Green on Blue: causes and responses (merged thread)

[carl]

People often say that attacks on the scale of 9-11 can be done from somewhere else, Yemen, Somalia, Western Europe etc. I have never bought that. Amb Crocker explained why it can't be done from Yemen. Western Europe is crawling with proficient police forces and intel services who are paying attention and whose individual officers and agents dream of being able to nab an AQ guy. If AQ wanted to use the area that used to be Somalia, they would have to get the Somaliland gov to go for it, which it probably won't, or the Puntland gov to go for it which probably won't and if they went to Mog the Ugandans would kill them and if they went south the Kenyans would kill them (both with copious help from us) and that would leave them with only thorny scrubland presided over by who knows who with access to nowhere.

They are in the best and probably only place for them in the world now, Pakistan mostly, because the Pak Army/ISI doesn't mind them too much. If Taliban took back Afghanistan there would be an even better place for them. This isn't before 9-11 anymore. Everybody is paying attention. They haven't gone anywhere else because they can't. The advantage of having a place where the authorities not only won't come after you but actually support you can't be done without.

Amb Crocker said some things about Kabul but I wish he had said more. The size of that place is a major change from 2001 as he mentioned. It has to have a very great effect upon how far a Pak Army/ISI supported Taliban & Co will be able to go after 2014.

Maybe H. Karzai has no intention of bugging out if the time comes. Amb Crocker very strongly said that Mr. Karzai's life depends upon what happens. That doesn't sound like a guy who is planning on running. And he has done some very brave things in the past.

Who knows how good the ANSF is, but it only has to be better than Taliban & Co. Another thread talked about some Taliban acknowledging that they cannot take Kabul. So it may not be such a sure thing how far Taliaban & Co. can go after 2014.

David mentioned the Indians. I wish Amb Crocker had had the time too also. They are the gorilla that sits quietly in the corner. If we decide to stop paying for the insurance policy that a post 2014 ANSF would be, I suspect the Indians, the Iranians, the Turks, the Russkis and the U-Pick-Astanis will make their own arrangements.

[Bill Moore]

Attacks that did not require a safe haven in Afghanistan
1995 Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway
1995 Oklahoma City Bombing
2002 Bali Bombins
2004 Madrid Train Bombings
2004 Beslan school hostage crisis
2005 London bombings
2006 Mumbai train bombings
Thousands of terrorist attacks in Iraq, now Syria.
Contrary to the Ambassador's claims, Al Qaeda in Yemen have been developing some cutting edge tactics and techniques for conducting terrorist attacks against airlines.

Future attacks will not require a safe haven since Al Qaeda is now largely decentralized and its core becoming less relevant. Terrorists historically have often found safe haven in major western cities by practicing good operational tradecraft and operations security measures. Safe haven for an insurgency and terrorists are two different animals. An intelligent mass murderer could develop a 9/11 like plot in his home and with funding facilitate the development of a cell to conduct the attack. Many will fail, just like the 9/11 should have in hindsight, but due to human error and dumb luck some will succeed. Training for the attacks could have taken place in U.S., much like the actual 9/11 hijackers did with flight school, martial arts training, etc. (flight simulators, recon airport secuirty, etc.). No doubt having Afghanistan was nice, but it isn't necessary to facilitate a major terrorist attack, and now operating from Afghanistan if more likely to result in compromise than success. We would be foolish to assume that any one piece of dirt is critical, and excessive focus on that piece of dirt will blind us to threats emerging from other parts of the world. We created a narrative that we can't escape from.
Future so called safe havens will definitely include parts of the many of the new Arab Spring countries, Yemen, Iraq, Mali, Indonesia, Philippines, Mexico, Somalia, etc. They will include the world of cyber which result in radicalized individuals in our own cities.

The Ambassador has a wealth of experience on point in a lot of rough areas, but like all he is subject to personal biases and clings to the narrative that he was part and parcel in creating.

[carl]

Bill:

Nope, Amb Crocker is right. AQ hasn't changed its ideology, nor has Taliban nor has Pak Army/ISI. If Taliban & Co were to reacquire Afghanistan, I see no reason at all why they would not resume doing what they had done before.

This is a semantic point but I'll bring it up. Amb Crocker referred to another 9-11. I referred to another 9-11. None of the attacks you mentioned were on the scale of 9-11 nor were any of them intended to be on the scale of 9-11. Now to your list.

I think you may be casting your net a little bit wide when you throw in Beslan, and Oklahoma City. Yes obviously attacks can be planned and carried out by other people in other places than Pak Army/ISIland and Afghanstan but the context of the discussion is AQ or AQ affiliated or sympathetic organizations. If you are going to include Beslan, OKC and Tokyo why not throw in the attack on Mecca or the Red Army Brigades in Italy or killing of the guy in Sarajevo that started WWI? And if you are going to include Iraq and Syria why not include Vietnam, Algeria, Cyprus and all the terror associated with the war in central Africa in the 90s and 2000s?

I did read that some of the London train bombers traveled to Pakistan for training. The failed Times Square bomber traveled to Pakistan for training and the guy from Denver who wanted to blow up the subway traveled to Pakistan for training. And the Mumbai attack was planned and run by the ISI from Pakistan. So I think that if you want to run a big op, especially a big complicated one, are AQ or affiliated, there is only one place in the world you can do that from and that is Pak Army/ISIland now, and Afghanistan if Taliban & Co get their bloody mitts on it again.

AQ in Yemen may be able to sneak an explosive cartridge on a cargo plane or make jockey shorts that might go bang but those are not ops on the scale of 9-11. In order to do something like that you need a country that likes you to live in. Cyber planning always sounds good but people still have to train somewhere, practice somewhere and make things somewhere. About the only place they can do that now, in the context of which we are speaking, is Pak Army/ISIland or perhaps Afghanistan again in the future.

We would be foolish to think that any one piece of dirt the only one that is needed to do bad things from. But we would be equally foolish to not to recognize that one particular piece of dirt is critical, and has been critical if you are looking at a particular type of big attack.

Ultimately though, the point isn't that is it possible that something big could be pulled off from somewhere else. Amb Crocker said that if Taliban gets Afghanistan back, AQ will be back with them. The last time that happened, it was not good.

[Dayuhan]

Straying a bit from the thread topic, but I expect David will sort that out...

AQ in Yemen may be able to sneak an explosive cartridge on a cargo plane or make jockey shorts that might go bang but those are not ops on the scale of 9-11. In order to do something like that you need a country that likes you to live in.

Ramzi Yousef hatched an ambitious plan to blow up airliners, assassinate the Pope, and fly a commercial jet into Langley from an apartment in downtown Manila. He might have pulled it off if he hadn't gotten sloppy.

[carl]

Ramzi Yousef hatched an ambitious plan to blow up airliners, assassinate the Pope, and fly a commercial jet into Langley from an apartment in downtown Manila. He might have pulled it off if he hadn't gotten sloppy.

He did indeed. He also attended an AQ training camp in Afghanistan I believe. He hid out in Pakistan for a while. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is his uncle. And he finally got picked up in Pakistan. So I would say, his case buttresses my point.

[davidbfpo]

Thanks Dayuhan:

Straying a bit from the thread topic, but I expect David will sort that out...

Yes I will. The issue of safe haven(s) for AQ and other terrorist groups has appeared before, so I'm not sure if there is an alternative home for these posts, if not a new thread will emerge.

The new consolidated thread on safe haven, sanctuary, sanctuaries and ungoverned spaces is called 'Sanctuary or Ungoverned Spaces:identification, symptoms and responses':http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=3905

[davidbfpo]

I missed this BBC Radio 4 programme, but the News website has a story on the issue and this appears in a side-bar.

Captain Doug Beattie has completed 3 tours of Afghanistan, most recently with the Territorial Army. He told File on 4 about the tribal allegiances which conflict with the work of many Afghan recruits.

There is a podcast for File on 4, but not yet this programme:http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/fileon4

Do not think of the Afghan Police as your local policeman who really looks after criminality. What you're looking at is a man who is normally illiterate, who is heavily armed, but has no concept of the rule of law. This young man is policing the area he lives in so they have family, friends and tribal leaders coming up to them and asking them to turn a blind-eye when they are moving a poppy crop through a checkpoint - that happens quite a bit."

"But sometimes there is an insurgent who could be known to the policeman who will ask him to turn a blind-eye so he can carry out whatever he intends to carry out. We know this and we've monitored this in some occasions. It's not because the policemen is aligned to the insurgency, it's not because he is a Taliban who has joined the police, it is because of these external influences against him from his family, from his tribe.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19672852