Today's Wild Geese: Foreign Fighters in the GWOT

[Kiwigrunt]

An eight minute TED talk on how the Taliban recruit/brainwash children.

[davidbfpo]

A SWJ Blog pointer to the Newsweek article 'Inside Al Qaeda', a recommendation from another watcher and the All Things CT (from Australia) too. Sub-titled:

Nine years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden’s network remains a shadowy, little-understood enemy. The truth, as revealed by one of its fighters, is both more and less troubling than we think.

Newsweek link:http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/04/inside-al-qaeda.html

All Things CT link:http://allthingsct.wordpress.com/201...-old-chestnut/

An interesting account of a juvenile, of Afghan origin living in Pakistan, being recruited, trained and then leaving - in response to his mother's pleas. Yes, some gaps and credibility to this armchair watcher.

So now All Things CT's comment:

one thing stood straight out when I read this. Their account of the class size–some 30 persons. Why this stood out is that this was the size of AQ’s basic training course at al-Farouq (though sometimes they had up to 40). And this size is actually bigger than the advanced training course size at Tarnak, which usually sat at around 15-20 persons.

Previous reports from recent training had tended to suggest AQ was only training at around 15 or so in a group, so this 30 figure stood out immediately. Whether they can still do this is of course a matter for debate, but nonetheless, even with talk of taking out so many fighters, which the authors cover in their article, this account of a full training compliment gives pause for thought.

Then there is a Peter Bergen piece:http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/04/w...l-matters.html

All Things CT again:

Might we finally be seeing the death of that hoary old chestnut thrown about for so long–about a robust pre-9/11 ”AQ” with a large membership base of at least several hundred or more usually several thousand members, instead of the just under 200 strong membership (198 actually) it had as 9/11 loomed??? As long term readers of this blog will know it is one of the first things I wrote about when I started allthingsct last year.

Peter Bergen’s new piece gives me hope that this may be taking place.

[davidbfpo]

A German story, albeit reported in The Scotsman:

GERMAN intelligence sources have revealed how a group of Islamist radicals discovered the path of Holy War was more difficult than they supposed. The nine would-be terrorists travelled, with two women, from Germany to Afghanistan in 2009 in a bid for glory.

(Later)They were also alienated by the experienced Uzbek fighters they had been taken on by, dispelling their notions of Islamic unity.

Link:http://www.scotsman.com/news/Wouldbe...war.6587573.jp

Yes, "spin" from Germany, but accords with other independent reports on the reality volunteers find upon joining the global Jihad.

[Bob's World]

Best to focus on the aspects of a problem within one's control

Causation rests primarily with the Government; Motivation comes from elsewhere.

As an example, within the states the Tea Party drives the Obama administration mad, but for the policies of the Obama administration, there would be no Tea Party. They attack the symptom, but don't ask; 'What is it about our approach to governance that leaves this segment of the populace feeling that they must organize and challenge us?"

The big benefit on this particular example is that those who join the Tea Party still have hope. Not the hope offered by the Administration in it's campaign bid, but the hope that comes with the certainty that the Constitutional guarantees of term limits, their right to vote, the timeline of when elections will be held, the knowledge that the President will not call upon the military to thwart the will of the people, etc. This is why the US can absorb a lot more causation than other countries can.

Motivation is another factor. This gets to ideology, recruiting, etc. But just as a wet forest is hard to burn, a well governed populace is hard to motivate to act out illegally to challenge government.

Germany must ask itself why it, of all non Muslim European states provides the most foreign fighters to Afghanistan? May be closely related to the fact that Turkey is a major source of foreign fighters there as well.

[Jedburgh]

INEGMA, 8 Nov 10: Conduits to Terror - Classifying the Methods of Jihadist and Middle Eastern Terrorist Recruitment

...From the perspective that people are the core of any organizations’ sustainable achievement, and that manpower is a critical success factor for terrorists, this report will investigate the recruiting and training methods and trends in terrorist organizations of the Middle East and Central Asia. The source of much disagreement today is whether recruitment is driven by a central leadership structure or more “bottom-up” in that actors self-radicalize and carry out an attack....

[Bob's World]

I realize "terrorist organizations" rolls off the tongue easier than "unofficial political organizations employing terrorist tactics where denied legal venues to affect change"; but it sure muddies the water.

Terrorism is a tactic. It is time to stop describing organizations by their tactics and begin recognizing them by their purpose.

"For want of a nail" the war was lost. Today it appears to be for want of a word.