The trail heats up?

I haven't seen much reaction to this article from the Times Online in the blogosphere (H/T SWJ). It appears that the Pakistani Army captured a series of over 150 caves near the Afghan-Pakistani border, believed to have harbored al-Qaeda. The story gets even better: according to the article, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two operative--some say the real brains of al-Qaeda--may have been in the cave complex just shortly before the raid.


Pakistani forces have taken control of a warren of caves that served until recently as the nerve centre of the Taleban and al-Qaeda and sheltered Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command to Osama bin Laden.

“It was the main hub of militancy where al-Qaeda operatives had moved freely,” Major-General Tariq Khan, the Pakistan regional commander, said as he gave journalists a tour of Damadola yesterday.

The village, nestling among snow-capped peaks in the Bajaur region along the Afghan border, has been fought over for 16 months. It is the first time that the Pakistani Army has set foot in the village, which had long been dominated by the insurgents operating on the both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

“Al-Qaeda was there. They had occupied the ridges. There were 156 caves designed as a defensive complex,” said General Khan, head of the Frontier Corps responsible for Pakistan’s counter-insurgency campaign in the region. He said that his forces had killed 75 foreign and local militants and cleared a zone up to the Afghan border, and that the campaign against the insurgents was in its final stage...

...Journalists were shown caves strewn with blankets and pillows, left in haste as the army approached in January. The village has been largely destroyed by the fighting...

...According to officials he and some other al-Qaeda operatives had been attending a dinner but left just before the attack. The ruins of the house hit by the missiles were still present...



This comes hot on the heels of Pakistan's capture of nearly half the Quetta Shura--the inner circle of Taliban leaders--just last week.

And, just for clarification...

Courtesy of Jenna (via Google Reader), we are reminded that al-Qaeda affiliates (e.g., al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaeda in Iraq, etc) are not quite the real al-Qaeda Central (in Pakistan). For a brief primer, check out this post in a great Middle Eastern blog, The Majlis.

I almost think that renaming each regional terror organization "al-Qaeda" is actually a global misinformation and deception campaign against the West. And I'm not entirely sarcastic when I say that, either (note bin Laden's words, starting with "two mujahadeen fighters".

I can guarantee that this will never happen...

...because it makes too much damn sense.

Boss Mongo came up with a modest proposal for our various law enforcement and intelligence agencies in order to help keep known terrorists out of the US. Unlike other "modest proposals", this isn't sarcastic or over-the-top in the least...it's simple, it doesn't violate anyone's rights, it's unobtrusive, and it's cheap. Which leads me to believe that it won't happen...

Mongo notes that the would-be underwear bomber, named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, has an Arabic-based name which, when transcribed into a Latin-based alphabet ("Romanized"), results in all sorts of possible spellings. As Mongo points out, this is the case with many Arabic names (look at the 37 possible spellings of Qadaffi's name). It would be relatively simple for someone to fabricate numerous forms of identification based on multiple spellings, greatly complicating searches for a known terrorist's name in databases.

Mongo's ingenious--and relatively simple--solution involves some knowledge of basic Arabic, and permits one to easily search for multiple spellings for one Arabic-based name. TSA take note: this is a far better security precaution than banning bathroom breaks and Amazon Kindles in the last hour of the flight.

Just when you thought Holiday air travel couldn't get any worse...

...a terrorist with suspected links to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) attempts to blow up an Airbus en route to Detroit, Michigan. And I thought being in Reagan International on the 23rd of December was bad...

One blog in particular has some great updates on this recent development. "Al-Sahwa" (Arabic for "The Awakening", in reference to the Awakening movements in Anbar Province in Iraq) is run by a number of Army captains who seem to spend their time blogging on counterinsurgency and national security issues due to extreme boredom in their captains career course (I deeply sympathize). On Christmas Day, no less, a poster by the name of Pat Ryan posted extensively on the recent happenings in the skies over Detroit:

It appears the the recent US-Yemeni operations targeting AQAP in various parts of Yemen have stirred up the hornet's nest...

Northwest Airlines 253 (originating from Amsterdam) was the site today of a failed attempt to detonate some sort of Improvised Explosive Device (IED). The Wall Street Journal reports that after the plane landed in Detroit, TSA and FBI officials quickly took one individual into custody and were interviewing all passengers. Although full details are yet to emerge, initial reports say that the man had some sort of IED strapped to his leg and attempted to detonate the device in midair. The device malfunctioned and started a small fire.

According to the WSJ, the man told officials that he had been given the IED by an AQ (or AQ-affiliated) operative based in Yemen and was acting on their instructions. If true, this would show the ability of AQAP to extend their reach beyond the wider Arabian Peninsula into the West and the US specifically. It also clearly raises questions of physical security vulnerabilities on flights originating from international locations.

Obviously, this story is still unfolding, so details will likely be sketchy for the next few days. However, I found it interesting that Pat linked the AQAP-inspired attack over Detroit to a recent series of successful raids against AQAP in Yemen over the last week. On Thursday, 24 December, the Yemeni military launched a massive combined operaton on AQAP operatives, and are suspected of killing the top two AQAP leaders in Yemen, as well as Anwar al-Alwaki , a radical Muslim cleric who had regular e-mail contact with Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter. In total, the 24 December operation produced the following results, according to Saba News, the official Yemeni news organization (H/T Long War Journal and al-Sahwa):

Anti-terrorism troops launched in the early hours of Thursday [24 December 2009] air and ground raids against al-Qaeda hideouts and training sites in Abyan in the south and in Sana'a in the north killing and arresting about 51 al Qaeda suspects, including foreigners.

Between 24-30 plotters were killed and caught in Abyan in the south, four killed and four arrested in Arahab district north of the capital, and 13 were seized in the capital of Sana'a.

The 24 December attack comes shortly after an American cruise missile attack 17 December. This strike was directed against three separate targets in Yemen, and is suspected of killing over 120, according to Yemeni officials.

The correlation is disturbing, but the attacker's isolated actions, and the relative incompetence of the operation may be an indication of an AQAP organization on the ropes. Let's hope so. The links between recent American/Yemen success and this recent botched plot are better than the theory I had about a Christmas event having great psychological effect, although it's not entirely without precedent this holiday season, what with a Taliban video of PFC Bowe Bergdahl surfacing just yesterday.

Waq al-Waq, a blog specializing in the Iranian- and AQ-backed insurgency in Yemen, has been quiet over the last few days, but should have great information coming out of the area.

Around the Blogosphere...

Today's foreign policy and military analysis, brought to you by some of the usual suspects.

I received a link yesterday from CourtneyME109 regarding an interesting article in Foreign Policy Online entitled "No Good Choices", referring to President Obama's four proposed courses of action in Afghanistan.

I need to begin with the following caveat. I will always be suspicious of computer models regarding insurgent environments, and it stems from my experience fighting the 21st Century Maginot Line in the Aviation Captains Career Course on the JANUS system*. There are far too many variables to be modeled accurately. Decades worth of formulas and wargames didn't help Helmuth van Moltke (the Younger) in August of 1914--and that was a mere 2GW battlefield, not the modern 4GW one.

Nevertheless, they shouldn't be completely discounted, either.

In the article at FP Online, two defense analysts partook in a series of wargames concerning Afghanistan. I'd be highly curious to see the raw data, and the methodology behind the wargames, but it brings up a number of issues which I think I'd suspected all along. Not the least of which is that the counterinsurgency landscape in Afghanistan is significantly more complex than the French experience in Algeria and the British experience in Malaya (around which much of our current counterinsurgency doctrine is based).

Says the article:

What explains the inability of any additional deployment to reduce the likelihood of insurgency in Afghanistan? Our analysis suggests that the U.S. counterinsurgency swims against two very strong currents.

First, the combustible mix of Afghanistan's relatively immutable social and political characteristics -- its ethnic and religious divisions, low level of economic development, and large population -- almost guarantees continued insurgency. The country's poverty and large population encourage competition for scarce resources, and that competition gins up violence. Democracy itself seems to further destabilize the country: Our analysis shows that when foreign countries institute democracy in countries with deep ethnic and religious divisions (and Afghanistan is a tribal-based society), insurgency results.

A second factor suggesting that additional U.S. troops won't do much to quell political violence is the length of the war in Afghanistan. Insurgency develops momentum and is more difficult to eliminate the longer it persists. A force that might nip a fledgling insurgency in the bud is unlikely to do so once it is embedded -- and the rebels in Afghanistan have been around for nearly a decade.

While the continued high probability of insurgency in Afghanistan is bad news by itself, its implications for the survival of democracy in Afghanistan are even more sobering. Indeed, the same ethnic and religious divisions, poverty, and large population that make Afghanistan ripe for the Taliban also undermine the viability of the democratic government -- and additional foreign soldiers do little to ameliorate those underlying conditions.

If the United States keeps the current force in place, our analysis predicts a nearly 20 percent chance that democracy will fail in Afghanistan within three years, 40 percent in five years, and 62 percent in 10 years. The most aggressive force expansion, adding 60,000 troops, actually increasesthe risk of democratic failure, to 22 percent in a three-year time frame and 73 percent in 10 years. Our analysis indicates that larger force deployments increase the risk of democratic failure because they stimulate discontent within the civilian populace -- even if they increase security -- making the durability of the elected government more tenuous.

On the flip side, however...

We also explored the consequences that continued insurgency in Afghanistan might have for its regional neighbors. Our research shows that the successful development of democracy in Afghanistan would promote regional democratization and peace, creating a powerful example for the wider region to follow and encouraging democracy in Pakistan and Iran. But democratic failure in Kabul would carry severe negative effects. In particular, the failure of democracy in Afghanistan raises the risk of civil conflict in Pakistan by a non-negligible 4.2 percent. Not only would the failure of the fledgling Afghan democracy undermine regional hopes for democracy, but the instability would no doubt spill over the country's borders.

Ultimately, our forecasts paint a bleak picture for Afghanistan, regardless of the strategy Obama chooses. Our analysis clearly shows that the time for the stabilization of Afghanistan, if such time existed at all, has passed. The deployment of additional troops to Afghanistan shows little chance of either ending the insurgency or sustaining Afghan democracy. At the same time, the collapse of democracy in Afghanistan raises the specter of something even more worrying: instability in a nuclear-armed Pakistan. As such, our analysis suggests that the resources proposed for the continuation of a losing bet in Afghanistan would be better applied to supporting Pakistan and maintaining its stability.

I'm somewhat skeptical of the claims that instability in Afghanistan will automatically lead to instability in Pakistan (andits arsenal of nuclear weapons). Note that Afghanistan had been stable throughout the 1990s, with seemingly minimal risk to Pakistan's stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Moving along, the next link comes from SWJ's Council and it regards the real threat in the region, al-Qaeda. The guys at SWJ link to another article in FP Online ("Destroying al Qaeda is Not an Option Yet") which discusses the current state of al-Qaeda: one that has been significantly wounded not only by Predator strikes--with a good portion of its top leadership dead--but also appearing increasingly illegitimate in the eyes of many Muslims.

Good news for us.

However, the author brings up a puzzling argument. He believes that the concentration of anti-Western Wahhabists in al Qaeda gives NATO a center of gravity to act upon. Should al Qaeda be destroyed, Wahhabists might flock to a number of other groups, with the dispersion making them that much harder to target and kill.

Oh, you mean like al Qaeda in Mesopotamia (Iraq), al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen), Lashkar e-Taiba, and any one of a number of other groups? Thanks, it already happened.

The last link isn't about foreign policy--it's about the families of Soldiers. In an article in the Washington Post, the wife of a battalion commander in Iraq notes a number of issues within the family readiness groups Army-wide. One of her top complaints is one which I agree with:

Finally, the Army should directly fund its mandated Family Readiness Groups. Currently, Army regulations require that fundraising be done within units -- so we bake cupcakes and sell them to our own husbands in the motor pool, effectively taking from the people we are trying to support. We shouldn't have to fundraise to treat families to pizza and bowling while their soldiers are deployed.

Yes, the FRG fundraiser. I would be all for nixing these in favor of direct funding to family readiness groups, although for a different reason than the author puts forward...my issue is with the time spent on fundraisers. I'd rather simply pay $50 out of my own pocket than give up a weekend selling cupcakes or sodas, and I'm certain many soldiers and families feel the same way as well. Many fundraisers take away precious time away from families on weekends and weekdays. Not to mention, in this era, many spouses work--when are they going to find the time to participate in a bake sale?

And that's the blogosphere for today. Oh, with one more note for the guys at al-Sahwa.

*--Good luck in your career course. To beat the game, just put tanks all over the battlefield and the Soviet Army will be destroyed. Don't leave a gap in your line like one student did, or the Soviets will break through. Seriously, we have students that fight like the French Army in 1940. God help us all...

The middle ground?

If it weren't Saturday night, I'd be posting all about the new plan for Afghanistan (basically a hybrid counter-insurgency/counter-terror plan). I need to see the specifics, but it doesn't sound half bad at a precursory glance. Something to mill about when I sober up tomorrow morning....

What's in a Name?

In the 1967 James Bond parody movie, Casino Royale, a number of the British agents decide to re-name themselves "James Bond" in an attempt to confuse the enemy. To that end, we have David Niven, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen and even Ursula Andress all playing characters who have changed their names to "James Bond". It sounds like a ridiculous plot point--after all, who would be confused simply by giving a whole bunch of agents similar names?

Most of you should be raising your hand right now.

(H/T SWJ's daily roundup) Today's New York Times ran an interesting article regarding the confusion even within the major policy think-tanks regarding the vast number of groups in Afghanistan who refer to themselves as the "Taliban". (As the author notes, "Taliban" is not so much a proper noun as it is a word for "students" in Arabic). Note that the points the author makes about the all-encompassing term "Taliban" can also be applied to the all-encompassing term "al Qaeda" (e.g., al Qaeda, al Qaeda in Iraq, etc). Take a look:

[A]s it devises a new Afghanistan policy, the Obama administration confronts a complex geopolitical puzzle: two embattled governments, in Afghanistan and Pakistan; numerous militias aligned with overlapping Islamist factions; and hidden in the factions’ midst, the foe that brought the United States to the region eight years ago, Al Qaeda.

But at the core of the tangle are the two Taliban movements, Afghan and Pakistani. They share an ideology and a dominant Pashtun ethnicity, but they have such different histories, structures and goals that the common name may be more misleading than illuminating, some regional specialists say.

“The fact that they have the same name causes all kinds of confusion,” said Gilles Dorronsoro, a French scholar of South Asia currently at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

This week, Mr. Dorronsoro said, as the Pakistani Armybegan a major offensive against the Pakistani Taliban, many Americans thought incorrectly that the assault was against the Afghan Taliban, the force that is causing Washington to consider sending more troops to Afghanistan...

...“To be honest, the Taliban commanders and groups on the ground in Afghanistan couldn’t care less what’s happening to their Pakistani brothers across the border,” said Mr. Strick van Linschoten, who has interviewed many current and former members of the Afghan Taliban.

In fact, the recent attacks of the Pakistani Taliban against Pakistan’s government, military and police, in anticipation of the army’s current campaign into the Pakistani Taliban’s base in South Waziristan, may have strained relations with the Afghan Taliban, saidRichard Barrett, a former British intelligence officer who tracks Al Qaeda and the Taliban for the United Nations.

The Afghan Taliban have always had a close relationship with Pakistani intelligence agencies, Mr. Barrett said recently. “They don’t like the way that the Pakistan Taliban has been fighting the Pakistan government and causing a whole load of problems there,” he said...

...Before 9/11, the Afghan Taliban hosted Osama bin Laden and the other leaders of Al Qaeda, but the groups are now separated geographically, their leaders under pressure from intensive manhunts. On jihadist Web sites, analysts have detected recent tensions between Al Qaeda, whose proclaimed goals are global, and the Afghan Taliban, which have recently claimed that their interests lie solely in Afghanistan.

Mr. Dorronsoro, the French scholar, said the Afghan Taliban were a “genuine national movement” incorporating not only a broad network of fighters, but also a shadow government-in-waiting in many provinces.

By comparison, he said, the Pakistani Taliban were a far looser coalition, united mainly by their enmity toward the Pakistani government. They emerged formally only in 2007 as a separate force led by Baitullah Mehsud under the name Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or Students’ Movement of Pakistan....

...Polls show that Americans, frustrated by the United States’ supposed allies and confused by the conflict, are losing their fervor for the fight. “The complexity of all this is hard enough for experts to understand,” said Paul R. Pillar, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst now at Georgetown University. “It’s not surprising if it baffles a lot of ordinary people.”

I've made this analogy before, although I stole it from my Middle Eastern history professor some ten years ago, but it's worth making again: the vast number of groups with similar-sounding names but vastly different agendas bears a striking similarity to the various Palestinian liberation groups in Monty Python and the Life of Bryan (all COINdinistas should probably find that link amusing).

As David Kilcullen points out in The Accidental Guerrilla, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are hybrid wars--fights against multiple insurgent groups, numerous terror networks, various competing sectarian and tribal groups, criminal syndicates, and so forth. This is common among many "small wars". Indeed, during the Hejaz War of 1916, Lawrence could not convince many of the Arab groups to join together to fight the Turks. Rather, he was able to get one tribe to lay an explosive device on the railway on one day of the week, then another tribe to mount a small attack somewhere on another day of the week, and so forth. It drove the Turks mad, as they were unable to discern any larger pattern to the operation. As Lawrence quipped, "maximum disorder was our equilibrium".

Small Wars are increasingly frustrating for the populations of Western countries. In addition to the factors frequently cited--namely, the length of time needed to conduct a successful counterinsurgency--the complexity of these operations is sometimes too much for the public to comprehend. In conventional wars, we find it easy to follow the success or failure of our forces. In many ways, it resembles a game of football--we watch our forces move increasingly closer to the "goal line", we face lines of battle which are generally similar to our own, and there's clearly defined "good guys" and "bad guys". Insurgencies and hybrid wars, on the other hand, are difficult to relate to--there are often many enemies, their numbers can grow or dwindle at will, they remain hidden and seek battle on their own terms, and success is difficult, if not impossible, to measure.

But this is the future of warfare--it's increasingly confusing, complex and muddled. And that's why we need to train leaders capable of dealing with these environments.

(Additional Reading: See "On the Psychology of Military Incompetence", which has some great passages dedicated to military leaders' aversion to ambiguous situations)

Afghanistan: Door number one, two or three?

A few links today which, once again, explore the various policy options in Afghanistan. What's interesting to note is that it seems that most of these options are actually expressed in far greater detail than they had been before. Anyway, a quick summary of a few of the points.

The big debate is whether or not to focus on a counter-terror campaign or a counter-insurgency campaign...both of which involve their own respective Gordian knots of unknowns, variables, black swans, and potential outcomes. Nevertheless, much of the debate has focused on concentrating on one of these two camps--either you're for counterinsurgency or for counter-terror.

I'd always hoped that there was something in between these two camps, and I heard it from Tom Ricks just today, during an interview on Fareed Zakaria's GPS (although it's also brought up in CNAS' June publication called "Triage: The Next Twelve Months in Afghanistan", available on Kindle). The CNAS gang proposed using the "oil spot strategy"--standard Galula-based counterinsurgency--which would begin by securing the urban areas of Afghanistan and slowly expanding their reach from these areas. Meanwhile, the counter-terror campaign would be conducted on the peripherals of the ever-expanding oil spots in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, the down side to many of these "middle ground" solutions, though, is that they seem distressingly similar to what we've been trying to do for the last eight years or so (with an urban elite government in Kabul which seems to barely exist outside of the city limits). Nevertheless, it seems far more attractive than a full-blown counterinsurgency campaign (which, by its very nature, will be messy and slow), coupled with a civilian surge (not going to happen).

The counter-terror crowd, on the other hand, has been sparse on details--they've mainly been "anti-full-blown-COIN" than anything else. That is, until today, when Austin Long at the AfPak channel decided to fill us in (it sounds eerily similar to something posted by Ralph Peters. No no, the counter-terror part, not the killing of American POWs part). Basically, it would consist of a few NATO air bases in Afghanistan, which would also house a few battalions of infantry forces and special operations forces, which would focus on killing or capturing key Taliban and al Qaeda leaders. This minimalist approach would still consist of several thousand troops (and contractors).

The problem I see with this approach, however, is that it will still be very difficult to get the human intelligence necessary to acquire these targets. Without a significant presence from NATO and (especially) Afghan troops, we risk having more incidents like those in Kunduz last month.

Focus: There's no easy way to cut this one. Not to mention, we still don't know the true nature of our enemies in Afghanistan: the Taliban, the taliban (little "T"), and al Qaeda.

The relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban: Friends with benefits?

A few days ago, karaka pend asked me whether or not it was worth the $35 to purchase War 2.0: Irregular Warfare in the Information Age. I thought it was a great book, don't get me wrong, but I hate spending $35 for e-books, so I recommended not buying it. Another reader disagreed with me, stating that the book was well worth the money--but caveatted their response with the fact that some of the material in the book might already be common knowledge to some people.

Now, I'll agree that much of the book reiterated information that I felt that I was already familiar with. Yes, I'm well aware that there are bloggers in the military. I know that Soldiers use Facebook to connect with the outside world, share life experiences, post pictures of cats who desire "cheezburgers", etc. I also know quite well that there's this site called Small Wars Journal where people discuss counterinsurgency....and while it's not The Best Page in the Universe, it's still good enough to make the Rolling Stone Hot List.

That being said, War 2.0 (along with another book I've been into recently, In the Graveyard of Empires) does tackle a very important issue which has, until recently, been overlooked in the debate on Afghanistan: the relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda. Fortunately, a number of pundits have been able to examine this issue recently, most notably Perter Bergen, who penned an article which appeared in The New Republic recently (h/t Afpak Channel on Twitter).

Bergen--one of the few Western journalists who has actually been able to interview Osama bin Laden--begins his article by summing up the arguments of those who support the "offshore balancing" strategy, which he opposes:

And yet, as President Obama weighs whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, the connection between the region and Al Qaeda has suddenly become a matter of hot dispute in Washington. We are told that September 11 was as much a product of plotting in Hamburg as in Afghanistan; that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are quite distinct groups, and that we can therefore defeat the former while tolerating the latter; that flushing jihadists out of one failing state will merely cause them to pop up in another anarchic corner of the globe; that, in the age of the Internet, denying terrorists a physical safe haven isn't all it's cracked up to be.

These arguments point toward one conclusion: The effort to secure Afghanistan is not a matter of vital U.S. interest. But those who make this case could not be more mistaken. Afghanistan and the areas of Pakistan that border it have always been the epicenter of the war on jihadist terrorism-and, at least for the foreseeable future, they will continue to be. Though it may be tempting to think otherwise, we cannot defeat Al Qaeda without securing Afghanistan.

Mr. Bergen is one of the first people to actually take on many of the valid points of the "offshore balancing" camp--after that camp has run circles around the "comprehensive COIN" camp for the last few weeks. (Read the article--why is General McChrystal not using Bergen's speaking points?)

Bergen brings up an important point which was mentoned in both War 2.0 and Graveyard regarding the Taliban--they've evolved since their ousting in 2002, and they've done so with the help of al Qaeda. The relationship between these two organizations has been a strained one since the 1990s--al Qaeda leadership looked down on the Afghan movement, according to both sources. Nevertheless, in recent years, they have been able to train the Taliban in a number of insurgent tactics--namely, the construction of improvised explosive devices, suicide bombings, and most importantly, the value of information operations. (As War 2.0 notes very astutely, the Taliban--which had originally banned almost all forms of media--soon came to realize the value of such forms of communication and propaganda).

Now, some of the claims Bergen makes seem a little far-fetched. For example, the fact that one Taliban-allied terrorist attempted a bomb plot in the West is used as an example that the Taliban actually have global aspirations. Nevertheless, it hardly sounds like Taliban policy. Bergen is also one of the few who tackles some of the key issues regarding the Af/Pak safe haven (can al Qaeda move to Somalia, Yemen or the Sudan effectively?), as well as the "internet safe haven" argument (I'd argue that there is, in fact, some value in using these forums).

All in all, Bergen produces an interesting argument, and one of the first well-written arguments I've heard from the "continue the war" camp. Although I still remain somewhat skeptical on some points, the fact of the matter remains that the relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban (or "little t" taliban) might be significantly more complex than originally thought. I think it's naive to claim that there is no connection at this point, and that it's equally unrealistic to claim that they are one and the same. For the time being, they have many agenda points which, for the moment, seem to be mutually beneficial. In a way, we might call these organizations friends, with benefits conferred upon the alliance. (Hehehe, I said "friends with benefits")

Edit: I'm not the only one who is confused as to the actual relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda, based on this article from the Los Angeles Times this morning:

Ten years later, could Al Qaeda return to Afghanistan and use it again as a launching pad for terrorist strikes?

The question has taken on heightened urgency as the Obama administration searches for a new war strategy, and Pakistan carries out its first major military offensive in the tribal region that Al Qaeda has called home since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

The issue is also a source of surprising disagreement within the counter-terrorism community.

Some are skeptical that Al Qaeda would return to Afghanistan, even in the event of a substantial U.S. military drawdown. Doing so would mean leaving a sanctuary in Pakistan that has afforded significant protection for eight years, despite a barrage of U.S. Predator drone strikes.

Others argue that Al Qaeda is under mounting pressure in Pakistan, and that a return to Afghanistan is all but inevitable if President Obama endorses anything other than a full-scale, counterinsurgency campaign there.

There is broad agreement among U.S. intelligence officials that Al Qaeda has a minimal presence in Afghanistan and would probably like to return there if it had the chance....

...One senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said the number of Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan is in the "dozens," and that most function as low-level fighters with no significant leadership presence.

"Al Qaeda brings very little to the fight in Afghanistan," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Militarily, he said, "if you removed Al Qaeda from the equation in Afghanistan, it wouldn't matter."

That may be by design. Over the last eight years, Al Qaeda has burrowed deep into Pakistan's tribal belt, and fostered a closer relationship with local Taliban elements that are focused on carrying out attacks against the Pakistani government.

The Afghan Taliban, by contrast, has sought to distance itself from Al Qaeda, and to portray its insurgent campaign as a local fight.

A statement last month attributed to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar urged the West "not to be deceived" by Obama's assertions that the Afghanistan war is necessary because of the Al Qaeda threat. "The West does not have to wage this war," Omar said....

...U.S. intelligence officials said there is little sign of an active relationship at the top of the organizations, and probably no contact whatsoever between Bin Laden and Omar...

...

Still, they point to ongoing coordination at lower levels. And in his recent military assessment, U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal said Al Qaeda aids the insurgency with "ideological motivation, training and financial support."

There are reasons that Al Qaeda might be reluctant to relocate. The protective, rugged terrain of Pakistan's Waziristan region and the group's ties with the tribes there offer advantages the terrorist network would struggle to replicate in other places such as Somalia or Yemen.

Pakistan has served as such an effective haven that after eight years, the trail for Bin Laden "is not just cold, it's frozen over," Riedel said.

Moving across the border would expose Al Qaeda operatives to risks of detection by satellites, CIA drones or spies on the ground. And even if the U.S. was to withdraw forces from Afghanistan, America is likely to have a substantial military presence there -- and freedom to operate, unlike in Pakistan -- for years to come.

Edit #2 (Courtesy of Pat O): Seems that Nathan Hodge at Wired's Danger Room has also noticed an ideological shift in the Taliban, based on contact with al Qaeda. Well worth the read.

Focus: This is the crux of the whole Afghanistan debate--What is the relationship between these two organizations?

Don't tell me we've stooped to the "Domino Theory"

I try to avoid making Vietnam comparisons in the Afghan debate, but sometimes it's unavoidable.

Take today's post by Londonstani in Andrew Exum's "Abu Muqawama", in which Londonstani and British General Sir David Richards invoke the old "Domino theory" argument from the Vietnam era. Says Gen. Richards in the Telegraph:

He said: "If al-Qaeda and the Taliban believe they have defeated us – what next? Would they stop at Afghanistan? Pakistan is clearly a tempting target not least because of the fact that it is a nuclear-weaponed state and that is a terrifying prospect. Even if only a few of those (nuclear) weapons fell into their hands, believe me they would use them. The recent airlines plot has reminded us that there are people out there who would happily blow all of us up."

Cute, but hardly accurate. Keep in mind that the Taliban ruled Afghanistan throughout the 1990s and seemed largely uninterested in Pakistan.

But wait, there's more to the Taliban's dastardly plans:

He said: "Failure would have a catalytic effect on militant Islam around the world and in the region because the message would be that al-Qaeda and the Taliban have defeated the US and the British and Nato, the most powerful alliance in the world. So why wouldn't that have an intoxicating effect on militants everywhere? The geo-strategic implications would be immense."

All right, so the monolithic Takfiri Jihadists in the world will then band together and continue taking over every country at will if we abandon Afghanistan? I have my doubts. The last time we invoked the Domino argument was Vietnam, and it was an utterly false assumption: after the US withdrawal from Vietnam, there were more wars among the Communist countries of Southeast Asia than anything else: Communism completely failed to take hold over the rest of Southeast Asia. Just as there was no monolithic Communism, there certainly is no monolithic Muslim jihadism (in case you didn't notice from all the sectarian violence going on).

One of the worst strategic blunders on the part of al Qaeda (and similar takfiri groups) is their propensity to cause mass civilian casualties among the Muslim community--significantly reducing their appeal. They also appear to have little interest in actual nation-building and governance. (T.E. Lawrence said it best--insurgents rarely make effective civil leaders). Especially in light of the elections in Iran, which showed considerable disinterest in the leadership of the ayatollahs and the like, I have my doubts that the Muslim world is going to rush to accept militant jihadism as a form of governance in the wake of an American withdrawal.

When life gives you lemons, put them in a Corona bottle…

The big news over the past few days has been al Qaeda's threats against Germany, possibly in an attempt to influence the elections. Obviously, they weren't particularly successful as Angela Merkel was recently re-elected this week.

Al Qaeda, in an attempt to dissuade the Germans from participating in Afghanistan, offered the following proclamation:

[Afghanistan is not] a beer tent to celebrate Oktoberfest in all year round."

Christ, with the 3600-man German contingent in Afghanistan consuming nearly a million pints of beer over the course of a year, it's kind of hard to tell the difference. Nevertheless, the police presence has been increased this month, particularly in Munich, where Oktoberfest is primarily celebrated. Indeed, only a dastardly organization like al Qaeda would seek to defile a holiday dedicated to drinking beer. Fortunately, there's an upside to the threats and increased police presence:

Susanne Seitz, 30, a communications manager from Munich in a black "dirndl", a traditional southern German dress, agreed: "It won't spoil the party, people are having just as good a time as they have always done."

"The police are clearly doing all they can to protect us, but if it happens, I don't think there is really very much anyone can do about it," Seitz told AFP.

"On a lighter side, police have virtually stopped fining people for being drunk on their bikes or not having their lights on while cycling, they seem to be more pre-occupied about catching the terrorists."

Ha, take that, Nanny State!

Chapter XVI: Whether it is better to fear or love butt bombs...

The US Naval Institute’s blog carries a number of fascinating posts—some regard naval history, some regard the nature of 4GW and the OODA loop. And then, we have some which primarily regard the use of what the authors refer to as “butt bombs”.

A little background: A recent al Qaeda plot involved the attempted suicide bombing of Saudi Arabia’s counter-terrorism minister. The attacker hid the explosives not in a suicide vest, but rather, as some news sources refer to it, in his “anal cavity”. The attack was ultimately unsuccessful; with the attacker eliminating himself from the gene pool after a fellow al Qaeda operative sent him a text message, detonating the cell phone-triggered explosives, and left the counter-terrorism minister shaken, but not stirred. Al Qaeda must be running out of ideas—this was used in the last Batman movie, The Dark Knight—only without the bomb in someone’s ass. The Joker, as you will recall, detonates a bomb hidden inside someone’s chest cavity after being granted his phone call, facilitating his escape. (The guys at Defense and the National Interest have a great analysis of that movie’s application to 4GW.)

When we first heard about this, we responded with raucous laughter, and we even made a little song about the event. Seriously, the lyrics were “Let’s have some fun, this beat is sick/I wanna take a ride on a dynamite stick”. Okay, it’s not exactly that original, sue me.

Anyway, the USNI quotes Dr. Mike Waller of politicalwarfare.org on the potential IO spin we could potentially put on al Qaeda’s use of anal explosives:

Al Qaeda has flummoxed security experts with its new tactic of evading detection systems by hiding explosives and detonators inside the bodies of suicide bombers.

The method redefines what it is to be an “assassin.”

The new trick came to light last month in a Saudi palace when an Al Qaeda operative, claiming to want to surrender, exploded in a failed attempt to murder the Saudi prince in charge of counterterrorism operations. The terrorist stuffed a pound of explosives and a detonator up his behind (or perhaps one of his buddies did it for him) in order to foil bomb detectors.

What I’m about to propose is gross and disgusting and downright insensitive. But it’s culturally appropriate. And it’s a quick, inexpensive way to see if we can damage terrorist recruitment and neutralize this new and dangerous Al Qaeda murder tactic. So here goes.

Rather than get alarmed about lacking the technical means to detect such bomb smugglers, we should use Arab and Islamic (and generally universal, lowbrow, adolescent) cultural traits to make terrorists too ashamed and embarrassed to turn their bottoms into bombs. And to humiliate their supporters.

This tactic is begging for ridicule. Terrorists hate being ridiculed. Sexually repressed young men hate being ridiculed. Islamist extremists hate being ridiculed. Mockery stains their honor. Most terrorists are sexually repressed Islamist extremist young men.

Therefore, it’s time for the US and its allies, as well as the Saudis, to turn on the laughs by making fun of the butt-bombers. We can all think of ways to ridicule these weirdos in English – oh, the metaphors are just too plentiful and too crude to list here – and the Arabic language is likewise awash in backdoor humor. To say nothing of Pashto.

It does make for an interesting IO spin, to be certain. There’s nothing like ridiculing your enemies’ gross incompetence and maybe even nominating them for a Darwin Award—particularly when it involves something that’s so comically sexually humiliating. But is the author over-estimating the level of embarrassment involved by playing up the gay angle? After the collapse of the Taliban, the custom among Afghan warlords to have a young boy in their service commenced again. Indeed, I believe it was Peter Bergen who reported that, during the Afghan Civil War, two warlords fought a battle with tanks over who had the rights to a young boy. The custom seems to have mixed favor throughout the Muslim world, with nations such as Iran out-right banning gays, on one hand. On the other hand, T.E. Lawrence reported that the Hejaz chapter of MEMBLA seemed to be alive and well among some Bedouins, at least during World War One.

Nevertheless, relentless ridicule is a simple, effective way to de-legitimize al Qaeda, especially when combined with their ever-increasing unpopularity as a result of the massive collateral damage they create.

Focus: Create your own IO spin on the AnalBomber. Do it for NATO.