistan, Zulkarnaen was likely drawn to the writings of jihadist ideologue Abdullah Azzam,[55] whose teachings focused on fighting against foreign powers' encroachment into Muslim lands.[56]

Zulkarnaen continued his Jemaah Islamiya training and recruitment efforts after he returned to southeast Asia in the 1990s.[57] He helped establish training camps in areas of the Philippines controlled by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front similar to those that existed under the Taliban in Afghanistan.[58] It was in one such Philippines camp that Mohammed Sidique Khan, a participant in the July 7, 2005 London transportation system attacks, learned bomb-making.[59]

Zulkarnaen is suspected in several major terrorist attacks. He allegedly helped prepare the explosives used in the 2002 Bali disco bombing which killed 202 people, including eighty-eight Australians, and is also a suspect in the August 5, 2003 car bomb attack on the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta.[60] Today, analysts consider him to be Indonesia's most dangerous terrorist.[61]

Beneath Zulkarnaen's quiet demeanor is a devotee to violent international jihad. Like Rehman, Zulkarnaen's connections make him a formidable opponent.

Conclusion

The upcoming generation of terrorist leaders is not amateur. They all have formal military training. They no longer accept the idea that brutality is romantic but rather seek to strike a balance between effectiveness and piety. They no longer assume that Muslims will flock to a strict Shari‘a state and, consequently, also tap into nationalist sentiments, even while striving toward a goal that would mean an end to the nation-state. Nevertheless, despite their strategic embrace of national identity, the new jihadist leaders recognize the importance of transnational links and alliances.

The strategic characteristics of these new jihadist leaders fit well with the direction that Al-Qaeda's central leadership is taking. Local Al-Qaeda leaders and affiliated groups have managed to maintain semiautonomous control over their individual organizations while still reporting to the terrorist group's central leadership. As a senior military intelligence officer put it:

We're seeing much more of a subsidiarization of terrorist groups, which has now become much more pronounced. Call it Al-Qaeda federalism. You have strong local leaders, but they are all held accountable to a strong central leadership. This creates a hydra-like effect. If you look at these nodes being established, they are all able to survive absent this central leadership. This is a big risk for the central leadership because they could break off. However, these groups remain wedded to the central leadership, and it thus creates a strong network.[62]

Meanwhile, the central Al-Qaeda organization can sense that some of its long-term goals may be within reach for the first time. Al-Qaeda has long sought to reestablish the caliphate.[63] Now, the terrorist group's growing regional strength makes the caliphate seem like a more reasonable goal since the Islamic emirates that are currently taking shape could form the basis of an eventual caliphate.

As a new generation of jihadist leaders shifts tactics in pursuit of a long-term vision, U.S. and Western officials counter the threat with disjointed, short-term strategies. The assumptions long held by Western counterterrorism officials about expansionist terrorist groups may no longer be true. With jihadists devoting greater attention to image, to managing civil society, and to broadening their outreach, states that fall to the jihadists may no longer fail. To the contrary, in Somalia, living standards increased when the Islamic Courts Union briefly restored public security.

In order to counter Al-Qaeda's new generation, Western officials should concentrate on twin goals. First, they should prevent terrorist safe havens from arising in the first place—a goal that was endorsed by the 9-11 Commission.[64] And, second, they need to prove that U.S. allies and their aid organizations are as adept at building a stable civil society as the jihadists. A large number of Somali citizens looked favorably upon the ICU when it gained power because it provided an alternative to the chaos that had prevailed before. Yet, after supporting a military intervention to topple the ICU, Washington has failed to provide the aid needed to allow Somalia's transitional federal government to thrive.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of My Year Inside Radical Islam (Tarcher/Penguin 2007). Kyle Dabruzzi is a terrorism analyst for The Gartenstein-Ross Group. They thank Aaron Garza for his assistance.

[1] Author telephone interview with U.S. military intelligence officer, Dec. 12, 2006.
[2] David Childs, "In the Spotlight: Al-Ittihad al-Islami (AIAI)," Center for Defense Information, Washington, D.C., May 26, 2005.
[3] The Washington Post, Jan. 5, 2007; "Terrorism: Al-Qa'ida Leaders, Jihadist Websites Express Support for Somali Islamists, Brand Ethiopians as ‘Crusaders,'" from "Jihadist Websites," Open Source Center (OSC) Report in Arabic, Dec. 19, 2006, reprinted in Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS), Dec. 19, 2006.
[4] Garowe Online (Puntland, Somalia), Dec. 26, 2006.
[5] Bruno Schiemsky, et al., "Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1676," U.N. Security Council Committee, New York, Nov. 2006, pp. 42-3.
[6] Reuters, Mar. 8, 2007.
[7] CBS News, Mar. 13, 2007.
[8] "Key Leader Profile: Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys," Terrorism Knowledge Base, The Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), Oklahoma City, accessed Jan. 18, 2007.
[9] Sunguta West, "Somalia's ICU and Its Roots in Al-Ittihad al-Islami," Global Terrorism Analysis, Jamestown Foundation, Washington, D.C., July 27, 2006.
[10] Author telephone interview with Abdiweli Ali, assistant professor of economics, Niagara University, Dec. 6, 2006.
[11] Newsweek, July 23, 2006.
[12] Interview with Abdiweli Ali, Dec. 6, 2006.
[13] Schiemsky, "Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia," p. 33.
[14] Ibid.
[15] SomaliNet, Aug. 9, 2006.
[16] "Initial Assessment on the Potential Impact of Terrorism in Eastern Africa: Focus on Somalia," Partners International Foundation, Newtown, Conn., May 5, 2002, p. 48.
[17] Schiemsky, "Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia," p. 42.
[18] Garowe Online, Sept. 27, 2006, accessed Dec. 4, 2006 (article since removed).
[19] CNN.com, June 15, 2006.
[20] "Key Leader Profile: Abu Hamza al-Muhajer," Terrorism Knowledge Base, MIPT, accessed Feb. 28, 2007.
[21] Abdul Hameed Bakier, "A Profile of Al-Qaeda's New Leader in Iraq: Abu Ayyub al-Masri," Global Terrorism Analysis, June 20, 2006.
[22] Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower (New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 336.
[23] Bakier, "Abu Ayyub al-Masri."
[24] Barbara Starr, Live From…, CNN, transcript 061503CN.V85, June 15, 2006.
[25] Bakier, "Abu Ayyub al-Masri."
[26] The Times (London), June 9, 2006.
[27] The New York Times, June 15, 2006.
[28] Good Morning America, ABC News, June 10, 2006.
[29] Letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, July 9, 2005, accessed Apr. 9, 2006.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Author telephone interview with U.S. military intelligence officer, Dec. 12, 2006.
[32] "Iraq: Al-Muhajir Threatens U.S. Troops in Audio Statement," from "Jihadist Websites," OSC Report in Arabic, Nov. 10, 2006.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Dawn (Karachi), Sept. 6, 2006.
[35] The 9-11 Commission Report (New York: W.W. Norton Co., 2004), p. 365.
[36] "Key Leader Profile: Matiur Rehman," Terrorism Knowledge Base, MIPT, accessed Jan. 19, 2007.
[37] Alexis Debat, "The Man Who Is Planning the Next Attack on America," The Blotter, ABC News, Aug. 9, 2006.
[38] Ibid.
[39] Alexis Debat, "Why Al-Qaeda Is at Home in Pakistan," ABC News, Mar. 3, 2006.
[40] Alexis Debat, "Inside Pakistan," National Interest Online, Nov. 1, 2006.
[41] Ottawa Citizen, Aug. 31, 2006; CNN.com, Aug. 12, 2006.
[42] Ahmed Rashid, "Pakistan's ‘Isolated' President," BBC News, Mar. 15, 2007.
[43] Sohail Abdul Nasir, "Al-Zawahiri's Pakistan Ally: Profile of Maulana Faqir Mohammed," Global Terrorism Analysis, Feb. 9, 2006.
[44] Ibid; Alexis Debat, "Al-Qaeda's Winter Headquarters," The Blotter, ABC News, Oct. 27, 2006.
[45] MSNBC.com, Oct. 31, 2006.
[46] MSNBC.com, Nov. 15, 2006.
[47] "Treasury Designates Jemaah Islamiyya's Emir Top Bomb Maker and Military Commander," Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of the Treasury, May 12, 2005.
[48] CNN.com, Feb. 26, 2004.
[49] Author interview with U.S. military intelligence officer, Dec. 12, 2006.
[50] Associated Press, Nov. 19, 2003.
[51] "New Jemaah Islamiyah Terror Chief Profiled," The Asia Security Monitor, no. 55, American Foreign Policy Council, Washington, D.C., Nov. 21, 2003.
[52] "Jemaah Islamiyah in South East Asia: Damaged but Still Dangerous," ICG Asia Report, no. 63, International Crisis Group, Brussels, Aug. 26, 2003, p. i.
[53] Ibid., p. 5.
[54] "Treasury Designates Jemaah Islamiyya's Emir."
[55] Sydney Jones, interview, Four Corners, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, accessed Feb. 23, 2007.
[56] Uriya Shavit, "Al-Qaeda's Saudi Origins," Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2006, pp. 3-13.
[57] Jemaah Islamiyah," ICG Asia Report, pp. 8, 10.
[58] "Southern Philippines Backgrounder: Terrorism and the Peace Process," ICG Asia Report, no. 80, July 13, 2004.
[59] Sydney Morning Herald, Oct. 27, 2005.
[60] BBC News, Sept. 8, 2003; Associated Press, Nov. 19, 2003.
[61] Author interview with U.S. military intelligence officer, Dec. 12, 2006; Associated Press, Nov. 20, 2003.
[62] Author interview with U.S. military intelligence officer, Dec. 12, 2006.
[63] The 9-11 Commission Report, p. 51.
[64] Ibid., pp. 365-7.

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Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of My Year Inside Radical Islam (Tarcher/Penguin 2007). Kyle Dabruzzi is a terrorism analyst for The Gartenstein-Ross Group. They thank Aaron Garza for his assistance.

Conclusion

The upcoming generation of terrorist leaders is not amateur. They all have formal military training. They no longer accept the idea that brutality is romantic but rather seek to strike a balance between effectiveness and piety. They no longer assume that Muslims will flock to a strict Shari‘a state and, consequently, also tap into nationalist sentiments, even while striving toward a goal that would mean an end to the nation-state. Nevertheless, despite their strategic embrace of national identity, the new jihadist leaders recognize the importance of transnational links and alliances.

The strategic characteristics of these new jihadist leaders fit well with the direction that Al-Qaeda's central leadership is taking. Local Al-Qaeda leaders and affiliated groups have managed to maintain semiautonomous control over their individual organizations while still reporting to the terrorist group's central leadership. As a senior military intelligence officer put it:

We're seeing much more of a subsidiarization of terrorist groups, which has now become much more pronounced. Call it Al-Qaeda federalism. You have strong local leaders, but they are all held accountable to a strong central leadership. This creates a hydra-like effect. If you look at these nodes being established, they are all able to survive absent this central leadership. This is a big risk for the central leadership because they could break off. However, these groups remain wedded to the central leadership, and it thus creates a strong network.[62]

Meanwhile, the central Al-Qaeda organization can sense that some of its long-term goals may be within reach for the first time. Al-Qaeda has long sought to reestablish the caliphate.[63] Now, the terrorist group's growing regional strength makes the caliphate seem like a more reasonable goal since the Islamic emirates that are currently taking shape could form the basis of an eventual caliphate.

As a new generation of jihadist leaders shifts tactics in pursuit of a long-term vision, U.S. and Western officials counter the threat with disjointed, short-term strategies. The assumptions long held by Western counterterrorism officials about expansionist terrorist groups may no longer be true. With jihadists devoting greater attention to image, to managing civil society, and to broadening their outreach, states that fall to the jihadists may no longer fail. To the contrary, in Somalia, living standards increased when the Islamic Courts Union briefly restored public security.

In order to counter Al-Qaeda's new generation, Western officials should concentrate on twin goals. First, they should prevent terrorist safe havens from arising in the first place—a goal that was endorsed by the 9-11 Commission.[64] And, second, they need to prove that U.S. allies and their aid organizations are as adept at building a stable civil society as the jihadists. A large number of Somali citizens looked favorably upon the ICU when it gained power because it provided an alternative to the chaos that had prevailed before. Yet, after supporting a military intervention to topple the ICU, Washington has failed to provide the aid needed to allow Somalia's transitional federal government to thrive.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of My Year Inside Radical Islam (Tarcher/Penguin 2007). Kyle Dabruzzi is a terrorism analyst for The Gartenstein-Ross Group. They thank Aaron Garza for his assistance.

Thursday, Jun. 28, 2007
In Iraq, Operation Last Chance
By Joe Klein

The Iraqi men squatting shoulder to shoulder in the blasted, abandoned classroom couldn't tell at first that the American soldier addressing them was a man of real authority. He was slight, taut, with sandy hair and a thin beak of a nose. He didn't sound like a big shot; he didn't bark in a commanding voice. "How many of you are going to make it?" he asked, in sketchy Arabic. Several of the men — Iraqi police recruits — looked up, saw the four stars on General David Petraeus' cap and shifted nervously, unsure of what he meant. His interpreter had better success. A scattering of hands were timidly raised. "You're all going to make it!" Petraeus said, giving the Iraqis' response the most benign possible interpretation. "That's good. Are you ready to defend your country?" There was a grudging shout, the Iraqi equivalent of, "Yes, sir!"

It was midafternoon on a blistering June Saturday in Yusufia, just south of Baghdad. The abandoned school was stifling, though more tolerable than the dusty, sun-addled main street of town, which we'd just walked along — the general on an arid grip-and-grin tour, offering Salaam aleikum, habibi! greetings to the few Iraqis willing to brave the midday heat. Now Petraeus moved from classroom to classroom, cloaked in heavy body armor, sweat trickling down the side of his face. Each room was packed with nonsmiling Iraqi men in deep squat — 500 in all. Petraeus was exhilarated. They were different from the usual police recruits. These had been selected by local sheiks.

Some were former Sunni insurgents who had just switched sides — part of a revolt against al-Qaeda that has been gathering force all spring. "This is cause for optimism," Petraeus told me as he watched the recruits being fingerprinted and getting retinal scans for their ID cards. "This is the wave of the future. You've got to work from the bottom up, get the local forces involved." The biometric scans were a major technological advance. The Iraqi police had a reputation for corruption and secret allegiance to the militias, but the allegiances of these men were not going to be secret. If any of those fingerprints turned up on a bomb, the culprit would be identified. "We're beginning to build a fairly significant database," Petraeus said.

This is one of his favorite themes — how much more knowledgeable the U.S. military is about Iraq now than when he first came over with the Operation Iraqi Freedom invasion force in 2003. Earlier, I sat next to the general at a briefing staged by U.S. officers at Fire Base Yusufia, and he whispered little addendums for my benefit. "See, these guys really get it," he told me as a major explained the nuances of a map showing the various local tribal areas. When the briefer showed a map of joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol bases, Petraeus said, "See, you can't secure a population by commuting to the fight." Another Petraeus theme: in the past, the vast majority of American troops lived on massive forward operating bases. But the counterinsurgency doctrine that Petraeus has sought to apply since becoming the top U.S. commander in Iraq calls for moving units out of their bases and into civilian areas, where they can interact with locals. "You guys have been doing classical work," he told his briefers at the end of the presentation. "But this is the time for you to take risks ... We're inevitably going to reduce this surge. You have to be thinking about what you want to leave behind."

It is, indeed, a moment of truth in Iraq. "This is a decisive phase," a member of Petraeus' staff told me and began to laugh. "That's one of our favorite jokes. It's always a decisive phase. But this time, I guess you'd have to say, it actually is." Operation Phantom Thunder, the nationwide offensive launched by U.S. and Iraqi troops in mid-June, may well be the last major U.S-led offensive of the war. "We couldn't really call it what it is, Operation Last Chance," says a senior military official. There is widespread awareness among the military and diplomatic players in Baghdad that, with patience dwindling in Washington, they have only until September — when Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are due to give Congress a progress report — to show significant gains in taming the jihadist insurgency and in arresting the country's descent into civil war. Phantom Thunder is an effort to dislodge al-Qaeda from its bases of operation in the suburban belts north and south of Baghdad, and — using intelligence from al-Qaeda's former allies in the Sunni insurgency — to prevent the terrorists from settling in elsewhere in the country. Petraeus says that the entire U.S.-led coalition force, which includes 160,000 American troops, is involved in the operation in one way or another. "We're not doubling down here," he told me. "We're all in."

Petraeus has been careful about claiming success, or even optimism, in the nearly five months since he returned to Baghdad. He has said a military victory isn't possible, that Iraq can be stabilized only through a political solution that honors all sides in the conflict — Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds. But his own staff is skeptical that a political deal is still possible. "This is going to be the first Shi'ite-dominated Arab government. Period," a senior military official told me. "And the Shi'ites are not inclined to be generous toward the Sunnis." The fact is, most of the important decisions in Iraq are now beyond American control.

Petraeus is not your old-fashioned, gung-ho, blood-and-guts sort of commander. He's an intellectual, a West Point graduate with a Ph.D. in international relations from Princeton. His record in Iraq has been mixed. He succeeded, for a time, in applying his counterinsurgency tactics in Mosul during the first year of the war, but his highly publicized effort to train the new Iraqi army in 2004 can only be considered a failure. He has successfully led soldiers in combat. And he does have his macho moments, famously challenging his soldiers to push-up contests. But he made his reputation more as a communicator and motivator than as a warrior. "He is very much a seize-the-moment sort of general," says Lieut. General Graeme Lamb, the senior British military commander in Iraq, who served with Petraeus' predecessor, General George Casey. Lamb describes Casey as "more stoic," which is British for "less dynamic."

The Sunni Strategy

Unlike Casey, Petraeus seems to have had a moment to seize. A good chunk of the Sunni insurgency has turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq, the fringe group — it comprises no more than 5% of the insurgency, according to U.S. intelligence estimates — that is responsible for the most spectacular bombings. The anti-Qaeda rebellion began in Anbar, formerly the most dangerous province in the country, an area famously described as "lost" to the terrorists in a Marine intelligence report leaked to the press in 2006. "Actually, the first tentative steps in Anbar were taken in 2005," Petraeus told me over dinner one evening. "The Abu Mahal tribe out by the Syrian border turned against al-Qaeda and fought hard — but pretty soon there were five or six dead sheiks." Not just dead, apparently — beheaded and left in the street. "Over time, the word began to get around among the other tribes that al-Qaeda was not only brutal, it didn't even respect traditional burial practices."

Some al-Qaeda elements overplayed their hand in other ways as well, demanding marriage to the daughters of local sheiks, forcibly recruiting teenagers as suicide bombers and imposing Shari'a law — including a ban on Western dress and smoking. "Last fall Army Colonel Sean MacFarland, the brigade commander in Ramadi, was approached by Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi," Petraeus said. "Several of the sheik's relatives had been killed by al-Qaeda. The story is, MacFarland guaranteed Abdul Sattar's security by putting an M1 tank section in [his] front yard and [a] police station across the street." By mid-March, tribal elements were helping clear al-Qaeda from the provincial capital of Ramadi. "Pretty soon, there were Sunnis in other parts of the country who wanted the same deal," the general said.

The current operation, Phantom Thunder, was made possible by the tribal flip. It is not classic counterinsurgency warfare. It is not about protecting a population but about attacking a historically elusive enemy. This is not so easily done in Iraq. On the second day of Phantom Thunder, I flew into Baqubah with Lieut. General Ray Odierno — a massive man, decidedly more blood-and-guts than Petraeus — to check the progress of what was supposed to be the most intense, and symbolic, battle of the offensive. In 2006 al-Qaeda's leader Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi proclaimed Baqubah the capital of the new Islamic State of Iraq. About 500 al-Qaeda fighters were said to be in the city, hunkered down, ready for a fight.

But now Baqubah was strangely quiet as we flashed into town, an otherworldly convoy of dust-colored Stryker vehicles, bristling with gunners. Only a few small explosions could be heard in the distance; there was no small-arms fire. We stopped at a bombed-out medical clinic for a briefing, with operation maps leaned against a white ceramic tile wall, Odierno and his commanders sitting on boxes and camouflage-fabric campaign chairs in a tight semicircle. The news was good. The enemy was said to be caught in a tightening cordon. Local Sunni insurgents — they claimed to be members of the 1920 Revolution Brigades — had helped to clear the Buhritz neighborhood. After the briefing, Lieut. Colonel Bruce Antonia told me, "Usually everybody's shooting at us. This is the first time we've had any of them on our side."

A second briefing, in a joint U.S.-Iraqi command post in the middle of Baqubah, was less optimistic. An Iraqi general said that he was pretty certain that the al-Qaeda leadership had slipped away, north to Tikrit and Samarra, and that many of the fighters were burying their equipment before they left town, hoping to return — as always — when the Americans left. In the days that followed, it became clear that almost all of al-Qaeda's fighters had gotten out. In a guerrilla war, only the stupidest guerrillas allow themselves to be lured into set-piece battles against a superior force.

"If you put your foot in a puddle, the water splashes out," Petraeus' chief counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen said. "The important thing is to secure the neighborhoods they've left." But the puddle analogy wasn't quite right. This puddle had evaporated and would undoubtedly condense somewhere else in Iraq. There simply aren't enough troops to police the entire country.

The Muqtada Factor

If you fly over Baghdad in a helicopter, as Petraeus sometimes does when the sun is setting over the sepia-toned city, all seems peaceful. There are crowded markets, kids playing soccer on large dirt fields; downtown Baghdad hasn't been reduced to rubble, as Beirut was in the Lebanese civil war. The increased number of U.S. troops has made many neighborhoods safer, but the relative quiet can convey the false impression of progress. During my week in Iraq — including three days in combat zones — I heard only occasional explosions, mostly in the Green Zone, which is shelled by Shi'ite militias nearly every night, and saw no pitched battles ... and yet the casualties piled up: 36 Americans were killed. There was a spike in Iraqi casualties as well because of horrific bombings at the Mansour Hotel, where al-Qaeda targeted some of the Sunni sheiks who had been cooperating with Petraeus, and at a Shi'ite mosque in downtown Baghdad. The number of daily enemy attacks has more than doubled in the past two years.

The violence is abetted by the political vacuum in Baghdad. The Iraqi government is irresolute to the point of near collapse. It is nowhere near to figuring out how to make a political deal amongst the contending parties that might lead to stability. "All this attention on benchmarks has actually been bad for the process," Ambassador Crocker says. "We've wasted so much time and energy on getting a hydrocarbon law" — that is, a law to divide oil profits amongst the ethnic and religious parties, likely to be approved soon — "but it has very little to do with getting a functioning government in place." The truth is, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government is puttering along, happily dependent on the U.S. "There are no consequences for them when they screw up," Crocker says. "Whatever's wrong, we take care of it."

The Bush Administration fantasy — a democratic Iraq that fairly represents the interests of Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds — is almost an impediment to the real horse-trading that must take place. Two families — the al-Sadrs and the al-Hakims — dominate Iraqi Shi'ite politics, and the issue of who leads Iraq may ultimately be decided between them. Each has a young leader. "The question is, Does either of these guys have the capacity to move from Prince Hal to King Henry?" said a senior U.S. military official. The Hakim family has traditionally been more aloof — and pro-Iranian — than the Sadrs. The current al-Hakim patriarch is suffering from lung cancer but has designated his son Amal to be the leader of his group, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. "Unlike his father, Amal smiles," a U.S. diplomat told me. "He gave a good speech in Najaf last week. He might actually be a real leader."

But the most important man in Iraq is the other Shi'ite prince, Muqtada al-Sadr, who is 33 and the nominal leader of the most powerful militia in the country, the Mahdi Army. Al-Sadr is often called mercurial — he's supposedly a fervent video-game player — but the evidence says otherwise. He has been a devoted follower of the populist, nationalist, outsider style of his father, the Grand Ayatullah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, which has great appeal for Iraqi Shi'ites. Unlike his father, however, Muqtada has accepted significant support from the Iranians — and fled to Iran for a time, allegedly, after the surge began.

How to handle al-Sadr is the single most important decision to be made by Petraeus and Crocker in the coming months: Is he friend or foe? There are those on the general's staff who believe al-Sadr will be the inevitable winner of the Iraqi power struggle and must be accommodated. Others believe he is an irreconcilable thug. Either way, his strength among the Shi'ite masses is obvious. On Sunday I walked through the Shorja market, the site of John McCain's infamous tour last April. (I, too, was accompanied by a fierce-looking squad of troops in up-armored humvees; the troops teased me about the absence of protective helicopters.) Unlike McCain, I asked the local vendors some political questions. Those I met — and most of the others at Shorja, my Army chaperones later conceded — were al-Sadr supporters. "This is the worst government ever," a cell-phone shopkeeper named Fadhil Taher told me, referring to the Maliki regime. When I asked about al-Sadr, he said, "He's a good leader. You tell America. He's good, good, good. He's a man of peace."

Two Clocks

Soon after arriving in Iraq, Petraeus invented a formulation that has since become a cliché: the disparity between the two "clocks" — Washington and Baghdad time — for ending the war. The Washington clock is "late fourth quarter, we're down a touchdown, and the other team has the ball," a senior Administration official told me. Petraeus knows that the American public is tired of the war — tired of not winning it, at least — and that a significant chunk of the Republicans in Congress may be about to abandon President Bush, as the respected Senator Richard Lugar did on June 26. The general would love to see "a couple of weeks without explosions" before September to reinforce his probable plea for patience. But insurgent forces responded to Phantom Thunder with high-profile bombings in recent days, and they are probably saving their best shots for the weeks before Petraeus leaves for Washington. The terrorists are lobbying Congress too.

There is another clock, not often mentioned, that sits in the Pentagon. It is the Broken Army clock, the service timeline for an exhausted force. Petraeus and his staff were deeply concerned when rumors of another tour extension, from the current 15 months for soldiers, spread in mid-June. "It would be a last resort," Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told reporters — but troop morale is so iffy that Petraeus quietly urged his commanders to "get the word out" to their soldiers that the extension rumors were false.

According to the Broken Army clock, troop levels will begin to wane in March 2008, no matter what Congress decides in September; the current 20 brigade combat teams will be reduced to 15 by August 2008. There is growing speculation in the military that Bush will try to pre-empt the Petraeus testimony by announcing a gradual drawdown from 20 to 15 combat brigades later this summer. "As if that isn't going to happen anyway," a senior officer told me. "But it may give us some political breathing space" — that is, it may subvert the Democrats' calls for a more rapid withdrawal — "if the President makes a big deal of announcing we're drawing down."

Petraeus won't talk about his September testimony, and he won't talk about the details of the inevitable U.S. withdrawal. But it is clear that he and his aides are preparing for the endgame. In Baqubah, General Odierno had told the Iraqis, "It's up to you to make sure [al-Qaeda] doesn't come back." One could only wonder about the fate of Sunni insurgents who had turned against the jihadis. Soon they would be facing a new foe, an Iraqi army and local police that have been notoriously awful in Diyala province — riddled with Shi'ite death squads, incompetence and corruption. Petraeus' "all in" bet relies on the police recruits squatting sullenly in Yusufia, indulging his cheerleading — "Are you ready to fight for your country?" Certainly, they were ready to fight for their families, their tribes, their mosques ... but for a Shi'ite Iraq? Probably not.

"The vision thing is really important," Petraeus told his commanders in Yusufia. "You have to visualize what security here should look like when you're gone." Petraeus was among the first to have the vision thing in Iraq, in Mosul in 2003, but the experiment was abandoned — there was a lack of sufficient troops — after he left. McCain and others believe, with some justification, that if the Petraeus counterinsurgency tactics had been adopted three years ago, the U.S.-led coalition might have had a shot. But now it seems likely that Petraeus will suffer the same fate in Baghdad as he did in Mosul. The various clocks are very much on his mind, but so are the daily sacrifices, the brilliant improvisations and occasional neighborhood victories of the troops he leads. "He doesn't want to be the fall guy," an aide said. And he doesn't deserve to be. It is hard to imagine, though, how this can turn out any other way.

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Why globalization will not be stopped

BUSINESS: On The Job in China," photoessay by Edward Burtynsky, Time,, 9 July 2007, p. 24.
Neat shots.

Subtitle says it all:

A wave of more than 100 million rural workers has flocked to cities for factory work, fed by Western demand for cheap goods. If conditions aren't ideal, they are often better than farm life.
The biggest migration in human history. The entire flow of African slaves was less than 15 million, spread over decades. This is 100 million in less than a generation and many more to come. Making that migration work is the biggest challenge the Chinese Communist Party faces. Anything that threatens that development threatens the Party's rule.

All fantasies about "unrestricted warfare" aside, the PLA doesn't have a clue about how to defend the regime from the greatest threat it can possibly face: rising expectations

http://www.iraqdirectory.com/DisplayNews.aspx?id=4036

Foreign companies digging oil wells in Kurdistan

Foreign companies digging oil wells in Kurdistan
Al Sumaria - [01/07/2007]

Foreign oil companies are searching for new oil rich lands in Kurdistan region where oil investments have been poor for many years. In Taq Taq region, which surface extends for about 600 square kilometers, Topco Turkish Company has started excavation works and has so far dug three oil wells which are supposed to produce 75 000 oil barrels a day. It started digging as well three other wells due to finish at the end of the current year.
Oil reserves in Kurdistan represent 2.9 % of Iraq oil reserves which is estimated at 115 billion barrels. However, experts expect to uncover more oil sources in Kurdistan region.
Oil companies are entitled to dig and excavate in return of a determined share allocated to the local government while the new oil and gas law expected to be discussed by the Parliament includes a Federal Council to supervise investments and signing contracts with foreign companies.
For his part, Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein Al Shahristani announced that contracts signed under the current law or the new law if not ratified yet would not be acknowledged. Al Shahristani called on the companies to restraint from signing new contracts before ratifying the new law and without the approval of the Federal Oil and Gas Council.
On the other hand, foreign oil companies in Kurdistan region are still facing the problem of exporting crude oil as they should wait for the new law to be ratified in order to negotiate over exports permit through pipelines connecting Iraq with Turkish Jihan Port. Thus, Kurdish officials have turned into another alternative that directly links Taq Taq region to the Turkish borders. Kurdistan region is expected to receive nearly 17 % of Iraq’s overall revenues in virtue of an agreement concluded between Kurdistan’s region and Baghdad Central Government.