01/02/2010
Biological Warfare Weekend 2
BW as a political football.
This week’s developments featured impressive posturing surrounding Tuesday’s report by the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.
Always get in the first shot With the deft political timing that CIA training provides, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, now at Harvard, started the week off with his own assessment of al Qaeda’s WMD threat.
George Smith calls the report thin, and goes into a lengthy review of the Ricin debacle in the UK, which Mow-Lar had googled for his report.
Armchair Generalist calls the report alarmist.
The Boston Globe and New York Daily News talk up Mowatt-Larssen’s credentials. The Globe even called it a “study.”
F is for Funding Former Senators Graham and Talent released their report the next day.
Plutonium Page at Daily Kos said it wasn’t really the commission because some of the original staff was replaced by new staff and maybe they weren’t very good staff or something.
Judith Miller’s Fox News headline read: Obama Gets ‘F’ on Stopping Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Which isn’t what the report said at all.
31/01/2010
Abdulmutallab’s Friends
Al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula claimed responsibility for the failed bombing of Flight 253. There is no reason to doubt this claim. Their video included his photograph, and Abdulmutallab’s time in Yemen is well documented.
One week ago, Osama bin Laden released an audio tape in which he also claimed responsiblity. A State Department spokesman said that the tape was “to continue to appear relevant.” Daveed Garenstein-Ross interpreted bin Laden’s claim as one of collective responsibility. B. Raman thought otherwise. However, I do not consider the claims by AQAP and bin Laden to be mutually exclusive.
On Thursday, Malaysian authorities arrested a diverse array of terror suspects, including 4 Syrians, 2 Nigerians, 1 Jordanian, 1 Yemeni, and a Malay. (Which makes nine, I know, but that’s what appears in the reports.) The trigger for this action was a tip-off from American intelligence. A Malaysian official told the New Straits Times that trigger for this action was a tip-off from American intelligence, and that the 10 arrested (out of an original 50) were linked to Abdulmutallab.
If true, that is, if intelligence agencies aren’t playing the 4-degrees-of-separation game, it would show that Abdulmutallab’s attempt was not organic to AQAP. In Thursday’s post, I stated, “I believe that AQCL leaves the local actions in the hands of its affiliates, but that “international targets,” that is, strikes against the West, are subject to control by AQCL.” I then immediately watered down my language with a wishy-washy, “Perhaps “control” is too strong a word, maybe more like “advice and guidance.” In future, I will avoid this kind of ass-covering qualifier. For now, I will look for signs that al Qaeda carries out terrorist strikes with more centralized control rather than less.
28/01/2010
Who’s The Leader of The Club That’s Made for You and Me?
Al Sahwa contributors recently discussed how best to model Al Qaeda.
In a recent speech in Australia, Rohan Gunaratna described the relationship between “core al Qaeda” and the “30-40 associated groups.” He maintains that the associated groups receive four things from Al Qaeda Central Leadership (AQCL).
- Training
- Weapons
- Finance
- Ideology
Gunaratna states that an important part of that ideology is the concept that the “local jihad” is not enough. The affiliates must join in attacks against the United States and its allies. I believe that AQCL leaves the local actions in the hands of its affiliates, but that “international targets,” that is, strikes against the West, are subject to control by AQCL. Perhaps “control” is too strong a word, maybe more like “advice and guidance.” In my model, AQCL issues tasks to an affiliate or allied group, based on AQCL’s target assessment, as well as AQCL’s assessment of their affiliate’s qualities.
The recent operation to assassinate Danish Cartoonist Kurt Westergaard is a prime example of this relationship. As Josh McLaughlin’s analysis noted, Danish security had the perpetrator under surveillance prior to the attack because of his ties to al Shabaab and al Qaeda. In light of this information, David Headley’s reconnaissance in Copenhagen must be examined in closer detail.
Headley traveled to Copenhagen at the behest of Lashkar-e-Toiba, who ran the training camp he attended . LeT is quite close to AQCL, in terms of both geography and personnel. Headley’s American passport seems to have come in handy for trips to other countries as well. He stands accused of conducting surveillence in Bombay to support the spectacular terrorist attack there in 2008.
According to the Times report on the Mickey Mouse Project, Headley originally travelled to Copenhagen with a truck bombing of the Jyllands-Posten building in mind, but:
Court papers said that Mr Headley told FBI agents that he went to Denmark in January and July this year to carry out surveillance on the newspaper’s offices in Copenhagen and Århus “in preparation for an attack to be carried out by persons associated with Kashmiri and Individual A”. Between the trips he allegedly met Individual A in Pakistan.
“Mr Headley stated that he proposed that the operation against the newspaper be reduced from attacking the entire building in Copenhagen to killing the paper’s cultural editor, Flemming Rose, and the cartoonist who drew the cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, Kurt Westergaard, whom Headley felt was directly responsible for the cartoons,” court papers said.
The less ambitious attack is in fact what followed. The clear link between the reconnaissance by the LeT and the attack by a member of a different al Qaeda affiliate illustrates the nature of al Qaeda’s global (as opposed to local) operations. This goes to the heart of al Sahwa’s recent franchise v. conglomerate debate.
Josh McLaughlin’s proposed model is much closer to the mark than the conventional wisdom of al Qaeda’s as a franchise. Still, one must be careful about applying the model; exceptions inevitably crop up in a complex operating environment. Two possible exceptions to the “conglomerate” model come to mind immediately, both from the 1990s: Algeria and the Philippines.
In the early ’90s, Afghan Arabs returning to Algeria formed Groupe Islamique Armè (GIA). AQCL withdrew their support from GIA, but not because GIA refused to carry out attacks outside Algeria. Far from it. The root cause was that GIA became involved in many civilian massacres, in some cases wiping out whole villages. These massacres damaged GIA’s reputation, and bin Laden expressed his concerns about this. shifted support to a new group GIA splinter, Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC). The GSPC included many veterans of the Afghan conflict. One could make a case that the GSPC was established as a franchise in GIA’s stead. The Algerian government has continued to make substantial progress against Islamist insurgency. The GSPC is now defunct. Its holdouts have folded into Al Qaeda in Maghreb, which seem more heavily Tuareg than Arab.
I will expand on the Philippines situation in an update this evening.
Update:
AQCL, or what was to become AQCL, also altered the order of preexisting extremist movements in the Philippines in the early 1990s. An Afghan war veteran named Abdurajak Janajalani established Abu Sayyaf by recruiting disgruntled members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) who did not care for that organization’s more accommodating line with Manila. A whole decade earlier, however, many members of the MNLF who wished for a more Islamist line formed the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Thus, Abu Sayyaf was established in parallel with MILF.
26/01/2010
Biological Warfare Weekend 1
It’s now Tuesday, and the weekend is long gone, but enjoy this first, limited installment in hopes of things to come. Today’s special: anthrax.
News From Nowhere: Edward Jay Epstein expands on his recent blog post via the Wall Street Journal editorial page. The case of the 2001 anthrax letters remains unsolved.
Nevertheless, in an attempt to back up its theory, the FBI contracted scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Labs in California to conduct experiments in which anthrax is accidently absorbed from a media heavily laced with silicon. When the results were revealed to the National Academy Of Science in September 2009, they effectively blew the FBI’s theory out of the water.
Little Drummer Girl: A New Hampshire woman with gastrointestinal anthrax is improving, says the Boston Herald, but the Nashua Telegraph says she’s still too sick to speak.
On the glum side, New Hampshire’s drumming community is suffering from the stigma of infection. “The drumming culture has kind of gotten trashed,” said one Julie Corey, local drum monger. The inquisition has reached a fever pitch:
“From what I can see, most people are carrying on with their classes, their events, but are asking for information,” said Corey. One of her customers has returned an animal-skin drum because of concerns.
Gram Stainspotting: The death toll in Scotland’s anthrax outbreak is now at eight. All confirmed seventeen cases are among heroin users. One of the cases is in Germany. AFP adds that most of the victims were infected through injection, but some cases had smoked it.
Dead In The Woods: In a move sure to reinforce public confidence in the official verdict of “suicide” in the death of Britain’s most distinguished biological warfare expert, Lord Hutton has sealed the records of his inquiry until the year 2073.
409
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 crashed into the Mediterranean Sea yesterday, killing 90. The official explanation is that heavy weather was cause, and Lebanese officials “…have ruled out foul play so far”. This despite of the fact that eyewitnesses saw the airplane go down in flames after a flash of light. In the context of the current threat environment for passenger aircraft, we should be skeptical of Lebanese officials’ claims.
On 25 December, a Nigerian national unsuccessfully attempted to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253, after smuggling a device aboard in his underwear. Most immediately suspected Al Qaeda, recalling a previous failed airline bombing by Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber.” American authorities rapidly confirmed these suspicions. Authorities determined that the bomber’s training took place in Yemen, home to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
On 8 January, CBS News reported that the Flight 253 bomber, Umar Abdulmutallab, told US authorities that 20 more suicide bombers were being prepared in Yemen. In that same piece, CBS says:
In addition, a team of FBI agents is now on the ground in the West African nation of Ghana, having arrived last Saturday, attempting to piece together Abdulmutallab’s whereabouts and activities in the two weeks prior to the attempted attack on Flight 253.
According to a government official, Abdulmutallab first arrived in the Ghana capitol of Addis Ababa on December 9 after spending five months in Yemen. sic
Addis Ababa is capital of Ethiopia, not Ghana. I suspect that the copy was supposed to read “first arrived in Ghana from Addis Ababa,” as CBS linked to another of their reports:
Abdulmutallab arrived in Lagos, Nigeria December 24 from a flight originating in Ghana. He then flew to Amsterdam where he boarded a plane bound for Detroit on Christmas.
Details are scarce because “this is a security issue,” James Agyenim-Boateng, the country’s Deputy Information Minister, told CBS News. He said the FBI had been in the country since Saturday and that no arrests have been made as of yet.
Agyenim-Boateng said Abdulmutallab, upon arriving in Ghana Dec. 9 from Ethiopia, had listed one hotel where he was staying on his immigration form, but actually stayed in a different hotel.
Flight 409’s destination was Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Abdulmutallab was there, in between his 5 months in a Yemeni training camp, and his two week Ghana stay, where he made final preparations for his suicide bombing. What purpose id Abdulmatallab’s stay in Addis Ababa serve? Was it simply a convenient transportation hub, or was it something more?
After Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt, passengers everwhere raised awareness levels, while authorities raised alert levels. A string of air-travel items hit the news in the weeks that followed:
- On 27 December, another Nigerian national on flight 253 spent an unusual amount of time in the bathroom. Authorites met the plane as it arrived in Detroit. It was found that he was, in fact, sick.
- On 4 January, the US government announced more checks on passengers from 14 nations.
- On 6 January, an American man behaving strangely caused Hawaiian Flight 39 to turn around well into the flight. The flight received fighter escort.
- On 8 January, a drunk Pakistani national on AirTran 39 became belligerent with flight crew, and locked himself in the bathroom. He may also have removed his shoes. The flight received fighter escort.
- On 8 January, a US national of Palestinian origin was removed from a Northwest flight from Miami to Detroit after he shouted that, “I want to kill all the Jews.” The man’s son said he had a history of mental illness.
- On 12 January, four (!) Arabic-speaking Air Marshalls removed four Saudi men from Northwest 243 (Amsterdam-Detroit) after the Air Marshalls overheard troubling talk between the Saudis.
- On 15 January, a 28-year-old man was questioned after reported suspicious activity on United Express 6036. The man had been seen handling a small package, and, after he’d visited the bathroom, a flight attendant noticed that a wall panel had been dialoged. A fellow passanger remarked that the man was Arab. Sniffer dogs found no explosives. The Associated Press published a report of a bomb threat, but later retracted it.
Some of these events were likely innocuous events exaggerated by public fears after the failed Christmas bombing. For instance on 21 January, a praying Jewish teenager on a US Airways flight prompted authorities to meet the aircraft after it was diverted to Philadelphia. However, in light of the ongoing conflict between al Qaeda and the United States, one must ask if the above incidents were more than instances of drunk, crazy, or unwell passengers.
Altogether more serious are two foreign reports from last week. On 20 January, Munich airport was closed for several hours after a man’s laptop computer tested positive for explosives. The man fled the area. On 23 January, a Turkish flight to Germany diverted to Greece after the pilot received a bomb threat on his mobile phone.
In the five days prior to the Ethiopian Flight 409 crash, the United States, the UK, and India made significant announcements regarding aviation security. On 20 January, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that direct flights to the UK from Yemen were barred. India announced three days later that it was increasing security measures after receiving a hijack warning, US law enforcement was informed that two female suicide bombers of Western appearance may be loose. Britain raised its terror alert to “severe” on 23 January, signaling that the security services there regard an attack on the UK to be “highly likely.”
Osama bin Laden released a tape to al Jazeera on 24 Jan, in which he claimed responsibility for the failed Christmas bombing. In that tape he used specific phrasing that indicated an upcoming attack, according to SITE. Less than 24 hours later, the passengers of Flight 409 met their end.
Pscrutineer 