Obama's counterterrorism doctrine: Let locals lead the fight

Excerpts:

But critics say America's past efforts to train local security forces have had mixed results. Washington has a poor track record of applying the long-term resources, funding and attention needed to carry out such efforts successfully.

In Libya, training by U.S. Special Forces soldiers was suspended after a local militia stole a cache of American-provided weapons. In Mali, American-trained military officers carried out a coup. And in Afghanistan, the United States failed to mount a major training effort until nine years after the fall of the Taliban.

...

Bruce Hoffman, an expert on terrorism and Georgetown University professor, said a cardinal failing of the American counterterrorism effort since 2001 has been its haphazard nature. Hoffman said the United States focused its effort on Afghanistan in 2001, shifted to Iraq in 2003, returned to Afghanistan in 2009. Now, Obama announced a shift from Afghanistan to Syria.

“It continues our pathology,” Hoffman said. “Our attention has shifted from one trouble spot to another with disastrous results.”

...

    Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert at the New America Foundation think tank, praised Obama’s address and approach. In the Philippines, he said, local commandos trained by American forces had severely weakened the Abu Sayyaf militant movement. Over the long term, training locals was far cheaper and more politically sustainable than deploying large numbers of American troops, he argued.

    "It’s pennies on the dollar,” he said. “It’s less than one percent of the defense budget.”

I find it quite amusing that Bergen cites the Philippines (and others will cite Colombia as well) because I doubt that he knows much about the Foreign Internal Defense mission conducted there.  But now it will be touted as the "model."  But people should remember that that mission started during the Bush administration (initial assessment conducted in October 2001 and campaign plan completed in November) and was built on relationships and operations from well before 9-11 and it has been conducted in accordance with basic Special Operations doctrine on to how advise and assist a friend, partner, or ally (in this case the US's longest standing treaty ally) with its internal defense and development programs to defend itself against lawlessness, subversion, insurgency, and terrorism.   All the current administration has done is allow it to continue (and it continued for such a long time with little visibility because everyone has been distracted with Afghanistan and Iraq and people like Bergen ignored it - which was a good thing for the mission).  The mission in the Philippines is nothing new and missions like it have been conducted around the world and well before 9-11.  But it is also not appropriate for every situation and the decision to conduct missions like it needs to be based on a strategy that supports US interests and requires a thorough (and continuous) assessment of the entire situation that leads to an integrated, synchronized campaign plan to support a strategy with balance and coherency among ends, ways, and means.

People like Bergen will contribute to the pathology that Bruce Hoffman outlines in which we will want to just try to apply this "model" (and the Colombian one) going from one trouble spot to another with no real strategy except to do more with less, with a small footprint and spend "pennies on the dollar" (which of course makes it sound attractive.)

The real lessons from the Philippines needs to be an understanding that the military (in particular special operations forces), the country team, to include State, Justice, the FBI, and USAID), and the IC all did their jobs in accordance with and their established roles and responsibilities and in the case of the military, its doctrine, and synchronized the actions of diplomacy, development and defense (and as an aside the so-called 3-D's was "coined" by an Ambassador, and not the military, well before it became a popular term of art).

That said the biggest and most important lesson from the Philippines (and Colombia) is the one in the title of the article: "let the locals fight."  What the Philippines and Colombia show is that we do have military forces and interagency elements that know how to operate with the host nation being in charge of their defense and not take over and dominate operations with US forces.  That is why the FID mission is the most appropriate and important mission for the future because it provides the joint and interagency framework to conduct these types of missions with the correct focus and from the right perspective; e..g., without the mission being dominated by a US presence.  Yes this is all new to people like Bergen and the administration but it is a traditional mission that has been used to good effective in history around the world (but it is not always been effective - it is NOT a silver bullet and the administration would do well not to think of it as one - but of course it is only natural to do so as that is the American way - we will always search for the silver bullet and holy grail rather than realize that such problems require synchronized and integrated campaigns to support effective strategy and presence, patience, and persistence).

Obama's counterterrorism doctrine: Let locals lead the fight

Sat, May 31 21:29 PM IST

http://in.mobile.reuters.com/article/idINKBN0EB0FL20140531?irpc=932

By David Rhode

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a foreign policy address this week, U.S. President Barack Obama gave his clearest outline yet of his counterterrorism strategy. Al Qaeda splinter groups remain the largest threat to the United States, he said, but Washington must respond to it in a new way: by training local security forces, not deploying American ground troops.

   “We have to develop a strategy that matches this diffuse threat - one that expands our reach without sending forces that stretch our military too thin, or stir up local resentments,” Obama said. “We need partners to fight terrorists alongside us.”

But critics say America's past efforts to train local security forces have had mixed results. Washington has a poor track record of applying the long-term resources, funding and attention needed to carry out such efforts successfully.

In Libya, training by U.S. Special Forces soldiers was suspended after a local militia stole a cache of American-provided weapons. In Mali, American-trained military officers carried out a coup. And in Afghanistan, the United States failed to mount a major training effort until nine years after the fall of the Taliban.

Finding the effective partners Obama described has proven challenging as well. For years, the United States has struggled to get Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to coordinate their support to Syria’s panoply of rebel factions. And the kidnapping of 200 Nigerian school girls in April exposed the inability of American officials to get the Nigerian government to address the endemic corruption that helps fuel the al Qaeda splinter group Boko Haram.

Bruce Hoffman, an expert on terrorism and Georgetown University professor, said a cardinal failing of the American counterterrorism effort since 2001 has been its haphazard nature. Hoffman said the United States focused its effort on Afghanistan in 2001, shifted to Iraq in 2003, returned to Afghanistan in 2009. Now, Obama announced a shift from Afghanistan to Syria.

“It continues our pathology,” Hoffman said. “Our attention has shifted from one trouble spot to another with disastrous results.”

In his address on Wednesday, Obama unveiled a $5 billion “Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund” to train local forces in the Middle East and Africa and voiced support for increasing American training and assistance to “moderate” Syrian rebels. "A strategy that involves invading every country that harbors terrorist networks is naïve and unsustainable," he said.

Obama said the new fund would allow the United States to expand training of security forces in Yemen fighting al Qaeda, support a multinational force trying to stabilize Somalia, and work with European allies training local forces in Libya and Mali. Citing the 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi and last September's attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi, he said the United States faced a different type of threat.

“Today’s principal threat no longer comes from a centralized al Qaeda leadership,” he said. “Instead, it comes from decentralized al Qaeda affiliates and extremists, many with agendas focused in the countries where they operate.”

    Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert at the New America Foundation think tank, praised Obama’s address and approach. In the Philippines, he said, local commandos trained by American forces had severely weakened the Abu Sayyaf militant movement. Over the long term, training locals was far cheaper and more politically sustainable than deploying large numbers of American troops, he argued.

    "It’s pennies on the dollar,” he said. “It’s less than one percent of the defense budget.”

AFGHANISTAN AS AN EXAMPLE

In his speech, Obama cited the training of “hundreds of thousands” of Afghan soldiers and police officers as a success. Afghan forces secured the country’s recent presidential election, he said, and set the stage for the first peaceful transfer of power in the country’s history later this year.

   But Graeme Smith, an Afghanistan-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, said Obama’s pullout would destabilize the country. He said a planned cut in American and foreign military aid will result in a rapid reduction in the size of the Afghan security forces.

    “If they quickly implement the plan to reduce Afghan security forces from roughly 370,000 to 228,000, we will have a serious problem in this country,” Smith said in an email. “You can't axe the personnel roster that dramatically without destabilizing many districts.”

    At the same time, according to Smith, Taliban attacks are rising and the broad direction of the conflict is escalation.

    Obama said a critical focus of the new training effort would be moderate rebel groups in Syria. Reversing his past opposition to large-scale American arming and training of Syrian rebels, Obama said that strengthened moderate rebel groups could serve as a counterweight to radical Islamist groups.

    Analysts say the proposed effort is too small to have any serious impact. Noah Bonsey, the Syria analyst for the International Crisis Group, said that moderates – groups he defined as “largely non-ideological or mildly Islamist” – have gained strength recently but overall remain military weak.

    “We have seen in the last few months that increases in funding, weapons and training to certain non-ideological rebel groups have strengthened their relative power within the rebel spectrum,” Bonsey said in an email from Turkey. “Thus far however, the levels of support provided - and apparently under consideration within the US administration - are not sufficient to meaningfully shift the balance of power between the opposition and the regime.”

   

 Bergen was more optimistic about Obama’s approach. He said future presidents could increase American force levels in Afghanistan, if needed, and aiding Syria’s rebels was a step forward. He argued that training local forces was the only approach that was politically acceptable to Americans and foreigners alike.

    “You buy yourself influence without a large footprint,” Bergen said. “It’s the only sensible model on all sorts of levels.”

Hoffman agreed that ground invasions were a mistake, but he said the American counterterrorism effort must be more consistent. Otherwise, Washington appears to be a fickle ally to those it is asking to fight al Qaeda splinter groups.

(Editing by David Storey and Frances Kerry)

The full report can be downloaded at this link: http://bipartisanpolicy.org/sites/default/files/Jihadist%20Terrorism-A%20Threat%20Assesment_0.pdf

New Assessment Finds the Threat at Home Has Shifted from Radicalized Groups to Radicalized Individuals

http://bipartisanpolicy.org/news/press-releases/2013/09/new-assessment-finds-threat-home-has-shifted-radicalized-groups

 

Bipartisan Policy Center Report Provides Recommendations for Flow of Arms in Syria, CIA Drone Program and Lessons Learned from Boston Attacks

Contact: 

Abbey Brandon
abrandon@bipartisanpolicy.org
(202) 218-6797

Monday, September 9, 2013

Washington, D.C. – A new report released by the Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Homeland Security Project today found that the most imminent threat to the United States is from individuals who are radicalized over the Internet, often inspired by al-Qaeda’s jihadist message. While these lone wolves might not be able to kill in mass numbers, the Boston Marathon bombings and the Fort Hood slayings show that alienated persons influenced partially by online messaging can cause great damage.

The report, Jihadist Terrorism: A Threat Assessment, provides a comprehensive review of al-Qaeda and its affiliates and provides legislative and executive recommendations on how best to counter the threat and protect the homeland. The report was authored by several members of BPC’s Homeland Security Project, which is led by former 9/11 Commission Co-chairs former Governor Tom Kean and former Representative Lee Hamilton.

As the U.S. weighs possible action in Syria, the report urges the executive branch to track the flow of arms to jihadist fighters in the region, as well as to incorporate lessons learned from the Boston bombings into its current emergency-response plan to ensure a more measured reaction to tragic but small-scale terrorist attacks.

“This assessment finds that the United States faces a different terrorist threat than it did on 9/11/2001. The borders between domestic and international terrorism have blurred, and the U.S. adversaries are not only organizations, but also individuals. To best protect the homeland, we need to develop defenses against a more diffused threat posed by radicalized individuals, in addition to organized groups,” said Gov. Kean. “The Bipartisan Policy Center’s report is intended to evaluate the current domestic and international threats and provide recommendations to help lawmakers and the administration counter those threats.”

The report also makes several recommendations to Congress, including reforms to the CIA drone program. Congress should use the withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan at the end of 2014 as an opportunity to review the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), and should create an independent investigative body—similar to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)—to investigate terrorist attacks in the U.S., explain how the attackers evaded law enforcement, and identify the lessons to be learned.

“It has been twelve years since the attacks on 9/11. Political leaders from both parties should renew their focus on counterterrorism strategies to ensure that our current approach matches the threats of today,” said Rep. Hamilton. “Congress should hold a series of public hearings to discuss where the U.S. stands in its counterterrorism strategy. Those hearings would be an opportunity to evaluate if our nation is absorbing the institutional lessons learned over the past decade, to analyze if the government is allocating resources to the right places, and most importantly, to determine what is missing from our strategy.”

The report was authored by: Peter Bergen, Director of the National Security Program at the New America Foundation; Bruce Hoffman, Director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University; Erroll Southers, Associate Director of Research Transition at the Department of Homeland Security’s National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) at the University of Southern California and former FBI special agent; and former CIA Operative Michael Hurley.

“Al-Qaeda has embraced a strategy that transformed it into a decentralized, networked, transnational movement, rather than the single monolithic entity it was on the eve of 9/11. This strategy was undoubtedly the result of necessity; U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the wake of the 9/11 attacks largely obliterated al-Qaeda as an organization,” said Bergen.

The new assessment builds on three previous reports released by BPC’s Homeland Security Project: a 2010 analysis that highlighted the increasingly homegrown nature of the terrorist threat, a 2011 report that offered practical recommendations for preventing violent radicalization in America and a 2012 report that offered recommendations to counter online radicalization. The Jihadist Terrorism: A Threat Assessment is the first in an annual series of threat assessments.

Al Qaeda Is Alive in Africa A witches' brew of Islamic jihadists is stirring up trouble across the continent. But is that America's problem yet?

Al Qaeda Is Alive in Africa

A witches' brew of Islamic jihadists is stirring up trouble across the continent. But is that America's problem yet?

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/17/al_qaeda_is_alive_in_africa?page=full

BY DANIEL BYMAN | JANUARY 17, 2013

It has been over a year and a half since Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, but now it seems like al Qaeda is everywhere: from Algeria to Somalia, from Mali to Yemen, from Pakistan to Iraq. In July 2011, arriving in Afghanistan on his first trip as U.S. defense secretary, Leon Panetta said, "We're within reach of strategically defeating al Qaeda." But on Wednesday, Jan. 16, Panetta seemed to express a good deal less optimism, making clear that the Algerian hostage crisis currently unfolding was "an al Qaeda operation." So has al Qaeda really become this web of linked groups around the world pursuing a common jihad against the West? And what is the relationship between the al Qaeda core and its affiliate organizations?

These are important questions; the debate about whether the United States should join the French and step up involvement against jihadi groups in Mali centers on these complicated ties. For while al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and his lieutenants in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area consume much of our thinking on al Qaeda, the United States is also fighting al Qaeda affiliates like al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and al-Shabab in Somalia, which is also linked to al Qaeda.

In 2012, the United States conducted more drone strikes on AQAP targets than it did against al Qaeda core targets in Pakistan. In Mali, U.S. concern is heightened by reports that some among the wide range of local jihadi groupslike Ansar Dine have ties to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). If groups in Mali and other local fighters are best thought of as part of al Qaeda, then an aggressive effort is warranted. But if these groups, however brutal -- and despite the allegiances to the mother ship they claim -- are really only fighting to advance local or regional ambitions, then the case for direct U.S. involvement is weak. The reality is that affiliation does advance al Qaeda's agenda, but the relationship is often frayed and the whole is frequently far less than the sum of its parts.

Al Qaeda has always sought to be a vanguard that would lead the jihadi struggle against the United States. Abdullah Azzam, one of the most influential jihadi thinkers and a companion of bin Laden, wrote, "Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward" and that this vanguard is a "solid base" -- a phrase from which al Qaeda draws its very name. At the same time, al Qaeda sought to support and unify local Muslim groups as they warred against apostate governments such as the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia and Hosni Mubarak's Egypt. Convincing local groups to fight under the al Qaeda banner seems to neatly combine these goals, demonstrating that the mother organization -- now under Zawahiri -- remains in charge, while advancing the local and regional agendas that the core supports.

More practically, in the past, the al Qaeda core has offered affiliates money and safe haven. In Afghanistan, and to a lesser degree in Pakistan, jihadists from affiliated groups came to train and learn and proved far more formidable when they returned to their home war zones. They also returned with a more global agenda, advancing the core's mission of shaping the jihadi movement. It also gave the core a new zone of operational access to conduct terrorist attacks in other places. Perhaps most importantly, the core al Qaeda managed to change the nature of the affiliates' attacks, so that in addition to continuing to strike at local regime forces, they also select targets more in keeping with the core's anti-Western goals. AQIM's attack this week on Western tourists and foreign oil workers in Algeria mimics the change in strategy. AQAP has taken this one step further and gone after the United States outside its region, twice launching sophisticated attacks on U.S. civil aviation.

Yet affiliation is risky for all concerned. Some groups come to al Qaeda as damaged goods: AQIM, for example, largely lost its struggle in Algeria before it came under the core banner. AQI committed a series of brutal atrocities in Iraq despite the chastisement of al Qaeda leaders and in so doing provoked a firestorm of criticism from previously sympathetic clerics in the Muslim world. In documents captured in the Abbottabad raid, one jihadist had warned bin Laden, "The problem is that al Qaeda has become a broad field; each can enter." The implication: By absorbing these far-flung franchises under its banner, the core could not disassociate itself from the actions of far-flung affiliates. Perhaps unsurprisingly, al Qaeda leaders explored whether they could cut ties to some of these groups.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/17/al_qaeda_is_alive_in_africa?page=full

CINCPAC Interview: Admiral Samuel J. Locklear

(Aside)  I know that Rumsfeld banned the use of CINC to refer to any military command as there is only one Commander-in-Chief, the President.  But I think there is something to be said for tradition so I prefer CINCPAC).  

The Admiral provides his description of the Asia Rebalance covering China, the Chinese military, the War on Terrorism, transnational crime, Indochina, Indonesia, and Cyber.  Excerpt on his view of countering terrorism:

In the long run, I believe the solution to countering terrorism lies in the professional and capable security services of our partner nations, good governance, and a general sense of prosperity for the people which will make extremist ideology less appealing and create an environment where terrorist organizations don't get the support they need and are no longer able to thrive.

V/R

Dave

The Interview: Admiral Samuel J. Locklear

http://thediplomat.com/2013/01/11/the-interview-admiral-samuel-j-locklear/?all=true

January 11, 2013

By Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe

America's rebalance towards Asia has many talking. The U.S. Navy will be at the forefront of such efforts. Admiral Samuel J. Locklear gives us his take.

As the United States military’s most important and largest overseas command, U.S. Pacific Command, otherwise known as PACOM, covers a jurisdiction that is half the Earth’s surface, 50 per cent of the world’s population and has one-fifth of the U.S. military’s total strength under its command. PACOM Commander,Admiral Samuel J. Locklear, spoke to Sergei DeSilva-Ranasinghe on what the upgraded U.S. presence in the region will imply, including initiatives to neutralize the growing transnational challenges like violent extremism; the impact of the pivot on relations with Indonesia and Indochina; and, importantly, the likely reverberations for U.S.-China relations.

When you say that the U.S. is rebalancing towards the Asia-Pacific, what was different about the activities of PACOM prior to the global war on terrorism?

Admiral Locklear: After the end of World War II and before 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States had a continual presence in the Asia-Pacific. This presence enabled the growth and sustainment of a secure environment that I believe engendered economic prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region. It also facilitated th

e rise of competent militaries that are participating broadly in the security environment today.

Before 9/11, much of the resources of the U.S. military were dedicated to ongoing operations in the Asia- Pacific. Although we did pivot away from the Asia-Pacific for over ten years, we still had assets dedicated to combat operations in the region.

When you say "rebalancing", what precisely do you mean?

Admiral Locklear: U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is coming to a close, and President Obama and the Secretary of Defense are looking to the future at what our defense force will look like post-Afghanistan and our global priorities. They recognize that the most significant national interest of the United States, and the interests of five of our seven allies and emerging partners, lies here in the Asia- Pacific.

Through rebalancing in the next few years, we want to have the right forces in the right mix in the right places in the Asia-Pacific, so that peace and security can continue to prosper in this region.The U.S. forces operating in this region, both rotational and forward stationed, are crucial to our strategy in this part of the world and ensure we have the right formal presence and are ready to provide the right assistance to our allies and partners.

At some level we are providing the right level of deterrence so we can ensure peace and security in the region. This is a continuum of our security role in northeast Asia, which is still a critical element of the overall PACOM strategy, and it will require us to take a different view of how we operate with our allies and partners and how we rotate our forces in and out with our partners and allies in several locations. For instance, in Australia we have been pursuing the cooperation between our Marine Corps and the Australian forces, specifically in Darwin. That is a good example of how we are working differently in the region in positioning ourselves to build a better collective security environment.

The United States puts together a calendar of events where countries with whom we have ongoing dialogue come together. These events include dialogue at the chiefs of defense level and at lower tiers. There can be dozens of such events and they extend from high-level talks to individual unit exercises. We host an annual Chief of Defense conference one year in Hawaii and co-host it another year in another country. In 2012, we co-hosted the conference with Australia in Sydney. We invited the Chiefs of Defense from most of the countries in this region, including India, China, Russia, Pakistan, France, and the United Kingdom, to get together and have frank discussions on their security interests. These are the type of discussions that help with commerce and lead to peace. When these don’t occur that’s when we have problems.

(Continued at the link below)

http://thediplomat.com/2013/01/11/the-interview-admiral-samuel-j-locklear/?all=true

How Obama Decides Your Fate If He Thinks You're a Terrorist

Good overview from our own Security Studies Program Professor Dan Byman.

V/R

Dave

How Obama Decides Your Fate If He Thinks You're a Terrorist

By Daniel Byman & Benjamin Wittes

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/01/how-obama-decides-your-fate-if-he-thinks-youre-a-terrorist/266419/

A look inside the "disposition matrix" that determines when -- or if -- the administration will pursue a suspected militant

Over the past two years, the Obama administration has begun to formalize a so-called "disposition matrix" for suspected terrorists abroad: a continuously evolving database that spells out the intelligence on targets and various strategies, including contingencies, for handling them. Although the government has not spelled out the steps involved in deciding how to treat various terrorists, a look at U.S. actions in the past makes evident a rough decision tree.

Understanding these procedures is particularly important for one of the most vexing, and potentially most dangerous, categories of terrorists: U.S. citizens. Over the years, U.S. authorities have responded with astonishing variety to American nationals suspected of terrorism, from ignoring their activities to conducting lethal drone strikes. All U.S. terrorists are not created equal. And the U.S. response depends heavily on the role of allies, the degree of threat the suspect poses, and the imminence of that threat -- along with other factors.

What follows is a flow chart (click here, or the image below, for the full interactive feature) that takes us through the criteria and decision points that can lead to a suspect terrorist's being ignored as a minor nuisance, being prosecuted in federal court, being held in a Pakistani prison, or being met with the business end of a Hellfire missile.

1. Territorial Jurisdiction

If a suspected terrorist is in the United States, the answer is easy: The only way to deal with him is to arrest and prosecute him in the civilian criminal justice system. So first, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies will monitor him to learn about the full extent of his activities and gather evidence to determine whether he has in fact committed a crime. And if so, they will arrest him. The Bush administration tried it for citizens caught domestically only once, in the case of Jose Padilla, and eventually gave up and tried Padilla in civilian court. The Obama administration has stated that it will use the civilian justice system exclusively both for domestic captures in general and for citizens, wherever our forces get them.

Though it remains controversial, the domestic criminal justice system is actually one of the workhorses of American counterterrorism. Since 9/11, the United States has handled more Americans suspected than all other options combined -- both using charges of terrorism itself and using more inchoate charges like conspiracy and material support for terrorism. In addition, a significant number of Americans suspected of involvement in terrorism have been convicted of lesser, sometimes unrelated, offenses charges.

If the suspect is overseas, however, the complications begin. The remainder of this flowchart conveys the steps and decision points that the administration takes, explicitly or implicitly, when deciding the fate of a suspected American terrorist.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/01/how-obama-decides-your-fate-if-he-thinks-youre-a-terrorist/266419/

CIA’s Global Response Staff emerging from shadows after incidents in Libya and Pakistan

Seems as if there can be no secrets anymore.

V/R

Dave

CIA’s Global Response Staff emerging from shadows after incidents in Libya and Pakistan

By Greg Miller and Julie Tate,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cias-global-response-staff-emerging-from-shadows-after-incidents-in-libya-and-pakistan/2012/12/26/27db2d1c-4b7f-11e2-b709-667035ff9029_print.html

The rapid collapse of a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya exposed the vulnerabilities of State Department facilities overseas. But the CIA’s ability to fend off a second attack that same night provided a glimpse of a key element in the agency’s defensive arsenal: a secret security force created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Two of the Americans killed in Libya were members of the CIA’s Global Response Staff, an innocuously named organization that has recruited hundreds of former U.S. Special Forces operatives to serve as armed guards for the agency’s spies.

The GRS, as it is known, is designed to stay in the shadows, training teams to work undercover and provide an unobtrusive layer of security for CIA officers in high-risk outposts.

But a series of deadly scrapes over the past four years has illuminated the GRS’s expanding role, as well as its emerging status as one of the CIA’s most dangerous assignments.

Of the 14 CIA employees killed since 2009, five worked for the GRS, all as contractors. They include two killed at Benghazi, as well as three others who were within the blast radius on Dec. 31, 2009, when a Jordanian double agent detonated a suicide bomb at a CIA compound in Khost, Afghanistan.

GRS contractors have also been involved in shootouts in which only foreign nationals were killed, including one that triggered a diplomatic crisis. While working for the CIA, Raymond Davis was jailed for weeks in Pakistan last year after killing two men in what he said was an armed robbery attempt in Lahore.

The increasingly conspicuous role of the GRS is part of a broader expansion of the CIA’s paramilitary capabilities over the past 10 years. Beyond hiring former U.S. military commandos, the agency has collaborated with U.S. Special Operations teams on missions including the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and has killed thousands of Islamist militants and civilians with its fleet of armed drones.

CIA veterans said that GRS teams have become a critical component of conventional espionage, providing protection for case officers whose counterterrorism assignments carry a level of risk that rarely accompanied the cloak-and-dagger encounters of the Cold War.

Spywork used to require slipping solo through cities in Eastern Europe. Now, “clandestine human intelligence involves showing up in a Land Cruiser with some [former] Deltas or SEALs, picking up an asset and then dumping him back there when you are through,” said a former CIA officer who worked closely with the security group overseas.

Bodyguard details have become so essential to espionage that the CIA has overhauled its training program at the Farm — its case officer academy in southern Virginia — to teach spies the basics of working with GRS teams.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cias-global-response-staff-emerging-from-shadows-after-incidents-in-libya-and-pakistan/2012/12/26/27db2d1c-4b7f-11e2-b709-667035ff9029_print.html

Seen on Facebook: Kidnapped Australian (Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines)

Terrorism and social media.  Facebook/You Tube are important media – for recruitment and as in this case for proof of life and communication between kidnappers for ransom, authorities and potential ransom payers.  Note also the comments about the one-armed, white horse riding ASG leader, Radullan Sahiron.

V/R

Dave

Seen on Facebook: Kidnapped Australian

BY MARIA A. RESSA

POSTED ON 12/26/2012 3:59 PM  | UPDATED 12/26/2012 6:54 PM

HTTP://WWW.RAPPLER.COM/NATION/18620-SEEN-ON-FACEBOOK-KIDNAPPED-AUSTRALIAN

MANILA, Philippines - On Tuesday, December 26, accounts on Facebook and YouTube posted and shared a video of Australian Warren Rodwell, kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf from his home in the southern Philippines a little more than a year ago.

In the newest video recorded Sunday, December 16, Rodwell looks noticeably thinner than the last proof-of-life video taped exactly 9 months ago on March 26.

Rodwell holds up a copy of the Philippine Daily Inquirer from Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012. Wearing a black t-shirt, his hair is cropped short, his cheeks sunken. He speaks with a weary air.

“This video clip today is to say that I am alive,” Rodwell tells the camera. “I am waiting to be released. I have no idea what’s going on outside. I am just being held in isolation.”

Facebook now connects more than a billion accounts globally while YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine. Both have been used by members of Filipino extremist groups, including the Abu Sayyaf and the Rajah Solaiman movement to recruit and spread their ideology.

According to intelligence sources in Southeast Asia, the region’s most wanted terrorist, Malaysian Zulkifli bin Hir, also known as Marwan, led a recently killed Malaysian JI member to his hideout in the southern Philippines through a Facebook account. A leader of Jemaah Islamiyah and Kumpulan Mujaihidin Malaysia, Marwan maintains a Facebook account through which he asks like-minded friends to join his jihad.

(Continued at the link below)

HTTP://WWW.RAPPLER.COM/NATION/18620-SEEN-ON-FACEBOOK-KIDNAPPED-AUSTRALIAN

Homegrown Radicalization -- How Data Analytics Can Help Prevent Terrorism

A 38 minute video on data analysis and radicalization. Peter Neumann is also an adjunct professor in the Security Studies program at Georgetown and teaches a course on radicalization in our summer term.
V/R
Dave

Homegrown Radicalization -- How Data Analytics Can Help Prevent Terrorism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCOp7nTTW1U

Published on Aug 3, 2012

How do people become terrorists? How can they be stopped? Prof. Neumann, Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, King's College London, presents an overview of the radicalisation process. Using Western homegrown terrorism as an example, this presentation shows what contribution data analytics, especially Palantir, can make to disrupting the process. It also touches on challenges and unsolved problems, especially internet-driven radicalisation processes and 'lone wolf' attacks.

With a Parent Off Again at War, a Holiday of Pride and Isolation

From the NY Times on Christmas Day:

As everyone prepares for Christmas tomorrow we should all think about the children whose parents are deployed and consider the toll the last 11 years has taken on military children and all the holidays and birthdays that have been missed because their parents are serving our nation.  Freedom is not free and so many children are also paying the price.  But we should also be proud of their strength.

V/R

Dave

With a Parent Off Again at War, a Holiday of Pride and Isolation

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/us/with-a-parent-at-war-a-holiday-deepens-the-isolation.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Mercedes Patterson, 16, helped Tango Jackson, 17, with his ROTC uniform tie in the hallway at Fort Campbell High School at the Army post in Kentucky. More Photos »

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: December 24, 2012

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — Signs of the season have been everywhere at Fort Campbell High School over the last couple of weeks: a student soloist sang the Carpenters’ “Merry Christmas, Darling” at the annual holiday concert, a big tree sparkled in the cafeteria under the Screaming Eagle emblem of the 101st Airborne Division, and thousands of parents were deployed yet again in Afghanistan.

It is nothing unusual for Alexandra Alfield, a 17-year-old senior whose father, a Special Forces soldier, has been gone since August and for six of the last nine years. “I do miss him,” she said, “but I’m just so accustomed to it.”

As President Obama considers how quickly to withdraw the remaining 66,000 American troops from Afghanistan, the parents of Fort Campbell students are still going off to war.

Nearly 10,000 men and women from the 101st Airborne, a third of the active-duty troops based here, are either in Afghanistan or getting ready to go. Still more parents here have been deployed with units like the Fifth Special Forces Group and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the Night Stalkers, whose members piloted the helicopters in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

That has made the high school, which is run by the Defense Department and is one of only four secondary schools on military bases in the United States, something of a window into the pain, pride and resentment felt by the families of the all-volunteer military force, which has borne the burdens of 11 years of war.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/us/with-a-parent-at-war-a-holiday-deepens-the-isolation.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all

Will Obama End the War on Terror?

It is interesting that it takes a movie to spark this debate.  Some analysis on Jeh Johnson's recent comments and the War on Terrorism by the author of Kill or Capture:  the War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency

V/R
Dave

Will Obama End the War on Terror?

Dec 17, 2012 12:00 AM EST

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/12/16/will-obama-end-the-war-on-terror.html

Zero Dark Thirty spotlights America’s finest hour in the battle against al Qaeda. But can Obama finish the forever war? The debate over drones—and getting out alive.

In the final scene of Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s heart-stopping thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Maya, a CIA operative and the movie’s heroine, is strapped into a seat on a military transport plane staring into the middle distance, looking depleted. The film’s dramatic arc follows Maya’s near-messianic quest to take out “UBL.” Intense and headstrong, she battles the weary fatalism of her bosses, suppresses all moral doubt about the use of torture to extract leads, and sticks to her theory of the case with feverish conviction. The movie’s harrowing, climactic kill operation is Maya’s vindication. But then, having identified bin Laden’s body in a hangar at Bagram Air Base, she finds herself all alone in a cavernous cargo hold, a thousand-yard stare on her face. When a cheerful crew member tries to engage her, she looks away. “Where do you want to go?” he asks.

"Ultimately we’re not going to be able to kill or capture our way out of this fight," says one Special Ops commander. (Benjamin Lowy / Edit by Getty Images)

Maya never answers—and the audience is left wondering whether her struggle is over. Has she exorcised her demons? Can she free herself from the grip of the “forever war”? Those questions, in a way, are as much about America as they are about Maya. Zero Dark Thirty, which opens in theaters this week, has already stirred controversy by reigniting a debate about the efficacy and ethics of torture. But nearly a decade after the last detainee was waterboarded by the CIA, the more relevant question raised by the film may be: when and how will the war on terror finally draw to a close?

It’s a question that President Obama has quietly discussed with his closest advisers. He has raised the issue publicly only in the vaguest terms: when he said, to rousing cheers on election night, that “a decade of war is ending,” it sounded more like a reference to Afghanistan and Iraq than a statement about the war on terror as a whole. Yet behind the scenes Obama has led a persistent internal conversation about whether America should remain engaged in a permanent, ever-expanding state of war, one that has pushed the limits of the law, stretched dwindling budgets, and at times strained relations with our allies. “This has always been a concern of the president’s,” says a former military adviser to Obama. “He’s uncomfortable with the idea of war without end.”

It is still considered politically treacherous for anyone, especially Democrats, to question whether war is the right framework for fighting terrorism. But just as the intelligence and military communities were criticized 12 years ago for having had too much of a “pre-9/11 mentality,” some in the administration have now begun to gingerly ask whether we today have too much of a post-9/11 mentality. Or, as one adviser to Obama recently put it to me, “Is it time to start winding down the state of emergency?”

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/12/16/will-obama-end-the-war-on-terror.html

Don't Trust 'Zero Dark Thirty'

I have not seen the movie yet.  I do understand about the first 20 minutes of the movie are devoted to interrogations that some say do not accurately portray how the intelligence leading to Bin Laden was obtained.  But Peter Maass makes an interesting argument below.

V/R

Dave

Don't Trust 'Zero Dark Thirty'

DEC 13 2012, 6:14 PM ET 14

The acclaimed thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden represents a troubling new frontier of government-embedded filmmaking.

PETER MAASS - Peter Maass has written about Iraq and Afghanistan for The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker.

One of the most dramatic scenes in Zero Dark Thirty, the new film by Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, takes place in a conference room where the CIA team hunting Osama bin Laden is lambasted by its boss, played by Mark Strong. "There's no working group coming to the rescue," he says. "There's nobody else, hidden away on some other floor. There is just us. And we are failing." Voice filling with rage, he recounts the death toll from 9/11 and other al Qaeda attacks, shouting at his team, "I want targets! Do your fucking jobs, bring me people to kill!"

Much of the pre-release debate about the movie has focused on whether it portrays torture as effective, in the sense of prying information out of al Qaeda suspects. Yes, the movie conveys that view, and I think it's inaccurate. Many experts, including key senators who oversaw an extensive congressional investigation, have concluded that torture did not play a significant role in finding bin Laden, and that torture in general is a counter-productive way to get information from prisoners. But the heated debate on torture misses what's far more important and troubling about a film that seems destined for blockbuster and Academy Award status. Zero Dark Thirty represents a new genre of embedded filmmaking that is the problematic offspring of the worrisome endeavor known as embedded journalism.

Unlike Lincoln, about a man who was killed a century and a half ago, Zero Dark Thirty portrays recent events. We know pretty much everything there is to know about Lincoln—all that's left is to interpret the historical record—but precious little about the hunt for bin Laden. That's why I was not only riveted by the "Bring me people to kill" line, but curious. Did it really happen? Did the film's heroine, who is called Maya, really tell the CIA director, during a meeting about bin Laden's compound, "I am the motherfucker that found that place"?

If journalists had received the same access as Boal and Bigelow, I would be a bit less troubled. But as it stands, we're getting the myth of history before getting the actual history.

I had fact-or-fiction questions about nearly every scene in the movie. Because the historical record is so slim, there was really only one person who could answer all my questions. A few days ago I talked with Boal, a former journalist who wrote the screenplay, basing it on exclusive interviews he conducted with, among others, people at the CIA.

"It's a movie," Boal reminded me. "It's not a documentary." He continued, "I'm not going to go scene by scene or line by line, because first of all I think I've got to have some authorial privilege ... My standard is not a journalistic standard of 'Is this a word-for-word quote?' I'm not asking to be held to that standard and I'm certainly not representing my film as that. The standard is more, 'Is this more or less in the ballpark?'" I pressed for detail and he replied, "It gets very dicey for me if I start confirming specific lines from specific people, so I'm not going to do that."

I am a journalist of the quotes-are-sacred sort, which means this is the point in the story where I should begin tearing into Boal and Bigelow. But I don't think the problem rests with them. They set out to create a feature film based on real events, and they have done so, making very clear that the film's heroine and other characters, while based on real people, are composites or complete inventions. I was hardly the only person who received the it's-a-movie-not-a-documentary line; the web is filled with instances of that quote fromBoal and Bigelow. They are quite literally telling us to not believe every word we hear.

(Continued at the link below)

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/12/dont-trust-zero-dark-thirty/266253/

Terrorist Attacks Soar, Deaths Down From 2007 Peak: Study

There will be an event to release this report tomorrow and you can register at the link below.  I have not found the report on line yet.  Here is the link to their web site: http://economicsandpeace.org/

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3720295504/efbnen
Release of the Global Terrorism Index
Institute for Economics and Peace
Wednesday, December 5, 2012 from 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM (EST)

Washington, DC
December 4, 2012
Terrorist Attacks Soar, Deaths Down From 2007 Peak: Study
By REUTERS

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/12/04/world/middleeast/04reuters-security-attacks.html?ref=world&_r=0&pagewanted=print

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of terrorist attacks each year has more than quadrupled in the decade since September 11, 2001, a study released on Tuesday said, with Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan the most affected.

The number of annual deaths in attacks, however, peaked in 2007 -- the height of the Iraq conflict -- and has been falling ever since. The survey reported 7,473 fatalities in 2011, 25 percent down on 2007. That figure included dead suicide bombers and other attackers.

Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Yemen were the five countries most affected by terrorism in descending order, it said, based on a measure giving weightings to number of attacks, fatalities and injuries and level of property damage.

The Global Terrorism Index - published on Tuesday by the U.S.- and Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace think tank - ranked countries based on data from the Global Terrorism Database run by a consortium based at the University of Maryland, a commonly used reference by security researchers.

The U.S. military interventions pursued as part of the West's anti-al Qaeda "war on terror", the researchers suggested, may have simply made matters worse - while whether they made the U.S. homeland safer was impossible to prove.
(Continued at the link below)
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/12/04/world/middleeast/04reuters-security-attacks.html