View Full Version : Architect of New War on the West
SWJED
05-23-2006, 05:27 AM
23 May Washington Post - Architect of New War on the West (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/22/AR2006052201627.html) by Craig Whitlock.
From secret hideouts in South Asia, the Spanish-Syrian al-Qaeda strategist published thousands of pages of Internet tracts on how small teams of Islamic extremists could wage a decentralized global war against the United States and its allies.
With the Afghanistan base lost, he argued, radicals would need to shift their approach and work primarily on their own, though sometimes with guidance from roving operatives acting on behalf of the broader movement
Last October, the writing career of Mustafa Setmariam Nasar came to an abrupt end when Pakistani agents seized him...
...has turned out to be a prize catch, a man who is not a bombmaker or operational planner but one of the jihad movement's prime theorists for the post-Sept. 11, 2001, world.
Counterterrorism officials and analysts see Nasar's theories in action in major terrorist attacks in Casablanca in 2003, Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. In each case, the perpetrators organized themselves into local, self-sustaining cells that acted on their own but also likely accepted guidance from visiting emissaries of the global movement.
Nasar's masterwork, a 1,600-page volume titled "The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance," has been circulating on Web sites for 18 months...
SWJED
05-23-2006, 05:33 AM
Also in the 23 May Washington Post - e-Qaeda: How al-Qaeda Uses the Internet (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/custom/2005/08/05/CU2005080501141.html?whichDay=3). Special report that contains articles, videos and examples...
SWJED
05-23-2006, 07:08 AM
23 Washington Times commentary / book review - Terror on the Internet: The New Arena, the New Challenges (http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20060522-101437-1668r.htm) by Gabriel Weimann. Review by Joshua Sina.
Buy Terror on the Internet (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1929223714/smallwarsjour-20/102-5970440-5360969?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=1789&link%5Fcode=xm2) and support the SWJ / SWC!
As today's generation of terrorists are ferociously hunted by counterterrorist organizations, they possess a distinct advantage that their older predecessors lacked: access to computers, the worldwide Internet and cyberspace's myriad technological benefits in conducting communications and warfare.
Attesting to the pervasive use of the Internet by modern terrorist groups, Gabriel Weimann's groundbreaking and important book points to the exponential growth in such use since 1998, when less than half of the world's 30 active terrorist organizations had established a presence on the Net, compared to today when the 40 active groups have more than 4,300 Web sites serving them and their supporters...
GorTex6
05-24-2006, 04:03 AM
Also in the 23 May Washington Post - e-Qaeda: How al-Qaeda Uses the Internet (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/custom/2005/08/05/CU2005080501141.html?whichDay=3). Special report that contains articles, videos and examples...
That is a reprint from a year ago. (http://www.council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=318&postcount=4) Info is still relevant though...
FREE READS! Courtesy of Rand Corporation
Networks and Netwars : The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy (http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1382/), John Arquilla
Netwar-like cyberwar-describes a new spectrum of conflict that is emerging in the wake of the information revolution. Netwar includes conflicts waged, on the one hand, by terrorists, criminals, gangs, and ethnic extremists; and by civil-society activists (such as cyber activists or WTO protestors) on the other. What distinguishes netwar is the networked organizational structure of its practitioners-with many groups actually being leaderless-and their quickness in coming together in swarming attacks. To confront this new type of conflict, it is crucial for governments, military, and law enforcement to begin networking themselves.
The Advent of Netwar (http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR789/index.html), John Arquilla
The information revolution is leading to the rise of network forms of organization, with unusual implications for how societies are organized and conflicts are conducted. "Netwar" is an emerging consequence. The term refers to societal conflict and crime, short of war, in which the antagonists are organized more as sprawling "leaderless" networks than as tight-knit hierarchies. Many terrorists, criminals, fundamentalists, and ethno-nationalists are developing netwar capabilities. A new generation of revolutionaries and militant radicals is also emerging, with new doctrines, strategies, and technologies that support their reliance on network forms of organization. Netwar may be the dominant mode of societal conflict in the 21st century. These conclusions are implied by the evolution of societies, according to a framework presented in this RAND study. The emergence of netwar raises the need to rethink strategy and doctrine to conduct counternetwar. Traditional notions of war and low-intensity conflict as a sequential process based on massing, maneuvering, and fighting will likely prove inadequate to cope with nonlinear, swarm-like, information-age conflicts in which societal and military elements are closely intermingled.
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